PC Curb

Imagine the thought of losing all the data and files on your computer. It’s a pretty scary situation for some people. Luckily, there are some precautions you can take to make sure you don’t permanently lose your data.

Firstly, consider buying an external hard drive. These come in all sizes and prices. All you have to do it plug it into your computer via USB and copy over the files you want to backup. Now if your computer gets infected by a bad virus or you accidently delete something, you won’t lose all your data.

The same can be achieved by using multiple CDs (700mb each) or DVDs (4.5gb each), but note these are not rewriteable, so make sure you try and fill them with as much data at once.

If you’re having trouble with playing songs on iTunes because they have an exclamation mark next to them, it means the file has been moved from the previous location. There is an option to locate the files one by one, but the easiest way is to just remove all the affected files from iTunes and re add them. The only downside with this is you will lose the play count of the songs.

The easiest way to remove the files is to highlight one file, hold down Shift and select another file. This will highlight all the files in between and let you remove them all at once. (right click and Delete). Also you can select files one by one by holding down CTRL and selecting the files you want.

Many people need to take screenshots of their computer screen for many different purposes.

To take a screenshot of your current screen, no external program is needed. Just press the Print Screen button on your keyboard, open up Paint and click paste.

This method will not work for video because it shown on another layer and the screenshot will come out blank. To avoid this, follow these steps.

For Windows Media Player 11, right click somewhere on the outside of the video, go to tools, options, performance, advanced. From there deselect the overlays option and you will be able to take screenshots of video.

Taking this step with the disabling of the overlays, you will also have the power to watch TV and use full screen games/apps and media players at the same time.

1. Defragment.

Defragmenting is a process that organizes contents of a hard drive to store files closer together. It also attempts to create more free space. After completing, you should notice immediate improvements in your computer’s speed and start up time. Defragmenting is free and can be done very easily using the following steps on an XP computer.

For Windows XP; Go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragment.

2. Anti – Virus

There are a lot of viruses on the internet and internet users need to protect themselves. Viruses can do harm to your computer and data, and they can slow down your system. This is why it’s important to regularly update your anti-virus program, and perform regular scans. However you must keep in mind it is not beneficial to install too many anti-virus programs. These programs can be helpful but the main problem is they take a lot of power to run, and you will be slowing down your PC unnecessarily. Always try to stay with one program at a time, and uninstall any others you are not using.

3. Delete Unnecessary Files

Freeing up space can improve the speed of your PC. Delete all the files you have downloaded and no longer want. Then remember to empty the recycle bin. Try a disk cleanup, which is located in system tools (same place as defragment). This will delete temporary internet files, empty the recycle bin for you etc. Lastly, you may want to download and install a program called CCleaner, it is free and is great for clearing internet history etc.

4. Uninstall Unused Programs

Most people install a lot of programs over time. If not used, these become a waste of space. Scroll through these often and uninstall the ones you do not plan to use in the near future.

For Windows XP; Go to Start, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs.

5. Disable Auto-Starting Programs

Disabling automatic opening of programs on startup will assist in a smoother startup of your PC. Nobody likes to turn on their computer and have to wait for it to open up programs and start doing virus scans. It is best to go into the options of a particular program and disable it to open at startup.