How To Quickly Diagnose Those Sound Card Problems

Written by Otis F. Cooper


Continued from page 1

Fourth...Before replacingrepparttar system unit cover, check and double check to see ifrepparttar 107713 card is fully inserted intorepparttar 107714 PCI Slot.

Its possiblerepparttar 107715 card may have crepted out of repparttar 107716 slot if it was not properly secured torepparttar 107717 case.

Fifth...After replacingrepparttar 107718 system unit cover, reconnecting all peripherals,and turning onrepparttar 107719 computer,click to openrepparttar 107720 Windows system folder.

See if there are problems withrepparttar 107721 device drivers which are small software used to allowrepparttar 107722 sound card to communicate torepparttar 107723 computer.

After you have performed these procedures andrepparttar 107724 sound card is not working at all,removerepparttar 107725 card fromrepparttar 107726 computer and try inserting in another system.

As a last resort,you maybe able to saverepparttar 107727 purchase of another card,when there was no need.

As with all components in your computer,don't delay too long in learning to identify every component.Go ahead,remove that system unit cover and studyrepparttar 107728 inside of your computer.

If you still hesitate to open your system,rush over to http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com/photos.html to see every component inrepparttar 107729 computer.It just may save you both time and money when you can identify each component and know what it takes to make repairs.

Otis F. Cooper is the author of the award winning PC Super Pack,the Computer Training By Video course.For hundreds more free PC repair tips,sign up for his bi-monthly newsletter and learn the PC free at http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com


Seven ways to speed up your PC.

Written by Dave Fraser


Continued from page 1

You must do this dragging (in either direction) from within Windows Explorer. Moving or copying a font to or fromrepparttar C:WindowsFonts folder via DOS commands or some other utility won't properly install or uninstall it. Some fonts should stay put, such as Windows system fonts, which haverepparttar 107712 extension .fon instead of .ttf. The icon for a system font has a red 'A' rather than a gray-blue 'TT'. System fonts are usually hidden files, but they're visible inrepparttar 107713 Fonts folder in Explorer. They disappear when you move them elsewhere, though. Some applications require specific fonts, such as Arial, Verdana or Times New Roman, so you'd better keep them around.

Any other ones you don't use can be moved to another folder.

More info on this can be found at:- http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;234749

************************************** Step Six: Optimise your system ************************************** A few basic pointers for optimising your system.

(1) Fromrepparttar 107714 desktop right click onrepparttar 107715 "my computer" icon and select properties. Select "file system" and underrepparttar 107716 hard disc tab, where it says "for typical role of this computer" select "network server" inrepparttar 107717 drop down menu as this speeds up transfers.

(2) Under floppy disc make surerepparttar 107718 little box is not ticked as this increases boot up time slightly.

(3) On Internet Explorer while surfingrepparttar 107719 net, images are stored onrepparttar 107720 hard drive in a section calledrepparttar 107721 cache. This is useful if you are using a slow dial-up connection as it meansrepparttar 107722 most used images don't have to be continually downloaded so surfing speeds are increased.

Ifrepparttar 107723 cache size is too great then Explorer has to check through allrepparttar 107724 images before it downloads them and this can slow up browsing. The optimum size is a bit, hit or miss, but with ADSL or cablerepparttar 107725 cache can be set much smaller asrepparttar 107726 images download quickly. Also whenrepparttar 107727 cache is too large repparttar 107728 files get fragmented (this is covered later) andrepparttar 107729 hard disk thrashes around trying to piece it all together thus slowing everything down.

It's a matter of trial and error but I wouldn't recommend much more than 50MB for a slow connection and about 10MB for ADSL or Cable.

Adjustment is made by clicking on Internet explorer "tools" and "internet options" then under "temporary internet files"repparttar 107730 settings button and userepparttar 107731 slider to adjustrepparttar 107732 amount.

(4) A program I find very useful for optimising various parts of your computer is one called "Speed up my PC" With this you can set it automatically to take care of memory usage and can prevent system crashes at awkward times. It's not free this on but it might be worth taking a look at it. You can read more on it here:- http://www.pcsandthings.com/speed_up_my_pc.htm

*********************************************************** Step Seven: defragment your hard drive regularly ***********************************************************

De-what, my hard drive? I might hear you say. Sounds a bit severe but it's something that should be done fairly regularly.

Your computer works efficiently whenrepparttar 107733 data it takes fromrepparttar 107734 hard drive to process in memory is all in one place and doesn't take very long to fetch.

After using your computer for a while, related files get broken up into fragments and are scattered all overrepparttar 107735 disc. This happens in normal use and it can significantly increaserepparttar 107736 time it takes to collect it all up.

A bit like you going to another room to fetch your files from a filing cabinet and if they were all together it would be easy to collect them. If onrepparttar 107737 other hand they were in different cabinets all dotted aroundrepparttar 107738 room then you getrepparttar 107739 idea.

The thing to do is runrepparttar 107740 defragmenter that comes with Windows. Double click "My Computer" and then Right Clickrepparttar 107741 icon for drive C: and then click properties. Select defragment and followrepparttar 107742 instructions.

This process can take a long time on a large hard drive with badly fragmented files, so it may be advisable to set this running at a quiet time computer wise or even overnight.

There is a another program I highly recommend for defragmenting which is called Diskeeper Lite and is much better thanrepparttar 107743 built-in version that Windows has. It is available as a free download plus some more articles on fragmentation from http://www.executive.com/downloads/menu.asp

Defragmenting is best done last afterrepparttar 107744 other steps above as removing files and clutter will leave gaps that can then be put back together for normal use.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carrying outrepparttar 107745 above actions will help keep your PC running faster and more stable and hopefully crashing less causing you less stress and frustration from lost work.

So get started now and clean up your PC and make it a habit to do it regularly and keep your system running at peak performance.

And don't forget one ofrepparttar 107746 most cost effective upgrades you can do to your PC atrepparttar 107747 moment is to add some more Memory (RAM).

Check our website for "Memory specials" at:- http://www.pcsandthings.com/

or

Buy direct fromrepparttar 107748 manufacturer at:- http://www.pcsandthings.com/crucial.htm

They have a system selector that can help you choose repparttar 107749 correct RAM for your PC.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Fraser makes it easy for beginners to learn about their computers in less technical terms. For more Free tips and tricks to make your computing experience better, visit http://www.pcsandthings.com and sign up for our FREE newsletter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dave understands that not everyone is up on the latest technical words and tries to make computers accessable to anyone by keeping things as simple as possible.


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