How to Fix & Speed Up Your Family's Windows Computer.

You know it's going to happen, and resistance is futile, so you may as well be prepared. Here's your ultimate guide to speeding up and troubleshooting your mother's, father's, grandma's, or other family member's Windows computer.

1. Clear the Web Cache

The web cache stores all kinds of information from their browsing sessions each time they access the internet. It does help pages they visit frequently load faster, but over time all of that data adds up and can actually cause lag instead of preventing it.

The process is actually different on each web browser, so head over to our ultimate guide for clearing the cache on any web browser for easy shortcuts. More than likely, you'll be heading straight to the Internet Explorer sections for Windows, or maybe even Chrome.

Protect your Computer System.

Emsisoft Anti-Malware uses two full scan engines in the battle against Viruses, Trojans/Backdoors, Spyware/Adware, Worms/Bots, Keyloggers and all other types of Malware.

Frequent signature updates provide detection for about 4 million different types of Malware. 3 layers to protect your PC against new infections: * The signature based scan of the double-engine catches known malware immediately when it tries to run. * With the awarded unique behavior based malware detection running programs are monitored all the time. As soon as a program does something suspicious, it is stopped and alerted.

That provides extra security against new and unknown threats. * Surf protection, that prevents you from surfing to malware spreading and fraudulent websites. Emsisoft Anti-Malware is a comprehensive antivirus tool to detect all types of Malware and Spyware. With the integrated automatic update feature, your PC is always up to date to protect permanently against dangerous software.

Unlock Bootloader On Nexus Android Devices.

Before attempting this guide to unlock your bootloader, please note that this is intended for Android phone with STOCK ANDROID OS ONLY. We will be using a Google Nexus One as our reference because it comes with zero user interface alteration from it’s manufacturer. If you are looking to unlock bootloaders on handsets which already have a custom UI from manufacturers installed like HTC Sense, Samsung TouchWiz etc, then this guide won’t be applicable.

1. The first step is download and install Android SDK.

Android Bootloaders

Every Android phone has a bootloader that instructs the operating system kernel to boot normally. But you need to understand one thing here that as Android OS is an open source OS and is available on a variety of different hardware, every manufacturer has their own version of bootloader specific for the hardware present in it’s environment. 

NB: Motorola packaged an “eFuse” command in their Android phones, which could brick (permanently turn off) your device in case you tried to flash a Custom ROM.

Why Is Bootloader Locked?

A bootloader is usually locked on an Android device because although it’s an open source OS, still the manufacturers want you to stick to their Android OS version specifically designed for the device. In order to apply this concept, manufacturers lock the bootloader. With a locked bootloader on Android devices, it is virtually impossible to flash a Custom ROM and forced attempts void warranty as well as usually end up in bricks. Therefore, the first step is to always unlock the bootloader.

How to Fix a few grub errors | Broken Bootloader and error 17/15

Grub is short for GNU GRand Unified Bootloader. To be simply put, it’s a boot loader package from the GNU Linux project. It’s the common and reference implementation of a multiboot Linux system. It allows you to choose which operating system or specific kernel to boot into.

Bootloader [Definition]

Boot Loader In literal terms, it  is a code that is executed before any Operating System starts to run on you Computer

The concept of bootloaders is universal to virtually all Operating systems that inculcates operating systems on your PC, laptop, smartphones, and other such devices. Bootloaders basically package the instructions to boot ( Turn on) Operating System kernel and most of them also have their own debugging or modification environment. As the bootloader kicks off before any piece of software on your device, it makes it extremely processor specific and every motherboard has it’s own bootloader. This is one reason that all Android phones have different Custom ROMS developed due to high variance of processing hardware present on the device.

 The iDevices running iOS somewhat share the same hardware specs and hence you don’t see much variance in their bootloaders.

Kernel

In computing, the kernel is a computer program that manages input/output requests from software and translates them into data processing instructions for the central processing unitand other electronic components of a computer. The kernel is a fundamental part of a modern computer's operating system.

When a computer program (in this case called a process) makes requests of the kernel, the request is called a system call. Various kernel designs differ in how they manage system calls (time-sharing) and resources. For example, a monolithic kernel executes all the operating system instructions in the same address space to improve the performance of the system. A microkernel runs most of the operating system's background process in user space to make the operating system more modular and, therefore, easier to maintain.

Kernel basic facilities

The kernel's primary function is to manage the computer's hardware and resources and allow other programs to run and use these resources. Typically, the resources consist of:

The Central Processing Unit. This is the most central part of a computer system, responsible for running or executing programs. The kernel takes responsibility for deciding at any time which of the many running programs should be allocated to the processor or processors (each of which can usually run only one program at a time)

The computer's memory. Memory is used to store both program instructions and data. Typically, both need to be present in memory in order for a program to execute. Often multiple programs will want access to memory, frequently demanding more memory than the computer has available. The kernel is responsible for deciding which memory each process can use, and determining what to do when not enough is available.

Any Input/Output (I/O) devices present in the computer, such as keyboard, mouse, disk drives, USB devices, printers, displays, network adapters, etc. The kernel allocates requests from applications to perform I/O to an appropriate device (or subsection of a device, in the case of files on a disk or windows on a display) and provides convenient methods for using the device (typically abstracted to the point where the application does not need to know implementation details of the device).

Key aspects necessary in resource management are the definition of an execution domain (address space) and the protection mechanism used to mediate the accesses to the resources within a domain.

Kernels also usually provide methods for synchronization and communication between processes called inter-process communication(IPC).

A kernel may implement these features itself, or rely on some of the processes it runs to provide the facilities to other processes, although in this case it must provide some means of IPC to allow processes to access the facilities provided by each other.

Finally, a kernel must provide running programs with a method to make requests to access these facilities.

The Birth of Linux OS

The Birth of Linux

On August 25, 1991, a Finn computer science student named Linus Torvalds made the following announcement to the Usenet group comp.os.minux:

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby,
won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486)
AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is
starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things
people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it
somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system
(due to practical reasons) (among other things).

The “Minix” Torvalds referred to is a variant of the UNIX operating system, used as a guideline for his the free operating system he wanted to run on the x86-based consumer PCs of the day. “gnu” refers to the set of GNU (GNU Is Not Unix) tools first put together by Richard Stallman in 1983. UNIX, the operating system that started it all, had its origins in the old Bell Labs back in the early 60s.

An Overview of the Linux Operating System

What is Linux?

Linux is, in simplest terms, an operating system. It is the software on a computer that enables applications and the computer operator to access the devices on the computer to perform desired functions. The operating system (OS) relays instructions from an application to, for instance, the computer's processor. The processor performs the instructed task, then sends the results back to the application via the operating system.