Clean slate

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: May 26th, 2010 | 0 Comments

Over the last 24 hours I have been busy with getting my computer into a good performance level for this summer. To do this I decided to fully format my computer and start fresh. Since I have a lot of files on my computer, I knew the longest part of this would be backing up what I need. That took a while, I ended up keeping about 90gb of files, this included some programs that I needed. I also had to backup my iTunes library this was really simple, I just copied my music folder and then exported the iTunes library file and that was it done! Since I am working on a few websites, some for myself and some for clients I backed up those files into a few different places just in case the hard drive I was using to back up the files managed to fail, it would be just my luck that it would and I would have to work my ass off to recover what I lost! I backed up all my files onto an internal hard drive which I actually keep outside of my computer, it is just a spare hard drive I have lying around that comes in useful for doing just this thing! To get my files onto it I used a set of cables I bought a while back which provide power to the hard drive and also has a usb cable for transfer! The next step was just to format the hard drive, I always worry after I just push that format button, in case I forgot to back something up, it would be lost forever, luckily it hasn't happened to me yet, and hopefully it never will! I reinstalled Windows 7 onto the computer once the format was complete, it took about 20 minutes which is not a bad time for installing it but usually I would install it from a usb key, which only takes about 10 minutes, that is a much faster way of doing it however I didn't have a spare usb key to put Windows 7 on so I had to do it using the disc. I worked on this from 11pm last night to about 2am, in that time I backed up all my files, formatted and reinstalled windows and then once all that was done I started on getting all my files back onto the computer. Putting the files back onto the computer was actually pretty fast and while the files were copying back on, I installed a few of my programs including my anti-virus suite (Pc-Tools Internet Security), iTunes and Tweetdeck. Once the files were back on the computer I organised them into a better order than I had them before. I used to have my pictures, videos and documents all mixed together, now I have them in separate locations, that should help me find things quicker in the future! I decided that was enough for one night, which was actually the bulk of the work complete. Today I just added on the last of the programs I use regularly, such as Microsoft word, FileZilla (ftp program), Gtalk, msn, Photoshop and Dreamweaver. The reason I wanted to reinstall my operating system was because over time your computer tends to become slower than usual and doesn't perform to its best abilities, this can happen from parts of programs being left behind when you uninstalled a program, it also frees up space. Also any entries in the registry that are not needed are completely gone now so the registry is smaller now since there is basically nothing on the computer. Now my computer is working much faster, I do notice the difference. The boot speed has drastically increased, which is great! :)

Windows vista hangs on installation

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: April 23rd, 2010 | 0 Comments

Up until recently I had only ever installed Windows Vista once or twice, and I never had any problems with the installation process.

That was up until a few weeks ago, I was fixing a laptop and it had so many viruses on it that the best option would be to backup any files that I could safely and then just wipe it.

After wiping it I put in the Windows Vista installation disc and it seemed to be going fine, that was until it came to the very last section of the install. At the "Completing Installation" section the computer just stayed there, usually the computer would reboot a few time then you could use your operating system, this should only take about 3 or 4 minutes.

For me I left it over night to see if it would finish,it didn't work, I also retried installing it again and again and it would not get past this section, it just kept on hanging on Completing Installation.

I looked through a few forums online and tried all the suggestions that worked for other people, but none of them worked for me.

Next I decided to have a look through the different boot options available on the computer and after changing a few I finally came across a setting that if you change it and run the installation again, it will complete it successfully!

When you turn on your computer press f2 to boot into your computers setup, once in that screen look around until you find a section that says "SATA Mode Selection", change the mode to IDE, then exit and save changes.

Then just start your installation of Windows Vista again and it should complete with no problems.

I hate drivers…

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: October 5th, 2009 | 0 Comments

...Computer drivers that is :D! The reason i hate them is because they cause a serious amount of hassle. This week my computer broke. No idea why, it was working perfectly the night before then when i went to boot it back up the next day, nothing! There was a black screen saying that windows failed to load a file and that it might be corrupt.

So i did what i normally do, i went on the web to find a solution to my problem to see if there was any way to fix my computer without wiping it. Unfortuantly every possible solution that was given would not work. I tried replacing the file from a working version of windows and had no luck getting my computer working again.

I finally decided to just go ahead and wipe my computer, i had all the files backed up thanks to a handy usb to hard drive cable :D . I then went ahead and reinstalled Windows XP, this time instead of putting back on pro or home edition i decided to try out Media centre edition, and i am glad i did, it works the same as home edition, as expected, but it just looks so much more appealing to the eye :) and i can now connect my pc to my Xbox through Media Center.

Anyway once the initial setup of Windows had finished my problems began! Since i have so much different hardware plugged into the computer i had to install all of there drivers, so for example i needed a driver for my mouse, keyboard, printer, monitor etc. I managed to get all those drivers no problem, however there was one that i still could not get even after trying many different driver solution on forum's online.

The driver i could not get was  the Video Controller and Video Controller (VGA Compatible), i found out this was for my graphics card, i needed it because whenever i moved things such as a window around the screen it would just jump like mad. I could only imagine how bad a game would of played on it, not that i play a lot of games on my pc.

No matter how many drivers i tried it would not work, in fact when i went to install the ATI driver that i needed for my ATI graphics card it would just freeze my computer. I went to the dell site and entered in my service tag code to get the driver i needed and that too froze my computer!

It was getting a bit annoying as the computer was basically useless without it. After a while i started to mess about on my computer and realised that the driver i downloaded actually saved as one file, so that when i double clicked it the installer would open, instead of opening the installer i right clicked the file and extracted the files inside it and then tried a manual install of the driver and it worked perfectly :D .

To make a manual install first the files have to be extracted, then simply go to the control panel, then click performance and maintenance then into system. Once in that windows click the Hardware tab then click into device manager. Once in there right click the driver you need to install and choose update driver. Then choose to select where to the install the driver from and include the folder of extracted files.

Then it works :D with no freezes occurring :D.  It is such a simple solution and i really wish i had of thought of it sooner, it would of saved me a lot of hassle.