Not all computer problems are software related. Hardware can go bad as well and can even be bad right from the store. Hardware problems can often be more difficult to diagnose since you can’t look at a piece of hardware and tell it’s bad. For many of your hardware components you can troubleshoot them by replacing it with another device. For example if you aren’t getting sound out of your speakers you can first try to replace the speakers since that’s easy and if that doesn’t work you can swap out the sound card with a spare if you happen to have one or you can take one out of another system.

For some devices such as sound cards, video cards, network cards and other devices that are put into slots you can try to remove the device and reseat it or even try a different slot. Most cards nowadays use PCI slots with the exception of video cards which are usually AGP but can also be PCI.

Below is a typical motherboard showing the various components so you can get an idea of what goes where.

You will notice that there are many PCI slots for multiple devices. There is only 1 AGP slot since most of the time you will only have one video card unless you are doing a dual monitor setup etc.

There are 2 IDE controllers for devices such as hard drives and CD-ROMS. Each controller can have 2 devices attached to it for a total of 4 IDE devices. If your motherboard has Serial ATA connections you can add even more drives to your system. Just make sure your power supply can handle the load. A power supply of 300 watts or more should be sufficient for most systems.

The motherboard will also have a floppy controller to hook up to your floppy drive.

Most motherboards will have 2 or 3 memory (RAM) slots. Keep in mind there are different types of memory for different motherboards so make sure to match it up correctly or else you will run into problems.

Most motherboards will come with 1 processor (CPU) slot although it is possible to have multiple processors but the operating system must support them. The slot in the above illustration is actually called a socket. There are different kinds of sockets for different kinds of processors. There are also processors that use the Slot 1 format such as the older Pentium II and III as shown below.

One very important thing to make sure that is always working properly is your processor fan. The processor fan keeps the CPU cool so it won’t overheat. Once the processor overheats its time to buy a new one and they aren’t cheap!

A processor that is running hot will start to give you random errors make your computer lock up as well. The same thing will happen with bad RAM. Most motherboards have a safety mechanism in the setup that allows you to set a maximum temperature the CPU can reach before automatically shutting the PC down. Check your motherboard documentation to find out how to get into your systems BIOS to enable this setting.

If you are the type that likes to install your own hardware or build your own computer you will be installing hard drives and CD-ROMS at some point. There are a couple of things to watch for when doing this. One thing is to make sure you have the IDE cable on correctly and the other is to make sure you have the jumpers set correctly as well.

IDE cables are marked with a red stripe to designate pin # 1. In most cases the red stripe will be attached to the drive closest to the power connection. Make sure on the motherboard you have the red stripe matched up to pin # 1 as well. It should be marked on the motherboard itself. In most cases you will find that the connection and cable are keyed so you can only put them in one way.

IDE drives require jumpers to be set to designate a master or slave device. Like stated before you have 2 IDE controllers with 2 devices on each controller. One is called the master and the other is the slave. You should always make your primary hard drive (C drive) as master. If you look on the back of the drive you will usually see settings for master, slave and cable select. Cable select determines what is what from which connection on the cable you attach the drive. IDE cables come with 2 connections for 2 drives. As you can see from the image below the jumper settings are right next to the power and IDE connections. You will usually see a diagram on top of the drive showing what jumper is for what setting.

Any other techniques to configuring hardware that are not mentioned? Feel free to comment below!

Use these tips to speed up your computer's tortoise!

Over time, the speed of computers with Microsoft Windows can decrease. This appears as the system taking more time to respond to a user’s actions like opening files, folders, surfing the Internet and other tasks. However, there are things you can do to speed up your computer.

The following is a list of ways you can improve your computer’s performance. These steps are intended to be used in order. The key is to do the simplest and least invasive thing first until your system starts responding better.

Golden Rule: Do No Harm

If you want to improve the speed of your computer, that’s great. However, above all, do no harm and beyond the scope of this Windows forum, ask for help from those you know if you get in over your head. Remember: you have time. You can stop most processes I discuss without causing harm. Caution and common sense go a long way when working with computers; problems are often much easier to fix than they appear.

Steps to Speed Up Your Computer’s Performance

1. Make Sure Your Hardware is Sufficient

Above and beyond everything you can do with software to optimize the function of your computer, making sure you have the proper hardware to support Windows is critical. Here are minimums that I recommend:

* For XP – A computer with a Pentium processor, at least 512MB of RAM (operating memory), preferably 1 to 2 GB of memory and an 80GB hard drive or larger.

* For Vista – A computer with any dual-core processor, 2 to 3 GB of RAM and a 160 GB or larger hard drive.

These hardware configurations will minimize Page Filing (swapping programs in and out of memory and onto the hard drive) and assure that your computer has enough horsepower to run the operating system. Upgrading memory (RAM) is the cheapest and easiest thing you can do to improve the performance of your computer.

2. Clean Your Desktop

Is your Windows Desktop dotted with files? Have you noticed that your computer has been running slower and slower? Do you see the hard drive light often flashing while you wait for the computer to respond to an action? There are steps you can take to fix it. Read this article.

3. Scan Your Windows System for Errors

An operating system is a collection of files that perform different functions. It is possible, over time, that one or more of these system files has changed or become corrupted. If this happens, the speed of your system may decrease. By using a utility called “System File Checking”, it will inspect these files and correct any problem it finds.

4. Scan for Viruses, Spyware and Adware

Every Windows computer is vulnerable to viruses. Viruses are nasty little programs that cause both major and minor problems for users.

Spyware and Adware are programs created by companies to find out more information about customers, so they can better market products to them. Usually these programs are not created for malicious purposes. Spyware and Adware can load into computer memory and slow it down.

Periodically scanning and removal of Viruses, Spyware and Adware is a great way to improve computer performance.

5. Uninstall Unused Programs

Over time, you may have accumulated programs on your computer that you do not use. When a program is installed, it creates connections between the program and the operating system. Even if you don’t use these programs, they can slow down your system. If you have the original program’s installation disk or file, removing programs will free up space on your computer and may speed up your system’s performance.

6. Adjust Visual Effects for Better Performance

Windows provides a number of interesting visual effects including animated windows and fading menus. If you do not have enough operating memory (see above number 1), these effects can slow down your computer. Adjusting or reducing visual effects can make a difference.

7. Don’t Automatically Start Programs

Programs use operating memory (RAM, also called system resources). Unless you always use these programs, you can keep them from loading at Windows startup and speed both the booting of your computer and its performance.

Drefragging you hard drive can be suicidal if done wrong.

8. Defragment Your Hard Drive (After you have tried everything else)

The more information and programs you have on your computer, the more it is likely that Windows has placed parts of the same file in different locations on your hard drive. It may do this for hundreds of files and programs, depending on how much space is available. Defragmenting the hard drive places all information for each file in one place. The result can be a faster computer experience.

Important Note: Before you even try this, backup all your work onto a different computer, hard drive, CD or disk. Also, you should only do this if you have a reliable source of power for your computer. Doing this when there is a brown out or power problem in the neighborhood, is not a good idea. If a computer turns off while it is defragmenting a drive, it will create more problems than not defragmenting it in the first place.

Are there are any others to speeding up your computer that isn’t here and is very important? Please feel free to comment below

Hewlett-Packard publicly announced on their website on Friday that the two giants of the computing world ,have come to an agreement which sees HP acquire IBRIX services.

IBIRX, a leading supplier of enterprise-class file serving software which includes data protection, high-availability features and data management services. The hardware giants tend to aim their services at large scale consumers where IBRIX’s solutions enable businesses to cache lots of important data, without much work and money.

HP claim that they want IBRIX to add to their growing portfolio in the eventful, high-performance computing storage market, growing at an annual rate of 20%. This comes as no shock to many of us as IBRIX software is already grouped together with HP Storage Area Network, ProLiant, BladeSystem and ProCurve Hardware.

HP’s vice president of Unified Storage, StorageWorks Division, Jeff Hausman said this action will benefit both companies and the growing market,

“Customers need highly scalable storage solutions that efficiently and cost-effectively manage massive amounts of information. This acquisition expands our portfolio to better support the needs of this market segment. In addition, IBRIX’s highly scalable software leverages industry-standard hardware allowing customers to fully maximize their existing investments.”

IBRIX’s CEO, Milan Shetti  later added that it was also in HP’s and its customers interest,

“Joining forces with HP is a natural fit for our customers, resulting in an enhanced storage solution that scales to meet their data growth. The unique combination of IBRIX’s file serving solutions with HP’s portfolio of products and services enables customers to lower the cost of scale-out architectures while easing the process of storing, accessing and moving critical data.”

HP have said that they are very close in ending the proceedings and will legally own IBRIX in 30 days.

The very company Thomas Edison founded said it has made a major breakthrough

Every Computer user’s dream to have so many movies on a single disk!

G.E report that the New York company, has made huge progress in digital storage technology. This tech will supposedly enable normal DVD disks (usually 4.7 GB) to support an astounding 100 DVDs.

However, we warn you not to get too complacent because this is still in the initial stages, in fact the product is still in the lab! In addition to it still being in development, the invention requires to be produced on a bigger scale and at a good price, as we are hitting the peak period of the recession very soon.

Envisioneering analyst, Richard Doherty stated,

“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” backing up this potentially successful advanced piece of tech.

In terms of potential, this holographic storage can be a huge use on the consumer, scientific and commercial markets, becoming a great step in the right direction for digital storage, which to be really honest hasn’t been the biggest tech category around.

What is the product?

Firstly, the product itself is based in “holographic storage.” This means that it is able to store security codes on credit cards and interestingly, the 0′s and 1′s as well. The products data are encoded in light patterns and put into light sensitive material. However, the hologram then refracts the light patterns and so as a light shines onto it, the data that has been recorded is visible and retrievable.

Personally, I am still bewildered at the holographic storage concept, though the theory has been known since the early 1960′s, it still has a promising future. This is because the technology can cram in much more data than DVD’s that we purchase from somewhere like Best Buy, and even the blu-ray DVD’s that have more than 50 GB’s of data space.

General Electric are not the only ones experimenting with Holographic storage. InPhase Technologies are also in the hunt to make the product it shall release later this year, with a realitic fair price. InPhase’s invention is to be a holographic storage system targeted at the medical market where they can use it to store medical images or alternatively, at businesses as it can be used in important conferences, meetings with the help of video production.

Holographic Technology has been heard of before but no one has pushed on with the theory until now.

After all, no single company has used the idea for conventional use. However, General Electric look be on track for becoming the pioneers of holographic technology especially as they have learned from previous mistakes and taking a contrasting advance in working with microholographic storage.

You cannot say working on this will take less than year because it is such a long winded process, seeing as GE have developing this idea since late 2003. It is always, for any company becoming the first of its kind in a specific region, impossible not to have any troubles so for example GE are having trouble finding a small enough hologram which reflects more light patterns.

Where is this all happening?

As I said before, General Electric are based mainly in New York and not surprisingly this is where its taking place, in Niskayuna which is in the south-east of the city.

Brian Lawrence, the scientist who leads G.E.’s holographic storage program stated,

“We’re in the ballpark. We’ve crossed the threshold so we’re readable.”

One of the best things about this product is that you can use this disk on your average DVD player which must read microholographic storage discs in order to work, which don’t worry, most DVD’s do! This holographic disk is set to hold 500 GB’s of space with the technology General Electric have acheived over 10x times more space than blu-ray disks!

Stanford Professor, Bert Hessilink quoted,

“If this can really be done, then G.E.’s work promises to be a huge advantage in commercializing holographic storage technology.”

As always with new discoveries, there are always huge meetings within a couple of months of the idea introduction. No surprise that it will take place in Orlando, in May, displaying their findings.

In addition to what Hessilink said, James N. Porter, an independent analyst of the storage market spoke out his feelings,

“It’s always well to remember that the most important technical specification in any storage device, however impressive the science behind it, is price.”

When will it come out and what price?

Giving that the development is around three quarters through, I would expect to see the introduction of the holographic storage to be with us around 2012. At the estimated time, I reckon it will be very cheap at around $15 cents per gigabyte, backed up with the fact that in less than three years, 1 GB on a blu-ray has declined over half. As Brian Lawrence explained, “The price of storage per gigabyte is going to drop precipitously.”

To make a big success, General Electric must target specific markets that have a place for its product. Ideally, this would be in the commercial market. If they went directly to a few hospitals and small studios just to start off to build a base. Earn some revenue and then go worldwide, which is sure to be a big seller! Though, for any newly developed product, the company needs a partner that knows what its talking about, with much experience and knowledge about the topic, in this case, optical storage.

Oracle suggested that this purchase "transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems".

Oracle come in just weeks after Sun they rejected IBM’s $7 billion bid.

Software manufacturing giants, Oracle have released that they are to purchase Sun Microsystems who are also in the software and hardware market for a huge sum of $7.4billion which in UK pounds is around £5.1 billion.

If Oracle are buying at $7.4 billion, according to Sun’s board of directors, each share is worth $9.50 per share which is still quite expensive in this current economic climate, still surprises me that Cisco have not put a bid in for the prestigious company as Sun have been hinting at a number of buyers who maybe interested.

Sun Microsystems desperate?

You may think Sun are doing profit wise, with $13.3 billion turnover in the last 4 quarters though the stat people miss out is the $1.9 billion they did lose at the same time. Sun, according to many analysts have been in financial difficulties for some time now, as they are not such a big company, they need a huge company like Oracle who can back them up in all aspects including finances and latest software releases.

This upcoming deal with Oracle could be so much better than the one broken down with IBM as they are not overlaping in the market, as IBM and Sun would hold less of the market. As Oracle are buying Sun Microsystems, they can utilize any products that they offer to advance their technologic software and also even more middleware features which, incidentally, Oracle’s middleware is on Sun’s Java language and software.

Sun Microsystem’s chairman, Scott McNealy, additionally said,

“Oracle and Sun have been industry pioneers and close partners for more than 20 years. This combination is a natural evolution of our relationship and will be an industry-defining event.”

After having high prospects from these talks with Oracle, the deal could go ahead as early as summer.

In additon to McNealy comments, Oracle President Safra Catz released,

“This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per-share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,”

In terms of shares, for Sun they leaped 36.8% ($2.46) to an astonishing $9.15 in the pre-empted market. However, Oracle shares did the opposite in falling 3.6% to a respectable $18.38.

All this news is well and good until you find there is a bad point, which there is always seems to be. In this case, it is the loss of hard earned jobs, yet again. As Sun, created the Solaris operating system and the developer of the Java programming language, there were bound to be a lot of bad news.

The figures are still to be reviewed by the companies as there could always be room for lay offs. Currently, Oracle employ 86,000 people and Sun have 33,000 hard workers employed. Anything can happen to those workers as well as us, so the best advice in these economic times is to work hard and keep your head down!

“LG researchers developed SMART technologies to minimize the effects of eyestrain that is often caused by the long hours we spend in front of screens.”

Brightness sorts itself out on its own

Digital media group, LG Electronics have introduced a new monitor range that supposedly reduces the amount of strain put on your eyes in your average, working day which the LG reminds you to have as it has a timer integrated into the screen telling when the recommended time to take a quick break is.

The new W53 SMART Monitor Series features an Auto Brightness automatic command permitting it to optimize the picture settings as well as brightness of the picture depending on what you are viewing and the ambient light in the room.

Marketing manager of business solutions at LG Electronics, Soyeon Shin quoted,

“LG has conducted extensive research around monitor use in Europe, and found that one of the main complaints was eye strain caused by the screen being either too bright or too dark. To address this, LG has incorporated the world’s first full suite of features that optimizes the brightness of the screen in its new W53 series, ultimately reducing eye strain.”

For those of who are green, you’ll be happy to know that the new LG series automatic brightness feature apparently lowers power consumption. This is done by reducing the volume of the backlight.

A really useful feature that everyone would benefit from is the cinema mode. This is where everything turns black except for the video screen meaning you can’t see related videos are any pestering ads. The feature also reduces eye strain as your focusing on one darker screen with no distractions.

In addition to the cinema mode feature, a proximity sensor is also introduced under the W53’s bezel detects when a hand comes within a certain length of the screen then activating the controls in order to make them easier to discover.

LG’s W53 SMART range will be available 18.5 to 27 inch sizes. Every monitor bigger than 21.5 inches offer 1920 x 1080p Full HD resolution as well as a 16:9 aspect ratio which is great news for gamers! The most gob smacking feature is the 50,000:1 contrast which is better than most TVs out now! Finally, the response time is quite sensational at 2ms.

Luckily, this new LG W53 series is not too far away and could be with us in less than two weeks! I look forward to seeing this here in the UK as most people will be fascinated by it but because of the current economic climate, how many people will actually purchase one of these high-definition Monitors?

After much thought between TV Giants LG and Freesat, the two companies collectively have established a new range of HD TVs which only Panasonic had done previously with Freesat, in order to allow more space for other important items in your living room!

LG LF7700 has Free-Sat HD Built in

The LG LF7700 series will arrive in 32″, 37″, 42″ and 47″ screen sizes. However, one thing that caught me out was the symbol on the above image which states it is HD Ready but also under the symbol it states 1080p. Confusing!

The new highly anticipated range, each contains an Ethernet connection, 4 HDMI ports and a mysteriously invigorating speaker produced by the highly regarded Mark Levinson. The Pixel resolution is 1,920 x 1,080 and in addition it has an astonishing 50,000:1 contrast ratio.

For the two highest ranking LG LF7700 of the series, it has a TruMotion 100Hz frame rate so the picture is even more clearer and finally there is a specialized Intelligent Sensor II meaning you can adapt the LCD backlight in accordance to the room’s lighting.

Can I buy it now?

If, after reading this article you feel the need to buy this item, you will have to wait a couple of weeks as the release date is around late April. The pricing, yet again will not disappoint as the price range for the sizes start from £576 (32″) going on to £1,149 (47″.)

Whilst writing about this article, I now feel obliged to purchase one of the TVs from this series. This is because the pricing is great, if you consider the specifications which are all around, admirable. Most notably for me, the in-built Free-Sat HD feature.

Great Specs, Great Price!