Archive: Basics

This morning I was doing a fresh install of Windows XP SP2 into a Virtual Machine. So far, things are fine I went through windowsupdate and found 3 updates the first time, then rebooted and hit windo…

This is one that's not as obvious as it should be. Every keyboard has a "print screen" button - usually it's in the group over above the insert/home/pageup/delete/end/pagedown block. Sometimes (espec…

How many times have I had this kind of phone call.... "my computers not working"... "the light on the monitor is on, but there aren't any lights on the keyboard. everything seems connected, but there…

This is going in the basics category. Quite often I visit a computer that has a mouse which is just a trial of patience to use. I mean, you have to pick it up and move it, shake it a bit, turn it ove…

Dealing with text.... we've looked at a couple of basics on logging in and starting to use the command line and hopefully not feeling too helpless there... we've seen ways to navigate directories and…

Now that we've logged in and learned how to move from one directory to another (and find where we are if we get lost...) it's probably time to start learning how to find out about other commands. Wel…

This is part two in a series of "how to use the command line in linux" style articles.... these are intended to be quite basic for those that have not used a command line before.... In part one we lo…

I know many people get intimidated with a black screen, white text and blinking cursor. No mouse, not knowing where to start.... well, I'm going to spend a bit of time in this article trying to help …

I did an article a while back about cron and scheduling tasks in linux (I also mentioned kron which is a graphical interface for cron scheduling...). That works well and good for things that happen o…

This is one that I run into from time to time. Most laptops the last year or two (actually maybe a bit longer), have built in wireless networking. This is great and makes for easy access to wireless …

Since this is a simple tip I'm including it in the basics category. I ran across a pc with a Dell Multimedia Keyboard and they wanted to disable the hotkeys (sound mixer was always popping up because…

The word "ping" is used in computer networking. It's usually used to test and see if a machine is able to be "reached" or "talked to" over a network. The terminology reminds me of the concept of rada…

I've added a new Computers-Basics category that will be a catchall for all sorts of "what is a" articles and hopefully very simple how-to's (the kind of things that will have some viewers rushing for…