What to do with an overheating computer

Like every other machine, a computer heats up a little while you use it. The heat produced is blown away through the air vents by natural convention, or forced convention, depending if the electric powered fan is off or not. Electric components are mounted on innovative fin designs that help with dissipating heat energy. Transistors in computer and video chips also add to the heat your computer emits. If you have been using a computer for a long time you should be able to tell when your computer is overheating.

Causes of overheating

Overheating may be due to bad cooling design—this rarely occur nowadays. Gaming also triggers overheating. Severely multi-tasking the computer makes the CPU operate at high capacity and this generates a huge amount of heat in the process. Using your computer in a high temperature environment adds up to the heat energy an average computer produces already and can lead to overheating as well.

Signs of overheating

At high temperature, fail safe software, shuts down your computer to prevent damage. Blue Screen and frequent memory errors are some of other symptoms of an overheating computer. A simple sign to look out for is constant or frequent fan operation. You can also use a program like Speedfan to monitor your CPU and video card temperatures.

How to Fix an Overheating Computer

The best way to fix an overheating computer is by reporting such problem to the manufacturer. That is, if you're still under a warranty. A warranty is suppose to protect you, the costumer, from any problem you may encounter while making good use of your computer over a given period of time. In severe cases, your computer manufacturer will either fix the problem or get you a new machine.

If you're using a laptop, a laptop cooler may serve a good purpose. Laptop coolers are electrically powered devices that consist of a fan and seat for your laptop. For desktops, some people prefer removing the cover of the casing. While this might improve ventilation, it's not a good way to fight computer overheating as it exposes the internal components of your computer to dust.

You can also disassemble and clean up clogged air vents and pathways of your computer. This is delicate, especially to people of less computer experience, as this exercise may affect the functionality of a computer.   The best thing to do, if you're under a warranty, is to report to the nearest manufacturer's servicing centre around you. It's important to note, disassembling your computer or any other electronic product, under warranty, could terminate the warranty agreement.

Before you disassemble your computer, here're some few useful tips: First, try reducing screen brightness. This may help. In addition, there're software programs that can be of help too. If you're using DELL, you may want to control the thermal management by using precision fan control utility. Other free software programs are also available online. It's important to add, these software programs are written by people who have no link whatsoever to any computer manufacturer in the world, so it makes common sense to exercise caution with these and only used highly trusted and recommended software.

Dangers of Overheating

Overheating can damage your motherboard or any other vital system components such as your cpu or your video card. Also, a hot computer usually runs slower than a cooler computer. Keeping your computer from overheating can also keep the computer from slowing down.

How to find your routers IP address

There will be instances when you will need to find your routers IP address (normally when you are having problems with it ) To find this it is quite simple, just follow the steps below:

1. Press start then run and in the box type cmd

2. A black screen will turn up, whre the flashing cursor is type ipconfig and then enter

3. Your local information will turn up, the default gatweay will normally be your router. Furthermore, you can can the computers IP address this way.

The best way to remove spyware on your computer

Manual Spyware Removal

Sometimes you may know a certain program is spyware. In this case, you can try to remove it manually. This is done by using the uninstall function of the computer. For Windows users, you can remove specific applications by going to your control panel (in "Settings") and selecting the "Add/Remove Programs" function. Once there, you will see a list of programs. Click on the program you believe to be spyware and select "Remove". Make sure to restart your computer after the removal to be sure all changes required for the spyware to be removed are complete.

Unfortunately, most of the time removing spyware is not this easy. For example, how can you know for sure that a certain program is spyware? If you uninstall the program the spyware came with, it doesn't mean that the spyware will be uninstalled too. Also, many spyware programs are invisible, meaning that they won't show up in your program list. Sometimes spyware programs can disguise themselves as programs important to your computer by using official sounding names like "winstartup". Spyware can also disguise itself by using dozens of different file names in different locations, or even by generating random names so it's not as easily detected. Even if a spyware program appears on your program list and you can uninstall it, not all traces of the program are always removed. In this case, you should use an anti-spyware program.

Spyware Removal Using an Anti-Spyware Program

The first rule of removing spyware by using a specialized program is to not rely on anti-virus programs. Because spyware is different from viruses, you need a different program to remove it. Check out our section on anti-spyware program reviews to pick one that's right for you.

Start by downloading the latest updates for the program you're using. This ensures the program is up to date on what spyware to look for and how to find it. Most spyware removers will have an "Update" button you can click on to download the latest information.

Next, exit all browser windows and programs that you have running. This includes email. You should also disconnect your computer from the internet. These functions impede the functionality of the spyware remover because it can't scan files that are in use for spyware. The more activity you have going on in your computer, the more likely it is that spyware is open and working too.

Once everything is exited and you are disconnected from the internet, run a scan using your spyware cleaner. Do this by pressing the "Scan" button. This means that your anti-spyware program will look for suspicious files on your computer and report back to you, and you will be given a choice of what to do with any suspicious files it finds.

After the scan, turn on immunization options to help protect your computer against the spyware program your scan has found in the future. Immunization options can be turned on by a button called "Immunize." Next allow your spyware cleaner to remove any spyware it finds.

After you run a scan using your anti-spyware program for the first time, restart your computer and run a scan again. This ensures nothing was missed the first time. Let the program remove any additional spyware files. If suspicious files were found during the second scan, restart your computer and run the spyware remover again. Keep repeating the scan-restart-scan process until your anti-spyware program cannot find any more spyware.

If you repeat this process three times and your spyware remover keeps finding spyware, or if your program can't find any more spyware but you think there's still some left, you may want to try running a scan in your computer's "safe mode." When you start up your computer in "safe mode," only the most essential processes can activate. This will prevent spyware from activating in the background and trying to hide itself while your spyware remover scans for it.

When you have finally removed all spyware your computer, you can start undoing any damage or setting changes the spyware may have caused.

Other Options

Sometimes spyware programs can become so embedded in your system that you can't deal with it yourself. For example, your computer may not be able to start up or open its internet browser anymore. In these cases, you may want to contact a local computer technician who knows how to fix the problem.

Remember, the prevention of spyware is the best method of keeping your computer safe. Learn aboutspyware prevention so you can protect your computer from spyware in the future and avoid going through the complicated removal process.

Spyware Removal Complications

Because of the nature of the connection between spyware and freeware, namely that spyware producers pay freeware producers to include the spyware in their product, the removal of spyware may affect the freeware program it was installed with (if that's the way the spyware got onto your computer). Spyware is a form of revenue to the company that produced the freeware, so if you remove the spyware sponsoring it, the freeware may no longer work. This is a small price to pay to remove such a security threat from your computer, but removal is your choice, you just have to decide where your priorities lie.

You may not know for sure if a freeware program will stop working until you remove its spyware. But there is a way to test whether removing spyware will affect the performance of your freeware. Most spyware removers give you an option called "Quarantine." This means the spyware cleaner will disable spyware files and put them in a folder to be deleted later rather than deleting them permanently right away. This allows you to run programs after the spyware quarantine and make sure everything still works with the suspicious files removed. You can then go back into your spyware cleaner and delete the suspicious files permanently. If something is not working properly with the spyware files quarantined, you can restore them. This lets you test the effects of spyware removal on your programs without actually removing it.

If you choose the quarantine option and everything on your computer seems to be working well after cleaning, remember to go back into your anti-spyware program and delete the spyware files permanently.

It does need to be stressed that spyware can be a major threat to the security of your computer. If your choose the quarantine option and find that one of your freeware programs doesn't work properly with its spyware removed, think carefully before restoring the spyware. Evaluate how important this program is to you and whether you can install another program without spyware that would work just as well. Restoring the spyware should only be a last resort.

Furthermore, protection is the best form of defence in this matter and there are a lot of products on the market however I have found the best and cheapest (since it is free) product out there to protect you computer is avast home. This does an amazing job of protecting you from virus, trojan horses, worms etc.

Here is the link

http://www.avast.com

How to install Windows 7

As we all know Windows XP is nearly every one's favourite, especially since Windows Vista is, in my opinion, a disaster. However, Microsoft have remedied this matter with Windows 7 (which in actual fact is Vista Service pack 3 !!) Windows 7 improves in every way on Vista, especially on the interface and the security. It will support  nearly all the software people have downloaded onto XP which is a big bonus.
Another good feature is the fact Windows 7 automatically plays on the T.V if you wi-fi enabled T.V or an X-box. What I think is the best feature is that the hardware of the operating system is becoming future proof where it is designed to work with upcoming hardware devices such as touch screen.

Here is an excellent video on how to install Windows 7 form you tube, which explains in detail how to finally kick the XP habit.