You can download my list of maintenance items and intervals to help keep your Windows operating system fast and reliable. You’ll receive a ZIP file containing my list in Microsoft Excel format and also an Adobe PDF version of the same list.
Is your slow Internet connection because of your own software, or Windows, or your Internet connection hardware, or your ISP (Internet Service Provider), or some of each, or what?
To know for sure, you’d have to check each of the above possibilities. Checking how your ISP is doing on the Internet is easy. Just visit One of [...]
If you’ve already suffered a data disaster you probably have “backup religion”.
If not, there’s no time like the present to prevent an inevitable computer nightmare!
I say “inevitable” because the hard disk drive containing your Windows operating system and all your data is guaranteed to fail – sooner or later. It’s a hot, fragile, high precision [...]
Do quick fixes and preventive maintenance with the best tools.
In this video tutorial, I show how to use the $30 ‘JV16 Power Tools’ product from Macecraft Software to do a Windows Registry clean or repair, and how to use some of the many other tools included in the ‘Power Tools’ kit to make your life with [...]
One of my computer consulting clients just called to ask if it was safe to install an Adobe Flash Player update from an automatic notice he received. The answer is “yes”, if it looks to be from Adobe and not a fake.
Computer paranoia
Don’t mean to scare you, and I haven’t heard about any such fakes [...]
Microsoft puts us between a rock and a hard place with “Automatic Updates”
The Dilemma
If you use the default Windows auto update settings, Microsoft automatically updates Windows components which you may not want yet – like the latest Internet Explorer browser version. Wise users hold off on such new software versions for a month or two, [...]
Many Windows users don’t realize that Windows keeps logs of almost everything it does. And these logs are easy to review for any recorded problems. Windows may be trying to tell you something – you’d best listen. Don’t wait for trouble when you can easily head it off.
I recommend that you inspect your ‘Windows Event [...]
Another reason to disinfect your keyboard and mouse
After reading a report last year about how keyboards are biologically dirtier than toilet seats, I started wiping down my keyboard, mouse, phone and other devices with alcohol every month. And I advised my computer clients to do the same – no need to bring my biohazards to [...]
It’s gonna get hot!
Squeeze 410 Million transistors onto a CPU (Central Processing Unit) chip that’s smaller than a dime and you’ve got some serious heat to deal with. Note that the CPUs above are shown laid out on their production “wafer” – before being cut up into individual “chips”. The latest chip fabs (fabrication facilities [...]
Leave messy cables alone?
As a long time electronics hobbyist, it suddenly occurred to me one day (while neatly coiling and tying up computer cables into small coils) that any coil of wire is an ”Inductor”. A “coil” in hobby-speak. It exhibits inductive reactance – higher frequencies encounter more resistance. And computer cables are antennas (as the [...]
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