Didn't your mother ever tell you not to use the phone, take a shower, or swim  during an electrical storm? Her advice should have included computers. Protect your computer and modem in storms. Unplug them!

• Electrical surges caused by power outages are very damaging to computers and modems.

• Even strikes at a distance are dangerous. They can travel great distances through telephone and electrical lines. They start as thousands of volts. It only takes a few extra volts to cause damage.

• Of course no preventive precautions may save a computer or  modem in a direct lightening strike. This includes surge and spike protectors.

• Be sure to back you your files regularly.
• For any questions or help, please contact info@waltbren.com

Use Scandisk and Defrag regularly.

• These utilities should be used on a regular schedule, depending on use of the computer, minimally 3-4 times per year. 
• Scandisk lets you know the condition of your hard drives and corrects most errors on it preventing problems later. If scandisk discovers any "bad sectors" your hard drive is on its way out. (Be sure to back up your files regularly.)
• Defrag puts all your files in proper order on the hard drive so that the computer can access them more efficiently and faster. It is like taking a shuffled deck of cards and putting all the cards in order by suits so that you can fine any card by name without much difficultly.

• Both of these utilities can be accessed two ways. The first method is:
  

  • Start by (double) left clicking on "My Computer" and then right clicking on the desired hard drive.

  • In the widow that appears, right click "properties" (which will be at the bottom).

  • In the next window you will see a pie chart describing disk space usage. Right click the "tools" tab.

  • In the "tools" tab window there are three sub windows. The top window is "error-checking status". This is your scandisk program. This tells you how many days since you last ran scandisk.

  • Click on "check now" and you will have the choice of running a standard (quick) or thorough (long) check.

  • At the bottom of the "tools" tab window is the "defragmentation status". This also tells you how long ago you last defrag this hard drive. (You would be surprised at how many computers in the service centers are found to have never run scan disk or defrag!)

• The second method is:
  

  • Start by (double) left click "Start". Move up the window to "Programs" the move to the right and up to "Accessories".

  • From "accessories" move to the right and down to "System Tools". When the "system tools" window drops down you will see many useful utilities. Among them scandisk and disk . Just click on either one of these utilities to run them.

Free Family Advice

Remember your family.
Keep your priorities in order!! 

Disclaimer: In no way are these articles meant to take the place of the manufactures' recommendations of use of their software or hardware. Please refer to all the manufactures' written instructions. "These articles are only meant to augment the use of software and hardware.