My 2¢ Worth

his weekend begins the Memorial Day holiday here in the United States and the unofficial beginning of summer.

emorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, however, it's difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day.

emorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states.

he South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May.

Feature Article

What’s That Noise Coming From My Computer?

by: John Dow Power Solutions CD

That’s usually how it starts. You hear an unfamiliar noise when you turn on your computer. Or, you may be working along and all of a sudden, your computer stops responding. Most people just ignore either one of these signs that something is amiss. They reboot or ignore the noise.

And therein lies the biggest problem. If the user immediately backs up all critical data when these events occur, replacing the component (there’s only a few components with moving parts on a computer - the power supply fan and the hard drive are the two major suspects when odd noises occur) is just time consuming. But if the user fails to heed these signs, then the real fun starts. Recovering data from a damaged drive is not for the faint at heart. Now if the drive is just corrupted, then there several ways to recover the data with software utilities. But our discussion today is about physically damaged hard drives.

The first question I usually ask on a service call (I run a computer service company) is do you have current backups of all your data? When they say no (about 75% of the time), the first thing I do is either instruct them on how to backup or if I’m onsite I do it for them. Once there is a verified backup of data, the rest is easy.

A qualified technician has about a 98% chance of retrieving data from a hard drive if there is no physical damage. A normal user with some help (info, tools, or both) has about a 90% chance. But depending on the situation, it can be very frustrating and time consuming. However, if there is physical damage, forget it. Unless the data is worth $1000’s, don’t bother since that’s what the bill could be to recover the data.

Soapbox on. Before I get into the troubleshooting aspects, let me impress upon you the importance of having current backups of all of your data. If you have current backups, no computer problem will cause you permanent damage. The best defense against computer failure of any kind is backing up your data on a frequent basis. The way I approach it is that if I’ve spent over an hour working on some project, I backup as soon as I finish. I’m lazy, I don’t like to do anything twice, so I backup often. OK, I’ll get off the Soapbox now.

Depending on what you do on your computer (and what you store there like photos, movies, financial data, etc.) backing up is the best way to protect yourself. There are so many easy ways to back up these days there is absolutely no excuse for not doing so often. USB memory sticks and drives, DVD and CD writers (although there has been a lot written lately about both of these media not being reliable for more than 2 years), even 1.44 disks can be used if you have the patience and individual files can fit.

My first choice is a USB drive since you can purchase a large drive for under $75 these days. Many come with one click software that makes backing up your data a snap. There are many ways to backup with incremental (to go back to a certain point in time) small backups daily and then a full backup weekly. But I digress since this article is about troubleshooting and not backing up data.

Back to the strange noise coming from your computer. Two items to check first, the power supply fan and the hard drive (there could be a third choice on the newer computers since most also have a fan on the processor chip). Both have bearings and spin at high speeds. You normally can determine if the noise is coming from one or the other. Replacing the power supply is not a big deal but can be laborious depending on your computer model and case design. If you’re not handy with a screw driver and understand a little basic structure of positive and negative connections, take it to a local computer repair shop. It’s not difficult but it is easy to make the wrong connection and you can fry your motherboard and everything attached if something goes wrong.

So, you’ve checked the power supply fan and the noise is coming from somewhere else. There are several items inside the hard drive that can cause noise but I won’t bore you with the details. Just suffice to say once the noise starts it’s time for a replacement. Mean time failure these days is 3-5 years on most units. But remember that is based on some daily use value, so it can happen at any time.

The easiest way to replace the hard drive is to buy the exact model, which nobody does since the price point constantly goes down. So instead of a 20 gig drive (that you never filled up), you go for the 120 gig replacement drive. Along with the drive is a CD that has the installation routine for most computers. You have to open the case (make sure the computer is not only off but the power cord is disconnected from the back of the computer) and remove the old drive, carefully replacing the connections in the same manner as the old drive on the new drive. There are only two, one power and one that connects the drive to the motherboard.

Once you have the drive hooked up and the case back together you’re ready to use the installation CD from the drive manufacturer. If your computer bios is set to boot off the CD (which most are since many don’t even have a floppy drive any more) you boot up once and get an error (we need to have power to open the CD unit) and open the CD and place the hard drive installation CD in and close it. Now you reboot and the CD will usually boot up with a menu that allows you to configure the machine and often will ask you for your OS (normally WinXP) CD to start the installation. And therein lies the first possible snafu. You don’t have your WinXP installation CD since your computer came with WinXP on the hard drive.

Don’t worry, it’s a slow down but not an insurmountable problem. You now get to call or go to the website of your computer manufacturer and ask for a set of restore/install CDs. They normally will charge you 5-10 bucks for shipping but will gladly provide the CDs. Make sure you tell them your exact model of computer so you get all the correct video, sound card, and other drivers for your computer. This is very important!

Most computer manufacturers have this down to a science and the CDs have everything you need. You simply boot on the first CD and the restore/install process is fairly automated with you just answering a few questions. This entire process takes about 90 minutes and don’t forget that you need to install any applications that you installed after you bought the computer.

One very important detail you need to address is to make sure you install Virus Protection software. Make sure you install this before you even connect to the Internet. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a computer hit within seconds of coming online, and if you don’t have protection installed you get banged immediately. Also install any WinXP updates by going to the Microsoft website and clicking on Windows Update on the left side of the opening page. Let it do it’s magic and install all critical updates.

Now you can copy back all of your data to your new hard drive and now you are back up and running. Now for all of you that are reading this article and have not backed up your data, go do it right now. You’ll be very glad you did just in case disaster strikes.

**************

John Dow owns www.powersolutionscd.com, a website that specializes in computer troubleshooting, security, and repair utilities. His Power Solutions CD has helped thousands of customers protect their computer and data, by providing a collection of utilities and how to articles to fix and repair ANY hard drive or computer problem. Click here to learn more:
www.powersolutionscd.com

Custom text in the status bar of the browser

Display your own custom text in the browser window's status bar by adding the following JavaScript to your source code. This can be placed in either the <head> or <body> section of your page, however, I suggest putting it in the <body> as close to the bottom as possible for faster page load times.

Replace the text in red with your own custom message.

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">
<!-- ;//
function SB_MESS()
{ status="Your_Status_Bar_Message"
setTimeout('SB_MESS()',1); }SB_MESS();
// -->
</script>

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Second Article

Why do we Defrag the Hard Disk?

by: Stephen Orgill Panther Products

What is Defragging?

Defragging is process done to a hard disk in order to improve performance and recover some lost disk space. Defragging is an essential part of a PC's upkeep as it keeps all the data on your hard disk in an easily readable order. If a hard disk is left without defragging, then over time the disk will begin to lose performance and also slowly reduce the available capacity to data. As you will be aware if your hard disk is running slowly then this will affect the rest of the system performance, in all applications and especially in games, where frame rate is important.

How does Defragging improve performance?

When you defrag your hard disk you re-arrange the order in which the data is stored on the drive. The PC will arrange the data so that data that belongs together and needs to be read together is actually put in the same place on the drive. The obvious question here is why doesn't the PC store the data in the correct way in the first place? In an ideal situation (such as a blank disk) the PC would do these as a first option. However with the amount of data being deleted and wrote to the disk every second the PC is on it is no wonder that the data cannot be stored together.

Lets have a look at an example. Say you write 3 files to a disk all 10Mb in size the data would be all in a line each 10mb block after the other. This is how your PC would prefer to store the data for maximum performance. It stands to reason that this is how you would like it to be stored as well if you needed to search for the data. But now lets say that you decide to delete the middle file as its no longer any use to you. You now have a gap inbetween your files.

Lets say this time you write a file of 15mb in size. This file will be written in the first 10Mb of space and the remaining 5Mb added to the backend of the free space.As you can imagine with the millions of files being written to and deleted from the disk each day, not to mention the temporary files that windows uses on a frequent basis its not hard to imagine the state in which your hard disk can be in after months of use. After a defrag in this simple example your PC would re-arrange the disk to look as follows.

When files or indeed groups of files that belong together are stores next to each other the PC has a much easier time locating the data plus the disk heads don't have to travel to different parts of the disk to retrieve the data required. This of course speeds up the disks performance and so in turn increases overall system performance. There are of course levels of performance gains. It becomes more negligible as you move to faster hard disks with large memory buffers to compensate for file fragmentation however I would not ignore the problem of fragmentation, it doesn't take much effort to defrag your disk now and then.

How does defragging increase disk space?

Simply put defragging doesn't really create any free space on your hard disk. It may appear when you look at the graphics that defrag programs show you, that the disk looks like it has more space, but all you are doing is moving data about not removing any. Any disk space gain is negligible and is caused when the defrag program puts together half clusters of data. Clusters can hold a number of files, but if not filled the next file is started at the next cluster. If a file is broken into pieces around the disk and defrag can put the file back into a single cluster, or just save a cluster somewhere a small amount of space will be released.

Advanced Defragging

Some defragging software can go a little beyond just sorting your files so they are all together. Programs such as Norton Speed Disk can also sort your entire sets of files and programs into the order that they are used. For example it can be set so that your windows swap file is at the fastest part of the disk, followed by games and most used applications which also need the fastest part of the hard disk., Then documents etc and rarely used application can be put to the back of the disk., This gives the priority speed access to the applications that need it most. Again this may only be a small increase in performance but every little helps.

Software to use for Defragging

You will be pleased to know that Windows comes with an adequate defrag program which everyone can use. There are also some other pieces of software out there for a more specific use. Norton Speed disk is one option on the market which comes as part of Norton Utilities and Norton Systemworks. Doing a search on Defrag software on your favourite search engine will give you some options of free to use and pay for software.

**************

www.pantherproducts.co.uk/

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