One of the most frequent questions we get asked is:

“My computer won’t turn on, what do I do?”  

There are several checks that you can do on your own, before you call your “IT Guy/Girl”.

1.  First, check the computer’s power cord.  Make sure it is completely plugged into the wall socket (or power bar).  Also make sure the power cord is completely plugged into the back of the computer tower/laptop.  This is the most frequent cause.

2.  If you are using a power bar/surge protector, make sure the cord is completely plugged into the wall socket.  Also make sure the power switch on the power bar is turned on.  Some power bars also have a built-in circuit breaker.  This usually looks like a black or red button near the power switch.  Press the button to reset it.

These are the most common causes of computers not powering up.  If you complete these checks, and the computer turns on, great!  If not, you can be sure that these are the first 2 questions that your IT Guy/Girl ask when you call them, you can reassure them that these checks were done, and they can skip to their next question.  If they don’t ask these questions before scheduling an on-site visit, get yourself a new IT Guy/Girl – these guys are obviously just looking to charge you for an on-site visit.

Email your question for our Resident Computer Geek to:  geek@tbyd.ca.

If you have computer problems that our FAQs don’t answer, please call us at

204-800-3166

or email helpdesk@tbyd.ca.

 

We Make I.T. Work!

Dear Geek, 

I know have a few programs running on my computer that are slowing it down. I need my PC to be at top speed for my computer game. I want to see exactly which programs are running and which ones I can close. Is there a way to do that?

Sincerely, 

Speed Gamer

 

 

Dear Gamer,

You can see all the programs running through the Windows Task Manager. From here you can also close some of the programs that you aren’t using.

To open up the Task Manager, you press the “Control”, “Alt” and “Delete” buttons all at the same time. This will bring up the Windows Task Manager.

In the “Applications” tab of the Task Manager, you will be able to see all the programs running. If you are not using the program, you can close it by clicking on the program and hitting “End Task”. If it is something like Microsoft Word, you may want to ensure that you don’t need to save anything first.

 

If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to: geek@tbyd.ca.

 

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Dear Geek, 

My son is now 6 years of age and using my computer. I don’t mind him going onto the computer to play silly little games, but my wife has brought it to my attention that my PC version of Grand Theft Auto is probably not something he is ready for. On top of that, my wife is always scared that when he is on the internet, he will see other things he might not be ready to see until he is at least 35. Is there an easy way to put child blocks on the computer?

Sincerely,

Still want to play GTA5

 

Dear GTA,

 

You can use Parental Controls to help manage how your 6 year old can use the computer. Some examples of limits you can set are; types of games they can play by rating, programs they can run, web filtering, and even a time limit on game play.

When the Parental Control blocks access, it will bring up a notification saying it has been blocked, and ask for your information in order to open it up.

Before you can set up the Parental Controls, you must own your own administrator account. You must also make sure that your child has a Standard User account, and not an administrator account, as Parental Controls cannot be applied to an administrator account.

First you have to open Parental Controls by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, and then, under User Accounts and Family Safety, clicking Set up parental controls for any user.‌ If you’re prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. Then you click the standard user account that you want to set Parental Controls for. Under Parental Controls, click on enforce current settings.

Once you’ve turned on Parental Controls for your child’s standard user account, you can adjust the following individual settings that you want to control:

• Time limits.You can set time limits to control when children are allowed to log on to the computer. Time limits prevent children from logging on during the specified hours. You can set different logon hours for every day of the week. If they’re logged on when their allotted time ends, they’ll be automatically logged off.

• Games. You can control access to games, choose an age-rating level, choose the types of content you want to block, and decide whether you want to allow or block unrated or specific games.

• Allow or block specific programs. You can prevent children from running programs that you don’t want them to run.

Computer Troubles?

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Dear Geek,

My Mother just passed away, and because she was a big person for keeping in contact with everyone in the family, she had everything from email to a Facebook account. I left her Facebook all of her online stuff for a bit, but I am wanting to take it down now and have some closure. Is there any way to de-activate this stuff?

Sincerely,

Wanting closure

 

Dear closure,

We are sorry for you loss, and yes, although leaving a Facebook page up for a while can help with some of the emotion, taking it down after a while often helps with closure.

Because many people save their passwords and usernames on their computers, the first step would be to log into their computer user and access their account and either modify it or delete it. If they have a password on their computer, or their user, this may not be a good option for you. You can use the password hint to help figure it out, but if you still can’t get it, there will be ways to delete the user from an administrator account (if it’s a shared computer).

If you have access to the person’s email account, you can use the “lost password” feature on most websites, including Facebook and YouTube.

Many websites also have pages to report the account of the deceased person:

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/305593649477238

Gmail
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/14300?hl=en

World of Warcraft
https://us.battle.net/support/en/

Any other accounts can be removed by contacting a support person on their support page.

Email accounts such as Gmail accounts of Hotmail accounts will also expire after not being used for a year. So you can also let these expire, it’s one less thing to worry about.

If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to: geek@tbyd.ca.

Computer Troubles?

Call 1-204-800-3166

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Dear Geek,

There is a website that I need to use for work, but unfortunately, it looks like a 7 year old child made the page. There are these flashing GIFs all over the place, and I find them distracting and annoying. I know this is someone else’s website, but other than emailing the author of the website to take those pictures down, is there anything I can do to stop them from flashing?

Sincerely,
Annoyed.

 

Dear Annoyed,

There is a way to turn off animated GIFs in your internet browser. This will not work for Flash or Java animations, but just GIFs. Because there are multiple internet browsers, there are a few ways to turn the animated GIFs off.

In the Internet Explorer menu bar, click on Tools and then Options. In the Internet Options window that opens, click on the Advanced tab, then scroll down about half way and find the option for Play animations in webpages. Uncheck the box next to this option and click the OK button. Close and restart the browser for the setting change to take effect.

In the Firefox address bar, type about:config. Click the I’ll be careful, I promise button. In the Filter bar, type image, then find the entry for image.animation_mode. Double-click this option and set the value to none in the pop-up window and click the OK button. Close and restart Firefox for the setting change to take effect.

At this time, there is no option for turning off animated GIFs in Google Chrome. Several people have developed extensions (add-ons) that can sometimes “pause” the animated GIFs, but they do not turn off the animated completely.

If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to: geek@tbyd.ca.

Computer Troubles?

Call 1-204-800-3166

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Dear Geek, 

I bought a new laptop, and I’ve just had a lot of friends tell me different things about how to prolong the battery. I had one friend tell me that I should discharge the battery before charging it completely back up, and another that they should be charged between 40%-80%. What’s the best way to keep your lithium-oin battery in the best condition possible?

Sincerely, 

Dead Battery

 

Dear Charged,

There is a lot of confusion about this because lithium-ion batteries are a lot different than the older, nickel-based batteries.There are a few things you can do to help.

The first thing is to preform shallow discharges instead of discharging to 0% all the time. Lithium-ion batteries do best when you discharge them for a bit, then charge them up for a bit. Studies on the subject show that discharges to 50% are better for your battery’s long-term life than, say, small discharges to 90% or large discharges to 0% (since the 50% discharges provide the best number of cycles-to-usage ratio).

Lithium-ion batteries also don’t need to be charged to 100%, they actually prefer not to be. When possible, it is good to keep your battery in the 40%-80% range to prolong the life of the battery. If you do charge it to 100%, do not leave it plugged in. This as well can hurt the battery.

Another important thing to remember is that you need to keep the battery (and the rest of your laptop) cool. A hot battery will degrade in heath much quicker than a cool one.

Keep these things in mind and your battery will last longer. But if needed it’s okay to discharge to 0% or charge to 100%. Remember that your battery is going to die in a few years, no matter what you do—even if you just let it sit on a shelf.

If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to: geek@tbyd.ca.

We’ll translate it from Geek-lish to English, so it actually helps!

Dear Geek,

While I am at work, I can’t access my Facebook account. I don’t know why it hasn’t been working, and it’s only while at work. Has my Facebook account been disabled? What is going on?

Sincerely,

Want to check my messages

 

Dear Facebook,

Your Facebook account can not be disabled without your consent, and this is not the reason for the lack of access while at school or work. There could be several reasons why you may be unable to access certain web pages such as Facebook while at school and work. Often it relates to the security settings and access control your school or work administration has setup on the Network.

Often these security measures are put on the network to help protect the employer or school from improper use of time and attempting to bypass the security measures can cause you to be fired or kicked out of school.

If it is a website that is needed for school or work materials, contact those in charge of your network, and they should be able to find a way to let you on the site.
If you are wanting to find out more about how you can minimize the amount of time your employees spend on websites such as Facebook, call 204-800-3166 or email helpdesk@tbyd.ca.

If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to: geek@tbyd.ca.

Computer Troubles?

Call 1-204-800-3166

We Make I.T. Work!

Dear Geek,

I was sitting in my local coffee place of choice with my laptop, using their Wi-Fi. I was about to log into my bank account to check if a payment had been put through, but I remembered that a coworker had told me I should not be using public Wi-Fi for things like that. Is this an issue? Will someone steal my money?

Sincerely,

Don’t Steal My Money!

 

Dear Money,

On an open Wi-Fi network like the one in the coffee house, hackers can snoop onto the network to see what you’re doing, or even use keystroke recording programs to learn passwords.

When you connect to an open Wi-Fi network, the network is generally unencrypted, you can tell this by the fact that you don’t have to enter a passphrase when connecting. Your unencrypted network traffic is then clearly visible to everyone in range, and people are able to see what unencrypted websites you are looking at.

If it’s something like online banking, I would wait until you got home. Anything like checking the news or the weather is fine, but anything like banking or online shopping can be risky. It’s better to be safe than sorry!

 

If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to: geek@tbyd.ca.

Computer Troubles?

Call 1-204-800-3166

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Dear Geek, 

Bytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes…What does it really mean?  I am getting a new iPod, but they are all different memory sizes. I don’t know how I can decide on a size if I don’t know what any of these sizes actually mean. How big is a GB really? How can I make sure I have enough space?

Sincerely,

iConfused

 

Dear confused,

The very smallest value of memory is a bit. You can think of a bit as a value of 1 or 0, (on or off).

A byte is the equivalent of 8 bits, and has the memory of one character.

A Kilobyte is 1,024 bytes and can hold around 2 or 3 paragraphs of text.

A Megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes or 1,024 Kilobytes. It can hold 873 pages of plaintext (1,200 characters) or 4 books (200 pages or 240,000 characters).

A Gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes, 1,048,576 Kilobytes, or 1,024 Megabytes. This can hold 894,784 pages of plaintext (1,200 characters), 4,473 books (200 pages or 240,000 characters), 640 webpages (with an average 1.6MB file size), 341 digital photos (with an average 3MB file size), 256 MP3 audio files (with an average 4MB file size), or one 650 CD.

A Terabyte is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes, 1,024 Gigabytes, or 1,048,576 Megabytes. 916,259,689 pages of plaintext (1,200 characters), 4,581,298 books (200 pages or 240,000 characters), 655,360 web pages (with 1.6MB average file size), 349,525 digital pictures (with 3MB average file size), 262,144 MP3 audio files (with 4MB average file size), 1,613 650MB CD’s, 233 4.38GB ’,or 40 25GB Blu-ray discs.

The size you need really depends on how many songs, apps, photos, and other things you are wanting to be able to have on your iPod. You have 2,000 songs on your computer? That will be around 7.8 GB, but knowing an iPod is “missing memory” (see that blog here), and maybe there are a few apps you are looking at, so you may want to go up to at least a 16 GB iPod.

If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to: geek@tbyd.ca.

Computer Troubles?

Call 1-204-800-3166

We Make I.T. Work!

Dear Geek,

I hear a lot about cookies on my computer. I’m assuming they aren’t the kind like Grandma makes, and I have no idea what they do. How do I get them on my computer in the first place?

Sincerely,
C is for Cookie.

 

Dear Cookie Monster,

Cookies are small files that websites put on your computer hard drive when you first visit the site. It is a computer version of your ID in the way that it tells the website who you are.

A cookie notifies the website that you have returned, and of any preferences you have set for the site. If you have not told the website of any preferences or left any personal information with the site, the website will only know that someone with your cookie has returned to the website.

How can this be helpful? Cookies can save your settings on a website if you want it viewed a certain way. For example, if you go to a sports site and specify that you want to ignore all the news regarding the “sport” of darts, when you return to the site a cookie will remember this and not show you the results of the international darts tournament.

Another example is in online shopping when you return to a website and your items are still stored in your cart. Imagine searching hours online for the perfect set of Star Wars action figures. You are about to pay, when your Mom wants to print off the new meatloaf recipe that was sent to her by email. When logging out of her email, she accidentally closes all the browsers. Cookies will remember that you had these certain settings and that you had wanted those items in your cart, otherwise you would have to scour the site again, looking for the exact same items you just spent hours trying to find.

A cookie cannot be used to get data from your hard drive, get your email address, or steal information. Very early versions of Java and JavaScript could allow people to do this, but these security leaks have been fixed, and this is no longer an issue.

An HTTP cookie can be used to track where you travel over a particular site, but this is done other ways as well. This tracking information is, for the most part, used by people such as web developers to find where their website visitors find is most interesting or helpful to their visitors, and where they can improve their traffic. This information can also be used for the web developer to figure out what kinds of ads and information you might want to see. If you are on a sports website, cookies tell the website that you might want to view ads for sports jerseys or autographed memorabilia, and not show you ads for something such as greenhouse gardening

If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to: geek@tbyd.ca.

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