Tech Talker’s 100th Episode
In this very special 100th episode of Tech Talker, Eric Escobar answers readers’ and listeners’ most pressing computer and technology questions.
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Tech Talker’s 100th Episode
This week is a very special milestone. It is the 100th episode of the Tech Talker podcast! I can’t believe how quickly time has flown – and how much fun I’ve had bringing you tech information each week.
To thank all of you for your support throughout the first 100 episodes, today I’m going to round up and answer your most pressing questions in one jam packed episode!>
I’ve covered a huge range of topics in the past 99 episodes of the Tech Talker show. If you’re new to the podcast, I highly recommend checking out the archive of episodes which you can listen to at iTunes techtalker or by going to my show page at QuickandDirtyTips Tech-Talker.
Although I’ve covered a ton of material over the past year, there are a fewquestions that I get asked over and over, tips that every computer user should know (not just a tech geek like me). So today, I’m going to answer some of your most pressing tech questions:
Question #1: How do I get a virus off my computer?
First things first, if you have a virus on your computer, don’t panic! Very rarely will viruses and spyware delete your files or cause irreversible harm to your computer. If you simply unplug your computer’s power cable, the virus is frozen. It’s not going to spread while the computer is off and it’s not going to continue to cause mayhem in your system.
This all may seem straightforward or obvious to some of you, but the moment a person realizes something is dreadfully wrong with their computer is when they start to panic and don’t think clearly – they start pushing various combinations of buttons that may do more harm than good. I’m here to tell you that, as with most things in life, it’s better to take a deep breath and calm down so you don’t do something rash to your computer that will make it worse (such as giving up your credit card information to a pop-up window that “coincidentally” appears when the virus rears its ugly head).
Once you realize that you have a virus, you have to assess a few things. First of all, is this virus creating pop ups, slowing down your machine, or completely taking over your computer? If it’s the first two, a virus scan with a program like Malwarebytes will do a lot to clean up your system.
If, however, you have a bad virus that locks you out of your own machine, you have one of two options.
Option 1: Wipe the drive clean and restore from a backup. I keep pretty diligent backups that occur every night, so if something bad happens. I can simply restore my hard drive to yesterday’s copy. For some people, this may be too cumbersome or time consuming.
Option 2: The second fairly foolproof method for cleaning a nasty virus is to create bootable USB drive or CD that can be used to scan your system.
This may sound daunting but it’s really easy. Basically you’ll be putting a special CD or flash drive into your computer that you can then use to scan your hard drive. I’ve outlined all of the steps on how to do this in my previous episodes on How to Remove the most stubborn viruses, as well as Part 2 of that series.
Additionally, check out my earlier episodes on this topic, including the Anatomy of a Virus and How to Easily Delete Computer Viruses.
Question #2: How and where should I back up my data?
I love this question because it means that people understand that having all their data on one device is dangerous. Imagine if your hard drive breaks or your computer is stolen and you don’t have a backup – you will lose everything!
Personally, I keep at least two backups minimum. I have an external hard drive that I keep at home to perform nightly backups, and then I use CrashPlan (or if you prefer Carbonite) to keep an offsite backup that runs constantly in the background.
Why two copies? Well I have an external hard drive because it’s easy and fast to back up to, plus if I ever need to go somewhere I can grab it quickly and go. Plus, if I ever need to recover something from it, it’s much faster than using a cloud backup service.
Having a cloud backup service like Carbonite or Crashplan is awesome because you set it once on your computer and it generally just works in the background without you ever having to think about it again. The drawbacks are that it takes a long time to upload and download any files you have, and if you don’t have internet, then you also won’t have access to your files.
However, if there is a natural distaster or a fire in your house, your files will be safely stored in the cloud even if your hard drive and computer are long gone.
Question #3: I accidentally deleted my [insert important file here]! How do I get it back?
Well, I know this would never happen to any Tech Talker listeners because they have everything backed up! Right?! But say this happens to a friend of yours, here’s what you tell them: When a file is deleted from your computer, it is seldom actually gone.
A computer file is a lot like a can of soup. Deleting the file is like taking off the label. The file is still there, you just aren’t quite sure what’s in it. So when you remove the label, the computer basically says to himself, “Well, I guess this space is no longer important. So when you need more space on the shelf, feel free to get rid of this can.” All you have to do is get to the file before your computer writes another file over it.
This generally isn’t too hard if you’ve just deleted the file. However, the more you use your computer after the file has been deleted, the higher the likelyhood that your computer has decided to use that space the file once took up for something else!
So how does this help you? Well there are lots of tools for recovering these label-less soup cans such as Recuva for Windows and Undelete for Macs. They search your hard drive for files that have been deleted but are still recoverable.
Well that’s it for this week’s episode! Again, I want to thank all of you for listening, reading, and sending me great questions to answer. Here’s to the next 100 Tech Talker episodes!
Have a question about anything in this episode? Or a suggestion for a future podcast? Send me an email at techtalker@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email or post it on the Tech Talker Facebook wall. And as always check the show notes to see a list of the programs I’ve mentioned in today’s episode.
Until next time, I’m the Tech Talker, keeping technology simple!
– See more at: How to Safely Recover and Delete Your Files
Have a question about anything in this episode? Or a suggestion for a future podcast? Send me an email at techtalker@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email or post it on the Tech Talker Facebook wall. And as always check the show notes to see a list of the programs I’ve mentioned in today’s episode.
Until next time, I’m the Tech Talker, keeping technology simple!
– See more at: How to Safely Recover and Delete Your Files
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/tech-talker
Have a question about anything in this episode? Or a suggestion for a future podcast? Send me an email at techtalker@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email or post it on the Tech Talker Facebook wall. And as always check the shownotes to see a list of the programs I’ve mentioned in today’s episode.
Until next time, I’m the Tech Talker, keeping technology simple!
Birthday cake and other images courtesy of Shutterstock.
