My computer mouse, which is actually a trackball, got damaged with a electrostatic discharge. I knew I was carrying static because I felt a little shock every time I touched a door knob.

Yesterday, I changed into my sweater, a warm fluffy one made of light synthetic material, and touched my mouse. The zap I felt was bigger than usual, and I immediately noticed that my mouse’s left button stopped working. I unplugged the mouse, rebooted my laptop…. nothing worked. So, I used Control Panel to switch the function of left and right mouse button.

I used it that way for about a day then realized that it wasn’t a practical solution because I basically lost the functionality of right-mouse click. So, I dug into my misc. computer box, took out an old mouse and started to use it.

I’m glad only the mouse got damaged, not the computer itself. Now, I’m careful when I use my mouse and computer. When I remember, I touch some metal surface to discharge the statics before sitting in front of the computer.

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.

Fingerprint Reader …. Neat but …..
My Toshiba Satellite U205 has a fingerprint reader. It’s kinda neat when it functions properly but can be a pain when it doesn’t recognize your fingerprint. I found out that it can be a REAL pain when the fingerprint reader malfunctions and you have some important files in “My Safe.” When you register your fingerprints, the software asks you to create a backup password in case of fingerprint reader malfunction, so the computer not recognizing your fingerprint is not a disaster. As long as you remember the backup password, there is a way out.

Reinstalling the software: Protector Suite QL
If the problem persists, you can remove and reinstall the fingerprint reading software, Protector Suite QL. The reinstallation of the software should not affect the files inside.

Crash and Safe Mode Operation
The real disaster occurred when my laptop crashed and could only be booted to a safe mode. I learned a hard way that the fingerprint reader didn’t work in a safe mode. Of course, I couldn’t find my backup password. I got locked out of My Safe. I have PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) installed on my laptop, so all my very important files were encrypted with PGP and NOT stored in “My Safe.” But I had a few personal files there. I wanted to retrieve them but couldn’t find a way to do so. If you search on the internet for “My Safe fingerprint problem,” you’ll see there are other people who lost the contents of My Safe.

As I restored the factory default setting on my laptop, I lost contents of My Safe. I didn’t lose any other personal data as I was able to move all my personal files, including pgp-encrypted files, to an external hard drive.

So, the moral of the story is “DO NOT USE MY SAFE.”

Don’t get me wrong. Other than the mishap I described here, I’m very happy with my Toshiba.

Benefits of external hard drives are numerous. Sure, you can use an USB flash drive to store a lot of stuff but probably it’s not enough for all of your music and video files. With an ever-increasing capacity of hard drives of a desktop PC or a laptop, you DO NEED to have an external drive for archiving or backup purposes. It’s also useful when you want to move your data files, whether they are documents, music, photos, or videos, between two computers.

As you can see in this post, my Toshiba laptop had a serious problem recently possibly because of some viruses, and I needed to restore the factory default, which meant I was gonna lose everything I’d put on my laptop. As my laptop refused to operate in a normal mode, I booted it into a safe mode and moved all my data files to an external HD (Western Digital My Book, 500GB). So, external drives come in handy in an emergency situation. I have two external drives, both from Western Digital. One is My Book, 500GB, and the other is Passport (250GB, shown in the above).

Let’s summarize benefits of external hard drives.
Benefits of External Hard Drives

1. Archiving
   If you computer is old and you are running out of a disk space, you can archive some files on an external drive. Archiving the data on an external HD will have an added benefit of making your computer running more smoothly if your computer is sluggish because of not enough disk space on a HD.
2. Backup
   Your family photos on your desktop/laptop computer can vanish, if your computer crashes. You need to back up all of your important files either by burning the data on CDs/DVDs or storing them on an external HD.
3. Security
   Data stored on an external HD are safe from hackers if you disconnect the external HD from your computer after backing up/archiving the data. I do my taxes on my computer but my tax files are stored on an external HD because all my computers are up and running and on the internet 24/7.
4. Portability
   You can move a large amount of data from one computer to another. These days, the transfer speed is so fast, so it’s much more easy to transfer data via an external HD.
5. Affordability
   External hard drives are becoming cheap by the day, so it is easy to take advantage of added storage capacity.

Nothing is perfect, so there are some disadvantages for external hard drives, too.
Drawbacks of external hard drives

1. Theft
   As they are portable, it is easy to get stolen. If you store important data on it, the loss is very painful. You also need to protect your personally important data (i.e., your financial record) by encrypting the data.
2. Damage to the device
   External drives can break mechanically. You may drop the drive or spill soda on it.

Let’s take a look at the prices of drives from online stores.

	Western Digital 1TB My Book Mac Edition USB 2.0 External Hard Drive $123.01 from BUY.COM
	Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB External USB 20 Hard Drive $119.99 at Best Buy.com

Now you can see I like Western Digital. All my hard drives I purchased in the past 15 years or so are from Western Digital and none failed. I highly recommended them.

Let’s go over to eBay and see what they got over there.

US $10.50 (5 Bids) End Date: Saturday Jul-31-2010 14:04:31 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $22.72 (3 Bids) End Date: Friday Aug-06-2010 13:56:19 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $61.00 (4 Bids) End Date: Saturday Jul-31-2010 13:05:14 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $31.50 (3 Bids) End Date: Saturday Jul-31-2010 12:05:00 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $10.50 (6 Bids) End Date: Monday Aug-02-2010 11:47:11 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

I encountered a problem when I tried to do a screen capture with my new Compaq laptop with Vista Premium on it. The normal method, which is pressing ALT+Prt SC or CTRL+ALT+Prt SC didn’t work. Then, I figured out that pushing “FN” (function, a key on the lower-left corner) and Prt SC (the same as “home” key on the upper-right corner) does the work. As is most of the computers these days, this laptop doesn’t come with a hardcopy of Users’ Manual, so I needed to do some internet searches to figure this out.

All right. I bought myself a new laptop. It’s Compaq Presario Laptop with AMD Athlon X2 QL-62 Dual-Core Processor. As you can see in this post, my laptop (Toshiba Satellite) crashed and I restored the factory default. Toshiba worked fine but it was about time to be replaced. So, I did a quick search on the internet and picked this one. Ideally, I wanted to get one with Windows XP but all new laptops seem to be loaded with Vista. The specs of Presario seem to fit my needs at this time. When I bought Toshiba, I was traveling regularly, so the size and the weight were my major factors. But not now. I wanted an affordable laptop that’s reliable and more RAM and disk space. My Compaq Presario comes with:

• AMD Athlon™ X2 QL-62* dual-core processor
• 2GB DDR2 memory (expandable to 4GB)
• Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support
• 15.6″ WXGA widescreen display with BrightView technology
• 250GB SATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
• NVIDIA GeForce 8200M graphics
• Integrated microphone
• 5-in-1 media reader
• 3 high-speed USB 2.0 ports
• Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g)
• Built-in 10/100Base-T Ethernet LAN
• Weighs 6.5 lbs. and measures just 1.7″ thin
• Good battery life of up to 2 hours and 30 minutes
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) preinstalled

So far so good. It’s not sluggish as I was afraid. The screen is wide and bright. I need to test the battery life, though. Overall, I am very pleased with this purchase as it was only $429.00 at BestBuy.

Considering I paid over $1,100 for my old Toshiba, it was a good deal.

One thing to note is that this laptop comes with 32bit version of Windows Vista. I have a friend who bought a higher-end Compaq Presario with 64bit Vista, and she’ been having problems installing her old software. So far, all the software I have got installed without problems on my new laptop.

My laptop wasn’t working well, so I restored the factory default settings. It’s working fine now, but I am now in search of my next one. I noticed that laptop prices have been going down dramatically. So, buying a new laptop is not too big of a deal these days. Still, I had to check out eBay to see what’s available there. Not bad. They have some nice ones there. Here are some listings for HP/Compaq.

US $61.05 (5 Bids) End Date: Saturday Jul-31-2010 18:21:06 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $31.00 (4 Bids) End Date: Saturday Jul-31-2010 18:10:25 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $15.50 (5 Bids) End Date: Saturday Jul-31-2010 15:32:32 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $15.50 (5 Bids) End Date: Saturday Jul-31-2010 15:15:35 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $15.50 (6 Bids) End Date: Saturday Jul-31-2010 14:32:38 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

As I had problems with VERY persistent trojans (see this post), I spent this weekend reinstalling Windows XP. It was tedious but went well except for 2 glitches. The computer didn’t recognize the network connection and audio devices. So, I had to download drivers from the ASUS sites. I didn’t have to do this when I first installed WinXP, but anyhow, everything is fine now.

Of course, I installed Virus protection and firewall program to protect it.

Toshiba Satellite A305-S6908 15.4-Inch Laptop ($679.99)

My 3-year-old laptop, Toshiba Satelie, started to malfunction. It automatically shuts down after splashing the dreadful blue screen. I thought it could be overheating because I had it on my lap and could feel the heat. After several rounds of rebooting, it still doesn’t work properly. It boots into a normal mode for about 2 min. then, it starts to reboot automatically.

When I booted into a safe mode, it works fine. So, my plan is to do a system restore. At this time, I am copying most of my data to an external HD.

The similar thing happened about a year ago. It became so unstable in a normal mode, so I did the same. Moved the files to an external HD and did a system restore. I know it’s going to be a pain becase I need to reinstall a lot of software but I don’t want to spend too much time troubleshooting this old laptop. I hope I can finish everything over the weekend.

It’s probably about time to replace this though. But I don’t want to buy a new computer with Windows Vista on it. Oh, well. Let’s see what happens after the restore.

Suddenly, I found myself looking for a new DVD/CD burner because I physically broke the one I had. I kicked the tray when it was open. My attempt to fix it manually failed, so I needed to get its replacement. The one I broke was Plextor. I don’t remember how long I had it but I loved it because of its reliability. I have been a fan of Plextor for over 10 years, I think. The first-ever CD burner I bought was a crap, which was good at making CD coasters. So, I paid a premium (at the time) and switched to Plextor. That was a good decision. No more coasters.

Now the time has changed, so we use DVD burners. Naturally my first DVD burner was also Plextor. I don’t remember its price except that it was higher than other brand’s. When I searched for a new DVD/CD burner this time around, I was amazed at the prices. Most of them are very very cheap these days. Since I’m rather impatient, I went to a small local computer store and got a cheap one. I was going to get Toshiba but I got LITE ON instead mostly because of the price and the store clerk’s recommendation.

$24.98 at Amazon.com
Lite On IHAP122-04 DVD Burner – 22x DVD+R, 8X DVD+RW, 22x DVD-R, 6x DVD-RW, 16X DVD ROM, 48x CD-ROM, 32x CD-RW, IDE

Installation was very easy and there was no glitches. I did pick IDE, by the way. I burned several DVDs and no problem there. I did feel that this unit was a bit noisy but it was not annoying. This came with a newer version of Nero. The new version of Nero is really bloated and a bit sluggish. Overall, I like this product and I recommend it, especially at this price.