Computer Tutorials

Adamsdvds.co.uk has just been re-designed I hope you like the new layout and design? I would love to hear comments, more so from the people who saw the old design as I’m sure you will find the new design to be a lot nicer even easier to navigate then the last.

At the moment there are still some design changes going on with Adamsdvds.co.uk so if you see anything that’s a miss feel free to send me an email with the details or post a comment and I’ll get on it ASAP.

The banner has also been re-designed, which to me feels a lot more welcoming then my previous design.

While changing the design over I have also taken some parts of the site down because I feel that they have only hindered my success with Adamsdvds.co.uk and that’s not how I plan to continue.

That’s about all for now really, just a quick update so you know whats going on.

If anyone has any suggestions for future tutorials or functions to be added to Adamsdvds.co.uk I would really appreciate your comments.

Adam Nugent

Recently adamsdvds.co.uk has been down for while this was due to the poor customer service and poor technical support of Webfusion.

I’ll start at the beginning, I came up with the idea for adamsdvds.co.uk I just needed somewhere cheap to host it. Well a friend of mine had just purchased a Webfusion Windows VPS so I asked him if it would be ok if I hosted adamsdvds.co.uk on there for a while, to which his reply was yes.

So after setting everything up, adamsdvds.co.uk was up and running smoothly for a while! Then at random intervals there server became slow this went on for a few days. Because my friend was the owner of the VPS he gave me joint admin access to the server, so I was investigating the problems and I was unable to find anything. I emailed Webfusion tech support, I waited and waited and waited… Nothing!

They never got back to me on the matter, so over a day later I emailed them again placing URGENT! in the email and I waited again! over two days passed before I got a response!

The response that I waited over 4 days for was:
Can you please supply me with the following details:
Plesk/Virt user names and passwords.
The dates that have been effected.
Any error messages from you log files that are on or around the time of the failings that are showing anomalies.

This annoyed me even more as they should all ready have this information (them being the provider of the VPS) and should have been able to solve the issue before they even contacted me.

So I replied to them giving them the user names and passwords and told them that I’m not going to go into the server again now to get the logs. Because by this point the server was slow pretty much all the time and starting to become unresponsive.

Again I waited for a response…. this was the 5th of April I waited two days and now the server was down completely I could not log into Plesk or Virtuozzo. I decided that it would be wise to just forget about Webfusion and move my site else where by this point.

However I did not have the funds to get new hosting until the 11th of April which at the time of writing this was yesterday! I had just got into Google and was starting to get some small traffic about 20 unique visitors a day so I was very frustrated because all the hard work that I have put it to this site trying to give help to other people, was all about to go down the drain.

I guess that’s why they sometimes say you get what you pay for! but although I was not paying my friend was forking out over £40 per month for this useless VPS.

I decided to go with the company that I bought my domain with as there customer service and technical support have been fantastic so far and I would recommend them highly (Hosted.co.uk).

So now its the 13th of April and I check my mail as I usually do and to my amazement there is an email from Webfusion support. Here’s what they said:

Thank you for your correspondence. What do the server logs say at the times when the server was not accessible? These will be the key to where your issue lies.

Now I’m sorry but that is just a little to late, so in other words they have not fully read the email that I sent them, they have not used the user names and passwords that they asked for and were provided with.
Its out of my hands now tho and left to my friend and hes told me that hes going to cancel there service.

They are just a joke!

I will never use Webfusion again in the future, If you are thinking of going with a Webfusion Windows VPS I would suggest you do one thing before hand and that’s search google with “Webfusion VPS” and look at the responses you get back!!

If you have had similar experiences with Webfusion or maybe they have never been a problem for you then I would love for you to comment on this subject.

Until Next Time…

Optimize Computer Performance

What happens when people buy a computer these days?
They neglect it from the day that it is bought and they are still neglecting it now, all they
do is install and then uninstall programs. The 3 main things that an average computer gets
used for are:

1. Internet
2. Email
3. Word processing

And that’s it really!

Because they only use there computer for these functions it becomes slower and slower day by
day until it’s almost unusable. The average user knows nothing about optimizing a computer
to get the best performance out of it, usually it gets that bad that you click on something
and you are waiting for ever for the program to start and then once it does start its still
taking forever to actually do anything! You should never have to wait!

If you end up waiting for programs to start or do there functions, you really need to do
Something! Below im going to tell you the single best action you can take to
Optimize your computers performance.

But first a little background on the Registry:
Your computer assuming that it’s running a Microsoft Operating System runs from a set of files collectively called the Registry. The are not something that a new or unknowledgeable
computer user should mess with, as deleting or even changing some entries within the registry
can result in your computer not booting up at all!
But there are other ways in which they get messed up, say for example when you uninstall
some software it’s possible that doing this can remove an entry from the registry that is
also needed by another program resulting in that program not working correctly or even
at all. More importantly it causes your computer to slow down because it’s looking for things
that have changed or is missing.

The Registry is the heart of a Windows Operating System and by heart I mean the main the
Central place of control! When things start to go wrong within the Registry your computer
does not know what to do. Sort of like a four-way road with no traffic lights, each driver
does not know when to go, that said, most of these errors can be fixed quite easily and
there are programs to do this for you.

So how do I fix my Registry and bring my computer back to the speed it once was?
Well it’s not as hard as you may think, not in the slightest! There are many programs out
there to fix these issues and tho some of them may be better then others here are two of my
Recommendations:

Ccleaner (Details can be found here) FREE PROGRAM

Registry Fix (Details can be found here) PAID PROGRAM

I have listed both a free program and paid for program this being because they both offer
different functions, too much for me to give a full description here. Hence the links! It’s up
to you whom you choose if any or maybe you want both that’s entirely up to you. Maybe you
would like to do a search for Registry programs yourself, in this case I would suggest you
use Google and Search for “Registry program” “free registry program” “registry cleaner” you
get the picture.

There is one thing that I am prepared to promise in this post, If you are one
of the people that has never even heard of the registry or have neglected your computer then
when you do decide on a Registry program it is guaranteed that you will have errors and in
most cases there will be quite a few errors.

Put it this way, I run my Registry programs more then once a week because I use my computer
quite a lot (I live on my laptop) and it’s rarely that they come up with no errors. So Believe
me when I say that it is essential you have some form of cleaner.
Some people make the mistake in thinking that there anti-virus does everything! This is not
the case you need spyware protection, virus protection, a registry cleaner, run disk clean
up and also disk defragmenter… I could go on but I’m sure your starting to get the point!
Your computer needs attention and today most program’s have scheduling features which means they run by them self’s, just take a look at my tutorials. There are a few there that tell you how to schedule some programs which means you don’t have to go out of your way to run them once a week. However keeping your program/s up to date is on your own back, with most programs as some do auto update them selves of haves options that let you set this up.
I hope this has been informative
Liked this post? Please leave a comment or Bookmark me with the button below.

As some of you may or may not have noticed on the home page of www.adamsdvds.co.uk I have displayed a small image linking back to this site www.pagerank10.co.uk.

If you have not heard of this! where have you been!! but for those of you that have or would be interested to learn more about it I really do think you should go over there and check it out!

Maybe you need to understand a little more about what it is and what they are trying to do, well I’ll do my best here to run it down for you:

The goal of the website is to go from PR0 to PR10 within 730 days starting from 20th April 2006 so at the time of writing this, there are 388 days left until the
experiment either fails or succeeds…. I’m not completely convinced that it will get to PR10 in the time allotted, though I may be proven wrong!

You are also able to do your part and join in to help the site reach its goal of getting a Google Page Rank 10, You can do this by linking back to www.pagerank10.co.uk by either creating your own link or you can choose to use one of the image’s that they provide here

Also at the same time you are helping them gain traffic, you link will be displayed on there site. To get your link displaying on the Home Page you are going to need to get quite a bit of traffic going there way.

Also on the site it says “the overall top referrer gets this domain and website for FREE!” This means that if you put there link on your site you have a chance of actually owning the site once the experiment is over weather it fails or not there is going to be a lot of interest in this site and a lot of traffic still flowing it its direction. So being the winner of www.pagerank10.co.uk could prove to be very profitable for the right person.

That’s all for now!

This website is best viewed in Mozilla Firefox!

Why is this so you ask?
Well it’s simple really; the quick answer would be that I don’t like Internet Explorer. The long answer is a little more detailed then that, here’s a list of reasons why Firefox is better then Internet Explorer:

1. Firefox is open source - Meaning that everything is not done for profit and there is a very big community that comes along with Firefox and keep it up to date.

2. Firefox has a wide selection of Plug-ins and Themes for you to use to customise your browsing experience and give you all the functionality you need.

3. If you are a programmer you can write your own Plug-ins and have them published on Firefox’s site for the world to use and give you credit for.

4. Its the only other Internet Browser that is really competing against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and its making Microsoft work harder for there money. (Browser Statistics are here: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp )

5. You can drag and drop any site right into the top of the Firefox browser and it adds a button automatically.

6. Firefox has a very good built in pop-up blocker which is much better than external pop-up blockers, as it can differentiate between user-requested and unrequested pop-ups.

7. Security: Internet Explorer has some major security holes, None with Firefox.

8. Live Bookmarking allows you to see when content from the RSS feeds has been updated.

9. RSS feeds from blogs and podcasts are automatically detected and this allows you to subscribe to the RSS feeds from blogs and podcasts.

10. Firefox comes ready with a built in search engine (Default Google) however this can be changed to a number of engines.

11. With Firefox you can have multiple tabs open and close the window… then when you re-open Firefox all the tabs you had open will auto re-open, must be enabled within settings though. This option is located at (Tools - Options - Main - Startup) choose from the drop down box.

12. Firefox options located at (Tools-Options) are much more user friendly then there Internet explorer equivalent.

13. In Firefox you can use the URL about:config (which you just type in as you would a URL) to edit the inner workings of the browser with a number of different results one of the main reasons to use the about:config option would be to optimise and/or tweak.

14. And even after all these improvements… Firefox is smaller!!! (Firefox 2 = 5.7MB — Internet Explorer 7 = 14.8MB)

OK this just a quick list of advantages that Firefox has over its competitor Internet Explorer and all them are just reasons that I all ready knew or had a quick look for, but by no means is that list a full scale list of the Pro’s of Firefox over Internet Explorer.

Everyone knows that Microsoft are always have problems with there software, there code is wrong or it is full of holes, and they are the biggest reason why Viruses affect us. People that write viruses write them for bad coded programs, where they can find holes and vulnerabilities to exploit. So all I can say when it comes to Internet Explorer is just say “NO” then go and get Firefox

I hope that you have found my site to be a useful source of help for your computer problems.

By using this blog I hope to create more of a connection with you people out there, you know who you are…. if you are still unsure who I’m talking about then I’ll give you a little hint. I’m talking about you! the person reading this right now and wondering what the hell is this guy on about!
Well lets jump into that, I’m asking for your support in my online life and by support I don’t mean your money! I’m talking about your comments they mean a great deal to me and there is nothing more that I like then to wake up in the morning and find a new comment on my site telling me that I’ve help you or even telling me that I’ve got something wrong.. cause in the end any comment is a good comment.

Even if you are telling me that I’ve done something wrong, well that’s a good thing because it points something out that I have missed and gives me a chance to correct it so that I can make your experience here more enjoyable. I know from experience myself that when you are looking for an answer to your problem online sometimes the first solution you find is not always the best one or even the correct one.
That’s how I plan to be different, I plan to make my posts and my tutorials the very best quality and by that I don’t mean adding big words that you don’t understand or vague descriptions. What I mean is by adding as much detail as I feel is necessary for the tutorial to be completed without error. OK, let me ask you a simple question here:

Which would you prefer?

A A tutorial that was filled with Jargon that you don’t understand.

B A tutorial that looks good but leaves bits of information out.

C A tutorial that give you extra info when needed and provides a picture for each action that you are required to take so you don’t get lost.

Well personally I would go C and that’s just the kind of tutorials that I write I Don’t assume that people understand even the basics of computers when I compose my tutorials. I don’t mean to treat people as they are stupid but I want my tutorials to be helpful to even the most new computer user.
Look at the two descriptions below:

Open My Computer

or

Look on your desktop, do you see an icon that’s looks like (insert picture of icon here) called My Computer? if you do Double Click on it to open…. If there is no My Computer icon on the desk top, Then Click on Start and then Click on My Computer (insert image or start menu here)

Now for me the first would have been enough but for some people out there usually people new to computers that would have just been confusing and even annoying. But with the second description I’m sure that not anyone, even the people that are not computer literate at all would have been able to follow them instructions and completed the task.
My tutorials can be found here

So I hope that my tutorials prove use full for people the world over, thank you for taking the time to read this post your comments are very welcome.

By for now
Adam Nugent

What is a Computer Virus?

A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. In general a computer virus is a self-replicating form of malware, meaning that a virus can copy its self and spread in a variety of different ways. Some of the ways in which a virus can spread are:
Over local networks
Via email
They can attach to other programs
Via any instant messaging system e.g msn, yahoo, icq

The name Virus comes from the biological term Virus because in some ways its not that different to a human virus in its workings. Once you are infected by a virus it may modify its self cause damage and start to take over, the medicine to cure your self of a computer virus is to run an anti-virus software programs, and in today’s day and age there is no excuse not to have some form of protection installed on your computer even if you cant afford or don’t want to pay for a high end commercial anti-virus programs, because there are plenty of open source (Free) versions out there.

(open source = free software, and usually a big community to go along with it so any problems you have witht he program sound me easy to find solutions to.)

Virus can range from slightly important all the way up to very dangerous, for example there are viruses that are just created to replicate them self’s and spread these will just take up memory which is for some people not a huge problem dependent on there computer resources, but in any case I’m sure you don’t want to be infected by a computer virus. Then comes the nasty ones, Viruses created to cause damage by deleting needed files from your operating system delete all your personal information and if you don’t have back-ups this can be something very devastating for many people say for example that its your college work or a report for work that you’ve been working on for weeks.
This is why I cannot stress how important it is to back-up your information  and keep your anti-virus program/s uptodate because viruses can even format your hard drive and if this happens your hard drive will be empty there will be no data left! that means nothing not even windows (your operating system) which basically means your computer is unusable until an operating system has been reinstalled.
Then comes viruses in the middle the ones that are just annoying, meaning viruses that display pop ups all the time and they even trick people into thinking there is a problem with your computer then give you a link to some website and tell you that you need to pay for and download there software to fix the problem.  Don’t ever pay for software  from these places more so if you have never heard of them before!  Always do a search on google or your search engine of choice with the software name first and see what comes up, you will mostly likely be surprised by what you find!

In the early days of computing virus spreaded via floppy disks but has time and technology have moved on, now viruses can spread by pretty much any means possible and sometimes its not even obvious that you have a virus on your computer.
like i said above they the term virus does not straight of mean that its evil and going to hurt your computer its just a name given to a collective that are programs that infect your computer and do something that you are not aware of or would not do yourself.
Believe me when i say that is it unlikely that you will get a virus that will format your computer or delete all your information but at the same time its not impossible to get one which means you should always be aware of what you have installed how your computer is reacting and the two main things are inexcusable not to do and they are:
1. Back up anything you would not want to lose! Regularly!!
2. Install at least one anti-virus program keep it up to date and run a scan at least once a week!!

Also most people make the mistake of calling everything a virus and this is not the cause there are bugs in programs that can cause nasty things to happen bad coded programs can cause blue screens of death which is usually a memory error, also malware, Trojans, worms are usually by most people all defined under the name virus when in fact there are difference in each of them tho in some they may be minor they are still there and sometimes different programs are required to remove different types.

There are actually some virus out there that are designed to fix problems and delete other viruses tho this may sound strange is is not a lie, they are created in the best of intentions and tho they are rare and may be helpful they still use your memory and may still cause damage to your system because it might not be designed for your configuration. But in the end whether it be a good idea or in the best intentions releasing a computer virus is in most jurisdictions a crime!!

This is just a small run down, yes i know i said small but if you are very interested and would like to learn more then believe me there is much more that you can learn there is a link below to Wikipedia where you can get a more full detailed explanation on this subject if you so wish.
Widipedia Virus Definition