What to do when your printer stops working

hardware, Office IT,
28
Jun 2015

The-Humanity-of-Printing

Do you know what to do when your printer stops working? If not, we’ll help you take out some of the guesswork with some basic troubleshooting tips.

Printers may be an understated piece of equipment. It almost becomes part of the office furniture, until it gets used for printing.  But what happens when the office printer stops working, what is one to do before they decide to call for help?  Firstly, remain calm. The good news is that we’ve pieced together a checklist for what to do when a printer stops working.

What to check before first

Just a preliminary note: It may sound obvious; however, most printers can actually display the problem on their LCD displays or give clues as to what the problem is. Make a note of any errors which may flash on this display too.

  • Restart the printer. Simply power off and then switch it back on. Sometimes all that is needed for a printer to work well again is a simple restart. This often does the trick, almost works like magic!
  • Clear the printer’s sprint queue. This is a common problem where one print job within the print queue jams up all other print jobs waiting for their turn to print in the queue. To clear the queue, simply head over to the printer’s setting from your computer’s Control Panel on Windows 7 or 8 by going to

Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound> Printers
Double click the printer that has the problem.
A print queue should be available, and from there you can delete and clear the print jobs to tell it to stop printing. Click Cancel to remove the print jobs.

Try to send a new print job to test its working fine.

  • Make sure your printer has enough supplies. By this we mean enough paper to feed through it and plenty of ink to use. Insufficient levels of these can make a printer unhappy, so be sure to not overlook this!

Paper Jams- a common problem

paper-jam

Printers are usually good at telling their users when there’s a paper jam. If there is one, it’s a good idea to check that paper isn’t stuck. Even the smallest piece of paper jammed in the printer’s rollers qualifies as a paper jam.

Sometimes a printer will complain about a phantom paper jam. In this case, it’s a matter of checking there’s enough paper in the paper tray and all trays or doors are closed shut.

Servicing your printer

The inside of a typical laser printer from Zinetic.

Diagram of the inside of a typical laser printer from Zinetic.

Laser jet printers need servicing from time to time, so it’s always a good idea to have it serviced. Once a certain amount of printing threshold has been reached, the printer may request a service to replace one of its components from wear and tear such as a print drum or paper roller, helping to further extend the printer’s life.

Check the warranty

It’s always a good idea to register your printer for its warranty as soon as it arrives in the office. You’ll want the least amount of trouble by having your warranty activated which will cover you for a faulty printer and have the problem fixed promptly by the vendor.

For more ways to troubleshoot your printers and computers, contact your local IT professionals.

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How Many Cores Does Your PC Need?

hardware,
25
Jun 2015

Multi-Core-CPU

Do you know how many cores your PC needs? Look no further than our guide, where you’ll find out the recommended number of cores for various scenarios.

You may have considered purchasing a desktop, laptop or PC, only to find some rather technical jargon in the specifications, especially when it comes to processors.

Single, dual or quad core, which one should you buy and is it worth it and at what speed?

These are some of the common questions asked when shopping around for new home or office PCs. The prices vary considerably so we’ve pieced together this article on what to look for based on your scenario.

What is a core?

Core refers a processor’s capabilities of processing. In other words, how much work it can do in parallel. The more cores a processor has, the more powerful it is to respond to computer instructions.  To the user this is all invisible apart from how quickly the computer works.

Older style processors use a single core, which only allows it to process one instruction at a time. At present, multiple instructions can be processed at different cores of the processor. Each core acts as a separate processing unit, which can even have their own cache memory on it. Therefore in essence, each additional core within a processor chip acts as its own separate processor. See below the recommended use for reach type of core processor.

Single, dual or quad core computer?

Socket-939

Single core system

A single core system has only one core. It should be used for a very basic computer that doesn’t need too much processing power such as a file server or a simple desktop. As the name suggest, single core contains a single strength of processing power. Computers with single cores tend to be very affordable.

Dual core system

A Dual core system is ideal for business workstations or non-critical laptops.
This type of processor has the power of two single core systems, and therefore, it can manage a little more workload for simple programs to run or to multi-task, such as MS office and having many browser tabs open.

Quad core system

A Quad core system is a more powerful processor that has four times the processing power of a single core chip and can respond to instructions quickly with ease. For instance, it is particularly used in servers, or on systems that run programs for video production, graphics work, handling large files or doing heavy multitasking.

Processor speed

Processor speed is measured in cycles per second, which is measured in hertz. Nowadays processors are available in Ghz speed, which translates as billions of cycles per second.

For instance a 3 GHz dual core processor is not the same as a 1.7GHz quad core one, as the latter is considerably slower in responding to instructions than the dual core processor. However, as mentioned before, the quad core can carry out multiple instructions with double capacity than the dual core but at nearly half of its speed.  This is something to watch out for as many retailers will advertise quad core processors at a dwarfed speed. Therefore, be sure you purchase one with a high enough Ghz speed.

For more ways to optimize your office systems, contact your local IT professionals.

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How Much Memory Does Your PC Need?

hardware, ,
23
Jun 2015

ram

Do you need to figure out how much memory is needed for your PC? Our guide can help you run through the various scenarios and their memory recommendations.

Whether a computer complains about running low on memory  or struggles to run with multiple application open, it’s clear that it may need more memory.

As a rough guide, read our list below to see which memory size to purchase for ideal system usage.

Suggested computer memory usage guide

.

  • 2GB – At present, this amount of memory is the suggested minimum to use. Avoid this level of memory unless the system is being used to only process basic documents, email or browse the web and only one of those tasks at a time. Be warned, it’ll be incredibly slow!

Note: 2GB was considered to be fast around a decade ago. It goes to show how the standard computer specification is changing and growing in tangent with newer software, operating system updates, applications, and computer processors becoming more resource hungry.

  • 4GB – This size of memory is considered good enough for business work stations and any systems which need to be able to efficiently access email, browse the web and work on documents or all at the same time.

Note: 4GB also used to be considered good to use on servers about 10 years ago. This is another example to put things into perspective.

  • 8GB – This is good for business workstations that require more resources from memory such as heavy multitasking. For instance, a workstation that runs more than one program at a time, works on multiple documents and opens many browser tabs will need this. 8 GB will offer a much more seamless performance.
  • 8GB+ – Memory can go beyond 8GB. For instance two 8GB modules can be installed in a server’s memory slot, making it 16GB. This is ideal for highly productive systems such as servers, or production systems, or systems that carry out graphics processing, video editing or work on large files and databases.

DIY memory upgrade?

diy-dream-build-970x0

Systems with sufficient levels of memory for its intended purpose can be purchased straight out from the box. Alternatively, memory can also be upgraded within a system.

Computer memory can be purchased as “memory sticks” and they can be inserted into the memory slots of a pc or laptop. If a laptop is under warranty, opening up the seal to upgrade the memory may cause the warranty to become void. So be  sure to consider this first.

Also keep in mind that 32-bit systems can only have a maximum of 4gb of memory.

Types of Memory

If going down the route of manually upgrading your system’s memory, there are different types of memory to consider.

As a quick overview, memory does not only come in size, but it also comes in different speeds. DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 are the memory modules available on the market that operate at different at speeds. For instance, DDR will have transfer rates of 1600 MB/s, whereas DDR2 will double that of DDR and DDR3 will double the speed rate of DDR2 memory modules.

What also differentiates each type of DDR memory is the number of pins on it. Therefore, be sure to acquire the right type of DDR memory to fit into your system’s motherboard, as well as one that supports the memory speed of your motherboard.

Different types of DDR memory will not be compatible with one another. For example, a mother board built to fit DDR2 memory sticks will not be compatible with DDR and DDR3. So be sure to also check this before purchasing additional memory for your system.

For the best performance pc, it’s desirable to have the highest level of memory size and speed, such as 16 GB+ DDR3 2933, however it does come with a premium price tag.

For more ways to optimize your systems and office productivity, contact your local IT professionals.

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USB Thumb Drives that can Fry your System

hardware, Security,
06
May 2015

PC On Fire Shoot

Learn how USB thumb drives can potentially destroy laptops / pcs. We’ll explain how this works and what measures can be taken to protect your computers.

If you happen to find an unknown flash drive in any place that you aren’t familiar with, we strongly advise not to plug it into a computer, especially one that is used for work.  It makes sense when there’s a high element of risk involved. Not only does the possibility of being infected by a virus exist, but as of late, a new type of attack has been created which can physically damage your systems. We have recently learned of dangerous USB thumb drives that are capable of frying a computer or laptop. 

How does it work?

Think of a computer’s ports as physical access points for an attack.

USB-Killer-2

  • An attacker would modify or build a USB thumb drive by using an inverting DC-DC converter to draw power off the USB port.
  • The power drawn from the USB port is then used to create a -110VDC charge on a capacitor bank.
  • Once the caps have charged up, this triggers the converter to shut down.
  • This forces a transistor to propel the voltage from the capacitor over to the port’s data pins.
  • This pattern repeats every time the caps recharge, discharging its high voltage through the port.
  • As long as there’s a bus voltage and high current present, the attack will run its course and overrun the small TVS diodes present on bus lines  of the computer or laptop.
  • Inevitably this will lead to a computer’s components, including possibly the CPU, to fry.
  • With fried components, a laptop or computer will be “dead”.

In typical circumstances a USB thumb drive is design to be protected, and a computer is normally able to dissipate manageable amounts of power, which wouldn’t cause this type of damage.

An example of an attack

A thief had stolen a USB flash drive off a commuter on the subway.  When the thief inserted the flash drive into his computer USB port, the least he’d expected was to see some data. Instead, his computer died as its internal components have been fried.  Although one may think that it was good for the thief to get their just desserts, it addresses a more serious problem- trusting unknown peripherals such as flash drives.

Precautionary measures

Now that we have a good overview of how a USB thumb drive can be engineered to take out a computer, let’s discuss how to prevent such an occurrence.

  • Don’t allow strangers to connect a USB thumb drive in to a mission critical computer or laptop.
  • Don’t plug in USB thumb drives found in public.
  • Do only use thumb drives purchased from reliable retailers or officially provided by an IT administrator.
  • Avoid sharing thumb drives, especially if they leave the premises and return to be used on computers.
  • Aim for individuals to carry their own thumb drives which can safely be used within an office environment.
  • Always question any thumb drives which may be presented to your business by an unknown third party. Even if it lands at your office’s reception desk, have an IT admin check it out first.
  • Have a thumb and flash drive policy in place to cover all of the above as part of your IT security policy.

For more ways to safeguard your computers and IT infrastructure, contact your local IT professionals.

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What is RAID and Should Your Business be Using it?

hardware, Office IT,
02
Apr 2015

What_Is_RAID

Find out what RAID is and whether your critical business systems need it. Learn all the basics to ensure your data stays secured regardless of your set-up.

RAID is short for “Redundant Array of Independent Disks”. The “I” in RAID can also be referred to as “Inexpensive”, which can also be true.

RAID stores your data across multiple hard disks for the benefit of:

Providing faster volume– Quicker to access data

Facilitates redundancy– Allowing seamless data access when a given number of disks fail.

In other words it helps prevent data loss when a hard drive fails by allowing the other hard drives to pick up the slack

One thing to bear in mind is that RAID data redundancy configurations are not immune to malware attacks, natural disasters and data beaches. As mentioned before, what it’s good for is preventing against hardware failure and maintaining uptime.

Popular RAID levels

Different_RAID_Configurations

RAID levels refer to how hard disks are configured to work alongside each other. There are three common RAID configurations that you’ll mostly hear about:

  • RAID 0- offers the benefit of fast access to read and write data by having it distributed across the disks. The main disadvantage is that it offers no protection when a drive in this arrangement fails, as it’ll be the missing piece that jeopardises this arrangement leading to unreadable data.
  • RAID 1– Mirrors the data in drives paired together. This offers better failover protections. In the case of one drive failing the data would still be available on the other disk whilst the failed drive is replaced. It also comes with the disadvantage of using up half of the disk space that is used to hold the mirrored data from the other disk. This means it’s a more costly solution.
  • RAID 5– provides the best of both worlds, with data redundancy and faster access to it. It distributes data across all disks like with a RAID 0 setup and covers data with parity. In the case of failover, it’ll recover data like it does with RAID1. You’ll need to consider the minimum number of disks required for this setup, which is three, and uses one third of the disk capacity to hold the disk parity information.
  • JBOD– Stands for “just a bunch of disks”. It’s not really considered to be a RAID however it is available alongside other RAIDs as a choice on most varieties of storage boxes. This only bunches a group of disks into one volume, where data will be filled until it becomes full and then moves onto the next available disk. With this, there’s isn’t any benefit of faster data access and redundancy. This is only good to use as a last resort.

What is RAID suitable for?

RAID is not really suitable for standard desktop computers, unless there’s a reason to store hundreds of gigabytes worth of critical data. Instead, it’s better suited on all servers and NAS (network attached storage) devices that share content and resources or that hold large amounts of data.

NAS devices simply act as additional storage that can be plugged into a network.

Since managing storage volumes on servers and NAS devices can seem like a headache to maintain, we suggest using an automated RAID management system such as SHR.

SHR by Synology, stands for Synology Hybrid RAID. It’s not even essential to know about all types of RAID setups as SHR takes care to quickly configure storage volume and deploy it according to your requirements.  Unlike the classic RAID setups, SHR allows anyone to maximize their disk usage. There’s a lot more flexibility too, where you can scale up with additional disks within an already configured volume.

For more ways to secure your data and systems, contact your local IT professionals.

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