| Tel. Support | Call Out | Terms | Estimates | About | Hints | Contact BTS |
|
Using the premise that 'prevention is better than cure' we hopefully can help you avoid having to call us out in the first place. Not that we don't want the work of course, but we understand the frustration that problems cause and would rather you avoided them. We are always here to assist if you do hit snags you can't avoid or solve. Note - this page is very long but we believe it to be worth the read so please stick with it to the bitter end if you can. Use the in-line links to jump to sections you want to review again, this will save a lot of scrolling. Hopefully the style of text won't be too heavy for the novice user nor too patronising to the experienced - in either case feel free to Email us with your comments or if you need more clarification of a point or two. E-Mail Tips : System Tuning : Tidying your Hard Drive First and foremost, for anyone with an Internet connection ( and you must have one to be reading this ) it is essential to have good Firewall and Anti-Virus programs running ... and keep them up to date !! An out of date Anti-Virus definition is worse than having none at all since you think you are protected when you in fact are not. We make no apologies for stressing this cautious approach to online activity, the fact is if more users took the simple steps below there would be far less problems. E-Mail Tips Email is still the number one route for virus attack. Having the protection will save you from most malicious content on the Internet but if you open an Email with a virus in it then your security is breached and you are relying on your programs being up to date. Unfortunately, virus definitions can only be added once a virus has been identified ... DON'T LET YOURSELF BE THE ONE TO FIND IT FIRST !!!! So what can you do ? The best advice is to be very cautious and sceptical - if something looks too good to be true it generally is and free offers can be wanting to offer you more than you bargained for. Messages with attachments that you were not expecting are a particular danger. If in doubt, make a note of the address of the sender and verify with them what the attachment is. Of course if the return address is obviously false or merely a random collection of characters then delete it unread. This goes for SPAM too ( unsolicited E-Mail telling you you've won this that or the other ). Replying to one of those to *take your name off our list* only confirms your E-Mail address as being valid so far from stopping the SPAM you end up getting more. The better E-Mail programs offer what is known as a POP3 SCANNER - this essentially only downloads the message headers and a few lines of text so you can decide whether or not you want to get the full message. Items you select to be not received will be deleted from the Mail Server without ever reaching your PC. In this catagory we would recommend The Bat! as this also has the advantage of being invulnerable to viruses which attempt to gather E-Mail addresses from your address book ( and make it look as though the E-Mail is coming from you ). For those not wishing to change the E-Mail program they use there are 3rd party programs that will enable you to do that E-Mail pre-scanning. One that has been used to good effect is Mail Washer, again a free program so worth trying out even if in the end you decide that the extra procedure to your E-Mail routine isn't for you. Back to Top of this page : Tidying your Hard Drive System Tuning OK - so you take all the precautions as you should but still find your system becomes less *user friendly* over time. Unfortunately this is a common problem with PCs. In the drive to get the PC to be an *all singing - all dancing* piece of equipment the stability side of things has suffered. Preventing, or at best alleviating, the worst of this comes down to routine maintenance of your system and here's where you will have to get your hands dirty and delve into the workings of your PC - not in the literal sense but more getting to grips with how the thing works and why it can go wrong. When surfing the net there are a lot of files downloaded and stored on your PC in order to create those wonderful Web Sites you see. All those files are kept when you leave that page so that if you return the amount of downloading will be greatly reduced ( and speeding up the displaying of the site ). The trouble here is the total number of files can become astronomical and your Web Browser has to search all of this to see if it has already been to that site before. All browsers have the option to limit the amount of these files or even delete them totally when you close down the browser. To give detailed instructions for every one would be too much to go into here, but the included help files with the browser will help you track down the procedure to follow. Unfortunately these options are not usually enabled by default when the browser is installed. Similarly, programs when installed create temporary files which they are meant to delete when the installation is done. Not all installer programs follow this and leave bits of junk behind. Over time these temporary files can build up. The problem here is that Windows also uses the Temporary Files folder in normal operation so excessive files will cause a slowdown of the system. Every now and again it is worth the time to search for these temporary files and delete them manually. To do this there is a built-in tool called Disc Cleanup which can be found in [Start / Program Files / Accessories / System Tools]. Let it run and when finished you'll see a list of the things it has found that can safely be removed with a check box against each one. The two to enable are Temporary Internet Files and Temporary Files - the others can be left un-checked ( and in fact Compress Files is better left not done - there is no need for this feature with todays larger Hard Drives ! ). As you delete things the Recycle Bin will start to fill up ( and it's a good idea to leave things in there until you are sure you really don't need those files ) - this won't cause a problem with your PC unless the amount of free space on your Hard Drive drops too low, and if that happens then perhaps some more serious pruning is needed ( remove programs you no longer use, data that you don't need any more etc ). If you are sure you've deleted the correct files, or no program you run complains about files missing, then you can empty the Recycle Bin and reclaim that used space. With a huge Hard Drive size then a Recycle Bin full of deleted files won't even cause a hiccup - however, searching for that one wrongly deleted file amongst a sea of correctly deleted ones can be time consuming to say the least. Tip here - try to keep it as empty as possible ! Tidying your Hard Drive Hard Drives store the programs and data that the PC uses and in normal operation the data tends to get scrambled over the disc surface so it takes longer and longer to read a particular file. Eventually this will slow down the system to a noticeable degree. In order to restore things to their former ordered state it is necessary to re-organize the data on the disc surface, making sure all the parts of a file are physically located next to each other. Note, in extreme cases it is possible for a file to be in two parts that are at the opposite ends of the disc recording area ! Windows has a built in program to do this re-organizing for you ( Disc Defragmenter, or 'Defrag' for short ) which you can find by going to [ Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools ]. However before you use Defrag on a Win98 / WinMe PC you need to do a few simple things. Make sure your screen-saver is turned off ( if the screensaver activates then Defrag will need to start all over again ) Turn off any anti-virus program ( to speed up the process - but turn it back on afterwards !! ) Make sure there are no background programs running that will access the disc ( any disc access at all will make Defrag start all over again from the beginning ) If you still cannot get Defrag to run to completion ( note it can take many hours on a large drive ! ) then the best solution is to start up Windows in Safe Mode. To do this, either hold down the F8 key during booting till you get the boot menu, or using MSCONFIG set Windows to show the boot screen on startup ( Goto [ Start / Run ], type in MSCONFIG and hit the [ Enter ] key ). Once in MSCONFIG click on the [ ADVANCED ] button and select the [ Enable Boot Menu ] option. Close MSCONFIG and you'll be prompted to restart, which will then show the Boot Menu as you want. Once you have the Boot Menu up, select Item number 3 ( Safe Mode ) then let Windows continue the boot up process. The colours will be all wrong and your graphics will look huge ... don't worry, when you restart normally things will be back to as they were ! Now you can start up DEFRAG again and it should do its stuff. If you have more than one Hard Drive listed then you'll be better starting with Drive C as this is where the Windows System resides and the bulk of your programs. Defragmenting any other drives is a useful excercise if you have the time. Perhaps it should be noted here that you cannot Defrag a CD or Floppy Disc. Like all things Windows related there are other ( non-MicroSoft ) programs that will do the same thing and many of them do a better job. Diskeeper Lite is one of those programs and recently became a free utility. This can run a Defrag in a fraction of the time it takes Windows to do the job and is what we use here exclusively to keep our systems in order. Remember, there is much more to software than just MicroSoft - and quality software doesn't have to cost an awful lot, or can be free !! Back to Top of this page : E-Mail Tips : System Tuning That's more or less it for this section, after all to do a complete 'how to use your PC' would take far more than a simple website and that wasn't our aim here. Hopefully the above tips can help you put off the day when you just have to call for Tech Support - but if/when you do you know the place to go :-) |
| Tel. Support | Call Out | Terms | Estimates | About | Hints | Contact BTS |