Computer Support Videos

A few days ago I decided I would purchase a new laptop for my internet business. This would allow me to record screen capture videos more easily than on my desktop. My previous post stated that I didn’t feel any need to upgrade to Vista. My desktop is still running Windows XP, but my new laptop came with Vista pre-installed. It’s not really a problem because the laptop has better specifications than my older desktop. The laptop included 1 gigabyte of memory which I recommend Vista users have.

Vista does have more features and seems to take up more memory, however, most can be disabled by changing the windows theme.

I decided to install Deep Freeze by Faronics which will keep my computer in the same state that I purchased it in. After deep freezing, I can simply change anything on my computer, catch a virus, install adware, and after a restart, my system will be back to normal. Any data which needs to be stored can either be uploaded or put onto an external drive. I highly recommend this if you want to keep your computer fast, rather than have your computer slow down over time.

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Sometimes I feel like a lone shark to one operating system when other friends and family members around have already upgraded to Windows Vista. However, in most cases, I am reassured that I made the right decision to sick with windows XP until I’ve upgraded my computer, or have purchased a newer one. Windows Vista is slower because it takes up more resources. That is fine. It has many new animated features and doo dads I really don’t need. I have however upgraded my Internet Explorer browser to version 7.0. Mainly for security purposes. I am satisfied with the decisions I have made so far.

Do you have an opinion on this? Feel free to write a comment to this blog entry.

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Windows Vista, Windows XP

I want to clear things up if you don’t know what a browser hijacker is. You may or may not have had one before. They are usually installed on your computer by scum software without your permission. If you’ve suddenly noticed that you browser no longer goes to your favorite website or search engine for your homepage, and instead goes to some no name search engine or an abusive website, then you may have a browser hijacker.

Using the video I just created, you’ll be able to find out if your browser is hijacked. You can also find out what each program running on your computer (as you run it) is. You will be able to determine the potentially bad programs from the good ones. Ok, check it out.

Here’s the link: http://www.computersupportvideos.com/videos/hijackthis

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I wanted to take some time and educate you about some of the different methods for backing up and storing data.

With the amount of images, music, and other types of data most people store on their computers now, there comes a point where you need to either move the data elsewhere because it can no longer fit on your hard drive, or, you just want to back you data up so you won’t lose anything.

For example… you have a digital camera and you take tons of photos of you life, your children, maybe your pet, or you vacations. However, you hard drive is getting overloaded with all of these files, and, who can really tell when you hard drive might just suddenly give out. So, you decide to put all of these photos on a CD.

Ok, wait second…

Digital cameras are quickly improving the quality of photos they take. So, now you realize you don’t have just a CD’s worth of images, and a CD can only handle up to 700 megabytes. But, you have a few gigabytes of images. This would take large number of CD’s to back up these images. A DVD can hold up to 9.5 gigabytes, but that amount can quickly be exceeded as well. Not to mention, a CD or a DVD can get scratched and damaged, and, technology is constantly improving and CD’s and DVD’s might be a thing of the past in a few years. Maybe you’ve heard of Blue Ray?

So, here are some solutions for backing up some of this data of yours.

The first solution is to just store these photos online. That means, upload them to a site that hosts data like images. There can be more than one issue here though. If you have many photos, you may end up getting charged for the amount of space you’re using. Other services may charge you for bandwidth, or, may just limit the amount of bandwidth you use. For example, the popular image hosting company flickr limits your bandwidth to 100 megabytes of bandwidth per month with a free account.

The second and best solution is to have an external hard drive which you can back up your data on to - even automatically if you want. Hard drives aren’t going to disappear any time soon. They are much faster than CD’s and DVD’s, and can store a whole lot more data. Hard drive technology does change over time too. New technology does allow hard drives to contain more data and faster speeds to moderate that data. However, a good backup hard drive will have more than enough space for storing your images for a few years to come.

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My next video is going to show you how to do an Outlook Backup in Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2003. Outlook is one of those programs that didn’t come with an easy tool for users to quickly be able to backup their e-mail, calendars, contacts, etc. So, I’m going to show you a little secret tool you can use to perform the Outlook backup process easily. It will make it easy to backup your Outlook files to your computer, external drive, thumb drive, or anywhere you wish! Look for this video on this site in the next few days. I will post an entry on my blog about it, however, you can also subscribe to the Computer Support Announcement List to be notified when I post a new blog entry.

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I’ve recorded and uploaded a new video which walks you through how to set up a task using task scheduler to automatically defrag your hard drive. In the video, I demonstrate how to make it run every month, however, it is very easy to modify the task and make it run more or less often. If you would like to see the video, head on over to the computer support videos page or go directly to the schedule defrag video.

Enjoy!

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Everyone (including yourself) should have their computer at some point automatically defragment. Wouldn’t you rather have your computer defragment your hard drive at a set time and or date rather than having to remember yourself that you need to defragment? This is a rather simple thing to set up in windows xp, so, I’m going to make a quick video on how to do this. It should be up in a few hours now. I’ll post a blog entry with a link letting you know when it has been uploaded to the website.

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There have been a few requests for some written instructions on how to defrag windows because the video took too long to load for some, or, they just did not have the correct software to view the video. So, here are some written instructions on how to do a defrag using windows xp. These are the same steps as the video, just written out.

First, right click on the My Computer desktop icon

Click on Manage

Choose Disk Defragmenter from the left navigation menu

Now, select a drive you wish to defragment on the right side

Click on the defragment button

You may wish to first analyze the drive first to see if it really needs to be defragmented. This will show you an estimation of what parts of the drive are defragmented, free, contiguous, and unmovable.

Defragmenting may take a few minutes or can take over an hour depending on your computer.

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Guides

You can now download our video on how to defragment your hard drive. It’s exactly 2 minutes long (we cut up the clip so you didn’t have to wait for our whole drive to defrag) and shows you how to defragment your hard drive every step of the way. Check it out:

http://www.computersupportvideos.com/videos/defrag/

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Videos

Welcome to computersupportvideos.com! This is the very first entry to our blog. Here we will keep you informed about any news related to computer support videos and computer support in general. Anything that is worth seeing, reading, or listening to will be posted right here! If you want to make sure you don’t miss anything, we recommend you sign up to our announcement list which can be accessed by going to http://www.computersupportvideos.com/newsletter/

Talk to you soon!

Aaron
ComputerSupportVideos.com

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