First Steps for Troubleshooting Computer Errors
A computer system primarily comprises hardware and software components. This is the reason why most of the computer errors are caused due to hardware or software problems. In this article, we are going to discuss some of the first troubleshooting steps that you may perform to identify the cause of these error messages and resolve them.
AVG 8 causing trouble for Webmasters!
It has come to light that AVG 8 LinkScanner function is spoofing itself and showing among the stats as valid IE6. By employing the user-agent of Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1), it shows up as visits from the Internet Explorer 6 browser.
There has been no word about it from AVG team and they seem to be nonchalant about it.
In any case, I was not very happy with the LinkScanner function which was introduced in AVG 8.0 and had disabled it with the consequence of a permanent exclamation mark in the system tray icon. The automatic updates also had problems but it was corrected in the later upgrades.
A Week with ThreatFire: Supplements the Anti-Virus well!
ThreatFire (http://www.threatfire.com/) has become quite popular recently with its completely novel way of protection. So I decided to give it a try. And after a week, I really think this is a must.
The software claims to supplement the anti-virus that is already installed and gives real-time protection. It says that, instead of looking for known threats it tries to detect malicious behavior to guard against attacks. As yet, I didn’t encounter any threat but at least it works well with the anti-virus and firewall running simultaneously.
What is Defragmentation and How to Do It?
One of the important computer maintenance steps is Defragmentation and it is also the most neglected. Either because you don’t know about its usefulness or simply don’t know how to do it. And if you are not bothered, then probably you are wasting your time reading this!
What is Defragmentation?
Let’s say you have stored a movie file (.avi) in a folder on your root drive (usually C:). For all practical purposes, the file is stored in one and only one location (C:\folder\movie.avi) unless you have a copy of it somewhere else. But on the surface of the hard-disk, the file isn’t stored contiguously at one location. Instead bits of it are spread over the space in the hard-disk. This is because a hard-disk has to store many files and this is an easier way to store rather than storing everything together. So the files are fragmented.
But there is a drawback to this method of storage. Whenever you will access the above movie file, the system will have to find every pieces of the scattered file before presenting it to you. That can slow the process drastically depending on the size and fragmentation of the file. So the obvious thing to do is defragment!
All You Need To Know About Cookies and How to Handle Them
You must have heard of cookies under various references. Here, obviously, I am going to refer to the Cookie that is part of the Internet. Lot of us do not know what it is actually and what purpose does it serve. You will know everything about it after reading this post.
What is an HTTP Cookie?
Before I tell you, why not see it for yourself? If you are using Windows XP, then it is pretty straightforward. Visit %rootdrive%\Documents and Settings\Cookies\ folder to view all the cookies. In Vista, type %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\Low in the Run (Windows + R) window to view all the cookies.
What you may see is a long list of text files, all having names user@some-website. If you open it in Notepad, there will be some non-understandable data written in it. So now you know how cookie looks. But what exactly is it?
When you visit websites through a browser, the website collects certain data about you (e.g. IP Address, HTTP Referrer etc..). These things are unique to every visitor of that website so it makes sense to store it in the visitor’s computer rather than at the server of the website. The file in which such information is stored is called a Cookie. Usually these information are encrypted so that no one can view it.
Subscribe to XSRealities via RSS
Recent Comments