Regular Computer Maintenance

Posted on Sep 28, 2007 in Windows | 1 Comment

A little while ago I wrote a post titled How To Keep Your Computer Running Smoothly where I explain several tools you should install and use to help keep your computer running. In this post I will provide step-by-step instructions on what I do to keep my computers running without any problems.


Cleaning House

Chances are you probably know a pat rack, you know the person who can’t seem throw anything away. When it comes to computers, most of us are probably pack rats as well. We have a large number of files on our computer that we probably will never need in the future. Use the following steps to reduce the clutter on your hard drive:

  1. Click Start->Run to launch the Run dialog box.
  2. At the command prompt, type set temp. You should now see the location of your temporary directory appear on the screen.
  3. Open Windows Explorer (Windows Key+E) and navigate to the directory show from the previous step.
  4. Press CTRL+A to highlight all of the files and folders and press Delete.

    5. Your temporary directory should know be cleaned up. If you get a message that indicates a files is locked and can’t be removed, then unhighlight that file by holding down the CTRL key and left-clicking the file. You can now try and delete the remaining files.

  5. While you are in Windows Explorer, you might as well take at look at your Documents folder.
  6. If you have many digital photos located in this folder, back them up to a CD/DVD or external hard drive. It is important, however, to have multiple back ups for any files that can’t be replaced. If you do have multiple back ups already, you can safely delete the ones on your local hard drive.
  7. For other files, such as documents, you can back those up as well. If you feel safe with your back ups, you can delete them from your hard drive. If you would rather keep them, then organize them into folders so you can easily find them.
  8. For files you downloaded from the Internet, if you can download them again in the future, then you can delete those as well. No use keeping files you can download again taking up space on your hard drive.
  9. If you have other directories that contain your files, go through and determine if any of them can be backed up and deleted.
  10. Close Windows Explorer and open up your Web browser. Find the option to remove your cached Internet files and delete them. Cleaning your cache is different depending on your browsers. Check out this Clearing Cache Web page for the different browsers.

You computer should be a bit cleaner with regards to the hard drive. Now it’s time to run some tools to perform checks on your hard drive.

Regular Checkup

Once your hard drive is cleaned up, it is now time to run some of the maintenance software to check to ensure your system is clean of spyware and viruses.

  1. Ensure that you have an anti-virus, and anti-spyware software installed on your computer. If you don’t please read How To Keep Your Computer Running Smoothly for various tools of each type.
  2. Execute your anti-spyware software to detect for any spyware that may be residing on your computer. Once you get the report at the end of the scan, take the action recommended by the tool.
  3. After running the anti-spyware tool, next run your anti-virus tool to check for any viruses. Hopefully you don’t have any viruses, but if it does then take the action recommended by the tool.

After you run both of those tools, you should now have a cleaner computer with regards to files, viruses and spyware. The next step is to verify there are no problems with your hard drive and then ensure your files are split across the hard drive.

Checking and Defragging the Hard Drive

Over time you hard drive and some of the system files can become damaged. This is not always true, but if they are it can cause your computer to become unstable.

Your computer may also become slower if the parts of your files are placed next to each other. Files are broken into pieces on your hard drive, and as you add, modify and delete files, these pieces can become fragmented. File fragmentation causes the hard drive to move to different locations to retrieve all the pieces of a file, which can take more time to use the file.

Before defragging your hard drive, we will first be checking for errors. To check for errors, use the following steps:

  1. Double-click My Computer, and then right-click one of the local disks that you want to check.
  2. Click Properties and then the Tools tab.
  3. Under Error-checking, click the Check Now button.
  4. Under Check disk options, select the Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check boxes.
  5. Click the Start button.
  6. At this point a message may appear on the screen stating that the disk checker utility needs exclusive access to the disk. It will also ask if you want the disk checker to run at restart. Click the Yes button.
  7. If you got the message in step 6, then close down any applications and restart your computer. Once Windows starts it will then execute the disk checker which will then check your hard drive. It may take a while to complete depending on the size of your hard drive, but just let it run.

Once the disk check has completed it’s task and Windows has restarted, it is now time to defrag your hard drive. To defrag your hard drive, use the following steps:

  1. Double-click My Computer, and then right-click one of the local disks that you want to check.
  2. Click Properties and then the Tools tab.
  3. Under Defragmentation, click the Defragment Now button.
  4. Once the Windows defrag utility loads, select your hard drive in the list at the top and click the Defragment button.
  5. Just let the defrag utility run. Depending on how defragmented your hard drive is it can take some time.

The steps above explained how to execute the Windows defrag utility. If you have installed another utility, then you can use that one instead.

Summary

This post explained the process I use to keep my computers running smoothly. You should do these steps on a regular basis: weekly if you can but at least once a month. If you notice your computer is unstable, or is slow, then you should perform these steps to find any problems with your computer.

Introduction to Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Posted on Sep 26, 2007 in Web Site, Web Site - Design | 2 Comments

In a previous post title Designing Web Pages: Tables or CSS, I briefly talked about using CSS to layout the content of a Web page. I didn’t go into detail about how CSS files are used in conjunction with Web pages or even how they are created.

In this post I will provide a simple introduction to cascading stylesheets and how you can link them to an HTML file.


Overview of a CSS file

Before discussing how to create a CSS file, it is important to provide a quick overview on stylesheets. Cascading stylesheets (CSS) are nothing more than simple text files that define the look of a Web page. Before CSS files, you would define fonts and colours within your HTML file. When you use CSS files, those definitions would be stored in a CSS file and removed from the HTML file. You can then link a CSS file, or even multiple CSS files to a single HTML file.

Using CSS files to define the look of your Web site has a few benefits. The first is that you can now change the look of your entire Web site by simply changing one CSS file as opposed to multiple HTML files. The second advantage to using CSS files is download speed. When you have all your definitions within your HTML files, it makes the files much larger, which takes more time to download. By moving the definitions to a CSS file, visitors would request a HTML file, which would also download the linked CSS file. Now any subsequent pages that use that CSS file would now read it from the visitor’s cache instead of re-downloading the CSS file again. Your HTML files will also be much smaller as they no longer contain the definitions.

Creating a CSS File – An Example

Let’s use a quick example to show how easy it is to create and link a CSS file to a HTML file. To follow this example you will need only a text editor such as Windows Notepad.

  1. Create a directory on your local computer that will contain the CSS and HTML files.
  2. Open your text editor and type the following (include the semicolons):
    3. p
    {
    font-family: Arial;
    font-size: 20pt;
    }

    This will define any paragraph (the p tag) as using the Arial font with a font size of 20pt.

  3. Now save the file as site-style.css into the directory created in step 1.
  4. Create a new text file and type in the following:
    5. <html>
    <head>
    <link href=”site-style.css” type=”text/css” rel=”stylesheet”>
    </head>
    <body>
    <p>This is a test Web page for CSS files.</p>
    </body>
    </html>

    All this text file does is display a message on the Web page. The important part in the HTML is the link definition in the head section. This tells the browser to use the file defined in the href tag. That file is of type text/css and it is a stylesheet. This entire line is how a CSS file is linked to a HTML file.

  5. Save the new file as csstest.htm in the same directory as the CSS file.
  6. Open the csstest.htm into your Web browser.

    7. What you should now notice is that the message on the Web page is now displayed in the Arial font and has a size of 20pt. You should try changing the font family and size in the site-style.css file and refresh your Web page. You will notice that the message text changes.

    You can also try using other HTML tags such as the heading tags (H1-H6), or create a second Web page that links to your CSS. You will then notice that as you change your CSS file both Web pages change.

Summary

This post provided a quick overview on CSS files and a very simple example of using CSS files but you can see how they can be very useful. There are entire Web sites on the Internet dedicated to learning CSS including all the various definitions you can use. If you want to make your Web site easier to manage and maintain, I suggest you learn more about CSS files.

Securing the D-link DI-524 Wireless Router

Posted on Sep 24, 2007 in Networking, Security, Windows | 57 Comments

I recently created a post titled Securing Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G router in which I provided step-by-step instructions on securing the WRT54G router. The Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G router is a popular router, but it isn’t the only one on the market. In this post I will discuss how to secure another wireless router, the D-Link DI-524.

Click to continue reading »

Designing Web Pages: Tables or CSS

Posted on Sep 21, 2007 in Blogging, Web Site, Web Site - Design | No Comments

There is some debate recently about the best method to design and layout a Web page. Traditionally, HMTL tables have been used to handle the layout of a Web page. Today, however, a new layout method is gaining more popularity which uses CSS (Cascading Stylesheets).

Which method is the best way of designing a Web page? I will explain both methods in this post and provide my own opinion. This post, however, won’t explain how to create the HTML files as I’ll save that for a future post.


Using HTML Tables

If you view the source of many Web pages on the Internet, you will probably see the entire layout of the page constructed using tables. Tables have been the main method of providing the layout of a Web page since they were first introduced. They make it easy to provide a header, footer, and content sections to a page.

Recently, however, many Web designers have been declaring that tables should only be used to display tabular data. This makes sense as many applications, such as Excel and database GUIs have a structured table look. The Web designers also state that the look and feel of a Web page should be separated from the HTML Web page.

The advantage to using tables is that they are easy to use. You define a table (<tabl>), then a row (<tr>) and finally a cell (<td>). You can span rows across columns and columns across rows to make cells larger. Formatting a table can be accomplished in the HTML code itself, or a CSS file.

Another advantage to tables is that all browsers in use today support tables. This means that a visitor won’t get a mangled Web page when it is viewed in their browser.

A disadvantage of using tables is they need to download the entire HTML first before they are rendered. This is because the browser can’t be sure how the table will look until the entire HTML can be rendered. As more people switch to broadband Internet, this will probably be a moot point.

I have designed many Web pages using tables, and have had no problems. I have, however, started to design Web pages using the new method: straight CSS with no tables.

Using CSS

The second method of laying out a Web page is using pure CSS and not tables. This method has been gaining popularity, especially among the processional Web designers.

So how exactly is CSS used to layout a Web page? The answer: through the use of division tags (<div>). These tags are used to divide your Web page into various sections. One large section will contain all the sub-sections, which is usually called the container. Within the container you may have header, footer, navigation and content sections. The look and positioning of these sections is defined by the CSS.

The CSS as I mentioned earlier is an acronym for Cascading Stylesheets. These are text files placed on a Web server that are downloaded along with the HTML file. A CSS file contains definitions, known as styles, which provide the look and feel of your Web site. The best part about using CSS files is that you only need to change one file when you want to change the look of your entire site. For those that manage thousands of Web pages, this can be a huge time saver.

One disadvantage to using CSS to layout your Web pages is that not all Web browsers support all the CSS style tags. Your Web pages may not display nicely to visitors on older Web browser. With each new version of a browser, this becomes more of a moot point.

I currently use the CSS method for Technically Easy, which is also my first site designed in this manner.

The Verdict

I usually call the last section in my posts "Summary" but this time I think I’ll provide my verdict, or opinion. I have used both methods to design Web pages, and have seen the advantages and disadvantages to both.

I decided to go with CSS for my new sites since that looks like the future of Web pages. I have accepted the risk that for many visitors on older browsers, the Web pages may not display correctly. I have also examined my Web site statistics and realized that for the most part my visitors are using newer browsers. I have tested my CSS site on IE 6.0+, Firefox 2.0+ and Opera 9.0+, and haven’t had any problems.

If you are a beginner to Web page designing, I suggest you use tables since they are easier to work with. Once you become familiar with HTML and CSS, you can then try using CSS for the layout, if you choose. I do recommend, however, that you learn CSS quickly and apply that to your Web pages as it can make changing the look of your entire site easier.

In the end, I don’t think it really matters which method you choose, as no one cares what your Web page source looks like. All that matters is that you Web pages display correctly.

AOL Users – Multiple IP Addresses

Posted on Sep 19, 2007 in Technology, Web Site | 2 Comments

A few days ago I was in a forum and someone mentioned that they noticed a discrepancy in their Web server logs. A visitor to their Web site was an AOL user, but they appeared to be making several requests from different IP addresses.

If you are on dialup, you will probably get a different IP address each time you connect to your ISP, however, it won’t change as long as up don’t log off. How did the AOL user have multiple IP addresses even if they didn’t log off? I will explain that phenomenon in this post.


AOL Proxy Servers

Unlike regular dialup users, AOL users don’t get assigned an IP address that will show up in a Web server’s log file. This is because when an AOL user makes a request over the Internet; the request goes through what is known as a proxy server.

A proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary between a user and the Internet. This allows an enterprise to control security, caching and provide administrative support. The proxy server is the access point to the Internet from the internal network of an enterprise.

How does this relate to AOL users? When a user connects to AOL, they receive an IP address from AOL. When they make a request to a Web site, the request is sent to the proxy server. The server then sends the request to the respective Web server. By this time the request has the IP address of the proxy server, and not of the AOL user.

The Web server completes the request and sends the information back to the IP address of the proxy server. The proxy server then determines which user requested the data, and then forwards the information to the AOL user.

If the AOL user makes another request, it can be sent to a different proxy server with a different IP address. The Web server will then receive a request from the same user, but this time the IP address will associated with the new proxy server. In this scenario, the AOL user has made two requests to the same Web server, but from two different IP addresses.

Issues with AOL Proxy Servers

There have been some issues related to the AOL proxy servers and AOL users. One issue is that Webmasters can’t get accurate data about their Web traffic. Usually, Web traffic data uses the IP address to determine unique users. If you get one user requesting data through multiple proxy servers, each with their own IP address, your Web data may indicate more users.

Another issue has to do with the actual IP addresses themselves. Many times a Web site might prevent traffic from a specific IP address from accessing their site. If a Web site bans an IP address from one of the proxy servers, any requests by AOL users that are sent through that proxy server won’t be able to access the Web site. This has frustrated many AOL users in the past.

Summary

Since AOL uses proxy servers to connect their users to the Internet, you may see multiple IP address from a single user in your Web logs. Each request from an AOL user can come from a different IP address depending on which proxy server the request is sent through. Besides the skewed Web stats from the multiple IP addresses, AOL users can be frustrated if a Web site has banned any traffic from one of the proxy server’s IP address.

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