Upgrading a Computer

There are many things that need to be considered when going to upgrade a computer! The purpose of you upgrading, is it a data storage issue, a memory issue, graphic issue etc, or is just that the computer is very out dated and needs a revamp.

Storage

When considering a change in hard drive you need to consider how much much more storage place you would actually need, its reasonable to want an upgrade if your hard drive is getting low on space, but how much more space would you need, and is the space being taken up really needed, if you want data to be kept an external hard drive to hold a copy of your current hard drive would be efficient and then formatting the drive within your computer and re-installing windows would be sufficient. Although you not want the hassle of having to plug in the hard drive so that you can access data, you may want everything accessible without external device. The best option I think would to be install a brand new hard drive but keep the existing one there, to set up a master and slave unit within in the computer.

Definition of master and slave drives

640Gb hard drive= 2x320Gb hard drives

This will be achieved through having one set as the master drive and the other as a slave. The master drive will be in use at most times, although if the computer need to access data from the slave drive a message will be sent to see if the master drive is use as the slave drive cannot be read if the master drive is in use

A typical hard drive spec would be-
500GB SATA Hard Drive
7200rpm
500GB-amount of storage space
7200 RPM- Repetitions per minute

SATA is the type of connector that is used to connect the hard drive to the motherboard, there are two types of connection for hard drives SATA and IDE. This is something that has to be considered when upgrading a hard drive. If the motherboard does not have a port for a SATA connection then you must ensure that your hard drive is IDE, as that is the only way you are going to be able to connect it to your motherboard,although if you have your heart set on a SATA hard drive you are going to need purchase a new motherboard and once means more money.

The main thing that need to be considered is all that data that is filling up hard drive really necessary and could maybe solve this storage problem by just deleting some unneeded data.

Processor

The processor or CPU (central processing unit) is essentially what makes your machine work. It is the brain of the computer it run the software and also processes all the data that you are
working on or having running.There are many different kinds of processors available on the market, an you will obviously want to save yourself money, so there would be no need to go all out and buy the latest and fastest chip from Pentium, before thinking whether you really need it or not. Nowadays there, are single core,dual core, and quad core. The two main companies in the processor world are Intel and AMD. Again when upgrading your processor you need to consider your motherboard, if it is quite an old machine that you have a new processor chip may not work on

Single core-1 chip

Dual Core-2 processors 1 chip

Quad Core-4 processors 1 chip

RAM

Upgrading memory is something that you may consider if you want your computer to run a little bit faster, but again with RAM you could have the problem with slots in your motherboard, not that the RAM chips won't fit in the slot, but that you may not have a suitable amount of slots for the amount you want to upgrade.

The main thing I think you need to consider when beginning to upgrade a PC, is how much upgrading you actually need to do, if you feel you need more RAM, a bigger hard drive, faster processor and maybe even a new motherboard, the best option may just be to bin your PC and buy a new one, upgrading your pc can add up to quite alot of money and nowadays you pick up relatively fast PC's for around £200-£300, again depending on what you actually want a £200-£300 pc may not be sufficient for you.

Considering making your own pc may also be an option, you pick all the components that you want an then get it build by someone or build it yourself if you have sufficient knowledge of building PC's

Installing CD Drive

The CD drive that I had to install was not placed inside the case it was simply plug and play(connected via USB Cable). So when it was plugged in via the USB cable windows recognised automatically there was no real installation required! The drive had an external power supply, was not actually powered from the computer. There really wasnt much to other than plug into a socket and then plug it into the computer via USB. In some instances you may have to download drivers for the CD drive from the manufacturers website, although the hardware should come with a CD included that will have the drivers.

How and why utility software is used

I am going to explain to you how and why utility software are used, I have chosen to explain two types of utility software- Virus Protection and Firewalls

Virus Protection

Virus Protection comes in the form of Anti-Virus software and there are many different brands of this software readily available on the Internet and to buy in shops, some are free and some carry a yearly subscription.

Your anti-virus software will do most of its work in the background and will warn you if a file could be harmful to your machine and will also flag up if there are any infected files on your computer. You can open up the program and check various things that may have been blocked or quarantined. Also, you can set the software to run a full scan of your computer say once a week at a certain time, this scan will run every week at that time as long as your computer is on. Anti-Virus software did originally only protect your computer from viruses, but nowadays it can protect you from spy ware, ad ware, phishing scams,and also can have firewall built in. it save the hassle of maybe having four or five programs to protect your computer on the Internet when you can have it all in one.

The obvious reason for using this form of utility software is to protect your computer from unwanted viruses and loss of data, using antivirus software is highly recommended if your computer is connected to the Internet, as this is where most viruses will be picked up, through downloading of files or sending of file over email or IM, not to say that you can not get a virus on your computer if your not connected to the Internet. If someone connects an external hard drive to your computer their is a high chance that your machine will become infected with the virus. Viruses can do a lot of damage to computers, they could cause them to stop working completely, could delete part of programs which can lead to them not functioning properly or at all. Also anti-virus will protect from the likes of spy ware and phishing scams. Phishing is where people try to steal your personal information, whether it be user names and password or even credit card details. Phishing scams are very hard to tell that they are fake that is why you need the protection against them, phishing sites look legitimate to the site that they are trying to claim to be, and the person will usually receive an email, and follow the link, thinking that it is just pay pal looking to confirm their credit card details, and once entered this sensitive information has been sent to people who are going to use these details to buy things themselves.

Firewall

A firewall is a protective system that lies between your computer network and the Internet,
essentially it is for preventing unauthorised use and access to your network. Firewalls can be software or hardware. Most operating systems will have a built in firewall, also you can download a firewall, or your anti-virus software may have a firewall feature as well, this can cause problems, you need to decide which firewall you would want to have running because two firewalls will not run efficiently.

When connected to the Internet your are essentially connecting to millions of other computers and without the right protection people could be connected to your computer with out you knowing, having a firewall though will prevent this from happening, your firewall will automatically warn you if something is trying to gain access to your computer, you will be asked whether you want to allow it or not, in some cases the firewall will just block access, as it knows the risk it could have.

Types of Firewall

Software- A software firewall can come as a stand alone program, built into OS, or within anti-virus software! A software firewall will protect the machine that is on from unwanted access

Hardware- A hardware firewall is effectively your router acting as a firewall, although not all router will have this function, the main advantage of a hardware firewall is that if you have a network within your house, the computer will act as a firewall for all computers connected to the network, which save the hassle of having to have numerous firewall running to protect the machines when the router can protect all..

Utility Software

Utility Software

Utility software is designed to help the running of your computer hardware and operating system, there are various types of utility software available. Many readily availabe on the internet and are usually free download, an certain forms of utility software are built into the operating system

Disk Defragmentor

The purpose of this utility is to defragment your hard drive. Fragmentation is when parts of a single file are not stored in the same area of the hard drive, which slows down opening time as all parts can not be located in the same place. So a disk defragmentor will find all the fragmented files on your hard drive and try to put them together, the will increase speed and effeciency of the hard drive.

Anti-Virus Software
Some version of anti-virus are free whereas other hold a yearly subscription! Which would usually range between £30-£60. There are many different forms available, really the best thing to do is to compare and see what one really suit you best, if you are interested in software for home using a free version of anti-virus would be effecient, again research into what one's are best.

Different Types

• Norton/Symatec
  McAffee
• AVG

As I explained in previous posts anti-virus software is designed to protect your computer from viruses. It really is must have these days especially if your computer is connected the internet. Anti virus software nowadays would also have anti-spyware, anti-spam and even firewalls built into the programs.

Compression Software

Compression is something that I explained in an earlier post! Compression can increase upload and download speed. There would usually be compression software built into the operating system, although again there are many forms of compression software available on the internet for download, again some would be free and others would need subscription for download, although i couldn't see compression software being very expensive, possibly about £20! Many websites have free versions of their compression software, which obviously are not going to have the same features as the one you have to pay for, although for a home user would probably be effecient.

Some forms of compression software are

• Win zip


• PicoZip(free download)


• 7zip

Registry Cleaners

A registry cleaner is a form of a utility software that cleans your system of files that are not needed and could be causing your machine to slow down! An example of a registry cleaner is a software which I spoke of in a previous post called CCleaner, CCleaner is a piece of free software that can be easily downloaded from the internet, from various sites and the company that makes the softwares site. CCleaner will rid your machine of unwanted files such as temporary internet files browsing history, cookies, It also allows you to clean your recycle bin, memory dumps, file fragments and log files. All registry cleaning software is designed to do this, here are a few examples of the software available-

• CCleaner


• Registry Cleaner 08

Compressing Folders and Formatting drives

Compressing folders is a very straight forward process and is excellent for faster uploading and downloading of files, as it will compress folders into one file, so if you take the example of an email, you can upload one zipped folder with forty pictures on it, as opposed to just having to upload 40 pictures individually to attach to the email


I am now going to show you the simple steps of how you would do this.

I'm not sure if you can see in the image but the file is 1,011KB. before compression

What your going to want to do is right-click on your mouse and select send to and then compressed folder
After clicking this zipped folder appeared just under the other file with a size of 603KB, which is a reduction of nearly 40%, which I think is a good reduction size.

Benefits

As I said before compressing files can cut file size significantly, and will mean that uploading onto a website or even attaching files to an email will take less time, also the person who receives the email with the attachment will have shorter downloading speed with the file being smaller

Drive Formatting

This could be anything from a hard drive to a floppy disk! What you want to do is click on my computer and then right-click on the drive that you wish to format!

A menu will appear and ask you what you would wish to etc.., once you click OK a warning message will appear asking if your are sure that you want to format the drive as all data will be erased.

Copying File to CD

Copying files to CD is a very simple process and there are many different types of software that you can use. There is software available for download on the Internet that is just for burning data to CD. Also many music applications have Burn functions including Windows Media Player, ITunes and Winamp

Obviously for you to be to complete a task like this you will need a CD-RW connected to your machine, keeping in mind that CD-RW drives can also be external and connected through a USB drive

I will show a few quick steps on how burn a CD using windows media player, it is a very simple process and it will not take very long to explain.

In windows media player there is a burn tab, once selecting this it will look like this

I'm not quite sure whether you can see this in the picture, but it say to insert a burner and to restart, unfortunately the computer that I am working on does not have a CD burner installed in it, so I will not be able to show you how to perform a CD Burn graphically. If you look to the right hand side of the picture, its says drag items here, these items are the music that you wish to burn, when you drag them into this area you can then just click the start burn button, this will then begin the burning of the CD, and then you pretty much you just have to wait to for the CD finishing burning and all files will copied to the CD

Copying and Deleting files

I am going to take you through how to copy and delete, this is quite an easy thing to do!

Well firstly you are going to want to know the file that you are looking to copy

The highlighted icon above is the file that i am going to copy, all i need to do is simply right-click on the mouse and select copy

The file is now copied, I now just need to choose where I want to copy it too. All I need to do when i find my destination folder is right-click once again only this time select paste.
Once clicking paste the copy should appear


Deleting Files

Deleting files off your computer is along the same lines as copying them all you need to do is right click on your mouse and select delete.

After clicking delete a warning message will appear asking if you are sure you want to delete the file

After clicking this it should sent the item to the recycle bin and then all you need to do is empty your recycle bin, you can also restore files that have been deleted and are currently stored in the recycle bin.

Creating Folders

Creating Folders is quite a simple thing to do, and you can do this again by simply right-clicking on your mouse

Right click-New-Folder

Once doing this a new folder will appear and you can rename to whatever you wish

You can create as many as you wish, folder within folder etc. It is a very good way to keep all your files organised instead of just having say one folder for your pictures and having quite a hard task trying to locate certain pictures..

Installing antivirus software

We all know that we do not want to pick up a virus on our computer at home, as they can effectively wipe out data,delete program, or even stop your machine working. Obviously the best way to prevent this happening is to install antivirus software to protect yourself from attack.

Antivirus Software-Antivirus software are computer programs that are specifically designed to identify, neutralise and eliminate malicious software

In the beginning these programs were only designed to detect viruses, but now they can have anti-spy ware tools, firewall and email scanners

How to install anti-virus software

First of you our going to need a copy of the file which you could download from a website, there are quite a few free anti-virus packages, and then others where you can pay a years subscription for various packages.

I am going to take you through the process of installing the antivirus software AVG, which is a free download, which can be obtained from their website http://free.avg.com/, when you click to download you will have to choose a destination folder for the file. Once your download is complete open the destination folder and double click on the AVG icon

after doing this a security warning will pop up, and then a screen should appear that looks like this
You will need to hit next to continue, the next screen that will appear is an agreement, you can read it, but you need to tick the accept box as you cannot continue if you do not do so. There are various other screens that will appear just have a read through them and click continue. You can also install a toolbar for AVG, a screen will appear during installation that explains to you about the toolbar, if you don't wish to install the toolbar, just simply uncheck the box and hit next
After going through all these screens a screen will appear that looks something like this
Once that blue line fills the bar your installation is complete and a screen like this should appearWhen this appears click OK, and AVG should open automatically

Benefits

The benefits of installing this software or any anti-virus is that's your computer will now be protected from viruses and spy ware. Viruses can stop your machine from working, delete files and steal information from you, and this definitely is something that anyone wants. This software is also free so it will not have an effect on your bank balance

Installing CCleaner

CCleaner is a free software package that enables you to clean up the registry of your computer, being able to clear unused things, such as temporary Internet files, browsing history, cookies, It also allows you to clean your recycle bin, memory dumps, file fragments and log files.

CCleaner is quite easy to obtain and install, you can download it free from various sites. It really is no different on installation that any other software and is quite straight forward.

When first clicking on the CCleaner file a screen will appear asking you to pick the language you wish, simple pick this from the drop-down menu

Once selecting your language then this screen will appear and you will simply have to hit next!

There is various other screens that will appear, including the license agreement, take a read through it and then click agree if you do agree with the terms, if you don't though you will be unable to continue installation.

From what I have heard most people do not like to install the task bar within their IE, not quite sure why, but if you do not wish too, simply untick the box.

Just continue with reading all screens that appear and then eventually the last screen will appear an click finish and the installation will be complete.

Benefits

The benefits of installing this software is that it will clean your drive of unwanted material, such as Internet history, cookies, it will realise unneeded files that may be slowing your machine down slightly, I don't think you would get a massive increase in speed, but it will clear out junk that could be filling up your hard drive, i.e. with temporary Internet files etc.

Installing Windows XP Service Pack 3

Service Pack- A service pack is a collection of updates usually called patches
These patches can usually be downloaded individually until the service pack is released, the service pack is usually the easiest way as you get all patches downloading at once in one easy package also doesn't come with any charge come with any charge, free updates. This can be downloaded directly from Microsoft's website or if you have windows update turned on, you should be able to download it automatically from that.

Once again is not complicated to install this onto your machine. I had the file saved on a USB drive so I simply ran it from there.

The circled icon is the service pack, I clicked on this and the following screen appeared

You really just have to wait until the blue bar fills, this can be quite time consuming, but I suppose you could just leave the machine to update when you were finished any tasks that you were doing on your computer.

When completed there may not actually seem to be that much of a difference within your machine, it is mainly to install patches in the OS(operating systems), it is known that some people have realised an increase in speed of their PC once installing a service pack, but this would not be the purpose of them.

Benefits

The main reason for installing service pack is that you have the most up to date version of the operating system, including all new patches and features that would prevent from unauthorised access to your computer etc. Once again this is also a free download.