My DigitalZone

Windows Safe Mode is very useful when you want to troubleshoot your PC’s problems. Your PC may misbehave for various reasons. The cause could be the software or hardware you just installed or a virus. You may encounter an almost disastrous situation where your PC refuses to boot up in a normal way. In all of these circumstances, booting into a Window safe mode will let you have a chance to fix the problem.

What is Windows Safe Mode
When you boot your computer into Windows safe mode, Windows load the minimal sets of software so that the administrative or diagnostic tasks can be done. You can choose what sets of software/drivers to load at the startup of safe mode but I recommend that you just use a default safe mode boot. It means that your network connection and display drivers, etc., won’t start. So, the screen looks very rough.

How to boot into safe mode
You may need to use a different method for some computers (e.g., Dell computers) but typically you need to F8 key to get into safe mode. When you first power up your computer, the machine’s screen is black and you will see some texts scroll up (e.g., keyboard, hard drive…). Don’t do anything yet because it is a list of hardware installed on your machine and a program on the motherboard is checking them. Right after the list of equipment, you may see “starting Windows.” At this moment, you need to start tapping the F8 key until you see the safe mode menu screen. As I said earlier, just booting into a regular safe mode is recommended.

What can I do once I’m in the safe mode?
Well, you can uninstall the software you just installed if you think it’s the cause. You can run an anti-virus software if your PC is likely to be infected. In the worst case scenario where you think you may need to reinstall Windows, you can move all of your important files to a removable disk just like I did a while back.

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS), or a battery backup, unit provides emergency power supply and typically protection from power surges. It comes in handy if you live in an area where power supply is not stable or thunderstorms are common. I moved to a part of the U.S. where there is a thunderstorm season that lasts for a couple of months and was amazed with its frequency. The particular area where I moved also had lots of housing construction going on, and I experienced frequent power flickers. Losing unsaved data because of a second of power loss is not fun at all. So, I went ahead and bought 2 APC UPC units. My 2 desktop PC are connected to them and I no longer have to worry about data loss due to power loss/fluctuations. Most of my other stuff, i.e., my laptop, are connected to regular (not-so-cheap) surge protectors.

I chose APC because it is the most reputable manufacturer of UPC and reviews for their products are consistently good. The unit I bought is this one.

It has 10 outlets with 5 being backed up by a battery. The other 5 outlets have surge protection only. I’ve had numerous power outages since I bought this and it never failed to operate. It also has an alarm that tells you when the power is out. I guess the alarm is useful because I don’t always notice a power failure during the day. If the duration of power failure is long, it can be turned off.

All in all, I am quite satisfied with this product.

Text message spam is becoming problematic worldwide. I’ve already gotten a few. Just a few junk messages are not much of a problem for me at this time but I don’t like it nonetheless.

SMS spam is much worse than an email spam because it’s more costly for people who don’t have a text-messaging add-on to their cell plan. For those who don’t have a text message add-on, it cost at least $0.05 per message. I remember we used to be worried about junk faxs. Now we are worried about junk text messages.

In the U.S., two senator propsed m-SPAM act in April this year. (m-SPMA stands for SMA spam.) We don’t have to wait until the bill passes. AT&T and Verizon have already added some features to block unwanted text messages from their customers’ inbox.

Verizon
Log on to vtext.com using your regular Verizon username and password. You’ll see “Text Messaging” menu on the left. Then go to “Preferences” and “Text blocking.” There are different ways to block different types of text messages there.

AT&T
Go to mymessages.wireless.att.com. Choose “Preferences” and go through text-messaging and alias options.

Hope this helps.

Google changed its requirements for a new Gmail account. Here’s what Google says:

If you’d like to sign up for a Gmail address, you need to have a mobile phone that has text-messaging capabilities.
If you don’t have a phone, you may want to ask a friend if you can use his or her number to receive a code.

The main reason for this seems to be spam prevention. I’m glad I already have a Gmail account because I hate to go through some extra steps. Google also says that it stores “each phone number to make sure it is used to create a limited number of accounts.” I hope this method will work but I’m not too keen on yet another entity storing cell phone numbers, which is more private than land phones. Google does assure that “your number will never be sold or shared for marketing purposes without your permission, nor will we contact you using this number without your express permission.”

Sometimes you don’t want some parts of your website to be indexed by search engine bots. Perhaps some directories are for private use only or perhaps you are working on a test site. If the page is not linked from anywhere, it’s supposed to be safe from spiders because no one knows the exact url, in theory, at least. But you want to make sure that the private part of your site remains private.

There are 3 common ways to prevent search engines from indexing some directories or files.

1. Using robots.txt
   When a search enginge crawlers visits your site, it looks for a file named robots.txt for instructions for your site. In order to prevent any well-behaved crawlers from indexing a directory, you will put the following in robots.txt.
   
User-agent: *
Disallow: /directory_name/

   If you have 2 directories, MyData and TestData, that you want to keep private, robots.txt will look like:
   
User-agent: *
Disallow: /MyData/
Disallow: /TestData/

   The asterik * indicates that this instruction is for all spiders. If you only want Google bots from indexing, then you will use:
   
User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /MyData/
Disallow: /TestData/

2. Using meta tags in each file
   You can put the following meta tag between the < head > and < / head > tags in any file you do not want search engine spiders to index. (Remove the space before and after < and > .)
   
< meta name="robots" content="noindex" / >

3. Using a password
   You can password protect files and directories either using a web server control panel or using applications that have a password option.