Posts Tagged: Windows

ccleaner / Geeky tip / Windows — No Comments
26
Jun 09

Geeky Tip: Clean your Windows and make them shine!

Ccleaner

I have picked up a lot of tips and tricks in my time as a geek, building my first PC in 1998 and my first website later that year. I was always told it is nice to share as I was growing up, so I am.

One tool which truly is a benefit to the performance of any Windows based PC is CCleaner, CCleaner has one main goal, to remove junk and clutter from your PC. It’s main targets are internet temporary files and old system tempary files. Which, can add up to GB of wasted space on your poor old computers hard drive.

CCleaner is free, so I recommend that you check out their website http://www.ccleaner.com and give them a try.

If you need an advice send me a message through twitter, http://twitter.com/andysmailes .

Geeky Reviews / Vista Service Pack 2 / Vista SP2 — No Comments
28
May 09

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Install – Initial Impressions

Windows Vista had a gift for me this morning, a bright new service pack with promises of improved stability and reliability..

I resisted the urge to press install immediately (It was not difficult considering several bad experiences installing Service Packs in the past (XP SP1, 1a or even SP2..) and waited until I had done some critical work for my clients.

Once that was done and I have a window for the expected crisis that may ensue I pressed the install button, with everything crossed, rabbits foot, horse shoe – you get the picture.

Well, first I had to agree to the licence, I did not read it through so have no idea if there are mentions of side effects or small implosions etc. Then my PC (64 bit Vista Quad core, 8GB, 945 chipset) restarted and during this the now familiar three stage update install progressed.

When it started up again it appeared a little quicker, but nothing too noticeable.

At this point the service pack could be uninstalled as the older files where backed up that where replaced during the install. To make Vista SP2 permanant and save some space run ‘cmd’ as an administrator and type ‘compcln.exe’ and let it clean your system of backup files. IMPORTANT: This means you can never uninstall Vista Service Pack 2.

I also ran my favourite degraf program; http://www.defraggler.com/download to tidy the drives up afterwards.

The system is running well but I can not see any noticeable difference. Obviously there are many 100s if not 1000s of changes made and security is paramount so it is advised (by Microsoft) to install it.

Hope this was helpful.

Andy

Issues since installing

Explorer has crashed once but I think that is due to memory hogging FireFox plugins that I have cleaned up since and no further explorer crashes.

Bootcamp — 5 Comments
13
May 08

Apple Macbook and Bootcamp, experiences and review

Recently I had the pleasure of using a new Macbook with Leopard installed while doing some consultancy work for a customer of Andy’s web. It was a white 13” model at 2.1GHZ and they, upon my advice opted for 2Gb instead of 1GB memory as this little baby had windows approaching!

Such a small thing and yet houses some real power – it is very lite. As with all macbooks since 2006 (ish), under the hood is an Intel dual core processor (Que annoying chimes). Powerful enough to deal with several tasks at once

I was working on this macbook pro for a client, the objective was set it up and install windows XP on it with bootcamp.

For those that have been under a rock or stuck on an island similar to the one featured in ‘Lost’, ever since Apple took this step, I mean logical leap, from PowerPC processor based Macs to Intel based Macs, there was the idea of a Mac dual booting into windows! And, after some well documented and intricate attempts Apple released a beta of an application that does just this – Bootcamp.

Bootcamp its self is now incorporated in Apple’s new incarnation of ‘OS X 10’ Leopard.

You will find the only real major decision is how much space you want for your windows drive

After preparing the Macs drive, you restart the computer… Then you presented with all too familiar windows bios style boot screen. With the XP or Vista CD/DVD in the drive the install starts.

After the, somewhat out dated ‘new features’(As this was Windows XP) articles during the install the system is almost ready. Before you do anything you need to pop the Mac OSX disc in the drive and install the Mac drivers to allow you to use all of the Macs hardware, eg web cam, track pad and keyboard effectively.

Running windows applications is like running them on a pc, the only difference is the keyboard. As there was ‘no spoon’ in a cult movie, there is no delete key(option and backspace works if I recall correctly). This will prove to be a definite learning curve for people used to PC keyboard layouts.

My client has been happy using the Mac as a PC for some time now – I wonder if that is the BIG Steve’s plan he he.