Setting Up The System - Performing Maintenance On A Computer

 

 The first step into maintaining a computer was to go into the start menu and to click on "Disk Cleanup".

 The computer then calculates how much space we would be able to free up.

 That told us that there was 1,193 KB worth of disk space that could could clean up so then we ticked all of the boxes so that we could clean up the maximum amount of space.

 After that we went into the "More Options" tab and clicked on the "Clean up..." option under Windows components.

 Next a window came up to add or remove components from Windows XP, after we chose whether to add or remove anything we clicked on the "Next >" button.

Now we had to wait a few minutes for the wizard to configure components on the computer.

When it had finished configuring, the components wizards had finished and we clicked on "Finish" and then onto "OK" on the "Disk Cleanup for ACER (C:)" window. 

 The "Disk Cleanup" then finished  cleaning the disk and after it had finished, we had cleaned the disk.

 Now we wanted to perform a disk defragmentation on the computer. So we went into the start menu, clicked on "All Programs" and then onto "Accessories", after that we clicked onto "System Tools" and finally we clicked on "Disk Defragmenter".

After we had done that we clicked on "analyze". 

 When the analysis had finished we clicked onto "Defragment".

Then when the defragmentation has finished we clicked on "View Report". 

After viewing the report we closed the windows that we had open and had finished the disk defragmentation.

We still had to clean the computer though so that is what we did. This is the computer and my ID card.

This is us cleaning the computer monitor.

This is us cleaning the computer's keyboard.

This is us cleaning the computer's mouse.

And this is us cleaning the computer's case. And now we had completed our maintenance of the computer.



Setting Up The System - Building A Computer

 

The first thing that we did was to check for safety. We had to be careful with sharp objects and to know that to get rid of a static charge in myself, we had to touch metal that is not attached to something like rubber, the inside of the computer would work well.

 

Then we had to check to make sure that we had all of the computer components to install into the computer to build it. Below this is some pictures of computer components that we later installed.



 Optical/DVD drive

 Hard drive

 RAM

 Graphics card

 Fan (CPU Cooler)

 The motherboard

 The empty computer case

We decided that the first thing that we would install into the empty computer case would be the fan. This was very fiddly and annoying to do as there wasn't enough room in the holes to fit your fingers so we could hold the small screws in place. Also we needed a really small screwdriver for the small screws and it took a while to screw them in once we had the screws in place. Eventually we managed to screw all 4 screws in and the fan was in place.

After that we had to install the motherboard. We had to line it up to fit into the computer and then screw it in with the green screw to secure it in.

 Next we inserted the graphics card. To insert the graphics card we had to slot it in it's place. This involved raising a small metal bar and then lining it up with the holes in the motherboard. After that we push down on both sides of te graphics card but not too hard and we it clicked into the right place we flicked the small metal bar back so that it stayed in place.

 We also inserted the RAM which involved finding the right way to push it in, being only one way due to a little hole which shows you which way to insert it. We gently pushed down on it and it clicked into place.

 After that we inserted the hard drive which you have to do carefully as the hard drive is fragile. There is an obvious place to put in the hard drive as it is in the shape and size of the hard drive. All we had to do was make sure it was going in the right way, slot it into place and slide it in and then just check that you have done it right - with the side with the port on it facing inwards.

The next thing that needed installing was the Power Supply Unit. This sat just behind the hard drive and just slotted into place.

Now we could plug all of the wires into wherever they needed to go. It was easy to see which cables connected which drive to which just by comparing the size of the cable's insert point to the places that looked like they needed something inserting to and to make sure that all of the wires were connected to something in the right place.

Then we put in the optical/ DVD drive. For this we had to make sure that the front of the drive was facing downwards, the pins line up to the slots and then lock the drive in there.

Next we had to slot in the fan cowl. This was easy as we just needed to slot it in behind the main fan so that it could deflect the air flow to the right places. Now we had to put the PSU and optical drive down in place before we put the case on.

Finally we plugged in the computer and connected the monitor and the keyboard to it to check that it worked and functioned correctly and then we had completed the task of building a computer.

Setting Up The System - Configuring A Computer

 

 The first thing that we tried to do was to create a new user account. The first action that we took to achieve this was to go to the control panel and open up "User Accounts".

From here we simply just clicked "Create a new account". 

Then we just typed in a name for the new account which we named "Jeff Jones" and then we clicked on "next". 

We clicked on the circle next to Computer administator as we were choosing our account type and then we clicked on "Create Account".

 And this is to show that we managed to create an account for a computer administrator using those steps above. And now we wanted to the picture for the account of "Jeff Jones" that we had just created so we opened up the "Jeff Jones" computer administrator account.

From here we just clicked on "Change the picture". 

 Now we clicked on a picture that we wanted for the account which was the man on the motorcycle and then we clicked on "Change Picture".

 This shows that we have managed to change the picture on the account of "Jeff Jones". From here we minimised the windows that we had open.

 The next act that we wanted to accomplish was to change the background picture of the whole desktop so we right clicked with the mouse and clicked on "Properties".

 Now we clicked onto the "Desktop" tab at the top of the "Display Properties" window that we had opened and now it showed us what the current background picture was of which was the "Red moon desert".

 Here we found a background that we liked which was called "Vortec space" and clicked on "Apply" and "OK".

 This shows that the background had changed to what we chose.

 Now we wanted to change our mouse settings so we clicked on start and then onto the control panel again.

 Then we opened up the "Mouse" icon.

 Now we changed the mouse buttons from "Right-handed" to "Left-handed" by just clicking the circle next to where it says "Left-handed" and then we clicked on "Apply" and "OK".

 Now we wanted to create a shortcut so after closing the programs that we already had open we right clicked on the desktop, hovered over "New" and clicked on "shortcut".

 Now we copied and pasted in the box the location in which we wanted to create a desktop shortcut to and clicked on "Next".

 After that we typed in the name for the shortcut which we called "My Documents" as that is what the shortcut was linked to, and then we clicked on "Finish".

 And this is the evidence to show that we had created a shortcut.