Windows Tools, Help & Guides

In my last article (An Explanation of the Pros and Cons of Using RAID on Your Computer), we discussed the problem of heat build-up during the very hot Auckland summer months and how a RAID 5 configuration with 4 disks can sustain the failure of a single disk. RAID protections provide one part of what should be an overall strategy to protect your data and your computer from heat.

In this piece we divert a bit from our standard hardware/software fare and look at the computing environment as a whole. We will postulate that a tidy workspace is, in fact, a happy workspace and suggest a few tricks to make your work-space more productive and more comfortable.

The three biggest factors driving the design of my workspace are heat, noise and clutter. If I can minimise these three and maximize my computing power and productivity (all within family budget constraints, of course), I will have archived the objective.

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The purpose of this post is to confirm the confidence I have in RAID technology as expressed in the earlier post “RAID“. It is occasioned by my recent plans to write a very different piece.

Background: the Warning Signs

Summers can get pretty hot here in Auckland. The average temperature for this time of year is 24 degrees Celsius (that’s 75 degrees Fahrenheit to North Americans) with 99% humidity so it’s no simple matter to keep a computer cool.

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Once in a while, one of your applications will lock up and you would have to kill it (in the good sense of the word). Of course this will cause you to lose any unsaved data. At least you will learn to save your work more often, right?

But wait, there is something you may try first … before shutting it down “ungracefully”…

Using RESMON

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The System Health Report is a great feature of Windows 7 that will help you find potential problems with your PC and point you in the right direction to a resolution. This report records details about your computer’s performance, resource usage, and more and includes diagnostic information about things that aren’t working with resolution suggestions.

Specifically, the report includes:

• Diagnostic Results (Warnings, Performance)
• Software Configuration (OS Checks, Security Center Information, System Services, Startup Programs)
• Hardware Configuration (Disk Checks, Systems, Desktop Rating, BIOS, Devices)
• CPU (Process, Service, Services, System)
• Network (TCP, Interface, IP, UDP)
• Disk (Hot files, Disk breakdown, Physical disk, NTFS Performance)
• Memory (Processes, Counters)

In this guide, we’ll cover the following:

1. How to run a system health check.
2. View the output of a system health check.
3. Research Issues.
4. Fix Issues.
5. Get help with reported issues.

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In earlier versions of Windows, you’d need a third-party solution to help you monitor key subsystems (CPU, RAM etc.) of your computer. With Vista, came the Resource Monitor (Resmon) and with Windows 7 came improvements to the Resource Monitor.

In this guide, we talk more about Windows 7′s Resource Monitor. Previously, Angel Luis showed you how to determine if you need more RAM using Windows 7′s resource monitor. In this guide, we’ll show you what else you can monitor with Resource Monitor and help you interpret the data it gives.

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You must have figured it out by now, I love these little Quick-Tips. I also love to find new uses for “old” things. I recently re-discovered the LOG feature in Notepad, and this inspired me to dig out some more hidden features of this seemingly insignificant program that has been installed with every single Windows Version I can remember.

This time I’ll show you how to Hide important information inside a Notepad document.

It has been reported that this doesn’t work on FAT partitions, only NTFS.  But if it does – let me know.

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