Note. Before undertaking any of the actions below, please ensure you have a full backup of all of the data on your system. If you do not feel fully confident with any of the work below please contact us to arrange for one of our specialists to visit your office.

When ever you use your computer, regardless of what applications you use, it creates a cache of files. This cache is used to help speed up applications and improve their overall performance, which all sounds great but it’s not always the case. For example, if an application crashes then it is likely going to leave behind a lot of temporary files which it created but was not able to clean up on account of it crashing. This means that those files will never be removed until some sort of clean up tool is run, enter Windows ‘Disk Cleanup’.  This application has shipped with every version of Windows since Windows XP and is designed to clean up all of these temporary files for the drive and help keep it running well. Follow the steps below to run the clean up tool.

1. First and foremost ensure that you have an up to date backup of your computer, do not begin this process without having a full, verified backup.
2. To run this on Windows Vista or Windows 7 simply click  on the Windows logo in the bottom of the screen and type ‘Disk Cleanup’ in the search box. The click on the entry which says ‘Disk Cleanup’ under the ‘Programs’ heading. If you are running Windows XP, then click on ‘Start’, ‘All programs’, ‘Accessories’ and ‘System Tools’ and it is located in there.
   
3. If you have more that one drive partition on your computer, i.e. C and a D drive, then you will see the following screen. Simply click on ‘OK’ to continue.
   
4. The application will then start to look at what files it can perform a clean up of.
   
5. Once it has completed the process of looking at what files can be cleaned up then it will present you with a list of those categories. While it will offer the option to compress old files, we would recommend against it as any access to these files in the future would slow the computer down as it would need to uncompress the files before use.
   

This simple check should be run once a month to ensure that your computer stays running in tip top condition. In the next blog post we will be exploring other ways to keep your computers running well.

Note. Before undertaking any of the actions below, please ensure you have a full backup of all of the data on your system. Should a large amount of errors be found on your computer then the resulting check may cause your computer to be unusable. If you do not feel fully confident with any of the work below please contact us to arrange for one of our specialists to visit your office.

One thing that can happen over time is that corruption can occur on the hard disk of your computer or laptop. This can occur for a number of reasons such as hardware problems, malware or virus infection, power fluctuations or other such items. Many of these corruptions will not interfere with your normal day to day running but you may notice that your computer runs slower however it is very simple to resolve, just follow the steps below:

1. First and foremost ensure that you have an up to date backup of your computer, do not begin this process without having a full, verified backup.
2. The next step is to enter a command prompt. To do this in Windows XP click on ‘Start’ and select ‘Run’, then type in ‘cmd’ and click on ‘OK’. In Windows Vista or Windows 7 you will need to run the command prompt as Administrator, to do this click on the Windows logo in the bottom left corner and type ‘cmd’ into the search box. From the list of results above right click on the entry ‘cmd’ and then click on ‘Run as Administrator’ from the context menu.
   
3. Once at the command prompt you should type in ‘chkdsk c:’, this will run the chkdsk utility in read only mode. This will check to see if there are any corrupts on the disk and report back as below.
   
4. You should repeat this for each of the drive letters that you have on your computer, i.e. if you have a ‘D’ drive then you will need to run ‘chkdsk d:’
5. Should any errors be found on any of the drives then you will need to re-run the command as follows: ‘chkdsk c: /f’. What the ‘/f’ switch does is tells to the computer that you want it to fix the problems that it has found. As the ‘C’ drive is always in use you will be asked if you wish to schedule this the next time the computer starts, simply press ‘Y’ and press ‘Enter’. Once you restart the computer chkdsk will once again run and clean up any errors on the hard disk. You should repeat this process for any subsequent drives on your computer.

This simple check should be run once a month to ensure that your computer stays running in tip top condition. In the next blog post we will be exploring how to improve your computers performance by keeping things neat and tidy until then happy computing.

fully managed approach

The same principles can be applied to your IT infrastructure. One method is to have a fully managed IT service which essentially means that you enlist the services of an IT service provider to manage your systems for you. It is then their responsibility to put a management system in place which is able to watch key performance indicators on all of your critical devices on your network. When any of these alerts are triggered then they will look in to the issue and then act accordingly. For example, if their system identified that the server’s hard disk is running low on space then they will look to see if any space can be made available otherwise they will notify you that you need to upgrade the storage.

the regular check

The fully managed IT Service may not be right for everyone as cost could be an issue. Another method would be to have a regular Server Health check. This would ideally be done once every 3 months to ensure that any developing issues are identifed and can be resolved quickly before that become a big issue. We recently developed a Server Health Check service which enables clients to have the peace of mind that their server is running correctly without having a fully managed IT Service  in place. While this does not provide the full coverage that a fully managed IT Service would provide by dealing with issues as soon as they arrive, it does allow the business owner to have a regular review of their server which in turn should help to prevent some of those issues before they become real problems.

Our Server Health Check service can also be used to provide support for internal IT teams to help them to verify that everything is working as it should be and assist them in planning their IT Strategy for the business.

Whatever you choose to do ensure that you protect your investment in IT, many business find that their IT is the heart that beats in their business. If you would like to know more then contact us on 0844 310 0040 or complete the form here

It is believed that the identified flaw could allow criminals to take control of people’s computers and steal their password.

We recommend that any users who are concerned about this issue should download and use Firefox until such time as an update has been release by Microsoft.

See also:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7784908.stm

UPDATE: Microsoft have now release an update to resolve this issue, please see here.

The first issue is one of performance; that is as more and more files and shortcuts are added to a users desktop then in time this will inevitably slow the PC down.  The reason for this is as that as the user minimises and maximises applications the screen must be re-drawn, now the fact is that the more information stored on the desktop the more memory will be used which in turn will steal that memory from genuine applications.  It will also slow down the process of re-drawing the screen as there is much more information to render to the screen.  The second issue is one of security; simply put the data on the desktop will stay on the desktop.  Unless the user specifically copies the data from the desktop to the server then this information is only contained in one location and is not backed up with the rest of the server data.  Now the question should be asked at this point ”Is this information important?”.  The simple answer is “Of course it is” otherwise why would you have the information in the first place.  In that case get it off the desktop and onto the server, once there leave it there and just work on it from the server.

Alternatively, if you are using Microsoft Small Business Server and have your “My Documents” folder redirected to the server then could move this information to the “My Documents” folder and it will be copied to the server during the “Log Off” process.  This is a simple practise that could save you hours or even days of work in the event of a failed workstation.  If you are still not sure how to do this then contact our team and they will be happy to help you.

The fact is that you cannot afford not to put this in plan. So what does the plan consist of; well it should contain the contact names and numbers of all individuals involved in the recovery
process (i.e. Telephone company, IT vendor, software suppliers etc). It also needs to contain all relevant passwords relating to your computer systems, details relating to the setup of the network and software. It should detail the recovery process for data relating to the network this should include how the backups are performed and what software is required to perform the recovery. The plan needs to contain absolutely everything that is required to run the business and with the recent floods and other adverse weather conditions it has never been more important to plan for the worst. So take some time and think about how your business will be affected should the worst happen and start and plan how you will recover from such and event before it happens.

1. First open “My Computer”
2. The select the “Tools” menu and select “Options”
3. Now go to the “File Types” tab
4. Go down the list and select “XLS (Microsoft Office Excel 97-2003 Worksheet)” and then click on “Advanced”.   Now select “Open” from the list and click on “Edit”.  Now in the box titled “Application used to perform action:” add a “%1″ at the end of the line.  Also take the tick out of the box titled “Use DDE”.
5. Now click on “OK” and select “OK” on all of the subsequent windows and thats it!  Excel 2007 will now open Excel 2003 workbooks without any problems.