Category: Computer fundamentals faqs

Imagine only ten seconds left for the New Year, and you are all set for the “New YEAR Wishes” post. The countdown began, and OOPS! What happened?. Your system suddenly falls out of speed, and your post missed the countdown. It is such a frustrating moment to begin with the New Year. Such slow speed systems frustrate the mind deeply and irritate a lot. But, there can be several precautions we can take to preserve our system from such vulnerable happenings.

Here, we will discuss the points and ways you can speed up your slow-performance system or prevent your system from poor speed and performance.

Ways to Speed Up Computer

We can follow the below steps to improve the speed and performance of the system:

1. Restart your system: It is the foremost step one can take when you find your system running slow. Restarting a computer helps to improve speed. The restart option is available in the Power option with other options. Also, you can use Alt+F4 keys to directly select the restart option from the dropdown list and click OK. Below, snippet shows an example to restart a Windows 10 system:

2. Reset or restore the system: Reset or Restoring is the process of setting the things back to its original look. Resetting a computer system means to eliminate the issues that are making the system slow and poor. Although the reset method erases all the changes we made to the system until now, it upgrades the system and its performance.

How to reset:

To reset the system, open Windows Settings>Update & Security>Recovery in Windows 10, as shown below:

When we reset the system, we get two options, i.e., to restore and save all the files or folders or restore without saving the files and folders. Choose the appropriate option and continue to the system restore.

3. Update Windows and Drivers to the latest versions: Always update the Windows to its latest version because it leads to a better performing system. Check for the Windows updates and the system will automatically find the latest drivers.,

How to check for updates

• Windows 10

In Windows 10, automatic updations are done. You can check the updates through Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Check for Updates.

Check for the available updates, if any, and install them. Restart the computer for better performance

• Other Windows versions

Go to the Control Panel of the system. Click the System and Security option and then Windows Update option. The system will show the required updates (if any) and install them.

4. Open only required programs or apps because if so many apps or programs are open on the system, it slows down the system’s speed. More number of programs open means that more RAM will be occupied. So, close those programs or apps which are not required will help improve the system speed.

5. Remove temporary files from the system: These files are the unwanted ones, so delete them from the system because they occupy the hard drive space unnecessarily.

How to delete:

To delete the temp files from the system, there are the following ways:

• Use Windows Disk Cleanup for deleting the temp as well as other unwanted files from the system. Select the drive which you want to clean and click OK, as shown below:
  
  
• Type %temp% either on the search bar (near start menu) or in the Run field (by pressing Window button+R together). Press OK.
  
  
  A temp folder will open, delete all the files as shown below:
  
  
  In case, any file is in use, skip such files. The %temp% command deletes the local temporary files.
• Type TEMP on the search bar or in the Run field. A Temp folder will open, as shown below:

Select all files and delete them. If some files in use, skip such files. The TEMP command deletes the Windows temporary files.

Removing the temp files from the system saves much hard disk memory and improves the system’s speed and performance.

6. Disable the unwanted startup programs: The startup programs begin in the background automatically whenever we start our computer system. We need to disable such programs. However, we never determine that some programs are unnecessarily executing in the background. We need to find out the programs and disable them if not required.

How to find and disable:

We can use any of the below-described methods to find the overall running startup programs and disable the unwanted one:

• Windows 10: Click on the Start button>Settings>Apps>Startup. Select the programs which are unwanted and set to disable by right-clicking on the corresponding status of the app, as shown below:

• For other versions of Windows, including Windows 10, the best method to disable the startup programs is to use Task Manager. Open Task Manager using Ctrl+Alt+Delete keys together. Select Startup and choose the programs you want to disable and set to disable.

7. Defragmentation of Hard Drive: Defragmentation is the process of arranging the unorganized bits of data into sequential and accessible blocks on the hard drive so as to optimize them. Doing this, filters out the unused free space in the hard drive and speed up the system. Mostly the causes of the fragmented hard drive are large files such as videos, heavy software, or games. Thus, defragmentation helps to upgrade the performance of the computer system. In Windows 10, 8, or 7, the defragmentation option is scheduled automatically, i.e., once per week. But, there is a manual option of defragmentation also available.

How to Defragment:

To defragment a file, type ‘Defragment’ on the search bar and below shown window will open up:

Optimize the drive by fragmenting them.

8. Scan for viruses and malware: Virus and malware are the malicious programs that eat up the computer and make it hollow from inside. You should always try to prevent your system from such disasters. Make a monthly check-up of your system and scan for such malicious programs. You can use antimalware or antivirus software as precaution. These antivirus and antimalware are used for the prevention and scan of the viruses (if any). Every Windows version contains Windows Security, which known as Windows Defender Security Center. It can be used for the virus or malware scans.

Open Windows Defender Security Center> Virus & Threats, as shown below:

Check and scan for the threats.

9. Stop or Pause OneDrive Synchronization: OneDrive allows storing files and folders to stay away from attacks or system failure. For storing the files, you need to sync files between your system and OneDrive and sync makes the speed slow. Thus, we need to pause or stop the syncing of OneDrive to improve speed and performance.

How to Stop or Pause OneDrive Sync:

To stop the synchronization, one needs to follow the below steps:

Step 1: Open OneDrive on the system.

Step 2: Select More > Pause Syncing.

Step 3: Select the time until when one wants to pause the synchronization.

Step 4: Finally, restart the system and feel the improved speed and performance of the system as shown below where we have directly opened OneDrive from “Show Hidden Icons”:

If one doesn’t feel any change or improvement in the speed and performance, resume the synchronization by again opening the OneDrive > More > Resume Syncing.

10. Disable the web browser extensions: In some systems, it is seen that when it is not connected with the internet, it works smoothly and efficiently. But, as it gets connected to the internet, the speed slows down, and performance degrades. The reason behind it is the plug-ins, add-ons, notifications, or extensions. Disable such plug-ins if not required.

11. Manage the animation and Visual Effects: Animations and other visual effects also impact the speed, and it becomes essential to manage if the RAM of your system is too limited. Adjust the performance and visual effects for the best performance option.

How to Adjust:

• To adjust the graphics and animations, open the Control Panel>System>Advanced System Settings and then in the Performance section, click on Settings as shown below:
  
  
• A Performance Options window will open, as shown below:
  
  

Make the settings whichever applicable and click OK.

12. Clean Up the Hard Drive: When the Hard Drive becomes full of memory, it starts to work slowly because not enough memory it has. To execute a program, OS needs sufficient space for it. Make sure that at least 500MB of space should be available in each drive.

How to Check:

To check the available memory space, open File Explorer and click on This PC (or My Computer) on the left side of the window. All the drives including the Local Drive, i.e., C Drive will appear, and below each drive name, you can see the free space available in the drive as shown below:

Try to maintain sufficient space in each drive for a good performance and speedy system.

13. Clean browser cookies and cache: Searching things and visiting numerous websites per day store cookies to the system and also browser uses Cache memory to speed up the browsing. However, both cookies and cache utilize memory space and, therefore, clear the cache and cookies in a month or two. It will somehow help to speed up the performance of the system.

14. Reinstall the Windows: It is an option when all the above options fail to achieve the objective of speeding up the system. The reinstallation of Windows means to reset all the drivers and settings to a new version. Reinstallation will not store and safeguard your files, so back up your important files over the internet before the reinstallation.

15. Hardware-related problems: After performing the above methods, you still find speed problems in your system, checking for the hardware issues (if any). There may be chances that any hardware component may be failed such as hard drive failure, CPU, motherboard, UPS, or any other. It is better to go to the shop for diagnosing and resolving such hardware issues.

16. Too Old Computer: If it has been too long working with the same computer for years. It is obvious that it needs to be retired because its hardware parts might have weakened deeply, and spending money over is just a wastage of money and time. The capacity of a good working computer system is five years approximately. Afterward, certain issues began to arise in it.

Generally, the word ‘science’ refers to the study of principals and the computation of a particular concept. Like General Science or Social Science, Computer Science is the scientific study of a computer system. It represents the theoretical study as well as practical implementations of a computer system. It incorporates all information on hardware and software parts. From brief to detailed, each related concept of a computer system is explained in it. It describes each part and process held in a computer system covering all parts from the core to its advanced topics. It lets us know and learn about algorithms, processes, programs, data representation, and the method of computing the digital information. Its discipline introduces various algorithms and data structures, network designing, concepts of programming and modeling, and artificial intelligence. Computer Science foundations are covered from mathematics and engineering subjects that result in electronic circuit design techniques, techniques from probability and statistics, etc.

Disciplines of Computing

Computer Science relates and belongs to the family of five separate but interrelated disciplines, which are collectively known as the Discipline of Computing. These disciplines are separated, but interrelated means that although they cover different concepts for research, their objective of the study is computing, which is the same for each. These five disciplines are:

1. Computer Engineering
2. Computer Science
3. Information Systems
4. Information Technology
5. Software Engineering

Associations and societies including IEEE-CS (the IEEE Computer Society), ACM (the Association for Computer Machinery), and AIS (the Association for Information Systems) have collaborated and working since 1991 in order to develop and enhance the taxonomy of these disciplines and guidelines for the educational institutions all over the globe which use these disciplines for research, postgraduate, and undergraduate programs.

Fields of Computer Science

A computer scientist is a person who researches and studies the theory of computation and design of software systems. As per the study, the fields of Computer Science are divided into two parts:

1. Theory, or Theoretical Part: It emphasizes on the abstract concepts such as Computational complexity theory, Programming language theory, Human-computer interaction theory (deals with the usefulness, usability, and accessibility of a computer system), Computer Architecture, Computer Engineering, and so on.
2. Practical Disciplines: It deals with the practical implementation of computational science. Computational science refers to the computation and use of algorithmic techniques for modeling scientific data. It also emphasizes computer graphics and visualization for implementing real-world applications, networking, databases and information systems, practical knowledge of the operating system to become capable of tackling the system issues.

Both these fields together complete the study of Computer Science because there may be some issues or points that can be better expressed when practical implementations are performed. Also, the theory remains temporary until understood practically.

History and Development of Computer Science

The development root of Computer Science relates to some distinguishable fields, which are:

1. Mathematics: It gave the notions and introduced the concept of ‘binary number system’ and ‘stored program’. It was understood that we could represent the information in the form of zeros and ones and store them in the system.
2. Physics and Electrical Engineering: It stroked Boolean algebra’s idea for circuit design, where it became possible to produce arbitrary outputs (false or true) by combining the inputs of electrical impulses to a circuit by Boolean algebra. It became possible to design a circuit with binary value inputs and get the desired combination of 0’s and 1’s as its output. Hence, the invention of the transistor, invention of optical, electronic, and magnetic media for the transmission and storage of information came into existence.
3. Management information systems: These systems are known as Data processing systems that describe the method of processing the data. It led to the notion and evolution of concepts such as fetching information, searching, sorting, databases, and GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces.

All these fields led to the development of Computer Science.

1623: A scientist named Wilhelm Schickard designed and constructed the mechanical computer, the first working calculator.

1673: Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated a digital mechanical calculator known as Stepped Reckoner. Gottfried Leibniz was considered as the first computer scientist and information theorist.

1820: Thomas de Colmar invented Arithmometer, the first strong and reliable calculating machine to be used in offices for daily purposes. With this, he also launched the industry of mechanical calculator.

1822: Charles Babbage began to design the Difference Engine (the first automated mechanical calculator), which gave rise to the idea of Analytical Engine. The Analytical engine was the first programmable mechanical calculator. In 1834, he began to develop the Analytical Engine, and within two years, he sketched many salient features of the modern computer.

1843: Ada Lovelace translated and wrote a French article on Analytical Engine in which she published the algorithm to compute the Bernoulli numbers. It was considered the first published algorithm to be implemented on a computer.

1885: Tabulator was invented by Herman Hollerith, in which he used punched cards for processing the statistical information. With this, Herman’s company became part of IBM.

1937: Howard Aiken initiated the ASCC/Harvard Mark me (known as the giant programmable calculator) after convincing IBM to develop it. The giant calculator was based on the Charles Analytical Engine. The ASCC/Harvard Mark I was able to use punched cards and CPU (Central Processing Unit) on its own. It was believed that after 100 years of impossible Babbage’s dream, it had become possible, and the dream came true.

1940: The ENIAC and Atanasoff-Berry computer, which was known as the new and more powerful computing machines, were developed. The term ‘computer’ referred to the machines and their working. It was proved that more than calculations, computers could be used for other computation works also. The field of Computer Science was broadened to the study of computation.

1945: IBM (International Business Machines) founded the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University, New York.

1950 and 1960: In this period, Computer Science started to establish as a distinct academic discipline.

1953: At the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, the Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science began. The diploma was the world’s first computer science degree program. On the other side, the first transistorized computer was built by the University of Manchester. The transistorized computer was known as the Transistor Computer.

1962: The first department of Computer Science was formed in the Purdue University, United States.

1959: Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng invented the MOSFET or MOS, i.e., metal-oxide-silicon field-effect transistor at Bell Labs. MOS was the first truly compact transistor which could be miniaturized and mass-produced for wide uses. It became possible to build high-density integrated circuit chips known as the computer or microcomputer revolution.

Etymology of Computer Science

In 1959, the term ‘computer science’ appeared in an article in Communication of the ACM for the first time. The writer Louis Fein in the article argued for the creation of a Graduate School in Computer Sciences. Finally, in 1962, the writer’s efforts, including the efforts of numerical analyst George Forsythe were rewarded. Hence, universities began to create the departments of Computer Science, and the creation started at Purdue. A Danish scientist Peter Naur suggested terms ‘Datalogy’ and ‘Data Science’. In 1969, the University of Copenhagen became the first scientific institution to use the term in its ‘Department of Datalogy’, and Peter Naur became the first professor in Datalogy. Numerous terms for the computing field were suggested to the practitioners in the Communication of the ACM. These names were flow-charts-man, turologist, turingineer, applied meta-mathematician, applied epistemologist. After three months, ACM also suggested the term Comptologist, then the hypologist, and then Computics was suggested. Computer Science was supposed to have a close relationship with maths because computer science was highly influenced by the work of Mathematicians like Alan Turing and many other personalities. Later on, the bond between computer science and software engineering came as an issue. In this dispute, David Parnas claimed that the objective of studying computer science is the properties of computation, and on the other hand, the objective of studying software engineering is the designing of specific computations for fulfilling the practical goals. Hence, it was seen that the academic, funding, and political aspects of it became dependent on whether to form mathematics emphasized department or engineering emphasized department. Finally, both the departments made efforts to bridge the computer science field educationally all over the globe.

Disciplines of Computer Science

After various revolutions in the history of Computer Science and after the encompassment of the Computer Science degree, various new disciplines in the field of Computer Science were introduced. So, if there are aspirants of Computer Science, they must gain the deepest knowledge they can. All the aspirants should understand the specializations and disciplines of Computer Science effectively. Thus, there are following specialization areas for the students who are pursuing the Computer Science degree:

1. Bioinformatics
2. Applied Mathematics
3. Computational Physics
4. Microprogramming
5. Networks And Administration
6. Computer Architecture Networks
7. Cryptography
8. Computer Engineering
9. Web Development
10. Computer Game Development
11. Robotics
12. Software Development
13. Simulation And Modeling
14. Computer Programming
15. Software Systems
16. Digital Image/ Sound
17. Data Management
18. Operating Systems
19. Design Databases
20. Computer Graphics
21. Parallel Programming
22. iOS Development
23. Mobile Development
24. Memory Systems
25. Artificial Intelligence

The students can take specializations in any of these sub-fields of computer science and also can get great opportunities in their careers. Computer Science has evolved all over the globe. It is like a drug that has created addiction in almost 70% to 80% of people all around.

Applications of Computer Science

Since the evolution of Computer Science, it has become a part of human life. In daily life, we use computer science through its various applications. Few of these applications are:

• Internet Browsing: Whenever we search something on a web browser through an internet connection, the browser uses the search algorithms and parallel computing to find and provide the best results for your query. So, it has become easy to learn about everything through internet browsing.
• Online Shopping: It is similar to window shopping where the shoppers purchase items by sitting at one place. They get lots of discounts and vouchers for online shopping. It is a nice application, but there may be chances of stealing the credit/debit card information. But, no wonder artificial intelligence and network security perform their role too well and prevent our data from stealing.
• Video Games: The whole concept of Video games depends on Computer Graphics. The Graphics Designer and Developer are responsible for creating such video games. It attracts kids to play these games and learn how to play.

In addition to these applications, there are various other applications of Computer Science that we use in our daily life.

Career Options in Computer Science

Computer Science has sparked the world with its charming and fascinating theories, engineering, and experiments. It has led to various developments that saves much time of people daily and has become a helping hand for them.

The different specializations in the field of Computer Science have attracted a lot of students. So, if anyone has an interest in this field can pursue the degree of Computer Science from colleges or universities offering the program and make their career options in the following fields:

• Database Administrator
• Web Developer
• Software Analyst
• Software Engineer/ Hardware Engineer
• Computer System Operator
• Tester
• Coder
• Computer Graphics Designer
• Computer Networking Engineer and lots more.

Know your interest, set your mind, take steps, and grab the opportunities you get.

Flipping a computer screen means to rotate a computer screen with different orientations. Usually, we can see the computer screen in the horizontal orientation. With respect to it, we can also rotate the display of the computer in other modes too. It is one of the exciting features for explorers who always try and learn to explore new things.

There are two possible ways through which we can flip or rotate a computer screen:

1. Through Display settings/ Screen resolution
2. Through Keyboard Shortcuts

Here, we will discuss and learn both ways of rotating a computer screen. Also, we will show the practical implementation that will help to understand in a better way.

But before starting, let’s discuss the type of orientations available on the computer.

Types of Display Orientations

Possibly, there are four different types of display orientation in Windows:

1. Landscape: It is the orientation that will rotate the screen in the landscape mode. It is the default orientation mode of the Windows system.
2. Portrait: It is the orientation that will rotate the screen in the portrait mode. It will make a screen rotation of 270 degrees, and hence your screen will be oriented vertically.
3. Landscape (flipped): The orientation rotates the screen on the opposite side of the landscape mode. It will make a screen rotation of 180 degrees, horizontal and upside-down, and hence your screen will be in the flipped mode of the horizontal (landscape) orientation.
4. Portrait (flipped): The orientation rotates the screen on the opposite side of the portrait mode. It will make a screen rotation of 90 degrees, vertical and upside-down; hence, your screen will be the flipped mode of the vertical (portrait) orientation.

Flipping a Computer Screen through Display Settings

In order to change or set the orientation of your system, follow the below steps:

Step 1: Open the Display settings on your system. To do so, you can either directly search in the Windows search bar as ‘Change display settings’ or right-click on the desktop over an empty place. A shortcut menu will open. Click on the Display settings/ Screen resolution. In the below snapshot, we have selected the Display settings through the shortcut menu:

Step 2: The Display settings window will open with various options to make different types of changes in the system display. One choice among all is ‘Orientation’. Under the Orientation dropdown box, all the four options will be visible to you. A snapshot is shown below to have the practical implementation:

Note: If you have set up multiple monitors on your system, ensure the correct monitor at the top of the Display menu.

Step 3: If you do not want to keep the changes, press the Esc key (first key in the first row of the keyboard at the top left corner). The screen will be set to its default orientation. Another way is to open the display settings again and set the changes back.

Flipping a Computer Screen through Keyboard Shortcuts

Another way of rotating the computer screen is the use of keyboard shortcuts. It is a direct and shortcut method. You can quickly flip the screen with just three keys available on your keyboard, i.e., Ctrl, Alt, and left/right/up/down arrow keys.

Step 1: Press the keys combination altogether, and your computer screen will get flipped, accordingly. Perform the following steps to flip the screen as per your need:

1. Ctrl+Alt+Up(↑): Hold and press the Ctrl+Alt+Up arrow key together. It will flip your screen to horizontal mode, i.e., the Landscape orientation (default mode).
2. Ctrl+Alt+Down (↓): Hold and press the Ctrl+Alt+Down arrow key together, it will flip your screen to the opposite side of the default mode, i.e., as Landscape (flipped) orientation.
3. Ctrl+Alt+Left(←): Hold and press Ctrl+Alt+Left arrow key together, it will flip your screen to vertical mode, i.e., the Portrait orientation.
4. Ctrl+Alt+Right(→): Hold and press the Ctrl+Alt+Right arrow key together, it will flip your screen to the opposite side of the vertical mode, i.e., as Portrait (flipped) orientation.

Step 2: However, if the keyboard shortcut keys do not work on your system, open Intel Graphics Settings by right-clicking on the desktop. Click on Graphics Options>Hot Keys from the shortcut menu. A snapshot is shown below:

Let’s see the practical implementation of each orientation type in the below screenshots:

Step 3: The Intel HD Graphics Control Panel will open. Click on ‘Options and Support’ icon as shown in the below snapshot:

Step 4: A HotKey Manager window will open. So, if the screen rotation keyboard shortcuts are visible, it means they are present. Otherwise, the shortcut feature is not available on your Windows system. Like in the below screenshot, the keyboard shortcuts feature is available, and thus, all the shortcut keys for different orientations are visible:

Types of Orientation Snapshots

• Setting the orientation in Landscape mode.

• Setting the orientation in Portrait mode.

• Setting the orientation in Landscape (flipped) mode.

• Setting the orientation in the portrait (flipped) mode.

It is an exciting activity, and you can easily perform it by carefully following the above-described steps.

Back up means to keep a copy of data on another device to avoid data loss in case of device crash, reset, or failure. It is a smart approach to backup data of your PC or mobile phone. It is similar to the backup plans we make when we finally decide to take risks for achieving our goal. Also, if you want to change or switch your iPhone to a new version or model, you can transfer your data to the new phone if you had a data backup.

We can attain back up of the iPhone on a computer by following the few steps. The matter is on “which operating system the user wants to take back up?”.

Here, we will discuss steps to backup an iPhone on Windows operating system as well as Mac operating system.

Let’s begin to discuss the iPhones Backup on Windows OS and macOS one by one.

Back up iPhone to Windows OS.

There are following steps through which users can back up their iPhone data on Windows system:

Step 1: Download and install the ‘iTunes’ application from apple’s website on your system. The iTunes application preserves the settings, saved images/camera roll, plus the other essential data. It is used for backing up data on Windows.

Step 2: Make a connection between your iPhone and system either by a USB cable (wired connection) or setting up the Wi-Fi syncing for a wireless connection. But if you are setting Wi-Fi syncing for the first time, it is required to use a USB cable for once to make a setting in iTunes application for enabling wireless syncing for your iPhone. Just do it once and enjoy wireless connection ever after.

Step3: After connecting, open the iTunes app on your system, and near the top left of the iTunes window, an ‘iPhone’ icon or button appears. Click on it as shown in the below snippet:

Step 4: After that click on ‘Summary’. Then, click on ‘This Computer’ under ‘Backups’ and click on the ‘Back Up Now’ option, as shown in the snippet:

Check the ‘Latest Backup’ and confirm your backup. Generally, the iTunes application automatically takes the back up of your iPhone data when connected with the system. But, it is the manual option to back up data whenever required.

Step 5: If your iOS version is above 3.0, you get an option ‘Encrypt local backup’.  It will help to secure your back up data. Click on it, and it will ask to provide a password for protection. Provide the password and click on Set Password, as shown below:

Your data will be back upped on your system.

Back up iPhone to Mac OS.

There are following steps you need to follow to back up your iPhone to Mac operating system:

Step 1: Make a connection between your iPhone and system either by a USB cable (wired connection) or setting up the Wi-Fi syncing for a wireless connection. But if you are setting Wi-Fi syncing for the first time, it is required to use a USB cable for once to make a setting in iTunes application for enabling wireless syncing for your iPhone. Just do it once and enjoy wireless connection ever after.

Step 2: If the version of your macOS is older, you need to use ‘iTunes’ for backing up the data. For a new version of macOS, use ‘macOS Catalina’. Here, we have used iTunes for backup.

Step 3: After connecting your phone, an ‘iPhone’ device icon will appear on the left top corner or right top corner (depending on the iTunes version). Click on it, as shown below:

Step 4: Click on ‘Summary’. Under ‘Backups’, click on ‘This Computer’ and finally click on ‘Backup Now’. A snippet is shown below:

You can check the ‘Latest Backups’ and confirm your backup.

Step 5: If you want the option to secure your stored back up data through encryption. Select “Encrypt iPhone backup” and protect it with a password.

It will safeguard your data from the mischiefs.

Read and follow the steps according to the operating system you own and back up your iPhone data in just a few steps.