If there are programs on your computer that are causing you grief because they refuse to be uninstalled, this post can certainly help you. Firstly, download and install the handy software "Revo Uninstaller". This program usually gets the job done when "Add or Remove Programs" in "Control Panel" is unable to do so. The interface is attractive and very easy to use. Just follow the directions.
However, there are times when you need to do a little extra to successfully remove these stubborn programs. For instance, you may run "Revo Uninstaller" and still the program persists because "Revo Uninstaller" was unable to locate the uninstaller for the program. The listing of the files may still be recorded in the registry but the "real" program and the uninstaller have already been deleted and one or two files may have remained on the hard drive. In such a case, just go to "Start", "My Computer", "Local Disk (C:)", "Program Files". There you will see folders of all your programs. Locate the folder of the program that you want to delete and delete it. Then run "Revo Uninstaller" again. When "Revo Uninstaller" prompts you to delete the listing in the registry, ensure that you select all the files that pertain to the program to be deleted. This process should completely uninstall the program.
Tampering with the registry is serious business. You can crash your system! So be extra careful to ensure that you tick only the files that pertain to the program that you want to uninstall.
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Thursday, February 10, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Fixing Your Flash drive
Introduction
Flash drives, pen drives, thumb drives are just a few names among the myriad of names for this device. Flash drives are very popular and have great utility. They are faster than floppies, CD-RWs or DVD-RWs and have hundreds or thousands of times more storage space. They can last very long about 10 years. A flash drive will eventually fail after about 100,000 read/ write cycles. This device comes in many different sizes and these days I see flash drives of up to 256 GB! Now that is an enormous amount of memory for such a small device. Although this device is quite reliable, as with anything else, there are quality and inferior products. So you would expect that a quality flash drive will last a long time and you will have access to your important data when you need it. If you make the mistake and purchase a poor quality flash drive just because it is very cheap don't be surprise if you run into major problems such as the loss of your invaluable information! Securing your peace of mind deserves investing in a reliable product. Flash drives are usually 2.0 which is a high speed device compared to its older model the 1.1 which is much slower.
When the Flash drive Stops Working
Perhaps many of us have just used our flash drives which were working fine a moment ago and all of a sudden after placing it in again into the usb port the device refuses to open and we get the message: "The disk in drive [X] is not formatted..." You try to format it with no success only to be greeted with the message: "The disk in drive [X] cannot be formatted." If the electronics on the device has failed, then you will have to replace it. However, if it is a case of the FAT 16, FAT 32 or NTFS systems becoming corrupt, then you may be able to repair the drive by reformatting.
Tools Available
I have discovered two tools that can be used to format a flash drive when the formatting facility in Windows can't get the job done. They are HPUSBDisk and fat32format. Fat 16 can only format a drive size up to 2 GB. So if you try to format a drive larger than 2 GB in Windows, you would not even get the option to format it using Fat 16. Similarly, windows will give the opportunity to use FAT 32 formatting if the drive is 32 GB or smaller. Any size larger than that will have to be formatted using NTFS. The trick is that FAT 32 is the ideal system to use on flash drives in the sense of universal recognition. All computer systems such as Windows, MAC and Linux recognize the FAT 32 system. Even though NTFS is the most advanced of the three, it is not universally recognizable like the FAT 32 system. The problem is that if you are going to use FAT 32, you would not be able to format a drive bigger than 32 GB on Windows.
Solution
A drive up to 2 TB (2000 GB) can employ a FAT 32 system. Any one of the two programs mentioned above can get the job done. HPUSBDisk have a GUI interface (the regular graphic visual that you are accustomed to) so it is very easy to use. However, fat32format needs some direction because it is done via a command line. Download any of these free software and try to reformat your drive. There is a great chance that you will succeed. If you decide to use fat32format, here are the directions. After downloading the file, copy it to the root directory (the C:\ drive). Then open a command line either by going to "Start", "Run" and type in "cmd" and press "OK". Or, go to "Start", "All Programs", "Accessories", "Command Prompt". Then, to run the program, type in next to the cursor: "C:\fat32format.exe" leaving out the quotation marks. Next, type: "C:\fat32format X:" Leave out the quotation marks and replace X with the letter that Windows assigned to your flash drive and don't forget to put in the colon after the letter and notice a space between "format" and the drive letter "X". You will receive a warning. If you are sure that the drive shown is the one that you want to format then enter "y". So make sure that you are formatting the correct drive because formatting a drive makes the data on that drive inaccessible. And that's it. When it is finished, you will get a report of what was done. That which we call a flash drive by any other name would function as great!
Flash drives, pen drives, thumb drives are just a few names among the myriad of names for this device. Flash drives are very popular and have great utility. They are faster than floppies, CD-RWs or DVD-RWs and have hundreds or thousands of times more storage space. They can last very long about 10 years. A flash drive will eventually fail after about 100,000 read/ write cycles. This device comes in many different sizes and these days I see flash drives of up to 256 GB! Now that is an enormous amount of memory for such a small device. Although this device is quite reliable, as with anything else, there are quality and inferior products. So you would expect that a quality flash drive will last a long time and you will have access to your important data when you need it. If you make the mistake and purchase a poor quality flash drive just because it is very cheap don't be surprise if you run into major problems such as the loss of your invaluable information! Securing your peace of mind deserves investing in a reliable product. Flash drives are usually 2.0 which is a high speed device compared to its older model the 1.1 which is much slower.
When the Flash drive Stops Working
Perhaps many of us have just used our flash drives which were working fine a moment ago and all of a sudden after placing it in again into the usb port the device refuses to open and we get the message: "The disk in drive [X] is not formatted..." You try to format it with no success only to be greeted with the message: "The disk in drive [X] cannot be formatted." If the electronics on the device has failed, then you will have to replace it. However, if it is a case of the FAT 16, FAT 32 or NTFS systems becoming corrupt, then you may be able to repair the drive by reformatting.
Tools Available
I have discovered two tools that can be used to format a flash drive when the formatting facility in Windows can't get the job done. They are HPUSBDisk and fat32format. Fat 16 can only format a drive size up to 2 GB. So if you try to format a drive larger than 2 GB in Windows, you would not even get the option to format it using Fat 16. Similarly, windows will give the opportunity to use FAT 32 formatting if the drive is 32 GB or smaller. Any size larger than that will have to be formatted using NTFS. The trick is that FAT 32 is the ideal system to use on flash drives in the sense of universal recognition. All computer systems such as Windows, MAC and Linux recognize the FAT 32 system. Even though NTFS is the most advanced of the three, it is not universally recognizable like the FAT 32 system. The problem is that if you are going to use FAT 32, you would not be able to format a drive bigger than 32 GB on Windows.
Solution
A drive up to 2 TB (2000 GB) can employ a FAT 32 system. Any one of the two programs mentioned above can get the job done. HPUSBDisk have a GUI interface (the regular graphic visual that you are accustomed to) so it is very easy to use. However, fat32format needs some direction because it is done via a command line. Download any of these free software and try to reformat your drive. There is a great chance that you will succeed. If you decide to use fat32format, here are the directions. After downloading the file, copy it to the root directory (the C:\ drive). Then open a command line either by going to "Start", "Run" and type in "cmd" and press "OK". Or, go to "Start", "All Programs", "Accessories", "Command Prompt". Then, to run the program, type in next to the cursor: "C:\fat32format.exe" leaving out the quotation marks. Next, type: "C:\fat32format X:" Leave out the quotation marks and replace X with the letter that Windows assigned to your flash drive and don't forget to put in the colon after the letter and notice a space between "format" and the drive letter "X". You will receive a warning. If you are sure that the drive shown is the one that you want to format then enter "y". So make sure that you are formatting the correct drive because formatting a drive makes the data on that drive inaccessible. And that's it. When it is finished, you will get a report of what was done. That which we call a flash drive by any other name would function as great!
Monday, November 29, 2010
CPU or Hard drive - the "Brain" of the Computer
Introduction
We tend to think of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) as the brain of the computer because it controls the machine and is the "thinking" part of the computer. However, the human brain is not only a thinking organ: it performs many other vital functions one of which is memory. Scientists believe that the frontal lobe or front part of the brain is concerned with thought and the temporal lobe (the part by the temples) deals with memory. If I compare this to the computer then the CPU deals with "thought" and the hard drive/ fixed disk, deals with memory. Note there are other kinds of memory in computing. Thus the hard drive is as much "brain" as the CPU.
A Great Free Utility Program
In my years of experience in repairing computers one of the commonest problems for computer failure is a failing hard drive. Since the hard drive stores the operating system, the computer will fail if the part of the hard drive containing the operating system begins to fail. One very useful program for monitoring hard drive health and performance is called Active@ Hard Disk Monitor. The information about your hard drive is beautifully displayed graphically. I particularly like the scan disk utility that allows you to see graphically whether there are any bad areas on your hard drive.
A Failing Hard Drive
Once you discovered that your hard drive is failing don't hesitate to take action. Ensure that you have a back up and immediately replace it. One great program that can facilitate the replacement is called EASEUS Todo Backup. Among its many features, you can backup not only a single partition but multiple partitions and from different disks! Or you can clone the entire hard drive, that is, copy the entire hard drive to a new drive. You don't have to use this program only in the event of a failing hard drive but you can use it if you would like to upgrade to a bigger hard drive. Another plus is that its interface is very attractive and easy to use and it is absolutely free.
We tend to think of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) as the brain of the computer because it controls the machine and is the "thinking" part of the computer. However, the human brain is not only a thinking organ: it performs many other vital functions one of which is memory. Scientists believe that the frontal lobe or front part of the brain is concerned with thought and the temporal lobe (the part by the temples) deals with memory. If I compare this to the computer then the CPU deals with "thought" and the hard drive/ fixed disk, deals with memory. Note there are other kinds of memory in computing. Thus the hard drive is as much "brain" as the CPU.
A Great Free Utility Program
In my years of experience in repairing computers one of the commonest problems for computer failure is a failing hard drive. Since the hard drive stores the operating system, the computer will fail if the part of the hard drive containing the operating system begins to fail. One very useful program for monitoring hard drive health and performance is called Active@ Hard Disk Monitor. The information about your hard drive is beautifully displayed graphically. I particularly like the scan disk utility that allows you to see graphically whether there are any bad areas on your hard drive.
A Failing Hard Drive
Once you discovered that your hard drive is failing don't hesitate to take action. Ensure that you have a back up and immediately replace it. One great program that can facilitate the replacement is called EASEUS Todo Backup. Among its many features, you can backup not only a single partition but multiple partitions and from different disks! Or you can clone the entire hard drive, that is, copy the entire hard drive to a new drive. You don't have to use this program only in the event of a failing hard drive but you can use it if you would like to upgrade to a bigger hard drive. Another plus is that its interface is very attractive and easy to use and it is absolutely free.
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