Trouble shooting with a PC; Things to look for

Trouble shooting with a PC; Things to look for

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta

You've just purchased a new program or piece of hardware to
run on your PC but after you installed it the entire system slows
down or hangs occasionally. Or, your computer now tends to crash
sporadically yet you've done nothing that would have destabilized
the operating system. What's going on?

Computers are actually dumb machines. They follow their orders
via the various programs installed in the PC from power up to
shutdown. But sometimes things get a little "confused". Sometimes
the programs are too new, too old or just conflicts with the
hardware it sees.

The following tips will hopefully point you to the right
direction since there are so many things that need to be checked
when trouble-shooting a computer. With a bit of luck, you can
avoid taking your PC to the shop for costly and lengthy
"repairs".

Before you do anything, always make sure you have a back up of
all your data. This is not difficult to do and should always be
done even if the computer is happily chugging along problem free.
Owning a computer brings responsibilities and data maintenance is
extremely important.

If you only have one hard drive (the C drive), it would be
advisable to "partition" or divide your hard drive virtually so
you can have 2 hard drives (C and D drive); one for the operating
system and programs while the other is for your data files.

In this case, you can safely format the C drive and store all
you data on D. Partition Magic is excellent software for
partitioning hard drives without any data loss.

If you've just installed a new piece of hardware but it works
sporadically, make sure that you've fit it with the latest driver
for your operating system. Using a Windows 2000 driver on Windows
XP may not always succeed although they are sometimes compatible.
Your hardware manufacturer may have the latest driver on its
website.

If the hardware is rather old, check the chipset provider as
well (the company who provided the chips for the hardware
manufacture). You can see the chipset name stamped on the
microchip. Do a search on the net for their website and download
the appropriate driver for your operating system.

When my computer would not turn off by itself although the
operating system had commanded it to (and my hardware allegedly
supported ATX shut down protocols), I upgraded the BIOS of my
motherboard (as it was rather old) so it could accept the latest
operating system codes.

BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System, the built in
software within each computer's hardware. This low-level system
provides the basic instruction set for the computer to
communicate with its peripherals. Sometimes, however, it needs to
be upgraded by flashing the BIOS.

Flashing involves updating the BIOS with the help of software
provided by the hardware manufacture. New programs or operating
systems would sometimes prompt the manufacturer to release new
BIOS to address any incompatibilities.

Although it is relatively easy to do so, it is important to
ensure that a flash in progress is not interrupted otherwise it
may render the hardware useless.

Within the Windows' operating system, there is a database
called the registry used to store configuration files of the many
programs that reside in a computer. Whenever you install or
remove a program, the registry is always updated.

Sometimes, however, when a user removes a program, the
program's configuration files are still referenced in the
registry and can sometimes conflict with others.

You should use Registry Cleaner (RegClean) by Microsoft to
clean out your registry. This freeware is available via
download.com.

Operating systems require some hard disk space to store and
utilize their swap or paging files. These files are temporarily
stored in the hard drive before being moved to the computer's
main memory for processing.

For Windows users, it would be ideal to have at least 500
megabytes in the C drive for the operating system to use. If you
don't have that, move or delete some files from the C drive. The
less free space you have, the more time it may take for the
computer to execute a program.

Files saved on the hard drive should be stored in a contiguous
fashion so the operating system can access them quickly. If a
file is divided into four parts in different areas of the hard
disk, it may take a while for the computer to load a program.

To make the hard drive more efficient, it should be
defragmented to optimize file storage. Windows comes with a built
in disk defragmenter program which users can utilize to make
their hard drive work more efficiently.

If you've done all of the above and your system is still
giving you a hard time, a total reinstallation of the operating
system may be in order. Sometimes there is so much garbage in the
operating system you have to totally clean out the junk from old
installs, including removing programs and corrupt files.

To do this, format the hard drive and do a clean re-install of
the operating system and your programs from your CD's. Make sure
you have backups of all your data files (Word documents,
spreadsheet dossiers, save game files) as well as hardware device
drivers either on a CD-Rom or in another partition (section) of
your hard drive.

This is not a painful process, just something that "normal"
users are afraid to do. Power users, PC gamers and ultra geeks
reinstall their operating systems once every 3 months. It's not
that difficult, however it may be time consuming.

But in the end, a clean install may zero in on what your
computer problem is if it occurs after you install a particular
program.

For more help about your computer problems, go to various
power user sites such as Cnet (cnet.com), Tweak3D (tweak3D.net)
or Little White Dog (littlewhitedog.com) to name a few. The
community there can help you trouble shoot any problems you may
be having and in the end, you can learn something about
computers, operating systems and hardware.