PC Maintenance Class 5

Tonight's session picked up where we left off last time. We were looking at the Windows Backup and Recovery Centre in Windows 7 (and as it is in Windows Vista) which is in Control Panel.

Using a USB harddisk drive, which is the way I would recommend you backup your computer, Windows 7 and Vista offer a completely unobtrusive backup solution that you will not have to worry about.

For the first time, as the screen shot above shows (you can click it to make it larger), you click on the Set up Backup option, and you are then asked to set a location for your backup, pick what you want backed up, and how often.

Windows will find your USB harddisk and by default will identify it as the best means of backup media. You can simply leave this drive plugged in, and let the computer get on with the backups.  You are asked what you would like to backup, and as a personal preference I only tend to get the computer to backup my documents. Personally I don't see the point in it making full backups of the system, when I have a System Image stored seperately of the computer.  The resulting choice means less time for the computer when it comes to running this procedure. Finally you are asked to choose the frequency of when you want the backup to take place. I have mine set everyday, and I chose 10pm at night. I very rarely turn the computer off, simply the screen when I'm away from it, and setting it late at night, means I'm not using the machine when it does the backup (not that that is an issue anyway). Its down to you what you would set it to, and the amount of data you are creating on a regular basis.

Myself I'm taking lots of photographs with my digital camera, and I figured that by setting the computer to backup everyday, then even if it were off for two or three days, I am highly unlikely to forget to leave the machine on for a 'once a week' backup, if that's what I might have set it to - if that makes sense?!

The initial backup will take quite a while, upto a few hours in some cases, certainly my own computer, however the daily backups thereafter are what we call incremental and only backup the differences so they take only a few minutes - so no hardship to have it set everyday. When you check in the Backup and Restore centre in Control Panel it will tell you how long it took, and typically for me, each daily backup was taking in the region of 2 to 8 minutes.

The main advantage of using this built in software is that you can set it up once, and forget it. In the past before I used this, I would once every so often copy my data to CDs or DVDs, and usually only when I'd come across an incident in work with a colleague who had lost some data. Then I would remember that its been about 5 months since I last made a backup and it would scare me into doing it, in case I lost the work. With this solution, I don't have to worry at all. It's done everyday, and I can forget about it!

Restoring the data, as I demonstrated is very easy, we simply choose the Restore My Files option, and choose what you want to restore.  I'd recommend, every so often, that perhaps you do a sample restore of one or two files just to ensure it does work. Afterall a Backup is only as good as it's ability to Restore your work!

On the Microsoft site there is a useful set of pages, that have videos, showing how to use the Backup and Restore feature of Windows 7, click this link to take you there now!  You may need to install Microsoft Silverlight, but simply follow the instructions given.

Those with Windows XP, click this link to see how you backup your files and folders.

The session ended with a discussion about the Windows Defrag utility, but time caught up with us, and although I described the mechanics of how it works and what it's purpose is, I will start off next week's class with a good look at that.

As a reminder to those in the class that asked about the course materials I recommend, these are the following books that I suggest you buy. Click on the appropriate links below. There are three available, one for each for each of the versions of Windows that are being used by people these days, but you only need to buy the one that's relevent to your computer, and not all three. (Unless you are feeling frivolous!)

Windows Plain & Simple - Windows 7 Edition

Windows Plain & Simple - Windows Vista Edition

Windows Plain & Simple - Windows XP Edition

Windows Plain and Simple - or as I jokingly tell the class 'Windows for the Plain and Simple'   ;-D

So join us next week where we'll look at Defrag, and some of the other diagnostic tools in Windows.

PC Maintenance Class 4

We covered two topics that we started on last week, splitting the session in two, a lecture type discussion on Windows Security, and a hands on practical session involving what I referred to as a 'problematic' laptop.

We had discussed the various types of virus that can effect Windows computer, and we dug further into this subject by touching on this again with a presentation on general security, concentrating on online security. We covered the topics of Cyberbullying, Phishing, Online fraud, Spam, Protecting your identification.

Cyberbullying is the use of the Internet and related technologies to harm other people, in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner. As it has become more common in society, particularly among young people, legislation and awareness campaigns have arisen to combat it.

One of the key factors in looking after your computer, as mentioned in the presentation was to make sure your computer is updated with Windows Update and that you take every effort to backup the machine. This being the case, we then switched briefly to our hardware project. The laptop from last week. Having taken the laptop away to attempt to get the user data off it and failed,  we were faced with having to do a factory restore.

The first thing I needed to do was alter what is known as the computer's Boot Sequence. This is done by entering the BIOS menu, upon boot. This process is known as booting, or booting up, which is short for bootstrapping.

The BIOS software is built into the PC, and is the first code run by a PC when powered on ('boot firmware'). When the PC starts up, the first job for the BIOS is to initialise and identify system devices such as the video display card, keyboard and mouse, hard disk drive, optical disc drive and other hardware. The BIOS then locates boot loader software held on a peripheral device (designated as a 'boot device'), such as a hard disk or a CD/DVD, and loads and executes that software, giving it control of the PC.

BIOS software is stored on a non-volatile ROM chip on the motherboard. It is specifically designed to work with each particular model of computer, interfacing with various devices that make up the complementary chipset of the system. In modern computer systems the BIOS chip's contents can be rewritten without removing it from the motherboard, allowing BIOS software to be upgraded in place.

In the BIOS menu, I had to set the DVD drive as the first boot device, so that when I put the Recovery DVD in the drive, the computer would boot up from the optical disk rather than the C: drive.  The further settings of BIOS is something we will look at in a later class. Understanding it, can help you learn more about how the computer works, however changing settings in it, can be at the detriment of your computer if you are a novice. By all means have at look at your computer's BIOS settings, but don't change anything if you are unsure.  Entering setup on most machines involves pressing something like F2 or DEL, this is usually presented on screen briefly before Windows loads.

Continuing, the machine booted up, and the Recovery process was able to start 'recovering the computer' to its factory settings.

Jumping back into the subject of Backups, we then finished the sesssion, by looking at how the automated Backup and Restore Centre in Windows 7 works. 

The Windows 7 Backup and Restore centre.

Backup and Restore is run through the Windows Control Panel.  One of the first things I pointed out, was the ability to make a Windows System Repair Disk. This involves placing a blank disk into the computer and allowing Windows to make the disk for you. To make one, or more information, click the link below...

• Making a Windows System Repair Disk

One of the other function available, which we will look at next time, is the option to create a System Image, information on this can be found by clicking the link below. In a nut shell though, the System Image is used in conjunction with the System Repair Disk to do a full system restore. Usually the System Image is best stored on external USB Harddisk, but can be spanned across multiple DVDs depending on the amount of data on your computer.

• What is a Windows System Image?

Setting your computer to backup on a schedule is dead easy. For the first time you click on Set up Backup. And simply follow the wizard. If you have an external drive plugged into your computer (which is the preferred means of backup) it will automatically identify it. The next screen will ask 'what' you want backed up, then finally, you are able to set the time and frequency of the backup. The default is every Sunday at 19:00.  I decided to set the laptop in class to backup everyday at 22:00.

This is an external USB drive.  This particular model is one of the Seagate FreeAgent Go range. Powered through the one USB cable, it just plugs into a free USB port on your computer, 
and simply appears in My Computer.

The first backup takes some time, it copies everything you selected, however subsequent daily backups, in this scenario, are incremental, and only the differences are backed up, making the daily task of backing up, minimal. Then once a month a new 'backup set' is created and is stored seperate to the first, this continues the cycle until the backup drive is full, and then the oldest backup set is deleted.  Progress and details of backups can be reviewed in the main screen of the Backup and Restore centre.

After Half Term, because we are away next week, we will look at those settings and explore how we can manage our backups, and most importantly, how we restore data if we lose it!

See you in a fortnight!

PC Maintenance Class 3

Tonight's class was split into three parts. Firstly, Anti-Virus, then Printer Troubleshooting and finally a practical session with a problematic laptop.

Click this hyperlink to download a copy of the presentation I used in class tonight!

Anti-virus is very important piece of software to have on your computer, there are many types of viruses out there that infect PCs all around the world. It's critical to make sure your Anti-virus software is up to date and current. That usually means if its older than a week, then its no good!

Strange as it may sound, the computer virus is something of an Information Age marvel. On one hand, viruses show us how vulnerable we are -- a properly engineered virus can have a devastating effect, disrupting productivity and doing billions of dollars in damages. On the other hand, they show us how sophisticated and interconnected human beings have become.

Experts reckon MyDoom worm infected approximately a quarter-million computers in a single day in January 2004. Back in March 1999, the Melissa virus was so powerful that it forced Microsoft and a number of other very large companies to completely turn off their email systems until the virus could be contained. The ILOVEYOU virus in 2000 had a similarly devastating effect. In January 2007, a worm called Storm appeared -- by October, experts believed up to 50 million computers were infected. That's pretty impressive when you consider that many viruses are incredibly simple.

When you listen to the news, you hear about many different forms of electronic infection. The most common are:

• Viruses - A virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program runs, the virus runs, too, and it has the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other programs) or wreak havoc.
• E-mail viruses - An e-mail virus travels as an attachment to e-mails, and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people in the victim's e-mail address book. Some e-mail viruses don't even require a double-click -- they launch when you view the infected message in the preview pane of your e-mail software.
• Trojan horses - A Trojan horse is simply a computer program. The program claims to do one thing (it may claim to be a game) but instead does damage when you run it (it may erase your hard disk. Trojan horses have no way to replicate automatically.
• Worms - A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of the worm scans the network for another machine that has a specific security hole. It copies itself to the new machine using the security hole, and then starts replicating from there, as well.

Discussing printers and how to troubleshoot them, we concentrated on the two main types of printer that are widely available Inkjet and Laser, although we mentioned a third, and older generation of Dot Matrix Printers.

No matter where you are reading this blog, you most likely have a printer nearby and there's a very good chance that it is an inkjet printer. Since their introduction in the latter half of the 1980s, inkjet printers have grown in popularity and performance while dropping significantly in price.

An inkjet printer is any printer that places extremely small droplets of ink onto paper to create an image. If you ever look at a piece of paper that has come out of an inkjet printer, you know that:

• The dots are extremely small (usually between 50 and 60 microns in diameter), so small that they are tinier than the diameter of a human hair (70 microns)!
• The dots are positioned very precisely, with resolutions of up to 1440x720 dots per inch (dpi).
• The dots can have different colours combined together to create photo-quality images.

Laser Printers work completely different. The primary principle at work in a laser printer is static electricity, the same energy that makes clothes in the dryer stick together or a lightning bolt travel from a thundercloud to the ground. Static electricity is simply an electrical charge built up on an insulated object, such as a balloon or your body. Since oppositely charged atoms are attracted to each other, objects with opposite static electricity fields cling together.

A laser printer uses this phenomenon as a sort of "temporary glue." The core component of this system is the photoreceptor, typically a revolving drum or cylinder. This drum assembly is made out of highly photoconductive material that is discharged by light photons.

Initially, the drum is given a total positive charge by the charge corona wire, a wire with an electrical current running through it. (Some printers use a charged roller instead of a corona wire, but the principle is the same.) As the drum revolves, the printer shines a tiny laser beam across the surface to discharge certain points. In this way, the laser "draws" the letters and images to be printed as a pattern of electrical charges -- an electrostatic image. The system can also work with the charges reversed -- that is, a positive electrostatic image on a negative background.

After the pattern is set, the printer coats the drum with positively charged toner -- a fine, black powder. Since it has a positive charge, the toner clings to the negative discharged areas of the drum, but not to the positively charged "background." This is something like writing on a soda can with glue and then rolling it over some flour: The flour only sticks to the glue-coated part of the can, so you end up with a message written in powder.

With the powder pattern affixed, the drum rolls over a sheet of paper, which is moving along a belt below. Before the paper rolls under the drum, it is given a negative charge by the transfer corona wire (charged roller). This charge is stronger than the negative charge of the electrostatic image, so the paper can pull the toner powder away. Since it is moving at the same speed as the drum, the paper picks up the image pattern exactly. To keep the paper from clinging to the drum, it is discharged by the detac corona wire immediately after picking up the toner. See...you learn something everyday!

The final part of the class, was a problem laptop. The laptop doesn't start up properly to cut a long story short, so a reinstallation was required. However there was work on the laptop, so we had to try and get the work off the machine first. I had a portable harddisk docking station, of which I placed the removed harddisk from, into it. The problem was though my laptop wasnt reading the drive probably, and time had caught up with us rather rapidly and we had to wrap up and leave things till next week. Come back next time to read about the outcome!

PC Maintenance Class 2

We finished last week by having a look inside a PC but time was against us and we ran out of time, so tonight we had a full session looking at how the computer was put together with all the various components.

I started off by taking the computer apart and then after break I got two volunteers to reassemble the computer. Words can explain what happened, but here are some photographs that show what went on much better!