How to Find Out Your Motherboard Manufacturer and Model

 To know the manufacturer and exact model of your motherboard, especially if you do plan to upgrade your computer, since the upgrade capabilities of your computer are set by the motherboard model you have. You will need to know this information if you need to perform a BIOS upgrade or download your motherboard manual or drivers. A BIOS upgrade is needed to make your computer to recognize a new CPU, and the manual is necessary if you want to check how much RAM your computer is able to recognize, for example.
Finding out this information is not so easy, because many manufacturers simply don't print on the motherboard their name or the model name. Also, you may want to check if the motherboard installed in your PC is really the model you ordered. Usually the warranty is void if you open your computer, so you will need to learn how to find out this information without opening your PC.

How it is possible to know the motherboard manufacturer thru software? 

Sandra
After installing Sandra, run it and go to Modules, Information Modules, Mainboard Information or simply double click the Mainboard Information icon present on Sandra's main screen.

Sandra will need one minute to collect all information about your computer. On the screen it will show, you can easily see your motherboard manufacturer under Manufacturer and its model under Model. Take a look on Figure 1 and you will see that we were using a Gigabyte GA-7VAXP Ultra motherboard.


Figure 1: Identifying your motherboard manufacturer and model with Sandra.

On this screen you can also find several other useful information about your motherboard, like how many memory slots it has and which ones are used and the chipset model your motherboard is based on. You can also see the BIOS serial number we were talking about under System BIOS.

Download Sissoftware Sandra
The size of the software is 56.5 mb

Techniques being used to steal passwords ; The Importance of Strong Passwords.

Keep your computer, data and accounts safe with strong passwords.

Your first line of defense on the Web is creating the strongest password possible to protect your computer, your data and your online accounts. That may sound like common sense, but hackers have become increasingly sophisticated at password “cracking.” What may have been considered a strong password a year ago may now be considered an open window to your computer. Internet security is based on a “weakest link” principle; hackers are constantly searching to find the weakest link possible to give them access to a network or computer. Often that weak link is a weak password.

There are a number of dos and don’ts when creating and managing your passwords, but there are some basics guidelines you can follow.

• Use both upper- and lower-case letters
• Incorporate numbers or punctuation marks
• Use at least one of these special characters: ! @ # $ % * ( ) - + = , < > : : “ ‘ .
• Make it at least 8 characters long.
• A strong password does NOT, in any way, use your personal information, such as name, phone number, Social Security number, birth date, address or names of anyone you know.
• Come up with something you can remember easily, but would be virtually impossible for anyone else to guess.

So, what can happen when you don’t have a strong password? If someone else is able to guess or crack your password, you give them access to your e-mail or IM messages, your bank accounts, your research, your contact lists or anything else you may have on your computer. They could start to alter or destroy files or even overtake your computer and turn it into a zombie. (A zombie computer is one overtaken by a hacker and used to perform malicious tasks, such as sending out large amounts of spam.)

There are a lot of techniques being used to steal passwords. Some of the most common include:

• Guessing. There are a number of programs designed to guess a user’s password based on information found online about the user, such as names, birth dates, names of friends or significant others, pet names or license plate numbers. They can even search for a word spelled backwards.
• Dictionary-based attacks. Programs and software also exist that will run every word in a dictionary or word list against a user name in hopes of finding or guessing a password.
• “Brute Force” attacks. This attack method refers to trying every conceivable combination of key strokes in tandem with a user name to find the password. There are programs that can run brute force attacks in very quickly. The best way to beat a brute force attack is to have a long and complex password, using upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters and punctuation marks.
• Phishing. This is a common scam technique where a hacker will send out an urgent IM or e-mail message designed to alarm or excite users into responding. These messages will appear to be from a friend, bank or other legitimate source directing users to phony Web sites designed to trick them into providing personal information, such as their user names and passwords.
• “Shoulder surfing.” Be careful when logging on to a computer in public, such as a computer lab, cybercafé or library. There may be hackers lurking around for the express purpose of watching people enter their user names and passwords. It’s a good idea to have a password you can enter quickly without looking at the keyboard.

Keep in mind that protecting your computer and accounts with strong passwords also protects other users when connected by a network. For instance, just about student, faculty member and staff member at The University of Texas at Austin regularly accesses the university network. If one password is breached, all of the computers on the network are put at potential risk for hackers, viruses or worms. We each need to do our part to protect computing resources at the university. Just remember, a network is only as strong as its weakest password.

Courtesy : www.utexas.edu/its/secure/articles/importance_strong_passwords.php

How To Make A USB Printer Wireless

 

Wireless Product Equipment - Network Routers, Access Points, Adapters and More Linksys WPS54G Wireless Print Server

 

Most homes these days have multiple computers. Whether it’s a laptop in one room or a desktop PC in another, they will both need access to a printer. Sharing a printer can be complex to setup, and the host PC always needs to be on for any other computers to print to it. A great solution is to add a wireless printer to the network. If you have an existing printer, you can easily make printer wireless by hooking it up to a wireless print server. A print server is a tiny box that connects to the printer, allowing it to be seen and accessed by other machines in your home.

 

Install A Print Server

You don’t have to be a network guru to install a print server. Print servers will come with a CD that allows you to set up and configure it. There are a few things to consider when setting up the wireless printer. Follow these steps to install your print server and setup the wireless features:

1. Plug the print server into the printer with a USB cable.
2. If you want to put the printer on the wired network as well, plug an Ethernet cable into the back.
3. Plug in the power cable.
4. Insert the CD into a computer on the network and the setup screen will launch.
5. You will need to put in the name of your router (the SSID). The SSID is the name you see when you access the router over WiFi.
6. You will have an option to have the router give the print server an IP address automatically through DHCP or you can assign a static IP address. For ease of setup, allow it to obtain an IP address through DHCP. More experienced users might opt to assign an IP address to the printer.
7. If asked, select Infrastructure Mode instead of Ad Hoc.

You will then need to go around to each PC and run the CD that came with the print server. The software will install a driver for the print server which is able to see the printer on the network. Once the print driver is installed, run it by going to Start, then All Programs. You should see the print driver utility listed along with the other programs. Once you click on the setup utility, you will be able to select your printer over the network.

If you did not already have the printer installed on your computer, you might need to obtain printer drivers from the printer manufacture if you no longer have the CD.

You can make almost any printer wireless. You will need to get the correct print server for your printer, though. Most print servers will already have inputs for a USB cable. But if you have an older printer that uses a parallel connection, you will need to purchase a print server that have a parallel port.
If you’re ready to put your old printer on the network and make printer wireless,

Asus Eee PC Recovery

Eee PC Recovery

The Eee PC is an Asus in the netbook form-factor. The laptop is ultra small and ultra light. As a result, the Eee PC and other netbooks suffer from the limitation of not having an optical drive. This makes performing an Eee PC recovery more challenging than your average computer. In addition, there is no logical way to create an Eee PC recovery disk through the Start menu. Fortunately, Asus has a utility you can use to recover from a hidden partition or use a USB stick to create a bootable recovery disk you can use to restore Windows in case of an emergency.

Disable Eee PC Boot Booster


Disable The Eee PC Boot Booster

The Eee PC Boot Booster shortens the boot time on the Eee PC. You will not be able to create recovery media or use the recovery partition unless you disable the Boot Booster in the BIOS setup. To access the BIOS of your Eee PC computer, boot the PC and tap the F2 key. You will enter the BIOS setup where you can easily locate the Boot Booster option and toggle it from ENABLE to DISABLE. Next, press the F10 key to save and exit the BIOS. The computer will automatically reboot, allowing you to press F9 and access a Recovery menu that had not been there previously.

Eee PC Recovery Partition

Once the Boot Booster has been disabled, you can now access the recovery options by tapping the F9 key when booting up the computer.


The Eee PC Recovery Partition

You will see a couple of options for recovery. The first button, marked Recovery, will allow you to use a hidden partition on the hard drive to restore your Asus Eee PC to factory condition. You will lose any data you do not have saved, so create backups of your photos, documents, and other important data you do not want to lose. Follow the onscreen prompts and your computer will revert back to factory condition in a relatively short period of time.

Create An Eee PC Recovery Disk

You will have the option to create a USB or Optical recovery disk by accessing the Backup button from the same menu you accessed by pressing F9 while booting. You should do this before you develop problems and store this disk or USB drive in a safe place. A recovery disk is important, as a hard drive failure will also cause the recovery partition to fail.

source

How to Connect Two Computers Wireless in Windows 7

Here's how to connect two computers wireless in Windows 7 Once you have this set up, you can connect this Windows 7 computer to other computer without using network cable, and its also called ad hoc wireless network. OK! lets create a simple network by assigning following network info to each computer's wireless adapter (you dont need to configure gateway and DNS servers):

Computer A:
IP Address: 10.1.1.1
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway:
DNS Servers:

Computer B:
IP Address: 10.1.1.2
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway:
DNS Servers:

In order to connect two computers, now you need to configure ad hoc wireless setting on Windows 7 computer A, so that computer B can connect to it wireless, after that can proceed to share file or printer.

On Windows 7 Computer A:
1) Go to Start and click on Control Panel.
2) Proceed to click View network status and tasks in Control Panel window.

3) Network and Sharing Center window will appear, proceed to click on Set up a new connection or network.

4) Set Up a Connection or Network window will appear, select Set up a wireless ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network option and click Next.


5) You will see some explanation on this wireless ad hoc network. Please note that both computers must be within 30 feet of each other in order to connect successfully! Click Next.

6) Here you need to fill up the details of this ad hoc network. Name your network, select security type and set security key if needed. Click Save this network option too, so that can manage it later. Click Next.
Note: Although you can choose No authentication (open), WEP and WPA2-Personal as security type, but I advise you to use WPA2-Personal as this is the most secure security type.

7) A window will be shown to tell you that the ad hoc wireless network is in the creation process. Finally this window will show you the created ad hoc wireless network with name and security key info, and this info is needed for other computers to connect to this ad hoc network. Bingo! You have done!


Note: You can always go back to Network and Sharing Center window, and click on manage wireless networks option to further manage this ad hoc wireless network.

8.) Lets move to computer B, search for available ad hoc wireless network and connect to it.

9) Once the connection is established, you are prompted to select network location type and/or homegroup on computer A. I will usually select Home network as network location type as the other connected computer is trusted computer. It's ok if you do not want to create homegroup.
At this point, you should be able to connect two computers and ping the other connected computer, finally proceed to share files if you like.

XP Quick Fix Plus , Portable and fast, a must have on every computer

There are a lot of excellent free Windows comprehensive repairing and fixing tools around the internet.

But there are times when you want just one quick fix for example when you are under a virus attack and you just want to enable the Task Manager or the Registry Editor so you can fight the virus back, or when some new installation changed your XP behavior and My Documents opens on every start up.

This is the right time to draw XP Quick Fix Plus with 40 common Windows XP problems fixes, only 0.58mb, portable, small and fast, a must have on every computer and with a small extra, a command line utility to fix 6 common problems directly from command line !

XP Quick Fix Plus is a tiny utility tool that does exactly what its name suggests: quickly fixes various system errors found in XP.

The user interface is so simple that it doesn't even have a help file, settings, or other features.

When you hover your mouse over a tool, you can see an explanatory text below where you learn what the commonly found problems behind system errors are.

By clicking the respective tool, XP Quick Fix Plus will attempt to fix the error. You will instantly see a message that tells you the task was either successful or a failure.

So, if you want a fast, portable and easy way to fix the most commonly found problems in Windows, then take a look at XP Quick Fix Plus. It's free to use!

Download XP Quick Fix Plus

How to reset Acer Aspire One D255?

You will have to factory Reset it. Restart your computer and before it starts up press Alt and F10 simultaneously. It will take you to a screen called Acer eRecovery Management ; it will give you an option of resetting. Once reset you can create a new account.

How To Create A System Image In Windows 7

Here's how to prepare for disaster by imaging your hard drive and setting up a data backup system image

1. Click the Start Menu, at the top of the menu Click Getting Started, then on the side Click Back up your Files.
Note: You can also just type Back Up and Windows 7 Search should find the application


2. In the Control Panel window that appears, Click the blue Create a system image link.


3. The Create a system image window should pop-up. Select which hard disk, dvd, or network location you are going to save your system image to. Click Next to continue.


4. On the next page we’ll keep with the basics for now, Check both your System and System Reserved drives. Once you have selected the drives Click Next to continue.
Note: You can select as many drives as you want, but the more you choose to include means the larger the image size will be.


5. The next window is just a review, make sure everything is correct then Click Start backup to start the process. This can take several minutes so patience is required.



6. This is optional : After the backup completes, you’ll be prompted with the option to create a system repair disc. This is a good idea just in case your system has any problems in the future. Click Yes.


7.  Choose which Disc Recording drive you’ll be using to burn the disc. Insert a blank CD or DVD to the physical drive and then Click Create disc.

Conclusion

Now you’re covered if your computer crashes,

Courtesy: Mr. Austin Krause , Free groovy tech support community.
There is a article on this Blog – How-To Restore from a Windows 7 System Image backup.