PC Support
© Brooke Clarke 2000 - 2007
When things go wrong and you call the support desk for your PC these
are some of the things they will tell you:
Reboot Your Computer
Often this is all that's required to get something up and
running and is the first thing to try.
Safe Mode
Often just bringing the computer up in Safe Mode then
restarting will solve problems. To do this:
- Either restart or power up the PC and press F8 many times
until the selection menu appears
- select Safe Mode
If the computer goes past this too quickly:
- install a NON system floppy and power up the PC
- When the PC asks for a system disk, remove the floppy and
press Enter
- select Safe Mode
In safe mode all the start up programs are not run and on my laptop the
mouse does not work, only the touch pad.
For a simple fix just wait for the disk drive to stop working and
restart.
Nov 8 2008 - Had trouble installing a new in the box version of Adobe
Photoshop 7. One of the suggestions was to copy the Photoshop
folder from the CD onto the C: drive and run setup.exe from
there. Also to do that in Safe Mode. But I could not get
into safe mode using the F8 key.
Another way to get into Safe Mode is to modify the Boot.ini file by
adding copying the line under [Operating System], adding a suffix and
changing the displayed name.
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Safe
Mode" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn/safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog
Now after the BIOS runs and before WIN starts there is a black and
white DOS type screen where you can use the up/dn arrow keys to select
the Op Sys.
Still another way to get into Safe Mode is to edit msconfig to use Safe
Mode Boot. This will work independent of your keyboard, BUT you
can not do much there because the keyboard will not work.
Newer computers have USB support in the BIOS, but this computer does not. I'll look into a BIOS upgrade.
Uninstall & Reinstall Software
If you have the source software (and you also may need the
operating system CD) you can:
- START
- SETTINGS
- CONTROL PANEL
- Add/Remove Programs
- Select the software from the list and click Add/Remove
You should restart your computer after this to clean up the registry.
WIN98SE Reinstall
My CD-ROM was not working for audio/video applications
and
the gifs on web pages were smearing. The tests in
MyComputer/Properties/DeviceManager for the video display passed.
Both of these problems were fixed by reinstalling
WIN98SE simply by installing the CD and doing a fresh install.
Bonus fro the WIN98 reinstall. My monitor power save mode stopped
a
long time ago and no matter what setings I used it would not go into
power
saver mode. But after the reinstall of WIN98 it's working again.
But
some gifs are still smearing.
System Resources
Just after powering up (or restarting) your computer
(before
you run any programs), check your system resources:
- <right click>My Computer
- select properties from the list
- click the performance tab at the top
- read the system resources percentage
85% or more is excellent
less than 80% may cause you problems
To improve this see MSCONFIG - Startup below
MSCONFIG - Startup
Task Manager
When you press
<Control><Alternate><Delete> the task manager window
will open showing you all the currently running tasks.
You can delete all except Explorer and Systray (for a
WIN98 operating system).
If you look at the task manager just after booting (and cleaning up the
Startup system) you should only see those tasks you enabled.
Note that when you run any applications they may launch more tasks and
many not close them when the application closes.
I notice that when my browser launches Adobe Acrobat and I later have
closed the pdf document, Acrobat is still a running task.
I can select in in the task manager and "end task" to shut it down.
Device Manager
If you are having a problem with some device, either inside
your computer or external to the computer DEvice Manager will be of
help in determining the problem.
- Get into Safe Mode
- <right click>My Computer
- select properties from the list
- select the Device Manager tab on the top
- There are many folders with a "+" to the left of each,
open each one in turn and look for a "?" or "!" in yellow or
"unknown..something" - If you find and of the above problems:
- click once to highlight the item
- click Remove
- If you are having a problem with something like the modem
- open the modem folder and remove all of the listed items
Once this is done restart your computer and during the boot process the
computer will add the software back for each of the items.
Sometimes you may need to supply the wizard with a CD or floppy, but
usually the PC can find the existing drivers.
You can also select an item and look at it's properties to see if
the PC thinks it's working properly.
Device Drivers
There are programs called drivers that the PC needs for
each
piece of hardware, both inside the PC and on the outside.
Frequently the manufacturer has newer drivers than what you get when
you open the box that your new device came in.
It's a very good idea to go to the manufacturer's web site and compare
the revision number of your driver with the one on their web page and
update
if there is a newer version.
Netscape Tips
- 16 bit color maximum
- keep the Messinger inbox empty or only with a small amount of
stuff in it
- don't use the smart update, instead use the fpt site:
ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/english/
Problem: Composer forgets the URL if a Publish (up load) is canceled.
Solution to this and probably many other Netscape problems:
I recommend that you delete this profile's cache,
cookies,
and history.
1) Close Netscape
2) Open C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users
3) Open the profile folder that is having the problem
4) Delete the Cache folder, cookies.txt, and netscape.hst
5) Close the window and restart Netscape
If problem still persists
Use the User Profile Manager under Start - Programs - Netscape
Communicator - Utilities to create a new profile. The new profile will
have it's own
set of data such as bookmarks and email settings. Creating a new
profile may resolve many issues encountered with Netscape.
Windows 98 Default File Dialog Sort Order
For reasons that are a mystery (maybe related to forced
shut
downs) the default file dialog sort order may change from the standard
name
order to some other order like in my case date order. It's a real
PITA
(Pain In The ...) when this happens.
The fix is:
Right-click START, click Explore, and then click drive
C.
On the View menu, click Details.
Click the Name column to sort items by name, press and hold down
the CTRL key, and then quit Explorer by clicking Close in the
upper-right corner of the screen (Do not use any other method of
closing.). Release the CTRL key.
Restart your computer.
Note that this method might be able to be used to change the
default order to other sore orders?
Defrag
I have seen computers that were never defragmented for many
years and the complaint was that the computer was very slow.
Others have said
that you should defrag once a week. Maybe once every month or
two,
but it probably depends on how much disk access you are doing.
It turns out that some of the tasks shown on in the system tray
next to the clock are not easy to shut down and bring back. If
you have
any task running that writes to the disk it will either slow defrag way
down or stop it. Therefore when I run
Start\Programs\Accessories\System
Tools\Disk Defragmentor I put my computer into Safe Mode (see
above)
first.
I've have a lot of grief with defraging my desktop computer.
Probably because the Starband software is constantly talking to the
disk. A way around the problem is to defrag the backup D: drive
and copy that using Symantec/Norton Ghost back to the C: drive.
This works well. Note that Ghost (DOS version anyway) does NOT
copy the entire drive, only where there is data, and compacts out any
unused sectors so the time for Ghost to copy a drive depends on the
amount of data on the drive, NOT on the capacity of the drive.
Windows\Temp
Many programs use this folder to store data that is
required for their operation. Most never delete the file when
they are done. Once the Temp folder has a lot of garbage in it,
it can slow down or crash some applications. Every now and then
you need to erase everything in this folder.
I made a new folder called Temp_DL that I only use when downloading
large files that I may want to keep.
Static & Chairs
The Plastic wheels on an office chair
rolling on a Plastic carpet mat generate a lot of static
electricity. A simple fix is to place plywood over the plastic
mat, but low cost plywood will chip and splinter, mine lasted a little
over a year and was messy. I'm now trying 3/4" Oak surfaced
plywood. It has a much smoother and harder surface and should
last longer.
Adobe Acrobat Standard Causes Windows XP to Freeze at Windows Boot
It took a few days of effort to
determine the Acrobat 5 was causing my computer to freeze during the
boot process for Windows XP Home. This was discovered by many
boot attempts both from Safe (admin) mode after a freeze and from
normal windows XP. After using Add/Remove programs you need
to manually delete a number of file folders and their contents.
Then running Norton One Button cleans the Registry of a dozen or so
left over entries. Adobe 7.0 Standard does work in Win XP.
It's too bad they neglect to post this fact on their web pages.
Backup WIN XP
WIN XP does not allow two drives on the
same computer both with a bootable operating system. This
means you can not make a clone of your C: drive as a backup using WIN
XP.
You could do this in WIN 98 and earlier versions. If WIN XP sees
another WIN XP op system it will trash one or both hard drives. I
suppose this is aimed at stopping illegal copying of the OS, but it
also is a PITA as far as backups go.
The procedure is:
- Before powering down:
- Install a bootable CD with DOS and Norton Ghost
- Install a bootable Floppy disk with DOS and Norton Ghost
The reason for the two bootable DOS
disks is to be very sure that the computer will not boot into WIN XP
with two drives connected. To be sure about this you can power up
with just your normal C: drive and just the floppy then just the
CD. In both cases the computer should boot up into DOS. If
not you may need to change the BIOS to enable booting from either CD or
Floppy.
- With the computer off connect the second hard drive.
Most mother boards have two IDE hard
drive connectors and each of the IDE cables supports two drives for a
total of four drives. For the best speed is good to have the two
hard drives on different mother board connectors. The primary
drive should be at the end of the cable to act as a termination.
- At this point there should be disks in the CD and Floppy drives.
- Power on and boot into DOS and run Ghost to do a Disk to Disk
copy. Pay attention to which is the source and which is the destination
disk. That's easy if the two drives are different sizes.
For example cloning my three year old 160 GB C: drive to a new 500 GB
drive made it very clear which was the source drive. When Ghost
finished, do not exit, but instead power down and pull the C: drive as
a known good backup and install the new drive as the primary master
drive (C:).
This is very easy if disk drawers are used.
these are Star Tech.com drawers and are the best of the three different brands I've used.
The top cover is held by a spring latch so can be removed without any tools.
The drive mounts on a plate that has spring isolation from the frame protecting the drive from some abuse.
The power connector and the interface connector are on short cables NOT
mounted rigidly to the frame. This not only makes it easy to
install or remove a drive from the drawer but more importantly makes
for a more reliable connection. The prior drive drawers had a
rigid connection and the strain between the mounting screws and the
strain on the connector caused intermittent operation also known as
hard drive crashes or blue screen of death. It took a long time
and some expense to find the cause. Those drives went into the round
file.
The LEDs appear to all be on, but that's just a reflection of the
flash. If you look closely you can see the right power on green
LED is much brighter on the top drive. The top drive is active
(switch on) and the bottom drive is inactive (switch off).
WIN XP will start and find new hardware and so yo will need to
reboot. But once that's done your'e running on your new disk and
have the old C: in storage as a known good backup.
Backup Philosophy
The only way a backup makes sense to me
is if you use the backup immediately after making it as described in
the above paragraph. A friend was using RAID for a number of
years and one day he got a message saying there was a bad disk
drive. He could not recover his data using the computer and paid
thousands of dollars to have a service recover the data.
Schemes that make an image of your C: drive or a part of it may or may
not be able to be recovered when you need them. The only way to
be sure is to do it.
It took about one and a half hours to backup 120 GB. The starting
rate was around 1.8 GB/min and the ending rate around 1.3 GB/min.
Computer Rings like a Telephone
Symptom
May 2008 - at random times it sounds like a telephone is ringing and
the sound is ooming from the computer speakers. The volume
control changes the sound volume.
Solution
A week or two ago I connected the computer to my phone line in order to
use the computer for faxes, but could not get it to work. At the
time the house phone line was plugged into the back of the tower stand
(sitting on the floor) it was done by feel. Today as part of
organizing my office with shelving and boxes
I can now see the back of the computer (bookcase removed) and the house
line is plugged into the "PHONE" jack not the "LINE" jack.
If your computer is making ringing sounds check to see if you have a house phone line plugged into the PHONE jack.
If so move it to the LINE jack. |
Noisy Fan on Motherboard
Stopped the fan with my finger then a
quick squirt of Kroil from the spray can puts a blob of foam between
the fan and body. When the fan starts up it sucks in the oil and
shortly thereafter is running smoothly. The Kroil shown on the
flashlights
page is the liquid form but they also make the spray can. I used
Kroil because it's a very good penetrating lubricant whereas WD-40 is a
water displacement formula, not a lubricant.
Dust
While fixing the fan on the Chipset IC
the flashlight showed a lot of dust on the CPU fins behind the CPU
fan. So the next thing is to power down the computer and use Dust
Off to clean the CPU fins.
CD-ROM Burning locks Computer
Jun 2008 - when trying to burn a CD-ROM the computer would lock a few seconds after the burn starts.
The problem was the secondary cable from the mother board connection to
the backup slave hard drive drawer, but with the key in the off
position. This may add some parasitics or cause some other
problem with the CD/DVD burner that's the primary device on this
cable. Unplugging the cable from the drawer solved the problem.
Adobe Photoshop 7 and Acrobat 9
November 2008 - I got a new in the box
Photoshop 7.0 for a reasonable price since in October the offer to
upgrade PS7 to the latest version had expired.
Photoshop 7 Fails to Install WIN XP SP3
In order to get into Safe Mode I needed to remove my USB keyboard and
mouse and replace them with the PS2 interface versions. Note: to get
into Safe Mode you can:
1) press F8 just at the end of the BIOS, but this only works with a PS2
keyboard on older computers and only if it's pressed at the exact
correct momment.
2) Modify the Boot.ini file to include a second operating system,
namely Safe Mode, but this only works if the up/down keyboard keys are
operational.
3) Modify msconfig for Safe Mode boot. This does allow getting into
Safe Mode and there you can run Photoshop 7 setup.exe from the C:
drive, but you can NOT fill in the serial number with a USB keyboard.
Once the PS2 inputs were in place the install worked fine.
When
PS7 was run the first time it suggested that the scratch file for PS
should be on a separate drive from Windows cache, so that's on the list
of things to do.
(I haven't done that yet, but have seen severe delays when opening file
dialog boxes whre Photoshop is associated with any files in the
box. Those delays have been mitigated by removing the file
associations and doing it manually using "Open With".)
There may be a difference between running in
my normal mode where I'm the only user AND have administrator
privileges and running in Safe Mode.
(I later tried settingup a new user "ProgInst" that has administrator prividledges, but failed to install.)
PS7 WIN XP Could Not Save <file> because of Program Error
PS7 can NOT "save as..." a .jpg file! .jpg should not be listed in the "save as" drop down box.
PS7 can "save for web..." a .jpg file!
(There are a number of predefined options, just as High jpg, Medium jpg
and Low jpg. When you use these you do not change any of
the parameters or the name changes.
When the Image size tab is clicked you can resize the image to some
number of pixels (so far haven't found an inch option). This
works very well producing a very nice image and with a file size that
small.)
PS7.0.1 Could not open <file> because it is not the right kind of
Photoshop will not open some pdf documents (may have to do with resolutiojn and/or color map).
In Acrobat 9 under File Export there is an option for images in a
number of different formats. This allows PS7 to open the pdf page
as an image.
Still haven't figured out if it's best to use JPEG, JPEG:2000, PNG or TIFF.
Photoshop 7 can not open .bmp files
That file was missing from the folder at:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Plug-Ins\Adobe Photoshop Only\File Formats
so
PS7 could not work with .bmp files. The reason it was missing was an
earlier version had a security bug. Adobe came out with a new version
the top of the page looks like:
---------------------------
Photoshop CS2, Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements 5 updates to address security vulnerabilities
Release date: July 10, 2007
Vulnerability identifier: APSB07-13
CVE number: CVE-2007-2244, CVE-2007-2365
Platform: All Platforms
Affected software versions: Photoshop CS2, Photoshop CS3, and Photoshop Elements 5.0
----------------------
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb07-13.html
------------------------------
I downloaded the patch zip file for Photoshop Elements 5.0:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/security/bulletins/apsb07-13/win/ps_security_update.zip
----------------------
and after unziping it moved BMP.8BI into the File Formats folder and it seems to work fine in PS7.
ATI All-In_Wonder 9800 Pro Video System
This system has been tempermental and now the video input that I was using for my Sky Weather Astronomy Webcam has quit working.
It may be because of WIN XP SP3. But this computer is not that
old and it cost almost $500. I'm in the process of seeing what
can be done.
RAM
When I got this computer it had a
single SIMM module with 512 MB. I've since replaced it with four
modules each having 1 GB for a total of 4 GB.
BIOS
After the problem with installing
Photoshop 7 (see above) I upgraded the BIOS for this Abit IS7 mother
board to the latest "10" version, but still it has not support for USB
devices like all the new computers. Maybe it's time for a new
mother board and video system?
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This is very easy if disk drawers are used.