To Improve Processing Computer Speed

Computer Repair Tips That Never Helped Me

I’ve only had experience with Windows operated computers, so this is what I’m referring to in here. Computer repair specialists were always hard to find, and many times we had to try to figure out a solution to fix a computer which stopped working, because no specialist would come home, and to take a PC to the service company was extremely troublesome, mainly because such computer repair centers were in the center of the city, where we barely had any parking spots. So, you had to carry that heavy computer for more than 1 km, to get it fixed. You can imagine that we tried to exchange information between us, to discover tips which worked, in order to fix the bloody PC without all that hassle. If I tell you that Internet wasn’t invented yet, then you can see that information was very hard to get.

If you don’t know, Windows operated computers tend to get sluggish after a time, especially if you repeatedly install and uninstall various applications. These are a few tips which everybody told me should help me make my computer faster, which I didn’t notice to help me very much.

Computer Repair Tip 1: Defragment Often

The information on the hard disk is written in chunks called sectors. One application can spread across many such sectors, and if they are not next to each other, the head which reads the information on the hard disk has to make additional movements, thus increasing the reaction time of the computer, resulting in sluggish, slow launch of the respective application.

While I believe the reasoning behind this, from experience I can tell you that defragmentation had no effect on my computer’s speed, at least not an effect that a human can notice. Milliseconds that I might have gained by performing the defrag operation every week were not worth the actual time spent on doing the defragmentation itself.

Computer Repair Tip 2: Clean Up Disk Errors

This is easy to do: on My Computer, select the drive you wish to clean up errors on, right-click on it, then select Properties. The first option from the second tab of the menu that opens is Check Disk. It won’t run, but you can schedule it to start next time when you’ll reboot your computer.

Computer Repair Tip 3: Remove Temporary Files

This is called the Disk Cleanup and you can find it in the same menu as in Computer Repair Tip no 2. It will free up some space on your hard drive, which is good, but the speed gain won’t be noticeable for human senses.

The only computer repair tip that worked perfectly each time, and offered me a fast system, at least for a couple of months was to reinstall Windows. I’m seriously considering switching to Mac at the next computer upgrade I’m going to get.

Do you have any more computer repair tips that never helped you improve your computer’s performance?

Microsoft Office Tips

Remove All Formatting in Two Easy Steps

Here's a great way to remove all of the formatting from a Word document or just a selected portion of the document:

1. Select the whole document by pressing CTRL+A or just select the portion of the document you wish to change.

2. Press CTRL+SHIFT+N.

Presto! All of your formatting is removed from the document or selection.

Navigate Word Documents by Using the Table of Contents

When writing long documents in Microsoft Word, you'll find the table of contents (TOC) is an indispensable tool—even if you don't include the TOC in your final draft! Why? The TOC creates internal links (similar to the ones you find on a Web page) that you can use to quickly navigate a document as you work. And, if you're already using styles, adding a TOC is easy.

First, be sure that you've applied either built-in (for example, Heading 1 and Heading 2) or custom styles to all headings and subheadings in your document.

Once you have done that, you can insert a TOC at the beginning or end of your document. To do so:

1. Click where you want to insert the TOC.

2. On the Insert menu, point to Reference, and click Index and Tables.

3. Click the Table of Contents tab.

4. Click Options and make sure a TOC level number appears next to every heading you want to include in your TOC.

5. Select any other TOC options you want.

Now, to go to a specific section in your document, click the corresponding page number in the TOC while holding down the CTRL key. To return to the TOC, click the Go to TOC button on the Outlining toolbar.

Editor's Note: To make the Outlining toolbar visible, open the View menu, point to Toolbars, and click Outlining.

Find Shortcuts to Useful Word Features on the Status Bar

Did you know that the status bar, that area at the bottom of Word documents where the page number appears, also provides shortcuts to a number of very useful features? Here are a few you may want to use:

§ To open the Find and Replace dialog box, double-click any location indicator on the status bar, such as the page number or section number.

§ To turn the macro recorder on or off, double-click REC.

§ To turn the Track Changes feature on or off, double-click TRK.

§ To turn extend selection mode on or off, double-click EXT.

§ To turn overtype mode on or off, double-click OVR.

§ To change the language format of selected text, double-click Language.

§ To resolve errors in grammar or spelling, double-click the Spelling and Grammar Status icon. Note: When the previous features are turned off, their labels appear dimmed.

Editor's Note: If your status bar is not visible, go to the Tools menu, click Options, click the View tab, and then select the Status bar check box under Show.

View or Modify Formatting with the Task Pane

You can use the new Reveal Formatting task pane in Word 2002 to view a detailed description of any text in your document. You can also use it to modify or clear the formatting; compare the formatting of different selections, or to find blocks of text with similar formatting. Here's how to use it:

1. Select the text you want to examine or reformat.

2. From the Format menu, select Reveal Formatting.

3. Do any of the following:

§ To change any formatting properties, click one of the underlined commands from within the task pane, and then change any options you want in the dialog box that appears.

§ To determine the formatting source, such as whether the formatting comes from a style, select the Distinguish style source check box.

§ To show formatting marks, such as paragraph marks and tabs, select the Show all formatting marks check box.

§ To format a text selection like the text that surrounds it, select the text. In the Selected text box, click the arrow, and then click Apply Formatting of Surrounding Text.

§ To view a feature-by-feature comparison of your text selection with another block of text, select the Compare to another section check box and then select another block of text.

Editor's Note: You can also open the Reveal Formatting task pane by choosing What's This? on the Help menu or selecting text within your document and pressing SHIFT+F1.