AmateurRadio.com

 I try to keep track of  the last time I cleaned my desktop PC. I would imagine most of us out there depend on PCs for most of our tasks as well as entertainment. For me, it's very important once a year to remove my desktop PC from service and give it a good cleaning and once over. In the past, I have found loose connections, inoperative cooling fans and poorly seated cards. It's very surprising the amount of dust that can build up on components. Not always do I find a surprise when I open up the sides of the PC tower but it's better to find something at an early stage as opposed to waiting for a failure. As we all know these failures happen at the most inappropriate times. This time around nothing that needed attention was noticed and I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of dust inside.....but this is all part of the yearly look-over of the PC. At my station the PC is part of my operations as I use it for logging, contesting and for integrating my radio with the PC. On top of that not to mention blog posts, reading blogs and YouTube.

 I try to keep track of  the last time I cleaned my desktop PC. I would imagine most of us out there depend on PCs for most of our tasks as well as entertainment. For me, it's very important once a year to remove my desktop PC from service and give it a good cleaning and once over. In the past, I have found loose connections, inoperative cooling fans and poorly seated cards. It's very surprising the amount of dust that can build up on components. Not always do I find a surprise when I open up the sides of the PC tower but it's better to find something at an early stage as opposed to waiting for a failure. As we all know these failures happen at the most inappropriate times. This time around nothing that needed attention was noticed and I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of dust inside.....but this is all part of the yearly look-over of the PC. At my station the PC is part of my operations as I use it for logging, contesting and for integrating my radio with the PC. On top of that not to mention blog posts, reading blogs and YouTube.

 

In today's modern radio shack, unlike in yesteryear, a PC is a connected part of the overall setup. It can simply be for sending and receiving QSL cards all the way to station automation and control. In my station, my PC is involved in QSLing, digital modes, logging, radio control and contesting. For this reason, it's important for the average ham to have more than a basic knowledge of computers. A few years ago while looking for some specific PC information I stumbled across a web page called "Askwoody"

 This site has endless gems regarding computing. The site is a bit limited unless you register. A simple donation is asked for full access to a wealth of information on the site. One aspect I took advantage of right off the get-go was Windows patching or MS-Defcon as the site calls it. You are advised when to install Windows monthly patches, basically once Microsoft irons out the glitches. The site guided me to a program that stops Windows from automatically updating. I can update when I want to and when the Ask Woody site recommends it's safe to do so. 

They have user forums on more topics than you can imagine. Here are some of the takeaways I found at Ask Woody.

- When upgrading my PC there was a wealth of information on how-to, recommendations on processors, hard drives and ram. Recommendations are not based on the fastest and newest but what overall was the wisest upgrade for your system requirements? 

- The importance of backing up and recommended (free) very easy-to-use backup programs. 

- Recommended maintenance that you should be doing to your PC. With very easy-to-follow advice, links, free programs and user forums for advice. 

- becoming knowledgeable regarding your router, internet connection and firewall. 

These are just very few of the gems I have found on the site. PCs have become a part of our hobby and I don't want to become a computer wiz but not PC illiterate either. This is one of the sites that can make my PC adventure a bit more comfortable and gain some knowledge. 

I encourage you to take the site for a spin and see what you think? 

 

In today's modern radio shack, unlike in yesteryear, a PC is a connected part of the overall setup. It can simply be for sending and receiving QSL cards all the way to station automation and control. In my station, my PC is involved in QSLing, digital modes, logging, radio control and contesting. For this reason, it's important for the average ham to have more than a basic knowledge of computers. A few years ago while looking for some specific PC information I stumbled across a web page called "Askwoody"

 This site has endless gems regarding computing. The site is a bit limited unless you register. A simple donation is asked for full access to a wealth of information on the site. One aspect I took advantage of right off the get-go was Windows patching or MS-Defcon as the site calls it. You are advised when to install Windows monthly patches, basically once Microsoft irons out the glitches. The site guided me to a program that stops Windows from automatically updating. I can update when I want to and when the Ask Woody site recommends it's safe to do so. 

They have user forums on more topics than you can imagine. Here are some of the takeaways I found at Ask Woody.

- When upgrading my PC there was a wealth of information on how-to, recommendations on processors, hard drives and ram. Recommendations are not based on the fastest and newest but what overall was the wisest upgrade for your system requirements? 

- The importance of backing up and recommended (free) very easy-to-use backup programs. 

- Recommended maintenance that you should be doing to your PC. With very easy-to-follow advice, links, free programs and user forums for advice. 

- becoming knowledgeable regarding your router, internet connection and firewall. 

These are just very few of the gems I have found on the site. PCs have become a part of our hobby and I don't want to become a computer wiz but not PC illiterate either. This is one of the sites that can make my PC adventure a bit more comfortable and gain some knowledge. 

I encourage you to take the site for a spin and see what you think? 

Today I was planning ( you may get the idea by the first 4 words things did not go as planned) to sit down at the radio (Icom 7610) do some reading regarding the radio. I have the Icom advanced manual as well as The radio today guide to the Icom IC 7610 by Andrew Barron ZL3DW. I started up the 7610 without issue found my two above mentioned books. As a sideline, I have been following a conversation on the 7610 I.O. user groups site regarding external monitor issues. The last post it was advised to check the inline fuses? I never heard of inline fuses on a monitor and was just checking online to see if I could see any information. My first thought was someone is confusing the power line fuses in this case. I put the info into my browser hit enter and some sites came up and I clicked on the first site and low and behold my monitor went red in color and I was greeted with the picture above! There was also a phone number (not included in the pic) of "Microsoft" and they could guide me on how to solve the issue. Well, it was obvious to me that this is a scam but my huge issue was my security program did not pick it up and stop the loading. My security program is Bitdefender but more about that in a moment. What happened was my mouse became extremely slow to move around the screen. I was not able to access task manager to close my browser, I was not able to shut my PC down or restart it via menu options. At the time the only option seem to restart the PC by holding in the reset button beside my power on/off button. The PC started without issue and first off I wanted to make sure Bitdefender was running and it was, I then checked to make sure there were no features turned off and all were on. I then opened Malwarebytes (premium trial version) and did a scan and it picked up right away there was an issue. After the scan was done the issue files were deleted. It was time to find out what was up with Bitdefender and why it did not pick up on the issue? I went to their site directly to online chat. In a nutshell, the tech rep only wanted the Malwarebytes log files to be sent and examined. I was disappointed the tech rep did not want to go over my Bitdefender settings to make sure all was on that should be. There really was nothing he did other than having me email the logs. My yearly subscription with Bitdefender is up in 34 days and the handling of this issue my make my mind up either way if I am going to renew or not. Last week I had another question for them and the tech support told me the "back office" would email me a response very soon. Well, guess what I have never heard a thing from them so let's see what comes of the log file submission.