Friendly PC Repair
Maryland Rd. v9w1e1 Campbell River, BC, Canada

Hello again everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Now that it's behind us, I can get back to posting helpful tips. So, who got a Windows 8 PC for Christmas? And how are you doing at navigating it? Well, I started up Windows 8 myself a couple months ago, and once I made a few tweaks, I've found it fairly decent to work with. And here's a tip that really helped out, hopefully it will help you as well.... Want an easier way to navigate straight to where you want to go, instead of several clicks and menus? Hold down Windows key, press "X" This brings up a little side menu with about 20 options, including the file explorer, control panel, settings, and many others that are tricky to find otherwise. If you're looking for any other help with Windows 8, or any other questions or issues, feel free to contact me. Also open to suggestions for these tips - what would you like to hear/learn about?

Hello again everyone! Here's another (hopefully!) useful tip... For all your Firefox users - ever get tired of being reminded over and over to update your plug-ins and add-ons?... If you're like me, you would rather nothing updated itself without you asking it to. So here's how to disable plug-in checks in Firefox: In the address bar write: about:config At the filter bar search for blocklist and make these changes: turn extensions.blocklist.enabled into false modify extensions.blocklist.url and delete the url modify extensions.blocklist.itemURL and delete the url modify extensions.blocklist.detailsURL and delete the url If you make these changes you will be able to update your plugins only manually, by opening the Add-Ons tab yourself, going to Plugins and clicking on Check for updates at the top of the list. Enjoy! Hope you found this helpful, and as always, leave comments and/or ideas for what you'd like to hear about in these tips!

Hello again everyone! Here's this week's PC tip.... Microsoft Security Essentials. I've been testing it for a few weeks now, and so far I recommend it. Doesn't use nearly as much resources (CPU time, RAM) as many other anti-virus programs out there (Norton, McAfee, etc.... use up a lot of system resources, and do have a habit of slowing the system down and getting in the way of what you're trying to do.)... Very easy program to install, just google the name, make sure you get it from Microsoft's site (not the first link or two that shows up on the search results! Those are ads.) Here's the link below: http://windows.microsoft.com//security-essentials-all-vers Updates itself automatically, you don't have to do anything. And best of all, it's free. It doesn't nag you to activate, or buy the paid version. If you choose to try it out, I'd love to hear any feedback you may have. And as always, feel free to send me any ideas for tips you might want to hear about.

Hi Everyone! Well, I didn't quite make it once a week with these tips, mainly because business has been, well, busy! (What a problem to have... ;) ) So here's this week's tip:... If you're finding your computer takes a long time to boot up, and/or doesn't seem to run as quickly as it used to, bogging down, etc.....try this: Start - Run - type "msconfig". (In Vista/7, just click Start, then type it into the search bar). Under the "General" tab, make sure "Selective Startup" is checked. Now, click the "Startup" tab. Scroll down the list - anything you don't need starting with Windows, make sure it's checked. Anything you know you need when Windows starts, uncheck it. I've often found I can just click the "disable all" button. Now click Apply, close. It will tell you to restart. After the restart, you'll see a box from the System Configuration Utility, telling you what you just did. Check the box, hit okay, and that will be the last time you see that box. This will drop the background process count and give your CPU and RAM better things to do. Hope this helps! And again - if any of you think of something you'd like me to cover here, drop me a message.

Hi Everyone!! So, I'm going to be giving PC tips once a week, right here on this page. If any of you have any thoughts on what tips you'd like to see here, feel free to comment. Anything you've wondered about? So, here's the tip of the week:... Your hard drive needs room to manoeuvre! Or, more properly, Windows need room on your hard drive. Once your hard drive becomes 60-70% full, the access speed drops considerably, thus slowing down Windows' ability to fetch files quickly, and slowing your computer down. The answer? The main thing that usually clogs up a hard drive is media (photos, music, videos....). If these are filling up your hard drive, you should find somewhere else to store them - either a second hard drive (external drives are dropping nicely in price these days), or burn to disc. Once you've moved files off the hard drive and created more space, run a defragmenting program to put all the remaining file pieces back where they belong - this also improves access speed. This is becoming less of an issue as computers are shipping with much larger hard drives than they used to, but if you have a computer that is a few years old, you could probably stand to lighten the load on your hard drive. Feel free to comment, or suggest tips you'd like to hear about!

If you find your PC is in need of a little TLC (or a lot!), drop me a line. You can message me here, or find my email address in "about". Very reasonable flat rates, and many happy customers!