Exids IT Solutions

What is Safe Mode and why should I Use it?

Safe mode is a diagnostic mode or operational state where Windows runs with as few programs and services as possible. It’s like taking away everything inside of a house and only leaving the structure. The house is still there, but it is no longer filled with clutter that you would have to normally walk around.

The reason you need to boot into safemode first is because most viruses and spyware do not load there. This allows us to work in an environment where viruses and spyware are not active, allowing us to configure your system to start cleanly the next time you start the computer into normal mode.

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The system configuration utility is a tool in Windows that is used to configure your system. It has a ton of features in it, but most notably it is known for being able to configure how windows boots up. You will need to learn how to open the system Configuration Utility throughout the next few steps, so get familiar with how this is done.

Opening the System Configuration Utility

Step 1.
             Click Start
> Run
.  Type in “
msconfig
“ without the quotes. Click OK.

Step 2.
             Be careful using the System Configuration Utility read more on this site to see how to disable items.

You use the System Configuration Utility to disable programs from starting up when your computer starts. Since all viruses and malware have to start up when you computer starts, the system configuration utility is a great place to start in preventing them from loading.

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Many of your computer problems can be fixed in MINUTES. The number one problem I still find in slow computers to this day is that there are too many startup items loading when the PC boots up. An optimized PC should have no more than a few programs starting when the PC starts.

Most people do not realize this, but most viruses, malware, and spyware can only be activated by loading on startup. If a virus is not loaded on startup, it is nothing more than a useless chunk of data on your hard drive.

Just think, if you had 10 startup items loading when you boot your computer how much faster your computer would be if you prevented 7 unnecessary items from loading! Depending on the size of the program, you could save 1-10 minutes every time you start your computer up!

Some programs like Anti-Virus must load when you boot your PC up. These programs can use a lot of system resources, but without them the risks out-weigh the benefits. In the next few sections you are about to learn how to optimize your PC’s performance.

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The reason why your PC seems slow

Your PC calculates millions of equations and algorithms in split seconds. The more information that it needs to process, the longer you have to wait for the results.

The plain and simple answer to why your PC seems slows down so much is that it’s overloaded! It can only handle so many things at once before it cannot operate within it’s optimal performance threshold; the computers ability to do multiple tasks at one time becomes more than it can handle efficiently.

Reasons why your PC slows down the longer you own it

The longer you have your computer, the more you want to do with it. This usually means installing games and applications, downloading music and movies, editing photos and so on.

There are a few things that happen when you use your PC for things like this:

• You use up hard drive space and fragment your hard drive. This basically means that your hard drive has to sort through large areas of data scattered all over which compounds into taking longer to retrieve information.
• You use up memory (RAM) that gets allocated to other programs. This is a common problem many PC users have.
• You may have installed incompatible or poorly written software at one point that is causing problems.

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You may notice when you get a brand new PC fresh out of the box it whizzes around like a top; flinging windows here and there, only taking seconds to complete the most complicated tasks.

• Then you start to notice it doesn’t have the zing it once did, and:
• The PC takes longer to start
• Programs take longer to open
• Error messages start to pop-up and say you have missing or corrupt files.
• Your screen flickers and your desktop Icons disappear and reappear frequently

This is about the time most people go to their CD collection and dig out the reformat or recovery CD. They toss it in the CD drive and minutes later their computer is back to the way it was when they first bought it. Many people do this and lose ALL their data!

This is unnecessary most of the time. It pains me to think of how many people go through this process everyday. Take some time to look around this site and learn how to optimize your PC!

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As mentioned previously, removing files by systematically deleting them in your computer is NOT a good idea.   There are however, a few areas in your computer that you CAN delete files from without any problems at all.   These folders are called "Temporary Folders" or a "Temporary Cache".

The best free Software for cleaning out temporary files in Windows

Windows has a couple of temporary folders built into it; however, many software programs also create their own temporary folders.   Because of this, it is recommended that you use a program that is frequently updated to make sure you are removing all your temp files from you computer.

The software I recommend is CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/).   This program is free and is updated frequently to know where certain programs write temporary files to.

CCleaner also allows you to customize if you would like it to clean any other folders that are not already supported.   It’s as easy and clicking "add folder to clean", and selecting the folder you want cleaned.

Another free program you can use to delete temporary folders is a program called Empty Temp Folders (http://danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp/).   This program does NOT update and does NOT know what folders to clean automatically, but rather, is designed to allow you to customize what folders it cleans.

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After time you computer starts to collect junk like the attic of an old house theres a lot of things you used once or twice but youve tossed them aside and forgotten about them.

In this particular instance I’m talking about software that you have installed that you no longer use.

Software that you may no longer use could be games, application, utilities, tools, or out of date security products (which by the way is very bad).

How NOT to get rid of software

A lot of people make the mistake of going on a treasure hunt throughout their folders and files deleting stuff that doesnt look like it belongs.

NEVER do this.

The second you do this you are risking breaking other working programs, and even if you do remove files that are no longer needed you probably wont find the file and information that was installed in your computer when the file was first created.

What is a DLL File, and why shouldn’t I delete them?

DLL stands for Dynamic Link Library.

You’ve probably seen these files scattered everywhere all over your system and have been wondering what they do. DLL files are usually an extremely important part of Windows, and without them your computer simply would not be able to run.

A lot of software also requires the use of DLLs to operate properly. Not all software has its own DLLs created specifically for its own purposes many of the DLLs that come prepackaged with windows help developers write programs that interface and work properly when ran in a Windows Operating System.

DLLs are unique in that they can be shared by many programs at one time. They contain information that is globally useful, and allow this to be shared amongst many other programs and software operating at the same time in your computer.

So now you may understand why you cant just go around deleting files. If you delete a DLL that you think belongs to one program, you may actually be deleting a file that belongs to several programs which will prevent ALL of them from working properly.

How to get rid of Software Safetly: Add or Remove Programs

Use Add or Remove Programs to remove software completely.

The Add or Remove programs applet is built into windows to allow you to easily see what programs are currently installed, and to give you the ability to remove them automatically.

We hear a lot of people asking us how to delete a program or how to get rid of a program. If you were to go through a computer manually deleting all the files, settings and registry entries that were installed with a program, it would not only take hours, but you couldnt possible find everything and may risk breaking other programs.

The reason why manually removing software would be so painful and slow is that many programs store information in something called the registry. The registry contains settings and other valuable configuration information many programs need to run properly. Even if you could delete all of the files for a program on a computer, all the entries in the registry would impossible to remove completely.

This is where Add or remove Programs comes in. Not only does Add or Remove Programs remove the files and folder associated with a program, but it also removes information that was written to the registry when it was installed.

When you install most programs, they use something called an Installer. An installer is a piece of software that programs written by developers use to install files, folders and write registry information. This installer records all the information written into the registry and stores it into a database. When you uninstall software, this information is read from the database so that it knows exactly what needs to be removed.

How to open the Add or Remove programs applet

Add or Remove programs is basically an application built into Windows that lists all of the programs that are currently installed in your computer. You can use Add or Remove programs to uninstall any one of the items listed in it.

There are two methods of doing this.

Method 1:

Step 1. Click Start > Settings > Control Panel to open the control panel.
Step 2. Locate the icon Add or Remove Programs and double click it.

Method 2:

Step 1. Click Start > Run.
Step 2. Type in "control appwiz.cpl" without the quotes.
Step 3. Click OK.

When the Add or Remove Programs applet opens, you can locate the program(s) you want to remove, and uninstall it completely!

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Your PC calculates millions of equations and algorithms in split seconds.  The more information that it needs to process, the longer you have to wait for the results.

The plain and simple answer to why your PC seems slows down so much is that it’s overloaded!  It can only handle so many things at once before it cannot operate within it’s optimal performance threshold; the computers ability to do multiple tasks at one time becomes more than it can handle efficiently.

Reasons why your Computer slows down the longer you own it

The longer you have your computer, the more you want to do with it.  This usually means installing games and applications, downloading music and movies, editing photos and so on.

There are a few things that happen when you use your PC for things like this:

You use up hard drive space and fragment your hard drive. This basically means that your hard drive has to sort through large areas of data scattered all over which compounds into taking longer to retrieve information.

You use up memory (RAM) that gets allocated to other programs.  This is a common problem many PC users have.

You may have installed incompatible or poorly written software at one point that is causing problems.

The solution to: "How do I make my computer faster?"

Many of your problems can be fixed in MINUTES.  The number one problem I still find in slow computers to this day is that there are too many startup items loading when the PC boots up.  An optimized PC should have no more than a few programs starting when the PC starts.

Most people do not realize this, but most viruses, malware, and spyware can only be activated by loading on startup. If a virus is not loaded on startup, it is nothing more than a useless chunk of data on your hard drive.

Just think, if you had 10 startup items loading when you boot your computer how much faster your computer would be if you prevented 7 unnecessary items from loading!   Depending on the size of the program, you could save 1-10 minutes every time you start your computer up!

Some programs like Anti-Virus must load when you boot your PC up.  These programs can use a lot of system resources, but without them the risks out-weigh the benefits.

If you are interested in optimizing your PC, one of the first things you will want to do is turn off startup items using the system configuration utility. I will talk about this more in furuter posts.

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You may notice when you get a brand new PC fresh out of the box it whizzes around like a top; flinging windows here and there, only taking seconds to complete the most complicated tasks.

Then, one day you may start to notice it doesn’t have the zing it once did, and:

• The PC takes longer to start.
• Programs take longer to open.
• Error messages start to pop-up and say you have missing or corrupt files.
• Your screen flickers and your desktop Icons disappear and reappear frequently 
• You recieve error messages that state you need to buy or install software to fix problems in your computer

This is about the time most people go to their CD collection and dig out the reformat or recovery CD. They toss it in the CD drive and minutes later their computer is back to the way it was when they first bought it.  Many people do this and lose ALL their data… this is unnecessary most of the time! It really does pain me to think of how many people go through this process everyday.

These can be Computer Virus Symptoms, and a sign that you have a sick computer. There are several things you can do for free before you go about spending a bunch of money on a technician that may just end up giving you a clean bill of health. The first things you will want to determine are:

• When did this first occur? Perhaps the problems started after you added a new printer or other hardware device. You could try unplugging or uninstaling this first before having a tech come onsite to charge you for an hour of doing this themselves.
• How long have you had the problem? If the problem has existed for a long time you may just need a tune up.  Yes, computer can slow down the longer that you own them – but they don’t get slow because of old age like people, they usually get slow because you have not maintained it properly.
• If you are getting messages, are they trying to sell you something? If so, this is a good indication you have been infected with some type of malware or spyware. in this case, you may want to run a free antivirus scan, and a free spyware scan to see if that will fix the problem.

You can run a free antivirus scan at one of the following sites to determine if in fact your symptoms are actually an indication that you are infected with a virus:

• Trend Micro

  http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

• Panda

  http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm

• BitDefender

  http://www.bitdefender.com/scan/licence.php

• McAfee

  http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp

• RAV

  http://www.ravantivirus.com/scan/ 

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I just read this article by James Coates of the Chicago Tribune and thought many of you would find it to be very useful. Understanding what your child is doing at MySpace can be very effective in curbing them from getting into some types of trouble down the road, and more than anything give you peace of mind.

A. Overnight, MySpace replaced the convenience store parking lot or mall fountain as a gathering place for kids starting in junior high school or earlier and going pretty much all the way through high school and well beyond.
Read the rest of this entry »

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