DEMYSTIFYING THE P.C.- WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH YOU IN COMPUTER INSTITUTES!

INTRODUCTION:

When we buy an item for personal use, we expect to put the item to use immediately.  The learning time and effort to feel comfortable using the equipment should be very less.  Of course, for certain items like automobiles, we need to learn driving; we also need to learn a few basic tasks such as changing a flat tire, replacing fuse, cleaning the carburetor, replacing the spark plug etc. in case we do not want to be stranded in case of breakdown.

The present day gadgets have changed the rules.  How many of us know all functions/features of modern gadgets like Home Theatre systems, TV, Oven, Mobile/cordless handsets etc. without referring the Manual?  The modern gadgets turn even seasoned techno-savvy into a technophile.  Personal Computers top the list of most un-personal and intimidating equipment to most users.  During my interaction as IMMS System administrator with many users, who are otherwise very tech-savvy and intelligent, I have observed that many of the problems reported to help-desk are due to certain myths and perceived complexities.  A PC, as the name implies, is a gadget, nothing less, nothing more, and a user should feel comfortable using the gadget and rectify common problems arising out of mistakes committed by the user or due to faults in system itself, without frantic calls to help-desk/mechanic.

This article tries to demystify the ubiquitous P.C. and explains few tips/tricks to run the P.C. if the user gets stuck midway. 

TARGET AUDIENCE:

This article is not for Power users (who may kindly skip this article now!) but for those users who handle the P.C. for everyday simple tasks such as making presentations, preparing and printing documents, surf the web, send e-mail and listen to songs/watch videos.  The operating system assumed is Windows 95/98/2000 (Mac/Linux users are power users, and would have skipped reading this article by now!). However, the article is not for complete PC novices and assumes on part of reader a certain comfort level working with Windows and performing simple tasks.

BASICS:

A PC user should have following items with him safety tucked away;

·        Windows CD (techies/geeks call this simple item as Windows Media!)  and license Number.

·        Driver CD/floppies (Even though it is possible to download the drivers from Internet, even though Windows operating system itself contains drivers for many well-known brands of peripherals, it is better if the original drivers are kept safety tucked away, for ease of  installation).

·        All original software-products purchased along with the PC or purchased subsequently (CD/floppies) along with their product-key (license) numbers.

·        Motherboard Manual.  Mostly a CD will also accompany the manual, which may contain drivers. So this CD also needs to be kept safely.

HARDWARE:

The basic instinct of any human being is to cut-open the toy/gadget/equipment he/she lays hands on and see the working of its internals.  See the behavior of any toddler/child when it plays with a toy!

However, as we grow older (and supposedly more mature!) we tend to curb this instinct and instead accept at face value how the gadget/equipment is supposed to behave.  Few of us still open the damn thing up and then dutifully call a mechanic to put the pieces back!  For such compulsive gadget-openers, here is the good news. PC is probably the easiest gadget which can be safely opened up, internals seen and explored and stitched back.  You only need a Philips screw driver! However, before you rush to the drawer to retrieve the screw driver, please know that you can very easily damage the internal parts if you carry a lot of static charges with you. Also applying too much pressure in taking out/ putting in a board or card in the motherboard can cause damage.

The PC hardware (here, I refer only to the chassis unit and not to the other accompaniments such as Monitor, key-board, mouse etc. which need not and should not be opened up!) consists of

·        The chassis/cabinet.

·        The mother-board (along with processor)

·        Memory cards

·        Hard-disk drive

·        CDROM Drive

·        Floppy Drive

·        Other PCI cards (Network cards, sound cards etc- However, may be empty)

·        AGP Cards (Display card –but may be empty or the AGP slot itself may not be there, if the video capability is in-built in the motherboard).

CABINET:

The cabinet can be a plain vanilla sheet box or quite classy looking. Nowadays, all cabinets are tower type.  The cabinet houses a SMPS (switched mode power supply) which stabilizes and steps down the Line voltage, for powering the various devices.  The motherboard requires power, so also the drives (Hard-disk, CDROM and floppy).    The point to note is that the selection of cabinet dictates the selection of motherboard.  i.e., not all motherboards go with all cabinets.  There are smaller cabinets, mid-size and bigger cabinets.  In geek terminology, this is called Form Factor. Form Factor is the physical size and shape of motherboard. The different form factors are AT, ATX and Baby AT.

MOTHERBOARD:

The motherboard is the most vital part of the PC, it is the central nervous system of the PC (‘brain’ is the processor).  The motherboard houses the processor also, and when you buy a processor, fan comes part of it.  The motherboard has other ‘bus’es to accommodate other devices.  Newer motherboards have almost everything in-built. The chipset is the ‘spinal cord’ of the motherboard; is a set of ICs that control the functioning of the motherboard. The chipset controls the data flow between the different components such as RAM, Processor, display card, etc. The motherboard can be identified very easily, as it is the biggest PCB fitted in the chassis unit. Try locating the processor (which again should be very easy, being the biggest IC on the mother-board and INTEL/whatever manufacturer name written on it.)  Then look for the Memory modules (which should look like wafers-similar in size and thickness to a wafer) There may be a single memory module or a couple, fitted on slots.  The memory modules comes in capacities 16,32,64,128,256 MB, so the combination could be upto 526 MB. These can be very easily added/upgraded.  The prices had dropped very drastically around 6 months back, and now are slightly higher. However, before adding/upgrading check the type SDRAM, RDRAM(New) or EDRAM(Older). Also check FSB (66/100/133MHz).  

PCI/AGP SLOTS:

Now that you have identified memory slots, look for bigger slots on the motherboard.  There may be three similar-sized slots and one bigger slot.  The three similar-sized slots are the PCI slots, where the LAN card(in technical parlance, referred to as Network Interface Cards), sound cards, etc are fitted.  The bigger slot is the AGP (accelerated Graphics Port) slot, where the Graphics card (nothing but the display card, which sits in between the processor and the display device (monitor) and paints the monitor with color pixels, as instructed by the application program) is fitted. AGP ports have faster speeds, and directly access the system memory.  The present-day graphics cards are nothing short of mini-processor themselves, they also have in-built RAM (i.e., memory) and without such high-end cards, certain newer games and CAD packages cannot be run on the PC, however powerful the main processor be.

Now, look for ribbon-like cables coming out of connectors in the mother-board.  These cables are the IDE cables, used to connect the CDROM Drive, Hard-disk and the DVD Drive etc. ( In some high-end PCs, there may be SCSI controllers, which are not discussed here.)  There may be two IDE channels, one called primary and the other secondary, and each will consist of two cables.  Two master devices cannot share a single channel. So, if one device, say Hard-disk drive is connected to one cable of primary channel, then the next device, say CDROM Drive has to be configured as a slave(by ‘jumper’ settings on the device) if it has to be fitted in same primary channel.  So, four devices can be concurrently fitted, two as masters and two as slaves.  Of course, the Chassis/cabinet also should have vacant bays for these devices. Bays are nothing but vacant slots on the front-side of the chassis. Just look on top of the floppy drive. You will find 3 or four bays. One would have been occupied by CDROM Drive.  The remaining may be vacant where you can fit extra Drives, by just removing the boards covering the vacant slots.

Hard-disk drives now come in capacities 40GB at prices which were earlier for 2.1GB! You can either replace the existing HDD or go for additional HDD, if you want to augment the hard-disk capacity of the PC.  Similarly, 3-in-one CD drives are now available in market at very competitive rates (which can write/ ‘burn’ in technical parlance to a CD, read CDROM and also read DVD media).  Since burning (writing) CD media is very convenient (but, beware of legal copyright issues!) it is preferable to go for CD-writers rather than CDROM Drives.  Of course, CD-Writers (contrary to the what the name seem to imply) can also read CD.

The other ports seen on the mother-board (accessible at back-side of the chassis/cabinet) are LPT (for connecting the printers), USB (for connecting any USB-devices such as web camera, printers, scanners, modems, even mouse, keyboard etc), PS/2 port (for connecting the mouse) and serial ports.

THE SOFTWARE:

·       BIOS:

When the PC is first powered on, after fitting the mother-board, drives etc., the PC obviously cannot do any work and it requires an Operating system so that the other Application programs such as word-processing program, or e-mail program etc. can work.  However, there is a BIOS which is required in between the operating system and the hardware.  The BIOS(Basic Input/output System) is a chip that resides on the motherboard and has software (program) to detect the components on the motherboard.  When PC is started, it is the BIOS which first checks whether the components are working.  The memory check at boot up (boot up is just a fancy technical jargon and denotes start-up only!) is done by BIOS. If you check the start-up messages during the PC boot-up, you will notice this. Similarly, it checks for key-board, processor, hard-disk etc.  To observe this, just remove the key-board cable from the port and check for yourself, how the BIOS detects no keyboard, reports the error and stops further booting process. Another term you will come across in relation to BIOS is Flash BIOS which is nothing but denotes that the BIOS program in the chip can be changed/upgraded by just downloading it from the vendor’s website.  BIOS program can be entered by pressing ‘DEL’ key while the PC starts.  Just keep pressing DEL key as the PC boots, and you will enter the ‘setup’ screen of BIOS. Just navigate through each menu and see the fields. For quitting this setup screen and to continue, press ‘ESC’ key. Prompted to save, choose ‘N’(No) and you can come out of the BIOS Setup.  BIOS Setup can be used to set up a password for the PC (during boot-up itself, and this password is different from Windows password).  BIOS setup is used to configure the drives and host of other functions such as enabling/disabling drives, changing the sequence of boot devices. The boot devices are nothing but the drive from which the BIOS reads the boot(start) program of the Operating system. It could be floppy (boot floppy), CDROM media itself or hard-disk(normally).  This boot sequence should normally be C(hard-disk), A(floppy) and then CDROM Drive.  Now, if the sequence is A, C, CDROM then everything is okay as long as no floppy is inserted in floppy disk during PC boot-up.  However, if floppy is found in the A-drive and if it is not the boot-floppy, but some other files (may be document files) then the PC does not boot-up and you get error message ‘non-system disk- replace the disk’; Similarly, if CDROM Drive comes ahead of C-drive in boot sequence and CDROM Media other than Windows is found in the CDROM Drive, similar message appears. So before calling the help-desk, just check whether the drives are empty or any floppy/CDROM has been left behind by mistake while shutting down the machine.

·       OPERATING SYSTEM:

Now comes the ubiquitous Windows, which has made Bill Gates famous, rich, notorious and hated (not necessarily in that order!)  Windows is just one of the PC Operating system (actually Windows is a generic term, could be Windows 3.1, windows 95, windows 98, windows NT, windows 2000, windows ME, windows XP) There are more elegant o/s such as Macintosh (Mac for short) and more stable, open-source (free!) o/s such as Linux, etc. But, Windows and Gates are almost synonymous with PCs. (With Gates around, why someone needs Windows?!)

Let us say, you have just purchased the PC and the hard-disk is virgin new. First program to install is Windows o/s say Windows ME or 98.  Installing the Windows is just putting the Windows CD in the CDROM Tray and closing it! Yes you read right. It is as simple as that, the program will auto-run and will give very meaningful, plain English startup messages and will install the Windows.  Only point to note is whether you want to partition the hard-disks and in which partition to install.  In case you want to keep entire hard-disk as single partition, installing Windows is a breeze. Just go through the messages, sit back and relax, munch potato chips or whatever, and after around 15/20 minutes, and after 3 to 4 reboots, Windows will be fully installed and Welcome to Windows screen will flash at you! In between, you will be asked to provide Location detail for time-zone purpose, where you select India (GMT+5-1/2 hrs). Windows will start detecting the peripherals (printers, sound cards, NIC etc) and may ask for the drivers, which you provide, floppies or CD as the case may be.  I am stressing this part, because Windows installation is no big deal and may be required more than once in your PC’s lifetime, so you must be comfortable doing this. And it is more comfortable and easier than entering a phone number/contact detail in your mobile!

INSTALLING OTHER APPLICATIONS:

Installing other applications such as MS-Office (which is a suite of programs consisting of MS-Word, the word-processing program (used to type this article), MS-EXCEL, a spreadsheet program (you will be using this if you are a finance/accounting person), MS-PowerPoint (presentation program used nowadays by even Politicians!) and MS-ACCESS (which is a database application and not available in Home versions) is also quite a breeze.  All you have to do is to put the CD and close the CD drive.  The program will auto-run, installer will start and ask you some simple questions, like product-key (a password-sort of number available in the CD case), directory/folder to install.  Pressing Next (‘Enter’ key by default) will start the install process and complete installation will again take around 10 minutes, and after customary re-boots.

Now, what are the applications that come as part of Windows Operating system itself and what are the applications that are to be installed separate?  Windows operating system comes with few nice programs:

·        Internet Explorer – is a browser application i.e., used for browsing the Net.  This is one of the best browsers around, and comes free, part of o/s bundle. (A lot of legal suits against Microsoft was against this bundling of browser)

·        Outlook Express  - is a e-mail client program, used for sending/receiving e-mails.

·        Paint  - a image-processing/painting software

·        Calculator

·        Games – Minesweeper, FreeCell (solitaire)

·        System Tools  such as Disk defragmenter, backup, Disk CleanUp

·        Net Meeting – a conferencing utility, yes, even video conferencing, chat, file-sharing etc. between networked machines, even across dial-up connections.

·        Windows Media Player – for playing Video files

·        Sound Recorder – for recording sound

·        Notepad – a simple text editor where text can be typed, programs such as c, java, etc coded.

·        WordPad – a slightly advanced text editor, where some basic formatting of text such as Bold, underline, etc., font color change etc is possible. However, does not have advanced formatting options and spell-check facility etc of MS-Word/similar word-processing applications.(Who will buy MS-Office at extra cost if Windows bundles advanced WordPad free?!:)

So, from above list, it is obvious that you have to buy (or pirate!) other software applications.  Typically, could be games, could be some CAD packages (for designing), Multimedia applications, etc.  Many free and share-ware programs are available in CDs which comes free with Computer Magazines.  Nowadays, all firms allow us to download evaluation versions of their programs. (Even Oracle 9i is available, but at Indian bandwidth speeds, it takes around 10 hours to download!).  How to install these programs?

·        The program could auto-run, in which case, it is fairly simple.

·        In case the program contains a ‘setup’ file (setup.exe) double-click on it, and the install screen should appear, which should further guide you.

·        In few cases, the program may be in compressed form i.e., .zip file, in which case you need a WinZip program (free version available) to unzip (uncompress) the files, and then run the setup file.

·        In few cases, the program could be a single file (typically, like ‘name_of_program.exe’ –say, organizer.exe, which incidentally is a cute(!) little Visual Basic program developed by yours faithfully, which keeps me organized(at least I believe so!).  In such cases, the single file needs to be copied to your hard-disk and simply run the program/application by double-clicking on the file.

·        In few cases, the program will be ‘name_of_program.exe’ and few more supporting files in the same folder. In such cases also, the program can be launched (another fancy term for just running the program) by just double-clicking the concerned .exe file.  (in above two cases, kindly note that the program name will not appear in the Windows-program list-either you have to create a shortcut for the concerned .exe file in the desk-top or go search the file in whatever folder you had copied and then double-click the file)

In some CDs distributed free  with Magazines, the CD may fail to auto-run and the index.html start page may also be corrupted.  In such cases, installation of the programs contained within the CD can be done by searching for install.exe files in the CD.  Each install.exe file will correspond to a program/application.  If you study the file structure of the CD, you may see from the name of folders, the type of files it would contain. Say, ‘resources’ folder may contain WinZip utility.  Either setup file will be found in the folder or a compressed archive or a single self-extracting file will be found.  By running the file, the utility will be installed.

WINDOWS PROBLEMS:

Now that you have learnt how to install the operating system and the other applications/programs, you will start using the PC. Is everything okay? No! Within few days, your windows start complaining of some illegal operation (at least does not warn you of any legal consequences, like going to jail!) Then some programs stop working. Some blue screen comes up warning of some memory intrusion, buffer and what not.  The root cause of most of such behaviors is that the program/application you downloaded from Net or installed from some CD (usually pirated also!) is buggy (in plain terns, not written by qualified programmers!) or that the program is deliberately circulated (By even vendors like Microsoft) to test for bugs (most of free versions are bug-fix versions, i.e., the vendor wants free testing of his application!).  Now such programs cause memory leaks, over-write some windows module etc.  The remedy is actually three steps:

1.      First, try to uninstall the suspecting program.  Good programs come with ‘uninstall’ utility; just run that utility. If a program does not come with ‘uninstall’ utility, it is not a program worth putting in your machine unless you are risk-taker or knowledgeable (not both, which however is very difficult combination to find!)

2.      Else, re-install Windows .

3.      If both of above fails, format the hard-disk.

I would like to conclude this article by touching on two topics, file associations and backing up/restoring.

FILE ASSOCIATIONS:

When Windows o/s is the only application installed, what are the files you can use? As you observed earlier, windows comes with text editors. So any text file (file with extension .txt or even any other extension, but consisting of purely text characters) can be read.  Since windows come bundled with ‘browser’ (Internet Explorer) any web-page (file with extension .htm or .html or .shtml etc) can be viewed. Any video file can be viewed using Media Player, any picture file opened either in Paint (if it is .bmp file) or in IE itself. Any .rtf file (rich text format – plain text file, but with some basic formatting like richer font) can be viewed using WordPad.

Now, as you start installing applications and start to save files, many files with weird extensions start to form and grow in your PC. For example MS-Word forms .doc files. Now, these files can only be opened by MS-Word program.  If MS-Word is uninstalled or corrupted, then these files, even though they may not be corrupted/deformed themselves in any way, cannot be opened and thus becomes unusable.  To use such files, the application (MS Word in this case) needs to be re-installed.  In few cases, the files get automatically attached to some application during the installation of that application. Let us say, you install some image editing software and that application becomes default application for all picture files (all files with extensions .bmp, .jpg, .tif etc) Now, if you uninstall this Application, all picture files may get orphaned i.e., they do not know which application to use to open themselves.  In such cases, just double-click on them, a ‘open with’ dialog-box opens up, choose the application (say IE or MS-Paint, in case of image files) and the file gets opened up.  There is another way using file associations; Open windows explorer or My computer, go to ‘Tools’ menu and ‘folder options’ sub-menu. You can see a tab ‘File types’ There you can see the ‘file extensions’, ‘type of files’ and ‘opens with’ option. Just browse through each file extension to see for yourself the type of file, and the application used to open the file.

BACKING UP AND RESTORING:

Though I have not touched on Viruses, worms etc. to keep this article reasonably short, suffice to say that viruses and worms can and will attack your computer in no time. The CD of .NET (developed by Microsoft) and distributed in Korea contains a known virus, because the third-party used for translating to Korean language had their machines infected with viruses and this virus found its way to the CD, distributed by Microsoft itself! So, in spite of best precautions, your machine might one day lose all data. So, keep your important document files and all other files which you have saved in hard-disk and which you feel are important backed-up in floppies or preferably CD media, since CD writers are nowadays quite cheap and Re-recordable CD Media (which can be repeatedly re-used just like floppies) also cost around Rs 100/- only.  Floppies are quite unreliable and always keep at least 2 sets of backed-up floppies.

Plain vanilla back-up simply means back-up your user-files (i.e., files which are saved by you viz. MS-Word/excel/PowerPoint files – which can be found by searching for *.doc, *.xls, *.ppt in Windows find files dialog-box).  Any other files generated by you such as web-pages saved, picture/image files, audio/video files etc also might need backing up.  If you use Database application, all such database files need to be backed up.

Also as the files get modified (you edit a word file, and save it) the back-up media should also reflect this modified file. i.e., back-up any modified file.  There is a Windows back-up utility itself, which helps in easy backing up and synchronizing the time-stamp of files.  There are some third-party utilities also. There are utilities available which can restore your entire hard-disk data to what it was before it lost data.  However, you can always re-install o/s and all application once again, after data-loss and then restore only the user-files.  This takes more time and effort, but at least this plain vanilla primary back-up strategy should be in place, if you do not have any other strategy using fancy utilities.

Plain vanilla restoration of files simply means copying back the files from the back-up media (floppies/CD) to the hard-disk either in a single folder ‘backup-up files’ or if backing up was earlier done folder-wise, recreate the original folders and copy back the files.

CONCLUSION:

 I have tried to  cover the basics of PC internals in a simple, non-technical language. Only from your feedback, I will know if I have succeeded.   Please send your feedback/criticism/suggestions to sureshnaloor@ongc.net.

AUTHOR’S PROFILE:

Suresh Naloor, DySE(Electrical) joined ONGC in 1990. He is presently working as Database Administrator, IMMS in Mehsana Asset. He has a Electrical and Electronics Engineering degree from College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University, Chennai and MBA(Financial Management) and PG Dip in Operations Management from IGNOU, N.Delhi.  He is an Oracle Certified Professional in Oracle 7.3 and Oracle 8 and currently pursuing certification in Oracle 9i.  He is Brain Bench certified in HP-UX UNIX System Administration and General UNIX Administration.   His interest includes Oracle, Linux and other open-source software.  He is passionate about Ruby, no, not of stone variety, but a open-source interpreted, object-oriented, scripting language.