(Free Members Only) Have you ever had a problem with your computer when you turned it on, that the monitor stayed dark just as if it were still off, or if it displayed anything at all, it said “No Signal Input” or “Monitor Going to Sleep”? Or in some cases, along with a dark screen, did your computer immediately start making any beeping sounds?
The “No Signal” or “Monitor Going to Sleep” display on your monitor is actually generated internally within the monitor, and aside from a connection problem, the monitor is probably okay. This typically occurs when the computer has failed in a way that there is no video output signal to the monitor. As for any beeping, it is sort of a morse code indication about a Power-On Self Test (P.O.S.T.) that failed. While this article was written with desktop computers in mind, most of it still applies to laptops as well, just know that laptop parts are layed-out differently, and may not be user-accessible.
You probably noticed that when your computer is working, that you hear a single beep when your computer begins to boot-up. This is a good POST beep and means that your system passed POST. If your computer didn’t pass POST and it beeps with continuous combinations of long and short beeps, there are 5 main hardware items that can cause this problem: Read More Here…
Read More...
Some time ago, I wrote about how virus and spyware infections can eventually lead to premature hard drive failures. In short, I was promoting good spyware prevention techniques and top tier virus and spyware protection programs as the best way to prevent one of the most common indirect causes of premature hard drive failure. The scenario goes like this: Your computer gets infected, and you put off repairs until the computer gets so slow, that eventually it won’t respond to any mouse or keyboard input. You might say that Windows stopped responding or the computer froze. What can you do but to perform a bad-shutdown by powering-off the computer? But if the hard drive was spinning at normal operational speed when the power was suddenly turned-off, it is possible that the hard drive’s heads may come into contact with the platter before the drive had a chance to spin-down and park the heads in a safe landing zone. This could result in damage to the heads, the platter, and even your data if the head/platter contact happened over an area of the platter that contains data. Read More Here…
Read More...
I’ve exposed CyberDefender and their aliases before, you know: DoubleMySpeed.com, MaxMySpeed.com and MyCleanPC.com. Well, they have a new radio commercial with an appealing sounding woman touting the DoubleMySpeed.com website out here in Hawaii. But as usual, I’m sure they are mixing it up around the country with their snake oil tactics for all their aliases. I won’t rehash my previous beefs about CyberDefender today other than to say that I would steer clear of even trying their products. Below is my latest video review of DoubleMySpeed.com. Read More Here…
Read More...
Posted in
Reviews
With high-speed internet at home and 4G on the go, literally untold millions of people are watching streaming video on their smart phones, ipods and tablets on a regular basis. For the internet savvy folks, we have already learned how to safely download, convert and import these audios and videos into our mobile devices long ago (in computer years that is). But if you are new to this game or are finally stepping outside the safety of iTunes to get all that great free stuff that is just waiting to be downloaded, then you need to finish reading this article first or you just might get infected on your first night out. I’m not talking so much about what kind of virus and spyware “protection” to use to keep safe on the internet, I’m talking about virus and spyware “prevention” by choosing safe programs or “methods” to do this downloading. But where do you start? Read More Here…
Read More...
I won’t say I’ve heard it all, but I have heard enough. Enough from customers that have asked me how did my computer get infected, I’ve got Norton, or McAfee, or whatever. Aren’t they some of the best virus and spyware protection products on the market? Without getting into any preferences for antivirus software, many of the good ones still fall short when it comes to detecting zero-day threats. Even the best of the best just can’t detect them all. And don’t forget the obvious, that some people have absolutely no antivirus software at all, while others’ is expired, or hasn’t been updated. Then there are just some that are extremely high-risk internet surfers that can’t lay off the adult and pirated software websites that are saturated with malware. But what you can do about it will require you to read and understand a bit about zero-day threats and how we need a new approach to computer security, one that is actually opposite to what you have been using. Its actually not new, its just not what became the accepted standard. We have been a bunch of cows going over the cliff for far too long now. Read More Here…
Read More...
(Free Members Only) If you are having problems viewing animated content on the internet such as videos, particularly with YouTube and Flash sites, your Adobe Flash Player may be corrupt. I see this sort of problem pretty often, especially after a spyware infection. So even if your spyware protection took care of the infection for you, it won’t be able to repair any damaged plugins such as Flash Player. That you will have to do manually. Without getting into all the detailed settings to check, it is just easier to make sure that your browser is using default settings so that Javascript is enabled and then just remove and reinstall the Flash Player with the latest version directly from Adobe’s website. Read More Here…
Read More...
(Free Members Only) Have you ever had a problem with your computer when you turned it on, that the monitor stayed dark just as if it were still off, or if it displayed anything at all, it said “No Signal Input” or “Monitor Going to Sleep”? Or in some cases, along with a dark screen, did your computer immediately start making any beeping sounds?
