Absolute Beginners Guide to Upgrading and Fixing Your PC

Before you dive headfirst into the upgrading waters, it helps to know what you're getting yourself into. If nothing else, you need to know whether your system can accept the upgrade you want to make; not all PCs are compatible with all the new peripherals on the market today.

Then there is the unsettling fact that even the simplest upgrades the ones where you plug a new peripheral into an open port don't always go smoothly. On the off chance that your upgrade either doesn't take or somehow messes up something else in your system, you want to be able to undo the damage and return your system to its pre-upgrade (or working) state.

That said, here is a checklist of what you need to prepare before you attempt a PC upgrade:

Pre-Upgrade Checklist

Assemble your upgrade toolkit.

Print out a system hardware report, so you'll know exactly what hardware is installed on your system.

Determine whether the peripheral you want to add will work on your system.

Make a note of your system's key configuration settings.

Gather your original Windows installation CD or disks including an emergency startup disk or CD, just in case your system won't restart normally.

Make a backup of your important data files.

If you're running Windows XP or Windows Me, set a System Restore point.

Read the instructions of the item you want to install.

Assembling an Upgrade Toolkit

As the first point on the Upgrade Checklist indicated, you should assemble an upgrade toolkit. Figure 2.1 shows all the tools you'll need to perform the various types of upgrades you can make to your personal computer system.

That's right. All you need are two screwdrivers flat-head and Phillips-head.

In fact, if you're adding an external peripheral to you system, you won't even need a screwdriver; all you have to do is plug the new peripheral into one of the connectors on the back of the system. You'll use your screwdriver only if you need to open the case of your system unit and install a new card.

Creating a System Hardware Report with Device Manager

Now that we have the tool gathering out of the way, let's look at the rest of the pre-upgrade preparation. It's good practice to know what hardware is installed on your PC before you install any new equipment. Fortunately, Windows provides a utility, called the Device Manager, that provides various reports that detail the devices installed on your system and which resources they're using.

"Mike Sez"

To use Device Manager to create a system hardware report, follow these steps (in Windows XP):

1. Click the Start button and select the Control Panel option to open the Control Panel.

2. Select Performance and Maintenance, System, to open the System Properties dialog box.

3. Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button to open the Device Manager utility, shown in Figure 2.2.

   Figure 2.2. Use the Device Manager to print details about your installed hardware.

4. Select View, Devices by Type to list all devices by class.

5. To print a report for a specific class or device, select the name in the devices list and then click the Print button. When the Print dialog box appears, select the type of report to print, as described in Table 2.2. Click OK in the Print dialog box to print the report on the selected output device.

Use the All Devices and System Summary report to determine whether you have a potential conflict with new hardware that you are preparing to install in your computer. Print the report, highlight all IRQ, I/O, and MEM settings, and then compare these to the settings that the new device(s) can be set to.

Print a More Detailed Report with Microsoft System Information

You can also use the Microsoft System Information utility (shown in Figure 2.3) to print out more detailed reports on your system status. Because Microsoft System Information gives you a snapshot of your entire system configuration, this is a great resource for anyone including technical support staff trying to troubleshoot Windows problems; this kind of specific information is necessary to figure out what might be conflicting with what.

To use the Microsoft System Information utility, follow these steps:

1. Click the Start button and select All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information.

2. When the Microsoft System Information utility launches, click the item in the left-hand pane you want to examine; the contents of that view will appear in the right-hand pane.

tip

Microsoft System Information organizes your system data into several major categories, displayed in a kind of resource "tree" in the left-hand pane. The most important of these categories are

• Hardware Resources This view displays hardware-specific settings DMA, IRQs, I/O addresses, memory addresses, and so on. Select Conflicts/Sharing to identify devices that are sharing resources or are in conflict.

• Components This view displays information about your Windows configuration. Look here to determine the status of your device drivers and network resources.

• Software Environment This view displays a snapshot of the software loaded in your system's memory.

To print out a complete listing of all system parameters, click the Print button. (Depending on your particular system, the printout can run up to 100 pages!) If you'd prefer to save your system information in a text file for future viewing, select File, Export, and then select a filename and location for the text file.

Backing Up Your Data

The next thing you need to do before you upgrade is prepare for the worst-case scenario, in which your upgrade completely fries your system and you lose access to all the data stored on your hard disk. While this is a highly unlikely scenario, it can happen and you don't want to be caught short if it does!

The only way to protect against a catastrophic loss of data is to create a backup copy of that data. Then, if you have to start rebuilding your system from scratch, you can restore the lost data from the backup copy.

You can back up your data to any number of media. In the old days it was common to use floppy disks for backup; given the size of today's data files (especially graphics and sound files), the meager 1.44MB capacity of a floppy disk just isn't big enough. Better to back up to a Zip disk, a tape cassette, or a CD-R/RW disc.

If you have all your data files in a single folder and are backing up to a large-enough medium (such as a CD-R/RW), the easiest way to back up the data is just to copy the folder. If your files are scattered all over your hard drive or (especially) if you'll need to use multiple media (more than one disk or tape, that is), you'll want to use a backup software program.

Fortunately, you don't have to go out and purchase a separate backup program because Windows has its own built-in backup utility, called (surprisingly enough) Microsoft Backup. To learn how to use Microsoft Backup to back up your data files, turn to Chapter 19, "Simple Steps to Keep Your System in Tip-Top Shape."

Setting a System Restore Point

If you're running Windows XP or Windows Me, another good preventative measure to take is to set a System Restore point. System Restore is a new utility that takes a snapshot of your key system settings. If some of your system settings get messed up during an upgrade, you can use System Restore to return your system to its pre-upgrade configuration.

To learn how to set a System Restore point, see Chapter 21, "How to Deal with a Finicky PC."