BITS AND PIECES OF COMPUTER INFORMATION
  THAT COULD SAVE YOU A TRIP TO THE COMPUTER DOCTOR.

• Always keep your computer on a surge protection. You need one that will handle all the different things you are plugging into it. Also there should be a spot for you to run your phone lines into this protection too... {Phones lines can also receive power surges too..} But remember, this is not always a sure fire way to keep it protected if you have bad electric lines.. Your surge protection is only going to take so many power surges, before it starts to break down... So Have your electric lines checked as well, so there is no open grounds, ETC..
• Never Plug your computer into the same circuit that your washing machine, dryer or larger appliances are plugged into. If you ever listen to these things running you will notice when they power up they will throw out a tremendous amount of power. Read the info on surge Protection.
• Keep the inside of your computer as clean as you keep the outside. You would be amazed if you have never looked inside your computer how much dust will accumulate on the boards, and the fans really get the most of it. I have had to replace so many processor fans and power supply fans that probably could have been avoided if you would take a can of that air, {usually you can buy at the computer stores, or office supply places.} and blow off all the dust in there. If your processor fan goes out and you don't know it, your processor chip will heat up, when this happens it may corrupt information on your hard drive, or damage your hard drive and you could lose all your information you have on the hard drive.
• To enable Java for Internet Explore 4.0, Click on View on your Browser, then click on Internet options, For the 5.0, click on tools, and options, then click on the advanced Tab, then scroll down to Java and check mark Java Logging enabled. Then you must click applied, and ok. This will enable you to see all the buttons and Scripts that others put in their web sites also.
• General Maintenance of your computer should be done at least once a week, if your using your computer quite a bit, especially if you are on the Internet daily. This entails scan disk, and disk defrag. Another thing would be to do full system scans with an Anti-Virus Program. 
• If your planning on reinstalling your operating system, Windows 95/98.  Make sure of what version of Internet explorer you are using. If you have updated your Internet Explorer to the newest version, 5.5, then before reinstalling your windows either uninstall the 5.5, by going to My Computer, Control Panel, Add remove programs, and once in there click once on the Internet Explorer to highlight it, then click on add remove. You should get a menu up asking if you want to add a component, repair, or go back to a previous version. Tell it to go back to the previous version. If you don't do this, then when you reinstall windows, your Internet Explorer will not work. You will get errors trying to run it. 
• Another little tid bit of info that might interest you with Windows ME and the Restore feature , if you happen to have Norton Anti-Virus Software installed on your computer, before attempting to do a recovery point , uninstall Norton Anti-Virus Software. If you don't do this, on Reboot after the restore, you will get errors after you do disk defrag, with Norton Anti-Virus.  And reinstalling Norton's will not fix the problem.  Norton.com  has all the info at there web site concerning this, and how to fix it if you happen to be having this problem.
• One tip you could do with your Outlook Express, is to remove the preview pane within the program. The reason to do this is that when you have e-mail coming in, it will not be showing down below in the preview pane. Once the e-mail is showing, it is automatically open, thus running anything that would happen to be written to run on execution. A virus does not always come as an attachment. To view step by step instructions please click here. E-Mail Instructions!