If your computer is making a lot of noise, you may need to replace your computer fan. There are certain types of computer repair that you might want to undertake yourself. There are several minor fixes that can be handled with a bit of instruction and attention to detail.
A computer repair that you might be able to take care of yourself is the replacement of the computer’s battery or fan. Every desktop computer has a fan inside of it. The computer fan is used to keep the computer’s components cool. It’s essential that the fan operates efficiently to ensure that the computer doesn’t become overheated.

The very first and most important step when doing any computer repair is to unplug the computer from the electrical outlet. You’ll need to examine the fan to see how it’s connected. The computer fan will probably be attached by a few small screws. When you loosen the fan screws, you’ll need to disconnect the fan from its power supply. Take the fan to your computer repair shop and purchase a new one. After replacing your fan, reattach the cover and plug the machine in. The fan should operate perfectly after replacement and the noise that you were hearing will have disappeared.

Is your computer getting slower and slower? Is this occurring despite not using any more memory? Are you having frequent freezing or spontaneous shutdowns? You may have tried erasing all the programs that you don’t use with no success. You may even have tried anti virus software thinking that you had been infected by a virus, and were disappointed to find that this didn’t improve things. It’s possible that your registry is corrupt.

Keeping your computers registry clean and repaired is essential to having a healthy system. The registry can also be manipulated with virus code to give up sensitive information and to cause malfunctions in the operating system. Just like any tool you use your computer needs regular maintenance and repair including a good thorough registry repair.

You need to keep your computer free from viruses. Viruses can harm not only your own files, but your entire system as well. A virus is usually located in a file, and it can be in one of these two states: active and inactive. When the infected file has not been executed, the virus is in an inactive state, and is not necessarily harmful. In cases where the virus is inactive, it is enough to delete the file. When the infected file begins execution (when started by user, by operating system, or by another program), the virus changes its state from inactive to active, and begins to perform harmful activities on the system

Once the virus has been identified, the best thing to do next is to run an anti-virus software, scan and clean the system. If you have anti-virus software on your computer (most users do), make sure the software is up-to-date. Most anti-virus software run periodical, scheduled or manual scans on your computer according to preference, and if fully updated, will promptly identify any malicious activity or files on your system. You will have the options of deleting, quarantining or analyzing the virus depending on the type of antivirus you employ. If you’re not too acquainted with the software, the only recommendation is to immediately delete the file, thereby eliminating any threat posed to your system’s security.

If all else fails, you can reformat your computer and start with a clean slate. To save data, you can install Windows again alongside the existing operating system. This is not the option we want but would not be recommended none the less. You need to choose the format option. With Windows XP you can choose either quick format or regular format. With a 120gb drive a quick format will take about 10 minutes while a regular format can take up to an hour. Quick format would be the preferable option.

Re-formatting a computer is quite simple with Microsoft Windows XP. The first step is setting your computer to boot from the CD-ROM. This can be done in the BIOS. For most mother-boards, pressing delete while the machine is booting will get you into the BIOS menu.

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Another type of threat that we are going to discuss is actually us ourselves. That’s right, us. What I mean by this is just simply the fact that we get on our computers on a daily basis. Whether we do our banking or have a web-site or blog that we update daily or just simple web-surfing. We get on our computers pretty much on a daily basis and it would be hard to live without these machines.

Now I am going to come out and say that the problem isn’t really all of our fault. At least it is not our fault all of the time. Sometimes we do everything we can to protect our machines because unless you are a PC technician, you are going to have to take it to get repaired or pay for someone to come to your location to fix it.

The problem really stems from us using these machines everyday. That’s right. Just using our machines can cause problems in a dangerous place (if you don’t know what you are doing) called the registry. If we install a program or uninstall a program we change the registry every time. If we install a plug-in in firefox then it changes the registry. Almost everything that we do in one way or another changes the registry. Now the registry for some of you who don’t know is kind of like a book keeping of all the settings for all programs on our computers. Now the registry does go a lot deeper than this, but I am trying to keep this as simple as possible as I know the general public will be reading this.

The registry itself can go through so many changes that literlally a few clicks of a mouse can really mess up a computer. Now you might be asking how can we fix this. Well, there are programs out their that do just that. They look for and fix registry errors. Now, they don’t get every single one, but for the most part they do a pretty effective job.

Now, a program that I really like and use a lot is ccleaner. Another reason I like this program so much is because it is free and they update it almost on a bi-monthly basis. You can get a free copy of it from filehippo.com or just simple search for ccleaner in yahoo or google.

Now, this program does a lot more than fixing registry errors, but that is mainly what it is used for. At least that is mainly what I use it for. Once you get this installed and running, you do a scan and tell it to repair all errors. What I like to do is do a scan and repair the errors, then do another scan and repair those errors. I keep doing this until no errors come up in the scan. The reason I do this is a lot of times when you fix one registry entry, there are others that were dependent on that entry and so it itself becomes a bad registry error. So you need to keep checking for errors and repairing them until you don’t get any at all.

www.ccleaner.com – It’s Free! Also great tool for cleaning temporary internet files, etc.

Hi, my name is Chad. I am a computer repair technician from Portland. I repair all sorts of computer related issues such as viruses & spyware, slow computers, lost data, network issues and so on. I wanted to write an article that will educate you on how to make sure your computer is running in optimal condition. There are a few key things that you should pay attention to when maintaining your computer. Make sure you cover the following items and you should have a sound working computer.

• Active and effective anti-virus protection
• Dust free computer – dust kills many computers
• Good onsite or offsite backup plan

I will discuss the items mentioned a little more in detail and provide you some know software names that are proven to work affectively in achieving these results. Computer repair can be kept at a minimum if you just give your computer a little TLC from time to time.

Active Anti-Virus Protection

It is vital that you have active anti-virus protection on your computer to prevent hackers from installing spyware, malware and viruses. I highly recommend the anti-virus software Kaspersky. Kaspersky is by far the most effective solution on the market. You should always pay attention to your anti-virus software’s icon in the system tray. A lot of times the anti-virus icon will change colors or something to notify you of any issues. Make sure you also do a nightly scan of your entire computer with up to date virus definitions for your anti-virus scanner. Your anti-virus scanner will automatically update the virus definitions daily.

Dust Free Computer

I recommend that you disconnect your computer and open the case once every month or so to clean the dust. I personally just use a vacuum cleaner and suck out all the dust around the CPU fan and other fans in the computer. Some computer repair technicians prefer to use canned air. I never understand why someone would want to blow dust in their face.

Good Onsite or Offsite Backup Plan

I highly recommend that everyone have a backup plan of some sorts. There are several ways to achieve this. One is to backup to an external hard drive with some sort of software. I prefer to backup my data to a service online called Carbonite. Carbonite is an online backup solution that backs up your data in the background with little to no interaction from you. The great thing is, if someone steals your computer and external hard drive or your house burns down, then all your precious pictures and other files are safely online for you to re-download.

Too be continued…

Here are a few pictures that will help you identify the keys.

General Windows Shortcut Keys

F1 – Universal Help key
F2 – Rename files or Folders
F3 – Opens up the Find dialogue
F5 – Refresh contents in current application

Windows Key & D – This will minimize all windows you have open and take you to the desktop. by pressing it again this can be reversed
Windows Key & E – This will open up the Windows Explorer file browser window
Windows Key & TAB – This will cycle through open programs through the taskbar.
Windows Key & F – This will open up the windows search feature
Windows Key & CONTROL & F – This will open up the search for computers window.
Windows Key & F1 – This will open up the Microsoft Help and Support Centre
Windows Key & R – This will bring up the run box dialogue
Windows Key & L – This will lock the computer and take you to the sign in screen

General Editing Keys

ALT & F – Opens up the file menu
ALT & E – Opens up the edit menu

Control & A – Highlights all text
Control & C – Copies highlighted selected text
Control & X -Cuts highlighted selected text
Control & V – Pastes text from clipboard into document
Control & Z – Reverses last action
Control & P – Brings up the print dialogue
Control & B – Creates bold text
Control & I – Place text in italics
Control & U – Underline text

Insert – Toggles between overtype mode and normal mode
Control & Insert – Copies selected text
Shift & Delete – Cuts highlighted selected text
Shift & Insert – Pastes text from clipboard into document

Shift & Home – Selects the text from current cursor position to beginning of line
Shift & End – Selects the text from current cursor position to end of line
Control & Left Arrow – Move the cursor backwards one word
Control & Right Arrow – Move the cursor forward one word

Home Key – Goes to beginning of current line
End Key – Goes to end of current line
Control & Home – Goes to top of document
Control & End – Goes to end of document

Other Keys

Alt & Tab – Cycles through current open applications
Alt & F4 – Closes the current open application
Control & Escape – Brings up the start menu
Shift & Del – When deleting a selected highlighted item – this will bypass the recycle bin
Holding Shift Key – While inserting a CD/DVD will bypass the auto play feature
F8 – While pressing this key on boot up will bring you to the boot up options screen – handy for entering safe mode