'Computer Systems Essay\r'

'Explain the function of the system whole components and how they communicate\r\nCentral touching unit of measurement †The Central Processing Unit (CPU) carries come forward the veritable processing of data. The data it processes is gathered via the system cumulation, from the primary(prenominal) depot. The CPU because sends back the results to main memory via the system bus. The CPU also restrains and convictions the operations of the former(a) tonality components. CPU’s delectation in their operation: Fetch, decode, execute, and writeback.\r\nBIOS †The BIOS is a built-in parcel that decides what a figurer can do without having gate to a threatening drive or CD/DVD. On PCs, the BIOS contains all the code required to control the key gameboard, display screen, discus drives, serial communications, and a tally of other miscellaneous functions.\r\nMotherboard †The motherboard is a printed circuit board (PCB) that houses and controls the components that atomic number 18 in charge of processing data. A motherboard provides the electrical circuit connections, these circuits argon use by other components of the system to communicate. The central processing unit and other subsystems ofttimes(prenominal) as real time clock, and mixed peripheral interfaces are also set on the motherboard.\r\nThis is motherboard doesn’t use active passion drop deads on its bridge everywhere kind of it uses a intricate passive arouse sink.\r\nPower Supply †A causality append unit (PSU) is the component that supplies place to a ready reckoner. In a PC the power supply is the metal box usually at examen in a corner of the case. The power supply has many various power leads all for divergent social occasions such as:\r\n* 20+4 immobilize power continuative\r\no Powers the motherboard, depending on what motherboard you bring forth it exit every require a 20pin or a 24pin connector.\r\n* 4+4pin ATX 12V Connector\r\no Po wers the CPU, depending on what motherboard you have it provide either require a 4pin or a 8pin connector\r\n* 6pin PCI-E VGA card Connectors\r\no Power new graphics cards, depending on the graphics card it give either require 1 or 2 6pin connectors.\r\n* SATA Connectors\r\no Used for roughly privileged components such as SATA leaden drives and SATA optical drives.\r\n* 4pin peripheral Molex Connectors\r\no Molex connectors are utilise for fans, lights and various other internal components.\r\n* diskette connectors\r\no Used to connect floppy disk disk drives.\r\nHeat Sink & cull out †A passionateness sink is specifically knowing to reduce the temperature of an electronic device by relinquish the heat into the surrounding air (case fans would then contract out this sulphurous air while move in cool air). All modern CPUs exigency a heat sink and most heat sinks require a fan. A heat sink without a fan is called a passive heat sink; a heat sink with a fan is c alled an active heat sink. Heat sinks are generally made of an aluminium alloy.\r\nThis picture shows various heat sinks used for devices like the CPU, graphics card, bridges on a motherboard and very much to a greater extent. Depending on how hot a device gets an special(a) fan may be required, the CPU, graphics card and motherboard all bunk to use active heat sinks.\r\nHard phonograph recording Drive †The profound disk drive is non fickle memory storage that uses a mechanism to analyze and write data on a hard disk. Every modern computer contains one or more hard disks. The draw a bead on of the hard disk drives is that they give computers the ability to remember things when the power goes out. A typical modern desktop machine pull up stakes have a hard disk with a capacity of between 250GB and 1TB. Data is stored onto the disk in the form of reads. The master (typically C:) is the primary drive, which the computer uses to boot up, the slave (D:) is usually used fo r extra storage and buck ups.\r\n structured Drive Electronics (IDE) †Floppy drive, hard drive and the CD-ROM drive are all connect to the computer through an Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface. An IDE interface is a resistard course for a storage device to connect to a computer.\r\nSerial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) †Is a computer bus interface for connecting host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives. SATA speeds are far great than IDE and the size difference means they are easier to cover and take in’t restrict air flow, so most modern computers tend to use SATA over IDE.\r\nThe size difference between IDE (left) and SATA (right).\r\nDescribe the purpose, holds and functions of dickens different operating systems.\r\nWindows 7\r\nFeatures\r\nFeature\r\n comment\r\nUseful?\r\n#1 Snap\r\nSnap lets you suck one window to the left and one to the right, bearing you to image two windows side by s ide.\r\nVery much, I think this feature alone makes Windows 7 stand above the rest.\r\n#2 Task boot out\r\nA remake of the anile taskbar that introduced roughly new features such as pinning, this forgets you to pin a application to the taskbar (similar to Mac dock)\r\nAgain this is a very useful feature, you can pin as many applications to the taskbar as you aspiration.\r\n#3 Thumbnail Pre draws\r\nExactly what it sounds like, thumbnail previews allow you to preview a window that is minimised or lowlife a nonher window, it is also the new way to crowd similar windows.\r\nThis feature is functionful if you have fourfold similar windows open however if you just have one or two windows open its non so great\r\n#4 Jump listing\r\nJump list lets you admittance your recently used file aways, depending on the application you can see your most played music (media player) or recently capable documents.\r\nHandy for roughly applications although not a key feature in my opinion.\ r\n#5 Aero peek\r\nThis feature allows you to make all open windows transparent this lets you view your desktop without minimising all your windows.\r\nThis is some other feature I love, I tend to save quite a lot of downloads to my desktop and being able to pitch back and forth without minimising is great.\r\n#1 Snap\r\n#2 Taskbar\r\n#3 Thumbnail Previews\r\n#4 Jump List\r\n#5 Aero Peek\r\nUndertake routine forethought tasks in relation to a PC.\r\nI bequeath show you how to carry out several forms of maintenance, software, hardware and file management.\r\nSoftware maintenance\r\nTo demonstrate software maintenance I’m going to up envision my antivirus. To seize on the process you first need to load up your antivirus (I’m using NOD32).\r\nOnce the main antivirus window is open I need to navigate to the update option.\r\nFortunately my antivirus does not need updating as my current virus signature database is up to date .\r\nThis is what happens when it’s n ot up to date, after a speedy download it will take me to the preceding page and let me know if it’s up to date.\r\n hardware maintenance.\r\nTo demonstrate hardware maintenance I’m going to find and use a printer that is connected to a separate computer on my network.\r\nHow I installed the printer on the other machine.\r\nInstallation was elemental and fast, all I necessitate to do was connect the printer to the computer via USB and chaw in the power lead. after(prenominal) turning on the printer I turned on the computer, then I installed the drivers and relevant software from the CD. later a quick reboot I printed a audition page and it worked fine.\r\nFinding the network printer.\r\nTo start the process I went to make > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers > Add a printer.\r\nDecide what fictitious character of printer you are trying to find, because the printer i intend to use runs through another computer i need to select Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer.\r\nHit Next and allow it to search, once the results are displayed select the printer you wish to use.\r\nYou should get a quick window viewing you its being connected.\r\nYou should get a window relative you everything was successful.\r\nFollowed by the option to print a test page.\r\nFile management.\r\nTo demonstrate file management I’m going to show a simple way to manage your files.\r\nSometimes folders and files get in the wrong place and things start to get mazed and missing files get accidently scratchd.\r\nMake sure you delete useless and old files to free up hard disk pose, do this by selecting the document and striking delete or right clicking the file and selecting delete.\r\nAfter creating relevant folders and deleting unnecessary files the folder looks much more organised and manageable.\r\n phonograph record kill\r\nDisk cleansing is a maintenance avail bundled in with Microsoft Windows, its purpose is to f ree up disk space on the computer’s hard drive. Disk Cleanup first searches your hard drives for files that are no daylong being used it then deletes these unnecessary files. As well as cleaning unused files Disk cleanup can also compress files that oasis’t been used for a long issue of time, this helps make space only when if you wish to access files that have been compressed at a later data the loading times can be Disk Cleanup looks in various categories to station these files.\r\n* Downloaded Program files\r\n* Compression of old files\r\n* Temporary meshing files\r\n* Recycle Bin\r\n* Offline files\r\n* Removal of unused applications or optional Windows components\r\n* Setup Log files\r\n* Temporary Windows file\r\nThese aren’t the only localizations Disk Cleanup looks for files, some options only appear with certain computer configurations. on that point are also options to finish off unused windows components to help free disk space.\r\n lovesom e example of how it industrial plant\r\nTo start Disk Cleanup go to spark > Programs > Accessories > System Tools\r\nWhen the program plungees it will begin analyzing how much space it will be able to free.\r\nThe coterminous step is selecting what you wish to clean, be careful you don’t delete things you need, saved passwords for profits website ect.\r\nThe watch Files button allows you to see the files that will be cleaned.\r\nAfter selecting what to clean you then run the programs, the progress bar shows you how long till its done.\r\nAntivirus\r\nEvery computer that connects to the internet needs an antivirus program, an antivirus program is used to detect, prevent and remove computer viruses, Trojans horses, worms and in some cases spyware, adware and other bitchy software.\r\nThere are various strategies for detecting threats the most common is signature-based detection, this involves using a library of already known threats and searching for these patte rns in executable code. unfortunately some threats are too new to be in this library; in cases like this the antivirus attempts to analyse code in its library with new threats.\r\nQuick example of how it works\r\nThis depends on where you install your antivirus but they can be launched by going to Start > Programs > [Antivirus manufactures name] > [Antivirus program].\r\nFor this example ill be using my colleges antivirus, Sophos.\r\nWhen you launch the antivirus it will have several options, the first thing you need to do is to update the program, and it’s no good searching for viruses if you’re using and out of date database.\r\nAfter updating you need to glance over for potential threats.\r\nThe scan progress window will give you a rough idea of when it will finish as well as what’s being scanned and what infections have been found.\r\nAfter the scan is correct you should get some form of summary, this will pick out you the amount of items scann ed, infected items and items that have been place in quarantine.\r\nBy quarantining threats it ensures your computer stays completely safe, some items are misread and are actually not harmful so quarantining these allows the exploiter to tell the antivirus that they are safe before they get deleted.\r\nAvailable benefit-grade software\r\nUtility software allows a user to analyze, configure, optimize and maintain their computer and should ned be lost(p) with application software, this type of software allows us to have text documents, listen to music, browse the internet and much more.\r\nUtility\r\nDescription\r\nDisk Defragmenters\r\nLocates files that are mixed-up over different locations then moves the fragments to the same location to increase efficiency.\r\nDisk Cleaners\r\nThis disk utility is designed to free up disk space and a computer’s hard drive. It does this by searching and analysing the hard drive for files that are no longer of any use, it then removes t he unnecessary files.\r\n trade\r\nThis involves making copies of important data so that these spare copies can be used to restore the skipper if it were lost or damaged.\r\ncommand line interface and GUI\r\nCLI allows you to interact with a computer by write commands in the text only interface. GUI is another way you can interact with a computer, instead of using a text interface it has a graphical interface that consists of icons.\r\nRegistry Cleaners\r\nThis utility was designed to remove registry entries that are no longer in use and are unwanted.\r\nAntivirus\r\nThat is used to prevent and remove malware, including Worms, Trojan horses and computer viruses.\r\n'