Tips for your laptop
Our colleagues over at What Laptop are in the middle of posting useful tips and Q&As for solving all sorts of common notebook and netbook problems, for beginner to more experienced users, so we’ve collated 12 of the best for your reading pleasure.
1. Clean and speed up your laptop OS
It’s all too easy to fill your laptop’s hard drive with files and applications, and the more software you add the slower it’s likely to run. Traces of programs are even left behind after you’ve uninstalled them, potentially slowing your laptop further. Thankfully, it’s easy to spruce things up using an application called CCleaner. Read on to discover how to download and use it.
2. Protect your laptop’s data
Due to the portable nature of laptops and netbooks, the data it holds is unfortunately always at risk of both theft and loss. While it’s impossible to keep your laptop 100% safe at all times, you can ensure that your data is kept safe, even if your laptop is stolen or lost, by encrypting it. One particularly easy free solution you can use is TrueCrypt. Read on to discover how to download and use it.
3. Help your laptop run cooler
While the fantastic mobility of laptops makes them great for working on the sofa or on in bed, it’s always important to make sure your laptop has adequate ventilation, to avoid overheating. Since the majority of laptops have vetilation fans to keep internal components cool, you must always ensure that these vents are unobstructed. This means no working on a duvet or cushion, as the extra heat it will cause your laptop to store could be fatal and cause your laptop to critically overheat. If in doubt, place the laptop on a tray when working in bed.
4. Help your battery live longer
When running a laptop at home from mains power, many users leave the battery plugged in at all times, so that it’s always fully-charged for when they want to hit the road. What they often don’t realise though, is it by never letting the battery fully discharge every now and then, they’re actually damaging the battery and guaranteeing that it’s lifespan will be greatly reduced. As a result, it’s always a good idea to remove the battery as soon as it is fully-charged, and then let it fully discharge when using, before recharging again. That way, you’ll be able to enjoy your laptop for longer without having to but a new battery every few months.
5. Change your netbook screen font size
While the compact size of netbooks makes them ideal for regular travel use, their tiny screens can often be awkward to use, when reading multiple pages of text or browsing the internet. Their low screen resolutions somewhat compensates, but to make life easier, it’s well worth increasing your netbook’s defualt font size, to make text bigger and more comfortabel to see.
To do this in Windows XP – the current netbook favourite – browse to Start > Control Panel > Display > Appearance, then set the Font size to either Large or Extra Large, depending on your needs.
6. Speed your laptop up
Most laptops that are brand new come with loads of software pre-installed a lot of it trial-only, and many applications that you may not even use. The more software you install, the longer it’ll take your laptop to start up, but with a free third-party app it’s a simple process to speed things up.
Using Autoruns, which can be downloaded here for free, you’ll be able to choose which programs your laptop runs on start-up, deselecting the ones you don’t use very often to speed things up considerably.
You’ll find lots of applications start automatically from Microsoft Office to DVD creation software and it really is just a case of un-ticking the ones you don’t want to run. This should see a huge difference in your laptop’s Notification Area the corner of the display that shows all the active programs. If you need to run any of the software you’ve disabled from starting automatically, simply select it from the start menu.
Only un-tick the programs you recognise in Autoruns, however, and be sure to leave any Windows system files and applications as they are.
7. Clean a dirty laptop
The first thing you need to do is shut it down and unplug the power lead. It may be wise to remove the battery as well. To clean the chassis, a damp, but not wet cloth should be enough to remove most dirt and grime. Read on for how to clean the keyboard and screen.
8. Clone your laptop’s drive
It certainly is possible to do what you are asking, but you will need a bit of extra equipment to do it. As well as your new drive, you will need a hard drive imaging program, such as Acronis True Image (£40 from www.acronis.co.uk) and a USB laptop hard drive caddy. A USB caddy for your new drive can be found on eBay for a few pounds. All you then need to do is clone the contents of your old hard drive, onto the drive in the USB caddy, then take out your old drive and put the new one in.
Step 1: Connect your USB drive caddy into a free USB Port on your laptop, and then download, install and start the Acronis True Image software. Once on the application’s Welcome screen, click on Disk Utilities and then click on the Clone Disk icon to start the Disk Cloning operation.
Step 2: On the next screen, select the Automatic option as your chosen Clone Method and then click Next. The next screen will be this one will allow you to select which drive to clone, so select your existing laptop’s hard drive as the source. It should be labelled as Disk 1.
Step 3: The next step is to choose the drive in the USB caddy as the destination for the cloned disk. Your laptop will then reboot and copy the data to the new drive. Once it has finished, swap the drives around and remove any data from your old drive if you wish.
9. How to upgrade your notebook’s memory
Your laptop manual will normally tell you how much memory you can fit, and what type and speed you need to use. However, if you don’t have that to hand, a very useful tool is Crucial’s memory advisor. Find out more about memory upgrading.
10. How to get spare laptop parts
Q. The DVD drive on my Asus laptop has stopped working and it no longer shows up in My Computer. It’s been troublesome for a while and I think it’s finally given up the ghost. Is there anyway to replace the drive, or do I need to get one from Asus? I’ve a feeling that a replacement from Asus would be horribly expensive.
A. It’s certainly possible to buy replacement laptop drives, but whether it would fit your particular model is another matter. What you need to do is remove the drive, usually by pressing a button or moving a slider on the bottom of the laptop, and have a look at the shape of the drive. This is important, because not all drives are the same shape. You also need to look at the interface, as there are two main types of connector. You may also need to remove the bezel from your existing drive and put it on the replacement drive, to ensure it matches the chassis. A couple of places you can try for replacement drives are www.drivemylaptop.co.uk and www.laptopspares.co.uk.
11. Recover files from a damaged hard drive
Q. Earlier this week my laptop failed to boot up. On removing the hard drive and putting it in a USB carrier I listened to hear it spinning up. I am quite familiar to the various sounds they make as they spin up, and all did not sound quite right. My computer recognised that an external USB device had been connected, and looking in Device Manager, the hard drive was reported as working normally. However it does not get allocated a drive letter and so effectively it is unreadable. It also does not appear under Drive Management. Do you think the drive has totally failed? Is there anything else I can do to recover some of the data off it?
A. Hard drives can fail without warning, although you’ll normally receive some advanced notice, usually in the form or strange noises, or problems when reading or writing files. It sounds as if your drive is spinning, hence your computer is recognising it, but the read/write arm is not moving, because you’d hear that as a faint clicking noise. This corresponds with the drive not showing up in Drive Management. If this is the case, then the news isn’t good. Data recovery software will only work if the data can be accessed, which clearly isn’t happening here. Although data recovery services, such as Kroll Ontrack (www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk) can take the platters from your drive, and put them into another drive, the cost is very high and probably not worth it for your needs. You can try downloading a program from the website though, called Verifile, which will tell you if any of your files are actually recoverable.
12. Use RAID drives in your laptop
Q. I have bought a new Acer Laptop, which has two 320GB hard drives. When I enter the BIOS and create a RAID set and set it to striping I see the two drives as 320GB each. However, when I then install Windows Vista, it shows only one drive with a capacity of about 700GB. Why don’t I see two drives, and can I use a partitioning program to split this large drive into two?
A. You have opted to create a RAID 0 set, which writes alternate blocks of data to each of your two drives. This is known as striping, and is designed for systems where you need very fast read and write speeds. A RAID 0 setup treats your two drives as one contiguous block of data, hence it only shows up as one drive. RAID 0 is not a good idea if you are worried about data integrity, because if one drive fails, then you will lose all of your data. Instead, choose a RAID 1 setup, otherwise known as mirroring. Here, your two drives will be identical copies of each other, and if one drive fails, you can replace it and the data on the other drive will be copied across. You will also still only see one drive, because if you could see both, you would see duplicates of everything, which would confuse both you and Windows.
1. Clean and speed up your laptop OS
It’s all too easy to fill your laptop’s hard drive with files and applications, and the more software you add the slower it’s likely to run. Traces of programs are even left behind after you’ve uninstalled them, potentially slowing your laptop further. Thankfully, it’s easy to spruce things up using an application called CCleaner. Read on to discover how to download and use it.
2. Protect your laptop’s data
Due to the portable nature of laptops and netbooks, the data it holds is unfortunately always at risk of both theft and loss. While it’s impossible to keep your laptop 100% safe at all times, you can ensure that your data is kept safe, even if your laptop is stolen or lost, by encrypting it. One particularly easy free solution you can use is TrueCrypt. Read on to discover how to download and use it.
3. Help your laptop run cooler
While the fantastic mobility of laptops makes them great for working on the sofa or on in bed, it’s always important to make sure your laptop has adequate ventilation, to avoid overheating. Since the majority of laptops have vetilation fans to keep internal components cool, you must always ensure that these vents are unobstructed. This means no working on a duvet or cushion, as the extra heat it will cause your laptop to store could be fatal and cause your laptop to critically overheat. If in doubt, place the laptop on a tray when working in bed.
4. Help your battery live longer
When running a laptop at home from mains power, many users leave the battery plugged in at all times, so that it’s always fully-charged for when they want to hit the road. What they often don’t realise though, is it by never letting the battery fully discharge every now and then, they’re actually damaging the battery and guaranteeing that it’s lifespan will be greatly reduced. As a result, it’s always a good idea to remove the battery as soon as it is fully-charged, and then let it fully discharge when using, before recharging again. That way, you’ll be able to enjoy your laptop for longer without having to but a new battery every few months.
5. Change your netbook screen font size
While the compact size of netbooks makes them ideal for regular travel use, their tiny screens can often be awkward to use, when reading multiple pages of text or browsing the internet. Their low screen resolutions somewhat compensates, but to make life easier, it’s well worth increasing your netbook’s defualt font size, to make text bigger and more comfortabel to see.
To do this in Windows XP – the current netbook favourite – browse to Start > Control Panel > Display > Appearance, then set the Font size to either Large or Extra Large, depending on your needs.
6. Speed your laptop up
Most laptops that are brand new come with loads of software pre-installed a lot of it trial-only, and many applications that you may not even use. The more software you install, the longer it’ll take your laptop to start up, but with a free third-party app it’s a simple process to speed things up.
Using Autoruns, which can be downloaded here for free, you’ll be able to choose which programs your laptop runs on start-up, deselecting the ones you don’t use very often to speed things up considerably.
You’ll find lots of applications start automatically from Microsoft Office to DVD creation software and it really is just a case of un-ticking the ones you don’t want to run. This should see a huge difference in your laptop’s Notification Area the corner of the display that shows all the active programs. If you need to run any of the software you’ve disabled from starting automatically, simply select it from the start menu.
Only un-tick the programs you recognise in Autoruns, however, and be sure to leave any Windows system files and applications as they are.
7. Clean a dirty laptop
The first thing you need to do is shut it down and unplug the power lead. It may be wise to remove the battery as well. To clean the chassis, a damp, but not wet cloth should be enough to remove most dirt and grime. Read on for how to clean the keyboard and screen.
8. Clone your laptop’s drive
It certainly is possible to do what you are asking, but you will need a bit of extra equipment to do it. As well as your new drive, you will need a hard drive imaging program, such as Acronis True Image (£40 from www.acronis.co.uk) and a USB laptop hard drive caddy. A USB caddy for your new drive can be found on eBay for a few pounds. All you then need to do is clone the contents of your old hard drive, onto the drive in the USB caddy, then take out your old drive and put the new one in.
Step 1: Connect your USB drive caddy into a free USB Port on your laptop, and then download, install and start the Acronis True Image software. Once on the application’s Welcome screen, click on Disk Utilities and then click on the Clone Disk icon to start the Disk Cloning operation.
Step 2: On the next screen, select the Automatic option as your chosen Clone Method and then click Next. The next screen will be this one will allow you to select which drive to clone, so select your existing laptop’s hard drive as the source. It should be labelled as Disk 1.
Step 3: The next step is to choose the drive in the USB caddy as the destination for the cloned disk. Your laptop will then reboot and copy the data to the new drive. Once it has finished, swap the drives around and remove any data from your old drive if you wish.
9. How to upgrade your notebook’s memory
Your laptop manual will normally tell you how much memory you can fit, and what type and speed you need to use. However, if you don’t have that to hand, a very useful tool is Crucial’s memory advisor. Find out more about memory upgrading.
10. How to get spare laptop parts
Q. The DVD drive on my Asus laptop has stopped working and it no longer shows up in My Computer. It’s been troublesome for a while and I think it’s finally given up the ghost. Is there anyway to replace the drive, or do I need to get one from Asus? I’ve a feeling that a replacement from Asus would be horribly expensive.
A. It’s certainly possible to buy replacement laptop drives, but whether it would fit your particular model is another matter. What you need to do is remove the drive, usually by pressing a button or moving a slider on the bottom of the laptop, and have a look at the shape of the drive. This is important, because not all drives are the same shape. You also need to look at the interface, as there are two main types of connector. You may also need to remove the bezel from your existing drive and put it on the replacement drive, to ensure it matches the chassis. A couple of places you can try for replacement drives are www.drivemylaptop.co.uk and www.laptopspares.co.uk.
11. Recover files from a damaged hard drive
Q. Earlier this week my laptop failed to boot up. On removing the hard drive and putting it in a USB carrier I listened to hear it spinning up. I am quite familiar to the various sounds they make as they spin up, and all did not sound quite right. My computer recognised that an external USB device had been connected, and looking in Device Manager, the hard drive was reported as working normally. However it does not get allocated a drive letter and so effectively it is unreadable. It also does not appear under Drive Management. Do you think the drive has totally failed? Is there anything else I can do to recover some of the data off it?
A. Hard drives can fail without warning, although you’ll normally receive some advanced notice, usually in the form or strange noises, or problems when reading or writing files. It sounds as if your drive is spinning, hence your computer is recognising it, but the read/write arm is not moving, because you’d hear that as a faint clicking noise. This corresponds with the drive not showing up in Drive Management. If this is the case, then the news isn’t good. Data recovery software will only work if the data can be accessed, which clearly isn’t happening here. Although data recovery services, such as Kroll Ontrack (www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk) can take the platters from your drive, and put them into another drive, the cost is very high and probably not worth it for your needs. You can try downloading a program from the website though, called Verifile, which will tell you if any of your files are actually recoverable.
12. Use RAID drives in your laptop
Q. I have bought a new Acer Laptop, which has two 320GB hard drives. When I enter the BIOS and create a RAID set and set it to striping I see the two drives as 320GB each. However, when I then install Windows Vista, it shows only one drive with a capacity of about 700GB. Why don’t I see two drives, and can I use a partitioning program to split this large drive into two?
A. You have opted to create a RAID 0 set, which writes alternate blocks of data to each of your two drives. This is known as striping, and is designed for systems where you need very fast read and write speeds. A RAID 0 setup treats your two drives as one contiguous block of data, hence it only shows up as one drive. RAID 0 is not a good idea if you are worried about data integrity, because if one drive fails, then you will lose all of your data. Instead, choose a RAID 1 setup, otherwise known as mirroring. Here, your two drives will be identical copies of each other, and if one drive fails, you can replace it and the data on the other drive will be copied across. You will also still only see one drive, because if you could see both, you would see duplicates of everything, which would confuse both you and Windows.
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