Technology And Computer|

Essentially, computers run smoothly over a series of commands. This process allows the user to be able to download and run certain applications. Whatever application you are running in your computer, it is supported by certain commands and would also take up memory in your computer. These lists of commands are located in the computers’ registry. Any task that you want your computer to do, it would automatically refer to the registry and find the information that is needed for your computer to do the wanted task. Over a period of time, it is inevitable that your computer would eventually experience some errors, as instructions and information in your registry gets messed up. As a result, your computer would slow down and worst case, your computer would crash. In order to fix computer errors, there are easy tasks that you can do by yourself at the comfort of your home, without any expensive professional help.

One way is to clean your hard disk, so that the performance of your computer will be improved. Your computer gets fragmented when your hard disk is filled up with unwanted files and junk data. If you already experience that your computer is taking up time in operating programs or opening files, this just simply means that the system had the hard time locating the information or the files that they need as a result of fragmentation. Disk Clean Up tool and Disk Defragmenter are provided by Windows. Simply, the Disk Clean Up tool in Windows will clean up space in the hard disk. In this process, the tool will find and suggest the files that are no longer needed and you can safely remove. Thus, giving you the option whether to delete some or all of the files. Examples of unwanted hard disk files are: Recycle bin, program set up files, temporary file folders, outdated system restore points, browser history and unwanted programs. The disk defragmenter tool would fuse all files stored and speed up your computer.

By performing a virus scan in your computer, the system will have the chance to be fixed and to be prevented from errors. The virus scan must be updated to really ensure the prevention of virus getting into the system and to make sure that your computer is free from malicious information. A virus is one of the major causes that your computer will behave irregularly.

Fixing problems using Windows XP Boot CD is another way. A lot of times, a virus infection will damage the boot sector of your computer. So by using your Windows XP Boot CD, you can now repair the installation of your Windows XP from the damage that the virus has done. This CD would just require you to perform certain tasks to smoothly start up your computer.

Last but not least, we can prevent future problems and also fix computer clutters and errors by performing a registry scan. By doing so, computer files such as DLL (dynamic link library), EXE (executable), and driver files can already perform entries in the computer and you can already operate properly on your computer. If your registry is damaged or unstable due to unwarranted expansion, the system would significantly slow down and eventually cause some errors. Registry scans that are performed regularly to the system of your computer would detect and also remove unwanted data and files from it. Anyone can do this quite easily and economically with the help and guide from a reliable registry cleaner tool.

Thanks to advance technology, there are many free registry scans that you can get without the hassle of contacting an expensive professional to fix your computer. Registry scans will give you registry maintenance, removing malevolent virus and spyware, scan and repair some registry and computer errors, defragging the registry and also registry back up.

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Are you unable to mount your Linux hard drive volume? The problem could be due to corruption the Linux hard drive data structures. To sort out such problems, Linux provides fsck utility. It is a command-line utility, which checks integrity and consistency of Linux file system, finds errors, and tries to fix them. However, in case if you run this utility on a mounted or online file system, you may come across catastrophic data loss situations. At this point, you need to carry out Linux Data Recovery to get your valuable data back.

If you mistakenly run fsck on a mounted Linux file system, the root iNode may got damaged and all iNodes start calling similar blocks. When you try to mount the volume after fsck, you may encounter the below error message:

“Mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1, missing
codepage or helper program, or other error. In some cases useful info
is found in syslog — try dmesg | tail or so”

After this behavior of Linux operating system, when you run ‘dmesg’, as stated in the above error message, you encounter further error message:

“EXT3-fs: corrupt root inode, run e2fsck”

When you run e2fsck, as suggested in above error, it gives you further error message stating:

“Root inode is not a directory. Clear?”

If you say ‘yes’ to above error, then it goes to fix the problem and then remove parent entry for each iNode in root directory. When you unallocate root iNode and blocks manually, and then try to rebuilt root iNode, it says that it can not allocate any block in file system.

Cause

This behavior is caused due to corruption to the file system, superblock, root iNode, or any other Linux data structure. Operating system can not locate the hard drive volumes and stored files, after corruption to the data structure.

Resolution

To sort out this problem and perform Ext3 Recovery, you need to format the hard drive and reinstall operating system. Although, this method is able to fix most of the hard drive related problems, however also deleted all hard drive volumes and files.

This entire behavior cause serious data loss situations and need Ext3 Recovery software to extract lost data. The applications perform Data Recovery Linux in a quick, safe, and easy way.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is the most excellent tool to perform absolute recovery of lost data. It recovers data from Ext4, Ext3, Ext2, FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12. The software is compatible with Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, 2003, XP, and 2000.

Although there are many things that can affect the performance of your computer, there are a few simply things you can do each month to help keep your computer running at maximum performance. This article will focus on two problems that impact the performance of your computer and will then explain what you can do about it.

Problem #1: Computer Hard Disk Files

Your computer is always writing information to your hard disk, no matter what you do. Your computer attempts to keep all file information in the same location on your hard drive. As you add and delete files, blank spaces are left between your files. As you add new programs or files, your computer tries to use these blank spaces.

Over time, this reading and writing of files can affect the way your computer performs. The files eventually become scattered in multiple locations on your hard disk rather than in the same location.

Your computer will still find the information. However, the more scattered the information becomes on your hard drive, the more accesses your computer has to make to find (and gather) the information. This requires your hard disk to work harder and do more reading/writing than is necessary. It will slow down your computer by as much as 200% and causes increased wear and tear on your hard drive.

Problem #2: Spyware

If you use the Internet, at some point you will download a file or software program onto your computer. Sometimes you will know something is being downloaded to your computer. Other times you will have no idea. (Although this article will not talk about small files called “cookies”, you may want to look up information on this subject. Cookies are written onto your computer from the Internet.)

Free computer programs (often referred to as Freeware) are a big hit on the Internet. Every day thousands of users download these “free programs”. Although there are some great freeware programs, these programs often have advertisements or tracking code associated with their use. The term “Spyware” refers to programs that gather information about your computer and (Internet) surfing habits without your knowledge. This information is then sold to a third party company as a means of generating revenue.

The problem with Spyware is that it also impacts the performance of your computer. It can make your computer very sluggish and unresponsive.

Three Steps to Improved Computer Performance

Now that we’ve discussed two problems that affect the performance of your computer, let’s discuss three things you can do to get your computer performance back to normal. You should do these three steps in the order presented. Ideally, you should repeat them about once a month or whenever you notice a change in your computer’s performance.

Step #1: Delete Spyware

The first thing you should do is to delete spyware files or programs from your computer. To do this, you can use a free software program such as Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition from LavaSoft. To get the program, go to www.download.com and search for “Ad-Aware SE” (without the quotes). Select “Download Now” and follow the installation instructions. Once the program is installed, you can scan your computer for spyware files. Then, you can select and delete them from your computer.

Note #1: Always be sure to use the “Check for updates now” option to keep your program current.

Note #2: You need to be aware that when you delete spyware files, some of those “free” programs you downloaded may not continue to work correctly. If you have a program you’ve downloaded and want to continue to use, check very carefully what you select to delete from the “Scanning results” once the scan has been completed.

Step #2: Clean up your Hard Disk

Once the spyware is removed, you need to clean up temporary and unwanted files from your hard disk. To do this on your windows PC, select the start option in the lower left hand corner of your computer screen. Then, select the program option. Under the program option, select “Accessories”. Under the “Accessories” option, select “System Tools”. From the System Tools option, select “Disk Cleanup”.

Select the drive you want to clean from the pull-down menu and select OK. Usually, this is Drive C. If you have more than one hard drive, select one at a time. This program will then scan your computer for files that could be erased from your computer. You can safely erase all temporary and Recycle Bin files. You can also check the box of any other files you want the program to erase.

Step #3: Defrag your Hard Disk

Once all the spyware and temporary files are removed, you need to defrag your hard disk. This process simply rewrites your computer files so they are no longer scattered all over your hard disk, but are written in the same location for quick sequential access.

To defrag your hard disk on your windows PC, select the start option in the lower left hand corner of your computer screen. Then, select the program option. Under the program option, select “Accessories”. Under the “Accessories” option, select “System Tools”. From the System Tools option, select “Disk Defragmenter”. First, select the hard drive from your computer. Usually, this is Drive C. However, many computers have multiple hard drives. Select one at a time.

You can select “Analyze” to have the program check out the hard drive and see if it needs to be defragged. The program will prompt you at the completion of its analysis. Use the defragment option as prompted.

Note: If you’ve never used this option before, I would recommend that you select the defragment option.

Once, you’ve completed these three steps, your computer and hard disk should be able to operate at maximum performance. Don’t forget to repeat these steps at least once a month or whenever you notice a change in your computer’s performance.

So is your computer extremely slow? Are you wasting more time waiting then you are actually working? This can be completely frustrating and at one time or another all computer users will experience their computer being extremely slow. Fortunately there are some things that you can do to fix a slow computer.

When you first purchase your computer it runs fantastic, you can open and close programs quickly, you can browse the Internet with speed, going from website to website, opening and closing pages without a problem, but after awhile you begin to notice a change. Your computer isn’t running with the same type of performance it had when you first purchased it and you spend more time waiting because your computer is extremely slow. Well if your now slow computer has you wanting to throw it out the window lets see what we can do to remedy the problem.

One of the many causes of a computer running extremely slow is that you have very low available disk space on your hard drive. Your hard drive needs to have an adequate amount of free space to allow for temporary files and it must also be able to accommodate your swap file. If your swap file cannot accept temporary files it will result in a slow computer. A swap file is just a file that is stored on your hard drive and it is used to store information that is not being used by your computers RAM (random access memory) at any particular moment. If your computer is extremely slow, your hard drive could be lacking the room for your swap file to grow, keeping it from storing more temporary files which in turns frees up more of your memory.

We can help your slow computer by regaining some of the space on your hard drive, in a couple of ways. The first step you should take is to run the disk clean up option that is right inside your system tools. To get to your system tools you would click on your “Start” button, then open “All Programs,” then click on “Accessories” and choose “System Tools” from the list and that opens up another list that you will choose “Disk Clean Up” from. Once you have Disk Clean Up opened you just double click on it and it will do all the rest. Now try using your slow computer for a day or two and see if it has made any improvements on your computers performance.

Now is your computer extremely slow even after you completed the Disk Clean Up and put it to use for a day or two? If so then we will have to use another trick to try and correct the problem. Your computer will contain folders that have files in them that are used for uninstalling Microsoft Windows updates. When ever you update your computer with Microsoft updates you simultaneously download the uninstall files which will allow you to uninstall any updates that you decide you don’t want for one reason or another. Well if your computer is extremely slow you may want to consider deleting these uninstall folders because they can take up a significant amount of hard drive space resulting in a slow computer.

You are going to want to locate and delete these uninstall files and to do that you must first open “My Computer” and inside My Computer your going to open your “C: Drive.” Now inside your C-drive you will open “Windows” or it may be called the “Winnt Folder” and when this folder is open you will see folders labeled $NTUninstall, now any of these folders that are older then a month you can delete. That should have cleaned up a lot of unnecessary files and folders, freeing up quite a bit of hard drive space. This will usually correct any problems causing your computer to be extremely slow.

Now, if you find yourself constantly complaining because your computer is extremely slow you now have a couple of tricks up your sleeve that you can use anytime that should help correct the problem.

In Linux operating system, GPT (GParted) is a useful tool that facilitates you to create, resize, move, delete, copy and check the hard drive partitions/volumes. It also copy file system on newly created partitions. It is helpful to create space to install new operating system, copying data stored on hard drive, mirroring one volume with another and recognizing disk usage. In some cases, using this tool may become problematic. It might damaged Linux superblock and lead to critical situations of system inaccessibility and possibly data loss. At this point, you are required to opt for Linux Data Recovery to get your precious and business-critical data back.

Sometimes, when the disk resizing, copying or any other GParted process is running, few read/write errors might terminate the phenomenon. Subsequent to this serious incident, your hard drive volumes could not mount and you come across a number of error message. In such circumstances, when you run the fsck utility after rebooting the system to check integrity and consistency of file system and hard drive, conditions could remain same. Situation becomes critical on every attempt to fix this issue. Linux operating system superblock may get damaged and give you that indication through following error message:

“superblock corrupted, run with -b 32768”

Superblock is a metadata structure of Linux operating system that keeps record of all file system characteristics such as size, block size, empty and filled blocks, respective counts, location and size of Inode tables, size of block groups, disk block map and the disk usage information. When it gets damaged, you can not access data from your hard drive and Data Recovery Linux is required.

Linux file system keeps redundant copies of the superblock. You can correct the problem by using any of them. You can search and use an alternative superblock with the help of ‘mkfs -n’ command.

If the above method can not help you to sort out the issue, Linux Recovery is the way to go for successful retrieval of your valuable data. Recovery is potential through advanced third-party applications, known as Linux Recovery Software.

The tools powerful and efficient scanning mechanisms to methodically scan whole hard drive and extract all of the lost, missing or inaccessible data from it. With read-only conduct and rich graphical user interface, the software are pretty safe and easy to use.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is an advanced and robust application for assured recovery in all data loss situations. The software recovers data from Ext4, Ext3, Ext2, FAT32, FAT16 and FAT12 file system partitions. It works well with most major distributions of Linux including Debian, SUSE, Red Hat, Fedora and Mandriva.

One huge question that many people have about the Linux operating system is how well it can handle games.  There are many who use their computer more for gaming than for other purposes, so gaming is important.  Can Linux play games?

Any game that is based on the browser alone will work fine in Linux.  For browser based games like Farmville, these will all work in browsers as long as there are the Flash and Java plugins.  These work the same in Linux as on any other operating system.

The second type of gaming is open source games.  There are quite a few free games that are made for Linux as well as other operating systems.  Since these are open source, it’s easy for programmers to port various versions of the game for the different operating system choices that exist.

What about commercial Windows games?
Not every single Windows game will work with Linux, but many of the popular ones will.  The first issue is if you have Linux compatible hardware on your system.  If your video card works well with Linux, then you won’t have to worry about performance issues that some meet by not having proper drivers to run advanced 3D graphics.

You can run quite a few games through WineHQ.  This is an application that can run Windows software.  Not everything works, but you can check the site to see which ones do work.

Another option is to use some of the paid programs that will correctly install and run Windows games on your Linux system.  Many don’t want to have to pay for something, but these services do work and have support for many of the more popular games.

For older games, generally you can use applications like DosBox or ScummVM that will emulate the environment the game needs to run in.

Over time and use with a windows machine you may notice that it does not run as fast as when you first got it.

This is usually because of a number of different problems that can occur with regular use of a computer. The smart computer user knows about these things and how to repair them on their own rather then having to hire a technician to solve the problem, (costing you time with out your computer and usually around 50 dollars an hour).

Possible problems usually include one or many of the following things:

Viruses

They happen, even if you spend all the money you can on antivirus software, you likely don’t even know you have one.

Spam

Loosely falls under the same definition as a virus but with some negligible variations, can also include programs that hit you computer with nasty pop ups and redirect you to web pages you don’t want to visit.

Registry

This is a comprehensive list of all programs that have ever been installed on your computer, sometimes when you uninstall a program some information can still be left on this list, the longer you have your computer the larger this list is likely to be.

To much junk

Unused programs and applications (different browser menus, and other programs)

Start up programs

On the bottom right of your computer beside the clock is usually a bunch of icons. These represent programs that are running on your computer at a given time, the problem is that not all programs that are running display an icon in the taskbar. There is usually much more programs running at a time that you are unaware of.

So lets get started then. Bellow are some tips almost any computer user can performe, to help speed up your computer

1. Restore Point

Before we get started we are going to record a windows restore point. If at any point you feel you’ve made a big mistake you can always go back into the windows restore program and reverte to where you’re computer was at before you tried to fix it. This should give you the confidence to play and adjust settings on your computer without the worry of messing it up. To do this you go to the start menu -> Program files – > Accessories -> System tools -> System restore.

A new program will open from there all you have to do is ask your computer to set a restore point, later if needed you can revert to it. A restore point is a virtual snap shot of your computers settings. It may take a few moments to process.

2. Safe Mode

Because you probably have viruses and unwanted programs slowing down your computer, in order to make the clean up process easier and more efficient we will put your computer into safe mode to run quicker. Safe mode is a basic start up of windows without all the extra bells and whistles that slow down your computer. Also if there is any viruses or programs running on your computer they will very likely not be running in safe mode.

To get into safe mode simply restart your computer then right as it is starting up press F8 on your keyboard, A menu will come up listing some options for you, you need to select Safe mode with networking so that you can still have access to the internet.

It is important to press F8 at a precise time as windows is starting up, some computers will prompt you on the bottom of the screen as its loading but its ok if you just keep pressing it until the menu loads, you can definitely press it more than once.

3a. Windows Updates

Windows frequently releases security updates for problems they find with their operating system. It is usually set up to do it automatically but most people ignore it for whatever reason. Even if this is not the case go to www.windowsupdate.microsoft.com and run through their automatic updates program. Its really easy just basically keep clicking yes and next until it is complete. Once the updates are finished it will prompt you to restart your computer, do so before you continue onto the next step.

3b. Restart Again

The computer will likely restart you into normal windows mode, we will continue to work on your computer through safe mode as it will run the next steps quicker, and we can pretty much guarantee that the viruses won’t be running aswell. So restart your computer again and enter into safe mode again.

4. Anti-virus

Ok the easy step to do now is to run a virus scan. Even if you don’t have an anti-virus program on your computer you can still scan your computer for free. The site I recommend is antivirus.com put on by a company called trendmicro, this company mainly profits from its corporate clients but offers a free online scan to public users. Simply go to antivurs.com and look for their free online services for home and office use. Then follow the instructions to run the housecall program on all your local hard drives. This program will provide a current scan of your computer removing all known viruses. Its updates everyday with new definitions so you always know you have an up to date program.

There are a couple other virus programs I should mention. Some of the commercial versions of virus software (Norton and Mcafee) are usually expensive, and require a subscription. In addition to the cost they all use alot of your computers resources to run. So if you are trying to remove virus to speed up a computer by installing Norton you likely won’t notice a difference in speed as it is probably making just as slow.

The solution is to get AVG free edition, Which is a free virus program for all to use, They do also have a subscription version that has a few more features but even the full version of AVG uses way less resources on your computer then norton or Mcafee.So after you’ve finished fixing your computer if you do want to install an antivirus program you may choose to.

4b. Restart in normal mode

At this point you will need to restart you computer and let it boot normally to get out of safe mode

5. MSCONFIG

This program isn’t very well known to most computer users but it is crucial to keeping your computer clean and organized. MSCONFIG is a windows program on all windows machines that controls all start up settings. To access it go to your start menu and click on the run command then type MSCONFIG and press enter.
This program will open in a new window and there will usually be 4 tabs at the top of the window. The main one that you can edit with little difficulty or computer knowledge is the start up tab, click on it and you will see a list of all programs that start when your computer starts up. In reality there is really only 2 or 3 programs that are absolutely necessary These are your systray and anything to do with windows explorer. At this point what you can do is go through the list and uncheck any programs that look suspicious or that you know are malicious or unwanted. When you apply the settings it will ask you to reboot. Once the reboot is complete if all is well you can uncheck more of the programs from the list and see if you computer will still run as you need it. Usually I uncheck almost all of them then add the ones I absolutely need back in after. You can also work in reverse and gradually remove a few at a time and make sure your computer is still ok after each reset. You will need to performe this step a number of times until you have the computer running as quickly as possible with the programs you need.

Usually some of the types of programs that are ok to have on your start up include your software for your burner, msn, your antivirus software, printer software,windows themes.

Tip: If your not sure what a particular program does then you can google all the information list in the startup list on that program and you can usually get an answer.

6. Registry

Similarly to MSCONFIG and the start up list. Your computer registry stores a list of all programs that have ever been installed on your machine. So if you’ve had your computer a while and added and removed alot of programs there can be alot of entries in your registry. A handy program also available on the antivirus.com site is the Hijack This program. This program allows you to clean up and edit your registry.

Caution!!!!!
Be very careful with this step, only remove entries you are sure that are old and unused. This can mess up your computer if done incorrectly, that is why the hijack this program is a good tool to use. Risk of failure can be reduced by setting another restore point before you performe this task.

The windows program that is used to allow you to perform the same task is called REGEDIT. I would only suggest this program for advanced users, and I only use it when I know specifically what program I want to remove from the registry as I can search for it with the find and replace tool.

Hope these tips provide you with a little more confidence and can save you a few service call to the tech support companies.