Posted

Oct 19th 2007

Well this should keep me at least somewhat active on SA (journal wise). I thought that since i'm now working as a Computer Technician, i'd be seeing a fair few problems with computers and thought i'd share some solutions to problems I come across. I might make this a weekly thing depending on if anything interesting happens in that week.

Anyway I hope they'll help someone out there.

Since this is the first one i've done, i'll do two tips.

Ever had a computer display a "No operating system" (or similar) message when you turn it on and it won't go any further?

Check all removable media such as floppy disk drives, flash sticks, etc and remove them. Chances are your computer is set to boot from one of those first before the hard drive and since no operating system is on those drives it'll just halt.

Got Norton's Antivirus/Internet Security?

No, just no . Seriously though, Norton's Antivirus, Norton's Internet Security, Trend PC-Cillin Internet Security, these anti-viruses you'd think are the best thing ever since all the major computer stores sell them or at least try to sell them to you. Well I can say that in Norton's case at least, if you remove it and use another anti-virus such as the one we use at work (NOD32), or the one I use at home Avast (Free), you'll find a massive increase in speed of your computer (this is of course your computer isn't the best computer out there). Reason being that Norton and Trend both use a lot of system resources, in Trends case it actually uses about 200-300mb ram on it's own. If you know what you're doing, you can disable Trend's firewall from running (check startup/services) and you'll probably lessen the ram usage by 100mb.

On that note here's one more tip:

Running Windows XP? How much ram do you have?

If the answer to that question is Yes and anything less than or equal to 256mb, then you're probably experiencing some speed issues, no? Even though Windows XP should run on 256mb, in most cases adding extra programs to XP (such as an anti-virus) can push you over the 256mb ram needed. So i'd recommend for XP at least 512mb ram. And for vista, never try to run it on 512mb x.x go for at least 1gb