Tim's Technical Tips

Remember CIH People you can ask questions by posting comments at the end....

Modem Setup

In your pack you will get these:

Plug the filter into telephone wall socket, and then plug the modem into the filter.  Don’t connect to the computer yet.  Turn the modem on.  Wait a few moments:

Here’s where everything plugs in:

On the front panel the lights will tell you if your SNAP connection is active (even without the computer plugged into the modem).

Until both the ADSL and SNAP lights are green you have no internet!

Once they are both green you should go ahead and connect the modem to your computer.

The computer will recognise the modem, and prompt you for what kind of network this is, Home, Work or Public, (choose Home Network).  It will then prompt for whether you want to share Pictures, Music etc. with other devices, (I usually just cancel this, but it does no harm to accept it).

Then the modem “may” just connect to the internet, or it “may” ask you to logon to it first.  If it asks you to logon to it, the user name is “admin” and the password is “password”.  Then, providing the SNAP and ADSL lights are green, you should have working internet.

Wifi

On the bottom of your router is the name of your wireless network (which is what is visible  to phones, laptops, tablets etc.) and the password that you use to logon to the Wifi network (which isn't visible).  It will look something like this:

Remember that your SNAP data allowance is shared amongst all connected devices.
  
  
Keeping Your PC running well

One of the biggest problems that will cause your PC to slow down is the number of installed programs that set themselves to run at startup.  You can check what is running by looking at the bottom right hand part of your desktop.  Here you will see some icons like this:

Click on the little triangle (shown with the red arrow) and you will get something like this:

These are all programs running in the background (ie all the time) and therefore using your computers resources.  What you will need to do is to keep this list to a minimum.  Do this in two ways:
By not allowing programs to install themselves onto your computer OR by uninstalling them, if they do.  Secondly by setting programs that you do want to have so that they do NOT run at startup (unless you want them to).


So to uninstall a program open the Control Panel and choose "Uninstall a program" or "Programs and Features" (depends on your view of the Control Panel).  You'll get a list like this:

To uninstall a program just click on it and choose Uninstall up the top.  But....which ones should you keep and which should you remove.  Partly that is down to two things; was it there already OR did you deliberately install it?  Obviously if you installed it, it's OK.  What I suggest though is that you Take a picture of what is installed so you can refer back to it.  Here's how to do this.  Bring up the list of programs as I've shown above.  Then click the Windows button on the bottom left of the screen or press it on your keyboard (if there is one).  Then type in snipping tool.  You'll see a screen like this, just click on Snipping Tool:

this will then open a slightly greyed out window like this:

Just drag around your list of programs and you'll get a screen like this:

then click the blue Save Disk or Choose File -> Save and save the picture somewhere.  Then you can refer back to your list of what was originally installed later and know whether you want the program or not.  Soon I'll do another tip on another major nuisance...toolbars! 
cheers
Tim