Setting Up Your Computer
What they should have told you when
you bought the computer
But didn't
Treat the computer with care
I had a complete PC which emerged from a warehouse which had been demolished by the 1994 Kōbe earthquake. It had a bent and battered case but when I connected it up and turned it on it fired up. Fortunately I backed up all the data before the hard drive crashed a week or two later, but otherwise it was fine and parts of it are still in use.
Computers are reasonably robust and hard drives are even more durable now than they were then. But don’t push your luck! Treat the case – before and after unpacking – as if it were full of eggs and you won’t go wrong.
Don’t move your computer case while it’s switched on. If you just can't resist it, be very gentle.
Setting it up and turning it on
This varies from computer to computer. You should have illustrated instructions showing you how. All cables and sockets are usually colour coded or the shape is obvious so the process shouldn't cause too much drama. Don't switch anything on until you're sure it's properly connected.
If you need guidance on the colours, shapes and sizes of the various plugs and sockets I have some information and images right here.
Power protection
You should use a surge protector between your PC and the power supply. Otherwise power spikes and lightning strikes are likely to cook it - your motherboard, your hard drive, or both.
If you want more robust protection and to avoid losing your computer when the power goes off, you need an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). See the next paragraph
Turning off
Never turn off your computer by cutting off the power or switching it off on the PC’s power switch. Always close down Windows before switching off your computer.
During normal use Windows creates a lot of temporary files which beaver away in the background out of sight and mind. If you shut Windows down properly, these are usually tidied up automatically. If you pull the plug these files are left cluttering up your drive, and can cause problems later.
To turn it off, with typical perversity, Microsoft have you click on the Start button at bottom left of your screen.
Then click on the Turn Off Computer button like this:
or this:
The next thing you see is something similar to this:
Clicking the Stand By Button will put the computer into Sleep mode. Parts of the PC are still powered, retaining your current status, but the power consumption is cut to a minimum, mainly by turning off your hard disk(s) and putting your monitor on standby. Pressing any key will usually cause a restart from Stand By.
If you have a cordless keyboard, you may need to press the PC's Start button to restore from Standby.
The other two buttons are self explanatory.
If you’re going to use the Internet/email
And you wouldn't be here if you weren't.
You should have, installed on your computer’s hard drive, an antivirus program. This, unless you had a better than average vendor, was only up-to-date when the antivirus program's CD was made or the program downloaded from the internet. Your antivirus program contains information on virus definitions which needs to be updated.
But hang on, I have to connect to the internet to get this protection don’t I?
Yes, you do. So the first thing you must do when you've connected to the internet is update your anti-virus program definitions. You must protect your computer against the dark forces trying to spy on you and vandalise your data. You must have an anti-virus program and anti-spyware programs and you must keep those programs up to date. Everything you need to know about installing these and maintaining them is in the Viruses and Spywaresection.
Updating Windows
Your nice new computer has the latest version of Windows installed – right? Wrong. It’s out of date. The nice boys and girls at Microsoft and the whackos who write computer viruses are waging a continuous battle, Microsoft trying to make Windows burglar-proof and the nutters trying to crack it. But never mind, we’ll get around it.
Microsoft have a whole lot of updates which need to be downloaded from their website before you start surfing the web.
Click on Start/All Programs/Windows Update to connect to the Microsoft update website and check for the latest patches and drivers. If you have a dial-up internet connection do this at a convenient time because the download could take hours.
Do this at least once a week.
XP Service Pack 2 and 3
If you have Windows XP SP 2 installed, either because your CD is an SP2 edition or because you've upgraded, it will have defaulted to automatic updates. If you have a "dial-up" connection and you don't want to tie your phone line up for hours at an inconvenient time, change this to "notify me when updates are ready". More about this soon.
Better still, if it's available in your area, get yourself a high speed internet connection. You'll never go back.
Really.
