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File-Level Backup

File-level backups are the most common type of backup. This method has been around for a long time, and most people are familiar with the process.  File level backup allows you to save individual files and folders from your office computer to a remote location. You’ve probably used a consumer-level backup program to save files, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or Microsoft Office Drive. Because only changed data is saved with each backup, the total backup is smaller in size and therefore requires less storage space.

For most SMBs, operating only a few machines or in a home computing situation, this type of backup is usually adequate for maintaining your data. Delete a file? Go and get it from your external drive or cloud storage solution.

Image-Level Backup

Image-level backup is known by many names: bare metal backup/recovery (BMR), disaster recovery backup, ghost backup, block-level backup or “cloning” your machine. Image level backup is a more complete option for backing up your practice data. Rather than copying individual files and folders, image level backup takes a snapshot of your entire operating system and all of the data associated with it. The backup is saved in a single file called an image, which can be retrieved and restored if your practice suffers a major data loss. This backup method requires more storage space, but it’s much more efficient when you want to get back up and running as quickly as possible.

Another benefit of image level backup is that the copy of your operating system can be restored to any computer. So, if your hardware is damaged due to a fire or flood, or if your computers are stolen, there’s no need to search for and purchase compatible older machines. And, while the main benefit of image level backup is having the ability to quickly restore your entire server from a single file, it’s also possible to retrieve a singular file – eliminating the need for file level backups.

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Monitor Connectors:

· If you are using a Monochrome / CGA/ EGA monitor, it is a digital monitor and will have a DB-9 Male connector that plugs into a digital adapter.
· If you are using a VGA/ SVGA monitor, it will have a male DB-15 connector that plugs into ananalog adapter. You should never interchange an analog monitor to that of a digital adapter and vice versa, or severe damage may take place.

Video types

When you are installing a different SVGA monitor, it is unlikely that the new monitor has the same
capabilities as the old one. As a result, the image on the screen may not be readable. In such instances,
change the video resolution to Standard VGA before installing the new monitor. You can change the
resolution appropriately after the image on the screen is readable with the new monitor. It may also be
necessary to load appropriate device driver, if you are installing a different display adapter.

LCD Monitors:

The ‘native resolution’ specification points out one of the big differences between LCD and CRT
displays. If you run an LCD at any resolution other than its native resolution, the display will become
blurry, especially with text. The reason this happens on LCDs is that they are made up of tiny cells in a
matrix (called the native resolution). For instance, if the native resolution is listed as 1280×1024, then
there are 1280 cells across and 1024 cells down the screen. If you only display at 1024×768, then a
large number of the pixels are being ’stretched’ over multiple cells, which is what causes the image
quality to degrade.

Various resolutions commonly used with LCD monitors are as given below:
1024 x 768 is XGA (eXtended Graphics Array)
1280×720 is WGA/WXGA (Wide eXtended Graphics Array)
1280 x 1024 is SXGA (Super eXtended Graphics Array)
1400×1050 is SXGA+ (Super eXtended Graphics Array Plus)
1680×1050 is WSXGA (Wide Super eXtended Graphics Array Plus)
1600×1200 is UXGA (Ultra eXtended Graphics Array)
1920×1200 is WUXGA (Wide Ultra eXtended Graphics Array)

Wide screen format aspect ratio is typically 16:10 for computer monitors and 16:9 for LCD
televisions. Aspect ratio of 16:10 conforms with WUXGA standard. Further note that UXGA has a
resolution of 1600X1200 and an aspect ratio of 4:3.

Products or instrumentation equipped with a touch screen normally require a calibration routine upon
power up because it is difficult to perfectly align a touch screens coordinates with those of the display
underneath it. Calibration is necessary when the coordinates of the area touched on the screen are not
sufficiently close to the coordinates on the display. Without proper calibration, software may not
respond correctly when a soft button or icon is pressed.It is recommended that you clean the LCD
screen with clean water, using a soft cotton cloth. Do not spray water directly on the screen. First wet
the cloth (no dripping of water), and wipe the LCD screen gently.

Monitors and static charge:

1. Monitors accumulate very high static charges and need to be handled very carefully. Before
attempting any repair, it is important to discharge any accumulated charges on the monitor. You can
use a jumper, one end of which is grounded, and touch the other end of the jumper wire to the anode of
the monitor. While doing so, ensure that you are not in direct contact with the jumper wire or the
anode. You can use a screwdriver, or a nose pliers with rubber handle for this purpose. A “POP” sound
can be heard when the static charges accumulated on the anode lead getting grounded through the
jumper wire. Static charges accumulated on monitors may lead to severe burn or even fatal, if come
into direct contact.

2. Never wear a wrist strap when working on monitors. Monitors contain very high voltages,
sometimes fatal to human, even when the power is turned off. If you are wearing wrist strap, the
human body works as a conduit to discharge the electric charge.

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A bus is a set of signal pathways that allow information to travel between components inside or outside of a computer.

Laptop Buses

PCMCIA or PC Card

Personal Computer memory card international association is a type of bus use for laptops. There are different types of cards and you primarily slide in the card in a PC card slot of a laptop.

Type II PCMCIA Card

Note: PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) cards supports 16 or 32 bit bus width.

Express Card

Express Card is the newest form of card you insert in newer laptops

List of Ports

Computer ports are connection points or interfaces with other peripheral devices. There are two main types of computer ports: physical and virtual.
Physical ports are used for connecting a computer trough a cable and a socket to a peripheral device. Physical computer ports list includes serial ports ( DB9 socket ), USB ports ( USB 2.0 or 3.0 socket / connector ), parallel ports ( DB25 socket / connector ), ethernet / internet ports ( RJ45 socket / connector )….

In this day’s most desktop and notebook computers use only USB, VGA, Ethernet, IEEE 1394, DVI and TRS physical ports. Serial, parallel, PS/2 and SCSI are used more by industrial and professional computers.

Phisical common computer ports – short description

-USB port (Universal Serial Bus) created in mid-1990’s mainly to standardize communications between computers and peripheral. Also, USB ports can be used as a power supply for different devices like digital cameras, microcontroller programmers, laptop coolers and other. There were four types of USB computer ports: USB1.0 and 1.1 released between 1996 and 1998 with a speed range starting from 1.5 Mb up to 12 Mb; USB 2.0 released in 2000 with a maximum speed of 480 Mb/sec and USB 3.0 released in 2008 with a maximum speed of 5 Gb/sec.

-Ethernet/internet ports were first introduced in 1980 to standardize the local area networks (LAN). Internet ports use RJ45 connectors and have speeds between 10 Mb/sec, 100 Mb/sec and 1 Gb/sec, 40 Gb/sec and 100 Gb/sec
VGA ports (Video Graphics Array) has 15 pins displayed on three rows and it is mainly used for connecting the monitor with the video adapter from the computer motherboard; adapters:
·HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface)
·DVI (Digital Visual Interface)

-IEEE 1394 ports this technology is developed by Apple between 1980 and 1990 with the name FireWire and it is the equivalent of the USB for Apple computers

-IEEE 1284 ports Printers – Parallel Communication Standard

-TRS (Tip, Ring, and Sleeve) ports are used for receiving and transmitting with analog signals like audio

-DVI are computer ports used to transmit uncompressed digital video data

-PS/2 ports were introduced in 1987 to replace the serial mouse and keyboard

-Serial port uses the DB9 socket/connector and transfers information, one bit at a time, between the computer and other peripherals. The serial computer port identifies with RS-232 standard

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A bus is a set of signal pathways that allow information to travel between components inside or outside of a computer.

Other Types of Bus

USB

USB or Universal Serial Bus is an external bus that most popular form of bus use today
USB is hot swappable
USB can daisy-chain up to 127 devices

USB Speeds
USB 1.0 supports 1.5Mbps
USB 1.1 supports 12Mbps
USB 2.0 supports up to 480Mbps
USB 3.0 supports up to 4.8Gbps

USB_A Connector

USB_B Connector

AMR

Released September 8, 1998, AMR is short for Audio/Modem Riser. AMR allows an OEM to create one card that has the functionality of either Modem or Audio or both Audio and Modem on one card. This new specification allows for the motherboard to be manufactured at a lower cost and free up industry standard expansion slots in the system for other additional plug-in peripherals.

AMR Slot

CNR

Introduced by Intel February 7, 2000, CNR is short for Communication and Network Riser and is a specification that supports audio, modem USB and Local Area Networking interfaces of core logic chipsets.

CNR Slot

PCI-X

PCI-X is a high-performance bus that is designed to meet the increased I/O demands of technologies such as Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, and Ultra3 SCSI.

PCI-X card

PCI-X Slots

PCI Express

A high-speed serial I/O interconnect standard being used for high-speed connection it will eventually replace the PCI standards

PCI-e Card

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Source Learning About Computers

What are binary numbers? The binary number system is when only two numbers are used – 0 and 1. It is also called base 2. The computer number system is base 2. Our number system is referred to as decimal or base 10 because we use 10 digits (0 – 9) to form all of our numbers. There are many other number bases, including hexadecimal, but it’s easier for computers to utilize 0s and 1s.

In electronics, a 0 is off (usually 0 Volts) and 1 is on (usually 5 Volts). All computer data is composed of 1s and 0s. Each individual 1 or 0 is a bit. Four bits is a nibble. Eight bits is a byte. From there we have kilobytes, megabytes, etc. Since everything is a series of 1s and 0s, the CPU has to perform every calculation in binary. But before any operations are done, numbers have to first be converted into base 2.

But before diving into the binary number system and conversions, let’s first see how things work in our decimal system.

Let’s just pick a number…like 9345. How do we get this? Remember when I mentioned we use base 10? In math the base is a number that’s raised to a power (another name for power is exponent). For example 34 is 3 raised to the 4th power, which means you multiply 3 times itself 4 times (3 * 3 * 3 * 3).

We have what’s called a place value system. Each individual number holds a particular numerical position. We get these positions by using 10 raised to different powers. Start with the number on the right.

So looking at 9345, the right-most number 5 is in the ones place (10º = 1). The 4 is in the tens place (10¹ = 10). The 3 is in the hundreds place (10² = 100), and the 9 is in the thousands place (10³ = 1000). This is true for any number. Now the larger the number the more place values (ten thousands, hundred thousands, etc.), but I’m keeping it short in this example. So we have:

If you take each number, multiply it by its place value, & add the results, you get 9345.

Note: any number raised to 0 = 1. Any number raised to 1 = itself.

This method is used in base 2 except rather than the ones place, tens place, hundreds place, thousands place, etc. you have: ones place (2º), twos place (2¹), fours place (2²), and eights place (2³), etc.

Using the base 10 example just above, the number 1011₂ is like this:

It’s the same process for any number system. And remember, the computer number system always uses binary. So now that you have a basic understanding of place values, it’s time to start converting!

Converting From Binary To Decimal:
Converting binary to decimal is really quite simple. All you do is apply the same technique used in the place value illustration on the intro page except this time we will be using a 2 instead of a 10.

For example if we want to know what 110100011₂ is in our number system (base 10) we do the following:

We usually start on the right. With each number, you raise 2 to its power then multiply the result by the binary digit. When you’re done, add all the results together and that is the number in base 10.

This method is used for converting any number base to decimal.

Decimal to Binary Conversion:
Decimal to binary conversion is not hard either, it just takes a little more work. There are two methods you can use: successive division and subtracting values using a table.

Successive division requires dividing continuously by the base you’re converting to until the quotient equals 0. The remainders compose the answer.

As an example, let’s convert 835 to binary.

The most significant bit is the left number in the answer and the least significant bit is on the right end giving us an answer of: 1101000011₂

Binary digits are usually grouped by 4, 8, 16, etc. so we can place a couple of 0s on the left to give us three groups of four. This does not change the answer.

0011   0100   0011₂

You can check your answer by converting back to base 10.

We just looked at the successive division method of converting from decimal to binary. The other method is subtracting values. With this method you keep subtracting until you reach 0. Let’s convert 165 to binary.

Notice a 1 is only placed under the highest value that can be subtracted from a number. Everything else is automatically a 0 giving us an answer of: 101001012.

Hexadecimal:
The hexadecimal (hex for short) number system uses 16 digits to form all other numbers. The purpose of using hex is for human understanding. Computers always work in binary (0s and 1s). To have a long series of binary digits gets complicated, so programmers had to come up with a more simplfied way to represent them. Hex groups binary numbers into 4 bit packages so to speak. One hex digit represents four bits (called a nibble). Hexadecimal numbers have a subscript 16 or H behind them (D316 or D3H). Because single characters must be used, the letters A, B, C, D, E, F represent 10-15. Remember, when dealing with number systems, we always start with 0. So we have 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F. Memory locations are listed as hex values, and many times when you get an error message, your OS (operating system) will show you the location.

Example of hex and the number of bits:

F6AH – 12 bits
BH – 4 bits
78H – 6 bits

Converting Hexadecimal to Decimal:
As was mentioned in the binary conversion section above, we use the same technique to convert to decimal (base 10) from any other base. In this case, let’s convert 4B7F16 to Base 10 (decimal).

Converting Decimal to Hexadecimal:
To convert from decimal to hexadecimal, we use the successive division method discussed earlier only we divide by 16 instead of 2. Let’s convert 501 from decimal to hex.

We’re done since we can’t divide 1 by 16 and that leaves us with a remainder of 1. When writing the answer the LSD is always on the right and the MSD on the left. The answer is: 1F5₁₆

Converting Hexadecimal to Binary:
Remember hex uses groups of four bits, so we can use the table below for conversions.

To convert D14B to binary:

D = 1101, 1 = 0001, 4 = 0100, B = 1011

When we put the pieces together, we get: D14B₁₆ = 1101000101001011₂

Converting Binary to Hexadecimal:
To convert 1111010101001110₂ to base 16, we first break up the number into groups of four as shown below:

1111 0101 0100 1110

Now assign each group its corresponding hex value

1111 = F, 0101 = 5, 0100 = 4, 1110 = 14

When put together, we get F54E₁₆

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Source Learning About Computers

To install a power supply is really quite easy. It fits in the top back of the case. First, orient the holes on the power supply to those on the case.

Then, place the unit in the space provided and slide it in until the screw holes are aligned.

Secure it by screwing it in.

Finally, plug the power connector into the motherboard. It connects one way.

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As you can see in the picture below, your left-hand fingers should be placed over the A, S, D, and F keys and your right-hand fingers should be placed over the J, K, L, and ; keys. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

The most popular printer for home computer users that prints by spraying streams of quick-drying ink on paper. The ink is stored in disposable ink cartridges, often a separate cartridge is used for each of the major colors. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

Similar to a laser printer, LED printers are non-impact but use a light-emitting diode instead of a laser in the printhead. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

First developed at Xerox PARC by Gary Starkweather and released in 1971, a laser printer is a printer that utilizes laser technology to print images on the paper. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

Alternatively referred to as a Multifunction printer(MFP), AIO is short for All-In-One. It is used to describe a hardware device such as an all-in-one printerthat is a printer, fax, and scanner all in one device. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

A printer is an external hardware output device responsible for taking electronic data stored on a computer or computing device and generating a hard copy of that data. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

Almost all laptops can connect to an external display and have the laptop display sent to that external display instead of, or in addition to, the laptop screen. Examples of an external display include a CRT monitor, flat panel display, projector, or TV. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

Unlike a desktop computer, laptops and other portable computers often do not offer many upgrade options. Below is a listing of common laptop upgrade questions and the answers to each of the questions regarding laptop and portable computer upgrades. Read more »

Source Computer Hope

The word “virus” is often used as a common term for all malicious programs, but technically a virus is a program or code that attaches itself to a legitimate, executable piece of software, and then reproduces itself when that program is run. Read more »

Spyware can invade your privacy by recording, passing on and abusing your personal details – including credit card details – all of it behind your back. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.bullguard.com

All the information you need on rootkits and how to remove them Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.myturbopc.com

“Malware” is short for “malicious software” – computer programs designed to infiltrate and damage computers without the users consent. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

Find how much RAM is installed and available in Windows 8 and 10

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Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

A game’s online performance can be attributed to many factors. Below is a listing of some of the different causes of why an online game may be slow or laggy. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

[bs_icon name=”glyphicon glyphicon-exclamation-sign”]Tip: This page only covers an overall slow computer and not a computer that has a slow boot up or slow Internet.

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Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

A slow Internet connection can be caused by any number of reasons. Below is a short list of some of the more common reasons your Internet connection may be slow. Read more »

Source: Adopted From www.computerhope.com

A slow Microsoft Windows boot up can be caused by a number of different issues. The following document contains various suggestions and tips that can help improve the overall speed of your computer’s startup. Read more »

A bad computer motherboard or CPU can cause an assortment of different issues on your computer. Below are just a few of the possible issues you may encounter. It is important to remember that the issues below can also be caused by more than just a bad motherboard and CPU. Read more »

A heat sink is an electronic device that incorporates either a fan or a peltier device to keep a hot component such as a processor cool. Read more »