A Computer Disaster that Didn’t Have to Happen
A business computer client of mine, whose home computer I’d never visited, emailed me about a problem with that home computer. Seems it wouldn’t start Windows, only display a black screen with white type and an error message asking him to insert a boot medium (CD) and complaining about his (non-existent) network.
Maybe you know what that means? Unable to access its hard drive, his computer did what it should have. It tried to start Windows from a bootable CD, but found none. Then it tried to start from his network and again found none. Then it gave up and displayed the usual cryptic error message in a language only a computer expert could translate.
Diagnosis – Hard Drive Failure:
My first visit soon confirmed the worst:
A failed hard drive – probably due to overheat. Everything stored on that computer was gone.
Causes and Contributions:
There was no automatic image backup system – just household financial files and some Word docs and photos copied to a USB thumb drive from time to time.
My client had bought a small (10.5″ high x 14″ deep) “mini” desktop computer, not the usual full size “mini-tower” (about 17″ x 17″). Inspection showed that this small computer case had fewer and smaller cooling fans than the usual full size case and naturally had a more crowded interior, with less room for airflow.
In particular, the hard drive was not well served by the cooling air stream. This case had a hot air exhaust vent on the top, which his wife had accidentally covered up by resting a plastic paper tray there. It had a cool air intake grille on the right side, which was unfortunately jammed up against the wall.
The case interior, vent grilles, CPU cooling fan, CPU heatsink, motherboard chip heatsink and power supply fan were also blocked by a lot of dirt and dust clumps from months of full-time operation with no cleaning inside the case.
And things looked even worse when I was unable to recover the data from his failed hard drive, after installing it in one of my computers and running the best data recovery program in the world (short of the CIA) on it for several hours.
Like most disasters, this one was the result of a series of bad moves. Also like most disasters, it has lessons for us.
Computer Cooling and Backup Lessons
A modern computer’s worst enemy is heat.
Today’s typical CPU (“Central Processing Unit” – the microprocessor chip at the heart of any personal computer) consumes about 75 Watts or more of electrical energy. But nothing can be 100% efficient (as “Carnot’s Law” of thermodynamics tells us). Inefficiency means that energy not used directly to do work makes heat instead. With millions of “not 100% efficient” microscopic transistors inside a solid block that’s only about 1” on a side, the CPU gets too hot to touch.
It’s smart enough to slow down or even shut down entirely, if it overheats enough. This is one of the typical causes of a slow computer. And the CPU has a fancy cooling heat sink and cooling fan, attached with special heat transfer paste. There are also a couple of other big hot chips running the motherboard and doing other jobs. And the power supply that converts 120 volts AC to the various DC voltages needed by the computer also gets hot and has its own fan and heatsinks.
The hard drive itself has a CPU of sorts inside – nowadays most computer equipment is “smart” like that. And it also gets rather hot. It senses its own temperature and can report overheating to Windows. But it doesn’t do anything about that condition.
Lesson 1: Keep It Cool:
Buy a computer with adequate cooling. I recommend one with a full size case, if you’re getting a desktop machine. Install it where it has several inches of space around, behind and above it, especially near where air must enter and exit the case.
Clean Out Your PC Periodically:
Shut down your computer, disconnect the power cord, open the case and clean out the dust with a soft brush and a can of compressed air. Be sure to clean the fans and fan blades, the heatsinks and inside the power supply box, through its own fan openings. Do this at least twice a year in the average clean environment and much more often in workshops or other dust prone areas.
Lesson 2:
Have an automatic image backup system and a disaster recovery plan, if you have any important data at all on your computer – or even just to avoid the hours of toil required to install a new hard drive, operating system (with many updates and restarts), get networked and back online, re-install and re-license all your programs, do your email setup, etc., etc.
In another post I detail how to best do backups and make a disaster recovery plan.
Lesson 3:
Restart your computer at least once per week. Windows was not designed to run for weeks at a time. It will probably get slow, start to misbehave and eventually crash, if you don’t “refresh” it by restarting it every few days.
Until next time – Keep it cool!
_jim coe
Tags: backup, computer cooling, installation, Solid State Drives
Wireless Optical Mouse
I find that many of my Windows computer clients don’t benefit from the many things which that right mouse button can be made to do.
Right-Clicking for Windows 7
You can right-click on any file to get a handy pop-up context menu – including the ability to invoke many programs you may have which are associated with that type of file.
Right-Clicking on the Windows Taskbar
A right-click on the Taskbar, on any item that’s currently running, will get you a list of the most recent things you’ve done with that item, the ability to add it to a permanent list or to close the item – and more. So much easier to right-click on the Word icon on the Windows Taskbar, then select a document you’ve been working on, then to find that document in Windows Explorer (the Windows File Manager). It works like the “File > Recent” menu inside Word.
Right-Clicking on the desktop background
A right-click on the desktop background (not on an icon) will let you customize your desktop (“Personalize”) or create a new desktop shortcut or a new desktop folder (“New”). You can also make changes there to your display settings.
Right-Dragging for Windows 7
File Copy or file Move?
If you right drag a file to some destination (another folder or such) you’ll get a handy pop-up menu where you can choose to Copy or to Move that file, or to Cancel the operation. This prevents you from accidentally moving a program which you only meant to copy – which is easy to do by mistake with a Left-Drag.
Right-Clicking for Applications and Microsoft Office
A right-click on any document in Office 2010 pops up a context menu, which can save you from having to search through the menu system to find what you want to do. Right-clicking on a Word “Style” lets you modify it and do several other things.
Right-clicking on the Office 2010 “Quick Access Toolbar” lets you add items to this handy widget (it’s in the upper left corner of your Office application’s screen).
There are many more ways to use right-clicking in Windows and Office than I can list here. Microsoft has an online article about right-clicking: Microsoft Article
Types of Mice:
Mechanical Mouse
The old original mouse used a Teflon coated ball, which rolled against small axels inside the mouse. That ball would pick up debris from the surface under your mouse and had to be removed and cleaned from time to time (along with those interior axels) to prevent erratic behavior of the mouse cursor. I hate to think of the number of mice which were probably discarded when all they needed was a good cleaning.
Optical Mouse
Problems with the mechanical mouse were solved by the optical mouse, which bounces a beam of light from an LED off of your working surface to a light sensor inside the mouse. You still have to clean the mouse periodically, if the LED or sensor become obscured by debris. But this happens infrequently.
Wireless Mouse
The other big change in mice (and keyboards) was to use a small radio transceiver to communicate between the mouse or keyboard and the computer, instead of a physical cable. The disadvantage is that this requires batteries. So, you have to keep batteries in stock and change them fairly often.
Space Mouse
Some digital artists and gamers use a “3D Space Mouse”, which responds to its position in space. In other words, instead of moving it around on a tabletop, you wave it around in the air.
Track Mouse
Some computer users have always preferred a “Trackball” to a mouse. Because of this, some mouse manufacturers offer a mouse with a built-in trackball. Never used a Trackball? Try one in a computer store some time – you might love it. The idea is that the Trackball case (or Track Mouse) stays still and you roll the ball around to move the mouse cursor on your display.
Trackball Wired Mouse
That Mouse Wheel
If you have a mouse with a wheel between the left and right buttons, you can use that to scroll up and down in your documents. The mouse wheel also doubles as a 3rd button, since you can click it.
Hope this helped you….
_jim coe
Experts take this so much for granted that they forget to warn others.
(* See below for an exception)
It works like this:
Basically, only one software application can use (open) any single software file at any one time – into your computers volatile electronic memory, where your file is located during the time you’re working on it. Until you save or close that file, from electronic memory back to disk storage, no other program can use it.
Your computer’s electronic memory chips are called “volatile” because without electricity and a fully functional computer, they can’t work. They’re not like your magnetic hard drive storage medium, which “remembers” your data while the power is off.
In practice, all this means two things:
• Work you don’t save is lost during a power outage or crash.
• Any backup application you use will not backup open files.
Back in the bad old days of less reliable computers and software, we old-timers learned to stop what we were doing and save our work every few minutes – by “force of habit”. That is, you only have to lose your work a few times to force you to develop such a habit. And stopping to do a save was pretty easy back then because computers could only do one thing at a time, so you were only concerned with saving one file.
Nowadays in my computer consulting practice I sometimes see users leaving dozens of files open over their lunch break, overnight or even over the weekend! Decent computer security [excuse me while I stop to save this] calls for a backup to a different medium every night. But all those open files are not being backed up!
Example:
For instance, here I am typing this topic into MS-Word – to be pasted into my WordPress blog later. If I had not saved this Word doc onto my hard drive by now and I had a power failure or other glitch – it would be gone forever.
But I did save it after the first couple of paragraphs. If there was a power failure or a crash right now, I would still loose my most recent work – everything I’ve typed since that most recent save.
Who’s looking at your work?
There’s another issue with the security of open files.
Suppose you leave your files open while you go to lunch and you don’t have a password protected [I'm stopping now to save this] screen saver running – which will cover up your work after a few minutes. Anyone walking by your desk can see, copy or alter your work. If you do the same thing overnight or over the weekend, people like office cleaning staff can also see, copy or alter your work. In fact anyone could get access to your computer and do anything with it or your data or any online web site they wanted. And you could be blamed for their nefarious activities.
So – words to the wise:
Save your work often, use a password protected screen saver to stop access to your computer when you leave it on while you’re away and don’t leave your files open for long.
* An exception:
Some people use their Windows desktop as more than a simplified way to open and close major applications.
For example, I have one client who must constantly manage several projects having many complex details - often while being interrupted by making or receiving phone calls.
He uses his Windows desktop to preview and track his workflow. That is, he leaves open all the programs he has used for the day’s tasks and will need to use later. This serves him as a series of workflow reminders and place-holders. By looking at his Windows 7 open items, he can more easily focus on and return to his place in his workflow after interruptions - and also see what should be done next.
With Windows 7 and a new 64 bit computer, he can have a great many applications open at the same time without slowing his work.
Such uses of the Windows desktop are exceptions to my “Don’t leave your files open!” rule – if you save your work as you go, so that none of these open items represent work which would be lost during a power failure or other problematic event.
Hope this helps…
_jim coe
[now saving this file]
What about you? Do you sometimes leave your computer files open too long?
Tags: backup, computer hard drive, computer memory, managing files
It’s happened to my clients – it CAN happen to you!
Your computers and all your paperwork are destroyed in an office fire or other computer disaster. What will you do?
Even if you’re prepared for a computer disaster, you’ll still have to:
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Deal with your insurance inspector and claims adjuster
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Hire a cleanup contractor and salvage what you can
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Arrange to rebuild your old office, if that’s what you want
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Locate, procure, rent and move into a temporary or permanent new office (or your home)
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Buy everything new
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Office furniture and appliances
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Telephone equipment
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Computers and all peripherals, including Internet and network equipment
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Other minor office and computer equipment
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You’ll have to recover all your computer programs, emails and data from your backup software:
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Setup new computers, peripheral equipment, Internet connection and networking
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Use your backup software to recover your programs, operating system and data to your new computers
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And while you’re handling all that, you’ll have to carry on with your current business projects and management
If you’re not prepared for a disaster
You could be driven out of business or forced to start over – without all your records, computers, software, data, etc.
How to prepare:
Insurance
I’m no insurance expert, but I can suggest a couple of things.
You need a policy that will cover not only your office and computer equipment, but the costs of restarting your business, like renting a temporary office, cleaning up your destroyed office, a computer consultant (unless you have the skills yourself) and much else.
Be aware of what software replacement terms your policy carries. Will it pay replacement costs for software products? How about your own past work product, all those documents, databases, spreadsheets, presentations, etc?
You’ll need to work closely with an insurer to make sure everything is actually covered and that you understand your policy thoroughly.
Maybe a good method would be to sit down and write out a scenario of what would actually happen in your unique situation, if a bad disaster occurred. If you don’t give it serious thought now, you’re going to have a hard time covering everything you’ll need when disaster strikes.
I don’t even want to think about running a business without insurance.
Computer security:
Backups
The key to easier computer disaster recovery is off-site backups and info.
Here’s my recommended plan:
Use large USB flash drives or USB external hard drives to make nightly, automatic full “image” type backups of each computer’s hard drives, while you’re out of your office.
Every few days (as many days as you’re willing to loose everything for) swap each backup drive with an alternate backup drive and store the backup drive with the latest backup image off-site.
Never leave both backup drives for each computer in your office at the same time – for any longer than absolutely necessary. In the event of a disaster, you must not lose both backup drives and your computers at the same time.
Do NOT make “file-by-file” backups!
Don’t use backup products such as those which backup to the Internet, or the Windows 7 built-in file-by-file backup tool. You must use an “image backup”, which makes a “snapshot” of your whole hard drive, including your operating system. Only an image backup can restore your old computer (or a new one) to exactly as it was at the time of the backup.
A file-by-file backup can only restore your work product, not your operating system or your programs. If all you have is a file-by-file backup from which to recover your computer – you’ll first have to re-install Windows (if you even have a Windows CD), get your Internet connection working, do many, many online Windows updates (restarting your computer after each one), get your email working all over again and re-install all your programs (if you have your original program media and all your software license keys).
Only then will you be able to restore your work files from your file-by-file backup. That can easily be a full day’s work for each computer, versus maybe one hour to restore everything from an image backup in one step – with no need for your software license keys or original program media.
Microsoft Windows 7 does offer a built-in image backup. But unlike Acronis True Image or StorageCraft’s Shadow Protect backup programs, it doesn’t let you recover files or folders from inside the saved image. You have to keep both an image backup AND a file-by-file backup for complete protection.
Do NOT depend on an online backup!
You can do file-by-file backups to servers on the Internet. Besides the fact that these are only file-by-file backups:
- Do you trust that your data is secure online?
- The more people store their backups online, the more hackers will be attracted to steal them.
- Online storage is rather new, but there have already been failures and lost data from such “cloud services”.
- A friend of mine who uses the top online backup service phoned them up to see how long it would take to restore all of his data. They told him “a few days” – the Internet is slow when dealing with massive numbers of large files.
A ‘gotcha’
There is one important caveat about the ability of an image backup to quickly restore your computer to exactly the state it was in when you made the backup. Suppose your destroyed computer was running the 32 bit Windows XP operating system and the new computer you purchased to replace it runs 64 bit Windows 7.
32 bit programs have to be specially handled by a 64 bit version of Windows 7. But the 32 bit programs you restore from a backup made with 32 bit Windows XP won’t have had that special treatment and won’t run. You would need to re-install them under Windows 7. There may also be other issues when restoring from one version of your operating system to another.
What to store off-site
- Your USB backup flash drives or USB backup external hard drives with your next to latest backup files
- Copies of your insurance documents
- A printed inventory, including all your computer equipment and software
- Your “ERD” (Emergency Recovery Disk) CDs or DVDs
- A password protected USB flashdrive or other storage medium with all your passwords and product license keys
- Any disaster recovery plans you have created
- All software product original media
- Weatherproof, water-tight packaging, if your recovery items are stored in your car, a garage, rented storage shed or other area not totally protected from the weather or subject to flooding.
Best security and disaster recovery products:
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Acronis True Image Home edition backup program -$49.99. My first choice for the home office/small office, or
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Shadow Protect Desktop image backup program – $89.95. My second choice
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Balarc Advisor free computer inventory program
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Seagate USB external hard drives, from Newegg.com online store
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Storm Case water-tight cases by Hardigg Cases. These expensive cases can often be found used on eBay
Also have:
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An excellent insurance policy and an insurance agent you trust
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A relationship with an expert and capable personal computer consultant
The future of backup
Solid State Drives (SSD) are slowly coming down in price. As they gain in sales numbers, the price will drop faster. With no moving parts these SSDs are much more reliable than today’s complex, delicate, high precision, high RPM hard drives. They are also extremely fast to start Windows and run programs.
Most data disasters are caused by hard drive failures, so I encourage you to switch to a Solid State hard drive as soon as possible. You can use a smaller SSD with only Windows and your programs on it as you “boot drive” and store your large amounts of data on a second standard hard drive, in order to buy a less expensive SSD drive.
Disclaimer
My usual disclaimer that I get a (tiny) sales commission if you purchase Acronis Ture Image Home backup or buy from the Newegg store via links on this blog.
Until next time – I hope you’re prepared…
_jim coe
Tags: backup, backup software, computer disaster, emergencies, security
I hope online backup services aren’t your only safety net!
Don’t be lulled by a false sense of disaster recovery security
By using only a remote backup service like Mozy or Carbonite. If all you care about is disaster recovery for your (smaller than their size limits) personal files, photos and the like, these services can be fine. That is if you don’t mind how slow uploading to the Internet can be. Remember that upload speeds are much slower than download speeds.
Think a bit
What are the most likely of all the possible serious personal computer disasters?
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A stolen laptop
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A failed hard drive
Recovering from computer disasters like those often mean:
- Re-installing Windows
- With dozens of Windows updates and computer restarts required
- Setting up your Internet connection all over again
- Configuring your email program and getting it working
- Importing your old email message file – if it’s not gone forever
- And your email message file may be too large for online backup services
- Installing and configuring all your programs
- Locating the license keys for all the programs you’ve purchased in the past
- And more…
It’s a huge hassle
And if you pay a pro to do it for you, a huge expense!
And online backup services can’t backup your critical Windows operating system files – so they can only recover your data, not restore Windows or your programs for you.
Now contrast all that with using a great local image file backup application, like Acronis True Image Home backup ($49.99 for a download). When you first install Acronis TI Home, you burn a disaster recovery CD in your CD/ROM drive (and if you’re smart, you do a new one every year, or after any major changes to your computer or software).
Now, if your hard drive fails or you need to recover everything to a new computer, you start your computer from that CD you made and use the Acronis TI program on it to restore everything (including Windows) from your backup drive. Instead of a risky, complex, day long (or more) hassle, you recover everything with a few clicks of your mouse, you go do something else and when you come back 45 minutes or an hour later, you find your computer is now just as it was when you made your last backup.
File-by-file Vs image backup
Those online remote backup programs, the backup programs built into Windows and even some commercial backup application only backup your files. They do what’s called a “file-by-file” backup. A good professional backup application like Acronis True Image ($49.99) makes a “snapshot” of your whole hard drive. So, when you restore that image to a hard drive (even one in most new computers) you get everything back, just as it was when you made your last backup.
A time saver
Making a full backup image can take from 1/2 our to over an hour – but you can schedule it to run at night, so it can be pretty painless. I expect you can do the same with online remote backup programs, but I’m not sure those would be finished by the time you wanted to use your computer again.
There is no problem with running current versions of Windows overnight, and you can turn off your display monitor to save energy. You should restart Windows at least once a week though.
My usual disclaimer
I get paid a (tiny) sales commission if you buy an Acronis backup product by clicking on one of the links here on my blog. And I’d be a happy blogger if you did 
But like all the products I recommend (with or without compensation), I use Acronis backup on all my personal computer consulting service’s client’s computers, and all my own - because it’s the best. Meaning that I don’t have to constantly fix it for free, like I would if I’d made the mistake of recommending an inferior brand. And if my client does experience a computer disaster, I know they can have an easier full recovery, if they make Acronis backups regularly and follow my recommended methods (please see also this post: “Backup software for your computer disaster” )
By the way, Acronis True Image is not the only image backup program I recommend. Shadow Protect Desktop is also quite good, though not as popular, more expensive ($89.95 Vs $49.99) and not quite as user-friendly in design as the Acronis products.
Until next time – Don’t forget to make your image backups…
_jim coe
Tags: backup, Disaster Recovery, security
Carry your whole computer in your pocket? Yes! (well everything you really need)
It’s now possible to put almost everything you use every day, including your Microsoft Office and other programs, onto a USB flash drive you can carry in your pocket!
How do they do that?
The secret is an inexpensive flash drive operating system. It’s called Ceedo and it uses the resources of any Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 computer, which it happens to be plugged into, to create a toolbar with all your stuff from your own desktop back on your own computer. But it doesn’t modify the computer it’s plugged into in any way (unless you want to save some work there or such). So now you can take the equivalent of your own computer with you in a shirt pocket, and run your own favorite applications and use your own data on any Windows computer anywhere.
Ceedo works on any USB device (USB 2.0 recommended for faster operation – as usual). So, you can also use it on USB portable hard drives.
Ceedo Personal works great for me!
Ceedo is good looking and reliable, can be password protected – and it’s smart. For example (after asking) it automatically updates to the latest version when you plug it in.
I stumbled onto Ceedo after I had wiped a flash drive and went looking for a new operating system to put on it. Now I’ve used Ceedo on a flash drive for several months and I love it. It’s perfect when I visit the offices of one of my computer consulting or web development and marketing services clients. And I even figured out a quick and easy way to update my flash drive with all the latest stuff from my own PC whenever I plug in my Ceedo flash drive.
Is Ceedo secure?
Of course I have my anti-virus program automatically scan my Ceedo flash drive whenever I plug it into my own computer. I don’t take chances on picking up malware from an infected PC. But as far as I can tell, Ceedo is no security risk.
Does it really have ALL your stuff?
Ceedo Personal comes equipped to support all the applications you’d expect, such as Microsoft office, a good file manager (like Windows Explorer), email and much more. But “out of the box” it won’t let you run every application you might have.
But they have a fix for that. For an additional$19.95 they offer their “Argo Application Installer“. It lets you easily convert a great many programs into mobile versions, which will then run on your Ceedo flash drive. When I bought Ceedo Personal, the Argo tool came as a free bonus and it’s worked great for me.
What’s the cost?
Ceedo Personal costs just $39. Both Ceedo Personal and Argo have free trials too, so there’s really no risk in testing them out. With the cost of flash drives (at newegg.com) down to $25 for 16 GB or under $60 for 32 GB, all this computer mobility is quite inexpensive.
Until next time – happy mobile computing!
_jim coe
Tags: flash drives, going mobile
There are lots of free Windows fonts available online. A Google search will show you many sources from which you can download Windows fonts – and many are free. However, exactly how to install your new Windows font is not always obvious.
Here’s how to install new Windows fonts
Fonts are a job for Windows
You can’t use Microsoft Word, Office, or such to deal with fonts – that’s a job given to Windows. Windows manages all your fonts, so that any program you have can share them.
TrueType font files
TrueType fonts are a standard font file format designed by Microsoft to work well with Windows. Other font types may work, and you shouldn’t be afraid to try them, but they may not work as expected.
Step-by-step
1. Download the Windows font to a known location on your computer. I like to create a separate folder with the name of each program I download so that pieces of various programs don’t get mixed together, and to make them easier to find in the future. When there is a license key involved (which is not the case for fonts), I copy it to a Windows Notepad file and save that in the same folder. All these folders are in a parent folder I call “Downloads”. Newer versions of Windows have a “Download” folder pre-installed.
2. The Windows font file is usually compressed inside of a ZIP file, as “fontname.zip” (which makes it faster to move over the Internet). So after you have it, you must “de-compress” or “expand” it, to open it up. Use WinZip if you have that tool (by right-clicking on “fontname.zip”). If not, and you have Windows XP or newer, that will have a built-in de-compressor tool. Right-click on “fontname.zip” and look in the “context menu”, which will appear, for a method to open it. Try to expand it to the same folder you downloaded the font file into, so you don’t have to go find it and move it.
3. Once you expand that zip file, you’ll have the actual Windows font file – perhaps a Microsoft TrueType font file – in which case it’ll be named “fontname.ttf”.
4. Now open the Windows Control Panel and double-click on “Fonts”. Do “File > Install New Font…” and then use the “Add Font” tool that opens, to browse to where your font file is and highlight it. It will then appear in the “List of fonts” at the top of the “Add Font” tool. Then click “OK” and you’re done. Just be sure that checkbox which says “Copy font” is checked (it is by default) so that your new font file gets copied in with all your other font files.
Be aware that too large a font collection can slow down Windows and your programs which use them. Try to stay under 800 fonts.
Until next time… Happy font collecting!
_jim coe
Tags: fonts, managing files
My list of things to check when Windows slows to a crawl just got longer. Today, I was trouble-shooting a laptop running Windows XP, when my client came up with a great clue. “When I start Windows, it’s fast, but after a while it gets slower and slower.”
After confirming to my satisfaction that all programs were slow, consulting the windows System Event Logs to look for clues and doing some routine maintenance, I turned to that least used of diagnostic tools. I stopped everything for a think.
“What”, I asked myself, ”comes to mind about ‘It does one thing at first (goes fast) and another thing as time passes (goes slow)’?” “What does that?” Then, “Wait – I’ve seen this before: It works when you first turn it on but it soon stops working …. when… when it’s a thermal intermittent!”
Stepping around to the back of the desk, I opened the laptop cover (the owners run it while shut – I don’t recommend that) and felt the air coming out of the laptop’s cooling fan at the outside back of the case. It wasn’t warm, as usual – it was HOT. So was the top of the case above the keyboard keys. I bent down with my nose close to the exhaust air and sure enough there was a faint “burning insulation” smell.
When Windows is slow, your CPU chip may be protecting itself from burning up, just as it was designed to do, by going slower and slower as it gets hotter and hotter.
Not wanting to stall the fan while things were so hot, I waited to blow out the vents with compressed air until I’d shut down the computer. Sure enough gouts of dust and tight packed “dust bunnies” flew out when I hit the intake and output vents with concentrated air from that little tube on my duster can.
Opening the case of a desktop PC and cleaning out all the dust with compressed air and a small brush, is something I do routinely – part of periodic PC maintenance. But over the years, I’d gotten used to thinking of laptops as sealed units which you didn’t get inside of unless they needed memory chips or a new hard drive.
CPUs and other VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) chips have been using 10x, 100x, 1,000x as many transistors in the same tiny package every few years for decades. And no transistor (or anything else) is 100% efficient. Some of that electricity you feed them turns into heat.
A few years ago laptops started having internal cooling fans. And those do suck in lots of dust during months of use – just like their larger cousins, the desktop cooling fans. The manufacturer’s of consumer computers don’t dare to protect them with dust filters. Dust filters have to be cleaned regularly to prevent over heating from lack of air flow. They have to be cleaned even more often than open fans, and who will ever do that?
So here’s your take-home. Every month or three, clean all that dust and debris out of both your desktop AND your laptop computers – with the power off.
Oh, and read the label on those duster cans – it’s not really compressed air in there these days – it’s a more or less toxic chemical propellant. Best to open some windows (the kind on house walls). Also, don’t shake that can. And use short bursts. Expanding gases get real cold (which is how your frig works) and if you hold that release button down long enough, out will come a stream of nearly frozen liquid – not air. Not so good to squirt that into your computer.
Until next time… stay cool…
_jim coe
Tags: faster Windows, maintenance
From time to time, people send me hoaxes.
They don’t know these are hoaxes – though it’s pretty obvious on close inspection. They think they’re warning all their friends and relatives about some imminent danger. Please don’t do that!
People create these hoaxes to try to spread them “virally” (like a virus). That is, by getting ignorant people to spread them to the mailboxes of others. If you do email a hoax to other people, you’re a spammer’s accomplice – no matter how good your intentions. So take a minute, do a bit of critical thinking or visit a hoax busting site and spare us all.
It’s not hard to spot a hoax and there are several web sites where you can quickly check on any email messages you mistrust.
Signs of a hoax email:
“Microsoft says the sky is going to fall!” Hoaxes often make exaggerated claims of danger, like “This virus will destroy your computer and both IBM and Microsoft say there is no way to detect or prevent it.” And they often make ridiculous claims (no virus can “destroy” a computer) in the name of well known companies. Many times these are companies with nothing to do with the topic. For example, IBM has no anti-virus products or divisions.
Bad grammar:
People who create these hoaxes are usually not great writers. So you’ll usually see something that reads like it was written by someone unfamiliar with English.
Unlikely claims:
Most hoaxes just sound weird and improbable. They’re not plausible. They don’t pass the common sense test.
If in doubt:
But you don’t even have to sniff out the hoaxes yourself. Instead, simply go to one of the hoax buster web sites and type the subject line (or the title or headline) of the suspected email hoax into their search engine. If it’s a hoax, they are almost sure to have it in their database and you’ll instantly get a result confirming it as a hoax.
So, please take that extra couple of minutes to do your “due diligence”, before you spread any more of this garbage – you’ll be fighting spam and keeping your reputation bright.
Hoax busting web sites:
Snopes.com
http://www.snopes.com/
Hoax Slayer
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/
Hoax Busters
http://www.hoaxbusters.org/
Until next time – slay those hoaxes!
_jim coe
Today’s desktop Windows computers usually come with 2 USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports on the front panel and 4 more on the back of the case. So many peripheral devices now use the USB ports that 6 ports may not be enough.
When you run out of ports to plug devices into, you’re going to buy a “USB Hub” – one of those little boxes on the end of a USB cable that gives you 4 to 8 more places to plug in USB devices.
This is were you can get into trouble in 2 ways:
1. The USB port is designed to not only accept and receive data signals from devices, but to also supply them with power. After you fill your 6 USB computer ports with power consuming devices, will you enough power left to supply those extra USB devices plugged into your USB hub?
You will if you were smart and bought a USB hub that came with it’s own power supply – and if you actually plugged that power supply into a wall receptacle and your USB hub.
2. Many cheap USB hubs are unreliable. Sooner or later you’ll start getting errors after attaching them. That’s why, if you receive a Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), like a white “Stop Error” on a blue screen, you should power down your PC (after any memory dump is finished) and detach ALL USB devices to see if that fixes the problem. It seems that one USB port with a faulty device attached can stop Windows from starting up or cause other USB devices to throw errors.
So, here are my USB recommendations:
1. Plug your most important USB devices directly into you computer case, not into a USB hub:
- Keyboard
- Mouse
- External backup drive
- Printer
- Connection to a smart Uninterruptable Power Supply (battery backup)
2. If you must use a USB hub, buy a good one, like one of the powered units made by Belkin.
3. Always use the power supply provided with your USB hub and never buy a USB hub without one.
4. If you get a BSOD error, add your USB devices to your list of suspects.
Until next time – may your USB ports stay fast and happy…
_jim coe
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