Troubleshooting Computer Problems – 8 Questions to Ask Yourself

Computer problems can be frustrating, especially when you don’t know the reason. Sometimes there is a simple solution, other times fixing your computer requires more effort. In this article, we will take a look at how to troubleshoot common computer problems.

Question#1 Is it Just You or Your Entire Network? One of the most common reasons for sudden problems such as the inability to access the web or print documents is related to your network. If all of the computers on your home or office network are experiencing the same problems, then you know that the trouble lies in the network not your PC.

Question #1:

Are all Cords Firmly Connected?  My computer won’t start", have you checked to make sure it’s all plugged in? Cords can come loose and cause your computer to fail to power up. Sometimes, this is also the case when a specific device (such as a mouse or keyboard) fail to function. If everything is plugged in and your device still won’t work, try another jack if possible. I have personally had several computers where the USB ports die for no apparent reason, causing my devices to not work. Plugging them in to another port clears it right up.

 

Question #3: Have You Installed Anything New Lately? New software can introduce a variety of problems. If you started having problems after installing something new, try uninstalling or reinstalling the program. If the failed installation has caused errors in your windows registry (as often happens), you will need to run a registry cleaner to restore your registry to proper condition)

Question #4:

Is It Hanging on Start up? If you can’t get past the Windows start up, you can attempt to hit the "F8" key on your keyboard and select the option to start up in safe mode. While in safe mode, you can uninstall problematic software or just attempt a reboot from there to see if the problem clears up. While in safe mode, it would be a good idea to back up all of your critical data as failure to boot can be a sign of serious problems with the hard disk

.

 

Question#5:

Is It Making Strange Noises?  Years ago, I booted up my office computer one morning only to be greeted by a screeching sound coming from my hard disk. Not knowing what else to do, I quickly shut it down. Still, I was not fast enough to save the data from permanent loss. What had happened was the needle in my hard disk had come loose and the sound I heard was it scraping my hard disk and wiping all of my data away with it. Needless to say, if you hear a loud scraping noise immediately shut down the computer. Your data may still be able to be recovered, but you will need a new hard drive before you can use the computer again. The moral of the story is that loud noises can signal big problems for your PC and it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Question #6:

Are You Experiencing Problems with Specific Software? If a particular program is giving you trouble, it can be the result of a corrupt document or a Windows registry problem. In order to find out, try closing your current document and opening a new one. If the behavior clears up, then it is likely just a corrupt file. If the problem persists, you could have errors in your registry. If this is the case, a good registry cleaner can repair those for you automatically. In fact, cleaning the registry is a great way to put an end to many problems and end up with a faster computer as well. I left a link for you at the bottom of this article for a free download of my favorite registry cleaner  

                                                .

Question #7: Is Your Computer Giving Error Messages?

Error messages are not usually much help unless you take the time to research them. If you type the exact error in to Google, you can find information on the specific cause of the problem. Often, error messages are the result of registry problems. As in the last step, installing and using a registry cleaner can help a lot with errors.

Question #8:

Have You Run Your Virus Scanner Lately? Lastly, it’s an unfortunate truth that viruses are out there and your computer could catch one if you are not keeping up to date with your virus definitions. Be sure to update your anti-virus software on a regular basis to make sure that it has the information it needs to fight current threats. If you don’t yet use an anti-virus software what are you waiting for? Download and run one right away to find out if your computer problems are the result of a rogue virus. Hopefully these tips will get you started troubleshooting your computer problems.

Oftentimes, computer troubles are something simple that you can fix yourself. Other times, you will need to take the computer to a technician for repairs.. Many problems can be solved in just minutes after a good cleaning of your Windows registry.

         

                CLICK HERE FOR YOUR SPECIAL OFFER

Kevin Couler Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Couler

Pc Diagnostic Shareware Review

 

 

 

Great ideas for computer diagnogtics and pc diagnogtics software.

PC Diagnostic Shareware Review

Although, the most popular operating system at the present includes a sort of Computer diagnostics tools, such as PC Health, Dr Watson, and others, those applications are not exactly what the consumer expects from a full PC diagnostics suite to protect their costly equipment and the invaluable information contained within.

There is a large number of PC diagnostics software offered on a shareware basis. This software is usually provided fully functional for a limited period of time to allow consumers to test the features and if the program fulfills their expectations, the programmer typically is paid a one-time fee. Some of those PC diagnostics applications offered under this mode are:

TuneUP Utilities

Computer diagnostics applications provided by TuneUp Software

International, one of the pioneer companies in PC diagnostics software since 1997, and the top utility producer in the German speaking area of Europe. From its headquarters in Darmstadt, a city close to Frankfurt, Germany, TuneUP Utilities has literally "saved the life" of many computer systems by detecting conditions that can be easily fixed by the end-user.

As of 2006, more than 300,000 copies of TuneUp 97, the original, has been sold, creating one of the most successful PC diagnostics utilities available on the German market, usually referred as the mother of all tuning and computer diagnostics tools. With the release of PC diagnostics TuneUp Utilities 2003 the product was introduced internationally.

Today, the acclaimed TuneUP Utilities 2006 PC diagnostics software is available in German, French, Dutch and English language, as innovative as the first day, offering one of the most complete and friendly computer diagnostics solutions, with free trials software and affordable registrations fee.

Dr. Hardware 2006

Another one of the pioneer companies founded in 1994, but running on MS-Dos platforms since the earlier days. Dr. Hardware is considered among the most advanced PC diagnostics system information programs on the market, made for both the beginner and the expert user.

This PC diagnostics software runs on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 200x, XP, XP and x64 operating systems, and offers improved analysis of multi-Core CPUs. Computer diagnostics include detection of AMD SVM feature (Secure Virtual Machine), plus support to new Athlon 64, Opteron and Sempron processors and Pentium4 trace cache.

ASTRA, Advanced Sysinfo Tool and Reporting Assistant

Another featured PC diagnostics software running in all Windows versions, like the other two mentioned above, but this is one of the last offering MS-Dos support for system restore purposes used by repair professionals

PC diagnostics performed includes computer configuration analysis and general Computer diagnostics returning detailed information about your computer’s hardware and devices operational modes, including reports on motherboard, CPU, hard disks, memory modules, chipset, PnP devices, monitor, video card, etc.

 

                                                 

                    CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR SPECIAL OFFER    

                                

 

 

By: Natalie Aranda

 Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every Personal Computer Owner Must Be Aware Of The Facts Of …

 

Every Personal Computer Owner Must Be Aware Of The Facts Of Computer Diagnostics It is not a question on ‘how attached’ a person is, it is a question on how much a person earns out of his data. In other words, for beginner computer users, losing files is like losing common documents, but for developers, it means losing source files. Source files are projects developed with the use of certain complex application. Losing them is close to losing a career! .

Computer Diagnostics and Data recovery is the solution to lost files. Data do not just disappear in one click but some of them are stored and could be recovered. The means of data recovery depends on the diagnostic and troubleshooting on how the functioning of the computer started.

Computer Diagnostics is the Only Solution: It is not easy to determine problems in the computer for a novice, but for experts, events with PC sounds, speed change, temperature and booting problems are just some signs and symptoms of lingering problems which could lead to data loss. Corrupt files occur when there is direct disturbance changing the data properties. When a project file can’t be opened, it is possibly corrupt. Latest software’s have the capability to recover files in one execution. Of course not all computer diagnostics data recovery is so easy and so straightforward.

If you delete a file accidentally, it is a simple matter to recover it from the recycle bin. Once you empty the recycle bin, however, things become more difficult. The deleted file still resides on your computer somewhere, but the pointer that tells the program where to find the file is now gone. There are various software tools available that promise to help recover deleted files, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some of the major players are Norton, McAfee and Computer Associates. There are a great many smaller vendors as well.

Things to be considered in mind: Even if all these products fail to recover your data, you may not be completely out of luck. Data recovery services specialize in recovering data from failed and corrupt hard drives. These data recovery services have tools and equipment not available to the general public. The cost for the computer diagnostics and data recovery service will vary according to the type of equipment and the difficulty of the job. You should get several estimates to make sure you are paying a fair price for the service you receive.

The best way to recover data without suffering for days and nights in order to accomplish this task has to do with creating backups of important data. You can save your data on CDs or floppy disks in order to always have a second copy of the file in case you lose it. It’s important to keep it as up to date as the original saved in the computer because if you don’t do that, the files will be different and you lose information in the same way.

 

                  CLICK HERE FOR YOUR SPECIAL OFFER

 

By: David Faulkner Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Windows PC Performance Troubleshooting

 

 

Is your computer running slow?

Do you think it is time to upgrade or get a new computer? Maybe not… read on and find ways to perform computer maintenance that may just speed up your computer performance and help you avoid an expensive upgrade.

Times are Uncertain -

Do you really need that upgrade or new PC?

Our customers and prospective customers at frequently come to us and ask that we suggest either upgrades or whole new PC’s that will solve their current non-performance nightmare with an aging PC. It’s quite amazing how sometimes as the conversation and understanding of requirements and problems experienced proceeds,we discover that actually the PC they already have may just still have a few laps around the circuit left in its tired chassis. In this article we will explain how you can diagnose your performance woes, streamline and tune them up. You’d be surprised just how much more you can get out of what you have.

Tip! Before making any serious system changes such as some of these are its wise to take a backup or restore point of your system before each change. Then should you subsequently find something is ‘broken’ you can restore back to a previous working configuration.

Analyse the problem before implementing the solution...

                                   

Use monitoring tools regularly – get in the habit of watching Task Manager and lookout for tasks and processes that are hogging your system memory or CPU. Task manager displays both in the process view as you can see below, you can also sort by clicking on the column headings. Even if you only use the Internet and eMail both these applications are renowned for memory leaks and processor bound loops (see an explanation of these problems in the next section).

Monitor Free Disk Space -

To ensure you have at least 20% disk space, preferably 30% or more should be free. If you don’t the file system struggles to operate as it needs some space in order to allocate and deallocate files the operating system and applications require while in use. Imagine walking into a hall full of boxes and you need to order them all by colour, in a room 70% full you’ve got 30% free space to temporarily put things in while you move other stuff around, in a room 99% full you may have no room at all to use as a temporary store. Use our earlier tip for reducing disk space consumption by eliminating unused installed programs or disk space is cheap these days with 1TB at under 100, upgrade your disk.

New Software invariably uses more Memory -

Finally, if you need an upgrade the one that makes the biggest difference in 80% of cases is simply adding more memory. RAM is now fairly cheap and you should consider 2GB to be the minimum of practical RAM to have installed. Every time you upgrade it try to double it or you’re unlikely to really notice the difference. On 32-bit systems there is little advantage to having more than 3GB of memory but usually it makes sense to upgrade to 4GB due to the size of memory kits available. If you need more than 4GB you will also need to upgrade to a 64-bit operating system. You can see your memory utilisation by consulting the Task Manager, ctrl-alt-del presents you an option to start the task manager.

                                   

 In a typical example 2GB of physical memory is installed, of which roughly 1GB is available, although windows is misleading us a bit here as it will always make sure some memory remains available or it will simply cease to function. So don’t look for 0 available free memory as an indicator that you need more, it never will be allowed to reach 0 as windows will swap a process out into the page file to free more memory up. There is 1.11GB of memory currently consumed (in the page file ‘PF Usage’, Commit Charge – Total). The page file is actually virtual memory on disk as tasks become active and inactive they may be swapped into and out of memory into the page file, hence that pause sometimes when you switch to another task as the disk is accessed to bring it back out of the page file.

Activity in the page file and virtual memory is complex and I won’t go into any more of that here as it doesn’t help you with performance issues. The key point to remember is if Windows is swapping memory out to the page file on disk then your system will be going a lot slower as you can be sure however fast your disk is it’s an awful lot slower than physical memory.

What we care most about is activity in real physical memory and the point at which we might run out of it and the page file becomes more active hence slowing down the system. Crucially the Commit Charge Peak should balance the physical memory available otherwise it means an awful lot of page file swapping is going on (known as ‘Page Faults’). If it was the yellow line in Page File Usage history would be bouncing around, or worse just steadily increasing.

Adjust Total Page File size -

Following on from the point above if your system page file size is too small your system will slow down or even fail to start tasks (usually with a system message to tell you the computer is out of memory). You can check this by looking at the Page File Total versus Peak size. If they are close to each other then you need to increase your page file size. With most windows default configurations this will happen automatically.

The exotic world of Deadlocks

Infinite Loops and Cartesian products – are all programming jargon that essentially describe bugs (though not always). The programmer of an application or product you’re using (and that includes the ones you take for granted like Windows and Device drivers) has likely made an error in designing or implementing the code such that logically it can never get past a certain point in its execution.

The consequence of this poorly designed code can be that the processor cycles used in this ‘loop’ consume all the available resources of your PC (check your task manager, which process is using 99-100% of the processor!? Or just ‘not responding’). You will notice this as your machine will suddenly lock-up, go dead slow, or the application in question will just hang. Thankfully with multi-core PC’s hanging is less of a problem as the other free cores can be used to KILL the task off and bring your PC back to life…

Run concurrently as few tasks as you need – each time you open up a task remember each one is using up a little more memory. If your memory or processing power is limited try to keep open only what you regularly need and close what you don’t it doesn’t take so long to reopen, and if it does it probably means you have too many open already!

Also bear in mind just because you can’t see an application doesn’t mean it’s not using up any processing cycles, it will be. All applications process events which might be system activity, emails being sent/received, diary alarms going off, keyboard or mouse movements, activity from external devices like printers and USB drives. They also monitor activity in the background even when you aren’t doing anything with them. This consumes more of those valuable clock cycles…

Typical solutions to try or consider

De-install and delete any unused software – take a look at your control panel Add/Remove Software icon and go through the list of installed applications line by line. If you don’t need or use it remove it. It may be taking up valuable space or cycles on your machine.

Disable Windows Defender -

For Vista users there are a number of new Windows ‘features’ that if you are an experienced PC User who understands how to roam the internet or email and download files safely you do not need. Windows Defender and Firewall are such services, if you have a third party or router firewall you more than likely just don’t need this services enabled. To disable windows defender, go to control panel->administrative tools -> services -> windows defender and stop the service, setting it to disabled or manual so that it does not restart on reboot.

Disable UAC (User Access Control) -

To experienced Windows XP users this feature has won a thousand polls as the most annoying new feature. Whenever you execute anything which affects system configuration or the filesystem (which is just about everything you might want to do that’s useful!), a modal popup asks whether you want the operation to proceed. Again use your judgement on your experience and competency with Windows, inexperienced users should probably leave it as is otherwise you will want to disable it. To disable user access control, go to control panel->user account->turn user account control off. You can also disable it using the msconfig.exe utility on the Tools tab, or directly in the registry.

Optmise the Windows GUI -

Windows Vista Premium and above has by default the Aero user interface enabled, this uses the 3D capabilities of your graphics card and will use up some precious CPU cycles. Unless you love the new look interface feel free to reduce load on your processor and memory and turn it off. To optimise system configuration for maximum performance, go to control panel->performance information and tools-> advanced tools-> adjust the appearance and performance of windows-> Select Adjust for best performance radio button and hit Apply.

Remove Startup programs -

A lot of applications helpfully install themselves on your machine to startup and drop into the System Tools tray as your machine boots or, or as you log in depending on how they are configured. Almost none of these programs will actually be required and they are only installed this way to save on the time taken for their first execution (as they are already in memory, in theory). Our recommendations are you remove all programs to reduce startup time, reduce memory overhead and to improve overall system performance. You can change startup programs using msconfig.exe or directly in the registry with the regedit command (alter the registry with caution!).

Our recommendation is that you use msconfig.exe (pictured below, Windows XP version) and scroll through the list of startup programs unchecking anything you know you don’t use or need to startup on boot/login. In the registry find the startup programs under Computer-> HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software-> Microsoft-> Windows-> CurrentVersion-> Run. In Windows XP you can safely remove ALL startup programs without it being terminal, you need to be a bit more careful with Vista.

AntiVirus (AV) -

Programs are notorious for reducing system performance and increasing hard disk load. Take a long and careful look at the configuration of your AV product and turn off any scanning or intervention that is unnecessary, turning off any supplementary tools, and any duplication of tools such as double spam checking etc. Typically you should treat AV as your second line of defense behind the firewall. You are only really likely to get a virus from outside the secure zone that is ‘Your PC’, unless you’re in the habit of writing your own.

So a viral attack is only likely to come from a software download, a rogue floppy or CD install, or a malicious Browser add on from the Internet. Some scare mongers have led us to believe that the viruses crawl down the wires and install themselves on your PC, they don’t, they only get installed from outside and only then if you allow it.

For this protection all you need virus scanned is inbound email, inbound software installs from removable media (CD, DVD, USB, eSATA, Firewire, Blu-Ray, Floppy etc.). We recommend turning off automated and scheduled scans, these are real system hogs and should be totally unnecessary if all inbound scans are working as they should be. I

nstead manually choose for yourself when you would like a total system scan just in case something was missed as it came in. We like minimalist AV tools that just do the simple jobs well and no more. A good AntiVirus should be like good children, nice to know you have it, but invisible and unobtrusive.

Disable unnecessary services -

Your system might have a lot of services which you may not need. But identifying them may not be very easy. Open up control panel-> administrative tools-> services and stop/disable services. Some of the services which should be disabled are Windows Search, Windows Defender, Windows Cardspace, and usually a number of third party tools such as HP print managers, Adobe tools, Real player, MSN, Google toolbar, Antivirus control panels etc.

Windows Search Indexing -

A tricky one as it sometimes speeds things up, but at other times can slow things down. In theory it only runs when your machine is idle, but we’ve found that is not always the case and it can also consume shared network bandwidth. We suggest you disable Windows Search indexing as it may improve performance substantially, especially if you have a new system as it will expend a considerable amount of system resources building indexes.

However, once the indexes are built it will reduce the time to find files with a file search (if you do that much?) considerably. So, if this something you do a lot you should turn it off while you are using the PC then turn it on again when you’re done and just leave it running. Windows Search will then just happily build indexes in the background while the PC is idle. Eventually you will have a fully populated index and you can just leave it on so that the index is automatically maintained.

Defragment hard drive -

Perhaps one of the oldest tricks in the book. As you install, deinstall, and move files around on your PC clusters of files and parts of files get distributed all over the disks surface. Over time this gets worse and worse, more and more fragmented. Every time you read a file of the disk the disk head has to reposition to pickup all these different fragments which slows down file access radically. The ideal scenario is to have all files contiguous, no fragmentation, and have the most frequently used files around the center of the disk to minimize average head movement time (seek time).

The defragmentation tool analyses and then defragments the disk for you and is available on the tools tab of the disk properties option (right click on your disk, select properties). You need to defragment roughly every two to three months, more often if you install and reinstall a lot of programs and files. It’s a good idea to run Error Check (also on the tools tab) and close all tasks and as many services as you can before defragmenting. Files currently open or in use cannot be moved…

Check for BIOS updates

For an experienced overclocker BIOS updates are a no brainer as they usually fix performance holes or issues with the motherboard. For most users we recommend if you have no known BIOS issues then do not update it. Either way close all programs before flashing an update to the BIOS, should the BIOS flash fail, be interrupted, or get corrupted (and you would be surprised how easily this can happen!) then your PC will be dead and you will need a new BIOS chip.

                             

 Check for chipset and operating system updates – Often new drivers or windows updates can speed things up a little or a lot. Windows Update is a blessing and a curse. With Vista you are now able to do ALL updates with the Windows update tool, including many third party drivers. Our usual recommendation is to leave it on Automatic, however, sometimes a new update can introduce instability or worse. If this happens revert to the last Restore point. If you are an experienced power user we recommend you manually run Windows Update and carefully select updates you know are comfortable with or know you need.

Easy performance boost -

Vista’s ReadyBoost feature allows you to plug in a USB flash drive or a flash memory card and use its available capacity to cache frequently used files, augmenting the system file cache in main memory. Though slower than main memory Flash memory is an awful lot faster than the hard disk and will speed up general file access markedly. Even quite large Flash drives are now very inexpensive.

Restart regularly -

Even large Enterprises and Government datacentres have a regular restart regime to clear down processes that have been executing memory for some time and refresh the operating systems own memory and programming state. Any problems with stale resources or processes is compounded by possible memory leaks and memory fragmentation occurring over time (which happens in the same way as disks can get fragmented). If you find your PC is getting slower the longer its left on you probably have some runaway process or processes eating up memory or cycles and you can either kill the processes or restart the whole machine. If you are monitoring your process and memory utilisation as we discussed earlier you will have noticed this happening. If it’s a problem deep in Windows that’s causing a performance problem over time then it’s unlikely you will be able to diagnose it and only a restart will fix it.

Generally you should be looking to restart your PC at least once a week. We restart non critical desktops and servers daily, our long term benchmark tests can run for up to a month non-stop without a restart. In the latter case we use a stripped down Windows build that we have tested as stable for at least a month. Remember Hibernate or Standy shutdowns are NOT a reboot, only Shutdown or Restart. Preferably do a cold reboot by shutting down and switching off completely and leaving for 10 minutes before powering on. This will also reinitialise your BIOS and all PC hardware. 

     

                   CLICK HERE FOR YOUR SPECIAL OFFER

 

Author: Alan M Johnson

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alan_M_Johnson

 

 

Common Error Messages With Simple Solutions

 

If you are having trouble with an email client there are some tips that may help your compter performance.

E-mail communication has become very important in our society today. Just about everyone has an email address, where important and sometimes unimportant information can be read and stored. Some of these e-mails can not be read with out the help of the "Outlook Express" program. But just as with many others this program too has errors within it. However, tech experts have found ways to correct these common errors in the program.

If you are getting this message on your screen, you are probably not able to access your email messages. Although computer techs are not sure why this problem happens, they have found a way to rectify it in a few simple steps. First you need to access your main menu and go to "tools", where you need to click on "Accounts". Choose the "mail" option from the list. Finally choose "Duplicate Mail Account" then "Remove". Repeat these steps until accounts have been copied and the old ones removed. Your problem should be cured. If not, you may need to find the .dbx file and rename it by accessing the windows Search Utility.

The second most common error is being unable to delete unwanted e-mail messages. This is because of a corrupted file within the e-mail files. When deleting copies you delete things twice, making things very messed up within the computer program, resulting in the inability to delete messages. If you move all your copied messages from your "delete folder" to a new one this will help with computer confusion. Next, close the Outlook express program, and open the Windows Settings option. Allow all hidden files to be displayed, and search for Deleted Items .dbx file and delete it. Make sure to re-hide all the files again once you have finished this process.

The last error within the Outlook Express program is one that will drive you CRAZY. When you discover that you can not receive any of your much needed e-mails, keep calm. This too has a simple solution. The reason this error happens is because too much information has been stored in Outlook. There is only a certain amount of space available in this program for storing e-mails. To fix this you need to delete all stored e-mails or copy them into a different folder.

Although these errors may seem scary or extremely frustrating, it does put a mind and body at ease to know there are a few simple steps to do, and then you can continue where you left off. Simply understanding these errors and why they happen will also help prevent them from happening less often in the future.

 

                   CLICK HERE FORYOUR SPECIAL OFFER

 

Author: Nanette Aniston

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nanette_Aniston