PC Memoirs

If you are a laptop owner and you use your laptop outside of your home, you probably expect it to work as long as possible on one battery charge. I know that battery life was one of the main criteria when I was looking to buy my first laptop few years ago. You don’t want to drag your AC adapter everywhere and sometimes you won’t find a power point to plug it in. I’ve been lucky, because my LG laptop has a decent battery and it holds its charge for over one hour even after 3 years of use.

Some people are not that lucky and their laptop batteries empty their juice in a very short time, and the laptop doesn’t even have to be very old. The worst case I saw is in one of my friend’s HP laptops, which is only a year old. The battery held its charge for 1 minute! Yes, just ONE minute! Needless to say, he had to replace it as this malfunction is not covered by warranty.

If you want to make sure your battery is used as efficiently and as long as possible on one charge, please take a look at some of these tips:

1. Turn off devices and programs that you don’t use all the time, for example your wireless card, bluetooth connection and remove all icons from the taskbar that you don’t use regularly.

2. Stay out of extreme temperatures. Do not use your laptop when it’s very hot or cold.

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Have you ever seen Windows error messages that display 3, 4 or 5 digit error codes, such as error #1056, or error #690 and so on? Do you know what they mean?

Usually the error message comes with a “More Information” link, which leads you to a Help page explaining why the error occurred. Once you find out what the code represents, you can also find out what you can do to get rid of it. But this link doesn’t always offer the solution to the problem.

Sometimes the error has to do with network connections or with an application that you tried to run or with a service that isn’t enabled. The reasons can be many, but what you need is a solution to such a problem.

Did you know that there are Web sites that list all Windows Error Codes, where you can see common errors and the corresponding solutions? I found several which might be helpful:

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If you are not happy with your broadband connection and think it should be faster, then you should try a few things to improve the speed or find out why it’s not performing better.

First, you should know what kind of connection you have and what speeds you can expect. You can find this through your Internet Service Provider (ISP), the company that gives you Internet connection. Most common connections today are DSL, Cable and Wireless. For example, if you have a 20Mbps connection, you should be able to download with speeds of up to 2MB/sec (over 2000kb per sec). Or if you have a 1.5Mbps connection, then you can download only up to 150kb/sec. Cable speeds vary and can be affected by all sorts of factors (your home’s location for example).

1. Test your actual speed at speedtest.net. This service will show your current speed accurately. In my last test I was able to achieve a speed of around 8Mbps. My ISP claims that it supports speeds of up to 24Mbps, so I should probably do something about this.

2. Next, test your modem. If you are not happy with the speed, maybe the modem is slow. To be sure, try to find a spare one (borrow one from a neighbor or a friend) and see if that one offers faster speeds.

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I spent the last weekend trying to solve a problem for a friend. He called me to clean a virus from his PC. I thought this would be a quick and easy job…

My antivirus program found several infections and proceeded to remove them, but then the PC suddenly rebooted in the middle of the cleaning process. This happened when the spyware scanner accessed the userinit.exe file. After the restart it was even worse: no one could log into their account. As soon as I typed in a password and clicked on Log on, that user was automatically logged off. I tried several accounts, all with the same result. My next idea was to start the PC in Safe Mode, but not even this worked. This is where I realized it’s a serious problem.

I went home to look for some solutions on the Internet. I found several and I tried (almost) all of them:

• First, I found some help here. This guide will most likely solve your problem. You’ll see that there are hundreds of comments from people who are thanking the writer for his help. The instructions are quite easy to follow and it shouldn’t take you long to restore your Windows system.

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Perhaps you have seen this problem while working on your PC: You are surfing the net, writing a document or listening to music when suddenly a new window pops up warning you that your virtual memory is too low. You are asked to close some applications or you won’t be able to continue using your PC.

This happens usually when you use several programs at once and your computer’s performance goes down. If your PC is old and slow, this message shouldn’t come as a surprise. The computer is using up all the RAM (memory used to run some programs such as Microsoft Office) and all the extra space on your hard drive that is made available by the Windows system. This extra space is called virtual memory and it’s used when there is not enough physical RAM available. Without it, your computer would freeze constantly.

There are two solutions to fix this problem:

1. Increase the virtual memory size:

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