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Angel Luis's Archive

I am an Engineer of Telecommunications that love computers. My first computer was a Commodore 16kb, about 25 years ago and since then I am always fighting computers problems. Please visit my entries and ask me about whatever problem you have, I will be pleased to help you. My email is discoveryourpc [at] gmail [dot] com. You can follow me on twitter @agenlu or read my blog www.discoveryourpc.net

Angel Luis's website.

These days it’s common that an application fails while in use. It’s no mystery why programs have auto save features and even can recover from a disaster. These new features make you think is impossible that you can lose data. We feel very comfortable because it seems that nothings bad is going to happen. How many people do you know that have never done a back up?

Another problem is that we are humans and it is very common that we make mistakes. Have you ever worked on a document for hours and then realized that it was better before? Some can say that Windows has the Previous Version feature but for me it is not enough.

We are going to see today how to configure Windows 7 to backup files while you work on them. Read the rest of this entry »

In this post, I am going to show you how to find who is using your computer and for how much time. I can find at least three reasons why this can be very useful:

  • You want to control the usage of your computer; maybe your children spend too much time in front of it—even when you are not home.
  • You are running a server, with this I mean a computer that cannot be shutdown, and you want to know if it’s up and running.
  • You want to control your own usage—sometimes is very useful to have statistic about this.

Some might say that using Parental Controls is easy to block the access to a computer at some hours, but we are not trying to block anything.

Read the rest of this entry »

Check Running Services on a Remote Computer [How To]

Posted by Angel Luis On September - 24 - 20102 COMMENTS

A computer that is conected to a LAN or Internet usually offers some services. If we talk about a normal network that uses TCP/IP protocol, each of the services is going to use a port. For a PC to use a service, it needs to specify the number of the port.

The first step to know if a remote machine is running a service is testing connectivity. There a lot of programs you can use for this but today I am going to use PortQryUI tool. This utility can be downloaded from Microsoft:

PortQryUI Tool. Microsoft Download Center.

I have selected the application because is very simple to use. If you want to use something more professional try NMAP; you can use Google to find it.

Read the rest of this entry »

If I told you about Sandy Bridge theres a chance you don’t know what I am talking about. If I write that Intel is preparing a revolution in processor technology, maybe you can take the subject a more seriously. However, if I comment that the processor, which will appear at the beginning of the next year, is not going to be the fastest Intel processor ever, maybe you think that call that a revolution maybe is a bit exaggerated.

In this article, I’ll tell you a little about the Sandy Bridge processor from Intel.

Read the rest of this entry »

3 DNS Problems that Can Slow Your Internet Connection

Posted by Angel Luis On September - 16 - 20104 COMMENTS

As with every complex device, computers are known to experience problems. When you are trying to connect two computers, you have to deal with the machines and what is in the middle. If something is not working properly on any of these systems, the communication could experience performance problems.

Every computer that is connected to Internet that runs a service (usually a web service) needs to be located so the service can be used. For telephones we use numbers to locate people. On Internet we use words, for example to enter on this site you have to use www.mintywhite.com. There are some reasons why on Internet we use words instead of numbers:

  • IP addresses, belong to a location and  a country; if we only use numbers and for some reason you change your location, every link will connect to an invalid site.
  • It makes it easier to have several machines use the same words. Google uses this technique with www.google.com, which has more than one Internet Protocol (IP) address. If for some reason one is down, the others can do the job.

Domain Name Servers (DNS) do that job. Their work is to translate a name to an IP address. This system is hierarchical so it is not just stored on one server. In this article, we take a look at some DNS problems that can slow your internet speed.

Read the rest of this entry »

5 Ways To Solve Word 2010 Problems

Posted by Angel Luis On September - 11 - 20109 COMMENTS

Even as Office has evolved is not unusual to find problems using the software. We have to think that a Word document,  is more than just a file. It usually includes advanced features as macros, link to external data, etc.

Microsoft that is aware of that has included several ways to solve problems.

Safe Mode

Word 2010 includes a Safe Mode, it appears in other version of the suite. To enter this mode you just have to hold the Ctrl key when you are entering on the application. The following image will appear:

Read the rest of this entry »


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