Techfriend

DWatts

If you're worried about messing up your computer, buy a second hard drive and store all your files on it - that way, if something goes wrong and you have to reinstall Windows, assuming you don't touch the backup drive you're fine. Heck, even better - buy a NAS box and completely remove your files from your computer. You can still access them through the network but you can never break or corrupt them if Windows fails.

But for normal problems, Google and Youtube.

barbiedoll

As you clearly like messing around with your computer and you're obviously keen to learn more about it, save your subscription money and spend it on a cheapy second-hand desktop from ebay, which you can play with to your heart's content. Or buy a refurbished laptop and keep it solely for your uni work. If you do manage to scramble your router settings, you can nip to your nearest coffee shop/McDonalds etc, and finish off any last-minute essays.

Spannerzone's advice sounds excellent, my husband has crashed our pc more times than I care to remember. (Thanks for the link!)

GunJack

spannerzone wrote: »

yeah if it's a quad core i7 with 12GB ram and BT 40MBPS internet

Git !!!!!! no offence, of course



....good job I use acronis, really..hate to think how long it'd take me on my Semperon 3000+, 2GB RAM and 6meg web

Lifeforms

It's a scary world out there with computers, but the only way people who you consider to be more tech savy (ie on the end of those expensive subs/phonelines) usually got there by experimentation, and mess ups. Google is your angel in many of those cases, including looking up files you might want to delete!. But more often than not, places like here will give you good advice for the current problem, as well as future issue proofing. Frankly people who man rhese lines quite often are semi good knowledged people, who work from a manual anyway, and if you ever get to the stage of something out of the extraordinary you could be struggling with it for a while.

ave your money, do what is suggested, especially a dirt cheap bare bones typed desktop off ebay. Experiment on that, and see what's what, and it will improve your confidence in your own abilities tenfold.

Even if you regularly image your computer, it doesn't matter how messed up it gets, you can get a recent back up up and going on it. (make sure they are regular, not once a year jobbie however, and with important OU assignments, make it daily/or even each time you save it on your desktop, just in case!)

spannerzone

GunJack wrote: »

Git !!!!!! no offence, of course



....good job I use acronis, really..hate to think how long it'd take me on my Semperon 3000+, 2GB RAM and 6meg web

Oh don't worry my own PC and internet is considerably lower spec...I too rely on Acronis, it was the best £30 I ever spent vs time wasted reloading several home computers.


:rotfl: