Yesterday, I had a service call, one of the "standards" as I like to call them. A slow PC.  I got on-site, and looked at the usual suspects.  There were no viruses or spyware, but there were a dozen little icons in the system tray.  NO WONDER! All this junk loading, XP was choking!

It amazes me how many times I walk into a new client and see the same thing - they ran out of room on their server because the system partition is too small. It reminds me of those silly “Plan Ahead” posters that were all the rage in the '70s, where the words ran across the bottom, then had to kinda take a turn up the side a little. But it’s good advice to plan ahead, instead of buying some pre-canned thing that Dell offers. Nothing wrong with Dell, in fact, their service is great, but glitz it up a little. Here’s some things to remember from a battle-hardened IT guy that will make your life with your new server a bit more bearable. I will be touching on generalities here, so you can elaborate on my points for your own needs.

If you're having problems with your iPod, here are some troubleshooting tips to try before taking your iPod back to the store. Some of these tips are available elsewhere, but since I see these problems at our tech support desk all the time, it's worth reprinting.  1. Check to make sure the iPod is not on hold I know this is a simple fix, but with laptops and mp3 players alike I have seen it many times, and it's the first check. The hold switch is on top of the unit - make sure there is no red showing.

Editor’s note: Liz is a tech support person and all-around electro-guru. She’s got all kinds of random fix-it tips running around in her brain, some of which occasionally make it to paper (or pixels in this case). Here are her tips for what to check with your laptop before spending the time and money to bring it to, well, her. 1. Remove the battery and plug it in with an AC adapter. If your laptop works fine with just the AC adapter, it means your battery is bad and you need a new one. I can't tell you how many of these I see a day. You can order a new battery from your retailer or manufacturer. 2. Non-Destructive Restore- to do this, restart your computer and press the F11 key during the bootup process. Select "Non-Destructive System Restore" as the option. If there is no option to do this (such as on Toshiba or Dell notebooks), do not restore the laptop unless you are prepared to lose all your data. It’s always a good idea to back up your important files before doing any kind of restore.

When you open Microsoft Word, do you find yourself repeating the same ritual? Changing margin sizes, changing to Print view, adding tab settings, setting a default font, etc.? Isn't it annoying? Well, you can set it so don't have to do this every time - just change your normal.dot file. What the heck is that? It’s the default document that Word uses when you start it up. You can customize it any way you want. Here’s what you do:

Remember back in 2002 when you purchased that hot new server for your customer? Remember when he called you back and you both decided to replace it? Well, now what do you do with it? I ran into this exact scenario. I had this very nice rack-mounted PC with a 500 mhz P3 processor and about 500MG of RAM with hardware raid. At the time, very nice. Now... a bit dated. So what do you do with it?

I hate Windows Vista. Hate it with all my heart. But, we have to live with it, so I have to fix it. We've run into the problem below frequently, and here's how to beat it.

I love geek gadgets, but I love geek gadgets with ingenuity and a sense of whimsy most of all. Enter the Do It Yourself geek projects that populate the internet, like building your own PC, mod-ing your Mac, hacking your Apple TV and more. With all of that high end tech handiwork going on, what's left for the handy geek with a lower budget? How about a DIY MP3 Player?