Routine tasks

Automatic scheduling

step 1. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative tools

step 2. Double click on the task scheduler

step 3. select new task and fill in all information. The boxes are self explanitory

Backup

1. In the control panel, select backup and restore

2. Select create a system image and follow the onscreen instructions

Improvements that could be made

D2

The first improvement that could be made to the computer is a new graphics card, the cost of this is around £36.62 for a Nvidia GeForce GT 520. The potential benefits of this include

·         Better rendering of graphics

·         Increased Graphical Performance

·         Faster picture loading.

The second improvement that could be made is internal, and it is defragmenting the hard drive. There is no cost to defragment, but the potential benefits include;

·         Faster loading of documents due to them being near each other in the memory

·         Faster speeds

The final improvement that could be made is formatting the hard disk. The cost of doing this is loss of data, but the benefit is more hard drive space, which could be essential depending on what the computer is being used for.

Report on how changed made the system more appropriate

CS3

M3

The modifications that I made in task 2 made the system more appropriate to the user’s specified purpose because by

·         changing the mouse buttons, I allowed the user to be more comfortable in using the computer, since there are a number of left-handed users.

·         changing the theme, I allowed the users to add a bit of personality to the computer, and with the options available, they can customise it even further

Test Plan and Results

I was testing my computer for functionallity. I came up with this test plan

I decided to do the desktop shortcuts first.

Step 1. I right clicked on the shortcut and selected properties, and look note of the file path

The file path is "C://ProgramFiles/AudioFreeFilesConvert

Step 2. I navigated to the folder specified, and found the program

I then did the time and date


Step 1. I went to the control panel and entered the time and date section

Step 2. I noticed that the time and even the date were wrong, so according to the test plan, I altered them to the correct settings



Before



After

Changing the mouse buttons

Step 1. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Mouse

Step 2. Tick the box at the top to change the default mouse buttons i.e. if left button was open then it will now be the right mouse button

Installing Software

Installing software

The software that is being installed is Audio free files convert.

1.      Double click on the installer (Highlighted)

2.      Click Next

3.      Agree to the licence agreement and click next

4.      The program will be installed

5.      Untick the run when finished box and click finish

Removing a Hard drive

Taking out a hard disk drive

1.    Set up all anti-static measures that you are going to use

Anti-Static setup

2.    Disconnect the 4-pin power plug by squeezing the sides of the plug and gently pulling it out

3.    Mark the pin so that you know which plug to insert.

4.    Remove the 16-pin power connector by gently pushing the sides of the plug and gently pulling it out of the slot.

Mark the pin so you know which one to insert

5.    Uscrew the two screws holding the hard disk in place and put them somewhere safe

6.    Gently remove the hard drive from the slot by gently removing in, being careful not to bash it hard against any surface.

To Insert a hard drive, reverse the directions and remember to firmly push in the plugs.

Expansion slots

Expansion slots allow the user to add or remove expansion cards, such as graphic or sound cards. There are a variety of expansion slot types these include;

• PCI (Pheripheral Component Interconnect)

• PCI Express (Pheripheral Component Interconnect express)
• ISA (Industrial Standard Architecture
• AGP (Accelerated Graphics port)

An AGP slot is used to support a graphics card, while the PCI slots are used to support various other cards like radio cards, TV tuner cards and Sound Cards.

We might have onboard graphics but we use a graphics card because it allows for better graphics on computers whose onboard might not have enough power to perform some tasks such as 3D rendering or image editing.

How can software utilities improve the performance of computer systems

Software Utilities help to improve the perfromance of your computer by helping to optimize it. There are a number of different utilities that are provided with the basic operating system, these are:

Disk Check

By running the disk check, it scans the main hard disk and check for any errors that may have occured due to a power outage for example. This improves performance because it is cleaning any errors that may have occured, and is allowing the computer to pick up files that may have been corrupted.

Disk Defragment

The disk defragmenter essentially put files that are stored in different parts of the hard disk back together, thus freeing disk space while speeding up your computer, as what power it was using to find and put the files back together when opening them is now not being used.

Web page cleaner

Often, when you are surfing the web, the computer saves the browsing history to the main disk, this results in slowing the computer down whenever you start up internet explorer, as it is loading all of the previous history, by running this utility, you are removing all of the history that is one week or older, thus there is less history to load, and internet explorer will load quicker.

Temporary file cleaner

When you are looking at web pages, or even working on files in microsoft office, the computer can store temporary files, these could be pasted images, and cookies on the internet. By running the disk cleanup, you can remove these temporary files, and cause the speed of your computer to increase.

Windows Update

Windows Update is normally used to install critical updates, but if you set it to install all updates, and to do it automatically, it can install updates that actually increase the computers speed. This is because they are normally low priority updates, and are not normally installed.

Software Utilities

Software Utilities are programs that help you to maintain a computer. they are normally shipped with the operating system , and can help to optimize the system. There come in a variety of forms, such as clean up and disk defragment tools.

Disk defragment tools

Occasionally, your computer's hard disk will become fragmented, which is when files that have been there that the user has deleted, and has saved new files in it's place, but if the file is bigger than the file that was previously deleted, then the computer will fragment that file, and place it in available empty slots on the hard disk. The disk defragmenter will consolidate those fragmented files and put them next to their counterparts while at the same time freeing up disk space.

To run the disk defragment, you go to

START-> Control Panel->System and Security-> Defragment your hard drive

Once in, you either analyze or defragment the disk, if you select defragment, the computer will automatically analyze the hard disk before defragmenting.




This is the analysis screen for the disk defragmenter, it is showing in the top bar what the fragmentation state would be before defragmentation

 After this the user has the option to defragment or view the report, if the user chooses to defragment, the following screen will appear




In this screen the top bar remains the same as defined in the top screenshot, while the bottom bar shows what the disk will look like after defragmentation.

 After the defragmentation the defragmentation report will come up.



This screenshot shows the defragmentation report, which gives details of the performed defragmentation



System Clean Up

This software utility is used to clean up disks of files that are not nessecary and just take up disk space. To run this utility the user must

START->CONTROL PANEL->SYSTEM AND SECURITY-> FREE UP DISK SPACE

This utility will first scan to see how much space you can gain,



This is a screenshot showing the clean up utility scanning and calculating how much space I can gain


and you can select what type of files are to be deleted using the checkboxes at the side of the program



This is a screen of what happens after the utility has scanned, as you can see, the amount of space you will save is displayed to the right of the item with the total amount gained is displayed underneath


When you select the "ok" button, the following screen will appear



This screenshot shows that the utility is deleting the files types that i selected in the second screenshot



Health and Safety

Health and safety is paramount when installing and changing computer components.

the main danger is static electricty, there are a number of ways to protect yourself, one way is the

ANTI-STATIC MAT

This is a mat that has 4 metal point on it for attaching a;
A) Wristband that you put on
B) A crocodile clip that you attach to the computer case
C) A plug that connects to the mains

A ANTI-STATIC PLUG

This plug connects directly to the power supply of the computer, thus preventing static electricity

The final method SHOULD ONLY BE USED AS A LAST RESORT

Place your thumb on the power supply and on the computer case, this equalizes the charge between the power supply and the computer case

Input/Output Panel

The input/output panel is located on the back of the computer and connects to many different pheriphals. The Panel tends to contain a VGA port, 2-4 USB ports, Sound ports for audio in/out, parralel ports, an ethernet port and a mouse and keyboard PS2 port.

A VGA (Visual Graphics Adapter) port is where the monitor plugs into. It is a 14 pin port with 2 screw connectors to hold it in place. A Parallel port is used to attach a printer to a computer. It is connected via a 25 pin connector. The PS2 ports are for use by a wired keyboard and mouse, wireless versions use a USB port. The Ethernet port uses an RJ42 connector.

Storage Devices

Storage Media

Storage Media is a place to save data to. The storage media can be in a variety of objects, such as  Internal Hard Drives, External Hard Drives, USB pens, Portable Hard Drives and CD and DVD disks.

HARD DRIVES

Hard drives are drives that store data in a computer, unlike external and portable drives, Hard drives are located internally, i.e inside the computer. An Hard Drive can have different capacities, such as 250 or 500 GB (Giga-Byte), and can go up to 1.5 TB (Tera-Byte) in size. The are normally connected by a 4-pin connector to a ribbon (See Power supply for details). To Remove a Hard drive, first unscrew the connector screws on the side that hold the hard drive in place, then remove the 4-pin connectior gently, you should also remove the 20-pin power connector. Then gently pull the hard drive out of the computer casing. To reconnect the hard drive, carefully slide the hard drive into the computer casing, then re-attach the screws to make sure that it doesn't slide out. After this carefully re-attach by gently inserting the 20-pin power cable into the slot on the hard drive and the 4-pin cable into it's slot.

External hard Drives

External hard drives are just that, the same as an internal hard drive with the same capacity but are located outside. To attach an external hard drive connect the USB (Universal Serial Bus) 2.0 Plug into the external hard drives slot and connect the power cord to the external hard drive.

Portable Hard Drives
Portable hard drives are like external hard drives, but do not require a power supply, instead they run off the computers own power. All you need to use a portable hard drive is a USB2.0 cable, and attack it into a USB2.0 slot on the computer. They have a maximum size of 500GB, any higher and they would be a external hard drive.

USB Pens

USB Pens are a easy way to carry media. To use just insert the pen into the USB 2.0 Connector on the computer. USB pens vary in size, up to 32GB

CD/DVD Disks

CD (Compact Disks) are mainly a form of storage media for music file formats while DVD's (Digital Versitile Disks) can be used to store video, music or just plain data formats. These disks that can be written using a CD/DVD burning program and are affixed with RW at the end, for example CD/RW means that it is a Compact Disk and can be Written too, overwriting any other data on the disk.