All advice is given AS IS. No warranty is expressed or implied.
If you are worried that you don't know what you are doing, then stop and hire someone to do it for you.
Keep your files properly backed up. This means making a
Restore Point and saving files since the last archive on a new medium (e.g. new CD). For added security, make more than one copy, and/or send alternate archives to different places (work, home, friends’ or parents’ place, etc), to limit catastrophic loss from fire, etc.
Always make a backup before installing (or re-installing) a new instance of software (i.e. even if it has been installed before, a new installation might cause new problems). It is not uncommon for older games to require older versions of graphics drivers, for example. Hard drive storage costs <$1/MB, CDs are about $0.50 each. FlashRAM is the best for transferring files between PCs.
You have been duly warned. Failure to adhere to basic PC hygiene does not constitute an emergency for anyone except you.
Always beware of the damage from the human body conducting static charge into the fragile components.A good technique is to connect the mains plug, with the power off, to the computer PSU, and touch the metal case.
(This provides an Earth to ground the person.) Remember to remove the cable before adjusting the components. A static-strap (for a few dollars) is also a very good investment.
BSoD[/color]
The majority of Blue Screens of Death arise from corrupt drivers.
Run dialog:
verifier.exelaunches the Windows Driver Verifier next reboot, and flag any stability issues.
If the issue preventing Windows from booting seems to be with the soundcard, graphics card or even RAM then it's more than likely a poor connection with the motherboard. Dust and grease, particularly on older components (or in dirty cases), can be removed using an ordinary pencil eraser (don't leave the shavings where they may be sucked into the case).
Crashing during gaming? Heavy workload can cause RAM to fail
if the DIMMS are different speeds (even from the same manufacturer), even after defaulting to the slowest. Match the RAM.
HEATIf there are numerous disk errors, but Windows CheckDisk doesn't report any surface errors, run
Motherboard Monitor to keep an eye on the temperature inside the case. The temperature should be below 40°C (above 50°C the physics underpinning the hard disks operation reach a critical point and can even cause physical damage).
Likewise, glitches or artifacts on your screen when playing a game, especially after a while, are a sign that the GPU (or the GPU-attached RAM) is over-heating.
Artifacts in the graphics?
Choppy playback, or random coloured lines appearing on-screen are both signs of driver issues. Check for an updated patch from
ATi or
nVidia, and that it is running the latest version of
DirectX that the GPU can support.
Top Five .dll file sites:Digital Audio linked to a Hi-Fi / Home Theatre Amp?
Analogue:- Use any input except Phono, as this is designed to boost and EQ low-level inputs and will distort line levels.
- For 5.1 amps, use 3 minijack to PCA cables to connect the soundcard to the inputs on the rear of the amp as follows:
- Front Left/Right (white is left, red is right)
- Rear Left/Right (white is left, red is right)
- Centre/Sub (white is centre, red is Sub)
- For 6.1 and 7.1 amps, an additional channel / pair is added for side left/right on the amp.
To use an external Dolby/DTS decoder use a digital connection (either coax or optical)
- Set the Soundcard to digital out, SPDIF out
No POSTIf the PC won't even Power-On Self Test (POST) into the BIOS, take a deep breath. Then check all your cables, expansion cards and memory, inside and outside your case. If that still doesn't fix the problem, unplug the power cable from the wall, prise out the CMOS battery from its housing on the motherboard and remove the jumper to clear the CMOS. Leave it for a minute, then replace the jumper, battery and power cable
in that order.
Bad Boot
- Connect the PSU and connect only the CPU (with cooler) and case fan to the motherboard. Plug in the power and turn on the system.
- The fans should turn and your BIOS should POST, issuing a series of long beeps. This means you've got power going to the motherboard and it's searching for memory.
- Turn off the power at the mains and install a RAM module in the first bank (marked 0 or 1) and then restart the system.
There will be one long and three short beeps, meaning that CPU and RAM were found by the motherboard, and it is looking for the graphics card.
- Turn off the PC and install the graphics card, and connect it to a monitor, then restart the PC.
- The cooling fan on the graphics card should be spinning and the BIOS message should appear on the active monitor.
- Ignore the disk boot failure messages.
Turn off, connect your hard drive and optical drive(s) and restart. If nothing has failed thus far, it is likely a harddrive problem, so reboot and scan your disk (this is a BIOS setting) marking bad sectors and/or reformat. Because you have an up-to-date archive of everything on the disk.
[/list]If the PC falls over and there aren't any problems in the Device Manager, it could be an impaired RAM module. Download
Memtest86; it's a free app that runs from floppy (or flash RAM) and gives the RAM a deeper scan than the standard, cursory check.
Always install and use a reliable firewall before accessing the internet (preferably not Windows Firewall).
and [url=http://free.grisoft.com]AVG Free Edition are free and very effective, and include an AntiVirus scanner. (There are Trojans in the wild that can infect a new Windows installation before the
Windows/Microsoft Update service can patch it.)
Get rid of Bloatware: any ISP offers, media player demos, etc.
Don't bother with AV trials, they are always time limited and may be difficult to remove: delete them with Add/Remove Programs before installing full versions. AV software interacts with Windows at a very low level, and can perform very resource-intensive CPU checking, which will slow the PC down.
Set a System Restore point before using
Windows/Microsoft Update. Update regularly. Archive critical data
more frequently.
Download and install a
Registry Cleaner.
RegScrubXP is good, as is
Advanced WindowsCare, and both are free for home users. The Registry is a single flat-file that holds all the key file administration information, and it is the Achille’s heel of Windows.
"BIOS Cehcksum error. Press F1 to continue ..." means the CMOS battery has failed on the old PC (typically not been active for more than a year).
Don't update the BIOS. If necessary, try the CPU in another PC (friends', family members', et alia): if it is not recognised in the healthy system, then the problem is with the CPU.
Don't panicHear a clicking sound from the PC? Back-up and remove the PC's case. Listen to where the noise is coming from: even though the noise is a symptom of a failing hard drive, it could also be a defective case fan. Turn off and unplug each fan one by one, restarting each time to see if there is one that has worn out its bearings.
Sleepers If there is a persistent virus, trojan or spyware that is repeatedly disinfected by the AV software, disable the
System Restore function from the
System Properties and
then run the scan. Malware can hide in the compressed folders of the system restore folder and then extract and re-infect later. Don’t forget to re-enable the
System Restore, afterwards.
Become a Power User:- Demote your XP user account. Restricting your permissions will prevent trojans from having sufficient authority to change system settings, should you pick up an infection.
- Use the Run dialog box, Enter:
lusrmgr.msc
- Click on Groups (left pane), and then double-click on Administrators (right pane). Make sure there is at least one administrator account to use, then choose your account to demote, click Remove (from the admin group).
- Then double-click on Power Users and click on the Add button. Type in the user account, and press OK, twice.
- To run programmes with administrator privileges, just hold the Shift key and right-click on the application (or its shortcut), and choose Run as and select The following user; enter the name and password of the administrator account, and click OK.
Computers are dumb. They do exactly what they are told. If something is not working, chances are it was the last thing installed that broke it: recall what has recently been added (last few days). New hardware, software, firmware, drivers; have you
Windows/Microsoft Update?
Second-hand PC? Install and use
Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware to banish the dialers and spyware. Then disinfect with a reliable AV, preferably from a bootable CD-ROM, so that Windows can be deep-cleaned.
Online game crash? Does the
Error Reporting Service also hang? Some Windows system files might be missing / corrupt.
Use the Windows Installation CD and type in the
Run dialog box:
sfc/scannowOK (This can take a quarter of an hour to run.)
Online TROUBLESHOOTING sites[/color]
www.cybertechhelp.comwww.avforums.comwww.practicallynetworked.comwww.tech-recipes.commalektips.comwww.helponthe.netwww.wown.comwww.bootdisk.comsupport.microsoft.comforum.pcformat.co.ukDump temporary files when Windows starts.
- Create a new text file on your desktop. Enter:
rd %temp% /s/q
md %temp%- Save the file and name it appropriately (e.g. cleantemp.bat), then hold Ctrl and drag & drop the file into the Startup folder, on the Windows Start menu.
Optical Illusion? Windows sometimes "loses" optical drives, even if they appear in the
Device Manager, they may not appear in
Explorer and/or won't play CDs.
This is more than likely a Registry problem.
- in the Run dialog:
RegEdit
- browse to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}- Delete the UpperFilters and LowerFilters values and restart the PC. (You may need to re-install buring software, after this.)
Finally, help keep dust out of the case
by design. Keeping the pressure inside the case higher than outside, will minimise dust inflow. This is easy to do: have more fan-power into the case, than out. Also fit some filters to the case fans, to keep dust from being sucked into the case. (The mild electric current of the semi-conducting components attracts small particles, just as the screen of a monitor or tv does.)
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