Computer Tips and Tricks

A lot of times when I am doing a computer cleaning, I mention that they need to buy more memory (RAM) for their computer to give it a little more speed. A lot of times, the memory recommendations we offer, can make the computer 4x faster! That’s more than a just a little! This is why it’s one of my favorite things in speeding up a computer. Why is this happening? Well, it’s becoming common to see computers that were purchased in 2003 still alive and kicking. They just need a bit more power to make them work with the applications we all love now. More hardware memory equals a better computing experience overall. Even though our cleanings help immensely, more memory sometimes can help with what we can’t take care of.

You maybe asking yourself would I need more memory? For starters,  you may have an older computer (5 years old) and it’s been running fine but it’s getting slow. Our cleaning service can get it faster and after our cleanings, our clients are very happy, but how about getting that old computer zipping very fast? The cause of the slowdown is that many times, these computers only have the bare minimum that came factory installed. If you have XP, to run with the big dog programs such as Office 2010, you should try to get your computer to at least 1gig of RAM or 2gig if you want your computer really fast. For the older computers, the RAM is usually very inexpensive and recommended if the computer seems stable. A lot of times, our clients are amazed at the price and didn’t expect it to be that cheap.

Windows Vista is another culprit of low memory. Most factory computers shipped with just 1gig of memory/RAM and that is way under-powered to run Vista. As the complaints are high with Vista, you can help it by just adding in the max memory your computer can take.

If you need help with purchasing or installing, feel free to give us a call!

If you need our help or want a computer cleaning, go to our website:

www.cananet.com

Technorati Tags: memory cleanings

Got another laptop from a customer with a Fake Antivirus that they inadvertently clicked on to startup that looks like they have 1300 infections and malware wanting them to click to a site for more help, or more importantly to at some point steal their personal info.

This one even had popups down in the lower right corner that is showing that the hard disk has bad sectors and needs to be replaced and that the graphics chip temperature is too hot and the motherboard needs to be replaced as well. Ofcouse this was fake, because I loaded HDTune and the drive tested fine and then loaded Speccy and the temp of the graphics was normal. All the person’s files were hidden so it looked like all the files are gone. Enough to make anyone stress out to the max.

First thing was to run ATF cleaner to get rid of all temporary files so I don’t have to wade through those. Could not install Super Anti Spyware locally in normal mode. Had to boot into safe mode with networking, then install SAS. Ran a fast scan first and removed all the malware. After reboot, ran deep scan with SAS in normal mode and removed some more trojans.

Next, I ran unhide.exe from bleepingcomputer.com or from technibble.com to get personal files to show up again. Now I cant see all the original items in the start menu still such as control panel or the “run” menu item. If you right click on start, then properties, > Customize > Advanced Tab > then in the Start menu Items: I click on the “Display as a link” on all the items that I want to show back up such as Control panel, Run, Printers, etc.

To further work on this cleanup, I install updates for Super Anti-spyware, Installed security essentials because the current security essentials is not even visible in the menus anymore even though it’s on the machine!  I got to ninite.com and install all the pertinent updates for flashes, java, vlc, teamviewer, hulu, reader, firefox, cutepdf, dropbox, everything search and Glary Utilities.

Installed My web of trust on firefox and ie and also did WSUS offline updates to get the latest Microsoft updates to a decent point. Did further updates via the Microsoft website.

Looking at device drivers, I also noticed that the ethernet card was disabled, so went into sysdm.cpl > device manager > right click on card > then enable. Now back in business.

The hard drive looked like swiss cheese and since it’s XP, ran jkdefrag on it till it looked good.

One of my favorite performance boosters is to speed up the start menu bar by editing the registry and tweak the menu show delay. I change it to 90Ms. Set it by regedit > HKey_current_user > Control Panel > Desktop > then modify MenuShowDelay to 90 instead of 400. It really has the effect of speeding up the Start menu clicks especially on XP.

There you have have, another satisfied customer.

Technorati Tags: unhide malware virus

Copy a File’s Path to the Clipboard without any Registry Hacks!

If you ever wanted to copy the full path of any file or folder to the clipboard but without installing any third-party utilities or making any changes to your Windows registry, here’s a tip for you.

Copy the File’s Location to the Clipboard

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the file or folder whose path you want to copy to the clipboard. Once you are there, hold the “Shift” key and right click that file or folder’s icon.

Because the Shift key is down, the contextual menu will have a new item that says “Copy as Path” – select that and the full location of the file or the folder will get saved to your clipboard from where you can paste it anywhere including the DOS window.

You can use this tip to copy a file’s location from all places including those appearing in the desktop search results.

This trick works in Windows Vista and Windows 7 but not XP. It was originally published in Ed Bott’s book - Windows 7 Inside Out

Technorati Tags: file path, windows7

Got a laptop in today that had such an odd problem. The customer said that they rushed the shutdown process and went ahead and hit the power button to shutdown the laptop. When they went back in and powered it on, the touchpad did not work.This was a Compaq (or HP) laptop model cq50-139wm (one of the deals at Walmart).

I installed the latest drivers over at synaptics.com but that did not work. I went to hp.com and got the latest drivers for that machine but that did not work. The device manager didn’t eben show the touch pad at all. The mouse setup under control panel did not even have a listing for the synaptics touch pad driver.

Thinking that it was malware related, I installed atf cleaner, pcfixer, malwarebytes, ccleaner and there was a lot of crap to remove but did not take care of the touchpad.

A lot of sites on this issue were saying to do fn-f7 or some key combination to make sure the touchpad was not turned off. In this case, there is a small push button above the touchpad, that is amber if it is turned off, blue or white if it is turned on. In my case, it was on, but the touchpad still did not work.

Did a system restore back several days but the touchpad still no worky.

I finally came across a site where it mentioned powering the laptop off, popping the battery out and letting it stay disconnected for more than a minute. This did the trick. Special thanks goes to http://forums.techguy.org for that info.

Technorati Tags: compaq cq50, laptop, synaptics, touchpad

Run MsConfig by going to Start > Run > type msconfig
Then selected startup and uncheck just about all the programs you can stand. If there is a program that is running and you are not sure what it is, you can google it by typing in “process “. Sometime it is obvious what the program is. Most folks don’t need to run MSN Messenger or Quicktime detector or all those programs resident in memory. You can always start them up manually and save your memory. Remember, you can always check the program back on if you need to. Just about the only programs you need to run is your antivirus or anti-spyware programs.

Technorati Tags: msconfig, slow computer, slow pc, slowdown, Startup

I wrote about this in Early August but am bringing it back up. The dreaded subject of disk defragmentation.

If you are diligent about keeping your machine running optimally, as I try to be, check out this screensaver which, when it runs, it defrags your hard drive. Don’t be alarmed by all the comments you will get on it, but it will surely get someone’s attention. Us this if you are constantly forgetting about defragging your drive.
http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/
Take the screensaver program and copy it over the system32 directory and then right click on your desktop > select screensaver and pick the JKDefrag screensaver and you’re done.

Technorati Tags: defragment

This link is valuable to those having trouble running programs in Vista that had no problem in XP or earlier Windows OS’es. I founf it over at Nirmaltv.com

Some software and games might be built for Windows XP and might crash when executed in
Vista. If your software is crashing in
Vista, you can fix it with a simple and quick solution. To run programs having compatibility issues in
Vista, turn on the
compatibility Mode. With
compatibility mode, you can run the program or game in the settings for which it was actually designed.

To run any program or game in
compatibility mode, right click on the executable file or the start menu item for this program and then select Properties. In the properties Window, select the
Compatibility tab.

Then give it a whirl!

Tags: vista, xp, compatability mode

1. Start >> Right Click on My Computer and select Properties. 
2. Click the “Advanced” tab 
3. Select “Settings” in the Performance section.
4. Disable any or all of the following: 

• Fade or slide menus into view 
• Fade or slide ToolTips into view 
• Fade out menu items after clicking 
• Show Shadows under menus 
• Slide open combo boxes 
• Slide taskbar buttons 
• Use a background image for each folder type 
• Use common tasks in folders
• This info was found over at 5starsupport.com and is a good fundamental listing of common things to do to take off some of the bells and whistles that could impact slower systems
  

Technorati Tags: performance, tricks, tweaks, windows, xp

This one drives me crazy. Have you ever just wanted to shutdown your machine but it takes for ever! Maybe, you are leaving from work, or going out or there is a quick storm approaching and you need to just shutdown. Either way, it sometimes can take a while. This tip comes from PC Tips N Tricks:

Actually windows XP takes time to close all running programs and applications before shutdown, but you can minimize this time if you have little knowledge about editing windows registry.

Follow the given steps to reduce the shutdown time:

· First click on Start button then type Regedit in Run option. Here locate the location to:
HKEY_Current_User\Control Panel\Desktop    or 

My Computer\HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Desktop

· Here in right side panel, double click on AutoEndTasks and here its default value is 0. Now change it to 1.

· Now in same side panel double click on value name WaitToKillAppTimeout. Its default value data is 20000; now change this value of WaitToKillAppTimeout to 3500.

· Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

Technorati Tags: registry edit, shutdown, windows xp