Computer Tutorials

I use Ccleaner alot to delete most of my temporary files usually but today I thought I would have a look in my temp file and see if there was anything there and was surprised at what i came across! So I closed firefox and all other programs and ran Ccleaner to only find out that its not deleting all the temp files in the temp folder.

So this tutorial is going to show you how to get to the temp file in windows xp and windows vista with it being the same and then how to delete the files.

Ok lets start.

Hold down the Windows Key on your keyboard and press ‘R’.
This will bring up the Run Dialog box.
Type in %temp% including the Percentage signs.
Click OK.
This will open the temp folder which contains temp files, they are of no use to you they are mostly Internet temp files and having to many of them can cause your computer to slow down, and that’s not what you want.

Click Once on one of the files in the temp folder (any file) to highlight it.
Hold down the Control key Ctrl and press ‘A’.
This will highlight all of the files within the temp folder.
Now either right Click and select delete or just press the Del key.
As usual it will ask you if you want to continue, Click Yes.

** if you encounter any resistance while trying to delete this files, that is usually because the files that you are trying to delete are in use. for example you might still have your Browser open, when you are deleting this files you will need to close most programs to ensure that all temp files are not being used at current.

I hope this has helped you understand just that little bit more about your computer, I was under the impression that Ccleaner deleted all my temp files! I want make the same mistake again, I would still recommend ccleaner though because it does delete quite a lot of the build up and of course it saves you time.

Adam Nugent

AutoPlay is the program that tells Windows Vista what to do when you have entered a CD/DVD into the CD drive, by default this program will greet you with a pop up window asking you what you would like to do.

Maybe you would like to insert a Music CD and just have it play straight away without you having to click anything, the same with a DVD or even a PC Game. If you follow this tutorial you will be able to decide for your self what happens by default when you place a CD into your drive

Navigate to:
Start ( the vista logo bottom left )
Click Control Panel
Double Click AutoPlay
Now you will have the AutoPlay window open.

Look at all them pretty drop down boxes waiting to be played with! By Clicking on the drop down boxes you will be able to select what happens for each option on the page, Here’s a quick run down on Audio CD just to explain the process.

When you select the Audio CD drop down box you will be displayed with a few options some people may have more then others dependent upon what music software you have installed.
Here’s what the standard ones do:

Ask Me Every Time.
This will as it says ask you every time you insert an Audio CD what would you like to do.

Take No Action.
Again self explanatory, This option will do nothing.

Open the Folder To View the Files.
Will display all the content (songs) in a folder giving you the option to play select ones and the like.

Play Audio CD using Windows Media Player.
This is will play the songs in Windows Media Player as soon as you have inserted the CD, without asking you.
**You may have this option associated with more music programs such as Real Player Quick Time dependent upon what you have installed.

Burn Music from CD using Windows Media Player.
This option will let you copy the music into windows media player library ready to be burned to another CD.

If you select any of them options and then click Save at the bottom of the window every time you input an Audio CD the same action will be taken.

There is also defaults for Devices that will let you control what happens when you input devices such as a USB Memory Stick, however to access these options you will need to have the device attached to your computer at the time.

At the bottom of the window there is a Reset all Defaults button if you feel like you would like to revert back to the default settings.

I hope this has been useful to you, If so leave a comment

Adam Nugent

Outlook has gone out of the window quite literally with windows vista and has now been replaced by a program called Windows Mail. I use this program myself to download and read the emails from this site and in this post and I’m going to give you some details on why windows mail is now the standard with windows vista.

Firstly to access Windows Mail go to:

Start (the little round button in the bottom left).
You may see it right there in the window that opens if not then click All Programs, and then click Windows Mail.

Whats new with Windows Mail and why should i choose to use it over Outlook Express, what are the new features?

Windows Mail is the the successor to Outlook Express, people like to stay up to date with software so they don’t fall behind. Windows Mail will replace Outlook Express and become the default in time as more and more people start to move to Windows Vista, this will of course take time because alot of people are still using Windows XP and alot of companies out there are still using Windows 2000!!

There is Also Windows Live Mail is the new version of Windows Mail, However this post is about Windows Mail and I am yet to have any experience with Windows Live Mail

One of the best new features that windows mail brings that will benefit the home user is the junk mail filtering (Spam) which will over time learn to be smarter based on your habits, meaning that it will learn from you what is more likely to be spam and start to act based on your past habits. This program is called Bayesian Spam Filtering.
Why we are on the subject of spam there has also been a phishing filter put in place to protect you from from websites that have been identified as being malicious.

They are some of the just some of the more important points that will affect you as a standard home user, if you want to know what the more advanced and technical new features are take a look at Windows Mail Wikipedia

The main goal of this post was to make users aware that Outlook Express is not installed on Windows Vista and what you can use to take its place, both them points have been covered above. If you have any questions leave a comment

Adam Nugent

Protecting your Privacy is what we are going to cover in this post. Anyone can take a look at your history and find out what you have been doing on your computer, and this raises serious privacy concerns. I’m sure you don’t want to be one of the statistics you hear about on the new all the time.

Identity theft
Wake up to have your credit card maxed out
find out that your in debt by no fault of your own..

We live in a time where things like this are at there peak with technology getting better by the day, the average person doesn’t have the time to learn about computer to an advanced level unless ofcouse that’s there job, which leaves you in a very bad place.
You have all that technology in front of you storing all of your information everything you do just waiting for someone to take advantage of it.

I’m going to give you a few tips that you can do to prevent these issues below.

1. I’ll start with the obvious one, never give your information out to someone for example user names/passwords/credit card details unless you can trust the person you are giving them to.

2. Always check that you are using a secure connection when you enter credit card information. (In firefox you will see the padlock at the bottom right of the window where as in Internet explorer you will see the padlock in the address bar)

3. Run anti-virus/spy ware programs on a weekly bases and keep them up to date.

4. Don’t forget a good firewall

5. Only enter your email address and other details and sites you know can be trusted, this is something you can easily find out by doing a quick google search on the company name.

Now lets talk more about the information that’s stored on your computer! This can be very damaging to your family, your credit records, and most importantly yourself. It can even be damaging to your health as we all know high levels of stress cause all kinds of health issues and stress is going to be one of the biggest factors for you if someone got hold of your personal information.

there are a few ways that are build into windows to help you get rid of stored up history and cached files, they do work but not to the extent you would. If the person trying to get hold of your information knows what there doing they will still be able to get all the details they need, this is where third party programs come in to help you.

Now I’m going to show you a few ways to clear history.

Clearing Firefox History.
Tools > Options > Privacy
Click Clear Now
select all the boxes and then click Clear Private Data Now
** Please be aware when deleting passwords, make sure you can remember them first or leave that box unchecked at your own risk.

Clearing Internet Explorer History.
Tools > Internet Options > General
Under Browsing History Click Delete
Now click Delete all
**Again if you want to keep your passwords saved click each box manually.

Windows Vista Disk Cleanup
Windows Logo(start) > Computer
right click Local Disk (C:) and select properties
on the General tab click Disk cleanup
select all the boxes then click OK.
then click delete files
** This can take a while!

There are a few other ways to remove history but i would rather not take you into the file system and start telling you to delete files as this is for people with more then average computer knowledge and i wouldn’t like to see you delete the wrong things and end up with a broken computer!

There are Also programs that can Help protect you much more then what I’ve show you above. Two such programs are listed below

Ccleaner
This is a very good Open source free piece of software.

Winclear
This is a very good professional paid for product.

Please take a look at both these products and make your mind up for your self or even better yet use them both as there might always be something that ones misses that the other does not.

That’s about it for now, Keep safe

Adam Nugent

When you look at your computer and start to think it’s slow and full of viruses don’t feel to bad, because I’m sure you have no where near 11,000 viruses causing you problems!

Yes, you did hear that right! 11 thousand viruses on just one computer found with just one scan of AVG which has got to be the most viruses I’ve ever heard of one just one computer. It’s amazing that this computer is still functional but as you will be able to see in the video there doesn’t even seam to be any slow down! Which brings me to another very important point, just because your computer is not becoming slow and your not getting errors and pop-ups all the time does not mean that your computer is virus free.

You see viruses can lay dormant on a computer in file format never actually infecting you, however which just one click of the mouse your computer could turn into a paper weight! There are also viruses/worms/Trojans out there that will not cause any visible harm to your computer but my let other people with illegal intentions gain access of your computer and all your information and lets be honest here that’s much more serious then your computer crashing!

Just take a look at the video below and then if you have not done recently do a scan of your computer, if you don’t have AVG then I would suggest that you download it as soon as possible and make sure your not riddled with infection like the poor person in this video. Download AVG Free edition and scan your computer this is in my opinion the best free anti-virus product out there at the moment.

Heres the shocking video!

Adam Nugent

There have been hundreds of cases where I’ve been working on a technical support help desk and I’ve had to advise the customer to format there computer as a last resort to there problems, the answer that I often got back from such a statement was “Format..?? What do you mean?”.

If you have even been asked to do the same or maybe you are being told to now and looking for advice, the video below will help you greatly in understanding how to complete such a task on your own. The video is by now means slow and detailed! however it will give you the basics of what you need to be doing and ofcourse you can pause the video in time with what you are doing and follow it step by step.

I must really stress to you that the warnings given in this video are essential to you for example:
1. Back up your settings.
2. Backup Files, documents, photos, songs, movies etc
3. Ensure you have all the device drives for hardware, such as sound card/motherboard/graphics card, anything that you have had to install on your computer that did not just work out of the box, Most of these drives if you don’t have them on disk can be found at the manufactures website.
4. Double check you have either:
A. Moved everything you wish to keep on to an external storage device or something of the like.
B. Copied everything to a DVD/CD

I’m stressing this fact to you because there are so many people that have misunderstood this point in the past and lost all of there content! Which can be very upsetting if you have something stored on your computer that means alot to you or is very hard to find.
So PLEASE MAKE SURE you have backed up anything that you do not want to lose before you begin a format on your computer.

Depending upon the speed of your computer the installation could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to install, I’ve been at both ends of this spectrum!
Below is the rather rugged but practical video where you will see a full install Windows XP Installed.

Adam Nugent

I was having a look round youtube today as most people do from time to time and thought what kind of results would I get by typing in “Computer Tutorials”, I was suprised at the amout you can find there!
I myself would love to start doing Video Tutorials! However the time that this would take would be much longer then it is for me to write them up, getting to the point!

I found 3 very simple Windows Vista tutorials that I’m going to share with you now, Look below

Like I said above they are very simple but also very direct and to the point which really is what you want and need. If you liked these tutorials please leave a comment’s here and also leave comments on youtube for Computertuts.

Adam Nugent

I’ve not visited this blog in quite a while and I had heard about the new and updated wordpress, so today I took the time to come and change over to 2.6 and at the same time decided that I also needed a new theme.

Like I said above I’ve not been around in a while now on this blog or the counterpart website. I’m hoping to change this and start to spend a little time each day writing some new content for you. Over the last few months without me doing any work on the site at all my daily visitors have grown to over 300 per day on some occasions over 1000! This has managed to grab my attention and give me some motivation back which I plan to show you soon.

I had fun writing the tutorials for you, I just could’nt keep up the motivation to do them without seeing any change in visitors/comments and the like. However now that I’ve seen changes in all of these I’m going to write some more and see how things go.

I hope you like the new look of the site?
Any Tutorials you have in mind?

Adam Nugent