You have just been struck by the Blue Screen of Death. Anyone who uses Mcft Windows will be familiar with this. What can you do? More importantly, how can you prevent it happening?

5 Fatal OE exceptions and VXD errors

Fatal OE exception errors and VXD errors are often caused by video card problems.

These can often be resolved easily by reducing the resolution of the video display. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-Display-Settings

Here you should slide the screen area bar to the left. Take a look at the colour settings on the left of that window. For most desktops, high colour 16-bit depth is adequate.

If the screen freezes or you experience system lockups it might be due to the video card. Make sure it does not have a hardware conflict. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Device Manager

Here, select the + beside Display Adapter. A line of text describing your video card should appear. Select it (make it blue) and press properties. Then select Resources and select each line in the window. Look for a message that says No Conflicts.

If you have video card hardware conflict, you will see it here. Be careful at this point and make a note of everything you do in case you make things worse.

The way to resolve a hardware conflict is to uncheck the Use Automatic Settings box and hit the Change Settings button. You are searching for a setting that will display a No Conflicts message.

Another useful way to resolve video problems is to go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Performance-Graphics

Here you should move the Hardware Acceleration slider to the left. As ever, the most common cause of problems relating to graphics cards is old or faulty drivers (a driver is a small piece of software used by a computer to communicate with a device).

Look up your video card’s manufacturer on the internet and search for the most recent drivers for it.

6 Viruses

Often the first sign of a virus infection is instability. Some viruses erase the boot sector of a hard drive, making it impossible to start. This is why it is a good idea to create a Windows start-up disk. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-Add/Remove Programs

Here, look for the Start Up Disk tab. Virus protection requires constant vigilance.

A virus scanner requires a list of virus signatures in order to be able to identify viruses. These signatures are stored in a DAT file. DAT files should be updated weekly from the website of your antivirus software manufacturer.

An excellent antivirus programme is McAfee VirusScan by Network Associates ( www.nai.com). Another is Norton AntiVirus 2000, made by Symantec ( www.symantec.com).

Troubleshooting and Maintaining Your PC All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies (For Dummies (Computers))

Set up automated backups

We all know how important it is to back up data, but generally only remember when it’s too late. Let Titan Backup 1.5 save your skin before you make an expensive mistake

Once you’ve got Titan Backup set up, you can leave it to automatically save copies of your files to a safe place at regular intervals, while you just get on with using your PC.

When you first install the program, you’re presented with a screen showing buttons for Try, Buy and a link marked Enter Key. Click here and use this code to unlock the trial software: 000020-ACM8KK-1Y2GMT-JZT492-G3QDZ4-YR27GC-TD91BP-MUUMEX. You’ll then have unlimited use of the program, and you can set up some backups.

When you launch the program, you’re given four options. You can create a backup task, restore data, synchronise data or edit your existing tasks. The annotation shows the main features of a backup task. You need to provide a name for the task and specify the files, folders and settings you want to backup. You then need to give details of the destination.

This could simply be a DVD/CD drive, or you could use an external hard drive or an FTP server online. At this point you can set the kind of backup you want. Option to replace files if space on the destination drive is limited. You can also use incremental backups, which add files that have changed, or differential backups, which delete any data that’s been removed from the source files. You can set backups to run at specified times or to run every time you start or shut down Windows.

This month’s disc is aimed at saving you precious hours during your working day. We’ve also included three full programs, the first of which is ConceptDraw MindMap 5. Here we tell you how to get started in mind-mapping.

The idea behind ConceptDraw MindMap is to help you organize and plan idea development. It is designed to work alongside other programs such as Microsoft Office Word and Office PowerPoint for seamless integration with your office set-up. Although it is initially aimed at business development, this program is also perfect for planning weddings, an essay or even a holiday.

The program itself has some very handy features. As with most software, there’s a handy ‘get started’ wizard to point you in the right direction. With any project, an initial ideas session is needed, and the Brainstorming function is very simple to use – just type in the topic and add ideas. Once you’ve got these, you can enter the main interface by clicking Finish Brainstorming. Your mindmap won’t look very special at the moment, so there are few tweaks you’ll need to make. All the entries you added appear as Subtopics, but you may need them to appear as Main topics. Simply highlight the entry you wish to convert, select the Topic menu and then select Topic Outdent. If you wish to add new Main topic, highlight the main idea and press Enter. A new Main topic appears and all you need to do is rename it. And here’s a quick tip: to convert multiple Subtopics, simply shift-click on each one and you will notice they are all highlighted. Then follow the same steps as before,

Once your ideas are complete, you can make the map more coherent by changing the Theme, adding symbols for reference and auto-arranging the map. In the right-hand toolbar you can have different tabs su

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5 Pro

A simple package that combines two detection engines for maximum efficacy

German security specialist G Data has been producing anti-virus software for over 20 years, but there’s nothing retro about anti virus 2008.

Open it up and you see a basic user interface giving direct access to the main functions (starting and scheduling scans and updates), as well as a few information panels. Click on “Options” and you can set some default behaviors  and toogle options like heuristics. As with Spyware Doctor . the emphasis is on practically.

G Data Anti Virus secret weapon is it “Double Scan” technology, which uses two independent detection engines to scan suspect files. They’re referred to simply as “Engine A” and “Engine B”, with Engine A described as the more effective but slightly more resource –heavy of the two. In reality, Engine A is a licensed implementation of Karspersky’s scanning engine, while Engine B is licensed from Avast. You can use both in combination or just one if you’re worried about resource usage we saw no penalty to using both engines, as per the default configuration.

This raises a potential concern: since G Data doesn’t own the scanning engines, it’s reliant on third parties to keep its libraries up to date. But the Karspersky engine has a great track record, and runs to a commendable hourly update schedule.

G Data supplements this with its own “Outbreak Shield” system, using data from email security specialists  Commtouch to identify traffic patterns that look like a virus outbreak. In theory, this lets it keep malicious emails off your system even before the threat is identified. It may be largely redundant in these days of web mail and hardened email clients, but it’s good to have.

Despite its multiple engines, G Data anti virus added just six seconds to our boot time (CPU spikes and hard drive activity continued for around 20 seconds afterward, though that’s always a hazard on a Vista system). It then occupied 46mb of RAM when idle-same as Kaspersky.

It was only to be expected that, in our tests, G Data anti virus would duplicate Karspersky’s excellent score. But, thanks to the Avast engine, it also flagged up the eGuardian chile-protection package that the Russian scanner considered harmless. That’s a very impressive performance.

G Data anti virus has its share of interface foibles. We’ve never known a product to provoke so many Vista UAC prompts-even anodyne actions such as opening the “options” window caused a system interrupt. And many windows( such as the virus scan details view) don’t appear in the taskbar, which can be confusing.

Another slight downside to G Data anti virus is its price. It isn’t extortionate by any means, but Karspersky 2009 can be found more cheaply online. Since the Russian offering is also more configurable , and gives practically identical protection, we’ll keep Karspersky as our A list choice.

But G Data anti virus is a simple, functional package, and when it comes to ppeace of mind it’s hard to fault its “belt and braces” approach to malware detection.

Here’s yet another solution for intergrating your PC’s audio capabilities into your home-theater system: Use an external USB audio device. These won’t deliver multichannel sound over HDMI ,but they’re dead simple to install: Plug the device into your A/V receiver with another, and install the accompanying software.

Asus’s Xonar U1 USB Audio Station (Asus Xonar U1 Sound Card (White)
) and Creative’s X-Fi Surround 5.1(Creative Labs SB1090 USB Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1
)are two examples of external USB audio devices. Both products use Dolby Digital Live to encode any audio signal to 5.1-channel Dolby Digital in real time. The audio is then output through a S/PDIF interface to your A/V receiver.

Asus Xonar U1 Sound Card (White)

Trojan Horse Named after the mythological wooden horse used to sneak Odysseus and other Greek heroes into Troy, a Trojan Horse will masquerade as a legimate program but will unleash a harmful payload once installed.

Worm Computers worms are self-replicating programs that burrow into systems, seeking out vulnerabilities to exploit. The ability to spread without any user action makes them particularly dangerous.

Spyware Ever  feel  like you’re being watched? If your PC’s infected with spyware, you just might be. Even worse, spyware not only monitors your activities but can also hijack your system with redirected web searches and other annoyances.

Polymorphic To avoid detection, polymorphic malware constantly changes its own code, often using encryption with a variable key. This stealthy technique poses a problem for typical scanners.