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Need to Know Computer Settings

Presented at the 24th October 2006 meeting - by Charlie Le Ber

    Take a look at System Properties
  • Click on "Start"
  • Click on "Control Panel"
  • Click on "System" and under "General" look for "Service Pack 2".
    NOTE: If you do not have SP2 here you will get no more XP updates.
    You need to get a CD with SP2 from a member.

    Set Automatic XP Updates
  • While in System Properties, Click on Automatic Updates Tab. On the club's notebook we use “Notify me but don’t automatically download or install them.” because we are on dial-up and during a meeting we don’t want a download. If you are on dial-up you may want to use this.
  • If you are on high-speed you could use "Automatic" as MS recommends. It is all automatic, the download and install, but you will not know what they install. IE7 may be a critical update, and you may not want to install it now.
  • You could use "Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them." This lets you see what they want to install.
  • Last and least is "Turn off Automatic Updates". This is a bad choice. If you use it, be sure to manually update on the second Tuesday of each month.
  • If you have made changes to your setting, click "Apply" and then "OK"

    Look at System Restore
  • While in System Properties, Click on the System Restore Tab. Click on "Settings".
  • You do not need 12% of your hard drive set aside for system restore. You can make it smaller. Put your pointer over the slide bar, left click and hold it down, while dragging it to the left until you see about 1000MB. That will give you about 5 System Restore Points.

    Look at Hardware
  • While in System Properties, Click on the Hardware tab.
  • Now click on “Device Manager”.
  • Look for (!) marks, red marks or yellow (?) marks down the left side. This could mean trouble and is good information to have when trouble reporting.

    Look at Advanced
  • While in System Properties, Click the Advanced tab.
  • On Performance click on Settings.
  • If your computer is slow you may be using computer resources to run these cosmetic features.
  • You could try "Adjust for best performance" but you may not like the changes.
  • If you have lots of system resources left, leave it alone.
  • On one slow computer I clicked "Adjust for best performance", then I clicked on "Show shadows under mouse pointer" and "Use visual styles on windows and buttons".
  • If you make changes, click "Apply" and "OK"

Internet Explorer 7 [IE7]

IE7 has gone through a long testing period and MS has released it now. You may get it as a critical update and you may have a choice to install it now or later. Frank and I and others have installed it and there is at least one problem with it. If you wish to install it now download it from here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx It is about 14 megabytes. If you are adventurous you may wish to install it now. If you are cautious, you may want to wait. It is very different than IE6. It is more secure, with more features, but you need time to adjust to it. At club meetings we will continue to demo IE7 and you should become more familiar with it. You may wish to set your “Automatic” Updates differently, see above.

    FEATURES:
  • The big change in IE7 is tabbed browsing. You can have multiple websites running at the same time and look at the one you want.
  • Look at the lower toolbar with the stars. The yellow star is your “ Favorites”. The yellow star with a green plus sign is “Add to Favorites”.
  • To the right of the stars you have your Selected Tag, or web page that is your home page.
  • You can get more websites by clicking on the small grey button that says "New Tab (Ctrl+T)” when you hover your pointer over it. Clicking on it will give you another tab. Now you can type in another website address or put one there with your Favorites.
  • You can start many tabs. To see what your tabs are click on the four small boxes, Quick Tabs, to the right of the stars.
  • To more resemble IE6 you could add the Menu Bar. Move your pointer to the right and click on "Tools". Now put your pointer on MenuBar and click. You will see another bar, and recognise the settings.

IMPORTANT:

There are many more features that we will cover in future meetings but for now if you do install IE7 you must make a change to ensure you can get to the "Members Only” part of our website.
  • Bring up IE7 and click on "Tools"
  • Click on "Internet Options".
  • Click on "Security".
  • Click on "Internet". This must be set to "Medium". Put your pointer over the slide bar, left click and hold down while dragging it down to "Medium". Release left click.
  • Click "Apply" and "OK"

Charlie Le Ber