Windows stopped support of XP! Should you be worried?

I have been getting this a lot at work. They have ended support of XP what should I do? Well here at work we are doing...nothing. Yep that is right not to worried here and I will explain why. It was estimated that 20% of current running pcs still run XP and here at my job I would say that we run about 35% over all campuses. Now the following are options and may not be truth but here is what I think. XP has been one of the most reliable operation systems in some time from Microsoft. And They don't even want to mention Vista so lots of people stuck with XP. I think there is some fear mongering going on because if you notice they have been very public on social media letting people know that they are ending support and I think that is to help sales of MS 8 which hasn't done as well as they had hoped according to investor reports.
Now as to why you shouldn't worry. It is like a lot of things with computers if you use common sense and don't go to places you shouldn't anyway you will be fine. If you are going to risky websites and I am sure we know what i mean by that XXX, or illegal software websites then you are taking that risk weather you have new security updates or not. A great example was the latest Internet Explorer bug. Yes it was bad and yes you could get your computer seriously messed up because of it BUT you still had to go to fake website that some one would have to set up and lure you too. Point is most holes and back doors are exploited when you take a risk any way.
Really with XP if you still wish to use it just remember to be safe. Don't go to those bad websites, keep your antivirus up to date, and run scans every now and then(reference my maintenance post 1, 2, 3) and you will be fine. I hope this helps you and thanks for reading. Please feel free to post if you fell differently.

Annoying Internet Explorer Trusted Site Pop Up and how to REMOVE!

Hello again. I have been having a deal of this at work and figured that there must be people out there also having this problem. The issue is that in Internet Explorer a box pops up and ask if this website is ok to allow access. This might also be confusing with those that know a little bit about the internet options because  it says that it is a trusted site but you of course don't have any trusted sites set up. Now you may want this site to never be shown or always be shown I will show you how to do both while taking down the pop up that seems to come up all the time.

First off you will need to open internet explorer and click ok on any pop ups that come up once the pop ups stop then we can begin. The directions are pretty much the same on all version of IE 8 and above with a few Graphic differences. 
1. We want to find a Gear looking Icon near the top and click on it once. After that menu is up click on "internet options" (if it is grayed out and you can't click on it ie just hasn't loaded up yet click the gear icon again and wait a few seconds then click it again to bring it up it should have loaded by then allowing you to click on the "internet Options" object).
2. A box will open and their will be tab looking things on the top that have titles. Click on the one that says security once.
3.Normally you will see 4 colored icons in a white box bellow the tabs. We want to click on the one that says "Trusted Sites"
4. There will be a button closer to the bottom the box now that says custom level. IMPORTANT for this to look right you must have "trusted sites" selected.
5. Another Box will come up with a bunch of little dots that you can change settings but we are only looking for one. About 3/4 the way down there will be one that says "Websites in less privileged web content zone can navagiate into this zone"  Prompt should be selected by default, this is why the pop up is coming up. If you want these sites to come up click the dot by "enable" if not click the one for "disable".
6. Once you have made your choice click OK at the bottom of that box to save and exit. Then click "OK" on the next box to save and exit and return to Internet Explorer. 

From now on you won't have that pop up come up any more. Thank you very much for reading this and I hope dearly that this has helped you out.

Maintenance Part 2: Scan disk to Fix Errors

In this part of my series I will look at how to keep your computer running error free and happy with scan disk. This is a very simple process but can take a lot of time depending on how big a hard drive is and if there are any errors. The way I show you does require you to restart your computer and it could be down for a hour or so.
Scan disk is important because if you have errors it hangs your computer up and can even stop programs from running altogether. The scan disk tool that I will show you how to use on Windows scan the disk for errors and tries to fix them. I would say unless you are seeing a lot of errors or having serious hard drive read issues a scan disk might only need to be done every few months.
So lets get into to it From XP on the process is almost identical to what I am fix to say. You can open "My Computer" on XP or just "Computer" on Vista and beyond, from either you start or windows button or from a icon on your desktop if you have it. Next find the hard drive icon that has a little windows logo on it, this is the hard drive your system file are on most computers, and right click it bringing down a drop down box and click properties. This will bring up a small window with some tabs. Find a tab that says tools and click on it. The top tool says error checking on that page and you can click check now. That will bring a window up with 2 check boxes and a status bar. Go ahead and check the bottom box by clicking on it. Then click "Start". It will then bring up a message that it need to be able to access all the disk and will have to schedule a check the next time the computer starts. Click OK and then when you are ready to begin the check just restart your computer and it should do the rest.

This should get your computer's hard drive error free and will help eek out some more speed if you have errors on your drive. The thing I am covering by the way is what your local Guru guys will do to your computer and charge you who knows how much to do these simple things that you can do on your own. As always thank for reading and my next piece I will cover the dreaded virus problem.

Maintenance Part 1: DeFrag the Fragmentation

I have decided to start a series of post on Maintenance of a computer. The first segment I will do will be about de-fragmenting a computer. The reason for parts is because I want it to be like most people will have time for. I personally have lots of time to have a computer down 4 or 5 hrs to do maintenance on it but most people will busy lives or laptops that are in use all the time may not have this luxury. You may just have a hour or 2 at the most.
First off why defraging is important. When you use your computer install programs, games, rip music or any thing else that uses hard drive space you run the chance of "fragmenting" a file. A fragment happens when the hard drive put a part of a file on a different place on a hard drive other than right beside the other parts of the file. The reason this happens is because in most cases a Operation System i.e-Windows 7 doesn't know to put a file together it only knows to use the next open place on the hard drive. Defragmenting attempt to put the pieces together so that the hard drive doesn't have to search for all the parts to a file on a hard drive they are just right there thereby decreasing drive search time, which helps speed up a computer.
Option 1: Stock Program: The process of defraging is very simple. I will go over it in for Windows 7 because that is still the most popular OS other than a lot of people still using XP out there but the process is still similar. *First click on your windows button, then find and click on accessories folder in your programs list, next find System tools and click on it and then click on "dfrgui" this is your stock Defrag tool for windows. You will see a button that says defrag now or something to that effect, It does change from time to time so I can't say for sure what it will say for you.
Option 2:  FREE Auslogic DeFrag tool: This is the method I use personally I like this tool and it is much more user friendly. It is a small program that you install and it creates a desktop Icon after you run it from the desk top it explains the rest. I like it also because it shows you which files it is moving and how the hard disk is looking before and after. This can be downloaded FREE by going to this website: http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/download/ 

NOTES*** Once you start defrag make sure you have time to let it finish if  you have to interrupt it, Power goes out or other wise your run the risk of it moving a file that is important to system and if it doesn't move the whole file it will corrupt it and your system may stop working. If you have to stop it hit the stop button and it will stop after the next file is moved. Also allow time for this if you have a older computer and it has never been defraged before it can take an hour or more.

Thanks for reading this and I hope this helps you next will be scanning your hard drive for errors to improve speed.