Why Should You Have More Than One Computer Like I Do.?

The answer is not as simple as “so that when one computer breaks down, there is another to use”.

As for me. It is more to security reason. Let me ask you a question, if you do online, can you be sure that your computer and data are 100% save from virus, hackers or information thieves? If your answer is yes, because you have the best and most update antivirus, anti-spy and all sorts of softwares running in your computer. Well, think carefully, isn’t that new virus exists first before antivirus company build the data base file to cure it. It is like the H1N1 virus currently out break over the glove. Have you heard of big firms’ computer system hacked by hacker and do you think they did not use antivirus or anti-spy softwares? Consider the online risks, it is save to to spare a computer that never online for your company’s or your own top secrets.

When online, you need to use important passwords to access your important membership, payments involving money line involving your bank account, credit cards, Paypal, Alertpay and many others. There is a need to spare another computer for this purpose, and remain this computer free from important data and remain off line immediately after transaction.

Lastly, spare another computer that has no important, private or secret data and never used this computer to access important password to the internet. This computer is for you and your family to surf the internet as long as you like. Online data thieves will find nothing valueable to steal. What ever virus and hacker do on this computer only cost you minutes to format your hardisk.

Now, do you realize the need to have more than one computer like I do?

Story OF A Harddisk That Lasted For More Than 20 Years.

This is a true story that I personally experienced. The 20 megabytes harddisk that came along with my first computer lasted for more than 20 years. Amazing, Isn’t that?

Well, it was 1992, I bought a second-hand 286 computer from my colleague for RM1500. By That time, 386 computers were in the market already as I knew many of my colleagues were buying 386 by that time, and the price was around RM3500. At that time, I had little knowledge about computer. I bought the computers because many of my colleagues were buying computer as Basic Programming Program was popular. Since we learnt only basic computer applications in college, we would compete with each other to excel in computer. So, in the end, everybody bought a computer and used his talent to create all sort of programs to show off to each other. That was a very good experience, especially when any one of us created some things ‘new and interesting’, we would meet and ‘party’ about it as we were not selfish, we shared every ‘great work’ created.

In those days, a harddisk was very expansive. It was around RM700. I upgraded my system to 386, later to 486 using MS WINDOWS 3.11, but still using that harddisk. I cannot remember the brand of the hard disk, but I think it was Seagate. It was as big and as thick as a CD ROM drive. Much Thicker and heavier than a Quantum Bigfoot harddisk. I had never measure its weight but I think It was 1-2 kilogramme. It had a red LED that lights and sound that ‘bipping’ when reading and writing. It was very slow of course. It was manufactured in 1980 and I gave it away to a secondary school boy together with the harddisk built in a 486 complete system in 2001 and I never knew about it now . The boy loved computer very much so I gifted it to him when I left the place of work after 4 years of working there. Ay that time I was using Pentium 233MHz Notebook on MS WINDOWS 98. After leaving the place of work hundreds of miles away from my home town for many years, It only remains in my memory and now I share it with everyone.

TIP: Take good care of your harddisk, so that it can serve you longer.

How To Diagnose Your Computer Problem Yourself ?

Strictly, please read the IMPORTANT NOTE AND WARNING at the bottom of the post first.

Step I) Power On Your Computer-Press the Power On Button Switch
Before doing that make sure to check all sockets and cables are connected firmly and correctly. By switching on the computer you can check the power supply unit.

STEP II) Check The Power Supply Unit(Tranformer)
If you switch on your computer by pressing the power on button, the first thing you noticed is the LED light on the top right corner of your keyboard that lights up or blinks for fraction of a second indicates that electric current is passing through the mainboard as your keyboard is connected basically directly to the mainboard. In another word the power supply unit is at lease some what working. You can counter check by putting your hand few inches behind the power supply unit at the casing to feel the air blowing out by the cooling fan inside the power supply unit. In fact, you can hear the cooling fan’s spinning sound too.

Step III) Observe The Hard Disk LED ON Your CPU
Look at the other LED lights on your CPU, especially the harddisk LED. The activity of the harddisk is indicated by the harddisk LED. When harddisk is in activity, the harddisk LED lights. By looking at the harddisk LED you know if your computer is loading Operating System(OS) like MS WINDOWS at startup or not. You can tell by looking at the nature of the hard disk activities indicated by the harddisk LED if the OS is running even if there is no display at the monitor/screen.

Step IV) See If There Is Anything displayed on the Computer Screen/ Monitor.
Make Sure that Step I and II above shows positive results, which means electrical power reaches your computer mainboard. Ensure Your monitor is powered on and connected firmly and correctly to your CPU.

Case I: Nothing displayed on the screen/monitor
Posibility 1: Random Access Memory (RAM) chip module out of contact. This is common to above 2 years old’s computer. Your Computer not even will run without memory. So in this case, there is no harddisk activity as said in Step III too. Solution: Take out and clean the RAM chip module and insert back firmly to its slot socket. When finished, Try power on your computer again.

Posibility 2: Processor burnt or or mainboard problem. At this point, if your power supply is good and RAM chip module in firm contact, but your computer just does not initialize, not even the processor cooling fan is spinning, it is possible that either your mainboard or processor (or both-less likely both) might be bad. For home user, if you have only one computer of this kind at home, you have no other mainboard of same kind to test out the processor or the other way round; may be you have no choice oter than to send your computer to a service centre.

Posibility 3: Problem with display units(including monitor, cables, display card(if any) and display output port/socket). In this case, your CPU as well as the harddisk activities are running normally. The computer loads fully but only it could not be displayed. At this point, you still can turn off your computer by typing on the keyboard. Solution: Check the signal cable’s pins are straight and reinsert your display card(if any) firmly. Replace your display card if it is bad/burnt. Then, Try power on your computer again. If you used the ‘Display only on LCD Projector Mode’ before your last shutdown, connect back and power up your LCD Projector or TV to see anything display on the LCD Projector or TV.

Case II: Yes, some things/scripts displayed on the screen/monitor
Possibility 1: It displays the normal loading process of the OS, but stuck half way, never finish loading. This is cause by incomplete or missing system files in the OS which may be caused by virus or malware/software that crushes or even memory crush while loading files at start up. Solution: use ‘save mode’ to log in (Press ‘F8’ key for MS WINDOWS after the automatic memory scan by the system at the very beginning of the start up, and select ‘use save mode only’) and restore your computer to earlier time. Delete and stop install the suspicious software that resulted the crush. If this still fails, there is no choice you have to insert OS CD like MS WINDOWS setup CD into the CD ROM drive, restarting your computer to reinstall your OS.

Possibility 2: Error message appeared telling you the cause and what to do(details and helps). The most common one are

i) ‘Hard disk failure’ or ‘None system disk’ which tell you to check your hard disk.
ii) ‘CPU Clock Mismatch’ or ‘CMOS Check Sum Error’ and you can press a key to continue or go to BIOS setup. This is cause by CMOS button cell battery flats or failures; hence, the BIOS chip lost memory on information about your hardware to start up. Solution: Follow the instruction to press a key to continue start up or setup your computers BIOS manually. TIP: Power on your computer at lease 15 minutes per week to prevent battery flat. Change the battery if necessary.

iii) Other error messages, like ‘system halted to protect your computer’. Solution: This is consider as stuck or crush, so refer to the earlier step above.

IMPORTANT NOTE AND WARNING: All risks are at your own if you try the above method. Open computer casing risking electrical shock hazards and computer parts warranty void.

Dad, When Are You Going To Change Our Computer?

Well, the title above actually tells stories about itself. What ever the storie are, the truth is the child dislike the current computer and demands for a new set while the ‘health’ of the current computer is not mentioned in the title. May be the computer was bought during the previous Christmas Day, not the recent Christmas Day few days ago. Just because their neighbours just bought a new computer set, the child also hopes to have a new one. The next part of the story is, many parents would buy a new one to please their children and he himself of course, especially when the price of computer is very affordable nowadays. Most likely, the new computer they buy does not bring extra benefit functionally to the family as they only use computer for word processing, spread sheet and data base, as well as occasionally for learning, online and playing games. For high income group families, buying new computer is just fraction of their income. Spending fraction of money to buy a computer is worth with their psychological satisfaction. If they can give away their slightly old computer away or dispose it off properly, it is not an issue. For low income group family, there is no issue also, as the parents are practically having to struggle very hard to feed their stomachs first rather than buying computer. Don’t you agree?

For the medium income group, those who buy would not be that happy as they have used up half a month’s salary or two to three months saving for that new computer which they would find out of no additional functional difference at least to them.

Tip: I believe, a simple rule, that is as far as your computer runs steadilyy and capable of compute your task smoothly; you do not need to change your computer to a new one. Computer technology evolves very fast. To me, it is always wise to spare the money to buy new computer now to a later date where I really should buy in the future. By that time, with this same amount of money, I can buy the latest computer at that time. By doing so, I help to reduce computer waste charged to the environment also, and I feel very happy. When I know that my computer is getting older, I remind myself to back up my data more frequently. That’s it. Nothing make me so difficult. As to my child, I buy him or her ice-cream or toys instead of the new computer.

Wait, Do You Format Your Hard Disk When your Computer Is Infected or Attacked By Virus?

What should you do when your computer is infected or attacked by virus? I think every body has the experience of computer infected or even attacked by virus. When you scan your computer with antivirus software or some time your antivirus software scans viruses itself automatically at the background, it gives you an alert of ‘virus found’ and prompt for your further action. Then, you have the choice to delete the virus file. In this case, your computer is said to be just infected by virus and as seemed there is no sign of attacking your computer. After scanning and removal of the virus with a reliable and updated antivirus software and back up your data to external storage device like USB drive or CD, you can consider the problem is solved. At this point, you seriously have to back up your data as new virus created before any body including antivirus company knows it. You also have to revise your computer’s antivirus software reliability at this point as the fact that virus could penetrate your computer with your existing antivirus software.

There is time when your computer is attacked by virus and you no longer can launch your virus scan session nor install an antivirus software. Many people would backup their data and format their hard dish at this point especially when alternative of scan from external remote network or antivirus rescue dishes fails or unavailable. As for me, I would back up my data to external storage and try restoring my system to a much earlier time. After restore(s), most possibly I can launch an updated antivirus scan or install a new up to date antivirus software. Keep in mind that this restore alone will not remove the virus from your computer. It is just temporally and the virus will attack back immediately. So quickly updated your antivirus database file or install a new antivirus software and launch your antivirus software right away.

When come to formatting our hard disk to get rid of the virus inside, we might consider to clean the memory in our computers BIOS chip that remember our computer hardware data and controls the way our computer startup. The BIOS chip is capable of storing data which may include virus. But if you set your BIOS to unwritable mode, then you are safe as virus is unable to write itself into your BIOS. To clear the BIOS memory, just take out the button cell battery or the BIOS chip itself from your computer’s main board and put it back later. But again, this involves opening of the casing of your computer that you may need to consider the electrical shock hazard and the warranty term that do not allow you to open the computer casing. This method of removing the memory of BIOS removes every thing including the password to access your BIOS set up leaving behind the manufacturer’s ROM default setting. When you forget your BIOS password, this is a solution for it.

What Is All-About-Computer-DIY About?

Welcome to All About Computer DIY. I am Lee, a former computer technician. In this blog, you can discuss, share and ask about all things about computer ranging from buying a computer to dealing with computer maintenance, problems, security, stories about computer and any other issues. Any visitor or I myself may answer your question about computer including how to fix your computer problems and so on. I would not charge you anything and would not service your computer online or offline but you get our tips and DIY. Why not let us or me help you over this blog to decide what to do with your computer problems whether you can fix it yourself before you send your computer to a computer service workshop.

I had owned computer since 1992 and I had owned AT, XT, 286, 386SS, 386DX, 486, AMD, Celeron, Pentium 133MHz, Pentium 200MHz, Notebook Pentium 233MHz, Psion Palm-Top, AMD K6 500MHz, Pentium II, Pentium 3, Celeron 1200 MHz and currently using Centrino Duo Core Notebook and ATOM 800 MHz Netbook. Over these years, I had never sent my computer to any workshop because not only I can diagnose all and fix them all, I can also build most computer system. I never buy new desktop computer for personal use in my life. I only built or upgrade my old computer system by obtaining components from cheap source like traded in used components left over or traded in by my customers, local computer service workshops or from friends. You might say my computer might be quite old. Yes, I admit, but as far budget is concern,my tip is saving up your money for other purposes like children’s education is always wise. More tips and stories in my coming post from time to time, so check out my blog from time to time. Thank you for visiting my blog.