Windows

Common Computer Issues on the User’s Side in Westchester There is nothing more frustrating than starting your day in the office and your computer is acting up. You have deadlines, you have to answer emails but your pc does not seem to cooperate. We have been called very often in Westchester county to assist users early in the morning because their machines had issues that they were not able to resolve with a single reboot. What is even more frustrating is that not always computer problems can be resolved with a remote session, but company employees have to wait for a tech to come over to solve the problems. What Sandanotech Tech Support Recommends Is to hire an IT firm that conducts computer business locally so that computer support in person may not be late when problems arise. Let us Know if you Need IT Support A typical day in the office begins with employees arriving to the headquarters and trying to login into their Windows account. A typical office has workstations running Windows 10 or 11 and users’ accounts are managed by one or two Activer Directory servers. The common issues that office suers are experiencing can be described as follows: User Cannot Login into their Workstation That issue has usually to do with users not rememberiung their login password and in that case a Windows system administrator can create a temporary new password for the user. After having input the temporary password, users can create a new password that would have to comply with the lenght and complexity required by the company’s password policy. User Reports that the Computer is Turned Off In this case, a tech would first try to turn on the computer and see if the monitors as well power up. If the computer turns on, users may be forced to go past Bit Locker and then login. Another attempt can be if the tech support in place can try to unplug the power cord, keep pressed the power button for 15 seconds to discharge extra power and try to reboot the machine. If all fails, the computer technician should see if there are Bios errors or if the system does not load. It happened to us that we had to replace computers quickly for a client in new Rochelle because after the Bios post, the system would not load because of corrupted files. User Cannot Print Solving printing issues seems easy but in reality it’s a very tricky troubleshooting task. First you may want to check if user has tried to print multiple times and his/her print queue is full with print jobs. Clear all the print jobs, reboot the pc and see if the printer is set as default printer in the Windows control panel and if the printer drivers are properly installed. If you have a Windows server that manages print jobs through a Group Policy Object, you may want to check that as well and eventually reboot the server if users cannot print. User Has No Internet Troubleshooting Internet in a small office is not the same as trying to understand why you don’t have Internet at home. A small business office may have several routers, switches and firewalls, and IT technicians have to deal with each individual appliance to see what’s going on. Usually tech support in Westchester login into the GUI of those appliances by typing their IP address. If one of those appliances does not let you login, you may want to focus on that as a temporary single point of failure. User Has not Received an Attachment from another User Usually the issue occurs when a user sends a pdf or a large excel file to another user via email. As the sender is not aware of the attachment size limitation, the receiver will never get the file. In this case, although Microsoft One Drive and Google Drive are 7 years old, users still don’t seem to realize that it will be better to use cloud service to send attachments. As a matter of fact a cloud provider will send to the receiver a link to download the file from a cloud server and not the physical file. User Cannot Login into their VOIP Phones Nowadays tech support in Westchester needs to be able to troubleshoot VOIP phones as part of their core competencies. Users usually forget their extension number so it would be a good idea if computer people keep a copy of the company phones’ directory and guide user to the phone login process. If a new user is onboarded or terminated we recommend to outsource the phone systems to a cloud phone company who can create, reassign and delete users’ numbers in a more orderly fashion. Computer Monitors are Turned Off Monitors are usually not turned off but they are isle. I would check the connection, restart the computer and see if the picture comes up. If the picture does not showe up I would check the input source in the monitor itself, which can be DVI, VGA or HDMI. If all those fail I would eventually replace the monitor cable with a new one. Computer Running Slow If the computer runs slow, there are serveral things to check before taking action. Check the hardware first: as we have seen some of our Westchester clients buying computers with Intel Core i3 processor, there won’t be that much to do because that machine was born to be slow. If, on the other hand, the computer or laptop has a Intel Core I5 or Core I7, tech support may want to uninstall unused programs, turn off software and services from the startup menu that are not needed such as Xbox, run Windows updates, browser updates and Microsoft Office updates. A good way to free up some storage is to cleanup the download folder and to empty the recycle bin.  

How to Make Windows 10 Run Faster Under the generic statement,” My computer is slow, can you make it run faster?”, there are several assessments a computer technician has to make. Usually, clients do not describe what is slow for them, but they just explain their frustrations as users. In a business environment, tech support does not spend a lot of time asking users what’s wrong with their computers because IT has already an inventory of all the programs that are installed, and they know the age of the machine they are dealing with. In a small business or home environment, however, things are different and IT consultants do not support the business network with the same frequency of a larger corporate network. The main distinctions that I would like to make in this introduction is the following: 1- REMOVE IRRELEVANT STARTUP PROGRAMS One of the issues that makes computers run slow is the length of time when it boots up. Therefore, one of the first things to do is to offload the booting process of the computer. Go to the taskbar and right click. Select Task Manager. When the task manager window opens, hit More Details at the bottom of that window. A larger task manager window will show a list of the running programs. Head over to the Startup tab. The Start up tab will display the programs that boot up as soon as the computer is turned on. To disable a program from the startup,, select the program and click disable at the bottom right of the window. Reboot eh computer for the changes to take effect. 2- REMOVE PROGRAMS THAT YOU DON’T NEED NOR USE There are programs such as Microsoft teams or Skype that runs at the startup but that some users do not use at all. In the age of Zoom, not many users are using Teams. If you don’t use teams and Skype, remove those programs because these resources begin working when the computer is turned on. Keep only the programs you need and use on a daily basis. There are two ways to uninstall unneeded programs on Windows 10: A) From the control panel by going to the search bar and typing “Control panel”. Once the windows shows up, you just select the program you don’t want and click Uninstall.B) Left click the start menu and the list of all the programs running on your computer comes up. Right click on the program you don’t need anymore and click Uninstall. 3- DISABLE SERVICES THAT YOUR COMPUTER DOES NOT NEED Manipulating the services on a Windows machine requires a little bit of knowledge and research because we don’t want to disable Microsoft services that the computer may need. To disable services at the startup, go to the search bar menu at the bottom left and type “msconfig” and hit enter. As soon as the System Configuration window opens, you need to go to the Services tab, and you will see a list of services running in your machine. Be careful before disabling because the list mixes up Windows services with other services and we don’t want to accidentally disable a service that the computer needs. Head down at the bottom left of the of the System Configuration window and tick “ Hide all Microsoft Services”. By checking that feature, you will be prevented from disabling Microsoft services and damaging your system. Getting back to the now filtered list, a service that for example, I would disable is the Google Chrome Update Service. Reboot the computer. A better way to disable a service is to go to the Services tab and change the service from Automatic to Manual. By changing the service from Automatic to Manual, you will tell the computer not to start the service at the startup but only to start when it’s needed. 4- SCAN YOUR COMPUTER FOR VIRUSES Another reason why the computer may run slow is because of a virus. Viruses are programs that take many resources from your computer besides the implicit danger that they can steal users’ data. You can use any type of antivirus you are comfortable with but please do not run an expired antivirus. An expired antivirus can slow down your computer like having a virus and can expose your computer to malware. I personally prefer to run scans with Windows Defender because since the introduction of Windows 10, Microsoft has really boosted Windows defense by creating Windows Defender. In addition to Windows Defender I recommend a light antimalware program, Malware Bytes which can protect your computer from ransomware and your browser with the Malware Bytes Browser Guard plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge. To run a scan with Windows Defender, go down with your mouse to the bottom right corner and find the shield icon. After you have found the Virus and Threat Protection select Full Scan and let the utility scan for infections on your computer. If a virus is found, follow the instructions on how to remove it and after you have rebooted the computer, the computer may run faster (depending on the virus, though). 5- RUN WINDOWS UPDATES Gone are the times in which Windows 7 updates were making more harm than good. I still remember when in 2015, computers became slower rather than faster with updates installed on Windows 7. As Microsoft is emulating Apple systems with its interface similar to the IOS, Windows will gain extra speed if it is updated frequently. Similarly to Apple updates that are meant to remove system files and replace them with newer files that can make the computer slightly faster, Windows updates will overwrite the existing files with newer files that can give more speed to your machine. As a general rule, on Windows the updates will get downloaded and installed automatically, but if you want to run them manually, just type “Updates” in the search bar at the bottom left of the desktop and the Windows update window will

What to do When Your Computer Reaches 100 % Disk Usage What does it mean when your computer displays 100 % disk usage? How did we get to that point and what are the next steps to avoid data corruption?If you use your computer on a daily basis, chances are that sooner or later you will see the dreaded ‘low disk space’ alert on Windows. This alert is easily one of the most annoying and frustrating things you can see when using a computer.Unfortunately, due to the amount of multimedia content we store on our computers these days, it is almost inevitable that at some point your Windows system will become almost full with all those images, videos, and audio files. The good news is that with a little bit of tweaking and maintenance, you can prevent this from happening again in the future. In this article, I will take you through simple ways to reduce the disk usage on your Windows system. 1- DISABLE CONNECTED USER EXPERIENCE AND TELEMETRY SERVICE To disable some key services, click on your start menu and type in services and open the services app. From here the first service you are going to look for is the connected user experience and telemetry. Scroll down and here it is right here so you can click on that to change it from automatic to disabled. Push the stop button and then hit apply. By disabling this service, you are not only freeing disk usage but also avoiding Microsoft from tracking your activity. 2- DISABLE SYSTEM MAIN SERVICE Similarly to connected user experience, another service that is worth disabling is the Sys Main Properties. After having reached out to the services applet, you may want to configure the startup type to “Disabled”. What essentially System Main does to your computer is that it preloads applications into memory when the computer boots up. At the moment of booting up the machine, Windows tries to guess which programs you are going to use and it loads those programs in the background so that when you click on them it appears as if they’re loading faster: in few words Sys Main acts as a system cache that learns from user habits and prioritize the display of the programs user adopts more frequently. There is no downside in disabling this Windows service. 3- DISABLE WINDOWS SEARCH Without leaving the Services applet, another service that can be disabled is the Windows Search. Once you have disabled the service, click on “Stop” and then “Apply”, and “OK”, otherwise the computer will not remember your preferences. The search service typically uses most of your hard drive resources. However, I would not disable this service because not having the Windows Search functionality means not being able to search for files and folders in your computer. Better maybe to think about disabling this service or the computer usability can be drastically reduced. Another cons of disabling this service is that it will disable the Windows built-in backup utility, also known as File History. Therefore, I don’t think that there is a major utility in disabling the Windows Search service. 4- CHANGE THE POWER PLAN TO HIGH PERFORMANCE Changing the power plan on your Windows 10 machine will not have a huge impact on the disk usage but it will increase the performance of your machine at the expenses of its power. On a desktop computer this tweak is recommended but on a laptop you may want to think whether is more important for you to save battery power or have a slightly faster computer. To change the power plan you may want to reach an empty area of the desktop and right click anywhere on the desktop. Go down to display settings and then from display settings you want to click on power and sleep and then from there you want to scroll down until you see additional power settings. Once we open the utility, you will see that usually it is set by default to “Balanced”. From balanced you will change it to high performance. Click on it to create a new power plan that will be a high-performance plan under a new name that you are going to give. 5- RUN WINDOWS UPDATES Sometimes running Windows Updates will solve software glitches and may solve the 100 % disk usage issues. To run Windows Updates you can just type on the Windows search bar “Updates” and the “Check for Updates” utility will come up. Click on it and let all the updates go through. Reboot your computer and check if you still have the 100 % Disk Usage alerting your computer. If Windows recommends running also optional updates, please go ahead and let those updates be installed. Reboot the computer and run a check up again. 6- UPGRADE TO AN SSD INTERNAL HARD DRIVE If you have recently upgraded your operating system from Windows 7 to Windows 10 or from Windows 8 to Windows 10, it is time to check if your computer has still a spinning drive (HDD). If your machine still runs on a spinning drive, your computer will run slower because Windows 10 presumes you are running a machine with an SSD. The fact of not having an SSD when running Windows 10 can bring to the 100% Disk Usage issue. This is the most relevant of all the tasks listed in this article because in most of the cases it solves the problem of the disk usage. Windows 10 was conceived with the new reading and writing speeds issued by faster SSDs. Manufacturers should stop releasing computers with spinning disks also because users do not know when a computer comes with a spinning disk or a Solid State Drive. Consumers are lured by a cheap computer and they often make the mistake of buying a computer with a spinning disk or with a Pentium or Intel Core I3 processors. BOTTOM LINE One hundred per cent disk usage does not mean

Did you Accidentally Delete Files on Windows? Here’s How to Recover Them There is nothing more frustrating that seeing our files gone. When we are working on something and hit accidentally the delete button on the keyboard, we pause for a second to understand why this happened.There is no reason to be sad because when it comes to deleted files, they aren’t actually deleted from your machine; they’re really just hidden from view in order to be overwritten by the PC later on down the line. One of the simplest ways to get your files back is to check the recycle bin and this method is a lot more effective if you have just deleted your files. A lot of people don’t often check the recycle bin but most times you can find what you’re looking for if you just check the trash. Double click on the recycle bin to open it and go ahead and look through all the files that are there to see if the ones that you’re looking for are able to be recovered. Then go ahead and right-click on the files that you want to restore and choose restore. The restore button will move back the file to its original location. You can also drag the files out of the recycle bin and drop it on a new location where they will be stored. Use a data recovery software such as Disk Drill. It’s a powerful all-in-one software suite that not only recovers files but also protects files and disks from danger in the first place. A great feature of this software is that you can recover up to 500 Megabytes of data for free before being prompted to pay for a license. Usually, half terabyte is more than enough for documents photos. One important caveat is that you may want to download and install Disk Drill to a different drive than the one you’re trying to recover the data from so if you’re trying to recover files from your C Drive for example it’s really recommended you download and install the program to an external drive. Once you have launched Disk Drill the interface will show the drives that are connected. On the left, different panels display features such as the data recovery as well as the drive backup and data protection. To recover the missing files, start the scan itself and select the disk or partition where the files were in the first place from the list presented and then click on the search for lost data button to initiate the search. Once the scan is finished you can review the files within the file structure. If you’re looking for photos just select photos, and the software will help you to sort through all the different picture files. Put a checkmark next to the files you want to recover and choose a save location, possibly a flash drive or another external hard drive. Use a file recovery file like Recuva. Download the free version of Recuva from here. Install the software on an external hard drive like suggested for Disk Drill. Time and the installation of the software to an external hard drive can lead to successful recovery, whereas hesitation and installing recovery software in the same hard drive where we need to recover the data from can lead to no results, as software will overwrite the data we are looking for. If you use – and I hope that you are doing so – the built-in Windows backup utility, File History, it will be enough to browse to the external hard drive that contains your files previously backed up via File History and you can manage to recover the files you have accidentally deleted by using the version history feature. Contrary to Disk Drill and Recuva, there is no software that needs to be installed and you can recover the files back to your C drive, as there are no overwriting issues with File History. However, the only caveat is that you need to have set up the back up of your computer earlier than the accidental loss of your files. File History looks similar to its MAC counterpart Time Machine, because it offers the possibility to browse to the different version history each file and folder have. You can use the app Windows File Recovery that you can download from the Microsoft Store. The application works with the command prompt, but its use should not be intimidating.Type winfr and the letter of the drive where you try to get the files from. For example, if the source disk is C and you are trying to recover all .docx files in C, you will type the following syntax in the command prompt: Winfr C: D: /n *.docxWhere C is the source disk and D the destination disk, possibly an external hard drive that will contain the word files we are trying to recover. However, if working with the command prompt is not your forte, the developers of Winfrgui have created the interface that interacts with the terminal. You can download and install Winfrgui from here and install it on your computer without incurring in the overwriting issues described in Recuva and Diskdrill. All Disk Drill, Recuva and Winfrgui are free and can recover accidentally deleted data from internal hard drives, external hard drives and flash drive as well. The main difference between the built-in Windows tools and the third-party recovery software is that the Windows tools do not require to be installed to an external hard drive like Recuva and Disk Drill.