Curiosity Killed the Console

Several hours have just been spent putting a PS3 back together again, and it has prompted me to remind folks of a few things to think about when taking computers/electronics apart. My boyfriend, in his excitement to play Dragon Age II, got tired of waiting for me to clean the lens on his PlayStation 3 and decided to do it himself. He's never done anything like that before, and he's about as tech savvy as my grandma, so needless to say I wasn't surprised to find a baggy of "spare parts" and a very funny looking PS3 when he was done.

Before you go on an electronics disassembling adventure, take heed the following tips:

• Set aside several hours of time. You may think that you'll remember how that piece fits tomorrow, but given enough time and distraction people are prone to forget. Also, leaving something disassembled on a hard work surface is just begging for something to get lost. I personally have a cat that collects screws in the middle of the night. He steals them, plays with them, and drops them in his food or water dish. True story.
• Do your homework. Have manuals, links, and instructions on hand before you start. A quick Google search will most likely uncover a video of somebody doing exactly what you're doing. Watch it, take notes, and save it for later.
• Make sure you have all of the proper tools, cleanser, etc on hand. Stopping in the middle to go to the store is a drag.
  
• Keep a pen and paper on hand and document each step. Remember, it's a lot tougher to reverse engineer something to try and figure out where that missing screw goes than it is to write it down as you take it apart.
• Keep several containers (shot glasses or sandwich bags work well) to hold screws/parts from different parts of the machine in and label them. For example, drop the screws for the outside case in a sandwich bag and label it "outside case." If they are different sizes, note what size goes where.
• Don't be afraid to seek out help. If you're not exactly sure how something should come apart, look it up or call somebody. Muscling a fragile part will lead to much shame and embarrassment.

It took some time, but all is well with Mr. PS3. Dragons Age shall be played, and I believe I've earned a free pass on dishwashing for a couple of weeks for my efforts and his embarrassment. Time well spent, if you ask me!

Upgrade Your Desktop RAM

One of the most inexpensive and effective ways to boost your computer's performance is to add more or upgrade your RAM. For a brush up of what RAM does for your computer and how much you need, read my earlier post here.

• Establish if you need an upgrade. To do this reboot your computer without opening any applications. Open the Task Manager (Ctrl+alt+delete for Windows XP and Windows 7. Start > Task Manager in Vista) and click the performance tab. If your available memory is hovering around 50% or less, then this means you're using half or more of your memory just to boot up Windows. Once you start opening applications, you're most likely maxing it out or getting pretty close to it so you could use an upgrade.
• Use the application SIW to figure out what kind of memory you have, how many slots your motherboard has, and how much memory your motherboard can support. See my post about SIW here if you're not sure what it is or where to get it. In the example below, you'll see I have 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM, 4 slots available, and my motherboard supports 4 gigs total. I'm going to purchase 4, 1 gig modules of DDR2 ram to replace my existing 512 modules.

• Go find the best deal you can! For shopping tips, check out my post here.
• Gather your new memory, the tools I described in my last post and your unplugged computer and lay them out on a hard table top. Carefully open it up, you may need to unscrew small screws from the back to do so. (Make sure to carefully save them!)
• Locate your existing RAM, and remove each one by gently pushing down on the clips on either side of each module, and carefully pulling it out of it's slot. Make sure to only hold the RAM by it's edges, and avoid touching the circuits on the side or pins on the bottom. When I remove RAM, I like to take it out and lay it in such a way, so that I know which direction it was installed. This makes it easy when lining up the notch in the pins on the bottom of the new RAM modules. You know exactly which way it's supposed to go. Oh these clips are dusty, time to break out the canned air!

• Again, holding it only by it's edges, carefully line up your new RAM module and gently push down until the clips pop into place. This does require some firm pressure, but not too much. If it's a strain, check to make sure you've lined it up correctly. Again, that notch in the bottom needs to be lined up the right way or your RAM just won't go in.

• Take a final look to make sure all of your new RAM modules have been installed correctly. They should all be flush, nothing should be sticking out. 
• Close your computer up, plug it in and boot it. Run SIW again to make sure all of your new RAM is recognized. If it isn't or if you received an error on boot, unplug it, open it up and re-seat the RAM.
• Now sit back, relax and enjoy the performance boost!

Tools of the Trade

This is just a really quick post to discuss the tools you should have on hand before you go tinkering around inside your computer. 

• A small set of demagnetized computer tools. You don't need to go nuts buying expensive kits. For $10-$20 you can buy a small kit that will include everything you need. Most likely you won't use much more than screw drivers, but it's nice to have the other tools on hand just in case. Plus the nifty cases they come in keep everything together and organized. The one below even comes with a small flashlight which can really come in handy.
• An anti-static wrist band. While some people chose not to use them, static electricity is bad news for hardware. They're really inexpensive and it's better to be safe than sorry
• Container for all your loose screws. Computer screws are tiny and will easily roll right off your table and into oblivion. I personally love old prescription bottles because of the lid but you can use anything, even a sandwich bag.
• Canned air is also really helpful. When you open up your machine you may find lots of dust, especially if you haven't opened it in a while. You should always take time to clean it up while you have it open for a repair or upgrade. Plus it's just plain fun!

 

What's a defrag?

If your computer seems to be running a bit slow, one of the easiest things you can do is defragment or "defrag" your hard drive. If this is something you've never done before, you might notice quite a nice performance boost when you're done. It's time consuming, but very simple, and it's something you can just set to run and walk away. Before we get into how to go about this, let's go through what fragmentation is in the first place.

When we think of our hard drives, we tend to think of them like vast, open, linear space. But your computer doesn't see it that way. Puny human brains! Windows sees your hard drive in a series of clusters, all the same size. I like to think of this series of clusters as a big bag of identical Legos. Windows will assign however many of these "Legos" to each file, depending on its size. The picture of you on a fishing trip may get one "Lego" while the video of you falling out of the boat may get 3. Now, your computer does not need these "Legos" to be kept together, it can still read them if they are separated to make room for more information. Over time, this happens a lot. You install programs and uninstall others. Add data and then delete it. Your "Legos" get moved around and separated from one another. After a while, it's about as tidy as the t-shirt table at Old Navy around closing time on Black Friday.

Now remember we said that Windows didn't need to keep all of the "Legos" from your file together to read them, but it does eventually make them slower to access. Imagine you are now trying to put the "Legos" together to read your midterm paper, and instead of being all lined up in a row, they are spread out all over your house. Even if you know exactly where they all are, it's still going to take longer for you to run around and put them together than if they were all neatly in one place. This is how a fragmented hard drive can slow your computer down over time. Like trying to recall all 50 states upon returning home from a healthy dose of nitrous oxide at the dentists office.

It's good practice to defragment your hard drive every few months or so, and Windows even has a built in utility to do so. You can access it in the Computer Management area of your Administrative Tools in the Control Panel. I'm not taking you through step by step, because I am not too jazzed with the performance of the built in utility. It reminds me of cleaning my room when I was a kid by  throwing everything in the closet. It looked tidy but wasn't really thoroughly clean. Instead, I'm going to have you use a free application called UltraDefrag. Download it here, and follow the installation wizard. Open it up and click the "Analyze" button to get a break down of how fragmented your drive is. Now, click the "Defragment" button and let it do its job. Easy peasy freesy...just how I like it!

Safe mode

There may be times when you'll have to access Safe Mode in order to repair something. Safe Mode is like a minimalistic version of Windows that's used for maintenance only. You can access it by following these steps:

1. Shut down your computer completely.
2. Turn your computer on, and as soon as you hear it come on tap the F8 button. You're trying to get into a boot menu before you see the first Windows start up screen and the timing of your F8 tapping can be tricky. You may not press it in time and Windows will boot up regularly. If this happens, shut your computer down and try again. Tapping F8 too many times on some computers may bring up a keyboard error. If you see this power it off and try again. It takes some finesse, you'll get it eventually.
3. Tapping F8, if done correctly, will bring up a Windows boot menu that asks you what mode of Windows you would like to start. Select Safe Mode, or if you're trying to update something that requires internet or network access, select Safe Mode with Networking. Windows will prompt you to hit continue, and you'll see what looks like computer code loading on the screen. Be patient and let it finish. It takes longer to load Safe Mode than when you're booting regularly.
   
4. Once you've finished your task in Safe Mode, restart your computer and boot Windows normally.
   

My computer is infested!

So you clicked on Claudia Schiffer naked, huh? Or maybe you tried to find the latest episode of True Blood on some nasty video sharing website and now you're being inundated with pop ups that offer everything from penis enlargement to expensive fake spyware removal? What do you do now? Well, first of all, don't panic! This happens to everyone...even me. It's nothing to be ashamed of, there are baddies all over the internet just looking for a way in.

A few years ago, while trying to remove the Vundo trojan from a client's machine, I discovered Malwarebytes. It's a delightful little application that does the absolute best job at removing viruses, trojans and spyware from your machine. And the best news is that it's free for home use! Download it here and run the simple installer. I like to start by doing the quick scan, removing anything it finds at the end then running a full scan. After that's done, reboot and scan again.

Now you may have a particularly ugly trojan that blocks Malwarebytes from installing or functioning properly. If this is the case, you can try installing it and or running it in Safe Mode. If you do not know how to get into Safe Mode, I've typed up some directions here.

Even if your computer is not obviously infected with anything, I highly suggest installing this application and checking every so often anyway. You may find something you didn't know was there. Or if you do manage to catch a virtual sneeze, so to speak, you'll be really happy you already have it installed and ready to go. Happy surfing!

Free Anitvirus

There are three things I look for when deciding what antivirus software to use.

1. Is it easy? Download, installation and continued updates should be easy and automated.
   
2. Quiet monitoring is a must. I have no patience for software that hogs precious resources or constantly pops up requesting my attention and money.
3. Cost! I'm a firm believer that there is no need to pay much if anything for safe web browsing.
   

There is a lot of software out there that fits the bill, but my current favorite is Avast! which can be downloaded here. You can upgrade to a paid version, but most home users will be fine with the free version. During the installation, it will try to install Google Chrome for you so if that's not something you're interested in exploring, make sure to check the bubble that ops for the "express installation" without Google Chrome. Enjoy!