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All computer & hardware components require professional installation. Software technical support is not available at this time. We recommend that you contact the software manufacturer for direct support.
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Thank you for purchasing a new Krex computer. We hope you are enjoying your new computer, and would like to give some pointers to help keep your computer running like new. Just like cars need oil changes to stay at their best, computers need regular maintenance to maintain peak performance. With all the information available on the Internet, it`s easy to quickly fill up your hard drive space and make your computer sluggish and unresponsive. Keeping your hard drive clean is essential to maintaining its performance and is, fortunately, an easy process.
There are 3 simple steps to cleaning up your hard drive:
1. Uninstall unused programs.
With all the information available at your fingertips over the Internet, it`s easy to get carried away at trying everything the internet has to offer. Many programs will download and install themselves at one wrong click of the mouse, and will take up both hard drive space and other valuable system resources like memory. Other spy-ware programs like SaveNow! will piggy-back themselves onto well-known programs such as Kazaa. Deleting programs by removing their folders will cause system problems. Be sure to use the uninstall feature inside Windows to properly remove unwanted or unneeded programs. The Add/Remove Programs feature is located in the Control Panel.
2. Clean out temporary files.
Many programs will write information to temporary files. In a perfect world, temporary files would clean themselves up without intervention from you, however we do not live in a perfect world and many temporary files linger till doomsday. Windows has a nice feature that will go in and automatically remove all unnecessary temporary files. This feature is called Disk Cleanup and is located in your Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools folder.
3. Scandisk and Defrag
Whenever Windows writes anything to the hard drive, it will put the information wherever there is space, and not necessarily in one continuous location on disk. Deleting files and programs will create patches of unused space that are not big enough to fit programs or large files, and will cause windows to write part of a program in that unused space, and write the rest across the drive, resulting in a fragmented file. Fragmented files tax the hard drive, causing it to skip around the disk in order to read one file. Scandisk will check for lost file fragments and tries to fix any errors it finds. Disk Defragmenter will unite the files and move the free space to the end of the drive. Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter are both located in the System Tools folder.
Now that your system is clean, keep it that way. This maintenance should be run at least once a month, more if you are constantly downloading or surfing the Internet.
As important as it is to keep your hard drive clean, it is also vital to keep it safe from power surges and outages. We highly suggest purchasing an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) which will protect your data and your hard drive from unexpected power fluctuations.
Finally, here are some good general computing habits that pertain to both home and work.
If you can`t stand to lose a file for whatever reason, make a backup.
That important report that took you four hours to write? Save it to two separate locations, and not both on the same medium. Put one on a floppy or CDR, keep the other in My Documents. While a hard drive crashing is rare, it does happen. And thinking it`s safe on a floppy alone is a no-no. A friend once saved his college thesis on just one floppy. One day while eating a meal, his car was broken into and his backpack was stolen. Three months of work had to be redone because he didn`t take the extra step to have a backup.
Saving your documents in the "My Documents" folder makes it simple to regularly backup and archive your important files. Simply burn the directory to a CDR every month or so.
Only open emails from recognized addresses with pertinent subject lines. The threat of receiving a virus is just as great from a known address as it is from an unknown, due to the nature of many viruses out there. Some viruses will replicate and send itself to everyone in your address book, making the recipient feel safe that it`s from someone they know.
Install an anti-virus program and keep it updated. Anti-Virus programs are reactionary, meaning they come out with fixes to viruses that are already present. Anti-Virus programs cannot protect you from future unknown viruses, so it is imperative to keep your anti-virus program up-to-date. Update at least once a week.
Once again, thank you for purchasing from Krex Computers. Following the above steps will help insure that your computing experience is enjoyable and reliable.
* We would love your feedback. If this was informative, helpful, unnecessary, whatever, please let us know by e-mail to info@krex.com
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