Techs-on-Call Computer Blog

You can't help but notice the commercials. "We have more 3G!" "Our 3G is better!" "We have 4G!" What does it all mean? Why should you care? What benefit is ther to you?

We'll start by asking why you should care. Unless you need the internet on your phone or on the road, you shouldn't care at all. For the majority of cell phone users out there, 3G is useless. 3G means, more or less, a faster internet speed through the cell phone towers. This will be discussed in more detail below. If you use the phone only to send and receive calls, text messaging, or email, then 3G has no benefit.

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We've all seen them, claims of cleaning up your registry to increase performance. The truth is registry cleaners are a waste of money. Don't waste your money or your time with these registry cleaners. Especially when you can get something that does the exact same job for free. Registry cleaner programs play off ignorance. Do you know what the registry really is? Probably not. It sure does sound important and complex.

So what really is the registry? It is an efficient database that has everything about everything for the operating system currently running. The registry concept is not limited to Windows. The fact is the registry is already very efficient. You are not going to speed it up. In fact, if you are not careful, messing with the registry can cause problems so severe, you may have to re-install Windows. Some poor registry cleaners can also cause severe problems to your operating system.

What registry cleaners do is remove entries in it that are accidently left behind and entries that are automatically generated by the operating system based on your actions. For example, recently used programs are put in the registry automatically by Windows. In every instance like that, the operating system is doing something to try and make your life easier. A bad registry cleaner will remove entries it thinks are left behind but really are not causing severe problems.

A problem with registry cleaners is they lack the ability to get rid of certain registry entries that are purposefully left behind. For example, you install a trial program. This program creates an entry in the registry saying when the trial was installed and other information, such as data required for the program to work and personal preference and so on. When you uninstall this program, it purposefully leaves behind that data. Then if you want to re-install the trial, it knows right away when you first installed the program. A registry cleaner cannot get rid of entries like these because it cannot know which entry is related to programs currently installed or programs that have been uninstalled.

Don't waste your money. A free program called CCleaner can do the exact same thing as these pay registry cleaners. CCleaner removes temporary files freeing up hard drive space. It also has the ability to remove obsolete registry entries too. And it is free. Now that your know, don't waste your money.

I have been working on a server for a business and needed to use a RAID 1 array. The problem I kept having was "Could not initialize UI subsystem" everytime I tried to install Windows Home Server (or WHS). When I tried to install without RAID, I had success. I spent much time searching for the solution. After much trial and error, I was finally able to find a solution that was actually not too dificult.

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