1. the computer displays a disk error or non-system disk message?

A. You may have left a disk in the A drive. Remove it and press any key on the keyboard to reboot the computer.

B. If you don’t have a disk in the A drive and the message is accompanied by a "clunking" sound, turn the computer off and send for a technician.

2. the computer is completely dead?

Check all the connections, the cables between the CPU and the monitor and all the electrical cables. Check the wall socket or surge strip to see if they are bad (sometimes a surge strip will have good and bad outlets). If all connections are properly connected and there is still no power then you may have blown power supply or mother board.

3. the computer locks up and/or is acting weird?

a. If the computer is frozen and will not respond to any commands, it may be necessary to press Ctrl + Alt + Del (all three keys at the same time) to bring up the Task List. Select any program that says "Not responding" and click the End Task button. Repeat until all tasks are ended. If this does not work, turn the computer off, wait several seconds, turn the computer back on, and let the computer run the Scandisk.

b. Reboot it. A majority of problems that occur while you are using your computer can be fixed by rebooting. Applications sometimes don’t release memory like they should when they are finished. The end result is your computer locks up or acts really weird. When you reboot, memory registers are cleared and most everything is reset. This fixes a lot of problems.

4. What is the Blue Screen of Death?

The blue screen of death is a reference to when a computer flashes a blue screen and then shuts downs without warning.The term " Blue Screen of Death " refers to the blue screen that flashes just before your computer dies and reboots itself. In most cases, absolutely no warning is given.

5. What Causes the Blue Screen of Death Problem?

The Blue Screen of Death is caused when Windows encounters a critical system error and shuts itself down to prevent damage to your computer. When a blue screen happens, it is because somewhere in your computer, something has performed an illegal operation. The other potential cause of a Blue Screen problem is a fault with specific hardware such as a power supply malfunctioning, a component over heating or a conflicting interaction between a slave drive and your primary hard drive.

6. What is a computer virus?

A computer virus is a program designed to spread itself by first infecting executable files or the system areas of hard and floppy disks and then making copies of itself. Viruses usually operate without the knowledge or desire of the computer user.

7. What kind of files can spread viruses?

Viruses have the potential to infect any type of executable code, not just the files that are commonly called ’program files’. For example, some viruses infect executable code in the boot sector of floppy disks or in system areas of hard drives. Another type of virus, known as a ’macro’ virus, can infect word processing and spreadsheet documents that use macros. And it’s possible for HTML documents containing JavaScript or other types of executable code to spread viruses or other malicious code. Since virus code must be executed to have any effect, files that the computer treats as pure data are safe. This includes graphics and sound files such as .gif, .jpg, .mp3, .wav, etc., as well as plain text in .txt files. For example, just viewing picture files won’t infect your computer with a virus. The virus code has to be in a form, such as an .exe program file or a Word .doc file, that the computer will actually try to execute.

8. What do viruses do to computers?

Viruses are software programs, and they can do the same things as any other programs running on a computer. The actual effect of any particular virus depends on how it was programmed by the person who wrote the virus. Some viruses are deliberately designed to damage files or otherwise interfere with your computer’s operation, while others don’t do anything but try to spread themselves around. But even the ones that just spread themselves are harmful, since they damage files and may cause other problems in the process of spreading.

9. Where can one "Properly and Safely" dispose of a "dead" computer components?

All household hazardous materials including electronic components (VCRs, computers, monitors, etc.) can be dropped off at the Household Hazardous Waste Drop Off

10. How do I know if a website is "Secure"?

Some web sites have the capability of taking advantage of a secure connection between the web site and your browser. This may be important to you, for instance, if you are entering credit card information or other personal information at a web site.

To tell if your Internet Explorer browser is viewing a secure web site, look in the lower right part of the window. There is a small box in the frame of the window to the left of the area that describes which Zone you are in (usually the Internet zone, with a globe icon). If you see a yellow padlock icon, then the web site you are viewing is a "secure web site." If the box is empty, then the web site does not have a secure connection with your browser. Netscape also has a padlock to indicate a secure connection. Tip-within-a-tip: You can double-click the padlock icon to view the security information about the website.

11. What are Cookies?

Cookies are small files placed on your machine when you visit some web sites. They may contain things like passwords so you can log onto the site more easily. They are NOT spy programs but useful files to help you connect to web sites more easily. You should not worry about them and certainly should not delete them.

12. What is the difference between the function of a firewall and a spyware removal program such as Ad-aware 6.0?

The two tools provide different functions. A firewall is designed to prevent intrusion into your computer by hackers, worms, and other threats that connect to your computer through your Internet connection. A spyware removal tool removes spyware that you have installed on your computer. Spyware is usually bundled with other "free" software and is installed when the "free" program is installed.

13. What is meant by Backing Up a file?

Backing up a file means creating a copy of all the files on your system, to another drive. It is very important to backup periodically, all the files on your computer. If something happens to your programs, you can always reinstall them from the copy.

If something happens to your data and you do not have a backup copy, you are in a pickle. How often you backup depends on how important the data is to you.

There are several ways to back up. You can back up to floppy disks, to another hard drive, to a special tape backup drive, or to a completely separate backup system such as a large, removable storage device. Be sure to put your backup copies in a safe place away from your computer. In case of a disaster, you will want your backup copies in a secure location.

14. What do the letters, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW mean?

CD-R stands for compact disk recordable. CD-R disks can best be thought of as "write once" disks. You can copy or burn to them once and cannot add any more data later.
CD-RW stands for compact disk re-writable. Because CD-RWs are re-writable, you can copy some files to a disk today; add more files tomorrow; erase some of the files the day after tomorrow and write over existing files.
DVD stands for stand digital video disk
DVD-R stands for digital video recordable disk. Like the CD-R, a DVD-R is considered a "write once" disk.
DVD-RW is a rewritable DVD and works much like a CD-RW disk.

15. What is the difference between CD and DVD disks?

DVD disks can hold many times the data that a CD can. CDs can hold around 650 megabytes (MB). DVDs can hold 4.7 gigabytes (GB) or about 4,700 MB. Put another way, DVD disks can hold about two hours of video. New technologies are pushing the capacities of DVD disks even further. Dual layer DVDs can hold roughly twice the data of a conventional single layer disk. Blu-ray disks, which are now being pushed by a number of manufacturers, can hold 27 GB in the single layer format and 50 GB in dual layer. A competing disk type, HD DVD, can hold around 15 GB. These newer standard DVD disks can only be used in drives designed to handle them.

16. What is USB?

A. USB stands for Universal Serial Bus, an industry-standard specification for attaching peripherals to a computer. It delivers high performance, the ability to plug in and unplug devices while the computer is running, great expandability, and a wide variety of solutions.

17. How does USB work?

A. Every USB device requires a small piece of software, called a driver, to activate it. After the user installs a driver, the USB device is ready to use as soon as it’s plugged in. USB is unique in that devices can be plugged in or unplugged even while the computer is running. This is a radical new concept that means customers can more easily take advantage of a wider variety of devices as they need them, and never run out of ports because they can plug in and unplug devices as necessary, all without ever having to stop their work or shut down their computer.

18. What is an External Hard Drive?

An external hard drive sits outside the main computer tower in its own enclosure. The enclosure is slightly larger than the hard drive itself, and sometimes contains a cooling fan. This portable encasement allows the user to store information on a hard drive that is not inside the computer, but rests on a tabletop or surface nearby the computer. The external hard drive is connected to the computer via a high-speed interface cable. The interface cable allows the external hard drive to communicate with the computer so that data may be passed back and forth. The most common types of interfaces are USB and Firewire.

19. What are common reasons for data loss?

Data loss can result from one or more of the following: electro-mechanical failure, natural disaster, computer viruses, data corruption or most commonly: human error.

20. When are data recovery utilities good to use when computer problems are apparent?

If you use data recovery utilities on a potentially corrupted drive it will put your data at risk. The utility will assume that your drive is in good working order both mechanically and electrically and may try to fix things that may not be the problem. Sometimes utilities can create additional problems.

21. What is the difference between logical and physical data recovery?

Logical data recovery is performed when there is nothing physically wrong with a hard disk. Examples of problems requiring logical recovery include virus corrupted data, master boot record corrupt, partition table corrupt, deleted files, or a formatted hard disk. Physical data recovery is performed when there is physical damage to the components of a hard disk such as circuit board failure, read/write arm failure, platter damage, and hard drive motor failure.

22. What is the probability of data recovery?

Data loss is a very critical situation which should be handled spontaneously. It should always be remembered that whatever may be the cause of data loss, the lost data can be recovered to a surprising standard. After the failure of hard drives, zip disk, tapes, floppy disks, servers or other storage media there is around 98 percent chances of recovering the lost data.

Probability or chances of data recovery is reduced to great extent if the damaged device is mishandled or any attempt made personally to retrieve the data. Launching the unnecessary program, restarting the computer or any activity taking place on the damaged hard drive may make the lost data irrecoverable forever. Using a conventional data recovery technique or handing over the damaged device to a reputed data recovery company avoids wasting time, effort and money resulting in quicker data r covery with higher probability of success.