Windows Tips

You’ve downloaded 4 utilities that can save your bacon when your computer starts acting up. As discussed in previous posts, malware can create havoc on your computer, make you believe in hardware failures, or silently steal your information, or use your computer as their host for sending spam mails to your contacts, or more. When your computer starts acting up is not the time to download the utilities that can solve the problem, you should have them on hand beforehand.

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Create a restore point. Get prepared for mayhem—malware invasions, incomplete software installations, or software conflicts, hardware incompatibilities—when your computer is healthy and runs like a dream. A restore point is like a Windows ‘undo’. You can restore your computer to the moment you created that restore point, meaning that everything that happened or was installed after that restore point will be undone. Here is how you do it:

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Here is a question for you: Did you create a recovery disk set as you were prompted to do when you got your computer? If you did, congratulations, you are computer savvy. If you didn’t, be grateful that the factory settings, which include the operating system, are hidden in a protected section of the hard disk that you cannot delete. I needed these settings to fix a friend’s computer that could no longer connect to the internet, wired or wireless. Why?

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I wrote about some essential keyboard shortcuts in an earlier post, but perhaps it’s time for a refresher and some additions. Some of these shortcuts won’t apply if your computer is configured to open files with one click of your mouse.

What would we do without UNDO?

• [Ctrl] + [z] = UNDO the mistake you just made. In a program that has several levels of UNDO, repeat the shortcut to back-track.

Working with objects

Objects are files, pictures, or anything that is on your screen. When you click your mouse once in an open window you tell the computer to focus on that window and the object you clicked on. If you just want to select the window

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Yesterday knocked an open bottle of water and managed to grab it before the whole thing spilled into my NEW VAIO notebook computer. But a good splash landed on parts of the keyboard anyway. The computer was running.

I grabbed a paper towel and tried to sop up some of the water very gently from the keys, powered down, unplugged the computer, turned it upside down to try to let the water drip out.

The I went to my desktop, the advice and read up on how to try to save the wet notebook, it’s actually very common sense. I’m writing this with my VAIO, and there seems to be no damage… I have touched wood! I used “spilled water on laptop” for a search term and got plenty of results. Here is the gist:

1. If you spill something, let it be water,

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