3 stubborn PC problems you can fix

However, don’t take a hammer to your PC just yet. The following is a list of common symptoms and treatments to help even the most troublesome PCs. You don’t even have to be a psychologist (at least not yet) to deal with your PC’s neuroses.
Windows 7 and Windows Vista usually manage this automatically, but overall you’ll find that these tips work for all versions of Windows, from Windows 95 to Windows 7.

1. You keep getting a “your system is running low on virtual memory” message

Perhaps you’re more than familiar with this scenario: You’re working on your PC and notice performance getting gradually slower and slower. Programs become harder to open and close. You wait forever for Web pages to be displayed. And then, you get some serious-sounding “virtual memory is too low” message, like the one in the following graphic.
Don’t worry: This message isn’t as scary as it sounds.

Virtual memory is the space your computer uses when it’s short of RAM (Random Access Memory), which is the memory used when running programs like Microsoft Office Word or Microsoft Office PowerPoint.
So what can you do to correct this problem and prevent this message from coming up in the future? The following are some solutions to keep your computer from displaying the “virtual memory minimum is too low” message.
Solution 1: Bump up the virtual memory size on your computer
The first solution is to increase your computer’s virtual memory settings. To do so, you first need to determine how much RAM you currently have.
Windows 7
1. On the Start menu, click Control Panel, then click System.
2. In the left pane, click Advanced system settings. If you’re prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
3. On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.
4. Click the Advanced tab, and then, under Virtual memory, click Change.
5. Clear the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives check box.

6. Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.
7. Click Custom size, type a new size in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, click Set, and then click OK.
Note Increases in size usually don’t require you to restart your computer for the changes to take effect, but if you decrease the size, you’ll need to restart your computer. We recommend that you don’t disable or delete the paging file.
Solution 2: Add more RAM to your computer
If you keep getting that dreaded “Your system is running low on virtual memory” message even after you increase your computer’s virtual memory then you may need to buy more memory for your computer. To really work well:

• Windows 7 needs at least 1 GB of RAM to run. See more system requirements for Windows 7.
• Windows Vista needs at least 512 MB of RAM to run, but for some applications (like gaming) 1 GB or more of RAM is recommended.
• Windows XP needs a minimum of 256 MB of RAM.

The more RAM you have, the better.
Find out how much RAM you have in your computer
1. On the Start menu, click Control Panel, then click System.
2. Under System, next to Installed memory (RAM), you can see the amount of RAM your computer has.
Note In some cases, Windows reports both the amount of memory that’s installed on your computer and the amount of memory that’s usable. If you’re using a 32-bit version of Windows, the amount of usable memory might be less than the total amount of memory installed.
If you’re at work, contact your company’s IT administrator before updating the memory on your computer. They may have some memory available and can help you install it.
If you do need to purchase some more memory, stop by your local computer shop. You can probably buy memory from them, and they’ll probably install it for you. Or, you can buy memory online.

Hard Disk Drive Maintenance Tips | HDD

Maintain Hard Disk Drives in Top Condition

You must have often seen your new computer beginning to crawl from those blistering speeds that you were once proud of. Well the good news is you can get those speeds back with some simple maintenance tips and tricks.
There are some simple maintenance tools available with every operating system(OS).

• Disk Cleanup
  Each time you install applications or simply work and surf the Internet it creates temporary files on the disk. Once you exit your work these files are no longer needed. Over time this burgeoning data fills up your hard disk drive and causes fragmentation of data. This is the main cause that puts chains on your nimble footed beauty. You have to just run this utility to restore its pride. Here is how- Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. On the dialog box that pops up select drive C to be cleaned (the OS drive).
• ScanDisk
  This utility determines any errors on your hard disk drive and repairs the same. Unscanned disks can have bad sectors and any data written on these can result in data loss. To scan any drive - Go to Windows Explorer, right click and select Properties. Click Tools[/] tab and under [i]Error Checking, click "Check Now". Bad sectors if any will be repaired or marked up. No data will be written onto these bad sectors henceforth.
• Disk Defragmentation
  Fragmentation results when data on disk is dispersed on the hard disk due to prolonged read and write operations as also while installation of large applications. With passage of time the free space on the hard disk drive does not appear in a chunk, but in smaller chunks and when you install applications data is written in available free space. You can well imagine what happens when the disk head has to scurry from one location to another to launch applications. Disk Defragmentation organises and moves around data files together so that read and write operations happen faster. Here is how to start the defragmentor - Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Defragmentor. Running this utility once a month is recommended. However do not overuse this utility.

These maintenance tips should keep your hard disk drives in top notch condition.

Computer Crash reasons

You may have heard of the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ but haven’t experienced it yourself. It is better to know the reasons behind this crash so that when it happens you are in a position to fix it. If you see on the screen “Fatal error: the system has become unstable or is busy”, “enter to return to Windows or press Control+Alt+Delete to restart your computer. If you do this you will lose any unsaved information in all open applications”. This is the infamous blue screen of death. This could happen due to any of these following reasons:

1. Hardware Problem: Computer consists of different hardware such as Printer, mouse, flash drive etc. Windows assigns an IRQ number for each of these hardware. When due to some reasons more than one hardware use the same IRQ this will result in a crash. In order to find if you have any hardware conflicts you can goto the ‘Device Manager’ in your computer properties. (Start-Settings->Control Panel –> System->Device manager), an yellow exclamation mark will be placed against the hardware that has a conflict. You can resolve this by selecting the device, uninstalling and reinstalling it again.
2. RAM memory: When you upgrade RAM memory, if you have two unmatched RAM cards or a RAM card that is not compatible with your motherboard, then a “Fatal Exception Error” will occur when you start the computer. If you are technically savvy then you may try to fix this by going to BIOS settings and editing the ‘Wait state’ of RAM or you can replace the cards with the same speed and capacity.
3. Hard Disk Drive: After using the computer for a few months or years, the hard disk gets fragmented with temporary files, or fragmented files. This will result in slowness of hard disk and may even result in computer crash eventually. You can maintain your harddisk by defragmenting your hard disk frequently and deleting unwanted files.
4. Video Card: If you see “Fatal OE exceptions and VXD errors” then it is due to the video card. To solve this reduce the video display resolution. You can do so by going to the control panel and display settings. Choose the correct screen resolution to match your monitor and change the color settings to 16 bit or match it with your monitor.
5. Virus: Most of the computer crash is due to Virus infection in your computer. You should install or enable windows firewall and install an Anti virus application to prevent unwanted virus applications infecting your computer.
6. Printer: Sometimes you may notice that the computer crashes whenever you try to print something. This is due to low memory buffer in the printer. Therefore when you send a lot of data to the printer or if you have multiple applications open and you print at the same time, this may happen. Unplug the printer from power outlet for 10 minutes and connect back again. Close other programs and try to print again.
7. Software: If a particular software is not installed properly or is not complete then it may result in a crash when you try to start that software. You have to uninstall such software properly. Otherwise some entries may still be in the registry referring to that software and result in instability of the computer. You can use registry cleaning software to clean your registries frequently.
8. Heat: Computers have inbuilt fans to cool down the processors. You can control the CPU speed from your BIOS settings. If the speed is set to higher than the normal CPU speed, this may result in overheating of the CPU which will result in Kernel Error.
9. Power Supply: Use UPS to regulate the power supply to your computer. This will reduce the chances of your computer crashing.

A tutorial on msconfig – System Configuration

msconfig is the Microsoft System Configuration Utility. In Windows Vista and Windows 7 it is called as ‘System Configuration’. This is a tool that comes with the Windows Operating System. For Windows 2000 users this tool can be downloaded from microsoft website. This is used to configure and maintain your Windows System. In this tutorial we can see how to use this tool.
To start this tool goto Start->Run and type ‘msconfig’. A new window with five tabs will open.

1. General Tab: This tab has three sections. Normal Startup, Diagnostic Startup and Selective Startup. When Windows functions normally we use Normal Startup. When the system doesnt function properly, we can use diagnostic startup to diagnose the issue and to troubleshoot. If we want windows to start with specific programs then we can choose Selective Startup.
2. Boot Tab: This tab shows the operating systems installed in the computer. Additionally we can choose options such as ‘safe Boot’, ‘Boot log’, ‘Time out delay’. If you are a new PC user then it is best to leave this tab without any changes.
3. Services Tab: This tab lists all the services installed in this PC with the details such as whether the service is running or stopped etc. From here you can enable or disable services. You can check the ‘Hide all Microsoft services’, to hide all essential windows services so that you don’t change them by mistake. From here you can identify unknown services that take up your memory and stop them wherever necessary.
4. Startup Tab: Startup tab shows the list of programs that starts automatically when Windows starts. All system tray programs and programs that run in background will also be listed here. You can see which of these services and programs you don’t need at startup and remove them accordingly. This will speed up your windows startup time.
5. Tools Tab: In the tools tab you can see, System Information, Programs, System Restore etc.

Different types of cards used in a computer

In a computer many different cards are used. You may have heard of their names quite often. Video card, Sound card, network interface card, Ethernet card, Accelerator card, Video capture card, TV Tuner card are some of the cards used in a computer. Some of them are essential cards while some others are inserted if needed. Generally any computer will have a sound card and a video card. In recent computers the network card also is very common. Here let us define the use of these cards:

1. Video Card: This is also referred to as the graphics adapter, display adapter or video adapter. This is a circuit that is used to display information on the monitor. Monitor resolution, Number of colours, monitor refresh rate, video card and the monitor’s quality all determine the quality of the display.
2. Sound Card: To handle sound, to insert a microphone or connect a speaker this sound card is used. Many sound cards have MIDI controllers. This is also called SWSynth.
3. Network Interface Card: This is also referred as NIC. The computer can be connected to a network only with the use of this network interface card.
4. Ethernet Card: Ethernet card is used to connect computers to computers. A cable is used to connect the Ethernet cards in each computer to make a network.
5. Accelerator card: This is a printed circuit board. This card is used to increase of the speed of the computer and can be inserted into any of the expansion slot provided in the motherboard. For example, a graphics accelerator card is used to increase the quality of the graphics.
6. Video Capture Card: This card is used to convert analog signals (signals from video camera or VCR) to a compressed digital signal. This compressed digital sigal can be stored in your computer as a video file.
7. TV Tuner Card: TV Tuner card is used to convert your analog or digital TV signal and view your TV channels in your computer. Win TVD TV Tuner card comes with video capture and stereo surround features.

Creating Autorun CDs a tutorial

Have you noticed that the CDs that you buy or the CDs that comes with books runs automatically when you insert the CD into your CD drive. This is because of the ‘Autorun’ facility in the CDs.
But using this Auto Run feature you can only execute executable programs. Therefore the webpages and any other files cannot be opened automatically using Autorun.
Imagine that you want to copy the powerpoint presentation that you created or the Word document into a CD and pass it to your friend. Will it not be nice if the powerpoint presentation or the document opens automatically when the friend inserts the the CD into his computer?
Now every computer comes with a CD writer. You may wonder whether the CDs that you create using your CD writer can use the Autorun facility. Yes you can.
You have to create a file named ‘autorun.inf’. You can create this file using a normal notepad. You have to copy this file in the root folder of the CD. If you want to use any icon then you can also copy an icon file into the root folder.
How to execute an executable file in a CD automatically.
For example assume that you have a myprogram.exe file and myicon.ico file. And you want to run myprogram.exe file automatically when the CD is inserted
Keep both these files in the same folder.
Open a notepad and type these three lines in the notepad
(autorun)
open=myprogram.exe
icon=myicon.ico
save this file as ‘autorun.inf’.
If your executable file is not in the root folder then you have to specify the full path. (eg. open=myfoler/myprogram.exe)
To create autorun cds for non executable files
If your file is not an executable file like .xls, .doc, .htm, .html, .mp3, .wma, .wav, .mpg, .avi, .jpg, .bmp, .zip or any other file then how to write the autorun.inf file.
Let us assume that you have index.htm file as the autorun file. Then the autorun.inf file will be as follows:
(autorun)
open=start index.htm
icon=myicon.ico
In this case when you insert the CD, a small black window will open and close very fast and then you will see the index.htm file in Internet Explorer.
If you do not want the dos window to open then create the autorun.inf file as below:
(autorun)
shellexecute=index.htm
icon=myicon.ico
However the shellexecute will not work in Windows 98 or older versions. It will work in Windows XP and the newer versions of Windows. In earlier versions you can use the DOS batch file. So you will have one more file autorun.bat in addition to autorun.inf
(autorun)
open=autorun.bat index.htm
icon=myicon.ico
and the autorun.bat file will as follows:
echo off
“start % 1
“exit
How to use autorun.exe
In the above example we used two files autorun.bat and autorun.inf. However the use of autorun.bat is not a wise option. Because a batch files cannot handle errors.
Therefore you can use the free autorun.exe instead of autorun.bat
autorun.exe file is provided by Tarma software research freely. Anybody can use this software. You can download autorun.exe from www.tarma.com/products/index.htm . Download this file and copy it to the root folder of the copied CD.
The autorun.inf file should be as follows:
(autorun)
open=autorun.exe index.htm
icon=myicon.ico