What is a Spyware?
Spyware is a category of computer programs that attach themselves to your operating system in nefarious ways. They can suck the life out of your computer's processing power. They're designed to track your Internet habits, nag you with unwanted sales offers or generate traffic for their host Web site. Read more on this.
What is a computer Virus?
A virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program runs, the virus runs, too, and it has the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other programs) or wreak havoc. More on this.
What are the signs of a dying Hard drive?
All too often, hard drives fail with no warning whatsoever. One minute the computer is working fine, the next you have a "blue screen of death" and all your data is gone. So, what's the lesson here? Don't rely on warning signs to predict hard drive failure. Assume that your hard drive is going to fail, and back up critical files. If you have a reliable back-up, you'll save yourself many headaches.
Some mechanical components can fail gradually, however, so occasionally you'll know when a drive failure is imminent. These warnings fall into two categories: sounds and performance problems.
If you spend a lot of time sitting near your computer, you're probably familiar with the usual sounds it makes. If you hear the hard drive making any unusual noises, that's probably a clue that something is going wrong. Grinding or screeching noises might mean the bearings or spindle motor are failing. A clicking, clunking or clanging sound could be the read/write arm slamming back and forth. Sometimes these sounds can be subtle and difficult to detect. If you think you're hearing funny noises, open your computer's case and listen with your ear close to the hard drive while someone else uses the computer to save or move some files.
Performance problems include a sudden increase in the frequency of freeze-ups and crashes. Of course, these types of performance problems can be symptomatic of any number of computer maladies, from viruses to memory leaks to non-drive related hardware failures. A more specific tell-tale: saving or moving files suddenly takes a very, very long time. When you run into any of these symptoms, back up anything that isn't already saved and hope the drive lasts long enough to get everything you need copied to another disk.
What is the Blue Screen of Death (BSD)?
The Blue Screen of Death (also called BSoD, Blue Screen, or bluescreen), known officially as a Stop Error or a bug check, is the error screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems upon encountering a critical error, of a non-recoverable nature, that causes the system to "crash." The term is named after the color of the screen generated by the error. In UNIX-based operating systems, a similar term is kernel panic.
Stop errors are usually hardware or driver related, causing the computer to stop responding in order to prevent damage to the hardware, whereupon, in the latest versions of Windows, the screen presents information for diagnostic purposes that was collected as the operating system performed a bug check.
Do I need a new Motherboard for my laptop when the DC jack is not working?
Laptop users may run into situations whereby they encouter intermittant power problems. Sometimes you have to wiggle you power cord for the machine to work. When that happens it is either the power adapter which needs to be replaced, or in the worse case scenario the DC jack that is faulty. Some companies may recommend you buy a new Motherboard or a new computer altogether. We at IVTECH, we fix your DC jack problem at a fraction of the cost of a new Motherboard.