BTEC National Diploma – IT Practitioners Unit 16 - Maintaining Computer Systems

 The three major tasks of maintenance are:  Preventative maintenance – when there is no problem  Repair – when there is a problem  Upgrade – when there is no obvious problem  How do you make a decision regarding upgrade?  Upgrade – demand from users – e.g. extra functions  Upgrade – Using tools to find potential problems

 Windows Task Manager  Windows Event Viewer System & Security

 The task manager tool is very useful as it allows a user to access information regarding the programs or processes currently running on a computer system. The task manager also allows a user to check the performance of a computer. This includes the central processing storage along with how much memory has been used, and how much is remaining. From looking at the performance, a technical user would be able to establish hardware upgrades, e.g. RAM.  KW: Total, Available, FREE, Cached memory; Paged, Non- Paged, virtual memory, hard drive used as memory.

 Using the task manager tool, I will establish if any internal hardware requires an upgrade. To begin with, I will click on the ‘Performance’ tab at the top of the window. From looking at the performance, I will be able to judge if any RAM (memory) requires an upgrade.  From looking at the RAM (Physical Memory), I can see that less than half of the initial RAM is remaining. This may require an upgrade.

 Given the information from Task Manager, what is your conclusion? (what needs to be upgraded?)  Why?  Definition: A cache is a block of RAM used for temporary storage of data that is likely to be used again. The CPU and hard drive frequently use a cache, as do web browsers. In a CPU there can be several caches, to speed up instructions in loops or to store often accessed data. These caches are small but very fast. Reading data from cache memory is much faster than reading it from RAM.RAMCPU

 Event viewer is a tool used to determine details of events which occur within a computer system. The event viewer typically has three logging areas; system, application and security. A user would be able to click on either of the above logging areas, and this will allow them to establish if there were any ‘troublesome’ events in those specific areas. To check the specific details of an event, the user could simply double click on the event. This will bring up a new window with the details of the logged event. If a user notices that a particular software has many ‘error’ labels when run, then the user could decide that the software needs to either be upgraded, or the user may need to install any updates for that particular software.

 I have clicked on the ‘Application’ logging area. Upon doing so, a log appears with some ‘error’ labels. This means that an application may be running with errors, and this further means that the software requires attention.

Event, log, Application, Security, Setup, System, Hardware events, Media Centre Microsoft Office Sessions

 The hardware upgrade that I have indentified is the computer system’s RAM. I was able to identify this, as the Task Manager stated that less than half of the initial RAM was remaining to be used. The available RAM could be used up very quickly, hence it is important to upgrade the RAM as soon as possible.

 The software upgrade that I have indentified is an application which is running with a ‘warning’ sign. This application is called ‘Samsung Mobile’, and I have noticed that whenever the application is opened, it is logged with a ‘warning’ sign. This means that that application requires attention, and could need an upgrade or updates may need to be installed in order for the application to run smoothly.