WizYo Tech Support
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PComputer Support
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Tech Support - All of the information provided here is free and there is
no registration required. On the left toolbar is an internal site search feature
that helps quickly access information located in the
blog
and
document archives. Most of the tools listed on this page are completely free to download and to use.
Please review the helpful suggestions listed down the right hand side of the
page.
-
Fun
-
PhotoFiltre is a great freeware picture editing utility
-
NoNags software and other free goodies
- Cheap
Personal Websites. (They require PayPal, but the starter package is a pretty good deal for a whole domain site.)
- Jarte is a Compact, FREE Word Processor and WordPad Replacement
- SUPER - If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file,
without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER © is all you need.
It is a Multimedia Encoder and a Multimedia Player, easy-to-use with 1 simple click.
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AntiVirus
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AVG Anti-Virus is
effective and easy to use. It automatically scans files and incoming
email. There are several versions available, but the Network Edition is
the most flexible and is designed to be compatible with workstations and
servers. AVG is very affordable. It is nearly half the
price of other antivirus packages and is good for 2 years
(instead of 1). Renewals are 50% of the purchase price.
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Home users may qualify for AVG
Home if they are a private, non-commercial, single home computer. Use of AVG
Home within any organization or for commercial purposes is
strictly prohibited. Please refer to the License
Agreement to confirm elegibility.
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You can scan
your computer for free using one of several online virus scanner
programs. If this one doesn't work for you, try searching Google
for "free
online virus scan"
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Having trouble with Pop-Up's?
- SpyBot
version 1.5 is the best program around for ridding a system of pop-up
advertisements (adware
and spyware).
Be sure to scan and reboot two or three times to make sure nothing
bad stays on your system. -Tutorial-
SpyBot's
HomePage
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Mozilla Firefox
is a great alternative to using Internet Explorer. It is much more
secure (IE isn't secure at all) and has lots of good options.
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The Google Toolbar eliminates
pop-up web page windows and is quite handy. (I once recommended this highly, but now recommend FireFox with the Google addon package.)
- Merijn.org
has the best tool for manual removal of spyware. Hijack
This! is great, but be careful. Beginners should read the
help docs and consult the user forums. If you can't get the
official copy, you can get an un-official one -here- This Tutorial has great information on using and obtaining the utility
- SPAM email getting you down?
- POPfile is a great program that was 99.8% accurate when I used it before switching to G-Mail (Google Mail)
- American Family
Association provides an email and internet filtering service for
a small yearly fee.
- Temp & Internet Files
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Cleanup!
is the best utility I've found to use for removing unwanted temporary files
from your system. When servicing a PC, I used to clear out these types
of files by hand while waiting on some other task to happen (installing
software .. waiting on a download to complete) After seeing this
program do all that I was doing and more with one click of a mouse, I
quickly added it to my tool kit. -- homepage
~ One word of caution before using this the first time, be careful on a new system. The author mentions performing a full system backup prior to using the program. You may not want to run this on a production server without customizing the program. By default all files starting with ~ (tilde) are selected for removal. This is still a great program (I use it several times a week on my personal system) but you may want to customize or review the settings before it wipes out a bunch of files.
- Microsoft
provides free updates for their software packages. The updates vary
in nature and could be associated with online security, improved program
performance and compatibility, or just some cute screen savers.
Either way, it's a good idea to check and see what updates
are available and then decide if you would like to apply them to
your products.
- Windows
Update is the key update website for keeping your Microsoft
Windows operating system
up to date. The previous instructions I had listed are no
longer available. Here are a few other pages for
reference:
London City University,
HP
or you can search for Windows Update instructions.
- Office
Update is where you can get 'fixes' for your Microsoft
Office products. If
you're having strange issues with Word, Excel or Outlook, apply all
the updates here before wasting a lot of time troubleshooting the
problem. ( Be sure to have your installation CD handy
during and even after you install these updates ! )
Disclaimer - The information contained on this page will fix lots of things
that could be wrong with your computer. The same information could also cause
your system to crash. As a technician, I have seen cases where a fix for
one system will not provide the same results on another system. Every
computer is different. I have provided this information to help relieve
some of the frustration from the garbage that breaks one of our most expensive
toys, a personal computer. I assume no responsibility for any damage that
may or may not be caused by these recommendations (or by you not following the
directions correctly). These tools do work and have worked for me just
fine. Thank you and good luck! - Tech Support -
Warning: date() [
function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Chicago' for 'CDT/-5.0/DST' instead in
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11
Warning: date() [
function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Chicago' for 'CDT/-5.0/DST' instead in
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Tuesday
October 29, 2024
Technical
(
Tech
)
advice
Quick & Dirty
Clean your computer. It gets dirty and needs to be cleaned. Yes, inside too, but I'm talking about all that crud from advertisements and playing online.
Delete the temp files. Manually update your antivirus and adware scanner software. Scan for adware and viruses. If anything is found, clean it and scan again. Continue scanning until nothing bad is found.
Manually apply any critical Windows updates. Repeat updating and rebooting until all are applied.
Repeat in a few months or as soon as you notice anything out of the ordinary. That's about it. Get this stuff done and your computer will whistle while it works ! :) .. well, maybe you'll whistle .. or i'm sure something somewhere will make some noise :)
protecting your data is much easier (and cheaper) than
recreating it
Backups
-=[Data]=-
I often make the comment if you don't have a copy, it's not that important. This is a hard thing to say, but even harder to hear. Especially after data has been lost.
Back up your data! This point can not be stressed enough.
A back up is simply a safe copy. It doesn't matter if it's on floppy diskette or some complicated online service. Just make sure you have one. And make sure it works too ! Try pulling some data from it for testing to make sure you can get to the copies in the event something happens to the originals.
Keep in mind that every hard drive will crash given enough time.
-=[Power]=-
UPS (Battery backup)
units allow your computer to keep running during brief power outages. They can also have your computer shut down safely in the event of an extended power outage.
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