Troubleshooting & Maintaining Your PC All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition
Overview
Need a PC problem fixed in a pinch? Presto! Troubleshooting so you can get back to making it work for you. There's nothing worse than firing up your PC only to discover it's inexplicably unresponsive. With this guide, you'll gain all the skills and insight you need to need to bring it back to life and to prevent it from ever leaving you in the lurch again. Find out what's behind common PC problems Solve email and web woes, both big and small Perform regular maintenance and get serious about backups Troubleshoot to find solutions to your issues and learn proper maintenance to head off future headaches!
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About The Author
Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.
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troubleshooting & maintaining your pc all-in-one for dummies, 3rd edition
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For a full view of files and folders that are backed up on your PC, you can use the File History browser. You might find this file recovery method better than hunting down files and folders and right‐clicking on them. The File History browser window is shown here. Browsing for files and folders to recover.To visit the File History window, follow these directions:
Tap the Windows key.
When you allow or block a program through the firewall on your Windows PC, you create a firewall rule. Windows presets a bunch of firewall rules, and some programs create rules when they're installed. To view the list of rules, follow these steps:
Tap the Windows key and type Windows Firewall.
Choose Windows Firewall Control Panel from the search results.
There are a few standard things you should check before you get your elbows greasy and end up with screws and computer parts strewn all over the floor. Review the items in this list first to determine what's wrong.
Is it plugged in?
Is it connected?
Is it turned on?
Press and hold down the Power button for five seconds to turn off any computer.
PCs
A quick way to improve dwindling storage media capacity is to hunt down those items that consume the most space. These are large files, some of which you might not be aware of. For example, purging a downloaded movie from your PC's hard drive could gain you 4GB of storage.To locate large files on your computer, use the Windows Search command.
Windows enables you to monitor your PC's resources to ensure that they're being used to the best of your PC's capabilities. The easiest monitoring tool is the Performance tab found in the Task Manager window. To view this item, follow these steps:
Press Ctrl+Esc to bring up the Task Manager window.
Click the Performance tab.
To take a quick glance at storage capacity on all your PC's mass media devices, open File Explorer and wander over to the This PC window. Follow these steps:
Press Win+E.
The File Explorer window appears.
Choose This PC from the items listed on the left side of the window.
You see an overview of storage available to the computer, similar to what's illustrated here.
Windows comes with a file compression feature. It's not the same as creating a Zip file archive. This type of compression is on the fly: When you open the compressed file, it's decompressed to its original size. So, as a user, you don't notice the compression in any way other than that your files consume less storage space.
PCs
If you haven't already, create a system image for your Windows computer. This is a backup copy of Windows that you can use to rebuild the system if disaster strikes the PC's primary storage device. Follow these steps:
Tap the Windows key.
Type backup.
Choose the item Backup and Restore (Windows 7) Control Panel from the list of search results.
You see firewall warnings on your Windows PC during one of two situations. First, because you're using a new program that accesses the Internet. Second, because something sneaky is trying to access the Internet or get into your computer from the Internet. In both situations, the firewall is unfamiliar with what's going on, so you're warned.
PCs
Much like everything else in your computer, Bluetooth functionality requires both hardware and software. Like a camera without film — one won't work without the other. Unfortunately, not all PCs arrive Bluetooth-ready right out of the box, especially older models.
If your PC didn’t come with Bluetooth hardware installed, you can easily add some by purchasing a Bluetooth USB dongle.
A background service on your PC runs all the time. It's one of those busy things inside a computer, most of which are necessary but some of which may not be. You can disable those background services to see a slight boost in performance, though the task is a bit technical.The table lists a bunch of services that Windows runs.
Your PC might get stuck when updating Windows. The progress bar doesn't move, and restarting Windows doesn't fix the bad update. The solution is to purge the temporary update files, or cache, which clears the pipes and allows the update to proceed.If you have difficulty getting an update to process, follow these steps:
Open an Administrator Command prompt window.
You made the mistake when you bought your computer. You were excited, you didn't know better, or you were looking at the price and not your needs. The bottom line is that the PC's primary storage device is too tiny. You need 2TB of storage, and your computer has a relatively puny 500GB hard drive.Without knowing anything about computers, you may think that you could just swap out the old hard drive for a newer one with more capacity.
The only time you need to restore a system image on your Windows PC is when the entire hard drive is dead, missing, or replaced with a cheese sandwich. With all that data gone, you have to rely upon three items:
A recovery volume: Use this media to start the PC and access the Windows Recovery Environment. The tools presented help you navigate through recovery.
PCs
By opening a command prompt window, you can search for files that Windows truly doesn’t want you to know are there. It’s a little technical, but when you really, really need to find a file, the method described in the following steps does the job:
From the Start menu, search for and open the Command Prompt.
The File History feature in Windows 10 automatically selects your user account's folders for inclusion in the backup. All files in the listed folders, as well as files in subfolders, are backed up. To check the list, and change the list of folders, follow these steps:
Press Win+I to visit the Settings app.
Choose Update & Security.
Your PC most likely sports a processor that has multiple cores. Or, it may have more than a single processor. You should confirm that Windows is taking advantage of the extra processing power by setting the number of processors available to Windows.Setting the number of processors may work to help boost your PC's performance, or it may not.
When an update doesn't go as planned, roll it back. You can do so within Windows, or, under dire circumstances, you can roll back an update from safe mode or when using the Windows Recovery Environment.First, if you can get into Windows, follow these steps to roll back an update:
Press the Windows key + i to open Settings.
To make the unallocated portion of a hard drive useful, you must create a new volume, one that’s recognized by Windows. You can create three types of volumes:Simple: This typical hard drive is the type that most PC users have in Windows. If you’re shrinking a volume to create a new logical drive, such as a new drive F (or something), this option is the one you want.
Windows offers a tool to help you purge files you may no longer need and might not otherwise be able to locate. The Disk Cleanup utility locates files that can easily be removed to free up some disk space. To run this utility, obey these directions:
Tap the Windows key.
Type disk cleanup.
Choose the Disk Cleanup Desktop app from the search results.
The Performance Monitor console is the most sophisticated of the Windows resource graphing tools. It's also the most difficult to use, probably due to its origin as a Windows NT program.To bring up the Performance Monitor console window, obey these steps:
Tap the Windows key on the keyboard.
Type performance.
Here's a handy place to keep all your PC's important info in case you need to get it fixed. Print this page and fill in the blanks. Keep this sheet near your computer for quick reference.
PC purchase date:
PC make and model:
PC serial number:
PC manufacturer:
PC dealer:
Manufacturer’s Web supp
Your goal as computer operator is to ensure that updates are checked for, downloaded, and installed. The program that helps you carry out this task is called Windows Update.
Understanding Windows Update
Windows Update is a program, but it's also a service. It runs all the time, checking in with the Microsoft mothership to see whether anything new is available.
Change causes trouble. Recall the items you've changed recently and you can better pinpoint problems and devise solutions. Use this list as a starting place.
Restart Windows to cure common ills.
Rarely do you need to reinstall Windows. Use the System File Checker to repair damage to Windows. Reinstall only after an unrecoverable disaster.
To monitor specific programs or activities on your PC, the best tool to use is the Resource Monitor. It's far less complicated than the Performance Monitor, and it offers more information and control than the Performance tab in the Task Manager.To open the Resource Monitor, heed these directions:
Tap the Windows key.
The Internet is such a big part of using a computer that when you run into network trouble, you'll want to pull out your hair (assuming you have hair).
Run a firewall.
Use anti-virus and anti-spyware software to ensure that whatever comes in over the Internet won't mess up your computer.
It's better to use Advanced Sharing options to share folders over the network than to use Homegroups.
Malware is an ancient software category. Programs that do bad things are as old as programming itself. Some nerd, back in the 1960s, upon being terminated, probably wrote a program that ejected every sheet of paper from the teletype machine. As time passed, the programs grew more malevolent and, thanks to the Internet, more pervasive.
PCs
The File History utility in Windows gets its name from its capability to recover older versions of a file. This feature is part of all backup programs, though it's often called Restore. The idea is the same: From the backup archive, you pluck an older version of a file. The File History feature makes it easy.To pluck an older version of a file from the backup drive, follow these steps:
Right‐click the file.
One way to prevent trouble is to be a stickler for maintenance. While it's possible to use a PC and never maintain it, you'll find your computer-human relationship boosted by following these key words of advice:
Keep your PC's files and the system backed up.
Check the mass storage usage in the This PC window to ensure that you don't exceed capacity on any drive.
For a microphone to work on your computer, it must be plugged into the pink jack on your PC, unless it’s a USB microphone, which simply plugs into the USB port.After plugging in the microphone, test the thing. Testing works differently depending on your version of Windows.To test the microphone in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, heed these steps:
Ensure that the microphone is properly connected.
Here is some good advice for things you should and shouldn't do when it comes to using a computer in a sane and useful manner.
Do pay attention to the User Account Controls (UACs) warnings. They imply that a setting change affects the entire system or could post a security risk.
Do run a firewall, and allow expected traffic to access the local network and Internet.
Programs can occupy a lot of storage on your PC's hard drive. You may have programs installed on your PC that fit that category, programs that you may not have run in a while. If so, feel free to remove those huge hogs from the primary storage device.Here, you see the list of installed programs on a PC, as sorted by file size.
PCs
You can use Windows ReadyBoost technology to improve hard drive performance. ReadyBoost works by supplementing system memory and mass storage access with a portion of fast flash memory from a USB thumb drive.To make ReadyBoost work, you need a thumb drive or media card with a capacity between 256MB and 32GB. Further, you should use a USB 3.
PCs
All your PC's performance‐ and resource‐monitoring tools provide good feedback, but the details are trivial. Activity always abounds inside a computer. The concern is whether that activity is causing the system to slow down.Whenever the PC starts acting slowly, pop up the Task Manager and click the Processes tab.
Windows provides support for both antivirus and antispyware security, in a single program called Windows Defender. It offers both active and passive protection, and it's regularly updated with fresh information, thanks to the Windows Update process. Windows Defender is your number‐one tool in PC malware protection.
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