Click Here to see our Forums

I feel the best way to explain how things work is to relate it to filing cabinet. First it will define a few terms I will be using throughout this lesson.

Hard Drive – A physical piece of hardware inside your computer.

Partitions – This is your C:\ Drive. If you have other Hard Drives installed you may see additional letters like D:\ or E:\.

Folders & Files – Just like a paper filing system, we keep Files in Folders for organization.

If we directly compare a computer storage system to a paper storage system it would go like this;

My Computer = The room that holds the filing cabinet

Hard Drive = Entire filing cabinet

Partition = Each drawer of the filing cabinet

Folder = The container in which you store your files

Files = The paper files with relevant information printed on it

Lets say we wanted to access a photo stored on our computer. We will assume that the photo is stored in “My Pictures” as they usually are. In this case, Windows has already provided easy links directly to My Pictures but we are going to do it manually so you see how this all really works.

Open My Computer, here you see the partitions listed. Double click on C:\ to view the folders within the partition.

More to come, ran outta time to write more

Time for a refresh and new content.

Stick around for more, Contact Us if you require assistance.

*Edit – All content saved, phew! So I didn’t lose as much as I had thought.

Open Internet Explorer and click on tools then internet options.

Click on the ‘Advanced’ tab then on the reset button.

Unless things are really messed up and you tried this already, leave ‘Delete personal settings’ unchecked.
[warning]Checking ‘Delete Personal Settings’ will erase all user names and passwords you have saved. [/warning]

Click close and restart Internet Explorer. Your problems should be resolved.

RAM – does your system have enough? It did when you bought it, but as programs get updated and installed they use more and more RAM each time. It is quite possible you have reached your limit on ram, this is how to find out.
Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to bring up the task manager. Click on the Performace tab at the top of the window.

How much free RAM do you have?

The area in the red box is what we are interested in. If you are running Windows Vista or 7 please skip to the next section as the steps are a little different.

The Total and Available memory is what we need to look at. Drop the last three digits and that is how much ram you have installed (total) and free (available.) So in my example we have 523mb or RAM installed and 386mb ram available. You should always have well over 100mb RAM available, if you don’t it’s time to install more.

For Vista/7 users it’s one more click but the information is laid out much better. Press Crtl + Alt + Delete and choose Task Manager. Click on the performance tab at the top then  Next click on Resource Monitor.

Vista / 7

Performance Monitor Vista / 7

Look in the red box area for all vital information. You still want to have a few hundred MB available/free. If you don’t, time to upgrade!

Assuming you have lots of RAM free let move on to virus checking.

Continued on next page… 

The first step is to plug your USB drive into ANY USB port on your computer or laptop. If autorun is enabled a small window should pop up asking what you would like to do. There could be different options here but lets just look at the “open folder to view files” option. Click it and it will take you to the content on your USB drive (which if new is probably blank/empty.)

If you did not get a pop up window, don’t worry, simply click on the Start menu then click on “My Computer.” Look for a new drive letter. (Pictured below) Double click it and you should now have a window open showing the files (if any) on the drive.

In my setup it shows as M: but it could be any letter.

Now you know how to access the USB drive to paste your files onto it.

Next we need to copy those files to the drive.

Do exactly as we did above but now instead of selecting the USB drive, select the place where you files are located. For example, if you wanted to move some pictures you would click on the my pictures folder and select the photos you want transfer. Copy or cut those files and choose the USB drive again. Paste those files and you are done!

Special Keys

Ctrl + A – Selects all items in active window.
Ctrl + P – Shows print menu.
Ctrl + S – Shows save menu.
Ctrl + Y – Redo last action.
Ctrl + Z – Undo last action.
Ctrl + C – Copy selected file/text.
Ctrl + X – Cut selected file/text.
Ctrl + V – Paste copied or cut file/text.

Alt + F4 – Quit current application.
Alt + Tab – Switch between open applications.

F1 key – Gives help on the active window or selected item.
F2 key – Rename the selected item
F3 key – Search for a file or a folder

Win Key + D – Show desktop.
Win Key + M – Minimize all windows.
Win Key + R – Opens run dialog box.

Tab – Move forward through options/fields.
Tab + Shift - Move backward through options/fields.

Highlight your text or file(s) that you wish to Copy or Cut, right click with your mouse and select either Copy or Cut.

Browse to the destination, right click with the mouse and select Paste. Wait of the operation to complete.

Copy – Make a duplicate of the file. Two copies of the file will remain.
Cut – Will move the file. Only one copy of the file will remain.

OpenOffice is a good start. It’s free so what do you have to lose?

http://download.openoffice.org/

If this doesn’t work you will have to dig a little deeper to try to solve the problem. Step 1 is to find out what file type or extension we are dealing with.

Right click the file you are trying to open, select properties. Look for a field that says File Type or Type of File. At the end of that it will show you something like avi, xls, doc, wps etc. If you don’t know what program you need to open this type, use Google to find it. Simply go to www.google.ca and type, without quotes, “open wps files” then read a few of the results for your answer. Replace wps with whatever file type it is.

We try to prevent the spread on the internet much like we do in the real world, antivirus software is like the flu vaccine. The vaccine works by showing the body what the virus or viruses look like so they can block the bug from spreading and infecting other sites of the body. The same theory applies to computer viruses, the vaccine is your signatures/definitions. These are updated at least daily and really what you are paying for when you subscribe.

The computer world has it a little tougher than the real world though. The major viruses being spread now a days are sold as a package on the black market and anyone with some cash can buy them. These kits have been designed by the real hackers to be easy to modify, which changes the signature or look of the virus, remember this is how antivirus programs detect most viruses. So instead of having 2 or 3 variants of one bug, we can have 1000′s of them created each and every day.

Most antivirus software also use some advanced tactics called heuristics. These basically look for patterns and familiar tactics viruses use to attack and spread, this is not perfect but it helps for those new and unknown bugs that are floating around on the web. This is also why some programs can be detected as “generic trojan/virus” we call this a false positive. It simply means a programs is behaving in a why that looks suspicious so the antivirus software flags it hoping the user can determine if it is true or not.

I hope this explains the situation for you and helps you to understand why such things can happen.