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December 9, 2009

Fix Windows with JV-16

Fix Windows quickly and do periodic Windows maintenance with the best tools

In this video tutorial, I show how to use the $30 ‘JV16 Power Tools’ product from Macecraft Software to fix Windows via a 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 Windows easier. Jv-16 is great for periodic Windows maintenance too.

Please note the control on the video player which opens the player to full screen size.
http://www.well-made-webs.com/windows-wisdom/wp-content/video/jv16_power_tools_2009-3.flv

Until next time – here’s to timely Windows maintenance…
_jim coe

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December 9, 2009

Help your computer chill out

dime400 Help your computer chill out

A 45 nanometer production semiconductor "wafer". Next these CPUs will be sliced up as individual chips.

Computer cooling is critical

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 or chip factories) use the new 45 nanometer production process. In other words, the narrowest “wire” (or other feature) width is 45 billionths of a meter. That’s now they manage their miniaturization miracles.

Nobody’s 100% perfect
That 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (the clause by Mr. Carnot perhaps) says that nothing is perfect when it comes to efficiency. Doing work always makes for some waste and that waste manifests as heat. If Intel’s tiny transistors are even 99% efficient in putting their electricity supply to work, 410 Million of them (crammed elbow-to-elbow) are going to work up quite a 1% sweat – depending on what you and Microsoft are ordering them to do, of course. Intel says these babies are turning on and off 300 Billion times a second – so they don’t get much cooling off time between cycles either.

Thermal Solutions
The bottom line is that the people who design the brains of your computer are in a constant battle against the heat that could make your processor protect itself by slowing down or by shutting down your computer. It could even suffer a fatal heat stroke. It’s called “Thermal Engineering” and it’s about coming up with “Thermal Solutions”.

The current consumer computer Thermal Solution is to use a “CPU Cooler (mounted on top of the CPU chip) to coax excess heat out of your CPU and into the metal fins of a “heat sink”, where it gets blown away with fans. Besides the CPU cooler fan, there’s usually one or more fans to pull cooling air into your computer case and maybe even more fans to blow the heated air back out of the case.

Intel CPU Cooler

fandesign1 265x4453 Help your computer chill out

If wishes were horses…
So far so good – if you have enough fans to blow enough air, if you can stand the fan noise, if you have plenty of cool air available and if you have a good way to exhaust the heated air out the back. …A whole lotta ‘ifs’, right?

Ideal Vs the World
Intel and the other chip makers assume their products will be used under “normal” (read “near ideal”) conditions. Not much different from you assuming you won’t be up all night next Tuesday, felled by the common cold this month, or win the Lotto during your lifetime. They can’t very well assume the worst and stay in business.

You are the weak link
But that means these manufacturers depend on you to not torture their chips. Let’s look at a not-that-unusual torture session, conducted by a computer user who represents that “worst” which Intel didn’t assume.

Intel’s assumptions
Let’s also assume you use an Intel desktop processor on an Intel motherboard. Intel specified that the people who built your computer used Intel’s thermal solution (see drawing above) with their processor. That is, they correctly installed the heat transmitting goo between the CPU chip’s metal case and the “heat spreader”, which transmits that heat to the heat sink, then they properly installed the heat sink itself, with its 51 fins to provide lots of heat dissipating surface area for the cool air from the properly installed Intel CPU cooler fan.

By the way, I don’t mean to pick on Intel – it’s the same for the others. In fact, I like Intel a lot, have had excellent support from them - and I do use their products when I design and specify computers for my clients.

Transistor torture
How does our hapless user inadvertently torture their transistors? For instance:
Their home office doesn’t have air conditioning. Today it’s 94 F degrees outside. So much for supplying cool air to the CPU cooler.

Also, this user bought one of those “computer desks” from a manufacturer that doesn’t know anything about computers. The computer is therefore jammed into this desk compartment which has a solid back, top and sides and no air vent holes drilled anywhere. There is maybe 4″ of space around the computer case. So much for intake airflow or for exhausting the hot air out the back of the computer case. Are you feeling the pain of that CPU chip yet?

But more than the CPU is suffering. Intel’s thermal solution uses the air that leaves the CPU cooler to also cool the voltage regulator chips and some other vital parts which they have arranged around the CPU. What with hot air coming into the computer case and being further heated up by the hot CPU, before flowing over these other components, they are also in a heavy sweat. Excessive heat may be shortening their lives.

Disaster strikes
What happens? Our user comes in, sits at their desk, fires up their email program and downloads a bunch of email. The CPU gets busy with the email and with that anti-virus scanner looking at each message as it comes in, and with the news site the user brought up to pass the time waiting for their mail – and the computer first slows to a crawl, then shuts itself down. Maybe it will start up again after a few minutes of cooling-off time – maybe it will never start again. It can only survive so much torture.

National ‘Be Kind to Your Computer Day’
I guess by now you’ve got the message. If you want your computer to be frisky and enjoy a long and productive life, give it plenty of cool air, plenty of room for airflow around it and plenty of fans. And use it in an air-conditioned space, if possible. Also don’t forget to open it up and clean out all those airflow blocking dust bunnies every couple of months.

Please feel free to comment below…
Until next time, stay cool…

    _jim coe

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December 9, 2009

‘Debug’ – Redefined

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 their offices, or vice-virtue.

Maybe your stuff could use a periodic disinfection, now that Swine Flu is all the rage.

You can use 99% isopropyl alcohol for disinfection – but not that dilute “rubbing alcohol”. You can get 99% isopropyl alcohol in drug stores, paint stores and some supermarkets. Read the label warnings! If you ever had a chemistry set as a kid, you know from your alcohol lamp that it’s highly flammable – and its fumes are not the stuff of life.

Apply with a soft cloth and you too can have an office that smells just like your doctor’s.

Please feel free to comment below…
‘Till next time – keep it clean and wash your hands often…
_jim coe

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December 9, 2009

Event Logs – A maintenance must

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 Logs’ (for at least the Windows operating system) weekly, and do so right after starting your computer, so you’ll know about any current startup errors – not just old ones which Windows may have fixed already or which are intermittent.

You’d be wise to also look at the separate Event Logs for your applications (programs), and for security events.

Finding the Event Logs:
Follow this path:
[Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Logs], then choose which logs to view from the list on the left.

ctrl panel1 550 Event Logs A maintenance must

First, go to the Control Panel and click on "Administrative Tools'

admin tools1 550 Event Logs A maintenance must

..then open the Event Viewer..

event log1 550 Event Logs A maintenance must

..then inspect the Windows logs.

What to look for:
The Event Logs will show white “Information” disks for events that went according to plan (ignore those), yellow “Warnings” for stuff you can probably ignore and the usual red disks for serious problems.

If you see any red disks, double-click on those events for a pop-up box with an explanation – probably an obscure technical one. You can copy and paste the error number or error name into a Google search to learn more, or you can copy it into an email to your computer guru. Don’t ignore red items – they are likely to already be causing trouble or to get worse over time.

Until next time – happy sleuthing…
_jim coe

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December 9, 2009

The Windows Update dilemma

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, while Microsoft fixes their inevitable bugs.

This is not to blame Microsoft for having program “bugs” (program errors). Every new version of every non-trivial software product is guaranteed to have bugs. Software is very complex and is written by error-prone human beings like you and me (and usually under stressful deadlines).

But if you don’t auto update, you may not get the latest Windows security patches in time to prevent some nasty infection of your computer’s software. Or you might miss out on some fix for existing software bugs or a cool new Windows of Office feature.

The Fix is In
With the right settings and a bit of caution when installing updates, you can prevent Windows Update problems:

Best Auto Update settings:
In [Start > Control Panel > Automatic Updates] set for “Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them”.

cp2 autoupdate600 The Windows Update dilemma

Find "Automatic Updates" in your Control panel...

auto update4331 The Windows Update dilemma

..then tell Windows not to install updates automatically.

In this way, your updates arrive automatically (you don’t have to wait for them to download, especially if you leave your computer on while you sleep) and you can inspect and approve or disapprove updates before installing them.

Do You Approve?
When Windows shows that little yellow shield down in the system tray to notify you of a newly arrived Windows update, click on it to open the description – but don’t install it yet. Instead, use the lower option in the description to see what they are offering to install. And don’t wait because you’re “too busy” to deal with updates. Often Microsoft is offering to protect you from a new threat to Windows – you want that protection right now!

As far as what you should install, I recommend always installing anything that mentions “security” or “malware” in the description – right away. Sorry, anything else must remain your decision.

Other Updates
I recommend that you go to the Windows Update web site from time to time and see what they have to offer as optional updates. You may find nice new features for your Microsoft Office products or such.
To do so:
[Start > Windows Update {from the list}]. Once you are on Microsoft’s updates web page, use that “Custom” button, then choose from the results shown on the left of their page.

Until next time – smooth updating…
_jim coe

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December 9, 2009

Worried about a Flash update?

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 – but a bit of paranoia is a good attitude when it comes to computer security. So it was smart of him to double-check by calling me.

Adobe Flash Player is installed on 99% of Windows computers, according to Adobe, and I don’t doubt it. It’s always been quite safe, and this recent security update from Adobe should make it even safer.

Beware web page scan or repair offers
In general, it’s always a good idea to install any genuine and familiar update arrives automatically as part of a program you already have and which mentions improving security.

It’s not safe to click on Internet web page offers to scan your computer or fix problems, unless you know the program and the vendor well. There are many sites which will invite you to infect your computer with a virus or spyware, disguised as some diagnostic or repair software. Some even infect your computer, then charge you to remove their infection! 

Until next time – play it safe…
     _jim coe

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December 14, 2009

Slow Internet connection?


internet danger 164x300 Slow Internet connection?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 these Internet monitoring sites and check out your ISP’s network status:
Internet Health Report
International Network Traffic Report

To see how your own connection is doing and compare it to other people’s, try this site:
Test your own connection

Gotta rush off – that’s all for now…

      _jim coe

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December 28, 2009

Windows Maintenance Schedule

ww ad110b1 Windows Maintenance ScheduleYou 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 Windows maintenance schedule.

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October 19, 2010

When Windows is slow

waiting300 When Windows is slow

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

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January 9, 2012

Computer Disaster – Hard drive heat stroke

inside pc2 470 Computer Disaster Hard drive heat stroke

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 from overheat:

My first visit soon confirmed the worst:
A failed hard drive – probably due to overheat. Everything stored on that computer was gone – a computer disaster.

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 many a computer disaster, this one was the result of a series of bad moves. Also like every computer disaster, it has lessons for us all.

Here is some advice from Seagate  (my favorite hard drive manufacturer) on hard drive cooling.

How to Clean Out Your Computer

Cautions:
Read the warning label on the compressed air can before using it. The contents can be toxic. Use short bursts to prevent spraying freezing liquid, keep the can level and don’t shake it.

Even if you situate your computer in a cool environment with plenty of space around its intake and exhaust grilles, it can still accumulate a burden of dust and dust bunnies inside the case which prevent efficient air cooling.

How often to clean?
Help to avoid a computer disaster – free your computer of dust buildup at least twice per year, and much more often in dusty environments.

How to clean out a desktop PC:
Shut down Windows normally, turn off any “master switch” (to be sure the motherboard is completely unpowered) remove the AC power cable and open the case. Don’t worry, the voltages inside a computer are only 12 volts and 5 volts, as long as you don’t uninstall and open the power supply box – and there is no reason to do that. Usually there are 2 screws on the back of the case, that let you slide off the side panel farthest from the motherboard and from the back panel connectors.

  1. With the case open, use a small dry brush and a can of compressed air with a plastic tube in the nozzle to remove dust from:
    1. The CPU cooler, its fan blades and its heatsink
    2. The case fan(s) and fan blades
    3. The heat sinks on the motherboard
    4. The air grilles
    5. The hard drive(s) and optical drive(s)
    6. Anywhere else you see dust.
  2. Now plug in the AC power cable, turn on any “master switch” and start the computer.  Then carefully spray compressed air into the intake grille of the power supply box from inside the case. Then spray compressed air from outside the back of the case into the power supply’s exhaust grille.
  3. Shut down Windows normally, turn off any “master switch” and put the case side panel back on. You’re done.

How to clean out a laptop PC:
With a laptop, all you can do is turn it on and spray compressed air into the air intake and exhaust grilles.

Use a vacuum cleaner?
People seem to like the idea of cleaning out their computer case with a vacuum cleaner. Actually my method works better.

Computer Cooling and Backup Lessons

A modern computer’s worst enemy is heat (no, not its user)

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, avoid a computer disaster – Keep it cool!

_jim coe

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