Housekeeping!

Look at your computer in the same way you look at your home. 

You like your home to be clean and tidy and everything is where it should be, household running smoothly, everyone has a clean shirt etc.

Keep your home this way takes a bit of regular housework, dusting, vacuuming or sweeping, washing, cleaning and so on.

If you want your PC to run well you will need to do similar tasks.  

• Regular Antivirus scans with up to date software.
• Malware and spyware removal with up to date software
• Disk defragmentation
• Disk cleanup
• Driver updates. 
• Make sure system restore is running

Most of these things can be automated.  Most of these things can be done with free software.  Sometimes you can find software that is both!

One of the most important things is (Here it comes, you've been expecting this one) is a back up!

And yes - I heard the collective groan.  

The times I've heard Will I loose all my pictures? or some version of that. 

Back up of data is imperative.  Disks are not infallible, but unlikely to all go down at the same time.  But you know all of this, you have been told this time and again.

What is also as important is a system image.  Windows can do this without additional software.

You spend ages installing all your software, putting all the serial numbers away in that safe place (I always think of the room of requirement when he hides the Potions book, because "Safe Place" I can never remember exactly where it is!!)

And then Microsoft gets involved and gives you updates, some minor, some major, and that is when it starts becoming a problem.  Minimise the problem by performing the housekeeping.

If you have a system image there is a very good chance that your system can be restored to its former glory with little fuss if a system has a backup.  

I hate it when I have to return a system to a client with just a bare copy of Windows 10 and their data.  Obviously I put AVs and stuff on as well, but it does not look the same as it did and nothing is where they left it.

If you would like some help or recommendations please contact me.  My advice costs nothing, a system rebuild is so much more expensive in many ways.

Have a good weekend all. 

Hardware issues.

A couple of PCs have landed on the workbench recently doing some strange things.  

A desktop that was reporting a corrupted installation of Windows 7, another Windows XP installation that was BSOD without warning and a Laptop that was just mucking about.

Sometimes I can get a bit bogged down by the Windows issues and cannot see the wood for the trees although the voices in my head are yelling at me.  

I heard RAM Issue RAM Issue with the Windows 7 desktop and although I ignored the voices initially they were absolutely correct.  

Windows 7 was erroring out with inconsistent and different error codes (which never make any damn sense in the first place) I installed Windows 10 successfully, but as soon as I tried to reinstall the Applications it all started playing games again.  Error messages and BSODs all over the place.
I set the onboard hardware diagnostics check to run and it confirmed the SMART status of the HDD as healthy and then found and issue with one of the RAM modules.  When I removed one of the RAM modules the PC started running well again.  The issue was hard to spot initially because it was the second stick of RAM.  Had it been the one in the first bay, the issue would have been more apparent as it would have crashed consistently and not every now and again when Windows was up and running. 

The Windows XP system was a duff graphics card.  As soon as another card was installed it ran ok. 

The Laptop was a HDD error.

It is the law of 3s!

I have had 2 clients this week with malware infected laptops and I  managed to infect my own windows tablet by not checking where the download came from.  The first Accept Window should have alerted me to the fact that the Google Chrome installation was not from Google and was a malware infested package, but by then it was too late and I had installed a pile of Malware.

Again, the law of 3s.