Chris J. Bartle. Computer
Technician.
Phone 0412 922 447
E.mail on [email protected]
‘Care
and Feeding of Computers’ a
book in progress.
My father taught me to
drive, and I think he did a fairly good job, and so does my insurance
company. Before he would let me sit in
the drivers seat and turn that magical key that would bring the motor to life
and take me into the adult world there were certain things I had to do and
learn. My father insisted that I learn
how the basics of the car worked and how to do basic user maintenance; I was
shown how to check the oil and water, there was a time I did this every day
before I started the car but as I have grown older bad habits and rushing has
taken over. I was taught about checking
my tire pressures and to make certain that all the things that opened and
closed continued to do so in the traditional manner. Eventually I was permitted to sit in the
driver’s seat, but not to start the car, rather to adjust the seat and the
mirrors, only then and all this is after I had demonstrated that I knew the
road rules was I permitted to turn the key.
So: what has this long winded introduction got to do with
computers? Simply put we all accept that
drivers have to do a certain amount of work to justify their right to drive, so
too do computer users, we have to service our machines and learn basic safety
rules as well. It is the object of this publication
to demonstrate the basics.
Rule number one: If in doubt press the F1 key from the very
top row of keys, it is the second key from the left hand side and in every
program on your computer it will give you the Help files, or more clearly the
how to do it book. I am typing this in a
program called Open Office, its a free version of what most would be familiar
with in Microsoft Office, if I press F1 I get this :-
The program list headings
down the left hand side of its page and gives answers to your search on the
right hand side.
Text that has an
underline under it like this is called a hyperlink and if you click on
the underlined text you will be taken to what ever the text is telling you
about.
So, rule one, press the
F1 key often and find out where it takes you, read the articles that it shows
you and enjoy the power of your computer.
And that is rule one out
of the way, now I hear people wonder, what is rule two, well the truth of the
issue is that there is no rule two, from here on in we will go through a range
or issues that are of equal importance to the computer user, F1 is the most
important rule, the first and the last, for with F1 you can resolve almost every contingency.
Back to health and
feeding, more importantly health, for if a computer is damaged, be that damage
in its hardware or its software, it will not work right.
The most common way that
computers become sluggish and damaged is through virus and spyware attack; more
on the difference between the two later on, suffice to say right now that they
are both a right pain in the bottom.
Every computer should
have an antivirus and an anti-spyware program installed and it should kept up to date and permitted to do a full check of the
system every week at the latest interval.
If you don't have an antivirus or anti-spyware program I can recommend
Anti Virus Grisoft, AVG for short and for home users it is a free program, it
can downloaded by typing www.free.grisoft.com
into an internet browser and reading the screen, a classic example of an
internet browser would be Internet Explorer, but to be a little blunt if your
not comfortable with the term 'internet browser' and you don't know where to
type the address www.free.grisoft.com
then this would be a good time to ask for some help, remember that F1 key. At this address you will find free anti virus
and free anti-spyware software that is second to none. I recommend AVG most highly.
As you can see from
the image above the data base keeps a close track on how old it is and when it
was last run, you may also notice that there are six files in my virus vault,
that is six virus infections that the AVG has protected me from.
Once a computer has a
working and up to date antivirus and anti-spyware program installed the only
other thing that really has to be done is to keep the filing system in order,
just like with a paper filing system computers sometimes get messy, they get
especially messy if they are asked to do a lot of work in a hurry, a bit like a
Office Temp with a bad work ethic. To
keep the PC running sweet we need to keep all the 50 to 60 thousand files on
the system in order. When the drives
contents are not in order we say it is Fragmented, and
then with the beauty that is American English (yes I am being sarcastic) when
it is out of order we say it is Defragmented.
What a wonderful word; Defragmented.
Now to put everything back in the right place there is a very nifty and
easy to use program called Disk Defragmenter.
Disk Defragmenter can be
found by left clicking on your START button, located in the bottom left hand
corner of your computer screen, and then left clicking on the line that reads
ALL PROGRAM, if you look at the pop-up that you just brought to life you will
see a link called ACCESSORIES and in this folder you will see SYSTEM TOOL, once
here Disk Defragmenter is evident, just click on the picture (icon) to run the
program., it will look like the diagram over page:-
Look at the picture,
where is says “Estimated disk Usage before defragmentation” there is a grey
line in this picture, now if you click on Analyze (US spelling) you will be told if the drive needs to be
defragmented or not, personally I always defrag even when its not needed, just
to be sure if there are red lines displayed.
As you defrag you will see the original image and the way the files look
once the program rearranges them.
Anything red is the wrong spot, green files can not be moved and are
always in the right spot and when the drive is finished being repaired the
block of colour should be blue with a couple of thin green stripes.
If you thought that
clicking on START and then just about every where else on the screen just to
get to Disk Defragmenter was a little bit like going around the world, there are
several other ways to do the same thing, I usually just click on START and
click on RUN in the RUN box type dfrg.msc and
then click on OK, and it all happens, or you can RIGHT CLICK on My Computer and
select Manage and from there disk Defragmenter.
What have we just
learned, we have just learned that there is more than one correct way to get
the same job done and this is what causes so much computer user confusion as
everyone does the same job a little differently; and that's enough to rattle
anyone confidence.
In the Systems Tools
folder that you found Defragmenter you will also find Disk Cleanup. This is a useful tool for dumping all the old
scrappy temporary files from the drive and it also makes things run faster, When you select Disk Cleanup a pop up like
this will appear (figure 1) :-
Figure
2 Figure
1
Select your main drive,
normally that is (C:) and a box like this (figure
2) will open, let the program scan your drive, in doing this it will
compress old files and finally present you with a list of options. Anything that Disk Cleanup finds can be
removed without effecting whether the computer will start or not so this is a
safe procedure, however if you are linking to any file that is Temporary in
nature (and you should not be) that file will be removed in the cleanup.
In the example to the
left there are 66,621 Kb in Temporary Internet Files, these are images of what
has been seen on the net, as well as any small programs that left installation
rubbish on the drive. As one Megabyte is
1,024 kilobytes, the wasted space in this Temp file is 65
Mb or 45 floppy disks worth of storage.
You
an see why it makes good sense to remove the Temp files and the others that are
found by Disk Cleanup.
Remember
the golden rule, if in doubt “ASK”. It
costs nothing to ask a question and it can cost to correct a problem generated
in ignorance. In this day and age with
telephones at hand and e-mail and Instant Messaging the days of being able to
say “no one told me” are gone.
Golden
rule number two, what ever man can break man can restore. Well at least with computers, this does not
work with all things but it does with computers.
And
that brings us to the end of Chapter One.
Thank you for reading this far, I hope that Chapter
Two is interesting to you, in Chapter two we will be looking at the Internet.
HOTMAIL.
HOTMAIL a free e-mail service that offers a
lot of storage space and is part of the Microsoft family of on line products
and an integral part of MSN Live (a chat program).
Open your web-browser,
normally that would be Microsoft Internet Explorer and the icon is a blue e and
in the address bar at the top of the screen type:-
You will be met with a
screen that looks like this:-
Simply click on the
button names “Sign Up” and fill in the questionnaire you will be presented
with, this is so easy it needs no further explanation.
Once you have an account with Hotmail, and by the use
of the word “account” we are speaking of a reckoning not of gaining an invoice
for with the exception of the Premier Service offered by Hotmail it is a free
e-mail service linked to a free means of chat, visual and spoken
communications.
When you log on to Hotmail for the first time as a
user you will need to add your Hotmail E-mail address and your Hotmail password
in the log on box, this I stress is your Hotmail details not the e-mail details
from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) you have the option of having the log
in page remember your name and password or just your name or nothing at all, I
recommend that the program remembers your e-mail address, but not your
password.
Once you log onto your new E-mail page in Hotmail you
will be greeted with a very easy to use interface that comes with excellent
help notes situated in the top right hand corner of the screen and accessible
by clicking on the word HELP.
Hotmail is so easy that school children sign up for
their first account while in primary school as part of their education about
computers.
This is your welcome screen and here you can see that
Hotmail can do many things, from keeping track of your e-mail to running your calendar
and even a contacts book to keep track of friends e-mail addresses and phone
numbers.
Click on Mail to see your e-mail, you will have one
as soon as you get an account for Hotmail will send you a welcome e-mail. As you send your address to friends you will
soon have plenty to read.
The next page looks like this:-
All of this can be accessed from any computer with
internet access and not only does this work on ADSL, DSL, Broadband, but it
also works on Dial Up Networking and dial up internet accounts can be obtained
for as little as $5.50 a month for retired people or certain types of
pensioners and $14.00 a month for the same type of deal for the general public,
ADSL Broadband is available for around $25 with ten times the speed of dial up
and it does not engage your phone line..
To send an e-mail click on the word NEW on the upper
left hand side of the screen, you will get this page when you do:-
Here you have the choice or attaching Pictures, Files or your own
Contact Information. A document made
in Word or a similar word processor would be a File, Pictures are just
that, photographs or other types of pictures that you may have stored on
your computer. Let us assume you
chose Pictures, well then you would see this screen shown below.
It’s just a matter or typing in the e-mail address
for the person you want to send the mail to for instance, [email protected] if you were
writing to me. In the Subject line write
something meaningful like “learning curve, assistance needed” or anything you
like that would describe the mail in brief, then its just a matter of writing
your letter or e-mail in the big white box and when its all done, press on the
word SEND.
If you want to send a photograph or another kind of
document with the e-mail you can attach it to this e-mail letter by clicking on
the word Attach, you will notice that there is a little paperclip associated
with the word Attach. When ever you see
the little paper-clip, in any program, it is the place to go to add other
things to what you are doing, just as a real paperclip permits you to clip
paper and pictures and even things together.
You can attach most things to an e-mail, but
remember, this is an e-mail, by design it is suppose to be small, you can not
attach a home movie to an e-mail, but you can attach single photographs and
even four or five smaller photographs.
If you attach some types of files, especially files ending
in exe the recipient’s anti-Virus will just dump the e-mail in the bin as a
potential virus risk. Documents and
photos are always safe to send. When you
click on Attach you will be
presented with three options, whether you are going to send a picture, a file
or your contact information, normally you will be wanting
to send a picture.
You
will then be presented with this screen. 
Simply put a tick in the corner of the pictures you
want to send and select Attach Files the rest is automatic, you will be taken
back to the page you wrote your e-mail on and the attachment will be listed
just above the box where you wrote your letter.
And that is about all you need to know up front about
Hotmail, once you have mastered sending an e-mail and making an attachment, the
other things that Hotmail can do for you becomes really easy.
Just remember at all times that computers are
frustrating, for many of us they are a steep learning curve, but the men and
women that write the programs try to do their very best to make them simple and
intuitive. A good trick to remember is
not to think, but to always look for the easiest options, for that’s exactly
what the programmers tried to achieve.
In chapter three we will be looking at how to protect
our valuable documents and photographs, this protection is called making a
Backup.
Chapter 3.
People who work in IT (information technology) are
the worse for actually protecting their data, if you
ever want to embarrass a technician or indeed anyone in IT just ask them when
they last made a back up.
So … what it this elusive thing, this rare thing,
this back up
Backing up data is simply copying what is on your
drive to a safe location that is not in the computer, the safest place to keep
your information is on a CD or a DVD.
This is the thing that frightens many people, and while there are many
complicated ways to make a back up or to send information to an ‘optical
media’, a DVD or a CD, the following method is by far the most simple and it
only takes a little computer knowledge to do it.
Throughout this article it is assumed that the reader
has the most basic of computer skills, that you know how to point with a mouse
and how to left and right click as well as how to left click on the options
that a right mouse click would give you.
Never forget that the left hand mouse button makes things happen and the
right hand button gives you choices.
Click on START (Round button using
When you open My Computer you are presented with a
screen that looks like this:-
The more things installed on your computer the more
drives you will be presented with. Today
we are only interested in the driver named C: it may be called Local Disk or
even
Now click on Documents and Settings:-
And click on your personal file, in my case that
folder is named Chris, yours might be anything else, it is the name at the top
of your start menu and in this folder you will find all of your personal
settings:-
Put a blank disk in your CD or DVD burner Right click
on the My Documents folder and select ‘Send To’ and then click on your CD or
DVD. After some thinking time the files
will be ready to burn onto optical media, put the blank media into your drive
and the files will give you the option to burn them, say yes when asked this
question and your back up is done. If
you have more data than a CD or even DVD can hold and that is 700Mb for a
CD and 4.4Gb for a standard DVD (up to 8Gb on dual layered disks), then you
will need to go to the individual folders and send the files to the burner in
smaller quantities so that the data will fit on the size disks you have.
You are now a better PC user than 90% of IT
professionals.
In our next chapter we will look at using a word
processor.
Chapter 4.
