Welcome To spikey's

General Tips

To Stop The Rolling Text... Put you mouse over the text

Speaker icon.

If you find you have no speaker icon, you can get it back. To restore your speaker icon, choose Start|Settings|Control Panel. Double-click the Multimedia icon. In the Audio tab, put a check mark next to Show volume control on the taskbar.
Once the Speaker icon is on your Task bar, you'll find that you can access this Audio tab directly. Right click the Speaker icon and choose Adjust Audio Properties. At the bottom of the Audio Properties window, there's that check-box again. Not surprisingly if you remove the check-mark the icon disappears from System Tray.


Limited or No Connectivity.

A lot of the network issues i see are the "Limited or No Connectivity" issues. Most of the times these issues are simple to solve, however sometimes there's a little trick to it. I will give you some simple methods to try and fix this problem.

The very first thing to do is try to do a so called 'release/renew' which will renew your connection with the gateway.
The following list will show you how to do so.

1. Go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt
(Vista users will have to right click "Command Prompt" and run it as administrator)
2. A black box will appear. Type in: ipconfig /release
3. After it is done releasing. Type in: ipconfig /renew
4. This should renew your connection with your gateway.

If the 'release/renew' steps above don't fix the problem, then you can try something that is referred to as 'Power Cycling' your modem.

To do this do the following:

" Turn off all computers connected to the router
" Unplug the power cord from the back of the modem and the router
" Wait at least 5 minutes
" Plug in the power cord into the Modem and wait at least one minute for it to initialize
" Plug in the power cord into the Router and again wait at least one minute for it to initialize.
" Power on one computer and try to connect to the Internet with it.
" If the one computer can connect to the Internet, then you can start turning on the other computers one-by- one and checking their Internet connection.

If these 2 simple steps won't work, then there might be something more going on.


Temporary Internet Files

Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores to a
size between 128MB and 256MB..

- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, do the
following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:" to
something between 128MB and 256MB.
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline contents"
(the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this could take 2-10
minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open Internet
Explorer.

To disable JavaScript, in Internet Explorer, use the following directions:

" Go to Tools->Internet Options.
" Click on the Security tab.
" Click on the Custom Level button.
" Scroll down to the scripting section.
" Set Active Scripting to Prompt or Disable. (Prompt will allow you to decide on a case by case basis whether JavaScript should be run.)
" Press the OK buttons to close the dialog boxes.

To disable JavaScript, in Netscape, use the following directions:

" Go to Edit->Preferences.
" Click on Advanced under Category.
" In Netscape 4.x, uncheck "Enable JavaScript."
" In Netscape 6.x, uncheck "Enable JavaScript for Navigator."
" Press the OK button to close the dialog box.

Check your hard drive.

You should periodically check your hard drive(s) for errors and defragment
them. Only defragment after you have cleaned up your machine of
outside parasites and never defragment as a solution to a quirkiness in
your system. It may help speed up your system, but it should be clean
before you do this. Do these things IN ORDER.

How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

How to scan your disks for errors
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265

How to Defragment your hard drives
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314848

I would personally perform the above steps at least once every three months.
For most people this should be sufficient, but if the difference you notice
afterwards is greater than you think it should be, lessen the time in
between its schedule.. If the difference you notice is negligible, you can increase the time.

SPAM! JUNK MAIL!

This one can get annoying, just like the rest. You get 50 emails in one
sitting and 2 of them you wanted. NICE! (Not.) What can you do? Well,
although there are services out there to help you, some email
servers/services that actually do lower your spam with features built into
their servers - I still like the methods that let you be the end-decision
maker on what is spam and what is not. I have a few products to suggest
to you, look at them and see if any of them suite your needs. Again, if
they don't, Google is free and available for your perusal.

MailWasher
http://www.mailwasher.net/


Internet Explorer displays the error message "Page Cannot be Displayed" after installing a security update.


To prevent the error message, disable the phishing filter in Internet Explorer
1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Click the menu item Tools.
3. Expand the line Phishing Filter.
4. Click the item Turn Off Automatic Website Checking.
5. Click the OK button to confirm.

Windows becomes slower when you use your computer for a while. This document tells you how you can speed up Windows.

The most effective and easy to perform tasks are listed first.
1. Delete all prefetch files.
2. Use Disk Cleanup to delete temporary files and files in the Recycle Bin.
3. Use Check Disk to scan the hard drive.
4. Defragment the hard drive.
5. Uninstall all unnecessary applications.

Delete all prefetch files of Windows
Windows keeps a list of all programs that should be loaded into the memory when Windows is started. These lists are kept in so called prefetch files. Deleting these prefetch files will cause Windows to re-evaluate which programs should be loaded into the memory when starting Windows. To delete the prefetch files follow the steps below:

1. Click Start and Run.
2. Type the command "C:\WINDOWS\PREFETCH" and click OK.
3. Press <Ctrl> + <A> to select all files.
4. Press <Del> or <Delete> to delete the selected files and confirm this.

Disk Cleanup

The Disk Cleanup tool enables you to delete temporary files and items that are in the Recycle Bin. To use Disk Cleanup follow the steps below:

1. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and Disk Cleanup.
2. Disk Cleanup can take a while to start. Mark only the following checkboxes in the main menu:
1. Temporary Internet Files.
2. Recycle Bin.
3. Temporary files.
3. Click OK to start the process.

Use Check Disk to scan the hard drive

Use Check Disk to check the integrity of the files on the hard drive and the hard drive itself. To start Check Disk follow the steps below:

1. Click Start and My Computer.
2. Right-click the hard drive you want to scan and click Properties.
3. Click the Tools tab and click Check Now.
4. A window with two options is displayed. After marking both checkboxes, click Start to proceed.
5. The program will ask to reboot the computer, confirm this request.
6. The computer reboots and the Check Disk program starts scanning the hard drive.
Note: This process may take a long time to complete.

Defragment the hard drive

After using your computer for several weeks or months the information stored on the hard drive is scattered all over the hard drive. This is called fragmentation and decreases performance. To defragment the hard drive follow the steps below:

1. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and Disk Defragmenter.
2. In the Disk Defragmenter choose the hard drive you want to defragment and click Defragment.

Uninstall applications that are not used

Every program that is installed (by Packard Bell or yourself) comes at a performance penalty. Uninstalling a program that is not used will increase performance. To remove a program installed by Packard Bell follow the steps below:

1. Click Start, All Programs, Packard Bell Support and Smart Restore.
2. Click the program you want to uninstall twice. A red cross appears in front of that program.
3. Click OK to start the uninstall process.


To remove unused programs you have installed yourself follow the steps below:

1. Click Start and Control Panel.
2. Click Add or Remove Programs.
3. Select the program you want to uninstall and click Remove or Change/Remove to uninstall it.