Keeping your computer up to date and secure is just as important as the regular servicing of your car or motorbike. Like any machine, your computer needs constant care and a regular tune up. If you fail to carry out this important task your PC will gradually become slower and start to develop problems.

To keep a computer in good shape you must keep it free of malicious software, viruses and dust. You should also ensure that your PC’s hard drive is well maintained to reduce any problems that might arise in the future.

A lot of freely available software can keep your PC perfectly well tuned. Its just a question of knowing what to download and how to make the best use of it.

How To Tune Up a Windows based PC

A comprehensive tune up procedure has been developed by QBS PC Help and is used whenever we tune up a clients PC. The detailed steps we take are as follows:

• Physically clean the PC by removing the cover and using a pressurised air duster. Make sure all the dust is removed and make sure all the cooling fans are working. For a thorough clean see the article cleaning your computer, computer components and peripherals.
• Check that Virus definition downloads are set to auto and that the latest definitions are installed. If there is no anti virus software installed and the PC is not heavily used by the client, install the free copy of AVG Anti virus.
• If not present, install a good firewall like Zone Alarm.
• Perform a full system wide virus scan.
• If the Windows Operating System is present install Microsoft Windows Defender for real time spyware/adware removal and protection. Windows Defender is pre-installed in Windows Vista and Windows 7.
• Uninstall any known adware or spyware using AdAware Anniversary Edition and SpyBot Search & Destroy. These programs will find most of the rubbish that resides on a PC’s hard drive.
• Clean your Windows Registry. A highly rated software tool for cleaning Windows files and the Registry is CCleaner. This free program scans your PC for many types of Windows files and extensions and also the Registry for unwanted, corrupt paths and gives you the option to make a backup before cleaning begins. Another tool for an experienced Windows user is CWShredder. If used carefully this can find even more adware and spyware problems and can also clean the Windows Registry.
• Remove any programs that start up automatically but have no right or reason to. Use msconfig to check these.
• With the users permission uninstall any unwanted programs.
• Check the hard drive for errors using chkdsk.
• Defragment the hard drive to realign the files for better performance.

The Final Results of a Thorough Tune Up

You may be surprised at how fast your computer runs after being properly tuned up and as you see from this post you can do most of this yourself, using a few software programs that are free to download.

To keep you PC running well use AdAware Anniversary Edition and SpyBot Search & Destroy at least weekly. And also clean your Windows Registry and files regularly using CCleaner.

We also recommend that you do a full tune up by following our tune up procedure every six months or so. This will keep your PC running smoothly and help to prevent any future problems.

Of course, nothing lasts forever so a major component like a Power Unit or Hard Drive might fail at some point. For more information about hardware problems see our series of PC Help Guides.

A Canadian company behind a search engine called Groovle.com has won a case filed against it by online search giant Google.

Google said the domain name used by the small business, 207 Media, was too similar to its own, but mediators the National Arbitration Forum disagreed.

In the complaint, Google asked for the judges to rule that 207 Media transfer the domain name over to it.

But three judges appointed by the forum refused the request. They said the name was not similar enough to confuse people and the word ‘groovle’ was more closely linked to “groovy” or “groove” rather than Google.

Source: BBC Technology

The Vista ‘User Profile Service’ fails to logon problem seems to occur when there are two or more user Profiles set up and one of these User Profiles becomes corrupted. But there are a small number of single users who also report the same problem. It does not seem to matter whether the users are ‘administrators’ or ’standard’ users.

As the affected users Profile has somehow been damaged Vista has changed the Profile’s extension to .bak – a backup file. This makes the user Profile unavailable and so produces the message:

The User Profile Service service failed the logon.

User Profile cannot be loaded.

At QBS PC Help we had to find an answer to this problem as we had a Dell Laptop, running Vista, to repair. This PC exhibited the same ‘User Profile Service’ problem. Thankfully the Laptop had two user accounts set up, one administrator and one standard user. It was the standard users account that had frozen.

A few searches in Google led us to the Vista Update forum which had a post on this topic.

Of course if you are the only user of your PC you’ve probably got only one user profile set up and you are no doubt the administrator. So if this account is frozen your only option is to try and repair Windows Vista.

Turn on your computer, and press and hold F8. You will see on the screen that appears the option to ” Repair Your Computer”. Select this and hit Enter. (use your own administrator user name and password).

On the next screen you will see the first Category “Startup Repair” and the second “System Restore”. Click on Startup Repair. When this finishes restart your computer.

If the Startup Repair doesn’t work try the second option – System Restore. Again when its done, restart your computer.

Hopefully, your user account is now working again.

The Suggested Fix for two or more User Accounts

If you have two or more user accounts set up then the following solution definately works . We fixed the Dell Laptop by taking these steps.

First, you need to log on with an administrators account.

Now go to Start and in the Search Box type regedit. Get past the nagging security box and wait till regedit opens.

Now go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\

Go through the listed Profiles to find the damaged Profile. The key to the damaged profile should have a .bak appended to it.

There should also be another identical key except for the .bak extension. Rename this other key to something else (e.g. one number above the highest number).

Also rename your damaged Profile by removing the .bak extension. Now change the State property of this Profile (listed in the right hand window) from 1 to 0.

Restart your PC and try logging on with your repaired Profile. It should now work.

Around the Internet there seems to be a big problem with CD/DVD drives disappearing from Device Manager, not showing up in the MyComputer overview folder and even being absent from the BIOS. Very strange!

This is all a bit of a mystery and although some of the solutions listed below seem to work for some people there are still many others who are stuck with a non working CD/DVD unit.

As PC repairers QBS PC Help have come across this problem with a clients Acer Aspire 5315 laptop. Despite trying everything posted on line, this laptop is still without a working CD/DVD.

Here are some of the many things we found and tried in an effort to solve this problem.

We know that some of these suggestions have worked for a few people but the Acer 5315 laptop we have seems completely unfixable at the moment.

Here’s a good fix for some situations

There is a fix that’s been around for some time for Windows XP which seems to have worked for some individuals who own Windows Vista laptops. It involves deleting the Upper and Lower Filters from the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11­CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Always back up the Registry before you change anything. When you open regedit click on the File menu and choose Export. Once you have backed up the Registry these are the steps you need to take:

Click on Vista’s start menu and type regedit into the search box.

Maximize the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE root key and then browse until you reach this particular key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11­CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

In the right hand panel you should see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter”. Click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.

Now restart your PC for the change to take effect.

If you have deleted both the upper and lower filters and you still are unable to read CD’s or DVD’s, this may indicate that your drive or your motherboard is suspect. But before you rush out and buy new ones, try all the potential ‘fixes’ below.

Try deleting entries in Device Manager

First go to Device Manager (type Device Manager in the Windows Vista search box and click on the result). Once you are in Device Manager check to see if a DVD/CD-ROM Drives heading is listed and click on the + sign to expand the view so you can see the device that should be listed there. If it shows a CD Rom Device right click it and select uninstall. You can then reinstall the device by clicking on the above ‘Action’ menu and selecting ‘Scan for hardware changes’.

Make sure you reboot your PC to see if this fix works.

Another possibility is to do all the above, stay in Device Manager, and then go into the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller and look at each IDE channel. Uninstall any channel which has nothing under the advanced settings. Windows Vista will then re-detect the channels (on reboot) and reconfigure any connected devices.

Once Vista reboots it should detect the CD Rom Drive and the correct Windows driver and install them.

A big problem with many online posts is that a lot of people seem to have no CD Device listed in Device manager !

One post reported this rather unusual idea -

“For the past few days my dvd drive has been showing up and I’ve been using it and everything seems so perfect. What did I do? I unscrewed the drive from the bottom of the notebook. When I slid the drive out of its slot there was a little metal bracket that holds the drive in place. It has some very tiny screws in it. Remove that bracket from the drive and reinstall the drive without screwing it in at all. Yes, there is a risk of it sliding out if you’re not careful, but this worked for me. When I booted, the drive showed up. My guess is that the bracket causes it to not make a FULL connection. Don’t get me wrong, with the bracket installed, the light comes on as if the dvd drive is loading, it even responds to me pushing the button and opens up, but didn’t show up in My Computer. But now it does.”

A few more fixes that people have tried

Some people have replaced the CD/DVD Drive with a new one and still end up with the same problem!

Even hard drives have been replaced and although this might fix the problem for a short while it usually returns!

We hope that at least one of these potential fixes works for your missing CD/DVD Drive.

One of our website’s, www.inputyouth.co.uk, had to be moved from one host to another. The move was to accomplish three main objectives.

These were:

• To lower the yearly cost by at least £30.
• To swap from a Windows to a Linux server.
• And to find 1st class customer and technical support by reading independent reviews.

After much deliberation we finally decided to try one of the hosts recommended by PC Pro in their Reliability & Service Awards of 2009 – Fast2host.com.

Fast2Host is a British company focused on providing web hosting with top support. And it shows in its results, with 95.8% of its customers happy to recommend Fast2Host to friends and colleagues.

The Input Youth account with Fast2Host was set up on Friday 2 October 2009. We selected the Linux Enterprise package which has 100 sub domains, 50 email accounts and a LAMP configuration (Linux, Apache,MySql and PHP). The whole set up can be managed using CPanel V11.

Changing the TAG

The TAG change from the old host to Fast2Host was complete on Saturday evening and the whole site was uploaded and working on Sunday 4th October. A pretty stella performance. There were no hitches along the way even though the Input Youth site has a WordPress blog and several film shows to slightly complicate matters.

Our Final Thoughts

This superb hosting company have been trading since 1999 and seem to go over and above what other hosting companies typically do for their clients. Their service and support are exceptional, which is borne out by the many positive reviews that litter the Internet.

So far we are extremely happy with Fast2Host. The Input Youth website has experienced no downtime and even loads a bit faster than it used to.

Fast2host are a superb web hosting company who offer loads of useful features as standard. Other hosting companies may well charge extra for these goodies.
So, if you are looking for a good quality hosting solution providing the latest technology at the best possible price, look no further than Fast2hosts.