Did your computer crash? Does your computer not start? Do you see the blue screen of death(BSOD)? Well these problems can, unfortunately, be attributed to many different things. The main cause is a virus, though. Here I’ll talk about ways to recover from a computer crash.

Of course, the first thing you need to figure out is if you still have power. I know this seems trivial, but computer parts do stop working. Even on the very expensive computers that you would think would last for years. So, if you have lights, flashing or not, and/or you hear fan noises, then you have power in your computer. Don’t forget to make sure your screen has power too. If you have power and you can see something displayed on your screen then you have a good starting point to troubleshoot a crashed computer.

If your Operating System won’t come up so you can see your normal desktop displayed, then you’ll have to try a couple of things to get that back up. One thing you can try is, shut down your computer and let it sit for a few seconds. Then restart your computer and as soon as you hit the power button and it starts to come alive, press and hold F8. You may get some beeps from holding F8, that’s alright though, you can let go of the button when that happens. Your computer should bring up a list of choices at this point. One of those choices will be “Safe Mode”. Go ahead and select that and see if your computer will boot to Safe Mode. If it does then you’re doing pretty good. All you’ll have to do now is run a virus scan, a malware scan, a registry cleanup and maybe even remove an infectious program from your computer. You can find information on all this on my Virus page or my Disk Clean Up page.

Another issue you might have is the BSOD. If you receive a blue screen with a bunch of technical looking information on it, then you’ve gotten the BSOD. This can potentially be a fatal problem, but there are ways to find out how bad it is. Primarily, this is caused by defective hardware or hardware drivers. If it’s defective hardware, then of course it would have to be replaced. If it’s a defective hardware driver, then an uninstall and reinstall of the driver might fix your problem. Although a virus on your computer could also cause a driver to go bad and reinstalling it would only fix it for a little while if you don’t find and remove the virus.

So to start this troubleshooting task, do like you did above to try to boot your system into Safe Mode. If you’re able to access Safe Mode, then you can look around for viruses and malware again and try to remove them. Then you’ll want to go to the device driver screen and check all your devices to see if they’re working properly. If the devices show to be working properly then there’s a lot more in depth research you can do to troubleshoot hardware issues. For example, if you look at individual hardware properties you can disable hardware acceleration to see if that resolves your problem. You can also look at Task Manager to see if your memory and hard disk are working properly. There are many many different things that can be wrong and can be checked to resolve hardware issues caused by drivers. Too many to list and explain here. If you have a specific problem, please feel free to contact me. I will do my best to help you.

Another way to boot your computer is with the included Operating System CD ROM. If you place this CD ROM in your CD drive and boot to that device you could essentially get to your Desktop or to a selection screen to do a repair of your computer software. You could also get to the selection to run a recovery and reset your computer to a previous known good configuration. These options are also available through the F8 method listed above. If you get to that screen and use these selections, then your computer will restore or repair from a separate partition on your drive. This may be your only option as well if you weren’t provided a CD ROM with your computer, which is the case most of the time. Either way you should be able to at least restore or repair your computer to a workable configuration. And of course it’s wise to update and run your virus software, malware software and registry cleaner to insure there are no more potential problems.

If your computer doesn’t have any power at all, then it’s safe to assume your trouble is either a bad power supply or a bad mother board. Which ever is bad can be replaced and this should restore power to your system and you should be back in business. Although, replacing hardware can be a pricey task if done wrong or taken to a shop since you’ll have to pay labor charges. Either one isn’t really that hard to replace, all you have to do is get inside the case and pull out the old one then replace it with a new matching model. The mother board can be a little more tricky since you have to remember where everything plugs into when you put it back together.

Ok, so hopefully this information is helpful in restoring your system to it’s previous state. If you have any questions or need any help please feel free to contact me.

Hello folks, I wanted to take a few minutes and talk to you about all the third party software that comes with new hardware or devices that individuals will attach to their computer. Everyone’s seen it, you buy a camera or printer or something that plugs into the computer; even cell phones now days can be hooked to your computer in one way or another. With all these devices comes a CD of DVD with third party software on it. Instinctively, users install this software on their system.

Don’t get me wrong, installing this software is not a bad thing but it could slow down your system or cause troubles. Windows is actually a great operating system that is particularly well at handling any third party hardware you may attach to your computer. Most devices will run just fine on a Windows system without installing their proprietary software. Also, not installing this software doesn’t clutter up your system.

If you attach a digital camera to your system, Windows has programs that will allow you to get your pictures off the camera and also edit the images as you deem necessary. If you want to sync your phone, Windows will normally be able to read the contacts of your phone and sync things for you without the phone manufacturers software. Just about any hardware you attach to your system will run just fine without it’s proprietary software.

Understand that there are useful third party programs out there and sometimes you will have to install proprietary software. The only thing I’m talking about here is, the more stuff you put on your system the slower it will be and the more susceptible to problems it will be. So as time goes on after your new install of Windows or the first time you turn your computer on, please be cautious and aware of what you’re putting on your computer to help it run better and keep your Hard Disk Clean.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to let me know about it.

The first thing you want to do to clean up your hard disk is remove any programs you don’t want or need anymore. Excessive programs take up file space and when they’re running they slow down your computer. Most manufacturers will add programs to their software when they sell you a computer and if you don’t use them there’s no need to have them on your computer. You can remove those and any other programs you don’t want anymore pretty easily with the Add/Remove Programs tool that Windows provides.

Access your control panel by clicking on the Start button to bring up that menu. Once you’re in the control panel you should be able to find the Add/Remove Programs Icon. Clicking on this will bring up another window that will update with all the programs installed on your computer. Go through this list and highlight anything you want removed one at a time. When you highlight a program you will have a button that should say ‘remove’. If you click on that button Windows will remove that program for you.

Be careful here because your list will have some programs that are required to run your computer, whether it be for hardware of another program. Don’t remove anything that your not completely sure of until you research it and find out exactly what it’s for. If you don’t need it, get it off your hard drive. Removing unnecessary programs can free up some space on your hard drive and it will also stop any of those programs from running that you’re not using anyway.

Unfortunately, this tool doesn’t completely remove all remnants of a program from your hard drive, but I will show you later on how to get rid of those parts. When you’re done removing programs, move on to the next section in Disk Clean Up to continue on with this process.