Computer Tip : Removing Dust From Computers & Keyboards

June 28, 2013
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If your like me everyone once in a while you like to clean out the junk that falls into your keyboard and dust balls inside your computer. I usually buy cans of compressed air and try to buy them in bulk at Costco or whenever I see them on sale. But while I was on Amazon and searching for some cans of compressed air I came across this electric hand held duster.

electric-duster-for-computers

I just recevied it today and I have to say this is one of the best purchases I have made in awhile. Not only will this save me money in the long run it is pretty powerful and my hands now longer freeze to death. 🙂 

The only downside with this is that it is pretty loud (almost like a vacuum cleaner), but I can now clean my computers (and my clients computers) without having to worry about running out of compressed air. Plus it’s also good to know that I’m no longer throwing away empty cans of air and adding to waste.

So if your in the market of buying more cans of compressed air you should really consider buying one of these..

If you have one of these let me know what other uses have you found that this comes in handy for.

RG

MSI.MSI_BPD_Scan FATAL ERROR trying to install drivers for HP Officejet Printer

March 23, 2013
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Came across this error today and after about half hour trying to uninstall and reinstall updated drivers for HP I was able to finally figure out what the problem was and here is how I fixed it.

msi-error

First you need to check the add/remove programs in windows and make sure you don’t see any HP printer programs installed. If you see any make sure you uninstall them.

Next, you need to download the Windows Installer Cleaner at http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4459 and install this program. Once you have it installed open up the program and now find BPD_scan and remove it. Do the same for BPD_fax and BPD_software if they are there also.

Now try and run the HP driver installer and it should work with no problems now. It shouldn’t be this hard to install printer drivers and I really think HP needs to make their own cleanup utility program for situations like this.

Anyways, I hope this helps someone save you the time and hassel of trying to do a simple update of your HP printer drivers.

RG

Dell GX520 keeps shutting off

December 11, 2012
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Today I came across a Dell GX520 that is in small factor form (SFF) that would turn right away once you tried to turn it on. It gave no error code or beeps. It would just turn off and if you tried to turn it back on it would do the same thing.

So I started to disable the connections to the cd-rom and floppy drives and still nothing. I finally removed both sticks of RAM and now the computer would beep but not turn off. Now that I know the computer is able to stay on and not shut off right away I knew that the motherboard and power supply had to be ok…it had to be the memory I just removed.

I put one of the memory sticks back into dimm slot 1 and turned it on. It turned off right away again. I then took it out and put the other memory chip in. This time it turned on and stayed on and finally booted into windows. YAH! 

One of the memory sticks had gone bad and this was causing the computer to shut down right away. So if you come across this type of problem with any type of computer try removing the memory and installing one by one to find out if you have a bad memory chip.

till next time,

RG

Excel Tip: Highlight Row Cursor Is On

September 28, 2012
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While I was working on a pretty big spreadsheet today I needed to see the data on rows as I was working on. I would be over in column J and wanted to see what data was in columns B and D. I thought if there was a way I could highlight the row that I was working with it would make it soo much easier.

After some searching I found this video below. It’s pretty easy to follow and was a life saver for my eyes and made going through my data much easier. This is a feature that Microsoft should incorporate into the next release of Excel. Enjoy!

If you have any questions or problems getting this to work let me know.

Internet Explorer Error: The Address Is Not Valid

September 27, 2012
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Came across this error today on a computer that would connect to the internet just fine but when you tried to go to another page you would get this error message. After a little troubleshooting I was able to find a quick and easy fix for this. Here are the steps to fix this problem. 

1) Open up Interet Explorer and then go to tools > internet options.

2) Click on the Connections tab.

3) Now click on the button that says “Lan Settings”

4) Place a checkmark on “Automatically detect settings.”

5) Now click OK and then click on OK again to close the settings box. Close out Internet Explorer and open it back up. You should be able to go to any webpage and not get this error anymore.

I hope this helps you and if you still have problems let me know and I can give you some other things to try.