Is Your Computer Speed Really Slow?
If your car breaks down, can you fix it yourself or do you phone someone who can?
In an era where cyber war fare is a constant threat, we are living with a continuous fear of computer viruses.
The number of people that don't use a computer must be frighteningly small by now and yet how many of us are still in truth scared to hell of them when things go wrong?
Well, I can certainly say I'm one of them.
Recently, my one-year old Lenovo started slowing down all of a sudden. It threw up an error message that would not go away even when I clicked the ok button as instructed.
Over a three-day period, I tried running clean up scans and re booting it constantly until it was so treacle slow, you could click to open a window and go off and make a cuppa before it responded.
Levels of frustration and to be honest fear that I'd inherited a virus, were running at an all-time high.
Admitting defeat, meant time for action, but at least I had the comfort of somewhere to run.
I called my trusty friend Catherine Lister at Fingertips, who has come to my rescue on more than one occasion.
Fingertips is a technology support business which boasts an expert team that specialises in every sector of 21 st century computer and digital technology, such as phones, TVs, sound systems, wireless routing… even digitising your photographic collection.
Just having someone to call made me feel better. Catherine made an appointment for her pc specialist to visit me and asked me to email her over the content of the error message.
It took one heck of a time to send the email but Catherine called me later to put my mind at rest that it was not a virus and Sam would be round in the morning to fix everything.
Bang on the strike of 10.30 am Sam was beaming on my front door step.
Firstly, he asked me to tell him when the problem had started and the symptoms that I was experiencing, he then set straight to work.
Rather like any good detective he now knew he was looking for something that had happened in the last three days, added to which he'd entered my error message into google and established it was an app that was most likely draining my computers memory.
He went to settings then selected apps, which is a modern term for programmes or files.
Sure enough there it was, three huge files taking up almost my entire remaining computer memory.
This meant that if my computer was a small car, someone had just attached a huge caravan to the back and asked it to drive up a very steep hill in fifth gear!
Whilst Sam set about removing each of the apps, he explained that the first thing to do with a computer is not to be scared of it, most things are logical and it's a matter of looking at when things changed and what activity had been occurring during that time.
Somehow, I'd down loaded three apps which were meant for an industrial sized computer gaming devise. I'm still none the wiser as to how this happened, particularly as the only thing I'll have a flutter on is the Grand National!
Sam re started the computer after every programme was removed and as each app was disabled the computer speed increased until my Lenovo was once again whizzing along without unwanted baggage.
If like me you're not a computer Whiz, then having your own domestic IT department at hand is a real peace of mind and particularly after this recent adventure, my best tip is Fingertips.
Advertorial
March 23, 2018
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