PreparedPC

You are browsing the archives of 2008 May.

Photo by Sister72

It’s one of those nagging things in the back of your mind: “What happens if my hard drive crashes, or the operating system gets corrupted, or…? I should do something about it.” Then you dismiss that thought because you think it’s too hard, or expensive.
It’s really not that difficult, nor expensive. We’ll [...]

Photo by DPS
Microsoft’s free application, SteadyState, is a way to quickly “undo” many problems that can develop as a result of spyware infections, people installing software that “breaks” other software, etc. It’s perfect for that spare PC that you’ve set up for the kids. Perhaps your parents are using a computer for the first time, [...]

You’ve visited a website and clicked on an link to listen to an MP3 file. Your computer dutifully plays the audio file–so far, so good. Now, you go back to the site, hoping to download the file you just listened to. But wait–the file that downloads is an M3U file. What is this, and [...]

Have you run into this problem yet? Your friend or family member, who’s been using a computer for several years, buys a new computer and asks for your help to “move everything over” to the new computer. You’re able to copy their data files to the PC, but when it’s time to set up their [...]

Belarc Advisor is a free-for-personal-use utility (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html) that inspects your Windows computer and creates a nicely formatted HTML report of your installed hardware and software. It’s worth installing and running (then backing up the report files that’s saved by default at C:\Program Files\Belarc\Advisor\System\tmp) to have “just in case.”