We dust our houses (or someone does, anyways), to keep things clean and keep us healthy.  What about your computer’s ‘house’?  It’s often overlooked by many of us.  However, dust in your computer tower can affect your computer’s performance, and even cause it to fail entirely.  So it’s important to clean computer-house every once in a while, in order to keep things running smoothly.

Cleaning your computer takes a lot of care, and a bit of technical know-how.  So if you’ve done it before, and are confident you have done so without crashing your system, go ahead and do so.  If you need some pointers on how to do it, and can follow directions well, check out http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/how-to-clean-your-pc-of-dust-and-dirt-936244 for tips on how to clean your computer tower correctly, and safely.  Only take on a computer spring-cleaning if you’re confident, as you can do some damage if it’s not done correctly.  If you’re not confident, please seek out your neighborhood (professional) computer geek, to do the cleaning for you.

Having your computer cleaned out regularly, can keep it running smooth, safe, and as fast as it should.

Sometimes, when someone emails me a picture within an email (instead of an attached file that I need to open), instead of the picture I get a little red ‘x’.  How do I get rid of the red ‘x’ and see the picture?

 

The red ‘x’ is still fairly common in web browsers and email providers, even though most email providers support ’embedded images’ (pictures within the email, instead of as an attachment that you have to open separately).

For an emailed picture:

If your email provider is having trouble displaying the photo, and all you’re seeing is a red ‘x’, try the following:

– Look towards the top of the email message itself.  There may be a window that asks you to indicate whether the email provider should download the embedded images.  Usually, this window will ask if you would like the email provider to download embedded images automatically in the future (usually with a ‘do not ask me again’ click box).

– If there is no window as above, try clicking the ‘Forward’ button on your email.  This sometimes makes the embedded images appear.  It’s not the most straight-forward way to see the picture, but it works (although just temporarily).  You can also ask your contact that initially sent you the email with the embedded picture, to resend the email.  Sometimes the red ‘x’ was just a fluky present from the world wide web, and it now miraculously works.

For a picture/graphic on a website:

– Sometimes web pages simply load with errors, so hit the ‘Refresh’ button on the address bar.

– Sometimes your web browser or security software has blocked the image.  If this is what is happening, try right-clicking the image.  This should open a window that offers you the option that will allow you to view it.  Some browsers will offer you a reason as to why it blocked the image…you might want to consider this before you view it.

– Sometimes, the website’s server is down.  To test this, try going to a different website to see if the images there are also affected.

– If your browser isn’t showing any images, from any website, go to ‘Settings’ in your web browser, and make sure the ‘Show Pictures’ option is checked, and hit ‘Apply’.  After doing this, hit “Refresh’ on the address bar.

This should solve your problems.  Well, with missing images and/or graphics anyways.  The rest of your problems may take a paid professional.  I know mine do…

 

Computer users these days may change email accounts several times within their computer-usage life.  I think I’ve changed email accounts 5 times in the past 3 years.  It can be a pain in the butt to import your contact list from one provider to another…unless you know how.  Some internet providers can import your contacts directly from your old account.  If you provide the username & password from your old email account.  Following these simple steps should simplify things for you.

– Open your new email account.  Click on the ‘Contacts’ section.  Look for ‘Import Contacts’ (or something similar).

– In Gmail, it’s slightly different:  Click on the ‘sprocket’ icon in the top right corner.  Click ‘Mail Settings’, then click ‘Accounts And Import’.

If your new account doesn’t import contact directly, you can still transfer your contacts yourself.

– Copy your contacts to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file, using your old email account’s ‘Export’ tool.  To do this, when you go to save, click ‘Save As’ and under the ‘Type of File’ drop-down menu, choose ‘CSV’.  Save this file to your computer.

– Open your new email account.  Use the ‘Import’ tool to copy the contacts out of the CSV file.  This will not remove your contacts from your old email account, merely make a copy & place the copy into the new email account.

HINT:  Don’t forget to email the contacts you don’t want to lose, from your old email address, and inform them of your new email address.  Otherwise, your emails from your new email account may end up in their trash (depending on their privacy settings), and you’re stuck wondering why they aren’t answering your invite to the lan party Friday night.

Following these steps should keep your email running smoothly.