Lesson 5

Well, it’s never good news when someone has to explain a new noise. It doesn’t matter if it’s a car or your computer – strange noises often aren’t good. In this case, a continuous high-pitched squeal is a sign that the hard drive on your computer is about to die. The good news is that it’s giving you a warning signal instead of just suddenly failing. I’d recommend you get a hold of an external hard drive and back up your hard drive immediately. Once all your data has been secured, we’ll need to install a new hard drive on your computer. I hope you kept all the discs for those programs.

Lesson 5

Hey, it’s always scary when the tech department says they’re going to upgrade your computer, especially when you don’t know your FAT32 from your NTFS. Usually, though, you can trust that those guys know what they’re doing. In this case, they’re giving you a more advanced system of file organization for your hard drive.

To put it simply, FAT32 is the system you currently have. FAT32 takes your file and breaks it into pieces, then stores those pieces in little slots of predetermined sizes. If you have just a little information, the rest of that storage slot cannot be used. Imagine you’re putting your clothes away in your dresser. But each drawer can only hold one outfit. One drawer might have a sweater, shirt, pants, belt, socks and shoes. That drawer is almost full, so it’s a good use of space. But the next drawer just has a dress and shoes. There’s more space left, but you can’t use it because of the one-outfit-per-drawer rule.

NTFS is another way of organizing and storing your information, but it is much more secure than FAT32. NTFS stores a copy of backup information in the middle of the disk, which provides protection against losing information. It is like spilling coffee on a report, but the coffee just gets the edges of the paper wet. That information in the middle is safe. NTFS also lets you control who can access which files. Because we have multiple users on computers, it’s important to make sure that the person who works the shift after you can’t get into your files and change them. NTFS also reduces the amount of storage space you need because it allows compression of files. So simple – why didn’t they think of that before? Finally, NTFS is much more customizable in terms of drive setups. If you realize you need more information on a volume, you can quickly and easily reallocate space.

NTFS is becoming more common as people upgrade their old computers. It’s what I’ve got on one of my computers at home.

CIOS Lesson 4

Sorry to hear that the file is giving you trouble. Here’s a quick way to delete it. Hold down the Window key and press R. Type CMD in the box and press enter. This opens up the Command Prompt. From here, you have to get to your folder. Type D: and press enter. This will bring you to the right drive. Type CD EMPLOYEE and press enter to get to the employee directory. This is where you should be able to find the file by typing DIR, but since it’s hidden, we need to un-hide it. Type ATTRIB and press enter. You should see the payroll.xls file, and it should have an H before it. Type ATTRIB –H PAYROLL.XLS and press enter. To check if this worked, type ATTRIB again and look at the list. If that H is gone before the file name, the file is now un-hidden.

CIOS Lesson 4

At the Help Desk, employees will need to understand basic access to the computer systems in order to diagnose and fix problems. One of the ways you will access the system is through the Command Prompt. After opening the command prompt screen, you will use various commands to identify problems in the system.

The DIR command will show you the contents of any given directory. For example, if you type C:\DIR, you will see the contents of the C drive. A:\DIR will show you the contents of the A drive, and so on.

If you want to switch from one directory to another, use the CD command. For example, if you are in the C:\PROGRAM directory and want to switch to the C:\MENU directory, type CD\MENU. Typing just CD\ will return you to the root directory. Typing CD.. will move you up one level in the directory.

There may be occasions when you must create new directories from the Command Prompt. To create a directory called New, type MD NEW. Use the DIR command to check that the directory was properly created.

The opposite of making directories is, of course deleting them, and this is done with the RD (remove directory) command. From the C:\ prompt, type RD NEW, and the directory you just created will be deleted. Use the DIR command to check this.

It is important to note that RD will not delete a directory that contains files or subdirectories. To remove directories that contain files, type RD /S NEW in Windows NT, 2000 or XP. For Windows 9x or MP, type DELTREE C:\NEW. Be careful when using this command, as it is very easy to delete files you did not want to delete.

CIOS Lesson 3

Computer-wise, I am in the middle of two worlds. Most businesses I go to use PCs, but all the computers around me at work are Macs. I see Windows XP as the most predominant OS for the PCs. I use it on my two PCs at home, as does one of my roommates, and when I get a glimpse of the OS on different computers around town, it is usually Windows XP. The Macs is my life are almost universally running Mac OSX, except for one ancient laptop that was running OS 9, but has since been upgraded. Finally, I have one roommate who runs Linux. I’m no sure of the version, because he tends to get pretty long-winded if I ask him about his precious computer.

I think that Windows XP is predominant simply because many businesses buy new computer with an OS already installed instead of building a computer and installing their own OS. The most common systems for these cookie-cutter computers is Windows XP. Of my two home PCs, one came with XP preinstalled, and the other was pieced together from spare computer parts by a friend, who installed Windows XP because that was the disc he had handy. Windows XP will continue to dominate the market as long as people are buying pre-packaged computers and accepting whatever OS the company dictates they should have.

CIOS Lesson 3

The System Information Tool can give you detailed information about your system in one convenient place. For example, you can find information about all the drivers installed on your computer under the Software Environment > System Drivers. Detailed information about all the components installed on the computer is found in the Components menu.

While the information in the System Information Tool might be very complex, it can also be used for easy solutions. For instance, if you are trying to use an image for your desktop but are not sure of the resolution, the information can be found under Components > Display. The System Information Tool can also give you information about the applications on your system, such as how many documents are currently open for Microsoft Word and how many templates are being used.

CIOS Lesson 3

Windows ME, like all version of Windows since Windows 95, builds upon the basis of Windows 95 as a standalone GUI operating system. However, all these systems are based on Microsoft’s experience with DOS. For example, Windows ME functions as two different products, the GUI that we associate with Windows ME and also a DOS protected-mode interface.

Windows ME also includes several legacy files which help older applications run on machines with the newer OS. In previous versions of Windows, the INI files were used to initialize drivers and applications. Windows 3x could have dozens of INI files. The holdovers for Windows ME are system.ini and win.ini.

System.ini functions like the config.sys files from Windows 3x. It contains global settings which tell the computer how to use its resources. Today, the system.ini is necessary for older applications that look for the file in order to load other files.

Win.ini functions like the autoexec.bat files from Windows 3x. While the file is not necessary to boot the computer, it stores all of the personalizations and helps to define how the applications interact with the resources.