Monday, November 29, 2010
How To Get Rid Of Overheating CPU?
Cooling systems
cpu overheatingFans and heat sinks are the cooling systems installed by computer manufacturers to reduce heat produced. Over clocked machines or high-end systems may have customized systems that include liquid or gas cooling. Heat is dissipated by drawing it with the help of heat sink. Cool air is passed by the fan attached to heat sink. Fans are of two types: one that blows air out and the other blows in. Fans that blow air inwards are attached to heat sinks and while the fans attached to CPU have two fans. One blows in and other blows out.
Causes of overheating
• Over clocking – To increase the performance and speed over clocking is done. It causes more heat due to modification of the frequency and voltage of the device. The system will overheat if over clocked systems does not have customized or high-performance cooling systems.
• Malfunctioning or blocked fans – Generally fans are attached to components like video cards, processor and CPU case. Even if one or all of them gets malfunctioned or blocked, much heat is produced as insufficient air blows in or out. Halt in working of fans may be caused by dust, dirt or other particles.
• CPU location – A cooling system may become useless if heat is not able to escape. This happens in cases when the computer is located at a congested area as airflow is also restricted.
• Improper airflow – Overheating can also be caused by improper arrangement of cables and other components inside the CPU case.
The dangers of CPU overheating
• Shortens life span of components – Overheating can shorten the life span of components. E.g. overheated video cards have less life as compared to normal ones.
• Consume lot of electricity – Overheated device consumes more electricity due to reduced efficiency.
• Melt your device – Plastic components may get melted due to overheating. E.g. a blocked fan may melt the socket or motherboard.
• Causes fire – Shells and cables may catch fire because of melting caused by overheating.
Common signs of overheating
• Frequent shutdowns
• Noisy fans
• Hot exhaust
• Frequent and sudden restarts
Getting rid of overheating
Increase in consumption of electricity is another drawback of overheating. Tips to prevent overheating:
• Invest in better cooling system – An efficient cooling system should be used in case of high end systems. You can either buy pricey gas or water cooling systems, or buy heavy duty fans.
• Clean the CPU regularly – Fans and openings are blocked by dust and dirt. So you should clean your PC with brush or a portable vacuum cleaner.
• Let the CPU breathe – The CPU must not be placed inside a closed cabinet or under a tight desk. It should be placed in an area where cool air can get inside and hot air can blow out.
• Rearrange the cables –Cables should be arranged in such a way that they do not restrict air from cooling system. Hard drives should be placed apart in the case. Use round type cables instead of flat IDE cables.
A temporary fix
You can open the case for some time if you do not have enough cash to buy cooling system. When the system is running you should place the electric fan in front of it to cool the system down. Remember to replace the case after you turn off the computer so that dirt particles cannot enter inside.
How To Get Rid Of Cookies?
What Are Web Cookies?
Cookies The information sent by a website or web server about you to your browser is stored in cookies. Whole of data is stored in your hard disk.
Authenticating sessions, tracking sessions with websites that need log-ins and maintaining preferences like page layout, page size and other features are stored in cookies but the main purpose of cookies is to differentiate users from each other and remembering them. For accessing website’s services, cookies also remember the information like usernames and passwords. Cookies are not executable codes but text files only. Cookies are NOT:
• Spyware or virus
• Only used for advertising purposes
• Causing abusive online ads or pop ups
• Causing spam
As cookies contain important information so these are prone to Cross-site scripting or exploits like XSS and hijacking of cookies through packet sniffing is also possible.
Other use of cookies
All the preferences from choosing language to number of search results per page are stored in cookies. Also information about previously visited websites is also stored in cookies. Due to increase in malicious software and spyware, privacy of cookies has become a concern.
Security and privacy concerns
The web server sends cookies back and forth when you browse any website using cookies. As these cookies contain sensitive information like passwords and usernames which can be intercepted easily and data can be used for illegal means also. Although in modern browsers you can actually accept or reject cookies. Also you may set your browser to automatically reject cookies if you are much concerned about your private data. However some websites may not work properly if you disable cookies all the time. So the best option is to get rid of cookies each time you are done surfing.
Getting rid of cookies
You don’t need to download any kind of software as it is easier to remove cookies. Different browsers and user accounts store cookies differently. So to get rid of cookies you need to open each browser in each account. You can remove cookies if you are using internet explorer by following means:
1. After opening Internet Explorer, go to tools menu and make sure only one instance of the program is running.
2. Click on “Internet Options”.
3. Click “Delete cookies” on general tab.
4. After that click OK.
You can also do this by right clicking Internet Explorer icon and selecting properties and then following step 3 and 4 to delete cookies.
In case of Firefox, you can do following:
1. After opening Firefox click on “Tools” menu.
2. Select “Options”.
3. Click on “Privacy tab” and then click on “Clear Private Data” button.
4. Make sure you select the check box for cookies after a small menu appears. After that click on OK.
To automatically delete cookies and private data, you can press CTRL+SHIFT+DEL in Firefox. This will remove all private data and cookies when you close the browser. By following ways, you can do this:
• Go to tools and then click Options.
• Click on privacy tab and click on the box that shows “Always clear my private data when I close Firefox”.
• Then click on settings and see if check box of cookies is checked.
To access secure connections you may also avoid shared or public computers. If not then clear the cookies after surfing. You may also request the owner to remove cookies if the access is restricted. You need to be careful as hackers can easily steal cookies and use them for illegal purposes.
Google Optimization
1. If your website has the Welcome screen,
make sure you have a text link that allows visitors access the site. It is common to see many sites with a welcome screen very striking and full of effects thrown into Flash but no other way to access the site. It is advisable to have a text link that gives access to the site “traditionally” because Google can not read Flash pages and therefore can not access the rest of the site.
2. Sure not to have broken links.
Sounds pretty obvious. But it’s impressive the number of errors experienced by the Google engine daily due to broken links. So we would have to check all internal links on our site.
3. Check the labels TITLE
The title of the pages is very important to Google, so you should check that the TITLE tag is relevant to the content of the page in question. This does not mean you have to put a title of more than 20 words, but rather in keeping with the content and easy to read by search engines and surfers.
4. Check the META tags
Rumors that Google is not interested in the META tags are not entirely certain. Google uses these tags to describe a website when there is too much code to read. So enter some valid as META tags KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION for keywords and site description respectively.
5. Check ALT tags
ALT tags should be the least likely used by webmasters. We add these tags to describe images for them. They are not a factor, but a plus for Google.
6. Check your frames (frames)
A frame is a frame or separate box in which we can load a web page. If you use frames that Google can not index us 100%. I personally recommend not using frames, but if you decide to use them read this article.
7. Have you got dynamic pages?
It is known that the web evolved greatly in recent years, and that more and more pages based on dynamic scripting languages (PHP, ASP, etc.).. But it seems that Google is limiting the amount of dynamic pages it indexes, so we could include some static pages … when the momentum is not necessary.
8. Regularly update
This is a very important aspect that you should consider, as quickly Google indexes more pages that are updated with some regularity. Podes note that the number of pages indexed by the search engine is increased if you update daily, but may stagnate or decrease if not provide new content. I recommend you put a META option in the header to tell Google how often you should return to reindex.
9. Robots.txt
This file can be very helpful if we use it correctly. With robots.txt you can filter search engines recorded our website and to restrict access to certain URL’s that do not want to be indexed (login page, file folders, etc.).
10. “Cahe Cache or not?
Google maintains a cache of some pages to have a faster access to them. Some webmasters prefer not to be cached, or Google cachee our pages all we have to do is place the following META tag between the heads:
* META NAME = “ROBOTS” CONTENT = “NOARCHIVE”
* With that prevent robots from caching and archiving our pages.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
How To Speed Up A Computer?
A computer is a machine which can be programmed. It receives input, stores data and processes it to give us an output in a useful format. Although, mechanical computers have existed for a long time – abacus and slide rule are good examples of this – electronic computers are a fairly recent phenomenon. This recent phenomenon has become so much an important part of our lives that nothing feels more annoying when computers don’t work or work at a snail’s pace! If your computer is also working slower, then here are a couple of tips you can try:
Booting:
If there are a lot of programs installed on your computer then it would take longer to boot up. It is certainly not advisable to delete some of them, because you may need them, but there is a little thing that we can do. We can identify programs that are least used and then, can load them only when a need arises.
(1) When your computer starts, all the programs that are installed on it are loaded and it takes longer than it would have if only those programs which are used most were to load during booting. So the first step is to click on the Start Menu, go to Run Type (Microsoft configurations). There among other options you will be presented with there two options: Normal Start Up and Selective Start Up. Just click on Selective Start Up tab and select the programs you use most of the time and unmark those, which are not-so-used.
(2) When you are in Microsoft Configurations(MS configuration) mode, you can look for BOOT.INI tab. Click on it and you will find a new box, which reads Timeout. It’s is normally set at 30 sec. which means a delay of half a minute. Change that to 3 sec., click on the tab OK and reboot your computer. After this, it is possible that your computer gives you a pop up saying you’re in selective boot mode; now just disable the window while saving your changes.
(3) There is a program called HijackThis, which can be downloaded from merijn.org. This program will analyze the processes that are running on your computer and will alert you about the things which are not needed.
(4) If you can ascertain that Trojans and Ad Ware are not loading when you boot, it would enhance the performance of your computer.
(5)Once or twice a month, clear all your temporary Internet files, vacant your recycle bin and move files, which are not needed to back up drive. Go to My Computer, click on Properties followed by Tools and then select the tab defragment. It would take some time but improve the booting time of your computer.
(6)If you are leaving your computer for not a long time, say only a couple of hours, then instead of shutting down your computer you can leave it in a stand-by mode. A computer on a stand-by mode remembers everything you were doing but this memory is called volatile memory. You can also save everything; this would an insurance against a power cut.
(7)Hibernate mode is a better option than stand-by mode if you are not going to use your computer for a whole day or similarly for long intervals. Hibernation mode saves an image of your computer’s open application and documents on the hard drive. You can put your computer on hibernate mode by going into the computer’s Control Panel. Turn off your computer holding down the shift key and the Hibernate option will appear, just click on it and your computer will go into a snooze.
How To Get Rid Of Computer Viruses?
Computer viruses are unwanted computer programs. They keep themselves hidden in your computer and then replicate themselves in their own way and multiply (spread). The Internet connects a lot of computers to each other and sometimes, while sharing data; sending emails etc, along with the files, computer viruses also get transmitted. A virus can do anything to a computer – it can delete files, it can corrupt data and it can also disable your computer’s security systems or can damage it irreversibly.
Viruses are sometime transmitted unknowingly but not always because there are people, who are known as hackers, who design these computer programs to break into others’ computers. Their reason could be any i.e. stealing data, personal animosity etc.
Common Types:
Resident Viruses: They remain hidden in your computer. They are in the RAM memory and control and intercept the operations which are carried out by the system. Their primary use is to capture secret information about the user i.e. passwords, credit card numbers etc.
Direct Action Viruses: They quickly replicate themselves and they are designed to fulfill a certain objective. They normally attach themselves to the files stored in the computer and when that file is made to run they get activated.
Overwrite Viruses: Their objective is straightforward – to destroy whatever information it can put its hands on. It deletes all the information contained in a file and copies itself on the files resulting in the files becoming useless.
Boot Virus: Boot system is that part of a computer which stores basic programs like how to start the computer etc. These viruses are after the boot sector of computers. The best ways to avoid them is to write-protect the floppy discs and never start you computer with an unknown floppy disc in the drive.
Macro Viruses: Programs like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint etc, have the ability to use small programs, known as ‘helper’ programs, to expand their functionality. These ‘helper’ programs are called ‘macros’. They remain stored in the document files of a computer. When that file is run, the virus gets activated.
File Infectors: Viruses falling in this category infect executable files (programs). Most of the viruses found today are of this category. Once the infected program is run, they get activated.
Solutions:
The best defense against any type of infection is a virus scanner that not only detects a threat, but eradicates it as well. Installing anti-virus software is the best solution and some of them are available for free:
Commercial:
There are some companies like McAfee Antivirus, the oldest antivirus development company in the world, which are experienced. And there is another of the Norton Antivirus kind, with really heavy antivirus systems. Other famous names include Quick Heal, ESET etc.
Free:
There are some companies which provide antivirus for free for home use. They include Avast Antivirus and AVG. Both are relatively new companies and provide you with an easy to install protection shield. There are other companies too, which make anti-virus software available for free under certain conditions – Avira AntiVirus Personal, Bit Defender etc.