You can change your screen resolution by either right-clicking the desktop and selecting Properties, or by going into the control panel and clicking the Display icon. You will then click the Settings tab. In Vista, you will find the monitor settings under the Personalization icon, then the monitor tab.
Next, look for the slider bar that says Resolution. Be careful not to set the resolution too high, as older monitors may not be able to handle the resolution and could possibly go black. If this happens, do nothing, as Windows will usually revert the resolution back after 15 seconds without a response from you. Typical resolutions are 800X600 or 1024X768. If you have a widescreen monitor, you can even try 1280x768.

You may have a couple of problems here. 1) Your colors may be set to 256 and should be set to 16-bit or 32-bit depending on your graphics capabilities. Or 2) You should make sure your graphics drivers are installed. To update your graphics drivers, visit the manufacturer of the card (nVidia, ATI, etc..) and download the latest drivers, then go to the Control Panel, then System, then Device Manager. You will see a listing for your display adapter. Right-click the adapter, then click Properties, then select the Driver tab and finally Update Driver.

Generally, you will not want to mess with these settings if your monitor is working okay. If you're monitor flickers or if you are suffering unusual eye strain, you may want to increase the refresh rate to reduce the flickering. I have a dual output video card and want to use two monitors. Is this possible?


Yes, having two monitors is great for multitasking or increasing the amount of your workspace for photo editing, spreadsheets or other tasks that demand multiple Windows open at once. To do this, connect both monitors to the card and navigate back to the Display settings area. You should see a box with a 1 and a box with a 2. The number 1 box is your main monitor. If you click on the second box, you can now adjust the settings for the second monitor. If you're not sure which monitor you're adjusting, click Identify Monitor and a huge number will be displayed on your screen. You can even drag the boxes around to get the exact orientation of the physical monitors.

No. While in theory a virus can erase the BIOS of a PC and some even manage to erase all the data on hard drives, this type of damage is not permanent.

No. While some firewalls may save you from worms scanning the Internet for open ports, a firewall will not save you from Human error virus infection, such as opening email attachments or partaking in file sharing.

There are many great free antivirus programs. AVG Antivirus and Avast! are a couple of good ones. You can also do online scans from Housecall. While Housecall will not give you real-time protection, it will scan your drives and help remove viruses already on your computer.

The first things you should do are 1) Buy or download a free antivirus program. Update that antivirus program, then run a full scan of your system. 2) Do not open Email attachments--even if you know who they're from. Some Email worms will send mail from a friend or loved-one's computer, so the send might appear to be from someone you know, but might actually contain a virus. 3) Stay away from shady sites.

If you're running a wireless network, or if you have a wireless router, then yes you do need to run some type of encryption. If you a running an unsecured network, anyone in close proximity can access your network. Run WPA encryption with a secure pass phrase. If you have older devices, you may need to run the obsolete WEP, but it's better than nothing.

To figure out your external IP address, you can visit a site like whatismyip.com. This will should you the IP address given to you by your Internet provider.

Try going to Start, then Run and type cmd and hit OK. At the command line type ipconfig /release and hit enter. They type ipconfig /renew or simply reboot the PC.

If you only have one PC in the house then, no, you do not need a router. If you have two or more PCs, then we recommend a router because they are pretty inexpensive and also help secure your internal network from snoops by providing Network Address Translation (NAT). NAT means the router has an external IP address provided by your ISP and then provides your internal network with an internal IP address, such as 192.168.1.2. This means the outside world cannot "see" the internal computers.

If you are in near proximity to your router or modem, then you should go with a wired network. While there may be no real speed advantage, there are security risks when going with a wireless network setup.