System Tuneup Guide

While sometimes you can’t prevent something terrible from happening to your PC, there are many things you CAN do to “Be Prepared”:

Sooner or later, you’ll probably have the wonderful experience of having your PC fail or ‘meltdown’ on you…this has happened to me several times in the past, and I wish I had a photo of the look of unimaginable horror on my face when I realized I couldn’t get my computer to startup and operate normally.

Computer disasters come in all shapes and sizes, from a damaging power surge, to and even more frightening theft of your personal data by someone to create a false identity.

10 Days to become a PC Disaster Response Specialist

That’s right, over the next 10 days we’ll be covering many critical issues on how to successfully restore a a dead PC to life, and we’ll also cover the area of computer security, and how to prevent break-ins and safeguard your data in ways that would make Fort Knox proud!

Are Your Components to Blame?

Many disasters can be caused by your hardware. The good news is it IS possible to revive a dead PC due to hardware failures, simply by identifying and replacing the malfunctioning components. Nothing is worse that typing a report that took you 3 hours to create, only to lose it because of a power outage or computer freeze. We’ll show you the options you have to diagnose and repair irritating errors that can be just as destructive as major hardware failures.

We’ll show you how to recover items or files that you deleted accidentally and want back. Like digital camera photos. We’ll look at how to repair scratched disks and how to use your recovery console to start your PC if it doesn’t boot. We will also show you how to create a recovery CD so you can examine an unbootable hard drive for your valuable data.

PC Security & You

We’ll also cover specific security concerns and what to do if your PC has been hacked or you know that someone else has helped themselves to your data. We’ll show you how to avoid spyware in all its ugly forms, and give you advice that will help you to protect yourself online. Wireless connections pose a major security threat today because most people simply don’t bother to encrypt their connections, which allows others to use your bandwidth without your knowledge.

So sit back and relax as we educate and entertain you these next 10 days…you’ll be better prepared to deal with any computer disaster after we’re done with you!

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Microsoft has included with Windows XP & Vista a multimedia diagnostics tool that will allow you to test your current settings and make sure your PC is performing at optimum levels. The DirectX testing tool will show you what areas your PC excels in, and which areas need imporvment:

To open the Microsoft DirectX Testing tool, click Start > Run > and type in dxdiag into the dialog box. Click OK to start the dxdiag and show a summary of your computer’s current setup. You can then click “Check for WHQL Digital Signatures” to make sure all your DirectX files are signed. Then you can click on Next Page to view a listing of all the DirectX files currently found on your system. Microsoft will report any problems on the bottom pane of the window. The following page will list all of your PC’s display functions. You can select Test DirectDraw and do the same for Direct3D.

You can move to the sound tab and use the slider bar to choose how much hardware acceleration you would like to use. Now click Test DirectSound, which will play a test sound in a variety of different formats. Make sure you can hear all the test sounds and then press Yes when the test is finished. This tests your computer’s ability to produce Mono, Stereo and Surround Sounds. You can then move to the music port, which show the different sound devices you currently have connected and their ability to produce the intended sounds. Click on test DirectMusic, which plays a small soundtrack you can listen to several times, and then click Yes to confirm that you have heard the music ok.

Diagnostics:

Running diagnostics on your PC is a good way to check for any problems that you might not be aware of. There are a number of commercial applications available for this task. I cannot recommend Norton System Works (one of the best known programs) however, because the program is an enormous resource hog, and any benefit you gain from running their suite of optimization products on your PC will be negated as a result.

There are a number of free trial download you can try first: TuffTest Light www.tufftest.com/free.html will run a number of very basic system performance tests, but won’t check any RAM over 8MB or hard drive performance. Memtest86 WILL check any amount memory and is available for Free! The catch is that you have to burn the ISO image download to a CD so it will work on your computer, and this can be done by getting another Free program like CDBurnerXP Pro and using it to burn the ISO image for you.

By running diagnostics on your computer you can enhance it and increase the performance levels of a PC you thought wasn’t worth saving!

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Since we’ve been on a Free utilities kick this week, I thought I’d pass along the download link for another useful freebie, the Microsoft Powertoys for Windows XP program….

PowerToys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience. What are they? PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released.

Note: The PowerToy by Microsoft does not currently work with Windows Vista.

Current PowerToy options: Here is a detailed listing of the options currently available with this latest version of PwerToys.

Color Control Panel Applet

Allows you to manage windows colors options all in one place…especially helpful if you are a photographer or web designer trying to keep the true colors from your photos when placed online.

SyncToy

With new sources of files coming from every direction (such as digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops), SyncToy can help you copy, move, and synchronize different directories, a must when working with so many different file formats.

RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer

Are you a serious photographer? Now you can organize and work with digital RAW files in Windows Explorer (much as you can with JPEG images). This tool provides thumbnails, previews, printing, and metadata display for RAW images. RAW images retain the most data possible when a digiatl photo is taken and then saved, this is a really nice feature to have on PowerToys.

ClearType Tuner

This PowerToy lets you use ClearType technology to make it easier to read text on your screen, and installs in the Control Panel for easy access. (self-explanatory)

HTML Slide Show Wizard

This wizard helps you create an HTML slide show of your digital pictures, ready to place on your Web site.

Open Command Window Here

This PowerToy adds an “Open Command Window Here” context menu option on file system folders, giving you a quick way to open a command window (cmd.exe) pointing at the selected folder.

Alt-Tab Replacement

With this PowerToy, in addition to seeing the icon of the application window you are switching to, you will also see a preview of the page. This helps particularly when multiple sessions of an application are open.

Tweak UI

This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.

Version 2.10 requires Windows XP Service Pack 1 or Windows Server 2003.

Power Calculator

With this PowerToy you can graph and evaluate functions as well as perform many different types of conversions.

Image Resizer

This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click.

CD Slide Show Generator

With this PowerToy you can view images burned to a CD as a slide show. The Generator works downlevel on Windows 9x machines as well.

Virtual Desktop Manager

Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy.

Taskbar Magnifier

Use this PowerToy to magnify part of the screen from the taskbar.

Webcam Timershot

This PowerToy lets you take pictures at specified time intervals from a Webcam connected to your computer and save them to a location that you designate.

I’ve been having a blast playing with some of the features of PowerToy since downloading it a while ago, and thought it was a useful enough program (Free) that I’d pass this info along to you as well!

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