Welcome to Hilker's Computer Repair

     Lately I have found more and more people hanging on to their older(5+ yrs old) machines.  Nothing wrong with that as a lot of them were made better back in the day.  The issue that seems to be arising more and more is the speed of these machines.  I can say to get more memory, a larger hard drive, change out the motherboard and processor, defragment the hard drive, remove the programs that you don’t use, and use cleaning programs to get rid of the large amounts of unnecessary files.  Some of those may not be cost effective right now in the economy we are in.  I myself have a few older computers with the same problems.

     The other day I decided I had enough and was not going to invest anymore money into one of my old towers.  Instead, I backed up all of the files that I wanted to keep and completely wiped my hard drive and reinstalled the operating system.  Now it runs just like it did when I first got it.  I didn’t load it with a lot of programs I didn’t need or use like what was on it before.  I put what I needed and that is all.

     Sometimes, especially after a bad virus, trojan, or spy-ware, this makes sense.  These invaders can cause real havoc on your computer, and cause loss of files that make your computer run.  Now in my previous blog, I mentioned that you should routinely back up your computer.  This is still very true.

     Just make sure to follow the instructions that came with your computer to reload it or contact a technician for assistance.

original creation:  06/26/2008
updated:  09/21/2008(added additional online storage providers)

updated:  01/20/2009(removed references to Xdrive as they shut down)
    

     This kind of goes hand in hand with the one about passwords.  Lots of us use the computer for our pictures and music.  Others use them for business, gaming, email, homework, and more.  What happens though if you forget your password to access the computer or, God forbid, your computer crashes or there is an electrical storm that fries it?  Well, if you haven't been backing up your files on a regular basis, you will almost certainly lose all of your data.  There are numerous ways to do this, some cheap and others not so cheap.  I will list a few of them here.

1)  External USB Harddrives.  Personally, this is the one I like the best.  One reason is that you can backup your entire system.  Another is that they are portable, you can take them with you where ever you go, which works if you visit family that is always asking for copies of the kid's pictures.  They don't take up that much room, and some even can be placed on a shelf next to each other like books or stacked up.  I have found the Western Digital MyBook series to be pretty reliable, but there are also many other great brands to choose from.  These types of drives are reasonably priced and now even go as high as 4TB(Terabyte).  Now unless you have 10's of millions of pictures, songs, files, or a small country's data storage, you will probably not need that large of one.  An average user would probably only need from 180GB(Gigabyte) to 500GB.  A small business or extreme gamer might need from 500GB to 1TB.  These drives can be found at Best Buy, Circuit City, and TigerDirect.com to name a few.  With most of these types of drives, free backup software comes with it.

2)  Small USB Flashdrives.  These also come in handy for their portability.  These would be more for taking files from work to home or vice versa.  Don't get me wrong, they will work out fine for many people, but only those that don't have that much information to backup.  Plus, if you do use them to backup a large number files, you might need a few.  These types of drives start out from 256MB(Megabyte) and can get as large as 64GB.  But the larger you get the pricier they become.  These drives normally come with a encryption program to help protect your files with a password.

3)  Online Storage.  You can almost always find places to store your pictures online such as Kodak Gallery, Photobucket, and ShutterFly.  "What about my other types of files?  Where can I store them online?"  There are also numerous companies that can be found by searching Google for free online storage such as Idrive, Carbonite, and Skydrive to name a few.  Now most sites limit you to a small amount of storage room for free(5GB) and then provide a fee based service after that limit.  Most are pretty reasonable, and you know your information is secure and backed up on their site regularly.  The only down side goes back to the posting about internet problems.  If you do not have a working connection, you can't access this.  The upside to this type of service is that you can access your files from any computer connected to the internet. You can even setup it up for the whole family to save pictures so that everyone would have access to them by setting one user name and password.

There are a few other options like saving to CD-R/RW and DVD-R/RW discs, but that can turn expensive and time consuming due the the number of discs it could take.



8:15 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

December 02

Spyware

Did you know that not all anti-spyware programs remove every type of spyware?  Its true.  Even the ones you pay for miss some spyware.  I have found that it is a good idea to have at least an additional 2 programs installed, not that run at start up(which you can define at installation), but ones that you can have scan on your own time.  A few of the free ones I use(did I mention I like free?) are Malewarebytes, Spybot Search & Destroy, Windows Defender, and Comodo BoClean. 


10:24 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

October 09

CMOS Battery, what is it?