Trouble installing a printer

A friend of mine is the secretary at a school. The school was given a new computer for Christmas and the I.T. person, who is a volunteer, was unable to install the old printer on the new computer. The original CD was available, but did not seem to work. I was asked to look at it and found I was unable to install the printer as well, using the original CD. I was disappointed when I called HP's tech support and was told that sometimes the CD doesn't have all the files on it. It was recommended that I go to their website and download the driver from there. This worked like a charm.
When you are having issues installing any peripheral, you can always call the support number listed or go directly to their website for downloads.

How do I find my IP Address?

A friend was talking to an IT Support Tech and was asked what his IP Address was. The Tech needed this information in order to remote control his personal computer. The Tech talked him through the process, but he called me to get a refresher. Turns out that my process is a little easier to remember. In the future you can be proactive by having this information handy before making the call to IT Support.
1. Get to a command prompt. I do this by going to Start/Run and typing in cmd and enter. You are now at a command prompt.
2. Next type ipconfig and hit enter. The first IP Address listed is your computer. You will also see the Subnet Mask and the Gateway, if needed.

Remember that this will enable the IT Tech to remote control your personal computer. Make sure this is what you want before giving the info.

Didn't work

Bad news. After getting the below error every couple of minutes for the past few days, my fix only fix it for a couple of hours. I am changing my security options and will keep you posted!
Sorry.

Facebook Error

The past couple of days I've been getting an error message after accessing facebook for a couple of minutes. My error says 'YOU HAVE ATTEMPTED TO ESTABLISH A CONNECTION WITH 35.CTEST.FACEBOOK.COM' etc.. (I think it can begin with any #) What I believe was happening: Someone suggested an application, which I ignored. I've always ignored these, but now that I've turned on more security, I guess it is notifying me of this attempted link.
To fix the problem, I went to my application request link and clicked the 'x' on all the requests that I've been ignoring. This stopped the attempted connection and I haven't seen the error for at least an hour. If it comes back, I'll let you know.

Having a problem seeing what's on your computer screen?

My 87 year old friend, who writes daily for the local Hospital Auxiliary, was having trouble seeing her icons and reading her documents. I changed the settings on her pc so the icons as well as the letters in her documents appear much larger. If this is your problem, here are the steps to take:
Right click on an empty space right on your desktop; click on Properties; Go to the Appearance tab; under the Fonts selection choose Large Fonts or Extra Large Fonts.
You also have the option to choose the Effects button and choose Use Large Icons.
Hit the Apply button. This was not enough for my friend so I went one step further: While still in Properties you can choose the Settings tab; Under Screen Resolution you can lessen your pixels (This makes the letters larger). Do this a little at a time and then decide which setting best suits you. If you don't like what you see, you can always change it back to the original settings.

Computer froze while opening a program

You can right click on the programs tab on the bottom of your computer and choose 'close'. It'll either close or you will be prompted to end the task. I would do it.
Remember, even though your computer appears to be frozen, it is doing something in the background (we hope). Sometimes if you walk away and get a cup of tea, it'll be resolved by the time you get back. If you're like me and had coffee instead of tea & you DON'T WANT TO WAIT! Go ahead and end the task.

My computer is running slowly

A frequent comment I get from friends and family is that their computer was working fine yesterday, but today it is so slow! I like to find out what is taking up the cpu usage. If you are running a Windows Operating System, you can check the cpu usage in Task Manager. Open it by right clicking on the task bar at the bottom of the screen (Hitting ctrl/alt/delete also works). Select Task Manager which opens to the Applications tab: Click on the Processes tab, then click on the column that says CPU. There will be a long list, but most show 0 cpu usage. That's normal. You may need to click CPU twice in order to see the processes using the cpu (the numbers will not be 0). The Processes will bounce around depending on which one is using the cpu at any given moment. This can make it difficult to see, but once you see what you're looking for you can click 'Image Name' to sort alphabetically. Mostly it should say System Idle Process. Then, I recommend searching the internet (if you can) for that process and finding out what it does and where it came from. You can hit the 'End Process' button and this normally clears up the problem.
Next I like to clean up some of the temporary files stored on the computer. You can do this many different ways. I like to go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Cleanup.
If you have a lot of time to spare, you may also want to defrag your computer after you cleanup. Go to the same System Tools and choose Disk Defragmenter. You can choose 'Analyze' and you will be told whether you need to defrag or not. Lots of red means you need to! This will take fragments of programs, files, pictures, etc and bring them all together so they are accessed faster.