The first thing that I’m doing after I bought a computer, be it used or retail, is to check if the components installed are indeed the components advertised. I personally think this is essentially because I witnessed more than once that a computer that was sold did not contain the components that the seller claimed it would.

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Not long ago, my system popped out a dialog saying “Error” in the title and offering two ways to go in form of two buttons below it - Yes and No. I was trying hard for a while to find out about the right answer but I never really did find it because I did not know what the error was all about. I suppose I’ve saved the world by choosing the right answer, the world didn’t blow up after all… And now seriously

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PC Pal is a software that is currently in Beta that checks your Windows installation for weaknesses and possibilities to optimize it. The process is very user friendly and requires minimal user interaction. Basically the user pushes one button and PC Pal checks the computer for problems related to security, networking, printing and performance.

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A friend of mine was recently asking me if I knew how to find out which BIOS was installed in his computer. He wanted to know for two reasons. The first was that he could not remember and was not able to figure out on his own. He did want to buy a better CPU and had to know which were supported by his motherboard and BIOS.

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Experts are able to gather sensitive data from your computer if they gain physical access to it. This can be achieved by various means like Live CDs, accessing unprotected accounts or administrators that take a look in your profile folders. They can search the files on your hard drives, read documents, look at your Internet cache, the mailboxes which contain all of your mails - even the deleted ones - and histories of downloaded files.

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