Aaaahhhh! Nooooooo! Water, coffee, and soda are among your laptop’s worst enemies. Just a little bit of any liquid on your laptop keyboard can not only ruin your keyboard but do serious damage to your machine and/or cause you to lose data.

The best way to prevent damage to your laptop from a liquid spill of any kind is to keep it as far from cups of coffee, glasses of water, and cans of soda, etc. Even then, it’s best to make sure all liquids are in a container with a lid. All liquids are damaging and may cause anything from corosion, gummy or sticky residue or electrical problems. If this happens to you, you can do one or all of the following:

1. If you have your machine plugged into a wall current, turn off the power at the circuit breaker in your home or office. You don’t want to touch a wet wire.

2. If you’re running the machine on battery power and ONLY when it is safe to do so, shut your laptop down through the normal Windows process. You can also try to turn it off immediately by depressing the Off switch or by removing the battery. If necessary and just to be safe, you can ground yourself by touching the center screw on the faceplate of a dry electrical outlet or by touching some other metal object that reaches to ground.

3. Again, only when it is safe to do so, remove the AC adapter and the battery, and set them aside.

4. Disconnect any external devices (such as a mouse) attached to the USB, FireWire, serial, or other ports.

5. If you find any liquid on the battery or AC adapter, wipe them carefully and set them aside.

6. Remove any cards installed in the PC Card slot. If they’re wet, carefully dry them off. If any water has gotten into the narrow slot, dry out the area with a cotton swab, taking care not to leave any threads of cotton in the internal connector.

7. Wipe off any liquid on the display. Use a clean cloth dampened with water to remove any sticky residue.

8. Hand-dry the keyboard surface with a lint-free cloth. You can also use cotton swabs to absorb any obvious moisture.

At any point in this process and especially at the end of this call us or bring your laptop in to our repair facility ASAP to help minimize any damage.

Let us get you running at the speed of light. Give us a call today 512-276-2092.

Viruses can do just about anything the writer/creator intends for them to do.  This can be something as silly as popping-up a window and displaying a little annoying message every once in a while.  Or it can cause something as devastating as modifying information on your computer system beyond recovery.

Here are some common mistakes people frequently make that can result in computer virus infections.  In some cases this can result in the complete loss of programs and other information stored on your computer:

1. Downloading programs from unknown websites
2. Opening attachments on suspicious emails
3. Ignoring the updates from installed software
4. Not having up-to-date virus protection software.

UFO recommends:

For individual personal laptops or desktops = Microsoft Security Essentials.  This free download is safe and easy to use. (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentials/product-information).

For small to mid-sized businesses, Worry Free Business Security from Trend Micro.  We can help you get a discount.  Ask us how! (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentials/product-information).

Are you using a USB Flash Drive to back up your data?  Remember that they can be lost or damaged.  We highly recommend using an online computer backup program such as Carbonite.  Go to www.carbonite.com for more information.  Once you pick the level of service that fits your needs, we can install it for no additional cost to you.

Most of us have experienced computer performance issues at some point. In this blog I will give you a few tips on how to repair your desktop computer or laptop. You’ll also learn a little bit about virus and spyware removal. Let get down to it.

There are a few things you can do for basic PC or Laptop maintenance.

1.) Install an virus and spyware removal program on your system and keep it up to date. Perform a full scan for spyware, malware and virus’ every week.

There are various anti-virus and anti-spyware programs out there. AVG, Adaware, Malwarebytes and Kaspersky are some of the top ranking programs. Each program has it’s own virus removal tools. One program may have a cure for the latest virus and the other may not. It is due to this, that you should keep your software up to date. If you find that you are getting infected with viruses and spam quite often, then it would be wise to consider a hardware firewall. With a hardware fire wall you can regulate the internet traffic coming to your computer.

Virus Removal

If you discover that you have a virus or spyware on your system the first thing to do is update your anti-virus program and run a full system scan and virus removal. I the virus is disabling you from running the anti-virus scanner then you may be able to get it to run in Safe mode. Safe mode can be accessed on system boot up by hitting the F8 or F5 key on the keyboard. Safe mode disables unnecessary startup programs from loading when you boot your computer. This give the ant-virus program more freedom to run.

2.) Run disk clean up periodically. Once a month or so is sufficient for the average PC or Laptop user. If you download files often or surf the web frequently definitely incorporate this step.

3.) Do disk defragmentation periodically. Analyze you drive with the built-in Windows defragmentation tool. If you have over 10% hard drive fragmentation then run the disk defragmenter. You do this periodically as well, about once every few months for PC and Laptop performance. Drive fragmentation normally takes a while to occur and can put a damper on PC performance.

4.) If none of the steps above help, your problem may have to do with the system resources you have available. Memory, your hard disk and CPU fall under system resources. It is possible that your computer cannot handle what you are trying to do. In a case like this, upgrading your amount of memory, hard drive or CPU may solve the problem.

If you plan on sending images to friends and families, the chances are some of them will view it on their phones. It can take awhile files over 5MB to download for viewing.  In this article we will explain how to quickly resize files so it can be sent and received faster.

• Navigate to the folder or directory where the image file is stored.
• Right click on the image you want to send.
• Select “Send to”
• Select “Mail recipient”
• Choose the file size you would like to send the file as. The smaller the dimensions the smaller the file size.

If you have noticed the performance of your computer has slowed remove some your junk files. Junk files build up over time. They are caused by internet browsing, downloading, and adding and removing programs. To clear these junk files, I recommend CCleaner by Piriform or Eusing Registry cleaner. CCleaner will remove temporary internet files and clear the Windows registry of left over program files from removed programs. CCleaner will also remove unnecessary registry files. Eusing does a similar job to clean up junk files.

Defragment your computer often. I recommend once a month or so. If you save frequently, you should consider defragmenting your hard drive monthly.

Always update your anti-virus and anti-spam software. Run each frequently.

Follow the steps above for proper PC maintenance.