PC Housekeeping
PDF Studies have shown that about 75% of Americans have Internet access, and that the average American now spends over twelve hours a week online. In Canada, it's probably about the same. I personally am way worse than that. I probably spend close to twelve hours per DAY online...I think I might skew the national average all by myself. And no, I don't consider that a bad thing for myself; since I've spent that time pursuing a degree in computer science and enhancing my creative writing for the novel I'm eventually going to write. I'm starting on my Master's degree in a few months, and see no reason to reduce my Net usage, thankyouverymuch. I'd go for counselling if I was, say, playing World of Warcraft for the entirety of those twelve hours.
Anyway! That wasn't the point I was going to make. The point is, every individual represented in the 75% is using a computer to connect to the Internet. And since Microsoft software has the biggest share of the market, it is safe to say that a very sizable number of those individuals have PCs. I have two that I regularly use and two that are defunct.
As these PCs age, they get slower. A lot of times, this is due to the filling of the hard drive, mingled with deleting things from it, resulting in a phenomenon called fragmentation (more on that later). Programs are installed, pictures, videos, and documents are created and downloaded, and then some of this stuff is (sometimes) removed as its usefulness diminishes. Since you'll be using your computer a lot to browse the Net, and to do all the normal tasks you're used to doing, it's a really good idea to perform some regular PC housekeeping routines. I'm going to show you a couple of things you can do to keep your computer clean, utilizing a couple of highly-useful programs.
Keep It Organized
This isn't really a complicated step, and I'm not going to ask you to download anything for this one. But, your PC housekeeping will be a lot easier if you can grab hold of this simple principle. I've seen computers before with lists of files in My Documents a hundred items long, all in a myriad of different types, some of which go together and some don't, some of which are still useful and some aren't...makes it really hard to spot what you need and what you don't.
Thus, I recommend some organization. Here's a point-form list of tips for keeping it all together:
- In your Documents folder, make a bunch of folders that contain specific categories of things. I have School Stuff, Story Stuff, Apps and Programs, and Other Stuff.
- Make your folder names make sense to you, so you know where to find your files at-a-glance when you return.
- You can precede your folders' names with numbers ('01', '02', etc.). That way when you sort by name, your folders will be at the top, in the order you want, and you can get at 'em easily.
- Make use of those folders that Windows gives you automatically called Music, Pictures, and Videos.
- Don't stop at one level of folders in your organization. In my School Stuff folder, I have a folder for each semester, and in each of those, a folder for each course I took.
- Be frivolous. If you have one file that doesn't seem to fit anywhere, just make a new folder for it. It's very probable that your odd-one-out file will likely end up with a buddy or three.
- Be merciless. If you find a file while organizing that you know you won't need, delete it.
Once you've done it the first time, give yourself a pat on the back. Your computing life just got a LOT easier. From here, there are two ways you can proceed with the remainder of your life:
- Every time you acquire or create a new file, you can make sure to save it in its appropriate folder.
- Every time you acquire or create a new file, you can dump it in My Documents (or an equivalent folder) and promise to organize it later.
Number 1 will save you from having to do a 'spring cleaning' every so often, and it seems to be the most logical choice. However, I will be honest: I usually end up using #2 because it's faster to just throw the files somewhere 'for now and then tell myself I'll fix it later. Either way, it's up to you. But keep things organized!
CCleaner
More than just your own unused files, there are other things that take up space on your computer. Internet browser caches, the Recycle Bin, temporary folders, and so on and so forth. In addition, your Windows registry can get clogged with useless information, too. The registry is basically a big database of configuration settings and options that's used by almost every program, and by Windows itself. It's a pain to go through and try and catch all of this and clean it up yourself. I'm going to show you a program that will take care of it for you with just a few clicks.
Go to this website and download CCleaner. Install it and run it. This is what you'll see.
CCleaner: helps keep your space free.
Most of the time, you can use the defaults here. The one thing I change in this list is to uncheck everything relating to my browser (I like to control that myself). If you use Internet Explorer, you can do that from the Windows tab displayed here. Clear all the boxes under 'Internet Explorer'. If you use Firefox or Chrome, you can do it from the Applications tab. Click Analyze, and see how much space you'll free. Then click Run Cleaner to claim it all back! Further, you can click the Registry button on the left pane, and clean that up too, in much the same manner. Remember to say 'Yes' when it asks you to back up your registry values, and keep track of where you saved them. If your computer starts behaving erratically after a cleaning, you can restore the registry values. Finally, the Tools button will give you a few more convenient options, allowing you to uninstall programs, run Windows' recovery program, and choose what programs start when you turn your computer on.
Run this once a week to ensure that you're getting all the space possible on your computer.
Defraggler
Hard drives are like libraries with a bunch of tiny square bookshelves. The librarian for your hard drive is pretty sloppy. In order to get things done as quickly as possible, he puts things in the nearest available empty spot on the closest bookshelf. Your files are like books. Some of them are small, and you can fit many of them on one shelf. Some of them are huge volumes, and you have to break them up among multiple shelves. Now, it's usually these big ones that are troublesome for us. When we first add them, they're all in bookshelves that are next to one another. All the parts of the volume are in one place. But! You might take a part of one out, leaving some space in a bookshelf. Meanwhile, that space gets partly filled up with a couple smaller books. When the librarian puts your book back, it doesn't fit in its original spot, so he finds an empty spot away from the other parts of the volume and slips it in there instead. The volume is now broken up! To use the computer term, it is fragmented. This could happen a lot with all the different books in the volume, and suddenly, the librarian needs to go around the whole library just to get this one big volume out!
This simple example is exactly what happens on your hard drive. Files get split between multiple hard drive blocks, and the read head has to run allll over the plate getting 'em all together when you want 'em. A defragmentation (defrag) program is an organization service that comes in and puts all your volumes back in adjacent bookshelves so they're all together again. Windows has a defrag program, but it's really slow and doesn't give you a lot of information about what it's doing. Hence, I like to use a program called Defraggler. You can get it here.
Defraggler: speed that hard drive up!
If you want to do things the simple way, just click the defrag button and watch the pretty colors change and the numbers skitter. This could give your computer a significant performance boost. You should run a defrag on it once a month at least. If you want to see more of the guts of your defrag, you can go into the file list, and look at all the fragmented files on your drive. I like to organize this list by size, so I can see which of my files are the biggest, and if I don't need 'em, I can go delete 'em. That saves Defraggler a bit of time.
Note that a defrag can take several hours on a heavily fragmented computer. If you still want to do other stuff while the defrag is running, go to Settings, Priority, and then click Background. This will run the defrag a little slower, and let your programs run as per usual.
Hopefully these tips and downloads will help you clean up and speed up your computer! Happy surfing!
</Glitch>
The Woes of Canadian Keyboards
A glimpse of the Arcane Keys.
I'm not exactly sure if this is Canada-only. I imagine it extends to other countries who host more languages than English and have a need to access scores of letters with accents, foreign currency symbols, and a few gratuitously random items. In Canada, we're characterized by our bilingualism, which means keyboards must (or should; not all of them do) support French.
My Toshiba Satellite thus has a number of red markings on the keys, and a red 'Alt' key that, I assume, is for accessing the special letters and characters that these markings denote. I never consciously use these, since I don't speak French and do not usually write it, and so I have no need for these keys. However! The availability of these special characters means that sometimes my computer gets confused. I've been in the middle of typing something, and all of a sudden my '?' key will only type an 'é'. This seems to happen randomly; with little or no input from me. It annoys me to no end.
If you have this problem, I'm gonna show you how to fix it. The key to this is the 'language bar'. It's usually visible on the taskbar just left of the clock and system tray (that's the fancy name for that little row of icons on the lower-right of your screen). Sometimes it's in a floating bar somewhere else. If it isn't visible, there are two things to try to make it so. Here's method number one.
- Right-click the taskbar.
- Click 'Toolbars'.
- Check 'Language Bar' in the list.
If there is no 'Language Bar' option in the Toolbar menu, try this:
- Go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Control Panel.
- Click 'Clock, Language, and Region'.
- Under 'Regional and Language Options' click 'Change keyboards or other input methods'.
- Click the 'Change Keyboards...' button.
- Click the 'Language Bar' tab, and select the 'Docked in the taskbar' option.
Once the language bar is up on the taskbar, you can deal with your foreign-character-spitting keyboard with ease. Here's how, in a couple quick steps.
- Open the window that seems to be the source of your keyboard trouble.
- Click the language bar and select 'US'.
And you're done! With that, you'll be able to fix up your keyboard's linguistic confusion at the touch of a button, rather than having to restart the laptop every time that occurs. Happy typing!
</Glitch>
How To De-Stupidize Windows Vista
Anybody who's been a faithful XP user has known the agony of having had to 'upgrade' to Windows Vista. I can hear the pain and remorse in your screams as you wait twice as long for files to transfer to your jump drive. I can feel the removal of follicles from your head as you tear your hair and confirm that 'YES, YOU REALLY REALLY WANNA OPEN YOUR PROGRAM!'
Microsoft has presumably saved us from this crucible of kludgitude by providing Windows 7. I've not tried the new operating system on a full-time basis yet, but those I've spoken with seem to confirm that it is what Vista should have been.
But, for those poor unfortunate souls whose computers broke down during the Dark Years of Windows Software Development, I have three simple but effective steps for helping to fix your Vista experience. It won't take away all the headaches (some are just too deeply embedded to be truly fixable), but it'll ease the more annoying and persistent problems.
User Account Control
The first is something I firmly believe every Vista user should do. Whenever you go to install a program, open a program on a disc, modify any system settings, or do something any more advanced than opening your browser to microsoft.com, Vista will pop up with a gloomy darkening of the screen and a dialog. This dialog will utter something to the effect of "This might be bad stuff. Are you really really sure you wanna do this?" And 99.9% of the time, you will sigh and say, 'yeeees...' This schoolmarmesque hand-holding is called User Account Control. Disable it at all costs. Here's how:
- Make sure your account is set up as an Administrator account. If it's the only account on your computer, it probably already is. Go to Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Control Panel.
- Click User Accounts and Family Safety.
- Click User Accounts.
- Click Turn User Account Control On Or Off.
- Uncheck the box and click Okay. Vista will probably tell you you need to restart. Let it.
- Enjoy a nag-free Vista!
Data Execution Prevention
The second little tip is probably only necessary if you're trying to run old XP programs and games on your Vista machine. It is a little bit more risky than turning off User Account Control, so make extra-special-sure you have a good antivirus program on your computer before you attempts this. I use Norton Antivirus, myself, and have never had a problem with it. This second tweak is the disabling of Vista's Data Execution Prevention. As if asking us if we're really sure isn't enough, sometimes Vista's DEP will block a program anyway, because it gets the funny idea that it is unsafe. Once again, I've experienced this most commonly when trying to run older software from CD. Here are the steps to get rid of it:
- Make sure your account is set up as an Administrator account. If it's the only account on your computer, it probably already is. Go to Start, right-click on Computer, and click Properties.
- Go to the Advanced tab.
- Under Performance, click the Settings button.
- Click on the Data Execution Prevention tab.
- Select 'Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only' and click OK. Vista will probably tell you you need to restart. Let it.
- Insert your disc, install your game, and run it, too! Oh, the novelty!!
Windows Updater
Tip Number Three may or may not be a problem for you. Windows will sometimes bug and annoy you with updates to your computer. Most of the time, this is because you have the option enabled that Vista should tell you everything about the updates it wants to do. This isn't strictly necessary, so I'll show you how to tell Vista to figure it out for itself.
- Make sure your account is set up as an Administrator account. If it's the only account on your computer, it probably already is. Go to Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Control Panel.
- Click on System and Maintenance.
- Underneath Windows Update, click on 'Turn automatic updating on or off'.
- Under the Important Updates heading, click the drop down box, and select either 'install updates automatically' or 'never check for updates'. The first is alright if you have a good Net connection, but it will probably still bug you to restart your computer every so often. The latter is better if you're on a slow connection and don't want it bogged down. Vista will probably complain at you from the taskbar.
- Enjoy a little less hounding.
I hope this helps a little in making your Vista computer feel a little less like the Gestapo. Take heart! In five or six years, Windows Vista will be but an unhappy memory chewing at the corners of our remembrance.