The Computer Productivity Guide

8/8/2019 The Computer Productivity Guide

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The Computer

Productivity Guide

Tips, tricks, methods, ideas and programs to help

both you and your computer work faster than ever

before!

Copyright 2010 Good-to-Great Computing

& Mark Stoop


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Introduction

Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?Ever call your office IT team just to get that response? Its even more embarrassing when turning

it off and on again solves the problem.However, when it doesnt work, and the IT person has to come up to your office and fix theproblem personally, ever see how fast they work? Fingers flying across the keyboard, programsopening and closing faster than the eye can see? Wouldnt you like to be able to do that?Good news! Thats EXACTLY why I wrote this Guide. Too commonly I see a person using acomputer, and I just cringe as they are so slow, or I see that their computer is in terriblecondition. I feel people need to be simply educated in simple use of a computer. Not all thatuseless stuff they teach in schools, such as basic use of Microsoft Word, but how to use yourcomputer at peak efficiency. Throughout this tutorial I plan to teach you simple tips and tricks tomake your computer run faster, and allow you to use it faster. I will write them as simply aspossible, so even the slowest of people SHOULD be able to work it out. However, throughout

the tutorial I will assume that you can learn; for example, I'm not going to teach you how to runyour internet browser every single time I tell you to do something related to the internet.NOTE: While this Guide was originally written for Vista, everything mentioned in it will

work in Windows 7, and most in XP or any other Windows Operating System.

You see, your computer may be running slowly, but there isnt necessarily a quick fix. It isnt assimple as downloading a program, and it doing the rest. Youll find most of the things in here(but not all) youll actually do yourself. Speeding up your computer is about understanding, notprograms. Sorry if I disappointed you.When I began writing this, I could have written it in the format ofDo this, download this, findthis, buy this, but I decided it would be better if I actually explained everything. For example, inthe tip related to defragmentation, I have tried to explain what your computer is actually doing,

as opposed to just telling you that it will speed up your computer. This is good because I thinkthat it is important you understand whats actually going on, but if you really arent interested,you can just skip it out.I could have also directed you to purchase software, but I decided against that too. If it costs tospeed up your computer, its not worth speeding up. Ive had offers from software companieswilling to pay me to endorse their product, but Ive refused them. I will only mention orrecommend programs I actually use, and know to be good. I may mention a few paid things, butnothing mentioned in this Guide that costs is worth buying. I intended for it to be a onepurchase sort of thing, you buy the Guide, and then nothing else costs.This Guide was a difficult thing to write. When I started writing I decided to base it at basiccomputer users, the ones who have a very basic knowledge of computers and how to use them.

However, as I got further I found it was more complicated than this. I needed to write it in a waythat everyone who read it would understand, and try to keep it interesting. There are so manydifferent types of basic users, but the biggest issue was age. The stereotype, if you will, is thatelderly people cant use computers, middle aged peoplewell, Im not really sure. It seems tome that some think they are really good on computers, but end up being useless. No offenseintended. However, overall, they seem to be on the average to low end of the spectrum of skill.Finally, kids and teenagers are stereotyped to be the best, because they spend all their time onthe computer.


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This is not necessarily true. For example, Ive known people who have retired, bought acomputer and spent hours on it and actually learned quite well how to use it. Ive known elderlycomputer gamers. Middle aged people, the skill range there is massive. I knew the Head ofDepartment for computers in a high school who was middle aged, and he knew just as muchabout computers as me, but Ive also met people of the same age who cant get onto Google.

There was also a teacher at that school who taught IT, and she was at least 60. Children andteenagers skill also differs a lot, but to a different extent. A lot of kids spend a lot of time on thecomputer but are just playing games, not really getting to use the computer well. A lot ofteenagers spend hours on the computer, but often they are just using Facebook, MySpace orsome other social networking website/forum. Im not saying they all do, but just becausesomeone spends a lot of time on the computer doesnt mean they are good with computers.Interest was a big problem in the writing of this. A kid who found us on Google would be lessinterested (maybe) in reading the introduction, for example, then a middle aged person. Ateenager may be more interested in learning about hackers than reading about a screenmagnifying glass then an elderly person.To conclude, this Guide contains information that is interesting to some, but not to others. It also

may make more sense to certain people. If you dont understand anything, please email me, as itwill let me change it and benefit you and all the other people who didnt understand it.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the software that I suggest here. All of it is free at the time ofthe most recent update (20/08/10), but this may change. I do not endorse the illegal downloadingof software, nor will I teach you how. See the appendix for more information on illegaldownloading.


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Contents

Feel free to read this in whatever order you want, however I would recommend readingfrom start to finish the first time.

Part One1. Introduction2. Contents3. The Computer User Categories4. Hackers

Part Two - Tips5. Know your computer6. Get a decent browser7. Use tabs8. Know your computer (part two)9. Get Virtual Magnifying Glass10.Know your drives11.Defrag your computer12.Run a registry cleaner13.Learn to touch type14.Use your keyboard more15.Understand downloading16.Get an operating system you like17.Consider getting iGoogle18.Sizing and freeing up space19.32 & 64 bit Windows20.File extensions21.

The Task Manager22.Error Reporting and Solutions

23.Administrative Permission24.Customization and appearance25.Changing drive paths26.Corruption and recovery27.Keep your computer organized28.Internet etiquette29.Viruses30.Basic hardware31.Vacuum out your computer32.

TroubleshootingPart Three - Appendices

33.Appendix A: A final note + contacting me.34.Appendix B: The Hackers Manifesto35.Appendix C: Resources36.Appendix D: Illegal Software37.Appendix E: Thanks to


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The Computer User CategoriesThis isnt a tip on how to speed up your computer, but is just so you know where you stand.I rank computer users in the following categories. This Guide is intended for levels 1 to (and including) 4.However, even if you are classed above that you may still learn a thing or two from this Guide. This is byno means an official ranking, I made it up. Remember, just knowing one thing doesnt necessarily meanyou are of that rank. You may know how to defrag your computer, but you may also not know how to run

your internet browser.1Is a person who has hardly used a computer before, knows barely anything, struggles to run anyprograms and usually is ridiculously slow. No offense intended.2A person who sometimes uses a computer, knows the basic functions, can run most programs.3The common computer user. They can run pretty much any program, may know a few keyboardshortcuts, may or may not understand what some of the basic components are. They can do what theyneed to, but may struggle with something new. They can install and usually uninstall programs, andsometimes notice that their computer is going slow.4The above average user. They can do everything they need to do, and run their computers pretty well.They might know a few tricks to keep it running smoothly, but don't usually understand what these tricksactually do.5The decent user. Up from here, most average computer users don't know the difference. A decent user

understands generally some of his computer, has some simple hardware recognition and should be able toadd/change/remove the more simple components, such as CD drives. They know what not to do, can helpmost people, and understand computer software sizing. A lot of computer gamers are at least at this level,but many are above or below this still. If you have reached this level of skill, congratulations! This Guidewill probably be useless to you. A level 5 user is a great level, because it seldom means you need help. Ifyou are at this level, you can still enlist help, such as if you want to build your own computer, as yourealize that store bought computers are rip-offs.6The really good user. You would be hard pressed to reach this level on your own. Generally people atthis level are/know/are-related-to a person with proper computer trainingmay work in a hardware store,be a programmer, or have just had training in computers. You fully understand pretty much every creviceand hole of your operating system (OS), and very seldom need help. To know if you are at this level Ihave a simple test: You are a level 6 user if you can fully operate everything in BIOS, set up your

computer through BIOS, and have successfully built a working computer out of components you choseyourself.7This user can do all of the above, and actually gives something back to the computing community. Iwould put web designers and programmers into this category, but they are not the only ones. Hackers alsofit into this category as well. I will explain hackers later. If you know a few commands in BASIC, thatdoesn't count as being a programmer. Even if you have written a few simple programs, it still doesn'tcount. Only if you have released these programs, preferably for free, and they are used frequently can youclass yourself up here. This is a very difficult class to reach.


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Being able to break security doesnt make you a hacker any more than

being able to hotwire a car makes you an automotive engineer. E.S.

Raymond

HackersIt may seem a bit strange that I included a section just about hackers in the first part of the Guide, but it isimportant you understand hackers. Not so much for reading this Guide, but for becoming part of theWorld Wide Web (internet).Hackers are commonly described by the media as evil, heartless computer nerds who want only to stealpasswords, wreak havoc and steal money. This is not so. Most hackers are good hackers, and would never

try to do the above things or anything for malicious purposes. I am a hacker.There are four general types of hackers.1The white-hat hacker. This has nothing to do with nationality. The white hacker is the good hacker,they use their powers for good and help out the community and hack only for fun and testing. They don'tdo anything illegal. The majority of the hacking communities are made up of white hackers.2The black-hat hacker. This is the type of hacker which the media portrays as what all hackers are. Ablack hacker wreaks havoc upon people, breaks the law, hacks for their own selfish reasons and don't careabout any other people. They are disliked by the general hacker population. They are sometimes,however, the best hackers, and possess the greatest skills.3The gray-hat hacker. This hacker is somewhere in between. They will do something illegal, but for thepurposes of good. They may hack someone's website without their permission, but then contact the personwith instructions on how to fix it and stop others from using that same vulnerability. Or they may damage

a website, but leave ways for it to be fixed with the right skills. So, not necessarily evil, but not exactlya saint.4The script kiddie. They are the lowest of the low, the scum of society. These are the sort who callthemselves hackers, are proud of it and think they are incredible for it. They use other peoples programsto get into websites. They have no dignity and get no respect. If you wish to just be a hacker, don't careabout the skills and just want to hack somewhere, become a script kiddie. If you do, however, don't expectany respect in the computing community. Theyve also usually got an over inflated ego, bragging abouttheir skills and thinking that theyre amazing.

These arent the only types; theyre just the general ones. Some hackers fit into multiple categories.Programmers also often call themselves hackers, but would generally fit into the White category.If you want to become a hacker, dont go around begging people (me included) for help. Dont email me

asking how to become a hacker, or how to hack a social networking website. If someone is going to teachyou to be a hacker, they will approach you.There isnt a way to hack. Hacking isnt about typing in a few codes that you memorized. Hacking isabout UNDERSTANDING computers, the internet and vulnerabilities. If you want to be a hacker, dontresearch how to hack, research elements of the internet such as HTML and JavaScript. From there youwill work out where to go.There was once a manifesto written by a hacker who went by the name of Mentor (most hackers havehandlesaliases) back in 1986. He was a white-hat hacker, but got arrested by the Secret Service.Shortly after his arrest he wrote the manifesto. There is a copy at the end of the Guide, if youreinterested.


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The TipsKnow your computer

This is one of the most important things to do. Youshould know what your computer is like, its software,its hardware, how old it is, how fast it is, how muchRAM it has, etc. OK, since we are at the beginning ofthe eBook, you may not understand all these things,but I will get into them later. To find out these specs(specifications), it is similar for both OS's. Go intothe Control Panel (on Vista it should be in the Startmenu (click the little Windows icon in the bottom lefthand corner of the screen), and on XP it should be onthe desktop or in My Computer (the folder which

displays all your driveswill explain later). If youcannot see it in My Computer, it should be writtensomewhere along the left hand side of the window.).From there you need to go into System. Doubleclick the icon with the word System underneath.NOTE: Throughout the Guide we will use the

Control Panel a lot. I have mine set to Classic View, so I will teach everything through that. Toset it to Classic View simply click Classic View in the pane on the left when in it.This will open the System page. I have taken a screenshot of it in Vista and XP, the Vistascreenshot is second, as it was too big to fit well on this page.

I have blurred out some of the information, as itwould not be suitable for posting, such as mycomputer name and activation code. The WindowsVista equivalent is below the information, due toits larger size. This window doesn't show all yourspecifications, but there are different ways to findthem. I like to use a simple program called BelarcAdvisor. It's free, and if you want it you can justGoogle it, you do know how to Google things,right? (Open your internet browser, it will be onyour desktop, the screen with a picture set by you

and lots of icons, under the name Internet,Internet Explorer, or Mozilla Firefox, howeverit could in some cases, be under something else.You are probably using IE, Internet Explorer, so ithas an icon of a blue E) Or, you can just follow thislink by clicking on it: (or copying it into yourbrowser)http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

The Windows XP System Tool
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.htmlhttp://www.belarc.com/free_download.htmlhttp://www.belarc.com/free_download.html


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Then, assuming you reach the site, click the link that says Download Belarc Advisor. If youare using Mozilla Firefox, click Save File, or if you are using Internet Explorer, click Save,and your file will begin to download. Once it has downloaded, run the file. I cannot tell youwhere the file will be saved, as you set that yourself, but common places are Downloads, inyour systems home folder (For me, the folder is called Mark, the one before Documents),

however this is for Vista. Other places are My Documents and the desktop. Double click the fileand begin the installation. It has simple instructions so it should be easy to install. When it hasinstalled it will ask you if you want to run the program or not, if you choose no you can run itlater by finding the program (it will probably put a shortcut on your desktop) and double clickingit. It will scan your computer and create a page in your browser where you can access theinformation. I recommend you print it, but this is optional. This contains all the informationabout your computer that you will probably ever need. Probably.If you print out this page of information, you will always be able to tell someone what specs yourcomputer has, helpful for buying new components, working out how to fix/run something, or justbragging about your computer.


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Get a decent browserNow, there is no best browser. There are browsers that may be worse than others, but that isjust an opinion. Internet Explorer remains the most popular internet browser on the planet. Thisis because it comes installed on every Windows machine. A lot of computer geeks will agree,

though, that it isn't a good browser. It doesn't have all the capabilities of a browser, and doesn'tfollow a few internet rules. I don't know what else is wrong with it, as I don't use it. By adecent browser I mean one that you like and know, so that you can use it faster. There are lotsof browsers around, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, Netscape, are some of the main ones. Iwould recommend to a regular computer user Mozilla Firefox, Firefox for short. It is a greatbrowser as it can be used by anyone; you don't need HTML or programming skills to work it out.I don't know how it compares to the other browsers, but it is used a lot more than them so needsto be user friendly. You can get Firefox here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.htmlDownload that, install it, and you'll be using Firefox. Another advantage of Firefox is that youcan customize it, and get add-ons. You can find add-ons at the site, and they are little files that

add something to change your Firefox to your own personal taste. I have one that tells me theweather (forecastfox), one that allows me to temporarily edit web pages (firebug. It doesn't staylike that, but is useful in a few situations) and one that is used more for web developers, allowingme to view every aspect of a page. There is no limit to the amount of add-ons you can get, but ifyou get too many Firefox may lag, crash, or just be really irritating to navigate. I heard of a guywho got over a hundred. It was done as an experiment, as it would have been impractical tonavigate it.Of course, you don't have to get Firefox, there are plenty of other browsers, many of which aresimilar to Firefox, so choose one that is right for you and that you like. This may not seem like avery good way of increasing your speed and productivity, but you would be surprised.Browsers like Opera, Safari and Netscape are all good browsers, but not as widely used, so some

have more glitches (problems), and may not be compatible with things, or not as user-friendly.

Question: Whats the difference between software and hardware?

Well, as the names suggest, one is hard, and one isnt. Software relates to

PROGRAMS, the things that make your computer work. I am writing this in

Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Word is a piece of SOFTWARE. Hardware

relates to the ITEMS that make the computer work. Your monitor (screen)

is a piece of hardware, along with everything inside the case (the boxeverything is attached to), such as RAM, your power supply, etc. Or, as Jeff

Pesis said: Hardware: The parts of a computer that can be kicked.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.htmlhttp://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.htmlhttp://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.htmlhttp://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.htmlhttp://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html


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Use tabs

Almost every web browser these days has tabs. Tabs are great as they allow you to open multiplewebsites in one window. It used to be that you had to open separate web browsers just to openmultiple websites, now you can do it all in one window. To open a new tab, click on File (in the

top, left hand corner of your web browser), and select New Tab. Alternatively, you can pressControl (CTRL) and then T, and a new tab will be opened. More on keyboard shortcuts later.Also, if your mouse has a mouse wheel (a wheel between the buttons), you can click on a linkwith the wheel clicker (if you push down on it, it will serve as a button), the link will open in anew tab. Finally, sometimes websites will open things in different tabs automatically, pop-upsand such like. To get out of these, simply click the X that appears in the tab itself, not theWindow. Consult the below screenshot.

If you click the + beside the right-most tab, another tab will open.Tabs are very simple, but often very useful. They can also make you look like you are doing a lotmore than you really are. For example, I could have one tab open on Facebook, be typing tosomeone, send the message, click into the next tab, Google something else, while thats loadingopen a new tab and go onto webmail, then click back to Facebook, send another message, clickto the Google search resultsAnd so on.They may seem simple, but tabs are one of the best things since sliced bread.


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Know your computer (continued)

There is a part of your computer, embedded into Vista and Windows 7, called the WindowsExperience Index (It isnt in XP, unfortunately). It simply checks your computer and creates arating of it based on the different hardware in it. You can find it under Performance Information

and Tools. It may ask you to refresh it, and if it does, do so. It will look at all your hardware anddecide how good or bad it is. It goes from 1 to 5.9, at the time of writing this.This is only really important when you are buying software that says it requires a certain ratingin whatever, so you don't really need to worry about it too much, but it is good to know.


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Consider getting a Magnifying Glass

Have you ever found that you cant see the text on the screen? Everything looks like this? Itisnt generally a problem for me, but it may be for some people whose eyesight isnt whatit used to be. The good news is that there are plenty of programs on the net which work as

magnifying glasses, simply making portions of the screen around where the mouse islarger. Ive tried out a few, and generally theyre made for XP. Not to worry, most workon Vista too. The best one Ive used so far is called Magnifier. It can be found here:http://www.iconico.com/download.aspx?app=Magnifier&type=free

Choose the latest version. As of writing, it is 2.4, however this may change. Its free.When youve installed this program, run it. It will open up a square on the screen whichwill have magnified wherever the mouse cursor is. Try it out. To change its settings, suchas the size of the box, simply move the mouse onto the window. Find some settings thatwork for you.If you dont want to use a magnifying glass, but struggle to see things on a page, there are

things you can do. In a word document (something that you wrote in Microsoft Word,your word processing program which you type things in) you can make text bigger byselecting it (holding down the LEFT mouse button at one end of the text you want toselect and then dragging to the other end of the text you want selected) then changing thesize in either the box up the top of the screen (it has a 12 in it by default) and by pressingControl (Ctrl its the key on the bottom left of the keyboard on most computers),holding it down and then pressing the ] key. (This is a key sequence and is written asCtrl + ]). Each time you press the ] key, the text will be made one size larger.

Selecting text.

You can also zoom into the page by holding down Control then rolling the mouse wheel (the

little wheel between the two mouse buttons). These work in anything thats part of MicrosoftOffice (Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel, etc).If you are in a web browser you can make the text on a page bigger by pressing Ctrl + = (theyused = because = is on the same key as +. It also would have been confusing if I wrote Ctrl + +).To make the text smaller press Ctrl + - (the minus key, to the left of =).

The text size box. Click the little

triangle to get a list of different

sizes, or click in the box to then

type your own size.
http://www.iconico.com/download.aspx?app=Magnifier&type=freehttp://www.iconico.com/download.aspx?app=Magnifier&type=freehttp://www.iconico.com/download.aspx?app=Magnifier&type=free


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Know your drivesThis will mainly help when installing things, finding system files, accessing files, etc. On slightly oldercomputers, they had an A: drive, which was the floppy disk drive. Computers now days don't generallyhave floppy drives, so A: drive has been omitted. By default, there usually isn't a B: drive, in the earlydays it was left for a second floppy drive. Then it goes to C: drive, and by default (I will say by defaulta lot. This is because the drive letters can be changed) it is your main HDD (HDD: Hard Disk Drive, what

stores everything). From there it changes from computer to computer. As each drive gets added, Windowsgoes to the next letter of the alphabet. D:, the E:, etc.I have two HDD's, but one has been partitioned. Partitioning is when you split a drive into two parts.Some people do this to back up (have a file stored in a different place, so if one is destroyed in one way oranother, it can be recovered) or ghost (Ghost: to have Windows, or a program, automatically copy files toanother place, a method of automatic backing up) their files, I do it simply for a organization reason: Ikeep all my main files on C: drive (part one of the partition, if you will), and all my music, videos andbooks on D: (part two of the partition). E: is another drive, which I am just using for storage. It used to bemy only HDD, but when I got a new computer I put it in so as to keep all my old files. My main HDD(drives C: and D:) is 500GB (gigabytes), and my other (E:) is 160GB. You will notice that C: and D: onlyequal a total of 465.6 GB's, and E: only equals 149GB's. This is because the other space is taken up by theprogramming that runs the drives. It happens in every HDD. My 1.5 terabyte HDD only actually stores

1.36 terabytes.The second part of your drives are your Drives with Removable Storage. These are CD drives, mp3players, flashdrives, memory cards, cameras, etc. F:, G: and H: are all CD drives. I don't have three CDdrives, I only have one at the moment (my other one died (died: broke)), but the two others are thanks toan image mounting program, called Daemon Tools. Average computer users will most likely never needto mount images (by images I dont mean pictures), so I won't cover that in this Guide. I: drive is myflashdrive.Below is a screenshot from My Computer.

On network computers, other drives will be ones in the network that your computer is connectedto. This can sometimes cause problems when connecting flashdrives. For example, your

flashdrive may want to default to being F: (it will usually change accordingly, but sometimesdoesn't), but F: may be taken. If it doesn't change, it just won't show up. I will cover solving thisproblem in Changing Drive Path's.Note: If you are interested in why E: comes up as Vista Main, it is because when I used

that HDD on my old computer, it was the main HDD, with another HDD as the secondary. I

named it Vista Main to avoid confusion and haven't felt it necessary to change it.


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Defragment your computer

This one can be very useful. It can, in some cases, speed up your computer quite substantially. Itis actually quite simple in what it does; it re-orders your files. Don't worry, it won't move them,you don't have to fear that an important file will be moved somewhere never to be seen again, itisn't like that. It does this so that when you try to access a file, Windows can find it faster and

display it faster. Picture it like this: Let's say you own a store. Out back you have a storeroom. Atthe beginning, the storeroom is ordered, one type of item in one place, another in a different, veryeasy to find everything. But then, over time, as things get more hectic it loses its order. Acustomer needs a case of whatever; you go and find that box, take it out and give it to them. Youorder more boxes but don't have time to stack them, so soon it becomes disorganized. Eventually,the room is a big maze of boxes, and it is virtually impossible to find anything.Your computer is like that. When you buy it, turn it on for the first time, it is in perfect order.Then, over time, as you add and remove items, everything is thrown into disarray, and Windowsbegins to struggle to find things. A disk defragger reorders these things; it is like the day you takeoff to reorder your storeroom.Now, to get a program that does this, there are several ways. The first would be to use Windows's

one, but it isn't very good. If you want to use it, get into the Start Menu, All Programs,Accessories, System Tools and choose Disk Defragmenter. You can also buy ones off theinternet, but they are no better than one you can get for free. The one I use is free, and is calledAuslogics Disk Defrag. You can get it here: http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/downloadDownload it, install it, run it. It is simple, all you need to do is choose the drive you want it todefrag, usually C: drive, but if you have multiple drives, select the one you want to defrag. If youdon't know which drive you want to defrag, find out which is the main drive for your computer.If you are on a network, for work or school, often there will be lots of drives but your hard driveis generally C:. If you are in a network, instead of doing this, contact your system administratorand ask him what you can do to speed up your computer, or ask him to, or if you insist on

defragging it, just ask which drive to defrag.

The first screen you will see upon opening Auslogics Disk Defrag.
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/downloadhttp://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/downloadhttp://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/downloadhttp://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/downloadhttp://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/download


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Choose the drive, press next, and it will begin to defragment your computer. Depending on how old yourcomputer is, and the state of it, this could take anything from a few minutes to a few hours.

Defragging my computer. I have blurred the current file

and quantity of things for security reasons. It looks asthough I have very little fragmentation, but that is due to

it only showing the state of a certain area. It changes as it

defrags different areas.When it is done, it will display a screen showing results. The main one is how much it increased thespeed. It may show only a few percent, but sometimes this speeds it up quite substantially.

That is quite a good result for me. My computer hadn't been

running too slowly, but an 8% increase is quite substantial.

You will notice that it tells me my computer isn't optimized. This isnt very important. It tells me to getthe program Auslogics BoostSpeed. Ive trialed this, and it is quite good, however it costs. You can geta free trial, but it only lasts a certain amount of time, then you have to buy it if you continue using it. Ifyou are interested, go to the Auslogics website (you can get to it from the link earlier in this tip or in theappendix at the end) and download the free trial. If you like it, buy it.Defragging your computer is one of the best things you can do to speed it up. If you learn nothing elsefrom this Guide, at least learn this.


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Run a Registry Cleaner

This goes hand in hand with defragging your system, well, for me at least. Simply, it searches forerrors, small ones such as a shortcut which doesn't work, and fixes them. To explain in simpleterms: Lets consider you have this store again. You put a box in a specific location (you'vedefragged the place, it is tidy), but then someone else comes along and re-arranges your

storeroom. You come back to get this box, but it is in a different location then you left it. Youcheck the sheet that you wrote the locations of everything on, but it hasn't been updated. It takesyou several minutes to finally find where this box has been put, using up valuable time. This sortof thing can happen in a computer, both for you and the inside of the computer. Have you evertried to open a shortcut, but received a message saying that the file couldn't be found, perhaps ithad been moved? Well, this is similar to the sort of thing a Registry Cleaner fixes. You may bethinking I never get that error, this won't help., but Windows uses shortcuts itself all the time,and this fixes problems with those ones, the ones you never see. The Registry Cleaner, like theDefragger, is free. It is called Eusing Free Registry Cleaner. It can be found on the followingpage:http://www.eusing.com/Download.htm

Go there, scroll down until you see Eusing Free Registry Cleaner, and click one of the downloadlinks. There are three, but it usually won't matter which one you choose (they are mirrors mentioned in the Downloading tip).Below is a picture of the website.

Download it, install it, and run it.You will get a message about it being Freeware (Software put out for free), but you can just clickSkip. When it is installed, it is easy to run. Just click Scan Registry Issue. I t may take a few
http://www.eusing.com/Download.htmhttp://www.eusing.com/Download.htmhttp://www.eusing.com/Download.htm


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minutes. You may get lots of errors, you will most likely get several hundred, but depending onyour computer and if this has ever been done, you may get over a thousand. The most I've everseen was 1200, but I'm sure there have been far more. Feel free to email me your results. Whenthis is finished, click onRepair Registry Issue, and

it will fix them. This usuallyonly takes a second or two.Simple as that. If you scanagain after, you will probablyget some errors again, butthese are just glitches;problems that aren't reallyproblems, and thereforecannot be repaired.To the right is a picture of

what it looks like while

checking for problems.

Did you know?The term computer bug came from when an early computer

malfunctioned when a moth landed on one of the circuits. If

we wanted to be biologically accurate, it would be called a

Computer Lepidoptera, but that doesnt have such a nice ring

to it.


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Question: How powerful are

computers these days?

That's a very general question. I

could give you an answer in

gigahertz, in watts, in volts, or I

could simply say the following:

Very. Back in the 1960s, the

IBM-1401 was considered

state-of-the-art, filled up an entire

room, and could do about 4000

calculations per second. This

sounds like a lot, but your average

PC these days can do around

(depending on who you ask) three

to seven billion calculations per

second. One of the worlds most

powerful computers (which is

housed in an old chapel go

figure!) can do a hundred trillion

operations (calculations) per

second. Just for the record, it

would take a human on a

calculator ten million years to do

what it does in a second.

Even cellphones these days can do

about one billion calculations per

second.

Gone are the days of ten minute

start ups and computer games

where the resolution was so low

that peoples heads appeared

square.

Learn to touch type

These days, more and more people are usingcomputers, for work, home and school. As we usethem more, we need to type more. Odds are that ifyou use a computer in your job, you will be doing a

bit of typing. It doesn't matter how fast yourcomputer is, if you can't type you can't use it well.Touch typing is simply typing without looking atyour keyboard. If you can touch type, you will befaster because you won't have to constantly belooking at your keys, typing, stopping, looking at thescreen, then looking back down at your keys. I cantouch type, and believe me, it makes things so muchsimpler. Some people, like me, learned to touch typesimply by typing a lot. I never actually got taught to,I just picked it up. Now, there is a specific way of

touch typing, where each finger gets assigned tocertain keys. Apparently this is faster, but if you cantouch type your own way then you will be fine. Ifyou want to learn this way, you will not struggle tofind a tutor on the web. If you search touch typingin Google, you will find plenty of websites that canhelp you. Off the top of my head, I would say thathttp://www.typingweb.com is a good one. It teachesyou well, but is more aimed at children, so you maylook a bit strange if you practice at the office. If youwant to use it, simply follow the link, click Start

Typing and either sign up or just type without anaccount. It is free.If you ever want to test your typing speed, TypingWeb does offer a test, but if you want to usesomething else, you can Google it, or go tohttp://www.typingtest.com . A lot of people willrecommend teaching yourself to type at sixty WPM,Words Per Minute, but this may be a bit excessive. Ican type at about 40 WPM, and that's fine with me.I think that's all that needs to be said about typing.
http://www.typingweb.com/http://www.typingweb.com/http://www.typingtest.com/http://www.typingtest.com/http://www.typingtest.com/http://www.typingweb.com/


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Use your keyboard more

I think this follows on from the last tip quite nicely. Too often I see people needing to be movingthrough things, open things, type a few things, etc, and I just cringe at the slowness of it all. Let'ssay a person has to open a file, type five words into it, save it, open another one, and do the samething. For people not using their keyboard for anything but typing, this could take about thirty

seconds, even up to a minute to do a single one (although I am unsure why anyone would everneed to do that. Data entry, perhaps?), whereas upon trying that at the time of writing this, it tookme no more than seven seconds. This is simply because I didn't use my mouse at all. I usekeyboard shortcuts. A keyboard shortcut is a function that has been put into a key, or set of keys.For example, a common one is Save. This is Control (Ctrl) + S. This means you hold down Ctrland then press S. This works in documents, be they Word, Excel, Paint, Photoshop, etc. Doing itwill save the file you are on, or if it hasn't been saved before it will open up the save window sothat you can save it then. There are dozens of different shortcuts, so I shan't list them all. Thereare a few, however, which can help a lot more than others.Ctrl + Alt + Delete Opens the task manager, or gives you the options to lock your computer(means you have to unlock it by putting in your password, if you have one, while keeping

everything as it was before being locked), Switch Users (only useful if your computer hasmultiple accounts), Log Off (it will log you out, but not turn off the computer. Again, this is onlyreally useful if your computer has multiple accounts), Change a Password (change your currentpassword for access) or Open the Task Manager, from where you can start or stop processes andprograms. I'll cover this later.Ctrl + Shift + EscThis just opens the task manager.Alt + TabMy favorite shortcut. This lets you flick between all the windows you have open bypressing it a few times. Go ahead, try it now. Pressing it once will go to the last window youwere in that is still open, if you hold down Alt and keep pressing Tab, you will scroll through thelist of windows. There is also:Winkey + TabAlthough it isnt as useful as Alt + Tab, it certainly looks cool. It also only works

in Vista and 7. It displays all the windows in a sort of stack, and each time you press Tab itrotates to the next one.Alt + F4In the earlier days of the internet, when browser games were just getting started, thisone was used a lot. Someone would tell you that Alt + F4 is a cheat when you were in avulnerable position, which would then close your Window and allow them to do whatever theyneeded. It closes the current Window youre in.Winkey + EWinkey is the term computer buffs (or not so buff) use for the key with the littleWindows Icon on it, to the left of Alt and right of Ctrl, as well as to the right of the second Altand left of the Right Click Key (will talk about soon). Anyway, pressing this will open MyComputer, from where you can access your different HDD's, Flashdrives if you have themplugged in, etc.Right Click Key (told you I would tell you about it) This does whatever clicking the rightmouse button would do. 'Nuff said. Its located beside the second Ctrl (the one on the right sideof the keyboard, right of the space bar)Winkey + DThis is a nifty little key for showing the desktop. This is the screen where all theicons are, with the picture that you most likely would have set yourself (if not, I will cover itlater)WinkeyYes, the Winkey alone can be useful. This open up the start menu (the menu that popsup when you click the Start button in XP, the Windows Icon in Vista), which i s more helpful


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Question: In menus, what do the lines under individual letters mean?

These are used for quicker keyboard access to those menus. Press

Alt to initiate the access, and then press the key associated with

that menu item. File is accessed by f, so to open the file menu press

Alt then F. You dont need to hold down Alt.

with Vista. When you do this, you can then type which will have Vista search for whatever youare typing on your computer. It can even search through bookmarks in your internet browser. Irely on it.Finally, these two go hand in hand: Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V. Most users have used these at one time oranother, but the ones who use it most are probably students, as it makes plagiarism so much

easier. Im not saying ALL students plagiarize things on the internet, but a lot do. Trust me, Ivebeen there (If you are a teacher or lecturer, an easy way to find out if your students have beenplagiarizing things is to type one of their sentences into Google. Search it, and if you are led to apage with the exact wording they used, they may have copied it. Try again with a few moresentences. If you are led to the same website time and time again, you can be pretty sure theyplagiarized it). Ctrl + C copies the text or item or picture that you have selected, meaning youcan then put another one somewhere (To 'cut' the item, so it is removed from that first place andable to be pasted anew simply use Ctrl + X), and Ctrl + V is 'paste', meaning it puts the copywhere you specified. I use them all the time.Well, that's all for now. If you want more, just Google useful keyboard shortcuts. Believe me;these will speed up your use significantly. Also, if for some reason or another, you are unable to

hold down multiple keys at once, you can turn on a thing called sticky keys. I don't use this,but it could be useful for some people. It means you can press one key at a time, and not have tohold down the others. To turn it on is very simple; simply press Shift five times.


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Understand downloading

If you can't download anything, you will struggle to do...well...anything on the net. The simplestand most common method of downloading is to go to a website, click the download link for aspecific file, and then download the file or .exe (.exe is a file extension, meaning it tellsWindows how to open the program. Again, I'll cover this later). It's simple, and everything is

done automatically. Thats how you got this Guide. However, there are lots of ways ofdownloading things. There are programs which you can download things through, for exampleLimeWire (which I hate with a passion), where you search for the files with the program whichis connected to the internet, and then the program downloads them for you. Another commonlyused one is P2P. P2P stands for Peer to Peer. Its more commonly known as file sharing, ortorrenting. This is widely used, but not many basic computer users know about it. Torrentingthings is an excellent way of downloading things, though it can be a bit frustrating. With this youdo need a program to download the files, but to get the files you go to a website and download adifferent file (with the file extension .torrent), which is generally very small. Then you run thisfile, as you would an installer, it opens up the program you use for Torrenting (BitTorrent, U-Torrent, Vuze, there are dozens) and uses that to download the item. The .torrent file acts like a

sort of map for the computer, telling it how and where to download the file or files you want.What's more is that it can download from multiple people at once, which can sometimes givebetter speeds then a regular download. These people you are downloading from are calledseeds or seeders. It works a bit like this: Let's say I need $800. You offer to give this moneyto me, but $1 at time, and once every few seconds. You start giving me this money, but it takes awhile. Soon, another friend of mine comes along and offers to help. Now, you only have to giveme $400, and my friend $400. He starts giving me the money, dollar by dollar. However, now Ihave two people giving me the money at the same time, so I will get $2 in the time it was takingme to get $1 at first. Lets say more and more of my friends start chipping in, and each time onedoes, the total time it is going to take lessens. This is how seeds work: the file you aredownloading is split into smaller pieces (the $1 at a time), and downloaded from different

people. All this is automated, you don't have to do anything. Then, when the download iscomplete, your program begins to make it possible for people to use you to download this filefrom, making you into a seeder. Of course, you don't have to seed, but it is ethical to. Thesepeople gave you a file; the least you can do is return the favor by helping others get the filefaster.Yet another method of downloading is a small program which you install, then download theoriginal program from there. This is similar to torrenting, but it only works for a single program,or a few programs, and saves you from downloading the .torrent's. Google uses this sort of thing,for when you wish to download things like SketchUp.Sometimes websites don't like to upload files to their website, so they upload them to anotherwebsite, and then place a MIRROR on their site. This mirror is simply a link to the site that theyposted it at, and the appropriate page.Now, you probably won't need to worry about these types of downloading; most software youwill need is available from the proprietor's website. I explained before about how to downloadsomething, and where it will go, or rather, that I don't know where it will go on your computer.


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Get an operating system you like

Using a computer can be just plain frustrating if the operating system doesn't work for you, isirritating or complex. A lot of people found that Vista is not very good. I use Vista, but amcontemplating moving up to 7. It doesn't even have to be a Windows computer, you could moveto Linux or Mac, although if you do, the rest of this Guide wont be as useful.

Now, there are several ways to change your operating system. Some operating systems are free,most Linux ones are. There are lots of Linux operating versions, a few of them are Xandros,Ubuntu and Knoppix. If you are interested in getting one, research the different distributions (Ibelieve information can be found on their website: www.linux.org), or versions, and decidewhich one you would like. I wouldn't, however, recommend installing it yourself. Firstly, youneed to be sure that you definitely want that OS (operating system), and second, you need to beable to install it. Installing operating systems can be time consuming tasks, and often quitecomplex, so if you really do want to change your OS, talk to someone (email me if necessary)who knows about computers. There are also types of Linux that you can get from a CD, meaningyou can use Linux without even installing it, good if you just want to test the OS, only want touse it sometimes, etc. These can also be complex to set up, but they are still generally easier then

installing it.If the OS isn't free, like most Windows OS's (I think they made a few of the earlier ones free, butI could be wrong), and to the best of my knowledge all Mac OS's, you can still get them. Buy thesoftware; you don't generally have to buy a whole new computer to get a new OS. This is a goodway to do it, as it makes installing much easier as it gives better instructions. You coulddownload it illegally, but I don't recommend it for several reasons: It's illegal, Windows or Machave ways of finding out (they usually don't do much, they just irritate you heaps by telling youit's illegal, and disable certain features. This is because it isn't always the user's fault. Sometimesvendors sell illegal copies to save themselves money), it makes it more complex, and thedownloads are usually quite large.Since I do not recommend it, I will not give you details on how to do it.

No matter what you do, just make sure you use/get an operating system you like.

Did you know?

Apple tried to sue Microsoft in 1985 and 1988 for stealing

the ideas of drop-down menus, tiled windows and mouse

devices. Microsoft countered that its ideas were developed by

Xerox and predated the Mac.
http://www.linux.org/http://www.linux.org/http://www.linux.org/


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Quick! Google the hell out of it! Mom, Futurama

Consider getting iGoogleThis is simpler if you have a Gmail account, but not necessary. iGoogle is a customized version ofGoogle. You set it up and then you get to choose extra things to show up on your Google page. Youcan pick anything from different types of news (world, sport, local, etc.), videos, weather, and even aTo Do list. This is really more of a personalization tip; it may not increase your productivity orefficiency. Some people love iGoogle, and use it all the time while others never do. I have it set up,but never really use it. It is mostly useful if you have Google as your home page in your browser (thepage that loads when you start up the browserI'll tell you how to change it later).Now, Google, being the kind company they are, have made setting up iGoogle really easy. All youhave to do is go into Google (www.google.com), click on the link in the top right hand corner, whichsays iGoogle, which will load up a page which should tell you that you are not signed in. If you havea Gmail account, sign in with that. If not, don't worry, it is free and simple to set up a Googleaccount. Simply click the link below, in brackets, telling you can set up one now. It will either takeyou to a page on which you can set up an account, and if you have never set up an account before,again, don't worry, it's easy. Just follow the instructions. Or, instead, it may take you straight to thepage to set up the iGoogle. This is simple; follow the instructions, choose what you want, preview it,and eventually finalize it. You can always change it later if you want to. If it has gone straight there,

it will then probably take you to the page to sign up your account. After that, iGoogle can be accessedfrom Google, and you can set it as your homepage.Below is an image of the finished iGoogle page.
http://www.google.com/http://www.google.com/http://www.google.com/http://www.google.com/


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Sizing and freeing space

You may have seen an item that is labeled as 1.1 MB, or 517 KB or 903262 bytes. Theseare all sizes of the files. Your HDD will have a size, too. Usually it will be several hundred GB.Weve got a lot to cover in this section, so Ill start off simply. You may have heard before that acomputer understands, or is in binary. Binary is also known as Base Two. These next few

paragraphs are about math, so if you don't care, or don't understand, feel free to skip them. Theyaren't really important, but you may be interested.We count in Base Ten, meaning we have ten digits, and all numbers are made up of these tendigits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. (On a side note, the reason we count in Base Ten is thought tobe because we have ten fingers, so when the ancients learned to do simple math and counting,they used their fingers, of which they had ten. I have a friend who thinks the world would be amuch better and more organized place if we counted in Base Twelve. Go figure.) A math teacherwould be VERY helpful right about now. Using these ten digits, we can make any number. Forexample, 6983 is made up of a six, a nine, and eight and a three. Binary works in a similar way,but it only uses TWO numbers, hence it being Base Two. Base Two creates any number using 0and 1. There are other bases, too. There is Base Two, Three, all the way up to Ten. Beyond Ten I

think there are about six more, but that depends on who you ask. These simply create their newdigits using letters of the alphabet (starting with A, then B, and so on). Personally, I think that isboring, and that they should have made up a new symbol for the numbers afterwards.Now, you may be wondering how any number can be created from one's and zero's. Well, it isactually surprisingly simple. Take this number: 10011101011001. That is equal to 10073. Howdid I work that out? Well, let's imagine a line of zeros:0000000000000000000000000000000Now, that number on the end there ^, can be either a one or a zero. If it is a one, then thatnumber is on. This means it is equal to one. Simple, eh? It gets a bit more complex now. Thatsecond number can, like the first, be a one or a zero. If it is a one then it is on. Now, if it is on,then it is equal to DOUBLE what the first number can be equal to. Since the first number if it is

on can be equal to one, then the second number is double, so if it is on it is equal to two. So, let'ssay you have them both on. That would be shown as the following:0000000000000000000000000000011To work out the number, you add the two numbers together. Since the number on the end is equalto one, and the number to the left of it is equal to two, then 11 equals three.Say we add a third 1 on, so it becomes:0000000000000000000000000000111This is the same again. The third number is equal double the second. Since the second number isequal to two, the third must be equal to 4. So, three ones in a row in binary is equal to 4 + 2 + 1,or 7. What about if we turned the third off, making it a zero, but turned the forth on?0000000000000000000000000001011You can work out that the fourth letter is equal to eight, so you add that to the other numbers. Butsince the number equaling 4 is off, we don't count it. The total is equal to 8 + 2 + 1, or 11.After this, the numbers keep doubling, the next 16, then 32, then 64, and so on. To create anynumber is a mix of on numbers and off numbers. Of course, you don't have an unlimited numberof zeros before the number, so you start from the one furthest to the left.

OK, now that you know (or don't know) that, I will explain computer sizing.The smallest size of something on a computer is called a bit. It is so small that it is either a one or


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a zero that is all it can be. So, 1001 is four bits in size. Since it is COMPLETELY impractical tomeasure everything in bits, we create the next size up. Trying to measure everything in bitswould be like trying to measure the ocean in milliliters. The next size up is a byte. A byte is thesize of eight bits. Just like there are 1000 milliliters in a liter, there are 8 bits in a byte. Again, itwould still be impractical to measure everything in bytes (although, some things are measured in

bytes, and some files downloaded from the 'net are shown on the website in bytes), so we createdanother size up. The next size is a kilobyte. A kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes. Just as there are1000 liters in a kiloliter, there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte. Now, a kilobyte is still very small, butthings are measured in kilobytes. Text documents usually are, some small install files are. Akilobyte can be abbreviated to KB.Since a kilobyte is still very small, we had to come up with yet another type of sizing. The nextone up from KB is a megabyte. Now we are getting into actual, important sort of sizing. Amegabyte is 1024 kilobytes. The majority of your files will be in megabytes. A song is usuallybetween 3 and 10 megabytes, and a video anywhere from 3 to several hundred depending on thelength. Photos are anything from 1 megabyte to 20 megabytes, depending on quality. Megabytesare abbreviated to MB.

The next step up is the chunky gigabyte. Up until a few years ago, a gigabyte was consideredmassive, and you would never have to deal with anything bigger. This is still true, but to a lesserextent. A movie is usually between 1 and 4 gigabytes in size (Or, if you settle for average quality,about 800 megabytes). Large programs such as games are a few gigabytes. The biggest file onmy computer (which is actually a combination of several games) is thirty-six gigabytes, which isa lot. There are...you guessed it, 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte. HDDs are measured in gigabytes.My current, main one is 500, low to middle end ones these days are about 320, my oldcomputer's one was eighty, and that was about six years old. I still have a nine year old laptopwhich is only ten gigabytes. My flashdrive is eight. When computers were first introduced to thegeneral public, my father had one which would have been no more than a few hundredmegabytes. Nothing compared to what we have today. Gigabytes are abbreviated to GB.The next step up from a gigabyte you may encounter in the near future. I doubt there will be filesor programs with this size, but you can get HDD's of this size now. It is a terabyte. A terabyte is amassive 1024 gigabytes. It is abbreviated to TB. I bought a 1.5 TB external HDD recently.Next is the petabyte. This is, of course, 1024 terabytes. Only large companies ever have anythingof this size. Some examples include:Facebook has about 1.5 petabytes of user's photos stored.AT&T has about 16 petabytes of data transferred through their networks each day. Good-to-GreatComputings servers have a few hundred megabytes transferred through its servers each day.World of Warcraft requires 1.3 petabytes to maintain its game.Well, you may not understand them, but that's OK. A petabyte is A LOT.Next is the more theoretical exabyte. Equal to 1024 petabytes. One exabyte would be equal toabout 50,000 years of DVD quality (which is quite high, meaning it requires a lot of space)video. The entire size of the internet is estimated to be only 500 exabytes.Next, and I don't think anything has ever been this size, is the unbelievable zettabyte. 1024exabytes. 'Nuff said. This is, however, an unofficial size.Finally, the yottabyte. I don't even need to explain. 1024 zettabytes. This is also unofficial.Designing all of these measures at this time is unnecessary, but perhaps in future they willbecome necessary. If so, things like yottabytes will only be needed for high storage things, likemapping the Milky Way.


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Now that that is done, we can start going back to practical things. You may have noticed howeach unit fits into 1024 of the next one (the exception being bits). This is to simplify things forthe computer. For example, 1000 in binary is written as 1111101000, but 1024 is simply10000000000. Likewise, numbers and sizes in computers like to be the following, or multiples ofthe following: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, and so on.

OK, now that you understand HOW sizing works, I'll explain how it can be useful.Every computer can only store a certain amount of data. My computer can store a total of 660GBs of data, my flashdrive eight, my camera two, and so on. If I place an item that is two GBs,then my computer will now be able to store two GBs less data, because the item is now taking uptwo GBs of computer space. This is why you should monitor what is on your computer. I don'tmean that you need to commit to memory the name and size of everything on your computer;that would be impractical. But if you occasionally go through the list of programs installed onyour computer and uninstall any that you don't use, you can free up plenty of space. In Vista, thiscan be accessed through the Control Panel, then clicking Programs and Features. Be carefulwith uninstalling programs, though. Just because you don't know what a program is doesn't meanyou don't use it or need it.

This is just the first few programs installed on my computer. The ones such as Auslogics, Adobeand 7-Zip are examples of the sort of program you ought not to uninstall. A good thing toremember is, though, when in doubt, don't delete it. If you don't know what a program is, Googleit. If it has the word Adobe in it, don't uninstall it.


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Also, the other programs I didn't blur are just because it doesn't matter if you see them, from asecurity point of view.Another way to free up space is to delete files that you don't need. There are two main ways:have Windows do it, or do it yourself. Windows has a feature built in to help clear out disk space.It won't get rid of everything that's unnecessary, but it will help. You can get to it either by doing

a live search with Vista (Open the start menu or press the Winkey then type Disk Cleanup), orfind it the long way, which is actually the quick way with XP. Go into the Start Menu, click ormouse over All Programs, find and then click Accessories, and click System Tools, then clickDisk Cleanup. It will ask which drive you want to clean up. For most people, this will be C:, soselect that. It will then work out how much memory you can clear out. This may take a fewminutes. If it stops and doesn't move for more than ten minutes, try canceling it (the button thatsays cancel), and if that doesn't work, open the Task Manager (mentioned earlier in Use YourKeyboard More), click Disk Cleanup and then click End Task. I'll cover the Task Manager later).Then try it again. If it persistently does this, don'tworry about it.If it does work, however, which it should, it will then

present you with a list of things you can have itdelete. It works out the ones that it can delete withoutany problems and automatically checks them, if youdon't want them deleted simply uncheck the box. Itwill provide information about each of them whenyou click on it, so I won't explain it all now. I will,however, tell you a few things to help out.The second option is Temporary Internet Files. Youcan delete this safely. It may, however, slow downyour internet very slightly. The TIFs are webpagesyour computer has stored so that it can load themmore quickly without having to download any (ormuch) information. Unless this is significant in size(more than four hundred MB), I wouldn't botherdeleting it.After that comes Hibernation File Cleaner. I wouldn'trecommend deleting this unless you know you never put your computer into hibernation. If youuse a laptop, closing the lid counts as putting it into hibernation.The Recycle Bin. You should have emptied this in the past. If not, now is a great time to becauseit is probably taking up valuable disk space. If you don't know what it is, the Recycle Bin iswhere files go when you delete them, so that you can get them back later if necessary. Beforeemptying it, I would suggest you go into it and see if there are any files you want from it. To getto it: It may be on your desktop, so if it is, simply double click it. If it isn't there, then you canvery simply get it back by going to the Control Panel, go into Personalization, and the ChangeDesktop Icons, which is in the left pane. Select Recycle Bin and click OK. Don't worry about thePersonalization tools, I'll cover these later.Now that the Bin is there, go into it and look through all the files, and decide whether or not youwant any. If you want one, click it once then click Restore. It will move the file back to itsoriginal location.Anything to do with error reporting and solutions: You can safely do that. I'll cover that later,


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under Error Reporting and Solutions.The other way to clear out files from your computer is to delete them manually. To do this,simply go to My Documents, or your folder (the one that is called what your computer's nameis), or Documents, or anything in that area. You can go to other places, but then you risk deletingimportant system or program files, so don't. Find files you don't want or need, click them once,

and press Delete on your keyboard. Simple as that.Size matters here, though. You won't free much space by deleting a few text documents. To seethe size of a file, hold your mouse over it until the size appears. If it is in GBs, and you don'tneed it, feel free to delete it. It can help a lot sometimes. If it is in MBs, it is fine to delete, butunless it is a significant amount of MBs (over one hundred) it won't make much of a difference,but is worth deleting anyway. KBs won't really matter, but if you don't need them you shoulddelete them so that they don't build up and make it hard to find things.If you want to see the total size of several items, select all of them (hold down Ctrl and clickeach one you want to be selected), right click one and click Properties. This will provideinformation about all of them, including their combined size. Its size may go up, but that is just itdiscovering more files as part of the files and adding them on. It will have two sizes: Size and

Size On Disk. These are usually pretty similar, so you don't need to worry about the difference.Finally, to find out how much space your computer hasleft, go into Computer and right click your HDD (or mainHDD) and click Properties. This will display informationabout space on the drive. It will show a pie graph withyour computers free space and used space under theGeneral tab. Dont worry about the other tabs. It willalso say (above the graph) Used Space: and FreeSpace:, each followed by how many bytes are free, then amore understandable number in gigabytes.So concludes the computer sizing tip. That was quite along tip.

Did you know?

The data from one

terabyte of items is

equivalent to a stack of

documents more than

16 times the height of

the Empire State

Building.


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32 & 64 bit OS

You may have seen, when buying a computer or on an ad, or when trying to download softwarethat it requires Windows Vista 32 Bit or something similar. You don't necessarily need tounderstand the difference between the two, only which one you have. I will, however explainwhat they mean. But first: how to find out which you have. It is very simple. Remember at the

beginning of the Guide I mentioned about how to know your system? I led you to a place fromthe control panel called System. To find out whether you have 32 or 64 bit (This applies toVista and XP), go back to System, and scroll to the section called... well... System. This will tellyou its rating on the Windows Experience Index (remember that???), your processor (when wecover hardware, I'll explain this), Memory (RAM) (We'll cover this too under hardware) andSystem Type. The final one is the one you want, System Type. This will say either 32-bitOperating System, or 64-bit Operating System. Or, if you have a really old computer, it mayeven say 16-bit Operating System. If it does say 16 bit, congratulations, you have an extremelyold computer, and should upgrade!Now, in some ways 64-bit can be better, it can be faster, but in other ways 32 is better as it ischeaper and compatible with more things.

The difference between the two is that 64 can handle more RAM then 32. You probably won'tknow what RAM is yet, but 32-bit Vista can handle a maximum of (in simple terms) four GBs ofRAM. This can change, though. 64-Bit can hold a maximum of 17,179,869,184 GBs of RAM.Of course, this is ridiculous; no one has that much RAM. I'll explain RAM in hardware.32-Bit Vista is cheaper, and unless you are a hardcore gamer, or run really high demandprocesses, don't bother buying 64-Bit unless you have money to burn.Its important to know what type of OS you have. Some software is only compatible with certaintypes of Vista or XP. I ruined my old computer by accidentally downloading a Windows Updatefor 64 bit XP when I was on 32 bit. Seriously. It hardly worked. It could no longer run mostWindows processes and programs, and refused to run explorer on startup. Ill expla in whatexplorer is in Task Manager.

Did you know?

Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) once said that Microsoft

would never market a 32 bit operating system. Windows XP,

Vista and 7 all come in 64 bit varieties.


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File Extensions

Every file has a file extension to tell Windows how to open it. For example, a regular worddocument has the extension .doc . This document has been through several formats (a differentfile extension is a different file format), such as .odt (Open Office, a word processor similar toMicrosoft Word), .docx, .doc, and finally .pdf (though granted, at the time of writing this it is still

.odt).Window's main executable (the way it opens programs) is .exe . Photos are generally .jpeg, or

.jpg, but images can be dozens of different formats.They are simple to understand, but there are a few small things you should remember aboutthem. When saving a file, as you decide what to call it, don't put a period in. If you do, thenWindows will think that you mean that everything after the period is part of the file extension.For example, if I want to save a Word document, and I make it example.number1 , then Windowswill think the file extension is .number1, not .doc .Why, you may be wondering, does Windows do this if there is no such thing as that fileextension? Well, it's very simple. There are thousands, probably millions of programs around thataren't made by Windows. Any one of these that saves something will need to give it a file

extension so that it can open it in the future. For example, Open Office uses the format .odt, sothat whenever Vista sees something.odt, it knows to open it in Open Office. Therefore, if I makesomething .number1, then Windows will assume that I have some way of opening .number1files, which don't exist. If you do want to give a filename a period, simply put a space in after theperiod, because file extensions never have spaces.This tip may not be very useful, but it is good to know. When on the internet, however, if you aredownloading something, watch out. They may tell you that you are downloading a .pdf of adocument you are interested in, but instead they let you download an .exe with the same name asthe .pdf you want. You download the .exe and run it, only then realizing that it was a virus. Thisis not an uncommon thing to happen. Always look out for the file format. I'll briefly discussviruses later. Also, many things on the internet come as .zip, .rar or .7z files. These are

compressed files, files that have been crammed into a smaller file to save time, space andbandwidth.

Id like to thank the academy,

my agent, and most of all, my

operating system: Windows

Vista for everything it- SYSTEM

ERROR Calculon, Futurama


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Task Manager

The task manager can be the most useful tool on Windows, because it allows so many things.You can use it to detect programs running on your computer without your permission, start andstop processes, monitor your computer's performance, and so much more. To open it, simplypress Ctrl + Alt + Delete, which will (on some computers) open up a menu with a few options.

Choose Start Task Manager. You can also open it by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc. It will openup a Window like the following:

This shows all the Applications running on my computer. This isn't generally useful for pickingup unknown programs (from viruses usually) unless the virus is really badly made. If, however,you have a program that isn't responding (doesn't react to anything you do, when you try to exit itrefuses to close), you can click it, then click End Task. That's about the on ly time theApplications tap becomes useful for the average user. The next tab is Processes. It is similar toApplications, but it shows everything that is running on your computer. There are four maintypes of processes: User, System, Network Service and Local Service. User will appear as yourcomputer name, and are all the processes that handle you directly. These processes run theprograms you are running directly, and the processes that make these programs run together.Below is a screenshot of the processes tab.


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Computers run different numbers of processes. Vista computers generally run more than XP, andthis can sometimes pose a problem for users who require a lot of processing power (notablycomputer gamers). My computer, by default, runs about 60 processes, and for a Vista computerthat is probably considered average to low. I do, however, choose to end (stop) certain processes,as every process takes up computer memory (different to storage space will be covered soon),and I want my computer to run as fast as possible. I can generally get it down to about 45processes while it is idling (when I'm not running anything, it is just sitting unused), but I ampedantic and would like to get it even lower. My old XP computer defaulted to about 35-45processes, but depending on what I was doing, I could on a good day get it down to an absoluteminimum of 28. This is a bit extreme for most people; you wouldn't notice the difference usually.The next type of process is a System process. These are the processes that make everythingwork, hold everything together. If a computer is like a town, System processes would be thelaborers, doing the hard work, doing the tough work, keeping it civil for the rest of us. These youshould be more hesitant about ending. If you look at yours (they won't show in Vista by default,simply click Show processes from all users), you will see quite a few labeled svchost.exe.Don't end these. Simple as that. Usually it won't let you, anyway, so it would just be a waste oftime. These are the processes that run your operating system, doing the most important work.Often there are processes under System that are connected to a program youre running, anexample on my computer is SteamService.exe, which runs with Steam.exe as a program I run.Next is Network Service. These are the processes that handle everything to do with the outgoingand incoming connections, either through the internet or a personal network. If the computerwere a town, Network Processes would be the tourism industry. Be cautious about ending these,too. Finally, we have Local Service. These are similar (but not identical) to System processes.Now, to speed up your system, often temporarily, is an easy thing to do. Simply find a process,click it, and click End Process. If you haphazardly end a process, you might end a critical one


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and crash your computer. If you are writing something in a word processor then end its process,it will close the program and not save. Killing, or ending, a process ends the process instantly. Ageneral rule of thumb would simply be to stray away from the System, Network and Localprocesses. Significant damage isnt commonly done through this, the worst is usually having torestart your computer, but you can do damage, so it really depends on how far you want to risk

your computer.Take care with the User processes. Not too much care, they arent usually critical, but dont justend all of them. It will give a description of them, so that will make things easier. If you don'tknow what a process does, the simplest way to find out is just to Google it. When you go to endone, it will give you a warning about unsaved data. For example, if you end WINWORD.exesuddenly, Microsoft Word wont have time to save your data. Thus, before ending processes youshould always save any work that you have open.One User process you shouldnt end is explorer.exe. Explorer is, basically, your desktop. If youend it your task bar (the bar down the bottom of the screen) will disappear as well as all the itemson the desktop. However, it isnt actually much of a problem if you end explorer. Simply stay inthe task manager, click New Task in the top, left hand corner and type explorer. It will

restart explorer, and all will be well. You will commonly find that if you end a process, it startsitself up later, or when you restart the computer. A simple way to stop this is to tell it not to runitself at start up. Open the start menu, on Vista type in msconfig, on XP find a program entitledRun... then type msconfig. Then hit enter. It will open up a window with several tabs, click theone entitled Startup. Uncheck the processes you know that you don't want running on Startup.Usually its safe to change these, but dont touch the Windows ones.There are four other tabs in the Task Manager. They arent as useful for speeding up yourcomputer, so I wont bother to explain them. They can be quite interesting, though, so you shouldhave a look at them sometime.Ive stressed through this tip to be careful, and although that is true, dont worry if you screwsomething up. Worst comes to the worst, restart your computer. Sometimes the computer will saythat youve ended a critical process, and will restart for you.


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Error reporting and solutions

Sometimes a program will malfunction and have to close. It will give you the option to eitherClose The Program or Submit an Error Report and Close The Program. Windows XP had asimilar feature (as did all previous Windows versions), but it wasnt so successful. Now if yousubmit an error report it will look through its archives to find answers to what went wrong. It

won't always; sometimes it will say This problem is being researched which basically meansWe'll only start looking for solutions if lots of people get this problem. This new method isn'tperfect, but it is much better than the old one. Now, when you submit a report, it doesn't give youanswers then, you'll find that unless you do something, you won't get answers.There is a part of the Control Panel that handles this. It is called Problem Reports andSolutions. It looks like the following:To see which reports you have set to be sent to Windows, click See Problems to Check, fromthere you can submit them. If you don't care, or you already know what they are, simply clickCheck for Solutions. It will send the reports, it may ask you for more information, just allow it,and then see if it has any solutions. Sometimes the solutions are quite tedious, so if the problemisn't recurring, I wouldn't bother fixing it.

As for speeding up your computer: fewer errors, less time trying to get around or fix them.


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Administrative permission (User account control)Ah, the reasons why many people loathe Vista. This was put in as a security measure, to stopunauthorized changes to your computer. How successful this has been I am unsure of, but it has annoyedhundreds of thousands of people all around the world. This isnt a problem for XP users.Recognize that symbol?:

Any time you get that symbol on an icon for something it means you will have to provide administrativepermission for it to continue. Sometimes it is just as simple as clicking Continue or Accept, but oncomputers with parental controls, or certain password settings, every time that comes up you will have toenter a password. The best way to solve this irritation is simply to turn it off. It's easy but it willrequire...administrative permission. If you cannot get administrative permission in any other circumstance(I.e.: whenever it pops up you have to ask your superior/system administrator/parent/etc), turning it offwill require you to do the same thing. If they don't allow you to, then I cannot help you. Sorry. If you do,however, have administrative permission, it is very simple. First go into the control panel:

Then go into User Accounts (circled in the screenshot), and click Turn User Account Control on or off.Then simply uncheck the box, and click OK. It will most likely tell you that you need administrativepermission to do this, and then will ask you to restart your computer. Do that and you have turned UserAccount Control off. No more annoying messages telling you that you will need to provide administrativepermission.Disclaimer: If you have a Vista laptop or computer which is for work (i.e. your workplace paid for it, itisn't yours, etc) I wouldn't recommend doing this. I don't know how your workplace handles this, so askthe network administrator first.


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Customization and appearance

Vista was made to be very customizable to your average user. There are many ways to do this. I'llstart with the desktop. Your desktop will have a picture on it, most likely. You may have set it, orit may be the default one. If it is the default one and you want to set your own, this can be donevery simply. Find an image you want as the desktop, either on the internet or on your computer,

right click it and click Set as desktop background. If you do it from the internet, it will providesome options, but they are simple to follow. Another thing to do is to go to the desktop, rightclick, and select Personalize. This provides several options. The two I recommend adjustingare Window Color and Appearance, and Screen Saver. Play around with these until you findsomething you like.Another thing to do to personalize your computer is to change the toolbars at the bottom of thescreen. By default I believe it shows the time, programs running, a few buttons and the startmenu. You can change this very simply. Right click on an unused part of the toolbar (if you arerunning too many programs, right click where the clock is) and mouse over Toolbars. There youwill get a selection of toolbars, any already enabled will have a tick beside them. Play aroundwith them and find combinations that you like.

There are still other ways you can change the toolbar. Right click it again, and click Properties.This will open up a window with a few different tabs and options. Again, there is not right orwrong way to do this, simply play around and find a setting you like.Personalization is a simple thing. Feel free to email me with your suggestions or what you havedone to personalize your computer. Screenshots are welcome. (If I haven't mentioned alreadyhow to take them, it is as simple as pressing the button that says Print Screen SysRq, then pasting(Ctrl + V) it into any program that allows pictures, such as Word, Paint, PowerPoint, etc.)Windows isn't the only thing you can customize. Firefox is made so you can customize most ofit. You can change the colors of it, download add-ons (I talked about these in the Firefox tip),change the homepage (you can do that in any browser, though), even change its most in depthsettings.

The easy way to edit Firefox is simply to go into the navigation bar (File, Edit, View, History,Bookmarks, Tools, Help), and either click View or Tools. View allows you to edit the basicinterface, if you click Tools, then click Options. Play around with these settings; that is generallysafe to do. Try, firstly, setting the homepage if you haven't already. It's pretty self-explanatory:put a link in the box and click Apply or OK.


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Changing drive paths

This is just a simple thing to do if your flashdrive doesn't show up due to the drive letter alreadybeing taken (I mentioned it earlier). It does, however, require administrative permission. You cando this in either XP or Vista. To do it, simply go to a shortcut for MyComputer (just Computer on Vista), right click the shortcut, and click

Manage. It will open up a window which allows you to change quite afew settings. Don't worry about them. Click on Storage, then on DiskManagement. This will show you all the storage drives on yourcomputer, including CD drives even if there is nothing in them. Find the one that is yourflashdrive. It will have a distinctive icon, of that which is to the right.That is the icon for removable media. It is only slightly different to the icons for your localdisk (C:) and sub HDDs. It may show up as much smaller in Disk Management, though. It alsomay appear slightly different, like in the screenshot below.

That shows all the drives currently connected to my computer. You can find your flashdrive fromyour list. Or, you can look at the lower half, which has more detailed information about the

drives. Scroll down until you see the one that says removable. In the screenshot, mine is the thirddevice down, labeled as Disk 2.

To change the disk letter is simple, right click the drive you want to change (in this case Disk 2,and you can click either from the list or the more detailed information), and click Change DriveLetter and Paths.... This will open up a smaller window, with a few options. Click Change....This will open up yet another window; with a drop-down menu to the right side of it (a drop-


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Question: What are the laws of the internet?

Thats a tough one. There are very few laws about the internet. In fact,

thats why a lot of people love it. It has no government, no president, no

prime minister, all are equal there. Apart from the cost from your ISP, its

also completely free. You dont HAVE to buy any

The Computer Productivity Guide

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Transcript of The Computer Productivity Guide