Keeping computers switched on?

Our office is closed over the Christmas break – what should we do with our computers ?

The easy answer, is that if no-one needs them, then switch them off!

The advice used to be that important computers should be left on as turning computers on and off exposed them to an electrical phenomenon called thermal shock. Nowadays computer designs are much improved and the impact/risks associated with them being turned on and their components warming up to their operating temperature is much reduced.

We also now live in a more environmentally aware society and one where energy costs have increased dramatically and if your pcs and servers are sitting there idle but using power you are throwing money away.

Of course you never just turn computers off, especially servers. You shut them down using the operating system. If you are using UPSs then you need to hit the power button on the UPS to turn the UPSs off as well, once the equipment it is supplying has completed their shut down of course.

When powering up, generally you should switch on your network and internet equipment first. Then your servers, turning on any ancillary components like external tapes drives, robotic libraries or disk arrays first. Once your servers are up and running then you can power on your pcs.

Please note this is general advice! Check with your support company if in any doubt about your systems. For example, we can’t turn off some of our servers equipment, as part of our proactive support service we are continuously gathering performance and alert information from our clients systems, servers and firewalls.

Excel or Access?

I have a business application I want written, should I use Excel or Access ?

Good question – both Excel and Access are popular tools that businesses use and there are definitely situations where you should select one over the other.

In Excel the data and the ‘application’ is unstructured and open, anyone can add a new column, move things around, change calculations unless you spend some time ‘locking down’ your spreadsheet. It is great for ‘what-ifs’, doing data analysis but poor for real ‘applications’ where you need structure, conformity, validation and data quality. Many businesses have built processes around the completion and consolidation of Excel data – this needs care to work well and the potential for an administrative nightmare sorting out and/or consolidating the information is substantial. Only one person can work on an Excel spreadsheet at a time so sharing information can be a problem usually solved by again having multiple copies of the spreadsheet and consolidating.

Access is structured. Like any database it consists of tables of information with fixed columns. It has built in data entry forms, reports which are built by a developer and can easily be protected, if only because few users have the skills needed to access and modify them. It supports simple to highly complex programs to manipulate your information up to complete applications. Where the volume of data or number of users grows you can upsize the data storage and use MS SQL Server. Access supports multiple simultaneous users and manages conflicts where two people attempt to modify the same item of data at the same time. Access is ideal for small to medium scale custom business applications that do not need to be web based. If you build an application in Access you may not even have to buy Access for your users as there is a free ‘runtime’ version which will run Access applications but not let you build or modify the application itself.

To summarise – the choice depends on the following questions – how structured and fixed vs unstructured and fluid is your information, how many people need to access/edit this information, how much information will you be dealing with, does the data need extensive validation or do you need significant reports?

Speed of broadband

I want to know the speed of my broadband, how do I do this?

The website http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ will run a test for you and give you the results for download and upload speeds.

Instant Messaging

We want to use Instant Messaging to stay in touch with our customers - can you recommend a good IM package?

Well this is really down to trying out a few and picking one you like. You do get Windows Live Messenger bundled with Windows so this is a good place to start. If you use a firewall to protect your PC or network you may need to ‘open a port’ to allow the messenger messages to flow between you and your internet connected clients.

The free IP phone package Skype also includes an instant messenger service – and if you and your client have suitable hardware you can make free phone calls or even video calls as well.

Gadgets for Christmas

Any ideas for last minute gadgets as Christmas presents?

You could look at Firebox’s website www.firebox.com or The Gadget Show’s website at www.five.tv/thegadgetshow/

Some of our favourite gadgets include:

Pzizz – it’s a Power Nap gadget – like a hypnotherapist in a mp3 player that induces a state of deep relaxation so you can have 10-60 minute powernaps. It generates a unique program each time you use it. www.pzizz.com the site is being maintained but still works. New website is http://www.energyeveryday.com/

Classic boys toy – the leatherman wave http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leatherman-Wave-Multi-Tool-Leather-Pouch/dp/B000O54HSC/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=sports&qid=1229443866&sr=1-5

SatNav

Mobile phone

Digital camera

The power drill (for putting up shelves etc etc)

Hair straighteners

Jamie Oliver Shaker

Electronic corkscrew which takes all the effort from opening a bottle of wine and allows you to begin consuming the contents with the minimum delay!

Microsoft Outlook Calendar - Adding bank holidays automatically

Is there any easier way to add the bank holidays into my Outlook calendar other than manually?

For Microsoft Outlook 2003 choose Tools, Options, Calendar Options and then Add Holidays and choose a country.

This will add in all bank holidays to 2012.

Computer not booting

My computer won't boot - it has a message which reads c:\windows\system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupted - what do I do?

An essential operating file has been lost or corrupted so immediately I would suspect a problem with your hard disk drive or possibly a malicious virus. In either case your PC is not bootable so your focus is getting it to boot, then see if the cause of the failure reveals itself.

If your don’t have a backup, your backup is too old, you have critical or important data on the disk or you are unsure of your PC skills – get expert help and do nothing. Don’t even read past this point!

You then have a number of options including:

1. Booting off the operating system install CD and using its repair option if available.
2. Booting off the operating system install CD and reinstalling the operating system, all your programs, re-configuring it all.
3. Booting off the operating system install CD and installing a second copy of the operating system, boot using this second copy and use this to repair the original operating system.
4. Physically taking the hard disk out of your PC and adding it as an additional drive to a working PC. Use the working PC to either repair the damage to the failed hard disk if possible or simply to copy all your data off it.
5. Similar to 4 – purchase and install a new hard disk in the broken PC, add your old hard disk as an additional drive and attempt to repair/recover data.

The options have not been explained in detail – they all have pros and cons and provisos – if you don’t know what they are or are unsure of the approach - you should stop and ask for expert help. This is an area where a high level of skill and even the most experienced professional will take great care. Consider also how much effort you are going to put into this recovery and if you suspect the hard disk - perhaps this is a sensible time to invest in a new hard disk?

Internet Explorer and other browsers

I've just heard the news about Internet Explorer's security flaw - can you tell me what other browsers are available and how do I get them?

There are several other browsers available, we’ll give you a list of the most popular choices with links so you can find out more about them and download them. By the way they are all free!

This is a very topical question given today’s news about a new flaw in IE here and advice to use an alternative browser until the vulnerability is fixed. Incidentally this particular flaw is to do with the helpful feature in IE (and other browsers) where it will remember those pesky passwords for you.

So, what is a browser ? Basically it’s the computer program that allows you to browse and interact with web sites. Behind the scenes your browser is receiving pages from your website in a formatting language and converting it into the screen display you see. It translates your screen clicks and keyboard entries into commands which it sends to your selected site for action.

Internet Explorer (IE) browser is installed with Microsoft operating systems so it is almost assured the top spot as many PC users just won’t be interested in looking for an alternative. It’s a bit like deciding to upgrade the radio in your car, most people stick with the one that came with the vehicle.

Informed users will want to at least look at the alternatives and choose the browser that offers the combination of usability, speed and security that is important to them. A good question you can ask is; if IE is installed with Windows – why would people go to the effort of downloading another browser? What do these other browsers offer that the users feel is lacking in IE?

Mozilla Firefox is the most popular alternative browser (statistics here), indeed amongst those interested or working with web technologies where it seems set to overtake IE as the browser of choice (statistics here). If you want to find out more about Firefox and why it is the most popular non IE browser then follow this link Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is user-friendly; it had tabbed pages long before IE added them and is more secure. There are pages and pages of articles on the web on whether Mozilla is better than IE or not – read about it, try it and make up your own mind.

A relatively recent addition to the browser list is Google Chrome which offers a minimalist design with the aim of delivering a browser that makes web browsing faster, safer and easier. We have used Chrome recently and loved the clean uncluttered design, speed was comparable to either IE or Firefox perhaps a little faster. There is a nice video overview on the BBC website by Google’s Jessica Powell. This will be the browser to trial over the next month or so, it’s going to have to be pretty good to beat Firefox though!

Another choice, which is going to be of interest to people who use both Apple and PC, is Apple’s Safari, simply because its available for both Mac and PC – so you can use and get used to the same browser on both types of computer. Naturally being an Apple design you get that Mac feel to the program. More information on Safari is here.

There are a few other browsers such as Opera and some old soldiers such as Netscape and the original Mozilla – however these all rate less than 1% of the global usage share.

Defrag

What does defrag mean?

You PC is always trying to give you the best performance. This means that when you modify and save or delete files it will do this as quickly as possible and it won’t worry about keeping your hard disk neat and tidy. When you delete a file it will leave a gap where the file was and when it then saves files it will split the files into fragments to fit the available gaps.

The result of this is you can end up with bits of file all over your hard disk. Now of course your Windows or other operation system keeps careful track of where all the bits are and how to put them back together when you load the file. Behind the scenes all this assembling files and splitting files to fit the available gaps takes time and performance suffers when it becomes excessive as fragmentation increases.

The answer is to defragment or defrag your disk – which essentially tidies up all the files, joining the fragments together and reorganises the disk to combine all the unused space into nice large usable blocks. Many operating systems include a defrag tool; In Microsoft Vista it is under All Programs – Accessories – System Tools. There are also utilities you can buy which will automatically monitor and defrag your disk when it needs it.

Uninterruptable Power Supply

What is a UPS and do I need one ?

UPS (short for Uninterruptable Power Supply) is a very big battery with some clever electronics that you insert between your computer and its mains power supply. It has two functions

1. It smoothes out any ‘bumps’ in your power supply voltage – spikes and brief dips in the power
2. If there is a power cut, it keeps your computer running long enough to shut down cleanly

So it is a protection device to prevent damage to computer hardware, your systems and your data. Put plainly power spikes are bad for their power supplies and sudden power loss is very bad for your systems and data as this can cause corruption resulting in the need to recover data from backup or possibly data loss. Serious data loss can render your computer inoperable, unbootable.

Now if your computer is a desktop PC you probably only want to invest in a UPS if the cost of having to recover from an expected power problem makes it worthwhile for you. If your PC is essential – maybe you are a smaller business where everything is on your PC, then you should consider this. If your PC is a laptop – it already has a battery to keep it going !

Of course most businesses put their key systems and data onto more powerful central servers. In our opinion it is essential to protect your servers with a UPS. Even a medium size server can hold a lot of information – if you need to restore its data after a power failure has caused corruption then this could easily take hours just to get the data from the backup tape. This assumes the power problem did not physically damage anything. A serious power cut – even a self inflicted one caused by tripping a breaker eg putting the kettle on – can bring a business to a standstill.

Top Tip - put your servers and network equipment on a different power circuit, ideally on their own.

When you get your power back you want to be up and running and recovering from the outage as soon as possible – not spending hours repairing your servers or recovering your systems and/or data.

UPSs come in different ratings – the higher the rating the more power it can supply. You can get quite compact UPSs to protect a PC and larger tower or rack mounted units for protecting servers. When selecting a UPS you should get advice on rating the power requirement of your equipment and work out how long you want the UPS to run your equipment during a power cut in order to correctly specify the size of UPS you need.

UPSs have a data connection to the computers that it protects so it can tell them when the power goes off and if it needs them to shut down. When the power comes back on you can specify a delay to ensure that the power is stable before the UPS automatically restarts everything.

UPSs can be very sophisticated, constantly monitoring the quality of your power and taking intelligent decisions when there are problems. I can recall one situation at a large site where the UPS was so big it had its own little building, the power to the site kept failing due to a faulty breaker and in the middle of the chaos a van with two engineers from the UPS company arrived unexpectedly. Apparently the UPSs electronic brain had noted the problems and phoned them……

Password protecting USB sticks

Can I password protect my USB stick?

There are a number of utilities you can buy, or these are sometimes bundled (included) with your stick. Cryptainer is an example of encryption software.

These encrypt all the information on your stick and require you to enter a password before the data can be accessed. Your stick contains the encryption program and a big, sometimes hidden file which contains all your data.

When you plug the key into your PC it will appear as an additional drive, say the E: drive. You then run the encryption software on this drive and enter your password. If the password is correct then magically a new drive, say F: appears. You read and write your files as normal to this second drive. Take care though - if you forget the password then you have effectively lost all the data on the key!

Out of Office Assistant

Can I set up an automatic message to reply to emails sent to me over the Christmas period to let people know when I will be back in the office?

Yes, you can set the Out Of Office Assistant. If you are using Microsoft Outlook 2003, click on Tools, Out of Office Assistant and then type your message eg 'I am out of the office until Monday 5th January 2009. If your message is urgent, please telephone [enter telephone number]'.

This message will be automatically sent to anyone who sends an email to your email address.

Don't forget to turn it off when you get back into the office ....