IT Tips for Laptop: Is your laptop your lifeline?

IT Tips for Laptop

Is your laptop your lifeline?

 

If your answer is “yes”, let’s hope you are taking good care of it. But what is the definition of “good care”? The occasional dusting and wiping may not be enough to ensure your laptop has a long and trouble-free life. Sometimes, plain carelessness can jeopardize your laptop’s condition.

Imagine your workstation without your laptop for a day? If your laptop crashes or has an external damage, you would have to reschedule your meetings and postpone work till you get your laptop back into action. To avoid such last-minute stress, do put into practice these simple steps which ensure your laptop’s long life and safety:

• The electronic parts of a laptop including the screen, keyboard and CD-ROM insert will break overtime when heavy weight and pressure is placed on them. You should not stack up a hoard of books or files on top of a laptop while you’re at work.
• Don’t hold/lift your laptop by its screen alone; when direct pressure is applied on the screen it might break the laptop at its hinges.
• Before shutting the laptop, make sure there are no small items on the keyboard that can damage the screen; hold and lift the laptop by its base, not by its LCD display; don’t tug the power cord; don’t roll your chair over the computer cord; plug in accessory devices into their proper slots; handle removable drives gently; don’t expose the laptop to extreme temperature fluctuations.
• As far as possible, use the laptop in a proper workstation. This may seem like killing the purpose of having a portable device, but in the long run, placing the laptop on a flat surface with good air circulation increases its life.
• Keep food and drink away from the laptop. This can be easier said than done for most people. However, a spill can cost you. Spilt liquids can damage the internal components or cause electrical injury to the laptop. Food crumbs, on the other hand, can go down between the keys in the keyboard and attract bugs, besides irritating the circuitry.
• Keep it clean, inside out. Sticky keys and crumbs between them mean it is time to clean your laptop. 

IT Network Tips for Users

IT Network Tips for Users

Network stability is very important for any organization. If network is stable, users will forget that there even is a network. This is the goal really.

If it is not configured correctly it can become unstable, start crashing frequently, or just run slowly. A major culprit when it comes to network crashes, instability, and slowness is the network loop.

Network Looping

Meaning :-

Network looping means a request or packet floating in the network without any destination or dead end. When switches connect this way, network packets can be bounced between two switches infinitely. In certain circumstances they can even begin to be duplicated over and over again.

How the Network looping occurs

A loop on the network frequently occurred. The cause of this is usually when a user accidentally connects a LAN cable’s at both ends to the network ports.

What happens if Network Looping Occurs?

A request or packet that doesn’t have dead end will cycle around the network and actually consume 100% of the possible network bandwidth. It results network outage. In this scenario internet as well as local network won’t be working.

Very tough to troubleshoot

If network looping happens then it’s very difficult to identify where is the loop. Because of loop activity all the switches starts blinking very faster than usually. So we cannot identify this issue from switches side.

IT team needs to check each and every conference room to resolve this loop issue. If they don’t get the loop in CR's, then we have to check each and every network ports which users have at their desks.

How to prevent Network Looping

It’s a human error so we cannot do much for this. But to minimize the risk you can help us by :-

1) Do not connect both ends of LAN cable into the wall mounted network ports.
2) If you will see any LAN cable lying in the CR rooms then please give it to IT.

10 IT Tips

10 handy tips for Windows 7

 

Do you know that window 7 is successful OS of Microsoft after XP. There are some hidden handy tools which will surprise your and make your work easier.

1. Send information to IT support  team (Very Useful)

 

Are you struggling to explain problems to your IT team?The next time you find yourself in complicated computer problem and want to inform your IT team or friend, give a try to Problem Steps Recorder. You can record a steps . screen shots, add notes, and email them directly to whoever is helping you. For tips on using Problem Steps Recorder.

How to do that?

1.        Open Problem Steps Recorder by clicking the Start button , and then typing psr. In the list of results, click psr.
2.        Click Start Record. On your computer, go through the steps on your computer to reproduce the problem. You can pause the recording at any time, and then resume it later.
3.        Click Stop Record.
4.        In the Save As dialog box, type a name for the file, and then click Save (the file is saved with the .zip file name extension).

To view the record of the steps you recorded, open the .zip file you just saved, and then double-click the file. The document will open in your browser.

1. Advance Calculator

Calculator click the View menu to check options. Unit conversion translates Celsius to Fahrenheit, kilometers to miles, meters to feet, grams to ounces, joules to BTUs, and more. You can use the new calculation worksheets to quickly compute everyday stuff like fuel economy and auto lease payments.

3. Move your taskbar

Did you know that you can move the taskbar to the top, right, or left sides of your screen? Watch a quick video demo.

4. Customize your clocks

Have friends, family, and colleagues in different time zones across the world? Add clocks to your taskbar to keep track of the time in their area. Or add a clock gadget to your desktop. You can even choose from eight different clock designs. Here's how to add and personalize gadgets.

Right click on desktop and add gadgets. When you right-click the Clock, you'll see a list of things you can do with the gadget, including closing the Clock, keeping it on top of your open windows, and changing the Clock's options (such as its name, time zone, and appearance).

5. Create and share themes

Like a little variety? With Windows 7, you can design, save, and quickly change your computer's themes (desktop background, window border color, sounds, and screen saver). You can even create a new theme, like one that showcases a slide show of your favorite photos as your desktop background, and easily share that with friends and family. Learn more and watch a video about how to create a theme.

6. Drag files from Jump Lists

With Jump Lists, you get a quick-access list of your most frequently or recently used files. Just look for the right-pointing arrow next to programs on your Start menu or left-click a program on the taskbar. You can use Jump Lists to open files and programs in just a few clicks. Even better, you can drag items from Jump Lists into open folders or email.

7. Create and mount VHD files

Microsoft's Virtual PC creates its virtual machine hard drives in VHD files, and Windows 7 can now mount these directly so you can access them in the host system. Click Start, typediskmgmt.msc and press Enter, then click Action > Attach VHD and choose the file you'd like to mount. It will then appear as a virtual drive in Explorer and can be accessed, copied or written just like any other drive.

Click Action > Create VHD and you can now create a new virtual drive of your own (right-click it, select Initialise Disk, and after it's set up right-click the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume to set this up). Again, you'll be left with a virtual drive that behaves just like any other, where you can drag and drop files, install programs, test partitioning software or do whatever you like. But it's actually just this VHD file on your real hard drive which you can easily back up or share with others. Right-click the disk (that's the left-hand label that says "Disk 2" or whatever) and select Detach VHD to remove it.

The command line DISKPART utility has also been upgraded with tools to detach a VHD file, and an EXPAND command to increase a virtual disk's maximum size. Don't play around with this unless you know what you're doing, though - it's all too easy to trash your system.

8. Enable and disable Windows 7 features

Turn on and off Windows features by clicking Start, typing features and press enter. In the Programs and Features window on the left-hand column click Turn Windows features on or off and in the Windows Features box check or uncheck the features you want enabled or disabled. 

9. Easily customize your Sticky Notes

Now you can make the Sticky Notes you keep on your desktop even handier. You can format the text and change its color, as well as resize, collapse, and flip through several Sticky Notes. If you have a Tablet PC or touchscreen, you can use multiple input (pen and touch) methods within a single note. Learn how.

10. Quickly find anything on your computer

Windows Search is the fastest way to locate and open any file on your PC, including documents, email messages, music, photos, and more. To use Windows Search, click the Start button , type one or two keywords, and see search results appear almost instantly.