General Configuration and Front Page

The General section is the first screen you see each time you log into the ACP. It contains some basic statistics and information about your forum. It also has a subsection called Quick Access. It provides quick access to some of the admin pages that are frequently used, like User Management or Moderator Logs. We will discuss its items later in their specific sections. We will concentrate on the other three subsections: Board Configuration, Client Communication, and Server Configuration. Board Configuration This subsection contains items to adjust the overall features and settings of the forum. Attachment Settings One of the many new features in phpBB 3.0 is Attachments. Attachments are files that can be attached to posts, like e-mail attachments. Certain restrictions set by the board administrator, control what users can attach. You can set these restrictions via the Attachment Settings page. For more information, see the section on configuring your board's attachment settings. Board Settings The Board Settings allow you to change many settings that govern your board. These settings include important things such as the name of your forum! There are two main groups of board settings: the general BOARD SETTINGS, and WARNINGS settings. Board Settings The very first board setting you can edit is perhaps the most important setting of them all: the name of your board. Your users identify your board with this name. Put the name of your site into the SITE NAME text field and it will be shown on the header of the default style; it will be the prefix to the window title of your browser. The SITE DESCRIPTION is the slogan or tagline of your forum. It will appear below the SITE NAME on the default style's header. If you need to close your whole forum to do maintenance work, for instance, you can do it by using the DISABLE BOARD switch. To temporarily disable your board, selectYES. This will keep any members of your forum who are not administrators or moderators from accessing your board. They will either see a default message instead of the forum, or a message that you create. You can add your own custom message that will be displayed when your board is disabled in the text box below the DISABLE BOARD radio buttons. Administrators and moderators will still be able to browse forums and use their specific control panels when the board is disabled. You also need to set the DEFAULT LANGUAGE of your board. This is the language that guests will see when they visit your board. You can allow registered users to choose other languages. By default, the only language installed is ENGLISH [GB], but you can download more languages on the phpBB website and install them on your board. Find out more about working with languages in the section on Language Pack configuration.

You can also configure your board's default date format. PhpBB3 has a few basic date formats that you can set your board to use; if these are not sufficient and you would like to customize your board's date format, choose Custom from the DATE FORMAT selection menu. Then, in the text box besides it, type in the format you would like to use. This is the same as the PHP date () function. Along with setting your board's default date format, you can also set your board's preferred time zone. The time zones available in the SYSTEM TIMEZONE selection menu are all based on relative UTC (for most intents and purposes, it is GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time) times. You may also choose whether or not your board utilizes Daylight Savings Time by selecting the appropriate radio button next to the ENABLE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME option. You can also set your board's default style. The board will appear to your guests and members in the DEFAULT STYLE. In the standard phpBB installation, two styles are available: prosilver and subsilver2. You can either allow users to select another style than the default by selecting NO in the OVERRIDE USER STYLE setting or disallow it. Please visit the styles section to find out how to add new styles and where to find some.

Board Features Through the Board Features section, you can enable or disable several features board-wide. Note that any feature you disable here will not be available on your forum, even if you give your users permissions to use them. Bus A set of parallel conductors, which allow devices attached to it to communicate with the CPU. The bus consists of three main parts:

Control lines
These allow the CPU to control which operations the devices attached should perform, I.E. read or write.

Address lines
Allows the CPU to reference certain (Memory) locations within the device.

Data lines
The meaningful data which is to be sent or retrieved from a device is placed on to these lines.

Different RAM Types and its uses

Intro The type of RAM doesn't matter nearly as much as how much of it you've got, but using plain old SDRAM memory today will slow you down. There are main types of RAM: SDRAM, DDR and Rambus DRAM. SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM) Almost all systems used to ship with 3.3 volt, 168-pin SDRAM DIMMs. SDRAM is not an extension of older EDO DRAM but a new type of DRAM altogether. SDRAM started out running at 66 MHz, while older fast page mode DRAM and EDO max out at 50 MHz. SDRAM is able to scale to 133 MHz (PC133) officially, and unofficially up to 180MHz or higher. As processors get faster, new generations of memory such as DDR and RDRAM are required to get proper performance. DDR (Double Data Rate SDRAM) DDR basically doubles the rate of data transfer of standard SDRAM by transferring data on the up and down tick of a clock cycle.DDR memory operating at 333MHz actually operates at 166MHz * 2 (aka PC333 / PC2700) or 133MHz*2 (PC266 / PC2100). DDR is a 2.5 volt technology that uses 184 pins in its DIMMs. It is incompatible with SDRAM physically, but uses a similar parallel bus, making it easier to implement than RDRAM, which is a different technology.. Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) Despite it's higher price, Intel has given RDRAM it's blessing for the consumer market, and it will be the sole choice of memory for Intel's Pentium 4. RDRAM is a serial memory technology that arrived in three flavors, PC600, PC700, and PC800. PC800 RDRAM has double the maximum throughput of old PC100 SDRAM, but a higher latency. RDRAM designs with multiple channels, such as those in Pentium 4 motherboards, are currently at the top of the heap in memory throughput, especially when paired with PC1066 RDRAM memory. DIMMs vs. RIMMs DRAM comes in two major form factors: DIMMs and RIMMS. DIMMs are 64-bit components, but if used in a motherboard with a dual-channel configuration (like with an Nvidia nForce chipset) you must pair them to get maximum performance. So far there aren't many DDR chipset that use dual-channels. Typically, if you want to add 512 MB of DIMM memory to your machine, you just pop in a 512 MB DIMM if you've got an available slot. DIMMs for SDRAM and DDR are different, and not physically compatible. SDRAM DIMMs have 168-pins and run at 3.3 volts, while DDR DIMMs have 184-pins and run at 2.5 volts. RIMMs use only a 16-bit interface but run at higher speeds than DDR. To get maximum performance, Intel RDRAM chipsets require the use of RIMMs in pairs over a dual-channel 32bit interface. You have to plan more when upgrading and purchasing RDRAM. Memory Speed SDRAM initially shipped at a speed of 66MHz. As memory buses got faster, it was pumped up to 100MHz, and then 133MHz. The speed grades are referred to as PC66 (unofficially), PC100 and PC133 SDRAM respectively. Some manufacturers are shipping a PC150 speed grade.

However, this is an unofficial speed rating, and of little use unless you plan to overclock your system. DDR comes in PC1600, PC2100, PC2700 and PC3200 DIMMs. A PC1600 DIMM is made up of PC200 DDR chips, while a PC2100 DIMM is made up of PC266 chips. PC2700 uses PC333 DDR chips and PC3200 uses PC400 chips that haven't gained widespread support. Go for PC2700 DDR. It is about the cost of PC2100 memory and will give you better performance. RDRAM comes in PC600, PC700, PC800 and PC1066 speeds. Go for PC1066 RDRAM if you can find it. If you can't, PC800 RDRAMis widely available. CAS Latency SDRAM comes with latency ratings or "CAS (Column Address Strobe) latency" ratings. Standard PC100 / PC133 SDRAM comes in CAS 2 or CAS 3 speed ratings. The lower latency of CAS 2 memory will give you more performance. It also costs a bit more, but it's worth it. DDR memory comes in CAS 2 and CAS 2.5 ratings, with CAS 2 costing more and performing better. RDRAM has no CAS latency ratings, but may eventually come in 32 and 4 bank forms with 32bank RDRAM costing more and performing better. For now, it's all 32-bank RDRAM. Floppy Disk Drives

In this type of situation, you should be sure to find an external floppy disk drive that will work for what you need. An external floppy diskdrive will often connect through a universal serial bus (USB) port. If you are trying to boot from a floppy disk, then you should be sure the BIOS on your computer include USB support for boot devices. 34 cm) disk in the early 1990s, capable of holding 1.44 megabytes of information. For a while there were two floppy disk drive types often included with computers. The floppy disk drive has many parts that are needed in order for it to work properly.

Floppy disks are small, removable, media storage devices. They record data onto a thin, circular magnetic film encased in a flat, square plastic jacket. Floppy disks are somewhat antiquated, having been replaced by memory sticks and re-writable CD storage devices. Original floppy disks were 8-inch floppies used in 1971-1975, but the first floppy disks that were widely used commercially were 5.25-inch disks. These floppy disks were quite flexible and required a 5.25-inch floppy drive. The disks could store up to 360 kilobytes (KB) of data, or about one third of a single megabyte. Later, high-density floppy disks held 1.2 megabytes (MB) of data. These floppy disks were widely used until about 1987. As the technology of floppy disks improved, the next generation was smaller and eventually held more data. The newer 3.5-inch floppy disks also had hard shell cases for protection, making them less floppy. The term floppy disk was still used for many years, however. Some 3.5-inch floppy disks only utilized one side of the internal magnetic mylar film for recording data, with a capacity of 744 KB. High-

density 3.5-inch floppy disks doubled the capacity to 1.44 MB. In fact there were several configurations, including single or double sided (SS or DS), and single or double density (SD or DD). Hard disk drive
A hard disk drive (HDD) is a non-volatile, random access digital data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data ismagnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the platters. Introduced by IBM in 1956, hard disk drives have fallen in cost and physical size over the years while dramatically increasing in capacity. Hard disk drives have been the dominant device forsecondary storage of data in general purpose computers since the early 1960s. They have maintained this position because advances in their areal recording density have kept pace with the requirements for secondary storage. Today's HDDs operate on high-speed serial interfaces; i.e., serial ATA (SATA) or serial attached SCSI (SAS). ard disk drives were introduced in 1956 as data storage for an IBM accounting computer and were developed for use with general purposemainframe and mini computers. As the 1980s began, hard disk drives were a rare and very expensive additional feature on personal computers (PCs); however by the late '80s, hard disk drives were standard on all but the cheapest PC. Most hard disk drives in the early 1980s were sold to PC end users as an add on subsystem, not under the drive manufacturer's name but by Systems Integrators such as the Corvus Disk System or the systems manufacturer such as the Apple ProFile. The IBM PC/XT in 1983 included an internal standard 10MB hard disk drive, and soon thereafter internal hard disk drives proliferated on personal computers. External hard disk drives remained popular for much longer on the Apple Macintosh. Every Mac made between 1986 and 1998 has a SCSI port on the back, making external expansion easy; also, "toaster" Compact Macs did not have easily accessible hard drive bays (or, in the case of the Mac Plus, any hard drive bay at all), so on those models, external SCSI disks were the only reasonable option. Driven by areal density doubling every two to four years since their invention, HDDs have changed in many ways, a few highlights include:

Capacity per HDD increasing from 3.75 megabytes to greater than 1 terabyte, a greater than 270-thousand-to-1 improvement. Size of HDD decreasing from 87.9 cubic feet (a double wide refrigerator) to 0.002 cubic feet (2-inch form factor, a pack of cards), a greater than 44-thousand-to-1 improvement. Price decreasing from about $15,000 per megabyte to less than $0.0001 per megabyte ($100/1 terabyte), a greater than 150-million-to-1 improvement. Average access time decreasing from greater than 0.1 second to a few thousandths of a second, a greater than 40-to-1 improvement. Market application expanding from general purpose computers to most computing applications including consumer applications.

Components
A typical hard disk drive has two electric motors; a disk motor that spins the disks and an actuator (motor) that positions the read/write head assembly across the spinning disks. The disk motor has an external rotor attached to the disks; the stator windings are fixed in place. Opposite the actuator at the end of the head support arm is the read-write head (near center in photo); thin printed-circuit cables connect the read-write heads to amplifier electronics mounted at the pivot of the actuator. A flexible, somewhat U-shaped, ribbon cable, seen edge-on below and to the left of the actuator arm continues the connection to the controller board on the opposite side. The head support arm is very light, but also stiff; in modern drives, acceleration at the head reaches 550 Gs. The silver-colored structure at the upper left of the first image is the top plate of the actuator, a permanent-magnet and moving coil motor that swings the heads to the desired position (it is shown removed in the second image). The plate supports a squat neodymium-iron-boron (NIB) high-fluxmagnet. Beneath this plate is the moving coil, often referred to as the voice coil by analogy to the coil in loudspeakers, which is attached to the actuator hub, and beneath that is a second NIB magnet, mounted on the bottom plate of the motor (some drives only have one magnet). The voice coil itself is shaped rather like an arrowhead, and made of doubly coated copper magnet wire. The inner layer is insulation, and the outer is thermoplastic, which bonds the coil together after it is wound on a form, making it self-supporting. The portions of the coil along the two sides of the arrowhead (which point to the actuator bearing center) interact with themagnetic field, developing a tangential force that rotates the actuator. Current flowing radially outward along one side of the arrowhead and radially inward on the other produces the tangential force. If the magnetic field were uniform, each side would generate opposing forces that would cancel each other out. Therefore the surface of the magnet is half N pole, half S pole, with the radial dividing line in the middle, causing the two sides of the coil to see opposite magnetic fields and produce forces that add instead of canceling. Currents along the top and bottom of the coil produce radial forces that do not rotate the head.

Error handling

Modern drives also make extensive use of Error Correcting Codes (ECCs), particularly Reed Solomon error correction. These techniques store extra bits for each block of data that are determined by mathematical formulas. The extra bits allow many errors to be fixed. While these extra bits take up space on the hard drive, they allow higher recording densities to be employed, resulting in much larger storage capacity for user data. In 2009, in the newest drives, lowdensity parity-check codes (LDPC) are supplanting Reed-Solomon. LDPC codes enable performance close to the Shannon Limit and thus allow for the highest storage density available.
Typical hard drives attempt to "remap" the data in a physical sector that is going bad to a spare physical sectorhopefully while the errors in that bad sector are still few enough that the ECC can recover the data without loss. The S.M.A.R.T. system counts the total number of errors in the entire hard drive fixed by ECC, and the total number of remappings, in an attempt to predict hard drive failure.

HDD formatting
The presentation of an HDD to its host is determined by its controller. This may differ substantially from the drive's native interface particularly in mainframes or servers. Modern HDDs, such as SASand SATA drives, appear at their interfaces as a contiguous set of logical blocks; typically 512 bytes long but the industry is in the process of changing to 4,096 byte logical blocks; see Advanced Format. The process of initializing these logical blocks on the physical disk platters is called low level formatting which is usually performed at the factory and is not normally changed in the field.[38] High level formatting then writes the file system structures into selected logical blocks to make the remaining logical blocks available to the host OS and its applications. The operating system file system uses some of the disk space to organize files on the disk, recording their file names and the sequence of disk areas that represent the file. Examples of data structures stored on disk to retrieve files include the MS DOS file allocation table (FAT), and UNIX inodes, as well as other operating system data structures. As a consequence not all the space on a hard drive is available for user files. This file system overhead is usually less than 1% on drives larger than 100 MB.

Redundancy
In modern HDDs spare capacity for defect management is not included in the published capacity; however in many early HDDs a certain number of sectors were reserved for spares, thereby reducing capacity available to end users. In some systems, there may be hidden partitions used for system recovery that reduce the capacity available to the end user. For RAID drives, data integrity and fault-tolerance requirements also reduce the realized capacity. For example, a RAID1 drive will be about half the total capacity as a result of data mirroring. For RAID5 drives with x drives you would lose 1/x of your space to parity. RAID drives are multiple drives that appear to be one drive to the user, but provides some fault-tolerance. Most RAID vendors use some form of checksums to improve data integrity at the block level. For many vendors, this involves using HDDs with sectors of 520 bytes per sector to contain 512 bytes of user data and 8 checksum bytes or using separate 512 byte sectors for the checksum data

Performance Characteristics Access time

The factors that limit the time to access the data on a hard disk drive (Access time) are mostly related to the mechanical nature of the rotating disks and moving heads. Seek time is a measure of how long it takes the head assembly to travel to the track of the disk that contains data. Latency is rotational delay incurred because the desired disk sector may not be directly under the head when data transfer is requested. These two delays are on the order of milliseconds each. The bit rate or data transfer rate once the head is in the right position creates delay which is a function of the number of blocks transferred; typically relatively small, but can be quite long with the transfer of large contiguous files. Delay may also occur if the drive disks are stopped to save energy, see Power management. An HDD's Average Access Time is its average Seek time which technically is the time to do all possible seeks divided by the number of all possible seeks, but in practice is determined by statistical methods or simply approximated as the time of a seek over one-third of the number of tracks Defragmentation is a procedure used to minimize delay in retrieving data by moving related items to physically proximate areas on the disk. Some computer operating systems perform defragmentation automatically. Although automatic defragmentation is intended to reduce access delays, the procedure can slow response when performed while the computer is in use. Access time can be improved by increasing rotational speed, thus reducing latency and/or by decreasing seek time. Increasing areal density increases throughput by increasing data rate and by increasing the amount of data under a set of heads, thereby potentially reducing seek activity for a given amount of data. Based on historic trends, analysts predict a future growth in HDD areal density (and therefore capacity) of about 40% per year. Access times have not kept up with throughput increases, which themselves have not kept up with growth in storage capacity. Interleave Sector interleave is a mostly obsolete device characteristic related to access time, dating back to when computers were too slow to be able to read large continuous streams of data. Interleaving introduced gaps between data sectors to allow time for slow equipment to get ready to read the next block of data. Without interleaving, the next logical sector would arrive at the read/write head before the equipment was ready, requiring the system to wait for another complete disk revolution before reading could be performed. However, because interleaving introduces intentional physical delays into the drive mechanism, setting the interleave to a ratio higher than required causes unnecessary delays for equipment that has the performance needed to read sectors more quickly. The interleaving ratio was therefore usually chosen by the end-user to suit their particular computer system's performance capabilities when the drive was first installed in their system. Modern technology is capable of reading data as fast as it can be obtained from the spinning platters, so hard drives usually have a fixed sector interleave ratio of 1:1, which is effectively no interleaving being used. Seek time

Average seek time ranges from 3 ms for high-end server drives, to 15 ms for mobile drives, with the most common mobile drives at about 12 ms and the most common desktop type typically being around 9 ms. The first HDD had an average seek time of about 600 ms and by the middle 1970s HDDs were available with seek times of about 25 ms. Some early PC drives used a stepper motor to move the heads, and as a result had seek times as slow as 80120 ms, but this was quickly improved by voice coil type actuation in the 1980s, reducing seek times to around 20 ms. Seek time has continued to improve slowly over time. Some desktop and laptop computer systems allow the user to make a tradeoff between seek performance and drive noise. Faster seek rates typically require more energy usage to quickly move the heads across the platter, causing loud noises from the pivot bearing and greater device vibrations as the heads are rapidly accelerated during the start of the seek motion and decelerated at the end of the seek motion. Quiet operation reduces movement speed and acceleration rates, but at a cost of reduced seek performance. Latency Latency is the delay for the rotation of the disk to bring the required disk sector under the read-write mechanism. It depends on rotational speed of a disk, measured in revolutions per minute (rpm). Average rotational delay is shown in the table below, based on the empirical relation that the average latency in milliseconds for such a drive is one-half the rotational period: Data transfer rate As of 2010, a typical 7200 rpm desktop hard drive has a sustained "disk-to-buffer" data transfer rate up to 1030 Mbits/secThis rate depends on the track location, so it will be higher for data on the outer tracks (where there are more data sectors) and lower toward the inner tracks (where there are fewer data sectors); and is generally somewhat higher for 10,000 rpm drives. A current widely used standard for the "buffer-to-computer" interface is 3.0 Gbit/s SATA, which can send about 300 megabyte/s (10 bit encoding) from the buffer to the computer, and thus is still comfortably ahead of today's disk-to-buffer transfer rates. Data transfer rate (read/write) can be measured by writing a large file to disk using special file generator tools, then reading back the file. Transfer rate can be influenced by file system fragmentation and the layout of the files. HDD data transfer rate depends upon the rotational speed of the platters and the data recording density. Because heat and vibration limit rotational speed, advancing density becomes the main method to improve sequential transfer rates. Areal density advances by increasing both the Rotational speed Average [rpm] latency [ms] 15000 10000 7200 5400 4800 2ms 3ms 4.16ms 5.55ms 6.25ms

number of tracks across the disk and the number of sectors per track, the latter will increase the data transfer rate (for a given rpm). Since data transfer rate performance only tracks one of the two components of areal density, its performance improves at lower rate, Power consumption Power consumption has become increasingly important, not only in mobile devices such as laptops but also in server and desktop markets. Increasing data center machine density has led to problems delivering sufficient power to devices (especially for spin up), and getting rid of the waste heat subsequently produced, as well as environmental and electrical cost concerns (see green computing). Heat dissipation is tied directly to power consumption, and as drives age, disk failure rates increase at higher drive temperatures. Similar issues exist for large companies with thousands of desktop PCs. Smaller form factor drives often use less power than larger drives. One interesting development in this area is actively controlling the seek speed so that the head arrives at its destination only just in time to read the sector, rather than arriving as quickly as possible and then having to wait for the sector to come around (i.e. the rotational latency). Many of the hard drive companies are now producing Green Drives that require much less power and cooling. Many of these Green Drives spin slower (<5,400 rpm compared to 7,200, 10,000 or 15,000 rpm) thereby generating less heat. Power consumption can also be reduced by parking the drive heads when the disk is not in use reducing friction, adjusting spin speeds, and disabling internal components when not in use. Also in systems where there might be multiple hard disk drives, there are various ways of controlling when the hard drives spin up since the highest current is drawn at that time.

On SCSI hard disk drives, the SCSI controller can directly control spin up and spin down of the drives.

On Parallel ATA (aka PATA) and Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drives, some support powerup in standby or PUIS. The hard disk drive will not spin up until the controller or system BIOS issues a specific command to do so. This limits the power draw or consumption upon power on.

Some SATA II hard disk drives support staggered spin-up, allowing the computer to spin up

the drives in sequence to reduce load on the power supply when booting. Power management Most hard disk drives today support some form of power management which uses a number of specific power modes that save energy by reducing performance. When implemented an HDD

will change between a full power mode to one or more power saving modes as a function of drive usage. Recovery from the deepest mode, typically called Sleep, may take as long as several seconds. Audible noise Measured in dBA, audible noise is significant for certain applications, such as DVRs, digital audio recording and quiet computers. Low noise disks typically use fluid bearings, slower rotational speeds (usually 5,400 rpm) and reduce the seek speed under load (AAM) to reduce audible clicks and crunching sounds. Drives in smaller form factors (e.g. 2.5 inch) are often quieter than larger drives. Shock resistance Shock resistance is especially important for mobile devices. Some laptops now include active hard drive protection that parks the disk heads if the machine is dropped, hopefully before impact, to offer the greatest possible chance of survival in such an event. Maximum shock tolerance to date is 350 g for operating and 1000 g for non-operating. Backup In Information Technology, a backup or the process of backing up refers to making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form is back up in two words, whereas the noun is backup (often used like an adjective in compound nouns). Backups have two distinct purposes. The primary purpose is to recover data as a reaction to data loss, be it by data deletion or corrupteddata. Data loss is a very common experience of computer users. 67% of internet users have suffered serious data loss. The secondary purpose of backups is to recover data from a historical period of time within the constraints of a userdefined data retention policy, typically configured within a backup application for how long copies of data are required. Though backups popularly represent a simple form of disaster recovery, and should be part of a disaster recovery plan, by themselves, backups should not alone be considered disaster recovery. Not all backup systems and/or backup applications are able to reconstitute a computer system, or in turn other complex configurations such as acomputer cluster, active directory servers, or a database server, by restoring only data from a backup. Since a backup system contains at least one copy of all data worth saving, the data storage requirements are considerable. Organizing this storage space and managing the backup process is a complicated undertaking. A data repository model can be used to provide structure to the storage. In the modern era of computing there are many different types of data

storage devices that are useful for making backups. There are also many different ways in which these devices can be arranged to provide geographic redundancy, data security, and portability. Before data is sent to its storage location, it is selected, extracted, and manipulated. Many different techniques have been developed to optimize the backup procedure. These include optimizations for dealing with open files and live data sources as well as compression, encryption, and de-duplication, among others. Many organizations and individuals try to have confidence that the process is working as expected and work to define measurements and validation techniques. It is also important to recognize the limitations and human factors involved in any backup scheme. Computer virus A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive. Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer. As stated above, the term "computer virus" is sometimes used as a catch-all phrase to include all types of malware, even those that do not have the reproductive ability. Malware includes computer viruses, computer worms, Trojan horses, most rootkits, spyware, dishonest adwareand other malicious and unwanted software, including true viruses. Viruses are sometimes confused with worms and Trojan horses, which are technically different. A worm can exploit security vulnerabilities to spread itself automatically to other computers through networks, while a Trojan horse is a program that appears harmless but hides malicious functions. Worms and Trojan horses, like viruses, may harm a computer system's data or performance. Some viruses and other malware have symptoms noticeable to the computer user, but many are surreptitious or simply do nothing to call attention to them. Some viruses do nothing beyond reproducing themselves Troubleshooting and Repair Guide There is nothing more upsetting for a PC user than when there is a problem with their machine. This upset can turn quickly to frustration when the problem seems to be impossible to solve, or

even to understand. Every PC user has experienced these feelings, but it is in most cases possible to both diagnose and correct most problems with the typical PC. And with some help, you can usually do it yourself. The most important resource you can have at your disposal when you are trying to troubleshoot a problem with your PC is: experience. Those who have done a lot of work diagnosing and correcting problems with a wide variety of PCs develop a knack for recognizing problem situations that they have seen before. They also learn (and invent) techniques that make it possible for them to get to the root of a problem quickly. There's no substitute for experience, but I'm hoping that this Guide will be the next best thing. I have accumulated here the experience of myself and many other knowledgeable PC users, upgraders and maintainers, to help you learn how to detect and correct many common problems that plague PC users. This includes both general rules of thumb regarding how to troubleshoot your PC, as well as information on dealing with vendor warranties, and repairing your machine. The heart of this Guide is The Troubleshooting Expert, an expert system database of questions and answers that will help you to quickly find a solution to the most common problems with PCs. Over time I will continue to add to and expand this Expert so that it becomes an increasingly more and more useful tool for tackling the woes that plague the computer user. Serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time (contrast parallel port).[1] Throughout most of the history of personal computers, data transfer through serial ports connected the computer to devices such as terminals and various peripherals. While such interfaces as Ethernet, FireWire, and USB all send data as a serial stream, the term "serial port" usually identifies hardware more or less compliant to the RS-232 standard, intended to interface with a modem or with a similar communication device. Modern computers without serial ports may require serial-to-USB converters to allow compatibility with RS 232 serial devices. Serial ports are still used in applications such as industrial automation systems, scientific instruments, shop till systems and some industrial and consumer products. Server computers may use a serial port as a control console for diagnostics. Network equipment (such as routers and switches) often use serial console for configuration. Serial ports are still used in these areas as they are simple, cheap and their console functions are highly standardized and widespread. A serial port requires very little supporting software from the host system. USB (Universal Serial Bus)

is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices. USB was designed to standardise the connection of computer peripherals, such as keyboards,pointing devices, digital cameras, printers, portable media players, disk drives and network adapters to personal computers, both to communicate and to supply electric power. It has become commonplace on other devices, such as smartphones, PDAs and video game consoles. USB has effectively replaced a variety of earlier interfaces, such as serial and parallel ports, as well as separate power chargers for portable devices. IEEE 1394 interface The IEEE 1394 interface is a serial bus interface standard for high-speed communications andisochronous real-time data transfer, frequently used by personal computers, as well as in digital audio, digital video, automotive, and aeronautics applications. The interface is also known by the brand names of FireWire (Apple), i.LINK (Sony), and Lynx (Texas Instruments). IEEE 1394 replaced parallel SCSI in many applications, because of lower implementation costs and a simplified, more adaptable cabling system. The 1394 standard also defines a backplaneinterface, though this is not as widely used. IEEE 1394 is the High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance (HANA) standard connection interface for A/V (audio/visual) component communication and control.[1] FireWire is also available in wireless, fiber optic, and coaxial versions using the isochronous protocols. Nearly all digital camcorders have included a four-circuit 1394 interface, though, except for premium models, such inclusion is becoming less common. It remains the primary transfer mechanism for high-end professional audio and video equipment. Since 2003, many computers intended for home or professional audio/video use have built-in FireWire/i.LINK ports, especially prevalent with Sony and Apple's computers. The legacy (alpha) 1394 port is also available on premium retail motherboards.

Keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches. Following the decline of punch cards and paper tape, interaction via teletype-style keyboards became the main input device for computers.

Despite the development of alternative input devices, such as the mouse,touchscreen, pen devices, character recognition and voice recognition, the keyboard remains the most commonly used and most versatile device used for direct (human) input into computers. A keyboard typically has characters engraved or printed on the keys and each press of a key typically corresponds to a single written symbol. However, to produce some symbols requires pressing and holding several keys simultaneously or in sequence. While most keyboard keys produceletters, numbers or signs (characters), other keys or simultaneous key presses can produce actions or computer commands. In normal usage, the keyboard is used to type text and numbers into a word processor, text editor or other program. In a modern computer, the interpretation of key presses is generally left to the software. A computer keyboard distinguishes each physical key from every other and reports all key presses to the controlling software. Keyboards are also used for computer gaming, either with regular keyboards or by using keyboards with special gaming features, which can expedite frequently used keystroke combinations. A keyboard is also used to give commands to the operating system of a computer, such as Windows' Control-AltDelete combination, which brings up a task window or shuts down the machine. It is the only way to enter commands on a command-line interface. Pointing Devices is an input interface (specifically a human interface device) that allows a user to input spatial (i.e., continuous and multi-dimensional) data to a computer. CAD systems andgraphical user interfaces (GUI) allow the user to control and provide data to the computer using physical gestures point, click, and drag for example, by moving a hand-held mouse across the surface of the physical desktop and activating switches on the mouse. Movements of the pointing device are echoed on the screen by movements of the pointer (or cursor) and other visual changes. While the most common pointing device by far is the mouse, many more devices have been developed. A "rodent" is a technical term referring to a device which generates mouse-like input. However, the term "mouse" is commonly used as a metaphor for devices that move the cursor. For most pointing devices, Paul Fitts's law can be used to predict the speed with which users can point at a given target position.

Tape Drive

Is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. It is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and long archival stability. A tape drive provides sequential access storage, unlike a disk drive, which providesrandom access storage. A disk drive can move its read/write head(s) to any random part of the disk in a very short amount of time, but a tape drive must spend a considerable amount of time winding tape between reels to read any one particular piece of data. As a result, tape drives have very slow average seek times. Despite the slow seek time, tape drives can stream data to and from tape very quickly. For example, popular Linear Tape-Open drives can reach, as of 2010, continuous data transfer rates of up to 140 MB/s, which is comparable to hard disk drives. Windows 9x Is a generic term referring to a series of Microsoft Windows computeroperating systems produced since 1995, which were based on the original and later modified Windows 95 kernel. This includes all versions of Windows 95, Windows 98and often also Windows Me.[1] Internal release versions for versions of Windows 9x are "4.x", where previous MS-DOS based versions of Windows used version numbers of 3.2 or less. Windows NT used a similar but separate version number between 3.5 and 4.0. The first successor to Windows Me (with internal version 4.9), Windows XP, used Version 5.1.[2] Windows 9x is predominantly known for its use in desktops; in 1998 Windows made up 82% of operating system market share. [3] Most of the feature set and compatibility of the Windows 9x line of operating systems was merged with Windows NT with the release of Windows XP, which was the successor to both Windows 2000 and Windows Me. How to Install Windows 98 After you partition and format your hard disk, you can install Windows 98: 1. Insert the Windows 98 Startup disk in the floppy disk drive, and then restart your computer. 2. When the Windows 98 Startup menu is displayed, choose the Start computer with CDROM support option, and then press ENTER. 3. If CD-ROM support is provided by the generic drivers on the Startup disk, you receive one of the following messages, where X is the drive letter that is assigned to your CDROM drive: Drive X: = Driver MSCD001 Drive X: = Driver OEMCD001

NOTE: If your CD-ROM drive is not available after you boot from the Windows 98 Startup disk, install the CD-ROM drivers that are included with your CD-ROM drive. For information about how to obtain and install the most current driver for your CD-ROM drive, view the documentation that is included with your device, or contact your hardware manufacturer.

4. Insert the Windows 98 CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive, type the following command at a command prompt, and then press ENTER X:\setup where X is the drive letter that is assigned to your CD-ROM drive.

5. When you receive the following message, press ENTER, and then follow the instructions on the screen to complete the Setup procedure: Please wait while the Setup initializes. Setup is now going to perform a routine check on your system. To continue press Enter. How to Install Windows 7 This step-by-step guide demonstrates how to install Windows 7 Ultimate. The guide is similar for other versions of Windows 7 such as Home Premium. The best way to install Windows 7 is to do a clean install. It is not difficult to perform a clean installation. Before you start the installation process I recommend that you check Windows 7 System Requirements list to ensure that your hardware is supported by Windows 7. If you don't have Windows 7 drivers for all your hardware, it is a good idea to download all the drivers from the hardware manufacturers website and save all the necessary drivers on a CD-R or a USB drive before you start the installation. Windows 7 DVD is bootable. In order to boot from the DVD you need to set the boot sequence. Look for the boot sequence under your BIOS setup and make sure that the first boot device is set to CD-ROM/DVD-ROM. Step 1 - Place Windows 7 DVD in your dvd-rom drive and start your PC. Windows 7 will start to boot up and you will get the following progress bar.

Step 2 - The next screen allows you to setup your language, time and currency format, keyboard or input method. Choose your required settings and click next to continue.

Step 7 - Windows 7 starts the installation process and starts copying all the necessary files to your hard drive as shown on the image below.

Step 8 - It will go through various stages of the setup and will reboot your system few times.

Step 9 - When your PC reboots it attempts to boot from DVD as its the first boot device. Do not press any key during the boot prompt so Windows 7 will continue with the installation by booting from the hard drive.

Step 10 - After the reboot your computer will be prepared for first use.

Step 11 - At this stage you need to choose a user name and computer name. Click next to continue. The user account you create here is the Administrator account which is the main account for your Windows 7 that has all the privileges.

Step 12 - Choose your password and password hint just incase you forget your password and need to jog your memory.

Step 3 - The next screen allows you to install or repair Windows 7. Since we are doing a clean install we will click on "install now".

Step 4 - Read the license terms and tick I accept license terms. Then click next to continue.

Step 5 - You will now be presented with two options. Upgrade or Custom (Advanced). Since we are doing a clean install we will select Custom (Advanced).

Step 6 - Choose where you would like to install Windows 7. If you have one hard drive you will get a similar option to the image below. You can click next to continue. If you have more that one drive or partition then you need to select the appropriate drive and click next. If you need to format or partition a drive then click Drive options (advance) before clicking next.

Step 13 - You can now type the product key that came with Windows 7 and click next. If you do not enter the product key you can still proceed to the next stage. However Windows 7 will run in trial mode for 30 days. You must therefore activate Windows within 30 days otherwise you can not access your computer after 30 days.

Step 14 - Help protect your computer and improve Windows automatically. Choose Use recommended settings.

Step 15 - Review your time and date settings. Select your time zone, correct the date and time and click next to continue.

Step 16 - Select your computer's current location. If you are a home user then choose Home network otherwise select the appropriate option.

Step 17 - Windows will now finalize the settings for your computer and restart.

Step 18 - After the final restart Windows 7 will start to boot up.

Step 19 - Finally you have the logon screen. Just type your password and press enter or click on the arrow to logon to Windows 7 for the first time.

Step 20 - After you have logged on to Windows 7 for the first time, you will see similar desktop to the image below. At this point you can start using your computer. However it may not be fully configured. You need to make sure that all the hardware is detected correctly and the necessary device drivers are installed. This can be done from the device manager.

Step 21 - To go to device manager click - Start Menu -> Control Panel -> System and Security > System -> Device Manager. You will see all your hardware listed as shown on the image below. You need to check if you have any yellow exclamation marks next to the name of the devices, similar to "Multimedia Audio Controller" on the image below. This indicates that the driver has not been installed for this device. At this stage you can install the driver for this device. To do so, Right Mouse click on Multimedia Audio Controller -> Update Driver Software...

Step 22 - You can choose to "Search automatically for updated driver software" or "Browse my computer for driver software". If you have the driver CD or if the driver is on a USB drive then choose "browse my computer for driver software". Window 7 will search and install the driver from the CD or you can locate the driver manually. Once you have removed all the yellow exclamation marks from the device manager your Windows 7 configuration would be fully complete.

Step 23 - Finally check if you have successfully activated Windows 7. Click Start Menu -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> System. You will get a window similar to the image below. Towards the bottom you will see Windows is activated followed by your product ID. This shows that your copy of Windows 7 is fully activated.

Installing Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Start from the installation DVD To start your Leopard installation, simply insert the Mac OS X Leopard Install DVD and doubleclick the Install Mac OS X icon. You can also start by inserting the Install DVD and restarting your computer while holding down the C key, or by selecting the Install DVD as your startup disk using Startup Disk preferences. Note: Mac OS X 10.5 cannot be installed on a UFS-formatted volume; see this article for more information. Default installation if Mac OS X is already installed When the Mac OS X Installer opens, follow the onscreen instructions to select your Mac OS X startup disk. Eligible disk volumes appear with a green arrow icon. By default, the installer will upgrade your currently-installed version of Mac OS X to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Note: If you wish to install in a different manner, click the Options button on the "Select a Destination" window; see below for more information about installation options. If you need to quit the installer before the actual installation process begins, choose Quit Mac OS X Installer from the Mac OS X Installer application menu, and then click Startup Disk to select a startup disk for your computer. Installation options If the installer does not detect an existing version of Mac OS X on your hard disk, or if you click Options on the "Select a Destination" window, an installation sheet will appear asking you to choose between Install Mac OS X, Archive and Install, or Erase and Install. Select a method, then click OK to continue. Install Mac OS X choice This installs Mac OS X for the first time on a disk that does not have Mac OS X currently installed. This option moves existing system files to a folder named Previous System, and then installs a new copy of Mac OS X. This option is available only for volumes with Mac OS X already installed. Usually, if you select this method, you will want to also select (check) "Preserve Users and Network Settings" which imports existing user accounts, home folders, and your network settings into the new system. Erase and Install If you want to erase your disk before installing Mac OS X Leopard, select this option then click OK. Important: This option erases the entire disk, so make sure you've backed up your important les rst.

If you want to partition your disk before installing, use Disk Utility (choose Disk Utility from the Utilities menu). In Disk Utility, click Partition. If you partition the disk, you can select a disk format including Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitive), and Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitive, Journaled). In most cases, you should choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). After partitioning, quit Disk Utility to return to the Leopard Installer. Important: Partitioning the disk erases the entire disk, so make sure you back up your important les rst. Installing on a computer with a third-party SCSI card If you have a third-party SCSI card installed in your computer and you cannot start up Mac OS X 10.5, attach a device or terminator to one of the cards ports. If you continue to have issues, try removing the card. Contact the manufacturer of the card for more information about using the card with Mac OS X. Installing on a computer with a third-party video card If you have a third-party video card installed in your computer, you may need to remove it before you install Mac OS X 10.5. Contact the manufacturer of the card for more information about using the card with Mac OS X 10.5. The Ubuntu Installation Guide How to install Ubuntu from CD 1) Download the Ubuntu ISO from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and save to your desktop 2) Burn the ISO image to a blank CD using Roxio CD creator or similar:

3) Run the CD from My Computer the CD should ask permission to run at which point youll see this option screen:

Install Ubuntu with Wubi 4) If youd like to install Ubuntu using Wubi, select install inside Windows and follow the instructions. Installing with WUBI is ideal for a first taste of Ubuntu as you can remove from add/remove programs in Windows later on. This install process is really easy but you dont get the same performance as if Ubuntu had a separate partition running on its EXT3 file system. The following screens are all based on the Wubi installer process, so you can follow the rest of the instructions below. If youd like to install Ubuntu separately to Windows, then skip to point 7) below. Heres what you see next: If youve got the space on your hard drive, go for 30gb or more for the installation size. 5) Now configure your installation using the simple settings options. You can specify the location of the Ubuntu installation on your Windows partition, the size of the Ubuntu installation, the Ubuntu flavour (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc), your preferred language, and a username and password for the Ubuntu system.When you click install, youll see this screen:

As soon as the files have finished downloading, youll see this: 6) Thats it! Click reboot now, and select Ubuntu on the startup screen. You now have a fully functional dual boot Windows / Ubuntu machine. Install Ubuntu on a single (EXT3) partition (separately to Windows) 7) Click Demo and full installation and your computer will restart and boot into Ubuntu. Its worth saying at this point that youre about to install Ubuntu on an entirely separate drive partition. That means, you need to make sure you have enough space on your computers hard drive to accomodate the new setup. Keir Thomas found that a partition less than 4gb would lead Ubuntu to crash during install in his first look at Ubuntu 9.04 over at Lifehacker. Heres a guide on how to resize or shrink your Windows Vista partition. Follow those instructions before you reboot into the live version of Ubuntu and youll have a really easy time during the following steps. Maybe youd like to install from a USB? Lets have a quick look at the process of installing from a USB before we continue: Heres how to install Ubuntu on a USB drive from Windows Vista: Format your USB stick with a FAT32 partition from Windows. You can get to the format dialogue by opening My Computer and right mouse clicking the removable drive icon. Click Format and follow the settings in the image below. You need a minimum 2gb USB stick.

9) Download UnetBootin. UNetbootin allows for the installation of various Linux/Ubuntu distributions to a partition or USB drive, so its no different from a standard install, only it doesnt need a CD. The coolest thing about the application is that its a portable app. You dont need to install it into Windows meaning UNetbootin will run on your Windows PC without admin privileges.

The new version of Ubuntu isnt in the Distribution list supplied with UNetbootin yet, so use the downloaded Ubuntu ISO from earlier on. Add the ISO using the Diskimage, make sure your USB drive is selected below and click OK. The ISO transfers to the USB pretty quickly, so soon after you click OK youll see this screen:

10) Thats it when the installation process is complete, restart your computer and make sure its set up to boot from USB. On my HP Laptop, pressing F9 on the boot screen shows a boot order menu. Selecting USB Hard Drive follows a black screen, an Ubuntu logo, and finally, your new Ubuntu desktop appears. Completing your Ubuntu installation, step by step Installing Ubuntu is so easy that it requires very little effort past this point. If youve managed to repartition your hard drive and restart your computer youll sail through the next few steps:

11) Click install on the live desktop (top left)

12) Choose your language in the welcome screen

13) Choose your location

14) Choose your keyboard layout

15) Set up your disk partition. This is probably the most technical part of the installation. When Ishrunk my Windows Vista drive volume, I never formatted the new partition, which means the use the largest continuous free space option works nicely:

16) Choose your username and password:

17) Migrate your Windows documents and settings

18) Youre now ready to install your new Ubuntu installation

19) When the installation has finished, restart your computer (youll be instructed to remove your cd rom or USB drive). Youre now ready to begin using Ubuntu!