Original subtitles

[Music]

a plus introduction

hi

and welcome to this a plus introductory

course

my name is josh penzel i'm a comptia

certified technical trainer and i have

my a plus network plus security plus and

cloud essentials certifications i'm also

a microsoft certified trainer and

microsoft office specialist which isn't

necessarily pertinent to this course but

it's interesting information nonetheless

i received my a certification in 2000

which was 12 years ago and since then

the test has gone through quite a bit of

changes

that being said i've also helped

hundreds of people get their comptia

certifications and i have no doubt that

you're going to get yours too

now there's a lot of information that's

going to be covered on this course and

so i just want to take a moment to tell

you a little bit about comptia the test

and what we're going to cover

comptia is what we call a vendor neutral

organization

meaning that they're not owned by anyone

so the test is supposed to have a nice

wide variety of all of the information

that you need to know in the it field

independent of a specific manufacturer

that being said one of the largest

operating systems and uh

contributors to our it field is

microsoft so you're going to see a lot

of that on the test

that being said we've also added a few

things to the a plus exam since i first

started

for instance mobile phones or

smartphones and tablets all covered on

this exam

now

the test because there's so much

information is actually broken up into

two different tests there's

220801 and 220802

when you complete both of these exams

you will receive your a plus

certification from comptia

now 801 is supposed to cover more facts

what is a computer what is a cpu

what is a display and so on 802 is

supposed to be more about setting up

those and troubleshooting them

however i find most of the information

to overlap quite a bit and i always

recommend people who want to take the

certification

actually study for both tests at the

same time

that way you can either sit for both

tests back to back on the same day or in

a short distance from each other the

reason being that information from both

is going to show up on each exam they're

not very well distinguished

each test consists of about 90 questions

and you have about 90 minutes to

complete them

some people find the 801 test easier

some people find 802 to me

they're basically the same

the only difference is you need a 675

out of 900

for the 801 exam

and you need a 700

out of 900 for the 802 exam so the

passing grade is slightly higher that

being said i'm expecting most of you to

get in the 800 realm after we finish

this course

now there's a lot of information covered

on this course and as many of you

probably know

there's their a plus is an introductory

course

before you're gonna get your security

plus and network plus certifications as

well as a result a plus actually has

information on networks and security

covered so studying for your a plus exam

is actually really going to help you

with your network plus and security plus

information too and studying for them

concurrently or around the same time is

going to help you pass all of these

certifications but we'll talk more about

those later

so the first thing we're going to do in

this course is talk about computers the

hardware then we're going to look at

software followed by networking displays

security and mobile devices

one thing i want to make very clear is

although you're going to be studying

by watching these videos i also want you

to get used to taking multiple choice

questions because the majority of the

test although not all of it

does have multiple choice questions

meaning they'll give you a situation or

ask you a question and then they'll give

you several answer choices

if you can master taking multiple choice

exams you're going to master this exam

there are however on this new

a-plus exam what are called performance

based questions which is relatively new

maybe a year old this means they're

gonna ask you to do certain things for

instance recognize parts of a

motherboard or

put together a computer that would be

good for a big gamer either way

most of the questions will be multiple

choice although some will be performance

based

studying throughout this entire course

is going to prepare you for both parts

of this

another thing to note is that

a plus assumes that you have six months

of experience in the field

if you don't that's fine don't worry

about it we're going to get you up to

speed if you have more than this then

that's good but don't get overconfident

a plus is a very specific way it likes

to see things on the exam and i'm going

to spend the majority of this course not

only going over information but covering

it in a way that's not too in-depth i

hope but gets you prepared to take the

test the journey starts here it doesn't

end here

with that being said let's get into the

course starting with an overview of

computers

[Music]

the computer

an overview

before we can delve into the

complexities of computer i want to go

over all the parts that make a computer

and when i was looking for a way

to

provide a metaphor to those who might

not be more as familiar with computers i

came across this 1613 definition in the

oxford english dictionary that said

a computer is a person who makes

calculations or computations now

obviously there weren't any machines

there wasn't even electricity at this

point so

a person had to do all the calculating

and then i saw the next definition from

1869 a device or machine for performing

facilitating calculations and then the

1946 definition which was a lot more

complex and i thought you know

using a person as a metaphor to talk

about a computer is actually really

powerful because in many ways they're

really similar

and so what i want to do is go through

your body

and i'd like to

compare it

to

a computer

so

the first thing your body has as you

probably know is skin and bones a

structure

now this structure provides a framework

in which everything else fits all your

organs fit in certain spots your legs

are on the bottom your feet below that

your arms are at the top your head above

that and it's all perfectly weighted in

order to support all of this

now the other thing your body your skin

and bones do is they protect everything

on the inside from everything on the

outside

so for instance when someone hits you or

when you fall your heart doesn't fall

out of your body right it's held in by

your rib cage and then your skin and

your muscles and so your skin and bones

provides protection from all those

elements and of course this thing this

body of yours has been perfectly

designed to support all of these

different parts

now this your skin and bones is very

much like a computer chassis which is

also called the case the structure

and as you can see in this image i

pulled up here you have several things

that

make a chassis a chassis

for instance you have lots of vents

because computers get very hot and so

this thing is perfectly um

created to allow for airflow there's

also lots of spots for hard drives like

over here

and as you can see from all these locks

down here this thing protects all of

these internal components

from the outside

you also have a spinal cord

your spinal cord is what everything

plugs into for lack of a better word and

it's really what allows your body to

talk to all the different parts of your

body so when my hand moves

that's my brain talking through my

spinal cord to my hand

it allows all these different body parts

as well to talk with my brain which

controls everything so not just

can my body

and not just can my brain talk to my

hand my hand actually talks to my body

my eyes talk to my brain everything

talks to each other i sing the body

electric is what women said

and this spinal cord

is very much like in computers what we

call a motherboard or

a system board and this system board

allows you to plug in everything you

have expansion slots which we'll talk

about and ram slots here and

spots to plug in all your storage

devices and all sorts of little chips

that allow everything to talk to one

another

and so

many ways your spinal cord is very much

like this motherboard

you also have a brain

and your brain as you probably know is

extremely important because it processes

all of the incoming and outgoing

information from your body

so when your eyes see something that

goes to your brain and that processes it

and then your brain can spit something

out through your mouth

it's also extremely complex and it's

very fast i mean our brain works so fast

that we move we breathe we walk without

even having to think about it because

our brain is processing at that high of

a speed

finally without it

we can survive we can live but we're

basically a vegetable we're not aware of

anything we can't process new

information

and so

our brains are very much like in

computers what are called cpus or the

central processing unit

and this central processing unit

basically is what makes the computer run

it does all of the processing

all the information that goes through

that motherboard through that spinal

cord

it goes to the central processing unit

and that cpu process this information

and sends it back to all the different

pieces

now you also have two different types of

memory in your brain

the first type short-term memory

is limited in what it can hold a lot of

people think we can hold about four to

seven things in our short-term memory at

any one time

and that's because

our short-term memory is what we use to

work on a project or work on something

it's what we're keeping in our head at

any one moment

and

that's what allows us to do our work

it only runs

because of this when we're awake or when

we're aware

we're not keeping things in our

short-term memory when we're sleeping it

kind of goes to sleep as well

and this is similar to in a computer

what's called ram or

random

access

memory

and this random access memory this ram

it's what allows us to work on things

it's like our desktop

which

we can put files on and work on them

during the day

just like our short-term memory but it's

limited in how much information it can

hold

because we also have a different type of

memory long-term memory

now long-term memory

holds far more information than our

short-term memory because we're not

using it every time we're working

we access deep information in there that

we can store for later use

so it's a lot bigger because of this but

we also

need the short-term memory right we need

that random access memory in order to

work with this long-term memory

and

some think that the information in our

long-term memory remains there always

your long-term memory can store

information for years and years and

that's where it files stuff away like

your file storage cabinet

and this is just like what we call

in computer storage these are your your

hard drives or your um

floppy drives or your optical drives

uh these are things that

store information

for later use

that we can bring into our short term

bring into our random access memory and

then we can do something with it

and we also have a stomach gi tract

right and our stomach provides us with

fuel this is what allows us to keep

running

it feeds all of these internal processes

our brain our muscles our heart these

all require constant fuel and they

require resources that's what

our stomach provides

and without it we will eventually die

you can go

a few days without food even longer

without water but at a certain point

unless you're feeding your body unless

you're getting fuel you can't survive

and

just like with anything with electricity

this is our power supply

this is what

fuels

every single part of this electronic

computer

we also have senses the five senses that

most people know sight sound smell touch

and taste

and these are how you receive

information from the outside world right

you use your senses to look around you

to hear things

to taste something

and each of these senses

can pick up a different type of

information they're attuned to specific

things my eyes are tuned to looking my

ears for hearing and i use them for

different things

and this gives our information our cpu

something to process

something to

take and chew on no pun intended

and this is what we call

input devices like what i've have here

like a

a keyboard

or

a mouse

for instance are our two most basic

input devices because they allow us to

input stuff into our computer into the

cpu into the hard drive

and this is very different

from speech and movement right these are

the outputs this is what lets us

communicate to the world and people

around us and i can use my mouth to

taste something but i can also use my

mouth

to speak to use language to reach out i

can use a gesture to explain something

and these allow us to convert our

thoughts our internal

into something external into our actions

these all this is also what permits

other people

to take our ideas and compute them

themselves so this really allows for

communication someone else's input

system their ability to hear or see me

and my ability to send a message

and in computers this is what we call an

output device and these are things

like

printers

or the most necessary output device

a display

so that we can see what's going on in

the computer

finally we have this whole nature versus

nurture debate right we we have our

bodies we have our brains

but unless there's something telling our

brains how to use all of this stuff it's

pretty pointless

right

this nature versus nurture what we learn

this is

our context this is how we embrace the

world

it provides us with language to go with

our voice

meanings to go along with our gestures

and it's a guide for dealing with the

world around us

and in computers this is what software

does

it provides a translator from the cpu

from the brain

to

the user to allow me to be able to type

something into the computer and the

computer knows exactly what i'm saying

now that's like us learning that's like

our instinct that's a bit a baby um

chicken pecking through the egg when it

first is born

so what we're going to do in this a plus

class is talk about all of these

different pieces

our output devices input devices

power supplies

storage devices

memory

cpus our brains our motherboards our

system boards and the chassis

and once we understand all of these

pieces

then we'll have a better sense for how a

computer operates

and we'll have a better sense for not

only how to fix them but how to connect

each computer to the other

so without further ado let's get into

talking about each one of these

individual pieces

[Music]

motherboards

chipsets and buses

now as you recall we said that

motherboards were the spinal cord

of

the computer meaning that it's the thing

that allows everything to communicate

together and it's what connects all the

different parts of the computer

together

so as you can imagine it's a pretty

complex and complicated piece of

equipment so before we can discuss how

to install motherboards or how to even

plug things into motherboards we need to

talk about some of the infrastructure of

a motherboard itself and the

architecture of it

so some of the things i'm going to talk

about in this video are the vocabulary

that we're going to see come up again

when we talk about motherboards and

three words that we'll talk about

specifically are chipset bus

and lane and no although those words do

have other meanings i don't mean driving

a bus on the lane on the highway

we're talking about these electronics

we're also going to talk about parallel

versus serial communication which are

two types of communication that occur in

just about every type of electronics and

we're going to see this come up over and

over again not only when we're talking

about motherboards but when we get into

networking as well

once we do that we're going to talk

about chipsets in particular

specifically there are two manufacturers

who make chipsets

there are two main chips that are have

been developed in these chipsets the

north bridge and the south bridge we'll

talk about the difference between those

and i'm going to point out now that

these are really important and they will

come up on the a plus exam so you

definitely want to pay attention okay

we're also going to talk about the dmi

direct media interf interface which is

what connects the north bridge and the

south bridge together

then we'll talk about buses

the front side bus or the hyper

transport bus which are just the same

exact thing

the memory bus

and finally the expansion bus which is

where we'll leave off and we'll discuss

these two buses in more depth and later

videos as well

all right

so first let's discuss the word chipset

you've seen it

probably in the objectives and you've

heard me talk about it but really what a

chipset is is a group of integrated

circuits or chips that are designed to

work together and are usually marketed

as a single product so this is why when

we have different types of motherboards

they have different chip sets meaning

the internals of them are the same so

although the motherboard the spinal cord

is called the same thing on every human

it works differently perhaps from a

human to a different type of animal that

also has a spinal cord you'll also

notice physically these motherboards

look very differently and that's going

to be something we're going to call

a form factor form factor being the

outside the physical

build of a motherboard okay but what

we're talking about here in chipset is

the internal build of it we'll talk more

about form factors a little later and

that has a lot to do with the chassis

a bus

is one wire or a group of wires that

carry data from one place to another so

very simply just like a bus you drive a

computer bus is what carries data from

one place to another just like

the cord that you plug in from your

smartphone to your computer has buses on

it all right but this is we're talking

in terms of motherboard something that's

integrated onto the motherboard and if

we look really closely and zoom in on a

motherboard we'll see lots of these

little circuits

built on to the motherboard and they're

integrated so i'm going to highlight a

couple right here i see one right and

this is a circuit that's integrated onto

the motherboard allows communication and

here's another bus

okay and there are several others here

and we can see them all over the place

and these are integrated right onto the

board and that's what allows the

computer electronics to talk to one

another and you can see these all over

the place so i don't need to draw

draw over every single one but you get

an idea of what where these buses are

and how ubiquitous they are on a

motherboard when we're talking about

communication electronic communication

specifically there are really two main

types we're going to see over and over

again not just on a motherboard but when

we get to networking as well the first

is serial communication now serial

communication uh has to do with sending

one bit of data

at a time if you pardon my not so

straight lines here that means that just

like this i'm sending one piece of data

at a time so this piece of data right

here has to arrive

before or has to be sent rather before i

can send this piece of data so you can

see there's a limit to how much data i

can send at any one point

now this is very different from parallel

which allows me to send multiple bits of

data at a time

so i could send four let's say bits of

data or

eight

all right now

one thing that's important to know here

is that all of this data is traveling in

the same direction

okay so this doesn't allow serial or

parallel doesn't differentiate between

the direction the data is going just how

much data can be sent at any one time

now what's also important is you'll see

here this word bit

right you'll see it down here now when i

say bit in computers we're not just

talking about a very small amount

there's actually a mathematical amount

that we're talking about

and what that is is the difference

between bits and bytes this is probably

something you've seen but you're not

even aware of

there are eight bits

in one byte

and you'll notice here that

bits are represented by a lowercase b

whereas bytes are represented by an

uppercase b

okay so

one mega bit per second is equivalent to

125

kilo

bytes per second

so that's why when you get your cable

modem installed and they say oh you're

going to get

let's say

16

megabits per second transfer rate and

you get home and you're really only

going to get

2 mega

bytes per second transfer right and when

we talk about storage and hard drives

later we deal with this big beat the

megabytes so that's where the confusion

lies so it's really important to

differentiate between these we'll come

back to this number eight again and

again especially when we get into

networking so it's really important to

pay attention to that again

eight bits in one byte

also something i want to point out just

while we're here as you see the m and

the k this all is math right so if i

have one

byte

that's a sorry one kilobyte would be a

thousand bytes

one megabyte would be a thousand

kilobytes

one gigabyte would be a thousand

megabytes etc etc cetera

all right

the last vocabulary word i want to talk

about is lane and what a lane is is two

serial wires that enable the sending and

receiving of data simultaneously so this

means that now instead of just sending

over data and then having it sent back

over the same cord i can actually

instead

send

data and

receive data at the same time so you can

see how this is going to allow for a

different type of communication

okay

so we've now covered some vocabulary we

covered what a chipset was base and lane

we also talked about parallel versus

serial communication with a little bit

in there about bit

versus

byte

so

let's get into chipsets

there are two main chipset manufacturers

and

when it comes to motherboards i should

say and these are the same names you're

going to see with

central processing units or cpus intel

and amd and what this means is not that

they actually make the chip right you

see sony on some and samsung and others

but what this means is they've come up

with the chipset the architecture of

these motherboards of these

cpus so it's important to recognize

these two now when it comes to speed or

quality these are pretty much equal

right there's really no difference here

uh there used to be arguments who was

better intel or amd but nowadays that

that argument is is

we don't really hear it anymore

all right so

now let's get into this is a really

important part of a plus is

there are two main ships that control

communication on a pc motherboard

the north bridge

and the south bridge

the north bridge which is also called

the memory controller hub for a reason

you'll see in a second

is responsible for high data transfer

devices

so think about north

high it's higher up it's going to be

responsible for high transfer devices

and there are two main high data

transfer devices we're talking about

here high speed graphics and memory or

ram which is random access memory these

two items need the fastest communication

to the cpu to the brain of the computer

the central processing unit now this is

different from the south bridge again

lower than the north bridge which is

also called the i o controller hub or

the ich

and this is for secondary controllers

just about anything else okay so any

input out devices such as hard drives

usb ethernet just about everything else

is going to be controlled by southbridge

so when you see northbridge or

southbridge on the exam and it asks you

what device is transferred over those

you want to remember that the only

devices that are going to use the

northbridge are high speed graphics and

ram if you can remember this it makes it

very easy to answer any questions okay

so again high speed graphics and ram are

controlled by the north bridge the south

bridge everything else that's what

allows communication between everything

else

and here is a diagram of the north

bridge in the south bridge you can see

again you can see that here's the c

you can see here i have

graphics

and here's memory the only two things

connected directly to northbridge as

well as the cpu which makes sense

because it's the fastest

uh required it requires the fastest

communication

and the south bridge just about

everything else right so i got my

onboard graphics controller some other

external buses etc we'll talk about what

all these things mean a little later we

see this here as well right northbridge

pci express which is a high-end graphics

card we'll talk about that connects to

the northbridge ram northbridge

everything else southbridge

the direct media interface

is what connects the north bridge and

the south bridge so if we go back here

you see here direct media interface this

is called the internal bus but that's

just another name for the direct media

interface this is what connects the

north bridge to the south bridge i just

point this out so that if you see the

term direct media interface on the test

you know that that's the thing that

connects north bridge and the south

bridge together these two main chips

that control communication on our

motherboard

so now we've talked about the chipset

we've talked about intel versus amd our

two main

competitors and

manufacturers the north bridge again

responsible for ram communication and

high graphics and the south bridge which

is everything else and the dmi direct

media interface which connects the two

together so let's get into buses

so

we see two different definitions here

front side bus

and hyper transport and the only

difference between these they're exactly

the same is one is what intel calls it

the other is what amd calls it okay and

what the front side bus is the very

front of that bus right what's the very

what's the most important thing of our

computer the brain right and that's the

cpu so this the front side bus is what

allows the cpu to communicate with the

north bridge or with the rest of the

motherboard okay so that's the front

side bus it is that communication route

between the north bridge and the cpu and

between the in effect then the south

bridge and the cpu as well

the memory bus also connects to do you

know what

that's right the north bridge right

because

memory bus right again is the fast speed

that needs to go straight to that north

bridge has a closer connection to the

cpu over here alright so the memory bus

is where all the ram plugs in we'll talk

more about these memory slots that you

see represented right here in a later

video

expansion buses are all the other buses

that allow us to expand the capabilities

of the motherboard and if we go look at

a motherboard real quickly you can see

several of these expansion buses here

right so here's a couple these are

called pci

pci expansion buses and here's an

expansion bus and then we have several

expansion buses for storage devices here

and you can see a couple

expansion buses or uh devices rather

already plugged into expansion buses if

you look right here

and the next video was what we're going

to talk about are these specific

expansion buses and the differences

between them all right but before we get

there let's just recap what we've talked

about so we just talked about all the

different buses front side bus hyper

transport bus memory bus and expansion

buses so recap this entire video we

talked about certain vocabulary chip set

being all those chips put together and

marketed as one a set of chips if you

will the bus which transports data from

one place to another

a lane which allows for

communication in and out

we talked about parallel versus serial

communication parallel meaning more than

one bit of data at a time whereas serial

is one bit of data at a time

we also talked about the chip sets the

two major manufacturers intel and amd

the north bridge which again i'm just

going to write it up here again

allows the connection of ram

or rather the communication of ram

random access memory

and high speed graphics i just want to

write that again because it's easy way

to remember this you don't have to

remember every single thing the south

bridge does all you have to do is

remember the north bridge is responsible

for ram and graphics and now you know

exactly what the north bridge and the

south bridge control

so we also talked about the south bridge

which is everything else other than

these two things ram and graphics

and the dmi direct media interface which

connects these two the north bridge and

the south bridge together

we talked about buses the front side bus

which is also called the hyper transport

bus on amd

a memory bus which

communicates between the memory the

front side bus and hyper transport bus

like their names cpu communication and

finally expansion buses which allow us

to expand the capabilities of our

motherboard and plug other things into

it so with all that being said let's

move on to the next video and talk about

our expansion buses and the type of

storage tech the different technologies

that go along with those

and the different types of storage

technologies we have

[Music]

motherboards expansion buses and storage

technology

now that we've discussed motherboards

and what makes them the spinal cord of

the computer

i want to talk specifically about two

ways we add things to the motherboard so

the computer has more functionality

expansion buses allow us to add new

technologies to the motherboard via

certain different

by different types of buses we'll

discuss and in storage technology i just

want to look briefly at the two main

storage technologies we use when it

comes to computers and we will revisit

them when we get into storage more fully

so first of all we're going to talk

about expansion buses and there are

several different expansion buses you

need to know for the a plus exam i'm

going to focus on what makes them

different from each other to help you

remember the first is isa

the second is pci now pci has several

different iterations pci x or pci

extended

pcie which also is pci express

and mini pci which as the name implies

was a smaller version of the pci bus

i'll also mention agp specifically for

graphics

amr and cnr which were for modem and

sound expansion

and also pcmcia otherwise known as a pc

card which used to be used a lot in

laptops and we'll discuss those more

when we get to laptops as well

then i want to touch on the storage

technology as i mentioned including peda

or parallel ata

and sata or serial ata

all right so let's start with expansion

buses

the first expansion bus i want to

describe is called isa which also stands

for

industry

standard architecture

and

this expansion bus you're not going to

see a lot and sometimes it's not even on

the exam much anymore but i mention it

because

you might see it

and it is you might see it in some

computers someplace and i just want to

make sure you're aware of it

so

the p the isa port is actually right

here it's this long one and you'll see

that it's actually sort of an extension

on it at the end here

right

here

and that's because this first part uh

supported 16 bits

of data

as we know that that is two bytes worth

of data

and then over here we have an extension

that allowed for 32 bits okay so really

what this

older extension bus was attempting to do

was allow you to connect more and more

complicated devices but eventually it

just became

out of date and it couldn't sort of hold

what it needed to and so what we did is

then we went to

um

pci

which is the next version we're going to

look at

and pci has several iterations i want to

talk about all right first pci stands

for peripheral

component interconnect let me just write

that out here

and

what was great about pci was it was a a

new standard

it supported the same functions found on

the cpu or processor bus but it had its

own assigned address space so it allowed

the cpu to

do its own thing and allow the pci bus

to do its own thing now that's not as

important as just knowing that the pci

is probably one of the more common

expansion buses we see and there were

two additional uh ones that were created

for desktop computers the first was pcie

sorry the first was actually pci x and

the x comes from

extended

with the big x now it's important to

know the difference between that because

even though it starts with an e it is

not pcie and pci x allowed for a 32-bit

expansion bus now when we get to pcie

and the e stands for express this lets

us get some really high-end

devices onto the computer

it's basically replaced every other

major expansion port at this point so

pcie or pci express is the one you're

going to see the most

when you look out and all of these are

just different versions of the pci

expansion bus right these are all

different pci expansion

but different ones are different sizes

for different bits etc it's not

important that you be able to recognize

them because you're not going to see

them in that way on the computer and if

you look closely even if you're on a

computer right here you can see it says

pcie 4. i don't know if you can see that

but it's sort of hidden there behind the

motherboard

but it'll label it for you and tell you

exactly what the computer is capable of

but the important thing to know is that

pcie is the fastest one that is

currently on the market now p mini pci

as the name implies was created

specifically for laptops and also

smaller computers

and it has less to do with the

physical size than it does with the sort

of architecture which is made to be

smaller so it could fit on

laptop motherboards

so

now that we've covered pci i want to

talk about agp which is another major

one again agp has been mostly replaced

by pcie

right so pcie is still our most common

one that we see

but uh agp specifically stood for and

this is an agp port right here you can

see it and i have another picture on the

next page you'll be able to notice it

right and both of these as they point

out these are pcis

okay so what happened was for a while uh

the pci wasn't very fast and we needed

something that could specifically deal

with graphics and so they created this a

agp which stands for accelerated

graphics port

and as the name implies it was

specifically for graphics and graphics

cards were made specifically to utilize

it

now of course what happened is

eventually pci came in and replaced agp

but

agp was the main

graphics card interface for a long time

and if you see it on the test you want

to know that it has to do mostly with

displays and graphics okay so just

remember that if you see agp you want to

remember this word right here this

graphics word

and if we go to the next page too

uh you'll see

uh

you can see this agp port here and

actually just to give us a quick review

all of these

are

all of these are pci

ports

next to this agp right here

and we also have some old school isas so

this motherboard i can tell

comes at a point before pcie but when

agp had just been invented so this sort

of dates the motherboard and you can

tell them they had to put in these isas

right over here let's write up those are

the

isas and over here those are pcis and

they had to put these isa still in here

because people probably still had isa

expansion ports

all right so the next one i just want to

mention briefly and you're not going to

see it a lot is this one amr and cmr and

these were specifically made

to support uh

sound cards

and also modems i don't know why those

two

although

we do see a lot of sort of similarities

in how they're created but

either way this was specifically

for audio and modems and the reason you

can remember that is because amr is

audio

modem

riser right and these were specifically

for the needs of audio and modem

um

capabilities we don't see them a lot

anymore again because of pci e which

basically did away with all of these

other

weird expansion ports that they tried

putting in

finally on motherboards you're going to

be seeing a lot of pcm sorry finally on

laptops you're going to see a lot of

pcmcia

cards now you might remember these

depending on how old you are because you

had little slots on the side of your

laptop that these could plug into and

you could expand just about anything

using these so for instance this is a

network card and right here which you

can't see there's a little network slot

and this just plugged right into a hole

on the side of the laptop and allowed

you to expand the the laptop without

having to do a lot of opening up of you

know the laptop and its components which

can get a little tricky and if we take a

look this is a more of an internal

pcmcia

card now the difference here is this is

also an ethernet card actually for

networks right you can see this is where

it would plug in right here

so it's different from the sort of

internal motherboard and right here you

would plug in a little what was called a

dongle that would sort of go off like

this and then it had a little cord on it

right but this just gives you an idea of

how uh small and

i

i should i wish i had a thing here to

show you this sort of distance but this

is probably about

uh you know five to six inches

and for those of you who deal with um

you know centimeters it's probably about

uh with 10 centimeters 10 to 12

centimeters as well

i'll just write that up here

so they're very small and it fit right

in on the side here and this was

expansion port specifically for laptops

okay

and here i've created a table and you

can find this you can download this as

well that tells you

these are the main expansion buses you

need to know tells you the maximum data

rate

how fast data can fly down these buses

and also how the megahertz or gigahertz

which is the speed that we can test

things in

and you can see one major point is that

we've replaced a 32-bit parallel

architecture

with a serial architecture here in the

pcie

okay you can also see how much faster

pci express is when it comes to

comparing it to the previous versions

and one thing that might seem a little

odd is you're going wait a minute this

one has two gigabytes over here and this

one is one gigabyte so isn't the agp

faster but what you'll notice is this is

one gigabyte per lane and if you recall

a lane allows you to send data

one way and then receive it another

right so we're sending and receiving

data

we're at faster much much faster

frequencies if you see over here

and we have one through 16 full duplex

lanes so i can have up to 16 serial

lanes on pcie which really means that

i'm

you know multiplying this one gigabyte

by 16. so my maximum is actually closer

to 16 gigabytes per second and that

includes sending and receiving data at

the same time again you can find this

table uh you can download this table and

so you can study this and remember it

you're going to want to know

specifically these three

right for the test you're going to want

to remember some of these data rates

specifically that pci express is serial

and then it runs on these lanes okay

that means it's full duplex meaning that

the data can come can be sent and

received all right

so

we've now talked about

expansion buses including isa which was

the oldest version

pci

pci extended

which is what that x stands for both of

these were replaced by pcie which we use

for just about everything nowadays

especially graphics

mini pcie which was made for

motherboards and expansion ports on

motherboards and looks very different

you probably won't run into a mini pcie

unless you're opening up a laptop we

also talked about agp which used to be

used for graphics but it's not used

anymore because of pcie or pci

express

amr which is that audio modem uh riser

and finally pcmcia

which is a pc card specifically for

laptops

and just because i don't think i

actually mentioned what that stands for

pcmcia

is a

personal computer

memory card

international association

right and this is because originally uh

this was used for memory only

now it's used or when it was used it was

used for a whole bunch of other things

all right so let's talk now about some

storage technology and again we're going

to cover this in more depth when we get

into

storage specifically

so first i want to point out here we

have a whole bunch of expansion buses

right we have some pcmci sorry

we have some pci ports

uh

all sorts of different types and sizes

all right over here

and then down here these are our two

storage expansion areas okay

sata

and over here

is peda

all right and let's talk more about

these in in specific and again we will

cover these in more depth when we get

into storage

so here's a peda

up close and personal it's

a 40 pin

bus us

okay the power is in a separate

connector and something called a molex

connector and we will talk about that

more later and you can see that it's

keyed

meaning can only be put in a certain way

you see these are not equidistant the

area from here to here is not

equidistant with the area from here to

here and this also makes sure as we

don't put it upside down

this red cord down here you see that

determines uh usually that should point

towards the power source on the device

and this connects directly into uh the

motherboard and then to two devices

up to two devices i should say including

optical devices hard drives etc

you can see it here uh being plugged

into

a hard drive and parallel ata or peda

was also called

an integrated drive electronics was an

older name for it

um and that's why sometimes you'll see

it referred to as ide which is actually

a misnomer

but a lot of people you will see it

called that of course

peda which is parallel

80

attachment

right and that tells you exactly how the

data is being transferred which is

through parallel means so there are you

know several different buses here

you can see different cords going up

right and these are all working in

parallel with one another now this is in

stark difference to the uh the newer

version which is sata and again i just a

closer look at the motherboard

right here that's where you would plug

in

a peda

cord onto the motherboard

sata is much different right you can see

it's much smaller much more compact and

actually it has its very own power

connector which is also called a sata

power connector

you can see how much less space this

takes and it's actually a good deal

faster because of how it's created

it shares the same last three letters

which is a t attachment with peda but

the difference is this is serial

so instead of having data that is

parallel you have it

in serial okay so the data is actually

traveling quite differently uh over the

device

and if we look here at the motherboard i

showed you first of all here's our

parallel

right which is all the way over here and

then here are the cereals and one thing

you'll notice is that you have a bunch

more cereals

than you do parallel and that's because

each parallel could hold

two devices

on it so you could have one hard drive

and one optical drive

and you could have up to two of these

parallels so you could really have a

total of four devices per motherboard

and you could actually expand this there

are ways to do that

but with sata each device has its own

sata connection and you can see there

are actually four right here the blue

ones and these white ones just

differentiate a specific type of sata

it's a little faster

so this lets you know that you can plug

these right in

so just to recap we've now just talked

about storage technology including peda

and sata so let's go back

we talked about our expansion buses the

antiquated version of isa which we're

not going to see much anymore but which

might pop up on the

a plus test

pci and some of the iterations of pci

including pci extended and pci express

mini pci which was made specifically for

laptops

agp which has the graphics the middle

initial of that

acronym

makes clear was specifically for

graphics cards amr and cnr which were

riser boards specifically for

modems

and audio and pcmcia

which was for pc cards and laptops we

also talked about storage technology

such as peda or parallel ata which was

also sometimes called ide and you might

see that and sata or serial ata

so now that we've talked about expansion

buses let's continue on

and take a look at some of the ports

that we're going to see on the computer

on the outside of it so we've just

talked about how to add internal ports

or internal storage so now let's look at

those external ones

[Music]

motherboards input output ports and

front panel connectors

we've discussed the internal expansion

buses such as these on this motherboard

that allow you to expand the

capabilities of a computer through the

motherboard by plugging in

new cards to allow for different

features and now i want to talk about

some of the input and output ports that

you're going to find on the back and the

front of the computer here are some you

can see right here integrated right onto

the motherboard

we'll take a closer look at some front

views in just a second these are called

input output ports because they allow

data to go in and out of the computer

let's take a look at some of these

including older ones and newer ones

so some of the older ports we're going

to cover are ps2 ports

serial ports

parallel ports

rj11 and rj45 ports an audio eighth inch

cluster

and svga ports now one thing i want to

point out right now is we're going to

mention all these ports here and now but

we're also going to cover them again and

again when we come back to the specific

input output devices such as printers

network devices like these the sound

card which is this relates to and the

graphics card so i just want to be clear

we're going to

cover this again and again in these

videos to really nail it in

we're also going to talk about some of

the newer ports including usb one i'm

sure all of you are aware of

dvi

the hdmi connector which you might have

seen on your tv

the ieee 1394 also known as the firewire

connector

an optical eye audio connector

e sata connector or external sata

a display port connector

and some sd or multimedia card inputs

that allow you to input a sd card from a

camera or camcorder right into the

computer

all right

so first let's look at some of the older

ports we have

first on the right over here we have two

different ports that look exactly the

same except for color

that's because these are

ps2 ports

and they are responsible specifically

for the keyboard

and the mouse and these used to be the

main ways that we would connect a

keyboard or mouse into the system now

nowadays this is replaced by this port

right here which i'm sure all of you

have seen the usb port okay but this

used to be the main way that we would

connect a

keyboard or a mouse

the mouse was a green

and the keyboard was purple which is

just something good to remember so i'm

just going to point that right here

keyboard was the purple

and the green was the mouse

and the one downside to ps2 was that it

wasn't hot swappable meaning if you

somehow pulled your keyboard cord out

while you're using your computer you

actually had to restart the computer

with the cord plugged back in before it

would work again unlike usb where you

can just plug it right back in

up here we have a connector

that some of you might be familiar with

it's called an rj45 connector and the

rj45 connector is specifically for

ethernet networks uh usually connecting

to what's called a cat category five or

category six cable and we will talk more

about that when we get into networking

it looks very similar to your old phone

cord as well and that's because it

actually uses a very similar connector

the phone cord is the rj11

port

and the phone cord was also used for

modems

so i point this out although we only

have one of them here right they both

look very similar the difference is rj11

is just a little skinnier and you would

probably see it

you'd recognize it if you saw it you

recognize the difference of course we

usually don't see these rj11 ports built

onto a motherboard anymore just because

most people have broadband internet

here we have a port that many of you

probably haven't seen and it's actually

connected to this port right here

they're they're similar these are

serial ports and like their name implies

they

send data

serially over the cords now we have two

different types one is a nine pin serial

and the other is a 15 pin serial and

they had different purposes

mostly serial ports were used for

connecting external devices such as

external modems back in the day which we

don't really do anymore on the a plus

exam you might see them as gaming ports

so it's good to recognize them as that

uh in other words that's what you would

plug up a joystick to so if you see

someone talking about an old gaming port

on the a plus exam this is what they're

referring to i want to point out two

things about these ports

one is

the shape so the shape you see and you

see it over and over again on a lot of

these ports it's called a d-shaped

connector or a db connector all right so

this would actually be a db9

and this one right here

would be a db15

you also notice that some of these this

one has pins sticking out and this one

has sort of holes that's because this is

called a male connector

and this one right here is a

female connector for reasons i'm sure

that you can figure out without me

having to explain it to you

the only other benefit to serial ports

is sometimes you need them if you're

going to connect to higher end

uh

network devices such as routers um

but unless you're doing uh cisco routing

and stuff you probably don't need these

uh cords and sometimes now you don't

even need uh the serial ports anymore

depending on how new the router is

above these right here you have another

port this is a db25

if you count those pins there are 25 of

them they're in two rows

and this is actually a parallel port

it's parallel unlike the serial port

because data is sent in parallel and

this was usually used for printers

you

you might see this

on the exam or on your computer called

an lpt port as well

so if you see lpt that's usually

parallel port all right and these were

again used mostly for printers although

there were other uses for them the main

one was printer ports

and again this was mostly

like with most of these ports replaced

by these usb ports

over here we have an svga port

and this is our main graphics port now

we'll talk more about this and what it

means and the difference between this

and the newer ones later when we talk

about displays but what i want you to

see here is that it is a 15 pin

db connector which is that d and it also

has three rows which is how you

recognize the difference between this

and say this 15 pin are right here so on

the test if they mention something about

a two row 15 pin as opposed to a three

row the difference is a three row is

that svga and again the main use for

this is graphics

finally over here to the right you have

three ports that probably look familiar

to you if you've ever used any sort of

audio device such as an iphone or i

um or an ipod or something and uh there

are three of them

because one of these would have been a

microphone port one of these would have

been for speakers

and one of these also would have been

for what's called line in which would

have been

sending in audio from an external source

such as a

a piano keyboard or something

these are actually also called 1 8 inch

connectors one inch in jack connectors

and that's just going to the

size of the connector that goes in there

you might remember on older audio

devices if you have an old pair of

earphones like i do

they were a little thicker it looked

exactly the same but was a little

thicker and that was called a quarter

inch so sometimes you had to go out and

get the little connector in order to

make these work together right but this

is the same audio connector that you'll

see on your ipod or iphone

all right so we've talked about older

ports including ps2 for the keyboard and

the mouse a serial port which you're

probably mostly going to recognize for

its gaming features joystick

parallel port which was used mostly for

printers

rj11 which was phone and modem and rj45

which was ethernet you also had our

audio cluster which was composed of

three eighth inch jacks

and finally our svga which was for video

and graphics

so now let's look at some of the newer

ports first of all i want to point out

here

we have a ps2 port

so that's the first thing to notice you

have this great ps2 port that you um

if you had an old for some reason mouse

or keyboard you wanted to plug up that

didn't work with your usbs which are

right here

and you could do that now usb comes in

several different flavors and we're

going to talk about them more in depth

so i'm not going to go into them too

detailed right now but you have

basically 1 2 and 3.0 the 3.0 is right

over here because it's blue that's

differentiating it from the others uh

these are just your plano 2.0 this the

main difference is speed which is why

you want to know the difference there

but the important thing to recognize

with these usbs is that they're fairly

ubiquitous they're in just about every

device some devices only have a usb and

they're keyed so you can only enter uh

the cord one way here's a little solid

area and then here's a hollow area okay

and you see that over here perhaps a

little better with this red here's a

solid and then here's the empty area

to the right of this we have three

graphics related ports

the first i want to talk about is this

one right here this is called a dvi port

and generally speaking you're going to

see it in white

that's because it wants to differentiate

itself

from the vga port we saw before which is

generally blue

so we've tried to replace the vga with

this dvi and the d stands for digital so

the idea is you're having digital video

here and this is the main way that

you're going to plug up monitors to a

computer

next to that we have a couple other uh

video ports this one right here is an

hdmi port and you might recognize an

hdmi port from your own dvd player or

your lcd con

your lcd or plasma screen tv and this is

another hd or digital format that allows

you to output video but in this case

specifically it's for outputting video

to a tv

or

some sort of other video output device

so whereas dvi we're really going to see

more with monitors hdmi you're going to

really use for tv out and that's when

you're going to want to recognize that

one

finally up here you have this display

port

this is not as common uh

an output device as we see with these

other two hdmi and dpi but it's another

way of connecting a monitor uh to your

visual

to your graphics adapter so it's just

another port sort of trying to

compete with this dvi

the only difference is that

different companies use different

types there are certain different uh

visual specifics that we're not going to

get into it doesn't really cover in this

a plus exam but again we'll talk more

about these in specific when we get down

to

the visual and graphics

below these usb ports you have this cool

little red port right here and you

remember in the last topic we talked

about sata right serial ata which was

sort of how we plugged internal storage

devices up

this is actually e-sata which is

external sata which allows you to plug

up an external hardware device using the

same exact bus so just like

sata allows for a little faster speed

than peda this was another way of

hooking up a hard drive uh external hard

drive now you can also hook it up by usb

but some people would prefer an esata

because of certain speed specifications

and also because certain hard drives

don't have usb built on

above that over here you see another

rj45

and the one of the reasons i know this

is a much newer

motherboard aside from everything else

that's on it is that you also see these

antennas right here which if you didn't

realize were there because of a wi-fi

connection so this motherboard has a

wi-fi connection a wireless network

connection built onto it so that you

don't have to use this plug anymore so

pretty soon we're going to see this one

go away as well

we also have our audio cluster over here

and you'll notice that there are two

extra

eighth inch jacks that's because they've

usually gotten rid of the

line in jack and just left the

microphone jack from now on uh because

most in if you're gonna input audio

anyway there's a couple different ways

to do it we'll talk about that in a

second

including this usb but the other reason

is that now you have

people who want a lot better sound

coming out of their computer and so this

is going to allow for say a rear speaker

a front speaker

maybe even a subwoofer etc so that's why

there are so many more

below it right here you have an optical

audio port now this allows you to have

digital audio out so whereas these are

analog audio using the same exact

connector we've been using for years and

years and years this optical audio is

actually associated sort of with this um

hdmi

because it allows you to have to output

uh digital audio as soon as the hdmi

doesn't output the audio and the video

together so you're going to want to use

your optical

audio in order to do that

if we look at the front of a computer we

see a couple things first of all here's

that usb

this symbol right here

that's the usb symbol and you see

several usb ports here and they're each

marked

because usb is so commonplace you can

see your eighth inch jacks right here

for audio

and then we see a couple of two other

ones we haven't seen before or three

rather first is this 1394 this is

firewire now 1394 is the code

specification by ieee uh which is the

uh

vendor neutral forum that sort of

specifies certain standards when it

comes to electronics um and 1394 is that

number

this was originally an apple

connector it got a sort of big because

it was faster at the time than usb was

capable of nowadays it's mostly used for

cameras and camcorders so that's what

you really want to remember it for uh

because by plugging up a 1394 connector

if you're a video editor you can

pause and play and stop the video camera

use from the computer without having to

go over the camera so it allows you to

have those controls um there's also two

different versions there's a a 400

and an 800 version

which is the difference between a and b

you can't tell by looking at it which it

is 800 is faster obviously

but a lot of people again aren't using

this as much because usb has gotten

pretty fast uh again the only reason

you're really going to be using firewire

nowadays is if you are a video editor

finally to the right you also see over

here these sort of longish boxes and

what this allows you to do is plug in sd

cards or other um

or other multimedia cards up

into this computer directly straight

from your camera so you can take card

from your camera plug it in and these

are just two different uh versions two

different types of multimedia cards you

don't really need to know the difference

between them but just you probably want

to recognize an sd card and we will talk

more about that when we get to storage

but the important thing is that these

are now built onto the system built into

the computer so you can read directly

from these uh these they've gotten so so

many people use them nowadays and use

digital cameras

we can also see here

another chassis the front here we have a

usb port uh you'll also notice in the

front of every computer right there are

power switches and if you notice right

back here and let me clear this right

back here you'll see some cords and

those cords actually associate with

these two switches and would plug into

the motherboard so when you flip the

switch it turns on the system

this little symbol right here designates

power and this one with this arrow sort

of in a circle that's designating a

reset a soft reset

you also have several lights

that are on the chassis right and these

tell you whether there's power to the

system like this one and then whether

there's drive activity

whether the computer is rebooting

whether it's thinking if the hard drive

is thinking so these can tell you

several different things depending on

the chassis but it's important to know

that there are these lights on the front

of the system on the front of the

chassis because those will come up

so now that we've talked about these

newer ports including usb

dvi

hdmi connector which is that uh for

connecting your computer up

to a mon external tv say firewire for

cameras optical audio esater external

sata display port which is another way

of displaying onto a

monitor and sd or multimedia cords so

just to go back over all of these we

talked about all these older ports

including ps2 right which is for the

keyboard

and the mouse

we talked about the serial ports which

is mostly joystick and gaming

and older systems

parallel port

which is for printers

rj11 which was for modems

rj45 which is for your ethernet or

network

our audio eighth inch jacks

and svga which was for graphics

now a lot of these have been replaced by

usb which is very ubiquitous comes in

three different flavors

dbi mostly replaced s

v s v g a and the d by the way stands

for digital we'll talk more about that

when we get into displays we have an

hdmi connector also a digital connector

specifically though instead of just for

monitors generally for tv output

the ieee 1394 a or b depending on the

speed and that's firewire which is

usually for cameras because it controls

them

your optical audio which is a step up

from these eighth inch still not too

widely used because most people don't

need that level of audio quality

esata which is for connecting external

uh hard drives

a display port which is a sort of a

competitor to dvi just a different

version not really a competitor more

just a different way of displaying

another port and then uh sd and

multimedia

card ports to allow you to plug up

directly your sd and multimedia cards

so now that we've discussed all of these

different ports on the outside and on

the expansion buses on the inside i want

to talk specifically about motherboard

form factors

and the power which is how

big they are how large they are which is

determined by the sort of devices

they're using

[Music]

welcome to module 2 lesson 3b adapters

and converters

where would we be without adapters and

converters obviously the whole idea is

to change one their form factor

to another

um several years ago obviously if you

were traveling internationally and you

took some sort of power device with you

you would need to buy some sort of

adapter to convert

the

physical presentation but also ensure

the power

was correct

now we've got a whole bunch of different

electronic devices that require

different video inputs audio inputs we

can connect laptops to

projectors and tvs

and this presents a lot of problems with

interoperability and compatibility

between different pin outs for power and

signals and stuff

so um the syllabus asks us to just be

aware of a few different types

of the dvi to hdmi usb types usb to

ethernet

dvi to vga

to dvi

ps2

and hdma to vga

alright so

looking at just an introduction

obviously adapters and converters

provide a connection between two

interfaces that are incompatible

due to their pin outs their

presentations

and signaling methods

so the the idea is the they interoperate

depending on what you're doing it'll

just be plug and play

plug and play because it doesn't require

any software updates it's just changing

one in pin to another

plug and play uh because your drivers

are downloaded also depending on the

type of interface

the converter not only connects to two

incompatible interfaces but converts the

form of the medium passing through it

all right so we're looking at dvi to

hdmi first and there's some

illustrations on the right here the dvi

actual interface

and above the adapter cable that changes

one presentation

to another

now you can go into all the technical

documentation if you wish it's not

really something i'm particularly

interested in what each particular pin

does

as it swaps along the cable how it

changes the

power types and the signal types but um

not really interested certainly for the

a plus exam

the dvi digital visual interface to the

hdmi high definition multimedia

interface

bi-directional

adapters allow you to do this

connect a computer with a dvi port to a

new monitor

a hd tv or a projector with a hdmi port

says you having to buy the new

projectors or new monitors or computers

connect a monitor with a dvi port to a

computer a blu-ray player

tv box or a game console with a hdmi

port

so you should be able to buy the cables

fairly inexpensively

now you do have a problem

and

i don't think they want i expect you to

know the different dvi types

and dvias dvii's i think there's about

four or five different types

and but a standard dvr doesn't support

audio when connecting to a hdmi port

so there's a whole bunch of

troubleshooting tickets on forums

with people bewildered as to why

their audio isn't working when they um

use the adapter

and the reason is and it doesn't support

the audio so you have to

connect normally you've got an audio

cable or some sort of an audio interface

to connect and you'd have to use a

separate cable for the audio signal

now depending on the and vendor there

are different workarounds to get this

work in but some of them can be quite

and difficult for a novice user or

somebody who isn't that technical

the hdmi source components and display

support dvid in to promote

interoperability between dvid and hdmi

all right obviously usb is a big

ubiquitous now there's so many different

types

and then there's usb mini usb

a lot of people are using them for just

charging devices as well as connecting

different types of devices

to their pcs or laptops

or other devices

the usb a connector is the a type and

you can see that on the right to more

rectangular

and then the usb

usb b type is the more square type on

the bottom left there

cable may have a type a on one end and a

type b on the other end for conversion

so for example then my printer

has a usb

b

connection coming out of it and then it

connects to my

pc using the usb type a

very handy uh the usb to ethernet it

basically changes your usb

port on your

laptop or whatever you've got to a

ethernet port

and then it can it's got the ethernet

presentation on the other side as you

can see

uh one end plugs to the usb of your

computer the other end supports the

ethernet

uh yeah i've already said it's basically

handy it turns your um

some places to have wireless disabled

for security reasons or you go to a

hotel and the only presentation they

give you is a usb and cable

going into a hub somewhere so this is um

this is the workaround

dvi to vga you can see here dvi cable is

the top part and the vga on the bottom

converts the

dvi output from your computer to analog

vga for crt monitors

dvr's digital and vgi

vgas analog debate the digital signal

has to be converted to analog which

happens inside the housing there

all right a thunderbolt 2 dvi

i'm not a mac user actually but the

thunderbot technology provides a port

that carries both display and pci

express data

the adapter cable allows you to connect

the apple thunderbot port to a dvi

display device and this makes it

compatible with the mini display port

i don't see much of these anymore they

were fairly popular i've probably got

one in my big box of

adapters cables and cards

the ps2

to usb lets you convert the ps2 keyboard

and mouse port on your computer to a usb

port

you can see uh

the mouse here the usb mouse

has got the adapter on the end there so

you can connect it to a ps2 i think most

um

pcs still come with the ps2 port if you

wanted to use it

laptops because of their space seems to

be happening a lot less now

hdmi to vga

this convert is an active device that

allows you to convert your digital hdmi

signal to the analog vga signal

converter may also have a 3.5

inch audio port for sending the audio

from the converter to a device just

depends on what you need really and what

you've bought it's useful if you want to

connect your laptop to an older

projector or monitor

it's an active device because active

processor is required which is inside

the housing there to convert

the high definition content for an

analog display

again you can look up all the

documentation if you're really

interested in all the signals and stuff

like that

the converter bus is powered from the

hdmi port it doesn't require power

source

well most of these adapters don't

actually

require a power source

so we've looked at the introduction dvi

to hdmi usb a to b

usb to ethernet

dvi to vga thunderbolt ps2 hdmi to vga

that's all for now

[Music]

motherboards

form factors

we've discussed a lot about the internal

components of a motherboard and what

makes it the spinal cord of a computer

but we haven't talked about are the

physical components of a motherboard

meaning sizes

and if we look at all of these different

motherboards that i have on this screen

you see that they each have different

physical components for instance this

has a cutout on it

this one is much more compact especially

if you look at some of

these internal sort of components

here this one looks much different from

the others

and this looks more like a standard

motherboard we're going to see on many

computers and that's because these each

have different form factors the physical

limitations or the physical

configurations of the motherboard and so

what i want to cover are some of the

most popular form factors that you're

going to find on the a plus exam and

that are out there in general and these

are atx

micro atx which is a derivative of atx

itx

and btx

finally i want to just quickly discuss

the main power connector you're going to

see for an atx motherboard since it will

come up on the exam and we'll cover that

again in more depth when we get to

power supplies and power connectors

so first i want to take an overview of

all these different motherboards and

we'll come back to this table but what

i've done here is just giving you a

quick overview of

the physical dimensions of each of these

form factors here and also some of the

identifying characteristics what makes

these form factors stand out if you were

just to look at them and some of the

things that they

are used for

so let's start by looking at atx and

micro atx now atx stands for advanced

technology

extended

and as i write that up there uh the

reason it has that extended on it is

because

80

used to be the main

form factor for motherboards and it was

replaced by this one the extended

version okay and atx is the most common

form factor out there one thing that

makes it uh

recognizable from other form factors is

that the ram slots which are here and

the expansion spots which we've talked

about right here and just as a review

this would be an agp slot

and these right here look like pcis

we also have our pata

and

i don't see any satas on this one but i

do see a battery for the cmos

and here's where our cpu would go in

here's some more betas right here

so

um

this atx this is the most common version

you're going to see and it's about 12

inches wide by 9.6 inches deep and by

the way just so we're clear the width is

actually

this distance

here

one thing you'll notice is between the

micro and the standard the depth is

actually the same these are both 9.6

inches that's the number you're probably

going to want to remember for the test

now the main difference between micro

atx and standard atx is just size

this was made for the micro atx was made

for smaller computers that had a smaller

chassis took up less space but you'll

see it still has

the ram slots and the pci slots uh or

the expansion ports are still

perpendicular to each other just about

everything else is on this motherboard

and they look pretty similar even uh the

these ports right here this looks like a

parallel port is still in the same spot

and the reason for that is they are

backward compatible meaning that you can

actually put a micro atx motherboard

into a chassis built for a standard atx

it might be a little difficult but if

you look at the screws right you can see

some screw

holes here and here they actually would

fit

about the same spots so this is backward

compatible and again this is the most

common form factor you're going to see

so if you see a question on the test

that asks you for the most common that's

the standard atx and the micro atx is

extremely similar the only main

difference is that it is smaller but it

is backwards compatible

so as we got into more complex computers

and smaller computers the need for other

motherboard form factors came out and so

we have these uh itx motherboards and

the interesting thing about itx is not

many people know uh no one can really

identify what the i stands for it was

probably just a replacement for the a it

sounded cooler and thinner um but one

thing that the itx motherboards were

designed for are some higher power

motherboards that could work in smaller

spaces so

the mini itx this one right here is

mostly designed for ht pcs and if you

don't know what that is that's ht stands

for home

theater so these were mostly for

computers you're going to plug up to

your tv and the reason that these were

designed is because not only are they

smaller but they actually keep a little

quieter and that's because they use

passive cooling which we'll talk about

when we get into cooling and passive

cooling is using heatsinks and things

like this that don't have fans there's

no active cooling going on and so

they're a lot quieter they also conserve

a lot more power which is important when

we're talking about connecting it to

your computer to your television

we also have these nano itx motherboards

and these are even smaller than the mini

itx motherboards mini the itx

motherboards by the way these

holes do line up with atx motherboards

so they are backwards compatible with a

atx

so that's just important to know is you

can put a mini itx on a

on a micro atx or an atx motherboard

the nano 8 itx

also has a low power consumption but

it's smaller because it's used for

computers that many of you probably

aren't going to build but for more like

set-top boxes like dvrs

and it's also used for video recorders

automotive

pcs that you're going to find in a in a

car so they're much smaller

require a lot less

power to a certain extent but

the needs of the motherboard are still

met

finally you're going to see a pico itx

and pico

have very powerful processors

a lot of ram they actually require

active cooling so they do require fans

and such because they're so small and

they're used in very very small pcs

sometimes things that are called ultra

mobile pcs

uh so

these are just important to sort of

understand the itx was a replacement for

atx it's del it's seen in a lot of other

non-standard computers that you're

probably not going to build if you're

building a computer you're probably

looking at an atx you might be looking

at an itx over here

in this case

you can see that the

ram slot is perpendicular to the

expansion slot but there are a lot fewer

of them right and that's because it's

much smaller one that's not mentioned on

this is actually what's called a mobile

itx uh you're probably not going to see

that on the exam i just want to mention

it and and that's been more for sort of

smartphones um

mobile sort of healthcare devices etc

it's just important to sort of point

those out and you can see how they can

get smaller and smaller

depending on the needs

finally we have btx which is balanced

technology extended so the only

difference here is this letter right

here

and these are for processors that

require a lot more heat release a lot

more

uh uh

power sorry require a lot more power

release a lot more heat and you can see

that they're actually designed to kind

of reconfigure the way things are you

see that here the expansion ports are

all the way on one side

the ram is on another side and the

cpu in this case is actually put at a

certain angle and this just allows it uh

these are really made for servers high

power servers that really require a a

lot more

power and have a lot more heat going off

you're really going to see these in

servers you might be building a computer

based on this

form factor if you're building a server

but most the time we're probably going

to buy a server all right so just going

back to this

table that we've created the main

difference you can see here between the

atx and the btx are where the ram slots

are

for that one the ma the micro atx

actually shares the same depth

with the atx it's just a little wider

they are backwards compatible these itx

do have several different uh you know

iterations and they're designed for home

theater pcs smartphones things that are

smaller require less noise and the btx

these are really for servers and high

power computers that are going to need a

certain a different um form factor for

whatever reason

so now we've covered the major form

factors including atx the most common

form factor micro atx which is an

iteration of the atx we looked at some

different itx form factors which again

are backwards compatible with both the

atx and the micro atx and then we looked

at the btx which is for servers so now i

really quickly want to look at the power

connector

so this is actually a pretty uh new

power connector and the reason i can

tell you that is because it's really big

and usually when we see when you used to

see power connectors they used to

actually be divided about down the

middle and one was called a p9 and then

one was called a p8 i don't necessarily

know why they had that differentiation

but they were there and now what they've

been done is they've been sort of merged

together and it's now one big p1 i

assume it has something to do with the

way the chords were lined up in the way

that they interacted but if we look at a

motherboard here

you can see here's the big connector

right here big power connector and this

is for an atx form factor this is the

most common connector that we see

and if we look at

a

pin sort of diagram that differentiates

all the 24 pins in the different colors

the you don't need to memorize this

whole thing but you do need to notice

that there are three voltages that stand

out 12 volts

5 volts

and 3.3 volts you might want to

recognize that orange generally speaking

is going to go along with the 3.3 volts

red generally speaking is going to go

with 5 and yellow generally speaking is

going to go with 12. you might get a

question on the test that asks you one

of those it's important to recognize

these voltages because these are the

different voltages that come into the

motherboard from the power supply and we

will cover these again when we go into

power supply but on the test you might

see one of these three pop up and it's

important to recognize uh which colors

are associated with which one of these

voltages

just looking at this again i want to

show you where the power connector is on

this motherboard which is right here

this is where that big old p1 would plug

in and there's 24

24

pins in here and if you see right here

there's a little keying so that way you

make sure you're plugging it in the

right way you can also see that they're

sort of rounded here's a square sort of

port right but some of these are

somewhat round and that's to make sure

that you plug it in the right way

obviously if you plug your power in the

wrong way it's going to blow the system

alright so

we've just covered the power connector

that p1 or it used to be a p8p9 power

connector and we will cover that more in

depth when we get to power supplies so

really quickly we talked about the main

form factors including atx which is our

most popular this is it this is the most

popular form factor you're going to see

micro atx which is backwards compatible

with the atx but it's just smaller

that's the only difference here is this

one is a good deal smaller okay we also

looked at the itx which is also

backwards compatible with these btx

which is mostly for

uh servers

and then we looked at the power

connector and what we talked about was

it used to be differentiated into a p8

or p9 power connector but now it's

usually just one big p1 power connector

so now that we've talked about uh the

physical designation of these

motherboards the internal i want to go

into some software that's built onto the

motherboard called the bios and this is

really important when we get into

starting up the computer

[Music]

motherboards

the bios

we've talked about motherboards from a

hardware context including the buses and

chipsets that make them what they are

the form factors that make them fit into

certain chassis and identify the

physical characteristics we've also

talked about these expansion ports on

the side for input output ports and also

these expansion ports internally and

storage technology but now what i want

to talk about is this thing called the

bios which is software that tells the

computer what to do the minute power is

the minute power reaches the motherboard

for the first time so we're going to

talk about this thing called the bios

and we're also going to talk about

the cmos which holds the information for

the bios the actual chip the cmos

battery and we'll explain the difference

there in a minute post or the power on

self-test that tests the hardware

components through the bios then we'll

talk about upgrading or flashing the

bios

and

following that we'll talk about

configuring the bios including the time

and date configurations

boot device priority which devices get

priority when we're booting the computer

up how we can set a password in the bios

the power management features that need

to be set in the bios for them to work

in an operating system

virtualization and how that's supported

by the bios

wake on lan which is a specific feature

that uh

allows you to wake up a computer over

the network and then we'll talk about

the bios and some monitoring that it

does and this is all uh specific to

things you need to know for the a plus

exam it gets a lot more in depth if we

were actually to take an entire class

say on the bios

so let's start with the bios in general

the bios stands for basic input output

system

and it is the instinct of the computer

it's what makes the the baby chicken

peck through the egg it tells the

computer what to do the minute power

reaches the system it is the first thing

that runs when you boot the pc

and it identifies

tests and initializes system components

so then once you get into your operating

system the operating system can access

these components it basically acts as

sort of a conduit between the software

you're going to use and the hardware

that's on the motherboard

some of the hardware that it's going to

test and initialize is the ram or the

memory the random access memory that's

our short-term memory if you recall our

our analogy the storage that's our

long-term memory which could include

internal or external surge

storage such as usb drives or hard

drives

optical drives like cd and dvd drives

and then the cpu the central processing

unit or the processor which is what

we're going to talk about in the next

video section

uh here's a picture of the bios

if you were going to if you were to go

into it and you see here some of the

things that it is

looking for so it tells us uh the the

memory that's in the system it also

looks at the cpu type and speed here's

the version of the bios in case we

needed to upgrade it

it tells us if there's a hard drive a

hard drive cd-rom drive installed

this computer has a disk floppy disk and

so it tells us about that too and

finally you can see here the date and

time so you can see all this information

is in the bios and right up here i just

want to point out this says phoenix bios

that is the manufacturer of this bios

there are many many different types of

manufacturers and although the specifics

of how the bios is going to look changes

from computer to computer the basics are

the same

here's another version of the bios

another phoenix version actually and you

can see here uh some boot order stuff

that we will talk about a little bit

later

so the bios is the software it's that

basic input output system the cmos is

the chip that holds the bios it stands

for complementary metal oxide

semiconductor complementary because it's

complementary to the motherboard and to

the bios

and it stores the contents of what the

bios finds so if the bio says hey i have

50 you know 16 gigabytes of ram and a

1.8 gigahertz processor that's going to

pass that information on to the cmos to

hold on to

so for instance you get this type and

speed of the cpu drive capacities date

and time are some of the things that it

stores and one thing that's important to

notice is that it is volatile and what

this word means is that when the power

is off it loses its contents so this is

different from non-volatile memory which

will maintain the contents of the memory

even when the power is on so because

this is volatile all this information

every time the computer gets turned off

would disappear but some of this

information like date and time for

instance we want to maintain even when

the computer is turned off that's why we

have to use a cmos battery it's a

lithium-ion battery right here on the

computer and it looks like a watch

battery now i've zoomed in a lot so you

can see this

but this battery is

necessary for maintaining uh all this

data that the bios finds and allowing it

to stay on the cmos even when we turn

off the computer we'll come back to the

importance of this battery a little bit

later

so the post is related to the bios in

that it is the power on self test so it

is the testing function of the bios it

is the first step in the boot process of

the bios so when

the bios initializes the first thing it

does is run this power on self test

which tests all of the components and

then it passes errors onto the bios and

then onto the user and it does this

through either using code numbers or

audio beeps now i've capitalized audio

beeps here because this is really

important

let's say that the display goes out your

monitor is not working because of some

error that the post found it now cannot

notify you via a code number on the

screen instead it's going to give you

audio beeps that you can then

find a decoder for and figure out what

the problem is now one thing that's

important to know about these audio

beeps is that they differ from vendor to

vendor there's no sort of general

speaking three beeps equals that or two

short beeps equals that this is sort of

similar to like a

a a morse code kind of but but there's

no

um universal right so i use that as a

metaphor to describe how it's going to

talk it has short beeps and long beeps

but it is not a morse code in the same

way that it's going to spell out

something all right but again the way

the post notifies you is by a beep and

sometimes you might have heard that one

big beep uh when you start your computer

that's just telling you everything's

okay if you heard multiple beeps and

nothing showed on the screen you'd know

something was wrong and you could go to

your vendor manufacturer

guide and you can check out what the

beat means

so here's an example of a post chip on

an old system and you can see here

there's an l an led that'll tell you

sort of a number that you could look up

there's also light codes and other stuff

and there's actually

probably an audio sort of built into one

of these there's probably a little mini

speaker that would beep for you but

nowadays you we don't have a separate

chip for the post it's all sort of built

into the bios and you can see here what

it's actually doing is going through and

double checking all the information it's

finding

and then what would happen is you

generally get then like a big old beep

and that would tell you everything's

okay and you'd be ready to go and that's

the power on self-test

so we just talked about the bios the

basic input output system the very first

thing that runs when i boot up the

computer and what it does is it is

stored on the cmos chip the cmos chip is

powered by a battery because it is i'm

going to write that word out again

volatile

which is an important word

the post the power on self test is that

test that runs very first thing in the

bios and it sends information down to

the bios which then can send information

to the user in case something is wrong

now sometimes just like any piece of

software the bios is going to go out of

date and then we would need to upgrade

the bios

so

flashing the bios is erasing and

rewriting the bios firmware

now firmware is the persistent memory

and code stored in it

meaning that it's persistent it doesn't

change so that's why when you buy a

motherboard it has this bios firmware

built onto it it's not software it's not

soft right it's not hardware because

it's not um

software being sort of the the software

it's soft it doesn't really have a

physical shape hardware being something

that is hard that's physical firmware is

this sort of in between it's

memory that volatile memory that is

persistent and the code is always stored

in it so the firmware rather i should

say is non-volatile

right because every time i turn off the

system i still want the firmware to

remain i still want the first codes to

tell the computer search for something

right it then passes that temporary

information on it finds to the volatile

memory of the cmos but the firmware is

it doesn't change it's persistent and as

a result we need to flash the new

firmware onto the circuit meaning when i

upgraded i'm not just installing or

overwriting something i'm literally

erasing the instinct the computer has

when it starts

and replacing it with a brand new

instinct

and so if something happens while i'm

flashing and that word flash it sort of

has that idea that there is no moving

parts right it's all electronic which is

why it has that flash and you might

recognize the word from say a flash

drive

which also has no moving parts but when

you flash new data onto persistent

memory you're erasing the old instinct

replacing with the new one if something

happens during the process then

like you lose power then you've

basically done what we call

bricking the system meaning you've just

turned your very expensive computer into

a big old brick that is now no good for

anything uh anyone who's been in the

industry for a while has at some point

lost power while flashing and you have

bricked a very expensive piece of

equipment so this basically renders your

equipment unusable so it's very

important that you only flash the bios

if absolutely necessary for instance if

you have a new feature that you need on

your motherboard

that can only be enabled through the

firmware software upgrade

so here's an example of a screen that

while a

firmware update is going on while the

flash is going on and it asks you do you

want to update the adapter firmware you

say yes it then identifies it

erases

the original firmware and then updates

the new one so where you get this is the

internet you go on the internet and you

search for the new firmware

you then

download it

onto a bootable device

bootable device meaning that the

computer can boot off of it so what

would happen is you turn on the computer

the computer runs that bio self-test it

then finds say a usb drive that is

bootable

it recognizes the new software on it

that's going to upgrade and then it goes

through this upgrade right here

once you've upgraded it you restart

and you're good to go

here's another version of the

bios flash bios rom utility so rom

being that uh that non-volatile memory

that firmware that we're gonna upgrade

it's another word for it we'll talk

about that when we get into memory

uh and it's just this is just sort of

designating where the firmware is gonna

go

and finally here's another one and you

can see it

this is actually running off of a floppy

disk so this is an older firmware

upgrade you can sort of see it upgrading

with the blue and the white as we're

going

so now we've talked about upgrading or

flashing the bios and that's by the way

flashing a bios it's not just going to

happen on a motherboard but on any

device that has uh power going to it for

the first time such as a printer

um

your phone has bios on it because it is

a mini computer uh routers have bios on

them that you firmware on them that need

to sort of run

so uh now let's talk about some of the

configurations we set in the bios

so when we get uh start the computer you

generally see something like this which

will tell you you can press a certain

button sometimes it's delete or f2 and

that'll enter the setup and the setup is

sort of the area where you can configure

the bios

now one of the settings that you can set

is the time and date now generally this

the first time we set this we set it and

then we like it to sort of stay the way

it is but don't forget that we're using

non-volatile uh non sorry

but don't forget we're using volatile

memory

meaning that when the power goes off so

does the date and time so this is kept

current by the battery

so one thing you'll see on the test

if the battery dies the date and time

will constantly reset which makes sense

right because now there's no power to

maintain that cmos chip so this is

important if the battery dies

the date and time will reset so if you

get a question asking you why is the

battery why is the date and time

constantly resetting it's probably

because the battery is dead

we also can set the boot device priority

and this tells the bios which device to

boot from first so for instance we were

just talking about flashing the bios and

we mentioned that you might want to boot

off of a usb drive well you tell the

bios what devices to look for in what

order

so for instance here is an example of

some boot device settings and you can

see right here it's giving us an order

for the boot device so the first thing

it's going to do is it's going to look

at the floppy drive in this case this

computer has a floppy most computers

don't know it is which is why they're no

longer covered on the a plus exam

but it used to be you could boot off a

floppy drive and that's how you would

get into the system if you needed to do

diagnostics if it didn't recognize a

floppy disk then you'd probably go over

to a hard drive now in this case look at

the cd drive as the third item it's

going to boot from so if you're trying

to boot off of a cd or dvd for instance

let's say to upgrade windows and you put

that cd drive in or you put that cd in

your cd drive and you boot up the

computer it's still going to go straight

to

your windows because it's looking at the

hard drive before the cd drive so what

you'd want to do is actually move this

device up here to second

we can also set a password in the bios

which is something we want to be very

careful about this isn't like setting a

password in your operating system this

is setting a password in the bios the

main software that makes the motherboard

start so if you forget your password

you're sort of in trouble unless of

course your motherboard happens to have

that cmos battery on it because that

means that the cmos

is maintaining that password

via the power in that battery so one way

to reset the password is to take out

this battery and restart the computer

another way you can do it is actually

right here this thing is called a jumper

let me write that over here and it's a

jumper because that little blue thing

has some metal in it and you see this

there's one little metal stick right

here and what happens is the metal

inside of this stick connects two of

these

pins together and it creates a circuit

so when i take this jumper off it

actually resets the circuit and by doing

that i can also reset the password so

the two ways we can reset the password

or either by

the jumper or by replacing

the battery

now we're going to talk more about power

management later when we get into the

operating system but it's important to

know that some of the power management

features we'll talk about require bio

support so your computer can't just

hibernate or sleep if the bios does not

support it so it's important to realize

that if you want your computer won't

hibernate for instance it might be

because your bios needs to be flashed to

the newest version or your motherboard

just doesn't support it in general

this is the same with virtualization now

virtualization must also be supported by

the bios now if you don't know what

virtualization is it's a word we're

going to see pop up again and again on

this a plus test because it is the new

um

it is sort of the new major thing that

we're seeing in all

in computers nowadays and what it

basically means is i have one hardware

computer i'm just going to draw a box

here to represent that

and on it i can have several virtual

computers

so for instance i have one big computer

but i have three computers virtually on

that so let's say i have an xp computer

and maybe i have a linux box and then i

have a windows 7 computer and all of

these are not physical these are

virtual computers running on one big

physical

computer and you can see

my drawing skills are not so great but

just pretend that is a computer all

right but again it this needs to be

supported by the bios

wake on lan is a feature which allows

the computer to be woken up through a

network message and lan this comes from

local area network which is something we

will talk about when we get into

networking more

but this is a feature that allows

through the network you to wake up the

computer and this might be done in case

of a you have a server

that you want to wake up remotely and so

this is just an important feature that

is

on the bios and you need to enable it if

you want to use it

the bios also monitors several different

things including

temperature which is important because

we're going to deal with heat a lot and

the bios needs to know how hot the

computer is getting so that it can turn

itself off before damaging itself just

in case

it's also going to look at fan speed

again related to temperature if the fan

speeds are going too fast or too slow

there's probably a problem and so it

needs to recognize that there's also

intrusion detection now this is an

important one i've seen it pop up in the

test time and time again intrusion

detection is actually an old bios

feature i don't see it very much anymore

but

it doesn't it does not relate to viruses

and it doesn't relate to hacking okay so

this is uh

this is not what that has to do with at

all what it has to do with actually is

someone physically opening the computer

which is something that we're probably

more worried about 15 years ago than we

are now and it's a holdover so what

would happen is if you had opened the

computer or someone had opened the

computer the next time you booted up the

bios or the post would tell you um

intrusion detection someone has a you

know

intruder detected which basically just

meant someone had opened the computer at

some point

finally it's also going to monitor

voltage which again is related to the

fan speeds and the temperature and we'll

talk more about voltage when we get into

power supplies

it's also going to look at the clock and

this is not just the clock as far as

time but also speeds

and um

it's also looking at bus speed which is

the speed that the cpu

how fast the cpu can get and we will

talk

more about cpu bus speeds when we get

into the next uh video section on cpus

or the processor

all right

so now we've talked about configuring

the bios and all the different settings

that that has to do with

so i want to quickly just go over

everything we've talked about in this

video

so we have a

we can leave you with sort of one last

repetition okay we talked about the bios

this is the first thing that starts this

is sort of what i call the uh nature of

the computer right if we're talking

about nature versus nurture for a human

being nurture would be sort of what your

parents teach you nature is what you're

born with and this is what the computer

is born with it is what it needs in

order to start up

the cmos is the chip

that contains the bios it is volatile

let's write that word out here again

because that's an important one meaning

that uh

the memory will reset itself whenever

power is gone and therefore we need to

have a battery

to provide power so that certain

information such as the date and time

and the password don't get lost

we also talked about the post the power

on self test which is the first thing

that runs when the bios starts up and it

is a let's put that that test and it

generally is going to notify you

via beeps

finally we talked about

flashing the bios and flashing the bios

that's like updating it except it's a

much more

uh

root sort of way of updating the bios

and if something happens in the middle

of flashing you've just done what's

called bricking your system

turn into a large brick

we also talked about configuring the

bios and remember usually there's a a

setting that says like you know you

enter d e l you know hit your delete

button or f2 to enter setup

we talked about time and date and how if

your

battery is going right if the battery

begins to go this is not going to stay

up to date

we also got boot device priority which

is determining if you want to let your

cd drive or your usb

or your hard drive boot first

we talked about the password and how

again you can reset that using the

battery you can also reset it

using jumpers

power management and virtualization the

important thing to know here is they

must be set in the bios they must be

enabled in the vios

for them to be enabled on the operating

system

we also talked about wake on lan lan

being a network and so this allows you

to wake up the computer over the network

remotely

and finally we talked about the fact

that the bios monitors certain things

such as the cpu speed

bus speed and heat

all right so now that we've talked about

all of this stuff having to do with the

bios and the motherboard uh i want to go

into the next component it's component

that goes onto the motherboard so we'll

see a little overlap here but

specifically i want to talk about the

cpu the central processing unit the

brain of the computer

[Music]

cpu

technology and characteristics

now that we've discussed the spinal cord

of the computer the motherboard or the

system board i want to talk about the

brain of the computer the cpu and i want

to begin by talking about the technology

of a cpu and some of the characteristics

that make up different cpus you're going

to see on the exam

so first we're going to talk about the

technology of a cpu by giving you an

overview of what the cpu is

talk about some of the brands that are

out there

uh the clock rate and the clock speed

which are somewhat different

we're also going to talk about the

difference between an external and an

internal clock speed and how those

affect the cpu and how you can do what's

called overclocking to make your cpu

your processor run faster than

it's actually built for

we're also going to talk about some of

the characteristics of different cpus

including the cash

that's not money as in money cash but

cash uh size and type

we're also going to talk about a

technology called or rather a

characteristic called hyper threading

multi-core cpus

the architecture of cpus whether the 32

or 64-bit which is something you might

have seen on some software packages and

finally we'll talk about virtualization

and something called the integrated gpu

which is similar to cpus

except specifically for graphics

so first what is a cpu well the cpu is

the central processing unit

it's the brain of the computer and as a

result it's the most expensive and the

most important component

that's because it executes all the

instructions that come from just about

any other part of the computer

so it basically allows the computer to

run without it the computer cannot work

because it cannot think

it must be compatible with the

motherboard now this is really important

you can't just go buy a cpu and then buy

a motherboard and expect the work there

are a couple different

things we have to check for and we'll

talk about what are called uh sockets

later on which is the physical

connection of the cpu to the motherboard

but the chipset also needs to be

compatible with the central processing

unit the cpu its speed etc etc

so uh it's important that when you

purchase a cpu you make sure that you

purchase a compatible motherboard which

would generally be listed someplace on

the packaging

now there are several different brands

of cpus out there and here you can see a

a picture of a couple different ones the

two biggest brands that you're going to

see out on the market and this is the

same with the chipsets are amd

and intel now again you might see other

companies building the internals of this

or sometimes the externals

however intel and amd are the two major

brands out there and they each make a

different uh flavors of um

and they each make different types of

cpus depending on the needs not just

speed but also the in internal and

what's really interesting actually is

this the cpu itself is actually really

small it's housed inside of this uh case

and it's probably about this big if not

smaller and it's a piece of glass

that has a whole bunch of circuits

etched onto it that allow it to work at

a certain speed

and it's actually a very complex thing

and

gets to a whole other side of sort of

technology and cpus but

for our knowledge for us in this uh for

the a plus exam all you really have to

know is intel and amd and that they are

the two manufacturers that make most of

the

cpus you're going to be dealing with

so let's talk about clock rate now when

you go to purchase

a cpu it's going to be identified by

something called a clock rate or clock

speed

the clock rate identifies the frequency

or the speed of the cpu and what it's

capable of achieving

so this is measured in hertz which is

cycles per second uh if you if you're

sort of an electronics geek uh this has

to do with sort of sine waves so i'm

just trying to draw a wave here right

and we have

sort of this access and you might have

seen this and basically a hertz measures

the amount of time that it takes to get

from one point to the next point

um

and most cpus today use gigahertz as

they're measuring and just to give you a

qualification of what that is that's

about 10 to the ninth hertz or one

trillion hertz so a gigahertz you think

about that compared to

megahertz or to just playing on hertz

which we used to see in

computers it's quite a deal faster and

again that has to do with how fast how

many of these cycles it can go through

in a second from here to here i don't

have to know that for the a plus exam

but i just draw that out there so that

you have an understanding

of how that works

now clock speed is slightly different

from clock rate and they're actually two

different types of clock speeds we're

going to talk about so while the clock

rate measures the potential speed of the

cpu how much it is potentially able to

go the clock speed indicates its actual

speed how much it's running on the

computer how fast it's running so this

is just like a car that can run for

instance 120 miles or kilometer

kilometers per hour but you rarely are

going to drive that cpu to the maximum

and sometimes if you tried really

pushing it you could probably push the

cpu or the car rather to go faster than

120 miles per hour

so there are two types of clock speeds

we're going to look at

the first is the external clock speed

and i have a picture of a motherboard

here because the external clock speed is

determined by the motherboard in other

words if i plug a cpu that's really fast

into a motherboard that's really slow

i'm limited by that motherboard so the

base clock of the motherboard is also

known as the bus speed so we've talked

about buses and we talked about that

that is how

data is sent from one place to another

on a motherboard it's like a circuit and

the bus speed determines how fast that

is that can go

and uh this is also known as the

external clock speed so they're just two

different names if you see them they're

pretty much interchangeable

and this generally is the frequency of

the fsb and if you remember what the fsb

is that's the front

side bus

which is the connection between

the north bridge if you recall the

difference in a north bridge and a south

bridge

so that's the connection between the

north bridge and the cpu

so this

right here if we were to use this line

as sort of that connection this would be

the bus speed and what's interesting the

reason i chose this image right here is

because if you look right here you see

some jumpers and if you recall we talked

about jumpers previously

these jumpers this is how we used to do

it you had to set physical jumpers on

the motherboard to tell it

how fast the cpu should run

so

uh

it couldn't just recognize it manually

you had to tell the motherboard this cpu

was running at 686

you know 600 megahertz

um and so we needed to set that in the

motherboard so the motherboard knew how

fast to push the cpu and we'll come back

to this point in just a bit

there's also the internal clock speed

and that's the one that you see

generally when they're packaging the uh

the cpu when you go out and buy one this

is the internal frequency or speed of

the cpu so for instance if this was a

1.2 gigahertz

processor that would be the internal

clock speed of the cpu and then you

would have to check to make sure the bus

speed

on the motherboard was equivalent or

could handle that amount of speed

now there's something called

overclocking and remember i said that

the motherboard sometimes has to be told

how fast the cpu is going so in this

case uh and what people will do is

they'll tell

this is user defined and this is

actually a little bit newer so what's

happening here is um instead of setting

the cpu operating speed via jumpers on

the motherboard it's setting it via this

uh probably a bio sort of interface

and

what you could do is tell the

motherboard that the cpu was actually

faster than it was and this would push

the cpu to go faster than it was made to

go now the reason you might want to do

this is if you're

you're running really high-end graphics

and you needed that extra oomph but you

didn't want to be limited and you didn't

want to be limited by the technology

that was currently out so you would tell

the motherboard to overclock the cpu it

was very dangerous because it pushed the

cpu past the limits it was supposed to

go however it didn't keep a lot of

people from doing it and when we get to

heating and cooling a little bit later

we'll talk about uh how people have

managed to

sort of combat the heat and the side

effects of overclocking their system but

it's important to know that overclocking

means

telling the motherboard to run the cpu

faster

all right so we just talked about

some of the technology including what

the cpu is the central processing unit

the brain the two brands

of uh most processors which are amd and

intel we talked about the clock rate

which is generally the potential speed

of

uh or

pardon which is the potential speed or

frequency

of uh the processor and then we talked

about the clock speeds both the external

and the internal speed the external

being the motherboard or the bus speed

the internal being the um

internal the internal being this the

processor's marketed speed and then we

talked about overclocking which is

telling the motherboard to move the cpu

faster than for what it was made so now

let's talk about some of the

characteristics of different cpus that

we're going to see the first one i want

to talk about is cache size so uh here's

an image just to describe uh what i'm

about to tell you and basically we have

three different types of caches and what

cache is is sort of a temporary holding

space

for data if you imagine the cpu is

running very fast and the rest of the

computer either because the bus speed of

the motherboard isn't quite as fast or

because the um speed of the uh ram the

memory isn't as fast

it needs sort of a buffer zone just like

when you're downloading netflix movies

and you're streaming them it downloads a

little bit more so that way in case of a

network flub you don't see any

sort of uh pausing so we have different

sorts of caches that allow for a buffer

so the cpu can get information uh as

quick as possible and then pop it back

out as quick as quick as possible and if

it's running faster or slower than the

rest of the system the

cache allows you to make up for that now

there are three different types of

caches and you just generally need to

know that the l1 cache is the fastest

and that's because it is built on to the

cpu so you see here's the cpu core

right which is inside that little glass

thing i was talking about and we have

two different caches l1 caches that

they're listing here

i is for instruction and d is for data

but you don't need to know that for the

a plus exam just know there's an l1

cache

and it is built onto the cpu as a result

it is the fastest cache however it is

also the smallest because uh

we can't allow so much information to

get access to the cpu and it's also the

most expensive

we then have the l2 cache which used to

be built onto the motherboard now it's

usually built onto the cpu but it's

accessed after the l1 cache so it comes

after that l1 cache and it's not as fast

but it is superior to the l3 it is

faster and it acts as a interim so we go

from l1 to l2 and then we can go from l2

to l3 so this is the second fastest

and then we have the l3 which is the

largest capacity but also the slowest

okay and what it generally does the l3

is generally the one that's going to

talk to the ram chips

that's the memory

and we'll talk more about that when we

get into memory in our sort of next

series of videos

the real important thing to know here

and i'm going to pull up another graphic

here is that you have the core of your

processor

right as we go down we get more latency

meaning this is the slowest

speed and this is the fastest speed

conversely the capacity goes the

opposite way so the faster the smaller

amount of space we have so

just know the l1 cache is the closest to

the core then l2 which is generally also

built onto the cpu and then you have l3

which is generally built onto the

motherboard um sometimes onto the cpu

depending on the on the make but the l3

deals directly with the memory okay so

it's important to know that l3 and

memory go together and that l1 is built

right onto the core and although it's

the fastest

it's also the smallest and that's why we

have several different versions of l1

through l3 cache and when programmers

write

programs to use the cpu they can write

things to use these different caches in

different ways in order to make their

programs run the most efficiently

so hyper threading allows a single cpu

to accept and process two independent

sets of instructions so if you look at

this word hyper thread imagine

that the cpu had multiple threads in it

and what it could do is even though

there's one core here so there's only

one cpu core there's only one processing

unit in there it could accept

two sets

of instructions in and out at the same

time so this allows it to sort of

virtually um simulate having two

different cpu cores

now this is different from multi-core

processors which literally have two or

more actually processing cores and we

see this more and more with um dual core

and even quad core

processors which inside the processor

has multiple cores

so that the cpu can process instructions

for multiple sources at once and this

makes it act faster and then if we added

hyper threading to this

that would then double the speed of

force so then it would make it

essentially able to process eight sets

of instructions at one point

so the hyper threading is taken to the

next level in this multi-core technology

that's just important to know there is a

link here somewhat in that

hyper threading does it virtually

multi-core actually does it

you've also probably seen this 32-bit

versus 64-bit architecture what you need

to realize about this is that

64-bit architecture allows the cpu

to have a wider bit uh have twice as

many bits right and because it has twice

as many bits it can process higher data

types 32-bit architecture is limited to

four gigabytes of data address space

and so you can imagine if i have a lot

of data going on let's say i have more

than four gigabytes of ram which is

memory

right and i'm using 32-bit architecture

well i can't use anything more than this

four gigabytes and now with computers

with eight gigabytes i want to be able

to take advantage of that and a 32-bit

architecture cpu is just not it doesn't

have enough space it's not wide enough

to allow that amount of processing uh 64

bits allows for

so much i think it's over a million

gigabytes uh i think it's pata bytes uh

a couple petabytes is sort of how much

data address space which is it's

theoretical we haven't reached that yet

and who knows if sure at some point we

will but that's like a petabyte is i

think a million gigabytes so you can

imagine how much more space the 64-bit

wide cpus allow

and the software must support cp um

64-bit as well which is why you probably

see 64-bit versions of operating systems

and 64-bit versions of software which

can take advantage of this cpu

architecture

it's also referred to in some contexts

as

x86 or x64 now the 64 makes sense right

because of this 64-bit

x86 that goes back to older cpus and i

don't know if you remember there were

286 processors and 386 processors and

then there were 486 processors and that

goes back to that which these are all uh

incrementally 32-bit

um cpu architectures and basically it's

every

processor between the

these 486 386 processors and now to the

64 bits

we're using the same architecture until

we got to 64-bit architecture which now

can take advantage of so much more space

it's where we're going and

i don't even know if they're making

32-bit

uh cpus anymore perhaps on a budget but

i i would never purchase one just

because it's going to be antiquated in a

few years

so just like with the bios we were

talking about virtualization that needs

to be enabled on the bios the

cpu has to allow and be created to allow

virtualization which again just to

qualify this virtualization means i have

one system so here's my computer okay

and rather than being limited to running

only one operating system on here i

could actually virtualize several

different machines onto this machine

so i would go through a bios i would go

through a boot up etc etc and i could

have several different machines running

on this machine this is how cloud

computing is basically working and if

you've heard of like the uh

amazon cloud space

ec2

or if you've heard of rackspace for

instance

uh this is what allows it to work you

can go to one of these services and say

i want a you know windows 7 or windows 8

server computer

uh sorry windows 2008 server and i

wanted to have these specifications and

it virtually creates that computer on

their end so you don't have to have the

physical computer on your end and this

needs to be enabled in the cpu this

needs to be something the cpu is capable

of because again it's the cpu is having

to do a lot more work

this centralizes hardware as you can

imagine and improves resource usage

because if you think about it a cpu

might be working really hard at one

point but at night it's not working at

all so what if i could take that cpu and

allow it to work on multiple systems at

once now if someone in china for

instance wants to use the computer at

one point for their own system and i'm

sleeping in america

it allows for a better usage of those

resources which is the real benefit of

virtualization and we'll cover

virtualization more and more as this

a-plus course progresses

finally this is the future of computing

virtualization and it's very important

that if you are going to be in

technology if you're going to be a

technician that you really understand

virtualization and that you embrace it

and learn a lot about it

finally i want to talk about this it's

called a gpu so whereas a cpu central

processing unit the gpu

is a graphics processing unit and

basically what's happened

is

graphics have become so intense and so

and requires so much more processing

speed that they were taking a lot of

power away from the cpu the central

processing unit and so a lot of uh

manufacturers began to create their own

processor on the graphics card

and now they've actually just started

integrating this onto the motherboard

because a lot of motherboards have

display graphic adapters built onto them

so it just recognized the gpu graphics

processor unit is specifically a

processor for graphics

all right so we just talked about the

characteristics

of a cpu and now just like always i want

to

go back over everything we've just

talked about so that we have a good

understanding and of of a cpu and the

technology and characteristics behind it

so first of all we talked about the cpu

which is the brain

of the computer it stands for central

processing unit right which is important

distinction when we from when we get

over here we talked about the two major

brands

which are amd

and intel

we talked about clock rate which is the

potential speed

and then we talked about clock speed and

there are two different types right the

external clock speed which is really uh

the motherboard bus speed

so that's the motherboard speed how fast

the motherboard is able to run and then

the internal clock speed which is the

one that's usually marketed

onto the cpu

we also talked about overclocking which

means telling the motherboard

to go faster than the cpu actually can

go and it pushes that cpu to the limits

we also talked about cache size and cast

cache size and type and there are three

different types right there's l1

l2 and l3 obviously the more space we

have on any of these the faster the

systems can be able to run because it

has a faster buffer zone l1 is the

fastest right but also it's the smallest

l3 is the slowest but it's also

the largest

so just remember that diagram we looked

at okay

hyper threading allows a single core to

take multiple

instructions at once so it can take

multiple instructions and it can deal

with them kind of making it a dual core

processor

and then the multi-core processor means

one processor with several different

cores in it

so

in effect it becomes

several different processors by the way

there are some servers that will have

multiple processors as well so you could

have a motherboard with two processors

on it each with multiple cores and you

can just imagine it just keeps getting

bigger and bigger

we also talked about the different

architectures of 32 versus 64-bit

architecture the important thing you

want to remember here is that 32

bit architecture has a 4 gigabyte

limit so if we're going to have more

than 4 gigabytes of ram or instructions

that are able to come in we want to make

sure we're going with a 64-bit which so

far we haven't met its limit yet in sort

of the technology we have

we also talked about virtualization

which allows you to have multiple

computers virtually on one physical

computer and finally we talked about the

gpu which is the graphics processor unit

so now that we've talked about the

technology and the characteristics of a

cpu i want to quickly go over the

different socket types the ways that the

cpu will actually physically connect to

the motherboard

[Music]

cpu

socket types

now that we've discussed the internal

architecture and technology inside of

each cpu i want to talk about this thing

right out here which is called a socket

and that's how the cpu will physically

interface with the motherboard because

after all unless we can plug the cpu

into the motherboard it really doesn't

do us any good

so we're going to talk about uh these

sockets as sort of an overview and

specifically i want to talk about what's

called a zip socket which works with

something called pga and then we're

going to talk about an lga socket and

what's interesting about these is these

are mostly speaking uh separated by a

manufacturer as well uh zif being mostly

used by amd today and lga mostly being

used by intel although this is changing

and has changed

and then we're going to talk about some

intel sockets and there's a bunch of

numbers popping up here

uh and these are the ones that a plus

would like you to be able to recognize

now one thing i want to say about these

intel sockets and there are also some

amd sockets as well and i'm going to

throw up here and one thing i want to

point out about all of these sockets

okay is that you do not need to be able

to recognize these sockets based on

sight alone

so don't worry about having to memorize

all this crazy

stuff uh cram it in what you do need to

be able to do is recognize which sockets

go with which manufacturers and there's

a couple key points that i will point

out to you that differentiate these to

help you remember them okay

first let's talk about a zip socket so a

zip socket stands for zero insertion

force and as the name implies

it was made to overcome an issue which

was being caused by applying too much

force to the cpu during installation as

you can imagine these pieces of

electronics are

very fragile and if you press it too

hard that can damage not only the cpu

but it can also damage the motherboard

so the zip socket uses a lever to push

the spring contacts apart so you can put

in the pins and then by moving the lever

back it allows those pins to pop right

into place with the contacts let me show

you what i mean

here's a zip socket and you can see here

the

lever

and what happens is when this lever is

down like it is right now and i don't

know if you can make it out but right

here there's a little lock with arrows

that point down and up so when it's

locked which it currently is uh the pins

are in place with

the contacts however when you lift it up

and move it over you can put the

contacts in i'm sorry you can put the

cpu in

with the pins and i'll show you what

that looks like in a second and then

moving the lever down drops those pins

into place

so this works with something called a

pin grid array and as you noticed on

that previous slide there were a lot of

little holes and this is called a pin

grid array

and the pin grid array

in

allows the pins or has the pins arranged

in a somewhat square shape and i'll show

you some of the deviations from that in

just a minute

and it's in a regular array so they're

in regular uh form and that way you can

pop them right in

to the socket and this allows for more

pins per circuit which is important

because the more contacts the pins can

make

the faster the cpu can communicate with

the motherboard so here's a pin grid

array on the bottom of a circuit and you

can see here

right that there are arrays of pins

in certain

configurations

and you can see a couple little uh

areas where there are no pins

usually i like to look at the corners

usually is one corner that's different

from the others and what this makes sure

is that you're putting the pins you're

putting the circuit in

in the right way so that way you know

that you're not

moving it over and you're not sort of

um you're not going to damage the cpu

you're not going to put it you know try

forcing it in you know exactly which way

it's supposed to be oriented when you

put it into that zero insertion force

socket so you move that zero insertion

that zip socket over using the lever you

just place this in gravity does its work

move the lever back it shifts all of

those pins over slightly until they come

into contact with the contacts on the

motherboard

now this is different from an lga socket

the lga socket which stands for land

grid array

has the pins on the socket rather than

on the circuit which is the cpu

in this way

the square grid array is on the

underside of the circuit but this grid

array

does not have pins all right instead it

just has contacts so it's sort of the

reverse of the zip socket i think this

will be easier if i show you a picture

so here's an lga socket we'll look at

this later and what you see here is the

pins are on the socket itself

so instead of me taking pins and putting

them onto contacts i'm now taking

contacts and putting them onto pins and

if we look at the circuit

you can see there are no pins on it

right it's just contacts and what would

happen is by putting this

and i'm going to go back for a second on

this you now have

the contacts just like you would have

made them with the zip socket but it's

reverse and the benefit of course is

because this doesn't have any pins that

can be bent it's easier to transport the

the cpu without damaging it

so now we've talked about sockets in

general including a zip socket which is

a zero insertion four socket this works

using a pga a pin grid array and we also

talked about an lga socket land grid

array in which the contacts land on the

pins

so now let's look at intel socket types

and amd socket types

i've made a table here that sort of

demonstrates which sockets go along with

which

cpus and

you can actually split this table right

down the middle

and again what i want to point out is

you do not need to necessarily cram all

this information into your head it would

be difficult too because you see a lot

of crossovers a lot of xeon processors

that use similar sockets and one of the

main reasons we have so many sockets by

the way is because

i need to make sure when i go to the

store to buy a motherboard that goes

along with my cpu

that i'm using that i have a cpu and a

motherboard that are compatible with

each other so this was an easy physical

way to make that happen

but again you don't need to memorize

necessarily all of this stuff what you

do need to be able to do is recognize

which sockets go along with intel which

sockets go along with amd and then

you're probably going to be able to want

to recognize some of these names which i

will go over

so let's talk about the intel sockets so

one thing you're going to notice about

intel you can look at this socket right

here and there are not going to be any

pictures of sockets on the a plus exam

and asking you to recognize them but

you do want to know that these are lga

sockets so intel nowadays uses mostly

lga sockets as is indicative by this

indicated by this picture

i want to point out these names core 2

duo and core 2 quad that's telling you

remember in the last

section we were talking about multi-core

processors meaning that the processor

itself had multiple cores so it

basically had multiple processors within

the pro the one processor that's what

that means so the duo has two and the

quad has four

xeon is the brand name that's generally

associated with servers so the intel

xeon line of processors are usually

server processors and that's important

to know i'll talk about the

similar one when we get to amd for for

their line

pentium is sort of the name that intel

has given to their line of processors

for years and years and years and

celeron processors were mostly

for mobile devices such as laptops

now here we can see the lga 1155 you'll

notice a couple things one is that now

you have some keying

around here meaning that you can only

put this in one way

uh the corners interestingly are all

pretty much similar

although

you do see some insets here

slightly different on this side which is

going to make it and here's one that's

not repeated on this side so you're only

going to put this in one way

you see the server again uh

xeon processors here the core i7 i5 i3

these are just different um

technology types that go along with

intel again not important you recognize

uh which ones go with which it's just

important that you do know that these

are all intel

the 1156 looks very similar to the 1155

and uh the 1366 again using has some of

the same exact processors it's a little

more square

this picture shows you the color

differentiation here a lot better

just so you know which way you're

putting in again you can see some keying

here's a piece of plastic on that side

it's not repeated on this side

and i just want to point out too this

big metal structure

that keeps the cpu in place because it

doesn't have pins that go into holes

that would sort of keep it from moving

around because they're just contacts

that sort of lay on there we needed a

way to make sure that that cpu wasn't

going to jostle around

all right so we've now talked about the

different intel socket types and what i

want to do now is move over to the amd

socket types

so one thing you'll notice about amd

socket types is for the most part

they're going to use

zips zero insertion force you can

actually see the name of the socket

right here and i was talking about that

lock right there earlier there it is so

you can see there's an arrow pointing

down and that says it's locked and the

arrow pointing up means when that lever

is up it is unlocked

the opteron

that is the server

brand

like the xeon for amd

all right so that's important to know

the 64 behind this athlon and by the way

athlon is sort of uh pentium right so am

intel pentium am deathlon that's just

sort of the line of processors the 64

says it is 64-bit

as opposed to a 32-bit

you can see an am2 here one thing i want

to point out is this whole housing all

around here this actually has to do with

attaching a heat sink and fan which

we'll look at in the next video again

here's your lever the lever is up right

now instead of down you can see some

keying

little plastic bits to make sure you're

going to put this in the right way and

actually here's a nice a really nice key

right here all right all of these on the

corners

you can see those all look similar this

one is keyed in only one way

the am2 plus

yet start adding the phenom line which

is just instead of athlon we have phenom

and we get a whole bunch more when we

get to the am3 and the am3 plus but one

thing i want to point out here you can

just see how similar these socket types

are this is a great image that

demonstrates how similar they are the

only real difference between the am3 and

the m2 are are two pins this one

and this one which are actually made

dark for you in this image and so i just

want to point out how very similar these

are again they're just changing these

because if they didn't then it would

by changing them allows them to

correspond and communicate with

motherboard manufacturers a lot easier

and therefore make it easier on the user

here's an am3 plus again still a zero

insertion force you remember those keys

i pointed out they're located here

here's a little uh there's a small one

right there

another one the fm1

uh

nice

some different type of keying in here

again you're not going to need to

recognize a picture of this but you can

see that we're getting

closer and closer to you know

newer and newer brands if you were to

sort sort of say

go out and search these

and finally the f the amdf is important

to know because as you can notice it's

an lga right so we've stepped away from

the zip and this gives you a nice

picture of that metal casing i was

talking about that goes over this whole

thing

right that's going to keep the cpu in

place

so again here's that table that lets you

recognize i want to point out again the

opteron and the xeon those are sort of

your servers right

the 64 is going to say a 64-bit you have

all these different sockets the f is the

only one of these that is an lga all of

the others are zips in the amd as the

name implies for intel all of these are

lgas

so now we've talked about the amd socket

types uh and again these are the ones

that a plus wants you to be able to

recognize for the exam which is why i

bring them up uh

if you think about your exam and all the

information it covers spending hours and

hours trying to cram this information

into your head is not going to be

worthwhile but i wanted to give you some

context so you understood and i do just

quickly want to go over these this

overview right here remember that zip is

zero insertion force

okay and that works

with a a pga which stands for pin grid

array

so the pins go in to the zero insertion

for a socket using a lever you move it

back and forth so that'll put it the

pins in contact with the metal contacts

on the motherboard and then you have an

lga which is land grid array and you can

remember that because it lands

the contacts land on the pins

mostly speaking zips are going to be

used with amd

and land grid are going to be used with

intel

so now that we've covered all these

different intel and amd socket types and

the physical uh way in which these are

going to communicate with the

motherboard let's talk about something

that's really important when it comes to

computers in general electronics in

general but especially the cpu because

of how important it is and how fast it

runs which is heat and how we cool

systems so that they do not overheat

[Music]

cpu

cooling

as you've probably seen on this slide

that i keep bringing up every time we

talk about cpus

the cpu itself and the sockets are only

half the story the other story are these

things fans and heatsinks and other

things that keep the cpu cool this is a

major component of the a plus exam and

something that we should spend a little

bit of time going

over so we're going to talk about

cooling in general why it's necessary

and then we're going to talk about

the three main components when it comes

to cooling your cpu and the ones that

are will definitely definitely pop up on

the a plus exam which is the heat sink

fans

and then the thermal compound

i also want to talk about something

called liquid-based cooling which is

specifically for when

people overclock their systems and

really need to cool down their systems

because they're running so fast and so

hot

all right so first of all why do we need

cooling what's the big deal well

as you probably know

electricity causes heat due to the

friction of the little electrons that

are going over the wire because they're

going over this metal wire right because

they're not in a vacuum they're causing

heat which is why when you have

electricity going through a cord for a

long period of time or you run your

computer for a long time it starts to

get a little hot well that's basically

because of electricity that's the way

that physics works and so because this

heat damages usually by melting metal

and electronics if it gets too hot the

computer needs to keep the

needs to keep itself at a certain

temperature and the cpu because it's so

small and because the so many there's so

much electronics going on in such a

small space

needs to keep extremely cool and is

always creating a lot a lot of heat so

they've had to develop ways to dissipate

this heat and get rid of it

so what we're going to talk about are

these two main ways heatsinks and fans

that we cool cpus and this has been in

cpus for just for

you know years and years and years and

if you ever build a cpu or you open uh

rather if you ever build a computer or

you open up a computer you're definitely

going to see these two things and i

guarantee you several questions on the

test will come from this subject

all right so the first thing we have are

heat sinks and as you can tell a heat

sink really isn't uh it doesn't look a

sink like in your kitchen

rather what it is is a series of metal

that directly touch the cpu and as you

know when metal touches metal it

conducts so what happens is the heat

literally is transferred from the bottom

here

up

through this metal

and then can dissipate out

up here

and so what happens is the heatsink

literally is a sink if you think about

it that way like a kitchen sink that

collects water it's a sink for heat and

because there's so much metal and

because it has little uh um you know

pathways in between it the air can get

in and why and and

sort of wipe away that heat so it cools

uh it releases the heat gets it away

from the cpu and then it can get out uh

into the chassis which then can blow

that heat away

here's another version of a heatsink and

you can see it's slightly different but

mainly what's great about this picture

is you can see down here how this entire

bottom area is one big metal surface and

then what happens is it goes up each one

of these individual sort of pieces of

metal and then

air which is sort of like blowing over

at the top

wipes away

all of the heat

now here's another version of a heat

sink and what's interesting about this

one is uh you can see

heat traveling up from down here up onto

these things and actually what you have

is you have a fan in the center and

that's the next thing we're going to

talk about which is a fan

uh then

creates airflow that blows all that heat

away all right so let's talk about fans

because uh one thing uh that we're

talking about with heatsinks this is an

important distinction is a heatsink is

what's called passive cooling meaning

there's there's no sort of moving parts

there's nothing that's going on within

it it's not sort of um

it doesn't create any more electricity

no electricity is needed it is passive

right nothing is happening fans on the

other hand are what are called active

cooling

so active cooling means that it is

creating an airflow that actively moves

the heat away and we use passive with

active in order to have the best

heat dissipation possible

so here are a bunch of different fans

and what you'll see

right here and you'll see this on any

motherboard is a little connector with

four small little pins in it and now

that plugs into

the motherboard it powers the fan and

then the fan can blow

if we go back to this slide the fan can

blow away

all of that air if we're talking about

i'm just going to go back to one of

these previous heat sinks

what you would generally have is the cpu

down here in the bottom

right then you have the heatsink which

dissipates the air up the heat rather up

to here and then you generally have a

fan that sits on top

and here's my

here's my little fan all right

and it blows all of this air

that then allows the heat to dissipate

out

so

what's happening again is we have some

passive cooling going on here that

passively takes the heat moves it up and

then you have active cooling on the top

that's actively blowing that heat away

now

if you remember what i just said we have

and i'm going to look at this from a

cross section if this is my cpu down

here

okay and then i have my heat sink on top

i want to make sure that none of the

heat that's developed by the cpu gets

lost when it goes to that heat sink

basically i want to make sure all of the

heat from that cpu goes up into the

heatsink and then the fan can sort of

blow it away okay in order to do that we

use something called a thermal compound

and this thermal compound creates a

tight bond between the cpu

and the heatsink

and uh if we look at this just going to

the next slide you can see here's the

cpu

okay and here's a heat sink and you see

this big piece of metal you can sort of

see the little pieces of metal right

over there that's going to go off right

and what this person is doing is

applying the thermal compound directly

onto the part of the cpu

and that's that center part by the way

the center part is really

that's where the the

that's where the heat that's where the

chip is okay and so he's applying that

there and then he puts the heatsink on

directly right onto that and it not only

sort of creates a glue but it also makes

a nice thin film that's going to make

sure all of the heat from the cpu

dissipates up into the heatsink

now when we really have a very very very

hot system which generally occurs

because of overclocking meaning that

we're telling the motherboard to run the

cpu at a faster rate than which the

motherboard is rated and the reason you

want to do this is if you're a big gamer

or you're running

applications that really need fast fast

speed well you can imagine that because

i'm running it so fast

the cpu is actually going to be even

hotter and because the heatsink and the

fan are not developed to

support the cpu going that hot what a

lot of people do is create what's called

liquid cooling and here you can see a

liquid cooling system i know it looks

funny but uh these are literally

uh this is carrying liquid that is

being cooled by this i generator right

here going in on top of the cpu and you

can sort of see the cpu socket right

there right it's taking all that heat

and it's cooling it so it's creating

like a like an air conditioning system

in some ways which uses liquid to cool

down the system now you can imagine this

is very dangerous unless it uh unless

you install it correctly because water

and electronics generally don't go well

together but they're used generally

using you know like liquid nitrogen and

stuff and you can see a guy here

who's created his own liquid system

you can see this just looks like a plain

old motherboard if you look right here

you see your audio cluster and your rj45

slots and your usb slots right and

here's even the ps2 and here's a dvi and

what this person is doing is pouring

liquid nitrogen you can see the fan

right liquid nitrogen into a container

that is going to keep the cpu cool and

you can see the cpu cool right there i'm

just going to erase everything because

you can see this looks like if you look

from that bar this actually looks like a

lga socket

okay and this is going to keep this cool

so that he can push the cpu past its

limits past of what it was made for uh

and

it's sort of like uh in some ways uh if

you remember for an exam instead of

learning the information you figured all

sorts of creative ways to cheat so

they're instead of buying a cpu that is

actually capable of going that fast or

in some cases the cpu just isn't

uh the technology isn't up to the speed

they need they're going to create a

workaround to cool it so that they can

overclock the cpu

so just as a uh

overview we just talked about cooling

we talked about why it was so important

which is because uh there's heat right

and heat is created by electricity

it's inherent

now

if you're using fiber optics like glass

for instance or plastic to transmit

stuff you're gonna actually have less

heat in that case because there's less

friction but as long as we're using

metal and even in using glass and

plastic there's still going to be

friction

this is still going to cause heat and so

we have is we have two types of cooling

right we have the heat sink which if you

recall is passive cooling again there's

nothing active going on there's no

moving parts it's basically just a large

piece of metal

i'm just going to draw my sort of

version of a heat sink right here yeah

big piece of metal that captures that

heat and sends it up to other little

metal and then the fan

is the octave cooling so we have the fan

on top there

that blows all that air over this and

that allows the heat to dissipate out to

the sides so the heat comes up the fan

blows it off to the sides and then

because it's in the chassis the chassis

like a power supply has a fan as well

which is blowing that out of the entire

chassis all right it's important to know

this is something that will come up on

the 10 the thermal compound

goes between

the cpu

and the heat sink okay it does not go

between the heat sink and the fan again

the fan is creating an air sort of uh

it's creating air that's blowing the

heat away we actually want a little

space there

with the cpu and the heat sink having

that thermal compound between them

creates a nice

film that is going to make sure all of

the heat

travels from the cpu up through the

heatsink as opposed to if i just draw

really quickly if this is let's say our

cpu

and this is the heatsink right

and let's say i have a nice sort of area

here it's nice and glued but then i have

a little bit of air right in there and

then i have more here now what's gonna

happen is there's gonna be like a little

air pocket in there of heat and that

eventually is gonna damage the cpu so we

have to make sure we have a thermal

compound that goes in between the cpu

and the heatsink that allows for the

perfect amount of heat dissipation

and then of course the liquid based

which is

specifically

for overclocking your cpu is generally

what it's uh having to do with and it's

you're not gonna probably see this on a

lot of systems you might not even

encounter one ever but it's really for

gamers people who are really pushing

their computer to the limits and for

geeks who sort of want to do it all

right so those are the things we just

talked about and that sort of concludes

the cpu so now that we've talked about

the motherboard right the spinal cord

and now we've talked about the brain the

cpu i want to get into the two different

types of memory uh

the short term and the long term memory

right and we're going to talk about

random access memory first which is the

your desktop your short term memory it's

what allows you to work on stuff it's

the cpu passes information on to that

and then we're going to talk about

storage which is sort of your long-term

memory your hard drives etc

[Music]

ram

memory basics

now that we've discussed the spinal cord

of the computer the motherboard and the

brain of the computer cpu we need to

talk about the short term memory the

workspace of the computer that's where

memory comes in

what we talk about when we mean memory

in a computer and one of the main forms

of memory and discuss is something

called ram which is represented by these

things right here

now before we get into the specifics of

ram i actually want to talk about

ram in general so i want to talk about

what is memory uh what is

ram stands for random access memory so

what is memory and then i want to talk

very briefly about the memory controller

which is going to come up again and

again and it sort of is important to

identify now because we're going to talk

more about how it affects the way ram

and the cpu interact

and then i want to talk very briefly

about the general types of memory that

we see

which are rom

and ram and i know that that's uh

that's a slight distinction there but we

will talk about what those two things

mean

and then i want to talk about the two

major types of ram we've seen which are

sram

and dram

and we'll discuss the difference between

those and which one is really the type

of ram that we're going to be discussing

when we get into further on in this

course

all right

so let's first talk about what is memory

memory is as i've mentioned the short

term memory in human terms of the

computer in other words it's the

computer's desk or the computer's

workspace so what i mean by that is

let's say you're working on

a word document or the computer's

accessing a web page

it doesn't want to save that web page to

its hard drive it needs some place to

sort of allow that web page to load and

work it needs some place to allow you to

type in your document before it commits

it to its hard drive memory that's what

the ram is there for that's what memory

is

there are different types of memory and

just like with different humans who take

longer or shorter times to access their

memories it can take longer or shorter

time to access different types of memory

and that's really what distinguishes the

different types of memory is how fast

and how how fast we can access it and

how much of it we have

there's also an important distinction we

need to make between volatile and

non-volatile memory now we've brought

these two terms up before when we were

talking specifically about the bios if

you recall right we said that the bios

was actually stored on something that

was non-volatile but it put the

information like the date and time into

something that was volatile and that's

why we needed a battery

so what it really means again is

volatile

memory is volatile

to power meaning that when power is

removed from the system the memory loses

its information

as opposed to non-volatile memory which

is the opposite which when the power

goes off

still retains the information that's on

it this is an important distinction make

and it's going to come back over and

over again so you want to commit to

memory non-volatile when the power goes

off the information stays

volatile the power goes off the

information also goes away

the memory controller is the go between

for the memory and the cpu

meaning it's how the cpu talks to the

memory

it stores information to and retrieves

information from the memory and the

reason this is important is the memory

controller has a lot to do with sort of

the lag that's going to occur right uh

the amount of time it takes to get from

or the cpu to

the memory and from the hard drive to

the memory etc etc

this used to be within the northbridge

if you recall the north bridge is what

allows the motherboard components to

talk to the cpu

and it used to be therefore built onto

the chipset onto the motherboard

nowadays however it's what's called on

die which means that it's usually built

onto the cpu itself

that's because it improves the speed

that the cpu can access the information

and it also allows cpu manufacturers to

customize it to how the cpu works

so now we've discussed what memory is in

general the workspace of the computer

and the memory controller which allows

the cpu to talk with

the memory sometimes used uh

through the motherboard

and located either on the motherboard or

nowadays mostly on the cpu

so now let's talk generally about the

two major types of memory that we see

and then i want to talk about the two

subsets of ram memory

so first let's talk about rom

rom stands for read only memory as the

name implies you can only read from it

you can't write to it as you'll see you

see a word here that probably looks

familiar bios

and the bios

is something that has to always be there

right the computer always has to be able

to read from it because the minute power

goes to that motherboard it needs to

know what to do

this means that it is non-volatile

memory meaning the power goes off the

information on this biostrip on this rom

chip remains

as a result it generally stores the bios

and it's soldered or hardwired onto the

compute onto the computer motherboard

you can understand why this is necessary

it used to be if you wanted to update

the bios you had to replace the

motherboard now thankfully you can flash

upgrade the rom

the read-only memory and update the bios

software on it

of course

if as we've mentioned you lose power or

something goes wrong during this flash

your computer has now been bricked

this is different from ram and ram which

stands for random access memory

is really what most people are talking

about when they talk about memory and

these are some ram chips here including

an old ram chip there

ram is volatile memory

meaning that when the power goes off the

information stored on these chips also

goes away

this is the main memory used as a

workspace for the cpu

when people talk about as i've mentioned

memory in the computer what they really

mean is this

this is absolutely necessary for your

computer to run as fast as it can in

some cases upgrading the ram will

actually do more than upgrading your cpu

think about it if you're a pretty

intelligent smart person but you have a

small workspace

then it's going to take you a longer

time to get work done but if you have a

larger workspace the more workspace you

have the faster you can actually work

stuff even though your iq hasn't changed

the cpu can access any memory on the ram

chip at any time

and this is really the power in the cpu

and ram discussion

now there are two different types of ram

the first is called

sram which stands for static ram as the

name

static implies

the data is stored as a static image

until it's written over or powered down

so the images so the data is sort of put

onto this chip as an image let's say it

puts uh here here's a person a really

terrible person right

and that will stay there

until it's overwritten

let's say with

uh here's a girl okay so now we have

that guy that's been replaced with a

girl image

however that image is going to remain

there for as long as

i need it to until we erase it

which would happen when it's powered

down or overwritten

as a result it's very fast because that

image is always there and nothing has to

be done with it it's also very expensive

and as a result it's hard to make it

very large in capacity and because of

that it's limited and it's not a great

workspace it's like a really good

solid workspace but unfortunately it's

not very large and therefore it's

limited so it's good for certain things

such as acting as a buffer or a cache

for things like the motherboard the hard

drive lcd screens will use it as a cache

or your lcd tv probably has some

sram chips on it in order to help that

image buffer and the cpu is going to

have built on

sram chips in order to help it get a

little uh it process things

seemingly faster for the computer

now this is different

from dram which stands for dynamic ram

the difference is that instead of using

a static image

the data needs to be refreshed

constantly this is because each bit is

stored on separate capacitors and

capacitors you might uh recognize are

sort of those cylindrical it's a

horrible cylinder

but sort of those cylindrical things

that you see on the motherboard right

now they are very very small you can i

mean

smaller than even i'm i'm making them

out to be and they exist inside

of these chips and each bit is stored on

a separate capacitor and as a result

these capacitors which is like a battery

will quickly lose its charge and so it

needs to constantly be refreshed as a

result

it's a little bit slower but it's much

simpler in its design and therefore it

can reach a higher capacity it can get

larger as a result this is what most

people mean when they reference ram okay

this is what they're talking about when

they talk about ram or memory

when you see it on the test this is what

we're talking about we're talking about

dram

dram is also packaged in sticks that are

installed on motherboard slots by the

way here is a large capacitor just so

you can see what those look like and

here are slots that you can see sticks

of ram would go into

one thing that's really important is

that

you must realize ram just like the cpu

has to be compatible with the

motherboard you're installing it on i

can't just go buy any piece of ram and

put it on any motherboard

so now we've talked about the types of

memory including rom

and ram and then we talked about the

types of ram which are sram and dram so

just as a recap

memory is the workspace or the short

term memory of the computer

the memory controller is

the so to speak

go-between

between

memory

and the cpu

we then talked about two different types

of ram uh memory the first being read

only memory

which is again

non-volatile

which means that a power goes away

that's okay

and then we have

ram which is

random access memory

which means

you can write and read from it but it is

also volatile memory we then talked

about the two different types of ram

that's static ram

which means that the

information is stored as an image on the

chip but it does not need to be

processed fast however

dram

which stands for dynamic ram

constantly needs to be refreshed but as

a result of its architecture it can be

built bigger and that's why this is

really what people are going to be

talking about

when we talk about ram and for the rest

of this

lesson and for most of the rest of the a

plus uh course that you're going through

right now when we talk about ram we're

talking about

dram

so having introduced all of these

concepts and again these are not

necessarily things they're going to test

you on in the test don't worry about

memorizing all of this stuff what you

really just want to understand here

is the difference between volatile and

non-volatile memory

and the difference between a rom chip

therefore in a ram chip and that when we

really talk about stuff what we're

talking about is dram

so now let's talk about the different

types of dram that we're going to see on

a computer

[Music]

ram

types of dram

now that we've discussed ram in general

memory in general and we talked about

the difference between rom and ram and

then we talked about static versus

dynamic ram i now want to talk about the

different types of dram or dram that

you're going to see

on the test and i'm going to throw a lot

of information at you i'll try to keep

it as simple as possible

but this is really the core of what the

a plus exam is talking about when it

talks about ram so first of all i want

to talk about sims

and dimms which have to do with how the

memory

which have to do with somewhat the

history of memory as well as how these

drams were created

then we're going to talk about several

different types of dims which are the

main type of memory used including s

dram which is different from sram this

is an important distinction look at this

d here okay this is s dram not sram not

sram and then we're also going to talk

about ddr dimms

we'll talk about the subsequent ddr 2 3

and 4 dimms and what's important about

them for you to know on the a plus exam

we'll also mention so dims which are

slightly smaller dimms

and then we'll talk about rdram which

was a short-lived

uh

dim type that you won't see really

anywhere but it is required it is on the

objectives for the a plus exam so i do

want to cover it okay

so first let's talk about sims this is

an antiquated old version of uh

of dram that you're not going to see

much anymore but it's it stands for

single inline memory module and what

this single has to do with are these

contacts right here

this was the most popular form of trend

through the mid 90s so if you took your

a plus exam a longer time ago like i did

you had to learn this a lot more and uh

what this had to do with was that the

contacts on either side of the stick are

redundant

meaning

that you see metal on this side and you

can imagine there's also metal on the

other side well the contacts on both

sides are the same they don't lead

anywhere different

as a result this is a generally a 32-bit

data path okay so we have 32 bits of

data that can travel on this and what

was happening

was basically a motherboard started to

have a 64-bit bus width and so what you

had to do is you had to install two of

these at once in order to take advantage

of the full 64 bits now we're actually

going to sort of come back to this

concept a little later but you can

imagine that we weren't using the full

potential of ram on the memory and so

they came up with something called dimms

so dims which stand for dual in-line

memory

are the most

popular form of memory currently on the

market and that's because they

differentiate from sims single inline in

that on either side

these contacts

are actually different

so

if the previous version

could do 32 bits of data

and now we've doubled the amount of

contacts

this chip is capable

generally

of up to 64 bits of data so you can

understand we've just doubled our amount

of data we also no longer have to enter

these two at a time in order to make

them work we had to do that on old

systems now i can put one of these chips

in and it'll work just fine because it's

taking advantage of the full 64-bit path

on that motherboard

so now that we've discussed sims and

dims and the difference and i just want

to point out these are all dram okay

this is all dynamic ram all of this

stuff that we're talking about here

so we're not dealing with sram remember

sram that static ram that was not in the

the that

was sort of a chip soldered on

these are all those sticks of ram dram

and what we just talked about is the

difference in sim and dim single and

dual and now what we're going to talk

about are different types of dual inline

memory modules which are the most

popular form on the market today so

first of all let's talk about sdram this

is different from sram sram which was

static ram this is synchronous dram

and what synchronous dram means is that

it's synchronized to the system bus or

the motherboard clock

so what was important about this is if

we imagine an old form

an old dim

okay

uh just a plain old dim old form just

plain old dram

what was going on

was that the

memory had its own bus speed its own

clock speed

and that was different

from the speed of the motherboard so

what would happen is as you can imagine

if i have two clocks that aren't

synchronized with each other then

they're not able to communicate very as

fast as they would like what we really

want is for these two things to be in

sync

and so what it does is it waits for this

clock signal before processing its

incoming commands

so when it waits for that clock signal

then it processes the command and as a

result it can work a lot faster

this allows the chips to accept new

commands while processing others this is

something that's called

pipelining

so

while it's working let's say on this

side of the chip on some set of

instructions

it can also be receiving information on

this side

because it is synchronized

with the clock on the motherboard now if

this is a little confusing to you that's

okay what you want to know is

again i'm just sort of

we're

canvassing out here

let me just go back for a second and

clarify because i think uh

i just want to make sure that we're

clear we talked about

first of all that we have dram which is

dynamic ram that's different from sram

okay

so we're talking about this dynamic ram

as opposed to static ram

then

now that this is out of the way

we talked about the difference between a

sim

single inline

and a dim

a duel in line so now we're still

talking about dims and we're still

talking about dram i know there's a lot

of ds going on okay and this d stands

for

dual

which has to do with this stuff

now we're on the inside and what we're

looking at here

is this synchronous dram

meaning

that

this chip synchronizes with the system

bus or the motherboard clock and that

allows the chip

to accept commands

while it's processing others and this

whole thing is called pipelining so

that's where we're at with sdram

however they still found

that they needed it to be faster we

wanted ram to be as fast as possible

because the quicker the cpu could talk

with this ram this quicker it can access

information on its desk

the more work and the faster it could

work

and i just want to point out that most

of the time sdram

when it was introduced was 168 pins down

here this is a number you're going to

want to remember okay

168 pins goes with sdram plain old sdram

168 pins

so in order to get things faster

a technology came wrong called ddr this

stands for double data rate

and as you can imagine

that effectively

doubles

our sdram

okay

so this really is if we really want to

get down to it this is

ddr

sd ram

which is in a dim

configuration this is a dim

okay it's a dim stick

so this dim

holds on it ddr sd ram

and

this is the most commonly

found sort of ram today now we're going

to get to ddr2 and ddr3

and and

those have superseded ddr but what i

mean is the technology behind this this

ddr stuff that's mostly what we're going

to see and these are the numbers that

you want to be able to recognize for the

computer and uh for the test and i will

show you uh some shortcuts for that okay

so what happens is you remember that

it's synchronizing with that clock cycle

ddr ram double date data rate ram

allows

the chip

to transfer data on the rising and the

falling clock cycle

so effectively if you think about a

clock let's do this

okay well it used to be

was this so this was plain old

sdram

all right you can get one process in and

then you can get another one in when you

get back to the top of the circle now

however we've inserted another place

that it can transfer data and so i've

effectively doubled the clock cycle i've

doubled the speed

now this as opposed to the past 168 pins

this is 184 pins in general you're going

to want to remember this

okay

plain old sd

168.

now we have 184 pins these are numbers

you're going to remember want to

remember so that's why i'm pointing them

out

ddr sd ram

is 184 pins

plain old sdram without the ddr in front

of it it's 168 pins

so here's a table that describes some of

the basic information having to do with

ddr memory and this is the stuff you're

going to need to know for the exam but

i'm going to make this really simple for

you first thing i want you to see is

over here you see what's called the ddr

standard this is usually how the ddr is

going to be

marketed

now one thing you'll notice

is this transfer rate

over here

also has to do with the module name

meaning that sometimes what they'll do

is they'll say this is a

ddr200 standard but the module itself is

let's say ddr

sdram

that runs at pc one 1600 and what i want

to do is i want to show you a quick

shortcut so you can always calculate

this something you're going to need to

know for the exam but before i do that i

want to show you how i get to it so

remember i said that ddr effectively

so remember i said that ddr effectively

doubles the clock rate speed and if you

look at

this number right here

you'll see that that pretty much works

right so i have 100 and my ddr standard

is 200 and if i look over here at the

transfers per second which is sort of

what this clock speed is measuring i see

200 million which is exactly

double

the 100 megahertz so this all seems to

make sense

now how do we get to this number

right here

well

here's what i need to do

first i take my clock speed

which is 100

and i multiply that by two because ddrs

times two so now i have

200

great this all makes sense to us but now

how do i make the leap from this

to this

well let's remember that we're dealing

with

64 bits of bus

right so remember that channel that we

talked about the bus

that this is traveling over the thing

that dims allowed us to take advantage

of this full 64-bit architecture well

how many bits are in a byte if you

recall

eight bits

equal

one byte

right

so if i have a 64-bit architecture

it and i have eight bits i can divide

8 into 64.

so i'm just going to go up here to do

that

and if you recall long form

division 8 goes into 64 exactly

8 times

so

if i have this 200

and i know it's transferring 200

transfers per second that's the clock

speed

i can then multiply it

by eight

which is the amount of

of

which is the width of the

bus

eight

bytes as opposed to 64 bits

and now i

get one thousand

six hundred

mega bytes

per second

and a really quick way to do this is

whenever you see this standard

just multiply by eight

just remember that you'll always be fine

you don't have to remember any of this

stuff okay so let's erase all this let's

take that with this ddr400 so you see

ddr400 on the test and it says what is

the transfer rate of ddr400 well you

know that ddr400 is double the 200

megahertz clock speed but that's not

even important to answer this question

what you do know is you have to take

that 400

multiply

by 8 and that gives you

3200 megabytes per second

ddr2

supersedes the original ddr

specification by again by doubling the

already doubled transfer rate

and this is by doing faster signaling

which gets a little complex and i'm not

going to get into here but basically

what it does is it doubles the uh the

speed by having its own clock rate don't

worry about that

but what you do want to worry about is

that it uses less power and it doubles

the speed from a previous ddr

and it also has a 240 pin standard as

opposed to 182

all right so let's take a look at this

table

if we have a ddr2 400

right again the same application applies

it has a 200 megahertz clock speed it

doubles that to 400

you multiply 4 times

8 and that will give you 32 so you can

always come up

with this number by multiplying this

times eight okay this that's the

shortcut you need to remember there's a

lot of information here it can get a

little complex but what you want to

understand is this number

the ddr2 533 is half the clock speed

and then if you multiply this by eight

you will always get the transfer rate

now ddr2 has been supplanted by ddr3 and

i love this graphic because one thing it

shows

first of all here's the 184 pin here's

the 240 pin ddr3 still has a 240 pin but

what it does show is how each of these

has different keying

and the reason that's important is that

they're not backwards compatible

so this superseded ddr uh that should

say ddr2

it provides a higher performance and

lower power consumption

right and

it

is a 240 pin just like i mentioned the

same as before

and it's not backwards compatible so

those are the important things to

remember and if we go to a table again

our same thing is going to apply take

this number 800 you multiply that by 8

you get 6400 as the transfer rate this

is the these this is the important thing

i'm pointing out the important thing you

need to know for the test because really

you go into a store you're going to look

on the back of your motherboard it's

going to tell you what type you want to

get the higher this number the faster

this number you can always multiply this

number by eight in order to get this

okay so now we've talked about sdram

which

effectively

sped up

dims by synchronizing

their clocks with the motherboard and

then ddr

which

doubled the speed and then you had ddr2

and three i didn't mention ddr4 there is

a new ddr4 out there you're not going to

be tested on it for the exam but it's

important to know that it is out there

uh which is the only reason i mention it

there and those kind of each doubled the

previous version

and so now let's talk really quickly

about sodiums and rdram

a sodium

is smaller

than a regular dime

and it's name implies that it's a small

outline dim

it's half the size of thereabouts of a

regular dim and it's for systems with

space restrictions such as laptops and

what's interesting and i don't have a

picture of this but the way that it's

inserted is actually diagonally so if we

looked at it from the side it would be

inserted

sort of like this if this was the uh the

contact down here as opposed to a

regular dim which is inserted like that

it also comes in the same you know

sodium this is the outline this is sort

of uh

how it its physical is and so you can

get ddr2 and three

although the pin count is different okay

so i just wanna point out this does have

a different pin count uh something you

need to know don't memorize that pin

count but you do wanna know a sodium is

specifically for laptops that's the

thing you're really gonna wanna know

finally rdram i need to mention it

because it is on the a plus exam this

stands for rambus dram now really what

was happening is this was

meant to replace sdram remember we had

that

uh those dimms and the sdram the

synchronous dram and it wasn't going

fast enough and so eventually someone

created ddr but if you remember sort of

the beta vhs debacle back in the 80s or

hd and blu-ray recently

rambus came out had this great

technology intel sort of picked it up

but then there was a a big standards war

and they lost to ddr so uh you will see

rambus dram which i imagine is the

reason it's on the exam on some older

systems from early 2000s but for the

most part it's really not around anymore

as a result it was used on several game

systems and some motherboards i think it

was on the ps3

obviously here it's on like a nintendo

system probably an n64 but you're really

not going to see it much i just

mentioned it so if you do see it in the

exam you recognize it it's it's sort of

a different thing okay

all right so now we just talked about

sodiums and rdram all right so let's go

back i just want to go over all these

again

first we had

sims first of all these are all

forms of dram

okay

dram being

that dynamic ram

as opposed to static ram

so these are all forms of dram

this sim

is a single

inline memory module as opposed to a dim

which is a dual

inline memory module meaning that the

contacts on both sides of this were not

redundant so this allowed for 64

bits of data

again sims only provided 32 and so they

had to be inserted in pairs

sdram

built upon dimms

it's a type of dim all right an sd ram

synchronized the clock with the

motherboard

and therefore it allowed for higher

speeds and more processing because it

could process information while

receiving information

so i'm just going to draw that like this

ddr

took this a step further and allowed as

opposed to if we have one cycle instead

of allowing information only come at

that one point it allowed the

information to go at the falling and

rising of the cycle so it doubled the

speed

through some infrastructure

changes we had then ddr2 and ddr3 and

remember the way you're always going to

recognize and be able to calculate this

is let's say you have a ddr 400

you see this on the exam and it asks you

what's the transfer rate you take that 4

you'll multiply it by 8

and that'll give you

in this case

megabytes 3200 megabytes per second

always multiply by 8 that'll give you

the transfer rate that's the key this is

what you want to remember for the test

no matter what you're not going to

remember anything else we've just talked

about remember this calculation

we then talked about sodiums which were

that small outline dim right so this is

a a variation on the dim it's on the

physical outline of it

this was mainly for laptops

and then we talked about rdram

which is that rambus

dram which was supposedly supposed to be

a competitor with ddr but it lost the

standards war and so it

went away

all right

so now we've just had a very complicated

and thick lesson into the different

types of dram

and specifically

types of dims that we're going to see on

the test so now that we've talked about

that

i want to talk about some of the further

technologies that are built onto chips

in order to make them run more

effectively

[Music]

ram

ram technologies

now that we've discussed a lot of

different things about ram including the

difference between rom read only memory

and ram

random access memory

we also talked about the difference

between

sram

which was static ram

and dram which was dynamic ram

then we talked about the types of dram

including sims

single inline memory modules and then

dimms dual inline memory modules which

was the major type we're talking about

and then we talked about a variation on

dimms

sdram

which stood for synchronous

dram

which allowed the dram to synchronize

with the motherboard clock and at and

work faster and then we talked a

variation on that the ddr which doubled

the rate

and all the different variations on that

so now i want to talk about some

technologies that have been built onto

these and some of the problems that

those are overcoming so one thing i'm

going to talk about first of all is

something called memory latency which is

a result of the memory controller

i then want to talk about multi-channel

architecture which effectively speeds up

the accessing of the ram by architecture

on the motherboard and we have single

channel

dual channel and triple channel

architecture and you have to know the

difference about these for the a plus

exam and then there's also quadruple

channel which makes sense uh once we

start discussing these it'll all sort of

blend together but uh you don't need to

know quadruple channel for the a plus

exam i'm just mentioning it because it's

out there

then we're gonna talk about them in

single and double-sided ram

parity versus non-parity ram ecc versus

non-ecc ram and then something called

registered memory and all of these have

to do with the integrity of the memory

to make sure what's reaching the memory

is in fact what the computer wants it to

reach in order to reduce errors

all right

so first let's talk about memory latency

this is also known as column address

strobe latency just in case you ever see

that

this is the delay between the memory

controller that requests data and the

data's availability so if you imagine i

have a memory controller and it says hey

memory send me over some information

there's going to be a delay in the

amount of time that takes

just like if we played a game of

telephone and you whispered in someone's

ear and they whispered in someone else's

we would it's going to take a long time

and what we want to do is speed up

the amount of time it takes by reducing

the amount of latency so what we want is

the lower latency the better right the

lower amount of obstacles the

information has to travel the better

and this is generally measured in

nanoseconds we talked about latency

we're generally talking about

nanoseconds but with ram we're really

going to be talking about this in terms

of clock cycles if you remember we

talked about

a clock cycle occurring right in regular

sd ram

and by synchronizing this clock cycle of

the memory with this the clock cycle on

the motherboard it was allowing it to

input and output processes a lot better

and then we introduced ddr

which allowed it to

double

the amount of information that was

coming in by doing by

dealing with information both when the

clock cycle fell and when it rose

so multi-channel architecture deals with

how many channels of communication there

are between the dram and the memory

controller

if you recall

uh if we have a cpu let's say

right and there's a memory controller

it's usually built onto the cpu but

let's assume that it's not and it needs

to talk with all the ram and let's say

we have three ram chips

they're all in this bank

i want to give

the cpu

the most information at any one point to

reduce latency but the problem is i only

have one channel i only have one highway

one bus for it to go over and so it's

limit on the amount of information that

can go over and so what if i

take this information let's say i have

four chips here

and i double the amount of channels

now i can have twice as much information

flowing through now i've driven the i

i've just drawn this but and this is

sort of a theoretical way of looking at

it it's not actually the way it

physically works okay so uh

when i get some pictures i think that's

going to clarify this but

what we're going to do in order to make

multi-channel architecture work is i'm

going to have

let's say a channel 0 and a channel 1

and i can put two sticks on each of

these channels

so when i put those two sticks on i want

to make sure

that they're on matching so they're

they're matching with one another but i

also want to make sure that they're

similar and we'll talk more about that

in a second so that's what this is

referring to is the sticks are installed

in matching banks on the motherboard

that are actually color coded and that's

how the multi-channel is allowed to work

and just as i said we want them to be

similar in speed and capacity so let me

show you some pictures i think that'll

clarify this

all right here's single channel

architecture

all of these pieces all the dram goes in

here

and there's one i'm just going to draw a

fake

channel

that allows the memory controller to

talk to all these pieces of ram

and at any one point it can only all the

ram all the information has to travel

through this highway no matter where

it's coming from

and that highway is about 64-bit bus

it's about 64 bits wide so it's you know

fairly limited

now instead if i have two channels and

here we can see matching channels so um

the reds

are on a channel together

and the blacks are on a channel together

and now i've effectively if i put a chip

in here

and a chip in here

and they're both talking to the cpu i've

effectively doubled the amount of

channels i have so now they're talking

on 128 bits

and the important thing there

is just like i've said now this

this memory the red memory

can talk at the same time as the black

memory and they're using completely

different channels

now

what we were talking about with having

the match

is that this red channel and this red

channel if i put two pieces of memory on

them

i want them to be matching memory

because

uh if i'm just going to draw on this

black channel might be a little faster

if this memory is 500 megahertz speed

and this memory is 500 megahertz speed

then they're both going to travel at 200

mega sorry i've been saying 500 they're

both going to travel at 200 megahertz

speed however

if this is 100 and let's say this is 500

which isn't a speed but let's just say

it is and this is 500 megahertz

now because they're both sharing the

same channel

they're only going to travel

at 100 speed so it's important that we

make sure that these two pieces of

memory are exactly the same and it's not

that they won't work it's just that they

won't work as efficiently so again in

the matching banks we have a red and a

red and a black and a black we want to

make sure that these are matching

sticks

if we have

triple channel so let's say i have one

two

three banks and they each have their own

channel that's each 64 bits

i've effectively increased my

bus to a 192 bit bus likewise if i have

a quadruple channel

i now have a 256 bit bus

you can see the benefit here and how

much faster the cpu is going to be able

to access information

all right so we talked about memory

latency which is the amount of time it

takes from the memory controller

to the cpu and the ram

right and there's a certain amount of

latency that occurs and we count that in

clock cycles and then we talked about

multi-channel architecture a 64-bit

limit on the single arc channel

architecture and then we have the dual

architecture which effectively raises

this to 128

the triple which effectively raises it

to

and the quadruple

which raise it to

256.

so now that we've discussed the single

through the quadruple channel

architecture i want to talk about

something else that has to do with

numbers so i want you to make sure we're

keeping this separate which is the

single-sided versus double-sided memory

so here's the way it works you see all

these

chips on the on the on the stick

and they're all on one side now there

might be some on the other side as well

and basically a single versus double

bank of chips on the stick that's what

we're talking about when we talk about

single versus double sided memory

the computer can only access one bank of

data at a time either on this side

or on the flip side so let's call this

the a side and the b side it can only

access the a or the b at one time and so

of course i want more data on one side

because that's going to make it faster

right

but single-sided chips if it's all on

one side means that each one of these

chips is holding more information the

more information that's on this chip the

more expensive it is so a more expensive

chip is going to be single-sided and

this is a case in which single is good

as opposed to double speed right

but double-sided is going to be cheaper

so that's the difference between single

and double-sided ships and i just want

to mention that it's very important and

it will come up in the test and that is

different from single or double

architecture uh channel architecture

now let's talk about some integrity

things parity versus non-parity

this is specifically for error detection

and we'll get into hashing and how it

does this later on when we talk about

security in the security plus exam if

you're going to stick around for that

long but basically what happens if you

think about it for every byte of data

which is eight bits

we're going to store one extra parity

bit

making for a total of nine bits

this extra bit

allows

the memory and the computer to check

that the data going onto the memory is

in fact good it doesn't have any errors

in it

so nine bits are stored instead of eight

bits so you can imagine this is gonna

take up more time and more speed but

it's gonna

it's gonna increase the integrity so

it's slightly more expensive and it's

slightly slower but it's necessary when

in data integrity is is uh important

meaning that i don't want the computer

to crash

because it suddenly got a bit bad piece

of data which can happen because there's

their computer stuff happens and this is

something we deal with over and over

again in computers is making sure the

data is it has integrity meaning the

data that the cpu asked for and the data

that the motherboard or that rather the

ram sent is the mother that was re is

the data that was received

now this is slightly different although

it's the same principle from ecc and

non-ecc ecc is error correction code so

parity

allows the computer to recognize

if there is a an error

so it looks at that bit and it can look

at the other data and can say oh there's

an error and it can shut down the

process before it causes an a huge error

on the computer which you can imagine is

really important if i'm talking about a

server or something that's serving

thousands of people like a google server

or yahoo server or something

ecc allows you to detect

and correct the data and the reason it

can do this is it stores more bits seven

bits with ever 32 bits of data so

whereas with every 32 bits of data um

parity would have stored four it's gonna

store seven and it can do that and then

it has enough to information and this is

a little more complicated to how it does

this but the important thing is that it

can correct as well as detect the data

what you really want to know about

parity and ecc is they're both involved

in maintaining

data integrity

okay meaning that it's gonna keep the

computer from shutting down

however again it's more expensive

and it's much it's a little bit i'm not

gonna say much but it is slower in terms

of a computer however it's much better

at detecting and correcting errors and

when data integrity is important meaning

i want to make sure that the information

traveling between the cpu and the ram

chip are are the same and sometimes

errors happen in electronics then i'm

going to want to have this probably in a

server or something where i don't want

the server to shut down i need to make

sure data is secure and in in and the

integrity is pure

registered memory is slightly different

so whereas parody and ecc these are

things that you're going to see on the

chip you can buy parity ram or e-ram or

ecc ram if you ever see that e on a ram

that stands for ecc okay

registered memory also is also referred

to as buffered memory

and what this does is all information

written to and read from the ram is

actually buffered

uh between the ram and the memory

controller so if i have the ram here

and the memory controller let's put the

memory controller here and let's put the

ram

here what it's doing is it's actually

registering and buffering the data here

so in fact it's one clock cycle slower

right it's a lot slower but what it's

doing is it can take it in here make

sure the information is correct before

it sends it on and that's going to

reduce the amount of errors

so this improves the integrity of the

signal and therefore it adds stability

just like all the other stuff and so in

a server and something really important

i don't need to shut down this is

probably something we're going to deal

with

again as i mentioned it's more expensive

and it can cause latency meaning it can

slow things down but we give some of

that stuff up

for pure signal and a more stable system

all right so we've talked about now

single-sided versus double-sided parity

versus non-parity ecc versus non-ecc and

then registered

let's go over all these topics because

we had a lot here first of all we talked

about memory latency and that is a a lag

if you will

and the time it takes for the data to

travel

between the ram

and the memory controller

because when this says hey send over

some stuff

it's going to take a while for this

information to come up and then send

over and again we're measuring that in

clock cycles

so it might take a clock cycle less and

in computers that can be a long time

we also talked about multi-channel

architecture so a single channel gives

us that 64-bit channel

a dual channel

means i have two channels that are

talking to each other

right but which increases the channels

220 bit

triple channel gives me 192 bits

quadruple

doubles that up to 256

then we talked about single-sided versus

double-sided in this case i want

single-sided architecture

because single-sided means that i'm

going to have um

a faster

and

faster access to ram because

the cpu can only access data on one side

of the chip at a time

we also talked about parity versus

non-parity which

detects

errors

ecc which not only detects but also

corrects errors

and then registered memory which offers

a buffer for the memory so we can make

sure that when the memory gets to the

memory controller it is pure and it is

what we wanted

so now that we've talked about memory in

general i want to go ahead and talk

about um

different storage devices that are used

not only that for the short-term memory

but when we need to store this memory or

this information into a longer term

place on the computer

[Music]

welcome to module 4 lesson 4 installing

and configuring pc expansion cards

which is a new topic for the updated

syllabus

you'll be doing a lot of this as a

pc engineering you may well already have

done it if you have a home computer and

needed to

add something or upgrade something a lot

of people really enjoy modifying their

computers

i've certainly had to install

updated video cards because i do a

little bit of

filming videos even though it's only

filming powerpoint and desktop i've had

to improve what came with the pc

improving sound cards and adding new

network cards when old ones break or

ports break

as you know a lot of motherboards have

uh port soldered on especially the

cheaper motherboards so it could have a

sound card

soldered on

and um or sound ports and also

ethernet ports and if these break for

whatever reason you can't replace them

because they're soldered so you have to

slot in cards

depending on which slots you have

available

so we'll look at installing and

configuring pc expansion cards

sound video network usb firewire

thunderbolt storage

modem i'm not sure why they've put that

in the syllabus modem cards but it's

there

wireless cellular cards tv tuners riser

carts

so as you know we've covered

motherboards already or if we if we

haven't it's going to be one of the

lectures there

and you'll normally have spare slots

unless it's some sort of micro pc

you'll have a few spare slots of

different air types now you

before you go buying any cards you need

to ensure

that um

two things are correct

you've got a spare slot

somewhere on your motherboard and the

second thing is it's compatible with the

card

that you're planning to buy

so check

your um motherboard documentation i had

to

recently install a new uh hard drive an

ssd

so i just had to make sure that the

connectors were correct

on my motherboard that it was compatible

and

and i had the i had the spare connectors

i had the spare capacity to add it

so the expansion card is a printed

circuit board fits into the expansion

slot of your computer

it enhances the functionality you know

that does something that the computer

already does better

or it lets you do something that you

couldn't previously do like plug in a tv

obviously

you have to power off your computer

before you insert the expansion card

add your anti-static wristband

uh and check the documentation obviously

yeah the gold plated connectors of the

expansion card are slid in

now normally you just have to wiggle it

slightly backwards and forwards in order

for it to

fit

occasionally it just slots straight in

but at the time you just have to give it

a little wiggle backward and forwards

and sometimes as you can see on the left

there there's a blanking plate

that is there to keep dust out and keep

the airflow working well

and optimally inside your pc

so you may just have to work that loose

sometimes has a little screw in there

undo the screw just wiggle it loose and

it'll come free

and that will allow you to insert your

expansion card

and on the end of the expansion card is

a little screw hole so you can screw it

to the back of your chassis

uh don't try and force it i've said make

sure it's compatible but just don't try

and force it in

uh again check the um pins line up

normally there's a groove

carved into the circuit board to stop

you trying to

plug in the wrong type of card to the

wrong slot

okay establishes contact obviously you

won't know it's um

working until you reboot the pc

software expansion cards usually come

with some sort of um

cd

software

or at the very least they download the

software

so we'll go to various sound cards and

i'll come back to installation in a bit

sound card also known as audio card it's

an expansion card that provides audio

capability

or um improved audio if your

current card or ports aren't up to the

job

the main ports you'll use are the

line-in

which is the pink one which you'll use

for a microphone if you wanted to do

some recording

and then the green one is for a line out

which will go to your headphone or your

speaker system

now depending on how much money you have

and what you need you'll get other ports

like optical ports joystick ports

and just depends so just check what you

need and check the documentation

a video card is expansion card that

creates a feed of viewable images you

normally replace this if your current

sound card is um

just not powerful enough or if it's

faulty and it's soldered onto the

motherboard you would upgrade

you can see this one looks like it's got

a vga and dva slot

again make sure you're buying the right

thing because um

your monitor needs to be compatible with

your card in as much as you need to have

the right cable to connect one end to

the other end so do double and triple

check

popular expansion slot for video is pcie

video card normally has components on

such as a graphics processing unit it

has its own heatsink

video memory

and this is why they're often upgraded

because these cards can come with i

think the latest one i was looking at

had two gigabyte

of on-board memory plus two fans it ran

in silent mode it didn't make any noise

whatsoever so these things are just

becoming mind-bogglingly powerful

obviously more popular with gamers and

professional graphics people who make

videos

you'll have ports such as vgi vga svdo

and dvi

now here's

some software that comes with my video

card nvidia

i'm not sure if

you call it nvidia or something like

that i'm never asked but it comes with

its own software that lets you do a lot

of stuff tweaking it

boosting the performance depending on

your

and capability of your pc you can change

the resolution on your monitor a whole

bunch of things so

and normally you'd have this software

that also runs

along with your video card so you don't

um just leave it to the default settings

on windows 7 or whatever you're running

you get the full use out of it

network cards obviously lets you um have

networking capability for your

pc

not much to say about that really

normally come with an ethernet port

because that's the standard we use

generally

usb cards uh provides usb ports on the

computer normally you'll have a few

anyway but obviously if you've got a

small computer it will have a limited

amount or it may not have usb 3 for

example

firewire

and not sure how

much firewire is used anymore actually

typically used to connect camcorders

external hard drives that benefit from

high transfer rates

thunderbolt cards

thunderbolt and

provides thunderbolt ports to a computer

it's a new i o technology that provides

10 gigabytes per second of throughput

both directions i think they only work

on macs

thunderbolt card carries both the

display

video and pci express data

via the single serial interface

it allows this card um

allows you to daisy chain up to six

high-speed devices such as hard disks

audio devices high definition monitors

etc check the um documentation obviously

to see if it's going to do what you want

it to do

storage cards normally provide internal

storage expansion

provide multiple internal hard disk

drives useful for servers that have raid

and want to raid more hard disk drives

modems of

rarely going to be used nowadays

no i don't recall the last time

i used a modem but it's in the syllabus

it provides an expansion card that

provides modern capability

for

users that want to connect to the

internet using their phone line

and

not use much anymore because obviously

you're all using

a cable

or a broadband

a wireless or cellular card provides

modem capability to your computer using

the telephone system

ymax gprs

it's available in modern laptops useful

when you want to access the internet

from your wireless service provider

tv tuner cards lets you watch tv on your

monitor if you have a monitor that can

support it

most tuner cards also

function as video

capture cards let you record tv programs

to your hard disk

as one of the last ones i think is a

riser card

this provides an expansion slot within

the expansion slot

so what you would do

would be add this um generally speaking

to a server

and say you had one pci slot you would

add this to your pci and that gives you

three more

well it gives you three pci cards

obviously the one you plug it into is

then used

and placed parallel to the motherboard

so it saves space because of the height

limitations on rock mounted

servers

just a few tips before installation

check compound compatibility

so many people buy stuff that just

doesn't work on their

particular hardware or doesn't work with

their operating system because it's too

old or too new

check all the documentation

normally the

hardware provider has a website

and they'll have a a particular page per

device

and per model and it will have any

latest updates any issues or any advice

check for any bugs or known issues i

know um

when i bought my recent ssd drive

it comes with management software

but um a recent firmware update update

for the

hard drive actually wiped it

which would be a nightmare for any

person who who

experienced that issue

so that's been fixed now but it's

something if um people hadn't read it or

didn't know about it and hadn't checked

the website that they were going to be

hit by that issue

back up your files in case you fry

something and lose all of your data back

it up to an external usb drive or

whatever

the

manufacturer will provide a

quick start guide usually

and it will tell you whether or not you

need to install the hardware first and

then the cd

or you need to insert the cd first and

add any drivers and other support files

obviously don't uh insert a card onto

the motherboard without uh powering it

down first because you'll probably fry

it

and i mentioned earlier you might just

need to use a gen a gentle right hair

backwards or forwards rocking motion

boot the pc and follow installation pro

and procedures normally

it's pretty easy nowadays when i was

working on windows 95 and 98

it could be horrible horrible experience

the card in device manager and see if

it's working

test it with whatever if you've put a

new sound card in make sure the sound's

all working

do any tweaks you need to do with the

manufacturers management software if it

comes with it especially with the video

cards

alright so we've covered a lot expansion

cards

sound video network

usb firewire thunderbolt

modem cellulose

tv and riser cards and i've also given

you a few tips on installing these cards

and getting it all set up

that's all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

storage devices storage overview

we've talked a lot about all the

computer components that make the

computer run and that allow it to

process data but where does it get that

data from

well this is where storage devices come

in

so in this section we're going to talk

about all the different storage devices

that are covered on the exam and in this

particular video i want to give a brief

overview of these storage devices before

we talk about them in more depth

so we're going to start this discussion

uh with a brief

introduction to what is storage and then

we're going to talk about the three main

types of storage magnetic storage

optical storage

and solid state storage now it's very

possible that there will be more storage

options in the future and you might even

encounter some that don't quite fit into

these but this is going to cover about

95 percent of the storage out there and

is going to cover everything that's

necessary for the a plus exam

all right so first let's talk about what

is storage

storage which is sometimes referred to

as secondary storage as opposed to

primary storage which is where our dram

would fall under is a place to frankly

store data this is where all the data

all the stuff you're working on gets

stored

for later use

so if ram is your desk then this device

this storage device is your filing

cabinet your desk allows you to work on

stuff in the moment but the filing

cabinet is where it goes so that you can

pull it out and work on it later

in our analogy from the very beginning

the short-term memory of your brain

would be your ram whereas the long-term

memory would be your storage

so just to give you an idea of speed

wise the reason that we have two

distinct different devices is because

this type of storage is at least about 1

million times slower than ram now that

number could change depending on the

type of storage we're using

but

this tells you how quickly we can access

stuff now of course we're talking

nanoseconds here in milliseconds so this

is not time that you can actually notice

however it is much slower than ram and

so the cpu can't access it directly

that's why we have ram as sort of that

interim buffer all right but uh the ram

of course is expensive and is volatile

and so one of the main things about this

storage is that it's non-volatile

meaning when the power goes out

the data remains on these devices but as

a result they're a bit slower and so

that's why we have this storage device

so as i just said and this is a concept

we need to discuss over and over again

non-volatile means when powered off it

retains data and again ram which is

volatile means that when

sorry volatile which ram is means that

when the power goes off the what's on

that is removed

and there are mainly three types of

media we're going to be discussing as

i've already mentioned

those are magnetic

optical and solid state

and we're just going to give an overview

of those in this presentation

so first let's talk about magnetic

storage as the name implies data is

stored on a magnetized medium generally

on some sort of platter which actually

looks like a cd and it's magnetic and

the data is stored on that using

different types of magnets and there's a

head

or an arm with sort of heads that go up

and read all this stuff

so

what happens is there are different ones

and zeros and don't forget computers

read everything in ones and zeros it is

the most basic form of communication on

or off and so there are little bits of

ones and zeros on these platters that

allow it to store data

then there's a read write head which i

have drawn a line here to represent

which can go on and read those ones and

zeros

and that allows you to

not only write data but also read it

back from this magnetized medium the

best thing with the magnetized medium of

course is if you have a strong enough or

a weak enough magnet you can reset those

ones and zeros erase data and then put

more data on

so there are three types of magnetic

storage that we're going to be

discussing in the next uh couple videos

and they are hard drives which are

represented by this item right here

floppy disk drives which we saw on the

previous

slide a floppy disk and then tape drives

which like the name might remind you if

you remember of like cassette or vhs

tapes same thing magnetic medium now

also one thing i want to point out while

we're on this slide is this k and disk

so that's quite different from

this word which is spelled with a c

the difference is if you see a k

that means magnetic all right the c is

going to be

optical which is the next type of

storage optical storage doesn't work

with

magnets at all instead the data is

stored on optical medium

using

light

so that means

lasers alright so if you ever see when

you open up a cd drive it says don't

look directly at the laser that's what

it's talking about rather than having

some sort of mechanical device that's

going to read

this

magnetic medium we have optical

lasers that read the stuff that is

written on here much smaller than in the

magnetic medium and therefore it can be

finely read by lights which are more

precise and also faster

there are three common types of optical

storage that we're going to be

discussing

those are compact discs which you

probably remember cds which most of you

probably remember this from audio

digital versatile disks or dvds which

i'm sure some of you have lying around

and by the way if you ever see this word

differently it might be video disk

digital video disk that's to

differentiate whether or not this is

holding uh video or data

and finally blu-ray discs which are sort

of the newest high definition format for

video and of course because of that can

hold a lot more data

for computers

finally we're looking at something

called solid-state storage so we talked

about magnetic mediums

meaning that it uses magnets and arms

and read write platters to read and

we'll talk more about that a little bit

and then we talked about optical medium

which was lights used lasers to read and

write and now we're talking about solid

stage storage uh solid stage storage

which as the name implies is data stored

using integrated circuits so the

difference here is rather than using

light or magnets there are no moving

parts everything is using integrated

chips electronics so this is sort of

similar to ram or dram

in fact as a result just like dram it is

faster less uses less power and

therefore has fewer chances of failure

it makes sense if there are less moving

parts there's going to be less things

that can break

also if i take it to some place like the

beach and sand gets in it i'm not as

concerned because there's nothing moving

for that sand to disrupt

there are four types of solid-state

storage that we're going to cover in

these videos the first is what's called

solid-state drives ssd which might look

a little familiar to

what you just saw with hdd hard disk

drives right and we are going to see how

those are different and these are sort

of taking over for hard disk drives

we're also going to talk about usb flash

drives which i'm sure many of you are

aware of and which are pictured right

here

and then we're going to look at sd cards

and compact flash uh memory

both of these are smaller form formats

that work electronically pretty much the

same as these somewhat bigger

formats however

they're made mostly for palm pilots

for palm computers smartphones tablets

and of course cameras

all right

so now we've talked about what is

storage the magnetic storage media

optical storage media and solid state

storage media again storage

is your filing cabinet or your long-term

memory

so

even though ram is your short-term

memory and is much faster

we need this longer term storage in

order to hold the data

we also have three different types the

first is magnetic storage media which

uses magnets and magnetic read write

heads

to read everything

this is going to be

hard drives or hard disk drives

floppy disk drives

and tape

then we're going to talk about optical

storage media

which again or cds

dvds and blu-ray

and just to remember this is lasers

optics lights okay and when we get to uh

networking as well we're going to see

how light's playing a role in replacing

some of the antiquated technology there

and allowing for stuff to get a lot

faster

finally we're going to talk about

solid-state storage media which is sort

of taking over

and is really competing with magnetic

storage media the best thing with solid

state of course is there are

no moving parts

so that's the thing we want to remember

there

and as a result

things are a solid state is faster

more efficient and it's also a little

bit more expensive and the way it does

this is by using integrated electronics

not dissimilar to the ram chips we

talked about in the previous lesson

all right so now that we've discussed um

solid state media uh optical storage

media magnetic storage media in sort of

broad terms let's get into each one

individually how they connect and how

they're gonna work in your computer

[Music]

storage devices magnetic storage

so now let's take a look at one of the

oldest forms of storage that is still in

use today and it's represented on here

on this slide by actually two images

this one

and this one and that's magnetic storage

so the three types of magnetic storage

devices we're going to talk about are

floppy disk drives

hard disk drives

and then tape drives

and tape is slightly different from

floppy which is also slightly different

from hard disk and they were used in

conjunction for a long time until

recently

in the past 10 15 years when we've

started seeing some replacements in the

optical and solid-state drive fields and

one thing i want to point out once again

is here this k at the end of disk this

represents magnetic rather than optical

drive solutions all right so let's talk

about floppy disk drives or

fdd for short now you might not have

ever even seen a floppy disk drive but

it used to be one of the only forms of

removable media that we had available to

us

today as a result of usb drives solid

state media and the limiting size of

these floppy disks it's nearly extinct

now this may be the only reason you're

going to learn it for the a plus exam

and the reason it's still on there is

because you may need it in order to

access older data that one of your

clients still has on floppy disks

someplace and so you might need to

actually install a floppy disk drive or

know about

fixing one in case one goes bad on one

of your

you know customers

devices now it used to be and this is

just an interesting factoid that some

computers ran entirely off floppies in

other words there was no hard drive so

what you would do is you would have two

floppy disks uh you'd have or two floppy

drives rather you would put your

operating system in one of them that's

how you would boot and then you'd put

applications uh in another and then you

would sort of switch back and forth in

order to add data on and off and this

was fine back when hard drives and

computers were really uh

you know when data was really small of

course now it just doesn't really work

anymore

so as i just said

as a result of having the floppy drives

in there and because the computer

naturally is going to look for a floppy

drive before anything else if you have a

floppy drive in the system and this is a

question that i've seen on the test

quite often uh you will get a boot error

when you start the computer so you might

see a question on the exam that says

something to the effect of you a client

goes away for lunch uh shuts down their

computer comes back boots up the

computer and they get a no operating

system found on the boot disk error

what's the problem well the problem

probably is that they left a floppy disk

in their system that they were working

off of and never took it out before

starting the computer back up and so

when the computer looks on this floppy

disk it's not going to find an operating

system and it's going to give you an

error so that's just a one of the main

issues i see on the test regarding to

floppy drives and why i'm why i'm just

bringing it up so here's a standard

floppy disk uh and it

one thing you'll probably notice right

away as you recall from floppy disks if

you ever saw one is that they are not

actually floppy uh they're actually

solid they're hard there used to be a

larger floppy disk with a big old hole

in the center some of you might remember

that

but those sort of went extinct because

again they didn't hold as much as this

one and because they were floppy it

allowed

issues to occur to the

platter inside so actually inside this

thing there's actually like a um

a little platter and it's magnetic and

very thin and this piece of metal right

here

is protecting

the the amount that is right over here

right so what happens actually is this

thing moves over to the side and then it

exposes uh the magnet you see it moves

over like this and it exposes the

platter which is there

and allows the computer to read it

so this is a three and a half inch

floppy disk

and it's about 1.44 megabytes so you can

understand that nowadays with usb flash

drives that can be up to say 16 32 or

even 64 gigabytes uh one megabyte really

doesn't do anything and so the only time

we're really going to see these is again

when we're dealing with old in

old data

on a you know a user still has it for

some reason

now uh it can be right protected i don't

know if you ever had a vhs player and

you used to record to your vhs's but uh

there's actually a little hole

right here and on the other side there's

a switch

and that switch can be you know thrown

that way or the other way and if there

is a hole right here

then it means that the computer will not

be able to write to this disk so an easy

way to fix this obviously is you just

move the um you just switch the switch

over so that it can be re written to

sometimes those get broken off and you

can use the old vh8 vhs trick which you

take a little scotch tape and you throw

it over there and the computer doesn't

know the difference

so on the back of the floppy drive

there's two connections you want to be

aware of the first is this

it's the 34 pin data cable

all right and it looks very similar to

an ide or paid a data cable that we

looked at before and we will look at

again

uh but the difference is not only is it

34 pins as opposed to 40 but it has a

twist in it right here and that's so you

know that it is a floppy floppy disk

drive and that's also because of how old

this is uh the electronics had to work

in a certain way in which they switch

some of the data

the power connector over here is what's

referred to as a berg power connector or

a mini power connector so if you see

this and you will be asked on the test

what kind of power adapter goes with a

floppy drive the answer is this one it's

a berg okay they're probably not going

to ask you to recognize it by looking at

it however it is much smaller than the

others

and as you can see one of the main

problems we used to have

is that it wasn't really keyed very well

so you could put it in sort of either

way they've they fixed that for the most

part on later models but now you really

don't see them so it's not even an issue

all right so that takes care of floppy

disk drives again one of the oldest and

our first forms of storage and also uh

the form of storage which we continue to

use as removable media

so now let's talk about hard disk drives

hard disk drives are today's most common

form of magnetic media

they're very similar to floppy drives

because they contain platters with

magnetic surfaces so if you recall i was

talking about the floppy drive i said

there were these like platters inside

right and they would rotate and the

computer could read just a little

portion of that depending on what was uh

sort of on the outside

of that piece of metal

now in this case however there are many

different platters kind of stacked on

top of each other which i'm not i can't

draw but i'll sort of represent like

this alright so you can imagine like

pancakes stacked on top of one another

and these platters rotate in very high

speeds and this speed is going to be

important

it's measured in rpms or rotations

per minute

so um

uh that's gonna be important we'll come

back to that in just a minute but there

are also read and write heads which are

like little sticks with little heads on

them and those reach across the disk and

sort of you know can

move

and can read the specific sectors uh

which when we talk about partitioning a

drive and how it's used by the operating

system we'll talk about but it can read

little bits on these magnetic on this

magnetic medium and it can also write to

it so it erases it reads and it writes

these were commonly uh 3.5 inches in a

desktop computer and you see that right

here which means that this is about the

width of a floppy disk

uh on smaller computers

say on laptops they're made much smaller

probably about two and a half inches

we'll talk about that when we get to

laptop computers

so some hard drive specifications that

you want to be aware of um

that you're going to buy a hard drive

based on the first is capacity now

nowadays this is usually measured in

gigabytes or terabytes if you recall

with that floppy disk we were dealing

with megabytes okay so just as a

just so we can go over this a thousand

megabytes

equal one

gigabyte

and a thousand gigabytes

equal one

terabyte

now uh

even smaller than megabytes actually

just to go over them is kilobytes so a

thousand kilobytes

equals one

megabyte okay so these are just these

are important to know it might come up

on the test

no matter where it comes up you

definitely want to know that information

another thing you want to be aware of is

the transfer rate that's measured in a

certain amount of megabytes per second

so i've thrown 300 megabytes per second

on here which is quite large for a uh

solid state beta

hard drive but we'll talk about that in

just a minute uh also rotational speed

which i just mentioned generally you're

going to see these in either 7200 rpms

or 5400 rpms if we're dealing with a

laptop you might see 4 200 rpms although

nowadays it's kind of more common to

replace a laptop hard drive with a solid

state we'll talk about that a little

later

obviously the faster the rpm the bigger

this number the better all right

so uh if i have more rpms that means

it's rotating more if i have less that

means it's rotating less and that's

going to

affect how fast i can access data

there's also cache a buffer now remember

when we talked about the cpu we talked

about different cache speeds the l1 l2

l3 cache so in this there is actually a

somewhat of you know like on-board dram

uh which can take some of that mem take

some of the data and throw it out to the

bus so that way it can be accessing

stuff it has a place to throw it and it

doesn't have to sort of directly deal

and therefore slow things down

finally we're going to deal with

something called latency and latency is

directly related to the rotations per

minute that has to do with how slow it

takes to access uh

data on a certain sector on one of those

platters so again remember we have a lot

of

sort of

magnetic

uh platters on here they're all the same

safe i'm just drawing these so you can

see them and we have a head that sort of

goes off and reads these things all

right and what it does is it literally

makes little um sort of dents

in the

in the magnetic medium and just like a

record if you will and it reads that

now to connect

a hard drive we're going to talk about

connections in a little more depth later

on as well but i just want to go over

the connections just like i did with

floppy drives you'll notice that there

are two different types we've talked

about when we talked about motherboards

there are two different types of main

connections the first is peda or

parallel ata now parallel ata is

distinguished by this 40 pin data cable

it's also called by the way ide you

might see it referenced as ide

okay so if you do see ide or peda they

are basically synonymous uh it actually

has to do a little bit with the

electronics but

you don't need to worry about that

um this allows for up to 133 megabytes

per second transfer rate we're going to

get much faster transfer rates when we

start dealing with

sata and even with usb

it uses as i just mentioned this 40 pin

data cable

and that's what transfers the data

however i still need something to power

it because as you recall there's moving

parts in here right and so um

that's what i have this for which is

called a molex power connector and we'll

see that in just a second one thing i'm

pointing out here is that each one of

these cables

can actually hold two hard drives on it

all right so there's gonna be three

plugs we'll see that later when we get

to connections but each one of these

holds two hard drives so the same data

cable is sharing two hard drives and you

can imagine why that's gonna slow things

down just a bit now as i mentioned it

uses molex power which we will talk

about again and again and this is a

molex power connector it's only really

used uh with paid out we might see it

with some other devices a little bit

later on but mainly when you see a molex

power connector or you see pata or ide

it's talking about this power connector

all right the other main type of http

connection you're going to see is the

sata or serial ata connection

so this allows for up to 300 megabytes

per second so it's

over

double

what pata was able to do

you'll notice that the data cable is a

lot smaller it's seven pins rather than

40. and what's interesting about this is

rather than having

two devices on each cable and each cable

represents a channel we have one so each

device gets its own direct line to the

motherboard or to the controller

this is going to speed things up and it

also allows for faster access by the

computer

the sata has its own power connector

we'll talk about that again and again

but

just recall that the sata does not have

a different name okay so a sata

power connector goes with sata data and

that's with the sata hard drive

finally we have this sort of weird

connector that you probably won't see

much in the field but you might

encounter it especially on some older

systems or really uh high

need systems and this is called scuzzy

scuzzy stands for small computer system

interface and uh if you ever hear

someone say scuzzy that is how you

pronounce that

term

so there are several different types of

cable types there's not one 40 pan or

one seven pin data cable type there are

several different types so that's one

thing that distinguishes scuzzy the

other thing that distinguishes scuzzy is

you can have up to 16 devices per

channel now when i say it's per cable

that's not exactly true because the way

this actually works is by piggybacking

we'll see an image of this later but

basically i would have a hard drive i'm

just going to draw one right here and

you have sort of two connectors one for

in

and one for out and what will happen is

you have a cable go in and then you have

another cable go out that can connect

to the next scuzzy device and so they

piggyback like so

and that's how you can have up to 16

devices now there are some special

considerations to deal with with scuzzy

and in our connections video i will talk

specifically about what those are now

another interesting thing with scuzzy is

generally speaking nowadays it uses the

same cord to provide power used to be

used molex

and other stuff nowadays it doesn't

nowadays usually the same cord that

you're going to plug in for scuzzy data

is also going to provide power so that's

really going to streamline things and

it's something that later on usb is sort

of going to steal

all right so now we've talked about

floppy disk drives the removable disk

drives we've also talked about hard disk

drives and that hard meaning that

they're there they stay in our system

they don't move we're not removing them

so finally let's talk about tape drives

which is our final type of magnetic

medium we need to discuss

now just like your vhs or cassette tapes

that used to listen to movie uh listen

to music or watch movies on it is tape

and if you look

at these tapes it looks like an old

cassette tape right you even have uh the

little thing you put the pencil in and

sort of rewind the tape this by the way

this is not

tape this is magnetic floppy drive okay

now the great thing about this is

magnetic tape is cheap and it's

removable you can see it comes in

several different sizes

however because of the way it's made

unlike having a platter which is in that

floppy right which you have an arm that

can sort of read any of this data at any

point

it has to rewind or fast forward to get

to certain data points and therefore

it's not really useful for sort of

instant access because if you can

imagine if i have to get a file that's

all the way at the end of the tape it's

going to take a while to you know fast

forward all the way to that just like if

you used to watch a vhs if you wanted to

go to the end of the movie you had to

fast forward to the end of the movie and

so we're primarily going to use this for

archival data meaning that when i'm

backing up my system that's when we're

mostly going to see tape drives and

tape's been used for archiving for years

and years and years and years which is

the main reason why you might you might

see it in the field it's um somewhat

getting replaced by cloud computing

which allows you to back up by the

internet and by removable solid-state

drives or removable hard drives

connected through usb but for the most

part if you have a big company that has

to save a lot of data

it's a lot cheaper to buy 50 tapes than

50 removable hard drives

the data is normally compressed and

actually the reason that's important is

because these tapes will come rated in

two different versions so you might for

instance see uh you know a 100 megabyte

tape and

then you'll see 200 megabytes compressed

and generally you're going to compress

the data because you're not accessing it

every day you're only accessing it when

you need to restore data or back it up

all right now nowadays these come much

much larger and you can buy them in any

sort of form you need and when we talk

about backups we'll talk about how

they're sort of used

so as i just mentioned there's the

native and the compressed capacity which

is what this represents and that's how

these are

marketed

finally they come in both internal or

external models

you'll see here this is definitely an

external model on the back here there'd

probably be some sort of scuzzy

connection or even a newer model's usb

connection and they're also internally

could be plugged up just like

your hard drives could so they come in

scuzzy peda sata

internal connections and then external

you might see usb or ieee 1394 which

again is firewire so that's just to sort

of tell you that

just like with removable hard drives um

they come in external and internal forms

the only benefit to having an external

one is it's easier to upgrade however

your tape you know you have tapes for

years and years and years you still need

that older version

finally uh these do require special

drivers specifically in older machines

newer machines might have them built in

but this is not something that the

operating system just naturally knows

what to do with uh and so sometimes you

are gonna have to go to the website and

get special drivers for these devices

and make sure those are installed before

you start accessing it again uh don't

make the mistake i made years and years

ago when i went to uh you know i saw a

sale for a hundred gigabyte you know

tape drive and this was 100 gigabytes

was crazy and it was so cheap and i said

man that's awesome i'm gonna go buy one

of these and i went home and i bought it

i plugged it in and i tried loading

stuff on it and i realized it really

wasn't useful at all for accessing data

it's only useful for backing up an

archive so again tape drives only used

for archival and backup purposes these

days

all right so now we've talked about tape

drives in addition to the others i just

want to go back over these all right

again floppy disk drives mostly uh the

ones you see are 1.44 megabytes uh it

uses a 34 pin

data connector

and a berg or berg

power connector

uh it is also removable

and most mostly you're not really even

going to see these in the field anymore

because they're so old the only reason

you'd see them is if you have someone

who needs to access old data hard disk

drives come in sort of three flavors of

connectors right there's uh peda

which is represented by that 40 pin

data and also

a molex power

we saw sata

which has both a sata power and data

and scuzzy

which we'll talk about in more depth

later and is uh used in a lot of what's

called raid arrays again we will talk

about uh scuzzy a little bit later later

in some of the special specifications

and some of the special configurations

you need to know about with that finally

we talked about tape drives and again

the most important thing to realize

about tape drives is magnetic medium is

they are for archival or

backup

purposes okay so if you see a tape drive

it's going to be used for backing up all

right and again all of this

this is covering our magnetic medium all

right so these all have to do with

magnets again if you take a huge magnet

you throw it over one of these it's

probably going to erase all the data for

the most part it uses platters and the

flappy and the floppy disk drives and

the hard disk drives and it has sort of

a read write head that's going and

reading the data on this um so these are

you know rotate into

the place that the head can read it this

is different from tape drives which just

like your old cassette tapes right has

like tape

that's running across the bottom and can

be read

of course the problem is if i need to

get to some data right in here i need to

rewind the entire uh you know tape to

get there so it's not really good for

instant access all right so now that

we've talked about all the magnetic

forms of media i want to talk about

optical media

[Music]

storage devices

optical storage

now that we've discussed magnetic

storage such as hard drives

tape drives and floppy drives i want to

talk about these sorts of storage

optical storage optical having to do

with like your eyes lights

so the three types of optical storage

we're going to discuss all look similar

on the outside but on the inside they're

all quite different these are compact

discs or cds

digital versatile disks or dvds

and blu-ray discs

now you might recognize these as

multimedia formats as well because there

are audio cd players

dvds which are digital

video discs and blu-ray discs obviously

also hold those high-definition movies

that you can now purchase and uh the

internals of them are exactly the same

the only difference is the external the

sort of how the data is being read but

in this case we're talking mostly about

data although i'll talk briefly about

some of the multimedia purposes as well

so first let's talk about compact disks

or cds

so these are those flat round optical

disks which are used to store music or

in our case data and one thing i want to

point out about all of the formats we're

going to talk about is this disk size

right here is going to stay exactly the

same so the physical form factor on the

outside is the same what's different is

what's going on in the inside now

with cds as with all optical

media

everything is stored in microscopic

indentations created by lasers light and

that's represented right here by this

okay and these indentations are called

lands and pits so the difference between

a cd to a dvd to a blu-ray is the size

of those lands and pits basically as

technology has progressed the media and

the

drives themselves have become better at

making those lands in pits smaller so

they can hold more data

so as i mentioned this stuff is read and

written to by lasers

now these

drives are measured in read speeds and

that read speed you've probably seen it

looks like something like an x a 48 x

for example now that x doesn't just mean

times as you might think in math

actually that ask x has a numerical

equivalent and that numerical equivalent

when it comes to cds is 150 kilobytes

per second therefore in the case of 48x

which is a pretty common

uh

read and write speed at least uh if the

cd drive for instance reads at 48 x that

means it's reading at about 7.2

megabytes

per second and if you were to do the

math and multiply 48 times 150 that's

what you'd get now this x does vary when

we go to the different forms so it's

just something to be aware of

now the other thing with these compact

discs on these is they hold up to about

700 megabytes of data

or 80 minutes of audio you're going to

want to remember these numbers they're

important and especially in relation to

dvds in blu-ray so again 700 megabytes

of data is the most that is hold

or rather held on these cds

audio cds versus data cds they're not

much different okay the difference

really uh comes when you dealing with

the software and we'll talk about a

little bit later uh specifically a

cord that needs to be plugged in when

you have a cd player on your computer

but really uh

the difference with these rs is there's

a audio decoder that can decode the

audio built onto a cd within the drive

and then send that over

to a sound card so actually i can listen

to cds without any special software on

my computer this is different from dvds

and blu-ray because video codecs uh the

decoder is a lot is a lot more in depth

um the cd-rom as rom now remember we

talked about rom right read only memory

cd-rom is read only there are

cds you can write to those are called

cd-r's so if you see cdr that means you

can read and write to it so the

important thing there is the addition of

writing

cd-rw is one that you can write and

rewrite to and the way it does that is

in the back um the

the lands and pits are sort of created

using slightly different technology it

can be reset uh re-magnetized so to

speak and so that's how it does that and

that's why on the back of a cdrw it

looks more metallic sort of like

the other thing with that is they cannot

be read in every player a lot of cdrs

you can read in most audio players not

all cdrws could now that's

mostly a moot point because no one uses

them as much anymore

so again cdr you can read and write a

cdrw can rewrite to now of course these

are so cheap that in some cases it's

easier to throw away 10 cdrs rather than

purchase a cdrw

so i just wanted to throw this table up

i have a few tables on here that you're

going to want to remember the thing with

the cdr these speeds aren't

terribly important but this points out

that for the most part nowadays you have

maximum recording speeds on cdrs of

either a 48x or 52x when it comes to the

cd-rw's the ones that are rewritable

it's either 24 or 32. so although most

drives nowadays can handle rewritables

you're not really going to use

rewritables much they're not they don't

as far as using them in the real world

they're not as useful as say a cdr you

can throw out really cheap or even a

dvdr which we'll get to the other thing

you really want to remember about cds

again is that they can hold up to 700

megabytes okay so that's the thing you

really want to remember about these and

that the x

equals 150

kilobytes

per second okay so these are the two

pieces of information that i think are

most important you might also want to

recall that this 48x and the 52x are

sort of our two standards

okay as far as cd connections we talked

about connecting hard drives well

connecting c cd drives are actually

basically the same they use the same

connections as internal hdds so uh

that's either peda or sata you can also

see them in scuzzy configurations as

well again with the pata we're gonna

deal with that 40 pin molex power

connector 40 pin data and with sata we

have a sata data cable which is seven

pins and that sata power connector

uh you can also have external by the way

cd connections that i'm not really

discussing here in depth but uh those

connect connect by a usb or firewire

generally nowadays you're going to see

them connecting by a usb

uh

when you're dealing with audio output

this is actually uh

somewhat

important because you might see this

question on the test when you're dealing

with pata drives there's actually a

special sound card uh a special sound

connection rather

that connects the cd drive directly to

the sound card or the integrated sound

card on the motherboard so that's a

question you pop in a cd it reads data

fine but when you play music it doesn't

play why that's because you have not

made this connection okay so this is an

important thing to remember especially

for the test and that's only with the

pata drives those ide drives when it

comes to sata drives all that

information is integrated through the

data cable so that's just uh something

that's really important to remember

again with peda is you have that extra

audio

cord that needs to go from the cd drive

to the

motherboard or to the sound card if it's

not integrated directly onto the

motherboard

finally uh one thing that's interesting

with cds is you you know looking at a cd

it's it's rather wide and unlike hard

drives and floppy drives which fit in a

three and a half inch bay

right if you remember so i'm just going

to write that up there

right and

okay for the most part that's what this

is fitting into especially on desktop

computers um with

cds we're dealing with a five and a

quarter inch bay so it's slightly larger

and you'll see those represented on a

chassis if you go to install

one right so now we've talked about

compact disks uh the sort of most basic

form of optical media that we had out

there so let's move on to the next

version which came out you know if you

guys remember dvds were sort of huge for

a while after vhs's and then they became

co-opted by computers as well because of

all the data they can hold so a digital

versatile disk which could also be a

digital video disk the only difference

here is what's being held in it if it's

mostly for video it's a dvd digital

video disk if we're talking about data

it's generally referred to as a

versatile disk you're probably not going

to see that on the test but i cover it

anyway just see for your own uh sort of

knowledge

most dvd drives read at 16x so you

remember cd drive could read it 48x and

you would go oh wow so you just lost

speed well not exactly because in this

case the x stands for 1.32 megabytes per

second so if you remember 48x was about

7.2 megabytes per second if we multiply

16 times this 1.32 we're getting a much

faster speed

already over 16 megabytes per second

all in all this is nine times faster

this x is nine times faster than the cd

speed so not only are we getting more

storage space on the dvds we're also

getting something that reads

and sometimes writes faster than cds can

the installation is identical to cd

drives nothing different so again paid a

connector the 40 pin and the molex or

sata

external could be usb or firewire

generally nowadays going to be usb

you must have and this is important okay

because this will come up on the test

you must have specific dvd software in

order to watch videos now generally

speaking most operating systems nowadays

come with this installed but you might

see a question that asks why

you can read data from a dvd

correctly but you can't watch a movie

and that's probably because the movie

just like with audio is encoded on there

using special compression and so i need

something that can decompress and show

me that video and that's why you need to

have specific dvd software on the

computer in order to watch the videos

so one thing i'm just going to bring

back this image that we saw with cds

because i want to talk about how much

data can be stored on these dvds

the first thing we have is a single

layer single sided disk and that holds

4.7 gigabytes of data per side

so 4.7 gigabytes we're already

increasing our 700 megabyte limit quite

a bit

uh but you'll notice these two terms

single layer

and single sided let's first talk about

single layer a dual layer allows you to

bump this up to 8.5 gigabytes and a lot

of movies if you ever tried for some

reason backing up one of the movies you

owned and then making a copy onto a dvd

it might not have worked and that's

because you were trying to take a dual

layer

dvd that the manufacturer sold you and

burn it onto a single layer dvd

obviously it doesn't quite double but it

does give you a lot more storage space

now this is does not mean

that the layers are on either side of

the dvd instead just like this sort of

is representing the laser can actually

shoot past the first layer

and go to the second and that's how it

allows for dual layers so it actually is

not on a different side okay so the dvd

laser shines through the first layer to

reach the second layer and that's how it

can increase

the amount of data being stored on it

now when you go out and buy dvds let's

say you're going to burn to a dvd and by

the way that term burning the reason

it's called burning is because you're

chemically making a change on the cd

that's why you can't rewrite to most

the

process of using a layer sorry a laser

is burning those pits and valleys

into

the cd or dvd

now a dual-sided disc holds information

on both sides so not just on this side

but on this side as well and so it's

literally like you could flip over the

dvd and look at the other side just like

the a and the b side of a record if you

remember what a record or lp looks like

so a dual sided disk can then double

this amount so if i have a dual layer

dual side

dvd i'm going to have about 16 gigabytes

of

space allowed on that

so again dual

dual layer dual side holds up to 17

gigabytes because a dual layer gives me

8.5 if i have dual layer on both sides

of the disk that i could flip over

that's going to give me 17 gigabytes of

data and you probably need dvd players

that can read both sides simultaneously

without you having to switch them over

although uh

of course if anyone ever had bought a

dvd at the store

a video dvd that you could watch the

widescreen version on one side and the

full screen version on the other this

was back before we had widescreen tvs

all over the place um you would know

that it's sort of how that works

so here's a table that shows you the

dvd-rom technology again dvd-rom

read-only these are all read-only dvd-5

that's sort of the uh most common

technology you see out there it has one

side and one layer and as we've

mentioned 4.7 gigabytes this is the

number you want to remember

if i have two layers which is dvd-9

technology don't worry by the way about

this i doubt it's going to be on the

test what you really want to worry about

are these sizes over here

which is the maximum size okay so

4.7 gigabytes for one layer two layers

increases that to 8.5 gigabytes

if i have two sides and two layers i can

double that and get to 17 gigabytes so

again these are some important numbers

to remember one more slide we didn't

talk specifically about this but just

like with cds cdrs we have dvd-r's now

you'll see that there's this minus and

this plus next to the r all that is

talking about are different format

technologies uh one might have been

panasonic the other might have been sony

or something right so this was just how

they were manufactured not as important

to remember as the fact that uh a your

writing speeds are you know

not too shabby here

if we we're talking about an x equaling

1.32 megabytes that's going pretty fast

however don't forget we're dealing with

gigabytes of capacity and so it's going

to take a lot longer

a dvd-r is about 4.7 gigabytes those are

the same

uh

a dual layer dvd-r goes to 8.5 gigabytes

we also have dvd rws which have the same

capacity they're just slower because the

media is slower the important thing to

realize about these plus r and minus rs

is that if you have a plus r player or a

plus r burner you must make sure to buy

a plus r media so when you go to the

store to buy your dvd recordable dvds

you need to make sure it's either a plus

or a minus okay so that's sort of the

important thing to remember aside from

the capacity which is 4.7

for a single layer

and 8.5 or thereabouts for a dual layer

and if i double that to a dual sided

dual layer

now

i'm at 17

gigabytes

all right so that covers now cds and

dvds and that brings us to the latest

form of optical

storage that we have which are blu-ray

discs

blu-ray discs look exactly similar to

cds they were originally envisioned to

replace dvd video

not to sort of create a whole new

standard of data keeping and that's

mostly what we see them as because

really if we're talking about storage

nowadays we're really dealing with usb

drives and solid state media like that

which we'll talk about if you recall

there was sort of a really a nasty

battle between hd and blu-ray blu-ray

one out uh

not not quite sure how that happened but

if you remember it happening it just

sort of one day hd wasn't around anymore

sort of fizzled out

and if you had hd you either tried

getting rid of all your stuff or buying

as much as you could so you could hold

on to them but nowadays no one makes hd

everyone makes blu-ray

this is not unlike the vhs beta

standards battle back in uh when vhs

sort of came on the market as well

um the drive speeds range from about 1x

to 12x and again this x

equals 36 mega megabits per second or

4.5 megabytes per second this is the

number we've been dealing with megabytes

so let's stick with that one if you

recall we had about 1.3 i think seven

for the dvds and so we're getting quite

an increase here about three and a half

times more to burn or to read rather

blu-rays

this holds and this is this is really

easy these hold 25 gigabytes per layer

you can have up to two layers

which means the biggest you're going to

get

on a blu-ray

is 50 gigabytes

right there

so

cd offers a 700 megabytes

dvd offers us 4.7 gigabytes up to 8.5

gigabytes for a single or dual layer we

can double that on a second side so we

can get up to 17 gigabytes on a dvd if

we're willing to use both sides but now

with blu-ray we can have up to

50 gigabytes

quite an improvement

normally these are connected via sata

connections because of the speed

requirement so you're not really going

to see many

pata connectors uh you might see uh

esata for the external it's external

sata we haven't really talked much about

that but that is the external uh version

of sata or a usb or firewire for the

external you could also see this in

scuzzy however i really doubt it you're

going to see anything but sata out in

the market

it is backwards compatible with cds and

dvds meaning you can plug

a cd into a blu-ray player you can plug

a dvd into a blu-ray player and it will

work same with a cd will go into dvds

right

and a dvd and a cd will also go into

blu-ray however you cannot play a

blu-ray

on a cd or dvd i point this out because

i have seen questions on the test that

say i just bought blu-ray discs i plug

them into my player and they're not

working i know cds and dvds work what's

the problem well you either don't have

the correct software installed

or you don't have a blu-ray player

you're putting blu-ray media into a cd

or dvd drive

so uh just like i mentioned you must

have the correct software in order to

watch your high definition movies

uh just like you do with the dvd so

unlike a cd where you have a core that's

gonna plug up to your sound card there's

nothing like that that exists for the

blu-ray or the dvd if you don't have

movie watching software on your computer

that can watch these hd things

it's not going to work

when you try plugging it up

just like with dvds we have a bdr which

is a blu-ray recordable and a bdr e

which is the recordable and erasable so

that's slightly different it's not an rw

it's an re

i have a little table here that can show

you exactly what we're dealing with

these are the ones we were talking about

these standard discs there are many

blu-ray discs which are not as important

for us because again we're really going

to want to be dealing with these suckers

the ones that can really hold some a

major punch

a standard disk single layer 25

gigabytes

and a dual layer is 50 gigabytes you

want to remember

these numbers

all right so that concludes blu-ray

discs let's go back and just talk about

some of the main talking points here

first of all we talked about cds uh the

important thing to remember with cds is

that that x

equals about 150

kilobytes per second

uh they hold up to about 700

megabytes all right so not too shabby

we also have cdrs

and cdrws

for storage again we can unless we can

write to the cd it's really no good for

us as far as storage the other thing

with cds and this is something i sort of

with all of these optical media is you

can't just write and erase and write and

erase if you're going to write to it you

have to burn it from the very beginning

so if i want to add data to a dvd i

actually have to burn it all over again

so it's not really good for sort of

adding and subtracting data quickly what

it's really good for is archival and

storage if i want to store a lot of data

on something okay so that's just an

important distinction that i want to

make sure is clear

it's something i think some of us have

been dealing with these things for so

long we might we might forget to sort of

uh specify but that is important i can't

plug in a dvd and sort of add to it and

remove from it really simply because

every time i do that it has to go

through this process of burning to the

dvd or the cd or the blu-ray again with

dvds

we're looking at generally

4.7 gigabytes

uh up to 8.5

on the dual layer

so that's single layer

and

dual layer we can also double this if we

have a single side versus dual side so a

dual side

is going to allow us for up to

16 gigabytes

okay the x not as important to remember

in this case but it's around 1.3

seven

megabytes per second instead of

kilobytes

blu-ray discs

one uh layer

is 25 gigabytes

so quite an improvement

even over this double sided

uh double layer

dvd

and if we're dealing with two layers we

can get up to

50 gigabytes which is currently the

maximum all right so that's what we're

dealing with the x

is around four point i think it was

seven

megabytes

per second

uh not important really to remember

this or really to remember this

this one i have seen pop up in the test

all right so now that we've talked about

this magnetic media which is great

because i can write to it and remove

from it instantly because it's dealing

with magnets rather than light and sort

of lasers and then we have

these this optical media which is really

good for long-term storage

that i can access very quickly although

it does take a while to burn to right

because every time i need to burn new

data to an optical medium i need to

start from the beginning so now we've

talked about magnetic and optical let's

get into solid state which is sort of

the future of where we're going

[Music]

storage devices

solid state storage

now that we've discussed magnetic

storage such as hard drives

and

tape drives and also floppy disk drives

and optical storage such as cds dvds and

blu-rays i now want to talk about this

third and final form of storage and the

one that kind of brings us back to ram

in some ways and is also going to be the

future of storage due to its uh

speed

and effectiveness and those are solid

state storage devices and solid state as

the name implies is different from

storage that uses magnets uh or

optical light but rather everything is

solid integrated chips so everything is

um soldered on and done through chips

and therefore

it's a much more efficient form of

storage albeit slightly more expensive

so uh the four main forms of solid state

storage we're going to talk about are

solid state drives which are made

directly to compete with

hard disk drives

we're also going to talk about usb flash

drives which in some ways are replacing

uh cds dvds

and blu-rays

uh although they definitely have

replaced

floppy disks

and then we'll talk about sd cards and

compact flash both of which are actually

quite similar to uh usb flash drives uh

the main difference being the form

factor or physical size

all right so uh to begin with let's talk

about solid-state drives now from just

the view of it you can see this thing is

sort of designed to

take the place of a hard drive

and what i mean by that is that it is

where the operating system can reside so

rather than a usb flash drive and you

can put a operating system on a usb

flash drive but it's rather small these

are made to be fairly large uh and you

know for instance the computer i'm

running right now has a 512

gigabyte solid-state flash drive and it

wasn't very expensive

excuse me it was pretty expensive it

wasn't very cheap

but uh it does replace the old magnetic

hard drive and the main difference here

is that uh unlike the

hard drives the magnetic media which

used sort of those platters if you

recall

right and then i had a head that could

read all of the data on these platters

on this magnetic medium or even like

optical disks which did the same thing

but used uh lasers i don't know how to

draw that

okay but use lasers to read stuff these

are obviously you can tell i never went

to art school um everything here is on

an integrated chip uh meaning these are

created using non-volatile microchips

just like

dram

certain types of dram which are

non-volatile i should add so um

this has a lot of benefits to hard

drives not only being faster but also a

lot more reliable because there are no

moving parts so because there's no

spinning disc because there's no light

laser

we're going to have a lot

higher up time meaning that we're going

to have a lot less problems with this

solid-state drive unless for instance

the soldering comes undone for the wires

now these are usually because of the

speed now remember peda allowed for

about 133 megabytes per second up to

about that sata allowed for a lot faster

connections and we'll see that

in the next video as well but you can

see right here

these allow for a sata power connector

right there and a sata data connector

right there and if we look on the drive

right there this is a sata drive right

next to that by the way you'll also see

this 2.5 inch so unlike our hard drives

which are generally three and a half

inches

this is a bit smaller most likely

actually because this is going into a

laptop and solid states are perfect for

laptops that's one of the places we're

going to see them because they allow for

lighter

uh devices that are more susceptible to

you know being put in a backpack or in a

briefcase that's dropped and moved

around and jostled all the time

so um due to the fact that there are no

moving parts we have a lot of benefits

the first is they're silent no moving

platters no rotating everything's pure

electronics and therefore it's a lot

more

a lot less noise when you start hearing

noise on a hard drive it could be fine

or it could also mean that mechanics are

about to go bad it also means they're

resistant to physical shock because

there's no moving parts that when i drop

something can get jostled out of place

sort of the worst that can happen is a

wire gets unsoldered uh and so

they're much more resistant to the

physical shock and if i have something

like a smartphone or even a laptop or

any sort of portable computer portable

computing device i'm going to want

something like that so this is actually

a major plus

additionally everything's faster there's

no moving parts that something has to go

through so i can access something almost

immediately because it's all electronics

as a result directly of this there's

going to be less latency so i can access

the data on these drives a lot faster

however it's not all pros the reason we

don't see solid states in every single

computer that is out there is because of

a couple things one is they're more

expensive right these do cost more

because the technology is newer and if i

want to get a higher capacity i'm going

to spend more money so whereas the 512

uh gigabyte

you know drive that i currently have in

my computer that solid state

might cost a certain amount it's going

to cost a lot less to get that same 512

and a 7200 rpm magnetic drive and if i

don't have the extra say 500 to upgrade

to this sucker on this solid state i'm

probably going to go with the hard disk

version i'm going to notice a little

less uh not as fast increased

performance but still good been used for

years and as long as i'm not jostling

around and doing bad things with the

computer it should work well

of course you can understand why this

isn't going to work well for

devices like iphones or android tablets

or anything like that because those

things get dropped moved around a lot

all right so that covers the solid state

drive again main way it's going to be

connected internally at least is versus

is in sata externally we're probably

going to see these connected either

via usb

firewire or even esata so let's talk

about usb flash drives

many of you have probably seen these usb

flash drives these are a whole bunch of

different form factors of them a lot of

different brands here just about

everyone makes a flash drive and they're

fairly cheap nowadays considering the

size uh by the way when we say a flash

drive that's just another name for solid

state so you might see these used

interchangeably a solid state drive a

flash drive

the main difference the reason we're

going to call these usb flash drives

just to distinguish between these and

the previous drives we were looking at

but the technology within them you can

sort of see

through here is just exactly the same

all right so this means that all

everything on the inside is electronic

there are no moving parts it's

everything's wires and soldered on and

is

you know the

um

flash literally flashes of of electrons

these are also known by the way these

usb flash drives are also known as thumb

drives because they're about the size of

your thumb

a lot of them by the way you can see

have little key ring

areas some of them have lights so you

know they're working

here's another key ring this one

actually has a key ring built on

um

these

have a lot of benefits to having these

rather than sort of that solid state

drive portable you know hard drive first

of all there's no special setup for the

most part you plug these in the computer

recognizes them these days and you're

ready to go so that's one of the main

benefits with these with these uh usb

flash drives or thumb drives they're

also drag and drop so unlike a cd-r or a

dvd-r or even a blu-ray uh

r

or bdr rather is what we would call them

uh you can drag files on these you can

drop them they're treated just like a

hard drive on your system so i can

delete files i can add files i can

rewrite files i don't have to re-burn

the entire disk or anything so they have

the functionality of a hard drive but

they're smaller the mobile and they

require no special setup

finally they are very small as you can

see they have a small footprint i can

carry it in my pocket this also makes

flash drives by the way huge security

hazards all right when we talk about

security later on in this course or if

you're going to stick around for

security plus we will talk about how

these are used if you ever go to a lot

of military installations or department

of defense sort of places they're not

going to let you use flash drives from

the outside generally on their systems

because they are just a perfect sort of

trojan horse sort of carrier for viruses

finally

these are fairly cheap i think i was

looking at 16 gigabyte versions online

the other day and they're probably under

twenty dollars uh under 20 us dollars i

should say you go to a 32 or even a 64

gigabyte version which you can get

they're going to get more expensive

obviously you want to put something a

lot of space in something that's very

small it's going to cost you more money

as the years go by though the capacity

increases and the price goes down

all right so now we've talked about uh

usb flash drives so let's talk about the

the final two sd cards and then compact

flash all right so secure digital or sd

cards you've probably seen these and

these were

technically these are the same thing as

usb drives they're just much much

smaller right the form factor is very

different here i've listed them a micro

a mini and a regular sd card a lot of

laptops these days actually have sd card

readers that are going to read something

about this size if you want to use a

mini or a micro which might be in a

smaller camera or a smartphone you need

an adapter that this item will actually

plug into and then allow you to plug

this up now just like with our original

floppy drives here's something cool i

can lock these so i cannot read and

write to them so you can actually just

like you flip a switch it won't let you

read and write just like with our old

floppy disks i think that's really

really cool and of course we're gonna

see these mostly used in digital cameras

pdas smartphones etc a lot of people the

main reason we're going to see these is

be especially in laptops is because

someone has a digital camera they take

the sd card out or a digital camcorder

they take the sd card out they put it in

their computer and now i can

automatically import all of my camera

camcorder stuff

the standard size is this one

which is 32 millimeters by 24

millimeters

quite small

there's also a mini sd card right here

and then there's the micro as i pointed

out here

getting progressively smaller i've

already talked about how you can you

need sort of adapters uh to allow these

to work with bigger systems

um

one interesting thing is that you might

not know is these actually have a two

gigabyte limit okay so the plain old sd

card actually has a two gigabyte limit

in order to increase this they've

actually created different forms based

on the sd card the first one being the

high capacity sd card

uh sdhc which you might see that's up to

32 gigabytes generally when people talk

about sd cards they really mean this as

well uh improving upon that is now the

extended capacity sd card sdxc

which actually has a theoretical

amount of two terabyte limit which is

pretty high uh however i don't think

there's anything on the market that's

beyond about 128 gigabytes so you're

probably not going to see anything out

there at this moment probably around 128

gigabytes obviously you're putting that

much electronics into something this

small uh it's gonna cost you a pretty

penny and and the market just doesn't

demand it yet uh you're really gonna be

using these sort of things for cameras

camcorders you also wanna make sure when

you go out and buy them and they will be

listed as one of these that your

computer or your sd reader can read

these

specific types of sd cards

now

the speed the transfer rate is actually

determined by something called the class

i think for the a plus exam you probably

won't go past class six okay but for an

example class six can transfer at about

six to forty five megabytes per second

now the reason this is important

actually and the reason we're gonna have

like you know a lot of class 10s out

there nowadays is because if i have a

camcorder that's recording in hd video

that's throwing a lot of data into the

camera or into the storage at any one

time and so i need something that's

really fast that can actually put that

data onto this small device and so

that's why the classes come into play uh

six is the fastest you don't have to

remember the speeds

but just remember the higher uh we'll

write that

a higher class

equals

a higher

transfer rate okay so that's a bit of an

important distinction to make

uh and as i mentioned some devices are

gonna require higher classes so you go

online you see oh wow this sd card is

really cheap that's awesome i'm gonna

throw it in my camera no big deal and

then you realize it's a class four when

you needed a class six and now you are

out of luck

all right oh one last thing to know

about secure digital cards or sd cards

uh there's one format that's been based

on it it's called a secure digital input

output card sdio card i want to cover

this because basically what this allows

is this is a derivative of sd cards okay

so what that means is it's used the sd

format

and it's derived this new format and the

benefit is as the name implies this io

it allows to have i o device

functionality i know you're saying what

does that mean it already has input and

output it's data but what they mean by

input output devices are stuff like

bluetooth wi-fi etc so it allows these

devices this little card to have an

integrated gps a wireless lan etc which

especially for smartphones is something

pretty major

one other thing i want to point out

is

subscriber identity module cards this

really doesn't belong necessarily in

this area but i'm bringing it up because

i don't want you to confuse them a sim

card does not have anything to do with

storage all right i mean it does it

stores something but it doesn't have to

do with storing uh information and it

doesn't have to do either with the sdio

card

what it does is it identifies a phone

specifically sort of a smartphone to a

specific telecommunications company so

they know what number goes with that

phone so that's what a sim card is

you've probably heard of a sim card if

you happen to own any sort of

phone at all

all right so that covers sd cards let's

let's just talk about the last form

compact flash which generally is going

to come in a card format but not

necessarily this right here is actually

a compact flash card

okay and the thing it's actually plugged

into is a board that would probably go

inside of your laptop you can see it's

actually connected

through a sata connector and it has its

own power connector uh which looks

somewhat like a berg connector

because this is not a high-powered

device

and this is again a solid state storage

device just like sd cards it's just a

different format and it's uh

commonly found in a card format so

you're probably gonna buy this card and

what you can see is this probably went

and there was a chassis that sort of

ended right here so you don't see any of

this stuff and the user could pop in

this card and it could be red

there are different types and these

types actually

are very similar to pcmci a cards or pc

cards which we'll talk about when we get

into laptops the type 1 is 3.3

millimeters and type 2 is 5 millimeters

you do want to remember this it will

come back when we talk about pc cards uh

which these do

share a form factor with

okay

these are larger than sd cards as you

can see size-wise they're larger than sd

cards

inside no difference this is just a

different format just like blu-ray and

hd

just like

beta and vhs this is a different format

some com you know some cameras use

compact flash some use sd i'm seeing sd

sort of winning the battle a little bit

but neither has really been declared a

winner in the marketplace

uh they have a higher data capacity than

sd which currently which is the benefit

um up to 137 gigabytes however with the

sd you know the extended sd

formats that are coming out uh

the

market share or sort of the win that

this has is really gonna it's gonna not

as important

and they're generally built into an ata

controller you see that right here so

here is an s uh sata controller plugged

up through a sata device here's the

power and so they're built into that ata

controller the reason that's important

is because the computer can mount these

and recognize them just like an ata hard

drive all right so that's one of the

a slight distinction

from the sd cards although most computer

software recognizes the sd cards as a

hardware as well

um so yeah

all right so now we've talked about all

of these let's just go back through them

and just talk about uh sort of these in

general the first we had are these ssds

solid state drives actually all of these

are sort of solid state drives but here

what we're talking about are drives that

were specifically

made to replace hard disk drives uh

there are no moving parts

all right and one thing you're

definitely going to want to know are

the benefits

right

which include uh faster

quieter

i think i forgot an e there and also

the fact that it is

resistant

to shock okay that's a big one and

that's why they're gonna be really big

in

portable devices again this applies to

all of this stuff okay

usb flash drives otherwise known

as thumb drives

they're very uh they're much smaller not

as high capacity although we'll probably

get there at some point that they have

just as high a capacity as anything else

and an important thing to remember is

that these are major security hazards

for instance uh one interesting one is

if i wanted to get access to a computer

system i could drop 50 usb drives which

are fairly cheap in a parking lot wait

for someone to pick it up take it inside

plug it into the computer in order to

see who to return it to

and there you have it now i've just

installed a virus on your system okay

we also talked about sd cards

and compact flash cards both of which

we're really seeing uh in cameras

and

smartphones

these are actually

logistically exactly like a usb flash

drive they're just smaller the only

difference

again

is the form factor

all right so now we've discussed

magnetic storage optical storage and now

solid-state storage so i want to take uh

just a brief moment at now and i want to

talk about how again how we're going to

connect these devices and some of the

special things we need to be aware of

when we're connecting these devices

internally to the computer

[Music]

storage devices

connecting

devices so now that we've talked about

all of the devices themselves including

magnetic

storage devices

optical storage devices

and solid-state storage devices i want

to talk more specifically about how we

connect them that's this stuff right

here

or in the case of usb drives that's the

usb thing right here there are some

specific considerations that we have to

take into account and although we've

seen all of these names before that i'm

about to show you

we haven't talked in depth about them as

much as i'd like and so i want to review

them and talk more in specific about

them so the first one we're going to

talk about is peda or parallel ata we'll

then follow that up with sata serial ata

scuzzy which has some very specific

considerations we need to pay attention

to and then i want to briefly talk about

network uh attached storage devices that

we can attach

for storage directly to our networks

rather than directly to our computers

and we'll come back to that when we deal

with networking in general

all right so uh the first thing i wanted

to show you is this image which

describes shows you the internal bays of

a computer now recall that with the five

and a quarter drive bays

those were specifically sort of we

brought those up with the optical

drives and the three and a half

inch bays

we saw

with hard drives

and also uh floppy drives

now uh these right here these drives

these are all three and a quarter by the

way all of these you'll see there's a

ton of them which would probably mean

this power supply is pretty large right

and we'll talk about that in the next

series of videos

these right here

you'll notice that it has these sort of

little things you could put a screw in

and then you could sort of move it back

and forth that tells me that probably at

the front here is a is a plastic bay we

can take out so this is where your

floppy drives would probably go

look there's room for two or uh if we're

talking really old a zip drive if you

recall what those were um and then below

that we have uh drives for hard drives

base for hard drives i should say

there's probably nothing on the front

that allows us to sort of expose those

because we don't need to see them right

up here the three and a quarter you can

um five and a quarter rather you see

they all have these sort of uh things

right and that would mean i can you know

show my cd drive my cd right or whatever

out front i don't know why you need that

many but i'm sure there are reasons

all right so i just wanted to show you

that so you had a visual of what we were

talking about earlier

um let's talk about peda so paid apparel

ata as we recall connects via this 40

pin

data connector all right so that's

really important to remember now

distinguish that between the 34 pin

floppy disk connector that was

uh with that had a twist in it if you

recall it had a little twist in it right

this one doesn't okay one thing i also

want you to notice is this little red

strip right here that red strip always

points inside on just about every device

paid a device and also in floppy disk

drives as well all right uh so that's

the data connector uh and the real

important thing just to know about that

is that the connector it's 40 pins it

can only go in one way you see there's a

little pin missing here that's to key it

there's also keying right here and

there's actually a little lip up here i

don't know if you can see to make sure

this goes in the right way obviously if

i turn this over it's not going to

connect properly i'm not going to get

any data out of it next to that you have

these jumpers

we'll talk more about those jumpers in

just a minute those are very important

for the test and actually we're very

important when we're installing peda or

ide devices

and next to that we have the power

connector which we'll also discuss in

one second okay so here are the ide data

cords you'll notice uh again just like

the one pin missing on the drive here

is

sort of

closed in area

on these chords these chords are

actually a bit older you can see that

they don't have that closed in chord

however they are keyed on the top

um the fact that these are different

colors really doesn't matter a whole lot

they might have to do with whether or

not this cable is called a cable select

cable which we can talk about in just a

bit

but the important thing to realize here

is that there are two

connectors per cable for devices so this

one right here for instance and this one

which you can tell is a slightly grayer

color these two look more black those

are for connecting to the motherboard

so those would connect to the

motherboard which would have

generally speaking

two of these slots

and that allows me then to connect two

devices into each of those slots so that

makes for a total of if you've been

doing the math

four devices

per motherboard so i'm limited in the

amount of paid devices or the ide

devices remember we use those sort of

interchangeably that i could plug into

the motherboard now that doesn't mean

that that's all i can have in the system

the way you would add one to the system

is actually you would get what's called

a

uh

a controller card and you would plug

that into like a pci slot

that would then contain

two more slots which could have four

more devices so that's how you would

upgrade passport devices but what's

important here is that each device

rather each cord which stands for one

channel so each of these is one channel

plugging up into the motherboard can

have two devices on it and so we're

going to need to tell the computer which

device to access first which is the most

important device that's where those

jumpers come in and we'll talk about

those in just a minute

you'll also notice this the pink or the

red on the outside

always facing on the inside of the drive

and you can still see

all the keying

so here's the molex power connector

this is for pata so you see molex

that's the pay to power connector

eight cords in there

voltages range

from 3.3 volts

to 12 volts

actually there are three voltages you're

going to see in the system in general

3.3

5.5 and 12 volts those are important

numbers to remember all right so this po

molex the only thing it's really used

for ever nowadays is for a peda device

all right so let's get into these

jumpers

right here you'll see it looks like

there are and i'm just going to draw a

representation of it right here

a few pins

and these pins

tell the hard drive where it is in

relation to the other devices on the

computer

the computer has

on each channel could have up to two

devices and needs to know which device

is more important

so you'll see this on hard drives you'll

also see this on cd drives it's a little

more complicated with hard drives here's

the reason why

it needs to know the computer needs you

to tell this hard drive manually whether

it is the master or the slave and those

words obviously have a lot of

connotations that we don't like so in

some cases you'll see primary and

secondary however on the test you might

see them referred to as master and slave

so which is the master hard drive and

which is the slave hard drive

when it is a master hard drive you even

need to tell it whether it is by itself

on the cord because remember there could

be up to two devices or whether it's the

master with a slave and the way you do

this

is there might be something as simple

so we're gonna try to draw these

as a little label up there that says ms

and cs

meaning master slave and cable select

i'll talk about cable select in just one

second

so if it is the master on the device i'd

put the jumper on the master rather if

it's the master on the channel i put the

jumper on the master so i would close

these off

and then the device knows oh look

i'm the master on this if it was the

slave i'd put it on the slave you can

only be one you can you can only be the

master or the slave so it's not worrying

about either now this is a really

simplistic view sometimes what you'll

see

if i had let's say all of this

is it might say something like you know

single master meaning it is the only

device on the ide channel

uh has a jump ring like

this

and then it might say you know master

with

a slave

and it would look something and i'm just

again these change that one might look

something

like this okay so you really want to pay

attention to this if you're installing

these paid devices that you're making

sure to jump jumper these correctly

now if it is the slave device you need

to tell it it's the slave device if it's

a slave device it's never by itself so

that's not something you really need to

worry about

um and again this is the mo this is

important it will come up on the test

and this only applies

to pata

all right you're not going to see this

with sata because of the way sata works

and we'll talk about that in a second

generally you will see this guide

if there is one you'll either see sort

of imprints

here

etc uh

for

optical drives you usually see it there

for hard drives it's generally up here

on the top you might even be able to

make it out i think there's a couple

hard drives later on i can point that

out to you okay

cable select

tells the computer that the cable is

going to select which device is which

and it does that based on the where

where it is placed on the cord so if

it's the middle you know if it's the top

device it's the master if it's the

middle device it's the slave that

sometimes changes based on the cord uh i

usually don't rely on that because i

prefer to do it myself but you can make

sure it's cable select

and then based on the cord type uh it

will determine the computer will

automatically know which is which i

think the actually the middle is

generally the master because it's closer

and the top the furthest is going to be

the slave again

not something you'll need to worry about

this in other words because there's not

another cord going out from it

right this is probably would be like the

slave cord okay

so that is only if you select cable

select and in that case you would have

to jumper every device on that system to

cable select so again the main thing

with paid is you need to make sure these

jumpers are correct if it's by itself it

needs to be told you're a master by

yourself if it's with another device you

need it needs to be told either it is a

slave or it is a master on a dual

configuration and that is all done via

the jumpers

i want to point out that this is an

external beta the way you know it's a

pata it'll tell you

it'll probably be in the packaging this

is a paid a device and in this case this

is uh connected by a usb so you would

plug this in the reason there are three

usbs one to plug into the back although

uh generally you'll have a mini usb

which is a lot smaller plugging into the

back and there's two because this looks

like a portable and rather than have a

plug that's going to plug into the wall

to power the paid device

it's actually going to use usb uh to

power it so you plug it into two usb

ports on your computer those can provide

power as well as data and one extra one

to provide extra power to make sure that

the device runs properly so just to

point out that the external beta uh

generally plugged up by a usb or

ieee 1394 otherwise known as

firewire because these are external

there are no jumpers okay so there are

no jumpers in external devices

that is only for internal

okay so now we've just talked about peda

again the most important thing to

remember about peda other than that 40

pin

data cable

and the molex power cable

is the fact that it has jumpers and you

need to tell it whether it's going to be

a master

a slave

or cable select right which then the

cable determines uh which is the master

in the slave generally speaking by the

way your master you want it to be the

primary

device so if you have your operating

system on something you probably want to

put that on the master it's also better

to have to use both channels

before you use one so if i have just a

hard drive and a cd drive i probably

want to make sure i have the hard drive

on one channel the cd drive on the other

then if i buy another device i can add

it to another uh probably add it to the

cd one first

because i want to give access to my hard

drive i want to sort of give that as

much access as possible

all right sata sata is slightly

different now you'll notice actually

there is a molex connector on this sata

device and actually right here you can

sort of see i don't know if you can make

it up

some jump ring all right and there are

jumpers so you can see some jump ring

that's because uh

there's probably a way to connect this

device through a peda um

sort of setup or an old sort of setup

but it is a serial ata so you're

probably not going to use that it might

have also in case the device itself

in case the

power supply did not have

a

sata connector you could plug it up

by the old molex

all right in this case there are no

jumpers though generally sata does not

need jumpers the reason being

if we look at the cord for a second this

data cord only allows one device per

channel so this data cord plugs in the

other end directly to the motherboard or

the controller

something cool to know i can run paid to

devices and sata devices concurrently so

you can have let's say four pata devices

and four sata devices on your system

making for a total of eight they won't

run against each other but you only have

one device

on sata per channel

so the cord goes directly into the

motherboard this allows it to have

direct contact it because they're

smaller they don't they're not worried

so much about the space it takes those

pedas were quite a deal bigger

so uh that's no longer a problem

however if you only have four slots on

your computer that's all you're limited

to again you can install a controller

card to fix that

here's the sata power cord a bit wider

you remember if we go back just for a

second and look at the hard drive you

can see here would be the data and this

would be power

all right again it is called a

sata powered cord

and that is specifically for a sata

device so the name with uh sata is

pretty easy it's all sata named so it's

a sata data cord which is a seven pin

and it's a sata power cord as well

external sata uh you can plug this up

through usb this is actually a mini usb

connector and it looks like here's some

power connectors however this thing

right here is for something called

eseta we talked about that when we

talked about motherboards but this just

allows you to plug up a sata device

via

uh esata external

sata connector and actually this thing

is a bay so what would happen is this

hard drive was actually made for an

internal device it's three and a half

inches uh it would plug into this

external device which then converts it

to allow an esata connection so

again e sata it would take the

data just like internal sata uses the

same configurations just slightly

different chords uh on the outside

but the important thing to remember with

sata

one per channel let me write that out

they don't piggyback

and you don't have more than one per

channel

and the other thing

there are no

jumpers

all right

so that takes care of peta and sata now

let's talk about scuzzy scuzzy has some

specific um

uh configuration things we need to be

aware of

first off scuzzy has many different form

factors on the chords as you can see

these are all scuzzy and they each look

different so there's no one sort of type

of scuzzy unlike peda and seda where we

have that 40 pin in that seven pin all

right

here's another version

an external drive

and what you see is there's two devices

now remember i talked about piggybacking

each of these can hold

one scuzzy sort of channel can hold sick

up to 16 devices

and

the way this happens is you plug

one device in and then you have a cord

going out to the next device and i can

piggy back up to 16 devices that way uh

either internal or external so this is

it just works on chords they're all sort

of just piggyback on each other the

reason i don't have any sort of extra

this actually does have an extra sort of

power cord however internally these can

generally run power as well as data okay

now here's the thing just like with peda

if i have more than one device on a

cable i need to tell the computer which

one gets priority and i need to tell the

computer which one is which

that's why it's very important that when

we're dealing with scuzzy we look at the

scuzzy bios now here is our regular bios

and what you'll notice is actually in

the regular bios we have to make sure

the scuzzy bios

is enabled that's because

obviously the computer is not just

naturally going to recognize scuzzy in

all configurations now you'll notice

that it can actually be disabled right

here and that's for if i install a

scuzzy card that has its own bios i

don't want the uh my computer bios to

take over but more importantly than just

the

our general computer bios and whether or

not it's going to be enabled with the

scuzzy bios it is something called iding

and this is really huge with scuzzy

um so

here is

the scuzzy id

and you'll notice every device has its

own scuzzy id right so here's a hard

drive here's a dvd drive and here's a cd

drive and each one is given an id

this is important this is the most

important thing about scuzzy when it

comes to the test okay every device must

have an id

here's another version and you can see

in the scuzzy bios they're here uh

assigning scuzzy ids to each device now

uh

notice they don't have to start at 0 and

go to 15. by the way you can see zero

215 is a total of 16 devices okay

but you do have to make sure that every

device is given an id and you can do

that either through jumpers or in this

case

through the

utility the bios sort of scuzzy utility

the other thing you need to make sure to

do and it's not listed on here but you

need to tell the last device

that it is the end so you must give it a

termination this can sometimes be done

uh through a bios utility

in another section of this bios the

other place it could be done is on

jumpers on sort of depending on the

configuration but the important thing

you must remember here every device must

be given an id

and the last device on the chain must be

terminated those are the two important

things to remember when it comes to

scuzzy all right so now we've talked

about scuzzy and again the two things i

want you to remember with this

every device must be given an id and the

last device on the chain

must be terminated

and that's because if you imagine every

device

right can have an in and then an out and

it goes to a different device and then

that one jumps to a different device and

we're piggybacking them like so

the computer's not smart enough to just

recognize oh this is the last device

right it needs to be told there's no

more devices don't keep looking you

don't have to keep looking because if it

does it'll actually result in sort of a

loop and none of these devices will work

so you always want to make sure to

terminate

this last device

so let's briefly talk about uh network

attached storage network attached

storage is represented by this device

right here and we'll talk more about

this when we get into networks this

device although you can't see the back

on the front you see this usb

port that's just to configure it but

really what this is is it fits several

hard drives inside of here

just like a sort of mini computer

there's a motherboard there's a bios

that tells it to connect directly to the

network and when this connects directly

to the network all the other devices on

the network

can now map this network drive so rather

than connecting it to your computer and

only having access uh on the on your

specific computer you now have storage

which instead of just being for your

computer is for the entire network uh

again there's probably a ethernet cable

uh port back here

or perhaps some of these are even

connecting wirelessly these days and

then any computer on your network on

your local network can connect to this

device

we'll talk more about these when we get

into network plus and a little bit more

when we're talking about networking in

the a plus

all right so we just talked about

network connections let's just go back

over what we talked about first we

talked about paida devices again the 40

pin data connector

and the molex power connector a really

important thing to remember about all of

these is they must be jumpered

for either

master

or slave

you can choose to let the cable decide

which is which using something called

cable select okay and then you have to

buy a specific cable uh specifically

made for that but otherwise you must

jumper it usually you also have to tell

it if it is a single

or a double configuration on the master

sata if you recall we're dealing with a

seven pin data

called a sata data connector

and then we also have a sata power

connector so unlike here we have two

different types of connectors this is

all the same

there are no jumpers in this again if

you recall peda has two devices

per channel which means two devices per

cord which is the reason why we need

these jumpers

with sata it is one device

per channel which means each cord is

only supporting one device so there is

no need for sort of jumpers

scuzzy it gets its power generally these

days power and data through the same

connector

uh which

varies uh they can be external or

internal the important thing to know

about scuzzy is you must id each device

and you must terminate the last device

in order to avoid a sort of electrical

loop

finally we talked about network storage

a network

attached storage device which allows uh

all of your your hard drives in that

device to be accessed by any computer on

the network rather than directly

attaching it

to your computer

so now that we've talked about all of

these devices that we uh

help the computer run let's speak about

what really every device needs to allow

it

to do what it does which is power the

fuel so let's get into power supplies

and talk about electricity

[Music]

power

power basics

we've now discussed all of the internal

components of the computer so now we

have to discuss the fuel that makes the

computer run which is of course power or

electricity

before we can discuss

power uh as it applies specifically to a

computer i want to discuss electricity

and some of what makes it

run and just so we have a firm basis

behind electricity and i want to talk

about some of the problems we encounter

with electricity in homes and offices

and things you're going to see on the

field in other words things that we have

to overcome as technicians and computer

users

so we're going to talk about

understanding power including terms like

voltage

amperage

wattage

and impedance

we're also going to talk about the

difference between ac and dc and no i'm

not talking about the band

what i'm talking about is alternating

current

versus direct current and that's a major

component that's going to play in

computers and actually all home

electronics

i'm also going to talk about power

issues that we encounter including

surges

spikes

sags

brownouts

and blackouts

all right

so let's start by talking about voltage

voltage is the electrical potential

energy

it's how much electricity can

potentially go through a wire

it's otherwise known as the measure of

work needed to move a charge

so here's a charge

from one place

to the other

while

fighting against the forces that keep

those charges balanced because don't

forget and that's divided by those

forces i'm just going to call that x for

right now and don't forget because we

have plus and minus right they're always

in perfect harmony these electrons and

what we want is when we're moving

electricity we need to sort of shake

this up and as a result we're always

fighting against the forces that want to

keep them together

this could also be referred to therefore

as tension or pressure and as a result

of the word pressure let's think of this

as water pressure going through a tube

so

if i have a high voltage if i have a lot

of pressure behind that water right it's

gonna i'm gonna get more of it

in the end a lot faster

if i

have

less pressure then of course i'm going

to have less

water going through the pipe

so in the united states this is probably

the most important thing on this slide

in the united states the voltage is

generally 110

whereas in europe it generally comes out

of the walls in 220. this is important

because we're going to have a lot of

computers that not only travel between

the two but that are also sold in these

two places and so we need to make sure

to remember this distinction we'll talk

about it a little bit later

amperage is different from voltage as

you probably guessed

it is the measure of electrical current

or the amount of electricity that is

actually flowing

so

this would be the amount of water

flowing through a pipe at any one time

now the reason that amperage is

important

is that

we use it to calculate wattage that's

the amount of electrical work that was

actually achieved in the end

so this equals the potential energy

voltage multiplied by

the amount of electricity

amperage

therefore

watts

equal voltage

times

amperage

if you can think about this let's say

we're on a construction site

and i know that the men at that day or

women let's say the people that day

lifted 100 bricks

but i know due to union laws that they

were only allowed to lift

one brick each

therefore i needed

100

men to lift

all those bricks

if instead the labor negotiate

negotiations change and i now i'm going

to have 100 bricks lifted but each

person

lifts two bricks then i only need

50 men

so you can see how this is sort of

working out if you're a little confused

that's okay electricity is very complex

but what you need to remember here is

that we use amperage and voltage to

determine

wattage

so again just want to point out this

equation right here because it's really

important

wattage equals the voltage the potential

energy

times the amps the amount of electricity

impedance as the name implies works

against these things

impedance is the opposition a circuit

gives

to a current

when voltage is applied so we thought

about our water

pipe if i have a big pipe and i'm

pumping a lot of voltage through that

then i'm going to get

a lot more watts

whereas if i have a small pipe with the

same amount of pressure i'm still going

to

come out

with less watts that's just

visually makes sense

this is measured in something called

ohms

all right so it's the only one that

doesn't sort of line up with its name

some people will call this resistance

but resistance is actually its own

quality it's a good way to think about

it though is sort of what's resisting

the electricity going through that

circuit

now here we come to ac dc which is a

major point

back in the days when electricity was

being created uh

by thomas edison and these folks

there were two different types of

ways of transferring electricity one was

called alternating current and in

alternating current the direction of the

current reverses now you're asking why

is that important well

this makes it easier to change the

voltage of the power

uh because if it's constantly

rotating right i can get in there and i

can change it using something called

transformers which we'll talk about

later

and the reason that this is important is

because if you imagine that i'm moving

across big wires and then i'm suddenly

coming to small wires

i don't want to necessarily pump the

same amount of voltage through all of

these because it's going to cost me a

lot of money i need less voltage here

and more voltage here and so

what uh alternating current allows power

companies to do is input something

called transformers

that allow them to alternate the voltage

and so they can save money by not having

to put out a ton of different wires

right so it's going on the wires over

uh your house for instance that's one

size it comes into your house that's

another size it's going under the ocean

perhaps that's a whole other size and so

alternating current makes sense

for

power companies and in those

sort of industries that are going to be

giving us power and need to transmit it

over long distances

direct current on the other hand means

the current always flows in the same

direction it's not as easy to change the

voltage of power but most electrical

components use direct current to run

batteries for instance use this type of

electricity so does

your computer

and so one thing we really have to do is

figure out how do we

convert

between ac and dc ac coming out of the

wall and dc going into the computer

this is what a power supply does this is

one of the main things other than

cleaning the electricity the power

supply does in a computer it converts

the ac

to dc we'll talk more about this a

little bit later

okay so now we've talked about

understanding power using voltage

which is the potential energy

amperage

which is the amount of electricity

and wattage which is the amount of work

that sort of is achieved

again

wattage equals

volts

times amps

impedance reduces the amount of wattage

by offering a resistance to the current

that's flowing through this

and finally ac dc distinguishes between

alternating

and direct current

alternating current comes from the walls

direct current

is what's in our computer

and this is why we need

a power supply

now let's talk about some of the power

issues that we're going to run into

in most homes and offices the first is a

surge

a surge is an unexpected increase or a

surge in the amount of voltage provided

it generally happens quite suddenly

and as you can imagine if i have a

sudden surge of voltage onto a device

and that device is rated let's say at

110 volts and suddenly i blow 5000 volts

into it you can imagine that's going to

kill this device and so that's why

something we want to protect against are

surges

this is different from a spike

a spike is a very short pulse of energy

that lasts maybe a millisecond

but

it's higher in voltage than

a surge

so whereas a surge might be i don't know

five thousand we're going to get double

that with the spike and so even though

it's a short pulse that short little

pulse that can come out of nowhere

probably due to something going on

within the power company or its wires

can seriously damage our computers

on the other hand we have something

called a power sag

a power sag is an unexpected and short

decrease in the amount of voltage that's

provided so for whatever reason the

power company has a problem and for just

a brief moment there's a sag and energy

well unfortunately a sag of energy can

actually stop our computers from working

because it removes the power from our

computer and if there's no sort of

backup then we've just lost any data

we're working on

this is different from a brown out

a brown out is an unintentional or an

intentional drop in voltage that lasts

for minutes or hours you might have

noticed this with say like flickering

lights

or your bulbs dim

in your home

for a brief period of time that's

because you're having a brown out again

the problem with the brown out is less

voltage we don't have enough to run the

computer the computer goes down

especially when we're in the middle of

an important assignment or work or even

worse it's a server that's serving

thousands of people

finally we have a blackout and a

blackout as the name implies different

from a brown out

is a total loss of power this is what

happens when there's a thunderstorm and

it strikes one of the power towers for

your

power company and suddenly

boom you have no power now the main

problem with the blackout other than the

fact that you lose power is that when

the power comes back on

it's usually followed by a spike because

a lot of power is going to come on and

when that spike occurs

that's when the damage to your computer

or your devices happens this is why you

should always unplug devices i'm gonna

write it out here

during a blackout

because when they come back on

you're going to be in big trouble when

it destroys your computer because too

much voltage is going through that

wire

all right so now we've discussed the

power issues that go along with

electricity including surges spikes

sags

brownouts and blackouts

so just to review we talked about

understanding power we talked about

voltage which is the potential energy

it's also referred to

as pressure

and you can think about that like water

pressure

or

tension

we talked about amperage which is the

amount

of electricity

and wattage

which equals voltage times amperage

which is effectively

the amount of work and i'll put that in

quotations because when it's electricity

it's sort of a misnomer

that's achieved

when you buy

power supplies

they're going to be rated in terms of

wattage how much power they can give out

we also talked about impedance which is

sort of the resistance although that

word is can be used to mean slightly

other things but it is the resistance to

the current of electricity flowing

through that wire

and then we talked about ac

which is alternating current

versus dc current which is

direct current

this is the type

that you're going to see in your pc

and this is the type that's coming out

of the wall

another note that i forgot to mention

remember that in voltage you're getting

a around 110

in the us

and you're getting about 220 volts

in europe

we'll come back to this later

we also talked about certain power

issues that affect us including surges

which are prolonged

although it can still be short

surges of power that come on to that

raise the amount of voltage that's

coming into the system

a spike is a very quick

but higher voltage

spike in electricity that can also

damage our computers

a sag is an intentional or unintentional

removable removal of electricity for

just a moment

so this can quickly turn off my computer

or reset my alarm clock although i might

not notice more than just a flickering

of my lights

a brownout occurs when there is a loss

for a long time of voltage over the wire

so instead of getting say 110 this goes

down to maybe like 50. and so the reason

it's called a brownout is because

your lights will brown they won't

they'll dim they don't black they dim

a blackout on the other hand means a

total

loss of power

and the important thing to remember is

that when the power comes back on

you're gonna have a spike

or surge of power that can damage your

electrical equipment

so we've now discussed the power issues

and some of the basics of electricity so

now let's talk about tools that we can

use to measure electricity

as well as

some devices we're gonna see over and

over again in

the field and at our homes and some of

you might even be familiar with that

help protect

against

these issues

[Music]

power

protection and tools

now that we've discussed some of the

basics of electricity and also some of

the problems that we're going to

encounter in the field just about for

any device but especially for computers

i want to talk about some of the devices

we're going to use in order to overcome

these problems and some of the

tools we use to test electricity in

these devices

so we're going to look first at some of

the protection devices that you're going

to see in the field and that are covered

on the exam including a power strip

surge protectors which sometimes are

confused but they are separate things

and ups which is not the delivery

company but stands for uninterruptible

power supply

we'll then talk about two of the tools

that we can use in the field and that

electricians do use but we're not

electricians but

tools that we can use in the field to

test electricity

including a receptacle tester which is

for the wall and a multimeter which has

several different purposes

all right so first let's talk about

power strips which are probably

something that you've seen many many

times and you have in your home

what they basically are is a group of

sockets generally in line like so

with a cable

that plugs into a single receptacle

which you don't see but let's say it

goes over here

so what this really allows you to do is

it allows multiple devices to share that

single receptacle now as you can imagine

there's only a certain amount of voltage

coming out of this receptacle and in

your home there's only so much so much

amount of current that your home can

withstand so a lot of times these have a

maximum wattage rating and remember

wattage equals volts

times amps that shouldn't be exceeded if

it is this thing will generally pop and

we'll talk about that in just a second

here's another example of a power strip

that you might see and in this case

it actually has an on or off switch so

that you could turn on or off uh all the

electricity going to these devices

something you might want to use in case

of let's say

a blackout so when the power surge comes

on it doesn't hit any of your devices

now um not only do they have the the on

and off switch but they usually have a

circuit breaker generally around 15 amps

some are more some or less

and that'll protect it from overloading

so basically what happens is if there

there's too much energy going into these

so for instance i have

two

let's say i have an air conditioner a

window air conditioner and

my computer and a printer and a tv all

plugged into the same wall outlet well

this device knows at some point

that there's going to be too much power

going through this cable and that's

going to overheat it and cause a fire

instead of allowing that to happen

there's a breaker inside that will

actually turn itself off when it reaches

a certain amount of current and remember

current is measured in amps

so that this does not cause an

electrical fire and there's generally a

little black you probably can't see it

here but there's generally a little

black button right here and by pressing

that you can reset

the breaker just like you would in your

home and this will protect it from

overloading and it really protects all

the leather electronics in your home

now one note before we move on this

device may or may not have the next

device we're going to talk about a surge

protector built in but remember this is

going to make sure

that there aren't too many devices

pulling current from the wall

into the devices and therefore causing a

fire uh and that and there's usually a

little breaker right here like i just

mentioned

and this is going to keep this device

from

overpowering that one receptacle that

all of these things are sharing now this

is different from a surge protector

this is a general surge protector a lot

of people they say you use surge

protector and power strip

interchangeably but actually what a

surge protector is is a device that

protects against

surges and spikes and remember we

discussed a surge a spike is sort of a

small

quick amount of voltage that comes

through the walls

and a surge is a longer term one not as

high but both times that can damage the

equipment because the electricity is

coming in so rather than trying to pull

too much current too much amperage out

of the wall and therefore causing heat

and possibly a fire not to mention

damaging of

the devices that are all sharing that

receptacle this protects against the

surge that's going to come from the

power coming back on after a blackout or

a spike in the electricity from the

power company

now the way it does this is it contains

something called an mov a metal oxide

varistor and if you have never seen this

word before it's kind of funny what it

is is it's a variable resistor which is

a

a piece of electronics that's going to

resist the the a certain amount of

current coming through and this is rated

in joules and just it's a term we didn't

talk about and this we're getting a

little complex here but basically joules

is how much

uh measures how much current

is passing through a certain amount of

resistance so how much one amp of

current

passing through

one ohm of resistance

takes in one second okay so that's what

this is measuring and it's generally

rated in joules

and what happens is a surge

let me erase that there a surge will

burn out part of that barista so what

happens is after a certain amount of

time right those surges those spikes

without you even realizing they're

happening and they burn out the varistor

or the variable resistor as opposed to

your devices and so after a while the

varistor needs to be replaced

but it's better replacing your barrister

rather than your device itself

and obviously the higher amount of

joules the longer lasting your surge

protector is going to be so this is

really important

and generally you want it to be at least

a thousand joules or higher

that way you know it's going to last you

a good amount of time

all right so now let's talk about a ups

now this actually is a mix between if

you notice

a

power strip

it has surge protection

so it's going to protect against surge

and it has

a battery built in alright so you see

this is back

ups so what that is is there's actually

a battery built in and this stands for

uninterruptible

power

supply

and as the name implies it's to allow

you to continue working on your computer

or your device after a power blackout

takes away all the power so you don't

have interrupted service so not only

does it protect against surges and

spikes which are going to come in it's

also protecting you brown outs and

blackouts which take electricity out

now here's the thing with it the battery

can be recharged but just like any

battery it's going to have a life so

anytime it's plugged in you'll see

there's actually little lights here and

they'll

if it's green it's telling you this is

it's good to go and that becomes after a

charge if the power goes out the battery

will eventually lose that charge and

then it needs to be recharged for the

next time

here's another uh ups

probably a little bigger has a larger

battery and the batteries depend um and

you replace this battery actually

there's screws on the back you can take

this uh the battery out you take it and

replace it

but you can generally monitor these via

a usb connection or in this case there's

looks like there's like a

serial connection

but nowadays they're really in that usb

and you remember a usb is going to look

something like this

all right and that way even if the

computer is in another place like a

server you can still monitor the ups

now it's going to emit a loud beep when

the battery is running low or when it

turns on to to battery power and that

way you know that either batteries the

battery has gone dead or the electricity

in the building has gone out

now because it has a limited amount of

battery in it you don't want to connect

high power devices into this ups the one

i see on the test the most often

laser printers you

want to plug in your computer itself

obviously perhaps a monitor uh maybe

another computer another monitor

something but you want to limit what's

on here because the real purpose of a

ups is not to allow you to continue

working throughout the blackout for

hours and hours and hours you might get

maybe 10 to 15 minutes maybe even less

what it really allows you to do is save

your information and shut down the

computer safely all right so what you

don't need are printers and laser

printers are huge mem power hogs and

that's a question i often see on the

test is you do not plug a laser printer

up to a ups

all right so we've just talked about

three different tools of protection

including power strips which allow you

to plug multiple devices

into one

receptacle

we also talked about surge protectors

which sort of uh generally come in power

strips but not always and these

protect against surges and spikes

and finally ups which just means it has

a battery in it

and allows you to shut down

all right so if you're in the middle of

an important document you can shut that

down safely

okay now let's talk about two tools

we're going to see in the field a bunch

and you need to know for the a plus exam

the first is a receptacle tester and as

you can see a receptacle tester testes

tests a receptacle in this case this is

the receptacle it's testing and it makes

sure that the right amount of voltage

which should be anywhere from around 110

to 120 volts in america 110's the rating

but sometimes it's a little variant

because it is electricity and so it

tells you if that wall socket is

functioning and obviously if i'm

installing servers let's say in multiple

locations across the country if this is

sort of your technician's job

then you got to make sure there's power

in that room before you log all the

equipment in there and that the power is

running effectively

the reason they're so popular is because

it's this little small device you can

hold it in your pocket or put in your

tool kit you'll see there's a light

indicator on here that tells you what

the light codes mean so you know whether

or not it's working and you can get it

at just about any home improvement

store

pretty easily so it's cheap

and easy it's sort of the long and short

answer it doesn't do a lot the only

thing it really does is tests uh that

what you got in here is is correct and

it's proper for your computer but it's

really not going to do a lot more than

that

so the next device that we're looking at

is called a multimeter a multimeter as

you can imagine measures

multiple things it's also a voltmeter

it's an impedance meter it measures all

these things right

and so

it can measure current

resistance

voltage etc

and these can and because it has

these contacts it can measure both

power inside your computer

let's say while the computer is running

and it can measure stuff outside your

computer like a receptacle

there are two leads a red one and a

black one that you plug in uh the black

is generally a neutral or ground lead

and the red is the hot lead that's the

one you need you know and you need to be

aware of if you ever jumped a battery in

a car for instance you'll notice the

same color receptacles okay so what you

need to do is just be aware that you

never never never

touch the metal because the metal is

actually

connected to hot current

as i just said never touch the metal

here's another multimeter a little more

specific because it is digital and these

are the ones you're probably going to

see more and more slightly more

expensive you can see the contacts or

the leads over here

right and they plug in and on the last

one they plugged into

and so really quickly i just want to go

over how you would test an ac outlet

this is fairly simple you probably know

this i probably don't need to go over it

but i'm going to because it's on the a

plus exam and i want you to be aware of

it

so you put the black lead outlet to the

ground so if i'm drawing up a regular

american outlet

this would be the ground

and these are generally both hot and one

of them might be in neutral but

generally these are both hot you don't

want to put a penny in either of these

okay so you put the black lit lead here

you then put the red lead to one of

these hot openings

then you would turn on the multimeter

the multimeter is not already on because

you might short it all right so then you

turn it on

once you get the reading

which you're going to get right here and

what you generally want is between as i

said 100 and 100 to 120 volts in america

and you want sort of in the same

range in europe

okay

then you turn off the multimeter

and you remove the leads that's how you

test it it's pretty simple but i think

the thing you really want to remember

black lead goes to ground

red lead goes to hot

so

we've now just talked about the tools

including the receptacle tester and the

multimeter and i just want to quickly go

over these one more time

so we talked about protection including

power strips which allow multiple

devices to share one receptacle

okay it generally has like a 15 amp

breaker in it just like you would in

your home to make sure it's not pulling

too much current

but it's not going to protect against

surges if you want that you're going to

need something called a surge protector

and generally there's going to be a

light on the surge protector that tells

you it's protecting against these surges

you can plug up a power strip by the way

through a search protector all right so

this protects against not only surges

but spikes as well and it does that

using that

arister which is a variable resistor and

you generally want that to be at least a

thousand joules

or more

we also talked about a ups or

uninterruptible power supply which

basically means battery backup you see

battery backup that's the same thing as

ups

and this allows you to shut down your

computer safely

then we talked about two tools the

receptacle which does one thing and

that's test the wall outlet

and then we also talked about a

multimeter which can do many many things

electricians will have it do a lot but

what we just went over is also how to

test a wall outlet but don't forget it

can test volts it can test current which

is measured in amps and can also test

ohms which is resistance

all right so now that we've talked about

all the we've talked about electricity

we've talked about the tools we've

talked about protection uh by the way

one thing i just want to re-iterate

because it's so important is we're never

going to plug up

a laser printer

to the ups

so now that we've discussed all of this

now let's get into power supplies

specifically and different power

connectors that are going to be inside

and on the computer

[Music]

power

power supplies and connectors

we've now discussed power and

electricity in general and what makes

electricity happen in a very broad and

general sense we've also talked about

some of the problems that can occur with

electricity and our offices and homes

when it comes to our computers and

electronic devices

we've talked about devices like this uh

power

a power strip or surge protector and

devices like this such as a ups or

uninterruptible power supply so now i

want to talk about the final component

of power which is power supplies which

are these things right here and

connectors which are these things right

here now we've seen some of this in some

previous lessons but it never hurts to

go back over it again for redundancy

sake

all right

so we're going to talk about power

supplies including what are power

supplies

the form factors they come in this is

not necessarily something you need to

memorize for the test but it's good to

be aware of

we're going to talk about wattage and

capacity and how power supplies are

rated and we're also going to talk about

fans or which are built into power

supplies and as we know from our

discussion of cpus and heat

this sort of actively cools the air uh

and keeps the power supply from

overheating and damaging itself

we're also going to talk about power

connectors these we've seen before when

we talked about storage including molex

connectors

berg connectors

sata connectors and then pcie connectors

all right so let's start with what are

power supplies well uh power supply as

you recall

converts ac

or alternating current

into dc or direct current so alternating

current is in the wall

and then what happens is it goes into

plugs into this device and through a

series of uh internal electronic devices

that i'm not going to get into

stuff like transformers

and inverters

and other devices it then converts all

this electricity

into

direct current

which is the current that the uh

computer can actually use

so as a result uh also because we need

the power supply to convert all this

alternating current to direct current it

supplies power to every device inside

the computer and you can see that there

are a bunch of different power

connectors we're going to go back over

these a little bit later

that allow us to do this so for instance

this big p1 connector right here we've

discussed when we talked about

motherboards this powers the motherboard

and the cpu and everything connected

directly to the motherboard we then have

connectors like the pcie connector

the sata and pata connectors which are

going to power our optical and hard

drives and uh perhaps even our floppy

drive connector if we have a floppy

drive so as a result we have a single

point of failure meaning that we have

one device in the computer that if it

fails the entire computer will fail and

as a result a lot of higher end systems

have multiple power uh supplies for

redundancy sake because again if this

single point of failure something you

might see uh referenced

as an spof a single let me write this

out

a single point

failure uh so as a result many of these

systems are going to have multiple so

that way i don't have a single point of

failure if one goes out i then have a

second one

uh some other things about it that i

want to point out first you'll notice

that right here the part that plugs into

the wall into that direct current uh

it's not connected it's not built into

the power supply so uh what happens is

usually your power supply or computer

comes with a cord that then allows you

to plug this into the wall now the

reason for this is because if i have

power supply and i want to in my

computer and i want to bring my computer

to another country or i'm a manufacturer

and i want to sell my power supplies or

my computers in many countries

this allows uh for us to use the same

power supply in many different markets

as you can imagine and depending where

you are in america we have um

sort of

connectors that look like this somewhat

but in different countries they have

them that might look like this right and

that's going to

be a different plug and as a result of

this different plug i can't i don't want

to build

something onto this that i can't use so

i'm going to

allow for external cords to be plugged

in so i can use it in different markets

all right the other thing you'll notice

that's on this power supply right here

is this on and off switch so i have a

master on off switch lest i let's say i

don't want to just unplug the cable

let's say i literally want to make sure

that no power can go into this computer

i can throw this on off switch and

you'll see as with all on off switches i

have a zero and a one the zero uh stands

for that off or it's actually a zero for

binary and then the one that is on okay

so this currently is set to

off

finally there's something that's not on

this power supply and but what you do

see is you see a little sticker here

and it says 220 volts only now you

recall uh

voltage in the us is different from

voltage elsewhere so in the us voltage

from the wall

is 120 volts

everywhere else for instance in europe

it's

around 220 volts okay now usually

there'll be a little red voltage switch

that allows you to use the power supply

in different markets so the cord takes

care of the physical specifications how

i'm going to plug it in but there's

generally a red switch

that you can flip that will allow you to

switch between the us 110 and the

european or the rest of the world's 220

volt

so this is important because you might

see on the exam you take your computer

to a new country it's not working why

it might be because you didn't switch

the little red switch which would go

right where this sticker is it's very

rare that i see a

power supply that only works in one

market the reason again being if i take

my computer

from america to let's say england i'm

going to want to be able to use that

computer there unless i have a switch

that allows me to do that at my computer

i now have to replace the power supply

which for most people is not an easy

task

so here i've listed some of the form

factors that the power supplies come in

you'll notice this atx which probably

reminds you

of a motherboard

form factor

and you'll see there are different types

of pin connectors generally either a 20

or a 24-pin connector and as i've

mentioned this is a p1 older models used

to have two

power uh connectors a p8 and a p9 i

don't know why they came with that but

covered just about the same space so

you'd have two 10 pin connectors that

then would plug into the motherboard

you'll see that each form factor

delivers different things for instance

some have access for pcie video cards

some have an additional

uh so here's a six pin connector some

have an eight pin connector uh this one

the atx 12 volt which is uh 2.3

uh

the version is 2.3 is also energy star

regulations which means that it's going

to use energy a lot more efficiently

again you don't have to memorize this

i'm just pointing this out to show you

that you have to make sure you have the

right power supply for your computer

that's going to interact correctly with

the devices that you have more

importantly for you to know is something

about wattage now

power supplies are rated in wattage

and if you recall watts

equal volts

times

amps

that's the potential power versus the

amount of current

and

this determines the maximum amount that

the

power supply is going to pull from the

wall

this is important because if i have a

lot of devices in my system i need more

watts if i have fewer devices i don't

need as many watts

power supplies range in general from

about 300 to 1000 watts

again the more watts the more devices

which is something you're going to see

on this slide in just a second

if you need to determine what kind of

power supply to purchase you can

generally find an online calculator go

on the google or yahoo or whichever your

favorite bing or whatever your favorite

search engine is and search for power

supply calculator and you'll see a web

page pop up that asks you what kind of

video card you have and what kind of

motherboard and what kind of hard drives

etc etc and you pop all that in and it

tells you how many watts there abouts

you need you might always want to go for

a few extra watts in case you're

planning on upgrading in the future and

as i've said more devices equal more

wattage so the more devices you have the

more powerful you want to make sure your

power supply is

finally uh you'll notice on the first

slide and here's the same picture that

there are fans

that are built into the power supply now

if you recall between fans and

heat sinks in the cpu world uh

fans are what we call active cooling

because they actively blow air out or

into the device in this case you can

imagine a lot of electricity going on in

here and it needs to make sure to get

all that heat out of the device and

generally speaking this is plugged up uh

the same place as you notice you can

plug up your

you know your cord right here so this is

on the outside of the chassis it's

generally like a big hole around this

and we'll talk about that when we get to

chassis

and so this uh fan has direct access to

the outside of the system this also

makes this one of the most fragile

components sort of from the outside and

in the power supply so they are built

into the power supply as you can tell

and it's usually if these things go bad

it's much more cost effective to just

replace the entire power supply because

you can imagine buying a new powers a

new fan for i don't know

in the us maybe a few bucks five dollars

um different currencies it's probably

equivalent not not too expensive but the

time it's going to take to unscrew this

uh make sure you ground yourself put it

in etc it doesn't seem very cost

effective when you can go out and buy a

brand new power supply for not much more

expensive than you can buy the new fan

all right so generally on the test if

you see something asking you about a bad

fan you're generally just going to

replace

the the entire power supply rather than

the fans the most common uh problem

you're going to see with power supplies

again is a failed fan it begins to

horror or quiz uh and make funny noises

generally that means your power supply

is about to go bad and if you don't have

a redundant one then it's probably the

time to replace it

okay so now we've talked about power

supplies we've talked about what they

are which is converting ac to dc current

the form factors which are generally atx

form factors different versions not

something you need to memorize but

something to be aware of the different

wattages and capacities they come in

meaning that the higher the wattage the

more devices it can hold and then fans

which are generally speaking the most

fragile component of the power supply

and if it goes bad you generally just

want to replace the power supply not the

fan

so now that we've discussed those let's

talk briefly about the power connectors

we see in a system most of these are

probably review for us

so first you can see that there are a

whole lot of power connectors that plug

in and the reason this is really

important is if let's say i want to plug

up uh four ide devices i need to make

sure that there are in fact four molex

connectors and i can see there's one

here one there one there and one here

right so i do have enough and that's

great

but let's say i want to plug up for sata

devices i need to make sure that i have

the correct number of sata devices or in

newer systems let's say i want to plug

up an old floppy drive for an old

customer who has everything on floppies

if i only have uh if i don't have this

bare connector

i'm not going to be able to plug up the

floppy drive all right so it's important

to realize that there are multiple

connectors

and we need to count them

quite literally to make sure that we

have enough connectors to connect all

our devices

so the first device

the first connector rather is a molex

connector and as we've talked about this

is used to power ide or peda a parallel

ata devices you'll notice that it is

keyed on the corners

up here so you can only plug it in in

one way there's also little sort of

grabbing plastic areas right on the back

here so you can grab onto something and

push it in

again

this these are necessary if i have an

ide or pata internal ide or paid a

device

i also have a bear connector remember a

bear connector is for floppy drives you

might also hear it berg connector i'm

not positive of what the

100

correct pronunciation as i think i hear

them both in the field you'll notice

this one is keyed as well you'll notice

there's sort of this plastic

piece which is sort of rising up you can

also see there are little device

parts right down here and that's because

when i plug this in and we'll see this

we saw this when we got to floppy drives

um

it sort of is a little higher up and so

this

pops it up so it makes sure the contacts

get in where they need to go so again

this is used to power floppy drives you

also hit see this is a mini power

connector

although the one i've always learned and

always heard and we've seen on the test

has been a berg connector or bear

connector

we then have a sata connector as far as

storage devices goes the great thing to

remember about a sata direct

power connector

is that it is used to power sata devices

so uh the data cable which is a sata

data cable and the sata power connector

are both have the same name you can see

a little keying right here on the side

there's a little keying there there's

also a little keying here

you don't see that sort of represented

on this side the power is slightly

different and one thing that's

interesting just to point out is this

orange cord which is going to offer a

different voltage or a different ground

okay

finally we have the pcie connector this

is a six pin pcie connector uh

it is keyed as well because the tops

of these are a little circular whereas

the bottoms are more flat i think you

can maybe see it a little better here

so i'm only gonna be able to plug it in

in one way

uh and these are generally for pcie or

graphics devices so remember pcie was

made specifically sort of to replace uh

the old agp advanced graphics port

devices so that's uh that's what this is

for and don't forget that most graphics

devices these days

have a gpu or a graphics processor unit

and so they need extra power to um uh

function to make the the fan say

function

and the cpu as well

all right so now we've talked about all

the power connectors including molex

berg sata and pcie so really quickly

let's just review all the stuff that

we've talked about we talked about power

supplies and what they are for the most

part is they convert

ac

to

dc alternating current to dc direct

current

there are many form factors the

important thing to know here is you need

to make sure

uh that you have a power supply that

interacts with your motherboard

all right we also talked about wattage

and capacity uh the important thing here

is more wattage

equals

more devices

and certain devices use more wattage for

instance a floppy drive is not going to

use as much as say an optical drive or

even a hard drive

finally fans there is a fan built in to

the power supply

it is always better to replace

the power supply

rather than

replace

the fan that's a book thing the power

connectors we talked about the molex

connector which is specifically usually

for

our ide or our

pata devices

uh beard connector which is usually for

our floppy

devices

sata which as the name we remember is

for our sata storage devices and then

pcie which is not for a storage device

at all but is for graphics

pcie devices which are getting more and

more power hungry so now that we've

talked about all the power supply uh

information we talked about what makes

uh electricity run the computer

components that are necessary to

the power components that you find in a

computer

and now i want to talk about chassis i

want to talk about the the structure the

skeleton that all this stuff is going to

go fit into

[Music]

chassis form factors

let's take a look at some of the

different skeletons that the all of the

computer parts can fit into

uh to begin with i want to talk about

the form factors of the chassis just

like the motherboard

there are different sizes that the

chassis come in and it's important to be

aware of them because when you buy a

motherboard you need to make sure it's

going to fit

and depending on your needs there are

different types of form factors so we're

going to talk about the main form

factors which include towers and desktop

and under towers we have full towers

mid-sized towers

and mini towers

and then we have the desktop form

factors which are the pizza box and rack

mounts

all right

so first let's talk in general about

form factors

generally this is directly related to

the form factor of the motherboard which

makes sense uh depending on how the

motherboard is made it needs to be able

to fit in a box that's constructed

specifically for it that's because the

motherboard has screws in certain places

needs certain cords etc etc so this uh

and the motherboard is the largest

component uh that's gonna go inside of

the

chassis and so it is the number one

component we need to address when we're

buying a chassis

so obviously as we've discussed when we

talked about motherboard form factors

atx

and micro atx are the two most popular

and they are backward compatible so you

could always put a micro atx motherboard

into an atx chassis you just have a lot

of extra space you're probably not going

to use so

generally speaking we have three uh

two or three types of form factors

two specifically the first is the tower

which means

it's a vertical right which means that

the height is greater than the width

if we turn that on its side we then have

flat desktop which means the height is

less than the width so right here this

is a tower now you could theoretically

turn this on its side but if you notice

you have sort of these drive bays which

could be for optical drives and those

would kind of pop out sideways which

some people do and it's not a problem

but it's not specifically made for that

now under the desktop models we're going

to talk about too but just i want to

point out that the pizzabox model which

we saw a lot more in the past and now

we're seeing more really mini sort of

computers that don't even fit into these

but the pizza box model specifically is

five centimeters or two inches and less

so the height is really small and that's

why it's been nicknamed a pizza box

because it is no taller than a pizza box

so let's take a look at a full tower

this is a full tower and the way i know

it's a full tower is uh not only because

i i don't have a

a tape measure or something out that i

can i'm measuring this with right now

right but i do know a uh

towers of full tower is generally 22

inches or more in height which is almost

two feet that's pretty tall

but you can look at it and tell because

it has six to ten externally accessible

bays and if i look right here i see uh

four accessible optical bays five and a

quarters and then i see two

three and a quarter uh sorry five and a

half five and a quarters up here and

three and a half's down here let me just

write that up

uh and i have six of them

these down here these are three and a

quarter bays they're probably not

accessible from the outside uh just

because this is where i'd probably put

hard drives and stuff like that and i

don't need to have access to that but if

you're someone who's going to have let's

say a huge station that needs a lot of

um

optical drives or you want to have

removable hard drives which is something

that sometimes you'll have if you have a

lab or if you have a server then you're

probably going to want a full tower

now the ratio of internal to external is

changing and part of that has to do with

the fact that now you have a lot of

removable hard drives and when we talk

about raid arrays later on in the course

which is a way of

having redundancy in your storage

devices this is something that gets

really important because you can

actually hot swap your hard drives which

means you can take them out and put them

back in without even turning off the

computer so that's a full tower

this is a midsize tower it looks a

little similar from the view but the

difference is not only that it's about

four inches at least four inches less so

it's about a foot and a half uh tall but

also it it has fewer external bays about

two to four external bays now this one

might be pushing it a little bit but

this one to me looks like a midsize

tower because i can see that there are

two bays right here

there are two more here

and so that's about four there might

have been one right here in the past but

obviously it's not there anymore so

again these are not uh hard and fast

rules but generally a mid size is

probably what you're going to see more

of those are sort of some of the dells

and such that you see out in the

business fields a lot

a mini tower on the other hand you can

definitely recognize because it has

maybe one to two external bays right

this one in fact only has uh

one

you know sort of two two places for an

optical

maybe one for uh uh floppy but this is

really much smaller and these are

typically 14 inches to 16 inches so

we're keep we're going even lower not

quite a little bit more than a foot but

but much smaller than that and again it

has maybe one to two externally

accessible bays the rest are all

internal uh so for someone who's kind of

on a budget doesn't need a lot of power

this is probably what you're going to be

using

all right so first i want to look at the

desktop pizza box this is actually the

front and the back of a desktop pizza

box and the reason uh it's a pizza box

is because this height

is about two inches no more and if we

look at the back it's really compressed

everything's sort of tight and in there

now the danger with something like this

and oh what's interesting too is you see

all the expansion bays

are here and that's sort of done using

something called a riser card uh which

we can which i think we've discussed

briefly but basically it's a card that

sort of goes in

and sits in the motherboard which is

sitting flat

this way

and it pops up and sort of allows you to

plug stuff in that way

so what of course these are really made

to kind of they used to put a monitor on

top of them

nowadays you also might put them off in

the corner put them on the side but

these are really skinny that's the point

of a pizza box really skinny really

compressed

a desktop rack mount so a rack mount

means and if you see these little things

right over here

so this is

horizontally

situated and remember when i was talking

about those removable hard drives you

could see those right here so you could

push on one of these blue things and pop

the hard drive out and put a new one in

uh but the reason this is called a rack

mount is this would actually slide into

a server rack so you might have five of

these stacked on top of each other in a

in a large server rack and if i'll just

do my

really poor drawing skills if this was a

rack

right and you'd have sort of

an inside

area

this is obviously three dimensions

and

all right and then what would happen is

you'd have sort of areas these could

slide on

and the reason you have these things

right here as you notice two screw holes

is then they would screw in

at some point at some

place on the rack and that way you could

sort of secure them in there

so these are really for server rack

mounts uh meaning that they're going to

be in server rooms you won't really see

them on sort of desktops

all right so those are all the form

factors again we talked about the tower

form factors including the full size

tower the mid-size tower and the mini

tower and then the desktops specifically

the pizza box and the rack mount so just

going over these one more time let's

recall that the tower is vertical in

nature whereas the desktop is horizontal

in nature a full size uh is generally

going to be about

22 inches mid size we're looking at

about 18 here we're looking at like 14

to 16. uh more importantly we're gonna

have about six to ten bays here

this one's gonna have probably between

[Music]

uh like two and six

and the mini is gonna have between one

and two

pizza mount is two inches high

pizza box rather and the rack mount is

for servers you're probably not going to

see all this stuff on the test but i'm

just telling you this because if you go

to the store you want to buy your own

computer this sort of gives you a

lingo to talk with all right so those

are the form factors of the chassis now

let's talk about

uh what makes the chassis the chassis

and some considerations that we see with

them and some customizations as well

[Music]

chassis

layout

so now that we've seen the form factors

let's talk about what makes a chassis a

chassis

we're going to talk about the layout of

a chassis

so that you know where all the

components go i want to talk about

something very specific with the chassis

which is the airflow it's not just made

uh just like your body uh your ribs

protect your heart from and your lungs

and all sorts of stuff from being

damaged uh

the chassis does that because of its

layout but it is also constructed to

allow

everything to work perfectly within it

and in the same way your chassis is made

to perfectly allow airflow

now we're going to talk about something

called intrusion detection which i think

we've mentioned before but what you

gonna see on the test and so i want to

point it out and then i just want to

show you some cool customizations that

some people have done to their chassis

so first the layout one thing you'll

notice of course and here i've sort of

stripped everything away from a chassis

is a chassis is a sheet metal enclosure

for the power supply the drive bays and

everything else the important thing to

know is that this is metal and the

reason that's important is because metal

conducts electricity it also means that

if the computer any of the computer

components are touching this it's going

to ground it and it's not going to work

right so we need to make sure that

everything is constructed perfectly and

screwed in perfectly because if metal is

touching the electricity components of

the computer it's not going to work

however when you're working on it it

also means that by touching this you are

grounding yourself releasing the

electricity that's in your body into

this chassis which makes it safer for

you to work on the computer

the rear panel back here

is and this we're looking at let me just

erase this the rear here which is what

we're looking at

is for peripheral connectors okay so

here you see where the expansion bays

would sort of pop out so if you plug

something into one of those uh

pci slots for instance here's where you

might see the connector for it

um and some chassis also have

rear panel uh sorry peripheral

connectors in front uh it's

rare that you see these expansion bays

but you'll definitely see

if you look here this looks like some

old pci slots

and

some other stuff could be coming out

here and sometimes you'll see like a

slot in the front for like usb sticks

we've pointed those out in a few in in

the past

um on the front panel we definitely have

a power button or switch a reset button

and several different leds so that you

know whether the computer is on the hard

drives working etc and those are

connected to the motherboard using

little cables and you see right here

this is actually a cable connected to a

um

that's a speaker and the reason that'll

be there is because

computers going through post it needs to

have be able to sort of let you know

that it's going well and it has that

beep but you'll see let me erase all

this so you can get a better look these

little cords you'll see them attached to

the case specifically where there are

power buttons and stuff and those are

probably down here someplace which is

why we don't see them um and those are

gonna have to connect to the motherboard

too that's just an important thing i

want to point out

uh the motherboard screws in to the

chassis along this lar the largest face

obviously the only part of this chassis

right here that it could really screw

into

is on this if this was standing on its

side you could imagine as well it's

going to connect to one of the sides

there are actually screw holes which you

can't see really well but they are built

in here's one right here let me

here's a screw hole right here and

they're all over and that allows you to

screw the motherboard in directly into

the chassis but that is going to connect

along this large face the power supply

is often in the top rear of a tower or

in the back rear

this is where the power supply probably

would go and you can actually notice

there are four screws which is how we're

going to connect the power supply these

screws by the way are different you can

see them over here that is to hold the

top on the chassis

are five and a quarter bays which we

pointed out which are going to be for

your optical drives that's like this

there are also three and a half inch

bays which would sort of be actually

over here although you don't see them or

underneath here uh and those are for

your hard drives floppy drives

solid state drives etc something that

some things that happen in certain

chassis is they will have more five and

a quarter bays and have adapters that

make this base smaller so even though

this is very large you might have

something that will build out

like this and then the hard drive fits

in

here all right so sometimes they'll do

that in order to

give you more flexibility

now this is a great image that really

demonstrates the airflow that's going on

you can see that there are vents all

over the place and if i just go back

really quickly you see all the vents and

you can sort of see them peeking out

from out there that are located uh on a

chassis

and you can see them here as well on the

front there's usually some venting and

what you see here is that the the front

vent is really bringing in some cool air

right there's a there's a fan built in

right here

and it allows cool air to come in run

over the hard drives in this case

and you saw that on the other one there

was a vent right there cool off those

hard drives which are very compressed

shoots the air in here you have hot air

now can come out the top and the back

and there's also a fan

here on the cpu that's going to help uh

you know run that so

these are perfectly constructed for

airflow and that is why it is extremely

important that

all of these

if

there aren't any open spots basically

all right so sometimes people will

install uh

an expansion sort of device and they

won't

and then they'll remove it and they'll

just leave a hole in here and the

problem is you're ruining the airflow

that was this was constructed for uh it

also means by the way that you need to

uh make sure that these are clean

because they get clogged

with dust obviously so cleaning these

with a damp towel on the outside uh and

some compressed air on the inside is

always a good idea vents are located as

i mentioned on either side front and

back and also on the top sun is on the

bottom this is why by the way you

shouldn't run your computer your laptop

computer directly on say a soft surface

like a bed or a couch because it it hugs

the computer too closely and doesn't

allow air to exhaust

so one thing that's uh

i think i mentioned it with the bios but

i want to mention it again here with the

chassis because it's directly related

something called intrusion detection and

this is an intrusion detection plug

it is a biased switch of which means a

push button and you can see that push

button right here that attaches to the

chassis and then

from the chassis to the motherboard and

what happens is when someone removes the

chassis

or the case

the switch obviously pops and changes it

then notifies the bios of this change

and that way the next time you open the

computer rather the next time you turn

on the computer it'll tell you some

there's been intrusion now if someone

really wants to get around this

they probably can and we don't see this

much anymore but i pointed out because

it has nothing to do with uh like

viruses like that kind of intrusion or

like hackers right or anything like that

it literally has to do with and we saw

it more with older computers

when someone

physically opens the computer and

intrudes on the physical uh computer

itself

finally i just want to point out some of

the cool customizations that you can see

on some of these chassis most chassis

through the 90s were referred to as

white box computers and that's because

they were sort of made of a

referred to as white box computers and

that's because they were made out of you

know they were white and they were

really boring looking and people started

you know

making black ones to make them a little

less annoying but

in the basically the last 15 years or so

people have really gotten creative with

the chassis here you can see someone

who's done a nice um a pretty cool

sort of

i don't know mayan uh thing but you can

see all the detail this person has

really put into it probably actually

made with foam or styrofoam

here's another one a lot of these are

made with a lot of different stuff

aluminum steel styrofoam as i mentioned

acrylic stuff would in this case it

looks like there's a piece of ply

you know and this is actually pretty

common is to you know let you see into

your computer and there's a really cool

one on the next page i want to show you

and this one has some black light

features as well i don't know exactly

why

and you can see

some of the other sort of features they

put on here including some custom faint

paint clear side panels certain windows

some internal lighting which you can see

here and that way people can look inside

and see stuff running for whatever

reason but really it's it's really for

geeks to geek out and impress each other

one thing is definitely with the liquid

cooling systems which we talked about

sometimes you want to be able to look in

and make sure those are running

correctly in this case it looks like

there's not even a

side case on here it looks like this

person is running hard drives

directly on his desk

all right so we've just talked about uh

the layout of a chassis again it's made

out of the sheet metal airflow uh

they're perfectly designed for airflow

intrusion detection which lets you know

whether someone's opened the case and

then customization some of the cool

things people have done so just uh want

to point out again

metal

uh that's really important okay because

that means you can ground yourself which

we'll talk about when we get to esd also

you have

power button and the reset button and

those need to plug in

to the motherboard

airflow they are perfectly designed for

airflow the important thing here is it

you need to clean them

clean the vents

you're probably going to want to use

a damp cloth on the outside

uh very

not very damp at all again water is

electricity's enemy okay you're probably

going to use compressed air

on the inside you don't want to use

vacuums

big mistake and that is a question on

the test

intrusion detection this is not having

to do with hackers this has to do with

has someone

opened

the system and then customization it's

just sort of a cool thing that people

have done you won't see that on the test

but i wanted to show you some pictures

not all chassis have to look the same or

be boring

all right so we've talked about

everything now we've talked about all

the parts components let's get into

building this computer

[Music]

building the computer

electrostatic discharge esd

before we can discuss putting the

computer together putting all those

components into the chassis and making

them work which will mostly be a review

of everything we've talked about

we need to discuss electrostatic

discharge

electricity and computers number one

enemy

because it can damage the computers and

it comes

straight from you because you have

electricity in you

it's actually based on a concept you've

learned about probably in elementary

school called static electricity which

is the same exact thing so we're going

to talk about ways to prevent esd

we're also going to talk about uh some

of the components and things that

some of the ways we ship items so that

they don't get damaged including

anti-static bags we'll look at an esd

mat

an anti-static wrist strap

anti-static spray

and then some of the environmental

conditions that are conducive to

esd and so we need to be aware of them

so first electrostatic discharge what is

it well if you remember from a basic

elementary school or basic physics this

occurs when two objects of different

voltages

come in contact and

the way you know it again is as static

electricity so you rub your feet on the

carpet you walk up to your best friend

you touch them and it gives them a shock

and of course when it comes to

components this can easily damage

components so with us it's we sort of

feel a shock and it sort of goes through

our body and the reason it goes we get

that shock right is because when i touch

my friend i create a circuit between the

ground and me the ground and them and so

the electricity goes through my body

through their body and then into the

ground

um

and with electronics as well if we

talking about if we're talking about a

piece of

computer that has core you know wires in

it that can conduct electricity i touch

that computer once i have all this

electrostatic discharge all this static

electricity inside of me and boom

suddenly i damaged the component however

unlike

with people you may not even feel the

shock because the amount of voltage that

it requires for you to feel

electrostatic discharge is actually

higher than the amount of voltage

that can damage a component based on

electrostatic discharge

uh so it's really important that even if

you don't just like with your hands only

because you they don't look dirty

doesn't mean you shouldn't wash them

same sort of thing only because you

can't feel static electricity

doesn't mean it's not there and doesn't

mean that electrostatic discharge

otherwise known as esd won't occur

so

the first thing i want to talk about is

an anti-static bag you may have seen

these if you've ever purchased an item

and in here you can see an item that's

being stored in this electrostatic bag

right what the electrostatic bag does is

these little black lines are actually

not lines they're little circuits

and those circuits because they conduct

electricity or constantly

in uh talking with the device inside and

so because the device even if it gets a

little bit of uh because the bag itself

cannot develop sort of static because

it's constantly being ground against the

outside this device can never get

damaged

so it allows for the ship the safe

shipment and storage of electrical

components but not only that it can also

be used to place components on them

because if you're if you think about all

these as being little circuits

right and they're talking to one another

constantly right it's very hard for

electricity to sort of build up because

it's constantly getting dissipated and

so when you can take you can take a

component out and put it on this and it

won't get damaged much smarter than

putting it on

just a table top or especially on

something like carpet which you should

never even work on

we also have esd mat which the concept

is somewhat similar

in here is actually a bunch of circuits

and uh this little

area right here allows you to plug up

a cable and at the end of that cable is

an alligator clip that alligator clip

you can connect to any piece of metal

specifically to the chassis remember we

said the chassis has a metal frame so if

we connect

this alligator clip to the metal frame

of the chassis it is now grounded off

the chassis so it grounds the surface to

a metallic object and now i can place

items on this without worrying that

they're going to be get some sort of

electrostatic discharge i can also put

myself on this in a way and it grounds

me to an extent

to build on this however we want to use

something called an anti-static wrist

strap the concept is the same instead of

having a mat though i have a wristband

now the wristband itself is not really

electro is not

uh doesn't have any cords in it it just

has a piece of metal right here it's

really simply designed that piece of

metal contacts with this wire that wire

has an alligator clip at the end of it

you plug that to the chassis and now you

are ground so what it does is it grounds

yourself to the chassis i want to talk

really quickly about this word ground

which i don't know if i've talked about

in depth when we talk about ground it

literally means the earth the ground any

electricity will go into the earth

because it because it is one of the

largest conductors of electricity that's

why when you have let's say a house

right and i have a lightning rod on it

and

lightning strikes that lightning rod

it'll go into the ground following that

lightning rod as opposed to striking my

house all right so that's the whole

concept behind a lightning rod

same thing is going on in your home you

have

a plug and one of those plugs generally

this bottom one is a ground and when you

plug

something in that ground automatically

actually follows goes all the way

through the walls and in the end it goes

into the ground outside your home

and what that does is it grounds all the

electricity to make sure that there's

not going to be any feedback and it

keeps fires from happening which is why

in newer buildings you see them

everywhere in older buildings you don't

so it's important

um that you ground yourself to the

chassis the chassis is a piece of metal

and whenever you touch metal right you

get a little shock

if you have static electricity once you

touch and release that shock though

there's no longer any electricity that

the you are the same voltage as that

piece of metal you'd prefer that to

happen with the the chassis rather than

with

the

computer component and so touching the

chassis actually is a poor man's esd

strap rather than have if you don't have

something to plug up that's constantly

keeping you in contact with metal you

can touch the metal and that will ground

you to the metal and then you can pick

up the component so this is not by no

means uh

shouldn't do all the time but if you

don't have an esd strap and you do need

to replace a component what you always

want to do is touch the chassis

continually touch the chassis with both

hands i try to keep one hand on the

chassis at all times you have to touch

and when i say the chassis by the way

you must touch

metal can't touch plastic plastic does

not conduct electricity

anti-static spray is more for the

environment as it says on this container

it neutralizes static electricity so if

you imagine there's a lot of don't

forget electricity has to do with i have

pluses i have positive and negative

right and basically what happens is when

these are in when these are neutralized

when when there's as many pluses and

minuses then i don't have electricity

happening i just sort of have a stasis

when i have too many pluses and not

enough minuses then uh

electricity occurs because it wants to

even this out

and that's how static electricity occurs

you get too many pluses on too many

positives on your in your hand and you

go over to the doorknob and that has

more minuses or less and suddenly you

press that and some of these will jump

over to that side so what this does is

it literally uh neutralizes that so that

way there is no

uh difference it's stasis so it reduces

the static electricity in the

environment and that way it allows it

allows you to do what you need to do

with less worry of there being um of you

getting electricity static electricity

uh by walking around or doing something

it's especially useful in dry areas i

don't know if anyone if you live in a

dry area but i once lived in the desert

in las vegas nevada u.s and

every time i'd go to my car i touched my

car and i would get a shock because when

there's less

water in the air

and if you imagine they're in in the air

there's like

you know you can't see it but it's less

humid humidity means there's

dampness in the air when there's less

water less dampness in the air there's

no place for the electricity from your

body to go and so uh it

it'll go to the first thing you touch in

my case it was the car door or it could

have been um a computer component

so in dry areas you definitely want to

have something like this that's going to

neutralize that and even more so you

want to see if you have a humidifier

which brings me to some of the

environmental factors by the way here's

another anti-static mat

here's some spray

here's the node

and this is some replacements for that

okay but

you do not work on carpeted areas ever

don't work on them as you know i rub

against carpet that causes static

electricity it's a big no-no you also

want to keep the humidity high above 50

this is key okay this will come up on

the test humidity high is an

environmental factor that you definitely

want humidity can cause paper to stick

together so in a printer situation it

might not be the best thing but if i'm

opening computer parts or i'm in a

server room i definitely want it to be

high humidity so that's why you'll

always see very expensive uh humidifiers

and hvac systems in servers not just so

that the humidity stays high but also so

that the environment is cool and that

prevents overheating don't forget

let's say you're driving around you go

into a client's site uh you fix

something you come back you have all

these parts

scorching outside you might have just

damaged something because it's been left

in the heat

alright so we've talked about esd

including anti-static bags esd mats

anti-static wrist straps anti-static

spray and environmental conditions

really quickly again esd prevention this

has to do with static electricity right

we don't want static electricity and

only because

only cause you don't feel it

it doesn't mean it's not there

antistatic bag this is for shipping

items you can also place items on the

anti-static bag sometimes your cpu your

ram will come in these bags uh

depends on how they're packaged esd mat

grounds the surface that you're working

on

most people will actually have an esd

mat and they'll have an anti-static

wrist strap which grounds you

both of these

we generally will attach to

the chassis

specifically to a metal part of the

chassis

the antisporadics anti-static spray

neutralizes

electricity in the air and the important

thing to remember out of environmental

conditions

is high humidity

all right

we've talked about preventing

electrostatic discharge we've talked

about now being safe when i'm putting

the computer together so that being said

let's get into putting a computer

together and building it

[Music]

building the computer

chassis motherboard cpu and ram

so let's get into the the fun part which

is actually putting the computer

together and i want to talk about the

first few components you can do this in

several different orders this is the

order i prefer uh and i'll point out the

parts that are particularly pertinent to

the exam

so first we're going to talk about

choosing the parts the correct parts

we've already discussed that in great

detail so i'll just remind you of some

things we'll prepare the chassis

install the motherboard install the cpu

and then install the ram and then in the

next video we'll finish up by installing

the storage devices uh connecting all

the power

and booting it up

all right so first choosing the parts uh

one thing you have to do first is

determine what your needs are if you're

a high uh if you're a high needs

individual for instance and you need a

graph a high graphics

sort of system for gaming for instance

you're probably going to want a pcie

graphics part port if you're someone who

doesn't really care about that then it

doesn't really matter if your

motherboard has a pcie slot uh and you

don't mind if you your motherboard for

instance has a built on graphics um so

what are your needs that's the first

thing to determine that's going to

determine

what kind of motherboard you're going to

purchase based on uh how much cpus

power you need and also

the amount of ram you need so once you

get your motherboard you know compatible

case can connect to that you also know

what the compatible processor is you

want what kind of cpu which is going to

be directly determined uh you know by

what slot is on that motherboard

or and then also what compatible ram you

need and how much of it if you only have

two slots for ram on your motherboard

then you're limited in how much you can

upgrade

uh you also want to know how many

expansion ports you want so back here i

can throw on a lot of expansion ports on

this chassis uh what if my motherboard

only has room for two expansion ports

maybe i don't need them maybe i'm not

looking to add a lot of stuff generally

speaking you're going to want to

definitely add

if you're a high-end user maybe a sound

card video card that stuff is generally

going to come integrated into the

motherboard but you might want to

upgrade it

and of course what i o ports do you want

on it do you want your motherboard to

have usb ports built on

firewire ports perhaps an sd or compact

flash reader these are all things you

need to consider when you're choosing

the parts

now preparing the chassis this is this

is something that's important i see it

come up on the exam you're going to use

something called brass standoffs notice

that if you look really closely

the motherboard is being risen up it's

not connected directly to the chassis

remember i said the chassis is metal and

so there's there's electronics on this

motherboard if it's directly touching

the metal we're going to be in trouble

actually on the holes on the motherboard

there's actually like a a metallic sort

of round area which is specifically so

that electricity doesn't get conducted

through

this screw

and so one thing you want to do is not

only these not only offer support to the

motherboard they're in several places

not just one but it also prevents from

an electrical loop because if power is

going into this motherboard and then

this motherboard is feeding power into

the chassis uh the computer's not gonna

be able to run because electricity isn't

going to any of the parts instead it's

being ground just like i would be ground

if i was working on my um computer and i

touched the chassis i would be grinding

my grounding myself to

the chassis not something i necessarily

want

so the first thing you want to do is

prepare the brass standoffs you'll

notice here this is where the screws go

in so what happens is that end screws

into the chassis

and then i'll be able to put the

motherboard on top and use another screw

and screw into the

standoff like so

so the first thing you want to do is

attach those to the chassis that's the

first step i say you're going to want to

reference where the holes are on the

motherboard so that you put

the brass standoffs in the right place

but

that's the first thing you want to do

you can't do anything until you've

accomplished that

once you've done that remove the

motherboard from its packaging and be

very careful you don't want to try not

touching the components try touching the

sides and you can lay it on that

anti-static bad bag if necessary

definitely the flat side down meaning

this side

okay you don't want to lay it on with

all the

components because

those can be damaged very easily

line it up with the standoffs and the

pre-drilled holes which are on the

motherboard and then

insert the screws and tighten you want

to tighten until it's snug but you don't

want to over tighten my father always

used to try to really tighten things up

in electronics we don't want that we

want it tight enough it's not going to

move around but we don't want it so

tight that you're going to damage it

which when we're dealing with

electronics can definitely happen

so as i'm just want to say this again do

not over tighten

the motherboard also if you ever need to

remove it it's going to be a real pain

all right the other thing you need to do

is connect any power reset hard drive

etc cords to the motherboard from the

chassis remember i said there might be a

there's definitely a hard

power button on the chassis well how

does the power button tell the

motherboard to start well there's

actually a row generally of little

connectors

and here it is on this motherboard and

they'll be little um small little

connectors

with two pins

and it'll have a cord

generally a twisted cord that's gonna go

to the power switch

and that plugs into a certain area on

the motherboard now it varies from

motherboard to motherboard so i can't

tell you exactly where all those are

gonna go

but what i would say is reference your

manufacturer's instructions and your

guide when doing that sometimes it will

say you know someplace around here

you know it'll say something like power

or led or something or reset

okay but

if it doesn't best thing to do is you

know either

reference the manufacturer's guide that

came with the mint the motherboard

or alternatively go online and find one

all right the motherboard's now in there

it's secure and it's ready everything

else is ready to be installed to it

the first thing you're definitely going

to install the cpu

so you remove the cpu and the heatsink

and the fan from the packaging you can

place that on the anti-static bag again

you want to place it with the lands or

the pins up so remember the pins are

going to go in this connector this pga

and the lands and that lga connector

like so i don't want those to face down

onto the table or onto the surface

because then i could damage them i could

scratch them you also don't want to

touch those you want to hold it from the

sides okay

so never touch the lands or the pins of

a cpu always touch on the sides can be

the same with ram we're never going to

touch the contacts themselves there is

oil in our fingers and when i start up a

computer

that oil can actually burn

when electricity reaches it it can

actually burn the the device

so you carefully insert and fasten the

cpu purge depending on how it's done

right if you recall

with an lga i just place it on there i

have this thing right here

that closes on top of it and then this

sucker

moves that way and locks you can see it

locks right under this thing

with a l uh a pga with the pin grid away

again yeah you have another lever the

lever goes up

you place gently

the

cpu

into that

zip socket

and then you pull the lever this way

and it'll fasten it

very simple

once you've inserted the cpu you now

need to add the heatsink

like we talked about you're going to

apply the thermal compound

right onto the cpu there's generally a

spot read the manufacturer's

instructions you don't want to damage

your cpu once you've done that

you'll fit the heatsink on top of the

cpu and then you will connect it you'll

notice on this one and in just about all

the cpus we looked at there's sort of

around it was like a

some sort of

casing and that allowed the cpu to screw

on

all right so there are the screws so i

put the heatsink on top the thermal

compound makes it a nice even layer and

then i screw it in to fasten it to to

make sure it's going to stay there

once i've done that attach the fan on

top remember

cpu is on the bottom

then our heatsink let me throw another

one on here for cpu

right

and here goes the thermal compound

here's the heatsink and then generally

the fan

is on top so again we go from the

passive cooling

to the active cooling

you're also going to want to plug this

thing in so fit the cpu fan on top of

the heatsink and then you're going to

fasten it the same way you do the

heatsink there's going to be holes you

fasten it using those holes sometimes

what you'll do is you'll put the

heatsink on and then you'll put the fan

on top and then there's a there's long

screws that fasten them both

sometimes there's also

other ways to clip on the heatsink it

really depends read the manufacturer's

instructions the one thing you need to

make sure you do is attach this power

cable which will be connected to the to

the fan uh to the motherboard you will

see for instance this has three little

pins you will definitely see

pins on the motherboard and it might say

something

like fan and you plug that in and

you'll make and that'll make sure it

works you need to plug this fan in

because it needs power in order to run

so now you've installed the motherboard

and you put the cpu on top of it now we

got to take care of the ram you already

know how much ram you want you've

checked to make sure it works and it's

compatible so you remove the ram from

the packaging you lay it on top of the

anti-static bag like we've talked about

we are not going to touch the contacts

down here we're only going to hold it

from the sides all right

like i just mentioned

we're never going to touch these

contacts

the other thing we want to take notice

of

is where the keying is in this case i

have keying here and you can see that

keying is on the board there

so i need to make sure to rotate this

100 you know 80 degrees before i put it

in otherwise i'm gonna have a problem if

it feels like it's not going in very

easily you probably aren't putting it in

the right way

so determine which slots to use as well

uh notice these are red and black which

one do i put which one do i fill in

first generally the motherboard is going

to say zero

and have like zero and one zero and one

you

want to put it in the zeros first and

then the ones again refer to your

manufacturer's instructors instructions

which will

tell you how to do that and also you can

figure out again if they need to be

impaired uh if they're you know dual

channel like this is we talked about

that

right then you're gonna want to make

sure you you put them in such a way that

they're gonna run efficiently

alright so you've oriented the ram

according to the keying on the

motherboard and on the stick

place the stick gently into the slots

pins down

distribute even pressure you can notice

here we have pressure on both sides i'm

not putting it in the center you have it

on both sides evenly pressing down on

the stick as you press down these things

these ears will close in and lock up

into the side

of the ram stick

and that way once you hear that click

you know that they are good to go and

they are locked in place

all right so we've talked about choosing

the parts and making sure they're

correct preparing the chassis installing

the motherboard the cpu and the ram

let's go back over this real quickly we

need to make sure everything is

compatible that's very important

everything needs to work together

specifically uh you need to make sure

that your motherboard supports all the

stuff you want

all right because everything else is

going to plug up to that including the

ram

including the cpu

[Music]

even storage devices

all right so you need to make sure

everything

revolves really around the motherboard

but that doesn't mean that that's where

you start you know you want a really

fast cpu this specific brand then you

need to go out and buy a motherboard

that's going to support it

the important thing to remember about

preparing the chassis

is to use those brass standoffs

you also don't want to forget

to plug up

the the power cord

to the motherboard

all right

install the motherboard again the

important thing

in this is you put it onto those brass

standoffs do it gently don't over

tighten

installing the cpu you're either going

to do that with a land grid array

or a pin grid array

either way whatever the type of socket

is we're not gonna press on we're gonna

let it gently sit on there remember

these are both

zero insertion force okay there's no

force involved zero insertion force

which means i'm not gonna damage

anything

on top of that

sits the heatsink

and on top of that is the fan we need to

make sure

the fan plugs into the motherboard

finally we're going to install the ram

we want to make sure it's keyed

you also need to know which slots it

goes into

all right we've talked about all these

components obviously they're not going

to run without power and without some

storage uh there's really no point to

having a computer so let's talk about

those

[Music]

building the computer storage power and

booting

so let's finish building the computer

first we'll talk about installing the

power supply i like to do this at the

end

and same with the storage because we

have less wires to deal with when we're

installing all the other components

sometimes it can be a little frustrating

to put in the ram and the cpu when you

have a bunch of power cords and wires

all over the place so i always recommend

removing those before you do anything

even if the computer is always already

put together

uh then we'll install the storage

devices

we'll talk about booting up the computer

for the first time and then finishing

the installation

all right so

installing the power supply we need to

make sure first of all that this kill

switch to switch to off like it is right

now on that zero

obviously just in case god forbid

something we somehow connect it to the

wall and we're not being careful we just

want to give ourselves as many

opportunities to not electrocute

ourselves as possible so i always make

sure that that is set to off

also you want to set the voltage

selector which in this case there isn't

one but uh if there is a voltage

selector we want to make sure to set it

to either

the 110 or 115 for the us or the

220 for european or for the rest of the

world really so that's something we need

to make sure of again if i'm in europe

and i set it to 110 or i'm in america i

set it to 20 i'm going to be in major

problem i might even blow out the system

so that's something you definitely want

to do before you install the power

supply

once you've done that you're ready to

put it in mount the power supply in the

case uh if you recall it goes either at

the top usually the top and the in the

back or

the back left if it's a desktop

uh and and some chassis do come with

power supplies built in i would

generally recommend if you can buying uh

them as such uh so that way you're not

really having to install a chassis uh a

power supply unless it breaks now just

reduce the amount of problems that

you're going to have of course that

gives you less

up to uh less customization

and especially if you're going to make

your own system with a lot of high power

things that's probably something you

don't want to do

generally the top or the bottom of the

case is where this is going to go as i

just said

and it's going to be secured using four

screws you can see the four screw holes

right here

it's important to differentiate these

from all the other screw holes

all right and the reason for that being

you don't want to start taking apart

like these right you don't need to take

these off sometimes people will start

trying to remove it and they'll remove

all these screws and they realize oh i

didn't actually need to remove those

screws and now i'm causing myself more

problems when i have to put it all back

together

all right so then what you're going to

do is you have to plug

this big p1 connector

the first thing you should do to that

motherboard which is going to go right

here that's either a 20 or 24 pin as you

recall

and if you also recall it is keyed a

certain way so uh generally speaking the

it's keyed so that the pins are like

this

sometimes you'll also see a little

a little tab

on one end and that will only allow you

to put it in on one end and it'll lock

into place generally speaking again if

you're having to force something in it

probably isn't in the right way

so you shouldn't need to force it and if

you do

um there's probably a

there's a problem

once you've done that now you've you've

given power to the motherboard and by

doing that you've also provided power to

the cpu

and to all of the onboard devices

now uh you want to install storage so

your power's there you can see here's a

power one it's already built into this

chassis uh you can also by the way see

all the chassis cables we had talked

about earlier that you're gonna need to

connect to the motherboard you can see

those all there

uh the first thing with storage is you

need to identify with drives are made

for five in a quarter bays or three and

a half inch bays we've talked about that

quite a bit again these three and a half

inch bays are mostly for your hard

drives

and the five and a quarters mostly for

optical

you've done that you can begin to

install them so you insert the storage

devices and you're going to use the

screws to keep them in place you can see

there are screw holes they're going to

be mimicked on the other side and what

you generally want to do

if you look at the

thing right here is you plug that up

right you screw it in here

here you can see it's like a smaller

area and this is a bigger one so

depending on

uh sort of the brand

uh these can vary but the benefit of

having a chassis like this is it it

doesn't really matter if you're putting

in an optical drive

you're probably gonna want the front the

front to be flush with the with the

front of the chassis and therefore

you're gonna wanna kind of put those in

and then sort of make sure it's exactly

where you want it before you tighten it

so adjust the drives before you tighten

them to make sure it's perfect flush

then you can go ahead and put that extra

titan squeeze on with these it's not as

big a deal if you tighten them you don't

ever want to over tighten but you can do

a little tighter than you should on than

you could on the motherboard for

instance

once you've done that you're ready to

attach all the cords uh so you can

attach the data

and the power cords

right remember with pata

this is a pata i don't have a sata

pictured uh

also with peda you're definitely jumpers

all right

and remember that's either a slave

or a master

very important also cable select

depending on the type of cable

okay

now that you've done that

you have your storage connected your cpu

is in all the power is connected to

everything you're basically ready to go

so now what you want to do is boot the

computer before you do that though you

need to do a couple things first you're

going to want to attach the power cord

uh to the power cable inlet so remember

there's no power cord attached so we and

by the way it's called a c14 inlet just

for your own rec

your own knowledge you don't need to

know that and remember uh

they do this so that they can work in

multiple different markets

you're also going to remove all of your

esd hardware so if you have an esd strap

for instance you want to disconnect

yourself from the chassis because the

minute power begins going to this device

after you hit this kill switch and turn

it on

uh you could electrocute yourself so

it's really important you remove all

your esd stuff we're not closing up the

chassis yet we want to make sure

everything's working first right so uh

as i said we don't want to shock

yourself or even worse electrocute

yourself we can then plug this plug into

the wall

turn this kill switch to on

and now we are ready to see if the

computer functions

so

we need to attach a monitor and a

keyboard to the onboard connections uh

generally these are going to be built

onto the motherboard these days if for

some reason it's not you will need to

extend these using these drive bays you

can see here as well

a pcie

power cord okay so you might need to

install a graphics card like this one

and you might need to attach a pci power

if necessary now one thing to realize if

there is a power device built into the

motherboard

and then you add another power device

the motherboard the bios is going to

automatically want to use this one the

one on the motherboard so you'll have to

go in the bios and disable the onboard

graphics that's just something you have

to do

i always recommend the first time you're

building it if there's an on-board uh

display

graphics card you're gonna want to plug

up to that not to the one you're gonna

add okay but do plug up the pcie if

necessary again to your to your pcie

expansion bay

now without closing the chassis

turn on the computer the reason you're

gonna do this is because you wanna make

sure all the fans are running correctly

and it's gonna be you know you don't

want to go through and close it up and

then realize you didn't seat something

correctly meaning you didn't put in your

ram all the way

so visually check all the fans are

running properly make sure you're

getting graphics on the on the system

you want to make sure that the bios is

reading the correct amount of ram and

hard drive so make sure it's recognizing

your hard drives you might need to go

into your setup or flash tools

and that way you can get more

information you want to make sure it's

recognizing the ram the right cpu

okay you want to make sure that the

memory is there the storage everything

is being

recognized as it should most biases

these days don't need to be told unless

you're dealing something with like

scuzzy and then you need to make sure

you're installing your scuzzy drivers

correctly

all right so enter setup if necessary

and take a look if everything looks good

then you're ready to finish the

installation

you can power off the computer first you

never want to do any screwing or

anything while the computer's on

close

glass side of the chassis

i have this config chassis here

generally you might have screws on the

back sometimes they're also like clips

or something on the top and bottom

so it makes it easier to slide it on and

off whatever it is put that on

and then power the computer back on

again

make sure it's working because sometimes

you put that case on something jostles

and then it goes wrong and you know

now uh something happened when i closed

the computer why was why did that happen

why was it working beforehand

so ensure it's still working and if it

is

clean your area put away your tools and

take a break because you've just built

your first computer now we'll talk about

troubleshooting a little bit later

but

now we've gone over

uh everything we've gone over all the

hardware uh in this video we just talked

about installing the power supply the

storage devices booting the computer and

finishing the installation again the

power supply is held in by four screws

and just as a reminder because this is

something you'll see on the test

you're going to see a 3.3 voltage

five voltage

and a 12 voltage okay so these are the

two voltages that are coming out of that

power supply you plug all that stuff in

to your and make sure the storage

devices whether it's peda

sata or scuzzy scuzzy special because

it's going to need its own drivers

paid is going to need the jumpers

say it is pretty easy

you're going to boot the computer

you're going to check in the bios to

make sure everything's being recognized

and then you're going to finish the

installation but putting the case on and

you know doing it remember before you

power it on

remove that esg strap the esd strap okay

you don't want to shock yourself

so

we've now talked about all of the

hardware going into a computer

i want to now talk about a different

type of computer a smaller computer with

some slightly different specifications

a laptop and we'll talk specifically

about what makes a laptop different and

why they're so commonly used because

they are quite a bit of the market share

now and how they're different when we're

trying to fix them

[Music]

laptops ports the keyboard and pointing

devices

now that we've talked about computers

large computers desktop computers i want

to talk about smaller computers more

mobile computers more formally known as

laptops now the interesting thing about

laptops is that all of the pieces are

still there from our desktop computers

the only difference is they're smaller

so let's take a look first of all at

some of the external factors of laptops

for instance the ports

that are going to be on the sides that

we're going to plug stuff into the

keyboard how we input and pointing

devices which are slightly different

since we don't have uh external mice and

external keyboards

so we're going to look at the ports that

we find in the keyboard in a laptop

we're also going to look at the keyboard

which is different in several ways first

of all it has a different layout and

second of all

it connects to the computer in a

different way obviously with the desktop

we are connecting it externally

then i want to look at pointing devices

and when we're talking about laptops we

can use an external mouse but we also

need something that's portable that's

connected to the device just like the

keyboard is so we're going to look at

the track pad

the track point otherwise known as an

eraser head

and finally a stylus which is uh

wasn't used as much as it is now thanks

to

um new mobile devices such as the ipad

which we will talk about more in depth

later

okay

so first let's look at some of these

laptop ports if we're looking at the top

over here the first thing we see right

here is uh the dc

connector so

a power connector would plug in here

it would then connect to an external

large box like so

and then that box would have another

connector that would plug into the wall

now the reason we have this box right

here

is because in a desktop we have room for

a power supply we don't have room for a

power supply

and a laptop because it's so small so

we've moved that power supply to the

external outside of it and we just use a

small cord to plug in all the power now

don't forget this power is not only

powering the computer as it's running

it's also providing power to the battery

and we'll talk more about that a little

later

here is an ethernet port or an rj45 port

remember a little smaller it would be an

rj11 port which is for a modem now the

reason i know that this is an rj45 port

and not an rj11 port is because there's

a little icon right here which you might

not be able to see that looks a little

something like this and that just tells

me that this is

a

network uh device

over here we have usb ports we've talked

about those and we will talk more about

those in the future

we also have eighth inch jacks

for audio we'll talk about those a

little more later as well

and here it looks like we have a cd or

dvd player usually it'll say on it

whether it's cd or dvd i'm guessing it's

a little washed out right now and right

here is just the button

that allows you to

pop out that cd drive now some drives

have tray loading which is this this is

a tray which means this entire thing is

going to pop out you're going to put the

cd into it and then there are also what

are called slot loading and those

if i could just erase

this right here

a slot loading would just have a big

slot

and in that slot you put the cd two

different types of dvd cd drives

depending on the device

now here at the bottom we have some

slots to begin with

these slots are for external cards such

as sd cards and also for expansion ports

that we're going to talk about a little

bit later in the laptop section called

pc cards

or express cards

or card bus and we'll talk more about

those a little later but basically that

allows us to

add a device to the laptop without

opening it

here we have an hdmi port which is going

to allow for

external video

we also have another usb port on both

sides of the laptop and you see we have

one over here and the reason we want two

usb drives on either side is because

what if i have a mouse on one side and a

keyboard on the other or i have a hard

drive on one side etc

right here we also have what looks like

a firewire drive

and firewire again it's also called ieee

1394. we'll talk more about this one a

little later as well and it's

specifically for

media like camcorders or editing

finally this little small thing right

here that's to lock the laptop so what

would happen is you would put a little

piece in here it locks in to one of

these pieces of metal here there's

usually a code a four digit code say

that'll keep it locked in and then you

can go wrap that say around the leg of a

table so that no one can steal it from

you

let's look at another laptop now a lot

of the similar things

here we have hdmi again

we also here have vga port and remember

we know this is vga because it has one

two three rows and this is 15 pins

so that i can connect an external

monitor to this device as well as

connected to my tv

and right here we also have

an s video port which would be useful

say if i wanted to plug it to

an older

um

an older video system

we have our ethernet cord here again our

ij45

here this looks like again some sort of

pc card

which we also see over here

underneath this one right here this

looks like a slot for sd cards

we talked about those solid state cards

might come from say a camera so you can

upload your pictures

usb drives and then this right here is a

mini firewire okay

the only difference between

the other firewall we saw in this one is

just the size this is a little smaller

allows for different types of devices to

plug in just requires a different cord

let's look at one more

all right now here we have a dvi port

and an s video port so this can connect

to my monitor right here and to my older

television here again the s video port

is not going to transfer audio it's just

video uh

the dvi we can use a connector to plug

that up to an hdmi but again it's not

going to

have

audio only the video because it is

coming from dbi here's our dvd or cd

player and here's a little button to pop

that out

i just want to point out this little

hole right here is an emergency button

so say if the cd gets stuck in there you

take a little pen you press it that's

going to force that to come out

here we have several audio jacks

including a line in

uh

looks like

earphones a microphone and then looks

like some sort of line in probably for a

keyboard or something

we have a

sd card

1394 right here which is our firewire

again mini firewire and a usb port and

if we were to look at the other side i'm

guessing we would also see another usb

port as well so you can see a lot of the

same ports we have on our desktops we

also have our laptops it just depends on

the need we're going to see a lot more

external sort of video ports on these

laptops because people want to connect

them to their tvs and generally speaking

we'll also see a port so you can plug it

up to an external monitor

the other thing to keep in mind here is

that depending on your needs for your

laptop that's going to change what kind

of laptop you want to buy that's going

to change the ports that you want to

make sure on it

all right so now we've talked about the

ports on a laptop let's get into the

input devices ie the keyboard and the

pointing devices

so first let's look at this keyboard now

the laptop keyboard comes in two

different flavors a 101 key alpha

numeric keyboard and an 86 key

uh keyboard with what's called the

function key or the fn key now this is

the 101 and the reason i know that is

because if you look all the way here on

the right

it has a little number keypad and what

this allows you to do is sort of type in

numbers like you would on a regular

keyboard however this also means that

you need a much wider

laptop or that the keys on the laptop

have to be smaller and so

what a lot of manufacturers have now

done is they've excised this

side sort of new number keypad

and they've replaced it with a keyboard

with the function pad

the function key excuse me and you can

see here's the function key and if you

look at the top here

and actually if you look at the top of a

lot of these

uh a lot some of the keys

you'll will see that there are different

sort of um

things you can do with each of these

keys and that that's because now you

have this function key that allows you

to use the same key for different

purposes for instance i'm just going to

erase all this for a second for instance

if you look right here you'll see that

this probably allows me to

plug up a monitor and

from the keyboard i can change what that

monitor is going to do

and those are in blue right there and

generally they are in blue

i might have some arrows to allow for

volume

i might also have you know something to

allow for brightness or to change the

clock or whatever it is

but again that function key activates

secondary functions on the other keys

now the other key you need to be aware

of when you're talking about laptops is

the num lock key

notice this right here is the num lock

key and if you look below it

you'll see

all these numbers here

there's actually above numbers right

here as well what this does is it mimics

the number keypad on a regular 101 key

keyboard

so you press that num lock key and now

you have a little num key

sorry you have a little number pad right

there now the reason this is important

is on the test sometimes you'll see

a

uh

question that says someone calls the

help desk and has been typing on the

keyboard and some of their letters have

suddenly become numbers and they can't

figure out why well the reason is

they've hit that num lock key and so

it's

turned half of their keyboard into a

number keep keypad and so what you have

to do is make sure to turn that num lock

key off so that's really important that

num lock key i see it on the test very

frequently

the connector for a keyboard is what's

called a flex cable it's actually

similar to the cable we're going to see

when we talk about the display laptops

use and why it's a flex cable is this

cable right here

is actually

uh flexible

and it allows because the uh because of

how the computer moves and because of

how little space there is we don't have

enough space for very large cords or

very thick cords so it's a very thin

flexible cable and you can see it can

easily get jostled out of place which is

one of the things you want to check for

if your keyboard stops working

completely

now here's a trackpad talking about

pointing devices the trackpad sits at

the bottom underneath the keyboard and

allows you to use your finger to move a

mouse now you notice in this trackpad i

actually have two buttons

and some trackpads will actually have

these buttons in place of a mouse

so while a pc uses a mouse a laptop

might use a touch pad or a track pad

later on we're going to talk about

eraser heads as well

and the two buttons may take the place

of a mouse's button so you can see here

this is for your left click and here's

for your right click and generally what

will happen is you use a four finger up

here and use a thumb down here this

trackpad also happens to have this for

scrolling so you can scroll the page

really easily if you don't have one of

those scrollers on a mouse

now don't forget sometimes on a trackpad

if we don't have these buttons for

instance we can actually just

tap on the trackpad again and so the

click is replaced by a tab so i tap once

and that allows me to open i tap twice

that's like a double click or a double

tap

so touchpads can be tapped or double

tapped some touchpads can actually

recognize whether you're using one

finger or two fingers if you're using

one finger it knows you're doing a

single click

or rather a left click and if you're

using a two fingers it can tell you

using a right click apple famously

invented this and has invented a lot of

other multi gestures thanks to the ipad

that they use on their track pads that a

lot of other manufacturers are using so

it's just important to note that

sometimes using two fingers or three

fingers or even four fingers can have a

different effect on some of these track

pads depending on the manufacturer

now these can be replaced but as you can

tell they're sort of integrated here

and so that's very rare and it's not

something we're going to see quite a lot

now i just want to show you there's

another use for a track pad right here

this is a small track pad on a

blackberry and you can actually use your

finger to navigate the blackberry

so this looks like an eraser head now

eraser the reason it's called an eraser

head it's also called a track point is

because it looks like the top of an

eraser and what you literally do is

press this

one way or the other to move the mouse

and depending on how you hold it you can

do that you can also sometimes click it

and if you hit it it'll actually uh

click just like a mouse would

here's a

another outside version of it you can

see that eraser pad in there now eraser

head rather now sometimes what happens

with the eraser head is they will get

worn down after time you'll notice also

the reason i like this picture is you

can see the buttons right here for use

with that eraser head

so i can move my mouse with my

forefinger and i can click with my left

or right finger you can also see it as a

track pad i'm sorry you can click with

your thumb or one of your thumbs

you can also see the trackpad right

below it and there's probably buttons

below that so this actually has both

features

a lot of laptops now have sort of done

away with one or the other it's all up

to personal preference too

finally we see a lot of stylus as a

digitizer a stylus as you can tell is

actually just like a pen that you can

use with your computer now this is a pen

a stylus being used with an ipad it

looks like right but there are also

computers laptop computers that allow

you to use styluses as well

and these allow you to

basically write on the computer

now you can also use them

as a pen to tap as well

so not only for writing but also for

tapping but generally speaking you're

going to get a laptop that has this

feature if you're going to write

now this is either going to be used on a

touch screen device or on something

called a tablet pad which generally

connects the computer via a usb drive

usb port

and allows you to write on the screen

without actually touching the screen so

it has like a large

space and you can write all over it

moving your mouse around and that's

basically

how i'm able to annotate these videos

now depending on your usage someone who

does a lot of drawing for instance is

going to have a more expensive tablet

pad because the tablet will be able to

recognize the different variants in

force they're placing on the pen so they

can shade for instance something in if

they're coloring something at a very

high force or a low force

these are widely used in tablet pcs pdas

and also

handheld computers nowadays

now in some cases it has to be

calibrated these pens have to be

calibrated which means

you'll probably given several x's on the

screen

and you're asked to tap the x with the

pen and the reason you need to do this

is the monitor and the computer need to

line up with one another okay so

sometimes when you see styluses on the

exam it does ask you

how do you what's best something special

you have to do with the stylus or with

the writing tool and that's you have to

calibrate it ipads you don't have to do

this android devices sometimes you do

and a lot of laptops you purchase that

have uh writing capabilities you will

have to calibrate as well

okay so now we've talked about keyboards

including the layout of the keyboard

which is different when you have those

function keys

uh and or

the num lock

those are the two ones we really need to

pay attention to we also have the

connector which is a flex connector

okay we also talked about different

pointing devices including the track pad

which means you're going to use your

fingers

a track point or eraser head which is

that little

plastic thing that's in the middle of

the keyboard and then a stylus which

again the important thing here is you

have to calibrate it generally speaking

so now that we've talked about all of

this stuff all this external stuff let's

get into some of the more intricacies of

a laptop computer and talk about some of

the uh internals that make it as well as

some of the special considerations that

go into laptops

[Music]

laptops video and sound

so now we've discussed some of the input

devices that make a laptop different

from a desktop computer let's talk about

the output device which is a little more

intricate and a little more internal to

the laptop since

making the monitor smaller was one of

the first keys to allowing a laptop to

happen also we don't have an external

speaker

or anything external that is required to

allow the laptop to work

so let's look at the video and sound

we'll start by looking at the video

specifically looking at the lcd which

also stands for

liquid

crystal

display

we'll look at the different resolutions

and we'll talk a little bit about what

resolution means if you don't already

know

that are available on a laptop

we'll look at very briefly what the gpu

is the graphics processing unit

and then we'll look at troubleshooting

video on a laptop now just as a note

we're going to talk more expansively

about

video and audio a little bit later on in

this course so some of the things we

touch on now we will touch on more in

depth later on as well

then we're going to talk about audio

including the integrated sound and when

we say sound we don't just mean the

sound card we also mean the speakers

okay

since they both have to be built into

the laptop

we'll then talk about volume control as

well

all right

first let's talk about the lcd screen

the liquid crystal display and you've

probably heard this now because a lot of

tvs are being made with the same

technology

what it is is a flat panel display and

the way it works

is there is a layer of liquid crystals

sorry a layer of liquid crystal

solutions around two sheets of

polarizing material

so we have a

a light back here which we'll look at in

just a second and again we're going to

talk more about this in depth

then we have

our liquid crystal solution

there are two sheets that it's around

different polarizing materials so it's

doing different things to the

to the electronics here

and then

we have the color filter allowing it to

actually create

images

now if my drawing doesn't clarify things

for you that's okay and you don't really

need to know it in depth for the a plus

exam i'm just giving you a brief

overview and again we will talk about

this more in depth later on

now it connects to the motherboard by a

flex ribbon cable and if that sounds

familiar

it's because that's the same sort of

cable that's connecting the keyboard

to the motherboard alright and the

reason we need a flex cable here is

because again look if this is going to

fold over

and close something in there needs to be

flexible this also means that this cable

is a single point of failure meaning

it's easy for it to

you know get destroyed very easily

now the lcd is lit by what's called a

cold cathode fluorescent lamp which is

basically a bulb nowadays we also are

going to see them lit by led powered

all right we'll talk about that more

when we get into video and audio but the

cold cathode fluorescent lamp is also

referred to as

or the led actually whichever one it is

is called the backlight and we'll talk

about that in just a minute because

that's a piece that also goes bad pretty

quickly

now the lcd backlight

is driven by a high voltage inverter

circuit called the inverter board so if

the inverter board goes out the back

light goes out just important to know

this vocabulary but basically that

voltage that high voltage inverter

supplies power to the lamp to the

backlight the backlight allows

all the crystals and everything to show

an image

otherwise the image is very dim

this is prone to failure

and if the inverter fails like i just

said the display will go dark so if you

ever have a question on the exam that

talks about

the display going dark

then your problem probably is that the

inverter board is bad especially if you

can hook up an external monitor the

external monitor works it means your

video card is fine the the display

itself is not okay so again that

external monitor should work properly

another way to test that the inverter

has gone bad if you shine a flashlight

straight at the screen you can generally

make out an image or the image is very

dim to begin with this means that there

is an image being provided from the

graphics card the problem is it just

can't be lit

another liquid crystal display here a

little newer

just pointing that out

now a lot of these are what called thin

film transistor

displays tft displays it's basically

commonplace now and what this is is an

active matrix display meaning that they

run at one resolution

okay now the resolution is the amount of

pixels

that this monitor can show

and it's generally shown in a sort of uh

high you know width versus height

but we'll talk about that just in a

second for every pixel there are three

transistors generally speaking rgb red

green and blue and out of that

combination they can create just about

any color you can think about

now this is contained the tft is

contained within a flexible material

behind the liquid crystal crystal

material

and so these transistors are what really

provides color

to the lcd the crystals

now this uses a low amount of power okay

so one of the benefits here is it

generates a small amount of heat which

is very important when we're dealing

with a limited amount of space

this causes little in the way of

interference and emissions again we have

so many things going on here i don't

need the emissions and electronics and

magnetic fields coming from this monitor

to be interfering with everything here

okay again this is a very

broad overview this is not something you

really need to know for the exam

now the display uh controls so

brightness for instance

can be adjusted generally on the

keyboard and there's generally

some function keys where we just talked

about those up here that allow you to

control the brightness

on some older laptops there might also

be a sort of knob generally speaking

you're not going to see that though now

the resolution like we just said is the

amount of pixels per area this is

generally measured in a horizontal

uh

by

vertical measurement

so for instance

1280

by

720

i'm going to show you some of the most

popular

resolutions here

these are important okay the only reason

i'm we're showing you these now

is because they might ask you

what the resolution is for one of these

standards and again these are tft

display standards so these are generally

set

and you can see over here

how the aspect ratio

matches the horizontal by vertical

basically what happens is this is a

a ratio so if i just took out that colon

and i put in a dividing line for

instance

16 divided by 9 is going to equal the

same thing as 1366 divided by 768 and

these are all widescreen ratios we very

rarely nowadays see full screen ratios a

full screen ratio would be around a 4.3

and that's what old televisions used to

use not anymore now what we have are

most of these widescreen and if you buy

a television that's generally we're

going to have the benefit is more

resolution more pixels means that it

looks like you can put more on the

screen that's because every pixel can

hold more information

uh it's smaller and so

everything looks smaller and then you

can fit more on there so obviously this

is a slightly uh

higher resolution than these two

the graphing the graphics processing

unit and again we're going to talk about

this a little more as well is a

processor specifically for the video now

the reason we have to have a processor

specifically for the video is because

video cards have become so advanced

nowadays that they were stealing so much

energy uh from

uh the

processors uh that we that

excuse me from the processor the cpu so

they had to start putting gpus on to

the video card or in this case onto the

laptop motherboard because it's also

integrated right this is also small that

it's impossible to sort of put a whole

bunch of different devices so they start

integrating it all into the motherboard

it's very hard therefore to upgrade the

graphics card on a laptop

it's part of the chipset and it utilizes

ram as shared memory shared video memory

rather so what it'll actually have is it

either has ram with the computer or the

video card has its own memory we'll talk

about that a little bit more later as

well uh to feed the gpu and to act as

sort of a buffer so that way when you

see stuff it is clear and if you start

seeing something that's really jerking

or it's um

it's not giving you a clear display it's

taking a very long time to to give you

visual information it could be that your

cpu and your ram are fine but your gpu

or your video card are actually slower

than you need on a laptop that's going

to happen more likely than on a desktop

and one of the things they've been

working on

quite frequently actually is trying to

make better video graphics on a laptop

so some video issues that we have on

laptops specifically that i've seen on

the test if the backlight has failed you

want to verify that it is an inverter

backlight issue like we talked about

you can shine a flashlight at the screen

and if you see an image the inverter is

bagged that's because the image is being

created it just can't it's just not

bright enough

if nothing shows when you do that

then your display flex cable might be

loose or disconnected or alternatively

the graphics card has gone bad one way

to test if the graphics card has gone

bad

is to plug in an external monitor the

external monitor works then you know

it's the monitor on your laptop that's

gone bad

if the external monitor doesn't work

then you know

the graphics card itself has actually

gone bad

now there are two types of lcd damage

that's damaged to the screen itself

there's minor damage that could be

caused by the keyboard scratching

against the display and generally what

happens is if you have

a laptop it has little sort of risers

and what that'll do is make sure that

there's a space between the

monitor the lcd and the keyboard and

sometimes what happens is those wear off

so if those are worn down or missing

what you can do is simply attach new

ones or replace ones to avoid further

damage

now if you have major lcd damage such as

a crack in the screen or a portion of it

not displaying properly maybe because

you dropped it you can always replace

the screen however it might be

cheaper to just buy a new computer at

that point

you might also see dark and irregular

lines running the width of the display

so you might see you know weird lines

sort of popping up uh generally speaking

once you get to that if it's not a

driver issue which it very rarely is

you're gonna have to replace your screen

obviously if there's physical damage to

it uh you're sort of sol at that point

and then of course you have to replace

the screen which is your only last

option

okay we've talked about video we talked

about lcd liquid crystal displays we

talked about the resolutions we talked

about the gpu the graphic processing

unit and again i just want to point out

with resolutions we're looking mostly at

16 by 9 or 16 by 10 which are both wide

screen resolutions and then we looked at

the most common troubleshooting steps

with video on a laptop so now let's talk

about the audio very briefly

uh the sound card is often integrated

usually through a mini pci card remember

pci is that bus we have on our computer

a mini pci card is simply a much smaller

form factor of that and there's usually

also integrated speakers so again it's

not very easy to upgrade the speakers or

the sound card once you've installed it

it's usually equipped with a speaker

headphone out connector a line in

connector and a microphone connector

again these are all generally eighth

inch and very small sometimes you'll

have only two so you won't have the

lighting connector you'll just have

microphone and the speaker or headphone

um

sometimes the connectors are integrated

for instance on your if anyone has an

iphone or if you have an android or a

lot of smartphones nowadays they use the

same um

the same eighth inch jack for the

microphone and for the

headphones of course you have to make

sure you buy a headphone microphone

combination that works with that and you

have to make sure the computer is

working with it too apple macbooks and

macbook pros as well

macbook airs also

share this connector

sometimes you'll also have an ieee 1394

again that's firewire connector the

reason i mentioned that is specifically

because of camcorders

for hardware volume adjustment we

generally have new systems that have

buttons through keyboards

um so for instance you would hit the

function key and that would allow you to

raise or lower the volume with older

systems you probably had knobs or dials

you can adjust the audio

on

within windows here i'm in the control

panel you can see

right and the control panel items

there's generally a sound icon you can

go in and adjust the levels configure

certain things within there

here's that path

alternatively

there's usually at the bottom right of

windows and we'll look at windows a

little more there's an audio that goes

up or down

and you can click on that task bar icon

and you can move the

sound levels up or down without having

to use any hardware adjustments

i just put a note in here as well that

many sound cards have their own

utilities and their own drivers so

that's something important to keep in

mind

okay so now we've talked about audio

including integrated sound that's sound

cards and

speakers as well as the volume which is

generally going to be turned on

through keyboard

keyboard buttons or you can do it

through windows so again we talked about

video we talked about the liquid crystal

display

okay most of these are tfts

right which means they are

an active matrix is what that means

which means it works well at just one

ratio one active ratio one resolution

okay so we talked about those

resolutions

we looked at them most of them are 16 by

nine or 16 by 10 which are widescreen

you want to memorize that table which

you can also download aside from this

next to this video

most video cards nowadays have a

graphics processing unit gpu to take on

the burden of a lot of that graphics

processing

and uh troubleshooting video the biggest

thing you're gonna see here is that

backlight

or the inverter board goes bad

with audio we have integrated sound

generally through a mini pci card not

just for the sound card but also for the

speakers

and the volume can be raised or lowered

generally by the keyboard

or either from the control panel or at

that bottom taskbar icon

all right now that we've talked about

our video and audio and sound let's talk

about some more of the components that

are specific to laptops

[Music]

laptops storage and power

we've discussed some of the more basic

things that go into laptops the display

sound pointing devices keyboards etc now

let's get into the nitty gritty let's

talk about how we power and support

all the devices that are inside of these

laptops and how we store information

so we're going to talk about storage

devices

particularly frus

and that's what a storage device is it's

a field replaceable unit let me just

write that up here

it's a good a lot of stuff are field

replaceable units um

storage

specifically is fru or field replacement

units and this is a term we'll see come

back over and over again

we'll also look at hdd access how we get

access to the hard drive

if we need to replace it or upgrade it

we'll briefly retouch upon sata vs peda

which we talked about in depth in the

storage section but i want to talk about

how it applies here to laptops

and then we'll look at optical disks uh

cds dvds blu-ray etc

next we'll talk about power

including

laptop batteries which is a major

distinction between a desktop computer

and a laptop right the fact that they

can run without being plugged into the

wall thanks to this battery

we'll talk specifically about the

lithium-ion battery which is

also for short looks like lion battery

and this is the battery that most

laptops use nowadays

and then we'll talk about

troubleshooting batteries and the power

within laptops

finally we'll talk about fans which

relates to power

because obviously power causes heat and

heat can cause problems for the laptop

so first let's talk about what a field

replaceable unit is and storage is a

field replaceable unit this means that

it's something that can be quickly

removed from the system so it can be

done at the customer location it doesn't

need to be sent away or taken away the

entire thing doesn't need to be

disassembled

so for example

hard drives and memory are field

replaceable units now the reason they're

under storage right here is just because

it's the first field replaceable unit

we've really come to if i wanted to

replace the display or the keyboard in a

laptop it's certainly something i could

do and you'll find google searches

online that explain how to do that

however it's not something that can be

done very easily

uh hard drives memory on the other hand

you unscrew a certain

the back of the laptop for instance and

then you

insert the new hard drive or memory or

take out the old hard drive memory it's

something you can do at the customer

location you don't need a lot of special

tools to do it

cpus and motherboards on the other hand

you would need to disassemble the entire

thing in order to make that work so they

are not field replaceable units again

there are a lot of different things that

are field replaceable units and we'll

see it also in printers there are

certain things that are field

replaceable units when we talk about

printers um

for instance toner

however

with computers hard drive storage

though that is a field replacement unit

it is something we can replace fairly

easily and fairly quickly

so let's talk about storage uh the

problem when we talk about laptops and

hard drives is that they're more prone

to failure

because they're handled more roughly uh

for instance when you're carrying your

laptop you might bump into someone uh

unfortunately you might drop it uh it

has to be

sort of

be able to put up with more wear and

tear

and as a result we need to make

sure that the storage isn't going to get

damaged your hard drive is not going to

get damaged while you're moving it back

and forth

so this is part of the reason why

one bullet point that should be here

a lot of hard drives now are going from

being

hdds to solid state drives

now if i want to access a hard drive

most commonly there's a panel on the

bottom of the computer on the laptop

computer so you turn the laptop over you

unscrew it and then you can usually get

access to your hard drive

on some

computers it might be underneath the

keyboard

usually not so much because that

requires a little more removal and

sometimes uh i remember i had a dell

laptop for instance that you would could

just pull

the hard drive off from the side so it's

important to just know that you can have

access to certain laptop components uh

pretty easily they're not going to test

you this on the on the um

exam per se but it's still important to

know in case you're ever on site

working now when we're talking about

sata versus peta in a hard drive now we

know that peda

which is also could be called

ide

right

and that's parallel versus serial

communication

we know that that's sort of the older

connection for hard drives and that sata

is sort of the new one

most newer laptop hard drives therefore

are going to use sata and when i'm using

hdds here i just want to make sure that

we know i'm not just talking about the

mechanical hard drives although that is

theoretically what this refers to i'm

also talking about uh solid-state drives

which are becoming more and more used in

uh

laptops because they are not susceptible

to being bumped around for instance

also many like i just said

of these are hdds that use sata okay

so just reinforcing that now one major

difference between hard drives in a

laptop versus a desktop is that in a

desktop they're three and a half inches

wide now we talked about that we looked

at the bays

on a laptop they're two and a half

inches wide which is much smaller and

the reason they're going to be smaller

is because we have less space

now of course that's going to

cause some issues for instance it's

going to cause more heat so we're going

to have to make sure we have fans and a

lot of things to cool down the space

pretty effectively

now this is a just really quickly i just

wanted to show you this it's not going

to come up on the on the exam per se but

this is a 44 pin to 40 pin ide adapter

and this might be uh necessary if you're

using a two and a half inch pay to drive

rather than a sata drive uh

what will happen is

the paid driver goes in here the two and

a half one and then when you plug it

into the system it uses

44 pins so it's just depending on the

the one you purchase you might need an

adapter sometimes these are actually

built already in to the laptop for

instance the motherboard accepts 44 pins

most hard drives use 40 pins so it's

just something to be aware of again i

don't think this will be on the exam but

i want to cover all of my bases

let's look at optical disks for a moment

a laptop dvd or cd drive failing is

fairly common uh it's happened almost

every laptop i boned it might have

happened to one of the ones you've owned

by the way i just want to point out

remember we were talking about moving

hard drives from the sides look at these

you can tell these just sort of pop in

there's nothing on the sides here that

has any

information that's relevant to

allowing this dvd player to work all of

this stuff is on the back

all right so this literally slides out

and slides right in

you can tell this is a dvd rom

not rewritable this one is rewritable

just a little review for you

as a result of them

failing so often they're actually pretty

easy to replace as i just pointed out

so usually they just slide into the slot

on the front or on the side of the

laptop now notice these are all tray

loading okay remember we talked about

tray versus slot loading a slot loading

drive you're probably not going to be

able to remove as easily so that's just

something to notice if your laptop has a

slot loading drive for instance a lot of

apple devices have those it's not going

to be as easy to replace you're

generally going to have to send those in

so here's that tray the tray pops out

you put the cd on it clips on sort of

through there and you put it in it's

good to go

a slot loading cd drive it just has a

slit

in the side of the computer if you

imagine that that's the side and you put

the cd

i'll make it just a little bit bigger

a little bigger slit and the slit you

just kind of slide the cd in it captures

it and starts to do it they have those

on desktop computers by the way as well

um it really depends on the manufacturer

and on aesthetics more than anything

okay

so we've talked about storage devices

including field replaceable units

which is what a storage device is right

something that can be replaced easily in

the field we talked about how you get

access to hard drives generally from the

bottom of the computer sometimes from

the side just like you will the optical

disks we looked at sata versus peda

specifically we talked about that 44 pin

to 40 pin adapter sometimes that's going

to be necessary for a pay to drive the

other important thing here is they are

two and a half inches

and a lot of these now are solid state

drives because those resist the

onslaught

that laptops generally have to go

through

finally we talked about optical disks uh

optical disks of course cds dvds

blu-rays and how those are generally

pretty easy to replace because they go

bad so often so now let's talk about

power

of course when we're talking about power

with laptops that automatically goes to

batteries

laptops are designed to run either on

battery power or wall power and if you

go into windows and you go to power

options you'll actually see that you

have many different options available to

you and we'll look at those a little bit

later

generally speaking you have about

between two to five hours on a battery

some nowadays are getting to like 10

hours or they claim 10 hours

really depends on what you're doing if

you're watching a movie that's going to

take up a little more energy if you're

typing a document that's not going to

take a lot if you're not

running your wi-fi and you're not doing

a lot of extra stuff that that's really

going to help you out

now the ac adapter plugs into the ac app

outlet as we talked about and then

so if we have the outlet

goes to a big box the transistor

inverter all this stuff and then that

plugs into the laptop again this is the

ac power and this is the dc power and

the reason we have all this is now that

power supply is taken outside of the

laptop and allows us more space and less

weight

so the majority of the power supplies i

just mentioned is outside of the laptop

that's what makes it so mobile that's

one of the keys to actually making the

laptops mobile

now when we talk about batteries the

most common is the lithium ion sometimes

i like to refer it as the lion of course

uh it's not lion it's lithium ion and

the re the benefit to lithium ion

batteries nowadays and the reason it's

the most common is that there's no

memory effect on these batteries if you

recall what used to happen is you plug

up your computer or your cell phone or

perhaps if you remember cordless phones

and what would happen is after a while

let's say

let's say this represents the battery

charge

and i

continually

charge it at about

70 percent but what's going to happen is

that after a while the battery thinks

this is 100 percent and so it never even

tries to charge this white space it just

charges right up to here of course the

problem is i've just lost

a good deal

of my

possible power

the other benefit to lithium ion

batteries is that they don't have a lot

of discharge when they're not used some

batteries if you don't use them for a

while they start to lose power lithium

ions pretty much retain the power for a

good amount of time which is wonderful

by the way i just want to mention with

the memory effect here this is why it's

important to completely cycle out the

battery so let your laptop or your cell

phone or whatever it is drain the

battery completely before you begin to

charge it this is very difficult most of

us don't do that but

if you don't do that you're actually

limiting the life of your battery

all batteries of course because they

have chemicals in them and electronics

need to be kept at a certain uh

heat

cool i would they say they should be

kept between 50 and 95 degrees

fahrenheit i would actually say

95 is probably a little too much i would

say 50 to

70 degrees fahrenheit is probably better

95 they're rated too

okay now nickel metal hydride and nickel

cadmium these are the other batteries we

used to see a lot of we don't see a lot

of them anymore because specifically

they have that battery effect meaning uh

just like i said if you charge it to 50

10 times then eventually it starts to

think 50 is 100 and you just lost a good

deal of the um

possible charge you could have had

okay you will see questions on the test

that asks you which are the most common

and just remember it's the l lithium ion

finally these nickel metal hydrides and

nickel cadmium unlike the lithium ion

will discharge power when they're not

used okay so if you don't use it enough

it's going to go away

now we're troubleshooting laptop power

uh if the laptop's not getting power at

all there's a couple things we want to

check first of all check your

connections are we connected into the

wall is the wall connected to the uh the

transistor plug the outside power supply

and is that plugged into the computer

properly

you also want to check the laptop and ac

adapter leds so generally a little light

some place on the laptop that tells you

if it's getting a charge if that's not

lighting up then it's likely power is

not reaching the computer okay

if the charges and as soon as this

happens you can hold the cord and it'll

begin to charge but when you let it go

it stops charging that generally means

something's wrong with the dc jack or

the on the computer or the jack on the

power supply and generally it means it

needs to be replaced hopefully your the

power supply needs to be replaced excuse

me the cord and not actually the entire

laptop

you can also inspect this uh soldered

connections and cables uh to make sure

nothing's been frayed your cat hasn't

been chewing on it

and of course this is the most important

one

it has to be the right power adapter a

lot of people think oh i can just use um

the power adapter for my other computer

these are actually rated at specific

voltages and if you

use a different

um

if you use a different power supply

uh with a laptop that needs a higher or

lower voltage you could end up frying

the laptop or not providing the battery

enough charge and therefore you'll begin

ruining the battery

okay you can't swap them between laptops

as i said they work only at specific

fixed voltages

you can also check the battery this is

something else too important one thing

you might want to try is take the

battery out completely and plug the

uh plug the power cord in if the power

cord works when the battery's not in

then that's a clear indication

something's wrong with the battery if it

works when plugged in but not when the

battery's in or if it works when plugged

in but not when it's not plugged in then

you know the battery is probably bad

one thing that sometimes happens is you

remove the battery somewhat you used to

be able to remove batteries it's a

little more difficult to do that now uh

generally because you have to remove the

the casing outside of the laptop but if

the battery has been removed and it's

not fully inserted you want to check to

make sure it's locked in it has like a

little click

and that'll kind of ensure that it is

good to go

the other thing to keep in mind is

batteries are finite they have to be

replaced at some point they only have so

many cycles on them now a lot of devices

that you can't replace the battery on

say iphones um smartphones anything like

that

they sort of anticipate this is going to

happen

and so uh

you know they expect you to buy a new

one in two three years they figure you

don't need to replace the battery it's

gonna go bad at some point uh with

laptops you're probably gonna use them a

little longer if you're trying to get a

lot out of it and and you know then

you're really going to probably need to

buy a brand new battery or if it's under

warranty tell them you need a new

battery

i just want to point out some stuff

about fans this is an internal fan right

here

okay you can see it's probably right

over the cpu fans are important because

you have so much heat going on these

laptops you need to exhaust that hot air

and so this is why it's important not to

run your laptop while it's sitting on

let's say a soft cushion or soft blanket

you want to put it on a hard surface

that's going to allow the air to get out

of the system

fans are generally on the side on the

back of the laptop and on the bottom

generally not on the top because that's

where your hands are and not on the

display because that would just be weird

they can get clogged very easily and so

one thing that you uh will hear when

they start to get clogged is clicking

sound they get clogged with dust the

fans do and so what you want to do is uh

go in and just gently sort of remove

that dust generally with some compressed

air

that is

um

especially rated so it doesn't have

uh any electrostatic discharge you might

also hear high pitched noises which also

could mean that dust is getting in some

of the machinations of the fan itself

when you're troubleshooting fans and by

the way this is what's called a laptop

cooling pad you can put a laptop on it

and it actually blows air out the bottom

so this helps to cool laptops even

further this is usually not built on to

a laptop

if it gets clogged like i mentioned you

can blow compressed air through the fan

slot out of the computer not in so this

generally means having to open it up and

blow out it's important to do that

because you blow the you blow the dust

in you might just hurt another component

you can also use a light to see if

something's obstructing the fan

sometimes the air blows something and

you get a nice big piece of dust sort of

gets stuck in there a piece of dirt for

instance as well so it's important to

take a look your eyes are probably a

better indication of fan problems than

anything uh that the computers can be

able to run on its own

in the worst case scenario you replace

the fan

sometimes this is just isn't possible

though

so you might have to take it in or worse

come source even buy a new computer

so we've talked about power

laptop batteries specifically the

lithium ion battery which is the

important one you want to remember we

talked about troubleshooting power and

fans let's now just go over this real

quickly we talked about storage in a

very general sense we looked at fru's

which stand for field

replaceable

units this is any unit which is easily

replaceable

in the field all right so this would

include storage which is why it's here

or for instance memory

something that's not field replaceable

unit the cpu or especially the

motherboard you'd have to remove the

entire thing not very easy

and you can't carry it around with you

into the field

hd access generally you're going to get

access to your hard disk drive by going

up the bottom of the computer sometimes

from the side just remember as well

we're having a lot of solid state drives

in laptops nowadays as well

uh we're also using a lot more sata than

peda if you're using a sata forget in

both cases it's gonna be two and a half

inches but you might also have a 40 pin

to 44 pin

adapter

finally we're talking about optical

discs these generally go in the side and

they're easy to replace again they are a

field replaceable unit because

they break down so much we talked about

power specifically we looked at

batteries remember laptop batteries uh

will run the laptop generally from

anywhere to two to ten hours depending

on what you're doing the most common is

the lithium ion which is sometimes

written like this sometimes this extra

eye is dropped either way it's a lithium

ion battery it's different from the

nickel uh cadmium or nickel metal

hydride battery just remember that the

other important thing to know with power

is you never never never want to allow a

different uh power cord

to be plugged in

to a laptop okay

use the power cord that's built

specifically for the laptop

troubleshooting them that could be a

main issue you also want to make sure

it's locked in and again batteries are

finite at some point they're not going

to work anymore

finally the fans you're exhausting a lot

of heat out of a very compressed space

you can have a lot of dust it's

important therefore to get as much uh

clean these as much as possible blow

compressed air

out

okay

so you're gonna blow compressed air out

of the device uh so you're not uh making

it more dirty and worse comes towards

you might have to replace the fan or

even the unit

all right so now we've talked about

storage and power let's keep talking

about some more laptop intricacies

[Music]

laptops expansion devices and

communication

so we have these great small devices

that have a lot of the same

functionality as

large computers

but we also want to make sure that we

can expand them to meet our needs in the

future

just like we can with desktop computers

and that we're not limited to just

working on our computer we want to make

sure we can access the internet and talk

to other computers so i want to talk

about uh expansion devices as they

pertain to laptops specifically

not just usb and firewire which are also

expansion devices and then communication

and some of the communication devices

that are specifically in laptops

as well as on other desktop computers so

first we're going to talk about

expansion devices and there are a couple

external expansion devices meaning they

can be added without opening the

computer

those are pc cards otherwise known as

pcmcia cards

we'll talk about those a bit older but

there's still some information on the

exam about them that might be useful for

you to have

we'll also talk about card bus cards

which most people confuse with pc cards

because they basically replaced pc cards

and functionality they look exactly the

same and use the same form factor

and express cards which are a completely

different form altogether

then we'll talk about internal expansion

devices meaning that we need to open the

laptop up and these are mini pci and

mini pci express just like on the

desktop we added this

express device that added some more

oomph to the

device itself

finally we'll talk about docking

stations which uh not only allowed us to

expand the functionality of a computer

but also make it easier for us to use

our computer as though it were a desktop

computer next we'll talk about

communications we'll talk about the most

basic form of communication ethernet

which just about every laptop has

nowadays

and when we're talking about ethernet

that is a a lot of people confuse

ethernet being the wired cord versus the

wi-fi

ethernet is actually the

the technology behind how the network is

communicating so we're going to look not

only at

ethernet wired but also

uh ethernet from a wi-fi standpoint okay

we'll then look at bluetooth

which is of course a newer technology

and not so new i guess it's been around

for a while now but its uses are

becoming more and more ubiquitous

we'll look at infrared or infrared used

to be used a lot more the kind that

you're seeing with your remote control

cellular wan

which of course is becoming bigger and

bigger now with smartphones and not only

that but with verizon 18t all these big

companies starting to port over to not

just doing selling you minutes and text

messages but selling you data as well

finally we'll look at the oldest

communication device that used to be on

desktop computers and on laptops the

modem which used to allow you to dial in

of course we don't see that much anymore

except on the a plus exam

all right so let's start by talking

about the pc card otherwise known as the

pcmcia card um

in addition to the other expansion

devices so the most common types is i've

already mentioned the pca pc card

card bus which looks exactly like the

pcmcia card and the express card now

there are a couple things that join all

of these devices

first of all they are hot swappable what

i mean by hot swappable is you can

remove

or install the device

without powering off okay

so if i wanted to add something

internally to my computer say my desktop

i need to turn it off unplug it make

sure i'm not going to do anything to

hurt the esd

however with

these devices external these external

expansion devices we're talking about pc

card card bus express card you can add

them or take them out of the computer

out of the slot without having to do

any turning off of the computer while

the computer is

hot per se okay

now

these devices can be used to do a lot of

different things they can increase

memory

add functionality let's say adding usb

drive usb ports or firewire ports where

there weren't any before

they can also increase storage

not by just plugging up a usb drive but

actually the card itself can have extra

storage on it and finally they can add

networking not just for an ethernet port

or wi-fi ethernet but even for say a

cellular wan you can buy

a pc card or you used to be able to buy

a pcmci card or card bus card that

allowed you to connect to the cellular

network nowadays that's mostly done

through usb

first we're going to talk about the pc

card it is 16 bit width just like the

old iso was if you recall isa was 16

bits wide

it's 68 pins in connector which means

that that's 68 pins down there which is

where it plugs into the laptop

it has to be supported on two levels and

this is actually going to go for all the

cards we're going to talk about okay

first it needs to have card services now

by card services that means it has

drivers and that it has a the computer

has system resources to allocate

so this is at the operating system level

now if we go a little deeper that's

what's going to be called socket

services that's at the bios level so

that means rather than just updating the

operating system i need to flash the

bios if i want to make sure that these

are going to work now most of the time

it's already supported you don't need to

worry about it on very very old laptop

systems if you were going to upgrade for

instance you might need to make sure

these are there

you also need to make sure obviously

that there are slots not only in the

laptop chassis per se but also in the

motherboard that's attached to it

now there are three different types of

pc cards this used to be on the a plus

exam quite a lot i don't know how much

it is anymore but i want to go over it

anyway

a type 1 a type 2 and a type three

okay

a type one is three point three

millimeters

a type two is about 5 millimeters

a little bit more sometimes 5.5

and a type 3

is 10 millimeters

the type 3 can contain

uh three type ones the type two can

contain generally two type

two type ones i know the math looks a

little off

but it can

due to

widths etc all right the type three can

also contain

two twos okay again we're not going to

see this a lot on the exam anymore this

used to be on questions a lot i think

they've finally gotten rid of them i'm

just mentioning them just in case you

see them on there that that's not a bad

thing to look at

the sizes here and that generally you

can fit two of these in there and two of

the twos and three

card bus is really what has replaced

mostly pc cards they look exactly the

same okay

except that it's now 32 bit width

instead of 16 bits wide

so essentially it is a pci card remember

a pci card you're going to put in your

desktop computer it's 32 bits wide

now they look similar to the pc cards as

i've mentioned but they are not

backwards compatible so you need to make

sure that the laptop has card bus

functionality and you can see right on

here it says card

bus i just want to show you quickly the

difference between the two

you can see one of these is a card bus

one of these is a pcmcia

and a couple things uh first of all it's

a little wider

you can see that there is a

a little area right here which is not

here although you can see it at the end

here

um and if you were to count these up you

would count them slightly differently uh

i think there's also a pin missing on

one of these although to my eyes at the

moment i can't see them

but you can see they look pretty similar

if you notice right here at the edge

we have slightly different

keying

okay

but they are different uh they're

completely different sources they don't

work the same together

all right now a card bus generally is

also going to be called a cardbus pc

card because it's basically replaced a

pc card

now um

express cards use a 26 pin connector you

can see that here

they are a separate technology

completely from the card bus okay and

they come in two different

formats they're not compatible with any

of the previous things they're not

compatible with card bus right they come

in two different formats either a 54

millimeter or a 34 millimeter wide

format uh you might have seen 34

millimeter wide formats on old apple

computers you might have seen the

express cards on other types of

computers

i just point them out so you see them

and so you know they're different i

don't see them pop up on the exam that

much and they've sort of gone out of

fashion all the cards have gone out of

fashion in recent years because of how

fast usb has become

we're talking about internal expansion

devices separate from these external

ones means i have to open up the

computer as you can see right here

now we have basically uh two internal

expansion devices mini pci mini pci

express

the mini pci has a max

data transfer weight of 133 megabytes

per second which

is isn't bad right and the game is

megabytes not megabits

mini pci or mini pci express doubles

that speed so uh we're going to see a

lot more of the express nowadays

it's used specifically the pci express

for ssds solid state drives that can

really make use of that pci express and

we're seeing them more and more and

other functions as well if it doesn't

need them it's not going to put them in

there but

that's beside the point uh it's hard to

sort of

spot a pci pci card in here it doesn't

really um have to do so much with what

is being

added or subtracted it has to do more

with the chipset and technology that's

inside and the real thing is it's mini

because it is smaller than the one in

the desktop that's really the main thing

you want to remember for the test

okay docking stations a docking station

expands the laptop to behave like a

desktop computer so you plug the laptop

into this docking station and suddenly

it acts like a desktop because it can be

plugged into all this other stuff

so it connects using a proprietary

connection on the bottom of the laptop

if you look at the back here i'm

circling it right now i'm actually going

to erase this just to give you a clear

view you can see there's a little

connector right here

that connector is a proprietary

connector created by this manufacturer

to allow their computers to connect on

the back of this docking station is

what's called a port replicator the port

replicator has many ports you can

connect devices to so you take your

laptop away you start to work on it you

come back you put it in the office and

automatically it connects up to a slew

of things

so there's the port replicator

which allows you to connect to

for instance a keyboard

mouse

uh

monitor

network devices and even power so by

just simply putting one connection

attached to this docking station you've

now allowed five six seven other

connections to be uh

automatically connected so you can see

how this is gonna save you time if

you're someone who has you know power

and this and that all plugged up you

just pop into the docking station and

you're good to go it lets you treat it

just like a computer in fact because you

can add a monitor and a mouse and a

keyboard you don't even have to open up

the um

you don't even have to open up the

laptop's display or use it sometimes

people have docking stations underneath

their desks

all right so now we've talked about

expansion devices including external

expansion devices like pc cards or

pcmcia cards the cardbus cards which

look exactly the same

and express cards

we also have internal

including mini pci mini pci express the

main thing with mini pci express is it's

going to be used with ssds because it

doubles the transfer rate and then

docking stations would have on them a

port replicator

which allows you to dock your laptop and

automatically connect it to a slew of

other devices

so now let's talk about communications

on a laptop

so

first we have our ethernet port

right and when we say ethernet this is

the physical ethernet port which is

again i'll say it one more time rj45

okay and so that's the wired port we

also have um

a wireless

wlan or wi-fi

uh generally built in an antenna is

built in some place to the monitor

generally speaking of a laptop to allow

it the best access to any of the signals

going on around it

uh the standard for this by the way is

called 80211

n or g or b we're going to talk more

about that when we get into networking a

lot later on okay but that is the uh

the code the standard

that allows

networking

many smaller laptops nowadays don't even

have this one they only have the

wireless and that's because more and

more places have wi-fi and so having a

physical connection isn't as necessary

and wi-fi is getting fast enough to

where it's not not always necessary to

have a wired connection

the

these are generally attached to the

computer using a mini pci card which is

internal or

one of the cards express card pc card

card bus etc although nowadays if it's

not built in you're going to add it with

usb that being said

i haven't found a laptop yet that

doesn't have wi-fi built in perhaps not

ethernet wired ethernet anymore but

definitely wireless ethernet

now bluetooth devices can uh

uh is a special

functionality we're going to talk about

it a little bit later a little bit as

well but it allows uh the laptop and any

actually any bluetooth device to connect

with other bluetooth devices such as

smartphones headphones i have a wireless

mouse that connects via bluetooth

and it creates what's called a personal

area network

so it basically creates its own network

that can connect other

bluetooth devices

okay

i point out this pan because it will ask

you on the test what kind of network

does a bluetooth create it's a personal

area network

most of these are

internally already built into the system

sometimes you can buy a little adapter

connects to usb generally speaking

though if you're going to get usb it's

already built on and we'll talk about

this more just as we already have

one important note is that you can use

bluetooth sometimes to tether your

laptop to your smartphone your

smartphone gets internet perhaps and you

want to use that internet on your

laptop computer what you can do is use a

bluetooth connection to share that

internet connection to your laptop

infrared or irda or infrared however you

want to call this that's this line of

sight connectivity that is required uh

and it works in short distances by the

way bluetooth works at about a 10 meter

distance we're going to talk about that

more in depth later but

infrared works at a short distance and

requires a line of sight it is the same

technology as remote control

so it has to be line of sight and we

don't see them a lot on laptops anymore

they used to be a lot more for remote

controls if you wanted to say

you know control a presentation nowadays

most people do that through a wireless

or bluetooth connection so you don't see

it as much anymore

as i mentioned replaced by bluetooth and

wi-fi

finally we have cellular wan

uh well not finally second to last we

have cellular wan which is internet

through your 3 or 4g cellular network

this is what you get with verizon sprint

att whatever your cell phone provider

you have

and this may be internal or it may be

added through usb or in this case a card

generally speaking nowadays you're going

to add it through usb that's when you go

to the store you buy a little usb plug

it plugs in and it allows your computer

to connect to

the satellite network the cellular

network

via this device

this may be called a wan card as opposed

to a cellular card so i'm just putting

that out there when is a wide area

network we'll talk about that in

networking i just want you to not be

confused if you see that as the

nomenclature on the test

finally modems

the old dial up connection

it's not seen as much anymore i didn't

even grab a an image of it because it's

hard to find

it can be external or internal uh

generally speaking nowadays you're not

going to see them built on internally

unless you have a specific system you're

purchasing specifically for it you can

add it externally but again with the

prevalence of

network cards nowadays we just don't see

them as much

so we've now talked about communications

including ethernet wireless and wired

bluetooth infrared or infrared cellular

wan and modem let's just go over

everything one more time okay we talked

about expansion devices including

external which means outside of the

laptop not having to open it up we

looked at pc cards those 16-bit cards

again there were type 1 type 2 and type

3 cards the type ones were probably

around three point three millimeters

the type twos are about five or five

point five

and the type threes are about ten

a cardbus card basically uses the same

form factor as a pc card but upset to 32

bits

and an express card is a completely

different functionality whatsoever

almost all of these have been replaced

by usb we still study them on the exam

because you might come across an old

laptop we then talked about internal

expansion devices including the mini pci

which is about 133 megabytes per second

transfer rate and the mini's pci express

which doubles that and is really going

to be used nowadays for solid-state

drives

finally we discuss docking stations

including the ever-popular port

replicator that is on the docking

station you dock the laptop onto the

docking station and then through a port

replicator it can automatically be

plugged in to a number of different

devices uh and you can have extra ports

that you didn't already have

we then discussed communications

including ethernet not just

wireless but also wired

nowadays a lot of laptops just having

wireless

we looked at bluetooth connections

for instance connecting a mouse or

tethering your smartphone

one thing i just want to point out about

wireless connections really quickly

while i'm thinking of it

don't forget

sometimes your wireless connection is

turned on or off

by a switch on the keyboard

okay

or on the side of the machine or

something you want to make sure

therefore

that if you connect

if you if you can't connect to a wi-fi

network and it was working at home let's

say that someone didn't accidentally

switch off the wi-fi connector on the

keyboard okay so just make sure that i

see that on the test as well

we talked about infrared or infrared

that requires a line of sight just like

your remote control

then we looked at cellular wan which is

like cell phone service generally

speaking you're going to add these with

usb nowadays some computers actually

have them built in

if they made a deal with a phone company

and then

modems which is the old dial up which we

don't see much anymore

so we've talked about expanding the

laptop we've talked about how it

communicates let's take one step back i

want to talk about cpus and memory some

of the really hardcore stuff with

laptops before we can leave laptops

behind for a bit

[Music]

laptops

memory system board and cpu

before we leave laptops behind having

already talked about

such things as power fans like we see

here

uh

pointing devices

docking stations communication and just

um you know

the monitor and the keyboard and all

that stuff i want to talk really quickly

and really briefly about some of the

internals

those really important components that

we started our discussion of a plus with

the memory system board and the cpu

so

we're going to talk about uh memory

specifically so dims or small outline

dimms we talked a lot about memory about

dims we even talked briefly about

sodiums but i want to remind you what

they are

uh the fact that the ddr one two and

three and the different

not just the speeds of those which we

already discussed but how those

immediately relate to laptops

i want to briefly discuss the system

board or the motherboard of a laptop

then uh the cpu central processing unit

whether it's mounted or socketed we'll

talk about the difference between that

is meaning is it built in or not

pga a pin grid away which we already

discussed something we didn't discuss

called a ball grid array which we see a

lot more in laptops

and then finally uh some of the sockets

that we see in laptops you won't have to

identify them by the picture but it's a

good to know nonetheless

so first of all let's talk about memory

when we deal with memory in a laptop

everything is exactly the same as in a

desktop except for the form factor which

is a so dim now remember dimms dual

inline memory module those were the main

uh

form factors of

ram that we put into a desktop computer

with a

laptop we need them to be a little

smaller so we have small outline dual

inline memory modules which just means

that the outside is smaller okay so

which is the smaller or maybe half the

size of a regular dim

you can see these dims decreasing in

size here

although i i'm not i don't want to say

for sure one of these is a so dim

i don't think actually any of these are

but

you can see that the size is getting

smaller and you can see how the form

factor is going to change

so

like i mentioned a smaller device a

smaller laptop smaller

less space

a smaller motherboard meant we had to

have a form factor that allowed for

smaller memory

now most laptops use ddr sdram right as

their type

so again the sodium is the form factor

ddr sdram is the type of ram

just like

desktops

just a reminder ddr2 is not compatible

with ddr3

even though they're both so dims okay so

only because you have a ddr1 or a ddr2

or ddr3 or nowadays ddr4 does not mean

it's going to be compatible with a

previous version so you have to make

sure whatever version your laptop takes

that's the version you buy

this is just a reminder of some of the

module formats here

okay again with ddr2 and

sorry ddr and ddr2 we have a 200 pin we

move that up to a couple more pins

there are different versions here

as far as and we talked about we take

this

right you multiply it

uh in order to get uh by eight in order

to get the speed and the um

megabits per second all right we talked

about that in the previous version uh in

in the previous discussion

on ram

so when we're installing and

troubleshooting memory on a

laptop one of the important things to

realize is that you have to check the

manufacturer guide for compatibility

before you purchase or install the uh

the ram

uh just like a desktop computer right

the motherboard has specific types that

it'll work with and specific types it

won't work with so you want to make sure

you check that before you go out and

spend your money

if the bios does not identify the ram

once you've installed it

the one thing you could have done is

just installed it incorrectly you need

to reseed it which means take it out put

it in again uh so that's one thing you

could do

the other thing is maybe you've put in

the wrong type of uh ram

if that happens though your bios

probably won't even come on you'll

probably get a fail to boot or you'll

get beeps in which case you can also try

reseeding or you might have some dirty

contacts something's not working and

there's no ram being read in the system

finally the memory itself could be wrong

generally speaking ram is very easy to

install if you can't do it

rather if something goes wrong when you

do it it's probably not your fault it's

probably the ram or the device or some

sort of electrostatic discharge problem

let's quickly talk about the system

board which is another name for the

motherboard a failure on the system

board is probably the worst thing for a

technician when it comes to laptops this

is because it requires a complete

disassembly of the entire uh laptop

everything is so integrated that you

have to remove everything well if you

have to do this i beg you to label

everything okay

over document label everything because

putting it back together is not as easy

as you think

the other thing is a battery on a system

board remember those little batteries

that run the bios has about a shelf life

of 10 years

so at some points you're going to have

to remove it

to get access to that battery you can

probably remove the keyboard and get

access to it on older systems

newer systems don't even have a battery

so uh this is a system board battery now

not a

computer laptop battery that's running

the entire thing

some laptops have a rechargeable battery

nowadays the newer ones just like i was

saying so you don't have to remove it

all right let's quickly also discuss the

cpus

they may be surface mounted which means

they're soldered on they can't be

upgraded or moved or socketed like on a

desktop computer meaning you can take it

out and add a new one a lot of them

nowadays are going to be surface mounted

because

a lot of them nowadays are going to be

surface mounted

because it requires less space

they either use a pin grid array or a

ball grid array

the ball grid array is similar to a pin

grid array except

if this was a pin grid away and remember

pin grid array means they're all in a

certain array all like pins

the ball

grid array

has

more like this

part of my terrible drawing so they're

like little balls and the balls hit the

contacts on the motherboard on the

system board and that's how the cpu

functions

so you can see either of these on a

laptop the reason sometimes you have a

ball grid array

less susceptible to bending of the pins

there are a couple different

common sockets i'm going to show you

pictures of them now socket m p g1 or g2

you won't have to recognize these for

the exam in fact most of the stuff in

this small video is not as important for

the exam except for the so dim part but

i just want to show you anyway

by the way

if the cpu fails you have to replace it

with an identical one same with the

system board although it's going to be

hard for you to find a system board

unless you are a technician working for

that company

so this is a socket m

a socket p doesn't look very different

if we just go back really quickly

i see a little bit of difference in the

keying here

the size in the center is probably a

little different as well

so again the keying here is a horizontal

instead of vertical

right

slightly different center

this is a socket g1 uh

the corners

again we have a different type of corner

here this is a little

more rectangular rather than square and

finally the g2 very hard to distinguish

these from each other that's why you

can't rely on looks you have to rely on

documentation

so

just to recap the important stuff that i

want you to remember here because there

was a lot of stuff i i just want to

rather there wasn't a lot of stuff not a

lot of it is in depth very important the

important parts again we talked about

memory

so dims what i want you to remember

about sodiums is the small outline okay

on a laptop you're generally going to be

using

a sodium

ddr

sdram by the way sometimes i've seen

sdram and ddr on the test if they think

sdram they're talking about an older

version of ram if you're going with ddr

that's what they want you to focus on

okay

with system boards the important thing

to know here is if it fails you're gonna

have to replace the whole thing same

with the cpu

generally speaking we're seeing more

mounted cpus rather than socketed

because they're smaller the pga is the

pin grid array

that's this

the bga is the ball grid array

so it has little balls

and then we talked briefly about some of

the sockets on laptops g1 g2m

don't worry about those you're not going

to be on the test okay all right so now

we've really discussed everything that i

think you need to know for laptops so

let's move on and get into

uh we've talked a lot about hardware

we'll come back and talk about some more

hardware later on but i want to get into

windows the windows operating system now

uh how you're going to interface with

the computer

[Music]

windows requirements versions and tools

so we've talked about all the hardware

stuff that goes into a computer now

we're going to talk about the operating

system and the main operating system

that you need to be familiar with is

microsoft windows i'm going to start

this

talking about probably the most boring

subject i can which are the requirements

that windows requires the different

versions and tools now this video is

going to be full of a lot of didactic uh

very sort of informational stuff i'm

going to try to point out the stuff that

i want you to remember

for the test specifically i was going to

be a lot of information covered

okay so what we're going to cover are

the xp minimum requirements uh windows

xp that is and

a plus requires that you know

information on three major operating

systems windows xp windows vista and

windows 7. so we're going to look at the

windows xp minimum requirements and then

the different versions of windows xp

although it's

i don't know 10 years old now xp is

still used a lot in the field and that's

why you have to know about it

we're then going to talk about the

windows vista minimum requirements and

then the different versions of that and

then the windows 7 minimum requirements

and the different versions of windows 7.

to my knowledge windows 8 isn't yet on

the exam although windows 8 is starting

to come out into the market

so you don't need to worry about that

quite yet eventually i'm sure we'll have

to update this to include windows 8 but

until then don't worry about it for the

exam

we're then going to look at

some system analysis tools that would

help if you're going to

upgrade or install windows on your

computer including the windows

compatibility center

uh the system information tool which

we'll talk about again and again

throughout our discussion on windows

and the bellark invite advisor which is

a third-party utility

that's been integrated into windows and

is good to know about

finally we'll look at some diagnostic

uh programs

that you can download from the internet

mostly for your own edification they're

not really going to come up on the exam

okay so first let's talk about the

minimum requirements for windows xp

now uh for the basic form of windows xp

you can see there are some very basic

requirements a 233 megahertz processor

which as you can imagine

is uh

is is you know

quite

light compared to what we have today 64

megabytes of ram 1.5 gigabytes of space

the requirements aren't that difficult

this is the reason a lot of people still

run windows xp it takes a very

minimal system and when we move over to

vista and then seven you'll see how

these requirements have really expanded

because the operating system demands

more resources it does require a cd

drive

or a dvd drive because that's where the

xp operating system files are going to

be installed from obviously a keyboard

and mouse we're gonna need those for all

of these operating systems uh some sort

of video adapter and a monitor in this

case it had super vga which at the time

was still sort of new uh a sound card i

wouldn't say was actually minimum

for xp but they listed it as such and

speakers are headphones to allow you to

listen to stuff through that sound card

now there are a couple different

versions of windows xp and there's even

more versions of the vista and seven

when we get to those

so we have windows xp home which is

designed specifically for home users and

the one thing you really need to know

about home and this recurs which is why

it's important to know is that it was

limited on its networking and security

capabilities so windows xp home the main

thing we'll talk about this more

networking was you couldn't

join a domain

meaning that if you had a business

domain you could not join it was only

allowed you to use it at home or with

work groups okay

we'll talk more about that a little bit

later

then we had windows xp professional

built more for the professional user it

was the most common version of xp in the

field it added the networking

capabilities uh it allowed you to log in

using a username and password that could

be authenticated at the domain level

we'll talk about more of that suffice it

to say

xp professional had more features than

home and allowed you to join a business

network

finally we had windows xp media center

which was developed specifically for

people concerned with audio and video

it allowed you to display it on a tv

this was when that was still sort of new

and it could be controlled remotely

using a remote control uh it was

specifically for videos and music and um

generally speaking it came pre-installed

on devices specifically made for media

functioning okay the important thing

here to know is that windows xp media

center

is for connecting to a tv playing dvds

etc windows xp professional the most

common version of xp in the field

especially

in businesses and it allowed you to join

domains

okay and that's the big thing we'll come

back to that when we talk about what

domains are when we get to networking

but the important thing to realize is

you could join a domain uh not just a

work group as you could in home

all right

that one was pretty simple the xb

minimum requirements and the windows xp

versions now we're going to get into a

bit more gets a bit more thick with

vista and seven

they wanted to market to many different

users and they also wanted to be able to

charge more money if you have multiple

versions of the operating system you can

have certain features in some and not in

others and that's going to allow you to

charge more or less

so first let's look at some of the

vistamin requirements and these change

depending on the version so i'm going to

talk about the requirements first and

then the version okay

for the windows vista home notice we

have 800 megahertz uh either a 32-bit or

a 64-bit processor now the processor

could go either way depending on

what your processor

used

remember that a 64-bit processor

right

allows you to have a file size of more

than four gigabytes 32 big bit couldn't

okay

you needed 512 of system memory as

opposed to 64. again we're still dealing

with megabytes nowadays we're into

gigabytes so this is just important to

notice look at this now we need some

graphics this is an important

distinction

the reason we need directx graphics and

we need 32 megabytes of graphics memory

it's because of something called arrow

which we'll talk about later but it made

windows vista more pleasing to look at

apparently and it was in direct

competition really to mac os 10 that

apple was putting out we now jump from

needing 1.5 gigabytes of space to 20

gigabyte hard drive with at least 15

gigabytes of space uh notice if you only

had a 20 gigabyte hard drive with 50

gigabytes of space you weren't gonna

have a lot of space for all your stuff

so this is important

you also needed a dvd drive now not just

the cd drive because there's so much

more packed onto the vista dvd of course

we needed internet capability that is

because with windows vista in seven we

started authenticating

windows

to prevent people stealing it and needed

some sort of audio output just like in

the previous version

now with the other versions of windows

vista other than just the home the basic

home we need actually a bit more okay

one gigahertz of processor speed one

gigabyte of system memory a windows

arrow capable of graphical card which

means that it had a directx not only

directx

but also means

but also means that it needs look at

this 120 meg 28 megabytes of graphic

memory nowadays we're dealing with

gigabytes so that's not really a lot

we have a much larger hard drive

40 gigabytes as opposed to 15 gigabytes

we also have an external dvd ro drive or

an internal just like with the previous

version again internet and audio okay

what you need to notice here is just

look at how much more resources these

advanced more advanced

versions of windows vista require

now the different versions let's there

are a couple more than an xp

we have home basic which we looked at

the first thing then home premium so now

we have two different versions of home

we have a business we have an enterprise

and then we have ultimate

now ultimate as you can imagine

it sort of has everything all of these

other ones do

business is going to kind of relate to

xp professional so i just want to point

that out

if you ever get asked the question about

what version of windows has x y and z i

generally say go for the

latest and greatest version because

that's going to have

everything in it right usually speaking

if it's a cheaper version like a home

home

basic or home premium it's not going to

have as much as ultimate so if they're

asking you a question about what has

something ultimate's going to have all

of it xp home won't so that's just sort

of a tip to help you get through the

test

so first let's look at um windows vista

home basic it's budget conscious it's

cheap it has uh for instance the windows

firewall parental controls

photo gallery

movie maker and that's about it it

doesn't you know obviously you can do

everything you need to do but it's not

going to allow you to do advanced

networking it's not going to let you

have advanced encryption

if we look at that in comparison to the

next version of windows home

notice i have to start higher because

there's more features it adds hdtv and

dvd authoring so in home basic you

couldn't make dvds it has some games has

some support for mobile and tablet pcs

allows you to use projectors and other

displays

allows you to schedule backups you can

have peer-to-peer network connections

okay oh if you don't know what that is

basically allows computers to talk

directly to each other

and uh it can support

only one

cpu but multiple cores

so you might have hardware that needs

the home windows vista home premium

support

i don't know many people who would go

out and buy windows vista home basic

they were probably provided with it on a

computer they purchased

now if we compare that to the next

version

windows vista business we're going to

see a couple other things this is really

targeting the business market just like

professional was

it includes all the the business of the

features of home basic except it doesn't

have the parental controls uh the reason

it doesn't have parental controls is

they figure your business you don't need

them

it can join

a windows server domain again just like

professional could in windows xp and

this is really important it has a whole

bunch of other stuff here i'm not going

to go over because frankly it doesn't

matter but you do want to notice this

encrypting file system

if you're anything less than business

you can't encrypt your data which means

if someone steals your hard drive they

can generally get access to all the data

on it and they can read it

with the windows vista business you can

encrypt that with a password

okay there's also remote desktop

services for instance allowing people to

remote into their computer from home

and a couple other things including

supporting up to two physical cpus so

you can see how it's starting to add

functionality

when we get into the next version

windows vista enterprise this is really

targeting to an enterprise segment so

not just a small business but to a very

large company that can license this out

multilingual user interface packages

meaning if you have a you know office in

france in an office in israel and an

office in canada and an office in

america and an office in india you can

use all these different languages it

adds what's called the bitlocker

service for drive encryption which is

the encryption service in windows

it is not available to purchase okay the

only way to get it

is through microsoft a special deal with

microsoft directly which is sort of

important you can also have access to

virtual machines which is something

we're going to talk about later

basically allowing you to have virtual

versions of computers on your computer

it also supports a lot more ram than the

other version did

and of course allows up to two physical

cpus okay again the difference in

enterprise and business business is

really looking at the business user

enterprise is looking at an entire

company

finally we have ultimate

as the name implies windows vista

ultimate

combines the features of everything it

allows you to do just about everything

you want

okay so we've looked at the vista

minimum requirements and the windows

vista versions again when it comes to

these versions i know there's a lot of

them there's a lot of information i

don't want you to memorize all that

information that's not going to be

necessary what you want to be able to do

is spot when they give you a multiple

choice question which version has which

the only difference

the thing that home has that this did uh

the business doesn't

is the parental controls what business

has that home doesn't is domain

and

uh ultimate has everything okay so

ultimate if you have a question on the

test i generally found ultimate to be a

good question a good answer

all right so let's look at seven now

with windows 7 i now need one gigahertz

or faster

uh cpu

one gigabyte of ram at least

16 gigabytes of space which is slightly

more i still need the directx

driver i still need those good um

graphics cards okay so that's really

important here

with ver and of course everything else

is exactly the same i need a mouse i

need all that stuff as well okay

with the different versions i have a

couple now i have even more versions i

have the starter version instead of home

basic i have the home premium i'm going

back to the professional which is just

like business

okay we have ultimate

and we have enterprise just like in

vista a lot more similarities here let's

take a look at them really quickly

so windows 7 starter edition contains

the fewest features it's just like home

basic it's only available in 32-bit not

in 64-bit it doesn't include windows

arrow which we're going to talk about

later on so you can't get fancy graphics

it also has a

very basic desktop wallpaper and visual

styles you really can't customize it at

all and the only reason people have

starter edition is it came on their

computers available pre-installed and

you say hey i want to do more on windows

i'm going to pay extra so in some ways

it's really a business ploy okay

then we went to home home is to the

major home users okay

it has some windows arrow options some

geographical activation restrictions

it's really basic it doesn't allow for a

whole lot

then we have windows 7 home premium

which contains a few more features

like the windows media center we saw

windows media with xp it also has

windows it has a windows arrow so now i

have some cool graphics to go along and

multi-touch support so if i'm using a

track pad and i'm using two fingers or

three fingers it's going to recognize

the difference notice now i not only

have starter i also have home basic and

home premium so what they're really

trying to do is incrementalize this so

they could charge more for different

versions

then we have windows 7 professional

which is targeted more towards

enthusiasts and small business owners it

includes all the features of windows 7

we're just adding to it now i can add

domain support which is an important

feature that's the one that's really

going to come up

i can be a remote desktop server which

means other people can remote into my

computer from

someplace else

location where printing which means it

will

automatically recognize printers nearby

encryption is added just like in the

previous ones i have a presentation mode

when i'm giving presentations and this

is important windows xp mode which we

will talk about which allows you to run

a virtual

not a real not a hardware but a virtual

version of windows xp on the windows 7

okay

next we move up to windows 7 enterprise

just like windows vista enterprise this

is going towards the enterprise segment

you have to have a contract to get it

not everyone can get it it's only sold

through volume licensing i get

automatically these multilingual user

interfaces the bitlocker and drive

encryption uh some other stuff like unix

at unix application support which isn't

very important for you to know about but

it basically adds more enterprise

features

um

diskless pcs meaning that i'm running

thin clients devices computers that

don't have a lot of

capabilities on the computer but

everything is remoted everything is

virtualized

again not available through retail

only through a business contract

finally windows 7 ultimate was just like

vista ultimate contains

everything right but instead of it being

only available to the enterprise user

it's now available to the individual

so you can ultimate you can

upgrade

for a fee

right you can do it online

so this is just important to notice

again ultimate's going to have

everything that vista doesn't i'm sorry

every ultimate's going to have

everything that the previous versions of

7 doesn't

just like enterprise

on to windows 8 or 8.1

which is the new addition to the

exam

xp has actually been removed which was

covered earlier however

because so many people are clinging on

to it because it works so well i've left

it in so

that's only there for information

minimum requirements you can expect to

be asked about this in the exam so note

them down and just keep reading over

your notes until it's awesome kim

needs one gigahertz or faster it run off

a 32-bit or 64-bit processor

it supports p-a-e-n-x sse2

to install a 64-bit operating system on

a 64-bit pc

the processor needs to support

cmpxcgh16b

prefetch w and lahf sahf

best thing is to

um

check your motherboard

and

the processor type but the types of

processor that your motherboard can

support

if you're thinking about upgrading

if you're obviously if you're running

microsoft on an enterprise network

you would normally have a microsoft

technical advisor a technical sales

advisor to help you screen all your

devices and give you uh the appropriate

advice

needs um one gig ram 32 bit or 2 gig ram

64 bit as a minimum these are by the way

you need 16 gig available hard disk

space or 20 gig if it's 64 bit

direct x9 graphics with the wd dm driver

wd dm version 1.0 or higher driver

optional to provide

touch input it requires a tablet or a

monitor that supports multi-touch and

generally speaking that's only if you're

using a tablet obviously for

presentations or marking

videos and such like

eight and 8.1 versions you've got uh

core

pro

enterprise

looking at core first it's the basic

edition for x86 and x64 architectures

everyday home use so your box standard

home user who's going to be surfing the

web

and doing a few document a few bits of

document creation that kind of thing

games and music desktop

uh apps like windows media player

built-in vpn clients remote desktop

clients can be used

your microsoft account login is

integrated into the operating system

so you can use um not only the computer

but microsoft online services such as

onedrive

if you move up to pro or if you choose

pro

it's a comparable comparable to windows

7 professional and ultimate

aimed at the small to medium-sized

business obviously it's got the

basic edition features

also includes

ability to join a corporate domain

participate in group policies and then

allow involvement in the workplace join

and work folders

lets your machine receive remote desktop

notifications

ability to use

hyper-v virtual hard disk booting

bitlocker and bitlocker to go

windows media center functionality as a

separate software package

and then onto the enterprise version

obviously you've got the premium

features

oh it's got the features of the other

versions

pro

you got access to enterprise features

such as um start screen control windows

to go creator app locker right bit

branch cache

direct access virtual desktop

infrastructure new version of windows on

it

so first we have something called the

windows compatibility center uh here's

the link in case you want to go there

it's kind of cool to check out

especially if you're going from xp to

vista or vista27 and it used to be

called the hardware compatibility list

basically what it tells you is it tells

you

hardware you have on your computer and

is it compatible with the newest version

of windows something you definitely want

to check out something we'll revisit

later on in the presentation

also the system information tool this

will tell you what's on your computer

you open the run prompt you can either

search for it or you type in msinfo32

you can type the exe you don't have to

this tool by the way is going to come up

a lot okay so this is going to do

information about your computer ms info

for instance um

what cpu it's running what memory i'm

going to show you a graphic of it on the

next page

also finally the bellark advisor good to

know about it's available um

for free right at this download spot and

then you would go to all programs and

download it and it's going to advise you

on what you would need to upgrade or

change in order to

um uh upgrade to a new version of

windows which is the only reason it's

mentioned i don't see it on the test a

lot but it is in the outline

really quickly here's an in uh here this

is how you what you would get to if you

typed in ms info 32

tells you a lot of information

the name of the operating system what

type you're running so this is an x64

which means it's a 64-bit

uh your bios version what kind of

processor you're running

etc etc gives you a lot of information

how much ram you have and so on and so

forth okay so this could help you before

you were going to install windows to

make sure you met all the minimum

requirements

finally i just want to take a look at

some self-booting diagnostic programs if

you're having a problem installing for

instance these are ones that you could

download off the internet so i'm just

going to list them up here

these would help

correct certain issues you're having

these are not on the test uh i just want

to point them out because perhaps you're

having issues booting your computer or

you want to check your computer before

you upgrade it and here are some good

tools this is the only one that is

authorized by microsoft the microsoft

assessment and planning toolkit

you'd download it you follow the

information on there and it'll help you

determine what operating system you can

and should upgrade to

so now we've talked about the system

analysis tools including the windows

compatibility center previously known as

the hardware compatibility list the

system information tool

which is ms info 32

and the bellark advisor

and finally we looked at some

self-booting diagnostic programs i

thought you might like to know about for

your own edification

so again we looked at those xp minimum

requirements the different xp versions

with xp we only had home

professional

and media

when we get to vista

one of the things with the requirements

that i see a lot is you have to have the

capability of arrow okay which is

directx

and perhaps 64 to 128 megabytes of ram

on the graphics card that's just

something i see pop up on the test

um

the different versions you have don't

forget i'm just going to draw a line

over here we have different versions of

home sometimes a home basic and then a

home

premium

we generally have a professional or a

business

there's also an enterprise version

only available to companies you can't

buy it individually and then ultimate

which gives you every feature okay and

that goes for both vista

and seven

then we looked at the system analysis

tools like we just talked about the

windows compatibility center tells you

what hardware and software is compatible

with which versions of windows the

system information tool which tells you

what's running on your computer

the bellark advisor which will advise

you

if you download it on how to

on what um version of windows you can

operate and then i gave you some

self-booting diagnostic programs you

could run including um the microsoft

assessment toolkit if you um uh the

planning toolkit if you wanted to

upgrade

now that we've gotten this sort of

boring part out of the way let's

continue on talk a little bit more about

windows uh the windows operating systems

how to install them how to troubleshoot

them and how to navigate through them

[Music]

windows installation

while installing windows is fairly

simple and the process is pretty

automated there are some

interesting considerations to be taken

into account when it comes to xp vista

and 7

and there are some tools that can help

you out if you're going to be doing a

lot of installs so i want to look at

installing and upgrading to windows xp

including the xp installation methods

and then some very brief verifying and

troubleshooting following that we're

going to see a lot of

the same stuff and some different things

when we come to installing and upgrading

windows vista also going to talk about

some installation methods uh we're going

to take a brief array into the vista

installation process since you might get

some questions on the different phases

of the vista installation

and then upgrading to vista and finally

verifying and troubleshooting once the

installation is done

finally we'll talk about windows 7 the

third and final windows operating system

covered on this exam

we'll look at the installation methods

just like we have with the previous ones

we'll spend a little more time looking

at upgrading to windows 7 from the

previous version of vista

because

there were more versions of vista as we

just saw and so the upgrade becomes a

little more complex

so we'll look at those vista27 upgrade

paths

we'll also look at something called

anytime upgrades something that's new

with windows 7 and then repair and place

upgrades

which also existed to an extent with

windows vista

finally we'll finish up with verifying

and troubleshooting a windows 7

installation

so let's start with windows xp

installing and upgrading to it and

there's going to be a lot of

repetitiveness here and this is a little

difficult to wrap your head around

without actually installing uh these

operating systems so if you do have a

chance i would recommend uh taking a

computer and installing xp

vista and seven if you can't have easy

and quick access to them

the first thing you want to do always

and this we're going to see this on

every single one of these is determine

which edition you want to run and then

confirm that the computer is compatible

with that edition now with xp the

compatibility uh the minimum

requirements are fairly low as we

remember and so you're probably not

going to have any problem if you want to

install any xp on just about any

computer

we also want to decide on how you're

going to install

windows xp whether from a cd

uh booting to a floppy and then

installing from a cd as an image or over

the network we'll talk more about these

when we get into windows vista and then

windows 7 since they are pretty much the

same but one thing to note is that we're

going to be using a cd with windows xp

and then

what's this floppy to cd well in some

cases

uh the bios and older systems did not

support

a uh

booting straight to a cd you had to boot

therefore to a floppy disk and then uh

load up the drivers for a cd driver

for a cd drive and then install from a

cd

an image something we'll talk about more

and more basically would be used during

a rollout

a rollout would be for instance uh i'm

installing xp on a thousand computers

and what this would be is you

install windows on one system

you customize it to your liking

and then you basically take an image of

that entire system so when you install

it onto a different computer

you don't have to choose all of the

different settings etc we'll talk more

about that a little more in depth when

we get to vista in seven

finally you can install over a network

which is going to be useful in

enterprise settings where you don't want

to have to carry around the media with

you basically the computer boots off of

and installs from a network server and

it's not something you necessarily need

to do at home but it's definitely

something that would be done uh in a

business setting

now once you complete uh the clean

installation

or the upgrade uh now what you're

upgrading from in this case is generally

you know a windows 95 uh so

or windows 98 rather so i'm not going to

go over that uh by the way i just want

to mention a clean installation versus

uh

the upgrade a clean installation means

that you erase everything from the

computer

and then you install windows from

scratch this is different from an

upgrade where uh the computer takes or

the operating system takes settings

software uh etc your data from the

previous installation and ports it over

we'll talk more about that a little bit

later as well

so when you're testing it one thing you

want to do is attempt to navigate

through windows so go to the start menu

try to access some things

access some certain administrative

functions whatever you just want to test

to make sure everything is working

correctly

you also want to connect to the internet

if that's something that you're doing

and generally nowadays you are so make

sure the network is working if it's not

it might be that the installation was

fine but your networking is not good but

connecting to the internet to the

network is always something

important since nowadays almost every

computer is going to be connecting to

the network

you also want to confirm that windows is

working normally

generally by updating the system so you

go to windows update and we'll talk more

about windows update

a little later

make sure you have the latest service

packs etc we'll talk about all of that a

little bit later um but you want to make

sure you can do that if you can't uh

you might have an issue and you might

have to reinstall and sometimes that

does occur now if the installation fails

there are a couple things you can check

one you want to verify you met the

minimum hardware requirements uh did did

you have 64 megabytes or whatever it was

of ram did you have 233 megahertz

processor in most cases windows xp

you're not going to have a failed

installation because of minimum hardware

requirements uh

you want to make sure however that there

aren't any hardware conflicts if you

have a really old something in your

computer perhaps that very old thing is

causing a conflict that doesn't allow

the installation to complete

more than likely

you either don't have enough disk space

or the installation media is bad

so

you know cd was scratched the image you

downloaded off the internet was not

complete this is usually where the

problem is going to lie

mostly because especially with xp

because the xp minimum requirements are

so low that it would be difficult for a

hardware problem to occur now when we

get to vista and especially seven it's

very possible that you're going to see

in the field some systems that are not

up to date let's say with what xp

requires

all right so that was really quickly

much quicker than we're gonna see with

vista in seven uh the installation and

upgrading of windows xp some

considerations uh the installation

methods and then verifying and

troubleshooting and i just wanna say if

um if we were sitting in a lab together

uh i would take you through and we would

do an installation on xp we would do an

installation on vista we would do an

installation on windows 7. um

unfortunately in this case i can't be

there with you but uh the e the best way

to lock this information into your head

is to go through it the other thing to

remember is you're not going to have to

do an installation for a plus and since

the goal of these videos is to get

through a plus what i'm what i'm trying

to do is hit on the pertinent

information so although

this is very

book

sort of heavy in the way that there's a

lot of text i want you to understand

that that's because that's how the exam

is it's it's a multiple choice exam with

very few images although they have added

more of that all right now let's talk

about vista the next operating system

that came around with windows

uh first just like with xp we want to

decide what version and determine the

computer hardware capability just as you

recall remember there was that

compatibility

website you could go to and the

compatibility wizard that you could run

okay so you want to make sure that for

instance you check the hardware

compatibility list

or the hcl

uh which will tell you what is

compatible with windows vista you also

want to decide on what method you're

going to install now

generally speaking you want to install

from a dvd and most computers are going

to have dvd players something to check

by the way is to make sure that you do

have a dvd player um you're not really

going to install from cd as much because

it require multiple cds okay

don't forget one dvd if you recall has

4.7 gigabytes of space one cd

has uh 80 minutes of

audio time or about 700 megabytes right

so

700 megabytes into 4.7 gigabytes we're

talking about six seven eight times as

much um

data so you're gonna have a lot of cds

to have the same stuff on a dvd um you

could also go from an image or from the

network again we'll talk more about

those in depth a little bit later on

when we talk about windows 7.

now just like with upgrades just like

with windows xp rather a clean

installation

means just like it sounds you've cleaned

off the hard drive you've formatted the

hard drive

and there's nothing else on it the other

option of course is to upgrade from

windows xp or earlier to vista now the

reason you might want to if you're doing

this for yourself you might want to

install to a clean install of course

you're going to make sure you back up

first

right so because otherwise you could

lose your data and it's always good to

just do a general backup in case you

forget to

save something

the reason you want to do a clean

install is what if you have a lot of

stuff on your computer you've been using

your computer for years and you've

accumulated all sorts of temporary files

and all sorts of um

weird files and things you don't

necessarily want all of those

to be sort of stuck

in your new fresh operating system so i

usually recommend a clean install if you

can if not that's okay then you do a

upgrade and what the upgrade does is

port over all of your settings and all

of your um

all your files

now before you start the upgrade you

need to check if the computer and the

operating system is compatible so let's

say i'm upgrading from xp to vista

what happens if i don't have the minimum

requirements for vista i only had them

for xp the other thing to realize is

that vista

is going to take more resources

from your computer

than xp so sometimes

um upgrading

to vista from xp might not even be worth

it if everything's working fine with xp

and you don't need the extra features

from vista leave it on xp it's a solid

operating system some people don't think

vista was very solid

if for some reason you need vista

because perhaps you want to install some

new software that doesn't support xp

that's when you want to upgrade but

realize upgrading an older computer to

vista that runs fine on xp might start

running sluggish and slow on xp on vista

simply because the operating system

requires more resources

when you're upgrading to windows vista

you do it the same way as a clean

install so you can reboot you choose

install

you just make sure not to delete

anything you can also do it from within

windows so all the settings application

all the data everything remains in the

system partition you're not going to

lose any data a clean install again

you're going to format and delete and

resize the partition perhaps

there are four phases of the vista

installation process and i want to go

over them really briefly because some of

them sometimes pop up on the test the

first one is the down level phase okay

this is when you're running um running

from a previous operating system

when you start the installation dvd

from within windows xp that's called the

down level phase just remember these

there's really nothing uh

no other way to sort of remember them

except for just commit them to memory

okay so the down level phase is

specifically when you're starting

the

vista installation from within windows

xp you put the dvd in and it pops up and

says do you want to uh upgrade okay

that's the down level phase and one way

you can think about it is uh the

installation is down it hasn't started

yet but it's sort of about to get going

okay then we get to the windows

pre-installation environment phase

this occurs after the restart at the end

of the down level phase so you've uh

installed from the you've chosen to

install from the dvd and now you're in

the pre-installation environment okay if

you're installing to a new hard drive so

you're not upgrading this is occurring

when you first birth the boot the

computer into vista so when it boots

from when it reboots from xp that's the

windows pre-installation environment or

when you're booting the computer

to the vista dvd so you choose you put

in the dvd you start the computer it

says do you want to boot from the cd or

dvd you say yes and it boots into that

sort of very

basic installation setting area that's

the pre-installation environment the

reason they want you to know that is

being in the prince pre-installation

environment you actually have access to

certain diagnostic features within vista

and certain options for installing it

the third one

the online configuration phase this

starts when the user receives this

message okay please wait while windows

prepares to start for the first time so

you're in the windows pre-installation

phase it basically unpacks all the files

off the dvd and puts them onto the hard

drive at that point it then installs a

lot of the files and then reboots the

computer and you're faced with a message

that says please wait while windows

prepares to start for the first time

now you're on the online configuration

page they don't mean online like on the

internet they mean online the system is

online and ready to start being

configured this is when it's going to

ask you

what country you live in it's going to

ask you a keyboard it's going to ask you

all this sort of stuff uh what keyboard

layout excuse me okay

this is when the hardware support is

installed for the system and certain

configuration settings are created

finally you're in the windows welcome

phase which is where the computer name

is selected

which is where the windows assessment

tool otherwise known as winsat

checks

the performance

of the installation and make sure

everything's running copacetically

this is also the final phase before the

user logs on so no longer are we just

configuring

we're now in the welcome phase it's

basically telling you some information

it's assessing where the computer's at

and it's preparing you to get in and get

going

by the way a list of all of the log

files uh in all the phases in windows

vista is available go to this i'm

throwing this up here you don't need to

know this for a plus but in case you do

run into a problem during a vista

installation this is the website you

could go to uh this is in the microsoft

knowledge base and this will tell you

where all the different log files are it

doesn't

it's too long for me to list and frankly

it's not necessary for the a plus exam

so if you can't start the clean

installation or upgrade here are some

things to check first of all make sure

your processor speed and your memory are

correct make sure that they

meet the minimum system requirements

you also want to make sure you had

enough free disk space just like with

windows xp

check to make sure there aren't any

hardware conflicts or hardware issues

you have a hardware that does not have

drivers or is not compatible with

windows vista that could be an issue

and was there damage to the installation

media same with xp perhaps the dvd had a

scratch on it there were a couple

important files that did not make it

onto the hard drive during the

installation

you can always go to the microsoft

knowledge base a great tool all right no

matter actually where you are whether

you're in the installation phase or

troubleshooting whether you're losing

with vista 7 or xp and that's

support.microsoft.com and it'll give you

access to search the knowledge base you

could usually get there also by googling

just as an fyi

okay

so that's installing and upgrading

windows vista we talked about the

windows

in sorry the vista installation methods

those four installation phases

uh we looked at upgrading to vista

verifying and troubleshooting now we're

gonna spend a lot more time talking

about windows seven uh because there's a

lot more information to cover and it's

the most complex because when you

upgrade to vista you simply

you know put in the dvd

in your xp and you're ready to go the

problem with vista is now you have

multiple different versions of vista

don't forget we have home we have

business

we have enterprise we have ultimate

as a result

windows 7 doesn't just want to let you

upgrade from home to ultimate you have

to follow certain upgrade paths okay

so we're installing and upgrading to

windows 7. same same thing that we did

with the last versions we're going to

decide which version we want to use

confirm the compatibility then we're

going to choose the installation method

now notice cd is not here at all you

can't even install windows 7 from a cd

because it would require way too many

you can record go from a dvd you can

also go from a usb drive now the way you

do it from a usb drive is now that the

internet is so advanced you can download

from the internet almost immediately

uh the windows 7 image

okay

this is sort of like this image

but these images what they're talking

about images that you've created the usb

image is probably from a raw image

although you could do it from an image

you've created as well you plug in the

other reason we can do this now is you

you boot from a usb drive

so from a removable

usb drive which you used to not be able

to do now a lot of bios is allow you to

boot off of a usb drive

from an image or the network as well

now windows 7 installation methods um

we have the local installation from the

dvd rom i'm just going to expand upon

these a little more okay

when we're booting from the dvd this is

the most common i put the dvd in

uh it's the default type of installation

this is also called an

usually an attended installation

local installation because it's local

it's not over the network you're putting

a dvd on to the computer itself attended

installation means that you are there

okay you're there you're walking the

comp

you're walking the system through the

installation you can also have an

unattended installation which means that

you have certain settings that you have

pre-selected

and you can then just sort of let the

installation run and every time it asks

a question for the user it looks at a

file that you've created

and that file

tells it the answer for instance

what domain to join

there's also um

local installation from usb

this is easier than in the past as i

mentioned because you can purchase the

windows images off the internet and you

can download them almost immediately now

the bandwidth is so high off the

internet it's it's fast to do this it

doesn't take a lot of time

the image can be made bootable on usb

and then you basically

download this tool to do it all right so

this is a tool that comes when you

download the image you can download this

tool as well this tool will allow you to

create a bootable usb drive so this is

what you need a usb drive you just copy

the image over to usb drive it's not

going to work you have to make it

bootable

then you run the program and install it

from the usb by basically

popping it in and working one note here

you have to be an administrator in order

to run this program it's not going to

let you erase a usb drive unless you're

an administrator

the computer also has to have this is

just a

something called the net framework

okay which you don't really need to

worry about it's a set of development

tools

that windows microsoft puts out

and you can read more about that again

on their site

to install from a server automatically

you can use something called windows

deployment services

or the remote installation services

program

okay

you can also use something called the

windows system manager these are all

different programs that you would know

if you are running a server a windows

2008 server for instance and you can

look them up more online

the windows system image manager

is part of what's called the windows

automated installation kit or aik it

allows you to create multiple images

that then you could deploy here's the

reason you would want to do that

let's say i have a thousand different

computers and i want to install windows

7 on them i also have

10 different models of computer of those

a thousand so let's say i have a hundred

of ten different models some are dells

some are gateways some are acers some

are hp's whatever

instead of having to sit there and run

through each one what i do is i go onto

each computer and i create an image

i install windows i set all the settings

correctly i install all the drivers

now that should be the same independent

of the version that i'm uh independent

of the computer i have meaning that if i

have a hundred models of the same

computer they should all have basically

the same uh same drivers same hardware

etc

so i create an image i load it onto my

system image manager which is on my

server and then i use a windows

automated installation kit to deploy

that installation

it's a little complex and you don't need

to know the ins and outs of this for the

exam just know that it exists

if i want to install from a disk image

this is a previous uh and another thing

i just want to point out not only with

images you only want to create that in

enterprise settings but there's also a

system restore image which we'll talk

about in a bit

basically i can create a backup of my

computer that's a snapshot of the entire

computer

so

i need to have a

identical computer that i'm restoring

from into i can't restore from my

uh dell to my acer computer because i

don't have different hardware so you

need to make sure the images are exactly

the same

the h the new hard drive needs to be at

least as large as the original system

and to avoid security identif identifier

conflicts meaning when i go to

authenticate windows on the internet

it's going to say wait you've already

installed this uh this version it's not

going to let me authenticate to avoid

that you want to get this tool it's

called sysprep

and you can find it in windows system32

folder it's always there it's installed

automatically play with it if you'd like

so the sysprep utility allows you to

create an image

which is basically a a

snapshot of the entire computer with all

the data on it

and then package it up to install it on

other computers alternatively you might

want to do this for your own computer

god forbid something happens to it you

can easily restore

if i want to restore from a install from

a recovery disk uh something that wasn't

in one of those installation methods we

message we mentioned earlier because

it's specifically for recovering from

perhaps a problem

um you generally have a hidden partition

or a recovery disk you've created in

windows which we'll talk about

and

this creates a

diagnostic tool that you can go into and

recover everything that you had off of

okay so

returns the computer back to the state

when you first received it this is

generally installed by the manufacturer

and one reason i put this in here

is because you sometimes get a question

on the exam that says something to the

effect of

i have a

hard drive

and on that hard drive i see a random

partition that i have never created i've

never accessed and i don't know what

it's doing there

what in fact has happened is the

manufacturer has installed a system

restore partition that you can access to

restore your computer

now if the operating system fails when

you install it you can return it to the

factory state

and the data won't be compromised when

you do this system restore you want to

double check that based on the

manufacturer

you can also do what's called a

multi-boot multi-boot means you install

multiple operating systems on one

computer so you can choose which

operating system to boot into this is

two or more operating systems on the

same hard drive for instance i want

windows 7 and windows vista this is

called dual booting or tri booting etc

quad booting if you have four versions

you generally want to do this if you

have a really powerful machine the other

thing is it's it you have to reboot

every time you want to go into the next

version of windows

now

upgrading to windows 7 is a little more

complex than the ver the previous

versions it's done essentially in the

same way it goes through the same

process as a clean install

but it can be done directly from windows

vista you don't have to restart from the

dvd you pop in the dvd into windows

vista and it pops up and says do you

want to upgrade and you say yes

this

is pretty easy on vista on windows xp

requires a little more effort because

it's an older system so you have to do a

little more

if the upgrade is a success

then the settings applications user

files are all kept in place

but i would always recommend backing up

your files just in case you would hate

to

you know be in trouble

you also want to confirm the operating

system is compatible by using the

windows upgrade advisor which can be

used if you uh click the check

compatibility online button when you

put the windows 7 dvd into your windows

vista system

the windows compatibility center is also

a website online you can go to we've

talked about that it used to be called

the hardware control list our hardware

compatibility list excuse me

only windows vista can upgrade directly

to 7. with windows xp that's why it

takes a little more work

the other thing is you have to have

service pack one or two and we'll talk

about what a service pack is if you

don't know what that is that's okay

we'll talk about that a little later but

you have to have service pack one or two

installed prior to uh

upgrading from to windows 7. you insert

the dvd into it into the windows vista

operating system you select the upgrade

option and it works

these are the paths that you have to go

on and you'll see what i mean

you can take vista business to

professional

enterprise or

ultimate these are all windows 7.

so if i want to upgrade

to windows 7 professional i must have

windows vista or higher windows vista

home will not allow me to upgrade to

windows professional okay

windows vista enterprise will only

upgrade to enterprise

not to any of the others

the home basic will only go to home

basic home premium or ultimate it will

not go to professional these are

probably the most important things you

want to pay attention to

okay on this in this entire presentation

because this is probably the questions

you're going to get

home premium can go to home premium or

ultimate it will knock downgrade to

basic

you see why i paying attention i'm going

to clear everything out so you can just

pay attention

to these upgrade paths this i would

write down and memorize because this is

the questions you're going to get on the

exam

finally windows vista ultimate can go to

windows 7 uh ultimate sometimes you

can't downgrade so i can't take windows

vista ultimate and upgrade to windows

vista professional i must upgrade to

windows vista ultimate

memorize this list this is the most

important uh aspect of

the entire uh this entire lesson okay

if you want to upgrade a non-vista to 7

you have to back up all your data prior

to the upgrade and then do a customer

advanced installation so like going from

xp is going to require that

then you have to reinstall reinstall any

of your applications after the upgrade

doesn't mean it's necessarily going to

wipe the hard drive all those this says

it's going to but what it means is that

the applications aren't going to work

once you install them

anyway you can also restore all data

files uh through there's a method it

does that but again i would always back

up just in case

you can use what's called the windows

easy transfer tool which we'll talk

about in a little bit

which is allowing the backup and

restoration of files the windows easy

transfer tool okay now we talked about

32-bit and 64-bit processors i want to

give you just a little bit of

information about that when it comes to

windows

32-bit versions of windows

can not

upgrade to 64-bit versions this is an

important distinction

windows 32-bit versions cannot upgrade

to 64-bit versions

and the 32-bit or 64

64-bit version can be installed on a

64-bit processor so only because i have

a 64-bit processor does not mean i have

to use a 32-bit operating system of

course i would recommend using a 32-bit

operating system to take full advantage

of that processor

finally a 32-bit version a processor

will only accept a 32-bit operating

system it will not accept a 64-bit

an anytime upgrade

is an upgrade from one vision uh one

version of windows 7 to a more advanced

version okay so if you see anytime

upgrade that means you're upgrading from

say windows 7 home to windows 7

professional

it does not require a disk a physical

disk or a download see this is where

they get you

what they do

is

basically make you pay a little extra

and you unlock

what's already installed or already on

the disk that you have

so you purchase an upgrade key and then

you unlock it

this is what an anytime upgrade is i

would pay attention to that because

that's going to be on the exam as well

the anytime upgrade paths allow you to

go from home basic to premium

professional or ultimate or from home

premium to professional ultimate or from

professional to ultimate

okay

these i would pay attention to as well

although these sort of make sense if you

think about them

you can also go from starter to any of

the others again you don't need to get

another disk you don't need to buy

anything different you just go online

you pay a lot of money or a little money

whichever version you're doing and you

unlock the extra features you do

sometimes have to have the original dvd

a repair in place upgrade

this is the last resort before doing a

complete reinstall of the operating

system if you're having major issues

with your operating system

so let's say you've had some really

major issues we're going to talk about

troubleshooting windows in a bit

but you just can't figure out what the

problem is you can do what's called a

repair in place upgrade

this is also known as a repair

installation

and what it does is um it basically

wipes all the system files from the

computer and overwrites them with a new

windows operating system you should not

lose any of your data

however

you probably will lose some

functionality so it's something you

don't want to do until you absolutely

need to

the last thing you want to do is wipe

the system and start from scratch doing

a fresh install

now of course you want to get in and

verify and troubleshoot verify windows 7

installation

test the installation or the upgrade by

navigating through windows

accessing those administrative functions

connecting to the internet just like

with xp and vista you also want to make

sure windows is working normally you

should be able to update the system if

it is and you should be able to install

the latest service pack and updates

if the installation fails for any reason

look at the log files i gave you a

knowledge base site earlier that you can

look at and find out more about what

went wrong and i would google that

problem generally speaking

it's probably either because

one of the files if you're upgrading one

of the system files was corrupt or

something is wrong with the media or

even with your hard drive

if you cannot start a clean installation

or upgrade

check your processor speed and memory

size

make sure the type and version are

correct and work with the

hardware requirements you have make sure

you have enough disks disk space

check for hardware conflicts and

hardware issues

and check for damage to the installation

method uh media rather

all right so now we've talked about

installing and upgrading windows 7

including the installation methods

upgrading to windows 7 the vista set to

7 upgrade paths anytime upgrades

repair and place upgrades

and verifying and troubleshooting

a lot of information here again a lot of

this i'm covering because some of it's

on the exam i pointed out the relative

pertinent point so let's look at this

first of all installing and upgrading to

windows xp you're probably not gonna

you're probably not gonna encounter a

lot of this on the exam if you do it's

probably actually gonna relate to having

to press that f6 button when you're

installing scuzzy drivers which we did

talk about when we talked about storage

installation methods include cd image

network

verifying and troubleshooting you want

to make sure everything works if it's

not working it's probably the media

installing and upgrading to windows

vista including the vista installation

methods here we add dvd to the mix

the installation phases the one i would

pay the most attention to is the

pre-installation phase which is that

first phase you're in when you boot to

the dvd

upgrading to vista is as easy as either

rebooting and choosing uh

an upgrade path or

putting the dvd in while you're in xp

and verifying and troubleshooting just

like we did with xp with windows 7 we

had a little bit more to talk about

remember

here we added

usb

not just dvd like we did over here on

vista

we talked about upgrading to windows 7

which had all those different vista

paths remember

go over that list again and look at you

can only upgrade from say vista home to

windows home you can't go to business

from home to professional

anytime upgrades means you can purchase

a key

to unlock additional features basically

a repair in place upgrade which will

allow you it's a last resort if you're

having a problem with the operating

system while you're in it it'll install

again all those system files and then

verifying and troubleshooting just like

we have with everything

all right now let's get into some more

information about windows some tools

we're going to be talking a lot about

windows so let's just keep trucking

along here talking about windows how it

works settings configurations etc

[Music]

windows migration and customization

so once you've installed windows you

want to make sure that all of your

settings are either ported over from a

previous version say an upgrade for a

situation or you want to make sure that

you can customize the operating system

to fit your specific needs so we're

going to talk a little bit about how you

migrate your settings over to a version

of windows from say a previous version

or another computer and how you can

customize the system then some of the

specific customizations that the a plus

exam wants you to know about

so we're going to talk about migrating

use of data including

the windows easy transfer tool which is

provided by microsoft specifically for

that the user state migration tool or

usmt which is a

tool used more for

large deployments of windows

and then we'll just briefly talk about

the fast wizard

files and settings transfer which was if

used in windows xp before we really had

windows vista and windows 7 which

brought around windows easy transfer

then we'll talk about some of the

particular ways you can customize the

user environment

including reverting to classic mode

disabling visual effects such as arrow

which we'll talk about later as well the

task scheduler to run certain tasks over

and over again

and region and language options

depending on where you're at

then we'll look at a couple of the

advanced tools we'll talk more about

some of these when we get into

troubleshooting as well we'll look at

the windows registry which is really the

heart of windows and one of the things

that sets it apart from other operating

systems including hives which is how the

windows registry is organized

we'll look at remote desktop

both remote assistance and remote

desktop both ways to remote into your

computer

and then finally we're just going to

look quickly at the program

compatibility wizard which allows you to

run

older programs on a newer operating

system and then windows xp mode which

allows you to run a virtual version of

windows xp in windows 7.

so let's start talking about the windows

easy transfer tool

it can be downloaded from microsoft.com

for windows xp although it is built into

vista in seven

and it allows you to copy files photos

music email all these settings which we

call the user state

uh

directly from one operating system to

another say from a version of vista over

to seven and the way you get to it is by

going to start all programs accessories

and system tools now the reason i'm

putting this out this entire path is

because a lot of the times on the exam

you're not just gonna it's not gonna ask

you to go to the tool it's actually to

give you several different paths and ask

you which path gets you there so it's

important to start thinking about things

in terms of this sort of text based um

readability okay

it can be uh the way you can migrate

stuff over is uh through the network or

via a usb cable from another computer so

if i have one computer i'm migrating

things over to another computer that's

how i could do it if i'm migrating onto

the same computer but a different

operating system let's say then you'd

probably want to use a removable media

such as cd dvd or usb flash drive

and all of the files and the settings

are saved in one large mig file so it

makes it really easy it packs all those

files up sort of like into a suitcase

called an mig and then it unpacks them

on the new computer and this is called

the windows easy transfer tool and as

you can tell from the screenshot over

here there's a lot of things that you

can transfer over in order to make sure

what is called your

user state

remains the same so uh it's just like

you're on uh your old computer even

though you're on a new system

now this is different from the user

state migration tool which does some of

the same things as the windows easy

transfer tool but it is a command line

tool meaning it is not a visual it is

not what we call a graphical user

interface it is a command user interface

that allows you to migrate the same sort

of files and settings it's also

downloaded from microsoft for all a

program it's not built into windows 7

and it's for larger or more automated

deployments so let's say i want to

migrate

um a whole lot of files over from one

uh

from let's say hundreds of computers to

hundreds of other computers so this is

what we're going to use that for because

it allows you to automate it and allows

you to centralize the process

there are two different tools built into

the usmt the first is called scan state

and that is what saves all the files the

next one is called load state that

transfers the files you can see in the

root there scan

as though it's scanning for the files uh

for the settings and then loading as

though it's loading those up i don't

think you're going to see these two on

the exam but i mentioned it just in case

they update things and they add it

the commands have several options that

you can add to it such as you can select

which users you want to migrate and

whether you want to compress or

uncompress

or encrypt the data

sometimes if i'm

transferring

people's you know settings over a

network i want to make sure it's

encrypted i also might want to make sure

it's in compressed that way it's not

taking up a lot of space

next the files and settings transfer

wizard fast wizard this is the older

version of the windows easy transfer so

it's not in 7 in vista this is what was

installed by default on windows xp so

this is windows easy transfer before we

got to 7 and vista this is what windows

xp used

and it was meant for transferring files

and settings from a windows xp

2000 or windows 90 x computer that's a

98 95 computer over to another windows

xp computer again you're not going to

see this very much anymore because now

windows 7 has the windows easy transfer

tool built in

okay

so that was migrating user data using

either the windows easy transfer tool

the user state migration tool which

again is going to be used more for

large deployments

and

unattended what we'll say

installations and then the files and

settings transfer wizard which is

specifically in xp

so let's look at customizing the user

environment one of the first things you

might want to do is revert to what's

called the classic mode

this basically means turning off what's

called windows arrow we'll talk a little

bit more about windows arrow later but

windows arrow is a visual uh tool that

allows windows vista to look a little

more

i don't know funky uh a little more fun

it uses more graphics uh but in some

ways it's also you know some people

don't like it because it

has changed um what they're used to and

so some people might want to revert to

the old classic looking windows mode of

windows xp and that might make people

more comfortable it also frees up

additional resources because windows

arrow with all its visual

coolness and we'll look at some of that

a little later and that is the technical

term by the way

it takes up more visual resources more

cpu more ram etc

so to get to this and you can see where

i'm at right now

you're going to right click on the

desktop wallpaper select personalize and

then select the windows classic theme

which is right here this is also

accessible from the control panel which

we'll talk about a little more in depth

but if i right click on the desktop and

go to personalize you can get to this

windows classic

theme and the windows classic theme will

turn off all the stuff you're not used

to and put it back in a classic windows

environment

this is also how you disable most of

your visual effects now you can go more

and put more um you can get more

advanced with disabling some of the

visual effects and the way you do this

is by going into the system properties

window again we'll talk about where this

is a little bit later but you can get to

system properties by right-clicking on

computer

and then going to properties and then

choosing system properties and you can

see

this screenshot right here i'm in the

control panel is another way to get

there

gone to system security and then system

properties you go to the advanced tab

and under here you have a performance

window and there's a settings button you

can check

when you go to the settings um

into that settings button you then

choose the visual effects tab

and then you can adjust

how you want windows to uh function now

you can choose you know to check certain

things if you would like however one

thing you can do is say adjust for best

performance what this is going to do is

turn off all of the cool appearances

and instead say i want not the best

appearance i want the best performance

your computer will probably run faster

therefore and this is something a lot of

people prefer to do rather than have

windows look good they prefer

prefer for it to run well

the task scheduler is also a great tool

that can automate a lot of the

repetitive tasks you have

it will run particular programs at a for

instance a certain time it can send

emails it can display messages at a

certain time

and what you basically do is you

set a trigger or a condition that causes

a task such as sending an email to run

so you tell the scheduler what action to

take when that task starts

and there are some things it can do

automatically for instance

from memory diagnostics it can run

certain

you know every time you boot up your

computer it can run a ram diagnostic or

it can back up the registry at a certain

point

it's pretty easy to

create a task you go to create basic

task or alternatively right below that

create a task which is going to give you

a little more customization

and you can play around in this again i

don't want to go in depth into this

because there's so much to talk about

and so little time and

you're not going to be asked

specifically about how to do this on the

exam but it's good to know that it's

there and that you can automate a lot of

frequent tasks you get there go to start

all programs accessories it's in system

tools under the task scheduler

alternatively in windows 7 and windows

vista and this is a great way to get to

anything just search it you click the

start menu there's a search but a search

window pops up automatically and just

search for whatever the application or

file is you're looking for

now if i'm in a different region

i speak a different language i have a

keyboard with certain um

you know characters on it i'm going to

want to go in here and change some stuff

this is accessible by the control panel

generally in clock language and region

in windows 7 it might be in a region

settings area in one of the earlier

versions of windows this allows you to

also

alter the currency how numbers are dealt

with inches versus meters etcetera uh

the time you wanted military time the

date how the date

for instance displays in america we

display the months before the days and a

lot of other parts of the con of the

world they display the

um

day and then the month

and this is so this is where you would

set some of that you basically change

how programs service the computer so for

instance keyboard layouts you can change

languages

all these sort of things that's going to

be set in what's called the region and

language settings and you can see that

setting

right here which is in the control panel

alright so we talked about reverting to

classic mode

disabling visual effects

the task scheduler and then region and

language settings now let's look very

briefly at some of the advanced system

tools here

this is the windows registry it is a

database that stores settings for

windows 7 vista or xp or any previous

version of windows it's actually in any

version of windows you will find a

registry

and it contains the hardware and

software information and all of the user

settings in fact each one of these

contains different types of information

the way you get there

and you want to memorize this and i'll

i'll bring it up again when we talk

about troubleshooting is regedit

you can also type in

regedit32

i am purposely leaving off the eye there

which is another way you can get in to

the registry and edit it you want to be

very careful you delete something you

replace something in the registry you're

going to screw up the computer

these things are called hives

and this is the organizational structure

of the registry

inside of these like this is what's

called a key that contains sub keys and

these sub keys have information that

tell the computer where to look for

certain things

you don't find something like this in a

macintosh computer because this is

specific to how windows operates and how

it functions basically

while your cpu might be the brain this

sort of has all the instructions and all

the information on how the operating

system functions if something happens to

the registry you can be pretty sure

windows is going to crash and burn

it does not store and this is important

actual data files

it just stores the settings those data

files reference

we're going to talk more about the

registry in depth a little bit later

now i want to talk about two ways to

remote into the computer the first is

called remote assistance all right this

is important to differentiate

this requires that someone has an

invitation

and the way remote assistance works is

it allows someone to assist you on the

computer say my grandmother needs help

she can send me a remote insistence

invitation and i can take over her

computer for a certain amount of time

now i can send the invitation by email

uh i or outlook for instance instant

messaging like windows messenger etc

and once the invitation is made and the

way it's made is by clicking you can go

to start help and support and then you

can click more support options

alternatively you can go into system

preferences and you should have a remote

assistance

um

advanced tab right here which is where

you can set these settings okay

to create the invitation you go to help

and support click more support options

and it allows you to send invitation

notice here i can set the amount of time

i want someone to be allowed to control

my computer so i don't want the

invitation to last for six hours let's

say that way the next day they can't log

in and mess with my computer

if you select the remote assistance link

that's how it's going to work or you can

invite someone to help you in xp you're

more going to see this in windows 7 and

vista i don't it was sort of added late

in windows xp again remote assistance

means i send an invitation to someone

and then i'm inviting them

to work on my computer and help me with

the problem

this is different from remote desktop

remote desktop

is allows you to connect and control a

computer without an invitation

so you select the users that are allowed

to connect you can see right here i'm in

system properties on the remote tab

right i can select what individuals i

want to allow so

i can add users from user accounts in

there

and they have to know the username and

password of the computer in order to

control it

now this is disabled

by default like it is right here because

they don't want someone being able to

log into your computer

so you actually have to go on and turn

it on in order for people in order for

yourself or other people to remote in

the computer

if it's enabled users can make

connections to your computer either by

using the computer name or what's called

the ip address which is something we'll

discuss when we get to networking

now the benefit to remote desktop and

this is the remote desktop connection

app this is the way you would connect to

a remote desktop is it allows you to

control the remote computer as though

you're sitting right in front of it

uh

as i mentioned the remote computer must

have remote desktop enabled

but

what happens on that remote computer is

it locks when someone connects to it so

if you were sitting in a computer and

someone connected the remote desktop to

your computer it would lock the computer

you wouldn't be able to do anything this

is different from road assistance which

allows someone to assist you on your

computer while you're on it a lot of

times people use this for instance with

servers

so i have

10 servers in my server room and i'm

sitting at my desk i don't want to walk

down the hall to the server room to fix

something instead i'm going to remote

into it and fix it from my desk

alternatively if i'm on the go a lot i

can remote in remotely from anywhere in

the world using the internet that gets a

little more complex and we'll talk about

that specifically when we get into

networking

uh it only unlocks by the way once you

lock a system it only unlocks with the

username and password so remote

desktopping into a computer will lock

the system just like you need a password

to get into it remotely you need the

password and username to get back into

it

and windows vista and 7 this is where

it's accessible

okay accessories remote desktop

connection

um

this should be uh one of those carrots

you can also get there by going to

the

this is rather how you get to the remote

desktop utility that we're seeing right

here remember on the previous page i

showed you the remote desktop

properties and settings

and in windows xp you can generally get

there um

through communications

one thing that's important to note is

you can actually download remote desktop

connection for uh like a macintosh

computer and remote into a windows

computer so it's a good thing to know

you don't need to have a windows vista

computer necessarily to or windows 7

computer to remote into a computer

all right so now we've talked about the

advanced system tools like the windows

registry which include hives we looked

at remote desktop and remote assistance

so very quickly now let's talk about

what's called the program compatibility

wizard

program compatibility wizard allows

applications that are compatible with

the previous version in xp such as xp to

work in a newer version such as seven

you get there by going to the control

panel

and then clicking the programs tab

and then

the programs and compatibility icon

it'll ask you for instance when you run

this wizard which programs you want to

make compatible

which operating system it should be

compatible with

and any resolution and color things for

instance if i'm running a very old

program that only works at 640 by 480

resolution

and resolution by the way we'll talk

about when we get into visuals a little

bit i want to make sure that i'm telling

the program compatibility wizard how to

run that program so i have a program

from windows 98 for instance and i need

it for some sort of business reason i

can open the program compatibility

wizard and make sure that that program

always runs as though it's running on

windows 98 it's not actually running on

windows 98 but i'm going to tell it it's

as though it's running on windows 98

now you can also get to this

compatibility tab

and the way you do that is by right

clicking on the program that you want to

run in windows explorer

and you're faced with

uh and you click on properties then

and now you have if you go to this tab

the compatibility tab and so you can see

you can choose what version of windows

you want to run

settings for instance i want to run it

in 256 colors at a previous 640 by 480

screen resolution which is really small

and perhaps i always want to run it as

an administrator

so you can click all of these settings

that you want

you can even have specific settings for

specific users

okay so this can be really useful if

there is a program that you're

constantly running just another way to

get to it if you don't want to go

through the control panel

finally let's say that you've upgraded

to windows 7 and you have some

applications that specifically run with

windows xp

windows 7 can emulate the entire windows

xp operating system what that means is

it creates a virtual operating system

within windows 7 that is windows xp

to make this happen though you have to

have windows 7 professional or ultimate

installed

you need to install additional

components that you can get off the

internet

and you also need to install what's

called windows xp mode also you can get

off the internet on microsoft site it's

free if you have windows 7 professional

or ultimate

but you need to install this capability

you then install what's called windows x

virtual pc which allows you to run a

virtual not a real but a virtual pc on

your windows 7 computer

and then you download what's called the

windows xp mode update and this lets you

run a virtual windows xp

on your windows 7 computer

these components can be downloaded for

free and here's the website as i

mentioned okay so this is a good thing

to know again

this is for i have a program that runs

in windows xp only it does not run in

windows vista it does not run in windows

7. and so what i need to do

is create a fake

virtual version of windows xp within

windows 7 that allows me to run this

operating uh these programs

so

we've now talked about program

compatibility and the windows xp mode

let's go over some of this stuff just

again

migrating user data with windows vista

and windows 7 this is built in and this

is the tool we're going to use the user

state migration tool is used mostly

for

once again

large deployments

for instance in a company

okay the files and settings transfer

wizard this is the old version in xp it

was replaced by the windows easy

transfer

some things about customizing user

environment we can revert to classic

mode which is basically turning off

arrow

and we get to that by right clicking on

the desktop okay

we can disable virtual visual effects

excuse me that's going to be

in that performance tab in system

properties

rather in the advanced tab under the

performance

area

the task scheduler allows us to schedule

certain tasks such as sending an email

running a program etc at a certain time

and region and language settings let us

for instance have different currencies

numbers metric systems etc

we talked about the windows some

advanced windows tools including the

registry which is really the brain

of windows

hives are how it's organized

okay the remote desktop and remote

assistance remote assistance requires an

invitation

and windows desktop which is disabled by

default

needs to then be

turned on and you use what's called the

rdp or rdc

remote desktop protocol or the remote

desktop connection to access it

finally we talked about the program

compatibility wizard and windows xp mode

both of which really allow you to run

an old program

on on the new operating system

right

let's talk a little bit more about some

of the fundamentals of windows uh in the

next couple videos including how the uh

how files are stored on the system and

some more of the customizations and

tools uh and how

the directory structure works

[Music]

windows files

i now want to talk about some very

important files that are in windows

including files that you need to boot

into the windows operating system and

then i also want to talk about how we

navigate windows in the command prompt

and i'm going to also demonstrate this

with a little demonstration at the

follow

following talking about them just to

give things a little more clarity

so we talked about we're going to talk

about some boot files including what

files are required to start xp and what

files are required to start vista and

seven now these are really important

because they will pop up on the a plus

exam okay so i want you to pay close

attention to these

we're also going to talk about file

associations how windows knows what to

do with the file when it sees it

and we're also going to talk about in

relation to this something called

indexing which is related to searching

for files

and then we're going to talk about

directories and files within the command

prompt and how you navigate them and

that includes uh

cd md and rd that's change directory

make directory in the remove directory

commands we're also going to look at dir

the directory command and tree which

gives you a visual representation of the

files on your computer

and then the copy

del or delete and move commands these

all these commands by the way you do

need to know for the a plus exam

okay

so first what windows xp boot files are

there well there's the nt loader file

and the reason you know this you should

recognize this is because of that nt

before windows xp came out there was a

version of windows called windows nt the

nt

stood for new technology and that really

revolutionized how windows was working

before that it was based on an operating

system called dos which was the disk

operating system and windows xp or

windows nt rather introduced this new

technology so the nt loader is the

program which loads windows it

determines which operating system is

going to start and if there's more than

one it chooses between them for you now

if you

have more than one operating system

installed that's going to be clarified

in the boot.ini file that contains a

menu of all the operating systems and

your different options for booting into

windows

finally there's the nt detect notice

again the nt there dot com file and that

detects the hardware that is installed

on your system so that windows can boot

up properly okay

this is the file i see most often nt

loader and the reason i see it is

sometimes you'll see you'll get an nt

loader

error and if you get an error the thing

that you're supposed to do and we'll

talk about this again when i get to

troubleshooting

is simply a copy another nt loader file

over

probably from the internet or from a cd

or dvd okay but that's the answer to

that question i see it pop up all the

time you're going to copy nt loader over

now in windows 7 and windows vista we

have some different file different files

when you're booting up the first is the

boot manager file this is the first file

that loads on the hard drive

and it's outside of the operating system

meaning it doesn't have to do with the

operating system it loads the operating

system it has to be outside of the

operating system otherwise the operating

system won't be able to it can't start

from within itself if that makes sense

this is responsible for starting any

particular os so for instance it's

responsible for starting windows 7 for

starting windows vista

once you get into that

it is also in charge of displaying an

operating system menu meaning let's say

you have windows 7 and windows vista

dual booted this is what's going to

allow you to boot into one or the other

it's also in charge of reading the bcd

which we're going to talk about in just

a second

so the bcd is the boot configuration

data

that tells the boot manager

information about booting into the

operating system

this is actually the successor to boot

ini

so boot i and i was in windows xp bcd

the boot configuration data tells

windows how to boot the operating system

so not just which operating system to

boot but how it's going to boot it

it can be modified with a file with a ms

config utility we're going to talk about

that when we get into windows or in a

program called the bcd edit utility i

doubt you'll ever go into this utility

but it's good to know about anyway so

the bcd feeds boot manager on how to

load up the operating system

so the boot files required to start xp

nt loader

boot ini

and

nt

detect

and the files required to start windows

7 or

windows vista

bcd

which

feeds information

to the boot manager

great

now

file what are file associations you've

probably seen these dot jpeg dot doc etc

this tells the computer what the

relationship is between a file and its

application

the extension of the file which is

generally designated by a dot and then

three letters

determines

what application is going to open that

file

now you can modify this by

right-clicking on the file in windows

and go to the open with

button

so you're going to right click a file

and i'll show you this when we go into

the demonstration and you'll right-click

a file and go to open with and it'll

open

uh this properties window for instance

and under the general tab you'll see it

tells you what type of file it is

you can then choose what to open the

file with

so for instance right now it's going to

be opened all jpegs are going to be

opened with the windows photo viewer

because jpeg is an image i could change

this and say no i want it to be open

with paint for instance

indexing

has to do with searching

this helps you find files faster if a

file is indexed that means windows has

set it aside as a file

uh which it ha it knows where it is so

you can find it

however if you index everything on your

operating system that's gonna lead your

operating system to constantly indexing

and then it's gonna take a lot longer so

windows doesn't index every single file

it only indexes certain files and to

adjust the win the indexing settings in

windows 7 you can go to the start

control panel

and then indexing options

and it'll bring up this menu and then

you can say what files you want to be

indexed so right now you see the users

folder is indexed but for instance um

the entire c drive the entire computer

is not indexed and you can modify this

right down here

right click so you click the modify

button and that's going to allow you to

add or deselect certain folders that you

do or don't want indexed

indexing is controlled by what's called

the windows search service

we'll talk about services a little bit

later but it's important to know that

indexing is controlled by this service

windows search properties so if you

disable the windows search service you

are in effect disabling windows indexing

if you're having trouble with searching

for files or with certain files being

indexed generally speaking you can

restart the computer and that should fix

the issue for you

you can also turn off indexing or turn

it on for individual files or

directories simply right click on that

file go to properties and then under the

general tab you can choose attributes

for the file and you'll see right here

allow file in this folder to have its

properties be indexed that way you can

make sure everything in a certain file

can be searchable okay so you

right-click the file directory and you

can choose whether or not you want it to

be indexed by going to properties and

then selecting the index option let me

show you those right now i'm going to go

into my computer here

and let's say i want everything in this

folder to be indexed

i right click on the folder

i go to properties

and under attributes i click advanced

here now

i can either choose to select

or deselect files to be indexed

if i want to go into the control panel

and i'm just going to search to make it

easier for myself

i can go to indexing options

and here i can modify which folders

i want to be indexed so you can see

right now the users folder is indexed

maybe i don't want that to be indexed or

maybe i do

as far as file associations

i'm going to find one of those picture

files i was looking at earlier

i'm going to right click

and i can either go to open with

and choose to open it with a specific

program

or i can go to properties

and here i can change

what program i use to open the file so

we've talked about file associations and

indexing files

now let's look at the directories and

files within the command prompt

now the command prompt is a text based

uh

way to interface with the computer

unlike the other ways we've been dealing

which is called graphical we'll talk

more about that later too

i want to cover the commands you need to

know first of all and then we'll go and

i'll show you them the first is the dir

command

this is the directory command

it displays the content of the current

directory

that you are in

you can customize how the content is

listed via what are called switches

for more about any of these switches you

do a switch

question mark now when i say switch

that's that backslash

there's also the tree command

this shows you all the directories and

subdirectories in their current position

in a visual way

you got to be careful about this though

because the tree command can take you a

long time to get through

and it can stress out the hard drive and

the resources if it's too long and i'll

show you what that is so

let's um

let's go ahead and take a look at this

first

i'm going to go to the command prompt by

clicking start

going to all programs

accessories

and command prompt

so here i'm met with the command prompt

which now i can

type in some commands to

the first we wanted to look at is the

dir command

notice it brings up the directory and

all the files in the directory i'm in

it says next to it whether the file is a

file or a directory so you can see here

all of these are directories

if we want to do use the tree command

instead

notice i'm just going to make this a

little bigger

notice how now it gives me a visual

representation instead

now remember what i was saying about

switches

if i do a switch question mark that's

like saying help and it tells me all the

different things i can do

when searching so for instance let's say

i want it to

display

hidden files

what i might do

is then do a slash a

so let's take a look at that dir

switch a

and then

i'm just going to point this out

and then

if you notice right here it says

attributes

hidden files

so i'm going to use h for hidden files

and let's see what that gives us

now look at all the files that suddenly

pop up that we didn't see before

i'm going to use the cls for the clear

screen

do a dir again so you can see it

dir the directory command shows you

what's in the directory at that moment

so

let's look at a couple other commands

that are helpful to know

cd is the change directory command i

just showed you how to show everything

in a directory what if you wanted to go

into a specific directory

this cd command lets you move from one

directory to another

md is the make directory command it

allows you to make a new directory

finally rd allows you to remove

directories

so if we go back into windows

i'm going to use my cls command to clear

the screen

and i'm going to do a dir

and i can see all the different

folders in my current directory i'm

going to move this folder over just a

little bit the screen over just a little

bit so you can see so i can show you

something

okay

so

let's say that i want to go into the

desktop

folder which would also be the folder

that you see on the screen

i'm going to say cd

space

desktop

now if i do a dir

i don't have any folders in there

because the computer and recycle bin

icons

they're not actually folders or files

but let's try to make a directory

on the desktop and see what happens i'm

going to md

space

i'm going to call my new directory new

i press enter

and all of a sudden look not only did i

create that new file which if i go to

dir it'll show

but look on the desktop now i have a

folder called new

if i want to remove that directory i use

rd

new

and automatically that file is gone

to go backwards

use two spaces uh two periods cd period

period

and that'll send you backwards

so right now i'm in c users josh penzel

folder

cd period period sends me back to users

dir i can see all the different folders

there and if i want to go back into the

josh penzel folder

i use my cd command

all right

finally

let's say i want to copy a file

i can use the copy command

there are more powerful versions of this

command such as xcopy and robocopy and

we'll look at those a little bit later

when we get into troubleshooting

there's also the del command which

allows me to delete files not folders

that's why i have the rd or remove

directory command

finally move lets me move something

instead of

a copy it and notice that move is also

how we use rename

that's because there was no rename

command what you would do is move the

old move one file to another one

and call it something different let's

take a look at that

so i've created a file on the desktop

called file

i'm going to change directory into the

desktop

do a dir so i can see that there is in

fact a file called file.txt

now let's say i want to copy that file

i'm going to copy

file.txt

and then i'm going to give the location

of the new file

let's say i want it to be in the same

directory

in the desktop directory but i want to

call it something different

file

2.txt

so what this is telling it is i'm going

to copy file.txt to file2.txt

i do that and notice now there's a new

file called file2

now i use the del command to delete a

file so let's say i want to delete file2

del

file2.txt

and now file2 has been deleted

let's say i want to rename a file i'm

going to use the move command

move

file.txt

to file2.txt

notice that file no longer exists it's

been replaced by file2

let's go ahead and copy

again file2.txt

and make a file called file.txt

all right

so

now we just talked about directories and

files in the command prompt including

the cd md and rd commands that's change

directory make directory and remove

directory the dir and tree commands

that's directory in the tree command

which gives us a visual representation

of the directory

and the copy del or delete command and

move commands

so again

we talked about the boot files in

windows xp and windows 7 or vista

in windows xp the one i want you to

remember the most

is nt loader

although it doesn't hurt to remember

boot i and i

and

nt detect as well

in windows vista or windows 7

we have the bcd

file

which feeds into the boot manager

we looked at file associations and

indexing

indexing which has to do with searching

and those file associations which tell

the computer what program to use

and then we looked at the directories

and files in the command prompt

including the change make and remove

directory

commands

the dir and tree commands and that's d4

directory

and then the copy delete and move

commands

so let's finish this off by going a

little bit back into

the file systems how windows deals with

files in general

and

how it stores those files onto the hard

drive

[Music]

welcome to module 10 lesson 4a this is

the update for the new syllabus entry

for windows

8 and 8.1

we're going to look at an introduction

the start screen apps side by side apps

how to use two apps side by side the

modern ui

pinning one drive windows store

multi-monitor tasks task bars charms

power shell

live sign in

and the action center

this is a screenshot of windows 8.

you can see it's a lot more

um

graphically oriented than other versions

of windows

we don't see the icons and desktop

icons that we

used to see

in earlier versions of windows

and the reason is it's intended to be

run on a variety of devices

desktop laptops tablets and even

smartphones

so it needs to be able to

have the same look and feel

among um

across a multiple multitude of devices

it also has a new user interface it's

different

from earlier versions of the window so

it'll take a little bit of getting used

to i know some people will hate it and

other people will love it

the other thing is i'm going to go

through all these features but i really

do recommend you

um

do it yourself you can install windows 8

in a virtual machine i've just pulled up

one entry from google

on wikihow.com

and you still do need the version of

windows which you can download from the

microsoft website

i'm not sure if they do trial versions

or not and i don't think they do but do

check that out but you need the um

virtualbox software

and then this particular web page

tells you how to install virtualbox and

then windows inside you need the

iso image to iso in order to install it

on the virtualbox

so the user interface the ui is so

simple that it can be used across

various devices as designed for maximum

user friendliness

start menu has been replaced by a start

screen

start screen has got a group of larger

size colorful icons these are called

tiles and these represent the um

the software programs there's like a

window into the actual

program

uh

you've got two tile sizes you've got the

rectangular which is obviously bigger

and then the square

you can access them from the start

screen by the single clicking or by

touching the tile

many of the tiles are animated and they

display the current information

of the software program directly on the

start screen so they'll be quite dynamic

an emails program will tally as emails

come in so it will give you a count of

how many unread emails you have in your

inbox

there's apps which are software programs

designed to run from the start screen

examples that we would all tend to use

every day are weather the date email and

the calculator

apps run inside the windows rt which is

the new runtime environment

of windows 8.

many apps provide consistent user

interfaces such as full page scrolling

and back buttons this is again so you

can just have the same experience with

each app rather than have to learn a new

way of navigating around each app when

it's opened

traditional desktop apps can appear side

by side with the apps on the start

screen

an app open in windows 8 takes up the

entire screen there's something called a

snap feature windows 8 this lets two

apps be viewed side by side so if you

want to watch the weather in real time

or have email up

but also be watching a video you can do

that

snap feature also gives you a bit of

granularity so you can split the ratio

70 30 60 40 etc etc when the snap

features are used the apps scale well to

fit the new window sizes so they

dynamically auto size so they fit

nice and neat and snugly

and opening up from the start screen if

you're using a touchscreen slide in from

the top of the screen and then drag the

app to the left or right side of the

screen

if using a mouse then drag the top of

the screen place the app to the left or

right side of the screen this is why

it's best to have a play with windows 8.

i suppose you could get away with going

to a local um store if they're selling

uh laptops and um just tell them you're

interested in having a look and having a

play

obviously don't stay there all day

if using a keyboard press the windows

key and the left arrow or right arrow to

snap the app to the left side or right

side

go back to the start screen open the

second app and resize the app by

dragging the divider between the apps

again something that works better by you

doing it rather than me telling you how

to do it to do overplay

the modern ui was formerly known as the

metro ui

it's a combination of typography colors

and motion enables speak

experience

so an example is the start screen has

got more colors new tile sizes

backgrounds and motion

focuses on letting you the user interact

with content directly

and one example is when you apply a

large tile size to the weather app

you're

in fact making the content become the

interface

greater emphasis

on consistency of designs across all the

products windows office

windows phone and xbox and it's not just

microsoft doing this cisco are doing it

as well where

they rapidly bought out of the companies

of the companies that provided

um ip telephony

firewall software years ago it was

running layer two switches unfortunately

each of these devices run a different

operating system so you have to learn a

bunch of different commands and

different prompts and it was quite

confusing

so the idea was they brought everything

together to run under cisco ios into

network operating system

which is still command line but you

you've got the familiar interface and

even cisco now moving

into um the gui gui way of running

things

so as a result the modded ui has made

windows phone 8 tablet or pc or xbox

looks like a family of devices

obviously it's all marketing because

it's ease of use

in windows 8.1 apps can be pinned to the

taskbar or start screen

if you want to pin it right click on the

app and then select pin this program to

taskbar

now the app will be shown on the taskbar

you can see the little tick in the

corner there and you can either pin it

to the taskbar or in pin from start this

one's already pinned to the start

right click the app and select a pin to

taskbar

now the app will be shown on your

taskbar no surprise there

touch screen units can press and hold an

app and then select more and then pin to

taskbar

if the apps run in then press and hold

the apps task button and then pin to

taskbar

now a new feature that microsoft are

pushing is one drive it used to be known

as sky

drive which may be a more familiar term

to some of you

it's storage on the cloud and it's

actually built in you can use it with

them microsoft office products it's

trying to push you into storing the

stuff on the one drive and you can

actually run all the

apps as well the

word

vizio etc from onedrive this is actually

built in now to windows 8.

now they've made onedrive the default

location pros and cons one of the pros

obviously is

you wouldn't lose your information if

you're creating an important spreadsheet

it will be on the cloud

uh one possible disadvantage is um you

need internet connectivity so if you're

somewhere that doesn't have the internet

available at the time then you're going

to struggle

uh now however different locations can

be chosen to save the document so you

could save it in my documents or

wherever you want

by default

windows 8 will save a backup of the

system settings to onedrive this can be

transferred to a new device if required

it lets you store access and sync files

to and from online storage uh the the

other thing i forgot to mention is if

you've got um your

spreadsheet on your pc

you can then update it obviously and

then sync it later

so that is something you can do if you

don't have internet connectivity

files can be accessed from anywhere in

any device with one drive

now you can access it using the onedrive

app or you can use the file explorer

now you do have to sign in with a

microsoft account or create one if you

don't have one already

windows stores an online store of apps

if you want to get apps then go to the

windows store

open by clicking on the store tile on

the start screen which is the arrows

there

the store displays tiles for individual

apps

clicking on the tile provides more

information about the app with an option

to purchase

so get your wallet out when the user

installs the app windows adds a tile to

the start screen

multi monitor taskbars and windows 8 is

capable of providing a better experience

if you have multiple monitors so more

than one which i've noticed a lot of

people do the especially techie people

or people who like to multitask or

graphic designers

and people who are trading on stock

markets or looking at different um

markets and need those screens

the taskbars are

customizable across different monitors

taskbars can be customized so the the

taskbar buttons on each monitor

are the icons of the apps that open in

that monitor

very useful thing i think you need to do

some playing with that to get it working

nicely but it's a really great feature

it's possible to make both the taskbars

show all the windows

that are open

to access right click on the taskbar and

click

settings under the multiple display

select show task bars on all the

displays you can see it ticked in the

box there

the show taskbar buttons on drop down

lets us decide where the taskbar button

should appear for example on one monitor

you can have all the apps grouped and on

the other monitor you can have them

separated

so there's a lot of flexibility there

charms is a new feature that provides

quick and easy access to some of the

most frequented actions

via shortcuts are available in every

screen in windows

the charms provides access to search

and start devices and settings

whether users access in the start screen

windows desktop or not the charms

feature is always available so that's a

nice shortcut there for you to use and

you can see an image of the charms here

should have made that a bit bigger sorry

in order to bring up the charms hold

down windows and see the windows key and

see

charms interface can be brought up by

using a mouse hovering the mouse pointer

over the lower right corner

or upper right corner

for touch

for touch screen and devices the charms

interface can be brought up by swiping

the finger

from the right edge of the screen to the

left

powershell for the more techy people

microsoft powershell it's a task

automation and scripting platform

consisting of a command line interface

and use for systems a windows systems

admin

it allows system administrators have

granular control over administrative

tasks normally not possible it's just

beyond the scope of the graphical user

interface

which is there for everyday users um and

obviously you've got control panel but

this is to dig deep down into um system

settings

you can do quite a few things just like

the command prompt you can execute dos

commands

for example dir and change directory

make directory

and i presume you could do your ping and

your trace routes and all that if you

really wanted to look at your ipconfig

settings

it can automate tasks and it's a

scripting platform so administrators

managing several windows host can create

and run scripts

to automate tasks

you access it by typing windows

powershell after bringing up the start

screen

all right live sign-in is a recommended

method for signing into windows you need

a microsoft account such as hotmail

live or outlook

it follows a single sign-on approach and

by signing in

using a microsoft account your windows 8

automatically connects to all of your

other online microsoft services

including your cloud storage your email

and such like and if you've got online

and access to

word excel etc

chat

also action center

notification center that keeps you

notified about problems and actions that

have been taken for the smooth running

of windows this is if you're interested

in

knowing what's been happening it

categorizes this issue into security and

maintenance

type back to action center on the start

screen

all right so we've covered a lot as i

said i recommend you

have a go at windows somehow somewhere

find somebody who's got it or play with

it somewhere

the start screen app side by side how to

use them

the modern ui

pinning onedrive the windows store

multi-monitor taskbars

charms powershell live sign-in and

action center so we've covered a lot

thanks for watching

[Music]

windows

file systems and disk management

before we get more into

the fun uh accessible stuff in windows

we got to talk more about what's under

the cover how windows deals with files

and how it manages uh files and file

systems

so we're going to talk about

file system basics

fat32 and fat which are two of the file

systems and when we talk about file

systems that's how the data is

transferred from windows onto the hard

drive at a very basic level

ntfs which is the new technology file

system the one that is most commonly

used in windows nowadays and then exfat

a new format

specifically for use with usb drives and

interoperability

we'll also talk about briefly the

compact disk file system cdfs which is

specifically for as you guessed it

compact disks

then we'll look very

briefly at disk management how windows

uses disk management uh we'll look at

the disk managed utility which we will

talk about more in depth later on

when we get into troubleshooting and

i'll show you examples of it then not so

much now

we'll also look at what the difference

between a volume and a partition is this

has to do with how the data is stored

and how windows deals with this data

and then logical drives which are uh

different from um

certain other types of drives

uh specifically physical drives which is

the physical hard drive logical drives

or how we logically in a software sense

break those up

then we'll look at raid which is an

important aspect that we'll see in this

in networking security and everything

this is how we create redundant access

arrays that allow the hard drive to

function at a higher level and

allow us to operate without worrying

that the hard drive is going to crash

and there are three types of raid arrays

we need to be aware of

zero type one and type five

so first let's look at the file system

this is how data is stored and addressed

or accessed on a disk

um

in a very basic sense

there are uh

a few major types we need to look at

there's the fat operating uh

file system

the fat32

file system

ntfs

and exfat so let's talk a little bit

more in depth about these

as well as the cdfs which is really how

the cd stores data on its uh on its

media

so fat which is also could be called fat

16 and fat32 were the original file

systems for windows starting with fat

and then upgrading to fat32 which

replaced the original fat one

it's now used mostly to interact with

older versions of windows and fat32 is

used on hard drives to allow

interoperability with say a linux or a

macintosh system

many usb flash drives for instance are

partitioned using fat32 and when we save

fat32 just to get clear if i have a hard

drive

right

this determines how

the files are stored

because basically if you have a large

let's say your hard drive is a filing

cabinet well i'm not just going to throw

everything into that filing cabinet

right i'm going to store stuff in

folders i'm going to create three sets

of drawers so that way i can make better

use of

better use of my files

and

with fat32

one file had a four gigabyte limit

and this was a problem obviously because

we're moving up in the world and now we

have larger hard drives and i want to be

able to have files and hard drives that

are larger than just four gigabytes

which is the reason it sort of fell out

of favor

so then came along ntfs again that nt

goes with windows nt new technology file

system and this is the most common and

the recommended file system for windows

not only because of how it stores the

data but also because the data is more

secure and more stable less prone to

error

it also supports larger volume sizes

remember with uh 30 uh fat32 we had a

four gigabyte volume size here we have

larger volume sizes and really

importantly

it supports encryption systems

it also supports permissions meaning

that i can say i want certain people to

have access to some files and i want

certain people to not have access to

certain files

it can support up to either

16 terabytes in four gigabyte clusters

and we're talking about clusters if this

is my hard drive everything is broken

down into little clusters

so if i have a one kilobyte file that's

taking up a four kilobyte cluster okay

or it can support up to 256 terabytes

using a larger 64-bit cluster

there's also the extended file

allocation table or exfat

exfat which is also known as fat 64

is specifically made for usb flash

drives basically what was happening

is ntfs is not recognized by macintosh

you can't read it you can't write to it

so people would switching between a mac

and a linux and a windows pc and they

were finding they couldn't use their usb

drives interoperability interoperably

and so uh

people were formatting them with fat32

which is pretty universal the problem is

you have a four gigabyte limit on fat32

so when you're trying to use a very

large file it wouldn't work so exfat was

created to overcome this uh

this exact thing it can handle very

large file sizes

including media that is larger than 36

32 gigabytes with a single partition

whereas with fat32 we had to break that

up into multiple partitions

it has a recommended of 512 terabytes

for one partition meaning a c drive or a

d drive for instance should not be

larger than 512 terabytes fortunately

we're not at a point where that's an

issue just about yet

it also has a theoretic

theoretical maximum of 64

zetabytes which as you can imagine is

pretty incredibly large and i don't

think we're going to reach that anytime

soon

finally i just want to mention the

compact disk file system

it falls under this standard which you

don't need to worry about

but it defines how information is

written to optical disks the reason we

needed to have our own file system

standard for cds just like we have our

own for dvds and blu-rays is so that no

matter what device you put that cd or

dvd or blu-ray into everyone could read

it and

this is used by windows and mac

and linux and any other operating system

as well

blu-ray and dvd also have their own file

systems just uh so you know

so that was a very basic very quick

overview of fat32 and fat ntfs exfat and

the cdfs

or the compact disk file system all of

which are file systems ways that windows

partitions up data and stores it onto a

hard drive

so let's talk about disk management now

this is the disk management utility on

the right here

and um

it is a utility for managing storage

devices within windows i'm going to show

it to you later when we get into

troubleshooting but for now i just want

you to notice look here

disk 0 means the hard drive

okay so just notice that that is the

physical hard drive

c

is how it's partitioned

so what you do is you can in this

utility format drives for a file system

such as ntfs you can also create

partitions so this partition is 60

gigabytes let's say i wanted to break it

up into two partitions of 30 gigabytes

each that's something i could do here

the reason i might want to do that by

the way is let's say i want to install

my operating system on one partition and

put all my data on another that way in

case something happens to my operating

system i don't have to worry about

losing all of my data all of my files

it's accessed in the computer management

console which you see right up here

and which we will talk about more but

the way you get there is by right

clicking on computer and going to manage

now volumes versus partitions windows 7

refers to these as volumes uh windows xp

and windows vista refers to them as

partitions and logical drives

partitions

are physical

and logical

divisions of the drive so what i mean by

that is um sorry this should not be here

partitions are a logical division of a

drive so for instance if my disk my hard

drive

is let's say

100 gigabytes

that is

physical okay

my logical or partition or volume would

be that c drive and let's say that i

want to make that 50 gigabytes and then

i want to have another partition volume

of let's say

[Music]

50 gigabytes

the physical hard drive is 100 gigabytes

but i am partitioning this into two

logical hard drives of 50 gigabytes each

so the volume is any space among one or

more of the drives with a drive letter

okay

and if i wanted to convert a basic disk

to a dynamic disk what that would allow

is a basic disk can only have simple

volumes one partition

a dynamic disk can have volumes that

span multiple disks so if we use my

example again let's say i had a disk one

let's say i had a second hard drive disk

one disk zero and six one if these are

both basic and these let's say we're

each total of 50 gigabytes then i would

have to have

this would be my c drive this would be

my d drive and each of these would be 50

gigabytes

if they're basic

if they are

dynamic

i can actually

have my c drive span

both disks

and create one large disk

if that is they are

dynamic okay

now logical drives

um are the c d e those letters

and the first partition you create on a

disk that's called the primary partition

uh being the first so disk 0 for

instance has a c drive that is the

primary partition

extended partitions are any partitions

you make after that primary partition

and they can be divided into logical

drives so i made that so in the example

using before c drive would be the

primary partition the d drive would be

an extended partition

logical drives therefore are giving a

letter assignment to that partition if

that makes sense so the partition i make

the primary partition has a logical

drive letter of c

i can have up to four primary partitions

because i can have up to four hard

drives or three primary partitions

and an extended partition

so that's a brief overview of disk

management

the utility volumes versus partitions

and logical drives

now let's talk about raid

raid stands for redundant array of

inexpensive disks

and it's designed to either increase the

speed of reading and writing to data

data to disks or creating one of several

types of fault volarant volumes

or

both

this is the capability of a hard drive

system fault tolerance we're talking

about now

of a hard drive system to continue

working after a problem with one of the

drives

so

if i have let's say three hard drives

and one of them crashes suddenly

i don't want to be

i don't want my entire system to to go

down i want to be able to run off just

the two drives raid allows that to

happen

now a distinction between fault

tolerance and a backup

fault tolerance

allows the hard drives to continue

functioning whereas about even if

there's a problem with one of the drives

whereas a backup allows me to

restore in case of a problem it takes

data and copies it someplace else but i

can't use it in real time

the levels you have to know for the exam

are 0 1 and 5

and 10 is also good to know and it's a

combination of two of the previous ones

which is why i include it

so i'm going to tell you what each of

these means

raid 0

provides data striping only and i'll

tell you what that means

let's say i have two disks

and they're set up in a raid 0 array

what happens here

is when i'm writing data it writes it

across both of these disks sort of like

that dynamic disk we were talking about

earlier versus a basic disk

so

while this

hard drive is busy working this one can

be reading or writing so i get faster

speed on both of these disks it improves

performance by

utilizing these two disks in a better

way

however there is no redundancy here if

one of these disks crashes

this one

won't work anymore i've lost my data

so it doesn't deliver any fault

tolerance which we talked about this

just delivers speed

like i said one drive fails all the data

in the array is lost i'm in trouble

unless i have a backup

as i showed you it requires at least two

disks so i can

stripe

the data across those arrays i can have

three if i want

but i need at least two two is the

minimum that's important to know

raid 1

is mirroring or duplexing

what this means is it gives me

redundancy and fault tolerance rather

than speed it does exactly what you

think it is

whatever are right here is copied over

here

i'm not striping

the data across more than one disk

rather i'm copying mirroring one disk to

another

this requires at least two drives to

work

i can't do it with three drives either i

need an even number of drives in order

to mirror

so if i have four drives

that would work as well

and it would copy whatever is over here

over to here

the difference between mirroring and

duplexing

is that duplexing

mirroring has one raid controller

meaning there's one controller

controlling all this

whereas

duplexing

is slightly different

and has

two controllers

in effect you're not really going to see

a difference duplexing might be a little

faster because it has two controllers

but the important thing to know here is

mirroring is for redundancy only not

speed

finally there's raid 5.

raid 5 is striping with what's called

parity

what this means if you remember parity

from ram

that provided error correction

so if i have three disks which is the

minimum

i'm going to reserve a small part of all

of these disks for parity

this gives me good performance because

it's striping across the disks

but

if one of the disks goes bad

it can actually run

the information

off of the parity of these two disks

these two disks

create that disk and what i can actually

do is put a new disk in

and it will rebuild from that

information

so it provides fault tolerance in

addition to performance

this is one of the most popular

implementations of raid

and it requires at least three disks as

i showed you okay

so

we talked about raid including raids 0 1

and 5. by the way just because i didn't

we didn't mention it and i wanted to

talk about raid 10.

raid 10 is a combination between

raid 5 and uh and raid

1 mirroring and striping so what it

provides

in effect

is

a striping disk

that then

it mirrors

okay

sometimes you'll just have the striping

on this which is a pure raid 10 and

sometimes what they'll call it if you

have um the striping with

parody mirrored then that's going to be

a raid 15. don't be too concerned with

that for the test but what it basically

does is mixes the two so that you have

double the redundancy and double the

speed

all right really quick let's talk about

this again the file system basics fat32

that is the original

opera uh uh file system fat32 replaced

that was good for interoperability

between operating systems and on usb

drives which is where you're going to

use it

ntfs is the file system you're going to

use with windows because it allows for

encryption

and permissions

exfat which was created specifically for

usb drives

and is sort of trying to replace fat32

and the compact disk file system which

is specifically

for cds

we looked at the disk management utility

which you can get to

the through the management utility

itself by right clicking

computer and going to manage

we'll look at volumes versus partitions

volumes is what they're called

in

windows

and partitions what they're called in

vista

and xp

and then logical drives which is

different from a physical hard drive

if i have a physical hard drive my

logical drives would be c and d and all

of these logical partitions

then we talked about raid including zero

one and five remember zero

was striping

and required two disks

one

was mirroring or duplexing

and also required two disks

and five

was striping

with parity

which required three disks

and what that did again

is it reserved a part of the hard drive

for error correction so if one of these

hard drives goes bad

that parity

can recreate the drive

okay

having gone over all of this uh under

the hood stuff let's get into the thick

of windows and how we're going to work

within it

[Music]

windows configuration

user interfaces

we've now looked at windows under the

hood so to speak what makes it work

behind the scenes

so let's take a look at what makes

windows such a popular operating system

by first looking at how the user

interfaces with it and overall we're

going to look at how you can configure

windows to work best for you or for your

client

first we're going to talk about windows

graphical user interface

as the name implies this is the way

by which the user interfaces or works

with windows in a graphical way unlike

the command line which we talked about

in the previous lesson and we'll discuss

a little more later

the graphical user interface or gui

is comprised of the desktop

icons

the taskbar

which also has on it the start menu

the quick launch menu and the

notification area

we'll also look at sidebar and gadgets

which are on the desktop

the application windows and dialog boxes

and how they're used and what they look

like in windows

and finally we'll talk discuss windows

arrow which was introduced with vista to

make the experience more graphical

friendly and

quote unquote cooler

so first let's talk about the gui the

graphical user interface

this is how the user interacts with the

operating system it used to be if you

wanted to talk to your system you had to

use a keyboard and type commands but

ever since the introduction of windows

and some other operating systems as well

but specifically windows 3 3 and 3.1

and now all the way up to windows 7 and

8 the user interacts with the operating

system using a mouse and a keyboard

the best thing about windows is that it

can be customized for a particular user

and system as we'll discuss throughout

this course

you need a keyboard and mouse for a gui

what this means is i can type with my

keyboard but in order to click

all the stuff like my start menu and my

icons and stuff we're going to talk

about you need a mouse and that was one

of the revolutionary things that apple

and later ma

and then microsoft introduced of course

the difficulty in the beginning was

making a mouse that was cheap now of

course they can be purchased for a

dollar or perhaps even less

everything on the display everything you

see is part of the graphical user

interface this is again how the user

works with the operating system

so first let's take a look at the

desktop

this is what you see on the screen

all of this this is the desktop

and it is windows from a cosmetic

standpoint so for all intents and

purposes when we talk about windows

we're talking about the windows desktop

it was meant to replace the user's

physical desktop back when it was

introduced with windows 3.1 and now up

until the present day

meaning that you have things on your

physical desktop paper

pens

uh envelopes books and you take them and

put them in the forefront open them and

that's how you work with them and so in

a way the windows desktop is meant to

replicate and replace a user's physical

desktop

it was designed to be as user friendly

and as customizable as possible this is

because everyone likes their desk

organized a certain way perhaps i like

my stapler on my left hand side and you

like it on your right hand side

in the same way almost everything in

windows is customizable

and

as you can see the easiest way to

customize the desktop is to right-click

anywhere on the desktop

and click personalize right here at

least in windows vista and then

in windows

7.

in windows xp it involves going into the

control panel and altering the display

settings

icons are these little clickable

pictures on the desktop

they are either entire programs that can

run from a desktop or elsewhere for

instance the windows explorer

or

their files stored on the desktop

instead of some an entire program they

might be a file such as a picture or a

text document

or there's shortcuts for program files

that are stored elsewhere the way you

know a shortcut is it has this little

arrow

in the lower left hand side

this means that unlike this which is an

application of sorts the recycling bin

um

the calculator this is not where the

actual application resides it doesn't

live in the desktop this is just an easy

way to get to it you click this it

actually takes you to a different

location within windows and will open up

that application so this is called a

shortcut

they're um small the other way you know

a shortcut is it's usually between one

to four kilobytes in size and that's

because again there's no data stored in

a shortcut icon

there is just a pointer that redirects

the

once you click redirects windows to find

the application elsewhere

as i mentioned this is not the actual

program it's important to remember that

because some people get confused if i

delete

this icon because it is just a shortcut

i'm not doing anything to the actual

program i'm simply removing a shortcut

to the program

the taskbar has many different parts and

it was introduced with windows 95.

it allows you quick access to a lot of

different things and it's the bar

spanning the bottom and that's by

default the bottom

of the desktop

so i just want to point out this is the

default setting it can be changed as

we'll see in one second and as you can

tell from this image over here to the

right

the first part of this taskbar

is the start button this used to

actually say start

but in vista it was rebranded to have a

um

a circle with the windows logo in it you

can bring back

the start menu by turning on the classic

uh taskbar but that's not as important

for the a plus exam

the start button gives you access to

several things we'll talk about in a

minute

next is the quick launch menu which

gives you quick access to specific

programs

then

the bar displays any open applications

here you can see the calculator is open

and following that

what's called the notification area

you can actually move

the

start menu

to either the top or the bottom

alternatively you can move it to either

side of the desktop

like i've done over here

just to show you how that works

if i right click on the taskbar

and go to properties

i can choose where i want the location

and just as that it's easy to move

while i'm here i can also show you by

dragging the taskbar i can actually make

it larger

or small

as i mentioned it can also be resized to

fill up to 40 percent of the screen like

you just saw me do

so let's take a closer look at the start

menu and here it is opened up

it is the main menu that is launched

from the start button

it contains several things

including a listing of all the tools

within windows

on the right

all the microsoft applications

any third-party applications which you

can reach by clicking on all programs

you can search for files or applications

right here in what used to be the run

area that was specifically in xp so this

is really in vista and seven we're

talking about here

and it also allows you to access the

control panel very easily and other

parts of the control panel

it also shows who's currently logged in

and will give you access to any recently

opened applications that you access a

lot so you don't have to then click all

programs and go to them

it enables you

on this button to log off restart shut

down or sleep the computer

the quick launch menu which you can see

right next

to the start menu right here

is directly to the right of the start

button and contains shortcuts to

applications or files that you

frequently use

now the benefit is that these are always

visible by default meaning no matter if

i'm in another application is open for

instance i'll always be able to open in

this case internet explorer

and windows explorer

the shortcut on desktop

the shortcuts on the desktop rather are

covered when i open applications so

while i won't be able to access my

desktop icons i can always access my

quick launch icons which is why it's so

important

the notification area is to the far

right of the taskbar

it's also known as the system tray

specifically in windows xp and older

versions of windows

it houses several things including the

clock as you can see

right here which also has the

date

any icons of applications that are open

in the background as well so while open

applications are going to appear on the

taskbar there are some applications that

don't appear open they work in the

background and this is going to show

those as well as um certain icons uh

that give access to other sort of things

for instance your usb devices

if the computer is plugged in if it's a

laptop etc the more of these that are

open

by the way

that's the more

resources are being used on your

computer because obviously more

applications open more resources being

used

the sidebar in gadgets now

in vista the sidebar is a windows pane

on the side of the desktop to the right

and it contains the gadgets in windows 7

the sidebar was removed and you could

actually put the gadgets anywhere on the

desktop

gadgets are mini applications that

interact with other applications so as

you can see here i have a gadget for

the date

calendar gadget there it looks like

there's a gadget here for rss headlines

and feeds here's a gadget that shows the

weather a small gadget with a puzzle

that i can solve and then something that

looks like a picture slideshow gadget

so for instance weather updates traffic

radio these are all examples of the

sorts of gadgets i can run on my desktop

to access get the gadget gallery by the

way you can go into the control panel

and click desktop gadgets i'm not going

to go over that right now because it

probably won't be covered on the test

what you do want to know and this is how

i've seen this is remember this word

gadgets

sometimes they try throwing you off by

calling them widgets that's incorrect

that's what they're called on

apple mac okay

so in windows they're called gadgets on

apple they're actually called widgets

finally here's an example of an

application window

these are windows that are opened by

programs and they contain several things

the first is they have a title bar right

here

they also have a menu bar below the

title bar

there's generally speaking also the

toolbar to the right which lets you

minimize maximize or close the program

finally there's the work area

should be this now obviously this is the

calculator

it's a fairly simple app but if we had a

larger application such as word you can

see that this would actually be a lot

more intense

finally let's discuss windows arrow

pay attention to this area right here

windows arrow features translucent

windows

it also has window animations for

instance when you open or close an

application the window will sort of uh

genie effect so it'll sort of grow as

opposed to just opening just makes it

look cooler it was trying to mimic

really what mac os x was in introducing

it also gives you a three dimensional

viewing of windows as you can see you

know the start menu is on top of

internet explorer which is on top of the

calculator let me clear it so you can

see that but you can see obviously the

three dimensionality

the implied i should say three

dimensionality that windows arrow is

trying to give you

there is also a modified taskbar in

windows arrow which is what we've been

looking at

um

if you look at windows vista and windows

xp without windows arrow the task bar is

a lot larger doesn't use icons but

actually has wider names etc

it's uh you

you don't want to run arrow or you

cannot run arrow on windows xp you can't

run error on windows xp

and in windows 7 in vista starter

edition you can't run arrow either we

talked about

or we will talk about how to

we did talk about

removing aero and getting rid of some of

those visual resources in order to make

room for other uh cpu and ram heavy

applications so it's not something

that's necessary it's just something

that you might like and that they

that makes the graphical user interface

and the experience more fluid

all right

so we talked about the windows graphical

user interface including the desktop

icons and the taskbar which was

comprised of three main areas the start

menu

the quick launch area

and the notification area

we then looked at the sidebar and

gadgets this is the thing probably the

most important thing to remember here

are the gadgets okay

not widgets

which is what they're called

on the macintosh system

we looked at application windows and

dialog boxes and finally we closed up by

talking about windows arrow which by the

way is fairly resource heavy and so if

you do not have a very fast computer you

probably don't want to be running arrow

all right so let's continue talking

about windows and how to configure it

[Music]

windows configuration

applications

so we've looked at some of the

configurations uh within the gui desktop

right your first interaction with

windows now let's look at some

configuration areas that give you a

little more access to what's going on

within the operating system

so we're going to look at some of the

windows applications the microsoft

built-in applications in windows and

these are very important for you to know

both for the a plus exam and as a

technician

so windows explorer is the first one the

way that we walk through the system per

se and look at all the files we did this

a little bit

in the command line using the command

prompt something else we're going to

talk about

and using different commands but windows

explorer gives you a graphical

representation of all your files and

allows you to move through them

we'll look at computer which is used to

be called my computer a sort of

extension of windows explorer

libraries which are within computer

these organize your files especially in

windows vista and windows 7 into

sort of predetermined

[Music]

categories

the control panel which gives you a lot

and a lot of configuration ability

within windows not to mention a lot of

troubleshooting ability and something

we'll be talking about throughout the

course and keep coming back to almost

everything is located through the

control panel in some way shape or form

network which gives you a quick view of

all the computers devices etc that are

on your network

the command prompt which we've seen

before giving you a command line

interface to access your net your

computer and windows

the powershell a more administrative

function that you probably won't use

unless you're doing some really in-depth

technical support issues

and the computer management tool which

gives you the ability to manage certain

aspects of the computer and is probably

one of your best troubleshooting tools

as we will see especially in the next

part of this course

within that is the microsoft management

console which allows you to plug in

different

management

tools and customize it to your liking

so first let's talk about windows

explorer

this

window over here

is a window in the windows explorer

you can get to it by either going to

start all programs accessories windows

explorer or opening any folder

or even your computer icon which can be

either on the desktop or in your start

menu and it gives you a graphical

representation of all of the contents of

your computer as we can see

you can even change the way that you

view files in the windows explorer

window

all the way to the right there is a view

button and you can choose how you want

the information to view

at the top there's a navigation bar that

shows you where you

are to the right of that

a search bar so you can search through

everything

we're currently in the library section

now

on the left is a navigation pane

as you can see here's the c drive and

some folders within it

even quick access to certain favorites

such as the desktop downloads and etc

so this is how you can graphically

represent everything on your computer

and access all the files that are hidden

deep inside of your computer or on the

desktop even

computer or what used to be called my

computer gives you quick access to the

windows explorer but specifically

goes to the most sort of

route area meaning to the hard drive

itself to the removable disks themselves

etc

you can get there by clicking start and

selecting computer or

sometimes you'll have the computer icon

on your desktop something you can set in

your desktop settings

it is tightly integrated with windows

explorer as i've mentioned in fact if i

erase all this you'll notice it looks

exactly the same the only difference

is this right here

this bar right here that gives you

certain extra features such as system

properties

uninstalling or changing a program or

mapping a network drive by the way right

here is the

icon that we pressed earlier to get that

list of big icons small icons etc

as i mentioned the only difference

is this toolbar

you can easily access data

going into computer from your hard disks

dvds cd optical disks

your usb flash drives or removable

drives

etc

also

another main reason to know computer is

it gives you quick access to certain

tools by right clicking it as you can

see here

if you right click and go to manage

that'll take you into the management

console which we'll see in a bit

and if you right-click and go to

properties that'll take you to system

properties

so that's from right-clicking properties

and computer management

is for my clicking manage

libraries are user-defined collections

of folders

as you can see here we have a library

for documents

music

pictures

and videos by the way these are specific

to xp uh to vista and seven

most importantly allows faster indexing

and searching of your important or

common documents i'm guessing that

you're probably working on a lot of

documents uh you want to have access to

your music to listen to it and you want

to view your pictures those are probably

three categories of files that you're

going to want to get access to a lot and

so what it does is it uses something

called metadata which is data on top of

the file in the properties of the file

that give more information about what

the file is this stuff exists in

internet files as well

so it describes the file's definition

and structure but it is not in inside of

the file data itself if you have a word

document for instance the metadata will

say

who made the document when it was made

when it was modified

what kind of file type it is

if there's any way it should be searched

or any way it should be categorized what

the metadata doesn't hold is the actual

document itself

now there are also meta folders in

windows 7 and that's what these are

these are meta folders meaning that they

capture the information not only of the

files but of the folders and those exist

only in windows 7.

so it describes the definition and

structure of the contents meaning

everything within this meta folder is a

document everything within this one is

music etc that's what libraries are

there's another term for these meta

folders

now here's the control panel uh probably

one of your most necessary tools in

windows it has access to all of the

computers settings and configurations

the color scheme for instance

making connections to networks

installing or modifying new hardware

uninstalling programs all of these are

things as you can see here's uninstall

programs here's the network uh here's

where you would get your color scheme

all of these are accessible through the

control panel

and the way you get to it is by going to

start control panel it's really simple

you can view it in categories

in windows vista or seven as it is here

these are categories right or you can

select this and go to what's called

classic view and that'll give you a view

of everything within the control panel

that's a view i prefer in fact let me

show you that

if we're here in windows i'm going to

go to start

and control panel

and you'll notice here i'm in classic

view okay which in windows 7 is just

going to large or small icons here's it

with large icons

and small icons

notice if i go into category view it

sort of

collapses all of those individual

settings into smaller categories to make

it quote unquote easier for the common

user however for us technicians we know

exactly what we're looking for and

sometimes doing it by the classic view

which is larger small icons can be a lot

easier

so as i mentioned you can switch to this

classic view which is how they are

listed in xp

network is another application this

shows all the computers and other

devices that are on your home network or

your local network

it looks similar to windows explorer

because in fact nowadays we explore our

hard drives the same way we explore our

network devices you can notice here the

toolbar is different from computer i can

add a wireless device add a printer or a

wireless printer and then look at

networker sharing services if i want to

share out a folder with other users on

my network

you access by going to start network or

if you're in a windows explorer

generally you can go to the left and

select network notice here libraries

computer network

the address bar at the top

shows the status of devices as a bar

from left to right so what you'll see is

as it's working

this green bar is moving to the right

and that's showing how it's uh how it's

doing in searching the network for all

these devices

if it's configured as a member of the

network you should automatically find

and be able to add the following in this

box including other computers

would be listed here

routers

wireless access points

and other network attached devices

such as say um storage devices

and printers okay and all of those would

appear in this box in the network area

if and only if you were configured and

they were too

the command prompt we've seen this

before this is what's called a command

line interface remember we talked about

gui graphical user interface well this

is a command line interface instead of

using a mouse everything is issued by

commands and text so it is a text-based

interface to issue commands concerning

all sorts of stuff including files and

folders which we've already looked at

networking which will we will look at

services to start and stop services etc

to access this you go to start all

programs accessories command prompt i

think i've even shown you that a quicker

way if you see this right here cmd

is to press windows r

or just go to start and go to the search

menu and type in cmd

let me show you what that looks like

so i'm back here in windows i'm going to

close the control panel

i'm going to go here i'm going to type

in cmd press enter and there i have it

now you might need to

open uh the command line if you're in it

you probably need to do some high-end

stuff and if so you might need to do

open it as what's called an

administrator this is called elevated

mode

so what you do is you right click on the

command prompt and choose run as

administrator you can actually do this

for any program if you're ever having a

problem doing something on a program

like update it or opening it as an issue

maybe you need to run it as an

administrator

to do this once you right click on it

and click run as administrator

this is the powershell

another

command line looking sort of thing but

it's slightly different it's a

combination of command prompt and a

scripting language so whereas the

command line uses what's called the dos

commands which was

uh

the older form of the one of the first

microsoft operating systems

um the powershell is a mixture of more

scripting language stuff so you're

getting really into the nitty gritty

here it allows you to perform

administrative tasks integrating scripts

and executables etc i don't see it pop

up on the exam very much but i want to

bring it to your attention just in case

you ever see it

to open it you go to start all programs

accessories windows powershell again

this might be the sort of thing you want

to run as an administrator

and for administrators that run scripts

often

you're going to want to use something

called the integrated scripting

environment which is uh

embedded in this however i doubt you're

ever going to use that and again that's

not on the exam

this is the computer management tool we

get here by right clicking on computer

and going to manage

alternatively

you can go to the run prompt and type in

this okay

this might be important to know because

sometimes it does pop up on the exam so

you can type in and you can see comp

management dot msc

msc stands for the the management

uh console

you can access many things in the

computer management console and you can

see here on the left pane

we have all the things we can access

such as the event viewer

any shared folders

local users that are on the computer

at the task scheduler device manager

disk management services you can see

this really gets us into the nitty

gritty of the computer and managing it

in the middle it shows you whatever

you've selected here

okay so it shows you the details of the

left pane

and over here to the right

it shows you additional actions that you

can run okay so for instance if i'm in

storage this will give me actions to say

format and partition the drive

now this is slightly different from the

microsoft management console

the

this is the shell

for other console windows so if we if

you look back at the computer management

there

you can see this is exactly the same we

have a left pane we have a center pane

we have a right pane the microsoft

management cost

console rather however allows you to add

and remove your own snap-ins your own

management things over here to the left

so

the other benefit you can control remote

computers not just your own this becomes

very helpful in networks server settings

etc

and you can control what particular

users see by changing the different

console mode

it also saves everything you've added so

that you don't need to

um

you don't need to redo it every single

time

and it'll also remember the last place

you worked so if you are someplace you

reboot the computer it'll pop right back

to where you were

okay

so we just talked about the windows

applications including the windows

explorer which gives us a graphical

view

of the files in our computer

computer

which is very tightly linked to windows

explorer and shows us

dvds hard disks

etc

libraries which use the metadata

in order to

group

our files

the control panel which is sort of where

we access all of our settings

network where we can see all our network

devices that one i think is fairly

self-explanatory

the command prompt which is our command

line interface

to our system

the powershell which mixes the command

prompt

with scripting allows more sort of

programming language and uh

shells and

scripting stuff which is a lot more

complex you're probably not going to

deal with this

computer management which allows you to

manage

the computer including

uh storage

event viewer

etc

and the microsoft management console

which basically is computer management

it's just customizable

all right

so let's keep moving along keep trucking

along here talk about some more of the

configuration

the configurations available in windows

in order to

work on stuff

[Music]

windows configuration tools and

utilities

there are a few tools and utilities that

are specifically helpful in instances of

working with the devices that are on

your computer and those i want to look

at right now

so we're going to look at some system

tools and utilities that are built into

windows including managing devices using

the device manager

something called driver signing that i

want to talk about what that means

then we're going to look at the system

information tool which provides you more

information on your system and the drive

and the hardware in it

i'm going to explain what irq and i o

settings are

and finally the directx diagnostic tool

which i know we've already mentioned but

i want to mention it again because it's

always on the exam and i want to make

sure to

repeat it over and over to knock it into

your head

so the device manager

is extremely extremely useful when

troubleshooting hardware problems on

your computer

it allows you to view and control the

hardware and the drivers that are

that work with the operating system in

connecting that hardware to the computer

now again drivers translate between the

hardware in your computer and the

operating system so they tell windows

what's connected and how to use it

these are generally installed and

updated through executable files this is

a file extension exe which means that

you can double click it and it's an

application that will run

that are from the manufacturer and you

can also install an update from within

the device manager and i'll show you

that in a bit

you can access the device manager in one

of two ways

either you can right click the computer

or my computer go to properties and then

you select the device manager

alternatively you can open the run

prompt or the search prompt and type in

dev management dot msc

or dev management msc spelled just like

this

if you've been noticing a lot of these

that we've pointed out

you've probably seen a pattern again you

want to memorize this because i do see

these

shortcuts pop up on the test quite a bit

the device manager as you can see

can search for drivers automatically

so

let's say i've i've we were in the

device manager

and i chose the network adapter

and i double click this one the intel

pro

1000 network connector and i can open it

up and here i can see the device is

working properly and i have several tabs

here including a driver tab

i can manually install a driver by

browsing for the correct file or i can

have windows go on the internet and

search for one for me which generally

works in the case of most items um just

not

very specific say graphic cards

you can right click a specific dice

device to update its driver

enable or disable it which would mean

it's physically connected but you are

not going to use it you're not going to

have windows access it at all

or to uninstall it all together

this might sound weird

and again you're not physically

uninstalling it you're uninstalling it

through the software if you're having a

problem with a device perhaps it

accidentally didn't install correctly

when the device drivers were installed

and so by uninstalling it you can

then have it reinstall and perhaps fix

the problem you've had which is the main

reason that people will do that

you can also check for any hardware

changes specifically by clicking this

icon right up here

which has if you can look at that and

i'll i'll show it to you when we go into

windows has a little um magnifying glass

over it which is like looking through

scanning through

windows for any hardware changes so for

instance you've just installed a new

device

let's say a new sound card

you can also access additional

properties by right clicking on a

specific device

before we go on let me go ahead and just

uh move into

so we're here i'm going to right click

on computer

which i can also go to from the start

menu

right click on computer

i'm gonna go to properties

and then i'm gonna click device manager

so here i have my device manager all the

devices if i hover over this for a

second you'll see it says scan for

hardware changes

and i can let's say let's go into that

network device driver i was just in

didn't mean to click that one here we go

and i have several tabs at the top

including the advanced tab i doubt

you'll ever go into this tab

the driver tab which gives us driver

details i can update the driver

let's say i want to update it

i can then have windows search

automatically for a new driver or i can

browse my computer for a driver perhaps

one that i downloaded

i can also disable or uninstall the

device now as i mentioned you can also

do this by right-clicking

i can scan for hardware changes go to

the properties which will do the same

thing as double clicking it

update the device driver

disable or uninstall the device if i

disable the device which i'm not going

to do right now because it will throw me

out it renders the device not able to

work with windows and you might want to

do that let's say in case you have two

network cards or two graphics cards and

you don't want them to interfere with

one another

all right so back here talking about

driver signing

driver files are digitally signed by

microsoft that's what i mean by driver

signing

this ensures that the file is passed a

certain level of testing and that it is

compatible with windows if you install

a non-signed driver that has not been

tested by microsoft you might cause

errors on the system by installing it

in windows 7 and windows vista driver

signing is configured automatically and

only administrators can install unsigned

drivers so only an administrator can

overwrite the installation of an

unsigned driver now the reason you might

have an install unsigned driver is

perhaps the manufacturer did not submit

the driver to microsoft for testing or

they might have done their own internal

testing

you want to be careful whenever you're

going to overwrite the signed driver

warning

in windows xp it's a little different

you can actually configure

windows to not tell you whether a device

is

unsigned or just to warn you or to

prevent you altogether you don't have

that liberty in windows 7 and windows

vista

let's look at the system information

tool which i'll show you when we go i'll

go back into windows and show you as

well

the system information tool allows you

to view and analyze information about

hardware components on your system

software environments in your system so

not just

the

hardware itself but also the software

environment that you're within and you

can see that right here here's the

software environment

here's the hardware resources okay

hardware resources like i said and

what's being used

hardware conflicts anything that's

causing an issue

especially two devices that might be

conflicting with each other which does

happen

irq and io settings

which we will talk about in just a

second

and you can access it either by going to

start all programs accessories system

tools system information which is quite

long or by simply typing in msinfo32

into the start run or search and if i go

into windows real quickly

i'm going to close the device manager

where we were

i can go to start all programs

accessories

system tools

and here's the system information tool

alternatively

i can simply search ms info 32

and get to the same place

you'll notice by clicking through any of

these things it gives me real-time

information

about any of the categories listed

now let's talk about irq and i o

settings these used to be a major part

of the a plus exam uh when i got

certified at least 13 years ago now

but nowadays because

obviously technology has changed we

don't see them a lot anymore but i still

think it's worth talking about since you

do see them an interrupt request

was when a device interrupted the cpu to

get its attention so it could send data

to it basically what happened is there

were only so many channels to the cpu

nowadays we don't have this problem and

so what a device had to do was

send an interrupt request over a

specific line

indicated by one of these numbers

to tell the cpu hey i want to talk to

you and this happened really really fast

so we're not talking a slow process

we're talking something that happened

really fast okay this is a legacy

function of the pc it does not occur

much anymore uh and that's really

because

device

devices work much faster much better and

you never really have to worry about

these the real issue is used to have

irqs that were reserved for certain

devices so other devices couldn't have

them

um

so you're probably not going to change

the irq settings

ever

the i o settings

this was the range of memory that a

device used to transmit data to the cpu

okay so this both have to do with the

cpu again

you're generally not going to deal with

this much uh the computer has gotten

much better at dealing with this

information and really quickly if we

just go over back into windows you can

see here's the i o and you'll see there

are memory and hexadecimal numbers

which is not decimal like 1 through 10

but uses a different code

tells us the range of memory

that each of these devices is using

and we can also see the irqs as well

finally the directx diagnostic tool now

remember directx

was specifically for

video and multimedia and so the directx

diagnostic tool is specifically used to

analyze and diagnose problems with the

video card

to run it you can go type

dxdiag in the run prompt or in the

search bar definitely definitely one

hundred percent memorize that because

it's always on the exam what happens in

the diagnostic uh

tool you can come in here

work on the sound system input

display

have it run

not only information but diagnostics

okay uh however

and specifically for these multimedia

devices so if you see something on the

exam talking about you need a utility

you're having problems with the video

card or the sound card what you want to

do is run the directx diagnostic tool

and you can get there by dxdiag

all right

so we've talked now about the system

tools and utilities

we talked about managing devices

specifically using the device manager

we also discussed driver signing

remember in windows vista in seven

only administrators can overwrite that

okay in windows xp you can you have

settings to do it

it's automatically configured

in vista

the system information tool remember the

shortcut into there is ms info 32

we've briefly discussed irq and io

settings which are legacy things legacy

by the way meaning that it's older it's

in the past it's our history it's our

legacy

and the directx diagnostic tool i want

you to remember dxdiag because it always

pops up on the test

all right let's finish up this by

talking about a little bit more in some

windows configuration

utilities and

settings

[Music]

windows configuration

os optimization and power management

let's finish up this section on windows

configuration talking about some very

useful

tools for optimization and talk about

the power management

settings in windows and as a note almost

all of this stuff is going to be on the

a plus exam so this is a really

important video to take

particular attention to and as we're

going through i'll also demonstrate what

we're talking about by going into

windows

so first we're going to talk about some

operating system optimization tools and

utilities

the first is the task manager one of our

most useful troubleshooting tools

not only because of all the information

it provides but also because it allows

us to quickly

end processes and applications even

force quit them

the ms config utility very useful for

troubleshooting especially when we're

doing multiple reboots

virtual memory which is actually

something that allows our computers to

run a little faster by re-routing a hard

drive space to make it virtual ram we'll

talk about that and how to get to it

something i see on the exam quite often

and then working with services services

are slightly different from applications

and there's a specific area that we have

to go to

in order to start and stop them and

we'll talk about that as well

all of these things i see questions on

on the exam so this is probably one of

the most important videos as a whole uh

that we've done on windows so far next

we'll talk about the power management

utilities

and configuration settings within

windows and i'll make some distinctions

that are going to help you when you get

questions about it on the exam

so the difference here we're going to be

talking about standby versus sleep

followed by hibernate

all right

so first let's talk about the task

manager

image of it on the right and i'll show

it to you once we go into windows

it allows you to do several things one

thing is to analyze your processor and

memory performance in real time now as

you see it says task manager up here

right and there are a lot of tabs here

so one thing the thing we're talking

about here is that it allows you to see

information on the performance of your

computer in real time

you can also kill any processes and

programs

from these two tools this one allows you

to kill processes and this one

applications

or programs the difference here is that

applications run overtly

on the system you see them internet

explorer for instance is an application

but there are always other processes

that are running in the background some

of them might be on that notification

panel at the bottom right of your

taskbar and some won't be and this is

going to list all of them and as you can

see gives you

ability to end the process

and end the process tree which means and

all the processes associated with this

process this can be extremely helpful

especially in the case of virus removal

you can also temporarily boost the power

to a specific process on this page

and that's by

setting priority right here

if i tell the system to set a high

priority for a specific process

the computer windows specifically is

going to give it more of its resources

than it's going to give to everything

else

now to open with task manager there are

several ways to go about it i think four

is how many we're going to list here the

first is to right click on the taskbar

and then go to task manager you can also

press ctrl delete and select task

manager

you can open the run prompt and type

task manager remember where

manager in almost all these cases is mgr

and finally you can use the key combo

ctrl shift escape control delete used to

bring up the task manager directly but

in windows 7 and windows vista that

brings up several

processes including

uh an option to select the task manager

which is why there are two different key

combinations to get there so let's just

take a look here real quickly

all right so let's try right clicking

on the taskbar

and right there you'll see start task

manager

one easy way to get in there

another way

is to press start

and search for task manager or type in

the task manager

name

now you can also use the two key

combinations we talked about

if we look here we first see any

applications that are running now i

don't have any applications running so

let me go ahead and open up a windows

explorer

and you can see automatically it has

libraries now running because we're in

libraries in our windows explorer window

when i close it it closes as well

now even though i don't have a lot of

applications running i do have a lot of

processes running

and if i wanted to i could right click

on any of these processes

and i could end the process or

alternatively set a priority for it in

order to give it perhaps higher or above

normal priority so windows will

designate more resources to it

we're going to talk about working with

services in a minute but here's a quick

place that i can go to take a look at

all the services that i can start and

stop on my computer

right here i can see some services are

running and others are stopped and if i

wanted i could always right click on a

service and go to stop service we'll

take a look at that in just a minute

again

here's the performance tab giving me

real-time information on how much memory

i'm using

information on my system

kernel memory

uh and i get some graphics to show me

how my system's running including cpu

and you can see certain spikes in the

cpu probably when we're opening things

i also have quick access to networking

information here's the bluetooth adapter

and my local area connection

and how much utilization they're getting

and the speed etc

and then i can see all of the users

currently connected to a system which

would be very useful especially on a

server right now i'm the only user

connected

all right

so

let's keep moving on then

next is ms config

this is also called the microsoft system

configuration utility the reason i call

it msconfig however instead of the

microsoft system configuration utility

which you can see is right up here

system configuration another name for it

is because generally speaking they're

going to ask you

about ms config not system configuration

however if you do see

the term system configuration know that

msconfig is the name of the

application just like if we were talking

about the task manager

its name is this

it allows you to do a lot of things

including permanently disabled programs

or services designed to run at startup

via the

startup or

services tab

the best thing is

notice that even though you're

permanently disabling them you're not

permanently removing them so this is

really useful for troubleshooting

because if i can

choose which

applications that i want to run at

startup and services i want to run at

startup

i can temporarily uh disable them or

permanently it'll just disable them as

long as i have it checked which is why

it says permanent but i can permanently

disable these programs and then

i can always turn them back on the next

time i boot into the system if i've

determined that it has or has not helped

it also lets you select from different

boot options as you can see not only in

the general tab which gives me different

startup options but also from the boot

tab that we'll see in a second when i

move over to windows

i can start or stop services upon boot

up like we talked about oops not

actually there but here in services

and it also gives me there are some

tools that it gives me really quick and

easy access to all the tools that we're

talking about actually

throughout the system can be easily

accessed by this tool tab

to open the easiest way to open it is to

go to the run prompt or to the search

bar and type in ms config

and let's take a look at it now

so i'm going to go to start and i'm just

going to type in ms config

and open it

now first notice i have three startup

selections

if i'm having issues i might want to

load into a diagnostic startup

i can also do a selective startup and

choose what i want

it to choose on startup what i want it

to run rather

this is almost like going into safe mode

but i can select that i'm going to go

into the safe mode from windows before i

get in there

now notice every time i boot up the

computer it's going to continue to boot

up in this diagnostic startup or into

selective startup until i

restart the computer

and change this to normal startup and

then reboot again

on the boot tab first it lists all the

operating systems loaded right now i

only have windows 7 loaded but if i was

dual or triple booting it would show me

all the different boots and i could

actually choose one and set it as the

default that way let's say that i had

windows 7 windows 8 and windows xp all

installed on the same computer which is

something i can do doing so using

something called triple boot

in here i could actually go in and

select which operating system i wanted

to default boot into

i also have the option to boot into safe

mode

and choose certain information for

instance base video which is like vga

mode gonna run it to 640 by 480.

i can have it log the boot information

and i can also say i don't want it to

boot into a gui meaning i want it to

boot into the command line instead

i can choose to make all boot settings

permanent if i would like however i

wouldn't recommend that unless you've

absolutely

you're absolutely sure this is more used

for tech technical support and

troubleshooting

here are all the services running we saw

this in the task manager and we'll see

this when we go into the services pane

as well

one easy thing i can do is hide all

microsoft services

so this will show me everything that's

third party so this can be a really

great troubleshooting technique

if i want to remove or

disable certain services all i do is

simply uncheck them

and when i reboot they will not

they won't run

if i click enable all that will reverse

what i just did

if i go to startup this shows me all of

the applications that are running at

startup right now it has some

vmware which is for virtualization

running but other than that there's

nothing else running on startup if i had

a viruscan program on this which i i

don't have on this particular system it

would also

uh boot up saying there's a virus scan

program and if i thought that virus scan

program or perhaps vmware were having

problems i could uncheck it

and reboot the computer and next time it

would not run this program at startup

this by the way

lists startups that are taking place

directly in the registry

so again once i determine it's the

problem i might go to this registry key

and delete the item but this gives me an

easy way to reverse that if i'm not

positive that i want to do it yet

finally i can go to tools and here you

see all the different places that we're

going to talk about or have talked about

and gives me an easy access to them

so the command prompt for instance the

task manager

i click launch and there's our task

manager we're just in it even shows the

system configuration

let's go ahead and end the system

configuration task and you can see how

easily windows task manager works

ms config almost always pops up on the

test i highly recommend that you

remember it and that you spend some time

playing with it

okay

virtual memory this is also known as the

paging file by the way

virtual memory isn't so much a config

utility as it is a configuration but it

is

useful for optimizing the system as the

other two programs were

this makes a program in the operating

system

believe that they have it has extra

memory and when we're talking about

memory what we mean is ram

the way it does this is by using

this file the paging file

on the hard drive

to replicate a certain amount of ram

so in reality the memory address is on

the hard drive

but to the computer it doesn't see a

difference now of course memory

addressing on the hard drive is going to

be slower than actual ram addressing

which is why we don't want to rely on

the paging file but it does help

double the amount of memory we have and

it helps open up some resources for

programs if i have multiple programs

running on the system at once so because

ram is a limited resource virtual memory

is only as limited as the storage i have

so if i have four gigabytes of ram i

might have 500 gigabytes of hard drive

and i probably want to designate just a

small percentage of that hard drive

space to ram if i can't upgrade my ram

anymore physically on the motherboard

this can be a good alternate

and can also help up the process speed

now again the hard drive is slower so

virtual memory is not as useful as

actually upgrading ram but you'll always

find it enabled because it we can always

use a little more

the rule of thumb is you want the

virtual memory to equal one and a half

the amount of ram in the system if

you're setting it generally

as you can see from here

the virtual memory is going to be

automatically managed

uh and you don't have to worry about it

but

and generally it won't be one and a half

times because the system is taking care

of it for you

but if you want to manually set it a

good rule of thumb is to do one and a

half times the amount of memory in the

system

this is really important

okay

i always see this on the exam

the paging file virtual memory is

located

in the performance tab under advanced

properties in the system and for in the

system properties tab so let's go there

i'm going to show you how to get there

okay

so remember we can get to system

properties by right-clicking on computer

and going to properties

i select advanced system settings

at the top i choose the advanced tab

then i choose the performance

in the performance group i choose

settings

and on the advanced tab

at the bottom

is a virtual memory or paging file

settings and there now i can either have

it automatically or i could set a custom

size for the paging file

you can see right now

it's currently allocated to about two

gigabytes although recommended is three

so

the system is doing that automatically

likely because it finds it doesn't need

it but that's something the system's

doing recommended is three because that

would be one and a half times what i

have which is currently two

you always wanted to have it at least be

double

at least equal to what you have rather

all right

i didn't make any changes but it thinks

it might i might have

so you want to remember

that path i see a multiple choice

question on every time i've ever sat for

the exam uh even in subsequent years

every time i sit for the new exam in

order to teach it i see that and a lot

of my students say they see that again

so we go to system

system settings

under the advanced tab under system

properties we go to settings under the

performance area

click advanced

and then there's a virtual memory area

okay go through that memorize that you

will see that i bet you you're going to

see that on the exam

finally services and we've taken a look

at services both in the msconfig and

task manager area but what services are

is they control particular functions

within windows the best thing about

services is while an application will

run only once you log into windows

services run as soon as windows starts

so stuff like printing wireless

networking uh all of these these

services start before you log into

windows so if i'm sitting at the login

screen i already have the ability

theoretically to print and i definitely

have the ability um

to connect to the network that's how the

system can authenticate my username with

a server

if a server is stopped or disabled the

corresponding programmer utility will

not run now sometimes you might see like

a quickbooks service if you're running

quickbooks which is going to help

quickbooks run stuff all the time or if

you have apple devices such as an iphone

running you probably have an apple

update service that runs in the

background

if

that's stopped or disabled via the

services menu

then it's not going to be able to run

the apple product

you can start or stop services in the

gui service console

which by the way

you can get to

by running this from the run prompt

or by going to start and search

the other way to do this is as you

notice this window looks a lot like the

management console so if you go to

manage right click on computer and go to

manage and you go into the service and

you'll see services on the left you can

choose services and then you can make

edits i'll show you that in a second

alternatively

so as i said services.msc alternatively

from the command prompt you can use the

netstart or netstop command

to start or stop a service

this can be useful especially if you

want to run a script or batch file that

occurs while the system is running you

can have it do something automatically

this gets really more involved with

networking

let's take a look at some of this

all right so i'm going to close out of

the system window we were at i'm going

to go to this a couple different ways

right click on computer go to manage

and now i'm in the management console

which we talked about and on the left

services and applications

i click on services and now i have all

the services that are running on the

computer

alternatively

i go to start and search services.msc

that opens the services console without

all the other management stuff

now that i'm here

i can see all the services and let's say

here's the fax

service

it's certainly set to manual so it's

going to start up only manually when i

manually start it up let's say i want to

start it i'll right click

go to start

and it'll try starting it

now

in this case the fax service is

automatically stopping because

it probably windows knows it doesn't

need to run or because i don't have a

modem

another great one is the printer spooler

right here it's already started if i

stop this i won't be able to print

let's right click

go to properties and we can see the name

of the service is spooler

now i can stop that from here

alternatively i could right click and go

to stop

but let's attempt to do it via the

command line i'm going to start i'm

going to right click the command prompt

to run it as administrator

because again i can't do a lot of these

administrative tasks from just the

regular mode command prompt i have to do

it from elevated mode something we

learned in the last video

i'm gonna do net

stop

spooler

and now the print spooler service is

stopping

you'll notice now if i go back to the

gui

it says it needs to be this

and i refresh this

notice the print spooler

is now not running i can right click on

it go to start

and now it started

all right so now we've talked about some

optimization tools including the task

manager

ms config

virtual memory remember you have to

remember that path

advanced

system properties in the advanced tab

a performance

group and then the advanced tab on there

which is for virtual memory and then we

talked about working with services and

how you can start and stop services not

just from the command prompt using the

net stop or net start commands but also

from that gui interface

now let's talk about power management

there's a power management area in the

control panel

power management is specifically useful

when working on laptops because

obviously they have the most need of

power management however

when you're even on the desktop you

don't want it pulling

pulling all the time and

from your power company it's going to

cost you money

so to get there we're going to start

control panel system security or power

options that's in windows 7 it might be

slightly different in windows xp

you can specify how long before the disk

turns off and how long before the

display turns off

now if i just turn off the display i

move my mouse the display pops back on

right away if i turn off the hard disk

uh

that's which takes more power than

simply a display

computer has to do a little more work to

wake up

i can also set other power savings

options for the processor the internet

usb pci express etc

because these all take power

you can do this by selecting a

pre-configured power plan

in this case there's balanced as you see

over here

and

there's also power saving

power saver rather which is only

available on laptops which is why you

don't see it on this one and then high

performance

okay

now if we go over there to windows

ourselves

let's go to the control panel

here's power options because we don't

we're not doing this in um

we're not in categories here we're just

straight in

classic view and i have balanced and

high performance right now i have high

performance let's say we want to change

those plan settings i can turn off the

display

in 10 minutes it's on battery

15 minutes if it's plugged in

i can also change advanced power

settings here

where i see the power saver option

i can click that and here power saver

gives me other options all of these in

the advanced tab i can check for

instance when i want the hard disk to

turn off

when i want the desktop background to uh

you know turn off or turn on a display

doing with the wireless adapter etc

i can also create my own power plan from

the left

using one of these as a cut as a

beginning point

and

um by going to plan name choosing my

plan name and then going and creating

all these uh the specific things i want

i'm not gonna go through that right now

you can do it on your own but you can

see how customizable this is

now let's talk about the difference in

standby sleep and hibernate

in standby or sleep the computer goes

into a low power mode

shutting off the display and the hard

disks

all the information worked on and all

this in the state of the computer so

exactly where you are on the computer

this is important is stored to ram

random access memory

okay

so

one thing we know about ram remember is

it is volatile

if power leaves the ram i don't have

my current all this information i worked

on it'll all go away so although the

computer is shutting off the display in

hard disks this there's still power

going to the computer and

the ram holds my current state

the processor still functions for

instance but it's throttled down using

less power

to take the computer out of standby

process i generally either press the

standby mode rather i either press the

power button or move the mouse and it'll

wake it up from sleeping

some laptops by the way still use a lot

of power in standby mode because again

the processor is still running

and in

windows 7 or vista it's known as sleep

not standby but they're the same thing

when we talk about standby we're talking

about sleep

hibernate is something different

right here

hibernate basically shuts down the

computer all the power leaves the

computer

all the data worked on however is now

stored to the hard drive

so remember

sleep standby it's storing it to the ram

and hibernate like a bear hibernating

for the winter it stores everything to

the hard drive

now

if i go to if i if a bear goes to sleep

and i go to wake it up it's going to

wake up pretty quick

the bear is hibernating and i go to wake

it up i'm guessing it's going to take a

lot longer to get it up and going

because it's probably been sleeping so

long it's all groggy think about

yourself if you're in a light sleep

you're napping right easy to wake up but

if you're hibernating it's going to take

a lot to get you up and going that's the

one metaphor i use to remember this

so again this is storing it to the hard

drive not ram like standby

besides shutdown

which shut down the computer completely

this is the this this consumes the least

amount of power again it stores

everything the hard drive the hard drive

is non-volatile meaning you can store

data onto this file

about where your system is

and then turn off all the power to the

system

now when i wake up from hibernate i'm

good to go

coming out of hibernation however takes

longer than standby because it's storing

to the hard drive so there is a give and

take here

now one thing is in windows 7 and vista

hibernate is not enabled by default and

so to to enable it you're going to want

to type this command in to the command

prompt from an elevated mode once again

knowing the difference in hibernate and

standby sleep definitely on the exam you

definitely want to commit that to memory

so we've just talked about power

management including standby sleep and

hibernate let's go back over everything

we just talked about

talked about operating system

optimization the task manager which

gives us a lot of options one way to get

to there uh control alt delete will give

us an option to do that

right we can also right click on the

taskbar

and choose it

we can also

type

task manager

in run

it allows us to do several things

including

check our resources

kill processes

or applications

we can start and stop services in real

time

all right really useful for in the

moment

troubleshooting

ms config is more about rebooting

it allows us to choose

upon a reboot

different uh boot settings

or boot options for instance into a

start mode

we can also choose apps

or services we want to run on startup

and it gives us a quick access to all

our tools

virtual memory that's the paging file

if you see paging file that's the same

thing as virtual memory

it is

an extension of ram

on the hard drive

or the solid state drive

and again

system properties

advanced tab

performance options and that's what gets

a lot of people it's under performance

options you think it'd be someplace else

finally working with services the thing

you're going to want to remember here is

services done msc alternatively you can

use the net stop

or net start commands to start or stop a

service

these run even before

while windows is

in the login screen so even before you

log in okay power management standby

sleep stores stuff to ram

which means it's shorter

wake up time

but

more power used

and then

hibernate which stores to the hard drive

has a longer wake up time

and uses less power

great

let's now that we've talked about some

of these tools let's get into more of

the nitty-gritty of using

troubleshooting and playing with windows

in the next two lessons

[Music]

windows maintenance

updating windows

as we leave optimizing windows we're

going to start talking about maintaining

it once you've optimized it and the

first step in doing that of course is

keeping it up to date

because the internet changes technology

changes windows is constantly being

updated and it's not just updated by

buying a new operating system but the

current operating system needs to be

updated with all sorts of

software updates in order to keep it

secure and running at peak

performance so we're going to look at

updating windows

and the windows update program

we'll look at critical updates and

service packs and what the difference is

between these

something called slip streaming which is

what you as a user

or as a administrator and microsoft do

once they release a very large service

pack of updates

something called the windows automated

installation kit which we talked about

briefly when we discussed installing

windows and we'll touch upon here and

how

it can be used in the update process

we'll talk about windows updates in

general which are slightly different

from critical and service pack updates

driver updates which are specific to

um hardware on your system and the

updates that are released for them

and then we'll talk briefly about patch

management

and how patches and updates are managed

from a

server

setting

first let's look at the windows update

program

so when i mean program i don't mean just

the sort of general sense of the word i

literally mean the application or

program that windows has in order to

make updating it easier

the system or a web page you can go to

which is generally update dot microsoft

or windows

dot com

i believe you can also replace this with

windows

automatically scans your system for

updates now these updates are divided

into several categories some of which

we'll look at a little more deeper

the first are critical updates and

service packs which is the name implies

you should

install as soon as possible these are

generally very important most of the

time security related or relating to the

stability of the operating system

windows updates which are more general

still necessary sometimes folded into a

service pack uh but generally make

windows run a little smoother or perhaps

add functionality that wasn't there

before

driver updates

specifically for updating the way the

operating system talks to hardware

installed in your computer and possibly

also providing uh the operating system

uh different capabilities in using the

hardware

and to install additional updates

through windows update you can also what

you can do is click start all programs

windows update and that will bring

this up alternatively you can go to the

control panel

system security and windows updates and

that'll take you to the same place

you can also turn on automatic updates

so that updates happen automatically

let's take a look at this program

if we're here i'm going to go ahead and

search for windows update

again you can always update um

reach a program simply by searching it

thanks to vista and

uh

7 and indexing

so you can see right now there is one

important update that is currently

selected that

my computer wants me to run and if i

click on this

it'll tell me what that update is it's

an update to the windows malicious

software removal tool and it'll tell me

some information

there are also several optional windows

updates this would be more of a critical

update and these are what are called

windows updates so i could update these

if i wanted to however they're not

critical and not necessary

now i can also change update settings by

clicking change settings and here

you can see it's it's automatically set

to install updates automatically every

day at 3am now i set it to 3am because

that's when the computer is on and this

is why in a

corporate setting we always leave our

computers on we don't shut them off

because updates generally occur at night

and it's going to happen at 3am when

hopefully no one is using the computer

i have several other options that we'll

talk about next

so

if my system is in need of updates and

if automatic updates is running

a shield will appear in the system tray

and if i double click

that shield it'll bring up the security

center window

the action panel and that'll allow me as

we just saw to turn on automatic updates

which will automatic which i have

several options one is to automatically

install download install the updates

download but not install the updates and

then do neither now the reason i'd want

them to be automatically downloaded

installed is if i don't want to worry

about it i want the system to download

these updates and then install them i

might want them to be downloaded so i

have them ready to install but i don't

want the system to install them in this

case probably because

i have

you know some concern that microsoft

might release a buggy update and so i

want to do some vetting before i install

it finally i can have it do neither only

act on my

when i want to

have these updates running so we go back

into windows

you can see here are my different

options install updates automatically

never check for updates obviously not

recommended

check for updates but let me choose

whether or not to install them

and then download updates but let me

choose to install them so they'll be

downloaded on the system but not

installed

i generally would recommend this one as

long as you're going to be proactive

about checking

otherwise you generally want this one on

so that way you are up to date

the danger of updates is once the update

is

released

and if it is a security update

anyone who's hacking windows systems or

has malicious intents

then knows what the security flaws are

and unless you update immediately you'll

be vulnerable to those security flaws

which is how actually they generally

get into a system

i can also view my update history from

here which will show me all the updates

and if it

how important it was and um whether the

status was successful or not successful

for instance here we can see there was a

failed uh update on the 13th of january

this is important also because if i

start having errors with my system after

i run a certain update i can go here and

check what update that might have been

so for instance on the 25th that update

was installed

if i had just installed that update

uh and suddenly my computer was having

problems now i know that it might have

been caused by the update and

i can

roll back my system

by uninstalling a certain update

generally through the uninstall tab

here

so here i could uninstall certain

updates particularly ones that are

causing me problems

now notice at the bottom

the shield pops up as well telling me

that there are new updates available

i can click on this it brings me to the

same exact security

window where now i can choose to install

the update i'm not going to do that now

because it might cause my computer to

restart

so there are several different update

types that we mentioned

critical updates and service packs

critical updates are ones that are

necessary and service packs are bundled

updates with all

a lot of different updates generally a

major upgrade to the sys to the windows

operating system

these can be for security and for

stability

and some must be installed individually

so sometimes i have to install the

service pack aside from all the critical

updates

sometimes the best thing about a service

pack is it includes 100 critical updates

so instead of having to download and

install 100 updates i just download a

service pack

there are also windows updates and these

are recommended updates to fix

non-critical problems

for instance to make something run

smoother or there might be an error with

a specific

card or some features or updates that i

want to add into windows operating

system

finally driver updates are updated

device drivers for installed hardware

say my sound card or my video card

perhaps even my

internet my network card

service packs are a group of updates bug

fixes updated drivers and security fixes

basically all of the above bundled into

one large update

here on the system information page you

can see it tells you what version of

windows you're running and also what

service pack you have so we currently

have windows 7 professional service pack

one which is how this might be marketed

they're installed from one large

downloadable package which generally has

to be downloaded and installed separate

from the other updates

and they are numbered

one two three etc by the time we get to

service pack three and four we're

generally ready for a new operating

system

installing is relatively easy

and while the service pack is installed

it will rewrite many files and copies

new ones to the hard drive just like a

windows installation does

many service packs are cumulative and

contain previous service packs as well

so sometimes you only need to download

service pack 2 and that includes service

pack 1 and all the changes in it

sometimes this is not always the case

now slip slip streaming is when a

service pack is incorporated into the

operating system distribution on dvd cd

or even by download this enables users

to install the operating system and the

service pack at the same time so if you

go to the microsoft website and want to

download windows 7 you also have the

option to download windows 7 with

service pack 1.

once the service pack or sp is released

microsoft usually slip streams them

automatically

so that way you don't have to worry

about getting the latest up-to-date

version when you buy it in the store or

download it off the internet

now there's also something called the

windows automated installation kit which

as we looked at was really good for

rollouts of

windows into large systems especially

when you're upgrading it also allows

system administrators to create slip

streamed images what we just talked

about of the operating system in the

service pack so for instance if i

download the operating system and then i

install the service pack and several

updates

i can use the windows automated

installation kit also known as the aik

to do a large roll out of this operating

system and of the service pack together

as i mentioned this is also called the

aik so if you do see this on the exam

that might be what it's referenced

finally patch management is the patching

of many systems from a central location

it's generally useful useful in large

companies networks and enterprises

and it allows for testing before wide

release generally what you do is if i

have a patch management policy i don't

let each individual computer update

patches on their own instead i have a

centralized server

just like in any server setting

that's

a patch server and what it does is

it can deploy patches

to all the computers on the network

sometimes what i'll have is a separate

computer that i can test all my patches

on before rolling them out to all the

other users

i would hate for one patch to have a

major issue sometimes microsoft releases

them hastily and if they had a major

issue and suddenly compromised all of my

systems that would be a major problem

however if i test it on one system and

notice that it's a problem i have now

spared the rest of my network

the

pain of a massive rollout and massive

failure

it also allows updates to be pushed out

to multiple clients

generally through something called the

system center configuration manager you

don't need to know the name of that but

that is basically what patch management

services use on a server in order to

control all these patches

this is also called uh in a previous

version sms or the systems management

server so if you see sms 2003 or sccm

those are the later versions all uh

the software you install on a server

computer to manage patches through an

enterprise

there's also something called the

windows server update services program

all of these uh you might want to just

recognize the anagram

the uh

the letters here

so that way you know that these are all

relating

specifically to patch management which

is how they'll be brought up on the exam

okay so now we've talked about windows

update in the windows update program we

looked at it on windows we also talked

about the difference between critical

updates and servers packs specifically

how service packs and updates can be

slip streamed into an operating system

image

uh and

can be done using the windows automated

installation kit especially for

administrators

we looked also at windows updates which

are add functionality to windows but

aren't as critical and driver updates

which are specifically for installed

hardware then we talked about

centralized patch management

so having talked about like this let's

continue on talking about maintaining

windows

[Music]

windows maintenance hard disk utilities

just like anything the hard drive after

a lot of use

becomes sometimes corrupted sometimes

just begins to run slower so let's take

a look at some of the utilities within

windows that provide for maintenance

specifically of the hard disk

so the hard disk utilities we'll look at

here are temporary files

which is not so much a utility as a type

of file that we can remove

in order to free up some space on the

computer we'll talk about what those are

and where to find them the disk cleanup

utility which allows you to remove

temporary files along with a lot of

other types of files

the check disk utility specifically for

checking errors on the hard disk

the system file checker which like check

disk checks files and the hard disk

sectors but in specific relation to

system files that are corresponding to

windows

finally we'll look at the disk

defragmenter something that many of you

have probably heard of if you've ever

used a computer before and we'll just

clarify what that is and how to do it

so first temporary files

these as the name implies are files that

are temporarily created by programs for

a variety of purposes for instance

during installation the file uh that's

the installation file needs to have a

place to put all the all the files it's

using during the installation but it

doesn't actually need them so it throws

them into what's called the temporary

file uh folder rather and then it sort

of leaves them there

so as a result these temporary files and

other older files can clog up your hard

disk

if you want to view and manually delete

your default temporary files you can

either go to a search or go to run and

type in

temp with

the two

percentage marks on either side

the reason these these percentage marks

exist and we see them in a lot of

different contexts actually is that

this will take you to the temporary

folder of whatever the user who's

currently on the system is and this is a

shortcut that the system recognizes so

that you don't have to know the exact

location and just to show you that it

actually

if we go into windows

and i go to search

and search for temp

with the percentage marks on either side

you'll see it actually brings up my

personal temporary file

folder rather and in here then i could

go and delete

all of these files hence freeing up a

little bit of space now just like this

there might be certain files that can't

be removed because they're currently

used and that's fine in that case you

can simply skip those

now there are also temporary internet

files that are created these are while

you browse the browser actually has

temporary files that it saves to your

computer in order to make the experience

a little smoother for instance if you go

to the same site a lot it's probably

going to save some of the images and

perhaps even some of the text on that

page so that way it doesn't have to go

to the internet every single time this

helps speed things up for you and make

things a little smoother

to remove temporary internet files and

cookies which are files placed on your

computer by a

a website in order to make your user

experience a little better for instance

if you go to amazon it says hi josh or

hi you

or if you go to another site it

recognizes who you are this is done

through the use of cookies to remove

these you go to the internet properties

which can be accessed by going to start

control panel internet options and then

checking the browser history section

which is

right here

if you go to delete uh that'll

automatically delete all of the current

ish um current files you can also select

this check box right here which will

delete browsing history upon exit when

you leave the of the browser just to

show you how that works

if we go to our control panel

we select internet options

this will bring up the internet options

panel and we could then delete our

browsing history we could also go into

settings and have it always delete

new files or determine how much it's

going to designate in this case it's

designating 239 megabytes to

temporary files

in case this looks familiar

we can actually also get here

by going to

the internet options straight from

internet explorer

[Music]

this offers the option to remove a

variety of information and not just the

not just temporary files but also

cookies your history etc all things that

can

clog up

your internet temporary files

the disk cleanup utility is built into

windows and it's specifically for

cleaning up space in the disk

particularly when you're really low on

space

you can select which volume you want to

clean up in this case it's cleaning up

volume c and it'll tell you how much

space it can reclaim in this case not a

lot only

2.06 megabytes

it not only calculates that based on the

files that are checked

so in this case it's going to remove

downloaded program files and temporary

internet files but i could also have it

check the recycling bin setup files

offline web pages etc

you can choose which types of these

files you want to delete so that way you

if there's certain things you want to

keep perhaps your temporary internet

files you do want to keep because your

browsing experience

then you can choose what to keep and

what not to keep

to get here you go to start all programs

accessories system tools disk cleanup

if we see that

all programs

accessories

system tools

and disk cleanup is right here

notice it automatically begins to

calculate how much space we can save and

it scans a lot of different files

before opening up

and now we can browse the sort of files

that are on here and choose what to

remove and how much space each is going

to provide us

we can also view the files

beforehand for instance in the download

program files that'll let us view those

files

offline web pages i can view these pages

there's none in here

etc so you really have some

flexibility in what you're looking at

now check disk is slightly different

from the past things we've looked at

this is a program that can check for

basic errors on your hard drive

uh

to get to it you can right click in

windows explorer uh on the volume say

the c drive and go to properties and

then tools and then run the

check now

option

right here

alternatively and this is the one you're

probably going to see on the test you

can go to a command line

and run check disk

the thing i want you to realize about

check disk

just like you can see in this box right

here which is from the gui interface

checking this will automatically fix

errors so running check disk the utility

just by itself will locate any errors

but it won't fix them in order to do

that you need to run check disk slash f

or

switch r

so you need to either run with that

or that after it that'll actually fix or

repair all the errors it finds otherwise

it'll locate errors but it won't

actually fix them i often see that on

the exam which is the reason i want you

to pay attention to it

now the system file checker is a little

more specific

it's otherwise known as sfc which is how

you'll see it on the exam and if you

notice in here on the command line

that's how we run it

by typing in sfc

uh it's a command line utility only so

it does not have a gui representation

and what it does is it checks the

integrity of the system files on the

hard drive so if you're having issues

you might first check a check disk do a

check disk to check that the hard drive

is fine but then if you're getting

specific errors about system files built

into windows and you don't want to have

to reinstall windows you can use the sfc

the system file checker to check those

files

it's like check disk but it's

specifically for sauce for system files

and i just want to show you down here

these are all the options that you have

so one option you probably want to take

is the scan now option which will

actually scan uh

all of and repair all the files uh when

you run the application

now disk defragmenting is something

different as well

as the hard drive saves accesses deletes

information on the hard drive that space

becomes fragmented uh if you can imagine

it it's kind of like empty folders in a

filing cabinet so

i have these uh

folders in my filing cabinet and they're

full of information and i'm filling them

up in

order but then let's say that

i need to come get this file and i take

all this file out and i don't replace it

now i have an empty folder sort of in

the middle

uh as opposed to where i want it which

is near the front

so what this defragmenting does is it

basically takes these and moves them

uh to one end and it takes the full ones

and moves them to the other end

that way you have easy access to empty

sectors and the full sectors get placed

where they need to go

that's because these gaps in the drive

space make the hard drive work much

faster to find the data it needs so by

doing this you're actually improving the

performance of your computer

defragmenting fixes this issue placing

the empty sectors at the end of the

drive space so it's opposite from what

i've drawn up there but you get the

picture the

empty segments get put at one end the

full segments get put at another

so here's the

defragmenting utility

it's built into microsoft and it's

called the microsoft disk defragmenter

now i can get here one of two ways going

into windows for a second

i can either go to all programs

accessories

system tools

and choose this defragmenter

alternatively

i can right click on the volume

go to properties

tools

and under the

check disk option i have a defragment

option

now if i don't want to use a gui utility

i can also use the command line defrag

utility which does the same thing but it

does it

uh in the command line now there's a

reason you're going to want to use the

command line over another and i'll talk

about that in a second there are also

other third-party programs norton mcafee

all of these release programs that will

do this sometimes they say better but

the microsoft programs work fine and

they're the ones you need to know for

the exam notice in here also you can

also have it scheduled to run a defrag

every say wednesday at 1am you always

want these to run at times when the

computer will be on but the user won't

be using them because if i have a

certain file open it's not going to be

able to move it

now the

disk defragmenter program the gui

program you must have 15 free space on

the volume required to act as sort of a

buffer zone if you don't have 15 percent

of your space free let's say you're

running real low on um space and you're

gonna use this defragment to hopefully

get you a little more space because it's

removing all that stuff

you can use the command line utility

defrag as i've indicated on the right

and that will allow you to defragment

the

system

notice also all the switches here that

can do different things for instance

perform the operation on all volumes as

a switch c

all right so now we've looked at the

hard disk utilities including temporary

files

we looked at that not only

in terms of the

windows temp folder but also

temporary internet files

such as cookies

and that you can easily remove those

we looked at disk cleanup utility which

will not only remove some of these but

other files on your computer that might

not be necessary can help you reclaim

some space

the check disk utility which by the way

if we run from the command line looks

like this

we can also run it in a gui interface as

we showed you

the system file checker which is like

check disk but specifically for system

files you'll definitely want to know

that by the way with check disk don't

forget the switch f or the switch r

which will actually fix the problems as

opposed to just find them sfc you

probably want

scan it now to actually scan

and use system file checker otherwise

you just run it and it doesn't

sort of gives you options and then the

defragmenter utility remember we're

going to want to use the command line

defrag

if we have less than

15 percent free space on the computer

all right let's keep talking about uh

maintenance in windows

[Music]

windows maintenance backing up

the last part of windows maintenance is

preparing for an emergency meaning

backing up all your data in case it's

stolen or becomes corrupted and this can

also help restore your computer once

something has gone wrong

so what we're going to look at with

windows maintenance are

and backups

are the three different backup utilities

windows sevens backup and restore

window vistas backup status and

configuration utility

and windows xp's uh window xps nt backup

utility notice that windows 7 vista and

xp use three different backup utilities

each which use have different names and

you have slightly different functions

which we'll look at

we'll then look at the different types

of backups including a full backup a

differential backup and incremental

backup you want to pay attention to this

because it will come back again and

again in just about every test you take

finally we'll look at a system restore

which is a specific way to that allows

your computer to restore itself and then

something called shadow copy directly

related to system restore and another

term that you should know for the exam

so first let's look at backups in

general

these are crucial for any company and

individual the reason is if there is a

fire you want to have a backup of all

your

information if your information is

stolen you want to be able to get back

up and running as soon as possible

with a backup can include individual

files or the entire system and it can be

backed up to another set of hard drives

you have say removable usb hard drives

or perhaps hard drives in a

network attached storage device or raid

array

optical disks such as dvds or blu-rays

remember dvds now only hold about 4.7

gigabytes a dual layer is a little more

than twice that

so a little less than twice that excuse

me so you're not going to get

as much space as you might need for a

500 gigabyte hard drive off of them

and then tape which is our cheap and

easy alternative still used a lot but

being replaced

by removable hard drives

backing up windows 7 vista and xp

involves using three separate programs

that we're going to talk about

they're all accessed differently as well

so you want to pay attention to the

different paths and names as we go over

them

however they all work similarly they all

up back up certain files folders etc and

if you were in them in one and you

figured out one you'd probably be able

to make your way around the other

so first let's talk about windows 7

backup and restore

this is called

it's called the backup and restore

utility

right there it allows you to back up

individual files it also allows you to

create an image

of the entire system

which would allow you really easily to

restore in case an emergency

you can also

kind of erase it here but you can also

create a system repair disk which would

allow you to repair your computer in

case it started acting funky

to create a backup with windows 7 backup

and restore you go to start

control panel system security

and backup and restore alternatively you

just choose backup and restore from the

classic view

you can click setup backup to set up a

location that you're going to back up to

and perhaps even schedule a backup

alternatively you can select which you

don't see here the backup now button

which is if you've already set up a

specific device say a removable hard

drive to store your backups

now windows vista uses what's called the

backup status and configuration utility

and that's located in the backup and

restore center in the control panel

this is the successor to what we'll see

next which is windows xp's nt backup and

it's quite a bit better you can backup

individual files just like we could on

the previous one

you can also backup your entire computer

in what's called a complete pc backup

this it creates by the way an image

so uh

an image basically is a very large and

all-encompassing

picture of your entire computer that

could bring it back

exactly as it was

to get there you go to start all

programs accessories system tools backup

status and configuration utility

alternatively

go to control panel and choose the

backup and restore center

now windows xp uses what's called the nt

backup utility and just from the look of

it of it you can see it's a bit older

you can go to the run prompt and run it

from nt backup

and it can also what it does it can back

up individual files using the backup

wizard

or the on the backup tab

you can also backup what's called the

system state

which

is all of the user files system files

etc but not necessarily all the programs

now this xp version does not include a

complete pc backup option so it can't do

a full image based backup of your system

that was because at that time they just

didn't think they had the media to be

able to accomplish such a thing

it does have however what's called the

automated system recovery option which

will create a floppy disk and cd drive a

cd disk that would allow you to

restore

from

in case of a problem

specifically it restores what's called

the system state

which we referenced right here the

system state as i mentioned is all the

user accounts the settings boot files

etc everything based in the system

windows system it's not going to save

all your data necessarily and not

definitely not going to have all your

programs and applications and it's going

to require a lot more work to get back

up and running uh

if you have to use it

now there are three types of backups

when we talk about backing up and you

want to know these

for this exam and others the first is

called a full backup which is the name

implies backup backs up everything it

resets also what's called the archive

bit

so every time you change a file

there's a checkbox on that file that's

checked that tells the computer

something's changed i want to make sure

to backup that file when you do a full

backup it resets that bit

so the computer knows in certain cases

not to back it up again now if you do a

full backup it's going to back up

everything whether it has an archive bit

or not

a differential backup on the other hand

is slightly different

it backs up everything changed since the

last full backup so i make a full backup

that erases all the archive bits then i

change something so my file gets checked

when i do a differential backup it

doesn't erase this check mark

so the next differential backup i do is

also going to back up this file

so

to break this down a little bit

if i had i'm just going to draw out the

days of the week here

let's say that i did like most companies

do

a full backup

on friday

then let's say i change files

i change a file on tuesday

right

and my computer crashes on wednesday

now what i need

and there's a differential done this day

there's a differential than this there's

a differential than this day etc

so what i need to back to get back to

tuesday's point

is i need the last full backup

and the last differential backup that's

all

both of these fo these files can

put me back to exactly where my system

was the day i i my computer crashed

this is different

from what's called

an incremental backup

an incremental backup

backs up everything changed since the

last full or incremental backup

so

it will reset this

once i've changed something

if we go back to our um

our example here

let's say ins i do a full backup still

on friday

but

every other day

i'm running incremental backups

if my system crashes on tuesday in order

to get back everything that i had i

would have to restore from friday's

backup saturday backup sunday's backup

monday's backup and tuesday's backup so

you can see i need a lot more media to

back up from because every time i back

up

on saturday it tells all those files to

erase that

archive bit so the next time something

backs up it's not going to back up that

file again

so i need to have these cumulative

backups differential takes more space

because you can imagine by the time i

get to thursday

it's quite a large backup because a lot

has changed since the previous friday

with an incremental though it just

changes it just backs up what's changed

since the last incremental backup so

differential takes more space

on the hard drive or on the backup

device but incremental but it also uh

requires

less

time

to restore because i only need two media

instead of five say

so the incremental again resets that

archive bit

we'll continue to go over this when we

get to network plus and security plus as

well but it's important to understand

the differences between these three

backups i see them on every test and

it's just good to know for your own

edification as well

system restore allows you to fix issues

caused by defective hardware or software

for instance registry changes that are

made by the hardware the software will

become reversed when you do a system

restore

it'll also force the computer to work as

it did previously now one thing

important to know is it doesn't actually

restore all of your data what it does

rather is restore the system

files

so it does something called creating a

restore point

which you can see right here

system restore

right and it's going to create a restore

point

so that way it has a point to restore

back to now again this doesn't always

fix all issues but it's a good first

step

you can do this manually and

alternatively you can also have it

automatically done

by the operating system before any new

applications or hardware and are

installed by going into the system

restore and configuring the settings

which are right here

to get there you can go to start all

programs accessories system tools system

restore

alternatively you can right click on

computer go to properties and choose to

edit the system restore properties so if

we take a look at that

i'm gonna go to start

all programs accessories

system tools

and system restore will bring up the

system restore utility

if i want to make changes to this

utility and when it's going to back up

system restore points etc i go to

properties

advanced system settings and under

system protection i can either go to the

system restore

utility

or i can configure certain settings

one thing you definitely want to do is

turn off system protection or system

restore before you do a virus scan

removal or virus removal that way the

virus can't hide out in one of your

restore points

so turn that off before doing a virus

removal it's the number one step you'll

see on any virus removal instructions

a shadow copy is also called a volume

snapshot service or

vss which is how you might see it

this makes a general backup copy of data

known as a snapshot

now just like a picture the picture

takes a picture

an image

so to speak of everything you can see it

all so you know where to put it all back

but it doesn't actually save the data

itself

so it doesn't take the place of an

actual file backup it just sort of says

where all the files should go

so it's used

in conjunction

with the restore point in order to work

it can be backed up manually or

automatically

just like you would

with a restore point

and it happens with the restore point

itself

just good to know about what a shadow

copy is it's more of a

copy of the shadow of the system as

opposed to being an actual backup of the

system

it acts as an additional supplement to

help error correction when it's coming

to restoring from a restore point

okay so we've talked about backups

including windows 7's backup and restore

utility window vista's backup status and

configuration utility

window xp's nt backup utility

we also looked at the difference between

a full differential and incremental

backup remember

a differential

does not restore

sorry does not reset

the archive bit

whereas an incremental

does reset the archive bit

as a result

differential

takes more space

but

in the case of a restore it takes less

time

incremental on the other hand takes less

space

but in case of a restore takes more time

we also talked about system restore or

restore point

which are specifically for system files

okay not

all of your data

and the shadow copy

also called volume snapshot service

which works in conjunction with the

system restore giving an overall idea of

the files that need to be backed up and

restored

so this concludes the windows

maintenance section now we'll get into

the real uh thick of things in the

windows troubleshooting lessons

uh for windows 8.1 backup and restore

we've got um

a few different steps to take we create

an image of the system

uh create a backup in windows 8.1

you find the file history control panel

you can use a smart search in the start

screen

click on the file history to view the

file history control panel

as you can see in the top there

on the lower left

corner look for system image backup

which is on the bottom of the yellow

border there

or gold

clicking on the system image backup will

bring up the create a system image

wizard

and to restore the existing os from the

backup image you plug in the external

drive that contains the backup image

go to pc settings update and recovery

and then click on recovery

click on restart now button under the

advanced setup when you've done that

in the choose an option screen select

troubleshoot

select advanced options after you've

done that

and then you select select system image

recovery on the advanced options screen

now the computer will restart and

present the system image recovery screen

so you select your username and enter

the password on the system image

recovery screen

once reimage your computer uh wizard

appears follow the steps on the wizard

to re

restore the pc from the selected system

image backup

and you can see the three images i've

put in here

[Music]

troubleshooting windows boot and

recovery tools

as we move from configuring and

maintaining windows into troubleshooting

it figure out what's wrong in case of a

problem we want to start with the most

basic way to figure this out which is

during the boot process and to look at

some specifically uh

and to look at some specific recover

recovery tools that can be used um

during your troubleshooting process in

case you find that you have

very limited options especially if you

can't even get into the operating system

so first we're going to look at the

advanced boot options menu otherwise

known as abom

this is reached if any of you have done

this by hitting f8

as the post ends and windows begins to

boot or just holding down f8

until you get into the menu

we're then going to look at the windows

recovery environment otherwise known as

winre

this is specific to

windows 7

and vista in xp

we're going to be looking at the windows

xp recovery console which is

specifically a command line

utility accessible by through the xp

installation process

and then we'll look at some advanced

recovery options in case you just can't

fix your windows operating system

so first let's start with the advanced

boot options menu

when you press f8

you get this these are startup options

that can aid in fixing problems when you

can't get into the operating system or

even if you can get into the operating

system it can offer you a couple

versions of the operating system that

load minimal

drivers and minimal services to help you

narrow down the problem

to access this startup option menu you

want to press the f8 key which is the

top of your keyboard immediately after

the computer starts up generally what

will happen is you go through the bios

post test and then windows begins to

load and before

windows begins to load you want to

press f8 and get into this advanced boot

options menu if you can't if you miss

you know the the period of time when you

can hit f8 simply reboot the computer

and you should be good to go

so let's talk about what each of these

options means

the first is the repair your computer

option

this opens the windows recovery

environment which we'll talk about after

we finish talking about all these

advanced boot options and that gives you

a set of diagnostic tools which can fix

issues often caused by defective

hardware or software we'll look at that

a little bit later it also lets you

recover your computer from

a an image

for say and you can also get there

through the

installation uh when you're installing

windows although here's an easier way to

do it it is only available on windows 7

and vista it is not this option right

here is not available on windows xp

next safe mode

safe mode starts the system the

operating system with a minimal set of

drivers

this would be used in case one of your

drivers fails or you're having trouble

booting in or you're constantly getting

an error you might try this

which will only load the operating

system with the minimal resources it

needs to run and if it boots in then you

can not only do some fixing while you're

in safe mode you might also have

narrowed down the problem

it's a good option when you're

attempting a system restore or when

you're scanning for viruses because it

won't load up anything unnecessary

next is safe mode with networking this

is the same thing as safe mode

starting the system with minimal set of

drivers but it also enables network

support loading up all those tcp

stacks etc

so

if you want to go out to the internet if

you need to be downloading driver

updates this is what you probably want

to do sometimes i have seen where you

can boot into uh safe mode with

networking but not safe mode and oddly

enough sometimes if you're having

troubles booting into the operating

system just booting into safe mode can

sometimes fix the problem

sort of allows windows to complete its

boot up process which allows it to

complete a cycle of some sort rebooting

the computer into normal mode then we'll

fix the problem

like safe mode with networking safe mode

with command prompt is similar to

safe mode it starts the system with a

minimal set of drivers however

it starts it into the command prompt

instead of the windows graphical user

interface so especially if you're having

trouble with your graphics card

or you're having trouble just getting

into the windows graphical system uh

going into the command prompt may offer

you a work around the this is why it's

also beneficial to know uh dos commands

um the next one enable boot logging

will create a file called ntb

t log that's nt new technology

btbootlog.txt

this gives you a file

that logs everything that happened while

the computer was booting up

this can give you a glimpse and some

insight into the boot process so if

something is crashing during your

windows boot this will give you an idea

of what the problem is and can then

enable you to fix it

low resolution video mode otherwise

known as vga mode

uses a standard vga driver in place of

the graphic processing unit specific

display driver this can also be called

vga mode

so basically it loads up the most basic

video card driver so in case you're

having trouble getting video this will

force the computer to use the most basic

generic video driver available and then

you'll be able to get into the system

and hopefully fix some of your issues

it uses all the other drivers as normal

so this is like a safe mode only for

video

uh as i mentioned it is called

vga mode in the windows xp and possibly

in like the windows 2000

uh boot menus

next

last known

good configuration which is also known

lkg and i do see this on the test a bit

this starts the system with the last

configuration that was known to work so

let's say the last time i boot into

windows i had no problem

and then i reboot and suddenly i can't

get in if i choose last known good

configuration it will boot up based on

the last time i was able to boot into

the computer so this is useful for

solving any issues especially with

hardware software updates things that

have changed to the system and as i

mentioned the way it knows the last good

no the last known good configuration is

that it is derived from the most recent

successful login so every time you log

in successfully and get into windows it

logs that as a last known good

configuration and then you can

choose this option to

log in as though the settings were at

that last point

directory services restore mode

is used to restore a domain controller's

active directory a domain controller is

specific to windows 2000 uh servers

windows 2008 server 1 2012 server

and it's specifically at uh domain

controllers um for

uh computers that act as authentication

sort of stores in other words if i want

to log my computer onto your network the

domain controller will check to make

sure i have the correct name username

and password although uh so although

it's mentioned on windows 7 vista and xp

boot menu it actually is not use used at

all the only time you would ever use

this is really in a server it just sort

of left over there and it's there i

guess in case you're using windows 7 for

some reason as a as a domain controller

uh however i've never really seen that

done

next is the debugging mode

this enables a debug program to examine

your system kernel the system kernel by

the way if we think about an operating

system uh as

perhaps a nut

the kernel is what everything else is

working on

so

there's a kernel and then there's sort

of a software services and then a user

access point and we

work through the gui

into the kernel

so it is examines the center part of the

operating system for any problems

next disable automatic restart on system

failure

is specifically if you're getting into a

loop what it does is if an error causes

windows to fail

it'll generally restart windows and

sometimes if you have the same

uh

the same error occurring

this will cause a loop of errors so you

boot into windows windows notices an

error it restarts the computer this

keeps on happening you can choose this

option to disable that feature that way

the computer will stop rebooting you'll

get out of your loop and hopefully you

can fix the issue at hand

so as i mentioned the loop is when

windows fails attempts to restart and

then fails again repeatedly

you would choose this option in order to

disable that feature which supposedly is

helping windows from hurting itself

next disable driver signature

enforcement we talked in the last

lessons about

driver signing and how windows won't

allow you to install drivers that are

not signed by microsoft

now in some cases you might want to

install them

and so what you can do is this will um

running in this mode disables the

feature that requires you to only

install

uh driver

signed

drivers that are been signed by

microsoft so this enables drivers

containing and proper signatures to be

installed on the operating system

finally there is start windows normally

and this is used to boot into a regular

windows installation now the reason you

this is here is in case uh you

inadvertently or accidentally pressed f8

or

in case uh you closed out of windows uh

accidentally beforehand um or it's sort

of crashed on you and you've been thrown

into this advanced boot options menu

automatically and you don't have a

choice you can choose to start windows

normally and bypass sort of any

troubleshooting you might want to do

next let's look at the windows recovery

environment so we just looked at the

advanced boot options menu

this is specific again

to uh

windows 7 or vista

and remember that was that first option

we had in the advanced boot options menu

you can also get to it by using the

vista 7 dvd so we can either get there

from using the boot menu which is f8 or

from booting from the dvd

you can recover various installations of

windows so if i have um

i can do a startup repair which would

fix any problems that are preventing my

windows from starting i can do a system

restore using a restore point like we've

talked about in the um

in the in the last lesson

in the backup area

we can also restore from an image

if we're having

trouble with

memory uh for instance our memory is

crashing on us we can do a diagnostic

that would tell us what issues occur and

perhaps i'm having issues and that i

only consult through the command prompt

it will let me get in there

finally you can always shut down and

restart from this menu

now in windows xp we have something very

different it's called the recovery

console it is a command line only

interface used for repairs so this is

the equivalent of win re

in xp there's no graphical user

interface though it is just command line

when you get to this window the way you

get here by the way

is it's included on the windows xp

installation cd and you press r after

you've been booted into installation to

go to the recovery console

when you get here you'll then choose

which windows

installation you want you can see they

chose one right here

um

if you have more than one windows

installation that's why that's going to

pop up and then you have to enter your

windows administrator password if you

don't have a windows administrator

password some of this can be tricky and

if you don't know your administrator

password you're in trouble

this is invaluable when the system can't

start due to missing or corrupted files

particularly like nt loader i think we

talked about that in boot

issues and we'll talk about that i think

in the next lesson as well

this is where you could copy over the nt

loader file from a previous cd etc

now these missing files could block the

advanced boot options menu which is why

you can't get in and do a system restore

or a last known good configuration

finally let's look at some advanced

recovery methods

you can get these all of these you can

get to in windows 7 and windows vista

and

if the methods you've already tried

don't don't work you can try using the

advanced recovery of course you have to

get into windows and go to the control

panel

there are two main options here

one is as we already saw in windows

recovery is you can use a system image

you've already created to recover the

computer basically you're restoring from

a backup

the other option is to do what's called

an in-place upgrade or a repair

installation of windows

so basically you're restoring files from

a backup

and you're

going to reinstall windows so it

copies over all the current windows

system files replacing them with brand

spanking new ones

this is also called an in-place upgrade

so

you don't lose any of your data

hopefully sometimes you can uh so it's

always good as i mentioned to restore

files from your backup or make a backup

of your data however what this does is

it reinstalls windows over the current

installation it does not erase anything

it just overwrites

so we've talked about now the advanced

boot options menu which we get to by

pressing f8

the windows recovery environment

which again was specific to vista

and seven

the windows xp recovery console we get

by pressing r

in the xp installation

and some advanced recovery options which

include

restoring

from an image

or

doing a

repair

installation

so having gone over all of these let's

now get into uh some i believe boot uh

specifically let's get into more

troubleshooting but let's also talk

about some boot

issues and errors that occur and how we

would troubleshoot those

[Music]

troubleshooting windows

boot errors

so we looked at some tools you can get

to in the boot process but now let's

look at some of the errors that occur

with some of the boot

files that are required to start and

boot into windows

these don't encompass every single boot

error that you might encounter but these

are the ones i see most often and they

relate almost directly to the section we

covered earlier about boot files

so uh first we're going to talk about

boot errors in windows 7 and vista and

these include

errors with the boot manager one of the

files required to start windows

and uh an error set that says bcd file

is missing required info again don't

forget the bcd uh file

that we saw

when we talked about windows 7 or vista

boot files

then we're going to look at the windows

xp boot errors including the nt dect

failed

the nt loader is missing which

as far as i'm concerned is the number

one boot error

question you might see on the exam

and then an invalid boot.ini

error message

so first let's talk about the windows 7

vista boot errors if a boot error is

operating system related i.e it's not

hardware related or it's not a

third-party application related you're

gonna get some sort of message that's

gonna allow you to troubleshoot it or

ask you to troubleshoot it

windows 7 vista boot errors use sorry

windows 7 or vista boot using the boot

manager or the boot configuration data

file the bcd during the startup process

so it's in these two files

that we see the errors that occur

so the first one we somehow see is the

boot manager is missing

this displays if the boot manager file

is missing or corrupt and remember the

boot manager file

is what provides information on

different operating systems and

looks to the bcd for information

it'll probably also tell you to press

ctrl alt delete which

is how you can get to the task manager

in windows or uh in a dos prompt or

before we get to into windows will allow

you to restart the computer so if you're

ever in the middle of a boot process

pressing ctrl delete will reboot it

however what this is insinuating is even

pressing control delete is still going

to lead to the same problem if it is

an issue

so there are two methods to repair this

boot manager error the first is to boot

into the system recovery options menu

and select the startup repair option

okay so you remember we go into

the windows re

and use a startup repair

to

fix that issue alternatively we can

select uh

you know the recovery

options from the a-bomb

the boot menu

the second is to boot into system

recovery options and select the command

prompt and once you're there you can

type this

command

boot rec

fix boot

okay

and um that's boot recovery

using the fix boot switch we'll take a

look at the boot recovery tool a little

bit later when we talk about command

line tools but this is a very important

option to remember and you're going to

want to remember it in relation again to

the boot manager is missing error you're

we're about to see that there is a boot

boot recovery option for the bcd as well

so fix boot is your fixing the boot

manager file

the next one is the bcd file is missing

this means the boot manager is not in

the boot configuration data store or the

bcd file in the active partition is

damaged or missing remember

boot configuration data

gives information to the boot manager

and what to do so if the boot

configuration data file isn't there

we're in trouble

the bcd store needs to be repaired or

rebuilt therefore so uh the first way to

do this is to boot into system

recoveries and select the startup repair

option just like we saw again that's in

the windows recovery console on windows

7 or vista

the second option is to boot into system

recovery options select the command

prompt and this time use the boot

the boot

recovery rebuild bcd switch so remember

fix boot

is for

boot manager

okay

rebuild bcd is for the bcd error

remember those two things and you'll be

fine for the test

now you also may need to remove the old

bcd file

first

using the command prompt and the del

command the delete command

all right let's look at the windows xp

boot errors

during startup again windows xp uses

four files three we really need to be

concerned with the first is the ntld r

the bootloader

nt loader right nt standing for new

technology

the boot.ini file

the nt

ntdetect.com file which detects which

operating system we're going to and the

ntos kernel.exe file this we're not

going to have many issues with and we

didn't talk about it when we talked

about boot files but this is basically

the uh the kernel of the operating

system that loads

now if any of these files are corrupted

or missing you'll get one of the

following sort of messages nt detect has

failed

and this displays if the nt detect

dot com file is missing or corrupt the

nt loader file is missing again the most

common one i see on the test

which displays if the nt loader file is

missing or corrupt

and then an invalid boot.ini file which

will display if the boot ini file is

missing or corrupt do we see a pattern

here it doesn't only mean that the file

has been deleted it could mean that it's

been corrupted and no longer can be

accessed

so

to repair these issues you can do a

couple things

the most common is in all these cases

reboot to the windows cd

and access the recovery console and

recopy the file from windows cd-rom or

backup media what i see this most in is

nt loader my nt loader file is broken

i'm getting an error message what do you

do what you do is you load into a

command prompt and you copy it from a

previous installation disk or a previous

image or backup

the other thing you can do is run a

repair installation

to restore or restore windows which will

again overwrite over this all the system

files although it should not delete any

of your personal files

as i mentioned i just want to lock this

in one more time the nt loader error is

the number one error i see the most when

it comes to booting up options

so now we've talked about boot errors

including the windows 7 vista boot

arrows which include the boot manager is

missing in which case

we can use the gui system in the r

windows recovery or

use the fix boot switch on the boot

recovery tool in a command prompt the

bcd

file is missing which would use

boot

rec

slash

rebuild bcd excuse me

read that

okay and then the windows xp boot errors

including the nt detect failed the nt

loader is missing and the invalid boot

ini the number one thing i want you to

remember about that is copy

a good file

from say a cd dvd

or backup

so that was a really brief overview of

some of the boot errors these are

specifically the ones i see on the a

plus exam

okay

and so i want you to remember these in

specific

now let's keep talking about

troubleshooting windows and other issues

we're going to see pop up on the exam

and how we're going to fix them

[Music]

troubleshooting windows troubleshooting

tools

we've looked at now boot uh

utilities and some boot errors that

occur and how to fix them specifically

we focused on boot errors on the a plus

exam

let's look at some of the

troubleshooting tools that are built

into windows that you're going to use

frequently some of these we've already

seen

some of these we haven't seen yet and i

just want to cover these all real

quickly

so

we're going to look at the windows 7

troubleshooting tool specific only to

windows 7 not windows vista or xp that

does a lot of troubleshooting steps for

you and it's geared towards the average

user but can solve a lot of problems

that even the most advanced user might

have

then we'll look at the device manager

again which gives you information about

devices in your computer and offers you

some options when it comes to them

the event viewer which logs all the

events going on on your system and is

the first place you can visit to figure

out if there are any errors or problems

that's specifically occurring that you

can then fix

we'll look at in within those the

different types of log files and the

different types of logs

we'll also look at the different types

of events that occur

next we'll look at what's called problem

reports and solutions which was in vista

following that we'll look at the action

center which is in both vista and

windows 7.

and then dr watson which was a very

basic diagnostic utility built into

windows xp

so first let's look at the windows 7

troubleshooting tool

it's located in the control panel

under troubleshooting

and it's an automated program that

determines when something has gone wrong

and fixes it while you sit there

this tool

can do a several different things

for instance it can troubleshoot

programs on your computer

hardware and sound problems

network and internet issues for instance

if you're not able to get out to the

internet

and other things such as security and

appearance and personalization

let's go take a look at it in windows

before moving on to the device manager

so if we're in here

let's go to control panel

and click on troubleshooting

now if we had a specific program let's

say with a program

or even a hardware uh you know problem

we could go there let's say we're having

a problem with power usage we could

click improve power usage and this would

troubleshoot power problems we're having

if we're having problems with the

internet

this would allow us to automatically

troubleshoot some of our network

connection problems

or even our printer

so you can see how this can be sort of a

first step when troubleshooting issues

on the computer and especially for

technicians who work over the phone a

lot this can be a good first place to

send

your

people who call you in at the help desk

so next is the device manager

it can detect if a device is

malfunctioning has the wrong driver a

conflict resource or even if it's been

disabled in which case uh there will be

a uh an x through it much like um this

if you right click on a device you can

enable disable it as we've seen

and you may need to do this if you have

more than one of the same device in the

system in other words if i have two

graphics cards one that is much more

advanced the other that is integrated

i'm probably going to want to go with

the

built-in graphics card

now the event viewer is somewhat

different now we've already looked at

the device manager so i'm not going to

show you that again because we've looked

at that several times in the past

the event viewer though i will look at

when we're finished with this this is a

tool for analyzing applications and the

system and any errors that are going on

or events that are occurring it tells

you a lot about the status of the

operating system and the programs that

are running on it

it notifies you of any informational

events or audits for instance when

someone logs into the computer or logs

off or shuts down the computer or if the

computer shut down down automatically

it'll also warn you about possible

issues before they become errors for

instance if it notices something that it

thinks is not quite right it'll tell you

through what's called a warning and

we'll talk about those different types

of events in a minute

it'll display errors as they occur on

here so if some for instance your

application crashes you could visit the

event viewer and it would tell you

exactly why the why it crashed

now it's located in the administrative

tools menu in the start menus that's

start

uh

accessories administrative tools and you

can also get to it through the manage

console the management console

finally you can also get to it by typing

event viewer at the run or search

at the search

window from the start menu if you don't

have run

so um let's go take a look getting in

there real quickly

so as we said we can get there by going

to administrative tools in the control

panel

right in here

if we go to event viewer that'll take us

right there

alternatively

we can type event

vwr

which is the command line version

or if we don't mind seeing other stuff

in there we can right click go to manage

and here we're in the event viewer along

with all the other management

items

so there are three types of logs in the

event viewer where these events are

logged

the first is the system log

this contains information warnings and

errors about hardware device drivers

system files etc

all of these deal primarily with the

operating system itself

as opposed to

applications on the system

the next is the applications log

as you can guess this contains events

about the programs that are built into

or sometimes installed into windows

so i've installed word microsoft word

and it crashes uh the crash might be

logged in the event viewer as a

along with a reason why it crashed

finally there's the security

log which will hold information gathered

for auditing and security purposes

mostly when people log or log off the

computer

now it's important to pay attention to

all of these different categories

because they will ask you a question on

the exam that says something like a

computer

someone logged into the computer where

would this be logged in the event viewer

an application crashes where would that

be logged um someone is having an issue

with the control panel opening where

would that display in the event viewer

and of course that would be in the

system because anything to do with the

system

okay so it's important to familiarize

yourselves with these different logs and

to understand the difference between

them

there are also four types of events that

occur in each of those logs

the first is what's called information

information which is represented by an i

in a circle tells you basic information

about a service starting or an

application that ran successfully

basically it's just logging something

that happened but it's nothing bad that

happened

the second is what's called a warning

a warning which is indicated by a yellow

exclamation point within a triangle

tells you that the installation didn't

complete or a service timed out or is a

warning to something that might go wrong

in the future again this isn't

necessarily an error it's a warning as

to something that could go wrong

now an error is literally something that

is broken

this is indicated by a red exclamation

point in a circle

and it means something failed or was

corrupted or failed to start etc so this

is talking about major issues as opposed

to warnings which sort of lets you know

information about something that might

not be working properly but which isn't

causing any crashes yet

audit successes

are only in the security log

and they're indicated by a gold colored

key

they track when a user attempts to log

into the operating system let's say or

when it when they log out it audits them

so if you run a server you're going to

want to take a look at the event viewer

uh the security log in the uh sorry the

security log in the event viewer quite

often to see when people are logging off

and logging on especially if you're

investigating a user who

went on and did something or a virus was

infected in the system

so we take a look here go to the windows

logs

we see uh our our major logs on the left

there's also forwarded events which mean

that they're forwarded from a another um

another computer and the setup log which

is not in windows xp but was for when

windows was installed or updates are

occurring

so we can see information on

applications

for and here's an error so we can see

down here

details on the air

and we can see

you know different types of views

category

there's even an event id that we can

search

etc

now this is different from information

you can see which is in a just an i

and oh i just saw a warning here's a

warning

which was this something didn't uh

necessarily work out well nothing major

happened but it's a warning that

something did not run correctly

and we could then take this information

and search it on the internet

we can even copy it here for pasting

onto a google page or something

notice in security we're looking at very

different

types of things most of these are audits

when people log on or when

information is accessed

and then system all these have to do

specifically with the windows operating

system

we can also create custom views in the

event viewer by the way for instance

things that happen at a specific time

let's say i've been having troubles in

the last hour and i want to see all of

my errors

i could create a view let's say called

uh

last hour

errors

and now that's always under custom views

and i can go and make sure there weren't

any errors that just occurred

problem reports and solution was a

program in windows vista accessible from

the control panel which enabled you to

check for solutions to hardware and

software problems it was sort of the

precursor to the troubleshooting tool

that's in windows 7.

it could be set to report problems and

even check for all solutions

automatically so if there was a problem

it would sort of notice it and then

would try to fix it for you

automatically

these solutions could also be checked

for manually when the problem occurred

via an error window that popped up

the action center is in windows 7 and

windows vista and it all automatically

tells the user what needs to be attended

to for instance um in this one it's

telling me oh you don't have a backup

setup

and you need to install a virus scan

program and so it'll continue to notify

me the about these until i actually take

care of them

in windows 7 the problem reports and

solutions

that we saw on windows vista is built

into this action center

so

when an error occurs the action center

comes up and helps you fix it

you can get there by going to start

control panel system security and action

center

and if we go in there right now

i'm going to close out of this

go to my control panel

and the first thing up is the action

center

and here you can see i don't have virus

program and i can set up a backup

and opening any of these will give me

other

information for instance checking for

updates

uh troubleshooting

in security perhaps it'll tell me about

my firewall which is currently set on

the updates currently set on etc

there also will appear an icon in the

notification panel when the action

center needs you to take action

now dr watson was an old troubleshooting

tool that was built into the windows xp

it was accessed from the run prompt by

typing dr watson uh without any of the

vowels 32

and you can see it's a very uh

obviously not as evolved

as our uh

troubleshooting tools in windows 7 and

vista

and see it's going to save dump

information give us information via

sound or visual when something goes

wrong

any application errors etc

failures that are listed in dr watson

right here are often also listed in the

application log of the event viewer so

that's a good place to start looking for

your issue

then you can look at the log path or the

crash dump file which would give you a

little bit more information

all right

so now we've talked about the windows 7

troubleshooting tool

we looked at the device manager

specifically for hardware

the event viewer which included three

different logs you want to pay attention

to

remember that's the system

application

and the security log

we also looked at events which included

information

warnings

errors

and audits

then we took a look at problem reports

and solutions which was in vista

and later built into the action center

which will notify you of things you need

to take care of such as windows firewall

updates

running a virus scan program

and finally dr watson which was a very

basic troubleshooting tool that was

built into windows xp

so having talked about these

troubleshooting tools let's keep

continuing in troubleshooting

windows

[Music]

troubleshooting windows

monitoring performance

so let's look at how we can monitor

performance in windows so that way we

know

perhaps what part of windows is not

working up to snuff and also so we can

monitor any problems that are occurring

we're going to look at the performance

monitor

which allows us to get a

eagle-eyes view of our computer and how

all the hardware is running within it

we'll also take a look at the resource

monitor which is very similar albeit a

little less customizable than the

performance monitor

then we'll look at windows memory

diagnostics which can give us uh

a

a way to take a look at and fix any

problems we're specifically having with

our ram

if you recall this tool is located in

the windows recovery console

for windows 7 and windows vista

then we're going to look at the ms

config utility that the system

configuration utility which we've

touched on a couple times so far and i

want to look a little more in depth at

each of the tabs that are available

including the general tab

the boot tab

the service tab

the startup tab

and the tools tab

so let's start by looking at the

performance monitor which is here on the

right

it tracks how much your devices are

being utilized so for instance right now

we're looking at the processor and how

much the processor is being utilized and

you can see by a graph

just when it's spiking and when it's not

the time

the average minimum etc

the best part about the performance

manager or monitor rather is that it's

customizable depending on what you want

to measure so while it's only going to

measure the cpu by default it can

measure a lot of other things including

ram

hard drive etc

the information appears in a graph form

in the center and can actually be saved

into

a report so you can watch it so you can

read it later so the best thing about

this is let's say your computer is

running sluggish

one thing you might do is set up a

performance monitor to create a report

over a four hour period of working on

your computer normally

this information can also be

automatically placed into logs this way

you can send those logs to someone else

or look at them yourself to see how

you can make your computer run more

efficiently or where the bottlenecks

appear to be

this is great for analyzing information

on a daily basis

so let's go in and take a look at this

so we can get there in a couple ways one

is we could go here and just search for

the performance monitor which will bring

it up

another way and this is something that's

built into the control panel here

is to go to performance and information

tools

you can actually have your computer

rated as to how the performance is

running on your computer or you could go

to advanced tools

and then select the performance monitor

which is of course already open

so if we go into the performance monitor

we can see that it's automatically

looking at the cpu

let's say that we want to add something

to be

if we want to add something to be

sort of

counted

we can go in here and let's say we want

to look at

[Music]

our cache so we can have the cache added

to the performance monitor

we could also say have

memory and logical disk

oops

memory and logical disk added

we can even choose in the case of

logical disk what instance or where on

the logical disk we want to look

we click ok and now look we have so many

more so much more information

that's going to be read to us

including pin reads for the local disk

um and cache

transition pages and available kilobytes

for memory

similar to the performance monitor is

the resource monitor

this tracks the usage of specifically

the cpu disks network and memory as you

can see right here

these are activex graphs like in the

performance tab of the task manager you

can see over here so if you remember the

task manager we went into

we had a performance graph that showed

us this information as well so this is

actually the similar and the same thing

this is done in real time just like the

performance monitor however it is not

stored like the performance monitor is

stored so the performance monitor is

more useful for daily information the

resource monitor is for looking at

information at that one instant that you

want to look at it

so it's not as versatile as the

performance monitor but it gives you a

quicker overview of everything

and if we take a look at that

i'm going to close here out of the

performance monitor

we can get there by going to all

programs

accessories

system tools

resource monitor

and here we can see exactly what's going

on with our computer right now

including cpu usage memory usage etc

we can also get this again for in the

task manager this is very similar

to performance tab

and even we can open the resource

monitor from here

if we want we can switch between these

to get more information

about any of these items

windows memory diagnostics analyzes your

memory otherwise known as ram or random

access memory for physical errors and

issues in other words if you're having

problems with your ram it might be able

to identify the specific stick that's

having the issue

it can be started from within windows or

from the a-bomb

the advanced boot menu

advanced boot options menu

by pressing the f8

key and then uh pressing the tab key

once you're in advanced boot options

menu

the errors are displayed after the

system is automatically rebooted so what

will happen is once you've run this it

will automatically reboot and then tell

you any issues that you've been having

especially if you're running it from

within windows which we can do

if we close the resource monitor

we can search for windows memory

diagnostic and right here click restart

now and check for problems alternatively

maybe we wanted to check for problems

the next time we start the computer so

it's not going to restart it right now

it also appears in a log in your log in

your event viewer as well so if you need

the information for later you have a

place to pull it from

now let's talk about this major tool the

system configuration tool which is more

commonly known as ms config especially

on the test and we've already looked at

this a bit but let's take a little bit

longer to look at it in more depth

this is an extremely useful troubled

troubleshooting tool with a variety of

functions as we've already looked i've

already seen rather

you can open it from the run prompt and

type msconfig which is probably the

easiest way to get there or search and

type in msconfig

so let's look at the different tabs the

first is the general tab

this allows you to configure the system

for a diagnostic or selective startup

this helps you to troubleshoot devices

or services that are failing it's almost

like a safe mode menu so going into

diagnostic startup will start to

diagnose issues with the system going

into selective startup you can choose to

load certain services startup items etc

the boot menu takes us a step further it

allows you to modify the operating

system boot up settings similar to the

advanced boot options menu that you get

when you press f8

if you have multiple

operating systems let's say you had a

windows 8 here

you could choose one

to be the default

the advanced options also let you set

for instance if you were to click here

how much memory and what ports you want

to use for debugging information

you can also go into a safe mode and

choose some other options

that you could get through the advanced

boot options menu the important thing to

remember here is once you boot into

these you want to open up ms config

again and make sure to unselect them so

you can get back into the normal

operating system

now the services

lists all the services and their current

statuses

if you want to enable or disable them

you can

you just have to uncheck and then

restart this is different from going

into

say services.msc

and simply stopping the service you're

not going to stop and start the service

from within this this is for when you

boot up the computer this allows you to

make temporary changes to the way the

computer boots up

the startup tab on the other hand lists

various applications that start when the

computer boots so again this is not

services these are startup applications

as you can see from the differences

you can also disable and enable these

here to aid in troubleshooting so for

instance if i think this startup item is

having problems i can

uncheck this restart the computer and

then see if i'm still getting the same

error if i'm not then i know that that

might be the issue

but it gives me an easy way to do it

without having to delete the file

because here i can simply

uncheck this and temporarily not load it

finally we have the tools tab

this lists common utilities you find in

windows

it'll give you a central launching point

from which to start them so for instance

user access control settings which is

constantly asking you are you sure you

want to install this or not in windows

vista the action center which we've

looked at windows troubleshooting we've

looked at computer management etc etc

so we looked at the performance monitor

which is for for instance

daily monitoring

of the system because it can outport

output rather to reports into log files

we also looked at the resource monitor

which is for more real time

information

doesn't let you

output the information

windows die

windows memory diagnostics for

diagnosing your ram sticks

and we looked at ms config including the

general

boot

service

startup

and tools tabs

again all of these i generally see on

the exam something that says

what tool would you use if you if you're

having troubles with something you think

is booting up and you want to test your

theory that you would do here because

you're going to test your theory

by unchecking it temporarily

rather than deleting the item

permanently

now that we talked about these monitors

let's look at one of the

worst windows problems the blue screen

of death otherwise known as a stop error

[Music]

troubleshooting windows stop errors the

blue screen of death

as the name implies the blue screen of

death is something no windows user ever

wants to see

and it's generally given that name

because once it happens it's rather

difficult to troubleshoot

that being said there are several steps

we can take to avoid

and to help recover from a blue screen

of death

so we're going to cover stop errors in

general also known as bsod or the blue

screen of death

we'll look at some of the reasons for

these improper shutdowns that can cause

the stop error or blue screen of death

other than just a hardware malfunction

as well

then we'll talk about troubleshooting

these improper shutdowns including

checking the event viewer

using msconfig one of our favorite tools

booting into safe mode via the

advanced boot options menu pressing f8

running a virus scan program something

not built into windows but highly

recommended

checking the power source

and finally if nothing else works

restoring or recovering windows

finally we'll just look at error

reporting something that happens with

less intense less

difficult to recover from

errors

so first a stop error otherwise known as

the blue screen of death or b-sod and

yes you will see this term on the a-plus

exam

what happens is it displays

a blue screen with a lot of text

and some code including memory addresses

etc maybe even a file name

generally speaking this completely halts

the operating system and if you get to

this point all the page you've just been

working on is now lost now sometimes it

can be caused by a specific file in

which case you can google for the issue

but

no matter what happens if you haven't

backed up recently

the file you were just working on is

definitely gone and hopefully nothing

else has gone as well

this may be a one-time event so it might

just have happened because uh you know

the planet's aligned in a in a bad way

certain operating a certain software was

running all at once or this could be the

result of bad memory bad drivers some

hardware gone bad etc

so the first thing to do is to check the

event viewer the system logs

specifically and the dump file upon

reboot now what the dump file is is set

in the settings for what happens

when these occur

remember when we went to the paging file

we went to system properties the

advanced tab and then we went here to

set virtual memory or the paging file at

the bottom there's an area called

startup and recovery

and in there under settings

we can get to what happens when there's

a stop error the dump file dumps the

contents of the ram into this file and

that way you can look at it to

troubleshoot

now as i mentioned you can alter what

happens when a stop error occurs through

this system properties in advanced place

so right here in the system root which

means uh c windows system32 for instance

the memory.dump file is sitting there

and all the information the kernel

memory dump is there so you could go and

see what happened at the time

in the memory

when this

stop error occurred

now improper shutdowns can occur for a

variety of reasons

brownouts or blackouts from unclean

power or from a power outage perhaps

there's even a power surge that occurs

after a power outage

of course hardware failure in addition

to software failure

of course then the user can

inadvertently unplug the computer which

happens more often than you'd think

finally the virus a virus or other

malware bad software that got on the

computer can cause an improper shutdown

so the first thing we want to do is

check the event viewer they're always

going to appear in the system log any

problems okay

you want to check for any alerts about

hardware failures service failures etc i

would look for warnings but specifically

you want to look for errors and remember

those are the red ones

okay an exclamation point in a red

circle

you may need to upgrade the driver for

the affected uh hardware if that's the

problem and you may also need to upgrade

the software if the service

is if there's like a service that keeps

failing you might need to upgrade the

software that is relying on that service

if the computer is running the latest

service pack and patches then you

wouldn't need to deal with that but in

some cases upgrading windows to the

latest version

or using windows update to do so can

really help solve some very basic

problems

next we can use ms config to weed out

any third-party program issues the

easiest way to do that is on the

services tab select the hide all

microsoft services now if it's a

microsoft service that means it's built

into windows and therefore it's probably

going to be a little more intense

before we get to that

we probably want to

make sure that it's not a third-party

program before we start troubleshooting

windows itself and so selecting this box

disabling all of them and then

restarting the computer can really help

you

so restart see if the problem returns if

it does that might

you know the issue is something

microsoft related or doesn't have to do

with the services if it doesn't return

then you can start to check one of these

on individually each one and see when

you start to get the problem by process

of elimination

next we can boot into safe mode you'll

always know you're in safe mode by the

way

because it'll say safe mode on the sides

here

remember safe mode only uses the most

basic drivers and the most limited

resources to accomplish

booting into the operating system so

it's a really good utility to use for

troubleshooting

if you have a driver issue this could

help you find out about it because again

it's only going to load the most basic

drivers

now you might have a virus pro you might

have a a problem with a virus on your

computer and if so running a scan for

malware and quarantining anything

unusual anything that the virus scan

program has can certainly help fix the

problem

now one thing you have to be sure of is

to update the av software using the

these are shown is called dat files

before and after you're finished

basically the virus scan program

provides the mechanism for removing

viruses however you need to have the

data files for the virus program to look

for if it doesn't know what files it's

looking for that are bad then it's not

really going to help you out

you also may need to run it in safe mode

because if the virus is running while

you're scanning then you're probably not

going to be able to locate it so booting

into safe mode

gives you a better chance of not loading

the virus up and so the virus scan

program can

find it

the other thing is the virus scan

program might not work correctly if you

installed it onto your system once the

system was already infected

in this case you'd probably want to go

onto a online

site such as trend i know trend micro

for instance has something called house

call and it will scan your computer from

the web this way you can be a little

more sure that the

virus scan program scanning your

computer is not infected

you also make sure that it's completely

up to date this way

you also want to make sure that the ac

outlet is wired properly and supplying

clean power

if your computer is very intimately

shutting on and off this could be

because there's something wrong with the

power supply

verify that the power plug is firmly

secured to the computer if necessary you

might even want to check the power

supply the reason you might know

something's a power supply issue by the

way is if you're getting intermittent

and unexplainable shutdowns

anything that sort of doesn't have a

pattern can generally be attributed to

some sort of hardware failure

finally your last option if you have

continued stop errors continued blue

screen of deaths that you cannot figure

out you can't troubleshoot then your

last option is to stop troubleshooting

and simply try fixing

this is using the system recovery option

which can restore your system files from

a restore point or reinstalling windows

over the current installation

therefore resetting your system files

now one thing to note is if you have a

virus this isn't going to help you much

and so the only way to completely remove

a virus from the system is to reformat

the computer

you want to do this by the way from the

installation dvd you can also do it from

a utility within windows

but if you're having an error on windows

then reinstalling from within windows

might bring over the same issue you've

already been having

now if you're having less serious errors

they might display as a pop-up window

like this which says the system is just

recovered from a serious error it then

gives you an option to send or not send

the error to microsoft

usually operating system will continue

to function

the application you were using might

close but the operating system will

continue to function

you can also find out more information

in the event viewer about it

and you can have it search the internet

by clicking that click here button

that'll take you out to the internet and

give you some more information if there

is any in the microsoft knowledge base

it doesn't always work but sometimes

it's worth checking

you can also send that air report to

microsoft as i mentioned and sometimes

they'll be able to give you a fix but

more than likely this is to help

microsoft make their product better

you can alter how error reporting works

either by going to the problem reports

section of vista xp

or in windows 7 going to the

action center and choosing the problem

reporting settings

so we just talked about stop errors

otherwise known as bsod i want you to

remember that term because it stands for

blue screen

of death

and i see this on the exam all the time

then for troubleshooting improper

shutdowns we looked at checking the

event viewer

specifically the system log using

msconfig

removing all the microsoft services

from the list and disabling those

booting into safe mode you can do this

by pressing f8 don't forget

running a virus scan

you want to do this

in a

safe mode

the other thing is you always want to

disable system restore

before you remove a virus we've

mentioned that because you don't want

the virus hiding out in the system

restore

check the power if you're having

intermittent problems specifically

and finally if you don't have any other

options as a last resort you can restore

or do a

recovery installation of windows

finally error reporting is going to have

you send information

to microsoft if you so wish

great

so now let's finish up our discussion of

troubleshooting windows by looking at

some of the command line tools that you

have at your disposal which i see pop up

on the exam quite a bit

[Music]

troubleshooting windows

command line tools

so let's finish up this section on

troubleshooting windows and on most of

the information we're going to talk

about windows in general on a plus by

looking at the command line tools that

you not only need to know for the exam

but that will help you in a

troubleshooting situation

so i'm going to list all of the

different uh

command line tools here and these are

all ones that you should memorize for

the exam and you should know how they

work as well because i see

a lot of questions on these which is why

i'm spending a whole video on them

first i want to look at uh commands that

you would probably use within windows uh

meaning within the windows operating

system itself rather than from the

windows recovery console

these include uh some we've seen before

including check disk

the system file checker also we've seen

that one before

convert which we haven't necessarily

seen before but we've seen the same sort

of thing

format also something that we know we

can do from the disk management utility

disk part or the disk partitioning tool

the defrag tool something we have seen

before

x copy a more advanced

form of the copy utility and robocopy or

the robust file copy which is also a

more advanced copy command

task list which is similar to the task

manager

and task kill also similar to one of the

features in the task manager

finally we'll look at the shutdown

command which is not only useful for

shutting down your own computer but for

shutting down a remote computer as well

next we'll look at recovery command

prompt commands some of these you can

use within windows and some are best

used just in the command prompt

including edit

which is like a text editor

the copy command which we've seen

the expand command sort of like an unzip

tool

then some commands we've seen before

including the boot recovery command with

the fixed boot switch

with the fix mbr switch

with the rebuild bcd switch

and with the scan os switch

these are all windows 7 and vista

commands and so then we'll look at the

fix mbr and fix boot commands which are

specifically for xp

some of these i will show you in windows

but for the most part a lot of these

we could only show if we did so i'm

going to talk about them

and you can explore them on your own

in general whenever you have a command

if you use the switch

question mark after a command so let's

say we did convert

space switch question mark that would

give us the help on that command and

tell us how to use it even further i'll

point out any switches that you need to

know but just so you know this is always

a way to get help with any command

okay

so first let's look at command line

tools within windows there are two

groups of commands

the first are those that run from within

the windows operating system

these you can

usually

run by going to the command prompt and

running in elevated mode when you run as

administrator this is something we've

seen before

there are also those that run from when

you run the command prompt option within

either the windows system recovery uh

option in seven and vista that's win-re

or from the recovery console within xp

so we're going to look first at these

commands which you can also run here

okay and then we're going to look at

these commands

some of these do overlap but i'm trying

to give you a sense of which ones you

would use from within the windows itself

and the ones you're running

going to want to pay particular

attention to from within the windows

command recovery consoles

first let's look at check disk now we've

talked about check this already we've

looked at the gui interface and we even

mentioned this but it never hurts to

mention again this checks a disk a hard

disk or a solid state and can fix basic

issues like lost files or

validation of a certain files it

displays a status report of what is

found underneath it

and

what's important to know about the check

disk command is simply running

check disk

you are going to find any errors but

you're not necessarily going to fix them

okay and you can see here when i ran

check disk to make this

screenshot it told me the f parameter is

not specified so i'm running it in only

in read-only mode meaning i'm going to

find errors but not actually fix them so

you always run a run with the slash f

command alternately the slash r command

will do the same exact thing

so um you can use this whenever you have

missing operating system files you're

having a lot of issues with your hard

drive or invalid boot disk uh errors and

you might get a better if you are

getting an invalid boot disk area you're

gonna have to run it from the recovery

console which you can certainly do

so again checking the disk checks the

disk for a hard drive missing sectors

missing files missing folders

it looks at file verification it looks

at large record files

you can see it's looking at re-parsing

certain records etc so this is really

looking at the hard disk itself

now this is slightly different from the

system file checker or sfc

this is a utility that checks protected

system files as we've already discussed

it replaces incorrect versions or

corrupted files or missing files with

the correct files again we're

specifically talking here about system

files okay

it's used to fix problems with internet

explorer or other applications as well

typically

you're going to run the sfc with certain

options and there are two i want you to

be aware of the first is the scan now

option which you see right here and

that's going to scan all protected files

immediately

alternatively you can use the scan once

option which will scan all the files

upon the next boot up now you might want

to do this because it's going to give

you a cleaner scan

because you're running after a reboot

as opposed to running within windows and

some of the files you're going to scan

are possibly being used by the system at

that moment

all right let's talk about convert a

tool we have not seen yet

this converts a volume previously

formatted as fat32 to an ntfs volume

without losing any data

so

you can see right here

there's the switch what i want to do for

instance i have a fat32

hard drive or i've formatted it as such

and now a little bit into using it i

want to

format convert it rather to ntfs if i do

this the old-fashioned way i actually

have to

format the hard drive and then

partition it with the specific

file system

that would mean losing all of the data

that's already on there so we can use

the convert command to convert the

current

file system to and ntfs without losing

any of our data

so this command shows you how we would

do this convert space

d colon which is the name of the of the

d drive for instance space

switch fs colon

ntfs so we're saying convert

the d drive

to the file system

and tfs

now we can do that from

within

the gui interface as well but it's

sometimes a little easier to do from the

command line let me just go over there

for a second

so if we're here i just want to show you

convert i'm going to do the help like i

said and this tells us all of those this

is the screenshot we saw but i just want

to show you if we go to manage

and we go to storage here and we're in

the disk management uh storage area

which i think we've seen before

if this wasn't ntfs

i could do some converting here as well

okay so there is the ability to do this

to an extent but sometimes we want to

use the convert tool um just because i

might want to do this from outside of

windows perhaps in a recovery uh area

the format command is another thing we

can do from within that gui manage

interface it's used to format magnetic

media such as hard drives or electric

media such as the solid state drives to

fat fat32 or ntfs file systems so again

when you first receive a hard drive

generally speaking it's not formatted

for anything so before you use it you

need to format it

the type of file system just like with

the convert command is

going to be uh

you're going to use the switch

fs to determine the file system

and you can then either use fat

fat32 or ntfs to tell the computer what

to format it as

you can also do this from within the

disk management gui as i already pointed

out but if they ask you on the exam how

what of the which of the following

commands would allow you to format a

drive to ntfs now you know how to do it

and again if we were to write that out

that would be

format

let's say we wanted to format the d

drive okay

switch fs

and then we could say ntfs

and again we can see that right

here

and if we look up here this will always

tell you the format so you can see it's

the format command

the volume which would be d

and then any of these switches

this would even let you if i put v a

switch v at the end

so if i was to add at the end of this

space slash v

you know um

disk then that would give this d drive a

label of

the disk or we could call it for

instance maybe we don't want to say disk

maybe we want to say files or

system or some other descriptor to tell

us what the volume is okay

disk part or the disk partition utility

allows us to partition the disk this is

also something we can do from that gui

so it is the command line counterpart to

the windows disk management program

which we just took a look at

and it allows you to create delete or

extend volumes so let's say i have two

draw two disks

i have the c drive and i have two

logical drives rather and the d drive

i might want to

use the disk part utility

right which is not a command it is

utility notice that i go into disk part

and now i can start and now i have all

these options of things to do

so for instance i could convert within

the disk part utility i could extend

i could expand the volume i could change

the file system etc

okay so if i wanted to merge the c and d

commands i would use

um

the merge command for instance

i could also use perhaps the extend or

expand uh

disks uh commands depending on what the

situation is

it also lets you assign drive letters

make partitions active etc again

what we do with this one just slightly

different is we run the command disk

part that takes us into the utility and

then from the utility we tell it uh what

we want to do so where i put the

question mark here that's i'm asking for

help i would put here

and you can see it at the bottom here

you know i put like convert

etc etc

defrag we've looked at defragmenting

earlier this is the command line version

of the disk defragmenter utility

it's going to allow you to analyze a

disk without even defragging if you want

to use the slash

a switch you can see that says perform

an analysis on the specified volume i'm

not actually going to perform a

defragment it's just going to tell me

how fragmented the disk is

i can also use other switches

all listed right here

to perform other tasks and you can see

those

for instance

run the operation at a normal priority

uh perform it on all volumes might be a

switch i generally want to run etc

again the reason you're going to want to

use this is if you have uh you know if

you have less than 15 of the disk

available you're going to want to use

the disk utility as opposed to the gui

utility

now we looked at copy the copy command a

little earlier and we'll look at it

again but copy allows you to copy one

file from one place to another

x copy was an advancement upon copy and

it allowed you to copy large amounts of

data from one location to the other as

opposed to copy which can only do one it

could even make exact copies of entire

directory trees

something that the copy command could

not do because copy can only

handle single files so instead of having

to run a million copy commands i can run

an x copy on an entire directory and i

can you know

copy over all the files i have a lot

more options here too

so friends i can only copy files with

the attribute file set that would be for

backups so i could use xcopy to actually

do a very um kind of

poor man's backup utility if i wanted

there are others here for instance i can

have it prompt to create new files

copy directories and subdirectories

would be the slash s command

so that would allow me to copy uh an

entire tree structure

now some useful switches

are that you might want to know first of

all star

dot star

is going to allow you to copy

all files so if i did and this works

with copy as well but if i did x copy

you know star

dot star

c drive for instance and i actually

wrote that the opposite

way but let's say i did this command

xcopy star.star c it's going to copy all

the files in the current directory 2c

and this and that's because again

this is a wildcard meaning all files

with all extensions if you wanted to do

for instance star.exe

that would only copy all files with the

exe extension

uh slash e as i mentioned that's right

here is going to copy all folders and

subfolders including the empty ones

whereas slash s copies all of them with

the exception of empty ones

so

slash doesn't uh use um

doesn't copy over empty ones which can

be useful and slash f displays the full

source and destination of files while

copying them so those are just some

useful ones

robocopy is the next step up from xcopy

it stands for robust file copy

it's a directory replication tool that's

meant to copy directories that contain

lots of data

including full directory trees so while

xcopy can do that robocopy adds some

additional advantages that xcopy doesn't

have for instance if you're copying over

the network it can tolerate network

interruptions so if your network goes

down and you're doing an x copy uh it'll

just fail robocopy on the other hand can

actually resist or overcome these

interruptions and will continue copying

once the network is back in place

it can also skip past junctions

preserve data attributes and time stamps

something that copy when you copy a file

it actually changes the data attributes

and some of the timestamps

and it does not it is not used

unlike copy and xcopy for copying just a

single file so it is specifically for

directories subdirectories really

large copy issues generally that you're

going to want to be using um in what are

called batch files

you can also have it copy only

directories for instance instead of

files so a lot more things you can do

with robocopy than you can with x copy

and a lot more things you can do with x

copy than regular copy

for instance it'll also give an in-depth

results of its actions when it's done

and you can look at all the

different switches

down here and take a look and see which

one's useful i doubt you'll need to know

any of the switches for the exam just

know about robocopy in general

now task list as you can see from the

screenshot there is similar to the

processes tab of the task manager it

lists all the processes running

and each process and this is important

is assign what's called a process

identification number or pid

now what you do is in the next command

we're going to see you're going to use

that pid to actually do things with the

processes

these are assigned by the way

dynamically meaning there's they're

signed

differently every time they're open and

so they always change

and that way also you're not going to

use the same application same number for

uh two applications that way every

application has its own number which of

course is um

important if you're going to be doing

things with this list

it also shows as you can see all the way

to the right the memory usage of each

process so you can see for instance that

one of the svc hosts which is built into

windows and is required for it there are

several of them running is taking up a

good chunk of the memory and we could

also see for instance that

this command

which is another it looks like an

another sv host or perhaps vmware tool

is also running a lot of memory so these

would help you

look at bottlenecks of course you could

always do this from task manager but

let's say that you are in a

command line only interface

trying to troubleshoot something this is

how you're going to do it

task kill can be used in conjunction

with this task list okay it's similar to

the task manager and that allows you to

shut certain processes down

so you can use this if processes are

frozen or for instance if you can't even

open the task manager this is where you

want to go

use an association with the task list so

you determine the pid so here let's say

we wanted to

looking for a pid ah let's say i wanted

to shut down internet explorer alright

so here it is

here's the pid

here i go to task kill slash pid

1216

and then it shuts down

pid 1216 which was internet explorer so

you can see how that works in

conjunction

the shutdown command finally is used to

shut down restart sleep or even

hibernate the computer or it can log off

individuals the reason you're really

going to want to use this command is if

you're working on a network you might

want to remotely shut down a bunch of

computers before you upgrade them say

and this allows you to do that

the slash

s

slash s rather is will shut down after a

delay whereas switch p is an immediate

shutdown and those you can see

represented um

here

right there's the slash p turn off the

local computer with no time or warning

slash s

shut down the computer and that'll do it

after a slight delay

you can also for instance even add a

comment using slash c so if you want to

send a message i'm going to shut this

down in 10 minutes

for system maintenance that'll give

people time to save what they're doing

and shut down which is really when

you're going to be using this again in a

network setting the best thing is you

can shut down remote computers as i've

mentioned

all right so now we've looked at the

windows command prompt including check

disk the system file checker or sfc

the convert command

the format command the disk part or disk

partition command

the defrag utility

x copy which is a little better than the

regular copy robocopy which is the

robust file copy

the task list and task kill commands

both just like the task manager and then

the shutdown command so now let's look

at some of the

recovery command prompt uh

tools and utilities and commands

so the first is the edit command which i

can't show you because it's not in

windows 7.

it's not available in all versions of

windows but it is used to create and

modify text files in effect it is a

text editor

uh so you can see it file edit search

you know

this is the

old version of wordpad or textedit or

notepad this is the original text editor

and it's useful if you ever need to

create text files or you need to save

information or you want to create a

batch file or something and you are in

a command line this is how you do it so

remember the edit command again is the

text editor it's similar like i said to

a basic text editor allows you to save

text files i can't show you this in

windows 7 because it doesn't exist in

the when in the windows installation

it's probably only available if we go

into the windows recovery installation

in this version you can check on your

own computer to see if it works

the copy command that very simple tool

not x copy not robocopy we've looked at

it before it allows you to copy files

from one location to another and for

instance the reason i'm mentioning it in

this is you might want to use it to copy

the nt loader file from the cd to the

hard drive remember if something goes

wrong with that nt loader file you're

going to want to copy the old file to

the new

disk or sorry the new file to the old

disk because the old one's probably

corrupted and in that case you're

probably going to want to use the copy

command

it's also available in most windows

editions but it's not usually necessary

because you're generally going to do

that through the gui interface or if

you're really copying over a lot of

stuff

you're going to use x copy or robocopy

instead

expand is like an unzipper if you have a

zip file that will decompress the file

so like that we have

cab cab files and exe files cab stands

for cabinet and these files are how for

instance windows xp stores all the files

before installation so if i needed to

get the nt loader file i would need to

actually open up or decompress or expand

one of the cabinet files in which it was

stored

so what this does is this command

places a copy of the decompressed

version on the hard drive once you've

done that you can then copy the file

using the copy command so i have a cab

file let's say it's like cab you know

it's

cab 01 you know it's 01632.cab

i'll write that out let's say i have so

i would put expand

01632.cab

and then that would

unzip or decompress a whole lot of files

out of this cabinet

and then i could copy

say the nt loader file from one location

to another

now we've looked at the boot rec or boot

recovery command but i want to go over

some of the switches that might come up

on the test some we've seen before the

first is bootrec fix boot this replaces

the boot manager file

it'll write a new windows 7 or vista

compatible boot sector to the system

partition all of these by the way are

only in windows vista and 7.

so if you have a problem with the boot

manager file again you're going to use

the fix boot command

now if you're having a problem with the

bc uh bcd file that's different we'll

look at that in a second

now the mbr is the master boot record

it's where the computer looks

uh in order to start booting up the the

computer

and what this does was if you're having

a trouble booting into the booting up

into the system you might have and

sometimes it'll tell you you have a

faulty mbr master boot record this

bootrec fix mbr rewrites the windows 7

or vista compatible master boot record

to the system partition which would fix

hopefully a lot of boot errors that

you're having

it can also repair boot sector blocks

after a virus has been removed so

sometimes you have a virus on your

system it deletes certain files in the

boot sector this can help to fix that

bootrec

rebuild bcd does just what you think it

does it repairs the bcd store which

again is necessary for booting into

windows

and bootrec

scan os or switch scan os will scan all

your disks for installations compatible

with windows 7 vista so that way if

let's say that you had a problem with

the mbr you need to rebuild it now it

doesn't know where the operating systems

are you would use this it would scan the

operating system find the installations

and then you can use those installations

to boot into windows

it also displays the entries that are

not currently included in the bcd store

so if i had a bcd store problem and oh

for some reason only one of my

operating systems was popping up let's

say i have windows 7 and windows 8 and

windows vista and in my bcd store it

only shows windows 7. there's no way i

can boot into my other ones this is

what's going to help you with that

now with windows xp we have these two

commands fix mbr and fix boot

fix mbr does exactly what you think it

does based on what we saw in windows 7

and vista this is used to repair the mbr

or the master boot record of the system

partition for windows xp

if you have a virus that's damaged the

mbr and windows can't start this is

probably what you're going to want to

use

fix boot

use is used to write new windows boot

sector codes to the system partition so

the mbr might be intact but the boot

sector is faulty and in this case you're

going to want to use fix boot you could

also use that with say the boot ini if

the boot ini file got damaged

all right so now we've looked at the

recovery command prompt uh commands

including edit command

which is like a text editor the copy

command

the expand command which is going to be

used

for decompressing files such as the

cabinet files

bootrec fix boot

fix mbr

rebuild bcd and scan os

and then the fix mbr and fix boot

commands in windows xp

so let's just go over all these one more

time

the check disk command

which we saw just like the gui utility

right is for checking bad sectors on the

hard drive

the system file checker is specifically

to fix system files so if you're having

errors specifically with system files

this is what you're going to want to run

convert

allows you to move from say a fat32

to ntfs

and again we always want to be in ntfs

if we can

the format command

which allows you to format just like the

disk management utility you can format

a

drive into fat fat32

or

ntfs

the disk part command or disk partition

command which is the command line

version

of the disk management utility which we

saw in windows

okay the defrag command

which is for defragmenting the system

especially if you have less than 15

percent free space

the x copy and robocopy commands

both of which are better at copying

directory structures

the task list and task kill command

which are sort of our command line

replacement for the task manager

and the shutdown command which

specifically lets you

shut down remotely

while i'm thinking about it don't forget

with the chat check disc command we want

to run with either the f slash f or the

slash r switches and with the system

file checker we generally are going to

want to use the scan now switch

recovery command prompt the edit command

that's like our text editor

the copy command which can be used say

to copy the nt loader file from a cd to

the dvd uh to your hard drive

the expand command which decompresses

files

specifically we're probably going to use

that with cab files or cabinet files

which are the files used to install

windows

the bootrec

fix boot for fixing the

um

our boot files

the fix mbr for fixing the master boot

record

the rebuild bcd to fix that bcd file

and scan os which is specifically for

scanning for other operating systems

that aren't in the bcd

these are all by the way

windows 7 and vista

whereas fix mbr and fix boot do the same

things as the ones above

but are specifically for xp

all right so we've talked now about all

the things we need to know really for

windows and this concludes the

troubleshooting section of windows so

now let's take a step back into into the

computers uh out of the operating system

and look at uh video

multimedia and then we'll talk about um

you know networking and all the other

parts of the a plus exam

[Music]

video

video subsystem

as computers have grown more advanced so

is video in fact a lot of video cards

are basically their own

mini computers which is why we call it a

video subsystem it's an underlying

system in the grander system of the

computer and i want to speak about this

a little more in depth because on the a

plus exam you may see specific questions

related to video and i don't want them

to catch you off guard

so first we're going to go over the

video card and the video sub system

again now the video subsystem has many

parts in it and we'll talk about that in

just a second but we're going to talk

about the video subsystem more like an

overview we're going to then discuss

video cards a little bit more

take a look back at the expansion buses

specifically for video cards that's pci

pcie or otherwise known as pci express

and agp

for a bus format created specifically

for graphics we're then going to look at

certain connector types how would we

connect

the monitor for instance to the video

card

we'll look at the video card chip set in

general which is just like a motherboard

chipset as i said video cards nowadays

are basically their own mini computers

we're going to look at the gpu the

graphics processing unit a word we've

seen pop up over and over throughout

this course

and then we're going to talk about

memory which in effect is ram for the

video card

so first let's go over the video

subsystem

as we just talked about there are many

parts in the video in the video

subsystem that make up the whole

for instance the video card in some

cases an integrated video card meaning

that it's built onto the motherboard

this has become more and more

common because basically you need a

computer nowadays with a video card and

so instead of adding one they've simply

built them onto motherboards of course

the issue with this is that they're not

as advanced as video cards you can

sometimes add yourself although that is

changing

then there are the cards expansion buses

now we'll talk about these different

ones again but it started with pci

pci moved over to pci express but in the

middle

we had agp or the advanced graphics

specifically for these cards because

they required a faster speed and a

faster connection directly with the cpu

now there are also two different types

of connections internal and external

connections so we're going to look at

those different types of connections not

only the internal connections between

the card and say the rest of the machine

but also the external connections

between the video card and the display

and then of course the display itself

we're going to talk about some of these

in depth in in this uh brief video and

in others we'll talk about them later on

in other videos

also the video drivers uh the software

component how the software and the

operating system interfaces with the

video card

so first let's talk about video cards

this is an example of a video card right

here a little bit of an older video card

and at this point as i've mentioned they

are self-contained computers

that's because they can contain a

processor the graphics processing unit

which we'll talk about a little bit more

they even contain their own ram or

memory so that way when the graphics

processing unit has gone through and

processed some of the visuals it has a

place to store it temporarily before

sending it up to the user

now we have to take into account the

following things when we're buying or

installing a video cards first of all

do we have the right expansion buses or

slots that go along with the video card

this is actually a really old video card

this looks like an old iso perhaps a

pci although it looks more like an iso

to me

but

we need to make sure that if we have an

agp for instance video card that we have

an agp slot on the computer

we also want to take into account the

gpu speed if you're someone who does a

lot of gaming and we'll see this later

you're going to want more right because

more gpu

equals better graphics just like

more ram is going to also equal better

graphics just like on your regular

computer right if you have a larger cpu

then you're going to have a faster

running computer

so like i just said memory is going to

be something we want to take into

account and then of course the

connectors these are important because

if you have a monitor that does not have

an hdmi connection and your video card

only has an hdmi connection which would

be rare then you're going to be in

trouble

on the other hand if you have a monitor

or you want to use your tv to connect

your computer to but your computer only

has a vga connection that's going to

cause you a little bit more grief you

can still do it via all sorts of

intermediary connectors you could buy it

say electronics store but still it's

going to cause you some problems

finally power and cooling don't forget

if this is its own computer nowadays

you're going to need to power it

with extra power and it's going to have

to be cooled because it's giving off

more power that's why a lot of these

will see this now because we have a

graphics processing unit will have a

heat sink on

the

video card and if you see a card in the

computer that has a heatsink and has a

fan you can be pretty sure that's the

video card

so let's look at the expansion buses

again we've talked about these in depth

already but i want to review them

because they are important

the majority of video card buses uh are

pci or peripheral component interconnect

x's nowadays all right this was the

original sort of format that people used

to connect their video cards to of

course it wasn't fast enough and so what

happened was they created this

accelerated graphics port which was

specifically for the graphics card

now of course what happened is we were

able to

rev this one up a bit

and create a pci express generally also

called uh with an x16 meaning it's using

16

lanes there

so this allows for a high data transfer

rate meaning that as soon as my graphics

card basically what was happening is if

we were using this old pci right here

the

video card was working faster than the

motherboard could keep up and so they

created a bus that was specifically

for graphics cards that could take the

information the graphics card was

outputting and feed it into the computer

as fast as it could

it also directs cook directly to the uh

sorry connects directly to the north

bridge of the motherboard's chipset

remember we had a north bridge in the

south bridge the north bridge connected

directly to the ram and the cpu it

connected the cpu directly to the ram

the south bridge connecting all those

other devices storage for instance and

so what the pci express did was it

rerouted itself so that it connected

directly to the cpu as well this is

because again graphics have become so

important that now we need to have these

high transfer rates that can connect

directly to the cpu now i know you're

thinking uh didn't you just say that a

video card has its own gpu yeah it does

but that's the process within the video

card that's the process all the weird

intricacies within uh video sort of

rendering when we come back it still

needs to go through a central processing

unit that's why it's called the central

processing unit okay so this gave it a

direct line of connection

to the cpu

additionally generally speaking like i

just mentioned the pci express x16 which

is the one you're going to see on the

market a lot now uses 16 lanes to

transfer data back and forth not

something you need to know for the exam

but good to recognize that anyway one

thing you're definitely going to see on

the exam is this come up this question

and i want you to remember if you see

pci agp pcie

and it asks you which one of these is

most likely commonly used today in a

graphics card you're going to look at

this one the pcie and if it has that x16

at the end that makes it all the more

better because that's telling you it's

using not just 8 not just whatever it's

using 16 lanes which is currently the

maximum we might start seeing 32 i don't

think our graphics cards are quite at

that point just yet

all right let's review the connector

types one more time

the video card is probably going to

dictate the kind of connector used

meaning you're going to have a video

card and that's going to dictate what

kind of monitor

you're going to buy to connect to it

so these are the three major ones svga

which is super vga sort of supplanted

the regular old vga and again the way we

know this is there's three rows

15 pins and generally speaking it is

colored blue

this is in contrast to dvi which is a

digital signal okay that's that d

digital video interface

and that's generally going to be white

as opposed to blue just something to

know

finally we have hdmi now the difference

between hdmi and these other ones

is hdmi can carry audio

and sound

so although it's digital just like dvi

is it can also carry audio along with it

so um one thing that's important to know

and the reason i put this bullet point

in here is that if you have dvi you can

use it by a like a connector an adapter

to allow it to connect to either an hdmi

source for instance your tv

or a vga source if you go to a vga

source just realize you're going from a

digital to an analog signal

and if you're going to

hdmi just realize you're only going to

get video because while hdmi can support

video and audio dvi can only support

video so this is an important thing to

remember if you're going to connect your

computer to your tv let's say and you

have a dvi port on your computer but an

hdmi port on your

tv you go to the store you buy an hdmi a

dvi to hdmi converter you plug it in and

you're getting video but no sound that's

because you have to connect your sound

card as well as your video card

now there may be multiple connectors on

your uh computer

maybe you'll have a vga and dvi or

perhaps you'll have a dvi and an hdmi

now this could be for a number of

reasons one i want to have tv out and so

it's going to include hdmi and dvi to

make it easier for you to output to your

tv alternatively maybe you'll have two

dbis and that could be because i want to

have two monitors

or perhaps you'll even have four dvi

connections

and you want to have four monitors

windows can support up to 10 different

monitors as we'll see later

not on laptops on desktop specifically

and you can expand or mirror your

your image on your comp on on the

computer to be

to take the place of multiple monitors

so that would be the reason you're going

to have multiple connectors on a video

card

i point this out uh this image because

there are actually several different

types of dvi connectors

although we don't usually think about

this and you won't

normally run into this and this will not

be really on the exam very much but look

you have dvi dvid dvia they do have

different connectors you can see

for instance these are slightly

different you can see over here these

are different between the eyes and the

d's

um

i just want to point this out because

let's say you buy a video card that

specifies one you want to make sure that

your monitor can work with it otherwise

you're going to be in

you know you're gonna be in trouble

okay

uh let's take a look really quick i just

want to talk about what's the video card

chipset is in case you run into this

term

again

just like a motherboard

the video card has its own chipset and

if you recall what a chipset is a

chipset is all the chips all the

circuits

and how they're packaged together and

sold okay so when we say a video card

chip set that means how all the chips

are set together and sold for this

specific unit and every graphics card

has its own chipsets some of the popular

ones you might have seen nvidia is a

pretty popular uh

chipset manufacturer they make graphics

cards and they have their own chipset so

it's just important to realize that to

recognize it that when we're talking

about chipsets sometimes we're not just

referring to motherboard we're referring

to the video card as well

and it provides again a connection

between the gpu and the ram on the card

so just like with the motherboard

if i have my chipset and again this is

just uh

this is not necessarily an image of a

chipset this entire thing is the chipset

right

but if these are little ram chips which

i assume they are

and let's say this is the gpu

the chipset allows all this stuff to

talk to to one another

and then you have you can see just the

remnants of it

the expansion bus down here

that allows the video cards chipset to

communicate with the motherboards

chipset

so let's talk about the graphics

processing unit can you spot on this

card

the graphics processing unit

the reason i know it's right there what

is this thing right here

it's a heatsink

just like

your central processing unit

so the gpu stands for graphics

processing unit and again it's measured

just like a cpu is now we're not getting

gigahertz yet uh when we're talking

about gpus we're generally talking about

uh megahertz still okay but 630

megahertz that used to be how fast a

computer ran by itself so now we're

taking that and we're putting it just

onto a graphics card it's pretty

remarkable

uh

as i mentioned you're probably going to

have your own heatsink and you might

even see a fan this is rather small

for a present day

uh

heatsink on a graphics card so you're

probably going to see very large heat

sinks and fans to cool these suckers

because they are so large and putting

off so much heat

the entire card in fact might be

enclosed so you might actually not even

see any of this chipset stuff right it

might all be enclosed

by a giant fan and plastic enclosure

just like some ram is in order to help

the heat dissipate

finally let's talk about ram before we

um get to the end here

it's measured just like a motherboard's

ram okay i didn't find any pictures of

it because it doesn't stick on the same

way that you're going to stick on other

rams sometimes it used to

sometimes you can upgrade the ram on a

video card it really depends on the

manufacturer

but

just like

regular ram we actually have a ddr

double data ram that's made specifically

for graphics cards called gddr which is

graphics data double data ram i don't

think you're going to see this on the

exam but i want to point it out because

in case it does come up or in case they

update the exam i don't want you to be

surprised and just like

with a regular

memory you could have ddr1 ddr2 or ddr3

ram and you could have a lot of it look

at this three gigabytes of ddr3 ram

that's someone who's doing a lot of film

editing right and look at this it's

going to run it one or two gigahertz

that's crazy that's faster than some

computers so you can see how

graphics video cards have really taken

on their own systems their own necessity

and because there's so much going on

nowadays

so we talked about the video subsystem

which is basically a mini computer

within the computer

we talked about video cards the

expansion buses remember the one you're

probably going to see the most nowadays

is pci x16 and that 16

means 16 lanes

we have different connector types svga

is that blue

15 pin

we had dvi which was white and is

digital

and then we had hdmi

which again carries video

and audio okay

the video card chipset connects the ram

well actually it connects these two

right

to one another

we also had the gpu the graphics

processing unit which is just a

processor specifically for video

and then memory the fact that

these video cards nowadays have their

very own ram and just like on a regular

computer it's gonna be a form of ddr

called graphics ddr

and it could be running graphics ddr3

and the gpu could possibly be running at

one gigahertz although i would be

shocked if you're going to find a lot of

stuff at that speed generally it's going

to be a little slower for the common

user

so now that we've talked about sort of

the hardware of it let's talk about some

of the settings the drivers the software

and the monitors

[Music]

video installing and troubleshooting

we've just gone over the video subsystem

so now i want to talk about installing

video cards and some of the

troubleshooting tips and some of the

troubleshooting questions and their

answers that i see pop up on the a plus

exam a lot

so first we're going to talk about

installing video cards and then we're

going to talk about troubleshooting

video cards and as i mentioned this

isn't every single troubleshooting thing

in the book

but these are the ones that i see on the

a-plus exam the most often so these are

the ones i want you to be aware of

we're going to talk about uh

troubleshooting connections

power supplies

onboard video settings within the bios

resolution settings

drivers

directx which is important and there's a

specific tool that you must know when it

comes to directx and again

we've talked about directx when it comes

to windows but i just want to go over it

again

the temperature of the video card again

these video cards now their own systems

gpus their own heat sinks so they can

overheat quite easily

stuck or dead pixels which has more to

do with the monitors which we are going

to talk about next but i wanted to lump

that in here with troubleshooting just

in case

monitor calibration which means

calibrating what you see on the monitor

to

what the video card is sending out

and finally uh internal uh opening up of

the computer and dealing with the

internals of the graphics card if all

the other things don't uh fix it

all right

so installing a video card is just as

easy as installing any other card you

insert it into an expansion bus slot and

just so we can remind ourselves that

expansion bus slot nowadays is either

going to be an agp

or more likely now a pci x 16

and just like other adapter cards you

you plug it in uh sort of wiggle it into

that slot if you if you haven't dealt

with one before i recommend uh going to

the store perhaps and taking a look or

buying some pieces and building your own

computer or finding an old computer you

can take apart doesn't matter how old or

how new

and then you screw

the end piece that's closest to the

connector into the chassis in order to

keep it in place

this is going to uh one thing you need

to make sure of when you're installing a

video card is that you ensure it is

compatible with your motherboard if you

get a pci x16 video card and you only

have an agp slot you're going to be in

trouble

so

sometimes with pcie there are some some

considerations that you have to take

into and i'm sorry i put x i'm at e here

pcie you have some special

considerations first of all some of them

can take two slots so you'll

you literally will double up on that and

then you'll have two screws as well okay

also

pcie if you recall from when we talked

about power earlier in the course has

its own six or eight pin power connector

so this is another thing you need to

make sure of when we're talking about

compatibility is that you plug the power

connector from the power

adapter or sorry the power supply into

the video card to make sure that it can

run that gpu can run the fan can run all

that stuff because now it takes so much

more power there's not enough power

traveling just through the bus

um

if you don't have a power supply

sometimes there are mola molex adapters

remember molex is the power

the power cord specifically for

um

ide pata drives and sometimes there are

adapters available to allow you to

convert a molex to a pci

e

power

finally you need to install the graphics

driver for the specific card if you

don't you'll still see something but

it's not going to operate at optimal

speed and optimal performance and it's

probably going to give you a very basic

resolution that's going to look a little

odd and not like the very expensive

video card that you just purchased

so just as i just just reiterating what

i said right now on the um slide

all right

let's start with troubleshooting

connections

nothing shows on the display let's say

that that happens the first thing i want

to do is figure out what's the problem

is the monitor even plugged into the

video card

that could very easily be the issue

can't tell you how many times someone

said my monitor is not working and i

said is it plugged in oh oh there there

that's the problem

um we also want to verify the monitor is

connected to the power outlet uh

sometimes people forget to plug it in or

even turn it on so i want to make sure

that the monitor is powered on in order

to you know before i start jumping to

conclusions check all the simplest

things first occam's razor states and

this is a famous saying

all things being equal the simplest

answer is usually the correct one

if the image on the display is scrambled

you have a couple other uh issues here

first it could be a bent pin remember if

we're talking about that vga connector

right which is three rows 15 pins

i could have one of these pins bent and

maybe hitting another pin that's going

to cause all sorts of electrical signals

to scramble and so sometimes what

that'll

result in is a scrambled

you can also make sure it's connected to

the right connection sometimes people

try connecting a dvi to a dbid and so

you're not

the computer doesn't know what to make

of these

rather the monitors that know what to

make of the video images coming out of

the computer

it can also be a driver issue so just to

keep in mind if you get this question on

the exam and it you don't see bent pins

or

connected to the wrong port on there it

could be that it's the wrong driver

all right power

if you have a flickering or stuck pixels

on the monitor the

first thing you can always do and this

just with anything really with any sort

of troubleshooting is power cycle the

computer the display and any equipment

if you have a ups um if you have a power

a

surge protector for instance you can

cycle those reboot them right turn off

the computer turn off the monitor

maybe even unplug it and turn it all

back in make sure perhaps that something

didn't get bent a pen etc

this is a go-to solution this is always

the first thing you should do

if you're sure everything is plugged in

correctly

alright onboard bios now here's where

we're specifically going to see this one

let's say you install a video card to

your computer that already had an

onboard video card and now the new

card's not working but the old one is

what's the issue i just installed my new

video card well probably what you did is

you didn't disable the onboard video in

the bios so the motherboard still thinks

well i'm only going to go with i'm going

to go with the the quickest solution

which is the one that's built into my uh

to my system so what you need to do

sometimes is sometimes you can do this

through the device manager in windows

but often times you go into

the bios and you disable the video card

okay

make sure you also plug the monitor into

the new video card and not the old

on-board connection sometimes you're

rushing through stuff you're so excited

to get this new video card in and you

plug it into the old one this is a

common question i see on the exam if you

have again you've just installed a new

video card or they're upgrading their

video card and it's not working and they

had an old video card that works fine

the issue is probably

not that you've installed the new video

card incorrectly it's actually probably

that you haven't disabled the old video

card

now resolution settings we've talked

about resolution a bit again resolution

is uh that

let's say

1280

by 720

right that would be a resolution and

that means you're 1280 wide by 720 tall

and that gives us an aspect ratio let's

say

uh 16 by nine in this case

sometimes if your monitor or your

graphics card doesn't support a specific

resolution you might get a distorted

image or the computer just gives up and

says i'm not going to try creating an

image at that resolution

in this case you've probably

accidentally set the resolution too high

and it's not supported by the monitor or

by the graphics card

generally speaking if you do this in

windows it will give you 15 seconds and

it'll say unless you click ok

i'm going to revert back to the old

resolution but sometimes you're rushing

through stuff you change the resolution

and then you press enter and you make

that window go away and now you just

have a blank screen i have had to in the

past go through by memory and get into

um

the display settings in order to change

this but another way to do this is boot

into the low resolution vga mode or safe

mode remember when you press f8

when you hear that windows beep

right before you get into start loading

windows you press or hold down f8 this

brings up the advanced boot menu and you

can choose to boot into vga mode or safe

mode which generally speaking is going

to load a

generic driver and is going to start the

computer with the resolution of 640x480

which is probably one of the lowest

resolutions you would never want to run

your computer at that resolution

nowadays because it's so low however it

is going to allow you to change and fix

the issue

so you modify that resolution in the

display settings once you've gotten into

vga motor safe mode and now you're good

to go

drivers

if there is no image a distorted image

or the resolution remains really really

low you can't get it up to the site you

need and you're thinking man i just

bought this really expensive thing and

it's running at 640 by 480 or 800 by 600

what's the problem well probably what's

going on is you didn't install the

proper driver or you installed the

driver incorrectly generally speaking

you want to download the latest driver

from the internet making sure to virus

scan check it of course but the reason

we do this is by the time you've

purchased the driver like we've said by

the time we've purchased you purchased

that driver at the store it could be a

year or two out of date so go on the

internet go to nvidia site for instance

and download the newest driver for your

operating system if you have windows 8

make sure to get a windows 8 driver and

install it

you may need to do this on another

system or in low res or safe mode

because low res by the way is that vga

mode low resolution and the reason you

might have to do this is i can't get

into windows or when it boots into

windows i can't see anything so

sometimes you go into the safe mode you

download the driver you install it and

that helps correct stuff that's the

reason safe mode is there

all right directx nowadays with windows

starting with vista directx was an

important part of the operating system

uh apple came out with all their sort of

advanced

graphics and microsoft wanted to mimic

that and so directx is this windows

technology that allows for better

performance from video and sound and

it's integrated into the operating

system

therefore

if you have windows aero for instance on

your vista or your windows 7 computer

and that's again that thing that allows

you to transparency behind or in front

of windows uh then you're running

directx and sometimes there can be a

problem with the directx sometimes it

causes issues so you want to remember

and i know we talked about this tool

before i just want to remind you of it

because i always see it come up on the

test dxdiag which stands for directx

diagnostic tool

it troubleshoots these issues gives you

information about the installed version

of directx whether it's operating

correctly

if you need to do anything etc

we looked at this when we looked at

windows i showed you a screen cap of it

you just go into start run or you search

for it if you go to if you have vista or

seven just go to start type in the

search

dxdiag okay remember that and remember

if you see this dx diag on the test

it's referring to media

whether that's video

or audio generally speaking it's going

to be video okay

now

because just like a computer can

overheat so can a video card high-end

video cards

used especially by gamers and designers

may push the

and if you're using your video card and

you're one of these high using people

you might be pushing the video card past

its its limits past the limits it's

supposed to be worked and as a result

the video card is going to begin to shut

itself down or throttle back the gpu

speed

closing the application

stop working because it doesn't want to

damage itself it doesn't want to

overheat to the point where it damages

itself so what it's going to do

is it's going to throttle back its own

speed it's going to stop working before

it hurts itself if this is happening

sporadically and this is the key if you

ever see sporadic right sporadic

generally means you have a loose

connection of some sort or you have

something that's only happening

sporadically that's not happening all

the time and that's something like

overheating all right it's important to

this is an important troubleshooting

step right here

so consider additional cooling fans or

liquid cooling for instance if this is

one of your issues

let's say you have stuck or dead pixels

on the screen you're looking at the

screen and there are a couple areas on

the screen that never move they're

always green for instance or some weird

color

your first step always

power cycle the computer power cycle the

monitor maybe there's an issue

if not

use software and here are some examples

of software you can download off the

internet uh there's one called lcd

repair there's one called ud pixel

there's another called

the monitor test okay google these you

can download these uh from the internet

and that will help do a diagnostic on

your monitor and through the

device through the video card to make

sure everything's running correctly and

to see if it can fix your issue

if it doesn't then your display is

probably bogus it needs to be repaired

or replaced a note when we come to video

okay when we come to monitors and we'll

talk about this in just a second

never repair monitor yourself

always take them in this is because when

we're dealing with monitors when we're

dealing with displays especially crt

displays which are the old ones they can

get

they can hold quite a charge and they

can harm you okay

so this is one of the major things if

you

having a problem with the monitor you

should not try fixing it yourself

now if you're having artifacts artifacts

or things that are remnants of images

that are being left onto your monitor

screen incorrect colors degraded images

there's a couple things one is

if you're running a crt

monitor which we'll talk about what that

is in just a bit but those are those big

old huge cathode ray

tube monitors you can try using the

de-gauzing feature and again we will

take a look at that in one of the next

videos

um that's generally an answer by the way

on at least one question d gauze okay

you can also adjust the brightness the

contrast on a monitor either using if

you're on a laptop using those keyboard

buttons or on the monitor itself using

that

menu screen which we'll talk about in

just a bit

you can also use the manufacturer

utility to calibrate the monitor with

the colors coming out of the screen

don't forget

what you're seeing on the monitor

is an interpretation

of colors that the computer believes to

be red green etc sometimes those

interpretations are wrong right and so

what you have to do is calibrate the

monitor to make sure the colors add up

finally your last step

uh you've tried everything else you've

tried power cycling you've tried running

utilities you tried de-gauzing whatever

nothing's working you probably have an

internal problem this is the most

time-consuming you open up the

computer you take a look at the graphics

card

now one interesting thing as well with

graphics if the ram is not seated

properly the graphics card's not going

to come on that's why we have post codes

okay

so sometimes you have dust

moving through the computer

causes the connections between the ram

or between the graphics card to go so

you can help you know clean that out

again not with water but with with some

sort of anti-static spray

you can also listen for those post codes

like i mentioned especially if the ram

is having an issue

okay

so

we've talked about installing the video

cards just like any others when we're

talking about pci

we're talking about pcie with the 16

lanes for instance we need to make sure

that we're going to connect power

and sometimes and that's a six or an

eight pin

and don't forget sometimes also you

might have two buses or two spaces

troubleshooting the video cards we

talked about troubleshooting the

connections

the power supply which goes back to this

onboard video settings in the bios

disable the onboard

video card

if you install a new video card

the resolution settings

the driver

directx again

an important tool just to keep in mind

is dx diag okay the temperature of the

video card

stuck or dead pixels which could be as

easy as just power cycling but it might

also require some sort of calibration

or it might require

uh you to actually take the monitor in

again monitor calibration which is a

tool within windows uh provided by the

manufacturer generally built in through

the driver and finally last thing is

you're going to open up the computer and

take a look at the internals

so we've talked about this let's keep

going talking about monitors resolutions

and so on

[Music]

video video displays

now that we've discussed how you install

the video card and the video subsystem

in general let's take a very overarching

look at video displays those monitors

that you plug into the video card so you

can see what you're doing on the

computer

just a note ahead of time there are

people who spend their entire lives

dealing with video displays and know the

intricacies of them in and out this is

an overarching view from a million miles

above the surface so um i want to just

throw that out there and also let you

know that you're not going to be tested

on video displays per se i'll point out

the very pertinent points for you to

remember but i want to cover these in

general for your own edification and

just in case

some information here helps you later on

in the exam or even in another exam

so the types of video displays we're

going to cover are liquid crystal

displays or lcds

and we're going to talk about the

contrast ratio

and adjusting that as well as cleaning

displays because lcds are the most

common and the ones we also see on

laptops

then i'm going to talk about light

emitting diode monitors or leds

following that organic light emitting

diodes or

which are a more advanced uh form of led

that we're seeing more and more although

its expense hasn't really brought it to

market just quite yet

finally we're going to look at plasmas

and cathode ray tubes which are the old

monitors that we really don't see much

anymore

we'll finish it off by looking at

projectors which aren't monitors per se

but are display devices and they are

used quite frequently especially in

business settings

so let's talk about a liquid crystal

display and what it is

we talked about this with the laptops

but a liquid crystal display consists of

two sheets of polarizing material

surrounding a layer of liquid crystal

solution

so you can see in this image right here

here's the liquid crystals and you can

see that there's a tft glass we'll talk

about that in just a second the

backlight

and then the filter that gives it a

certain color

now

this thin film transistor

this which creates an active matrix

display

is actually

three transistors for each pixel and

remember when we're talking about a

monitor we're looking at thousands of

pixels and each pixel creates one little

dot on the screen

um each transistor

sorry each pixel has three transistors

that's why it's a thin film transistor

and they are contained within this

flexible material and what this allows

is it allows the screen to constantly

refresh itself

allow it to store an electrical state of

each pixel while the other ones are

updated that way you're looking a nice

smooth screen that's going on we talked

about when we get to crts we'll see

different technologies that allowed them

to do that because they refreshed very

differently

you don't have to know how all of this

works the most important thing here

is really that the backlight

creates the light which allows all this

other stuff to come to surface you'll

also notice here this color filter glass

creates three it takes three different

colors and merges them into one pixel

if you can imagine that this one image

right here is

one set of three pixels

or sorry uh one pixel rather with three

different colors in it you can imagine

there are thousands of those on the

surface so this is a really

dumbed down view of this

this cold cathode now most lcds use

right here

what's called a cold cathode fluorescent

light and that's the backlight

this uses a low amount of power and

generates a small amount of heat which

is important especially when we're

talking about laptops

it causes little in the way of

interference in transmissions as you can

see there is voltage going through this

which means it's electricity the

electricity therefore is going to cause

a certain magnetic field this means this

backlight is creating very little

therefore it's not going to disrupt the

image very much and it won't disrupt the

other things that are in your computer

this work well

these lcd screens especially the active

the tft active matrix ones

work well

with one specific resolution which is

generally why

when you buy a laptop it tells you to

use it at one specific resolution for

instance maybe 1440x900

and if you change that resolution it'll

still work but it's not going to look as

pristine and as clean

here are some common resolutions i'm not

going to go over them we talked about

them actually when we talked about

laptops and that's really where they

belong i just want to review this again

i haven't gone very much in detail about

this in fact it might be a little

confusing that's okay uh the important

thing here is not to understand the

intricacies of how an lcd screen work

that's not the point here a plus is too

broad for that what i do want you to

understand is simply that back here this

backlight uses

this fluorescent light uses this cold

cathode fluorescent light and by the way

catherine tubes are what's going to be

used in crt monitors the old ones and

these are liquid crystals that hold a

certain charge

and allow

a color to come through

now when we're dealing with lcds

therefore we have two different things

we can deal with one is uh the contrast

ratio which could be the comparison

between the brightest and the darkest

colors we see this with plasma as well

how black are the blacks and how wide

are the whites

if they're very merged together then

we're not going to get a very clear

picture some people complain that the

black

blacks are not as black on an lcd

monitor as they are in a plasma which

we'll talk about a little bit later the

higher the contrast ratio therefore the

better uh percent perceived the better

perceived the lcd screen is okay so it's

also going to make it more expensive now

if you're someone who does a lot of

graphics uh photoshop

etc you're gonna want the highest

contrast ratio possible possible because

it's gonna give you more colors and more

depth

when we clean the displays we wanna make

sure that the liquid doesn't get between

the bezel and the screen specifically on

a laptop

now you're not going to be able to sort

of get in and see all those different

layers that we just saw on a couple of

screens ago it's not something you ever

have to worry about but you can imagine

that water could seep in if you allow it

to so you need to be careful and not

allow too much water when when you're

cleaning a display in fact what you want

to do is conservatively

spray whatever the cleaner is onto a

soft clean

lint-free cloth this is important

because if not you're going to get lint

little bits of lint all over your

monitor

and you generally want to use isopropyl

alcohol diluted with water i think it's

about 50 percent diluted okay so that's

something you can also buy specifically

sheets that are going to let you clean

it the important thing here is you don't

spray it onto the monitor you spray it

onto the lint-free cloth and then you

wipe the monitor okay and the reason we

use isopropyl alcohol to lead with water

is it's going to evaporate quicker and

it's not going to leave streaks

so that's a very quick and broad

overview on liquid crystal displays

talked about the contrast ratio which is

specifically how wide are the whites and

how black are the blacks

and then cleaning the displays again

spraying on the lint-free cloth and then

wiping on the monitor

so let's look at leds

now these are leds right here and what

led stands for is light emitting diodes

diodes are usually used in a combination

to display images so you can see here we

have

what would generally be called at r

red yellow and this could be a green or

blue

and these combinations allow us to

create a whole bunch of different

pictures now leds are also used in this

format right so if you at the top of a

bus use leds

calculators are going to use leds etc so

they're not only used in monitors

they're used in these calculators

screens at sport arenas that are very

large you're going to use leds and

that's because if you went up close to

one of those screens it probably

wouldn't look very pretty but from far

away it doesn't matter

now the way that the led monitors work

and for home use it's not much different

from lcds in fact it is an lcd monitor

it's just that the backlight is

different instead of using those cold

cathode fluorescents you're using an led

and the leds are grouped into small

triads of red green and blues which then

shoot out a color or a certain

combination of colors

shoot that through the crystal liquid

up through the polarizing glass

and that's what creates the image

so this is referred to as an led backlit

lcd as opposed to a cc

fl

backlit which was the other one we

talked about so if someone says an led

monitor they're actually talking about

an led backlit lcd monitor just a quick

clarification there

now organic light emitting diodes are

somewhat different in this case the or

um these are organic colored molecules

as opposed to diodes that are held in

place between electrodes so we're

getting a lot smaller here a lot more

into nanotechnology and stuff it's it's

um

beyond sort of my grasp of technology

but what's really cool about it

is

they're extremely small and so much so

that they can be printed onto any

substrate meaning any sort of source

pretty easily look here this is like a

piece of plastic or flexi and you're

printing

a piece of you're printing an oled onto

it

this means that you can display images

on just about any uh any material which

is pretty exciting

they're still rather expensive as a

result and so you're not going to see

them a lot in the market but you can see

where we're going with that and what it

allows us to do

so we just talked about leds basically

very small diodes and then organic light

emitting diodes oleds which is sort of

the future which is even smaller

let's talk about plasma which we're not

going to see so much in

monitors but more in televisions

they use small cells that contain

electrically charged gases which is why

it's plasma if you're like a star trek

fan

you probably know that term right so

gases it's using the gas it's charging

the gas in a certain way so it gives off

a certain image here is a schematic by

the way

which is i think a little confusing but

i wanted to throw that out there so that

you could see how it was somewhat

working

so it uses for instance the same plasma

gases that are in like fluorescent lamps

now what it's known for and the reason

people really liked plasma screens is

that it had a very the brights were very

bright and it had low low blacks

compared to lcds so where the lcd blacks

were still a little bright the blacks on

plasmas were supposed to be very very

dark and gave a nice richness to the

color nowadays leds have actually grown

in technology so we don't see so much

difference and because plasmas give off

a little more heat and had a little more

what we're called was called burn-in

which would be like the a logo sort of

sticking into the image

more people are using leds lcds and leds

nowadays

it also used a lot higher energy and as

i said before that caused it to give off

a lot more power and a lot more heat

so that's why the led backlit lcds were

were released they were able to compete

with plasma as i said the technology has

gotten a lot better

cathode ray tubes these are the old

suckers this is actually the inside of a

catheter a tube what you don't see

is

the casing around it with all the fans

and stuff

but this is an older type of monitor

that used a vacuum tube display just

like the old uh tvs did

there were basically guns that shot in a

red a green or a blue uh

image onto a screen

and what they did is they measured this

in what was called dots per inch

and you can see here are little triads

of red green and blue and this is a 21

inch here's a 17 inch you can see this

one has a much smaller dots per inch and

the dots per inch measure how much space

between each of these so on this one

you're getting a much finer image

on this one you're getting a much finer

image than on this one

a lower dot pitch meant better crt image

quality because as i mentioned the

dryads are much closer together they're

much tighter and so your image looks a

lot smoother they used to say used to be

questions on the exam and they might

still be on there

that if someone who is doing a lot of

graphics editing for instance would want

a crt because it's going to give them a

pure display nowadays the technology is

so old you can't even really buy a crt

anymore and in fact the technology of

lcd has gotten better so the image on an

lcd is now going to be just as good if

not better than a crt but i do mention

it because sometimes the a plus exam

questions are a little out of date

an important thing to know with the crts

not only measured in

pixels but also dots per inch like i

said

you never ever ever want to attempt to

repair a crt this is really important

there will still be questions about this

on the exam

this whole thing

as i said it carries a huge charge all

those guns shooting images as a result

it's basically like a giant battery you

open this up you hit some metal onto

this uh your your electrostatic

um wristband for instance and you are

going to severely hurt yourself never

attempt to repair a crt the other thing

is always carry the crt with the screen

facing your stomach this way nothing can

slam into that crt it also is because if

you look at how this is this is the

screen right here right

you can see that's where all the the

heft is and so you want the heft towards

your body not away from it

the other thing is again with crts i

just want to mention this because i see

it is they can be de-gauzed it creates

a magnetic uh all this electronics

creates a magnetic field that can start

to discolor some of the screen using the

gauze button is what you're going to use

to

reset that magnetic field and allow the

screen to

not be stuck with certain colors or

certain images on the screen

finally projectors

they're plugged into a computer's

external video port and they require

that you have a display to be a

flat surface to project onto generally

speaking these are used with

presentations and the way it works is

there's a very bright bulb inside of

this unit that's spraying out and

allowing that image to

project just like the led backlight in a

monitor

these are measured in lumens by the way

the more lumens the

brighter your image so sometimes you

have pico projectors nowadays you might

have heard this term

pico projector these are really tiny

projectors maybe the size of like a

smartphone you can carry around in your

pocket and then you can project the

problem is they're really low on lumens

so unless the room is very dark and the

projector is very close to the wall

you're not going to get a very clear

image

these are commonly used for

presentations and for teaching and we

see them a lot in business and what you

want to be aware of here is that most

the time you're going to be plugging

these up with

a laptop that someone brings in and you

want to make sure you're aware because

this is the question that i see pop up

on the test of that toggle button on the

laptop okay so you can toggle back and

forth between the monitor

and the

between the monitor on the laptop and

the projector using a toggle button on

the laptop

so we've now talked about plasma screen

tvs cathode ray tubes and projectors

let's just review some of the pertinent

points here lcd screens generally use

that ccfl backlight

okay

they have a liquid crystal solution

that's basically charging a certain

amount of the electrons and stuff in

there and creating the image that's

coming out

the backlight allows that image to come

forth onto the screen we can still have

the image without the backlight just

like we talked about with a laptop but

if that backlight goes out you're not

going to see anything

the contrast ratio is how black are the

blacks how wide are the whites some

people will argue that plasma had a

better contrast ratio and that's why

leds came around

the cleaning displays remember we're

going to spray

onto

a cloth

not the screen itself

leds light emitting diode monitors that

is basically led

backlit

lcds

okay so instead of there being a ccfl

backlighting you're actually having an

led that's doing the backlighting

organic light emitting diodes these can

be printed on any substrate and this is

generally

where the technology is going

so i could start to make monitors that

are

very thin

and they're probably using this already

in certain smartphone applications

plasma screen tvs generally in tvs not

monitors some people argue that it was

offered a better contrast

but that again

is why

oops and that again is why the leds uh

were brought around cathode ray tubes

these are the old monitors we don't see

them a lot anymore you want to remember

a couple things when it comes to this

one is de-gauzing the monitor which

we'll talk about again

you also want to remember never

fix these yourself

okay

finally a projector

lumens

is how the brightness is measured

and when you're using with a laptop

be aware of the toggle button

great

now let's finish up our discussion on

displays with a talk about some of the

settings that you can set in windows for

a display

[Music]

video

video settings

we've now discussed all the hardware

that goes into the video subsystem all

the installation and troubleshooting

steps you're going to take and we looked

at the displays the monitors and the

projectors that allow you to see the

image that the graphics card is putting

out so now let's talk about how the

video interfaces with the operating

system specifically certain settings

that you you can change and set and also

some other settings you can set in the

monitor

so we're going to look at

video drivers which allow the operating

system to communicate with the graphics

card color depth which uh tells how how

rich the color is on the that is

displayed

the resolution how many pixels uh and

how fine of an image it is

the aspect ratio which is specifically

like full screen versus widescreen if

we're talking about films or movies

refresh rate which is how often the

image gets refreshed or painted onto the

screen

the osd which is on screen diagnostics

menu which allows you to

set different things on the monitor

directly specifically like brightness

contrast distortion etc

we're going to look at a specific

feature called degaussing which i talked

about when we talked about crts i want

to point it out again because it's a

little odd and i always see it pop up on

the test

and multiple monitors using more than

one monitor which can also be called

dual view when we're talking about

laptops

let's talk about video drivers

the driver lets the operating system

communicate with the actual device as

we've discussed it simplifies therefore

the amount of work that an application

needs to do because the driver acts as a

go between for the application and the

device in other words it's sort of a

universal translator and it takes a lot

of the pressure off of the application

to have to translate directly to the

device itself by allowing the driver to

universally do that through the

operating system

this is uh especially for video and

graphics cards

you want to use the manufacturer's

driver if we look over here and i have

just an image of all of the devices on a

computer for instance

floppy disks dvds etc

some of these it doesn't matter if

windows uses a generic driver but when

it comes to display adapters

specifically

we want to make sure that we're using

the driver

that comes with the graphics card we're

using now sometimes uh this is built

onto the motherboard that's easy sort of

comes with installed for you or it comes

on a cd from the manufacturer but if you

buy an additional graphics card you want

to make sure to use the graphics driver

that goes specifically with that

with your graphics card

where you're going to get this is

generally off of the internet off the

manufacturer's website and you need to

make sure that your operating system

supports the graphics card for instance

your windows

8 let's say you upgrade to windows 8 and

the manufacturer has not released a

driver or is not going to release a

driver for windows 8 you're going to be

in trouble and i just wanted to point

out over here this is the device manager

which we've seen

when we were talking about windows and i

just opened up

the device drivers for the display

adapter which is what it's called here

in the device dr uh in the device

manager and you can see here's where you

could roll back the driver

disable the driver uh be careful here if

you were to disable or uninstall the

driver for the video card you wouldn't

be unable to see anything and you would

then not be able to even load up a

generic driver and you probably have to

boot into safe mode or vga mode

finally

you need to make sure like i just

mentioned that a driver is available for

the graphics card not only is the

graphics card um compatible with the

operating system sometimes by the way it

says it's not compatible and it still

works you can use an old driver say a

windows 7 driver on a windows 8 machine

not recommended but sometimes that's

sort of your last

last ditch attempt

all right color depth

this describes the amount of bits that

represent the color that you're seeing

if you hear of one bit that's known as

monochrome black and white that's not a

lot of color

8-bit color is a very blocky color you

don't get a very wide representation

you're not seeing a lot of um

uh you're not seeing a lot of like depth

in the color there's not a lot of

variation it's very simple this is

what's used in vga mode uh when you boot

from that advanced boot menu by pressing

f8

and that is the reason it uses that is

because it's so simple most of the time

you're going to use 16 bits which is

usually enough for most users if you're

really advanced users they're probably

going to want 32 bits of color and here

you can see these are all this is

actually set to 32 bits of color

the way i got here is again going into

the control panel going to display and

then going into the properties for

my graphics card and on the

adapter menu pressing the properties

button this

differs depending on what

um operating system you're working on

but always when you get into this

adapter properties it's going to be here

in the adapter type properties menu okay

not under color management which is a

bit of a

color management actually talks about

what red what is red what kind of red am

i looking at uh that's going to get more

for graphic designers people who want to

match up the colors that they're

printing onto the colors they're seeing

on their monitor like adobe etc you

don't need to worry about that okay what

we're looking at is the bits of color

how deep it is and again that's here in

this modes

and if we were to scroll this up or down

we would be able to see a 16 bits color

8 bit color etc again you're generally

going to run it at least 16 or 32 bits

in order to get a nice depth of color

that's going to look good to you which

is important now with windows 8 windows

7 and these advanced graphics that they

come with

as i mentioned you can alter the color

depth in the display properties windows

easiest way to always get to display

properties windows by the way right

click on the desktop either choose

personalize or properties or resolution

or one of these alternatively go in

through the control panel find display

properties and there you have it

resolution

is different from color so we have color

that has to do with

you know reds blues etc

the pixels how fine that image is is the

resolution we've talked about this um it

is measured in the horizontal by a

vertical measurement you can see all

that was a terrible line you can see all

of the

resolutions here that this monitor is

allowing which is a lot

um generally most aren't going to allow

this many it's currently set at 1440 by

900 i can make a higher resolution which

would make it a finer image

would cost my

resources more but would give me a much

purer image or i can go a lot larger

which is going to give me a bulkier

image okay the more pixels that are used

the more a user can display if you think

about it it makes sense if i have a

window the window still has the same

amount of pixels what i'm doing though

is by increasing

the resolution i'm allowing myself to

fit uh

more and less space okay and that's why

it looks like if i increase the

resolution on a monitor that i have more

space in fact you don't have more space

the monitor remains the same what it

does though is it allows you to put

more and less space because it needs

less pixels in order to accomplish what

it needs to accomplish

the way to get here again just like with

the other one right click on the desktop

if it's you're an xp you're going to

choose properties if you're in vista

you're going to choose personalize and

when we get to windows 7 they knew that

people were going to adjust their

resolution and so they allow you to

directly

set resolution right there

if it's set incorrectly so if you set it

if you set one of these it's generally

not going to let you set it incorrectly

but if you set it incorrectly uh it

might not appear the image might no

longer appear or you're going to get a

really wonky image for instance going to

be too wide or it's going to be looks

stretched or it's going to look squished

okay so it's important to choose a

resolution that fits your monitor and as

we've mentioned when we talked about

monitors a lot of monitors are set to

work with specific resolutions

the aspect ratio is directly related to

the resolution this is the width of the

image divided by its height for instance

if the resolution is 1024 by 768 and

remember that's width and that's height

right if i divided these

i would get an aspect ratio of 1.33

which

is a four to three aspect ratio right

here okay that's full screen so an old

tv from 10 years ago that had a full

screen aspect ratio nowadays you'd be

hard-pressed to find a monitor or a tv

that's not widescreen and widescreen is

usually a 16 to 9 or a 16 to 10 aspect

ratio

uh so as i just mentioned they're mostly

widescreen 16x9 or 16x10 and the reason

they're doing this is really for movies

um most films nowadays are coming out in

this you get a wider image as opposed to

a taller squatter image that's why a lot

of movies do it instead of being able to

fit one person in the frame they can fit

three it's sort of the same thing on a

computer instead of being able to fit

one

square window you can fit three

rectangular windows

again you have to choose a resolution

that fits the monitor's aspect ratio or

it's going to appear odd you have a full

screen monitor and you choose a wide

screen aspect ratio it's going to be

weird you ever tried converting video

for instance or

you tried uh

watching for instance a full screen

movie on your widescreen television

you'll notice it puts up little black

bars on the sides if you tell it to fill

the screen it stretches it out and all

the faces and everyone looks

stretched so it doesn't fit correctly

and you don't really want to do that

nowadays especially because of how large

monitors have become

the refresh rate has to do with how many

times the display is painted per a

second

this means that

it's generally really known as the

vertical refresh rate and the reason for

that is because of crts which we'll talk

about on a crt

the horizontal lines are painted one at

a time from the top to the bottom that's

why it's vertical refresh rate right so

basically your lines are drawn from the

top to the bottom like this and then it

goes back and it does it again and so it

works its way down okay and that's the

refresh rate and once it's been

done this once that's one refresh now

this happens constantly and very fast

and it's measured

generally 60 times per second which is

measured in hertz so generally this

happens at 60 hertz

now

if a lot of new tvs lcds for instance it

works a little different

instead of painting what's happening is

the crystal material is illuminated

instead of being painted so there's no

flicker if you ever

videotaped for instance

a crt monitor you would see the lines

nowadays with lcds you don't see that

because the image is created differently

it's not painted onto the screen one

line at a time instead they're sort of

all

thrown up on there

generally speaking these are going to be

60 hertz as well

but now they can reach as much as 120

hertz now here's the important thing to

know about that

you might have

your computer supports maybe 75 hertz

and you plug it up to your tv which only

supports 60 hertz so it doesn't work

likewise you might have a game that does

that requires 75 hertz but when you plug

it up to the tv that hurts that selects

60 hertz it doesn't work so it's just

important to be aware of the refresh

rate on these the other thing is if you

have 120 hertz refresh rate it's

refreshing so fast every second that

it's going to look a little blurry at

times because real life is blurry i

remember the first time

i got a 120 hertz

television and someone came over and was

watching a a a sports game they said oh

it looks too blurry and in fact what was

happening is the image was so clear that

they were used to seeing it refresh

less times so their brain was used to

making up the images in between when in

fact they were actually seeing the

images so it was going faster and it was

a clearer image and they weren't used to

that so it's just an interesting sort of

thing to be aware of uh a lot of gaming

as i just mentioned requires a higher

resolution rate and a and not only a

higher resolution rate a higher refresh

rate i think is what that means to say

and so

um you got to be aware that your monitor

has to support the refresh rate that

you're setting in the computer

here by the way

you can see the refresh rate right there

so you can modify this uh by going to

the adapter tab same place here is that

adapter tab if you were if you recover

uh

if you sorry if you

remember we were on this adapter tab

when we were fixing colors right in this

it's going to be in the monitor under

the screen refresh rate here

you want to make sure as i just said the

monitor supports the refresh rate and by

the way this might be different this is

windows 7 this image this might be

different on xp or vista

the on-screen display or on-screen

diagnostics helps you configure picture

quality

using uh

menu options that are built into the

monitor you've probably seen this

distortion picture size centering

contrast so sometimes you see a

there's an image that looks like this

and what that means is you can move the

image up or down in relation to the

monitor or sometimes you see one that

looks like this and you can actually

adjust

these sides and make them curve more

curve less on crts this happen a lot

more than on lcds they're a little

better with the digital image you're not

seeing this as much

but it's important to know it

superimposes on top of the monitor's

display and generally speaking nowadays

you're going to see more contrast and

brightness rather than uh the picture

centering etc where you are going to

deal with this is more in a projector

nowadays because a projector you can

tell the image i want you to move up i

want you to move down

depending on

the uh

surface that you're projecting onto

generally there is a menu button

someplace on the display on the

projectors a button on the top of the

projector and that's how you get to this

on-screen display and then there are

generally it's generally you'll have

like an enter button and then you'll

have arrow buttons that allow you to

adjust one way or the other

laptop monitors by the way have a very

basic

on-screen display function

generally it's just brightness

maybe you're getting some contrast

that's because laptops it's all

integrated it doesn't need as much

configuring as a monitor that you're

plugging in

i want to mention the degauss tool one

more time because it is important

this exists only in crt displays those

are those big big old computers and it

still comes up on the test what it does

is it decreases an unwanted magnetic

field in the crt

see the crt has a magnetic plate that's

near the front of the monitor

with all the electronics going on it

starts to pick up certain magnetic

fields and so if we're looking at the

monitor from the front and i'll draw a

little border around which is what the

monitor would look like and maybe you'll

have a little knob down here and some

buttons to adjust to get to the osd

right you'll start to see a little

discoloration on the sides specifically

or you'll see a weird color in the

middle and that's because this metal

plate is picking up magnetic fields so

what happens is when you press the d

gauze

button

you'll see it shake and distort the

screen well really quickly and then all

that stuff will be released that

magnetic field is released and so it

returns to normal without discoloration

if you still have the discoloration by

the way the gauze isn't gonna help you

you're gonna need to replace the monitor

of course if they're still using a crt

they should probably replace the monitor

anyway

so multiple monitors allows you to

either duplicate a display which is

called mirroring a display

or stretch the display across multiple

desktops that's called extend so if you

see here if i have three monitors and

you actually move these around in here

right and you can see uh if i was to

drag my mouse from here over to here

this is how it would work

now generally speaking you can't

necessarily uh

have

an image that sort of is on both at the

same time in the center you can have one

that spans like watching a movie

sometimes you can have the movie span

the entire array of these monitors but

it's not going to just let you sort of

sit one in the middle sometimes it will

actually though

it's important to know the difference by

the way between extending and mirroring

generally speaking if you're going to

connect two monitors you're going to

extend the monitor

if you're connecting a projector you

probably want to mirror it so you can

see

one image on your laptop and one image

on the projector so this works well for

applications that are wide or if you

need multiple windows let's say you're

keeping outlook open in one window you

have your browser open in another you're

looking at a presentation on another

just lets you work with more than one

monitor at a time

generally speaking and you can see it

right here you're going to set one

monitor as the default there's a blue

there's sort of a blue box around this

one if you notice

this one though is not a default what's

going to happen is most of the

applications are going to open on the

default unless you set them specifically

to open on a secondary and the taskbar

which i've boxed in right here is only

going to appear on the on the

primary so the start menu is only going

to appear on the primary not on the

extended ones

if you make changes where you make

changes in the display properties window

right click on the desktop go to for

instance screen resolution or

personalize and what you can do is add

displays you would choose the display

that you want to

alter here then you could change for

instance the resolute resolution the

orientation landscape or horizontal for

instance

and choose whether you want it to be

extended or mirrored again with the

projector you're going to want to mirror

it you can also by the way move these

actually around so you can have

screen one on the right and screen two

on the left

on a desktop computer you can have up to

10 monitors which is pretty cool however

on a laptop you don't have that much on

a laptop you can only do

two and that's why it's called dual view

okay that's because you have the monitor

on your laptop and you have uh one

external port generally

like a vga or a dvi out you can only

have two and that's called dual view

generally speaking you're not going to

be able to add an additional

video card to your laptop because it's

so integrated

so just keep in mind dual view

specifically for laptops in case you see

that on the test

all right we talked about video drivers

again this translates

between the operating system

and the device and it is important

to use

the manufacturer's

driver especially for a video card okay

color depth generally we want 16 bits or

32 bits if you saw them when i screen

capped working at 32 bits the more bits

the higher color resolution the higher

color depth you're getting uh the more

richness you're getting in the color

however that's also taking more

resources

the resolution is that width by height

so for instance

1280

by 720 is a common resolution

the aspect ratio comes directly from

this number it is that divided by that

and gonna give you either like a 4.3 or

a 16.9 generally speaking

this is full screen

this is widescreen

the refresh rate which is measured in

hertz

and commonly

you're going to see about 60 hertz

sometimes you can get up to 120 hertz is

how often

the image is painted onto the screen

the on-screen diagnostics or on-screen

display

depending on your interpretation of that

acronym

allows you to

change certain monitor settings

from the monitor itself the most

important one here is degaussing

which resets

the magnetic field

on a monitor

specifically

a crt monitor okay and i see that come

up on the test all the time which is the

reason i mentioned it finally multiple

monitors

and dual view

dual view

is for laptops specifically

you can have up to 10 monitors on thanks

to windows on many computers

so that wraps up videos

now let's talk about the other part of

multimedia sound which is not as complex

as video but it's worth taking a brief

look at

[Music]

audio sound overview

we've talked about video so let's spend

just a very little brief amount of time

talking about audio there's not a lot on

audio that's really going to pop up on

the exam but there are a couple

pertinent pieces of information i do

want to point out to you

so we'll talk about the audio subsystem

in general which includes some of these

things including a sound card which

we'll talk about more

the eighth inch or mini jacks and we'll

also talk about a new technology

or not so new but

not seen as much i should say called

spdif which is a sony digital optical

format

uh

toast link or toshiba link ports the

ports that usually that spdif format

uses

we'll also talk about installation of

the sound card and the speakers

and finally some media players that

you'll find in windows and some formats

that you'll need them to play

so first the audio subsystem is

comprised of several different pieces

just like the video subsystem

the sound card which has an expansion

bus connected to it generally speaking

pci

or pci

e

uh audio ports uh those are the eighth

inch or those s

pdif which we'll talk about internal and

external connectivity

which is going to relate to speakers the

internal by the way not to those audio

ports um

well to some audio ports internally but

also externally we'll talk about those

sound card port drivers rather and then

some third-party audio software or even

built-in audio software to play the

audio so

we're talking about sound cards

these are responsible for generating the

sound that's sent to it either by the

operating system or the cd drive this is

an important distinction i've seen

questions on the test relating to this

specific thing and i'll talk about a

little more

the sound card can be integrated and

usually is into the motherboard or it

can be installed as this one would be

through ext expansion bays

or it can be connected through an

external say usb or ieee 1394 connector

now what's interesting here is a lot of

people are fine with the sound card

that's built into their system and

generally speaking you'll be

hard-pressed to find a system that

doesn't come with one built in the

reason you might want to upgrade is if

you want really incredible sound you're

not just happy with uh two speakers you

want five or seven speakers 5.1 dolby

digital or 7.1 dopey digital for

instance so that's the reason you would

upgrade your sound card

now sound cards all have these mini

jacks a lot of them do and that's the

standard for audio and it serves

most people quite well and it still

serves audio quite well it's one of the

things that really hasn't changed

although there are these optical audios

for people who really are audiophiles

but that's not most people a lot of

people will spend time and money on

video but when it comes to audio they'll

get a pair of headphones that plug up

through this and it'll work just fine

for them

so i want to just give you the the most

common connections right here

and the color coordinating they have

you'll see this has seven connections

and that's for what's called a 7.1

digital

or dolby connection and that has seven

speakers and here are the inputs now

you'll almost always have the lime green

which is that main output for two

speakers the pink which is for your

microphone input and then a line input

uh safe for

a keyboard or something

surround sound output is the block that

gives you two extra um

speakers perhaps in the back uh behind

you so if the main ones are the right

and left and front the surround sound

are for the right and left behind you

the orange for the center and the

subwoofer that's

really independent of anything the the

new one the one you really want to look

out for this is the silver or the brown

one that's that 7.1 output i'll show you

what that looks like on a diagram a

little later but those are for side um

connectors on the side left and right

so that you really can feel the sound

again this might be a little overkill

for most people but that's for those

eighth inch mini jacks now

there's another

kind of

format which is called the sony phillips

digital interconnect format that's

represented by these right here these

are actually using a toast link

port and i'll talk about that in a

second this is also known as digital

optical so just like with video you have

the vga which gives you an analog output

and then dvi the digital video interface

or hdmi which gives you a digital video

this gives digital audio the reason it

really hasn't taken on is most people

don't really require a digital audio

they don't need it they don't find that

these eighth inch

generally for most of what they can hear

does the trick now some people who are

really into it real audio files um

listening to a lot of modern day stuff

that was recorded in such a way might

want this optical stuff or you're doing

a lot of sound editing the reason a lot

of people don't need it by the way is

because a lot of the audio wasn't really

recorded digitally back in the day and

so if you're listening to say an old cd

from the 80s or 90s or anything that was

recorded on that technology you're not

going to hear enough to make it worth

your while but it is there

it delivers that high quality digital

cable sound

over

fiber optic cables so again instead of

dealing with copper it's replacing the

copper with fiber optics now spdif is

the standard and there are different

types of ports that work with that

standard and one of those ports

is the toslink which stands for

toshiba link that's this right here and

you can see i'm just gonna go back real

quickly look at this you see that sort

of squarish

right there

if we go back just for a second

you can see that square right there

okay

so the input is usually black

and the output is usually gray and

these are really short the reason

they're short fiber optics we don't want

it to travel too far although it could

but the longer it is the more um

possibility there is of something

getting damaged within the fiber optic

system and again because we're using a

black sorry not a black a glass or

plastic core that's transmitting light

uh bends

in the cord for instance

could cause a problem

uh additionally it can get damaged and

if it's damaged then we're in big

trouble not as forgiving as metal or

copper

it emits red lights from either side

that's because

it transfers data instead of through

electrons it's transferring to light

that's how it travels so fast that's why

the signal is so clean again most people

don't recognize don't need this level of

high quality audio which is the reason

it really hasn't taken off but if you

see that

maybe on the exam but more likely at a

store or on your computer at least now

you know what it is and you can play

around with it a little bit

when you're installing the audio card uh

you want to insert the audio card just

like you would into your pci or pcie

slot and then if you're replacing the

onboard sound just like with the video

you need to disable the onboard audio

all right remember with the video you

install that new video card it doesn't

work what's wrong same thing can happen

here you need to disable the onboard

audio so that way the computer doesn't

get confused and think you want to use

the old sound card but you do in fact

want to use the new one

there may also be and this is the reason

i have

um

this um

uh picture here there may also be some

chords that go from your sound card onto

your chassis so that way uh you can for

instance

listen to your head you know plug your

headphones into the front of your

computer and listen from there don't

forget a lot of times you don't want to

you know dig around in the back and a

lot of chassis have an eighth inch jack

on the front but those don't just work

magically they work if you plug them up

so sometimes there's an hd audio cable

to plug up to the front and not only

that there's sometimes a connector that

connects between the cd drive

and the sound card this is the number

one question i see on the exam in

relation to the sound card you have a cd

drive and i think i talked about this

when we were talking about storage you

have a cd card

a cd drive

and you can play data from it but not

audio what's the problem the problem is

you haven't connected this cord to the

cd drive and the audio uh and the sound

card that's because uh for some reason

the ide

at that time in the older systems

did not

uh carry the audio signal only the data

one in newer drives this isn't the uh

necessarily a problem but if you see

this question on the exam now you know

what it is and you can answer it

correctly which is that you didn't

connect the audio cable from the cd

player to the sound card

furthermore we want to install the

manufacturer's drivers if you have an

advanced sound card if you don't have an

advanced sound card use the generic

drivers no problem if you have an

advanced one with 7.1 for instance uh

you know and by the way here are the

speaker setups you can see a 5 this is

5.1

and this is 7.1 you can notice the extra

speakers here okay

so you connect those according to the

instructions and what's going to happen

is the drivers that you install from the

manufacturer are going to allow you to

install these properly otherwise it's

not going to support outputting all that

audio

and again the 5.1 or 7.1 are two common

speaker technologies

2.1

is just two speakers

finally media players we need software

that can play the audio uh and port it

to the sound card some popular media

players include windows media player

which is also wm oh

which is also uh

play stuff in a wma format

it's built into windows so you don't

have to install anything extra if you're

using an ipod iphone etc you might have

itunes winamp used to be a very popular

one for mp3s vlc is a free service a

free software you can download off the

internet works in just about any

operating system and it's really useful

i recommend it actually

and depending on how your audio files

are compressed if they're in mp3 format

a dot wave format

wma format needs a windows media player

etc you might need a specific media

player to open it nowadays media players

are pretty good about being

interoperable so they can open just

about any format but just be aware that

some formats only work with certain

programs

so that was our brief overview of the

audio subsystem we talked about the

sound cards the eighth inch mini jacks

again these are generally our most

popular

sound these two the spdif

and the toast link

that's relating to optical audio

something that we see out in the field

and it's been out for a while but we

just don't work with a lot because most

people don't require that level of

quality from their audio when we're

talking about installation the important

thing really to remember is that cd

player chord

otherwise sometimes audio won't play

between the cd player and the audio

and the sound card and finally media

players uh you need to have some of a

media player to play the correct form of

uh compressed audio when you have audio

it's actually quite large what we do is

compress it mp3 is a compressed audio

format to allow you to listen to it

and transfer it over the internet and

keep it small that's why certain formats

are bigger than others and have a

certain deal of quality to them

if they're more compressed you're going

to have less quality

and

most people might not even notice again

this is the reason why the eighth inch

jacks still work for most people

so that's all i have to really say about

the audio again not not a lot on that

the cd player chord that's the big one i

see on the exam a lot now let's talk

about um peripherals expanding the

devices i want to go into a little bit

more about the ports such as usb etc

[Music]

peripherals input and output ports

now let's spend a little time reviewing

and going back over in a little more

depth some of the input and output ports

that allow us to plug up peripherals in

to our computers and peripherals or

anything that add to the functionality

of the computer on the outside for

instance a printer would be a peripheral

or scanner so let's talk about some of

these input output ports and what an

input output port is first of all and

then we'll look at these ports and these

are the ones we need to know for the

exam usb and we're going to talk about

troubleshooting usb

firewire otherwise known as ieee 1394

serial ports which are older as well as

parallel ports also older

ps2 ports another old

all three of these are actually

quite old you're not really going to see

them anymore but they do pop up on the

exam which is the reason i cover them

and then bluetooth which is a wireless

connection not so much a port

as much as a logical port as a more

logical port than a physical port is

what i mean to say

all right

so first input output ports

input ports allow you to input

information by use of a keyboard a mouse

microphone or any other device such as

like a barcode scanner or or just a

plain old scanner

this allows you to input information

into the computer tell it something give

it information

an output device or an output port

allows you to take information out a

printer a monitor speakers these sort of

things take information and move them

out

out of the computer and so when we talk

about these ports they're generally

import output ports because they allow

you to either input and or output

information okay

i want you to familiarize yourself with

these ports since these are the

important ones to know and these are the

ones we're going to talk about these are

the ones that come up on the test first

of all usb it's used by a wide variety

of devices

universal serial bus by the way

let's just write that up there again

and um

nowadays almost anything can connect

through usb it's become one of the

ubiquitous standards of connectors and i

i o ports uh keyboards mice printers

external hard drives cameras just about

anything can connect via usb these days

and the usb cord provides data transfer

and supplies the power so some devices

like an external hard drive might have

an additional power supply but

if the device is low powered enough it

can actually be powered through usb just

like a

a phone a smartphone nowadays can be

powered and charged up by connecting it

through the usb port of your computer

now the speed of the data transfer port

depends on the version of usb you're

using and there are three versions that

are sort of out there and around the

first the oldest usb 1.1 there was a 1.0

but not many people used it and that's

at about 12 megabits per second nothing

extraordinary and that's why we have so

many other ports like firewire that were

came about before usb was able to sort

of catch up

then there's usb 2 which

ups it quite a lot to 480 megabytes per

second so that's quite an increase now

you can see where connecting external

hard drives is really going to be

possible

not just mice we can just now we can't

just connect just mice and keyboards but

stuff that requires a faster data rate

finally we get to usb 3 which allows for

up to

5 gigabits per second but is actually

closer to about 3.2 gigabits per second

in actuality

sometimes we have a theoretical and uh

that is what the technology should be

able to reach but what it actually

reaches is something different and just

over here as we've pointed out before

this is the symbol that represents usb

um

usb can

a computer with a usb bus can have a

maximum of 127 devices through one port

which is quite extraordinary now you can

do this either by piggybacking off

another device meaning that you have a

device that's connected to the computer

so just put computer there and then you

have another port in it that lets you

piggyback and so on and so forth however

a lot of devices don't have more than

one port what you use is what's called a

usb hub

a usb hub allows you to plug up and you

can see this is a usb 2 hub allows you

to plug

one you plug that

you know

cable into your computer and now one

port becomes three ports if you want to

add to this you simply use another usb

hub in piggyback and you can have up to

127 devices on one port which is quite

extraordinary considering previously you

could have one on a device

cable lengths will vary on the usb

specification i don't see this pop up on

the test a lot but usb 1.1 and usb 3 are

three meters long for those of you in

the states

it's about 9 to 10 feet

usb 2 allowed a little bit longer

maximum length of 5 meters again

if you need something that's going to be

so distant that it needs more than that

space sometimes you can find an

extension cord that will work but it's

going to degrade the signal and your

speed is therefore going to degrade as

well and not to mention you might have

certain errors that occur

there are two types of usb

connectors

both of them have four pins

there's a plus five volt pin that gives

power

then there's a positive and negative

data pin and finally there's a ground

pin

you can sort of see those in here

if you look

now there are two types of connectors

the type a connectors and the type b

connectors type a is usually on the back

of a computer on a side of a laptop

the type b connectors are generally on a

printer or some other large devices

generally speaking you're going to see

this one a lot

there's also a new type specifically for

usb 3 that you might see instead of this

b you'll see a different one it looks

more like

this

that's going to connect to like a usb 3

device however the one connecting to the

computer is always going to look the

same

there are also mini and micro connectors

for phones cameras etc i didn't pop

those up here but i'm sure you've seen

them if you have a smartphone they're

just really tiny um and on one side

again it's always gonna have this sucker

now when you're troubleshooting usb and

by the way this blue if you see a blue

one that's generally going to designate

a

usb 3 device firstly you want to make

sure usb is enabled in the bios okay

just like with

our

display and audio we need to make sure

that the bios has the functionality

it's rare but it might have been shipped

disabled or you might have accidentally

disabled it while you were playing

around in there so it is something to

check

also you may you might have to update

the firmware of your bios or of the

computer

to

for instance of the motherboard rather

to ensure that it accepts usb

usually you're going to be doing that if

you're trying to move up to like usb 3

not so much for usb usb has been around

for long enough now that i don't think

you'd be hard-pressed to find any device

any motherboard rather that

wouldn't support usb

if you're using usb 3 devices you also

want to make sure you're using the right

cable

the right port the right software

generally speaking usb 3 is backwards

compatible meaning it will operate with

a usb 2 port or usb 2 cord

however you're not going to get

those

speeds that you're really benefiting

from with usb 3. and as you could tell

from before you're really getting quite

an increase in speed so it would be a

shame to have a usb 3 port and not be

able to use it

next there's ieee 1394. i want to

describe what ieee is first of all

that's the institute of electr

electrical and electronics engineers um

it's a not-for-profit organization and

basically what it does is create

standards for cables connectors uh all

sorts of technology and so what this is

is the ieee standard 1394.

we'll see ieee come back over and over

again when we're talking about any sort

of electronics or networking for that

matter

and this is really used for devices that

need low latency

real-time data transfer

in other words i need to make sure that

when it's sent i get it pretty quickly

afterwards and what we're really going

to see that with is camcorders

or cameras

all right if you're doing video editing

the benefit to firewire is you can

generally control the

device the camera while you're editing

so it allows you just a lot more freedom

with that nowadays a lot of film editing

is done

onto solid state drives anyways

so going playing forward and back isn't

as necessary and firewire is sort of

losing its edge

so as i said music or video that's

really when you're going to see firewire

hit the market

like usb you can have up to 63 devices

that can be powered by one computer

that's not all in one port

you do have to have more than one port

i don't know what the

how many i think it's 27 perhaps on one

single port but you can have up to 63

devices total

uh there we go 16 devices per chain i

was wrong not 27. so you can have 16

piggybacked off one another before you

need to plug another one into a direct

port

generally you would upgrade this by

installing another

firewire onto a

pci

slot for instance

this is also known as firewire as i

mentioned not just ieee 1394 this was a

name given it by apple computers um it's

now been supplanted by their thunderbolt

technology which is not covered on a

plus

the serial port so let's take a step

back in time serial port is one of the

oldest uh

forms of

input output ports

usb and firewire are both serial buses

meaning that the data is transferred one

bit at a time so it shares a very common

trait with serial port

however this original nine pin serial

port is known as a de-9 and there were

de15s as well

so sometimes you can look out for that

again this is a male connector because

obviously the pins are sticking out

this was also known as a com port mostly

because it was used a lot with external

modems and it was used to communicate

directly with networking equipment it

still is in fact if you're going to work

on a cisco device um you want to make

sure that you're i know a lot of places

that they still require

serial ports on their laptops so they

can interface directly with a router

cisco router for instance

to make changes to some of the routing

tables in there

it's also used for game controllers like

joysticks or it was uh nowadays that has

been supplanted mostly with usb

so it's really rarely in today's

motherboards i hardly see it

unless again you need it because you're

trying to work with

a

router or a cisco device a network

device like that

parallel ports you can tell from this

label right here mostly printer ports

parallel because it delivers more than

one bit of data at a time generally

eight at a time

the 25 db 25 port right here known as a

printer port generally also might be

referenced as a lpt port

which i mentioned right here sometimes

old scuzzy devices which we talked about

or scanners also connected through a

parallel port

again been supplanted mostly by usb so

we don't see it a lot anymore but you

might see it pop up on the exam which is

why i cover it we talked about ps2 ports

let's review them really quickly this is

for connecting keyboards and mice to

your desktop or your laptop again been

replaced by usb

in this color scheme generally the

keyboard

ports are purple and the mouse ports are

green

after about 20 years replaced by usb and

now even being replaced by bluetooth

technology since you don't even need a

cord to plug up a mouse and keyboard to

a

computer nowadays

so let's talk about bluetooth that's

sort of the newest of all these

technologies

except for maybe usb3 it's a wireless

option for peripherals and basically

what it what it is is a short range low

speed wireless network just like the

wireless network that's going to get you

internet access it runs in the same 2.4

gigahertz frequency actually that many

of the wireless standards that we'll

talk about a little later also run on

um and so it can cause a bit of uh

conflict with a wireless

uh signal uh however it works a little

differently and so it's sort of an

engineered to work around that this is

an important note i see on the test a

lot the network that it creates

when it connects to many devices is

called a pan a personal area network

okay so that's just an important

distinction if you see what device makes

a or what technology creates a pan a

personal area network that is bluetooth

the version 1.2 the one that um

was before the current version offered

one megabit per second version two is

three megabits per second not very fast

so it's not great for file transfer what

it is good for is uh headphones um

especially for like smartphones

keyboards a lot of the time now and mice

as well

again most bluetooth devices are a class

2 which means that they have a range of

about 10 meters not a lot this is a

number you want to remember since

sometimes it will ask

what is the range of bluetooth

okay and class 2 10 meters

so we've just given an overview of some

input output ports including the

universal serial bus usb we're currently

on version 3. i'm sure version 4 is

coming out soon we talked about

troubleshooting it the main thing we

talked about there was you could um

connect up to 127 devices

one thing i want to point out i don't

think it was made clear in the

slides although we mentioned it in

passing

if you have 127 devices all trying to

feed power off of one usb port you're

going to overwhelm that usb port so if

you have a hub for instance plugged up

to that usb port sometimes you do is

you'll have what's called a powered hub

okay that adds

basically

you would have the usb

you know

port here and then you would also have

a power connector that way this um

if we just said there were four other

connectors here maybe let's say five

just for um for fun

that's gonna add power to this usb hub

which in turn will allow more devices to

get power so sometimes you want to have

a powered hub especially if you're going

to be connecting say a lot of external

hard drives or cd drives something

that's really going to take a lot of

power

we talked about firewire or ieee 1394

mostly used for cameras and editing

serial ports

used to be also a com port a lot of

modems used to connect through that okay

parallel ports also referenced as an lpt

port lpt-1 port

and that's generally a printer port if

you see that

again the serial port is a nine pin

generally speaking and the parallel port

is a 25 pin

ps2 used to be how we connected our

mice and keyboards

nowadays

that's been replaced by bluetooth and

by a usb and again bluetooth creates

a personal area network

so we've talked about these input output

ports i want to talk specifically about

some specialty peripheral devices now

just really quickly that i've seen pop

up on the exam and so i want to make

sure you're prepared for them

[Music]

peripherals important devices

i just want to briefly talk about some

important devices that might not have

been covered in other parts of this um

of these videos that are important

relevant to peripherals and that i find

popping up on the test a lot

so first of all

we're going to look at keyboards and

mice and some

special

things to keep in mind about them

then we'll look at kvm switches which i

think we have talked about but i want to

talk about them again

and then barcode scanners which for some

reason i see pop up on the exam quite a

bit and i want to point out some

pertinent details about them

first with keyboards and mice these are

devices that are also called hids or

human interface devices because they

allow the human to interface with the

computer

they're commonly separate on desktop

computers but on a laptop we've already

talked about how they're sort of

integrated and you can buy devices like

this that actually integrate the

keyboard and the mouse

making a combo keyboard and mouse by the

way this is a trackball

symbol to one mice so they get a track

ball sometimes you'll see a track pad

here as well it works exactly the way uh

a mice uh mouse does

now if the on this integrated keyboard

mouse

if the mouse breaks and sometimes i see

this question if this mouse breaks

then in fact the entire thing the

keyboard has in fact broken

not just

um

the mouse so sometimes i see a question

that says something like

uh what happens if the mouse on an

integrated keyboard breaks what do you

have to replace and the answer is the

keyboard because the keyboard actually

has the mouse attached to it that's the

trick here that's why i'm including this

in this little

extra video okay

the keyboard also may require cleaning

if it has jammed keys and this is where

a

say

vacuum

electric discharge electrostatic

discharge vacuum would come in handy to

help vacuum up some of that

gunk in there

if the mouse is jumping around a lot of

the screen it could be that you need to

replace the mouse ball or that the

surface of the mouse isn't working very

well or if there's a trackball like this

one there might be some dirt sort of

inside the inner workings of it

uh if it's happening on a

computer it could also be a driver issue

and

it could also be a surface issue so what

i'm uh if i'm using an optical mouse for

instance especially

with an optical mouse

it could be that the

is reflecting in an odd way optical uses

lights so it's reflecting in an odd way

and i'm not getting a nice clean

uh uh

the mouse isn't getting a nice clean

sort of

signal to work off of and on laptops

it's likely that your wrist again we've

mentioned this but if there's a trackpad

right here and you're typing and the and

the mouse keeps jumping around your

wrist is probably running up against

that trackpad and that's causing the

issues

okay a kvm switch

a kvm switch is a short for

keyboard video mouse switch and what it

does is allows you to control multiple

computers from one mouse keyboard and

monitor so you can see here

each one of these goes to a different

computer

and each of those computers

has an led light

that would turn on when we're

associating with that

one this right here would go to the

monitor of the one monitor that i'm

actually using so you have a special

quote you have special cords that plug

into the kbm switch and then you have

one set of cords going from the kvm

switch to one monitor and one set of

mice nowadays by the way these usually

are usb ports but still and on the other

side what you can't see is there's

probably two ps2 ports for the keyboard

and mouse

this allows you to switch between

devices either using a key combination

maybe like escape

z or something or you can press this

sort of button right here and that would

let you switch between the different

devices

i've never seen these go up beyond 32

devices so sometimes i have seen 16 i've

seen 132 kvm switch before i haven't

seen many more than those these are

generally going to be used in server

rooms

a lot of times we can remote into a

computer through the network uh so uh

all i need is an ethernet cord but i

still want to be able to get root access

to a computer that means having access

through a keyboard a mouse and having a

monitor attached to it why buy 16 sets

of keyboards mice and monitors and who

has the space for it when i can buy one

set and that's what a kvm switch allows

finally barcode scanners

what they do is they measure the

reflections

if we've seen a barcode right

i'm just kind of making a very terrible

bar code

there's a laser that goes across this

barcode and measures the black and white

lines and the reflections and translates

that into a number that number then can

be searched on the system

to get a price or a product or whatever

and that's why they're used in stores

what's important though is you need to

tell the computer

or the scanner depending on how it's

working what each code means by

inputting it so if i scan this barcode

that might give me a number but i might

a not know what that number me the

computer rather might not know what that

number means or might not even be able

to read the number because it hasn't

been calibrated properly so one thing i

see pop up on the test is when you're

installing a barcode scanner you need to

make sure that you have

set up all the codes properly and

installed those along with the barcode

scanner something i just wanted to point

out

generally you're going to plug this in

via usb might be plugged in via a serial

port or some other form but most of the

time nowadays usb of course with iphones

and such it's all done wirelessly as

well

so just a brief video talking about the

keyboards in mice specifically i wanted

to mention those integrated keyboards

and mice okay the kvm switch which is a

keyboard

video

and mouse switch that allows you to

control

uh multiple computers

with one set of controls okay one set of

a monitor a keyboard

and a mouse

finally barcode scanners the thing we

mentioned with this that's important is

they measure the reflection off of the

white and black lines sometimes people

will say they measure the space between

them either one is correct and you have

to

install uh the codes

along with the device so i just wanted

to talk about those real quickly bring

those up since i have seen those

specifically come up on the exam and i

didn't want you to be caught off guard

[Music]

custom computing

custom pc configurations

as the title implies on the a plus exam

there are several examples of custom pc

configurations they're going to ask you

about now i've selected the ones that i

know they're going to test you on and in

some cases what they'll do is ask you

to create the computer based on the

configuration so i'm going to talk

specifically about what hardware

considerations go into each one of these

configurations so the ones we're going

to talk about here

are the audio video graphics editing

workstations

uh cad and cam workstations and these

have similar requirements and we'll talk

about what those are by the way cad

which you may have seen before and we'll

talk about this again is computer aided

design

all right so if you've ever seen a movie

where their pixar working on their

animations that's a cad station or uh

someone creating a blueprint

uh of a of a house for instance that

would be a cad station as well

and we're gonna talk about

virtualization workstations uh it's sort

of a misnomer but we're talking about

here are virtual computers

on larger servers okay so a virtual

computer uh

on a

physical server and the idea being that

we can have multiple

different virtual computers on one

physical and this sort of gets back to

what we've always talked about with

computers the logical

versus physical

we're going to talk about two types type

one which is called native and type two

which is called hosted not sure you

really need to know these in depth for

the exam but i want to cover them just

in case because they are this is

becoming the sort of new

key topic in computers

um then we're going to talk about thin

and thick clients

defining how much resources the computer

itself has is where we get thin and

thick from we'll talk about that then

we're going to talk about some home

considerations home computers

considerations including a home server

pc which distinguishes itself from a

business server a home theater pc which

is more like a computer that you're

going to plug up directly to your

television or tv

and finally a gaming pc one that is

specifically geared towards those who do

a lot of gaming related to almost all of

these is a technology or a

way of connecting your video card is

called scanline interleave which

involves connecting two

video cards together and we'll talk

about that uh as it

works in relation to everything above

okay

so first let's look at audio video

graphics editing workstations we're

dealing with audio editing or audio

workstation we're looking at some

something that's running uh maybe

logic pro a big sound design workstation

we're looking not only at audio editing

but also uh audio creation

mixing etc okay with video editing we're

not only looking at feature films but we

could be looking at screencasts

using software like camtasia or final

cut pro

etc and with graphics we're going to

look at like adobe um

photoshop

or adobe illustrator

um

or people who create graphics or edit

photos so we could also be seeing this

with photographers etc

so

due to the requirements of the

multimedia on these computers

right and again when we're dealing with

editing any of these this multimedia

when you download us uh mp3

for instance onto your computer what

you're really downloading

is

uh

a compressed

version of that sound so the audio

itself is not as wonderful as it once

was it's been compressed and it's lost

some of the quality to make up for uh

the id

the space issue meaning that it can now

be transported over the internet

when we're editing it we're dealing with

uncompressed

or raw footage

and as a result

the data is larger and it requires not

only more resources but more storage so

some things we're going to need are

faster multi-core processors

large amounts of ram we're going to see

this in just about every computer we

want

that requires sort of more resources

vast amounts of storage to cover all

this uncompressed and raw data as well

because again raw files are extremely

large i think something like 15 minutes

of raw hd video is like 40 gigabytes so

obviously i need uh to let's say i have

an entire film and that's hundreds of

hours

i need so much space it's not even funny

in order to make this actually a system

that's gonna work and i'm also gonna be

large in multiple monitors you can see

here this is an editing workstation and

there are multiple monitors

showing different things all around here

not only do i have my input to edit but

i'm seeing what i'm editing and find

maybe like an hd output as a result it

might also need some sort of special

video out connection or even a sound out

connection in the case of audio so that

way i can see what it is you know the

final product of what i'm editing

cad and cam workstations are similar in

their requirements cad by the way as we

mentioned stands for computer

aided design or computer aided

manufacturing

either of these means that the computer

is helping me make some sort of designer

manufacturing decisions so for instance

here

you can see the artist is using the

computer to help design these shoes

which then could be fed into a computer

to manufacture the shoes so

computer-aided design is used in not

only in uh you know for

engineering architecture drafting also

for certain designers

like animation

you might have seen this sort of stuff

in animation

either way it's going to require the

same resources which is

similar to multimedia and editing

stations higher powerful cpus more ram a

high-end video card

and when we're talking about a video

card we also need a high gpu and high

ram

so the maximum amount of ram

the highest powerful cpu we saw those

again same thing this is something we're

going to see over and over again and

adding into that the high end video

cards which we might have needed in

video editing as well

all right those are our two sort of

multimedia systems

so at virtualization

a virtualized workstation or uh

virtualization is the idea behind having

one computer that runs one or more

virtual operating systems on a physical

computer so i have this physical

computer and it is running uh

three virtual

systems on it each of the systems

believes itself to be actually one

system one physical system but in

actuality they are all running on one

physical system as you can imagine

therefore the physical system has higher

end requirements

in order to do this in order to have

these virtual pcs it needs what's called

a hypervisor and a hypervisor allows

multiple virtual operating systems so it

allows us to happen on one physical

computer so it is basically responsible

for virtualization in the first place

you might have heard something called

um amazon elastic cloud or ec2

what this does is you can use amazon's

servers

to host your own virtual computer now

they don't create a brand new physical

computer for you every time you pay them

what they do is they just give you space

on their computer and allow you to

create a virtual pc on it so they take

care of the hardware they take care of

the updating what you have to take care

of is creating that virtual

system this is also known by the way as

a virtual machine manager a hypervisor

so if you see that on the test you'll

recognize it and there are two types of

hypervisor setups we're going to look at

one is called type 1 which is native or

bare

bare metal and the other one is type 2

which is called hosted and what this has

to do

is with how close the hypervisor is to

the physical computer itself so let's

take a look at that

type 1 native virtualization

workstations also called bare metal in

this case the hypervisor runs directly

on the host computer so i have my host

computer hardware and next i have the

hypervisor on which i can then install

operating systems as a result of this as

i mentioned this is called bare metal

meaning the hypervisor is installed

bare

directly on the hardware

uh examples of hypervisor software here

are some

vmware makes a package citrix is a

popular one as well and one you're

probably gonna see pop up in the test is

the microsoft hyper v which stands of

course for hypervisor now hyper-v one

thing i want to mention is it can run in

two different capacities it can be

installed as a standalone directly on

the hardware of the system like we have

here or it can be chosen as a role

uh meaning basically how you want to use

windows 2008 server

so there's two ways to install it

it requires as well by the way cpu

support

so in order for the hypervisor to run

right on the hardware the cpu needs to

be able to deal with this which it can't

necessarily do all the time

this is in contrast to type 2 which is

the hosted or virtualized workstation

on this in this situation the hypervisor

runs within or on top of the operating

system all right so i have my hypervisor

and it is running on top of the

operating system

i do not have it connected directly to

the hardware like i would in a type 1

rather it is connected through the

operating system and therefore it is a

guest uh um

sorry

therefore it's actually going to require

more resources which i'll talk about in

a second

the guest operating systems run on the

hypervisor which runs in the host

operating system that's what this is

getting at okay and as a result like i

said

guests are one level removed from the

hardware so whereas in the if we're

doing this type one

section on the right hand side

the operating system hypervisor hardware

in this case though i'm adding in

another operating system in between the

two and as a result it runs less

efficiently and requires more resources

which makes sense the farther away i am

from the hardware the less efficiently

i'm going to run

examples of some of the software we're

going to see here microsoft virtual pc

which if we remember from talking about

windows is what's responsible for

windows xp mode

okay so windows xp mode which allows you

to run xp applications directly on a

windows 7 computer uses microsoft

virtual pc which is a type 2 hosted

virtualized workstation of windows xp

there's also a vmware server and vmware

workstation both examples of

hosted

virtualization

now any computer designed to host or run

a supervisor which means it's going to

host all these virtualized workstations

needs to have several things first of

all it needs to have the most powerful

cpu possible just like our other

computers maybe even more so because you

imagine i'm running 10 of these

computers

virtual computers let's say i'm running

you know 10 of these on one of these

this sucker better be pretty powerful it

also needs to have the racks maximum

amount of ram that can fit in the system

and an extrude it needs to be extremely

secure

if i get access to this system i have

that now access to 10 operating systems

now it's important that these host

operating systems um

be

secure as well but i need to make sure

my physical host

is extremely secure because if someone

gets access to it all of these become

compromised and which isn't a problem if

i own all of them but what if i'm

leasing out my computer to 10 other

clients then it becomes a real issue

all right so moving into this let's say

we have this computer we're going to

call a fixed server for the time being

and it is one physical server with a

hypervisor and let's say it is running

four operating systems on it

this is where something called a fin

client can come in what a thin client do

does is it is a computer that has few

resources when compared to a typical pc

it is what we call

diskless

it has no hard drive it has no optical

disks it does have a cpu and some ram

it has a fast ethernet connection

or network interface card is what i'm

calling that and it also has ways to

plug up a keyboard

uh

a mouse etc

what happens though is the thin client

simply displays the operating system

from the fixed server

so the thin client itself is not doing

any processing the processing is all

happening

on the fixed server side the thin client

itself is not doing any of it

so when the thin client is turned on it

loads the operating system in any

applications it needs into ram

from either on-board

flash memory or from the network which

is more common nowadays it pulls up from

the network and when i turn it off

everything gets wiped away but it gets

saved again to the network

on the thick server this is what it's

called a thin client it doesn't do any

of its own stuff it requires someone

else to do it it is in some way simply a

portal

to a server

now this is different from a thick

client which in all

um

you know

basically is a pc a computer that we

have it has a cpu it has ram it has a

hard drive it performs all the data

processing on its own computer now what

it might use is a thin server to get

some files or a program off of but all

the actions that are happening all the

processing is happening right here and

when you turn it off it has a disk to

store the operating system and the

profiles etc this is more expensive so

it's more expensive to have 10 of these

than 10 thin clients

and i don't have the centralization that

thin client

thin client thick server provides but

in this case each individual has a more

powerful system

now let's talk about some of these home

pc configurations the first is a home

server

a real server or a business server runs

software like windows server 2008 it

runs its own special server software and

if you wanted to get into the microsoft

certifications you could explore that

but this software is expensive and

requires a lot of know-how for the

average home user it's just too much

power it takes too much time to

configure and so

a home server is the idea of using a

windows 7 operating system and starting

what's called a home group which we'll

talk about a home group allows you to

share

files

media

printers

etc with other computers

so i'm just going to have one computer

that's slightly better than the others

and on that i'm going to put all of my

data to share out all of this stuff so

what i can do is then share information

from a central location

to all my other computers

files

printers can be shared etc now this

could be useful let's say i have five

kids

you know and you have

everyone that wants to watch the same

movies or uh run the same programs

instead of buying five versions of the

programs i could put all the versions i

could put all the programs all the stuff

on one central souped up computer and

then let the other computers act almost

as thin clients and access that stuff or

process it on the computer now

to what degree you do that really

depends on how powerful your home server

is but the media can also be streamed

from other systems as well so one thing

i do in my home is i have all of my

music and movies and everything on one

computer and then i can play that onto

any tv in my home or any computer in my

home as well which are connected to tvs

you probably need in this case a gigabit

network adapter because you need it fast

it's accessing the network so that all

the other servers can re all the other

computers can reach it and you probably

need some sort of raid array because if

you're storing everything on this

central computer you need to make sure

that if the hard drive crashes you're

not going to be in trouble

now a home theater pc is slightly

different again with the home theater pc

we're dealing with a tv or a television

okay so what it does is it takes the

place of several devices you'd hook up

to your tv so what are those devices a

blu-ray player or a dvd player

uh various audio equipment like some

intense um

sound system

a set top box or a tivo box or a dvr box

to record your tv and its programs

and as a result of replacing all of

these i need to put special hardware

into the box in order to make sure that

it can do it so something i might need

is a video adapter with a video out i

need some hdmi so i can plug it up to

this tv

i also want a cable or satellite or tv

input card that way i can get um i can

hook up my antenna i can hook up my dvr

and it'll work properly

i also need some advanced sound cards

probably with some sort of 7.1 or 5.1

dolby digital by the way this tv input

card i see this often

in reference to the httpc so you're and

you're going to want to know that term

httpc so if you see it it's probably

input card that they're going to talk

about is you need a tv input card and a

tv output card but a lot of computers

nowadays have a way to connect to a tv

what they don't have as a way to input

tv signals

you probably also need some optical

drives like blu-ray dvd etc and you're

gonna need some storage advan a lot more

storage because if i'm

burning all of my dvds and burning and

downloading all of this

movies from television and stuff i'm

going to need storage to to store all

that

now a gaming pc is the final sort of uh

home system

games are some of the most powerful

applications around and so gaming pcs

not only have they basically have

everything we've talked about they're

going to have a high-end video card with

specialized gpu which is also going to

have a lot of ram on it they're going to

have a powerful cpu in the system in

order to run all the stuff that's going

on

they're also going to have lots of ram

in the system to feed that cpu okay and

we're probably going to have a liquid

cooling to keep all this stuff from

overheating because remember when we're

dealing with

gaming that's when we're going to talk

about overclocking the cpu and so we

need to make sure to cool it we're gonna

have special sound card uh probably in

order to hear all the cool stuff that's

going on in the game and finally we need

a really fast network adapter and strong

internet connection because a lot of

times you're not just gaming with

yourself you're playing with other

people

and so you need to make sure that any

lag

can be avoided and one of the major

parts of lag not only for the resources

but is the network

finally i wanted to talk about scanline

interleave sli this is when a computer

has two or more identical video cards

and they work together to have greater

performance and higher resolution

so

this is accomplished by having two or

more pci express video cards the problem

is most motherboards only come with one

pci x pcie x16 slot and so i need to

make sure that i buy a motherboard that

is compatible and has enough cooling to

cool to

video cards because remember each video

card has its own gpu now i've just added

a third card now i have two cards and a

cpu i have basically three processors in

my system between my two video cards and

my main central processing unit and

that's going to mean major cooling

these are most commonly found in gaming

rigs but they can also be found in video

editing or in cad computer-aided design

or computer-aided manufacturing

workstations anything that needs

advanced video card

all right

so we talked about audio video graphics

editing workstations and our

computer-aided designer computed aided

manufacturing

the important thing to remember with

these is i'm going to need more cpu

more ram and a higher end graphics card

i might also need additional storage as

well

a virtualization workstation the

important thing to know here is native

it runs directly on the hardware

whereas hosted

doesn't run directly on the hardware it

runs

over

an operating system so it's one level

removed and you can think about that two

minus one is one level removed from one

um

in both cases these need just about all

the stuff cpu

ram storage you also need high-end

network

capabilities

thin and thick clients remember a thin

client

doesn't do its own processing

it is bare bones whereas a thick client

is basically equivalent to

a pc a regular computer a home server pc

is basically like a business pc but runs

windows 7 generally

or

or another consumer operating system as

opposed to a business one

you're going to want to have maybe a

raid array on this

and a high-end network gigabit card

home theater pc the important thing to

remember here is that tv out card

although

uh

you also need a tv input card so

basically it's a tv input and output

card one to get the video out onto the

tv and one to input that signal

a gaming pc is gonna have everything we

talked about uh it needs you know cpu

graphics

sound

ram

network it basically needs everything

and in some cases it's going to use scan

line interleave which remember is two

graphics cards

you have to make sure you have a

compatible motherboard though

all right

so we've talked about all of this

information

dealing with specific cons

setups for computers

[Music]

welcome to module 17 lesson two

configuring soho multifunction devices

which is a new addition to the a plus

syllabus syllabus

introduction to soho multifunction

device stroke printer

the functions we'll call them mfps i

think to save my breath

features of mfps advanced features

benefits

drivers the configuration settings

wired device sharing

common interfaces

wireless common interfaces

the integrated print server hardware

cloud and remote printing public shared

devices and data privacy

so here's an image of a typical

multi-function device which for all

intents and purposes is is a printer

with other features as opposed to

um

other options but you're mainly going to

be using it for a printer

it says soho stands for small office

home office which there are probably

millions of people that work out of a

a spare bedroom or a little

cabin somewhere or something in the

bottom of the garden remote workers for

large companies or self-employed people

who are running small businesses

like massage therapists and beauticians

and things like that

the soho multifunction device is also

also known as a mfp a multi-function

printer

so what does it do

well it's quite a few functions it

prints it can

photocopy

scan

fax not that anyone sends them but i

think they have a that capability

so mfps are generally connected to a

network through ethernet and usb ports

has a basic think finishing

functionality such as two-sided printing

and duplexing so these are just a couple

of the features you would find on

advanced

office and printers

and that also do photocopy and stuff

these things obviously can sort them

print on two pages

and some of them can even

staple and insert spines but obviously

these smaller devices

um aren't really designed to do that

much stuff

the mfps offer standard capabilities

such as docket document

output offset sorting inflation normally

and when you come to do the printing you

will see some features like

do you want to print all of page one you

do you want to sort it in pages one to

ten and then print one to ten again and

again that's a little collate it and

then obviously it's down to you to pick

pick the big pile out and sort it out

and staple it or whatever you wanna do

there's some advantage features like you

can scan documents or send it to email

network folders or usb drives

and can be accessed using mobile devices

i guess it depends on how much money

you've got to spend on these devices

they could allow cloud printing using

the vendor's web applications

they could also contain hard disk drive

to store information while processing

all of their requests

basic authentication which i think we

cover later on

uh benefits the popular because i have a

smaller footprint i either take up less

space

and the ones you've got can just be you

know a

couple of square feet and they can sit

on a shelf somewhere or under a desk or

even in a drawer

save power because you don't have

the three or four devices you're trying

to power

obviously save cost and because you're

not purchasing all of the devices

um

flexibility for a regular task from a

single device

now before you actually install it make

sure you've got the correct driver you

really do need to be careful that you've

got the specific driver

a few years ago you used to be able to

get away with um if you couldn't find

your specific model a printer driver you

could find something similar and

generally it would work because the only

function at the time was printing

well now um you must find the specific

model and sub model uh for your printer

your mfp

i also find the correct one for your

version of operating system they're

drilled down now so

windows xp vista

seven now

it might actually be the same driver but

you still need to do check on the

manufacturer's site that you're

installing the one that's listed or that

driver covers three or four operating

systems

if you've got a 32-bit operating system

then you should install the driver meant

for the 32-bit operating system unless

the driver software says that it's

compatible with

um both

different configuration settings such as

duplex collate orientation of the page

quality

normally it comes with software so

you'll actually download the driver but

also install the manufacturer software i

know for my hewlett pack card

you can do a whole bunch of things with

the pr with the printer when you install

it but it can also do things like clean

the

nozzles on on the printers it can

perform their diagnos diagnostics and a

whole bunch of other stuff just so it's

working

optimally

so duplex is printed on both sides and

yes this is actually in the syllabus i'm

pretty sure you know it i know it and

everyone else knows it but because it's

in the syllabus i want to copy it

with duplicate setting the paper

produced from the printer

after printing has both sides printed

so says paper obviously

should be uh supported by your mfp

device if it doesn't support it you

basically have to do the old-fashioned

way of print it

work out which way

upside down

uh back to front or flip it

uh to put the piece of paper back in so

you've got to do a little bit of um

testing i've done it where i've put

arrows and just printed some test pages

but i've written an arrow on the page

just to see which way it was supposed to

go in and then for the duplex

clay allows you to print pages in a

predetermined order and this should be a

little check box

useful when printing many copies of a

document containing multiple pages

for example if you want to print five

copies of a brochure containing three

pages and the clate would go one two

three one two three one two three one

two three one two three

just have you sorted everything out if

you don't choose clay and i'm sure we've

all made that mistake at work then it

will print one one one one one two two

two two etc etc which is soul destroying

when you realize you've done it

uh portrait landscape are two modes

again i'm sure you know this but i want

to make sure you do because it's in the

syllabus orientation

portrait allows you to print the context

in the form of a regular letter with the

short edges of the paper on the top and

the bottom

um landscape but sometimes when you

printed an image or a photograph or

you're printing several photographs that

you want to cut up for um

homework projects for kids and stuff

like that then you would print it with

alongside the short side on the left and

right

quality the printout can be adjusted by

choosing the type of paper that we're

going to use for printing

the type of print black or color print

is the quality of the print itself such

as draft normal or best yeah this is

just basically to save ink if you just

got

um something basic you want to read over

just to

check

spelling or how it looks on the page you

don't want to do best quality

um if you want to print a color picture

best quality then you have to feed the

photo paper into the tray select the

media choose color and then best quality

or it could be photo quality

wired device sharing a device showing on

a computer network can be either wired

or wireless as we know

and there's many ways an mfp device can

be wired to a network

commoner

usb serial not as common anymore

actually a serial connection or ethernet

which obviously means you um if it's

going on the network it needs an ip

address for network printing

a usb the usb port on the computer is

type a

normally have a type b connected to your

printer which is the square type of usb

cable

we've covered the usb cables earlier

serials not seen that much anymore

legacy serial ports

probably couldn't do a lot of the

advanced stuff though with the um

serial ports

ethernet interface mfp device with an

ethernet interface can be connected

directly to a computer network

the ethernet interface of an mfp device

is an ap8c connector often referred to

as rj45

sure we've all seen those a couple ways

to wirelessly connect to the mfp device

are bluetooth 802.11

bluetooth works over short distances and

you can print using your mobile device

for example

802.11 is for wireless networking as we

already know i'm sure

if your mfp device supports it then you

can connect to the wireless network

allowing your computers

or mobile devices to carry out all the

usual tasks

types of wireless lans you can have uh

infrastructure or ad hoc

the infrastructure mode the computers

use 802.11 and whichever the

specification is to connect through an

access point

in ad hoc your your devices connect

directly to the um mfp

integrated print server hardware

uh when the mfp supports network

connectivity it'll have built-in a

built-in print server that manages the

print jobs without a need for a network

computer to act as the print server

it's pretty old-fashioned stuff no

actually want to hear that term print

servers haven't heard that for a few

years

if an mfp device supports cloud printing

or remote printing then you can print

lead directly to an mfp device from

anywhere

in the cloud printing or remote printing

the devices

and sorry the documents to be printed

can be sent over the web to a printer

connected to a remote computer

that's providing both the um print on

the remote computer switched on and

connected to the cloud

i think you probably and look up on your

printer's manufacturer's website if you

want to research more on the cloud

printing

an example is if you want to print from

an erp system to a printer located in a

remote facility such as a warehouse you

could be asked by somebody

who works in your

company to run off a print but they want

it to be printed at this this other

printer that's connected to the cloud

system

so that would save you printing it and

then having to take it or even post it

public shared devices that can be either

local or networking can be shared via

your operating system

such as tcp bonjour or airprint

your mfp device if it's networked i said

earlier it needs to have an ip address

and the printer ports open for traffic

check your documentation to see what the

printer ports would be

for um for your device but that

obviously needs to be permitted through

the firewall

you can connect to the device using its

ip address also

a lot of the time it would be named

you'd collect a name printer and the

name would be allocated to the office

mac operating systems use the bonjour

service to find devices

you have to enable this set it on the

printer

airprint is apple's technology that

allows you to print from your mac or ios

device to an air print enabled mfp

that's without the need to install or

add drivers

data privacy user authentication on the

mfp is necessary if you want to prevent

unauthorized access depends what your

device supports and in

what depth

some advanced mfp devices have a hard

drive caching for storing or spooling

the print job

now in order to show data privacy you

could be printing off some sensitive

things like

proposals or

and

buyouts of other companies or

redundancies

it's recommended to encrypt the internal

hard drive

if possible

or print directly from memory so you

don't actually store it

all right so we've covered a lot of

stuff including the introduction to soho

the functions the general features in

advanced

benefits

drivers and configurations for wired

wireless

you integrated hardware

cloud printing

data privacy that's all for now thanks

for watching

[Music]

printers

printer types and technologies

believe it or not there's actually a lot

of

questions on the a plus exam about

printers and that's because in our work

as technicians we are often fixing

printers even though there are people

who specialize just in copiers and

printers etc

that's because it is one of the most

common output devices that we find when

there is a computer involved

not only that but the way they connect

to a computer or network varies and

there are several different types of

them

in fact four the four you see

represented in front of you right now

so what we're going to do is talk about

first these printer types and

technologies and how these printers work

and then we'll talk about

how they connect and how to troubleshoot

them after installing them

so in this video

we're gonna go over uh printers in

general

talk about multi-function or all-in-one

printers which many of you have in your

homes or are in many home offices

and then we'll look at the four main

types of printers and how they work

these are laser printers

inkjet or bubble jet printers

thermal printers

and impact printers

now even though you would think the a

plus exam is going to cover mostly

computers don't forget that nowadays

printers are so complex they are mini

computers and as a result we're going to

see a lot of questions on the exam about

them so it's really important that you

pay attention to some of the stuff we're

going to cover in this exam uh in this

video

finally we'll talk about local versus

network printers which gets a tad

complex if you've never actually worked

with them

and again we'll cover this more in

networks and then if you're continuing

on to the network plus exam we'll talk

about these a little bit more there

okay so first let's talk about printers

in general they're possibly the second

most popular output device right behind

video displays obviously

we need a video display in order to see

what we're doing on the computer but

unless we can get that information off

of the computer

and put it into real world circulation

then we

are sort of limited in our ability to

use our computers

and that's why almost anywhere you find

a computer you'll find a printer of some

sort

out what a printer does its most basic

definition is it outputs hard copy

versions of what is on the computer

screen so if you're working on a word

document it can output that word

document onto a piece of paper if you're

working on editing a photo it should be

able to output that photo onto a piece

of paper

now many connect via the usb or directly

to the network and generally they'll

have both if they are a more advanced

printer sometimes they connect to the

network uh

through a wired connection

and more than often these days they're

connecting through wi-fi as well so

that's really increasing the

availability of them to network users

and making it easier to connect them as

well

now they rarely connect to parallel

ports nowadays remember we looked at the

parallel port and again that was a db 25

25 pin d shaped connector

uh that's the main way they used to

connect and you might have also seen

them called lpt ports lpt12 etc but

nowadays we rarely see these because

again except on some of the older

printers that you might encounter

depending on your clients

but we're really going to see more of a

connection via usb and the network

now multi-function printers

are like the name implies

also act as fax machines copiers

scanners etc for instance this device i

can see a number pad that's for the fax

machine you can see a document feeder

and if we were to lift this up we would

see a flatbed so that gives us the

copying and scanning functionality it

also acts as a printer and if you think

about it in a very larger sense if

you're ever in an office setting you

might have seen these really large

copiers well these nowadays are also

multi-function printers

yes a lot of people use them to copy but

it's also where you print stuff too and

nowadays they can act as scanners even

scanning stuff directly to email

or to a drive on the network so

multi-function devices are we're seeing

more and more often

in not only small office home offices

and by the way when i say small office

home office you might see that

referenced as soho but we're also seeing

them in larger offices thanks to the

expanding capabilities of copiers

now these are also known as all-in-one

printers specifically in the consumer

market so if you go to a

consumer

store such as the best buy you're

probably going to see it called an

all-in-one printer multi-function

printers or multi-function devices are

generally what we're going to call the

larger more expensive items

now there are four

printer types that we're going to

discuss not only just mention them in

name but we're also going to discuss how

exactly they work and how they work has

to do directly with their name there are

laser printers

which is this one right here

and laser printers use literally a laser

in order to print information onto

a piece of paper

that's not all they use obviously and

we'll talk

much more in depth about how laser

printers work there'll be several

questions on it on the exam next there

are what are called inkjet

or bubble jet printers

these are the most commonly seen in

consumer markets whereas laser we're

going to see more in

corporate sort of environments

and the bubble or inkjet has to do

mostly with how they were marketed we'll

talk about where the name bubble comes

from when we talk about inkjet printers

next there are thermal printers which

would be these these are also seen

usually in the context of commercial

sort of point of sales items if you ever

go check out at the grocery store or at

a

you know any sort of store actually and

you're giving a receipt say the gas

station as well you're generally being

given a receipt that was printed on

thermal paper

and used a thermal printer

finally the impact printers the most

common of watch of which is the dot

matrix printer you probably saw these uh

20 years ago if you were in computers

and you probably still these still see

these in certain contexts and we will

talk about those as well

so like the names imply a laser uses a

laser for printing inkjet uses ink that

is jettisoned directly onto the paper or

bubbled up through the

inkjet head onto the paper the thermal

printer uses a heat applied to a

specially coated paper

and the dot on the impact printer

or the dot matrix printer works most

like a typewriter which is that

the

print head makes impact with an ink

ribbon

and that impact creates uh the image or

words on the on the printer

great so let's take a look at a little

more in depth at uh first the laser

printer

laser printers produce high quality text

and graphics on cut sheets of paper the

reason i say cut sheets is when we get

to impact printers they're generally

using rolls or banner paper the type

that you've seen with the little

dots on either side of the paper

right

so rather than using that uh these use

rollers uh that are able to sort of move

these cut sheets of paper generally in

an eight and a half by eleven in the

states or an a4

uh out in um

in europe and other parts of the world

they're used mostly to print

in black and white

but advances in technology have uh and

therefore reduction in costs have

brought more color laser printers to

market whereas a color laser printer

used to be something very rare now we

see color laser printers quite

frequently and that's because nowadays

the

it's not as

uh expensive to get a color laser

printer as it once was whereas it used

to be if you were doing anything but

black and white that was unnecessary the

other reason we're seeing them more is

in businesses nowadays more people are

printing in um

in color whereas uh maybe 10 years ago

and before that

no one really had a need for

color printing if you could print in

black and white

the way this works and i'll talk about

this in much more depth is that a laser

beam projects the image onto an

electrically charged drum

uh what happens then is the toner is

spilled on that drum

and the toner has a different charge

than the drum and so uh just like if you

had glue and you painted onto a piece of

paper with glue and then you poured

confetti onto that

and then you sort of turned the paper

over and shook off all the confetti

whatever remained would be where the

glue was it works somewhat the same way

if that's a little unclear that's okay

we're about to talk about it a little

more um in depth so after the laser beam

projects that image onto a drum the drum

then is uh transfers that over to the

paper

so there are some advantages to laser

printers first of all uh the speed can

be anywhere from 10 to 100 pages per

minute just mechanically that's way

faster than we're going to see on dot

matrices on dot dot matrixes

most thermal printers and especially on

inkjets and you know if you have a

printer at home i doubt it's reaching

100 pages per minute

the print quality is also really high in

comparison to other forms of printers uh

it's generally at 600 dpi or dots per

inch but we see them at anywhere from 12

to 2 400 dpi resolution as well and

perhaps even higher depending on how

much you want to spend the

resolution of the print just like the

resolution on your video display

determines how fine of an image or how

fine the text is

also the cost is much cheaper the

toner's cost per page is cheaper than

other printing methods so buying toner

which is

the substance used to create uh

the letters on the piece of paper or the

images on the piece of paper almost like

ink is much cheaper than the consumables

in other

printers

so let's look at first the components

that are in the printer and then we will

talk about uh how they all work together

so the first component we have is the

toner and this is a type of powder

that's stored in a replaceable toner

cartridge

although it's difficult to see on this i

believe the toner is probably in this

location right here

so this is for all intents and purposes

the ink this is what is printed onto the

piece of paper the reason it's called

toner however is it's not ink like you

see in a pen it is a powder

that's stored into a replaceable toner

cartridge and the reason this powder is

used is because of how the printing

process works and we will see uh that a

little more in depth in a minute

it also creates the text and images on

the paper from being electrically

charged something we will talk about and

we just mentioned when we talk about

lasers next there's something called the

corona wire this provides a charge to

the drum so we're talking about all

these charges and using negative and

positive charges for the toner and also

for the drum well this corona wire

which isn't really

wonderfully referenced on this diagram

but which i think is probably best

referenced by this sort of electric

board

literally charges the drum so that uh

the power of electricity can either take

a negative or a positive uh and you know

negatives and positives attract

right and uh two negatives would reject

each other just like two positives would

reject each other

so that would go away from each other

these would go away from each other and

these

are gonna go

i don't know how to draw that

differently

are gonna go towards each other how we

do this great

the corona wire provides the charge to

the drum so that's what's actually doing

the charging

the fusing assembly

which is

down here

is what fuses the toner onto the paper

if you ever feel uh paper as it's coming

out of a laser printer it's very hot and

that's because once that toner drops on

to the piece of paper the fuser is what

literally burns it into the paper and

makes it stick this is also what keeps

the ink from smudging if you have a lot

of smudging there's probably something

wrong with the fuser

finally the laser of course

which is right here

yeah and

i'm going to put that there because you

can see the laser is shooting off of

this reflective surface

and the laser

writes the image or text to the drum

this being the drum

right here there are also rollers which

roll the paper

up to where it needs to go

so these are the main

components that we see in the laser

printer now let's talk about how they

all work together

so

generally there is this is a six step

process we're going to take a look at

there is an unofficial first step

however that's that the text or image to

be printed is calculated by the printer

then that image which the calculation is

sent to the printer now here's something

that's important

printers all have their own amount of

ram

so

the printer the computer decides what

the image is going to look like uses the

device driver or the printer driver to

communicate that to the printer and then

it's stored in ram on the printer

the more ram the printer has the more

print jobs it can deal with at one time

if i have a large company and 100 people

are using the same printer i'm going to

need to make sure that i have a high

amount of ram

also if i'm printing a lot of high-end

pictures or very large pdfs

large images etc then i'm going to need

more ram because just like you would

assume pictures

images take more ram space more memory

space than documents do

a processor also on the mother on the on

the um in the printer on a system board

again these are like mini computers as

we mentioned uh recalculates

the

image the data sent to it by the printer

uh by the computer and then it stores it

into ram while the printer reads itself

and then until it prints so i point out

that there is a cpu

and ram and a chipboard

in the printer in the laser printer and

this is just about in any printer laser

printers probably have them a little

more intense and a little more large

than the other printers for the most

part

so the inofficial's first step is the

sending of the data to the printer but

let's talk about what happens once it's

on the printer the first step

is called the cleaning step

so as we talked about

uh there is

toner that is used and this is powder

that's sort of poured onto a piece of

paper and then um what happens is any of

the toner

that's not

charged correctly that hasn't been

charged by say the

laser

is not going to fall onto the piece of

paper

and so we have excess toner again i use

the metaphor of

throwing confetti

or uh

those um or shiny sort of

glitter onto a piece of paper on which

you've painted an image in glue you're

gonna paint the imaging glue on the

paper that's what the laser does then

you pour the toner or the glitter onto

the piece of paper and then you turn

that piece of paper over and you shake

it anything that hasn't been glued is

going to fall off well a rubber blade

much like a squeegee is going to

wipe all of that excess toner off

so that way the drum can go around and

get lasered again for more toner

there's also an erasing lamp that

removes any leftover charge on the drum

so this is basically the first process

the first step but could also be

considered the last step in the process

since uh it is cleaning up from the

previous print job

but there's a squeegee that removes the

old toner and then there's an erasing

lamp that erases any charge on the drum

so we're starting with a neutral

electronic charge

step two is what's called conditioning

what happens here and this is also known

as charging they both begin with a c if

that helps you

a negative charge is applied by the

primary corona wire remember the corona

wire applies the charge

powered by a high power supply high

voltage power supply within the printer

so

there's a high voltage power source

that makes the drum

and this high

voltage power source

through the corona wire makes the drum

negatively charged okay so as this image

indicates we now have negative charges

on the drum

the drum is negatively charged and

that's how we start okay so now the drum

is negatively charged thanks to the

corona wire

in step three which is called writing

otherwise known as exposing

the laser

writes to the drum as it spins

so as you see here here's the laser

there's a mirror that sort of is helping

it

scan onto this drum and look the drum

now has all these negative charges okay

that's been done because of the corona

wire

as the laser writes

it creates a lesser negative charge

so what basically happens is

look at all these areas that don't have

charges now i'm going to just go over

them in red

this is the image that the laser is

creating it creates a lesser negative

charge

when the toner falls on the drum

it's going to fall off of this area onto

the piece of paper whereas the rest of

the toner is going to stay on the drum

and is going to be cleaned off later so

only the red parts

of the toner are going to be

transferred onto the paper

which brings us to step 4 developing

in this the laser drum surface is

applied with a negatively charged toner

so just like pouring the glitter onto

the drum i pour toner onto the drum

and now i'm ready to add paper into the

mix

the toner by the way has a higher charge

than the areas of drum it's been written

to

so don't forget with positives and

negatives what happens they attract

right so the drum uh what's gonna happen

now is the toner is gonna stick

to any of these parts

because don't forget now i have pluses

and minuses which attract and it's going

to fall off of the parts i've already

painted in red onto the paper

this brings us to step five

transferring

the toner now is transferred to paper as

the drum rolls over it so if you see

think of the drums going this way

okay and you can see the laser is

writing on it there's toner being

applied here when it falls over onto the

paper which you see right here

only the toner

by force of gravity that isn't attracted

to the drum already is going to fall

onto the paper everything else is going

to stay attached to the to the drum

the paper slides between the drum and is

positive and the positively charged

corona wire giving the paper a positive

charge

so now

because it's not attracted to anything

on the drum the toner is going to be

attracted to the paper

this makes the toner attracted to the

paper and the movement of the paper by

the way is assisted by these rollers

which help it move

over the drum or below the drum

finally

we have the fusing

step this is where the toner is fused to

the paper when it's passed through the

fusing assembly

so you can see there's a hot a lamp here

that heats up this roller

that then

is a pressurized roller

that heats the toner and basically melts

it onto the paper to reduce uh smudging

and it'll it'll basically it's what

makes the printer print okay

you can see here it gets very hot

so

that's an overview of the printer of

printers in general an overview of

multi-function printers and then we

introduced all the types of printers and

then i talked about the six step laser

process okay

of all the things we're about to talk

about this is why i'm pausing here for a

moment

the laser printer and its six step

process is by far the most important and

you need to know what we just talked

about for the exam they're going to ask

you questions

that will specifically um

relate to that

so now let's talk about inkjet printers

these are the most common in small

offices home offices and personal use

because they are much cheaper an

investment than laser printers they can

print text documents photographs

and graphical information in color

and in black and white and they're

usually connected to the computer via

usb although there are some nowadays

that do connect by directly uh

via

via wireless or wired network

connections

what this does is it works by propelling

ink a jet

jettisons the ink watch called inkjet

from a cartridge onto the paper

there are two types of inkjet printers

and i don't want you to get these

confused with the types of printer in

general okay these are the two types of

inkjet printers

first there's thermal printers or

thermal inkjet printers and again i want

to point out that thermal inkjet

printers are different from thermal

printers it has to do with how the ink

is jettisoned onto the paper

in this case heat is sent to the ink

cartridge which forms a bubble which

then

pushes the ink onto the paper this is

where the name bubble jet comes from

uh as i mentioned

there's also these piezoelectric

printers so unlike the thermal printer

which forces the ink on through heat the

piezoelectric uses an electric current

to the ink material changing the ink's

shape and size which then forces it onto

the paper sort of similar concept but

different in application

in this case there are

it's much simpler process than in laser

printers step one the paper or other

media is pulled or moved into position

by a roller mechanism or belt you've

probably seen this and this is the part

you hear so this is where the paper is

pulled in

and then step two the print head on a

mechanical arm as we can see right here

here's the print head okay and here it

is on a mechanical arm

moves across the paper and places the

ink as directed by the print driver so

it basically places it where the ink

driver tells it to

uh and then step three

at the end of the line the paper or

media is advanced and the print head

either so once the it's drawn one line

on

right it either reverses directions and

continues printing or it returns to the

left margin before printing continues so

this depends on how the printer works

exactly but this thing moves back and

forth

spraying ink onto the paper

and finally step four

the paper is ejected upon completion and

you can pick it up in your tray because

of this there's no fuser there's no heat

applied directly to the paper and that's

why smudging is much more common in

inkjets than it is on laser printers

great so that was an inkjet printer

let's continue on to thermal printers

thermal printers produce text and images

by heating specifically coated thermal

paper this is a key okay you need

special paper to use a thermal printer

these are mostly used in point-of-sale

systems gas stations pumps

cash registers etc

mostly for receipts

so what happens in thermal printers is

there is a thermal head that generates

the heat and takes care of printing to

the paper

there is also what's called the platen

which is a rubber roller that feeds the

paper through the printhead okay

finally there's a spring which attaches

or applies pressure to the print head

bringing the paper the print head in

contact with the paper so the spring

allows the thermal head to

uh

heat up the paper which is brought upon

by the platen i wouldn't worry too much

about these parts i'm going over them

but i very rarely see

this sort of stuff on the exam the thing

i see most on the exam with reference to

thermal printers again is the thermal

paper which is probably the most

important thermal printer part even

though it's not even part of the printer

finally there's also a circuit board

which controls the mechanism that moves

the print head just like we've seen on

every printer there's always a circuit

board that tells the printer what to do

so

in the thermal printing process the

thermal paper is inserted between the

thermal head and the platen

the printer sends current to the head

which heats up the head

and then activates thermosensitive

coloring layer of the paper so the ink

is actually sort of built into the paper

there is no separate ink and that's why

it's sometimes simpler for receipt

machines for instance is because instead

of having to buy

ink and paper i can just buy the special

paper and then the printer does

everything else i don't have to replace

ink cartridges this is one of the

benefits of thermal printing again the

key to thermal printing

is

that this paper

is special purchased okay you need

special paper that's been treated to use

a thermal printer

all right let's now talk about the last

type impact printers

impact printers as the name implies use

force

impact to transfer ink to paper

they're not seen as frequently as they

were 20 years ago but they're still used

in some places such as auto repair shops

accounting departments i've seen them in

a lot of government agencies basically

places that uh have not invested in new

printers or where the sort of forms that

they have work better with these

printers because it sort of looks more

like a typewriter so they can print onto

forms a little easier

how these impact printers work is

dependent on the type of impact printer

just like a typewriter is an impact

printer

it has several different keys several

different impact points each of which

has a letter inscribed on it very

smallly and when you hit that key it

punctures through a piece an ink ribbon

onto a piece of paper that letter but

the most common type of printer we have

is the dot matrix printer

these print text one line at a time

instead of one um

letter at a time so they use a matrix of

pins to create characters instead of a

form letter so as a typewriter would hit

put on an r a dot matrix is gonna

put on

the dots

required

to make an r

i'm doing the dots but you wouldn't see

the dots until the r is created that's a

terrible rendition but i hope it gives

you the point so there are pins that

create the letters and these are done

one line at a time

very finely though so it looks like the

letter has been created all as one

the print head with these pins strikes

the ribbon of ink which you can sort of

see here

going through

and through that ink it places the ink

on the paper through impact just like

you would with a typewriter except these

are using dots a dot matrix as opposed

to

an entire letter

great so now we've talked about impact

printers let's finish up this discussion

by talking about how printers either

connect locally or through a network

to other devices

so

a local printer means that the printer

connects directly to a computer i.e

through usb port

if that computer goes down however so

does the network printer right because

no one can connect to the printer

because it's connected directly to that

computer

on the other hand a network printer

connects directly to the network or to a

print server device

so

it is shared by more than one user on

the computer network

for instance

these printers

this one right here connects directly

to the network which then connects to a

print server as opposed to this one

which might connect directly to a

computer okay

now this could connect directly to the

print server and then the print server

could then serve it out to all the other

computers and in that case we would

probably call it a network printer even

though it's connecting locally to the

print server if that seems to make any

sense

the whole idea behind a network printer

however is that usually it connects up

to a router or some sort of uh

network device and that way in case a

computer goes down every other device

still has access to the printer because

it's connected directly to the network

as opposed to locally to a computer

usually it's given an ip address and

becomes another host on the network so

just like a computer has an ip address

which is its specific unique address on

the network which we'll talk about in

networking the printer has its own ip

address

now if the printer connects directly to

the network it usually does so by way of

a rj45 port or a wi-fi uh

you know

nick network card

and then what happens is a print server

would be uh assigned or the printer

would be assigned to a print server to

manage the to manage the computers that

want to

print to the

to the printer that way not everyone has

un just liberal access to the printer

there's someone sort of managing what

documents go to

the uh individual printer

there also could be a computer or a

smaller black device device serving as

the network printer sometimes there are

i'm sorry not network printer but the

network server sometimes there are

wireless routers for instance that you

can connect a printer directly into in

this case the router is also serving as

the print quote-unquote server even

though it's not specifically another

computer

the printer could also be connected via

usb to a print server and it's still

considered network printer because again

it's being networked out to everyone

else and servers

by their nature should not be going down

we'll talk more about network printers

when we get into networking and i think

it'll all make a little more sense there

but i want to bring up the

context now

all right so now we've talked about

local versus network printers let's

quickly just do an overview

and um

review what we've just talked about we

talked about the printers in general

again a printer is one of the most

common output devices the multi-function

printers also serve as a scanner

a copier

and a printer

there are four different types of

printers we talked about the first was

the laser which uses a six step process

you should review the laser printer a

bunch of times this is the most

important one

the inkjet has ink

sprayed through the heads

so those ink cartridges you buy the ink

is actually sprayed through that onto a

piece of paper this by the way is the

reason they say not to recycle

print heads or print cartridges because

the head will get clogged

we also have thermal printers

which use specially treated paper is the

thing you should remember about those

and an impact printer the most common

being a dot matrix

uses impact

like like a typewriter

to transfer a certain degree of ink

to a piece of paper and that ink by the

way is on a ribbon

final we talked about local versus

network printers local printer means

that the printer is directly connected

to the computer network printer means uh

that it's connected generally through an

rj45 port

and is managed

by a print

server

great now that we've talked about uh

this overview of printers and the types

of printers let's discuss

some of the uh

ways that we install printers and then

make sure that they're working correctly

before discussing troubleshooting them

[Music]

welcome to module 18 lesson 1a virtual

print technology which is a new syllabus

item

we'll have a look at what virtual print

technology is the printer file the

printer pdf

print to xps

print to image

so virtual

print technology allows you to store the

information to a file instead of

actually

printing it so the pages aren't coming

out of a printer in this particular

instance

it's widely used to convert documents of

any type

into other formats the examples are pdf

xps or even an image format such as jpeg

so

the context for the exam is printer file

printer pdf print to xps and print to

image

when you

if it's enabled by the way it has to be

enabled when the printer file option is

selected in the print dialog the data is

not isn't sent to the printer for

physical printing

instead

it's written to a file typically with

the extension.prn

so this

option is useful when you're printing

directly from a document which will be

time consuming or if you want to print

the document from somewhere else an

example is if you wanted to take your um

document to a commercial printer

at your local stationery office and they

have a

professional printing set up that can

print it collate it

and and put some sort of

spine on it so it could be a a book

you've written or something like that

with lots of images and it's something

you don't want to write or print at home

because you're going to use too much ink

or your printer isn't up to it oh it's

broken

once we've had the output saved to the

file it can be used later to physically

print the document

the printer file is specific to the

printer chosen at the time of using this

option so when you print to the file you

need to choose the type of printer

that's going to be printing the document

and

check the dialogue when you're actually

going through this and you

and maybe while serves uh speaking to

the

um

whoever owns the printer if it's if

you're going to a print shop to see if

this is a format that will work for them

prints a pdf's really common now and you

can do this if you're creating ebooks

for example you want people to download

or documents for your company

that you don't want people to edit or

they don't have copies of microsoft word

or it's just going to look a bit too

cumbersome so print to pdf is um

adobe's proprietary format or pdf is

so what you're doing is creating a pdf

instead of

printing the actual document

the extension is pdf

you would normally download the drivers

if you don't have a built-in pdf printer

for whatever reason

with your printer software you can

download pdf printers

in order to view the pdf you'll

obviously need a pdf reader such as

adobe reader

most browsers can also read pdf files

print to xps

xps stands for xml paper specification

it's a virtual print technology that

allows us to print a document to xps

which is microsoft's proprietary format

xps is supported by several versions of

windows so it allows you to create an

xps file from any application that can

print

the

extension is xps

in order to view you need to have an xps

viewer it's installed by default on

windows vista 7 and 8. i would imagine

you can download a viewer for other

operating systems on the microsoft

website there

printer image means you print the

document as a popular image format

examples are jpeg tf bmi dot bmp bitmaps

the printer image is not built into the

operating system so a third-party

virtual image printer must be installed

on your computer

it's the easiest way to convert a

document into an image file

obviously you need some sort of picture

viewer which pretty much everyone has

on their operating system and you

download them as well

so we've looked at

introduction to virtual print technology

printer file pdf xps and image that's

all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

printers printer installation and

configuration

we've discussed the different types of

technologies and the different types of

printers so now let's look at how we

install and configure printers

specifically in the windows operating

system

so we're going to talk about installing

printers including checking for

compatibility

installing the printer drivers

connecting the printer physically to the

computer

calibrating the printer

and then finally testing the printer

we'll also take a brief array into

configuring printers overall this will

be a fairly short video in comparison

with the video before and after it

so when before we're going to buy a

computer before we install it we need to

make sure that the printer is compatible

not only with your operating system but

also the version of your operating

system so you need to make sure if you

have say

windows

7 that it's compatible with windows 7

professional for instance

and you also need to make sure that the

drivers exist

for the 32-bit or 64-bit version

so if you have a 64-bit operating system

make sure that the printer is compatible

with that operating system and

the 32 versus the 64-bit version of it

if you have a macintosh

you need to double check that it's

compatible with that since some are not

you're also going to want to check the

server and the clients for compatibility

meaning

we talked about a network printer i need

to make sure that the network

server that's going to host the printer

is

compatible and i also need to make sure

that the clients the computers that are

going to be using the printer for the

most part are also compatible

windows server i might have a windows

2008 server but i might have clients

that are windows 7

vista maybe even xp and so i need to

make sure that the drivers exist for all

of these versions of the operating

system

you also want to check windows

compatibility lists to verify that

remember we talked about the

windows compatibility list available

online the compatibility

you can always do a google search so you

want to make sure that it not only says

it on the manufacturer's site but also a

microsoft site

and double check how the computer is

going to connect to the network or to

the computer

for instance you might be expecting to

connect the printer to your network

directly well in that case you want to

make sure that it has an rj45 that's an

ethernet wired connection or that it has

a wi-fi connection alternatively you

might be interested in a bluetooth

connection which you can also in some

cases connect your uh computer through

so these are all important things to

take into account before you go out and

purchase the printer or before you

upgrade your system uh especially in the

case of an enterprise system

now the printer drivers uh need to be

installed before you physically connect

the printer that's just generally the

way we do it and if you are following

instructions that come with the printer

they will generally echo this sentiment

i always recommend to download the

latest drivers from the manufacturer's

website the other place you could

install them from of course is the cd or

the dvd that comes with the printer

however i find that the manufacturer's

website drivers are going to be the

latest and the greatest and so i always

recommend installing from there

you need to make sure as i just

mentioned that the operating system and

the version of the operating system is

compatible with that driver

and usually

if they don't have it on their website

then it's not compatible

in which case you can try

to install

the printer anyway but realize you might

be met with

disappointing results

you can use the add a printer wizard

which is located in windows in three

different locations depending on the

version you're running

in windows 7 it's located in what's

called the devices and printers

in windows vista it was just located in

printers

and it was called printers and faxes in

xp

and if we go over to windows real

quickly

go to the start menu we see it's right

here located on the start menu devices

and printers

if we go to the top we can add a device

or add a printer they've added out a

device because now we have a lot of

other types of devices that we're adding

to the computer with seven

this would probably be where you'd add a

barcode scanner for instance if you want

to add a printer you click add printer

and here you can either choose to add a

local printer or a network

wireless or bluetooth printer so one

that does not connect directly via usb

once you connect this

uh it'll probably recognize the printers

already there however you can choose a

port to connect it through again lpts

these are generally parallel ports you

generally won't have to choose one of

these either

in some cases you might want to create a

new port which would be a tcpip port

which would be if you have a network

printer that you want the computer to

treat locally you'll create a port using

the

printer's ip address which we will talk

about when we get into networking ip

addresses that is

once you've installed the drivers you

can generally connect the printer if

you're using usb or ieee 1394 and again

just to remind you this is firewire i

don't see many printers coming in a

firewire standard nowadays but i'll

point it out anyway you don't need to

turn off the computer that's because usb

and

firewire are both or both what we call

hot swappable i think we've seen that

term before but it basically means uh

while the computer is on while it is hot

you can plug things up to it

this is not the case if you're

connecting the printer via a parallel

port which is that lpt-1 port

a scuzzy port or a serial port which

would be a com port

so in that case you should shut down the

computer first after you've installed

the drivers

you shut down the computer plug it in

and as it boots up it will probably

recognize that the printer is connected

you can connect the printer to an ac

outlet after you've connected the

printer to the computer

again this is going to provide power to

it

and so the last thing you add is power

of course the very last thing you do is

actually turn on the printer using the

on off switch

you don't need to connect a laser

printer to a ups remember a ups is an

uninterruptible

power supply and it's a battery backup

for lack of a better word i often see on

the test this exact statement

okay so sometimes it'll ask you which of

the following devices does not need to

be plugged into a ups and this is a

reminder that laser printers do not

connect to a ups ever they take up a lot

of power a lot of energy and in case

your power goes out you don't need to be

printing off stuff what you do need to

be doing is saving everything and

shutting down so that way you don't lose

any of your information

so now that it's connected driver's

installed everything's gone well uh you

generally you need to calibrate the

printer

what this means is

what you see on your screen sometimes

does not correlate exactly and precisely

with what the printer is going to put

off and so the printer needs to know

for instance

which of these three

actually gives you straight lines now on

some computers

when it prints off number three might be

the right answer in this case you choose

number one because it gives you the

straightest line this is also useful for

um

color so sometimes it'll have different

colors sort of on a screen or it'll say

which of the following is the best blue

or the best yellow etc and that

calibrates the printer and aligns it

another term

aligns the print heads

to work properly in outputting what it

is you're seeing on your actual screen

so again this aligns the printing

mechanism to the paper and verifies

color output it aligns it using this

method and the color generally by

showing you different swatches of the

color and asking which is the best for

you

the printer software usually guides the

user through this process

meaning that

this is not something that's built into

windows this is built into the printer

utilities so i'm not going to show you

this because it depends on the printer

you have but generally speaking if you

go into the printer

settings there's generally an options

area where it'll give you the ability to

access the printer itself the

utilities sometimes it'll also be

installed in the add remove programs

area i'm sorry in the all programs area

off the start menu and you can run it

the actual utility provided by the

manufacturer in order to do this it's

the same thing you'll do if you need to

clean

um

the printer

ink sometimes these calibration tests

can also be done on the small printer

display

some printers have a small tiny display

generally

something like this

and

you might see calibrate as an option

um you would move through this display

by the way because on the

top of the printer is generally

something like this and it lets you

select what you want to

mess with sometimes these small printer

displays are specifically on laser

printers and on larger enterprise

printers such as

copiers etc that's where really where

you're going to see these

testing the printer once it's all set up

and you think it's good to go there's

actually

uh

you can test the printer by printing a

test page and this is built into windows

built into most driver settings what you

do to get here is you double click the

printer in the printers area

okay so you can see behind here is the

devices in the printers area here in

windows 7. if we were in windows vista

it would be called printers and if we

were in

xp we'd do printers and faxes you double

click on the printer itself

and then

you go here to printer go down to

properties

and this box will pop up

all right

at the bottom of the general tab you

will see the print test page

when you print the test page

it'll say it'll show you several

different things including the operating

system the local computer is running

and various other configuration and

driver information it'll also have the

windows logo on it

so you can make sure all the colors are

working properly the reason it gives you

the operating system local computers so

you know that you've printed it off from

a specific computer in some instances it

will also give you information

of uh

the ip address network protocols etc

sometimes you can also print a test page

off using the onboard display

specifically on laser printers larger

can

canon xerox etc that are going to be in

a large

company

if we just go take a look

here at windows 7 i'm going to close out

of this add new and let's say we go to

this printer we go to printer properties

and here we can print a test page if we

so wish

they'll tell us a test page has been

sent

and then we can double check to make

sure everything's okay

so after we've installed the printer we

can configure it

there are three locations that we need

to know about for configuring the

printer the first is on the small

display sometimes that's on some

printers not all printers

uh these are more common as i've

mentioned on laser printers large

enterprise scanner copiers

and they are menu driven and usually

very user friendly and intuitive so you

would go to the test page option to

print a test page maybe settings uh

if you have questions about that always

refer to the documentation that comes

from the manufacturer

you can also go within a

printer's web interface so if the

if this is a network printer

it's generally given an ip address

which you might know i p address for

instance like a 192.168.0.23

we will talk about what this is in the

next couple seconds when we talk about

networking but you would go to a web

browser you type this in and you would

then be brought to a web based interface

where you could configure the printer

this is only if it's a network printer

as i've added and it's often accessed

directly through a web browser in some

cases you will have a utility that will

do this for you that you have to install

on your computer

basically what this is is you are

accessing the printer the printer itself

is large enough to where it has a very

small computer built onto it

that allows it to display this web-based

interface to you

and through which you can make

configuration changes

there's sometimes on you usually rather

on copiers enterprise printers etc if

you have a very large expensive

printer copier that you have leased or

that you've bought you'll generally find

that it has one of these web-based

interfaces on it

finally

within windows where we've looked

already double-click on the printer

access the properties like we've

demonstrated

and if we go back there for a second

and i'll open up

properties one more time

you can see all the different options we

have for

configuring this

including security options which would

allow certain individuals to use it or

not uh certain settings color

advanced tab etc etc

i can even change certain properties

down here

you'll notice now it gives me the access

to change a lot of stuff that was grayed

out before

all right so now we've talked about

installing printers

we looked at checking the compatibility

one thing you definitely want to check

for is whether it's 32 or 64 bit

installing the printer drivers which you

do

first

you can get these off of the dvd

or off the internet from the

manufacturer's website

then you connect the printer

usually using usb or if it's a network

you're going to use a wi-fi

or an rj45

calibrating the printer

which you do using a

manufacturer utility

and then you test the printer you can

generally but

printing a test page from the windows

dialog box the important thing to know

too is you'll probably want to go into

windows and or word rather and you know

create a test document to print off too

uh just to make sure it's not only

working well in windows but in your

applications as well and finally we can

configure our printers

from three different places

uh the second is that web based

interface

right the first was the on board menu

little display on the printer

and the third was located in windows in

one of those three locations and

remember with xp it was called

printers and faxes

with vista

printers

by itself and now in seven

printers and devices

great

so

let's continue on by looking at

troubleshooting printers once we've

installed them configured them and now

that we know what kind of printers we're

dealing with

[Music]

printers printer management and

troubleshooting

now that we've discussed printers and

we've discussed the hardware that goes

into them not to mention installing and

configuring them let's look a little

more in depth at managing the printer

mostly from the operating system side

and also troubleshooting them

and specifically i'm not going to go

in depth into troubleshooting printers

in every circumstance since there is

actually a

comptia certification devoted to

printers and imaging devices but what

i'm going to do is look at the ones that

the a plus exam points out most

frequently

so um some of the things we're going to

talk about are print jobs what they are

how we can control them on a computer

printer priority which you can actually

set and which has

different benefits

uh print spooling which is

quite important to remember and this is

actually the way that

windows prints using the print spooler

printer pooling which is pooling

together multiple printers

that act to the user as though they're

one

sharing printers

meaning sharing a local or network

printer which we've talked about

networking printers

printer permissions who gets to use a

printer and for what

separator pages really important to

separate

between different print jobs especially

if you're printing for multiple people

and then troubleshooting printers and

some of the common problems we find and

the best ways to fix them

all right so let's start with the

printer management in general and print

jobs

to manage a printer or an individual

print job what you do is double click

the printer the job was sent to and you

double click this it's located we've

talked about this in windows but in

windows

7 it's in devices and printers windows

xp we're looking at printers and faxes

and windows vista simply printers

if the print job is listed so here we've

double clicked and i'll show you this in

a second we've double clicked the

printer

and this box pops up and

under here the print job would be listed

and it would give you all of this

information

so you'd have the document name

the status would be listed and we'll

talk about that

it'll say

whether it's been sent to the printer

it's printing etc who owns it number of

pages size etc

other messages that you could get by the

way

could be it's being spooled which means

that and we'll talk about spooling in a

second

or a few minutes rather but that the

computer is quote-unquote printing the

document into a into an area where then

it can send it to the printer cued

meaning it's it's not spooled yet but it

will be stopped perhaps there's an error

with the printer uh

or you have manually stopped or paused

the printer or failed meaning that

something went wrong and the document

cannot be printed

must be deleted

if i have a job by the way

and this is why this gets important if i

have a job that's sitting at the top so

let's say i have three jobs

the topmost job is the one that's going

higher in the queue

if this job fails

for some reason

all of these jobs won't print because

it's basically like i have i have a cork

plugging up the hole okay

so

just so we can get into this real

quickly and so i can show you

so here we are in windows

and if we go to devices and printers

which is accessible from the start menu

i can see all the printers that have

been installed on this computer as well

as other devices but we're noticing

we're looking here at printers and faxes

again printers and faxes is the name of

this entire thing if we were to go

through it

in

windows xp by the way you can also get

here by going to the control panel

so if we go to control panel

we can then find devices and printers

here

and we're at the same spot okay so if i

double click on whichever printer i'm

using

then that print queue comes up and now i

could add stuff to this print queue

delete it etc we'll talk about some of

the stuff but this is the box that we're

talking about in most the next section

so jobs listed here

as i mentioned the jobs as soon as

a job is made it's going to be thrown

into the queue right here and you can do

things with that job you can pause it

you can restart it you can stop it

completely

and to do that you can either right

click on the job when it appears i don't

have any jobs to show you or you can

actually go to this document menu right

here

and here you can see pause resume if it

is pause restart cancel the job all

right and you can also purge all jobs

so here i am if i go to print and you

don't see this right now because there's

not one but there's pause printing which

will pause all the jobs and i can also

cancel all documents which is called

purging it meaning if i have let's say a

major error i can just cancel all the

documents now if i have 50 documents

though every one of those can have to be

resent to the printer all right and

that's what we're talking about for the

printer in general here are specific

documents so i can pause one document or

cancel one document and allow another to

sort of take its place

the larger documents take longer to

spool before printing and again we're

going to talk about spooling in more and

more specif specifics in just a second

but the reason i mention that is if i

have a

you know a 100 megabyte file which is

pretty large for a printing file

at the top of my queue and i have you

know 10 or 20 or 30 other print jobs

below it this is going to create a

bottleneck and in some ways this will

actually crash the printer

which can sometimes be an issue so if

you have a question on the exam talking

about you know someone who's working in

the graphics department is trying to

print something and

as soon as they print no one else

reports that they can print to that

device the problem is there's probably

one page one document that's getting

caught up in there

all documents by the way can be paused

or cancelled as we've mentioned and you

can do that from that printer tab where

i showed you so this is for documents

the printer i can pause

the printer from printing at all as

opposed to just pausing one document or

i can cancel it by

saying to cancel all documents and

that'll do what's called purging it of

all the documents

the entire printer can also be taken

offline from the printer menu like i

just mentioned in this case you're

you're basically pausing it we're back

in windows here and

if we go to printer you can see

if let me let me try choosing another

one to show you

um use printer offline would be an

option

right now it says connect because the

printer's not connected physically to

the computer but there would be a

option here to disconnect the printer

and then you could use it offline which

would basically mean you're telling the

computer to cue things up for the

printer although it's not connected yet

all right so printer priority

if we um want to give

we we want to give a printer a higher

priority than another printer let's say

they're connected to a computer i'll

talk about how we do this you can

actually configure from the advanced tab

of the printer properties the

um

priority of the printer and let me show

you how we get there we're here i've

opened up the printer so just to go back

for a second

uh let's use this printer just for a

second i double click the printer this

brings up the pool the spooling the cue

i press printer and i go to properties

and here i

have um

more properties notice this is the

advanced tab you can see i can spool

things from here i have a priority right

there it's a little grayed out right now

and the reason for that is i'm not

running it as administrator

so if we go back to printer and we say

open as administrator

now i can go into properties i can use

it offline

and i can see that i can raise or lower

the priority

of this printer

from there i also have access to a lot

of other properties that we're going to

be talking about as well including

sharing okay so that's where i can

access the printer properties page and i

can

change the priority the printer

uh which is in this box right here from

anywhere from 1 to 99 99 being the

highest priority so it's slightly

different you might think one is the

highest priority it's not this is useful

when i'm when you're sharing printers

out to give certain users first access

so

what you might want to do in this case

is let's say i have one physical printer

um and i have managers

and then i have let's say i don't know

like accountants obviously i want my

managers to have higher priority so what

i might do is take the same printer and

create it twice logically on the

computer i have one physical printer

we're only dealing with one right but

i'm going to install it twice on two

different quote unquote ports so let's

say i have printer one

and then i have

over here

printer two they're the same printer

right i've just installed them twice so

i can do different things with them this

one i might give a priority of 91.99 and

this one i might give a priority of one

now whenever people are printing through

this print server

the managers who only have access to

printer one are going to get faster

printing than the accountants even

though it's the same physical printer

the printer is going to listen to the

managers before the accountants okay a

little advanced but i'm just trying to

show you the benefits

so again we'll create two logical

printers for one physical printer like

we've just done up here

and then we share out one for managers

one for other users the managers get

priority printing

now print spooling we've been mentioning

this a couple times so i want to talk

about it

there are three possible things that

happen

when you

press print

the first thing is that and this is not

this does not happen by default

is that it prints directly to the

printer meaning all the information

contained

goes straight to that printer without

any delays

and

all of the memory is reliant on the

printer memory so i have

say a word document or let's make it

something more like a photoshop picture

it's going to send that directly to the

printer and the printer has to deal with

converting everything into a printable

format making sure it's all in order

making sure the colors are right etc and

so the ram and the power this is going

to take is going to be a lot heavier on

the printer than it would be on the

computer i'm taking all the resources

and whatnot away from the computer and

putting them all to the printer the

problem is that the printer goes down

this causes errors and i'm putting a lot

of

a lot of pressure for lack of a better

word on the printer to get the job done

the other two options one is that it

starts printing immediately

so what it does is it

and and the reason it says uh what's

happening is these are things you can

set

these are options you can set

so instead of it's sending to the

printer it does what's called start

printing immediately which is different

in this case

one page at a time

is spooled to the hard drive

and then that page is sent to the

printer

in other words instead of me sending

let's say i have 10 documents

10 pages

option 1 would state that all 10 go

immediately to the printer

and so i'm putting a lot of heavy

lifting on the printer

option two what we're looking at right

now is i have 10 documents

i'm going to take one of those documents

feed it to the hard drive

and then that's going to feed it

to the printer

and once that's done

i'll do the same thing

with number page number two and so on

and so forth

this is the default setting in windows

and it's usually the best option because

again i'm do i'm working i have a

one-page buffer zone right there's

always if we're if we're dealing with

this

if this is sort of our path if you will

and this is for this current option

right i'm taking one one page at a time

and doing all of this it's going from

the application to the spooler

from the spooler it's being saved to the

computer and then or from the computer

let's make that the hard drive

and then from the hard drive of the

computer to the printer and then we're

ready for another one

this is different

from

uh

the

next option

in the third case we start printing

after the last page is spooled so what

we really have is

i have the application

which feeds to the spooler

and then feeds to the hard drive

and then this feeds back to the

application instead

and once i have 10 pages then i go to

the printer

as opposed to doing one at a time

so the entire document is spooled to the

hard drive and then sent to the printer

the downside to this is i mean it's

going to take a lot longer to print and

i'm putting more resources on my

computer if i have a very large document

i'm not offloading one page at a time to

the printer

so you can see the why

this one the print spooling immediately

is going to be the best option

sometimes we want to start printing

after last pages spooled if friends we

have a very powerful computer not a very

powerful printer

although you probably need more space in

that printer if it's going to take a

larger amount of data at all at once

to access

the printer spool service we have to go

in through the services console or we

can use

the command prompt so we talked about uh

services before let's just go in and

take a look at this so i'm just going to

close out of all the printer stuff we're

in i'm going to open our services which

again remember services.msc

all right and here's print spooler if we

double click it the name of the service

is spooler remember that i could stop it

from here

or i could start it from here

this is automatically set if you notice

it's set to automatic stop so for some

reason you're not able to print go in

here check to make sure this is started

sometimes it gets shut off by accident

so we can either start and stop it from

here i'm actually going to

try to do it from the command line so i

can show you i'm gonna run as an

administrator

all right and remember we use the net

stop

spooler so i'm telling it stop the

spooler service

and now it's telling me it's stopping

and it's stopped if i now go back to

services you'll see

if we

refresh this

that now it is no longer started it's

actually off if i right click it i can

go to start

and now it looks like the principle is

back up and running okay now i could

also do that by set using net start

spooler

as opposed to net stop spooler now

printer pooling

different from printer spooling okay

printer pooling takes multiple physical

printers and combines them

so

imagine i have

these are each printers

put a little p in them

okay i have three printers

now what i'm going to do is allow these

to work together to create print jobs so

instead of having three different boxes

with three different cues

i'm gonna have one printer cue

that feeds three different printers

and

the computer is gonna help me determine

which printer should take the next print

job

because obviously i can only send it to

one printer at a time but let's say i

have three jobs that are all ready and

queued up now what it's going to do is

it can send one job to this printer one

job to that printer one job etc and it

can do what we call load balancing it is

going to balance the load of the print

jobs to all the printers

the way we get here and the way we can

do this is you go to the ports tab of

the properties

and

you can enable it right here under

enable

printer pooling

then what you can do

is check multiple ports to be pooled

so let's go ahead and open up that

printer devices and printers dialog box

i'm going to open this printer

i'm going to open it as an administrator

and then i'm going to go to properties

ports tab

now you'll notice this is on a thin

print port

i could add a port

like a standard tcp port would mean i'm

adding a port for a network printer that

has an ip address we'll talk about ip

addresses in a bit when we get to

networking but i have a standard ip port

and let's say i create five of them one

for each printer because each printer

has its own ip address

now what i do is i can enable printer

pooling and select all of those ip

addresses

i click ok and now i have one logical

printer pointing to five physical

printers

so that's how we do printer spooling

now sharing printers is different is a

different thing altogether once i've

mapped a printer i want to hopefully be

able to share it with others whether

it's on a server or on a local computer

a networked printer must be shared so

that other users can send the jobs to it

if it's not shared out then only the

local user can send jobs to it

now first the first thing we have to do

is we have to enable printer sharing and

file sharing in general you can see here

on the file and print sharing dialog box

we can turn on or turn off file printer

we need to make sure it is on so it's

file and print sharing and the way we

get there is by going to advanced

sharing settings out of the network

sharing center and if we go over just

for a second now we can um access the

control panel

the network and sharing center

advanced sharing settings and here we

know turn on file and print sharing

so once that's turned on and it's it's

called network connections by the way in

windows xp which i don't have

right here to show you but if you're

looking for file and print sharing it's

going to be also in the advanced adapter

settings or advanced advanced sharing

settings but in the network connections

area

once that's done then you have to share

out the actual printer so if we go back

i've enabled

all file and print sharing

now i'm going to go into devices and

printers

and i'm going to right click

excuse me i'm going to

right click and go to printer properties

this brings me to the same place where i

was if i double click and go to

properties

notice by the way i just want to point

this out while i'm here

printer properties or printing

properties

is different from the regular properties

properties doesn't really give you a

whole lot okay so what we're looking at

is printer properties

and here there's a sharing tab in which

case i would then

share this printer out and give it a

shared name

i can also choose whether to render

print jobs on the client computers or on

this computer so in other words who's

doing the spooling are you doing the

spooling sending the file over to me and

then i'll send it over to the hard drive

or are you going to send the file to me

and then i'm going to spool it and send

it to the hard drive

okay you share the printer out you give

it a name whatever the name is that's

what you will share it out to all the

computers with and once you share

something it generally has

an xp little hand underneath it in this

case two little people

again that's right-clicking going to

printer properties we're going to the

print tab going to printer properties

and in sharing

you can uncheck or check share this

printer by the way while i'm there

i just noticed something i want to show

you

if i'm sharing with multiple different

types of computers you can actually add

different drivers so if i have an xp

computer i'm sharing from windows 7

computer but i'm sharing with some

people who might have xp i want to put

the xp drivers on the server that way

they can install the printer fairly

easily

printer permissions so

i'm giving i'm networked my printer i

want to give other people access to it i

can now on the security tab same place

we were i can set the permissions of

each user so here's me on my own

computer and administrators obviously

which is a group and you can see i have

permissions to print manage manage

documents special permissions etc

um special permissions by the way that

would be going into advanced and

choosing some of these advanced things

but let's say i have donna i can add

donna and maybe i want to give her the

permission to print but i don't want her

to manage printer or documents i wanted

to contact an administrator and again if

we're here we're gonna go to printer

prep properties

i'm gonna go to security

and here i have the options for

the different users

i'm not logged in as an administrator

right now so let's actually do that so

we can take a look and play with this

open administrator printer properties

okay we go to security

and now i could for instance say i don't

want

administrators have to be able to do

everything but let's say i wanted to add

another user

um

or another group for instance

i could type in the name of that group

if we had guests or something

so here's the guest i've just added

that's a user

and they have permission to print but

not to manage or to manage documents

managing the printer would allow them

for instance to add the printer to

someone else's computer managing

documents allows them to delete specific

documents that are queued up to print

so you can set what it is they're

allowed to do on the printer in here

we'd only have to deal with

users by the way we can also deal with

whole groups of people and sometimes

what you'll do is you'll say

this gets into more networking

network plus as well but what you would

do is create an administrator's group in

which you can add people so then instead

of having to every time i have a new

employee add donna into this printer

security area i would add her to the

administrators group

uh and again we talked about you print

manage printers and manage documents the

difference in managing printer and

managing documents being one you can

delete the documents on the printer the

other one you can actually manage the

printer go into the properties check out

who can share who can be

you know what it's shared as what the

advanced rights the color management etc

so separator pages also on the advanced

tab also from that properties area and

this is going to help users find the

start and end points of their print job

so if i have

five

five fifty five hundred users using the

same printer how do they know when their

sprint job ends and someone else's

begins well we put a separator page in

between those

and it might be a blank piece of paper

or a paper with the name the username of

the person who printed so that way they

can locate their stuff or the location

of the printer whatever it is

the way we get to these again we go to

the advanced tab if we scroll over here

for a second

on the advanced tab you click at the

bottom

separator page and now you could browse

for different separator pages

there are some of them are located on

your computer

you can see right here system print ps

script etc

so there are some built in

to your computer however you know

sometimes you don't want to have one at

all in which case you'd make this blank

you can also download some off the

internet

either way you can play around and find

the right one for whatever not really

useful for home users unless you have

multiple people printing to one network

printer

and as we mentioned it can be added from

the advanced tab

so finally i just want to talk about

briefly some troubleshooting stuff

when you're working with printers always

try to keep them clean they get dirty

not only from toner and ink

but also from

dust etc

you can use printer maintenance kins

let me say that again

maintenance kits which are provided by

the manufacturer

um

and especially for laser printers these

are going to include fusers roller

separation pads to help keep

rollers from hitting each other and

instructions on how to use all these

sometimes it'll also include toner you

will want to memorize what is in a

maintenance kit and what isn't in a

maintenance kit because i do see that

pop up in the exam for instance the

corona wire is not in the maintenance

kit drums

are generally not in the maintenance kit

that's sort of a little bigger that's

not a field replaceable unit most of

these are fru's field replaceable units

this is important i see this on the exam

when you finish installing a maintenance

kit

reset the maintenance print count this

is because

uh

and i'll mention the vacuum in a second

but this is because

the printer let's say is supposed to

be maintenanced after a hundred thousand

prints so every 100 000 prints you have

to call the maintenance guy to come out

and do a maintenance kit or they're

calling you to do that right

as a result you need to make sure

that

you have an accurate count of how many

printers uh how many things have been

printed on that printer so you always

after you finish maintaining putting in

a maintenance kit into the printer

you're replacing the fuser you're

replacing the rollers

reset the print count which can also be

called the maintenance count but i

generally see it as the print count you

also might want to have a vacuum

available for toner spill and a can of

compressed air

to

blow out any obstructions

in the vents thanks to dust

all right so we've talked about print

jobs in print management we looked at

printer priority

uh 1 through 99 the reason we would want

to do that for instance give managers

a higher print priority

than accountants for instance

right they would get the 99 they would

get the one print spooling there are

three options here the first is

just go to the printer

the second

is its print immediately

and the third is

um

you're also spooling it

but all pages

so you wait to spool all the pages and

remember spooling basically means i'm

saving it from

uh the app

to the hard drive and then to the

printer

as opposed to

not spooling which would just do app to

the printer

printer pooling which is using multiple

printers

to load balance

talk about how you share printers you

can do that from the sharing tab

printer permissions which is related to

sharing and that's from the security tab

separator pages from the advanced tab

separate the print jobs and then

troubleshooting printers the biggest

thing i see other than everything we've

talked about here

with physical troubleshooting

is those reset of the kit okay other

things i have seen have been

network related which we've talked about

or that

the top print job

is corrupted or cancelled or paused

and therefore all the other print jobs

are getting

stuck because this one is is a

bottleneck

all right

we've talked about printers now let's

move into some a little more in-depth

area of networking

[Music]

welcome to module 18 lesson 3a laser

printer maintenance which is one of the

new

subjects for the exam

introduction to laser printer

maintenance replacing toner applying the

maintenance kit

the maintenance kit

calibration and cleaning

so this as i said it's a new item in the

syllabus we've needed to know about

uh printers ever since the a plus

exam started

but as the pc engineer for a company you

may well be expected to carry out

some routine maintenance

the bigger companies will generally have

a maintenance contract with

the manufacturers however there may be a

certain amount of maintenance that

you're expected to do or

you may just have the whole job for the

company

so like any other machine with moving

parts and parts that wear out and need

replacing

laser printers require maintenance they

come in all shapes and sizes however

generally there's some maintenance

techniques that apply to all laser

printers

obviously it

ensures the printer runs correctly for

everyone reduced downtime reduced

outages and paper jams and that kind of

thing

all their laser printers have one or

more toner cartridges

toners of black powder

now normally you'll see a message on the

printer when the toner has to be

replaced

when you see a low toner message it

doesn't actually mean immediately

replace it it just means it's low

what most people do is

carry on using it until it

stops fading on the page

the other thing is people do and all

engineers do is take out the toner

cartridge give it a shake

put it back in and then carry on using

it

and then when it starts to fade that's

the time to actually replace the toner

cartridge

and before you actually do that make

sure the printer is powered off by

unplugging the power cable check the

documentation anyway for more

instructions and more details on that

what's safe and not safe to do

during the tone of related maintenance

and generally you switch off the fans

and air conditioning because you don't

want the particles from the toner

cartridge to be airborne because um

they're not safe

to be breathed in

pretty toxic actually

toner cartridge could either be on top

or on the front of the laser printer and

that it normally clicks into place and

there's normally a little flap you'll

press up or down or slide in order to

remove it from its

housing if the toner drum are separate

units in the printer then you may have

to press a button that's what i just

said

new toner may have a protective plastic

layer that's a good point also sometimes

there's a strip that you have to pull or

peel off so again double check otherwise

you could have problems it could

actually melt or cause issues

after you close the printout you'll

probably want to print a test page which

most printers will

ask you to do or force you to do or do

automatically

the maintenance kit based on you use

this pattern you may have to apply a

regular maintenance kit to ensure smooth

function of the printer because parts

wear out due to wear and tear and over

time

for example you can schedule a

maintenance had a predetermined page

count

and that the higher models are printers

the more expensive ones will have a

a little counter on there or the

software or showing on the

printer you should power off the laser

printer remove the power cable and let

it cool off for at least one hour before

you begin maintenance obviously if it's

a larger company you'll need to

do a change request and

inform people that the printer isn't

working you may well need to disable

print jobs to that printer otherwise the

print queue can become

full and when you um enable it

it'll print off all those jobs and

people may have sent those jobs to other

printers so it's all duplicated

your typical laser printer consists of

user replaceable parts such as the

pickup rollers the transfer roller and

the fusee unit

the paper pickup rollers are used to

pick and feed the paper to the printer

obviously the removing part and they've

got rubber on them so it does wear and

tear so you may um

you may need to use

uh replace them it's recommended to use

manufacturer's parts because of the

warranty

the transfer roller's positioned right

below the toner cartridge it becomes

electrically charged during the printing

process

as the paper passes through the drum

the toner from the drum is transferred

to the paper

now due to wear and tear the roller

degrades over time

same with all the hair rubber rollers on

printers now don't touch the new

transfer rally with your bare hands

because the grease on your skin can

cause defects in the print quality

nothing worse than causing a problem

since the fuser unit uses heat and

pressure it's also subject to mechanical

wear and tear and electrical failure

after you've installed the maintenance

kit you should reset the page count on

the printer so you may well have to do

this manually

and otherwise it's going to lead to

problems and false messages for

servicing and

replacement

a calibration is a printer function used

to optimize the print quality normally

comes with a software

after you do your maintenance um

do a calibration such as

you could have replaced the toner or

applied the maintenance kit

another it's one of your troubleshooting

steps is to carry out printer

maintenance for whatever reason things

can be blurry or the pages aren't

aligned correctly or the ink isn't being

correctly used so you can do maintenance

and carry out maintenance usually takes

a few minutes and then the printer

during this shouldn't be turned off

obviously

certain printers the high-end such as hp

4600 automatically calibrate themselves

which is very handy

you can also manually um do it you may

well be able to go in and change the

timings of the

self calibration also

cleaning it's necessary to clean the

inside of the printer because toner and

dust particles and other

things particulates flying through the

air

um can can get um stuck inside and cause

issues

before you clean it again turn off the

fans and air com

and power down the printer

give it an hour again to cool off if

it's been used

always best to wear a mask and gloves

during the cleaning because toner

particles are very as

damaging to lungs

eyes and

nose

toner cloth is used to wipe the toner

don't use compressed air as it will

basically blow all the particles all

over the office

making you very unpopular

there's a special vacuum a toner vacuum

used to remove the remove the finer

particles because you're

the

vacuum cleaners that you buy in the

stores just don't have the correct

filters

exterior the printer can be clean using

a damp cloth with a few drops of alcohol

check the manufacturer's instructions

because if you use the wrong thing to

clean

at the printer then you can invalidate

the warranty and cause damage and

scratches

so we've done an introduction to laser

printers replacing the toner maintenance

kit

calibration and cleaning that's all for

now thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 18 lesson 3b another

of the

four new editions under the printer

title

for

the new a plus in syllabus items

introduction to thermal printer

maintenance replacing paper your best

practices how to replace the paper

clean heating element removing debris

so thermal printers we it's a strange

one really because most of us won't have

anything to do with these

and because of where they're actually

used which will come to in a moment

however obviously it's been added onto

the syllabus

and some people will need to

be servicing these for customers or

maybe asked to

so they've introduced this as a um

precaution

and because of added other printer types

so thermal printers they're used for

printing receipts and labels

so for any business that's got um

normally for point to sell possibly

uh where they make a transaction and

they need to print a label for the

customer

they use a a coated paper special type

of paper that you have to buy

and

thermo chrome

chromic paper commonly known as thermal

paper to the rest of us

uh ordinary paper pack cannot be used so

don't try and save money for the

customer by buying

some ordinary paper from the uh local

stationers because it just won't work

so you need to use the particular role

that complies with the printer

specification as always check the

documentation for example in the hewlett

packard thermal receipt printers model

799a

the thermal paper should comply with the

following

and you can see the width diameter and

length there

so follow their specifications for that

printer

check the user guide as i've said for

the recommended types because if it

breaks in the printer or causes an issue

then you're going to invalidate the

warranty

recommended to replace the paper when

it's near the end of the roll a lot of

the time you'll have a little marker

put onto the receipts i've seen red

bands added

as it as it

reaches the end of its

availability

before you replace the paper turn off

the printer and unplug it again check

the documentation because they may allow

you to do otherwise

to replace the thermal paper you open

the cover

and remove the used one obviously put

the new one in

and you normally have to um pull out a

bit of paper

so we can grip it and capture it

hold the paper that's sticking out and

close the printer cover

check whether the paper is all loaded

properly you can advance the paper there

should be a manual button to feed it

through

a thermal head of the printer contains

the heating elements these generate the

heat to create the print on the paper

over time they just get dirty there's

dirt in the air there's obviously

people's skin and

floating around skin particles which is

pretty gross to think of

it's going to degrade the print quality

so if you don't do regular maintenance

it's going to cause the printer to start

start skipping bits of characters which

is going to cause headaches

when somebody comes to read the um

their receipt

in order to prevent it just do regular

maintenance

and remove any residue

before you do that turn off the printer

and unplug it

clean it you normally use a cotton swab

moistened with alcohol

as i keep saying check the

manufacturer's instructions they may

actually provide these solutions or tell

you which manufacturer to get the

solution from you may have to order it

in

alternatively cleaning cards can be used

to clean the printhead cleaning card

also cleans any dirt

that accumulates on the rollers you

basically feed it in as if you were

putting paper in and the card is pulled

out slowly while um holding the printer

you can get cleaning pens that are

available to clean thermal print ends

tip of the pen you press against a print

head and you um rub it side to side

now you can lightly blow out into

the inside of the printer to remove

scattered paper and dirt

you can also use the clean damp cloth

moistened with alcohol

i don't recommend using a household

cleaner inside the printers because of

static electricity

it meant to be sufficient to pull out

any of the debris either

all right so thermal printer maintenance

replacing paper best practices how to

replace the paper clean the elements and

removing debris that's all for now

thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 18 lesson 3c

impact printer maintenance another one

of the

syllabus objects under print and printer

maintenance

look at the introduction replacing the

ribbon and the printhead the paper

so

an impact printer is a type of printer

in which the moulded letter made up of

metal or plastic striking against the

ink ribbon

this is actually

you can actually tell by looking at the

image there that we could find

it's quite an old-fashioned technology

you may find it in a specialized uh

particular environment

in which you have to look after it

uh unlikely to be in most modern offices

uh unless as i said there's some sort of

specialized need for this type of

printer

these include dot matrix daisy wheel and

line printers

in some impact

printers the ribbon moves with the

printhead assembly while in others the

ribbon doesn't move with the printhead

and the ribbon is the part that contains

the

ink

replacing the ribbon impact printers use

a single ribbon cartridge made of abs

plastic

you used to be able to wind these on if

the tension

became a bit loose or you could wind it

on if that particular part

um

had wasn't servicing or giving you a

good quality ink

and

what normally happened is they stopped

you

and

putting it back from the beginning again

once it had used up

even though this was perfectly possible

you could recycle it because there was

some ink left obviously the

manufacturers

wanted to make make some more money by

stopping you doing that

uh ribbon cartridge is modularly

designed meaning it can be unplugged

when you have to change it and then plug

back in

ribbon inside is made with nylon and has

ink applied to both sides

now when the ribbon zinc is used up it

has to be replaced when the printed

characters become um

worn out barely barely visible on the

paper

as usual with the other printers you

have to turn off the printer and just

for safety and plug it in case somebody

plugs it on if they see it and

switch it on sorry if they see it and

switched

if the printer was just in use then you

need to give it a few minutes to cool

off before replacing the cartridge

and replacing the printhead the

printhead hits the paper to make

impressions it actually whacks it like

an old-fashioned typewriter but it does

so electronically

that even wears out after extensive use

so turn uh turn off the printer

and give it a few minutes again if it's

just been used

the printhead is also a modular part

that can be unplugged by the press of a

button or by moving a lever just depends

on

how ancient your printer is

then you plug the new printhead

into position

and as a general rule you replace the um

ribbon when you replace the printhead

replacing the paper improv printers use

tractor feed mechanism to continually

load the paper so it's got little tiny

feet that slot into the edges of the

paper

and then usually the edges of the paper

you can tear off if you so wish

continuous feed paper has perforated

edges that fit into the sprockets which

you can see um just highlighted there

the little plastic sprockets punch into

the holes that are already on the paper

tractor feed ensures that the paper

stays aligned during printers so they're

aligned along the red so you've got a

straight edge which you'll sort out when

you're feeding it in

input printers can handle multi-part

forms that consist of multiple copies

are pre-printed form sandwiched together

using a carbon paper so basically you

print it and then peel off whichever

sheet

when printed on a multiple platform case

should be taken to position the form of

the printer

in such a manner that various sections

of the form will be properly printed

without any misalignment

all right so we've covered these older

printers that may be in use and some

places for

logistical reasons

an introduction to printer maintenance

replacing the ribbon the printhead

replacing the paper

that's all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 18

lesson four

inkjet printer maintenance

we're going to look at inject printer

maintenance the printheads replacing

cartridges

general steps calibrating the printer

clearing jams

so an inject printer basically sprays

small droplets of ink onto the paper

it's um

a cheaper alternative in many ways to

the laser printers so it's a popular

option still

for

home home use small office home office

soho's

cleaning the print heads if the inkjet

printer hasn't been used for a while the

nozzles actually get clogged with ink

that's become dried and it doesn't work

very well so it affects the print

quality

it can result in printing incubators

incompatible characters not printing the

colors

missing lines or dots

so you can see uh strange

streaks and things obviously aren't how

they should be

now they modern printers actually are

self-cleaning so you may not have to

intervene

if you do the printer software comes

with the

options for setting automatic cleaning

or manual cleaning

uh you can print the and clean the print

heads manually it should be done after

you've attempted to clean them

automatically

refer to the user manual as with every

printer you can generally use a cotton

swab looking earbud

and swabbed and moistened with a bit of

alcohol but again check the

documentation

the ink stored in disposable cartridges

inside the printer

normally you have four

cyan

magenta yellow and black some have

two one cartridges for cyan magenta and

yellow and one for black and obviously

for different colors the ink is mixed in

different proportions in order to

achieve the correct color

you can see they sit in little

docking stations here so you can pull

out

the

cartridges as and when they've run out

and just click them in to replace them

you can have lights on your cartridges

also or you can have warnings pop up on

your screen or manually check

printer software comes with the printer

can show the ink levels this looks like

possibly a hewlett packard worn in there

when the ink culture is out of ink you

must replace it if you want to carry on

printing certainly using that color

anyway

the replacement cartridge needs to be

compatible

now you can get um clones that will work

um

i think you get the printers normally

don't stop you using and cloned

and cartridges so it's not an actual

manufacturer provided one

but they have ways of trying to entice

you you get you can get reward points if

you're using genuine

printed cartridges you can also get them

recycled and refilled with ink again

certainly my hewlett packard printer

knows that it's um not the original one

that went in or certainly

and it's been pulled out at some point

filled refilled and put back in it can

tell but um it carries on letting me use

it anyway

now repair to the refer to the manual

when you're replacing the cartridge

you normally turn on the printer press

the power button lift the cover

and normally when you lift the cover it

triggers a

switch inside that presents the

docking station for you to easily access

remove the ink cartridge that needs

replacing

you can see one here in somebody's hand

it just slots down at an angle and then

clicks in and normally there's even a

picture on the

ink cartridge itself or on the docking

station

they normally have a protective

sticky

film that you have to pull off so check

that that's the case

don't touch the copper contacts on the

ink nozzle because it can cause smudges

and obviously get ink on your hands or

clothing which may not come off slide

the new cartridge into the slot

when you close the print cover

often the calibration will take place

and it may well ask you if you want to

print a test page and align the nozzles

and such like it depends again on your

model

when you replace the cartridge the um

the printer will align the ink

cartridges as i've just said

you can manually do it and when either

you put the ink cartridge in or you just

want to check the alignment if something

doesn't seem right

this is the bane of most people's life

paper jams occur when a piece of paper

gets stuck somewhere

inside the printer

i've been troubleshooting these for

years even before i was in it

opening up various hatches and pulling

them through

and

and the most expensive printers that

i've worked with have a little computer

printout that tells you which slot to

pull you could have four or five to

choose from in order to clear the jam

and then some of the places i've been at

tell you specifically not to do that

because you can make it worse and call

it support and then obviously you'll

have to wait for somebody to to turn up

refer to the printer's manual how to

clear the paper jam

normally you switch off the printer and

unplug it remove all the papers from the

paper tray

open the main cover move the print head

sideways to free the jammed paper

slowly pull out the paper by holding it

firmly and ensure all the paper

fragments so you can pull off from the

main piece but there could be other

parts inside or it could tear off

so you need to carefully check there's

nothing left on the inside

there close the main cover normally you

will have an error message that clears

once you've done that it can and check

that the paper is all gone

so i've looked at introduction to inkjet

printers the print heads replacing

cartridges

calibrating and clearing jams

thanks for listening

[Music]

networking network types and topologies

and now we come to what makes in my view

computers and technology today is so

interesting which is the

the concept of networking or being able

to connect multiple computers and

multiple devices together so that they

can share and processing power

information and so forth but before we

get into really the complex stuff we

need to talk about some of the we need

to take a step back

and talk about some of the terms

terminology and what are called

topologies or how networks are put

together which is represented by this

right here

so we're going to spend this first video

uh going over

the network types the different types of

networks and the topologies or the ways

that networks are constructed now some

of this might be different

than what you have encountered in the

field some of this might have different

words you might have heard that's okay

what i'm trying to tell you are some of

the official terms and how they're used

on the exam

so you might talk to people who have

different names for things but this is

definitely one way to name everything

and this is also how the exam talks

about things so what we're going to

start with is looking at a very brief

networking overview and again what's

interesting to note here

i just like to always note when we talk

about this is a plus contains networking

and security

okay

however there's also a network plus and

a security plus exam

so

this is a brief

smidgeling of what we're going to be

able to cover in network plus and

security plus if you're going to

continue to take some of those as well

so i just want to cover that really

briefly so when we're talking about an

overview this overview is extremely

general a 50 000 foot view as opposed to

network plus which gets a little closer

but still not as even in depth as some

really intense stuff okay so we're doing

a network overview

then we're going to deal with network

types these are the types of networks

that exist and they

include a lan or a local area network

a wan or a wide area network there are

several lands in iwan

these are the two major ones

then we have what's called a

metropolitan or municipal area network

which is a type

of wan

um and then a personal area network

which

usually on the exam has to do with the

network created by bluetooth devices

okay so we're going to talk about all

these you can see that these all end in

a n area network the idea is what is the

first word and that's going to give you

a clue as to what the rest of the stuff

is

there are some that we're not going to

cover such as a can or a campus area

network but i think you will get the

idea as we go forward

that these are

subjective names that are really applied

to groupings of computers

not so much for technical means okay

then after we talk about the different

types of networks we're going to talk

about the topologies of networks

topologies are how the network is

physically laid out or logically in this

case we're talking physically and the

ones we're going to look at are star

bus

ring

and mesh we also are going to briefly

mention hybrid

so we will talk more in depth about

topologies we'll talk even more in depth

about them when we get into network plus

because here we're just covering the

ones that we need to know for the exam

all right

so first the networking overview

a computer network and again this word

network

is something we see in other

applications not just computers but a

computer network consists of two or more

computers that communicate to share

files access databases collaborate and

projects connect to the internet etc etc

now i would even open this very formal

definition up

and change this word computers to nodes

because it com now this is a computer

network

but i would say a network

information technology network and by

the way the internet is an internet work

it is just the largest network that

exists

uh the internet contains not only

computers i mean i guess that the

definition of what is a computer but a

smartphone is a computer

a printer to the extent that it has a

processor and a board and ram is also a

computer so when we're talking about

computers we're also dealing with these

nodes all right and there are different

types of nodes that we discuss so if i

use the word nodes that is sort of in

reference to a computer or any device

that plugs up to a network

it is

some important considerations to include

in networking and these are what we're

going to talk about

over the course of this entire lesson

all of these videos on networking

are the technologies used devices

protocols cabling

hardware in other words what is the

hardware that plugs everything up

together

the installation configuration and

troubleshooting which is not just

physical

but also the software we use

how it is organized which is the

topology

which we're going to discuss in this

video

the types of communications necessary

meaning ports and tcpip

how they communicate over

this hardware technology

how the network is secured and this

doesn't just get into security plus but

don't forget anytime

you have a a you know

something of value you want to protect

it that's why your home is secured so

you want to make sure our networks are

secure not just our computers but our

networks in general

and the effect of the network on a

budget because there is a cost involved

all this stuff costs something and so we

need to start saying what are we going

to pay for and what are what isn't worth

it to us a home user

is going to have different needs than a

business user

all right

so let's now talk about network types

computer networks could inhabit a room a

city

or computers across the globe which

we'll call the internet and each one is

going to have a different name given to

it

these are all generally categorized

meaning that if it's inhabiting the

entire city we could call it a couple

different things

so what i'm going to try to do is give

you a brief overview of how we

categorize these different networks into

types because you are going to see these

quite a bit popping up on the exam and

just in life in general as an i.t person

the first one and these are the ones

we're going to look at now we're going

to look at them more in depth the local

area network which might go towards this

one inhabiting a room look at that word

local

a wide area network which as the name

implies

excuse me for that as the name implies

is wide large

also known as a lan and a wan that's how

you're going to see them more frequently

called

generally speaking iwan is comprised of

many lands

the metropolitan or municipal area

network which is more about encompassing

an entire city

obviously i could have many local area

networks in a man and

quite frankly a whan and a man could be

somewhat sometimes called the same thing

right but we're going to talk about that

as well

and then a personal area network

much smaller perhaps even than a local

area network and again i usually see a

pan or a personal area network when

we're dealing with bluetooth

so let's first talk about a lan versus

wan these are two really important

distinctions we need to make a lan is a

group of computers and other devices

that are located generally speaking in a

small area

so this could be

an office depending on how we designate

it a home

a room perhaps

even the floor of an office

so it's any of these

are how we designate it what really

makes a land different we'll talk about

this when we get into some of the

hardware is that they all connect to

each other through switches

okay so everything within a lan connects

through switches and we'll talk about

that when we get topology when we get

into hardware as well but there's an

important distinction to make that we're

not getting to a router which is a term

you may have heard of and we'll talk

about more

we don't start dealing with routers

until we need to get out on the lan

it's like this a local area network

would be for instance your building uh

if you live in a building or your

neighborhood you know where everyone is

if someone came up to you and said hey

can you show me where bill's house is

you could say oh yeah bill he lives down

the corner but if i asked you hey where

does bill live

and there's no bill in your neighborhood

or i want a bill who lives in

a completely other

on the other side of the city or on the

other side of the world you're going to

need to reference your phone book or

you're going to get on the internet and

do a couple searches

in the same way

switches can only communicate with

devices to which they know that are

locally connected and so one of the

things with the lan is that it's in a

small area

that we can administer

from a small central area we're not

going out anywhere beyond that and as a

result the switch knows the location of

every computer or node uh

that's nearby

a roo a router

i almost said rooter a router is what is

going to allow the lan

to communicate

with the rest of the world

okay so just like

um your post office allows you to send

messages

or i mean literally snail mail messages

letters to people in other parts of the

world whereas if you wanted to give

someone a letter you could send a

messenger in new york city where i live

you can send someone by bicycle to

deliver a letter to anyone else in the

city really but if i need to send it to

some place

overseas let's say in england or

australia then i'm going to have to use

a router i'm going to have to use the

mail server

i'm going to have to use us postal

service or fedex or ups or something so

that's the difference the router is

going to allow the land to communicate

out to the rest of the world

out to the wide area network the lan is

the local area network

now a wide area network is a group of

one or more lands so if you imagine over

a large geographic area

so if you imagine that each one of these

is one of these that's what a wan would

look like so if imagine that this is a

land

and this is a land

and this is a land right basically the

internet is just comprised of a lot of

smaller lands

now those lan how we define those could

be as a win or a lan it depends but

generally when we talk about wan wide

area network

you see that term on say a device

they're referring to the internet which

is the law which is the biggest wan in

the world

of course we could be dealing with wands

for instance

um

multiple offices so if i had some

telecommunications company to help me i

could connect let's say i owned all of

these this was my houston office

and this was my new york office and this

was my tel aviv office and this was my

london office

and this was my

um

shanghai office let's say okay so if i

owned all these and i got the help of a

telecommunications company i could then

connect all of these together

and we'll talk about that a little bit

more

likewise when you go out to the internet

you need a telecommunications company or

an internet service provider

to help you reach out past your local

area network to the wide area network

each lan also requires a router to

connect to each other so

there's always going to be a router

connecting each one of these to the when

the wan itself has no limit there is no

size limit so the wan is comprised of

many of many lands

now let's talk quickly about mans and

pens a metropolitan area network or a

municipal area network is used when a

company or say a government or an

organization has two offices or more in

the same city so the idea is it's sort

of like a wan but the wan is constricted

by a municipal area

a telecommunications company helps

create a high-speed link between the two

offices

or you use the internet to connect them

using something called tunneling

or virtual private networking which we

will discuss a little bit later on

this is similar similar to a wan because

it still needs a router

but it's just in a smaller geographical

area

this term has come into use more

frequently over the past few years

again it is subjective in use so someone

might say might call it a wan someone

else might call it a man

theoretically i would say a man a

metropolitan area network is a wan

a wide area network because it is not

constricted by say a room or a building

that being said i'll leave that up to

people who are designing it when they're

calling it something you know they need

to call it something different

now this is different very different

actually from a personal area network or

pan this is a smaller computer network

used for communicating between

smartphones pdas other devices in other

words it's to have your computer

communicate with your mouse communicate

with your smartphone okay again every

time i see pan on the net on the test it

is in relation to bluetooth

so this is generally attributed to that

bluetooth communication

you see it on the test and i write it

twice i wrote it and typed it remember

bluetooth boom pan is bluetooth okay

and these are also ad hoc meaning unlike

some of these other devices these other

network types

ad hoc means that there is no

centralized controlling uh device that

you connect through so whereas a lot of

the devices have switches like we saw

i'm about to draw a star network

right everyone connected through a

central

all my computers are connected through a

central switch

these devices there is no central switch

they just connect with one another

so we just gave a brief overview of

networking the networking being

nodes or computers

that are connected together for some

sort of purpose then we looked at

network types local area network would

be your home

or a floor of a building or the

entire building depending on how they

wanted to to do it

okay a wide area network generally

outside of a geographical area the best

known wide area network is the internet

a metropolitan municipal area network

i'm going to say is lycoan

but it is city restrictive or

metropolitan area so if you have five

offices in london perhaps you're going

to connect all those uh offices together

and then a personal area network which

again is bluetooth

so now that we've talked about these

network types let's discuss network

topologies

so there are four five network

topologies we're going to discuss the

four pictured here and then a fifth

called hybrid which is a mix of these

the network topology

defines how the devices are physically

cabled together

or

how they logically communicate

okay so this is this these could be

literally

physical designations how these the

cabling

right actually runs

or it could be logical meaning this is

how data is transferred and sometimes

what we'll have is we'll have something

that physically connects

in one way but logically connects

in another so it's important to make the

distinction between a physical topology

and a logical topology

what we're discussing for a plus is a

physical topology we're not discussing

logical topologies we will get into that

with network plus so we're literally

talking about how these devices these

computers are physically connected to

one another

okay

so let's look at the first one is called

a bust topology

this is very rare in today's networks in

fact most of these are very rare in

today's networks except for star

all computers are connected to one

backbone cable it's called the backbone

because it does the brunt of the work

okay

so every computer

plugs in

to this network cable

sometimes they used to do this via

something called a vampire tap

which i don't have a picture of to show

you and it's not on the exam anymore

thank goodness but this used to be

something if i had a very thick cable

imagine this being a very thick cable

a vampire tap was literally a wall

connected and had metal teeth

that fed directly into the metal of the

cable and that's how you accessed it so

this would then connect up to one wire

or there were sometimes what were called

t connectors

right which as you can see from the

looks of this

i'm just going to erase this for a

second

it makes back upside down t here are the

t connectors

so you would have coaxial cable for

instance with a t connector

and you would also just like with scuzzy

if you remember scuzzy we would

terminate

the ends of this network so it knew

where to end and where not to end but

we're getting a little into logical

the problem with this setup though is if

this cable gets destroyed

right

all of these computers now cannot

communicate

in some cases if one of the computers

goes down that can also disrupt

communication there's another one that's

similar called a line network that

literally looks like this

some people refer to this as a bus

if one computer gets destroyed none of

them can talk to each other which is why

this bus is at least makes a little more

sense than this line

if you want to add or remove computers

from a bus network you have to take the

network down obviously the entire thing

has to go down for me to add another

computer if this didn't exist i'd have

to take all these down so that i could

pop it in there

okay that's the downside of bus and why

it's not really used anymore um

it doesn't have to be used anymore

either because we have what are called

switches now

so let's get into a ring which is kind

of different so remember we talked about

a line

a ring

means and this is also very uncommon

nowadays but basically there's no

central connecting device every device

connects to the next device until they

create a ring this is kind of like that

line but in a circle

so literally this guy if this guy wants

to talk

let me uh draw this out like this if a

wants to talk to

[Music]

let's say d okay

then he has to go and this can only go

in one direction generally

so he has to go through each computer

before reaching d and then d has to go

to these two computers before getting

back to a to communicate and they have

to keep doing that and so you can see

how this is really not practical for

modern day computing

you also have to bring down the whole

thing

before uh you can add a computer and if

one chord goes down one connection

the entire thing is shot obviously if

one computer goes down the whole thing

is shot

so this is really not useful in today's

market

some very advanced

networks where we're dealing with

certain very expensive servers and very

high-end reliability stuff will use ring

networks

they generally use them not in the

physical sense but in the

logical sense meaning that data is

passed

from one to the next

and they actually physically connect

through a central device

so the device says you first now you now

you now you it goes like this

and so they communicate in a ring

but

very unlikely the only reason some

people have them is because they're very

old and sometimes if it ain't broke

don't fix it and there can be some

benefits to a ring topology that go

beyond the scope of this course

so

let's talk about the star topology which

i think is by far the most common you're

going to see today

and it did away with 90 percent of the

bus and ring topologies worldwide when

this was introduced and the reason is

you have a central connecting device

like a switch

that unites all the computers on the

local area network

so if one if the connecting device goes

out you're in trouble right however

if

this computer goes down or this

connection goes down you still have

connections between all the other

computers

so it this was a lot more reliable not

to mention easier because if i want to

add a computer i don't have to take the

entire network down i just plug into the

central device which is why it's really

the most common and uh most useful

physical topology that's out there

we also have a mesh topology

some people call this a full topology

every device connects to every other

device

so

you can see in this case this guy has a

connection

to every other

computer

this way he has a direct line of contact

to every other system on the on the on

the network very rare

and

the reason is because this could be a

lot of connections obviously it's the

total number of computers minus one

because you don't connect to yourself so

because they are one two three six on

this this every can every computer has

to have five connections that means five

places to plug in a connection so five

network cards five sets of cords and

they all have to be direct

so you can imagine this is gonna cost

mucho money but it is highly redundant

meaning it is very hard to take down

this network because even if

this connection gets shot

this guy can still connect by doing this

and if that connection gets shot they

can connect this way so you can see

there are so many connections that would

have to go down that's why this is still

used

uh however it is rare because the cost

of implementation is so expensive that

you're only going to see it in certain

circumstances where the network going

down would literally mean um that you

know millions of dollars or billions of

dollars going down and a loss of time as

well

so special

special environments that need that much

redundancy would have it banks

government institutions i'm sure

you know the military etc

finally we have a hybrid technology this

combines two or more technologies so for

instance we have a bus connected with a

star here probably not going to see that

as much as a star ring

meaning that i would have a star here

and then maybe i have another star

and then

let's say here's my star

and then i have another star

and then these are all connected

in a ring format okay so that would be

also a hybrid connection or a hybrid

topology so here's a star bus

or what's also called a hierarchical

star in which case

you know i have this computer which is a

star and then it goes down to

so it's doing something like this

and then this goes down to another one

and this goes down to another one and

this is what we call a hierarchical star

okay but this is a uh hybrid topology

meaning that it's mixing several of the

topologies we've already seen

okay

so now we've discussed uh topologies

including a star

bus

ring

mesh

and hybrid so let's quickly just go back

over everything we talked about one we

talked about a networking overview again

networking means i have two or more

nodes or computers that are connecting

together

generally to share resources in some way

shape or form

the networking types we looked at local

area network is a smaller geographic

area

it could be covered by

say your room

or a floor on the office or an entire

office building

okay

many lands

make up a wan

which the biggest win in the world is

the internet

wide area network the metropolitan or

municipal area network is generally

bounded by city limits or some such

distinction

a personal area network dealing with

bluetooth

we then looked at the network topologies

including a star

which looks like this you have a central

device

and it is also the most common

a bus

which means that all connect

through one backbone

a ring

in which

the devices are connected in sequence

mesh in which

every device connects

to every other device

okay so this is redundant

but also very expensive

and finally a hybrid

which

is a mix

of any other

topology

all right we've discussed networking

types and network topologies so now

let's keep

you know bulldozing into networking and

talk more and still in a general sense

about networking uh technologies

about the way that we set them up and

about the way we communicate over

networks

[Music]

networking network devices

we've discussed now the

uh the network types and the network

topologies right the types being

lan

wan

man

pan etc all these area networks but

these are logical distinctions for the

most part they tell us what kind of

network it is but they really don't tell

us how that network communicates and

same with the topology well it's great

to know physically how everything's

connected but what good is that without

knowing what is physically connecting

them to each other and allowing the

network to work

so what we're going to talk about in

this video is this one right over here

the network devices what allows all

these computers to communicate

with one another from a device level and

the different devices we're going to

find on the network

after we talk about this video then we

will get into the media that connects

all these devices okay but first we need

to talk about some of these devices and

there are a bunch on the exam

we're going to just briefly go over some

of them in a very brief way if you're

going to continue on to network plus

that's where we'll cover them in much

more depth and in network plus as well

it's going to be helpful to remember the

stuff we talk about right now because it

will feed over

so some of the devices we're going to

talk about include a hub which is an old

older device we don't see a lot anymore

for reasons we'll describe a switch

which if you recall we were talking

about lands allows all those local area

network computers to communicate and

connect with one another a router which

if you recall we talked about allows the

land to get out to the wan and i want to

make a distinction here with the router

in just a second

we're also going to talk about a

wireless access point which allows for

what are called unbounded connections

meaning that there is no wire they are

wireless

we're also going to look at a soho

wireless access point and router this is

a special device

that we see a lot in the market nowadays

especially in small offices and homes

places that they don't have their own

i.t department

and soho

stands for small office

home office

so it's important when you see soho

uh wireless access points slash router

or they might say it's a soho access

point or a soho route or whatever it is

when you see soho involved there just

remember that we're dealing with a

device that does

many different things the router we're

talking about here is only a router

a soho router which is the thing a lot

of people call a quote-unquote router at

their house is different

in an extent because it does more and

we're going to talk about those in great

detail later

a bridge which in some ways is linked to

a switch we'll talk about that

a more advanced device that you probably

won't deal with as much

network attached storage which is sort

of like a hard drive for the network

uh and we'll talk about that and those

the reason these are now devices is

they're their own

miniature sort of computers that don't

have an operating system they only serve

uh storage to the network and to the

network at large which we'll talk about

a modem which is an older device used

mostly for dial-up connections and i'm

going to point it out now although we'll

see it later

these two

acronyms you want to know pots and pstn

plain old telephone system

and public switched telephone network

modems allow communication over those

and you will see these a lot sometimes

they'll say what device allows

communication over a pots network and

that'll be a modem but again we'll

discuss that in more depth in just a

little bit

then we'll also look at internet

appliances there's a lot of different

definitions for this but it's really any

device that gets you out onto the

internet

one might consider their smartphone an

internet device or an internet appliance

and then a firewall which is

mostly used for security and we'll talk

about it more a soho

router has a firewall built in usually

and this is for security allowing

certain things in but not everything

like a wall of fire that allows certain

things in that are fire proofed but not

things that aren't water fire proofed

finally we're going to look at voip or

voice over ip

phones which are now this is sort of the

new technology we're seeing a lot more

in the market

um

this is what allows you to communicate

using uh with a phone over an internet

connection using voice packets over an

ip data network which we will talk about

as well all right

so let's start

by just discussing what a network device

is in general

basically they allow communication

between computers and nodes over media

the most basic type of network device

that we've already discussed to an

extent is what's called a network

interface card

or

a network adapter

this is what plugs into the computer and

allows the computer to talk over the

network okay so what we're talking about

are sort of larger network devices

and some of these are hubs switches

access points these are what the network

interface card and the media plug into

to allow multiple computers to

communicate with one another

and so they allow connectivity between

networks not just between

computers so for instance routers and

bridges connect networks together

whereas hubs and switches and access

points as you've discovered at home if

you have a wireless network connect

computers together okay

so remember these are what make up and

remember these because whenever you see

lan that's generally having to do with

one of these devices

whereas wan has to do generally

with one of these

they also provide security and

protection

such as a firewall

uh and other devices like that that

we'll see in network plus that we're not

going to cover here

so there's a lot of different devices

and they do a lot of different things

let's talk about the first one which we

don't see much anymore but we did 10

years ago and there were quite a lot of

them hubs this was the original

connecting device for computers on the

lan so remember we looked at that star

topology you would have four computers

that could all connect

into this hub

and they connected into the hub

and now

automatically i have a star network

right there's a central device and all

of them can connect to it so wonderful

perfect i'm done

well

this is a really basic device

and the problem with it was that it only

used one trunk circuit for multiple

ports

what that means is

inside of here

all of these basically guys just all

connect together

so

when

i'm just gonna write some letters on

here when a wants to communicate with b

it can't do so on a private line

if you are old enough you might remember

a party line

for your phone which meant that you pick

up the phone and someone else in the

neighborhood could possibly listen in it

was a party line it was shared

in the same way you're sharing all this

connectivity on the hub so if a

sends out a packet

into the hub

even though it's only meant for b

it's gonna go out to every computer

that's a distinction of a hub

when we get to switches it does

something different so a hub regenerates

the electrical signal

from one port to every other port

so it's like if i walked into a room and

and i had a note for someone and instead

of handing the note to the specific

person let's say bob i announced to the

entire room the note and i say this is

for bob and then i communicated the

message so you can see how this is going

to take a lot more

um

traffic network traffic and it's not

keeping things very private

so it causes this is the real issue it

caused a lot of broadcast traffic

because it broadcasts the data out to

every other system that's connected to

this hub

a switch on the other hand

is also a central connecting device that

allows all the computers to connect to

it

but

when it regenerates the signal from one

computer

and i'm just gonna

obviously this is a huge switch

okay

so i'm just gonna draw these

when it regenerates from one going to

the other

it actually sends

the data specifically

to the

computer it's meant for

so if i have all these computers

whereas a hub if a wanted to communicate

with h

a hub would contact every single one of

these computers

a switch on the other hand

uses the signal

and takes it and only sends it to the

person for whom it's dedicated

so a hub

sends it out to everyone it's like i'm

going into room and i yell it out

a switch takes that note and gives it

specifically to the person to whom it's

intended

this it does this by identifying what's

called the mac or physical address of

every computer

so each device on the network and the

switch has one too has what's called a

physical address

we're going to talk about these a little

more in depth as well but the physical

address is basically its social security

number it is its name that it cannot

change

and so what it does is it knows all the

mac addresses of every device on the

network

and what it can do therefore is it

creates a table and it says

a

equals this mac address

b equals this mac address etc etc

and so then when it when a says i want

to send it data to

computer h it knows by the mac address

which computer computer h is and it can

send the data specifically to that

computer so we're not broadcasting we're

using unicast now we're sending data

from one computer directly to the other

as long as they are all connected to

this route to this switch

okay

so every port has an individual entity

this therefore increases data throughput

and reduces excess broadcast traffic i'm

not having to send data to every single

computer every time i want to send

something i'm just sending it to the

person to whom it's intended

and that's going to increase

throughput because it knows where it's

going it's not driving all around the

city it has a direct route

now a router is the next level up from a

switch

it's used to connect two or more

networks together to form an internet

work

allowing data to leave and return to the

local network

so

i have

a switch

and it connects let's say

five computers

and we'll call them one two three

four

five

one of these computers wants to go to

google's website

well the switch is not connected to

google's website what it needs to do

is connect through

a router

and the router is responsible then for

sending that data out to google

and then it comes back

the router sends to the switch and the

switch can send it back to the computer

so again the router allows us to get

outside of our lan

switches are for inside of our lan now i

might have

several switches

within the land so i can have thousands

of computers but whenever they want to

get outside of the network to outside to

the wan we have to go through a router

so it routes data from one location

another by way of what's called an ip

address

an ip address is a number given to

every device on the network every device

on the internet has an ip address we're

going to talk about those in much more

depth but it works at a higher level

than mac addresses mac addresses as you

could imagine are like

your social security number given out by

the us government or

a number given out by the military

sometimes give serial numbers to

individuals it does not change it is you

forever

your ip address would be like the

nickname we're going to call you or

another way to think about it is your

phone number it would be a mac address

now i don't know about you but i don't

remember a lot of phone numbers i put

them into my cell phone and i just go to

the name

so if i want to call

bob i don't type in bob's phone number i

just type in bob

and then the computer does the rest for

me in the same way the router

knows

how to communicate because it can deal

with bob

switches can't do that switches need to

know the phone number and if i'm talking

about a phone number across the world

that's going to get very difficult so

again routers use ip addresses

switches use mac addresses which are the

hardwired ones that might make a little

more sense later on the important thing

to remember is that

routers are dealing with the wan and

switches are dealing with the land we

don't really see hubs anymore because

they're too much broadcast traffic all

right

and as i mentioned they route signals

for all the computers on the lan out to

the network so even though i might have

a thousand computers i only need one

router

larger organizations also will use

advanced routers so they can connect to

multiple networks outside of themselves

including the internet this is something

called a vpn concentrator

or a vpn

a vpn device we'll talk about vpns a

little bit later but that'll allow you

to do other things than just connect out

to the network

wireless access point

this enables data communication over the

air as long as the node

whether it's the computer a printer your

smartphone whatever is equipped with a

wireless networking adapter

so

as long as

one of these is connected

to my computer i can connect to the

access point the wireless access point

and don't forget you can have i mean i

don't

you can forget it because i haven't told

you yet you can have multiple access

points

that all connect

through one switch

so if i have a very large building i can

have access points in different spots in

that building and then these each create

a wireless network

by which i can connect to my

switch and once i'm on the switch i'm on

the network okay the access point really

what it does is it replaces bounded

media it replaces chords

so that's that's the important thing

with an access point

um

it transmits the data using radio waves

and it uses either 2.4 gigahertz or 5

gigahertz frequencies we're going to

talk a lot more about wireless or what's

called the 802 11 standard but just know

that an access point is that device okay

so at home you have something different

it is access point it is also a router

we're talking about a device that only

is an access point that's it

and it brings as i mentioned mobility to

a new level because now you don't have

to worry about being stuck by a cord

so a soho or a small office home office

access point and router

these have a bunch of things in them

they have a router built in they have an

access point built in they have a

firewall built in they have something

called a dhcp server that we're going to

talk about in the next lesson built in

these things have tons of features it's

feature rich

now why is that good for a small office

home office well i don't need a lot of

features and i don't need to have they

can be pre-configured i don't have a lot

of specialty things

in a business setting though i don't

want one device that can do 10 things

because what if one of those 10 things

goes bad i've just lost the entire

device so that's why these are really

used in small office home office

and it's an important distinction to

realize the soho access point as opposed

to

a plain old router if they say soho

router or soho access point then that's

something special they just say regular

router then you're not dealing with a

wireless device sometimes they'll say a

soho router and they expect you to know

that that means it's also an access

point or a soho access point and they

expect you to realize that that's also a

router okay so sometimes when we're

talking about these things we're going

to mention soho routers or soho access

points and that is an important

distinction to make

by the way these can also be referred to

as multi-function network devices soho

routers and many people you're going to

hear in the field say oh my router

i have a router

actually you have a router but it's

really an access point with a whole

bunch of other stuff on it if you had a

real you know real routers for

businesses can cost hundreds if not

thousands of dollars depending on the

needs

all right a bridge similar in some ways

to

a a switch in the way it works but

similar to a router and what it does

this is a device that can either connect

two different lands together or separate

them into two sections i'm going to

explain why you'd want to do that in a

minute

let's say i have switches going back and

so i had a bunch of let's say each of

these is a switch

and every time and i know these guys are

never communicating with these guys

all this stuff creates network traffic i

mean switches do a pretty good job but

still there's a lot of network traffic

going back and forth and so what i might

want to do

is create something that's going to act

as a buffer so if a packet goes here

that is meant for the computer on this

side the bridge will say no don't don't

send it over that keeps if i erase on my

terrible drawing as these lines indicate

that keeps data it keeps traffic from

going over to the other side of the

network

so in some ways like a toll bridge in

certain major metropolitan areas they'll

charge you a lot of money to go over so

they can reduce traffic this does the

same thing

there are wired and there are wireless

bridges and the wireless ones are more

are used today to increase the size of

networks so you'll connect two lans

together

using a wireless bridge

meaning that uh i don't have i have two

connect i have two i have two networks

and i need to connect them over a long

distance using a wireless sort of bridge

so they can connect these two networks

but generally speaking and when i've

seen them it's generally to help reduce

network traffic by blocking stuff that

doesn't belong on this network over here

and when we get to network plus we'll

talk about specifically how it does that

but in a plus just know that that it's

reducing broadcast traffic

network attached storage this is a

device that contains multiple hard

drives

and connects directly to the network

so it's like adding a removable hard

drive or a usb hard drive but to your

network

so there's a

rj45 cable back here

remember what those look like

okay and it connects that out to my

switch

so that every device can connect to this

generally speaking you're not going to

see these in this form in a business

setting more in a home setting these

smaller network attached storage devices

there are larger network attached

storage devices specifically for um

companies and

larger enterprises and the reason i want

that is they these do not have

um

uh

operating systems okay so they can so we

can store and retrieve data from the

devices mapped as network drives which

we'll talk about how to do and we can

explore them from the network but from

my operating system but i don't need

this doesn't have an operating system on

it it's plug and go it's plug and play i

don't have to do anything special so a

network attached storage device and nas

specifically allows me to upgrade the

storage on my network but not on a

specific computer and because there's no

operating system on this thing there's

less things that can go wrong with it

uh it also off yes so as i mentioned

high speed access to storage with no

operating system by the way i just want

to make a distinction between this and

something called a san

a storage area network which we'll talk

about in network plus

so an nas and a sand there they're

backwards from each other but a san is a

storage area network which is like this

but an entire network of them so instead

of a local area network it's a storage

area network it's a small network that

only has storage devices

all right

a modem

this provides internet and wan

connectivity so before we had routers

and all this stuff at least at home and

before we had broadband internet we had

no dial up right and so the modem which

stands for

um modulate and demodulate takes analog

signals

over the phone line

and that

like facts sound if you remember dialing

up and it com puts them into digital

so you can talk data and then it

converts it back again

so a modem modulates and demodulates

network data and allows you to use the

plain

uh

plain old

system

or the

public

switched

telephone

network

okay both basically the same thing

as i mentioned changing dig digital

signals of a computer to the anal analog

signals used by typical land-based phone

lines and back and forth vice versa

often by the way very slow device i

think it was limited

to 53 kilobits per second was the

fastest modem they were ever able to

really come out with i think actually it

was 56 kilobits per second but the

problem was that the phone line could

only support 53 kilobits per second so

compare that with the you know 15

megabits per second you're getting on

your broadband connection

by the way also used only if there's no

other internet option available nowadays

or if you're in and believe it or not

there's a lot of people who still are

dialing up as odd as that is for certain

people in um

uh in metropolitan areas a lot of rural

areas you still have dial-up networking

so also might be used in server rooms as

points of remote administration meaning

i'm going to dial into my server room in

order to access things and to make

changes nowadays however this is

probably done over the network using

some security

all right an internet appliance

refers really to any device that enables

easy connectivity to the internet but

doesn't really do much else here i have

if you recall i don't remember if you

guys remember this but i do a web tv

which was a device that was basically a

computer

but it connected to your tv allowed you

to get email and browse the internet to

an extent but it was not a fully

functioning operating system computer

i mean it had an operating system but

the operating system's goal was simply

to allow you as a user on your

television to access the internet

so web tv is a good example some people

refer to tablets as an internet

appliance uh although

i disagree because i think a tablet or a

smartphone is now a computer and i think

these are computers too so it's sort of

a poor

it's sort of a legacy term because

nowadays we don't really have devices

that only get to the internet this also

might be sort of like a thin client

because it is only connected to the

internet it's not really doing anything

else but either way

uh if you see internet appliance pop up

in the exam now you know what it is

finally i want to talk about firewall

this is a hardware or a software

appliance so it can exist either in a

physical hardware like your your soho

router or it can be a piece of software

for instance on the computer that

protects from unwanted intrusion

for small offices and home offices the

firewall is built into that soho router

so you have a soho router that generally

is going to have this firewall built

into it

in large organizations you literally

have a device called a firewall that

plugs up so what it does like a fire it

allows some stuff in and some stuff it

does not allow in

so if you use some arrows there so some

of it lifts lets through some things it

doesn't let through and the reason it

knows what to let through and what not

to let through is based on what are

called rules and you can create inbound

and outbound rules

so out would be this way in would be

this way okay

it can also block basic networking

attacks

most you know if

they're really good they're going to be

able to get past it anyway but the idea

is

why would a burglar rob your house if

you have a lock on it and your neighbor

doesn't

so you want to give yourself as many

options not to get

attacked than to get attacked so it can

block basic networking attacks and might

deter someone from trying to break into

your network

if you have a soho firewall and a

firewall on your system you're doing

double duty you have double the amount

of

protection

and last but not least i want to discuss

these voice over ip phones

voice over internet protocol it's it's

basically a collection of technologies

and protocols that allow communication

over an ip based network we're going to

talk about ip addressing later but the

idea is we're not using pots or pstn

anymore that's the plain old telephone

system or the public switch telephone

network we have this great internet now

and the idea is well let's use that to

communicate voice because voice is

different from data because it has

different requirements for instance data

if i miss if i'm

if i'm reading a document with data in

it and let's say an an e gets dropped on

that right i can probably make it out or

i can ask them to resend it but if i'm

on a phone call i can't i don't want to

have to ask the person to constantly

repeat what they're saying

so this is really a replacement for pots

and pstn and

and it took a while to get to because

new technologies had to be created

these voip phones by the way connect

directly to the ethernet you can see

the cord sort of popping out here this

is not an rj11

okay this is an rj45 you can see it's

made by cisco systems which is the you

know the major networking company

all words spoken are converted into

packets data packets those packets are

then routed through the internet to the

other end anything about routing and

getting past our

x our internal network to an external

network we're dealing with all sort of

new technologies and if it's not

implemented properly with something

called qos that you're going to see

again and again in in direct reference

to voip which stands for quality

of service which is also a series of

technologies that guarantee for instance

that when i talk you can hear me

otherwise we're going to have sound

quality and latency issues meaning i'm

going to say hi

and you're not going to hear it for five

minutes

sound quality as well i can't have

dropped packets or dropped sounds it has

to be really nice otherwise the

technology is not going to be good

enough to replace pots and pstn

fortunately there has been enough

technology sort of advancement that that

we can

all right

so let's just uh go over what we've

talked about we talked about network

devices which are really allowing us to

communicate

not only between

computers

but also between networks

and they can also provide security

all right then we looked at hubs which

broadcast

data

to everyone okay

not just to the one person right they

broadcast to everyone and so they have a

lot of network

traffic a switch

which sends data only to the computer

for which it's intended to the node

and it does this using physical or mac

addresses which we will talk about in

more depth if you're a little confused

by that okay

routers on the other hand allow

communication

outside of the network

or into the internet or when

we also have a wireless access point

which allows unbounded

or wi-fi connections

a soho

router which is not only an access point

it's also a router

it also is a firewall

it is also

to some extent a switch

it is also to some extent uh other

devices that we haven't talked about

like a dhcp server and an nat server a

network address translation we will

discuss these in a bit later on a bridge

which either connects

or divides

lands

network attached storage which is high

speed

a

high amount of storage for a network

directly

a modem

which

allows wan access

or lan access really but it allows when

access

via the pstn public switch telephone

network or pots plain old telephone

system

the internet appliance

which is any sort of appliance

providing access

to the internet but not much else

almost like a thin client

a firewall

which is really protecting

uh

but allows

certain things in

and voip or voi voice over ip phones

i'll write that out

voice over ip

which allows

voice communication

over data packets

all right

so we've discussed all the different

network devices now let's keep talking

about media and how we're going to

connect these devices to one another

[Music]

networking cables connectors and cabling

tools

we've talked about the different types

of theoretical networks that exist and

we've also discussed some of the devices

you're going to find on these networks

so now let's talk about how these

connections exist and that's through the

use of actual physical cables and

different types of connectors we're also

going to talk about the tools that you

need to make these cables and

the physical tools you need to test them

as well

so

what we're going to talk about here are

the cable types and connectors including

twisted pair cables and the types of

connectors that go along with them this

is by far one of the most common uh

media out there

coaxial cables which you probably know

from uh

you know your television as well uh

although now is coming more into play

with internet

and fiber optics this is sort of where

um networking is going because it's a

lot faster uh it works in a different

way unlike these two which work with

copper okay which is our main

way of conducting electricity fiber

optics works with light and plastic or

glass

then we're going to look at the cabling

tools including a cable cutter

a wire stripper

a crimper which actually attaches the

connector

to the

cable

a punch down tool which you might not

see a lot unless you're working in large

installations of cabling but is

specifically done for terminations and

at sort of the in the the wiring closets

continuity testers

patch testers for patch cables a toner

probe

a loop back plug

and something called a time domain

reflectometer or tdr so these first few

tools are for

uh

creating

and then these last few tools are for

testing

all right

so let's get into it

cables provide a huge amount of data

transfer over today's networks

if you think about how much data is

going back and forth those cables are

sure bearing a lot of the brunt and

twisted and coaxial cables use copper

wire

and send electricity over the wires

okay so that's how they're transferring

the data

electricity as you may or may not know

as we discussed is basically broken down

into

on and off ones and zeros and that's

transferred over copper wires when it

gets

it's sent from one end encoded in a

certain way and then when it when it's

received on the other end it has to be

decoded but that's all done in the

software and a basic physical level

we're dealing with copper and

electricity with twisted pair and

coaxial which are twisted being the most

popular and coaxial sort of being legacy

but we're still we still see it in a

bunch of instances

fiber optics on the other hand uses a

glass or plastic core and sends light or

photons over it okay so it's important

to realize the difference between these

two

because one is using copper

and electricity

the other is using light or plastic

glass or plastic and sending light and

so as you can imagine

we're dealing with a lot less heat

on the fiber optic it's also going to be

a lot faster because i don't have as

much friction building up from the

electricity and that's where the heat

comes from is the friction of those

atoms more or less

the connectors

are the connection point between the

media the cables between these cables

and the network adapter so i have a

cable

let's say i have two

computers and i have a cable to connect

them the problem is what do i put on the

end of the cable in order to plug this

cable in and that's the connector

so we not only have to talk about this

sucker the cable we also have to talk

about these the connectors what actually

interfaces physically between the cable

and the adapter

there are also different connectors for

different types of cabling and purposes

and in some cases you're going to have

different connectors uh several

different connectors for instance

coaxial has some different connectors

and fiber optic uses quite a few

different connectors a twisted pair

usually uses the same type of connectors

but we'll see how even the twisted pair

has some variations

all right so let's start with talking

about twisted pair here's a great

picture of twisted pair

this is the most common type of cable

used in today's networks if you've ever

seen

what people refer to as an ethernet

cord and an ethernet is the

the

standard by which this cord is created

and by which data is transferred over it

then you've seen this you probably

haven't seen the wires inside except at

the very ends

the copper wires as you can tell inside

are twisted together into pairs and

that's throughout the length of the

cable the reason for this

is because it lessens emi

electromagnetic in uh interference and

also what's called crosstalk which is

where signals from this cable will jump

over to signals from this cable so by

twisting them they've discovered that

this actually lessens the amount of

interference they cause and that they

are susceptible to now there are other

things we can do to make sure that it's

not going to get outside interference

because there isn't anything sort of

covering this

right now okay this was actually

discovered though

way back when i think by um uh

edison that this worked

uh it is the mo

there are two

frequently used twisted pair types and

when we talk about

twisted pair you'll see that is tp

and they are

there are a couple different ones

category 3 or cat 3

which is the phone wire and that uses an

rj11 connection that we've seen

category 5 which is 10 100 megabits per

second

and this is the network but by the way i

just want to point out here because it's

been a while

that network transfer is measured in

megabits so although this is 10 or 100

megabits per second uh remember that's

not megabytes so you have to divide by

eight by the way this might also be

called

a 10 or 100

base t

the base is saying it's base band the t

is for the twisted pair

and the 10 is saying the

speed

and then category 5e which is called

enhanced

10 100 this basically added some more

security measures it became less

susceptible to emi etc and then finally

we had category 6 which was gigabit

which allowed

1 000 megabits per second

and nowadays you're generally going to

see a lot of the 5e you might see a lot

of six depending it really depends on

when the the network cables were laid

but these are the most common categories

of cabling if you see someone mention

category 3 that's what was used with

pots or pstn

okay

now there are two

general types of twisted pair cablings

we're going to find

category 3 category 5 whatever it is

there's two ways that they're made the

first is called unshielded twisted pair

also known as utp

this is most commonly used because it's

the cheapest uh it has the least amount

of requirements but it also is the

easiest to install

it can be run only about a hundred

meters before there's what's called

signal attenuation meaning that the

signal begins to degrade

okay so i'll just write that out there

the signal is degrading that's what

attenuation is and you're going to

remember this number

100 meters

or 328 feet

i see that pop up on the test

okay so that is for utp

unshielded twisted pair

the cable jacket this thing right around

here is made out of pvc which is a type

of plastic

if this catches on fire it can be very

harmful to humans it's toxic

okay and so

if you're using cabling and this goes

for any type of cabling actually between

floors you need to use what's called

plenum grade cable this is important and

i see it pop up on the test the plenum

by the way if i were dealing with floors

so we had one and then we had floor two

actually i'm going down here so we would

do it the other way but just for the

sake

the

plenum is the area

between the floors okay that's called

the plenum

and so if

you're going to be running cable between

an area that has no sprinkler system for

instance and is susceptible to fire

which would be in between the floors

which is called the plenum you need to

use plenum grade cable the reason is it

has a different

coating on the outside that's not toxic

if burned

this can cause major issues

you know

when buildings sort of collapse or are

burned to the ground

one of the biggest worries isn't

necessarily the damage to the structure

it's actually all the toxic fumes that

burning that cable lets out

and uh the reason is because it has a

special teflon coating and a low smoke

variant of the twisted pair so it's not

going to release all of the bad

chemicals that the regular twisted pair

is so this is really important to

remember this plenum grade

okay because it will pop up on the test

so remember that's in between floors

construction

in an area where there's no sprinkler

system

shielded twisted pair is different from

unshielded twisted pair and you can see

the picture here the thing that makes it

different is this what looks like

aluminum foil coating around it okay

utp is susceptible to electromagnetic

interference from the outside remember

these are crossed so the

twisted rather so they don't receive

electromagnetic interference from each

other but on the outside emi can still

come in

and so

shielded twisted pair or stp

was developed to help reduce emi from

the outside now utp is still more common

and it's cheaper

but they put this metal shielding like a

foil i'm just going to erase it so you

can see it again

over the wires and that reduces an

external

emi threat it also reduces the

possibility of someone gaining access to

the network uh unauthorized wise so

someone could

for instance pick up on the signal

coming out of an unshielded twisted pair

and then sort of tap in that way so this

is used specifically if we're near

you know

electricity

or areas of high

emi

the disadvantages and the reason it's

not used in every situation because

you're saying oh why wouldn't i just use

this well it's much more expensive

and the shielding

needs to be grounded

you notice there's an extra cord right

here

which wasn't in the last

um

in the last utp that's because this

actually goes to what's called

it's a

a grounding plate

which is in the server room or in the

wiring closet

and what happens is this is ground and

then goes out to

your actual ground okay and what will

happen is all your devices can ground to

this

and so you need to have grounding if

you're going to be using shielded

twisted pair

as a result

it's more expensive and it costs more

not only to buy but also to in

to install

and this is why all patch panels punch

blocks wire racks should be permanently

grounded before use

i've seen this on the test so you're

going to remember that okay

you have to ground patch panels punch

blocks and we'll look at a punch block

by the way when we get to the punch tool

and any racks basically in your server

room you always need to have a grounding

a

sort of a grounding

um

bar

something that is going that you can

connect everything up to that's metal

that then connects to outside

now a twisted pair connector is this

sucker

it's on the main page this is an rj45

connection

and it connects to each end of the cable

now this is obviously professionally

made you can tell just because of how

nice it is at the end but you don't need

to actually buy these professionally you

can make these yourself using some of

the tools we'll talk about

and these connect to rj45 sockets and

network adapters otherwise known as nics

and switches

the rj45 plug looks like a telephone

plug if you remember those which by the

way are rj11s so don't get them confused

rj11 you'll see mostly with modem

pots pstn etc

it is larger

and it contains eight wires as opposed

to six so this right here contains eight

wires

uh four twisted pairs as opposed to the

rj11 which only holds six that's why

it's smaller

i love this diagram because it shows you

the color combinations here

there are two different ways to wire

these now actually you don't need to

wire them

theoretically according to these

standards um

for it to work however if you don't wire

it according to standards and someone

else comes in to to do some work they're

going to be confused which is the reason

we all try to use the same

standards a straight through cable which

means most cables are going to use this

uh color combination which by the way if

we were to write this out would be white

orange

orange

white green

blue

white blue

green

white brown

brown

that's a straight through cable and

basically what happens is you wire this

the same on both ends of the cable and

the data can run through straight

if you want to connect a computer

to another computer directly not through

a switch

uh or you wanted to connect two switches

together in older situations at least

what you would need to do is create

what's called a crossover cable and this

is important a crossover cable as

opposed to having

the 568b wiring on both sides

has 568b on one side and 568 a on the

other

so this is what we'll use on crossover

if i wired them both 568a it would

basically be a straight through cable

by doing one on one side one on the

other i'm making what's called a

crossover cable and just so you can see

what's changed here

let's write this out white

green

green

white orange

blue

white blue

orange

white brown

brown and what you'll see here

is that we've switched

a couple of the cables

particularly

one two three

and six

they've been switched

okay it's just these guys

if you'll notice

that's where the majority of data

is sent by uh on a um

on a cable so that's why we switch those

that way if you think about it

if it's coming through when the data is

sent and i guess this was a it was bad

to sort of draw that blue one

so let us erase that real quickly but

when the data is sent

as you can imagine

it's going to be sent

like this but then when it comes

in

to the crossover

it's going into a different wire

in the computer and so

it knows

one end ascending the other end is

receiving and this is called a crossover

cable specifically if you need to

connect two computers directly together

um

and as i mentioned it's gonna be wired

for 568b on one end and 568a on the

other this is also used to connect one

switch to another or sometimes two

routers to another we don't see this as

much anymore and the reason is because

switches and some network cards as well

can

auto sense the type of cable that's

being plugged in and so they can do the

switching for themselves so nowadays

you don't need to do crossover cables

if it used to be when i taught this

years ago we would create

a crossover cable for you to take with

you in your tool kit

nowadays we don't really do that because

it's no longer necessary

all right so now we've talked about

twisted pair let's get into coaxials

very different coaxial has a single

conductor

right here

surrounded by an insulating material

right there

which is then surrounded by a copper

screen

and finally plastic

okay

the all the data is being transferred

via that sucker right there this one

this cable very thin very small

everything else here is used to protect

the cable and to

help it be less susceptible to outside

interference that's what this metal

shielding shielding is

some networking technologies still use

coaxial cable and i'm sure

you've seen it at home if you have a

cable modem

or you get internet from a cable

provider then the cable modem is

providing you internet access via a

coaxial you have a device a modem which

is modulating

that

signal it's a gateway it's modulating

the signal from the

cable

into your uh into a rj45 and so it

changes the type of cabling used

older bus technologies and if you

remember bus was this one

right you used a

coaxial cables and had bnc connectors

which we'll look at in a minute but

you'll rarely see those today if you see

an old network card you'll generally see

there's a a coaxial connector on it

because some old computers used to use

that especially in in these bus

situations nowadays we rarely see this

anymore

except in like bigger

setups

fiber optic

transmits data by the way of light

instead of electricity

so as you can see here we're not using

copper anymore we're using light it segs

the signal much faster than using copper

wires

and

it doesn't even play emi doesn't even

play it in the equation because

electromagnetic interference doesn't

interfere with light

so fiber optic is

much more difficult to splice into and

therefore it's the most secure type of

cable

the benefits for using it are obviously

clear the problem is it's also a lot

more expensive

and you can't bend it more than 90

degrees in normal use because if you

imagine that light

traveling through here

if you bend something 90 degrees the

light can't travel anymore so you have

to make sure that it's kept in a certain

way it's not as movable or bendable

as twisted pair wiring is or coaxial

there's also two different types of

fiber optics you need to be familiar

with and i'll try to make this as clear

as possible for use of the test

single mode fiber optic uses a single

ray of light

it can support

over 10 gigabyte bits per second and can

run thousands of kilometers

so if you think about it single

can go

further

distance as as a result of being single

however it also supports

less bandwidth or throughput

multimode fiber on the other hand

is used over shorter distances notice a

600 meter limit as opposed to thousands

of kilometers but it has a much higher

bandwidth

uh and that's because it has a larger

core diameter than the single mode cable

so if you imagine multi-mode if you

imagine i have

more stuff in there it's going to be

able to carry more but because i have

more it's going to be able to go less

distance so remember multi-mode

is less distance

more bandwidth

whereas single mode is

more distance

less

bandwidth no matter what

fiber is still faster than copper

multi mode is frequently used in

backbones as backbones and server rooms

backbones being that

that uh

connector that sort of everything plugs

into this will be for your really high

end network bandwidth for instance i'm

connecting two buildings together or i'm

connecting two routers together or two

servers together

both types are capable of supporting

a thousand megabits or gigabit and 10

gigabits per second of networks and both

run faster than network uh twisted

pair cable okay so in either case you're

gonna

fiber optic is less susceptible to emi

runs faster and quicker

and more data

there are three types of connectors i

want you to be familiar with with fiber

optics the st connector the sc connector

and the lc connector sc and lc look

almost identical the thing i want you to

remember about st is it requires that

you twist it

if you can notice right here

you can see that something needs to go

inside of there so st requires that you

twist it in order to get it into place

whereas sc and lc do not you just press

them in that's what i want you to

remember about that by the way bnc

connector for coaxial which i don't

think i show a picture of

looks similar to this right the one

cable comes out there's a circle around

it

and it twists on

to a connector of some sort

all right so we've talked about now

cable types and connectors we looked at

twisted pair connectors

using the rj45

twisted pair cable sorry using rj45

connector a coaxial which uses a bnc

connector and then fiber optics which

uses st

lc and sc

all right now let's quickly talk about

some of the cabling tools we're going to

need

all right so a cable cutter

is something

a sharp tool that can cut the end of a

network cable so if i have a spool and

basically what you'll do if you're if

you're making um

a bunch of

uh cables for instance you're going to

have

500 meters of coax

coaxial cable or twisted pair cabling

and the first thing you need to be able

to do is cut them

into pieces so you can make smaller

cables it

usually you're not just going to buy

something that's just a cutter it's

generally going to be built into another

tool like pliers or crimpers but you

need to have something that's sharp that

you can cut the cable with

the first step to making the cable is to

cut it to length

then you need something called a wire

stripper

this strips the plastic portion

off

the end of the cable okay and exposes

the copper wire underneath you can see

here these are special made

all of these are special made wire

strippers

and what you can do is and this one's

specifically for coaxial and what you do

is you put the cable in between this and

it is especially designed to fit the

cable but not much else you pull out and

it rips off the very end of the plastic

that way you expose the copper

underneath which then can make contact

with the connector

next we have a crimper

the crimper

actually attaches the plug to the cable

so you can see right here is a crimper

for an rj45 what happens is if you

imagine i have that plastic and then i

have

that sort of connector

is you have a little bit of this plastic

coating it sort of runs into

the plastic

connector and by crimping it this bar

right here

presses into the plastic and actually

presses the plastic of the connector to

the plastic of the pvc coating and that

keeps the connector on so it's very

important when you create this that you

make sure

that the plastic actually fits in where

that connector goes otherwise it's not

going to stay

this is basically how you attach rj45 to

utp or even stp it's the same thing

all right a punch down tool is used in

one of these 66 or 110 blocks if you see

a 66 or 110 block on the test the answer

is punch down tool i can just tell you

that automatically

this as you can see these are all the

mini all the cables

not even wrapped in a bigger rj45 or

anything this is where the cables

terminate for say the telecommunications

company generally speaking unless you're

working for a telecommunications company

you're not going to need to deal with

this but what happens is this tool

punches

each one of these individual cables into

this which is called a punch down block

that terminates all the cables

for the entire building into one

location and that's how you're going to

use that

it connects the wires into the

structured cabling system that you've

created which involves which we will

talk about what a structured cabling

system is

in network plus but this is basically

connecting it to

um

drops patch panels etc but this is where

it all ends in a very broad sense

this punches down

is the actual termination of the cable

that's where the cable actually ends all

cables end in a punch down block either

call the 66 or 110 punch done block

depending on the amount

of terminations

all right now we're getting into some

tools so so those tools are how we made

the cable now we're going to get into

some testing tools a continuity tester

has a land testing unit that plugs into

a port on the patch panel

and then a terminator plug that plugs

into the other end of the jack so i

would plug one end and you can see i

have a cable here

connecting so this end would plug into

say

my patch panel or into the drop in the

room

this would plug into the other side and

then what it does is it tests the

continuity of the cable to make sure and

you can see here

this is probably made for rj11 in some

way but it has pins and it tells me

which pins are working and which aren't

it's going to test not only for

continuity to make sure the whole thing

works but it's going to test each

individual wire in the cable to make

sure one of them isn't shorted this

would also tell you for instance if you

had a crossover cable because it would

tell you which pins were transmitting on

which end

a patch tester is different so that's

going to test the continuity of a cable

say from

your punch from your patch room your

patch panel all the way to the drop in

say another building or not another

building excuse me but another room

another room in the building a patch

tester is generally for connecting a

patch cable together

so basically i want to test my cable i'm

not testing the continuity of the signal

i'm more testing that the cable is

working

it has two rj45 jacks on it so the other

one had a sort of a receiver sort of

wireless this one both ends of the patch

cable plug into this and you can tell

exactly what's working and what's not

working

you press a test button which is usually

on the bottom or the side and it tells

you if the connection is good

or miswired or whatever

and it all tells you it here

there's also a toner probe

which would basically be used to connect

if you wanted to find

where a cable was

terminated so let's say i wired

something up

and then i have to go back and fix it

but i don't know

which drop lines up with which cable in

the patch room right it's like your

circuit breaker at home sometimes you

don't know

flipping which switch is going to turn

off what cabling in your room

so when it's turned on this sends a tone

along the length of a cable so i'd go

into a room

i would plug this into the

cable and then it would send a tone and

then i could run this device

outside the outside of the of all the

ports

in my

server room and it would tell me which

cable lined up with the cable i'm

shooting the toner through the the tone

through

so it can pick up the tone at any point

along the cable and on the termination

length this helps me identify cables

so i can identify which cables the one i

want to work on i'm in a room that the

drop's not working let's say uh consumer

customer complains their connections not

working i test it i notice that they're

right the cable's not working

now i need to determine where in the

patch panel the

cable is terminated so then i can

continue to do troubleshooting but on

the back end

this

toner probe is going to help you find

that and think about it like it releases

a tone that then the other device can

pick up or hear

it's good for locating a miss or

unmarked drop like i just explained

we also have something called a loop

back plug the loopback plug

connects directly to an rj45 port and

just like the loopback uh

and we'll talk about loopback for um

software reasons but what this does is

it simulates a network adapter being

connected to because what it does it

sends a pin out and then it has the data

come back in

directly and so what it does is it can

tell you whether or not your your actual

network card is working efficiently and

correctly

and it tests the port itself as opposed

to testing the cable everything we've

really looked at has been testing a

cable or following a cable this is going

to actually test the port to make sure

your network adapter port is still wired

correctly

and it'll also test to make sure the tcp

functions are correct on the network

adapter

finally the last tool is a time domain

reflector and it's also the coolest

looking tool what it'll do is locate a

fault or disk continuities in the

connector by transmitting just like the

time domain

sorry just by the toner probe it

transmits a short pulse but instead of

just trying to find the pulse so we can

locate a mismarked cable this will tell

me where the faults are in the cable and

send it back to me

if the cable is

installed correctly i won't get any

signal back right because it's going all

the way if i am hitting a flub it'll

reflect that back to me like sending a

ping and it'll send the error back so i

can see it and i can see oh there's a

problem in the cable and i can get a

general idea of where it is located in

the cable so this is to help me identify

faults in a cable generally you're going

to use it with

less

less like utp and more fiber optics and

larger setups

okay

so now we've talked about cabling tools

including the cable cutter wire stripper

crimper

punch down tool

continuity testers a patch tester

toner probe loopback plug and time

domain reflector let's go back all over

all of these one more time

all right so we started by talking about

cable types and connectors

our twisted pair which comes in utp

that's untwisted unshielded twisted pair

and shielded twisted pair

remember it's twisted to reduce

crosstalk

and emi

generally speaking we're using a 568b

can

connection

if we do the 568a this is called a

straight through by the way

on both sides

568a on one side and b on the other is

what's called a crossover cable

and also remember

we have to use plenum grade in between

walls okay

we talked about a coaxial cable oh and

the other thing i want to mention about

utp and stp

is you're going to see a lot of cat 5

cat6

and

100 meters is the limit

coaxial cable has a single core

a single copper core

fiber

optics uses light instead of elect

electric

and it also

is broken up into multi-mode

and single mode

remember multi is faster

over shorter distances

and single is slower

over longer distances

then we talked about our cabling tools

including the cable cutter which can

help you literally cut the cord to size

the wire stripper

which removes

the outside insulation

the crimper which literally attaches

the connector

to the cable

the punch down tool

which is used to punch down the

termination points

of cabling

to a 66 or 110 block

continuity testers

which test the cable from one end to the

other

by looking at each

individual pin

the patch tester which is for testing a

cable

a toner probe which helps you locate

a mismarked drop

but when you say drop that means a

network drop

a loopback plug

which tests support

and the time domain reflector which

helps you locate

impedance

or problems

on a cable's path

great so now we've talked about the

physical stuff the hardware stuff let's

get into talking about some of the

software

and uh

protocols that allow networking to

actually occur

[Music]

this networking

ip addressing and configuration

just like you would have no problem uh

finding a friend in a classroom

sometimes networking can be really easy

but what if your friend was located on

the other side of the world instead of

in the same classroom as you in fact

what if that friend was someone you had

never even met before how would you send

them a message well this is where i p

addressing comes into play

ip addressing gives each computer a

unique address on the network that then

it can use in order to

transfer data from one point to the

other over the physical media and

devices we've already talked about in

fact ip addressing is the technology

that allows routing to take place

meaning it allows the internet to

actually be in existence so we're going

to talk about in this video is how i p

addressing works a number you've

probably seen but what exactly it is and

how it's different from something else

called mac addressing we're also going

to talk about how configuration of it

works on a pc

so first we're going to talk about mac

addresses which are also called physical

addresses these are hard wired numbers

that are

in your any device whether it's a

smartphone computer network adapter etc

and these are hardwired from

manufacturing this is different from the

ip address

and tcpip

is the protocol suite that allows ip

addressing to occur so we're going to

talk about tcp in general

we're then going to talk about the ip

address whereas the physical address

might be

a number given to you say your serial

number if you're in the military or

social security number for people in

america the ip address

is a logical address that's given to you

when you sign onto the network when you

leave the network it's taken away in

some instances and so um the

routers and servers and all the things

out there that are sending data between

one to the next know how to find you

even if they don't know your physical

address which can be hard to determine

they can get back to using an ip address

and we will talk about this

there are two versions of ip currently

out there the older version is called

ipv4 ipb4 this has been sort of the de

facto standard for a very long time and

so we're going to talk about ipv4

and in it

we have things called classes this is

what we call a class full addressing

system and it allows us to know how big

the network is and how many nodes there

are on it or how many computers there

could be on it we're also going to look

at private versus public ip addresses

at home you don't need to have an ip

address that can get you out to the

internet you just need an ip address

that can work you within all the devices

in your

local network so private i p addresses

are used uh in order to allow us to have

ip addresses for every single device in

the world since i would quickly run out

of them otherwise

and that's different from public ip

addresses the ones that go out onto the

internet

we're going to look at something called

a subnet mask the subnet mask determines

what the network name is and what the i

what the node name is

meaning that i have to know what's uh

what country you're in

before i can determine what your serial

number is for instance a phone number

you dial a international or a

country code before you start dialing

the local uh code for the actual country

you're in

there's also something called the

gateway address which is the ip address

of the device

that

is easiest for uh

that you would reach out to first in

case you don't know where else to turn

there's also something called dns i

think we've talked about this domain

name service this is what translates

google.com or yahoo.com or cnn.com or

any of these into an actual number so

that you don't have to remember the

number you just have to remember the

name so instead of me calling you

for instance by your

uh

phone number if i'm looking on my phone

i don't have to remember your phone

number i can simply remember your name

and my phone will

dial your phone number for me

we're also going to look at something

because this is a good place for it

called the hosts file which is sort of a

local dns

server on your computer file that

contains all of these ip addresses and

the um

domain names that they represent uh it

was used a lot more in older systems and

we'll talk about that then we're going

to briefly go over ipv version 6 the

newest ip version

how we write it out what are called the

truncation rules how we write this into

a shorter form such it is a much larger

number it's much harder to write out

we're going to look at in both cases

what are called dynamic versus static ip

addresses whether they are signed to you

through what's called a

dhcp server

when you log on or whether you are

assigned it by say your administrator

and given an ip address that never

changes especially for large devices

like servers or um web

web servers

something called an apipa address every

device needs an ip address they come

with a mac address automatically but

they need to have an ip address

in order to work and so if it cannot

find an ip address it will self assign

itself an ip address

we also need to talk about something

called the local host in both cases in

both ips

there is a way to ping yourself or to

say hi to yourself to make sure that

everything is set up correctly this is

called the local host and we'll talk

about that

we're also going to talk about how to

configure tcp in windows

let's start talking about a mac address

this is also called the physical address

of a device and every device adapter

every thing on network has one of these

if you have your computer has four

different network adapters a wireless

one a bluetooth uh and a hardwired then

you're gonna have uh three or four

um ip addresses uh mac addresses excuse

me physical addresses one for each

device

it is a unique identifier that allows

other devices to locate you

especially now and this is how

networking works

every device has a mac address that's

its name it cannot be changed it can be

changed in more advanced networking

settings but for our purposes it cannot

be changed it is physical it is

hardwired on and so other devices can

locate you the problem becomes how do i

locate a mac address on the other side

of the world that's why we start having

ip addresses

this is similar to a social security

number given to us citizens or a serial

number given to members of the military

it will never change and will always

remain the same and always be a way to

name you

you can change for instance your name my

name is josh i could go to the court and

have that changed but my social security

number in the eyes of the law will

always remember remain the same that way

the u.s can always keep tabs on me

it is the mac address a hexadecimal

number hexadecimal means that a decimal

number

if we think about this

and we will talk about this more in

depth in network plus a decimal number

has zero to nine in every digit you can

have zero one two three four five six

seven eight nine that's ten

possibilities

that's des like or dec

uh which is a root for ten

a hexadecimal number on the other hand

has 16 possibilities 0 through 9 we

already talked about those 10 and a b c

d e f

so in every

space where there could be a number it

can be either

any hexadecimal number and therefore you

have 16 possibilities

the hexadecimal number is divided into

six groups of two characters each and it

might look

a little something

like this

so

i have

six groups one two three four five six

of two characters each this gives me by

the way 48 bits

of information

which by the way if we break that up it

would be six

bytes

because 48 goes into eight

eight goes into 48 rather six times so

this is six bytes

48 bits just to give you an idea of how

large it is

it is hardwired onto an adapter meaning

the adapter when you purchase it has a

hexadecimal

physical address given to it

generally speaking the first three

numbers in this hexadecimal

are the manufacturer

meaning that

you could actually look up these numbers

and determine what manufacturer made the

device

whereas

these last numbers

are at the

manufacturer's discretion this is for

their device so so they can keep this is

where they can change stuff

okay if i have more than one ip address

on the same network i'm going to have a

problem since that's

how things are going to communicate

and so it's very important that every

device have a unique

mac address

all right so now you've been introduced

to mac addresses and let me just show

you

real quickly i'm going to go over to my

windows box

so here i already have the command line

open

i'm going to clear the screen

and if i was to do what's called

ipconfig all which is a command we'll

talk about

you'll see

that every device

has one of these mac addresses

and specifically if i go up here and

look at my ethernet adapter that's

what's giving me out to the internet

right now

you'll notice that here is my

physical address my mac address for this

device and i could literally look up

zero zero zero c two nine and find the

mac address

company the company that that mac

address has been assigned to

all right so let's talk about tcp

this stands for transmission protocol

sorry transmission control protocol

internet protocol it is what allows us

to take those mac addresses you imagine

i have millions of mac addresses and

they're on networks

if you imagine i have each of these

circles represents a network

and i have to

hop

from a

to b

there's really very little way

for this guy

a to know what the mac address is of b

or even if it does know the mac address

it doesn't know where to find it and so

that's why ip addressing comes in

it is a suite of standards that allows

for end-to-end connectivity in other

words from a

to b

it specifies how the data should be

formatted

addressed

transmitted routed and received in other

words

how i formulate the data into a packet

how i address it using an ip address so

i can find what i'm looking for

then how i transmit it over the media

over my cat5 cabling

how it is routed

between all of these different hops

and then how it's received by computer b

before it's all sent back the other way

it allows for wide area networking and

the internet

mac addresses as i think we've talked

about

and using switches

only allow for local area networks

a switch

this is a switch and all the computers

are hooked up to it

and a wants to talk to b a can say hey

i'm looking for mac address whatever and

the switch says oh i know who owns that

mac address because they're connected to

me

however the problem is a switch doesn't

know

let's if

if they're not connected directly to

this computer they don't know the mac

address and so that's why we need ip

addresses and routers which can deal

with ip addresses

this overcomes the limits of mac

addresses and the way it does that is by

signing each device an ip address

so

instead of just giving you

your social security number now you also

have

a physical address so

you might live someplace in the world

but unless i know the address where to

send that that piece of mail it's not

going to reach you

okay so let's talk about ip addresses

this is the unique assigned number of

your computer on the network

and it's divided into two parts this is

important just like a phone number if

i'm gonna dial a phone number the first

thing i need to do is determine where

the phone what where in the world the

phone number is gonna be sent

so there's the network portion which

tells the computer if we're using the

telephone analogy

which country

to go to

then the next one the host portion is

the individual number of the computer

this then tells it where in the country

to find the user

so if i'm dialing a phone number in the

united states the international code is

one

and then the phone system knows oh i'm

reaching out to someone in the united

states then you can dial the rest of the

phone number which reaches the

individual person in that country but

without

this universal international code it

can't it doesn't know where to send the

phone number

so there are two i versions of ip

addressing which you need to be familiar

ipv4 and ipv6 ipv4 i'm guessing is the

one you're more familiar with

ipv6 is rather new it's starting to come

of come big and we'll talk about that

and you need to know a couple things

about it for the test

so ipv4 consists of four octets which

are separated by dots and each of those

octets by the way it is a decimal number

okay so zero to nine and each octet's

value can be between 0 and 255.

so an example this would be 175.168.34.6

each octet contains 8 bits and

collectively the whole thing is 32 bits

i could explain why that is and i will

in network plus when we talk about

binary numbers

binary meaning instead of 10 options for

every space i only have two zero

and one

but each octet contains eight bits and

so collectively this entire number

is 32 bits big

there are approximately therefore 4

billion total theoretical addresses

which sounds like a lot but if you think

about it we have what seven to eight

billion people in the world

and if only a small fraction of those

let's say one million uh sorry one

billion perhaps are using computers then

we have to make sure all every one of

those people only has one ip address and

then what happens

with all of the

companies that have multiple so you can

see where we're having a problem hence

the reason we needed to have a new

version of ip addressing but there have

been

some things we've done to overcome this

so one of the things

is we've introduced as i mentioned ipv6

the other thing we've done is divided

these into what we call classes

a class determines based on the first

octet

so if i have a lot of you guys have this

one

okay you know that this is located in

class c

it then tells you

because of the class

where the network id and where the node

id separate and the subnet address the

subnet mask is going to help with this

too we'll talk about that in a second

so if i have a class a address i can

have up to 128 networks that's because i

only have

between one

that's because if we look right here i

have between 0 and 127 to add there

with class b and by the way the network

id would mean that this is that would

class a would mean this is the network

id

and the rest of this is the node id

i can have up to like six over 16

million

addresses on that on each of those

networks

if i start getting to

a class b

which might be

129 dot i don't know 50.2.14.

then

this is my network

and these are my nodes so i can have up

to 16 384

network ids

or networks

and on those networks i can have up to

65 536 addresses per network so this is

the amount of computers or devices i

could have

with a class c

we extend it even more

and by the way i

incorrectly wrote this one this wouldn't

192 would never have worked there

let me just erase everything to make

this easier

in this case

my network id

consists of this these three as a result

because i have more space for networks i

can have

over 2 million networks

however i only have the possibility of

256

nodes on that network so these are what

we call classes you want to memorize

this for the exam just memorize these

for the first octet

if the first octet comes in and it's

let's say 16 you know that's a class a

if it's between 128 191

then you know it's a class b etc etc

okay so let's talk about

these private addresses

addresses that are private

are not displayed directly on the

internet and they're not forwarded by

routers meaning that they stay only on a

local network

so when they reach a router the router

will say hey i'm actually not available

to

um

to forward this on

okay so these are used within a private

network that's because i can have then

ten thousand

twenty thousand fifty thousand nodes on

my network

but i don't have to deal with all of

those computers out on the world wide

web out on the internet instead what you

do is you use one ip address that all of

those internally share but inside of the

network they can all talk to each other

so this is what we call a private

network a gateway device then uses

something called network address

translation or nat something that is on

a soho router

to allow all nodes in the private

network to share one public ip address

that's one of the techniques we use to

get around the limit of ip addresses

there are three private ip address

ranges that you need to be aware of

10.0.0.0 through 10.255 to 255 to 255.

it's a class a so again this is the

network these are the nodes a lot of

people use these nowadays because look

at all the possibilities i have for

nodes

then there's a class b version

172.16.whatever

okay

by the way that's 172.16 through 172.31

that's a class b limiting it class b and

then finally the one you might all be

familiar with i'm just going to erase

all this 192.168.

okay and that is a class c

these are the private network ranges i

would memorize these for the test

they're going to ask you which of the

following is a private ip address

okay

now classes by themselves allow us to do

some stuff and they tell you

more or less where the network id and

the node id end but a subnet mask adds

another layer it allows us to sort of

subdivide out those ip addresses this is

getting very complicated and that's

because this is going to be covered a

lot more in depth on the network plus

exam but for a plus i'm just trying to

cover the terms that you need to know so

if a little this is going over your head

that's okay

this divides the network into two or

more networks

so basically if i have one ip address it

allows me by using an additional ip

address

to create two networks out of one ip

address it's a little confusing

and until we talk about the

math behind it i don't think it'll make

a lot of sense but just realize that a

subnet mask divides one network one ip

address into two separate networks okay

what it does is it divides or defines

the portion of the ip address which is

the network number and which is the

individual host number so whereas we

know

a

10.1.15.63 is a class a meaning that i

know that this is where things divide i

can actually divide this up even further

using subnetting

and then once i do that i need to

add a subnet address

to tell me

which part

belongs to the network and which part

belongs to the node this is just how i p

addresses have developed

when we get to ibv6 we've done away with

all this confusion

the defaults for each class of networks

are

255.0.0.0 for a class a

255.255

for class b and 255.255 to 255 for a

class c so you see by the way the

the classes recurring here

okay so again

a

only the first octet

b

two octets c

three octets

finally we have to talk about this thing

called the gateway address this is the

ip address of a host

that enables access to the internet and

other networks

so it's basically telling you or telling

the computer where can i go if i don't

know where to find a network well you

can go to the gateway address

the ip address of the gateway should

always be on the same network as the

computer connecting to it and if i take

you over to my windows 7 machine

we've already done this command you'll

see

the default gateway

10.0.0.1

and the ip address is 10.0.0.166.

so this computer is going to say hey i

don't know where to go to find this

person

i'm going to go to my gateway and

they're going to tell me

in most home and soho setups the soho

router is also the gateway address so

we've talked about the soho router

right it's not only offering dhcp

which i think we've discussed and we'll

discuss again

it's also a gateway

it's an access point

it's a router

it also provides that network address

translation we mentioned which allows

the sharing of one ip address to many uh

to many computers on a network and i

will discuss that a little more in depth

as well

finally we have the dns server the dns

stands for domain name system and we'll

talk about this again it translates

between an ip address and a domain name

in other words google.com to this number

that way i don't have to remember the

number i can just say hey

google.com and this it takes care of

everything for me

the dns server is the ip address of the

host that takes care of domain name

translation to ip and forwards that

information back to your computer

again

if we go over here

you see

dns server 10.0.0.1 it's the same as my

gateway in a soho setup that's generally

going to be the case

once your computer knows the ip address

of a website then it starts to transmit

uh and receive data

so it needs the dns server to tell it

what the ip address is so then it can do

the rest of its work

before i get into hosts file i just want

to talk about network address

translation which i feel i've been

remiss in explaining

i have a switch here

and i have let's say

six computers connected to it and we

will say this is a

10.0.0.x network

so this is

10.0.0.5

10

15

20

25

30.

then

this hooks up to a router

the router

let's say is 10.0.0.1

that's on the private end

publicly when it goes out to the

internet

it also has an ip address so that it can

talk to other devices on the internet

remember this is private

so the router is not going to send that

information out to the network that's

the internet because other people share

the same private ip address so it might

have

26.15.8.

remember this is a class a address

so what happens is it allows

all the computers in here network

address translation

allows all the computers

in the network using this private ip

address to share

a public ip address this is how

i p addressing has gotten away with all

the stuff it's gotten away with and

while it's still in use

a host file is similar to the dns but

it's located on your computer

so it has a listing of ip addresses

like google

and the names that they apply to so

whatever that was 775 etc etc etc

and it's just a list it's like a text

file

this is where it's located

always

and

if we go back into windows

and i go into c

windows

system 32

drivers

etc there's my host file

and if i open it

with notepad

you can see

here is the beginnings of the host file

now the reason the host file used to be

used

is

on dial-up network if i had to go to my

domain name service server my dns server

then i was having to go quite a long way

before i could get back and start

transmitting data so what it would do is

save some of the common

ip addresses to your computer so that

way you didn't have to go out to the dns

server

by the way if you want to have fun with

someone

go ahead and type in a different ip

address and save that

now when someone types in google.com

it'll go to this ip address which is

called the loopback address we'll talk

about instead of out to the network

i'm not going to save this

it's like a text file with domain names

and i p addresses so as you saw i opened

it up in notepad it is a text file

you can download a host file from the

internet by the way that will break the

dns for malicious sites so what it does

is just like i wrote google.com127

whatever it'll take

the

names of

malicious sites and it'll address them

to

ip addresses generally on your own

computer that way when a virus tries to

get out to the network to reach its

server it doesn't nothing happens and so

you can download a host file you could

install on your computer that would

actually do this for you

okay so we've talked about a lot so far

let's go ahead and review where we're at

first we talked about mac addresses

these are the physical addresses sort of

like

a name you were born with or given a

number that you could never change this

is hardwired onto the device and cannot

be changed it can be actually spoofed

just like anything in electronics which

means that you can pretend you have a

mac address that you don't actually have

but it cannot be changed

tcpip which allows for routing

over the internet it is the protocol

suite that actually allows this to occur

i p address which is the address that is

given

to every device okay

it is what allows tcpip to work and it

works by actually uh sort of

circumventing the physical address

still used in switches but it is used by

routers and so it allows the internet to

occur

then we talked about ipv4

which is a 32-bit ip address

address

right broken up into

four sections each section

0 to 255.

then we talked about the classes

remember class a

b

and c

and you need to remember that table that

i showed you on the previous page

private versus public ip addresses

remember those 192.168.

the tens

and those

172.16 through i think it was 35.

we talked about the subnet mask

which divides

the network and the node id

the gateway address

which is

where the computer first looks

dns or the domain name service

which

translates

names

to ip address and there's a server

and then the hosts file

which is a local similar to a local dns

all right so now let's talk about ipv6

ipv version 6 is assigned was designed

rather to meet the inadequacies that

were there in ipv4

it's 128 bits long instead of 32 bits

long that's four times the size so as

opposed to 4 billion addresses possible

we have 340 undecillion

i don't even know how to write that

number out it's so big

so we're hoping that ipv6 will never

fail us

at least in

our lifetimes we won't have to worry

about what happens when we run out of ip

addresses

it also has something called ipsec or ip

security built into it which makes for

more secure communication and it allows

packets to be larger these are called

jumbograms we usually talk about packets

which are this how data is broken up to

be sent over the internet and its

jumbograms

is a larger

packet size

it is comprised of what i call eight

hextets which are each

comprised of four

hexadecimal numbers

so it might look something like this

each hexed at one

two

three

four

five six

seven

eight

and each one

has four numbers

and each

spot

can have up to 16 different choices

the first four and here's one major

difference between ipv4 and ipv6

always there's no classes in ipv6 so

always

these first four are always the network

id

and these last four

are always the node id whereas in ip

addresses for version four we had to use

classes and subnet masks to determine

where the node ended in the network

began

so there's no need for an additional

subnet mask this simplifies things in

some ways even though it looks like a

more complicated number

now writing out that number can get a

little tricky and this is what the most

important thing is about ipv6 for the

exam

full addresses

like the one we just saw can be

truncated using true rules truncated

means made shorter

the first is you can relieve any leading

zeros and four zeros in a row become one

single zero

so

the next rule is that one consecutive

group of zeros only one

become a double colon

so this can only be done once

and that's because i'll show you in a

minute but it's because when i'm

rebuilding the iphone i won't know uh

which is the network and which is the

node

so let's look at this one for example

we

have our network note id and our node id

if we take the first rule remove leading

zeros

this is what we get

because all of these zeros can be

removed and we're just left with zero

all of these zeros can be removed to be

left with eighty-one

all of these zeros can be removed so

then zero

etc

and so on

now remember the second rule

one consecutive group of zeros becomes a

double colon

so where are my consecutive zeros

right here

and if i

if i uh

truncate those consecutive groups of

zeros to a double colon

this is what i get

so now instead of writing out this whole

thing let me erase all this you can see

the difference

i can write it out like this

now let's say

just for the sake of argument

that

right here this these are all zeros um

no let's actually say that for the sake

of argument this one is all zeros so i'm

just going to write this out here

fe 80

0 because we can truncate right 0

0 i'm sorry we don't have to write the 0

down 8 1

1 a 1 0.

now because we could

truncate

consecutive zeros to a double colon we

have another set of zeros here

now here's the reason we can't truncate

them both

i know i'm missing because i have one

two three i know i'm missing five sets

of zeros

so do i put two sets here and three here

or do i put three here and two there you

see if i allow two of these to be

joined then i don't know how to rebuild

this back to this so i i'm only allowed

to do this once that's the reason for

this either way remember this rule

because this is going to pop up in the

exam both of these again

you can remove leading zeros

and any zeros just become a single zero

and you can truncate consecutive zeros

into a double colon

now in either case whether you're using

ipv6 or ipv4

dynamic ip addressing means the ip

address and the subnet

and the gateway and the dns server are

assigned automatically by what's called

a dhcp server

so your computer wakes up and it says

hey i need an ip address

and a dhcp server on the network says oh

no problem i got you covered

and it assigns an ip address to the

computer

now this is different this is called

dynamic addressing and the reason it's

dynamic is the ip address can change

depending on when it boots up onto the

network and it requires a lot less work

this is what we generally want because i

don't have to configure the computer in

any specific way i can just boot it up

and it's ready to go

many soho routers have a dhcp server

built in so again another thing this

soho router does it's a network address

translation it does dhcp it does routing

it does all this cool stuff that's why

those are such neat devices

this is common for most clients so in

most situations you're going to want to

do dynamic ip addressing which means

using a dhcp server

static ip addressing on the other hand

has to be manually assigned by an

administrator

the reason you might want to do this

is if you have a server or printer or

some device like your router or your

gateway that you need to know where it

is at all times i can't risk

waking up the computer and having it be

given an ip address that i can't find

like google's website we always want to

make sure it's the same spot it's always

the same place we can't afford to have

it move around

so in this case

let's say i'm running dhcp

and i'm getting a dynamic ip address and

i wake up my computer and it goes in the

network and it can't find an ip address

well then we have to deal with what's

something called the automatic private

ip addressing or a pipa

this is if the computer or the node the

printer whatever it is cannot find a

dhcp server to give it an ip address it

will assign itself its own ip address

and this is called an ipa address it

will always and a pipa address will

always be

this okay it'll always be

169.254. something that's something

in this case if you get an apipa address

it means the network is not working the

computer cannot reach a dhcp server

therefore something is wrong

in other words um it doesn't have a real

ip address that will be allowed to

access network service services so it'll

give itself its own ip address but it's

not actually able to do anything with

that ip address

in this case if you're getting an ip

address

then you want to check connections

adapter your driver your dhcp server you

need to check everything because for

some reason the computer's not reaching

out to that dhcp server or in your soho

router it's not uh if you have a small

office home office it's not reaching the

router okay and so it's not actually

getting out to the network at all it's

not working

the network is in effect down it's

broken

in ipv6

this is the apipa address

it's

fe80

and then all

leadings the followings after that are

all zeros you don't need to know this

for the test i'm just mentioning it so

you know that there is an ipv6

address and this is what it is

finally i want to talk about this thing

called the local host

in ipv version 4 the local host ip

address is called 127.0.0.1

this is

the node on which you're currently

working in other words if i ping or i

sent out or i looked for this ip address

on the network it's going to be me it's

always me if i'm on a computer and i

look for this ip address it's always

going to find me

okay

in ipv version 6 this is something

different but this is used for like

loopback tasks tests i want to make sure

tcp is working properly so what i can do

is ping

which is a feature we'll look at in one

of the later videos i can look for this

ip address and if it comes back

correctly then i know tcpip is working

on my computer correctly

in ipv6 by the way

it's this right or

written shortly that

so it's just one all the way at the end

all right let's talk about tcp

configuration briefly

to get to tcpip configuration windows 7

you want to go to the control panel

networking internet and the network and

sharing center you'll see something

you'll right-click on your network

connection

you go to properties and you're brought

to this box right here

then you can see right down here

you have internet protocol version 6 and

internet protocol version 4 ipv4 ipv6

you can select the

change adapter setting link

which is also

in the network sharing if you don't want

to right click go to properties there's

another button change adapter settings

and windows vista this is called manage

my network connections link

and then you right click on the local

area connection icon select properties

and here you are

okay let me show you what that looks

like since i have a feeling that was a

little confusing

all right so here i am on my computer

i'm going to go to the control panel

network and sharing center

change advanced sorry change adapter

settings now i'm here both my adapters i

have a bluetooth adapter and a local

area network connection i can right

click go to properties

and now

i can start to assign

figure out the properties for ip

addressing

notice here it said obtain ip address

automatically from a dhcp server obtain

a dns server automatically okay if i

wanted to do a static ip address i would

tell it what it's using

in xp it's it's similar i'm just going

to go through this you go to network and

internet connections then you're

automatically on the network connections

panel you right click on the local area

connection or whichever one it is and

you go to properties it's basically the

same thing i just wanted to outline this

here the biggest difference

really

is this right here okay

and again you're gonna see the same

internet protocol version four you will

not see in our ipv6 in windows xp

so you hit properties and you're there

same way as we just saw

once we're in the tcp configuration

which i just showed you

you want to note this box right here

validate settings upon exit if i set

static ip addresses then checking this

box will make sure that they're working

when i close out of this window

okay

because obviously it's not getting its

information from another server you're

putting it in so you need to make sure

it's working properly

if the ip properties dialog box is set

to obtain an ip address automatically

you'll also have this alternate

configuration tab which allow you to set

up a second ip configuration for

instance if you work from home and you

work at an office that'll let you have

two different settings and if we go over

to windows 7 real quickly and again here

i am properties

and go to alternate configuration here

it's telling me automatic

although i can configure it as well

okay

so now we've talked about ipv6 we looked

at the truncation rules

dynamic versus static ips apipa or

self-assigned

addressing

local host id ip addresses and we looked

at windows configuration let's go over

all this again first we have the mac

address this is the physical address

hardwired onto the computer

tcp which allows routing it allows the

internet

the ip address

which is a unique

network id

it's assigned

okay either by the administrator or by a

dhcp server

ipv4

has four

octets

of 0 to 255 each

then we looked at classes the class a

b

and c remember that table we looked at

pri which you need to memorize memorize

these classes we'll get at least one

question on the test about it private

versus public there are three sets of

private ip addresses that will not work

on the internet those are those 10

dot x that exit x 172.16.x.x

and the 192.168.x.x

the subnet mask

which

differentiates the node from the network

id

the gateway address which is

where the computer goes first the dns

server

which translates ip

to names

the hosts file which is sort of a text

file that does this for us

then we looked at ip version 6 which is

128 bits

it is eight what i called hextechs

of four characters each

each

a hexadecimal number

we look at the truncation rules there

were two of them

the first was removing leading zeros

and the second was

compress

consecutive sets of zero

then we looked at dynamic versus static

in most cases we want dynamic but that

requires what's called a dhcp server a

static must be assigned by a user or

administrator a people or that

self-assigned ip address

automatic

private ip address if the

dhcp server isn't around then i'm going

to self-assign myself in a pipa address

the local host remember that's 127.0.0.1

or

this and ipv6 that's me always me that's

like saying me myself and i okay and

then the windows configuration

basically you can right

click and then go to properties

sort of the shortcut

but it's in that network and sharing

center in

windows 7 vista

all right

very complex complicated

discussion to be having and when we talk

about network plus it'll get a little

more easier to understand

[Music]

networking tcp ports and protocols

tcp was revolutionary in that it allowed

routing and it allowed us to start

communicating data over long distances

because uh it allowed for different

routers to sort of

send that data onto another router and

so on and so forth until it went to

another server and then back to you

however there were other protocols that

allow us to do the bulk of what we're

doing over that tcp so what we're going

to talk about are some of those

protocols that you need to know for the

a plus exam

that allow services to occur such as

browsing the internet sending email

tcp enabled them to work on top of them

but we still have

protocols that use these technologies in

order to make it all work the way we

want and then we're going to talk about

ports involved very heavily in this

discussion because there are certain

ports you need to know for the exam and

ports are the logical end point of one

of these protocols so

when a

when a data packet reaches

a computer it needs to know what to do

at that point where do i go who am i

looking for and that's where the port

comes in because it can say oh i'm

looking for port 25 on this computer for

instance and that'll tell the computer

what it is this data packet is meant to

do so we're going to talk about those

and there's a lot of text in this one so

i want you to pay careful attention i'm

going to point out what you need to know

okay and some of these you might know so

first we're going to start with talking

generally about ports and what they are

there are two types of ports

every port number there are two types

there's tcp and there's udp we're going

to talk about the difference between

them although you won't have to

necessarily recognize whether something

is a tcp or udp port for the exam then

we're going to look at several tcp

protocols some of these you've probably

heard of and for each of them you need

to know the port that it's by default

given

or that it works over so we're going to

talk about ftp which is 20 and 21

ssh or the secure shell

which is 22

telnet which is 23

smtp allowing us to send emails 25

dns what allows us to browse the

internet because it changes google.com

into an ip address number that's 53.

http which is the protocol allowing us

to browse the internet

pop3 uh one of the protocols that allow

us allows us to receive

uh emails

imap which is another protocol for

receiving emails although works slightly

differently and is taken

more

dominance in the field

https a secure

uh

a secure rendition of http that allows

you to search the internet

rdp finally remote desktop protocol

which we have looked at when we were

talking about windows allows us to

remote into a computer then there are

some additional protocols that you don't

need to know the ports for and by the

way i've been writing these ports

out the port numbers just because i want

to keep repeating them and i will repeat

them later and then i'll give you a

table as well and some of these

additional protocols are dhcp what we've

discussed allows you to allows a server

to randomly not randomly excuse me

allows a server to

assign an ip address to a computer snmp

used for managing devices smb which is

what allows you to share out printers

and files and ldap which is our

directory protocol allows you to log in

using a username and password for

instance

all right

so let's start talking about tcp ports

in general

in a sense a port is the logical end

point of a look of a connection so we're

not talking about a physical port

that would be sort of like the

connection okay what we're talking about

is a

logical port a logical endpoint of a

connection so if i have an ip address

192.168.1.120

there will be a colon and then it will

have a port colon80 which is telling the

computer that this data packet is meant

for

something on port 80 which turns out to

be http or web browsing

the ip address defines the node but the

port identifies what to do with that

information once it reaches the ip

address again

getting to the computer is one thing

knowing what to do with it once it gets

there is a whole other

in tcp ports are either what we call

connection oriented tcp or

connectionless

udp we'll talk about what the difference

is between those two but just remember

connection oriented is tcp connection

less is udp

for two computers to communicate they

both have to use the same protocol which

generally dictates which port is open on

the network adapter so

i know for my firewall that i have to

open port 80 to allow web browsing if

port 80 is closed from traffic coming in

i'm not going to be able to browse so it

allows us to use a sort of short of hand

so that way everyone in the world knows

where they're going to be communicating

through

there are three ranges of ports

ports 0 through 1023 which most of the

port numbers we're going to learn fall

in are what are called well-known ports

these are sort of industry standard

ports they do not change

1024 through

49151 we're going to see one in this

range are registered ports these are

literally registered with an

international organization

say quicken

would want to register a port so they

can use it with their software and

finally we have what are called

experimental ports these are private

they cannot be registered they can only

be used in in a private realm not

outside not publicly over the internet

necessarily okay

so first tcp this stands for

transmission

control protocol and remember that

control

this is known as a connection oriented

session

so any any port that's any tcp port is

connection oriented this means that

every packet that is sent is checked for

delivery so like a delivery confirmation

when you're sending something through

snail mail it doesn't just send it and

then make and then hope it gets there it

sends it and then it checks that it

definitely got there

if the receiving computer doesn't

receive the packet

it it uh it knows

because it's tcp and then it can ask for

the packet to be sent again so in this

way tcp is going to make sure that you

get all the data you got and if you

didn't get it then it's going to say hey

i didn't get this packet can you please

resend to make sure that you do get it

so it's not going to leave any gaps in

the data

all right no one packet is left behind

udp on the other hand stands for user

datagrain protocol

and a datagram by the way is a is a sort

of another name for a packet

these are known as connection less

sessions basically if the packet is

dropped we're not going to ask for it

again i'm going to let it go so whereas

tcp is going to say hey i didn't get a

packet udp is going to say hey don't

worry about it you lost a packet but i'm

not going to need it

this is like sending mail over snail

mail but not getting a delivery

confirmation or not having someone call

you so you don't know that it got there

you're just sort of hoping that it got

there

this is used mostly in streaming media

the reason being if some data doesn't

get there then i have a skip in the

music but i want it to keep going i

don't want to have to send for more and

then i have to pause the music while the

music comes it doesn't work out that way

so udp is good in situations where i

don't need to make sure i got all the

information

so music video etc these are certain

instances we're probably going to be

using udp ports rather than

tcp ports

all right let's talk about some of the

protocols

that you need to know for the exam and

i've chosen the specific ones you're

going to get asked on

first ftp this stands for the file

transfer protocol

for better for a

lack of a better way to say it this

allows computers to transfer files back

and forth so

um when you

when i want to upload some files to

someone i log into their ftp server and

then i can upload files to them and then

they can send files to me most of the

time when we download files we download

it using a slightly different protocol

but ftp was the original protocol used

to send files back and forth

you usually connect using tcp 21.

sometimes you will also use

tcp 20. now notice it is tcp because i

want to make sure if i'm sending you

files you're getting the full file i

also need to make sure that i have an

ftp client software necessary to connect

to an ftp server so you use a program

such as filezilla or cute ftp or one of

these programs you can download for free

off the internet you type in it asks for

the server

and then it'll ask you for a username

and a password and you type that

information and it logs you in sometimes

it'll ask you for report by default it's

either going to be port 20 or more than

likely 21. however

it's important to know that by default

it's going to be these you can always

change them just like almost any of the

ports we're going to talk about

tftp is another one to know about this

is trivial ftp and it uses

udp69 so whereas i'm using a tcp port

here and i wouldn't worry about

memorizing this necessarily but i want

to mention it just in case it comes up

on the exam

trivial ftp uses udp 69. it's not

positive that the data is going to get

there but it doesn't really matter

because this leaves a lot less resources

so in certain instances i might be using

trivial ftp as opposed to regular ftp

there's also a different form of ftp

we'll talk about in just a second

so the secure shell or ssh allows data

to be exchanged between computers on a

secure channel

so

for instance if i'm going to deal with

credit card information i'm going to

want to use secure shell it also offers

a more secure replacement to ftp and

telnet

so if i'm going to connect between two

computers instead of using telnet which

we're going to talk about in a second i

can use the secure shell it creates a

secure user shell over a network for me

to communicate with another computer we

can also use sftp

secure ftp

which is going to run on

this port

which is port 22 so we're going in order

here ftp first then i can use 22.

sfdp is going to use 22 also secure

shells can use 22. a really good

rule of thumb by the way if they ever

ask you which of the following is not

secure or is secure the one with an s in

it is probably secure there's also an

https just like there's an s ftp

all right

telecommunications network is sort of a

a legacy older

um

protocol it stands for telecommunication

network and it provides remote access to

other hosts in the command line so

nowadays when we access computers

remotely we're using a graphical user

interface a gui and we'll generally

connect uh you know by rdp or something

telnet was one you would use the command

line to establish a connection and it

uses tcp 23 okay so again we're going in

order here it's mostly not used anymore

uh because

other

other protocols do do it better frankly

but this is an older form it didn't

encrypt the data the password so the

password would be sent over you know the

network anyone who could sort of pick up

a packet could see it so it wasn't very

secure ssh on the other hand much more

secure so it's used

in a lot more circumstances

so

it's been replaced mostly by ssh

by the way it may still be used to

access some routers and other hosts on

your local network which is the reason

we bring it up

all right

now we're getting into some stuff you

probably have seen a bit of

smtp simple mail transfer protocol this

is what allows you to send email for

better uh for lack of any other

definition

it remember you can remember this if you

want with send mail to people

okay i don't seem to have a problem

remembering just smtp or simple mail

transfer protocol it could be because

i've been doing this for so long

it commonly uses tcp 25 but this must be

a local server

meaning if you are

on uh let's say

verizon provides you your mail server

um

provides you internet access rather you

have to use smtp25

for them for their server if you try

using smtp for google search server it's

not going to work because they're not

local so

25 must be the local server if you're on

you're the hilton

internet because you're at a you're

traveling you must use their server you

can't use your server from home and this

sometimes causes problems when people

travel okay so what you generally do

yeah you have to use your isps

smtp server and in many cases they use

what's called an smtp relay

which allows you to send the email

through someone else's server instead of

a local server such as google and that's

going to use tcp 587

all right so generally speaking if it's

a local server it's tcp 25 but nowadays

a lot of the time they're doing it

through an smtp relay which is tcp 587

and good to remember and to know

domain name system or domain name

service sometimes called used to

translate domain names to i is used

excuse me to translate domain names to

ip addresses so it is going to translate

google.com

into

whatever the ip address is for

uh google

it's uh yeah oh and there it is

it uses udp 53 okay this is not data we

need to worry about i don't want to

spend the extra resources making sure it

gets there so i'm going to use udp a

connection less protocol and it uses 53.

the hypertext transfer protocol

transfers web based materials from the

web server to your web browser so it is

what allows browsing

that's why you always see http colon

slash www dot

uh

yeah

normally it's done in a compressed

format not a secure format so in order

to make it go faster you're you're

working in not a compressed format it's

not secure people could

see what you were browsing if they were

looking in

it uses tcp 80 by default however

sometimes this changes and sometimes

you're going to use more secure

methods of this https which we'll talk

about

in order when you're dealing with say

credit card purchases or something over

the internet

the post office protocol version 3 this

is used by email clients to retrieve

incoming email from a mail server so

what this does is it downloads the mail

to your client and either removes it or

leaves it on the server either way it

doesn't organize anything on the server

so when you read something on your

smartphone it does not show as red on

your computer pop downloads the email

this is an important distinction between

pop and the next one imap it downloads

mail

onto your computer but it does not

organize it so once it downloads it you

don't

it doesn't update the server if you

delete download it and then delete it

it's not necessarily although you can

set this it's not necessarily going to

delete off the server if you want that

which is a little more advanced you're

going to use imap which is the next one

we're going to talk about so nowadays

imap is more prevalent because if i

check it on my iphone i want to make

sure it's checked on my computer

this by the way uses tcp 110 you're

going to want to remember that tcp 110.

uh imap the internet message access

protocol this is an email protocol that

enables messages to remain on the email

server so they can be retrieved from any

location and it supports folders so you

can organize them into folders so

instead of downloading the email onto my

computer i'm caching it onto my computer

i'm creating a copy on my computer that

i can read but every time i do updates

or delete something that change goes

back to the server

so when i read it on my smartphone it

shows as read on my computer when i

delete it on my computer it shows is

deleted on my smartphone

this by default uses tcp 143.

the hypertext transfer protocol secure

we talked about http which works on port

80 okay but https sends and receives

information like http but it's more

secure it has what's called trans

transport layer security tls

which we'll discuss more in security

plus and a little bit in network plus

and this encrypts the information as

it's going through the browser this is

used for credit card trends uh

transactions etc

and if you google browse nowadays you

can use https google.com which you might

want to do if you don't want people

sneaking in looking on your browsing

it uses by default tcp 443

the remote desktop protocol the last

protocol i want to talk about it allows

remote computers to have full remote

control of a pc so it's going to allow

you to log into a windows-based computer

from another computer does not have to

be windows-based you just have to have

the remote desktop client and allow you

to control that computer

users are given limited access to a

remote computer's applications

so

you can't

you don't necessarily have full control

because you're not sitting there so an

administrator can decide how much access

is given

don't forget administrators are always

given full control to a computer and

this is also the same thing although we

would call this remote assistance

this also allows you to invite people to

access and help you on your computer say

your grandmother

this by default uses tcp or udp port

3389

okay because again lag is something we

don't want it's probably going to double

it up

all right i put this port chart on the

right here because these are all the

ones you need to know if you remember

this chart and when you i'm telling you

memorize this chart you'll get i would

say five to ten questions off of this at

least if not more

first thing you do when you walk into

that exam space is write this down on

your brain dump sheet that way you don't

have to think about it you don't have to

recall anything you have all of these

ftp 20 and 21 ssh 22 telnet 23 smtp 25

dns 53 hdp for browsing 80 110 for pop3

imap uh more advanced email 143

https 443 smtp specifically the relay

which i put a star in x2587 and rdp

remote desktop protocol 3389

remember this chart uh i think it should

be on your notes as well

so we've now talked about ports

including connection oriented ports

and connection less ports

we also talked about protocols

ftp the file transfer protocol

ssh the secure shell

telnet

which allows remote access

smtp allows mail sending email sending

dns allows google to

i p address domain name system http

allows web browsing pop3 allows you to

download your email imap allows you to

organize your email https secure http

and rdp remote desktop protocol the only

registered port we're going to learn

remember these ports and you'll be good

to go

now before we finish up this video i

just want to talk about quickly a couple

other protocols that you don't

necessarily know the ports for but will

pop up on the exam and by the way all of

these ports will be repeated on on

security plus and network plus so it's

good to memorize them now

all right dynamic host configuration

protocol we talked about this already

but this automatically assigns ip

address information to hosts such as

computers printers servers routers it'll

automatically assign the ip address if

it's configured to be dynamic not static

and what happens is uh

it not only addresses adds ip address

because that is the main thing in iphs

information but it's also going to give

us our subnet mask

the gateway where the computer goes if

it doesn't know where else to go

and dns servers so all of these are

assigned automatically thanks to dhcp

and remember as well that a soho router

has a dhcp

built in

so it can assign

ip addresses to computers you don't have

to buy another device

and there it is

if the ip address is assigned you cannot

count on it remaining the same although

sometimes it does because you apply for

a lease to an ip address and sometimes

that lease expires once the lease

expires it's no longer good for you

all right so when your computer logs on

again the server the dhcp server is

going to give you a different address

dhcp allows this all to happen the next

one i want to talk about the simple

network management protocol

it's used as a standard for managing and

monitoring devices on the network so the

network management system controls

everything snmp-based and what i mean by

this is it's installed in your computer

which is known as a manager sometimes a

server and the devices to be monitored

are known as managed devices say a

printer or a router or something that's

sending up packets what it can do is the

printer can send out a packet that says

hey i'm out of ink or i'm out of paper

and that is picked up by your manager

the nms and on a big enterprise network

we have one manager that's doing this

and we have lots of devices it's

checking

these include routers switchers

computers printers all of this stuff

uses snmp and can be monitored by it and

in an enterprise setup you can imagine

how much energy this is going to save if

i can centralize all of the management

of all these errors that are coming out

server message blocks provide access to

shared items on the network such as

files and printers smb

which

in

linux talk would be samba

another version of smb allows you to

share files on your network it also

provides authentication so you can make

sure only the people you want are

accessing your files when we talked

about file sharing in windows and we

were able to share out folders or files

this is how we did it it's using smb

server message blocks

finally the last one i want to talk

about is the lightweight directory

access protocol or ldap it's used to

access and maintain distributed

directories of information like used on

microsoft domains so for instance when

you log into your microsoft network at

work it is using an ldap

protocol when you log in that is what

keeps the directory working that's what

allows you to authenticate so microsoft

refers to this as a directory service

ldap is also what's used to have a

global address directory list in

exchange so if i have an email a system

ldap is what allows me to keep sort of a

big address book of everyone in the

system

in other words it allows you to use your

username and password on the network so

ldap really responsible for using your

username and password on the network

that's how i want you to remember it for

purposes of this exam or when you see

the word directory service

so now we've

additionally discussed about dhcp for

dynamic ip addresses snmp for management

smb which allows file sharing and ldap

which allows user names passwords and

directory services let's go back over

these all again we talked about ports

the logical endpoint

of a connection

then we looked at tcp which is

connection oriented

like a delivery confirmation

udp which is

connection less

then we looked at some protocols

ftp uses 20 and 21 it's the file

transfer protocol that allows you to

transfer files

ssh 22 the secure shell

which is used specifically for

securing connections between two

computers and can allow for secure file

transfer as well telnet which allows

remote access to computers

via the command line

smtp

sending email

dns 53 domain name system

which allows google.com to become an ip

address yahoo.com whatever http 80 which

is what's responsible for web browsing

pop3 uses 110 it allows you to download

your email when you receive it imap

which uses 143 as opposed to pop allows

you to organize messages on the server

okay so it's more advanced than pop

https which uses 443

secure browsing

and rdp

remote desktop

as though you're sitting at it

then we also discussed some additional

protocols including dhcp which allows

dynamic ip addressing

snmp which is for management of devices

smb which allows

file sharing and print sharing actually

and ldap which is directory services

basically what allows you to use user

names

and passwords

so now that we've discussed how

everything works logically let's talk

about how you even get out to the

internet in the first place what kind of

services provide you internet access

[Music]

networking internet services

so we've discussed uh the

theoretical ways in which we set up

networks the devices

the way those devices connect through

certain media connectors and cables

we've also talked about

tcp and depth and all the ports

that we require

and in some ways

all the protocols that allow the

internet to work and allow us to do

things on the internet but now let's

talk specifically about how

we are going to get access to the

internet through internet services so

we're going to discuss an isp and what

that is otherwise known as an internet

service

provider

and some of the ways that they provide

us access to the internet which would be

dial-up to the use of a modem

and if you remember

pots or pstn

uh isdn

which was is an older sort of faster

form of dial-up replacement for dial-up

not used as much anymore due to

dsl and cable internet becoming so big

we're also going to look at fiber optics

uh sort of where some of these services

are heading because fiber optics as we

discussed in media offer more speed

we're going to look at satellite what

you saw on that main page

used mostly in rural areas that don't

have access to some of these faster

internet service providers

ymax which is not really around much

anymore thanks to

advances in cellular technology but ymax

which was aimed at

replacing

all of these other hard forms of network

bounded forms

by replacing it with an unbounded

wireless broadband network capability

which has mostly been undone thanks to

cellular and advances in cellular

technology

including 4g lte

lte

replacing ymax so we're going to look at

these and how they provide internet and

just the different options in case they

pop up on the test

so first let's talk about what an

internet service provider is this is an

organization or company that provides

access to the internet through a number

of different media and communication

types plain and simple

this is the organization you pay to

provide you access to the internet

that's the easiest way to to do it

how they provide that access that's a

whole different story

for instance in the united states aol

which some of you might

be familiar with used to provide dial-up

service to a lot of people and then the

you know broadband started taking over

and a lot of people thought oh well now

they don't need um to provide broadband

they're going to provide content well

actually aol still provides gets most of

their money from dial-up services so

they are an isp not just a content

provider so we'll talk about that and

some of the others as well okay so start

with dial up and here we have

a modem

this is still used by millions of people

as i mentioned still aol's main source

of income comes from dial-up because in

a lot of places the phone network is

there again that is pstn or pots which

we'll see again on this slide

but there is no other infrastructure to

lay the foundation for any sort of

broadband network and so having

high-speed network that some of us are

used to is not available and so dial-up

is still the main

uh form used it's very inexpensive

because it uses a pre-existing network

however it is extremely slow

extremely slow and if someone picks up

the phone

uh it drops your connection it's also

just not as reliable as some other

things this is a 14.4 kilobits per

second modem i think the highest they

ever made them

was

kilobits per second that actually worked

at a top range of 53 kilobits per second

if you imagine that compared to the 1.5

or 15 megabits per second we can get

from cable nowadays you can see how much

slower this is working and as a result

don't forget the internet has evolved as

well a lot of stuff has uses more high

graphics it takes a lot more to load

and a lot of companies now aren't

building stuff for modems so it can

really be a pain in the pain to

you know have a dial-up connection as i

mentioned it uses pots or pstn the plain

old telephone service or the public

switch telephone network to provide its

infrastructure because it connects

through a cat 3

rj11 connector

all right still using that twisted pair

that we see with uh cat5 but

now it's using cat3 because this is an

older form

uh it connects via a modem and the other

thing is you have to have software that

builds that supports the modem supports

dialing in most of the time in fact i

would be willing to say 100 of the time

operating systems are now building that

into their um

into the services that they provide so

that's dial up older dialing up over

pots or pstn

all right isdn or the integrated

services digital network this was a

digital technology and remember potts

analog

which was developed to combat the

limitations of the of the pstn or public

switch telephone network

it can send data

you can talk on the phone and you can

fax all on the same line so this was a

precursor

to dsl which is going to sort of split

the signal in a different way

it's not used as as often as cable

internet or fiber optic services but

some still will use isdn for fault

tolerant secondary connections

you do have a direct line to your

telephony service unlike dsl which is uh

using a slightly different um

could be having a shared line or could

have a a line that is dedicated but a

lot of times you will have this because

it's old's legacy and it's now for fault

tolerance and for additional internet

connections not for your primary

um it there are two different types of

isdn service you don't worry about

knowing these but i'm going to mention

them anyway so that you have the

knowledge there's the bir bri excuse me

which is the basic rate isdn which got

up to 128 kilobits per second again

maybe twice as fast as a regular modem

and it ran on a standard telephone wire

which was why it was so wonderful

the primary rate isdn bumped that speed

up quite a bit

but it ran on what's called a t1 circuit

which is a dedicated different type of

line has to be has to be run

specifically to your organization

again we saw these a lot 15 20 years ago

when uh big companies had broadband

internet but most of us at home still

had dial up nowadays isdn is sort of on

the outs it does require a special

device to negotiate between the analog

and digital in your home um

however you would be provided that by

the telephony service okay so just good

to know about isdn don't worry about

really learning it in depth because i

doubt you're going to see it on the test

in in

in too much depth

next is the dslr digital subscriber line

this builds on dial-up by providing a

digital data transmission over a phone

line at high speeds so it's sort of

building on where isdn left off

the dsl modem which is this thing

connects to a phone line

and then it has an adapter so if you can

imagine this goes to the phone line

and then there's another adapter that

connects it to an rj45

and then what you can do is connect this

to a soho router

just like you do with your cable modem

and that allows you now to share with uh

all of the computers in your home

network

uh there are two different types the

first is a dsl or asymmetrical digital

subscriber line this can run on your

home telephone line but it's not as fast

as cable is going to be

on the other hand we have symmetrical

digital subscriber line which is

installed

as a separate line it's symmetrical to

the original line it's more expensive

but the data transfer rates are much

higher than on an a dsl again i would

not worry too much about these

distinctions

a dsl is what you're generally going to

have in your home

okay and sdsl is what we might see in a

business

because you can get higher speeds the

best thing about this is it's a little

more dedicated because it is installed

as a separate line so you're not sharing

anything with anyone else this is a

separate line dedicated to you into your

network

by the way the upload and download speed

are symmetrical

on sdsl which means that you're

basically

you're sharing the same thing a dslr

asymmetrical so you can generally

download faster than you can upload and

when we say download that's going to

your

computer whereas an upload is from your

computer okay

symmetrical means that you're getting

the same speeds on both

all right cable internet broadband cable

it's used for internet cable and tv

um it offers high higher speeds than dsl

you can start it sort of five to 15

megabits per second sometimes they have

these booster systems that bump it up to

like 50 megabits per second what that

does is simply it gives you more

of the bandwidth and takes some from

your neighbors

uh it uses coaxial copper cabling back

here which then you can see this is the

cat5 wire

and then you can probably see right here

looks like the

cable the coaxial okay so you have a cap

a coaxial going in and a cat5 going out

by the way the difference between dsl is

uh

with cable you're sharing your bandwidth

so if you have up to 15 megabits per

second you're sharing that with your

neighbors so if 10 of your neighbors are

on at any one time then you're sharing

with 10 of your neighbors as opposed to

dsl which is direct you're not sharing

with the neighbors in the same way

fiber optics it's sort of getting a lot

faster now i'm sorry a lot more popular

obviously it runs much higher data

transfer than

cable does and dsl it's not as

widespread as dsl and standard cable

because you need to make upgrades in

infrastructure and in some cases the

companies just haven't done that yet a

great example by the way of this would

be like fios is a great example of a

of a um

fiber optic

setup and what they're doing here by the

way is this is on the outside there is a

fiber optic connection coming in and

then um

it is divided up and sent out

in a

connection

in a a

cat5 connection

so verizon fios is sort of the best

example of this again it's not it's not

point to point fiber optics you're not

getting fiber optics everywhere what

you're doing is the fiber optics is in

the main central area and then they're

using copper cabling that's already

pre-existing to get that to your home so

you're not getting the full benefits of

the fiber optics i just want to make

that clear you're getting

half of the benefits

satellite uses this antenna or a

satellite dish to connect via line of

sight so you this has to be basically

within a couple degrees of the of

satellite up in the

um

up in the sky it's usually used in

places where you cannot get internet

uh from dial-up or from landline access

so it's really if you're in the middle

of the woods or the middle of the desert

or something then you're probably going

to want to go to satellite internet

it's

uses basically what happens is this

antenna

or a satellite dish

connects with a

satellite that is orbiting around the

world 22 000 miles above earth

and

these speeds are generally just as fast

as today as you know cable dsl the

reason we don't use them generally

is

it's hard to get

upload and download at the same time so

generally speaking you might have to

have a separate connection for your

uploads because this is getting data

down

from the satellite but you can't really

send it back to the satellite that would

make

that might be a little ridiculous so

sometimes you have to have a separate

landline to feed out

to the server and then that tells it

what to send down to you uh the other

reason is it's much more expensive and

it's res

it has a lot more susceptibility to sort

of changes in weather

it's also open to electrical natural

interference it's also the highest

latency of any technology i mean it's

going to be the slow it can have the

slowest

or the most opposition to that data

coming towards you

all right worldwide interoperability for

microwave access otherwise known as ymax

this is a wireless technology that

offers high-speed connections similar to

satellite except it doesn't require a

line of sight

if you've heard of 4g

one of the 4g types is a ymax 4g

nowadays lte has sort of taken over at

least in the united states market as the

popular brand but i'm mentioning wimax

because it it still exists in some areas

it covers a much larger distance than

standard wi-fi so instead of having

wi-fi which is going to be what a

certain amount of meters

this can get up to around 50 kilometers

so you're getting a huge distance

connecting to this and the benefit then

is that you have your own modem on your

laptop or you have your own gateway

device just like a cable modem that you

would put in your home but instead of it

connecting through a cable wire a dsl

connection it connects wirelessly and

then you can feed off that connection

because it's so fast you're not going to

notice a difference and the idea is buy

this instead of a cable modem because

now you can just get all of your

internet

from us and you'll have it no matter

where you are

the issue is it's a little more

expensive and again it hasn't been

marketed so well uh that it's still in

business a lot of the companies that are

we're sort of forcing up wimax and also

it's only available in certain markets

so if you're you travel from your

metropolitan area in new york to

you know some small town in kansas

you're not going to have internet access

so as i said common in urban areas and

it's marketed directly as a a competitor

one of the major

competitors right now trying to market

this as the clear network

saying that they had basically why get

time warner or optical uh or some sort

of cable internet when you can have

internet anywhere you are thanks to this

ymax access

so there it is

finally this is the one that's really

getting uh more popular now is cellular

this provides you access to the internet

from mobile devices and it uses several

different technologies

um gsm cdma gprs edge network the 3g

network 4g network etc now what's the

difference is between this and ymax is

simply the technology that's going on

above it

3g was short for third generation

communications and it enabled mobile

devices to really start getting faster

and faster data speeds over these which

were really much slower then we moved

into 4g which is fourth generation and

that has really created a much faster

and more secure solution so now you

don't have to be as worried about people

sneaking in to get your data if you're

connected to a 4g lte network now and

lte was a direct competitor to ymax now

lte is really winning out so the idea is

instead of getting ymax pay your cell

phone company or your mobile phone

company money

they'll give you extra data and now you

can use these which can become portable

hotspots now right portable hotspot

wi-fi devices

and now you can use that as an access

point connect up to your cellular

network and you're good to go

you can have up to 100 megabits per

second at a moving vehicle to maybe one

gigabit per second when you're

stationary i mean the the speed is

really incredible when you compare that

you're getting one gigabit from

uh a cat6 cable

okay

and 4g devices are available directly

for laptops and tablet computers built

into smartphones you can also buy usb

uh devices that plug into your laptop

and give you cellular internet access in

certain

certain times you can buy a computer

that has the cellular uh

capabilities built in although that has

not been as popular in recent days

because technology has been changing so

fast it's hard for the manufacturers to

keep up

all right so we talked about an isp or

internet

service

provider

we discussed dial-up which uses a modem

over the pots or pstn network we looked

at isdn which was a replacement

for pots pstn it's digital digital

subscriber line

just like the digital subscriber line

excuse me dsl right and uh digital

network

it allowed um

there were two different types the most

basic type allowed about 128 megabits

per second the next one was about 1.5

megabits per second not used so much

anymore been replaced by digital

subscriber lines also digital the most

common is a dsl which stands for

asynchronous

meaning that the upload and download

speeds are not the same

cable internet uses coaxial

the thing here is you're sharing your

bandwidth

with your neighbors

fiber optic again this is using light

or photons

when they talk about fiber optics

they're not talking point to point

what they're talking about is the

infrastructure behind it is now instead

of

copper is now a fiber optic satellite

uses uh a satellite dish

it needs line of sight

and it's usually for rural areas where

they don't have a landline

wimax is like the clear network the idea

is

wireless internet anywhere

it's specifically in urban areas right

now

and it has been competing

with 4g lte

finally we had cellular this is the same

as your mobile phone network

and this is where the market share is

heading

specifically because you can get

internet really anywhere that there's a

cell phone network

great all right so now we've talked

about internet service providers let's

keep

going on by talking about uh some more

networking

um

by talking about uh configuring a

network

and setting it up

[Music]

networking network setup and

configuration

before we get into troubleshooting a

network and using all these

troubleshooting tools that we have to

know for the a plus exam we need to talk

about setting up the network and

configuring it for a specific

environment

in this lesson we're specifically going

to talk about soho environments or small

office home office which deal of course

with the soho router and so the first

part of this video is going to deal

specifically with considerations that

deal with that soho router we're then

also going to talk about setting up and

configuring other parts of the network

as we'll see and these all follow again

the a plus guidelines if we were getting

into more of an enterprise or corporate

environment we'd really be looking at

network plus and security plus so first

we're going to talk about soho routers

key to setting up a small office home

office network now these do several

things the first thing we talked about

is they are an access point or a

wireless access point and so we need to

discuss briefly the wireless standards

that exist

802.11 being the ieee wireless standard

we're then also going to look at port

forwarding and port triggering

because when two div

we know from ports and

talking about how tcp works that the ip

addresses act in order to

let two computers communicate but when

they're behind a router

that router has a public ip and a

private ip as we've discussed and

internal to the network on the lan there

are

perhaps 10 perhaps hundreds of private

ips and so in some cases we need to

allow the computers to deal with

individual ports

on the public side so we'll talk about

how

the router can forward

uh in one case the

port from the router from the public

side into the private side to a specific

computer as opposed to all of them and

then port triggering which allows an

internal computer to open up

automatically an external port when it

sends out information we'll look at

those a little more in depth we're also

going to look at something called nat

which i think we've mentioned

name

address

translation which serves a few purposes

again one of the things that a soho

router does

as opposed to different types of routers

not only allowing a public ip address to

be shared amongst several internal ip

address networks computers but also

allows

the security and safety of an internal

device by never revealing its actual ip

address we're also going to talk about

something called the dmz or

demilitarized

zone coming from the military sort of

terms there the

demilitarized zone is an area on the

network that's not quite

protected but is kind of protected and

we'll talk about the reasons for that

we're also going to look at quality of

service which again we did discuss when

we talked about voice over ip and then

wp

s which is wi-fi protected services a

way of setting up your wireless network

uh your wireless soho router

quickly and securely although it is

mostly out of favor these days because

it is not as secure as once thought

however i want to cover it in case it

does pop up in the exam

i haven't seen it pop up in the exam a

lot but it is on the outlines uh that

comptia likes you to go over

all right so then having talked about

the

soho routers and their um

uh configuration i want to talk about

the network cards and some of their

properties including the status lights

that you'll see on the back of a network

jack uh bandwidth and latency one going

hand in hand with the other bandwidth

being how much data is going across a

network card and latency being how much

is sort of lost or how slow it sort of

um starts to hit as it goes across that

area

and then duplex settings or half duplex

settings so either full or half duplex

which

determines how data is communicated

whether it can be sent and received at

the same time or not

then we're going to look at network

configurations including a couple

different things we've talked about

briefly at other points uh wol or wake

on lan allows a computer be remotely

woken up from sleep um over the internet

or over the network rather power over

ethernet which allows us to power

devices using only an ethernet cord much

like usb devices are powered only by

their usb cord and we're going to talk

about three

uh

three items one a work group which is a

peer-to-peer network type uh in

small office home office settings home

groups geared more towards the home user

also allowing you to

share um

files media etc and then domains used

mostly in server sort of networks or

large enterprises office settings

has a server client model so instead of

these two which we would consider

peer-to-peer meaning each computer

is also

a server and a client it serves up data

and receives data from other computers

the domain

setup means the domain is a server you

have one centralized location in which

all of your resources are held and where

everyone is authenticated and then you

have client computers again used mostly

in a

large environment

setup

we're also going to talk about locations

uh which allows you to configure your

windows computer so that depending on

where you're at it can pick up different

information for instance if i have a

laptop and bring it to the office and at

home they're both going to have

different network configurations i might

have to configure locations makes that

an easy switch to make

finally i'm going to talk about sharing

resources and i don't mean the resources

that allow sharing i mean actually

sharing out data

this would include mapping drives so

that they seem like a local hard drive

on your computer although they're a

network drive

vpns or virtual private networks which

allow you to have a virtual private

network over a large public network such

as the internet and are used in a lot of

corporate settings um

large uh companies use them and you can

even use them at home basically it makes

it seem as though you are sitting in

your office even when you are someplace

else

okay so let's start with talking about

this soho router right here uh we know

that most soho routers because you can

purchase them at a store plug them in

and go are plug and play once you plug

up you're ready to work you don't have

to really do anything to them this means

that computers can be plugged in or can

be wirelessly connected and can

communicate and access the internet

also it also means that the

soho router has a built-in dhcp server

so that when those computers plug into

this router generally through one of

these i'm guessing this one looks a

little separated so i'm guessing this

goes to the internet

what we'd call the wan connection um

that

it's automatically going to assign these

an ip address and so that means that the

router has built into it a dhcp server

right so just so we're we remember this

has a dhcp server a wireless access

point built in it also has network

address translation which we are going

to talk about and a couple other things

as well

uh what this also means though is that

the router is set up by default over

this connection to pick up an ip address

from the

internet service provider so

you pull information

uh just like a computer is going to pull

information from the router to get out

on the internet the router is

automatically configured to pull

information from an isp such as your

cable modem or dsl

so that it can get out to the network

and allow all the other devices out on

the network

all right so here we're looking at the

web

configuration portal of a router

and one thing i want to point out

immediately and this will come back up

when we talk about security but it's

also really important to mention up

front is that you don't want to use the

default settings since they are by

default very insecure right if you

imagine this is something that's going

to allow me to set up almost

instantaneously in a plug-and-play

fashion you can also imagine that the

settings are going to be the same on

probably thousands and millions of these

devices that go out there and so if i'm

using uh if i can pick up the manual for

one and you haven't changed any of the

default settings then i can get access

to your internet into your network so

what we want to do is log into the

router to make some changes and we do

this via the web interface so for

instance if this link says

is a

192.168.1.1 we can open a browser window

such as internet explorer google chrome

whatever it is and we type this in

and what it does is it finds port 80 on

that router which has a bit of firmware

already installed and that allows a web

page looking thing to pop up on our

computer now what this web page does is

it gives us access to the

to the inside of the router

and so we can make start making changes

as you can see here

right so instead of a more advanced soho

router we might have to log in using a

terminal such as telnet or ssh but in

this case we can do it directly through

a browser

so let's look at some of the settings in

here that we have the first thing i want

to talk about and probably the reason

most people buy these soho routers is to

get the wireless access and there's

usually a wireless tab to control this

stuff now there's a couple things we

need to know about wireless which is

also known as wi-fi or wireless lan or

wlan

first of all ieee the same company that

came up with the 1394 standard for

firewire and so forth developed

802.11x series of protocols or standards

802.11x stands for the wi-fi standards

okay so 802.3 i believe is the ethernet

standards that's for plugging in

directly uh and so that everyone who

made a device that's going to plug into

your net into your computer or into your

network uh has similar standards so that

your friend can come over and plug into

your network likewise a wireless

wi-fi standard 802.11 allows any

computer

to make its own

wireless card or have its own wireless

connection and you can connect to it

because it's all standardized now there

are a couple different ones you need to

know for the exam there's 80211 a b

g and n if we look over here wireless

network mode

you'll see it says mixed that's because

it probably uses a mixture of these if

you imagine b was the first one to come

out and then g came out after that this

by the way looks like a g router so if

i'm using a g router but i have a older

computer with a 80211b network card i

want to make sure they work together and

so running in mixed mode allows that

it's usually backwards compatible so uh

if i'm running a b router i can't expect

it to work with a g network card but if

i'm using a g or an n router n being the

newest one

then 802.11 g is going to work fine as

long as i work on uh mixed mode now one

thing i have to watch out for is that if

i'm running on mixed mode it also

probably means that i'm not working at

the standard that i want to be working

at

so the speed's not going to be as high

the security might not be as wonderful

and so what you want to do if possible

is try not to work in mixed mode however

mixed mode generally speaking makes it

easier for interoperability

now the other thing you'll notice is

right below i'm just going to erase

everything right below this you see

i have what's called a wireless channel

and something

that allows for

me to disable a wireless ssid broadcast

we'll talk about the ssid in one second

but let's talk about this channel first

there are 11 channels or 10 channels

ranging from 1 to 11 that you can run

now they run on either a 2.4 gigahertz

or a 5 gigahertz frequency so if you

imagine a walkie-talkie or a cb radio or

something like the police are going to

use what they can do is they're talking

on one frequency but they can change

channels

so what we're doing is we're talking on

one frequency but we're using one

channel in that frequency you can

imagine that

one frequency has several different

channels and you can choose a specific

one to use etcetera etcetera now the

most common are 1 6 and 11.

so we're generally going to see those

used sometimes this will also say auto

select which will mean it's going to

select a channel that is not being used

by other people around you of course uh

this also means that it's going to

constantly switch and if you choose one

channel that'll probably work well for a

while but then the other routers around

you especially if you're a highly you're

in a highly densely populated area are

going to start to

you know

figure out you're only using six and

then they will try to compensate so i

recommend leaving it on auto select

unless you're really having some

troubles you'll notice this is running

on channel 6 on the 2.4 gigahertz

frequency so we could also run on the 5

gigahertz frequency and that's going to

have to do with which standard we're

using and we'll talk about that in a

second

so we also have something called the

ssid or the service set identifier this

is the network name a lot of you have

gone into

an area restaurant a home whatever and

you have to connect to someone's network

and it says oh connect to you know bob's

network for instance

and that's the ssid the name of it now

one security thing we have is that we

can enable or disable this name to be

broadcast so even though it's secure

even though it might require passwords

something we'll talk about in just a

minute

the network itself the name of the

network could be broadcast or not

broadcast it's sort of like if i have a

home and i have a door with a doorknob

that's clearly marked you know where to

open the door now if you don't have a

key you're not going to be able to get

in

if i disable the broadcast that would be

like having the door hidden into the

wall you could still open it if you knew

where to find it and you're still going

to need a key but i've just made it that

much harder for you to locate uh the

entrance into my home so that's sort of

the idea behind an ssid and not

broadcasting it or broadcasting it by

the way one of the secure things and

you'll see this when we we'll talk about

this when we get to security

but one of the things they'll mention on

the test is how to secure a wireless

network this is one thing that you can

do to enable more security however it

doesn't actually secure the network

because all it's doing is simply hiding

from view what really is already there

these are the standards b g a n that you

need to know for the exam

now you just have to memorize this stuff

but you need to know the standard letter

and then you need to know the speed and

frequency now this is pretty easy okay

b and g

both run on a 2.4 gigahertz frequency

a runs on a 5 gigahertz frequency and n

works on

uh 2.4 or 5.

remember that now the reason they were

using five gigahertz is they thought

that might give them a little less

conflict with other devices that were

around such as wireless phones or

microwaves etc but there were other

problems that that brought with it and

so now the current standard and n is the

current standard is to use 2.4 or 5 so

the computer can sort of make the choice

speed you're also going to want to pay

attention to

802.11b has an 11 megabits per second

speed when we get to g and a they both

have 54 megabits per second the only

thing that distinguishes them again is

the frequency

with n the one that's currently used the

most we have up to 600 megabits per

second and we can use 2.4 or 5 gigahertz

frequency this is an important table to

memorize and i would just take this

whole thing i would write it down on a

piece of paper i would study it and then

when you get into your exam i would

write it down immediately onto a little

piece of paper or onto sorry you'll

probably get something called a brain

dump sheet which is like a laminated

sheet of paper that you can write on

with an expo marker

so

we've talked about the door which is the

ssid but let's talk about that key so i

have the door let's say it's

broadcasting or not broadcasting meaning

the door is hidden or not hidden we

still need to make sure that people just

can't get access to the home uh but

people can't just read the data that's

going on over these wireless connections

we want to make sure it's encrypted so

what we need to do is secure the

wireless network with one of several

encryption standards and there are three

that are currently out there the first

is something called wep

wep is actually a really old form it had

to be either a 10 or i believe a 26

digit

hexadecimal number or

which include numbers and letters so a

lot of folks would use their cell phone

numbers or their phone numbers united

states which are 10 digits in order to

keep this simple but you couldn't just

sort of type a code like you know josh's

network as your password this is sort of

we're talking about here

you need a password to get in and the

problem with wp is not only that the

password quote unquote had to be consist

of a 10 or 26 digit hexadecimal number

it was also extremely easy to to hack if

you're to go on youtube right now and

search wep hack or crack you'll find

someone who's able to hack a wp code

within probably even less than a minute

next was a dub was an encryption

standard called wpa you don't have to

know

the type of encryption it used but it

was using something called tkip and this

was more secure than wep codes the

password or what we also called the key

to get on the network

was could be really anything it could be

any combination uh like a regular

password however this was also easily

hacked and so

wpa2 which uses a different standard aes

became the current is now the current

sort of de facto and this is the one

that uh uh people use you'll see there's

also a personal and enterprise versions

of that i wouldn't worry too much about

that until we get to um

uh

more advanced sort of security but this

is just how people logged on personal

allows you to type in this password or

key enterprise required there'd be

something on your computer

and we're going to cover these issues a

little more depth in the next set of

videos covering security but i just

wanted to bring them up now they are

related to wireless encryption and most

of the time nowadays again we're going

to be using this standard

all right let's talk about something

called port forwarding and here is the

screen that you would see uh in a link

sys router for port forwarding what it

does is it forwards an external network

port from the public network to an

internal or private ip address and port

so if you imagine

that each one of these ip addresses

there there's none listed right now but

any of these ip addresses could be a

different computer on the network

so

we will imagine

that we have

0.5.10 and dot 15. so these are all and

let's say that this router is like we

mentioned before 192.168.1.1

this one is dot 5.10.15

in this place right there okay and

that's on the internal network however

the router also has an external ip

address which i'm just going to make up

something

and what happens is data goes into here

right data comes in from the wireless

from the network rather

from the internet and it gets to the

router and let's say

we have an application like rdp remote

desktop protocol so you're on the

internet someplace and you want to get

remote ask access

to this computer right here well the

problem is if i ask the router hey i

have port 3389

the router doesn't know

which is the rdp port if you recall the

router which is right here doesn't know

where to send this because it has three

computers connected right and so what

you can do is you can tell it ah

whenever you get

a request for port 3389

i want you to send that

to ip address 192.168.1.5

and so

this computer will always be the one

that accepts rdp connections now if i

wanted to have a second rdp connection i

could do that too but i would actually

have to identify another port to use it

so i can't use the same port because

that'll confuse the computer okay

or the router rather confuse the router

so this enables you therefore to have a

web server or ftp server a remote access

in your private network that's

accessible from the public network and

if i just erase all this real quickly

what i could do then is if i have a web

server what's the web server

http that's port 80.

ftp server

port

21

rdp as we mentioned 3389 etc etc

i could have just about anything if i

had a mail server right i could do 110

or 143. any of these would work and

basically what happens then is whenever

someone comes in and says hey i'm

looking for the web server which is on

port 80

the router would say oh well that's on

ip address you know whatever whichever

computer now the one trick here is that

your router would have to always have

the same ip address which is generally

not the case in a home setting

nobody on the outside as well is going

to recognize that there's being

forwarding enacted they're just going to

get automatically to the computer

there's no reductio nothing happens it

all happens automatically so they're not

notified of it

now port triggering is similar remember

port forwarding

i'm just going to draw

our little diagram up again

we had a 0.5 point 10

and .15

and import

forwarding uh and i'll let me write this

out

in port forwarding the request always

came from the internet in port

triggering on the other hand what

happens is the

port originates

on the inside network so you can specify

an outgoing port that your computer can

use for special applications

this then opens an incoming port when

your computer is using that outgoing

port so just to give you an example

let's say i'm using an application a

game

that

sends

data out on port

1000

and by the way these it says two that's

because you could have a range of ports

but for our sake i'm just i'm putting

the start and the end port is the same

but then when the data came back it came

on port 2000 and you would know this

because the game would tell you these

are the ports you need so what you're

basically telling the computer the

router is whenever any computer you

notice there's no ip address on here and

all of these guys want to be able to

work on the same computer

so what you're telling uh sorry work on

with the same router with the same game

so what you're telling us is whenever

someone

sends out data on port 1000

make sure that they get a return

information on port 2000

that's on any computer on the network so

if computer point 10

sends out a trigger of port 1000

note the data is going to come back

through port 2000.

now network address translation is sort

of what allows all of this to occur

what happens is network address

translation

modifies the ip address as it crosses

the router and hides that private ip

address from the public network

so

if i draw this up again here's my router

that has nat on it one of the many

services

and here's point five

here's point 10

here's point 15

and

this is going out to the cloud or to the

internet

and we're just going to assign this

another ip address

what happens then is network address

translation

hides

this internal ip address from the

internet

it also allows

this computer

to utilize this public ip address when

it's talking out on the network but

enables the data coming back to go

straight

to this computer

so that way all these computers can

share the same public i p address since

they only get one

so it not only provides safety for the

computers on the lan but it also allows

one ip address to do the work of many ip

addresses so it allows this ip address

to do the work of all of these so i

don't have to have a single public ip

address for all of these computers and

it hides this information as well

and the reason it does this is when an

ip address communicates with the

internet the ip address is converted to

a public ip address this one

plus the inside computer is assigned a

port

so let me show you what this looks like

i have 176.18

that's the public ip address

and 20

identifies the internal computer

so let's say we had a fourth computer

attached that was point 20 and i

realized that my

public ip address is slightly different

but that's okay

what this would tell it is okay

so i talk to google who sends out

information

says hey google this ip address

wants some information and i google says

great and sends that information back so

it gets back to the router which is this

ip address

and then the router says well wait what

computer did you want to communicate

with oh computer 20 and then it'll go

and attack uh or not attack sorry it'll

go and give the information to

20. now this number i've made them the

same they might not be the same in

actuality but what's happened is it's

treating the computer itself like a port

and so it gives that information it

addends the information and now when it

comes back the router knows who to send

it to this is called network address

translation

so again this number is the public ip

address and this number right here the

20 designates the internal computer on

the private lan

now something else called the

demilitarized zone

let's say the router

uh

well we could have the router any place

but let's say we have for sake of

argument a router right here

now what happens

is

the dmz

is an area that's not quite part of my

internal lan we'll say this is the lan

it has an internal cms on it or a

customer management system

but it's not part of the internet too or

the wan

it's sort of in between the two

and why might i want this well i have

something like a public web server i

don't want to protect it so much by my

internal firewall that no one can get

into it because then they won't be able

to browse my web page on the other hand

i want to make sure it's a little more

protected than just the plain old

internet so that way my web server

doesn't go down

so this is a middle ground that's

partially protected by a firewall and

that allows public access but also

protects your private network

so

what this would be saying is in on a

page in your linksys

for instance or your netgear or whatever

your soho router is you would say oh if

this has ip address 5 that's in the

demilitarized zone so you can leave that

outside of the network or behind

instead of on a firewall in a more

enterprise setup you would actually have

two firewalls like this one does

and you would put this device in between

the two of them logically

this is a good place for web servers

email servers ftp servers or for

research for instance i might have

something called a honeypot here which

is like uh

telling hackers oh this computer is open

to the network come on and hack me and

then you can see what sort of things are

happening to your

honeypot when you put it out on the

network

so quality of service is specifically

dealing with voip and streaming media or

auto audio playback and what it does

is

it makes sure that this stuff is

prioritized

because dropped packets with normal

browsing or while sending other sorts of

data that can be really easily rectified

and you would never even notice but when

we're dealing with audio or multimedia

it's going to be a lot easier for you to

notice when for instance someone's voice

stop starts dropping because if a voice

packet drops you're really going to

notice that so it's a matter of making

sure that there is a certain degree of

quality in the service provided to voip

calls again for a plus i want you to

focus on just this connection

quality of service voice over ip

a dropped packet on a voip call

is

not only sounds terrible makes the

service unreliable so if i can't

guarantee that there is going to be a

degree of quality of service then voip

phone calls are useless right i can no

longer count on them it's no longer

useful

you'll also recall there was something

called wi-fi protected setup

this was a standard that was used by

router manufacturers and it allowed you

to connect pretty easily to a

uh access point a wireless access point

soho

access point i should say because there

was an 8 to 10 digit pin number located

on the bottom of a router and it located

on the bottom the router you could then

sort of

easily connect if you could get access

to that wipe that pin however the

problem was there's a potential security

flaw built in

to the technology and therefore it's

recommended that it's sort of you don't

use it

it offers a certain ease of use and ease

of setup

however

uh

it's not that it doesn't offer that much

ease that it's worth the security hassle

the only reason i mention it is because

it's on the outline i haven't really

seen it on the exam and i don't really

expect you're going to encounter this in

an actual uh setup but i just wanted to

make you aware of it in case

finally when we're dealing with soho

routers we need to deal with placement

one thing we really want to make sure of

is that we keep them away from anything

that can interfere including

large electrical sources anything that

has outlets ups microwaves a large

amount of metal electromagnetic

interference anything that's going to

offer that some people also live near

airports have issues whenever planes fly

overhead i mean we are dealing with

wireless radio technology on certain

frequencies and therefore you're going

to have issues whenever you're near

those frequencies the other thing you

want to make sure is that you place it

physically in the center of your office

or your home or wherever so that way it

distributes

best among the area

so now we've talked about eight uh soho

routers including 802.11 wireless

remember n is the current

standard it uses a 2.4 gigahertz or a 5

gigahertz frequency and it has 600

megabits per second the other ones you

should know are a b and g

and look at that table again port

forwarding and port triggering remember

port forwarding is initiated from the

wan side whereas port triggering is

initiated from the land side

nat or network address translation

allows you to share a public ip address

with the private i p addresses on the

inside with multiple computers you also

have something called a dmz or

demilitarized zone it's an area

uh that is

not inside your

lan but still offers some protection

okay

used for web servers etc qos quality of

service again the thing we really want

to hit on with that is that it is

necessary for voice over ip and then

wi-fi protected serv

service or setup which is is not used

much anymore but it was an easy sort of

setup

but it had that security flaw

all right let's move on to network cards

now

this is a network adapter which is also

referred to as a network interface card

or a nic

if you ever hear someone refer to a nick

that's what they're talking about um it

is con

it has several considerations that we

want to be aware of uh and these are

some things i just want to

briefly mention the first is bandwidth

this is the amount of data throughput of

the connection the maximum data

throughput of the connection throughput

is the actual data so i can have a high

bandwidth and i can have low throughput

so in many cases this might be 10 100 or

even gigabit which is a thousand

megabits per second

this is measured in bits per second bps

which is why you see when we were

talking about wps

or sir not wps but wi-fi connections we

saw for instance 54

mega bits per second right and remember

that's divided by eight to give you

bytes

we also need to talk about latency

latency is the time it takes for sent

data to be received by a remote computer

so although my throughput might be 54

megabits per second by the time it gets

the other side you might actually have a

realized throughput of 20 or 30. and

latency is uh

the measurement of how much

time you're losing

now there are a couple status indicators

we can always check

when we're configuring and analyzing the

network adapter there are actually two

types of status indicators we need to

pay attention to the first are the led

lights on the network adapter itself

these show connectivity which should be

solid and they show activity so there's

two of them there's a connectivity and

an activity the connectivity solid shows

that you are connected and the activity

blinking shows that there's actually

data that's passing through that's not

only gonna be on your network card by

the way that's gonna be on any port so

if you're looking at a switch you should

probably see two leds one for solid and

one blinking showing there's activity

passing if one's not if for instance you

have a solid connection but no activity

then maybe there's something

some sort of problem with the cord

the other thing we want to look at are

any logical indicators in the operating

system there's a notification area

pop-up when you connect or lose

connectivity that's on the bottom right

hand of the computer which is hard for

me to show you right now just because i

would have to unplug my computer or take

it off the network which is not

something i can easily do in this setup

but you'll see at the bottom right now

if i just go over to windows 7 real

quickly down at the right hand corner

corner is our notification area and you

would see down here something telling

you you are or are not connected uh if

if you were to lose connectivity

all right let's also talk about duplex

settings now i've gotten to this uh

this intel

you know pro 1000 network connection

properties that is my nic

okay and uh i can tell that the

throughput is 1000 or gigabit so just

reviewing some stuff now this

duplex speed and this is never something

that you would actually set but it's

important to know about

there are two different types one is

called half duplex

this is uh where a network adapter can

send or receive data but not at the same

time it's just like uh walkie-talkies

right you're on a walkie-talkie you

press the button you talk and what do

you say over and the next person talks

talks talks over and then at the end

both say over and out that means i'm

leaving but the reason that's like a

walkie-talkie is i can only talk or

listen at the same time at one time i

can't do both

and that you know in effect

halves the amount of bandwidth i have

because i can either send data or

receive data i can't do both

now full duplex on the other hand

this is where the adapter can do both

simultaneously it can send data and it

can receive data this is effectively

doubling the maximum data throughput so

if i have a thousand

is my is my bandwidth then now i have up

to two thousand because i can send up to

a thousand and download up to a thousand

now that means up to two thousand you

would actually have to be making use of

both of those and i doubt that happens a

lot um so it's not something you you

know you're never gonna hit the full

amount all the time

but it does double the amount of speed

you can have and so it's very important

especially for like switches you want to

make sure they have full duplex support

this is similar by the way to a

telephone you can talk on it

and you can listen at the same time and

a lot of times we talk over each other

now this is usually configured for

what's called auto negotiation as you

can see right here

and that's going to allow the

computer and the technology to

automatically negotiate how much the

duplex speed itself and if we go over to

windows 7 just so i can show you where

we're at all right so let's go to start

let's go to the control panel

go to network and sharing center which i

think we've been here before

i'm going to go to

change adapter settings and here i have

both my adapters i'm going to right

click on this one and go to properties

and now on the

uh connect using i'm gonna go to

configure

and here i have advanced okay and here i

can check

to have my duplex speed and right now

it's set on auto but i could tell it to

do

for instance a thousand megabits per

second full duplex which would basically

give me a bandwidth of up to 2000

megabits per second one for downloading

and one for uploading

all right so now we've talked about

network card properties or nic

properties which is important to

make that distinction

right including status lights bandwidth

latency

right and bandwidth and latency again

that is one is the actual

and one is the throughput or what

actually happens and then duplex

settings remember we have half

duplex and then full duplex half being

like a walkie-talkie

and full being like a telephone

so let's talk about some network

configurations

first wake on lan

this is used so a computer can be woken

up by a remote computer over the network

for instance a server or another

computer i don't use very often i don't

want to have to go sit at the computer

and move the mouse what wol or wake on

lan allows me to do is do that remotely

from anywhere in the world the remote

system sends data to a network adapter

and it sends that data through something

called what's called a magic packet and

the magic packet magically quote unquote

wakes the computer up and this is how

wake on lan works it's useful for

smaller networks when you store data on

one computer

and you need to get access from that

computer at any one time if the computer

is sleeping to conserve energy then

you're going to want to you don't want

to have to go over and wake it up you

just want it to sort of open itself nope

no problem

or turn on itself without any issues

generally there needs to be firmware

support for this feature which could be

in the bios i think we mentioned this

all the way at the beginning when we're

talking about bios is that the bios

needs to support wake on lan or the

firmware of the nic if it's not

integrated into the motherboard needs to

be able to support that

we also want to talk about something

called power over ethernet which is a

really important especially in modern

day installations the reason is is it

allows a device to be supplied by the

ethernet which is also providing the

network connection so

as you know ethernet contains

four twisted pairs or eight cables total

well not all of those are necessary for

data some of those provide power and the

reason i might want to do this is is

that the um power is going to travel

along with the data and therefore what

if i have like a voip phone a voice over

ip phone or a wireless access point in

the ceiling someplace i don't want to

have to worry about a separate power

connector and then have to find a power

outlet now i can actually run one cord

my 100 foot let's say ethernet cord and

that'll just provide power to the

wireless access pointer to my voip phone

and

i won't have to find another sort of

plug or another cord so it simplifies

things a lot and it's used any place

really where

the power doesn't need to be too too

much in some cases if i have like a huge

router or switch the ethernet's probably

not going to provide enough power for

that so it does depend on the device

itself

this reduces the need for additional ac

power outlet and also more cables as

we've already talked about

all right now we're going to talk about

work groups home home groups and domains

a work group

is also referred to as peer-to-peer

networking this is usually a small group

of computers and 10 or less is

key you can't have more than 10

computers on a work group and they share

the same work group name

and i'll show you where to find this on

windows once we get to domain changes

since they're in the same location as

you can tell

and they both act as clients and servers

so because they all they're a group

working together

so this would be if i have

a router

and then i have four computers

computer one

computer two

computer three

and computer four

i might want just for the sake of

argument i'm going to have both of these

in a work group and we'll call it

accounting

and then we'll have this other work

group

for management

now with these two work groups they

won't necessarily be able to talk very

easily with with each other across the

groups but within groups these computers

can share information between one

another let's say one has all of the

accounting uh uh in the accounting one

one has all the quickbooks information

another has a bunch of excel documents

they can pull information off of each

other now of course in some cases we

might want a centralized computer but

that's where we get to domains so this

is what's called peer-to-peer networking

they are peer-to-peer talking to one

another

no information or data is centralized

right

every computer acts as a client and as a

server

this can lead to issues with backing

stuff up storing data and so forth which

is why it's not used

if there are more than 10 computers

this is best of course in a small office

home office situation but really not

much more now you can also use it at

home but actually windows has invented

something called home groups which is

specifically for use at home

it was introduced with windows 7 and it

was and and it's automatically created

you sort of have no choice over whether

it's there or not and what it's aimed at

is being able to share files multimedia

printers and so forth easily with other

people in the same home group

so to get here you go to start control

panel home group and you automatically

have access to these home groups and if

we go and

take a look at this

i'm going to close out of where we were

i'm going to go to the control panel

and click home groups

and now automatically i can choose

what i want to share out on my home

group

i could even share additional libraries

or exclude certain things

and i can even have a password so anyone

who wants to get access to this home

group which is decentralized could

connect and so if i have four computers

in my home i might want them all in the

same home group so i can share movies

between them or documents or even share

the same printers and this makes this

just easier to do because automatically

when you pull up windows explorer

it'll automatically let you open your

home group so you can see right here i'm

in the home group if there were other

computers on this network that were

sharing the same home group you would

see them right here

so they're automatically shared from

windows explorer making this whole thing

a lot easier to

create as opposed to work groups and if

i go back in work groups i would

literally have to

go to my network

and then i could see other devices on my

network there in my home in my work

group

as the name implies this is really

geared towards home users and not so

much work environments

finally we have domains

domains which are also used in what are

called client server networks mean that

there are one or more computers in the

control of the entire network called

domain controller

this is the net this device this server

this domain controller

would allow you to log on using an

administrator u or username and password

that is centralized so i can go to any

computer on the domain and use the same

username and password and be able to get

on that's the real benefit this enables

a lot of computers to simultaneously

access

and if we

draw draw our thing out again we had

computer one computer two computer three

computer four all connected to a switch

now what happens is i have another

computer

called the domain controller

and all of these computers are on the

same area but if i want to get

information i'm always getting it off of

the server

if computer one wants to log on i can

use my username administrator password

here and that'll get me on i could also

use the same username and password here

and that would get me onto this computer

just as easily as this one so it's

centralized everything is centralized

so this centralizes usernames passwords

among other things information etc

and if we go over into windows real

quickly so i can show you this

the way we get to

change

information when it comes to our domain

is you can go to the system properties

which i got to from right clicking on

computer and going to properties but you

could also get to through control panel

and then going to system as you can see

right here all control panel and system

and then what you do is you go into

advanced system settings

and here on computer name tab you see

something that says

network id

which is

the name your computer has

on the network

and then you can also

choose whether or not to add the

computer to a domain so here's the

computer name and here's the domain

if i wanted to add it to the domain it's

not going to let me right now because

there is no domain

this is really common in larger networks

enterprise settings any large

place is really going to have this

finally locations is a tool in windows

that really lets you

move from different locations and

maintain

different network configurations and

security settings

so to get here you would open the

network and sharing center and there's a

place that says view active networks and

let's take a look at that

we're here in windows i'm going to close

out of where we were

now i'm going to go to control panel

i'm going to go to the network and

sharing center

and

here look choose homegroup and sharing

options if you remember that from

earlier but if you see right here it

says view your active networks

and if i want i can click on my home

network that's the location i'm at and i

have an area and it's called home

network now i can also create another

network for instance public network or

work network

and i could walk through this wizard

which would take me of creating a new

location in that area

now whenever i want to come

to a different network

i can simply click connect or disconnect

that would let me open this uh

now if i ever want to switch to a new

network

i can simply go to here and choose a

different location and automatically

it changes my security settings for me

so i can select where the computer is

part of uh the home network work or a

public network and it's going to change

the security settings for me

automatically you can also change those

settings

all right so now we've talked about

network configurations

wake on lan

which was allowing us to wake up a

computer remotely power over ethernet

means that data and power sent through

that same ethernet cable work groups

which allow me to share data with other

computers in my work group home groups

really for home users and other

peer-to-peer format which allows me to

share data with other groups in my home

other computers my home group and then

domains for client server setups and

finally locations which allows me to say

take a computer and change where it's at

and automatically in one click changes

security settings and sharing settings

finally let's look at sharing resources

over a network

so i can first thing i have to do is

turn on or turn off network sharing and

i can do this from the network sharing

center or homegroup advanced settings if

i go over into windows

i'll see here that i have choose

homegroup and sharing options

and here it tells me what i can share on

my home group but i might also want to

share other things in which case i need

to

change my advanced sharing settings and

here you see all the advanced sharing

settings i think we've seen this before

for instance file and print sharing

needs to be turned on turning on network

discovery means other computers can find

my computer on the network and so forth

then i can then once i've turned on

network sharing all i have to do is

locate the folder or the other resource

right click it and go to share

so if we go back again i just turned on

let's say file and print sharing and now

i want to share

let's say

the users folder very big folder i could

right click

go to properties

click sharing

and now i could

share this device share this with other

people it actually is already being

shared as you can see

and it's being shared as this which is

called the unc so it's the computer name

followed by the folder name

now if i wanted to permanently share

something on my computer from another

one so let's say i just set that users

folder up and now another computer

wanted to share it and they wanted to

have it on their computer at all times

what i might want to do is do what's

called mapping a network drive this

allows you to map a network drive

someplace a network share and treat it

like a local drive

now you do this from the toolbar in the

computer or from using the net use

command

so if we go into the computer

so i'm going to close out of this where

we are

i'm going to open up computer

and right here map network drive now i

could say i want to make for instance

drive x

a certain folder on the network and i

could use the unc right here

so let's say we i was something a server

called resource server and let's say it

was a folder called office so that's

where all the office documents were held

and then i could click finish and it

would be done

reconnecting at login will make sure

that i do this every single time i

reboot the computer

and i could also

i could also connect using different

credentials meaning if i'm logged in as

a standard user but i want to connect

using an administrator connection i

could do that

network drives are mapped according to

the universal naming convention which

i've mentioned which is

and that's formatted rather poorly and i

apologize for that

but there's two backslashes and then the

computer name and then the share name

now we can also use the net use command

to do this

and before i move on to vpn i just want

to show you that

i think i talked about that when we

talked about network printing

so if i open up the command prompt as an

administrator

and it's going to be hard for me to do

right now because i actually don't have

anything i can use out for you but let's

say i could say net use

i would do

say the z drive

computer name

share name and then i could you know if

it went even further i might do that as

well i press enter and this would

automatically allow me to map the z

drive to the computer name share name

just like we did in that dialog if you

do slap a switch question mark to get

help you'll notice there's some other

settings you can set here for instance a

password or a

username if you want to use a different

username etc

also whether or not you want it to be

persistent meaning continually happen

you could say persistent yes or no

so let's talk about a virtual private

network this creates a virtual private

network over a public network and that

public network is of course the internet

this is as if so this makes it as if you

are sitting at your computer

in your office even though you're

someplace else in the world and the

reason it does this or in the way it

does this rather is it creates a tunnel

between your computer and the vpn device

at your office so here's the world wide

web or the internet

okay

out of that internet

let's say this is your

your home

and you have a router and then you're

connecting

say you have your laptop you have your

desktop and then maybe you have some

sort of like a home theater pc

over here

you also have in your enterprise a

router

and then it gets to let's say some place

on there is your work computer that you

want to remote into for some reason or

you want to connect

to

a work server

what you could do if they have it set up

this way is there would be a vpn device

in this router or connected to this

router with an ip address

or would be using port forwarding

you would connect using a vpn connection

that you'd set up at home let's say with

your laptop

and that would create a tunnel

between that device

and the server

and this tunnel is going to make outside

people not able to connect

so it secures the connection as well

which is why it's used so often

you can set this connection up by from

the network and sharing center and if we

go into windows one more time

and i close out of that

i can go to control panel

network and sharing center

set up a new connection or network and

here is the option

to set connect to a workplace using dial

up or vpn connection and you would set

that up you would have to use

you would use your internet connection

for vpn and you would use an internet

address or a server address provided to

you

there's also other things you could use

as well

but this generally would be given to you

by your

administrator at the office

so as i mentioned you have to know the

ip address the username the password etc

for the vpn devices for this to work

all right

so now we've just talked about sharing

resources including mapping drives

and vpns so net let's now just go over

everything we've talked about which is

quite a bit

so we started talking about soho routers

remember we talked about 802.11 and i

mentioned

four different types there was b which

was 11 megabits per second and ran at 54

at the sorry the 2.4 gigahertz

frequency then we looked at g

which was 54 megabits per second and

also ran at the 2.4 gigahertz a

which was also 54 mega megabits per

second but was at 5 gigahertz

and then n

which was 600 megabits per second and

ran it either 2.4 or 5 gigahertz

port forwarding which started on the lan

side i'm sorry the wan side rather

and port triggering which started on the

lan side

network address translation which

allowed the sharing of one ip address

or one public ip address

dmz or demilitarized zone

which is an area between

the land and the wan it's sort of used

for servers and whatnot in between two

firewalls quality of service thing i

wanted to remember that it was voip or

voice over ip and wi-fi protected setup

which is antiquated

and has a security flaw but allowed for

easy

setup

on a wireless network we then talked

about network card properties including

the status lights remember there's an

activity

light

and a connection light

we talked about bandwidth and latency

bandwidth being how much data can go

through latency being the measurement of

data when it reaches the other place

and then we talked about duplex settings

half duplex

which was like a walkie-talkie

and full duplex

which was more like a

phone

we then looked at network configurations

such as wake on lan

and

power over ethernet

making it easier for us to install

network devices we then looked at work

groups and home groups which are both

peer-to-peer

remember home groups was introduced in

windows 7.

that's pretty big

domains

is the client server setup

and locations which is easily allows us

to set up

security

settings and network configuration

then we talked about sharing resources

including mapping drives which allows a

more permanent use of those resources

and vpns which creates a tunnel over the

public internet

great

now that we've talked about configuring

and setting up a network let's discuss

in a bit more detail

uh troubleshooting one

[Music]

networking troubleshooting networks

as we reach the end of these videos in

this lesson on networking we need to

discuss how to troubleshoot networks and

this is a pretty

large field and people spend their

entire uh you know years and years and

years and their entire careers studying

troubleshooting networks so specifically

i'm going to focus on some of the

more common problems that i see pop up

in the test and also i'm going to look

at the command line tools that pop up on

the test

specifically in how you can use them to

troubleshoot

i may be going into the windows

environment at some points here but uh

most of what i have to say is going to

be expressed on the slides

so we're going to begin this discussion

as i just mentioned with a look at the

command line tools you can use when

troubleshooting your network

specifically these are ipconfig our sort

of most general um

tool that allows us to get the

configuration of rfp addresses

ping which can test connectivity

trace or trace route which uh is an

advanced form of ping which allows you

to see

basically the path the pack it takes as

it goes from one location to the next

netstat which looks at the network

statistics on a specific computer

particularly ports that are open

an nbt stat which i highlight here

because it has to do this nbt which is

for net bios a windows based naming

service that we'll talk about but

specifically this is to look at

windows names just like dns domain name

service allows you to convert google.com

to an ip address netstat is what nbt

stat or net bios netbios is what you use

to look at microsoft names of computers

so your computer has a name josh's

laptop that uses net bios when it goes

out on the network

and then i also want to look at ns

lookup which is directly related to

domain name service that's the name

service lookup so that would look up for

instance what google.com's ip address is

finally i want to look at the net

command which we have talked about when

we talk about services or with using

mapped drives

but it's a pretty popular command and

it's one we need to i want to address

just again

then i want to look at troubleshooting

the comp some common symptoms in

uh

windows environment specifically with

networking including no connectivity

limited and intermittent connectivity

slow transfer speeds which we could also

write as high latency remember that word

latency we looked at

a low rf signal specifically in terms of

wi-fi

and an ip conflict meaning that there's

more than one ip address on a network

which can happen uh when we're using

static ip addresses not so much with

dynamic because the server would make

sure we don't have more than one ip

address

we're also going to look at the use or

what happens when we have an apipa

address remember that's that

self-assigned ip address that a computer

gets when it can't find an ip address

from a dhcp server

so let's start with the command line

tools these are extremely useful

especially in troubleshooting network

situations and that's really because

with so many versions of windows

it's hard sometimes to find the

information we need and to get there

quickly and with the command line if you

know a few tools you can get the

information you need really quickly

without having to open up any gui

interfaces which is why they're still

one of the preferred methods of

troubleshooting

on computers today you always want to

make sure you run the command line as an

administrator or an elevated mode and

remember we do that by right clicking on

command line and clicking run as

administrator we also need to know some

specific tools that were that we just

talked about for the a plus exam so

there are some others out there that

we're not going to cover these are the

ones you need to know for the a plus

exam

all right so before we get into ipconfig

let's go over into windows and

we're going to go to start we're going

to right click the command prompt and go

to run as administrator

so now we have it open i'm going to go

ahead and cls which is clear screen

and just for the sake of being clean

here i'm going to make sure we go back

to our root directory

so now we're in c

so first let's talk about ipconfig

ipconfig stands for the internet

protocol configuration or ip

configuration

it displays current tcp network

configuration values so you can see for

instance here we have

all this information that we can get

including our ipv6 address ipv4 subnet

mask default gateway and so on

it's the first tool you want to use when

you're troubleshooting a network because

this will tell you is the computer

getting an ip address if it is then you

know that half of the problem doesn't

exist there is no problem right and so

we can start to narrow down what the

issues are i'm getting out if i can't

get out to the internet but i have a

valid ip address i know the problem

isn't internal to my network it must be

the connection that my

router is getting from the network or

from the isp

there are also several switches that you

need to be familiar with

um

the first

is ipconfig all so let me just take a

second here and go over we'll just run

ipconfig in the windows environment

just to show you so we're here i'm going

to go ipconfig and automatically get all

this information i'll make this a little

bigger just to help us

and what you'll see is that you get

ip configuration for every adapter

that is

on the computer so i have an ether i

have a bluetooth adapter that of course

would give me some information it's

disconnected right now local area

connection etc tunnel adapter if i'm

using vpn um and then

others that that are specific to

software and such

now the first now what you'll notice i

want to point out here is that you're

only getting the ip address the subnet

mask and the default gateway you're not

getting any other information and so if

we go back and we looked at ipconfig all

and you can see a screenshot on the

right this shows us a lot more

information including the dns server

which was not included originally

and the mac address which you will call

as the physical address

you already have the gateway which is

provided

so if we go over into windows 7 we see

here the information we have and now if

i i'm going to clear screen this and if

i run ipconfig all look at how much more

information appears the most important

one that you really want to pay

attention to in my view at least

is

this one the physical address

it'll also tell you whether dhcp is

enabled and some other information but i

think the most important thing this can

tell you is the mac or the physical

address of the adapter and that's

something you definitely want to take

into consideration

so that's a pretty important switch

giving you a lot more information there

are a few others that you should be

aware of

the first is ipconfig release which

releases the current ip address

now let's say that i had a bad ip

address or i have a dual ip address

you know i'm having an ip error which

we'll talk about but for some reason i

have somehow gotten an ip address

another device already had i could use

ip release to release that ip address

to another device

i could also have renew now renew will

renew the ip address so whereas release

just lets go of it renew actually lets

go of it and then asks for another in

that way renew is a little more useful

and finally ipconfig flush dns erases

and re-propagates the dns settings so uh

if you're having trouble for instance

getting out onto the internet perhaps

the problem isn't that you're not

connected but the problem is really that

you your dns has been poisoned somehow

and is sending you to the wrong sites so

by flushing the dns it erases all the

dns settings and then allows you to

re-propagate that

and if we go over to windows just really

quickly

i could do ipconfig

renew

which is going to renew the ip address

that i have

and

ipconfig

flush dns

automatically just tells you it

successfully flushed the resolver cache

and the cache being that information

it's storing on the computer so now

every time i go out to a site it's going

to begin to re-propagate that data from

off the internet

now with ipconfig there we can

troubleshoot with it because if we can

tell if a computer is receiving an

actual ip address from a dhcp server or

if it's being assigned in a pipa or

self-assigned address if it's being

signed a self-assigned address then we

know whether the ip address

is actually real we can also determine

whether the ip address is private or

public if we go over and look at the ip

address i'm getting right now

by doing an ipconfig

you'll notice it's a 10.0.1.28

well if you as you recall that is a

private ip address so i am behind a

network uh i'm behind a router

if i was getting a public ip address

then i would know i'm connected directly

to the isp and this could tell me that

something was might be wrong or

different in my setup

i also could tell if the user can't

connect to any websites but there are

but it can connect to other computers on

the lan then the dns server address is

probably not configured correctly and by

releasing and renewing the ip address

and by flushing the dns that's going to

help fix that problem

okay the next one i want to talk about

is ping

ping it shares the same name if you've

ever watched like a submarine movie it

tests whether another host is available

over the network so we can see if that

network is live or not

so you'll see here i pinged google.com

and it says with 32 bytes of data which

is the standard packet size and you can

see it's getting a reply with a certain

time to live in bytes

the reply indicates the host is alive

and it can be communicated with if you

get a request timed out or destination

host unreachable then that's probably

means that the host is down or it's been

configured not to accept icmp packets

icmp packets by the way which we'll talk

about in network plus are the packets

that ping sends out so

if we go over to windows again and i

clear screen

you can see as i ping google.com that

i'm getting a response

however

if i ping

microsoft.com

you'll notice that i get a request timed

out

now one thing this could tell me is oh

this probably means that microsoft's

website is down

but if we go on the internet

and

try to go to microsoft.com's website

you'll see it's working perfectly fine

so in this case they have actually

configured their routers and their

servers not to accept pings from icmp

packets which is the reason why this is

not working

this also gives you the time that the

ping took to travel to and from the host

you see here it says 8 milliseconds 92

milliseconds 12 milliseconds etc and if

i'm getting a very high numbers if i got

a lot of 92s or um you know 400 or

something then there might be some

latency issues as well and if we go back

over real quickly

you'll see here that the time to live uh

the time it took was actually pretty

small

and again this could suggest latency

issues

so some of the switches you want to know

the one of the biggest ones you want to

know and by the way with this one we use

the hyphen instead of the uh

the slash i'm not sure of the reason for

that um but that's the way it's always

been ping slash t will ping the host

until the command is stopped manually

so uh

you probably want to use that if

you are what you've rebooted a computer

and you're waiting for it to come up

and so if we go over there real quickly

i will initiate one for you

let's ping

google.com

and what will happen is it's going to

keep usually it only gives four but it's

going to keep pinging

and it just keeps going until i press

ctrl c and then it will stop

ping n

pings a host a specific amount of time

so you could specify when you ping it 10

times or 20 times there are some

benefits to using that i wouldn't worry

so much about that one for the exam the

one you really want to know about is the

ping slash t that's the big one

there's also

ping l

which pings the host but you can specify

the amount of bytes you want to send uh

as opposed to 32 you might want to send

you know 64 or something that could be

uh for a bigger test again the one i

would really worry about is ping t which

will continually send pings over and

over again remember you can always do

ping

question mark for help and that will

tell you all the switches

now we can use ping to troubleshoot

specifically

it's really useful to test whether or

not tcp has been installed properly and

we can do this by using the loopback

address you remember we learned when

we're talking about tcp that these

addresses these ip addresses this one

for ipv4 and this one for ipv6 can be

used to basically ping yourself they are

the iphones that represent yourself and

if we go over to windows and we type in

a ping 127.0.0.1

you'll notice it's gonna ping us and the

time takes less than one millisecond

interestingly you can also ping

localhost that is the netbios name of

the 127.0.1

and if we ping that you see it's pinging

itself now with the ipv6

the same thing and it also works

we can also use ping to verify that a

computer as i mentioned is backup after

a remote shutdown or uh

for remote control purposes so if i've

rebooted it say a server that i've been

working on i can use

ping to verify it comes back up so then

i can remote in and do what i need to do

all right let's talk about trace route

trace route

which is

condenses that rt

from route it builds on ping by sending

packets to a destination beyond the

local computer's network and it tracks

the route it takes

so what it does is it pings each router

along the way between you and the final

destination so every time it hits a new

router it sends back information to you

so then you can determine

where for instance we're losing

connectivity

if i don't have connectivity

so where a bottleneck occurs or where

connection is failing and if we go into

windows real quickly

let's try pinging uh sorry trace

tracing the packet from us

to microsoft.com

so what you'll notice and we can see

when

it uh

times out so i have this time capsule

which is

10.0.0.1.1 which is

my router and then it seems like it's

going off into

uh my

uh

local isp and now it's going out into

other servers right and now here you can

see it probably hits some sort of

microsoft server

and so what's going to happen at this

point

is it's going to stop giving us

information

now if we do this with

google on the other hand

let's clear this

we should see the first few should be

exactly the same because it's going out

from us and then it's going out to our

um

to our network

and now it's out on the isps these are

the same things we saw before

and now we're starting to not get some

information here because there's

probably some stuff along the path it

doesn't want to show us

but here we still have

some ip addresses and so on this will

keep going until we reach google.com

server and we could see where any

hiccups are on the path it's taking we

can also tell that it only takes 10 hops

that's what we call this

10 hops to get between me

and google so that's like six degrees of

separation right of kevin bacon this is

10 degrees of separation to google.com

the next one i want to look at is

netstat

netstat

gives you current network statistics it

shows you open sessions to the local

compute

to the local computer

this includes which ports are open

two

you can also see what network services

are currently running and perhaps some

shouldn't be so you can see over here it

shows the if i ran a netstat and i can

run this on my computer as well that it

shows

127.0.0.1 is a local address meaning

it's from my computer and the port

that's open is 5354. and then what i

could do is i could go on to the

internet and search what that is

interestingly you'll notice that the

5354 here matches to this one and this

one to this one so this is probably an

internal connection made from my

computer to itself and back again these

probably create like a figure eight loop

and if i was having an rdp session i

would see three three eight nine on

there if i had an open ftp server i

would see 25 and i would see the foreign

address be the foreign computer that i'm

connected to

now different from this is nbt stat

nbt stat

shows uh the network statistics

over tcp connections using net bios and

again net bios is like dns but is

specifically for microsoft networks

just like i said

so what you can do is use the a switch

to show what the service is running on

the local remote computer are and i

would recommend that so what you'll see

is this says nbt stat a what services

are running on the ip address

192.168.1.105.

if you read it without that it would

simply

give you your own uh

your own

statistics so this allows you to do it

for another computer

it calls this the name table by the way

so this shows the name and the type of

computer it is and all the remote

machines that you are currently

connected to

now nslookup

is the name server lookup service and it

queries a dns server to discover certain

details about dns

plain and simple so if we go over and

take a look at this i'll clear out of

this

ns lookup

now nslookup runs slightly different

from the other tools you do nslookup and

that takes you into an nslookup utility

you'll see that it says the default

server is 10.0.1.1 that's where it's

going for my dns server and now i can

look up information

for instance yahoo.com and it'll say oh

uh

that's these are the three ip addresses

that could get you to yahoo.com

or we could do google.com

and these are all the ip addresses

including a looks like an ipv6 address

these are all ip addresses

that can get you to the google.com

server

and we could go on so for and so so on

and so forth control c by the way will

generally get you out of that

all right the net command

this is a a actually a collection of

commands it's not one because we've seen

it in a few instances and what it is you

have net and then the next word defines

what kind of command you want net view

lets you see which computers are

currently on the network so if i was to

do net view

as you can see i did to the right you'll

see these are all the devices that are

available on my current network if i do

it right now

net view

you'll see there's only two devices on

the network myself and my other my

router

net share is what we use to remember to

share or map drives

i'm sorry to share folders on your

computer let's go back

netshare allows you to share folders so

that other people can view them

just like right-clicking on a folder and

going to share

and net use lets you map network drives

which we already looked at

by the way netstart and stop allows you

to start or stop services like we looked

at when we talked about printers and if

we go in and just review that real

quickly i can say net stop spooler which

will stop the spooler service

and then i can net start spooler to

start the spooler service

so now we've talked about some of the

command line tools used in

troubleshooting networks including

ipconfig general configuration data ping

trace route ping which verifies

connectivity and trace route which

traces the route a packet takes

net stat showing the current network

statistics

nbt stat for net bios statistics

ns lookup for our dns servers and then

the net command which is actually a

series of tools

now let's look at troubleshooting some

of the common symptoms

so first let's talk about no

connectivity

the first thing you want to do is verify

your physical cables making sure you

replug them in using a cable tester etc

you also want to make sure the network

adapter is enabled in the device manager

right so if we go into windows i need to

make sure

if i right click on computer

go to properties

and then i go into my device manager

i need to make sure that my network

adapters are all running properly

and you can see here there's no problems

with any of them

if it's a laptop and this is an

important one i see this pop up on the

exam all the time okay

if you have a laptop and the user has

wireless make sure the wi-fi switch or

button is switched to on otherwise the

wireless card is as good as disabled but

from a hardware point of view not even

from the advanced my uh

device manager you can also ping the

local computer to make sure tcp is

installed correctly it could be all the

hardware is connected but the protocols

the tcp protocols aren't connected which

is not allowing you to connect

finally i would verify the internet

source is on and working meaning you can

ping your router or your gateway

you could also try to reboot the

computer this would reset everything

this is generally a pretty good step

you can find out from a user of any

programs or recently installed or

updated and roll them back again using

the add remove

in xp

programs or the uninstall

application sort of option

in windows 7 or vista

sometimes an anti-virus software or

firewall software updates can cause

connectivity issues so be aware of that

and if something happens most of the

time though you're going to be able to

fix that by simply rebooting the

computer

you also want to make sure you're

connected to

an enabled port on a switch or router

sometimes you can disable

a port from a switch or router and you

want to make sure the one you're

connected to is enabled basically the

idea is

check all the physical connections then

start checking the software connections

and then you know nothing else talk to

your isp you can also always test

with a device you know works

as well

you can also

if you know that your soho router isn't

working or your cable modem or your dsl

modem unplug them all

replug in the cable modem replug in the

soho router

now if you have a limited in or

intermittent connectivity this is

different from no connectivity the first

thing you want to do is ping the

localhost to see if tcpip is functioning

because limited or intermittent

connectivity means there isn't a

permanent big problem like you're not

plugged in it means something is going

on and off which is weird

you can also ping the router or another

system on the network to see how far

your net your your connection is

allowing you to get

if that fails and the user only has

local connectivity so if i can't ping

the router or another system on the

network then something's wrong right

if paying the router does work try to

ping a website so again here's my

computer

here's my switch here's another computer

maybe here's the router and here's the

net internet first thing i want to do is

test does this work

yes that works now tess does this work

yes that works now test does this work

oh no that doesn't work ah so we guess

the problem is probably here if that

does work then you can go out some more

if you can ping the website by name then

you're probably not having an issue at

all if you can't ping a website by name

then you're probably having a problem

with your dns server your name server

right you can get out to the internet

but it just can't translate between

names and ip addresses

you might also want to try ipconfig

renew to get a new ip address a lot of

this is common sense based on the stuff

we've already talked about so this is

sort of a conglomeration of all of the

stuff we've discussed

it you can't have more than one ip

address on the same network as we'll see

so

sometimes if another device comes on it

has been assigned a temporary ip address

or a dynamic and another device comes on

that has a statically assigned ip

address and it's the same one that can

cause an issue

it could also be due to physical issues

faulty patch cables wireless and network

adapters too far from the access point

etc

if you can access some some networks but

not others in a larger area then use

trace route to determine where the

problem is is lying you know that's the

best thing about trace route it'll tell

you when the device drops out now if

we're dealing with slow transfer speeds

this is probably more related less to

your network and more related to old

equipment network congestion or even the

internet connection depending on how

large this is at home it's probably

related to your isp

at a bigger place it could be related to

you know

a lot of traffic

or

old switches or old hubs being used

instead

you can always run a netstat a to see

what connections the local computer has

the internet and maybe if you have

unnecessary ones then that's where the

problem occurs if i run netstat a

or nbt stat a and i see a lot of

problems occurring

or a lot of connections then i probably

uh

you know have some sort of compromise

system

you also want to always try

updating all your software clearing all

your caches maybe even power cycling

everything and that should fix the issue

if i have a low rf signal and this is

definitely related to access a wireless

access point first check the distance

it might be that you are too far and

it's just not going to work you want to

make sure as we've mentioned that the

access point is in a central location

and away from anything that's giving off

a lot of emi

you may also want to consider upgrading

to a new wireless adapter you know a lot

of wireless access points are really not

that expensive and so it doesn't hurt to

spend 50 bucks if that's going to get

you that much more internet connection

you know

and you want to update the software on

the wireless adapter and on the access

point to the latest firmware versions

and that can help some speed issues as

well sometimes you can also try using a

different channel

now if i have different ip conflict

messages you're going to get a message

that pops up and says there's another

computer on the network with the same ip

address

the first computer that uses the ip

address is going to continue to function

the second one that's trying to join

that one's not going to work this

usually happens when you're using static

ip addresses which means you've self

self-assigned an ip address so what you

generally want to do is use a dhcp

in order to have this all automatically

configured for you

now if you're getting in a pipa address

this is the same generally as no

connectivity right if you get that ip a

pipa address when you type in ipconfig

or ipconfig all then you're failing to

get an ip address from a dhcp server so

what are our problems

well this means uh and by the way

remember a

addresses always start with 169.254.

so the real problem is the computer's

not getting connectivity maybe you're

not plugged in

maybe the dhcp server is down or your

router is down no matter what the

problem if you're getting a pipa address

is that it can't find a dhcp server and

any problem that could that could cause

you not getting to a dhcp server whether

the dhcp server is down whether your

switch is down whether your

cords are down any of that can be the

actual problem

great so now we've finished talking

about troubleshooting common symptoms we

looked at no connectivity limited and

intermittent connectivity

slow transfer speeds low rf signal ip

conflicts and apipa addresses let's go

back over all these starting with the

command line

so we talked about ipconfig which is

used to give you your ip address more or

less

if you do this slash all don't forget

that will also give you the physical

address

a ping

right that's to test the connectivity

and by the way i have seen it where they

will show you

um the output of a ping and ask you what

tool this is so it's good to sort of go

through these and just know what kind of

tool it's giving you or what kind of

output it's shooting out

trace route traces the hops

and can tell you where bandwidth or

where latency or where an issue is

occurring

net stat shows you the statistics

on a computer specifically it looks at

open ports

nbt stat the reason i mostly see this is

having to do with net bios okay if you

see net bios just go straight for nbt

set that's the answer and remember those

are the microsoft names so this will

tell you for instance what computers or

users are connected to you

ns look up is to get dns information and

then the net commands which can be used

remember to share out something

to use something

or to start and stop a service

we then talked about troubleshooting

common symptoms including no

connectivity

which

could be a physical issue

or it could be you know anything try

pinging

your tcp but generally i'm guessing that

you're not even connected limited and

intermittent connectivity which

generally means you're connected but not

getting an ip address or

connected but not getting out to the

network which could be a problem with

the router

slow transfer speeds check your distance

check your caches etc low rf signal

upgrade the firmware

or centralize this the access point

ip conflicts mean that you have more

than one ip address generally restarting

or fix the problem but you want to make

sure everything is set up dhcp if

possible and an apipa address generally

means you're not getting connectivity or

having limited connectivity so uh

check you know everything

between you

and the dhcp server if there is a dhcp

server that might be the problem

okay so now we've talked about all the

networking stuff let's get into security

to secure this network that we've just

created and troubleshot

[Music]

welcome to module 21 lesson one

internet of things technologies it's one

of the new subjects has been added to

the latest

come to exam

they just expect to have an overview of

what these things do rather than any

detail because there's quite a

diverse array of protocols here

said wave and plus bluetooth which i'm

sure you've heard of

nfc

infrared

rfid

so internet of things

it's a network of devices appliances

vehicles physical devices and many of

them work with sensors or softwares so

for example when you're

say let me go down there's a car here

actually

you'll have a sensors on your car

and i didn't want any awards for drawing

sensors on your car

breaks

uh which has been detected by

goal goes into a cpu of some sort

when it detects that the wears down and

say you've got 30 left then it will uh

communicate to

the garage

or computer in the garage that will

order whatever part you need from the

manufacturer that will go to the garage

and then you probably depending on how

advanced the car is have a notification

that uh your tires are worn or your

garage next time you take it in for a

service we'll have the part in stock

and um

be able to replace it that's just one

example of the internet of things

there's many of many others and it's

just a phrase that was coined

uh several years ago

said wave is a wireless communications

protocol

used mainly for home automation for

example your lighting your security your

thermostats to set it and all your

favorite settings works over a mesh

network so all the devices are um

interconnected

and it's controlled by a keypad or you

could have a key fob of some sort

and plus

it's a wireless communication protocol

again

monitor sensor data

this could be your heart rate tire

pressure television any number of things

and it's created and managed by the ant

alliance it's actually a subsidiary of

garmin who do us the satellite

technology

a bluetooth mesh adopted in 2017 it's

many to many communications

so the receiver can be a thing a group

of things or many things for example

you compare that to unicast multicast or

broadcast

all messages are encrypted and

authenticated so it's pretty secure

are you sorry you can ignore that one

near field communications

a set of communication protocols you're

probably using this already it allows

two devices one is usually a smartphone

to communicate

now you need to be within four

centimeters of each other so you have to

be pretty close

use for contactless payments i know on

my phone i can enable it to

act as my

card credit card or debit card and swipe

my phone instead of my card quite handy

if you've forgotten your wallet

somewhere as well and you need to pay

for something

infrared i'm sure you've heard of that

we used to have this used to be the

competitor to wireless where companies

would add an infrared communication

module on top of their building

and as long as they had line of sight

they could get high speed communications

with another building within i can't

remember what the range was

but i mean it fell by the wayside really

it's similar to visible light but a

slightly longer wavelength

uh for example your remote control

you click that and per second of holding

down the button it sends out 38 000

signals

using internet of things for medical

diagnostics fire detection

and remote gasket detention detection

rfid you'll probably see this if you saw

the the newest not the newest born film

a born film um with jeremy uh

i've forgotten his name now

jb reiner we had one of these inserted

in him and they tried to uh and

unfortunately tried to shoot him with a

missile to it to cut it out

but um yes essential to the operation of

the internet of things it allows

computers to manage all individual

things this is compared in the picture

to a grain of rice so it's pretty small

uses emi fields to identify and track

tags atop

attached to objects

the attack can actually contain

electronically stored information so

this is what's used to target pets

for example um when when a pet gets lost

somewhere it can be tagged

also using tracking vehicles if you've

ever seen a production line there's tags

inserted on the vehicle and that updates

the entire production system as to if

it's going too fast too slow and and

when to expect the next vehicle along

all right so we've covered just in brief

the z-wave ant plus bluetooth nfc ir

rfid

just didn't need to be aware of these in

case one of the questions pops up in the

exam

that's all thanks for watching

[Music]

security

malware

all of the benefits of networking and

computers are clear but what about some

of the downsides

whenever we create something new of

course especially a new way to

communicate we open ourselves up to

vulnerabilities

one of these vulnerabilities is malware

or bad software

so what we're going to talk about in

this video and in the coming lessons on

security are all the different

security weaknesses we have in our

systems and in this video specifically

we're going to talk about kind of

software that installs itself on our

systems and networks in order to gain

access to some of our most private

information

so in this discussion we're going to

start talking about malware we're going

to identify different types of malware

including viruses

worms

trojan horses

logic bombs

root kits

spyware

and adware now while all of these might

have the misnomer of all being viruses

this sort of uh be all end-all term that

we all think of they're all actually

somewhat different things and as a

result sometimes we have to deal with

them differently

after we talk about identifying these

things we're going to look at preventing

them

first we're going to talk about

av software or antivirus software which

is specifically designed to

stop

viruses and all these other malware

forms even though it's called anti-virus

software we're also going to look at

windows updates keeping windows up to

date so that the flaws in the operating

system that are discovered

cannot be used by hackers

we're going to get browser settings

since we're browsing the internet uh

most of the time we're on it

this is a

common area of problems for malware

a firewall we discussed briefly in

networking specifically it's something

that keeps the bad guys out and the good

guys in

auto run what happens when we put in a

cd or another form of media

when we plug that into windows it

automatically begins to run of course if

we have a virus on our system this can

be an issue

or on the media rather this can be an

issue

and finally the most important

prevention technique education by

educating people we can keep them from

opening things and running things

they're going to hurt their systems

and finally that once we talk about

prevention we're very briefly going to

discuss removal and troubleshooting

there was a large part of my career

where i spent

most days simply opening computers up

and um removing viruses from them not

not hardware opening them but on

software and uh so this can be a very

complex issue we're just going to

briefly scratch the surface of in order

to

introduce you to some of the things you

might see on the a-plus exam

all right so let's start by talking

about malware malware is a broad term

that describes any sort of software

that's usually designed to infiltrate a

computer system and maybe even damage it

without the user's knowledge or consent

now sometimes the user knows they've

clicked on something

but they haven't consented to that thing

destroying their computer and they don't

realize it and this has to do with the

type of uh

software that has been installed and

there are several different types there

are that we're going to cover we're

going to cover the difference between

them viruses

worms which a virus is self-propagating

just like a virus in your computer

in your body rather a worm is something

that can dig through a network and

doesn't need

to attach itself to another piece of

software a trojan horse just like the

greek myth um

denotes something that disguises itself

as one thing but is actually something

else

logic bombs which uh despite the name

sort of sounding odd

are very dangerous because what they can

do is basically

wait on a system until you are ready

until they are ready to sort of attack

uh root kits would get to the root of

your computer the adm administrator

password more or less and so it can do

real damage to your system

spyware which is used to spy on your

movements on the computer uh perhaps to

gain password information or information

for selling you a product and then

adaware

or adware which

is used to advertise to you and get you

to buy things so all of these different

things are types of malware and they are

all different and these are what we're

going to cover in the upcoming slides

so first let's talk about a virus this

is a computer program that can self

replicate itself and therefore spread

from one computer to another it's

probably the one of the most basic types

of malware that's out there and the key

is that it does self-replicate okay and

then therefore because it's

self-replicating it spreads from one

computer to another

many uh much of the time the way that it

spreads itself is by

attaching itself to an executable or to

a legitimate application file for

instance uh

you

have a document or a

application that you're running on your

computer and what has happened is the

virus has infiltrated that document or

or that program and so when you run it

it automatically

starts to run and takes over your

computer and by doing that it can also

perhaps attach itself to media that you

are burning or putting onto a

unto a um

thumb drive

it may not be obvious that the system

has been infected but that does not mean

it hasn't been infected so only because

you don't see it doesn't mean nothing's

happening and sometimes the

causes of what is causing or what is um

oh the symptoms are not necessarily

clear it could be anything from sluggish

movements to a lot more network traffic

to odd files appearing on the desktop

now a worm is slightly different this is

similar but what it specifically does is

it exploits a weakness in the operating

system or an application so a virus

remember attaches itself to an

application in order to get someone to

run it a worm on the other hand will

worm its way into an applica application

or an operating system through a

weakness in it so whereas the virus

attaches itself to another application

the

worm exploits a weakness that's already

in the operating system it can also worm

its way through the network and infect

other systems without any user

intervention which is why these can be

so dangerous

so you plug up a computer

to a network that has the worm or your

computer has the worm you plug it up to

a network and suddenly you've just

infected the entire network and it

begins making its way around unlike a

virus which requires generally someone

to activate it generally by attaching

itself to an application

as a result

a worm can therefore

affect a system a network system much

quicker than a virus and even a computer

system because again it doesn't require

anyone to run anything

a trojan horse is different this takes

its name from the trojan horse of greek

mythology as you remember the um

greeks and the trojans were in a war and

what happened was the greeks decided to

build a large horse a hollow horse that

they hid themselves inside and then the

trojans brought that horse believing it

was a

sacrifice into their

um into their gates when they brought

into the gates they started partying the

greeks got out let all the other greek

armies in and destroyed troy

so uh a trojan horse therefore

hides itself in

by looking like something else it is not

self-replicating unlike viruses and

worms which are self-replicating

instead it appears to be useful software

but when it's run by the user it

actually harms the computer or steals

information so again a virus is going to

attach itself to a program a trojan

horse is a bad program it just pretends

to be something else

now a logic bomb this is dangerous it's

a piece of code that sits dormant until

specific conditions are meant for

instance on a specific date

so let's say that i've created a and why

would i want to do this well let's say i

want to hack

a government office or a big bank what i

can do

is send out a logic bomb that slowly

infects computers all around the world

and then on a specific date they all

launch and start attacking this place

now no one has known about it beforehand

because the virus program didn't a virus

program didn't know what to look for and

no one is aware of it because it hasn't

caused problems in the past but at this

specific point on this specific date

that logic bomb

basically hits the mark and starts to

send out

issues

it can be very detrimental because until

they're activated the user or the

community as a whole probably doesn't

know of their existence so that's why

they're really dangerous

now a root kit

hides its existence from normal methods

of detection by utilizing administrator

or root access when we talk about root

access which is a term used more in

linux than in windows this means you are

at the base like of a of a plant you're

at the base of that plant you're at the

base of the operating system and so by

having such root access you can hide

from the people searching for you for

instance if a criminal

works is the chief of the police it's

going to be hard for someone to find

that to

find out that person right because they

have root access to everything so this

is very difficult to remove you're

probably going to need to go into safe

mode and do all sorts of crazy things

maybe even go into the command line in

order to remove a root kit

now spyware

spyware spies on a user or an

organization for instance of facebook or

google

and gathers private information about

them without consent or knowledge so

it's not a virus which is

self-replicating and doing damage what

it really is is spying that's specific

purpose so in some ways it could be

classified as a virus but what it's

really doing is sole purpose is not to

destroy anything or hack anything but in

fact to spy and so it's in its best

interest to not be discovered and

therefore to not do anything weird on

the system

so for instance i might want to find a

about a user's browsing history so i can

figure out what to sell them or i want

to log their their keystrokes so i get

passwords to their information

this can collect a wide variety of

information and therefore it's very

dangerous depending on the type of

spyware that's installed

adware on the other hand is advertising

supported software meaning that the

whole point of it is to try to make

money now it seems illogical to me since

i don't know who would actually click on

a pop-up that appeared but

it's generally responsible for those

unwanted pop-ups that display product

information the problem is that people

someone must actually be clicking these

otherwise they would stop doing it

the main purpose therefore is to gain

revenue by click-throughs so basically

the more you click on these things the

more money they make which

leads them to want to create more adware

all right so now we've just talked about

some malware including the difference

between viruses

worms which worm the way through a

system

trojan horses which disguise themselves

as something else logic bombs which wait

until specific conditions are met before

launching

root kits which are difficult to get rid

of because they sit under the root the

administrator access

spyware which spies on users or

organizations and adware which is trying

to make revenue for a client now let's

look at how we can prevent some of this

malware

so anti-virus software every computer

should have antivirus software running

on it i don't care if it's a linux a mac

a pc anything and on the right you'll

see there are

countless uh a companies that provide

virus scan and virus removal and virus

protection

these prevent infection from a wide

variety of malware so although it says

anti-virus a better term would probably

be anti-malware since most of these will

actually prevent or be able to discover

not just viruses but malware as well

it needs to be updated with the latest

engine and date dat or definition files

so just because you have the software

doesn't mean it knows what to look for

and as a result you need to constantly

update it with what are called data

files dot dat files these are what are

called definition files they provide

definitions of of basically irregular

software to look for

to the virus scan program this way the

virus scan program knows what it's

trying to find

it tells the software what to search for

just like i said

and it's also important not that you

just update it but you also run full

searches regularly when the user is not

at the computer specifically maybe at

3am in the morning or 2am it's also

important this is why you want to leave

your computer on at night

uh even if you're not there so the virus

scan program can run

all right

so other than having anti-virus software

on computer which is going to look for

antivirus but sometimes it's not going

to know what to look for right because

the viruses might come out more

frequently than the data files or this

or the definition files so this is why

we need windows updates which i know

we've talked about but i'm going to

mention them again here it's important

to have uh your computer be up to date

with the latest service packs updates

and everything otherwise it's

susceptible to attacks by worms etc

remember worms are taking advantage of

um weaknesses in the system now here's

the other thing with windows updates the

minute microsoft releases a windows

update it's basically telling every

hacker every virus creator out there

every worm creator out there that there

is now a flaw in their operating system

and so for everyone who doesn't update

you now have an automatic weakness that

microsoft has pointed out to software

developers not very good on them

so it's important for you to check for

updates periodically or set the system

to check automatically for you

in fact if we go over to wind if we go

over there right now

we can go to search for windows updates

and here we'll see there are 14 updates

that are available right now the most

recently updates were installed at 2 14

today and you can see that even between

then and now there's been some updates

and what we could do here is see the

important updates that are available

and then i could go ahead and upgrade

them if i'm ready which i'll wait to do

the other important thing to realize

here is that we have um

settings

on windows updates and what we generally

want to do is have them install updates

automatically and i see i have every day

at 3am you can also have it download the

updates but have it choose whether to

install them and you might want to do

that if you're doing a say on a

large

network

where an update might bring down

something and in this case you generally

have a test computer

when the computer is on but you're not

there is when you want to update as i

said it was 3 am on the place where i

updated it

all right now let's look at browser

settings from the security tab in the

internet options box you can increase

your security level you'll notice right

here

you see the security zone

level for the zone and it's at medium

high if i want to make sure nothing's

going to get in i move it up to high the

problem of course is the higher i go the

more difficult it is going to be for me

to browse and so you want to find a nice

sort of balance between them

you can also turn on fishing filters and

pop-up blockers that are allowed uh in

advance and privacy and that way you

make sure that it's that even if you're

not educated the person using your

computer isn't going to do anything

that's a little weird

this is as i just mentioned it's going

to keep the uneducated users from

accidentally clicking something and if

we go over into

here for a second remember there are two

ways to get to internet options or to

our browser settings at least in

internet explorer one is to go into

internet explorer and go to options the

other one of course is to go to the

control panel and here we have internet

options we can choose from now remember

this is just for internet explorer so if

you're using firefox or chrome you'll

want to do this as well here in security

we can

move up make it higher or lower we can

even set zones as to where we are

just like we could with locations for

networking

we could also set a custom label a

custom level where we could say you know

what we want this

to do or not to do

and we could reset that to save this as

a certain settings or reset it to one of

our previous set custom settings

also as i mentioned there are other

advanced settings you might want to take

a look at

such as

multimedia that you allow to run

and they're also you could have add-ons

as well that will allow you to do

different things content as well you can

have a content advisor so that uh

you know certain sites that might have

some stuff you don't want your kids on

same with parental controls uh are

probably also gonna have malware built

into them as a note as well it's very

important to be aware of um

javascript oracle java which has a lot

of difficulties um and so

it has a security flaws built in

uh i think direct the homeland security

united states has actually said that you

should not have it enabled ever and

here's the pop-up blocker i was telling

you

you could make sure that the pop-up

blocker is on and then you can allow

certain pop-ups for instance from your

banks etc

now a firewall don't forget windows

comes with a firewall built in and if

it's available you want to make sure

it's on and updated

this is going to close all the inborn

inbound ports to your computer by

default and then if you want to allow

something in you have to tell the

computer to allow it in so don't forget

windows firewall is built in it's built

into seven vista and xp and it should

always be turned on you probably also

have a firewall on your soho router so

you're now getting double the amount of

protection

which is great

you may need to open ports for specific

applications to operate

properly some you might not even think

need it for instance i know some uh you

know software you might download off the

internet or you might get from a real

manufacturer needs those ports in order

to communicate for updates and so forth

if we go into

windows real quickly we can see here

windows

firewall and there's with advanced

security let's go to the plain one and

here you can see uh it's all it's on and

it's different for public networks and

home and network it sees i'm on a

private network right now and so that's

how it's

protecting my computer

on a public network it would do

different things i can even go into

advanced settings

and now i can allow choose what my

inbound rules are and my outbound rules

are and i might need to create a new

rule for instance for inbound to allow

certain things in

and again you would look at your

manufacturer's instructions for

information on what ports you need to

allow but if we went to newport you

could say for a program for instance or

a port specifically or predefined ones

and you can go to the wizard it makes it

pretty easy

let's also talk about auto run

you want to disable autorun for cds dvds

blu-ray drives usb drives so that way

you won't be infected by apple uh

you won't be infected by you know

viruses that are on the media because

what happens is if you have for instance

cd or dvd auto run as soon as you pop

that cd or dvd in the computer is going

to automatically run that piece of media

when it automatically runs that media

your device or your computer gets

infected so this gives your antivirus

software time to scan the media for

malware before you run it so i would

always recommend if you have antivirus

software you should scanning your media

before you run it this way you won't be

in trouble

and before we go to education

if we go over

we can actually see where the auto run

settings are

i'm going to search for auto run

and right here you see you can also go

into control panel uh items and choose

auto play what it's called in windows 7.

and here you can see pictures blank cd

blank dvd blu-ray movie etc etc

finally education is the big one this is

the most valuable and important

preventative measure which you can do is

to educate users on how viruses can

infect a system

more so because most of the malware and

the

viruses get access to our system because

of what's called social engineering

we'll talk about that in the next video

but basically engineering someone

by tricking them

so we want to instruct people on how to

screen their emails not to open unknown

attachments how to scan removable media

such as cds and usb before copying files

we also want to set up the computer for

these people to scan removable media

automatically and the computer on a

daily basis maybe not something we

necessarily need to educate them on if

they are in our institution or

organization but definitely something

they should be aware of and don't forget

they're taking their computer home with

them then that opens up a whole other

slew of um viruses in ways they can get

infected

great so now we've talked about

preventing malware including with av

software anti-virus software making sure

windows updates are frequent and set to

automatic browser settings the firewall

was built into windows auto run or auto

play and then of course education

something we will keep coming back to so

finally let's just talk about

troubleshooting and removing um these

viruses and this is a bunch of ideas for

you

specifically that i see on the a plus

exam the first thing you always want to

do if you notice an infection is go

ahead and disconnect the network cable

um

you can always reconnect it especially

when you're in safe mode or you're

behind a firewall or in an area of your

network that's not going to hurt the

other computers but this at least will

give you time uh when you know the

computer is not going to reach out and

hit anyone else

in that way you can also turn it off if

you need

what i would also do at this point is

back up the entire system because you're

going to make problems when you start

removing the virus you might

accidentally make it so the computer

doesn't start anymore something to be

aware of of course is when you back up

the entire system you are also backing

up the virus so you want to be careful

with the backup media that you use

you can focus on critical user data if

you need for instance you can focus on a

uh you know the user folder but you're

always going to risk missing something

so this is why i recommend doing an

entire system backup

this also might mean you have to remove

the hard drive or use a clean external

hard drive that you know is not infected

you might remove the hard drive bring it

into another computer and do things that

way

another thing you want to do is disable

system restore let's go into windows for

a second because one thing we definitely

want to do

i'm going to go to system properties

here

and go to advanced system settings

and go to system protection is i want to

turn off system restore the reason is if

system restore is on

then

the virus can hide out there and so we

need to get rid of system restore so the

virus can't hide out there once we

remove the virus we turn system restore

back on as i think i mentioned before

when we talked about system restore

windows this is the number one way

viruses stay on the system

we can also boot into safe mode and run

an anti-virus scan sort of the next

thing you want to do

booting into safe mode means what i'm

only loading up the applications and the

device drivers i absolutely need running

an anti-virus scan is searching the

computer for all those viruses using the

latest data definition files which you

need to make sure to download from the

internet

you may need to repeat this in normal

mode as well since sometimes if you're

not running the virus it's not going to

find anything so going the normal mode

and running of antivirus might find some

stuff that you didn't find in safe mode

it's good to do it both times

you also probably

an option whenever you're

going to be a virus removing is to

remove the affected drive to a clean

machine which is a computer only used

for the scanning of malware in other

words uh you take the hard drive out

attach it as a slave or a secondary

drive

especially with rootkits is what you're

going to want to do

and then you scan from within windows

this external drive this extra drive

so you boot from the clean drive and

then scan the extra drive from a clean

operating system you know it's clean

because you've either just installed it

or you don't have it connected to the

network and you do not let data come in

very easily you may also want to run an

anti-virus scan from an online scanner a

good one is trend micro's house call

this means that it runs it from the

internet as opposed to from inside the

computer if you're running it from

inside the computer don't forget the

computer has been

infected and therefore the virus game of

the computer might also be infected so

running it from a third party just like

with the clean machine you're running

this from a clean machine that's on the

internet

uh there's also a great

tool called microsoft's malicious

software removal tool it's really worth

checking out and you can get it on

microsoft's website or by googling

there's also some manual troubleshooting

steps you can take if none of those

automatic sort of searching steps work

for instance you might want to use the

an older restore point that was given

that you know was before the infection

occurred

you can check startup items in ms config

to manually remove files and registry

entries don't forget

msconfig if we close out of this

allows you to you know check things off

so if i notice oh what's this i don't

know what that is i think that's causing

my problem you can now apply restart it

won't boot up with that and if your

problem goes away then you can be pretty

sure that this is the problem

you also might have something like a

boot sector virus which means it has

destroyed parts of your boot sector in

that case you might want to use one of

the

boot recovery tools perhaps with the fix

mbr switch

of course the only 100 percent definite

way to remove a virus is to format the

hard drive and perform a fresh and clean

install unless you do that you can never

be 100 sure you've gotten rid of all

remnants of the virus

great so now we've talked about

troubleshooting and removal let's go

over everything we've discussed when it

comes to malware

let's discuss everything that we've

talked about in regards to malware

first

we talked about what malware is any sort

of bad software right any sort of bad

software that's going to infect your

computer

viruses are self-replicating

and they attach themselves

to known files

worms

are also self-replicating

but do not require user intervention

what they do is they make use of

weaknesses

in an app

or operating system

trojan horses

pretend they're something they're not

a logic bomb

waits for a specific day

or specific uh

thing to happen

before it launches

root kits

get at the root or the bottom or the

administrator access

spyware

again is used to spy on you for

information

adware is used to get advertising

dollars

then we have prevention

including av software anti-virus

software

which needs to be updated with those dat

or definition files

to keep up to date

windows updates which should be set to

automatic and should be done frequently

to resist

getting attacked by a worm browser

settings remember we want to set the

security settings high

then we have the firewall we want to

turn it on

and you might have to set rules

to allow exceptions that you know for

applications auto run that's the cd dvd

blu-ray autoplay we want to turn it off

so that way you have time to scan it

and education the number one way to

present uh prevent

viruses and other sorts of malware and

then we talked about a bunch of

troubleshooting steps

including

safe mode

turning off automatic restore

or system

restore

and so on

so now we've talked about malware let's

continue talking not only about software

security but about physical security as

well

[Music]

welcome to module 20 lesson 1a common

security threats and vulnerabilities

so we're going to look at ransomware

fishing spear fishing spoofing a zero

day attack

a zombie a botnet denial service

distributed denial of service

brute forcing

oh dictionary attacks and non-compliant

systems violence

violations of security best practices

man in the middle

i just wanted to say you you're not

expected to know a lot about these

things because the a plus is just a

computer engineer

and job so help desk and pc

installations and printer

troubleshooting and such like

security stuff would be responsibility

of the security team or security

engineer and it's such a big field

it wouldn't be fair for some um company

to expect you to do all this unless

you've got qualified and

and there's some time working in the

security team so this is just an

overview so you have an appreciation

firstly ransomware

it's a type of malware that denies user

access by encrypting or locking the

browser or desktop

on the infected system it can lock and

encrypt files and folders also

and there was a case just a few months

ago of a police department somebody

i think downloaded some piece of

software or clicked on a link in an

email

and it locked all of the files for the

entire police department

and they ended up embarrassingly paying

a ransom to get the um key to unlock all

their files again

fishing is a scam where fraudulent

emails appearing to be from legitimate

organizations or self sent to email

users

so you could get something the common

ones are

and parcel that hasn't been signed for

tax refund

and

tax warning saying you haven't paid

and often if you've actually ordered a

parcel say if it's for amazon for

example

you could

um click on that link thinking oh i've

missed delivery of my amazon parcel and

it turns out it's a phishing

um

it's a phishing email and then normally

you would click on their

link it would look like the official

website and you would log in using your

username and password which would then

give them access to order stuff and

divert it to their house

all right spearfishing it's a fishy scam

that targets specific individuals roles

or

organizations

so it's more specific

fraudulent email appears to come from a

legitimate organization or associated

with the email user

purpose is to make you used i um the

user david

confidential information

reputable companies will never ask for

confirmation confidential information

through email

if you're suspicious obviously don't

reply you can go directly to the website

or you can call the company yourself

you could normally um

we don't go to detail on the course but

you can normally click on the uh

from details and you can see that the

actual sender although it says

whoever amazon.com you can actually look

at the email it came from and it'll be

something

um

that doesn't say amazon.com it will be a

different email address or host

spoofing is the active intruder

pretending to be someone else by

falsifying data it's done to gain access

to a user's system or information

in a computer network spoofing the

technique of assigning a network packet

with a false ip address

zero day attack

zero d attack the attacker exploits an

unknown vulnerability and software so

it's normally something they've

discovered

or somebody else has discovered and

posted the vulnerability somewhere

and they're exploiting the vulnerability

this is done before the software vendor

manages to become aware of it or before

they can release a patch

a zombie is a computer connected to the

internet that's been compromised by an

attacker as a result the attacker has

control over the zombie device

a botnet is a virtual network of

compromised computers they can perform

malicious attacks

they can send spam emails or participate

in a distributed denial of service

attack

we cover the uh

denial of service stuff in the network

plus in more detail and obviously in far

more detail in the security plus

the denial of service attack refers to

an attack on a computer network to make

it services

and resources unavailable generally it

saturates the device with um request to

set up a connection but doesn't actually

set up the connection so all the

resources are reserved reserve reserved

and then finally the device present runs

out of

um

resources

if it's distributed denier attack the

attacker uses and controls victims

computer to attack someone else's

computer taking advantage of the loan

weak security

of the victims network so this is um

one device attacking many devices and

then using those devices

brute force is that the attacker

requires the website requires usernames

and passwords and the and the software

attack

will try multiple versions it will keep

using things like admin

and password as as password or password

one two three things like that

and things like um

wordpress websites particularly

vulnerable which is why most now won't

let you use the default admin and

password credentials to create accounts

you can actually set a limit of and fail

password attempts as well before it

locks

your

access

if the password length increases the

amount of time taken to discover it also

increases

uh long uh complex passwords are the way

to

defeat

these type of attacks as well as

limiting the amount of

their passwords

dictionary attacks like a brute force

dictionary attempts to discover the

password by trying a list of words from

the dictionary that's why you're

generally not recommended to use words

from the dictionary

as your password for example aardvark or

apple

non-compliant systems are devices that

have haven't complied with the network

settings or configurations maybe

somebody's left it there and it's been

forgotten

or somebody's added it to the network

when they shouldn't have

flash players an example this is uh

isn't supported by many different

operating systems now because of the

amount of security vulnerabilities

usually workstations are software

agencies still that will report

non-compliance

violations of the security policies and

best practices

uh

best practices to create and implement a

policy it's essentially a business plan

normally delivered by way of distance

learning training although you can have

on-site trading obviously

and it briefs the user on how to protect

uh the devices and networking data

security policies should deal with

prohibited software especially people

bringing in their own software on usb

sticks

or downloading stuff which is quite

common

you should create an end user acceptable

use policy that outlines what employees

can and can't do with their workstations

should identify actions that can result

in discipline reaction

some users should not view inappropriate

material becoming involved in spamming

or using authorized devices

one security best practice is to keep

the computers in an appropriate place

computers in the network should be

protected from unauthorized access and

therefore they should be kept in places

that give the users only the necessary

privileges

computers in the network they provide

access to public such as external web

servers are kept in a dmz

this is a demilitarized zone and it's

normally an interface of your firewall

that has outside access to the internet

but it could contain for example

the web server that members of the

public can view your website but then

they can't have access to the inside of

the network which will be on another

interface usually

uh security policy should also include

patching it's common best practices to

patch your system when the new patch is

released by the software vendor

apply the patch is important to avoid

exploits that take advantage of the

vulnerabilities

you normally do these schedule these

every evening or every friday or on the

weekend when users aren't um using the

devices

there should be a periodic vulnerability

assessment

you can actually hire penetration

testers to see if they can get into your

network and

plant plant files

it's necessary to have physical access

controls in place which allow only

authorized personnel to physically

access a building

a man in the middle is an attack where

an attacker reroutes the communication

between the server and the client

without the knowledge

so normally you'll have a device that

manages to intercept the packet

changes something in the packet or about

the packet and then forwards it on as if

it's the original packet

so as a retar as a result the attacker

can view the confidential information

and as i said it could also change some

of the information in the packet

open wireless networks such as those at

cafes are more prone to man in the

middle

if you encrypt the communication between

client and server it will normally

encrypt the data

but also be able to detect if there's

been any interference into the packet

all right so we've covered some of the

main threats ransomware fishing spear

phishing spoofing zero day

zombie botnet

service and

distributed denial of service

brute forcing dictionary compliance

and man in the middle

that's all for now thanks for listening

[Music]

security unauthorized access

we have so much important information on

our computers

including business documents passwords

credit card information

other payment information such as bank

accounts tax information and so on and

so forth that we need to make sure only

the people we want to have access to

this information have access to it we

also need to balance that with the ease

in which we access our own information

so for instance if i had 20 passwords to

access one document well that might keep

it safer and might prevent unauthorized

access but it would also make it quite

difficult for me to get access to my own

documents so we're going to talk about

are not so much ways in which people

gain unauthorized access we discussed

that briefly in malware but we're going

to talk more about how we prevent

unauthorized access by authenticating

people so what we're going to talk about

here is first of all authentication

methods authentication uh and you will

see this a couple times is broken into a

few different categories

three or four depending on who you ask

the three main ones are it's something

you have

something you know

and something you are

there's a fourth one that some people

will include something you do but for

the most part these are the three

biggies and so what we're going to look

at are several different types of

authentication that fit within this

including lock and key the same way that

you'd probably get into your home uh a

cipher lock

a card key

smart cards uh and specifically a

certain type of smart card used by the

department of defense called a cac card

a token which is not actually like a

token a coin it is a

number based access authentication

system but the token is something you

have that gives you that number we'll

talk more about that and biometrics

the newest and probably the most

forward-thinking form of authentication

which is the something you are category

using your eye your finger etc to get

you access to something

and we're going to talk briefly about

physical security

and one method of physical security

called a man trap that i see pop up on

the exam quite a bit um and you've

probably seen one without even realizing

it so it doesn't sound as odd as it may

the word may make it out to be then i'm

going to talk about social engineering

as we mentioned when we were talking

about malware the ways of getting access

to your system actually

education can prevent most of it and

that's because most of the time what

we're doing is engineering people

we're socially people are socially

susceptible to things and by convincing

them to give us information that's

usually the easiest way to get access to

something so we're going to talk about

certain forms of social engineering

including spam

fishing

shoulder surfing which is not as cool as

it sounds

and then piggybacking and tailgating

finally we want to talk about how you

can dispose of a hard drive this is a

physical thing because don't forget your

hard drive contains all of that

information and if you simply erase a

hard drive it doesn't mean that all the

data is going to go away so we're going

to talk about three methods including

clearing

purging

and then destruction of a hard drive

so uh with that said let's talk first

about authentication

authentication is the verification of a

person's identity so we have uh

your identity which would be like your

id card and then i need to make sure

that this id card belongs to you that's

authenticating a lot of drivers license

for instance or id cards issued by

governments have a picture that way the

person looking at it can authenticate

the identity

if i had a identity card for you

then i would be able to access all of

the things that you can access

just by having that identity card so we

need to make sure this identity card can

be

authenticated in some ways and that's

what we're doing we need to authenticate

an identity so for instance you have a

username that you put into something but

you also have a password that allows you

to authenticate that that username

really belongs to you

now there are four categories as i

mentioned there were three major ones

and an extra one that authentication

falls under

something the user knows such as a pin

or a password

something you can memorize something you

know in your head or the answer to a

question

such as what is your mother's maiden

name

something the user has

this would be something like a key

or an atm card

and then something the user is such as a

fingerprint or retina scan this is

biometrics something the user is or

something the user or something you are

finally it could be something the user

does now i sort of

hold a bit of

opposition to this one just because i

think you usually do something in

relation to what you know but this could

be a series of combinations of things

um

swiping something doing something

knowing the process again i would

contend that in many ways that falls

under something a user knows and so

that's why these are the three biggies

some people and i'm mentioning it just

in case you see it uh we'll consider

that something a user does there's also

authentication

that is uh uh of mult many different

types

for instance uh

an atm card you put in the card

and that's something you have and then

you have to type in something you know

so we have what are called multi-factor

authentication

which is an important distinction it's

something you

mixing and matching two out of these all

right

so let's talk about some of these forms

of authentication the first a lock and

key one of the oldest forms of

authentication

uh what good

is high tech encryption and computer

software if the user can easily access

the hardware and so we need a physical

perhaps lock and key to give people

access to certain rooms

now there are different types of lock

and keys this type is actually we have a

a key that gets you into it and actually

lock and so

this would fall under something that the

user has

you have a key now the problem with that

is if someone gets a copy of the key

made or comes upon the key that you've

perhaps left

then you can get access to the same

resource that person does anyone who's

seen a mission impossible movie knows

the benefit of a key though is you can

record who has what keys so for instance

if someone gets access to a specific

resource you can narrow it down to know

who has a key well it must be one of

those three individuals that gate got

access of course the problem with this

is if that person loses a key or allows

a key to be made

then there's no way to track down who

that person was who perhaps

copied the key

next we have something called a cipher

lock a cipher lock uses a punch code to

unlock a door or for instance a pc

laptop so this is a door a cipher lock

you might have one attaching to a laptop

this is something the user knows so now

instead of having a key that can be

copied it's a punch code or a number of

course the benefit is there's nothing to

lose the downside is what if you write

down your your the code or somehow

someone gets it from you by looking over

your

shoulder the benefit of using a cipher

lock is you can use different codes for

different users and this allows us to

keep track for instance if i know that

you have a specific code one one one one

and then someone else has a code 222 and

we see that there was a burglary right

after someone used the one one one one

code then we know that either you or

someone you told the code to has broken

in

now next we have a card key this is one

of the most common electronic entry

systems uh in this case it's a key that

you put into the lock sometimes it's

simply a key a card key that you uh

flash by the lock much like a fob

and this is something the user has

something you take around with you

each key contains a unique identifier

and then the security can log whose key

open the door when so if you lose your

key and someone takes that then it's

going to come back to you but at least

we know which key was used whereas with

the lock and key method we don't know

which key was used because only one type

of key can open the door and with this

one they digitally add sort of numbers

so that we can lock it and there is a

computer system that's logging all the

auditing uh auditing all the security

who's going in etc

this might be replaced by the way with a

key fob a radio frequency chip a barcode

etc but the idea is the same by the way

a key fob would be like those things are

using in cars nowadays it is based on

proximity so as long as you have it in

your pocket or in your pocketbook or

perhaps in your shirt pocket

or holding in your hand

you can get access to the room simply by

being near it now there's also something

called smart cards and this is an image

that has several different things on it

so this right over here is the smart

card and what makes this a smart card as

opposed to the card key is this thing

right here

they have a small nano processor built

in so that they can communicate with an

authentication system now the benefit to

this is it has a much wider

usage

instead of just giving you access say to

a door now we can give you access using

a cac card to

a computer system so the government

uses something called a common access

card members of the dod and whenever

they want to send an email

or

do anything for instance get access to a

certain area of the network they can use

this key card as opposed to having to

type in a username and password and so

that's the real benefit to the cac card

and these smart cards is they have a

little processor built in and so they

can talk to an authentication server or

an ldap server if you recall

ldap was that

directory access protocol

that gave us

access to certain like usernames

passwords but now the card takes the

place of that

it also assists with file security

because what it can do is it

automatically can add a key to encrypt

uh emails and files before you save them

or send them and that can be really

beneficial

of course

you you always have to have the key card

and if you lose it you're in major

trouble but canceling the key card uh

can also be done by say security so if

you lose it they can cancel that the

nano processor on that card won't be

able to get access to things

uh it's also something that someone has

again this is not something they know

this is something they have and this is

different from a token which is also

something you have but this is a token

right here and you'll notice it looks on

a key chain and it has a little number

and that number randomly changes so

after a certain period of time let's say

every 60 seconds this number changes so

that way if someone was to see the

number and then try to log in they would

only have the 60 second time window to

use it

you therefore

it's you have to provide this token code

when you're at getting access to

something so let's say you are logging

in remotely from home to a computer

using vpn which we've talked about you

might have to provide your username and

password something you know along with

your token something you have that way

they can make sure someone didn't just

steal your username and password and

that someone actually has that token of

course if they steal the token now they

have access

it's very useful as i mentioned to use

in remote access situations such as with

vpn it's also very expensive and you're

usually only going to see it in a large

enterprise setting uh very large

computer systems nowadays also there's

even google and dropbox and a lot of

other services are starting to provide

token access by using an app on your

iphone or on your smartphone such as

your android phone and so you download

an application that gives you access

to uh this rotating sort of token number

and now without having to have uh any

sort of special device you can log in

now of course the problem with that is

if someone gets access to your your

phone now they have access to your

entire system uh so you need to be

careful with that the other thing is

that the back end of that on google's

side for instance is very expensive

because again they have to be able to

coordinate those numbers and so that can

be a little tricky uh again this is an

authentication that is something you

have just like that card

by the way there are some other things

up here and for instance this crypto

card right here which would also be

something you have and uh a usb stick

you could put into your computer that

would automatically encrypt everything

on the

computer finally biometrics this is the

big one and i always see questions about

this on the exam in general this is the

science of recognizing humans based on

certain physical characteristics so this

is something you are okay and that's

this kind of category we're talking

about here bodily characteristics that

can be measured are stuff like

fingerprints

um retinal scans or eye scanners uh

facial recognition software uh and even

voice recognition

now we still have a long way to go

before all of these are going to be

useful in the in the sort of

non-commercial consumer market but they

are getting more and more uh

available because the technology is

getting cheaper and cheaper to make all

right so now we've talked about

authentication and remember i'm just

going to keep adding this over and over

again the three types that i want you to

really remember is something you are

something you know

and

something you have

okay so lock and key is something you

have cipher lock something you know

card key something you have a smart card

would also be something you have

a token something you have and

biometrics something you are another

thing you would know would be a password

this is why it's important never to

write down passwords because they have

to remain something you know not

something you have if someone has that

piece of paper then we're in trouble the

other thing to remember is that we have

something called

multi-factor

authentication

and that can involve

any mixture of these so it would mix

something you are with something you

know for instance a password and a

fingerprint scan or something you have

with something you know such as an

example of

an atm withdrawal right you need to have

a card that you swipe and you have to

know

an atm pin

all right so let's quickly talk about

some physical security things

passwords should never be written down

and especially not taped on a monitor

under a keyboard just like i mentioned a

little while ago

this is generally falling under the

reason that you'll generally see this is

in something called a clean desk policy

a clean desk policy usually says that

you have to remove all papers from your

desk before leaving for lunch breaks etc

this way no one can walk by during a

break and get information

you always want to store these papers in

a safe place and either shred or burn

them if they're no longer needed i know

it might sound weird to shred paper

i mean to burn paper but there are burn

bags in certain

you know government institutions so that

way they can make sure stuff can't be

recovered

you're also probably going to want to

put a privacy filter on a pc monitor and

that's going to reduce the visibility of

the monitor for shoulder surfing if

you've ever seen a privacy filter you

have a monitor and the privacy filter

sort of sits

on top

of that filter i'm just sure to show the

distance and it makes it so that

the width of where people can see is not

very wide so you have to be right behind

this in order for it to work all right

it also works as a double reducing

anti-glare you may have seen them in the

field

i also want to talk about something

called a man trap because this gets

specifically to um

uh

physical security

in situations in which someone can

tailgate you and this is a term we'll

talk about a little bit later a man trap

is like a double door system in which

only one person is allowed access at a

time so sometimes what you'll have is

you'll literally have if we're looking

at this as a cross section if i have one

door

and then i'll have a hallway and then

you'll have another door

alright so here's one door and here's

the other door and what happens is this

way it only allows one person at a time

so you come in here and then you swipe

and then you go in and then the next

person can swipe and go in the idea is

that you want to make sure only one

person goes in at a time the other thing

this does is make sure that there's a

buffer zone between uh more than one

person

in case an emergency sometimes uh in the

military if you go to a military base

if we have two cars like so this is my

really terrible car drawing right what

they'll do is they'll make sure that

there's always two cars

whenever they're checking ids and stuff

at a roadblock that way

this car right here can never just

drive through okay so they're using one

as a buffer for the other it is a

man-made man trap another type of man

trap um

is gonna be

uh one of these turn styles as i think

i'll mention in a second i wanted to

point out that authentication can happen

at each door so for instance here i

might need a

password or a passcode because it's a

cipher lock and then here i might need a

card key so you can have double

authentication in order to double check

that people should be allowed access

if you're not authorized you may make it

past the first door but you might not

make it past the second so the idea

again is using a multi-factor what we

call multi-factor authentication in

order to double check that someone who's

getting access should be having access

okay so now that was physical security

including the man trap let's talk a

little bit about social engineering

social engineering

unlike other forts that are done like a

brute force like a brute force attack

which means that i'm just going to try

as many passwords as possible until i

finally get through social engineering

basically means i'm going to manipulate

people into giving me information

which you know can be a real problem

there are a lot of different examples of

this i want to provide you for instance

an email asking you for your password is

a type of social engineering it's

manipulating you into giving you giving

a password maybe uh the email even

pretends like it's your bank an

organization asks for your credit card

information or your password on the

phone uh they call you and you don't

call them back right so they say hey uh

this is your bank please give us your

social security number or this other

piece of information what you should

always try doing in that case is saying

hey let me call you back

uh or for instance someone calls the i.t

desk or the personnel office and to gain

information hi i'm frank's wife and he's

out today and i need to get his password

for whatever reason or i need to send

him something and these are all ways in

which we social engineer in order to get

what we want now one type of social

engineering is spam

and this is as you all know is basically

unsolicited bulk email why it still is

going around uh you know why we have to

spend

you know thousands perhaps even millions

of dollars a year

on reducing the amount of bulk email we

get

but

one of the reasons for this is they hope

that they'll get some you'll need to

click on something right and then they

can affect you with a virus or do

something else so it is a form of social

engineering one way to prevent it

is to use a strong password and that way

uh hackers can't send email from your

email address

sometimes what will happen is in order

to get information or to send out

information to other people that you

know they will get access to your email

and then send out emails and other

people think oh that's from my buddy so

i'll open it and so one thing we can do

is use a strong password always a strong

password and by the way

just so we know what a strong password

is a strong password should be at least

eight characters if not more

okay it needs to include numbers

upper and lower case

uh letters and special special

characters

this is why one of the most commonly

used generic secure passwords is

something like this

so i'll have one two three four five six

seven eight nine characters i'm using a

number the number zero i have upper case

letters and lowercase letters and then i

have special characters so this is

passwords but we've replaced the a with

an at we've used some uppercases and we

replaced this o with the zero

an easy thing to do

you also want to use some sort of spam

filter if it's not already provided

through your server if you're using a

google or a yahoo or one of these

there's probably a spam filter built in

a very popular spam filter used on an

enterprise level is called postini and

basically what it does is it searches

emails and suspects them of either being

spam or not and then moves it into a

junk email folder

as i just mentioned some email clients

provide an additional spam filter and

that would be like outlook so outlook

will have an additional spam filter or

you can install one save from mcafee or

norton and so on and so forth

uh you can also subscribe to what are

called white lists these uh as opposed

to blacklists

right contain email or entire domains

that are trusted and so you basically

it's someone else telling you hey you

don't have to worry about this uh

of course the trouble is if you're on a

blacklist then other people aren't going

to receive your emails so it's really

important

and blacklist something else you can

subscribe to which are the opposite of a

whitelist basically saying keep these

people away from me

all right fishing fishing is attempting

to fraudulently obtain private

information usually by pretending to be

someone else now this can happen either

using uh email or phone

or

or even in person if i go to the bank

and i can produce some sort of id saying

that i'm you then i might be able to get

access to all of your bank account

information

alternatively if i call up you know call

you at home and say i'm your bank

and that i need some information ask you

to provide me with something you might

just do it so another example would be

an email leading you to a malicious

website that looks like your bank

website so it looks it looks like a

website that you visit often but it's

actually a fake website that's been set

up specifically to fish information from

you

you can put a fishing filter in place

but education is the number one way to

combat social engineering in any form

including fishing by the way you might

hear of a term called whaling and

whaling as opposed to fishing means

instead of going after the small fish

you're going after the big fish like

ceos etc so they try to go after the big

names that way they can just get to the

good information quickly

now shoulder surfing is really simple

this is the use of direct observation to

find out someone's password pin or other

information

so you're typing in your password i'm a

technician and i'm standing over you and

you type in your password and they watch

you that's shoulder surfing it's one of

the main reasons why whenever i am on

site with a client i always turn around

or walk away while they log in

you can use

different things such as that privacy

filter like i mentioned over your

monitor you can also shield the screen

or the keypad with your uh

hands

however of course the biggest way to

reduce shoulder surfing is to be

educated

there's also something called

piggybacking or tailgating which are

similar but slightly different

both are

basic these are both physical sort of

access uh

social engineering ways and basically

what happens is let's say i have a card

key

what i would do is i swipe in i open the

door and i start to walk in and then you

go hey hold the door and you walk in

behind me you've never swiped your key

there is no proof therefore that you

even are allowed to get in

this is a really big deal especially in

military government installations where

you're not supposed to do any of this

now the difference in piggybacking is

piggybacking is usually with the

person's consent meaning that i uh i

swipe and then i open the door for you

as you walk in i've seen this in cases

for instance when i was on a military

base someone uh a lower ranking officer

opened the door you know swiped and

opened the door for a higher ranking

officer and let them pass of course the

problem is this

breached security protocol what really

should have happened is they both should

have been swiping in but one was trying

to be nice to the other with tailgating

you usually don't have the authorized

person's consent so that would be like

the door is about to close and i rush in

we've seen that in a bunch of movies

someone throws their hat to block the

door from closing etc

man traps turn styles security guards

these are really good ways to prevent

against piggybacking and tailgating

in addition to of course education

education

education all right so now we've talked

about a few forms of social engineering

including spam which is like that

unsolicited bulk mail phishing

pretending to be someone you're not in

order to get information

shoulder surfing which is basically just

looking a line of sight direct

observation and then piggybacking or

tailgating the difference being one is

authorized and one is not

finally let's talk about some hard drive

disposal methods

storage devices such as hard drives

contain a lot of useful information on

them and even once i've formatted it

purportedly erasing all of the data on

there someone who's really good at

forensics can actually recall a lot of

that data including for instance

passwords or tax information and so on

so proper data removal goes beyond just

file deletion or formatting and we're

going to talk about a couple of these

either way

when a hard drive is removed from the

computer we either need to recycle it in

a proper manner so someone else can use

it or dispose of it in a proper manner

so no one else can use it for instance

if i had a piece of paper with very

sensitive information on it i'm probably

not going to let someone write on the

back of it because what if they turn it

over i'd probably shred it same with a

hard drive we need to figure out how to

either dispose of it or recycle it in

such a way that our information is not

going to be lost to someone else

there are three methods of disposal that

we're going to talk about

or

when i say disposal that also includes

recycling one is called clearing one is

called purging and one is called

destruction i just want to point out all

of these

all of these have different names and

i'll talk about some of them and some of

those depending on who you talk to would

have different things the important

thing is just to realize that um

information still resides on those hard

drives and i need to get some

information off of them

all right

so first let's talk about clearing

clearing is the removal of data that

then can be reconstructed uh cannot be

reconstructed i'm sorry

so

one thing that this is called another

word of this by the way is called data

wiping

it overwrites the old data with new

clear data

by the way you can see here's a

if this is a wipe and this is something

this is a device that you'd bring around

and would specifically use to clear wipe

the uh hard drive and so you're adding

old you're adding new data on top of the

old which hopefully should remove stuff

this is also referred to as shredding

the hard drive by the way there's also

physically shredding the hard drive so

this word can get a little weird

in some cases the data is recoverable to

an extent using forensic measures so it

is important that when you do this

you do it in such a way that you're not

leaving any information on and that's

also why a lot of times we're not going

to use this method

the next one is called purging

this is also known as sanitizing and

this is where we remove all the data so

it can't be reconstructed by any

known technique so as opposed to

the other one where i'm adding clear

data over the already

their data this is going to actually

sanitize it this destroys data on the

media and usually this complies with the

department of defense uh sort of method

and by the way i just want to mention

when we're formatting a hard drive there

are two types of formats

there is a low level and a high level

format what we're talking about here are

low level formats now that might sound

weird because you say hey a high level

format that sounds like it's higher it's

better in fact a high level format think

about this way sits on the highest rung

of the of the hard drive and doesn't get

deep in and really do a deep clean

that's like a quick clean

of your home for instance a low

low-level format means you're getting

deep you're really scrubbing it and

that's what we want here now the

department of defense requires that you

have at least seven passes of rewrites

as you're destroying all this data all

right and you can see here we can verify

the lastpass here's seven passes right

here

this may also degauss the disk which is

basically

wiping a huge

magnet over the disk and that's gonna

cause physical damage to the drive and

the platters within but it does purge it

of all data or delete all the data from

it or wipe it

this then cannot be used again once

you've done that so it's not so good for

recycling but sometimes we just want to

make sure the data is not off and we

don't want to recycle it

now the third and final type is

destruction as this great image on the

right shows you the storage is literally

pulverized it is put into a big machine

that pulverizes the data so that there

is no way it can be reconstructed

then once they've done that the media is

disposed of in accordance with some

municipal guidelines generally not

burning or you know thrown away into a

landfill of some sort or some place

where it can be

disposed of properly and in the best

in the best way of being disposed for

the um environment as well

so now we've just talked about hard

drive disposal

and recycling

including clearing or wiping a drive

purging a drive

and finally destroying it perhaps by

pulverizing it

so now let's go over everything we've

talked about in regards to unauthorized

access

so first we talked about the different

types of authentication

and you'll recall we talked that there

are four uh three to four different

types something you are

which again falls under that

biometrics

something you have

which would be the lock and key

card key smart card

token

and then

something you know which would be for

instance the cipher lock or any sort of

password or pin

we talked about the lock and key a

physical form

like using an actual key and a door the

cipher lock

using a pin or code that you know to get

in a card key which you swipe the card

to get in such as like a hotel room

smart cards which have a nano processor

built in this is where cac cards fall

under

a token which is a

usually a small device that you carry

that has a changing number on it that

number giving you access and then

biometrics any form of retinal scan

fingerprint anything that is measuring

something you are also voice recognition

and facial structure then we talked

about physical security some of the

things including a clean desk policy

that's that are important and never

writing down your password

a man trap which ensures that there

won't be it protects basically against

tailgating

we looked at social engineering which is

any way of manipulating an individual

into giving you information

the best way to combat social

engineering education

okay we looked at spam which is

basically that

bulk email

phishing which is trying to get

information from a user not unlike

social engineering we just talked about

it's a very specific type of social

engineering where i'm trying to get

information by pretending to be someone

else or

by pretending to be a bank for instance

shoulder surfing which is direct

observation

and then piggybacking or tail baiting

tailgating rather piggybacking remember

is with consent tailgating is without

consent and then we looked at hard drive

disposal clearing where we

put a clear data over

the data is already there this is useful

for recycling purging which is where i

actually wipe the data off i format it

over and over again generally seven

times

and then destruction

which is going to be like pulverizing uh

the hard drive so no one can use it ever

again

great let's continue talking about

security now that we've talked about um

authentication in this sort of physical

sense and also

now that we've talked about social

engineering and a lot of the ways things

are going to get access

to our systems

[Music]

welcome to module 20 lesson two a

digital security

gonna look uh very again very briefly

there's a whole bunch more um

lectures on this in the security plus if

you want to specialize

as a security engineer

vpn vpn concentrator data loss

preventions a new syllabus

topic

disable import acls is a real big one

for

networking

in this in respect of um

cisco ccna and juniper

and other um network devices

emr fin filtering trusted and

interesting software software sources

so uh vpn it's a virtual network built

on top of an existing public network so

it's an alternative when you don't or

can't afford or don't want for whatever

reason at least

line that solely belongs to you but you

want to use a public internet of some

sort but still have a secure connection

so normally you'd have vpn client

software which is often free on your

clients

that would go through where your

internet connection creates in a vpn

tunnel if you're connecting to a

corporate network it would terminate on

a vpn server or vpn concentrator

which terminates a lot of different

vpn connections so you can see the

diagram there from technet from

microsoft

the concentrator provides a remote user

with secure access

basically the vpn tunnel or connection

terminates at the vpn concentrator how

many connections you can have

terminating at the concentrator

depends on the hardware on software

running on the the vpn concentrator

feel free to look at

the different devices available from

different manufacturers such as cisco

and cisco's competitors

the vpn concentrate is a device that

handles multiple vpn tunnels coming into

the organization's network

vpn concentrators provide vpn encryption

using either ipsec or ssl secure sockets

layer

ipsec provides a high level of security

and encryption

it and requires client software to

establish the vpn turn on

uh if you're going to have a fixed

location ipsec is better

if your

remote users are roaming

say they're a traveling salesperson or

connecting from

internet cafes or such like ssl is

better

nowadays your vpn concentrator isn't

actually a separate device used to be

so instead of manufacturing these

concentrators are combined with um

other security devices that also provide

firewall protection so basically this is

a

security device that performs multiple

functions

data loss protection dlp

system designed to detect and prevent

the unintentional disclosure of

sensitive data such as credit card or

your social security number

it does real-time scanning to identify

where the sensitive data is stored

monitors how such data has been used

it understands content and context

and automatically secures the data by

enforcing data protection policies

dlp protects sensitive data when it's in

use in motion and at rest

disabling airports unused ports and

operating systems such as windows should

be disabled

so this is a port number on your device

and i presume you should really have a

firewall that opens up the common ports

and then it would ask you as and when a

port is um trying to open on your device

whether or not you want to allow it in

or out

unused ports are physical ports on your

devices such as switches that should be

disabled this would prevent somebody who

manages to get physical access to your

switch to plug in their device and start

using it and possibly injecting traffic

and into your network

that's going to come from our security

acls it's basically a list of

[Music]

permit or deny statements you have to

configure them in certain ways and they

can be quite tricky actually

and you'll see a lot of this if you come

to do your cisco ccna

so it's a table containing rules that

are going to either permit or deny

traffic into or out of your network

normally on a router

or firewall interface

there is also an operating systems

network devices and rdbms

acls are replied to interfaces as i've

said

the router will check the incoming or

outgoing traffic against the acl it will

either be permitted or denied

at the end of every access list there is

an implicit denial this means it's

invisible so if you're doing

troubleshooting you won't see it but it

denies anything that hasn't specifically

been permitted

email filtering refers to the process of

emails

processing emails to protect against

spam viruses and other email threats if

you go on a corporate network you'll

normally see a little footer on the

bottom of every email that says this um

email has been filtered and sometimes it

will tell you if a particular piece of

content has been removed

and blocked spam and emails emails

processed by the email servers

can be configured not to deliver emails

matching certain criteria

the in our software team and the

well-known reputable software vendors

are considered trusted software sources

this is trusted software for your

network

microsoft's considered a trusted

software source

sources such as ptp and file sharing

sites and unknown software vendors that

we don't trust absolutely are considered

untrusted software sources

so we've looked at vpns vpn

concentrators data loss prevention

disable imports access control lists

email filtering trusted and trusted

software sources

that's all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

security

user security

we discussed a lot of physical security

and enterprise security settings but

when a lot of us think of securing our

computers we think of user names and

passwords so that's what we're going to

discuss specifically in this video

so we're going to start by talking about

user security in general including the

different types of accounts that a user

can have when you type in your username

your username is actually associated

with a type of account that gives you

certain types of access to your computer

we'll then talk about these different

accounts including administrator

the standard user account

a power user

and then the guest account

the there are can be more types of

accounts but these are the most general

types these are the templates that are

included in many versions of windows and

these are the types that the a plus exam

wants you to know about

we'll then talk about something called

account lockout which is how if you have

typed in a password multiple times and

gotten it wrong you get locked out of

the system for security reasons we'll

also talk about passwords and what makes

a good password and some of the settings

that an administrator can create our

surrounding passwords to make sure that

they are top notch and that they're the

most secure these include a password

complexity

password history meaning not using a

password you've already used in the past

the age of a password meaning that after

a certain length of time the password

will automatically expire and you'll

have to create a new one

and password length or how long it is

whether that's four characters like a

pin or that you would use for your bank

or perhaps 15 characters and the longer

it is the more difficult it is to

hack

we'll then talk about something called

the user account control which many

people who use vista and later windows 7

i know is that annoying box that pops up

asking you to uh

to

click yes anytime you want to do

anything to the computer but it's

actually a security measure

we'll also talk when talking about user

account control about the principle of

least privilege which is central to the

idea behind uac

we'll talk about where you can control

the user account control settings so in

case you're trying to technically

support a computer

or troubleshoot a computer you don't

have to constantly worry about this box

popping up or perhaps for a certain user

you want it to be a little more secure

okay so let's begin talking about user

security

um usernames and passwords are the most

common types of authentication for

gaining access to any sort of software

meaning that when you get to your

computer generally speaking if it's a

computer on a company network you have

to type in a username and password the

username is an identity it tells the

computer who you are the password is

authentication that tells the computer

that the person whose username you're

using

is actually representative of you uh

that would be like a picture

on an id so i give an id to someone at

the bar let's say and it says i'm over a

certain age and that's my identity

however to authenticate that they have a

picture that they can double check with

my face

just as a reminder this is something you

know one of the most common types of

authentication something you know a

password you memorize this is why we

don't want it to be something you have

so you should never write it down

the username is known to everyone that's

not hidden at all

for instance the username in my case

might be jay penzel my first initial and

my last name

or it could be you know computer user 22

or a plus instructor whatever that

username is it is shared with anyone and

everyone

there are also several different types

of user accounts like we're going to

talk about which these fall under you

can see over here

it has my username followed by

uh the type of account i have

we also have another one here guest

telling us that the guest account is

disabled which we'll take a look at in

just a bit

now the administrator account is the

first one and by the way

i want to show you where we access all

of this user all this user settings

because i just showed you two different

windows if we looked between this one

and the previous slide so if we go over

into windows

of course the the sort of simple way to

get in here is to go to the control

panel and there is a user account

section

and here you can make changes to user

account change the password and so on if

you want to take a look at other

accounts you click manage another

account and up pops all the different

accounts you can create a new account so

on and so forth however the sort of more

advanced way and if you were working on

a windows 2008 server for instance this

is where you'd want to go to manage user

accounts for the entire domain is to

right click on computer and go to manage

and on the left choose local users and

groups

here you can see actually a few

different users that you didn't see

previously including the administrator

user account

and then groups show you groups of user

accounts and we'll talk more about that

a little bit later

so computer management is the window

that i was showing you just previously

here we are again in the computer

management console and you can see

the administrator

is highlighted currently

this is a type of user that has full or

near full control of the operating

system the administrator account is

usually the most

uh powerful on the system

therefore it also has access to

everything

files folders if you are the

administrator on a network you probably

have access to everyone's email and

everyone's

folders and everyone's files and as a

result with that responsibility uh or

with that privilege comes a lot of

responsibility if something happens to

the system then you're probably going to

be the first one to be blamed

there is a default administer

administrator account which you should

disable as you can see over on the right

and we saw in the window we were when we

were in windows it says administrator

and to the right the description says a

built-in account for administering the

file computer domain

now

this is built in so that every windows

system automatically has an

administrator account and the username

for that account is administrator

the problem with this is if it's in

every single windows distribution

that also means that it is uh

known to every single hacker or every

single

sort of nefarious person who wants to

get access to your computer and so we

want to disable this the way we disable

accounts by the way

if i go over into windows 7

is to right click

and go to properties

when this pops up

we can see there's a check box and this

one is currently disabled says account

is disabled the reason we disable

accounts as opposed to

say deleting an account

like so

is

because what if we want to uh you know

we we fire someone or someone leaves our

business and then they come back later

we want to just be able to re-enable

their account and all their settings are

as they were

so generally speaking we'll disable

instead of deleting accounts

day-to-day computer use by the way

should not be in an admin account unless

you're the administrator of perhaps a

large organization and even in that case

we don't want you to be using your

computer in an administrator account the

reason being if i'm in an administrator

account and a virus accesses my computer

or perhaps a hacker gets access to my

computer

then now they have access to everything

so sometimes it's better if i'm working

in a standard account and then go into

an administrator account whenever i want

to make a change this is sort of the

principle behind the user account

control that we'll talk about a little

bit later

the next type and probably the one we

want to see most used is the standard

user account

uh i've show you see over here a new

window you haven't seen before and this

is when we're creating a new account

from that user accounts window

so here we are in the computer

management but if we go back into

control panel

and we go to user accounts like we were

before manage another account

and then we go to create new account

you'll see we can create a username so

for perhaps we had a friend named bill

and we wanted to create a username for

him uh and then we can choose whether we

want this to be a standard user or an

administrator you can actually change

this after the fact but

i want to point out that standard user

is generally where we want to put people

and the reason for that is that this is

a normal account for a person on the

network they can access their own data

but nobody else's and if you imagine

that i'm in a big computer organization

or i'm in a banking you know a big bank

organization or any sort of enterprise

i don't want to give people privilege or

access to components of the network that

they shouldn't be having access to or

that stuff they haven't created and so

in general we want most people to fall

under this standard user account

this also means that they cannot perform

administrator tax tasks without the

administrator password

so for instance if they wanted to

install an application this might not be

something that the standard user account

allows for if they want to change some

settings on their computer probably not

something the standard user account uh

we're going to allow we can actually

change what they're allowed to do in

their standard user account in something

called the local or the global policy

settings and we'll take a look at that a

little bit later

but um generally speaking most people in

the standard user account that's where

we want to throw most people it's where

uh

you know you can use your computer open

up words save a document access that

document

but you won't be able to say create

other uh accounts for other people in

the network or access stuff that the

administrator doesn't want you to access

this is so just like i said you can't

perform those administrator tasks like

installing programs or changing certain

settings

now in between these two

between the administrator and the

standard user account is something

called a power user account

this is someone who has the ability to

do some administrative tasks like

installing software but not other things

like creating a new user account

you can see over here when we um

back in computer management now there is

a power users group that i could add

individuals to

if we go over there for a second

so here are the user accounts i'm

creating a new account you used to see

power user actually listed here but that

was taken away a few years back

i think in windows vista it was taken

away however if i go back into the

computer management console let's say

that i have a new let's create a new

user and we'll call it uh we'll call

them bill

and we'll give them a password really

quickly

and i'm gonna go to create

and now we have bill on this account and

if i go to groups

i can choose what kind of

account i want bill to have currently by

default he just has a standard user

account but let's say i go to power

users

and now i can add him as a member

now bill is a power user on this

computer

i would add him to

for instance administrators the same way

so it's pretty easy as you can tell to

go back and forth in this we don't get

too in-depth into this just because that

would be more of a windows

administration sort of certification

that microsoft would give out but this

is a little introduction for you

um

as i mentioned the the

uh power user account was removed from

the the default user types in windows 7.

i think i might have said windows vista

earlier and that's just because it sort

of was falling out of fashion no one

really knew

what uh someone in between a standard

user and an administrator was going to

do

but in some cases you will still see

people

organizations who use them and you might

see it pop up on the exam

as i mentioned it's still available as a

user group although it's not in the list

of user types when you create a new user

from the control panel

the last type of account i want you to

be aware of for the a plus exam and as

we go over to windows 7 real quickly you

can see that

there are other groups such as backup

operators and network can

network configuration operators and

remote desktop users and so on and so

forth

not covered in the a plus exam however

but the last type i want you to be aware

of is something called the guest account

the guest account is an extremely

extremely extremely limited account that

can't really do much of anything except

use the computer and what's there um for

instance they can't change any settings

they can't modify the desktop they can't

uh install any programs or even change

the password they've been given like a

standard user you would imagine can

change and create their own password and

the reason we have a guest account is uh

and we have a default guest account as

you can see it's built in by this

description here is so that if someone

comes into our network and we want to

give them a quick quick access but we

don't want to create a username for them

because they're only going to be there

for let's say a day then we could use

the guest account

however

this is automatically disabled

by default and we also want to disable

this for security purposes as well

obviously and maybe even change it some

called something else instead of guest

press visitor

just like for administrator we don't

want to use administrator as a default

username we might want to use admin or

uh you know big man or something right

the reason being again if we have a

default anything a default guest account

a default administrator account then

anyone who wants to get access to our

system will automatically know oh well i

know there's an administrator account i

know there's a guest account and they'll

be able to get into it pretty easily

now uh you'll see over here we have

something called local security policies

and before we talk about account lockout

which is some a setting you can have

with passwords i want to just go over to

the windows so i can show you this

we're in computer management here but

i'm going to close out and actually go

into

the local security policy if i had an

entire network you could actually have

something and i'm not sure it's

available in here

yep called the global security policy

which would mean this is for all users

on the entire domain but because we're

not running a server because we're using

windows we don't need that

so in local policies we have several

different options and the one we're

looking at right now is uh

security options

and

in account policies we also look at

password policies okay now under that we

have account lockout policy and i just

want to point out too rights assignment

we can here determine what sort of

people are going to be allowed to do a

standard user for instance uh modifying

an object label i might not want regular

users to be able to do that um

other things renaming the administrator

account the only person who do that is

the administrator

etc etc so the this sort of was what i

was referring to earlier when i was

saying this is where you could set what

a standard user could do but let's look

at account policies here and let's

choose the account lockout policy

and so this is where we would set

everything we're about to talk about

with account lockout

if a user attempts to lock onto his log

onto a system and is unsuccessful after

a certain number of attempts they'll be

locked out the reason for this is

generally speaking

um we have something called a brute

force

attack a brute force attack means i'm

just going to continually try to get

access to your system over and over and

over and over again

and

in order to

prohibit this we can have a lockout so

after they try 5 or 10 or 15 times

whatever it is to get access to your

system

it'll just lock and disable the account

until someone comes and unlocks it

so we can do a couple things in the

local security policy for instance we

can set the threshold to a certain

amount of invalid logons how many times

can someone log on

using the wrong password for instance

before they're locked out

we can also set how long the user is

going to be locked out do we want them

to be locked out for 10 minutes do we

want them to be locked out for a few

days

and we can set how long until the

lockout counter is reset

uh

for instance if they're locked out and

they're locked out for 30 minutes how

long until that lockout counter how many

times they've tried logging on will be

reset

and if we go over real quickly

you can see i have a reset lockout

counter after a certain amount of time

it's currently disabled so let's

actually turn on the account

account will lock out after let's say 10

invalid attempts

okay and then it says that we've created

a suggested setting where the account

lockout will take place for 30 minutes

and the account lockout counter which

seems similar and really is it's also

going to be set for 30 minutes by the

way the difference between account

lockout duration is that's how long you

have to wait before trying to log on

again

uh the account lockout counter is

you know basically how long

until the

that number of times is reset uh

obviously if the account lockout

duration is 30 minutes and the account

locker lockout counter is 45 minutes

then you'll your account won't be locked

out after 30 minutes but you won't be

able to get into your account for

another 15 minutes so generally said

saying we want to set both of these

at the same time

now password complexity is something

else we want to deal with and again if i

go over to windows 7 now we're not

looking so much at the account lockout

policies we're looking at password

policy

and here is the password complexity

requirements

so password complexity means that the

password has to have at least eight

characters

and at least one upper case letter one

number and one special character

i think we talked about this previously

but this is why a very common default

password would be something like capital

p

at

ss

w

zero rd

i have one upper case

i have one number

and i also have uh one special symbol or

special character

this is gonna make it harder for a uh

bot a computer that's gonna try hacking

into my computer to figure out what my

password is because it doesn't just have

to go through the dictionary and it

doesn't just have to go through the 26

letters in the alphabet it has to go

actually if you think about it

we have at least one uppercase character

and there's 26 of those at least one

lowercase character

and there's 26 of those

and then we also imagine that the

special characters i'm not sure how many

of those there are but let's say

there are 15 of those and then we have

10 numbers

so

with all of these if we add that

together

we have what 52

67

77 total i believe if i did my math

correctly and so every single time it

has to guess

one

uh digit it has to guess through

uh basically 77 different options

and then if you multiply that times 77

times what 77

to the let's say you're you have eight

characters then you can see this is

going to be a pretty big number the

longer by the way

the length is the more difficult it is

to hack into an account which is the

reason why they recommend having a very

long password

uh you can require complexity by users

in the local security policy as we've

said

sometimes

it can just be recommended that you

recommend someone have a complex

password but you don't have to require

it

but you can actually tell windows to

require by enabling this these

complexity requirements

the next one is password history as you

can see over here if we set decide to

enforce a password history we can

remember how many passwords the computer

remembers so every time you change a

password which is something else we'll

see in a second um

we want to make sure you can't change it

to one you've already used

so

this is

uh so basically you can't use a previous

password

and if i require you to change your

password let's say every 30 days then

that means you have i guess six months

of passwords if we set this to six

uh that you wouldn't be able to use and

so you wouldn't be able to reuse a

password for six months you have to

reset your password every 30 days you

can imagine that then someone only has a

small window of time in order to hack

into your computer if they somehow get

your password and uh they won't be able

to reuse that password for quite a long

time

uh so there you go can't use the last

three passwords we said six can't use

the last six passwords

this is the password age

how long will the password uh

be allowed to be used for so this

defines exactly how long the password

can be used and the minimum must be

higher than zero obviously so the

minimum amount of days

uh

i can't have zero days right i must have

at least one day

and then the maximum would be what 30

days 60 days 120 days whatever that is

and if we go over here

you can see i have a minimum password

age and a maximum password age my

minimum password age is cur uh sorry i

went to maximum the minimum password age

is currently zero days which means the

password can be changed as soon as you

want i can do five different passwords

in one day generally speaking you want

to set this so that if someone changes

their password they can't just

immediately change it again

okay

and then the max maximum password age

you know you can set this to say 60 days

so after 60 days the computer will say

hey it's time to change your password

they will be prompted to change the

password when they make the maximum wage

generally on login

although sometimes after login as well

now the password length remember i said

the longer a password the better it is

and harder to get hacked the system and

so this defines the minimum number of

characters the password has to be in

this case it's 8 8 is generally a good

number sometimes i see 15 even

the only problem is and you have to

balance this is if i ask people for

instance to create a 15 character

password every 15 days and they can't

reuse a password let's say after 15

times it has a 15 password history

they're going to have to remember a lot

more passwords and if they're having to

remember a lot more passwords they're

probably going to start writing those

passwords down which creates another

security flaw so everything has to be

balanced uh because you don't want users

so frustrated by the password policy

that they're constantly trying to

figure out ways to get around it

all right so now we've looked at the

different user security and account

types including the administrator

account which is the highest end a

standard user account

which is most users fall into that the

power user which is between these two

and then the guest account which is

specifically for a temporary user on the

system we're not going to use it a lot

and we generally want to

disable this when we're not using it

it's actually just good to disable it no

matter what there's very few reasons you

should have a guest

the default guest enabled we then talked

about account lockout which is after a

certain number of ten attempts

you can't get into

your system anymore and an administrator

actually used to go and unlock your

account which would be done from that

manage console and then we talked about

some different password settings

including complexity which remember is

an upper case uh at least a note lower

case a number and then a special

character we talked about password

history

the amount of

how much the computer remembers of past

passwords

the minimum and maximum password age

we don't want someone to be able to

change their password if we have a

history let's say of 12 we don't want

someone to be able to change their

password 12 times in one day and then

use an old password right so that's the

reason for the minimum age a maximum age

maybe 30 days 60 days maybe 120 days

finally we talked about length we want

it to be a minimum of eight which is

something that complexity will require

but maybe you want to go as high as 15

or even higher be warned of course that

the harder it is to create a password

and uh the heart then the harder it is

to remember a password the more likely

it is that users are going to forget

their passwords and or write them down

so let's talk about user account control

user account control is the security

component of windows 7 and windows vista

that keeps every user in a standard mode

user instead of administrator so what

happens is every time i want to do

something on the computer that's when it

bumps me into administrator mode and

asks for a password so it asks for

permission before allowing any changes

this can be annoying if i'm trying to

install something or make changes myself

but what if a virus is trying to make

changes to my system then this is really

going to be helpful because before it

can make a root change to my system it's

going to say hey are you sure you want

to do that and i would go wait a minute

i didn't ask it to do anything

so this is a meant to prevent

unauthorized access and to avoid user

error in the form of accidental changes

however sometimes it also just becomes

annoying especially if you know what

you're doing

now it's based on the principle of

least privilege this means a user should

have access to only what is required

they should have the least amount of

privilege they need

i don't want to give someone

administrator access if for instance

they need access to a folder or if they

want to install something what i want to

do is give them access only to the

things that they need on generally a

daily basis

that way i can make sure they're not

going to

either accidentally or purposefully uh

make a negative or bad change to the

system so for instance if a person needs

to update excel files and browse the

internet they don't need administrator

access right so i want to keep them in

the least amount of privileges possible

so i give them access to only what they

specifically need and nothing more

now uac you can set how this works and

the way you set this if we go back into

windows 7

is

we go into the control panel

and we go to user accounts and when we

see user accounts at the bottom it says

change user account control settings

alright and here you can see the default

is notify me when programs try to make

changes to the computer and let's

actually look at a couple of these

different settings

as i mentioned it's in the user accounts

area of control panel and we click the

change user control settings which i'll

just point out in case you missed it

again

right here

so there are a couple different settings

we can set the first

and you can change these based on the

slider

the first is to always

which would be here always notify you

so whenever anything happens you always

want to be notified

for instance if you make changes to

windows settings anything

the next one is notify me only when

programs try to make changes to my

computer notice the difference is

programs so if you go and make a change

to your own settings in control panel

for instance it's not going to ask you

to type in your password and double

check everything

the third one is notify me only when

programs try to make changes to my

desktop uh

i'm sorry to my computer now the

difference here is actually a very

subtle one uh when the user account

control comes on

it dims the background dims the desktop

it's basically to tell you hey and it

has a little noise and it tells you hey

you tried making a change and i don't

want you to do that are you sure you

want to do that with this one the only

difference is it does not dim the

desktop

i think it's kind of silly that there is

a specific area just for that but

there you have it

finally uh the last one is to never

notify you and if you are

doing a lot of troubleshooting you're

making changes to the computer you're

very sure on what you're doing then you

probably want to set this to never

notify that way you won't get an

annoying pop-up every time you're trying

to make a change

okay so now we've talked about user

account control including the principle

of least privilege and we looked at the

different settings we have in user

account control

and just because we looked at them on

the slide but not in the computer let's

just go over to windows 7 real quickly

and let's just take a look here so right

over here notify me don't dim the desk

desktop

right this is really the only reason

we're gonna do this as they say is only

if it takes a long time to dim the

desktop on your computer you have a slow

video card you have a slower computer um

then you would want to say do not dim my

desktop so in effect we really only have

three actual different differences

because these two are the same thing

just one is graphically different and

down here don't notify me at all uh i

would never do this

unless you are working on a computer and

when you're done working on the computer

always go back to the default unless the

user specifically asks you and and

they're the client uh and and you don't

have sort of a global

policy restricting them all right so

let's go back over everything we've

talked about so far

in this video first we talked about user

security right this is

passwords and user accounts or usernames

we looked at the different account types

including administrator which is has

full access to everything

we don't want to operate in this which

is the whole reason we have user account

control

the standard user account which is the

default for all users and by the way i

just want to point out that there is no

standard user group what there is

and it's a group that everyone is in

uh is if we go back to this users over

here we go to groups

there is a user's

account and every single user is in this

account if you're not in this account

then you're not a user on the system so

that's what we mean by standard users

we looked at a power user

which is

between uh an admin

and a standard user

we looked at a guest account as well

which the big thing here is to

by default

is to uh disable it

we also checked out account lockout

which is after a certain number of

attempts

your account

is

locked out

and you can't get back in unless you

wait a certain time period or an

administrator lets you in

we also looked at some different

password settings that we can set in the

local policy

or in a large organization the global

policy

talked about complexity which means

again one uppercase one lowercase a

number and a special character

we talked about the history we have uh

how many does it remember so how many

passwords are remembered by the system

the uh default password age which

there's a maximum and a minimum

the minimum age we probably want to be

at least one day so someone can't just

change their password over and over

again and the maximum age we might want

anywhere from 30 to 120 days

and then the length we generally say 8

is a good length

but we might also want it to be as high

as 15 or even more

we then talked about user account

control which

basically double checks

before changing any settings

we talked about the principle of least

privilege which means you only have

access

to

what you need to have access to

and finally we looked at the different

types of user account control settings

the three biggies were always notify you

no matter what

never notify

and then you know by default uh notify

only when applications make changes not

when you make changes and then we have

that option to dim the desktop or not

dimming the desktop is the default

great so now that we've talked about all

this stuff about user security let's

just continue on finish up talking about

security before we move on to

mobile devices and then technical

professionalism

[Music]

security file security

having discussed security from a user

point of view uh usernames passwords etc

let's talk about security from a file

point of view meaning the files that are

saved onto your computer and in some

cases the directories or folders those

files are within

so to begin with we're going to talk

about file security in general including

file attributes or specific qualities or

properties that are attributed to

specific files

hidden files and folders

something that's not so much securing

the files is simply keeping them out of

the hands of people who wouldn't know

what to do with them

for instance we use the hidden door

analogy when talking about

not broadcasting ssids for a wireless

router

but let's talk about hidden files and

folders

from the perspective of we don't want

someone who wouldn't know what to do

with say a hidden security file or

system file to delete it accidentally so

we hide it just to make sure

we're also going to look at something

called administrative shares these are

shares of folders or files that are

specifically used for administrators or

things that the administrator needs to

have access to in some ways these are

actually linked as we will see in a bit

and i want to talk about permissions how

we can sort of merge uh user security

with file security by acknowledging

which users are allowed to have

permission to access certain files

we're also going to talk in this

category about share permissions which

is somewhat different from ntfs

permissions uh

depending on how we're sort of sharing

things and ntfs permissions are going to

have a bit more weight than share

permissions share permissions being from

a network standpoint and ntfs

permissions being from a computer

standpoint of the file

we're also going to talk about how

permission inheritance works for

instance if i create a file within a

folder that has certain permissions or

if i create a new folder as a subfolder

of a folder that already has permissions

and then we're going to talk about how

that works when we're moving and copying

files

then i want to talk about encryption

encryption being if i have a file and

it's in what we call plain text and

someone who shouldn't have permission to

it does get permission to it they're

going to be able to read it so we

encrypt files so

if someone gets access to them even if

they don't have permission and even if

they had to work pretty hard to get

access they're going to have a harder

time decoding or de-encrypting the file

much like when we send coded messages

in battle

we're going to talk about something

called the encrypting file system which

allows us to encrypt specific files and

then the bitlocker encryption which

allows us to encrypt not just files but

an entire folder directory or even drive

finally i want to just mention briefly

and it'll come up briefly in something

called the trusted platform module or

tpm which is a piece of hardware that's

now found in a lot of computers uh on

motherboards and is used specifically to

allow encryption to occur it's sort of

like the decoder ring if you will

of encryption

all right so let's start with file

security i will go over into the windows

platform in order to show you some of

this in practical terms

but let's talk first about

a file security in general

files can be assigned different

attributes in windows we can see those

attributes over here on the right and

we'll talk about them a little more in

depth

these attributes some of them have to do

with simply how the system is going to

deal with the file for instance

archiving which we

see right here

which has to do with backing up and

whether or not a file is indexed or

whether it's read only or even

hidden which we'll talk about more in

depth too but there's also some other

things we can talk about when it comes

to attributes and

these attributes are sort of like labels

on a file to tell the system what to do

with it

to access these attributes for a

specific file all you have to do is

right-click any file and select

properties so

if we go over here into windows

and let's just find uh

a test document here i go to properties

and at the bottom i have attributes now

there are only two that are listed read

only which will make sure that i can

only read the file i can't edit it and

hidden which will hide the file i think

we've even looked at that before

um and we'll have to unhide it this is

something that we'll go over again but i

want to

show you it because i do think it pops

up on the test we're going to go to

organize folder and search options

go to view and under hidden files and

folders we can have show hidden house

and folders okay

so i'm going to apply that so we can get

access to this file and then we'll take

a look at that again but if i want some

more advanced as i unhide that if i want

some more advanced attributes you click

advanced and you get the screen that we

saw on the slide that we were just

looking at

so the other way we can do this is to

actually use the attrib command

through the command line and i just want

to show you that real quickly so if we

go over into the windows 7 environment

here

i've moved a file onto the desktop

called test and the reason it's a little

uh faded is because it's actually hidden

and if i want to use the attrib command

first i'm going to right click the

command prompt to run as administrator

notice that a user access control thing

pops up are you sure you want to run

this as administrator and now let's use

our command line to get to

the root cd slash will get us to the

root and then

cd for change directory right and we

want to go into users

okay and then we want to go into my user

account

and then if we do a dir we'll notice

there is a desktop folder

all right and if we do another dir we

notice the file is not listed now i know

the name of that file is test so if i do

attrib

which is the attribute command and then

i list the file name which is test.jpg

and then i add minus h that's telling

this i want to remove the hidden

attribute from the test.jpg file

i do that and not only will you notice

on the desktop there now it's not hidden

but

if i do a dir there it is if i want to

reverse this i can do attrib

test.jpg

plus

h

just like that it's hidden again

so let's talk a little more about these

attributes there are a couple different

ones the first is read only the

read-only attribute means that you

cannot make any changes to the file so

if we go over here and i click this file

and go to properties i could also do

this using the atrium command and i

set it to read only

all right so let's open up the file and

let's say i'm gonna i want to open this

in paint

and let's just make some sort of change

to it we'll just draw a line on it

great so i've done this change and now

let's uh save it

and i want to save it as test.jpg it

tells me to exist i press yes to

overwrite it and oh

it says the file is read only i can't do

that and the reason is a read-only file

cannot be edited right so this is what

we might want to do if we want to make

sure that no one's going to change a

file now obviously

we right-click it and we unset read-only

i'm going gonna go ahead and unset

hidden here as well and then we can make

all the changes we want

the other one uh is hidden and we've

seen uh what hidden does uh hidden makes

the file invisible to all users except

the person who created the file so

that's the reason why i can see this

file

even if it's hidden

it's because it's my file however if i'm

looking for it from another user they

wouldn't be able to see it

uh admins can unhide files individually

or for the entire system and uh the way

we unhide files again we just did this

right is i go to and i think this will

pop up again as i go to computer

organize folder and search options click

the view tab and here it says hidden

files and folders and i can click don't

show hidden files or folders and watch

what happens to this file on the left

that we know is hidden apply it and just

like that it is gone okay and so this is

one of the reasons we might want to use

the attribute command is because i know

the file is there

so i can

take out that hidden quality and it

should appear on the desktop

there's also compression which we see

over here in the advanced

attributes area so we're clicking this

button we can get into this advanced

attributes window and compression allows

you to convert a file into a smaller

size uh the only problem with this is

opening it then it has to uncompress so

we might not want to do this in all

instances but we might want to do this

to save disk space we have a very large

file finally we have encryption which

we'll talk about a little more later but

this scrambles the file contents more or

less so only the person who created the

file can

read it or anyone with a

um uh

some sort of shared key that lets any

user unencrypt that would work as well

so let's talk about these hidden files

and folders here's that the

area i showed you a bunch of times i

want to go over this again

system files and folders are hidden by

the operating system to protect the

system uh from

basically stupid users if a stupid user

goes in and says oh here's a file i

don't need this and deletes it then

we're going to be in trouble so it's

important to hide certain files and

folders that uh

we don't want regular standard users who

don't know where this checkbox is having

access to it so

showing these files then can be very

important if i'm a technician and i need

to see all the hidden files and that's

why i would want to go into this folder

options and click hidden files and

folders don't show hidden files and

folders

now let's talk about something called

administrative shares

and this is the computer management

console i'll go in there in just a

second but folders and files are shared

out but they're hidden and that's what

administrative share is that way unless

i'm an administrator someone in the know

i wouldn't be able to access

the share because it doesn't look like

it's out there

and the way we do this in the name is we

just add a money symbol at the end of

the share name

and you'll see over here actually

there's a pretty big share which is the

c drive uh the c drive right here right

and if we go look at the share i'll show

you this in in the windows in just a

second it has a little money sign after

it

so a lot of times this entire c drive is

shared out on the network

administratively so that an

administrator can get access to any file

on the system

if i go over into windows real quickly

and i show you

we're going to right click on manage

and if we look at shared folders from

the management tab you'll see here is c

colon right the folder path is c this is

a default share it's actually on every

windows system by default so you need to

make sure that you turn this off and

you'll see that there is a money symbol

after that share name which means it

will not pop up same with print

this will give us access to all the

printers and the printer drivers and it

is hidden by default so only an

administrator who wanted to get access

to it could do so now of course we can

still set permissions on this and we'll

talk about that in a second so unless

you have a password you wouldn't be able

to access it

and so as i mentioned the c

money symbol

sign is a common administrative share

seen in just about any windows computer

now you still have to know the share

name just like that empty door or the

the

hidden door but you also have to know

that you have to have permissions you

have to be allowed to access that in

order to get in there

and that's the next thing i want to talk

about are the share permissions

you can choose

who you want to share a file with in a

network setting these are accessed from

the sharing tab and by default the

everyone group has read only access to

all of your files meaning that they can

if they know the administrative share

they could get onto your system and they

could

read some of your files

but that doesn't mean they could do

anything to them and as you see we have

an option here to even either allow

people to do read or read and write and

notice the group everyone means every

single user in the entire network so

to get to this

if i go over to windows

i can right click uh let's say on this

uh this is a file so let's find a folder

we might want to share out let's say

um let's go to public

and maybe this public downloads folder

let's say we want to share this i could

right click go to properties and there

is a sharing tab

right and if i click

uh

the share button you can see here

everyone because it's a public folder

currently has read write access so i

might want to change that to just read

or i might want to remove them from this

i can add individual users remember we

created a bill user a little earlier so

i could add an individual user of course

he's in the everyone group so this would

be a little redundant or i can add

groups of users let's say

power users for instance

uh now these are different from ntfs

permissions uh remember that sharing

that's on the sharing tab with ntf bus

permissions and remember ntfs

is our

file system these are accessed from the

security tab and rather than using

usernames and passwords from the network

they use

security permissions and allow us a lot

more flexibility on who we want to allow

and what we want them to do

there are six default levels of

permissions whereas in the last one we

just had read or read and write here we

have full control

modify read and execute which would be

useful if i had applications i want to

allow people to run right because

executing is a little different from

just reading

list folder contacts the

equivalent of a dir command of directory

command and then just plain old read and

write obviously modify would let them

modify the file the reason we might not

want to give them full control is full

control would let them also adjust the

share settings and if i go over

into windows over here okay we're

currently in

the sharing tab if we go over to

security we have a lot more flexibility

here and then what i could do is edit

the permissions

by clicking edit and then checking boxes

whether i want to deny certain rights or

allow certain rights

ntfs permissions take precedence over

share permissions so remember share

permissions are sort of at the network

level ntfs permissions are at a computer

level although you can include

network groups and network users in both

you can also allow or deny access to

users or groups just like i mentioned

with the previous section so i could add

uh i could add bill as a user or i could

add power users and all of the members

in that group automatically get

permissions this is something that we do

a lot in

networking actually to make things

easier instead of having to add one user

uh

each time i add let's say i hire a new

administrator instead of having to add

that user to every single file i want to

have him get access to i just add him to

the administrator group and then any

time um

i add the uh uh

you know

and then anything that that

administrator group has access to that

user has access to so it really

simplifies things quite a bit

all right now let's talk about

permission inheritance and how this

works

if you create a folder the default is

that all of the permissions will come

from the parent folder so if the parent

folder allows for

full control then the subfolder will

also allow for full control and what you

can do is actually set this

when you're setting the advanced

settings you can say whether or not

you want to replace child object

permissions meaning uh here i have the c

drive which is shared out

and

i can say for instance whether i want

to deny all users and then i could say

replace all child object permissions

with the inheritable permissions from

this object meaning all the subfolders

would take on the same permission for

this

if

i create a new or change the name of

folder or i change the permissions of a

folder you need to make sure to check

this box otherwise the subfolders will

not have the same permissions

any permissions set in the parent will

automatically be inherited by the

subfolder if you check that box and to

get to that box

if we go over here and we go to advanced

settings here we see

include inheritable permissions from

this object's parent which would mean

the folder above it and if we went to a

root folder because this is a sort of a

base folder it's sort of located deeper

in the nether regions of the hard drive

but if i went to say um the c drive and

i changed the

uh

permissions here

so let's go to not sharing but security

because we're dealing with ntfs

permissions and i go to advanced here

and i choose to change permissions here

you see it replace all child object

permissions because these are the

permissions that are lower down the rung

underneath the c drive permissions

so when i move and copy files and

folders if you copy a folder on the same

uh

or to a different volume the folder

inherits permissions of the parent

folder it was copied to so i copy a

folder to a new folder in the same

volume or on a different volume and it's

going to inherit the permissions of the

parent folder

alternatively if i move a folder so not

just copying but i move a folder to a

different location on the same volume

the folder will retain its original

permissions okay

so we've now talked about file security

including the attributes such as

read-only hidden compression and

encryption we looked at hidden files and

folders and how to turn on and off uh

universal hiding of folders

uh administrative shares those are the

ones with the

money sign

after them

we also looked at uh permissions

including share permissions and ntfs

permissions which are higher which take

sort of um

credence over the share permissions and

then we looked at permission inheritance

and what happens when we move and copy

copying remember you're going to take

the permissions of the new parent folder

moving you are going to retain your old

permissions

so now let's talk about

encryption a little bit

encryption is the process of converting

information and making it unreadable by

other users by use of a cipher or an

algorithm so it's sort of like using a

decoder ring right and if you remember a

decoder ring

or any sort of decoder right that would

mean like a is equivalent to the letter

z and b is the equivalent of the letter

j and so on and so forth so that someone

would have a lot harder time decrypting

what they're reading now we're taking

this to a much higher level than just

that but that's sort of a basic way of

explaining it the encrypting file system

or efs

is what allows us to encrypt one or more

files it's a component of ntfs so when

we were at the advanced attributes and

we saw this checkbox encrypt contents to

secure data that is the equivalent of or

that is using the encrypting file system

or efs

this does not protect files by the way

when it's moved to another computer so

they will not be encrypted if you move

them to another another computer

it also cannot encrypt the entire hard

drive to do that we're going to use

something called bitlocker encryption

bitlocker encryption can be used to

encrypt the entire disk

and it's based on what's called the

advanced encryption standard or aes

which is the same thing we used when we

talked about wpa2 which was a wi-fi

standard and we'll talk more about that

in security plus actually

this uses a 128-bit

key so you can imagine that's fairly

large and difficult to crack

the drive if it's encrypted will suffer

in performance when compared to a

non-encrypted drive and that is because

obviously it takes longer to process all

the information

there are a couple different ways

bitlocker encryption can work one is you

need

you basically need one of the following

things in order to make it work you

either need a tpm or trusted platform

module chip which is the chip on a

motherboard that contains the decoder

ring

so that way if i encrypt all the files

this thing

will tell me how to decrypt them of

course if something goes bad with this

chip i'm in trouble

we also could use an external usb key

or we could have an extra hard drive or

a hard drive with a second volume and

that volume could contain all the

encrypting information

uh so

one wouldn't contain the operating

system the other would

would contain

information that is unencrypted that

could help me unencrypt information on

the operating system the preferred

method of course is to use the tpm

okay so now we've finished talking about

encrypting

and we talked about the encrypting file

system which allows you to encrypt one

file bitlocker encryption for the whole

drive and then trusted platform module

which is a decoder basically built onto

the motherboard that contains the

encryption information so let's go over

everything again

we talked about file security security

from a file level we looked at

attributes the four we looked at were

read only

hidden

encryption and i'll draw another one

here compression there are others but

these are the biggies by the way if

we're using that attrib command

we would use a plus sign to add a hidden

attribute or a minus sign to remove a

hidden attribute

speaking of hidden we talked about

hidden files or folders and the way to

turn that off which is to go to that uh

up go to the file options or go to the

options within a windows explorer window

and then um

which if we go over to windows 7

we can get to once again by clicking

organize let's actually close out of

this first

all right by clicking organize

and then going to folder and search

options clicking the view tab and then

under hidden files and folders clicking

show hidden files and folders

we also talked about the administrative

shares and remember those are the ones

that are hidden from view by using the

money sign

and then we've looked at permissions

including share permissions which are

those network level permissions

accessible from the

share tab and then ntfs permissions

which are those computer

based permissions and those again were

in the security tab okay important

distinction there we also looked at

permission inheritance which is what

happens to the file and remember that

generally speaking a file will uh

take on

the

um

standards and permissions of its parent

we also looked at moving and copying if

we move a file it retains its

permissions if we copy a file it takes

on the permissions of its new parent

we also looked at encryption which is

sort of like a code so that people can't

even if they get access to your files

they don't know what they're saying the

encrypting file system is a subset of

ntfs that allows us to encrypt uh

individual files and folders

bitlocker encryption uh allows us to

encrypt the uh

entire drive

and the trusted platform module it is

like the decoder ring that

contains uh

encryption information

great let's finish up this thing on uh

the series on security by talking about

router security specifically soho router

security

[Music]

security router security

let's finish up our discussion on

security by talking about router

security and when we talk about routers

uh generally speaking we're gonna be

talking about soho routers in fact that

is what we're gonna be talking about

soho routers or wireless routers these

sort of linksys d-link netgear

devices that we purchase and put in our

homes and in small offices

just because

not that all this stuff doesn't exist

when we deal with larger routers or

larger access points and a lot of the

stuff we're really talking about here is

wireless in nature but because it's uh

those are sort of encompassed by larger

certifications and different uh

manufacturers

so we're going to talk about a couple

things first the default administrator

password

which if you remember from our

discussion on wireless

routers or soho routers

is the way we

access these devices through a web-based

interface and using a password and we

want to change that anything default we

generally want to change so that way not

just anyone can get access then we're

going to talk about disabling the ssid

broadcast we've talked about that before

and we'll talk about it again sort of

like the

invisible or

hidden doorway in a wall that you have

to know is there in order to get access

to

we'll talk about wireless encryption

standards wep wpa and wpa2 we will talk

about those in more depth when we get

into the security plus certification

well let's talk about mac filtering uh

mac filtering being based on the

physical

address uh of the

remember the mac address or the physical

address of a device is that hardwired

device so we can filter things based on

that and then disabling wps wi-fi

protected setup

which was a

perhaps ill-conceived

way to connect to your wireless network

and get it securely set up quickly of

course the problem with it was that it

had quite a few security flaws in it

finally we'll talk about the dhcp range

so that we set the range of ip addresses

being given out by the dhcp server in

case we also have a static ip address

device such as a printer or server so we

don't double up on that

all right so first let's talk about the

default password

you go up to your you go to your browser

you type in the ip address of your uh

router your soho router again anytime

saying router or meaning soho router you

type that into the browser and up pops

this web interface

and it asks you for a username and

password well generally speaking uh that

username or password is blank or

administrator or password in fact you

can go onto the internet look up the

linksys or the netgear or whatever and

you can

uh get in you know get that information

from the manufacturer's instructions and

then log in so it's very important that

one of the first things you do is go to

this administration tab or whatever it's

like wherever it's located on your

router and change the default password

to something that you know and only you

know that way your neighbors can't hack

into your system i can't tell you how

many times i have been able to

get into the router of a neighbor simply

by going to their um

uh connecting to their network and then

which is not secured by the way and then

uh simply hacking uh you know their

settings

so you change this to some complex

password we've talked about password

complexity in the past the reason you

want to change something complex is so

that a

brute force attack can't hack it

let's talk about disabling ssad

broadcast i think we saw this exact

slide before but i want to bring it up

again um your ssid is the name

of the uh

wi-fi of your wi-fi network and so by

hiding the broadcast of it or or by not

broadcasting the ssid uh the only way to

get access is to know the ssid and so

you type that in to uh

you have to go to connect to another

network when you're connecting any

device and type in the ssid and this is

something that's a little more

complicated to do

for users who are not as advanced it can

still be discovered by the way it just

requires some special software so

that's the real reason uh it's kind of

one of the things they mention as far as

security is to disable the ssid

broadcast

wireless encryption so uh

if we look

hello

so wireless encryption

um

oh

so we've discussed encryption in terms

of uh files and folders but let's talk

about encryption over wireless just like

with anything we're sending data packets

over a wireless or unbounded connection

and so we want to make sure

that

someone was to sniff those data packets

they wouldn't be able to get out they

wouldn't be able to even read what they

were what they were seeing and so uh the

then we use these um different

encryption standards the first is wep it

is the weakest type of encryption it can

be cracked i think we've talked about

this in uh

literally 60 seconds and so it's not

really used it's better than nothing but

it's not really used that much anymore

the second is wpa it is stronger and it

uses an encryption standard called tkip

however the problem with it is uh it is

still have it still has some security um

problems and so wpa2 was created it is

the strongest and it is the current de

facto sort of encryption standard for

wireless

um as you can see over here this is

actually using a wpa with a pre-shared

key it's using aes which is the wpa2

standard so this is a an early on sort

of uh router right here that wasn't

calling it wpa2 yet the benefit of using

the wpa2 not only is that over wp is not

only that you can use any uh combination

of words and letters like we've talked

about but also it's much stronger much

more difficult to crack and it is

currently the the strongest encryption

that we have

uh some older devices by the way will

not support wpa2 and so you need to make

sure to upgrade the firmware on those

devices if in case uh you're going to

deploy a wpa2 network

so let's talk about mac filtering

um we can actually tell the wireless

network to not or to allow certain

device only certain devices in based on

the physical

ip address and what a mac filter does is

you can see from this i'm in this

wireless tab here and there's a wireless

mac filter and if i enabled this you

could literally put in the mac addresses

of up to a certain number of devices and

it would only allow those computers on

the network now don't forget uh if you

had a laptop and you had a desktop

computer and you had a iphone or an

android device or a smartphone or a

tablet each single one of those devices

would need there you need to get the ip

the mac address of the device which can

be somewhat difficult

depending on the device we know how to

do it in your computer ipconfig all but

say on an iphone or something it might

be a little more

testy for you to get that and you'd have

to enter that in here so if you have a

friend come over it's going to be a

little more uh you know difficult for

them to get access to your wireless

network so you manually enter these into

the soho router and it creates what's

called

this is important

creates an acl

or an access control list and that

access control list determines which

devices are going to be allowed on the

network

uh now if they're not on the list they

they don't have access to the network

they might quote unquote connect but

they won't be able to get anything they

won't be given an ip address or anything

so this can be a little more difficult

if you have a lot of people coming in

and out of your network but at the same

time it can really sort of close up any

holes and really keep it more secure

that being said it is possible to do

what's called spoof a mac address and by

spoofing a mac address

you can

basically tell your computer that it has

a different physical address than it it

really does and so

spoofing is somewhat of a

more advanced topic so you can change

your mac address and then get through a

mac filter but it's a little more

difficult to do

so finally we talked about wps wi-fi

protected setup this was built into

older systems it allowed uh connecting

the wireless access points easier for

the user and it was supposed to be uh

a secure

setup connection unfortunately it was

susceptible to what are called brute

force attacks where someone just sort of

as i've mentioned uh sort of just lists

numbers over and over and over again

here's the pin number you would connect

with and it just keeps out going at

numbers until it finds the correct

combination and then it gets access to

your network so again wps not really

used much anymore

and therefore is not something that we

recommend you use at all

we're gonna end this with this dhcp

range if i have um

let's say uh some static ip i have a

server and i wanna i'm on a 192.168.1

dot whatever network okay i can set the

range that the soho router is going to

add up on the dhcp so it's a dhcp server

right now right now it's starting at

zero so it's going to give out i p

addresses starting at zero so go one two

three four etcetera but if i want to

give a static ip address to that server

i was mentioning i might want it to be

five so let's say i want to give that ip

that static ip address of 192.168.1.

now i want to make sure that this dhcp

server isn't going to re-issue that ip

address to another computer so then what

i can do is i can set this starting ip

address to say start at 10 or 20 or

whatever then

i can

tell it you know how many dhp users or

whatever the important thing here being

that it's not going to

issue any ip addresses that are under

10. as a result i can be sure that i'm

not going to have any ip address

conflicts remember i can't have more

than two devices with the same ip

address and so it won't hand out one of

your static ip addresses which is going

to keep things more secure and running

more smoothly

all right so we've talked now about the

default admin password we want to change

it because it's usually blank all right

disabling the ssid broadcast which is

like that hidden door

you can still get access to it if you

know where it is

wireless encryption standards the one we

use most today is wpa2

mac filtering which again uses an access

control list an acl

okay an access control list to determine

which physical addresses are allowed

through into the system

we want to disable wi-fi protected setup

because it's actually not protected at

all right it is a um

we just don't want to use this because

it is susceptible

to brute force attack

and finally the dhcp range we can set we

want to start the dhcp range at a

different

perhaps at a higher number so that it

doesn't hand out

our static ips

great now we finished up talking about

security let's move into talking about

mobile computing

[Music]

in this video we will examine the

standards for wireless communication we

will also discuss wireless security

protocols and various methods for

securing your wireless network

we will conclude with some best

practices for wireless security

802.11 is a set of standards for

implementing wireless networks as set

forth by the institute of electrical and

electronics engineers the ieee

each standard will have different

strengths and weaknesses

80211a provides for maximum speed of 54

megabits per second and a maximum

distance of 60 feet

80211b

provides for 11 megabits per second

transfer rate in the 2.4 gigahertz

frequency

it has a range of up to 1000 feet in an

open area

in a range of 2 to 400 feet in an

enclosed space where walls will degrade

signals to varying degrees depending

upon the composition of the walls

80211b is not interoperable with 80211a

802.11g provides for a maximum data

transfer rate of up to 54 megabits per

second in the 2.4 gigahertz frequency

compatible with 802.11b

but will slow to 802.11b speeds if

sharing the same wireless access point

802 11n is a more recent specification

that allows for speeds from 54 megabits

per second to 600 megabits per second

with a range of up to 820 feet in an

open area

there are several wireless security

protocols

first

wired equivalent privacy or wep

wep was standardized in 1999 and in

spite of its name is far from being as

secure as a wired network

as a matter of fact the issues with wep

are many and it has been deprecated in

favor of newer more secure standards

wep comes in two standard encryption

strengths 64-bit and 128-bit

some vendors offer a 256-bit wep but

this is not widespread

the problem with wep's encryption

strength is that the key length includes

a 24-bit initialization vector or iv

this only leaves 40 bits for the actual

encryption in a 64-bit

and 104 bits in the 128-bit

implementation

the difference between the advertised

encryption strength and the actual is

massive

64-bit encryption is not 24 times

stronger than 40-bit encryption

it is twice the strength of 40-bit

encryption 24 times

this means that it is 16.8 million times

weaker than advertised

there are numerous attack tools written

to take advantage of wep's cryptographic

weaknesses kane enable aircrack kismet

to name a few

and cracking the key of 64-bit wep can

literally be done in a matter of minutes

wep should be considered fully

deprecated and not for use on any

network that you wish to protect

wi-fi protected access

wpa and wpa2

was introduced specifically to address

the cryptographic shortcomings of wep

vendors were anxious to replace wep so

wpa was released through a firmware

upgrade and was quite backwards

compatible to many existing wireless

access points

wpa2 is a more complete presentation of

the standard but in many cases required

a hardware upgrade to implement

some of the key features of wpa and wpa2

are

wpa provides improved data encryption

using temporal key integrity protocol

tkip

tkip uses wep's existing encryption and

provides a 128-bit encryption key thus

fixing the key length problem with wep

wpa2 also uses tkip but adds advanced

encryption standard aes counter mode

with cipher block chaining message

authentication code protocol ccmp both

standards have been extended to include

additional types of user authentication

through the extensible authentication

protocol eap

web controlled access to the network

based on the client's mac address which

is very easy to discern

eap uses public key encryption to

significantly enhance the cryptographic

strength of the connection and ensure

only authorized access

the extensible authentication protocol

eap

is a framework that authenticates

clients and servers to each other using

several different plugins

since eap does not specify which

authentication is to be used it provides

the administrator with a wealth of

choices as well as being forward

compatible to future authentication

mechanisms

eap is often used in but not limited to

wireless networks

two common eap implementations are

protected extensible authentication

protocol peep

which is an open standard developed

through a partnership of rsa security

cisco systems and microsoft

and

lightweight extensible authentication

protocol leap which is a proprietary

cisco implementation of eap

8021x

is an ieee standard that provides a

port-based authentication mechanism for

all flavors of wireless

it uses eap to authenticate the user

against a directory service such as

active directory

one there are numerous security methods

and practices that can be implemented to

protect your wireless network

first there are general guidelines

physically secure the wireless access

point

secure access to your wireless access

points administrative interface

disable remote administration

change the default channel

and make sure to keep your firmware up

to date

the service set identifier ssid

change the default ssid

do not broadcast the ssid

this is a speed bump on the road to

hacking your wireless access point

it's a good idea but don't count on it

as your sole method of protection

a non-broadcast ssid is only a secret if

no one is connected to your wireless

access point

if anyone is connected even over an

encrypted connection

the ssid will be unencrypted in the

packet and can then be extracted by any

wireless sniffing tool

as for encryption

do not use wep

use wpa2 with tkip or aes and use a

strong password

no matter how secure the cryptographic

algorithm it will be susceptible to a

dictionary attack if a weak password is

used enable mac address filtering so

that only specific mac addresses are

allowed to connect to the wireless

access point

a couple of notes about mac address

filtering

first

only use mac address filtering if the

population of devices that you want to

have connect is fairly static

needing to go to the interface to

constantly put in new mac addresses will

get old quickly

second

it is a trivial matter to sniff wireless

traffic and discern an allowed client's

mac address

at which point the attacker can spoof

his mac address to match the victims

even easier than getting the mac address

and hijack the user session or simply

wait until the client is no longer

connected and then present the allowed

mac address and connect up as that

client

next use a virtual private network

and periodically scan for rogue wireless

access points

it is not uncommon to find where a user

has installed their own wireless access

point to simplify their connectivity

these rogue waps can potentially bypass

your authentication mechanisms and

should be eliminated immediately

as for antenna placement

shape your wireless signal through the

use of unidirectional antennas and

manipulating signal strength

to avoid providing a signal to unsecured

areas such as streets and parking lots

also clients should never auto connect

to an open wi-fi

and should never disable the host-based

firewall

in this video we examined the standards

for wireless communications we discussed

wireless security protocols and various

methods for securing your wireless

network

we concluded with some best practices

for wireless security

in our next video we will continue our

look at network security with network

design elements

[Music]

mobile devices hardware and operating

systems

we've discussed the big computers we've

discussed even smaller computers like

laptops we've discussed networking and

security but now let's talk about uh a

new

forerunner in the computing market

mobile devices not just tablets but also

smartphones which are miniature

computers

this is a new area to the a plus exam

and it's been added because there's been

a growth in this market that's sort of

unprecedented and surely it's going to

continue to push one thing you'll note

probably is even by the time you watch

this video um the technology will

probably even have moved past where the

a plus exam is testing so we're really

focusing on are two of the major um

forerunners in the market the android

and the ios or apple

uh manufacturers of course windows is

coming out with some stuff blackberry

has released new um

smartphones and tablets as well

so it's going to be important for you to

keep up to date on this information

by looking at some other sources and

double checking

online and on the internet and keeping

up to date by reading your latest

magazines

but that being said let's talk about

mobile devices uh the hardware and the

operating systems that go into them and

what makes them a little bit different

from the other computers and laptops

we've looked at

so first we're going to talk about

mobile hardware

and then we're going to talk about the

mobile operating system or os there are

two major mobile operating systems uh

that we see android which most people

would think of google when they think of

that because it was sort of commissioned

by google and ios or apple so just so we

are on the same page here google

and apple

uh then we want to talk about installing

apps obviously because these two are

different operating systems they have

different ways and they're actually

different in the way that they've been

created in the way that they're

commercially released we need to talk

about how we install apps on them which

is slightly different we also want to

talk about the screen configuration as

you might note moving a smartphone or

tablet to the side uh allows the

the

tablet or smartphone can recognize

how it's sort of being positioned and

can change and that has to do with

something called the accelerometer and

something else called the gyroscope so

it's good to just be familiar with those

terms

we also want to talk about calibration

something that you actually don't see on

apple but you do see with a google or

android devices

finally we want to talk about resetting

the uh

device whether that's a soft or a hard

reset

a soft reset being uh like a reboot just

sort of restarting it a hard reset being

bringing it back to its

manufacturer factory settings so let's

start by talking about mobile devices in

general here i have several different

ones including a kindle

an ipad or an apple device and an

android device as well or the google

device

computers uh mobile devices are

basically computers that are smaller and

lighter than laptops we might even think

of them as ultra mobile uh of course

they're not marketed as computers

they're marketed as smartphones and

tablets mobile devices but they are in

effect computers in fact the iphone and

the ipad in fact i bet all of these

devices have uh

more

computing power than the entire

spaceship uh that went first to the moon

so it's really quite incredible how much

we're able to fit into these nowadays

they have the same basic components as

other computers but they're different

types

uh if we look at them and this is a a

small arm processor here

the first thing we know is that all of

these for the most part are arm based

processors arm don't worry what it means

but it's just specifically made for

mobile devices so they have their own

mobile processor that's been developed

they also for the most part use

non-volatile flash memory that's

hardwired to the system so remember

volatile memory is susceptible to

um

to the power loss non-volatile means

that power can go off and it's still

going to keep its information the reason

we're using flash memory which again is

a

solid state uh hard drive is uh because

these are ultra mobile they're moving

around a lot we don't need them to be

susceptible to shock or to jostling and

we certainly don't want to lose

information on them so this not only

allows them to be faster it allows them

to actually live in an on a mobile world

for the most part as well a lot of these

come with on-screen keyboards apple sort

of introduced it and everyone's scoffed

at it but it has really taken over why

have an exterior keyboard like the

blackberry has

when we can simply put one on and have

it learn how you work of course each

keyboard that's on screen works

differently but for the most part one

pops up and you type using your thumb or

fingers and the more you work on it the

better it becomes

blackberry has maintained a or up until

recently maintained a physical keyboard

which they have just just replaced with

their own on-screen keyboard device they

do say they're going to come out with a

hardware keyboard the reason that most

people have stuck with them so far but

on-screen keyboards are where we're

going

they also have no mouse this is really

important and this is i think something

that's really going to revolutionize the

way we compute there is no mouse on

these tablet devices and if you've

looked at any of the windows 8

if you're into windows 8 which is not

covered on this exam and their surface

devices that microsoft is now trying to

sell

they sort of

mix mouse and touch screen the idea

being that you can use your multi-touch

you can use your fingers you can use

your hands to do what the mouse would

have done and you do it quicker

the other benefit of using multi-touch

and the reason it's called multi-touch

is that you have you can use one finger

is different from two fingers different

from three fingers so the computer can

recognize how many fingers you're using

and change

what it does based on that

it's not easily upgradable so this is

sort of a a

bad thing if you would

think of it or a good thing for the

company it's not easily upgradable

meaning i can't just pop in some new ram

or upgrade the hard drive because there

are really no frus or field replaceable

units because this thing is so small

everything is integrated very tightly

and as a result of being integrated so

tightly it's difficult to have someone

who is not an expert on the machine go

in and

upgrade something also they don't want

you to do that yourself because you're

probably going to break it and so they

usually require that you buy a brand new

one if you want to do that in fact you

can't even really take it to the store

to upgrade these devices usually you

have to just buy a new one and they're

built um you know generally when they're

sold they're sold in sort of a two-year

contract uh thing so in two years when

the device is

basically at the cusp of being out of

date you can purchase a brand new one

so as a result of not being able to

upgrade them you're not going to do a

lot of hardware work on them in fact

we're going to rely on warranties more

than internal servicing something else

that's good for the companies right

because if they can force you to go back

to them they can have more money in

their pockets so it's important to know

when you're working with these devices

you're mostly working on the software

side you're probably not going to be

working on the hardware side because if

something's wrong with the hardware

you're going to take it to the company

and let them

fix it based on the warranty

so there are two major mobile operating

systems

and there's something important to

distinguish between them the first

is an open source

operating system which effectively means

it's free to download and modify so

anyone who could build the hardware uh

for a an open source device could

theoretically download the software and

install it make modifications etc so

these are very open it's very easy for

other people to get access to easy to

create applications for easy to install

applications etc the most popular open

source operating system out there of

course uh is linux and the most popular

mobile open source operating system is

android and that is this logo right here

um

of course being open source it's public

domain uh now the thing with uh i

shouldn't say public domain because you

do have anything you release

if you ever do any modifications to an

open source item you generally speaking

have to release it yourself for free or

have a way to release it for free now

this is different from closed source

things closed source means it cannot be

modified without express permission in

licensing

so if i want to change something on it i

have to get permission from say apple

and the best uh um

and this is also why it's called vendor

specific i need to get the vendors

approval um of course the most popular

one here is ios which is apple's

operating system which is going to be

running on iphones and ipads so it's

important to realize the difference

between these open source would also be

like uh linux okay and closed source

would also be like windows i know we

haven't talked a whole lot about that

but

uh because it's not really covered on

the exam to a great extent but linux is

an open source

um

free to download free to modify if you

know what you're doing operating system

windows is closed source meaning

microsoft does all the upgrades they

modify stuff and if you want to have

access to it

you basically have to contact them

so let's first start by talking about

android android is this open source and

it's actually based on linux which is

the reason it has to be open source

operating system and it's basically

released commissioned by google um

google they commissioned the android

open source project which was

specifically made to release this and

then to further maintain and develop it

so

google whose motto is do no evil have

really been at the forefront of this and

they're the ones who are trying to

change the way we deal with

mobile operating systems and so on of

course the issue with people who say

things are open source means that anyone

can get access to stuff including

nefarious folks like hackers black hats

and also the other problem is that

because it's open source and because

anyone can have access to it

interoperability in a specific sort of

environment may not be as use as good or

useful which is why apple subscribes to

ios

there are different version names and

each name is given a

tasty

sort of name it's not given a number so

this number would have a name equivalent

so if you see cupcake gingerbread

honeycomb ice cream sandwich etc and you

can go and search these on the um

on the internet as well

you will get uh information about these

um

to identify the version on these you go

to menu settings and about the phone and

brings you to something like this screen

and then you can see what version you're

running you could always google the

version and get

the name equivalent

one thing i just want to point out it's

difficult at this point to

sort of uh screencast mobile devices so

a lot of what we're going to be looking

at are these screen captures that i have

so let's talk about ios a different

operating system it is a closed source

but unix-based operating system found on

iphones ipads i touches etc it is based

by the way on the

apple operating system mac os x and they

have integrated them more and more as

they've been released only apple

hardware uses this operating system so

if i had an android device that i

purchased i could not install ios on it

to create an application there for a

developer has to download a special

software development kit which is also

known as an sdk and you have to pay

apple to go live with it this is very

different from android where you can

basically download the entire android

operating system and

get access to it dissect it and figure

out how to build an application for it

so for this you actually have to go to

apple and say hey i want to develop

software for you can i please have a

software development kit they'll say

sure and then when you want to post your

application they're going to make you

pay for it

the ios is given different numbers we're

currently i think on version 6.1 or 6.11

or 6.2 or something around there i know

a release was just released the other

day they don't have names which is

ironic considering the fact that uh mac

os x is given names like uh cat names

like lion mountain leopard uh snow

leopard etc um to identify the version

on this one same sort of thing we're

going to go to settings general which

you can see here and then about or about

this phone and that'll take you and you

can see right here the version the

carrier model number serial number etc

etc

now installing apps and i want to point

out that we're dealing with apps here

not applications an application is that

full piece of software going on to a

desktop computer generally speaking when

we're talking about mobile devices we're

referring to apps so they're slightly

smaller in both cases uh at least

nowadays maybe not in the past but

certainly now you can install new apps

to your device directly on the device

itself generally by going to uh an app

store or a market android has the market

apple has the app store you're going to

want to remember the difference here

okay android market or the apple app

store because that will pop up on the

test i've seen it

if the mobile device is connected to a

computer you can also browse the apps on

itunes or on the google play website

google play

is

apple's sorry android sort of uh online

presence itunes is the software that

apple requires you to have in order to

sync things back and forth between your

computer so it's important to know that

if you're on your computer you can go to

either of these

there is an app store on a mac os x

operating system the computer-based

operating system but it does not have

anything to do with the ipad and iphone

per se so you could theoretically go to

the google play website you could browse

you could press download and thanks to

syncing

which we will talk about a little bit

more you could sync of the device

automatically with or without plugging

it in depending on how you have things

modified

now there are some apps that require you

to hack uh in the good sense or the bad

sense depending on your on your uh

perception the operating system to gain

what are called super user or root

privileges you can see that right here

root privileges in the android world

this is called rooting the phone and in

the ios or apple world this is called

jailbreaking the phone uh so

because the operating system is

controlled to an extent and because

they're doing deals with you know uh

wireless carriers like verizon att

sprint and so on uh they want to

maintain a certain level of

conformity between uh all of their apps

and they also want to sort of restrict

certain apps from getting on to their

system

so if you jailbreak or root the phone

you can actually get access to things

you would not have access to through the

regular google play website and so on

however this may void the warranty if

you do it so you want to watch out

before you start

rooting or jailbreaking a phone that

being said

you could always

hard reset which will talk about the

phone into its factory settings and

because you're only making changes to

the software not to the um to the

hardware then you you could actually

sort of erase the damage you've done and

no one would know the difference

so let's talk about screen configuration

real quickly if the user turns the

device uh the display is going to rotate

automatically

and a user can lock the display so

there's no automatic rotation and that's

what i'm demonstrating right here if you

double click the home button and on the

iphone which is that button right down

at the bottom and you uh that'll bring

up a sort of multitasking window you

swipe that to the left and here you have

a thing that allows you to lock the

screen in place so it will not rotate

automatically this is also available on

android as well

and you might want to do this say if

you're reading a book or you're working

on a document or even a picture and you

want to be able to turn your device to

get better access to things

in android this is in the settings

display area so you go to settings

display and there's a option to

automatic rotate and in the iphone or

ipad or ios device you can double click

the home button and you can select uh if

you swipe to the left an option not to

rotate there's other ways to do this on

an ipad you can actually set the side

button which is used for mute on an

iphone uh to do this for you if you go

into the settings but the important

thing to know is there is a way to what

we call lock rotation so that the uh

phone and the screen

or the tablet won't rotate when you turn

it

so let's look at this thing called the

accelerometer and the gyroscope which

actually make this possible by the way

these are animations it'd be difficult

obviously to find the actual device but

this is what we call an accelerometer

and this which you might have seen if

you have a child or when you were a

child uh is called a gyroscope the

accelerometer uh detects the rotation

and shaking of the device so that's what

is uh responsible for the automatic

adjustment of the portrait to landscape

what we just talked about with locking

the rotation that is something a result

of the accelerometer after

into the device's life a few years they

added something called a gyroscope

which adds pitch roll and yaw you can

see this thing sort of uh is only

working on three different axes the x y

and z axis right this thing sort of also

works on those but you can notice how

everything can spin in this way it's

really sort of three dimensions uh in a

much more

full way than the accelerometer is and

by the way these are just animations so

don't get crazy about trying to figure

out how they work but the important

thing for the the gyroscope is it like a

plane can start to um

notice all the different configurations

of the phone and this is going to be

used for like if you're playing games so

uh i'm playing a game and i can tip my

phone one way and the i can you know

make the

airplane on the thing i'm doing kind of

roll as well uh whereas the

accelerometer does most of the basic

stuff that most of us would need the

gyroscope is going to add all that extra

cool stuff to it

now when we talk about calibration

remember we did talk about calibration

we're talking about any sort of touch

screen devices we're using styluses but

android devices actually have a screen

calibration utility it's called g sensor

and um

it allows you to calibrate the device so

it knows uh base you're calibrating the

accelerometer so it knows when it is

sitting flat on a table uh and then it

can sort of

adjust from there it's found in the

settings and display area

it might not be necessary to use but it

is included on android iphones do not

have anything like that so it basically

is going to ensure that the three axes

the x y and z axes are all calibrated

properly so you want to make sure it is

on a flat

table

when you do the calibration it is only

available on android devices and this is

important it's not on apple apple has no

sort of built-in calibration utility you

might be able to find a third-party one

but i doubt you need it i don't know why

they need it and the other doesn't

but it is

if you're having trouble the phone

thinks that it's always being turned

when it's not you might want to go and

calibrate it

well let's talk about resetting a device

a soft reset what we call a soft reset

is powering the device off and then

powering it off uh powering it back on

again

this is the same as when we've talked

about uh power cycling a device uh this

is what we're talking about it's a soft

reset so basically we hit the reset

button we hear we hit the um we turn it

off we turn it back on we unplug uh the

power from our soho router and then plug

it back in either way in both types of

phones the way to do this is to press

and hold the power button uh in the

iphone the power button is located here

in some cases on android it's located up

on the top left it could change

depending on the device again with

android devices it's harder and i should

have said this at the get-go but

a lot of the examples for android

devices that we're going to throw out in

a lot of the ways that we say of getting

to things that might be on one

particular version of the android device

if you're buying a different type of

phone htc samsung whatever

um

you're gonna have different

settings and it could have different

buttons and stuff because there is no

conformity among all of the devices

again it is an open source operating

system with apple they control

everything so you're always going to

have the same sort of thing okay so you

can press uh the power button and then

what happens is you have

on the iphone and on the uh android as

well you have a thing that says slide to

power down you take your finger you

slide the object to the right and then

the thing powers down you press the

power button again and it turns back on

so that's how you would do a soft reset

for a hard reset this returns the device

to its factory state and the danger here

is it's going to remove all the data all

the applications you've installed so

it's important to back up before you do

a hard reset why would you want to do a

hard reset well let's say you're having

a lot of bugs you're having a lot of

problems something has become corrupted

uh you're having some weird errors you

can do a hard reset it takes all the

software out and puts the new the

software back on clean and there

therefore you can sort of determine if

you're having a hardware problem or a

software problem

in the iphone you'll find the reset

option in settings general and then

there is something called reset and you

can see for instance here reset all

settings erase all content and settings

you have several different uh options

here uh what you want to reset

on the android you're gonna find it in

the privacy area uh at least on the

current version uh that could be

changing but right here you would hit

settings go to privacy and then you'll

have a reset option

all right

so now we've discussed mobile hardware

uh and remember the arm processor was

sort of a big one um

and everything of course

is flash memory or solid state

we also talked about the two mobile

operating systems the major ones android

is the first one it is open source and

it is google

sort of derived derived

uh and then ios which is closed source

or vendor specific and it is apple's

domain

we looked at installing apps for

installing apps for google we're either

going to use the android market

or we can use google play

with apple we're looking at either the

app store

or

going to itunes to the app store

we looked at screen configuration the

fact that we have something called lock

rotation so that the phone or the device

or the mobile tablet does not

automatically rotate uh

the way we know rotation is the

accelerometer does the x y and z axis

the gyroscope is what is um responsible

for

uh pitch roll

yaw etc these are all sort of those

airplane terms and this is really going

to be used more for gaming rather than

simple rotation

we also looked at calibration only

available on an android phone and again

it is called a g sensor

finally we looked at resetting that

includes a soft reset or a hard reset

remember soft reset is just power

cycling

and a hard reset is returning to the

factory settings

great so now that we've discussed all of

this about uh our operating systems our

hardware let's get into talking more

about the specifics of the software how

we use it networking and so on

[Music]

welcome to module 21 lesson 1a mobile

hardware and operating systems part one

look at wi-fi calling the launcher or

the gui

virtual assistants sdk

apk

wireless emergency alerts mobile payment

service

wi-fi call in is a service that allows

you to make phone calls

from your smartphone over a wi-fi

connection

this is when you can't get usual

uh cell coverage or it's just a poor

signal not enough to make a call so

instead of using the cell towers wi-fi

call-in uses the internet to connect to

your call carriers network

you should have a wi-fi call in on your

phone turned on as long as it supports

it obviously and your carrier needs to

support this service you need to check

that your carrier does and obviously

depends where in the world you are and

um your location remotely

and the launcher or gui the gui stands

for graphical user interface they're

obviously used across multiple devices

now used to just be

pcs now you've got a whole bunch of

different mobile devices

mobile devices have the gui interfaces

that allow users to interact with the

device through graphical icons

obviously apple's a version of this the

ipad

for example the home screen you see on a

smartphone is a gui

launcher is the section of a mobile

device's home screen with graphical

icons you press on it and it will launch

the application

the launcher shows the user the main

view of a mobile device

there are launcher apps that let you

change the look and feel of a home

screen

an example is an overlaunch ass launcher

app for android-based and mobile devices

moving on to virtual assistant virtual

assistants

the latest mobile operating systems come

with a computer program called a virtual

assistant that lets you speak to your

smartphone to complete tasks

um you could use this to make calls send

messages make notes set reminders and a

whole bunch of stuff popular versions

are apple siri google now microsoft

cortana

if you've got an iphone or ipod or ipod

you can use siri by holding down the

home button and siri into sirius what

can i help you with

or you can say hey siri to activate siri

google now on android devices

hold down the home button or you can say

ok google to activate the service

you can use cortana on windows mobile

devices by holding down the search

button or you can say hey cortana to

activate the service

sdk apk sdk stands for

software development kit

it's typically a typically a set of

software developer development tools for

developing applications

for a particular operating system

the development of ios apps require ios

sdk on the mac os

android app support development on linux

mac os x

10.58 or later and windows 7 or later

using android sdk

windows app development is supported on

8.1 and 10 using windows sdk

apk is android application package

apk is a package file form might used

for the distribution of apps for the

android operating system so this is how

you would have to eventually supply it

to um

android or whoever is distributing it

for you in order for them to provide it

to their users

i'm sure there's a whole other bunch of

security and other verification steps

you have to go through

wireless emergency alerts these weas are

sent by the us government in the form of

text messages to users

wa capable mobile devices

these are text messages that show up

with a unique audible signal and

vibration

purposes as a public safety system it

alerts

the american

people or whoever's using the phone as

soon as possible to intimate

imminent threats to their person or

their property

there are three kinds the presidential

alert obviously issued by the president

imminent threat this is imminent threat

to life or property from man-made

or natural disasters

amber alerts are

issued to help authorities search for

and locate an abducted child

you've also got now on many phones the

mobile payment service where you can use

your phone

to pay for goods or services

uh in the

sms based transactional payments you

make the payment by sending a text

message to a short code

direct direct carrier billing you pay

directly through your mobile phone bill

mobile web payments you make the payment

through an app installed on your phone

and near field communication you make

the payment by waiving your nfc equipped

phone

over a credit card terminal so where

you'd normally hold or

hold your credit card

you would hold your um

phone

depending on how you've set it up you

may need to add a password as well

so it's

processed in the same way as a

traditional credit card swipe

so we've covered wi-fi calling the

launcher gui

virtual assistants sdk apk

wireless emergency alerts mobile

payments

that's all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 21 lesson 1b

various types of mobile devices

now we're going to look at an

instruction to mobile devices tablets

smartphones

wearable technology it's all the rage

now

phablets

e-readers smart cameras

gps

alright so this is a new uh item on the

syllabus so just a general knowledge is

and required of these

mobile devices i'm sure you know already

unless you've been living in a cave

it's a small handheld computing device

that can easily be carried around

they have um

display screens if you need a keyboard a

miniature keyboard or a touchscreen

appears that provides a virtual keyboard

so tablet smartphones wearable

technology said all this

so the tablets uh provide commut

computation and reachability media

experience

so obviously it's not something you

would buy if you were going to write a

book but it gives you all of the

usability generally speaking via apps

and web browsers

tablet as a touch screen of seven inches

or larger were measured diagonally

they were in various operating systems

including android ios and windows

to interact with the tablet uh use the

recognition of finger or stylus gestures

on the touch screen display

tablets provide the um on screen virtual

keyboards actually seen people type

pretty quick on these but certainly not

my cup of tea

tablets can relapse and provide

productivity on the go and

they could often plug in via the cloud

to

business

servers or apps running off the cloud

for the business so you can all interact

on documents

uh business users can access data at

work track inventory or provide points

of sale apps

etc

smartphones a pocket-sized mobile device

functions as a digital camera

video camera media player gps calendar

whole bunch of stuff

they have a screen of between 2.45 and

5.5 when measured diagonally

they can run the same operating systems

smartphones use finger recognition or

stylus gestures on the touch screen

display

uh you get again you get an on-screen

virtual keyboard uh generally speaking

people seem to use their thumbs with

these though

wearable technology and these are worn

on your body generally speaking there's

a watch they can get

other areas like you can wear things on

your arm

smart watches fitness monitors glasses

and headsets

smartwatch can wirelessly communicate

with the tablet or smartphone allows you

to make and receive phone calls check

your emails and text messages

your fitness monitor keeps track of your

activity it can measure a heart rate and

possibly steps as well i think although

it's a

you normally wear a step counter on your

waist but i think it can and they can do

steps as well

glasses and head headsets mobile devices

that project the computer generated

image of your real world environment

they'll allow you to interact with your

surroundings

you can put virtual clothes on the dog

standing in front of you

phablet is a mobile device considered a

hybrid of a smartphone and a tablet

touchscreen of between 5.9 and 6.99

inches

when measured diagonally

they provide large screen experience of

a tablet with a functional functionality

and portability of a smartphone

there are operating systems such as

android ios and windows

you get intensive screen viewing

activities such as web browsing and

multimedia

e-readers

have been pushed quite heavily by

amazon among other companies

and meant for reading electronic books

and magazines

uh basically looks like you're actually

reading a book on the good ones or the

you can change the

font the font size is and highlight

different parts pull up dictionaries

and bookmark different pages and change

the background color and also have a

have it backlit

it tends to have a longer battery life

than other mobile devices because they

don't do anything else apart from

display text

you can access internet through wi-fi

and cellular networks

smart camera is just like a normal

digital camera but it comes with a video

recorder touch screen built-in wireless

and other features

allows you to navigate or input

characters onto the screen

uh smart cameras are built in wireless

network connectivity such as wi-fi that

allows you to post network and photos on

social networks emails or back them up

to

a cloud storage

gps i'm sure we all know about these

they've been in use for a few years and

they receive signals from gps satellites

determine your location and they can

show you the best location to get

and the best way to get to your

destination the longest route the

fastest route you can also tell you

alternatives and where things like speed

cameras are set up

all right so looked at a few devices

mobiles tablets smartphones wearable

phablets e-readers smart cameras

and gps that's all for now thanks for

watching

[Music]

mobile devices connectivity and

networking

obviously one of the benefits of having

a device you can carry around in your

pocket in your pocketbook or your

briefcase or your bag or whatever is

that it's going to get you connected to

other computers outside of yourself

particularly the internet and so we need

to talk about how the connectivity and

networking works within

these tablets and smartphone devices and

specifically what we should be paying

attention to for this exam so we're

going to start by talking about the

global positioning system or gps that's

built into these devices

we know that there used to be devices

specifically made for gps so that you

could for instance drive your car and

get to where you wanted to go without

getting lost

however it's very important that we uh

uh just take a quick foray into how this

has been built into the current mobile

devices we're also gonna talk about

cellular connectivity uh obviously one

of the benefits is not just that we can

talk on the phone on say an iphone or an

android device but that

it gets us data as well as um

sort of voice and and texting

um we're also going to talk about the

wi-fi network cellular data is more

expensive

to use because it's sort of everywhere

it's you know working on satellites and

all sorts of uh infrastructure that's

been set up wi-fi we can set up at home

and connect to and it's gonna save us a

lot of money so

if we we need to be aware of how this

works and just i just want to point out

too

because this will sort of give us a

little um information back to what we've

been talking about in the past each of

these devices we have a cellular sort of

connection and a wi-fi connection both

of those are going to have their own mac

addresses okay because they're on

different networks so i just wanted to

point that out

we're also going to talk about tethering

if i have my laptop with me i need to do

work that i can't do on my tablet or on

my iphone or on my android device

i might want to use the internet

available on my device through my laptop

and that is something that's available

uh

depending on how you have your

device set up and on what you're paying

your provider

finally we want to talk about bluetooth

which again creates those personal area

networks and allows you to connect other

things to your device not just

connecting say your

apple device with your computer so you

can transfer files but more so so that i

can connect say a

headset or even a keyboard to one of

these devices

all right so first let's talk about the

gps and here we have an old-fashioned

gps system which

i'm imagining or going a little bit out

of fashion now that you can carry that

on a device that does other things as

well but this is a worldwide system of

satellites that specifically provides

location information to apps and service

providers so for instance if i am in a

new city and i want to try to find a

restaurant

the gps system in my phone

or on my tablet will allow me to find a

restaurant nearby so it'll locate where

i am and it'll search around me

alternatively it'll help give me turn by

turn directions uh to

a location i'm trying to get to i travel

quite a bit and i can tell you the

turn-by-turn directions offered on my

smartphone really help me get where i'm

going especially because sometimes i fly

into a new location and need to get to a

hotel or to an office that i've never

been to before

uh geo tracking by the way is what is

referred to uh when we talk about the

tracking and recording of a location of

a mobile device over time a lot of times

without you even knowing it and this is

why a lot of people like to turn on and

off these settings um

apple google verizon sprint all of these

providers are getting information about

where you're going at any one time and

they're tracking you uh now they're not

tracking you specifically so they can

sort of you know

do whatever

you know blackmail you or something what

they're doing is they're trying to

gather statistics for their network and

so they can make stuff better but they

are tracking your information where

you're going and so it is important to

be aware of that

as you're using this gps system

you can also use by the way if you don't

have gps built in like some of the

earlier models use what was called wi-fi

crowd sourcing to determine location if

you have for instance a tablet that does

not have cellular or gps built in it

only has

the uh wi-fi what it'll do is it'll do

some sort of trying a triangulation on

the closest wi-fi

hotspots to you and get information from

those as to your location so it is

possible even without gps to get a

basic uh sort of um

somewhat of a location it's not going to

be as pure as the gps location

now there's two ways we want to talk

about how we can turn this on and off if

we're dealing with an iphone or an

android on an android based device uh we

can go to settings and then location and

this isn't a word that's going to come

up we don't they don't call it gps that

would kind of scare people so they call

it location settings and then you can

say whether or not you want to use gps

satellites likely on just likewise

rather on an apple device ios it is

located in privacy which is interesting

because they're talking about

the privacy of letting information out

and it's located in what's called

location services

and other devices the other reason you

want to be aware of this for both of

these is other applications google

application you download a google maps

application you download a sort of yelp

or a food restaurant location searching

service or something or even if you have

a application that recognizes where you

are in order say a taxi or car for you

any of these are going to have access to

this information that means you're

providing that to the app the app could

then be sending that to their

manufacturer so that's why they're

located in privacy there and it is in

location services so again we're looking

at location services uh not necessarily

called gps okay

all right so let's talk a little bit

about cellular connectivity and the

cellular networks that um

these devices are using uh

gsm or the global system for mobile

communications is what allows voice

calls and this is pretty

universal

however there is also not only voice

calls in the cellular network but also

edge 3g voyage

4g lte and so on these are for cellular

data so not only are we dealing with

voice calls which has been around for

quite a while now um because you know

mobile phones cellular phones

they've been used for quite a while to

make voice calls and then we added text

messaging to them but now the big thing

of course is data being able to sort of

browse the internet get information from

the internet off of these and these in

sort of uh an ascending order of uh

speed have been what's been around we've

talked about that a little bit earlier

when we're talking about networking and

wi-max and so on and so forth but every

device

as a result is required to have

something called airplane mode

which uh can turn off any wireless

antenna in the device and this includes

the gsm remember that's for voice wi-fi

which we will talk about in a minute uh

gps bluetooth and the edge 4g lte

network whatever and then here just just

so you know here we're in cellular data

uh here for um

uh

for the iphone we're talking here about

cellular data you can enable lte which

gets it to load faster uh we also can

enable or disable um

data uh

cellular data network on our other

devices as well

uh android has the setting to turn on

the airplane mode by going to setting

wireless and networks airplane mode in

an iphone or an ios the settings are

just settings and there's an airplane

mode right there and i think i'll show

you a picture of that in a slide that's

coming up

um

with the wi-fi network in here by the

way is that

airplane mode

that i was mentioning

uh in a wi-fi network this is similar to

pc's wi-fi network mobile devices can

connect just like a regular computer can

remember it has a different mac address

it is a different device uh 802 11a bgn

generally nowadays they're lg

and

sometimes this is going to be faster and

cheaper data than a cellular net

connection uh generally it is going to

be cheaper

unless you're sort of paying for a wi-fi

connection

it'll usually be faster although the

technology behind 4g and lte and so on

and so forth nowadays is actually making

um

inroads into that and it might we might

even be in a world where no one needs

wi-fi at some point because everyone can

get their access through other means um

the android to get to this you go to

settings and then wireless networks

wi-fi settings this is also the same

place remember where that air airplane

mode is so here we're in wireless and

network settings and then we can either

choose you know wi-fi or wi-fi settings

to manage or set up wi-fi and then uh

there's the airplane mode setting right

there in ios you go to settings and it

is wi-fi and here we could turn on and

off wi-fi and then choose the network we

want to connect to and so on and so

forth

now tethering as i mentioned is

something different tethering is what

allows you to use your phone as sort of

a portable hotspot you see that word

here in both uh in both instances

basically it shares its cellular

connection with other wi-fi capable

devices so what it'll do is it basically

broadcasts out a wi-fi connection that

other people can connect to right and

you can either connect to it using wi-fi

or actually by using bluetooth

and then it allows that computer to use

its cellular connection you can see this

one has a personal hotspot on and it has

something connected to it

so this is as i mentioned something

called a portable hot spot which you

might see referenced it basically turns

your phone into somewhat of a soho

router

uh now the cell service whoever's

providing your cellular data carrying

for instance verizon

att sprint etc etc

has to support you using this service so

sometimes you'll try turning this on and

it'll say not supported um the other

thing is it it may cost you more money

to enable that service obviously they

want to get as much money as they can

from you so they might try charging you

more money to use it this is called

tethering by the way all right let's

talk briefly about bluetooth this of

course is that wireless standard for

transmitting data over short distances

we've talked about this in in the past

usually it's going to be used for like a

headset

or a printer connection you might also

see it done with keyboards because these

devices have those on-board keyboards

some people want a full keyboard you can

connect a bluetooth keyboard it's used

to create those personal area networks

remember this is the big thing i always

see it coming up on the test as a

personal area network is what a

bluetooth connection creates and it

takes up battery power so it should be

disabled if it's not being used just

turn it off disable it

if you're not using it because it will

cause

you to lose your battery quicker because

it's always looking for other bluetooth

devices and here we can see the settings

and where they are

to connect to a bluetooth device

you uh or to connect a bluetooth device

to your mobile device you have to

actually do some things first the

bluetooth needs to be enabled on both

devices so you need to set it as on

okay

then the other thing you have to do is

you have to set one of the device to

what's called discovery mode or you have

to make it discoverable

so the there's one device that's going

to be doing the searching

and there's one device that's going to

be discovered now when you do it on an

ios it actually does both at the same

time when you do it on

android you have to select it to turn it

on and then you select to make it

discoverable as well once one device is

discoverable the other device will

search for it it'll find it and once it

finds it you need to pair or link it and

generally what will happen is a pin code

will pop up you have to type a number

into one of the devices generally the

one that's doing the searching will

connect find the device you say connect

and then it says please type in a pin

code you type in a pin code and that's

how they can make sure that uh you know

you own both the devices and you're

staring at them so it's done for

security reasons by the way uh the other

reason we're going to want to disable

bluetooth devices because of something

called blue snarfing which is where

someone will connect to uh your

bluetooth device without even realizing

it and steal information from you

great so now we've talked about global

positioning system again that's like

those turn-by-turn directions uh where

you are in the world and it it can be

done um

using a triangulation of wi-fi networks

as well we talked about cellular

connectivity not only for voice which

again was that

gsm

but also for uh data which is going to

be on those sort of 4g lte networks and

so on and so forth quickly gaining speed

and i think in a number of years once

the infrastructure is in place this will

overtake wi-fi uh i can't guarantee that

but i i'm pretty sure because why would

you have a wi-fi network when you could

just have wireless everywhere however we

do also have wi-fi networks these

connect the exact same way as a regular

computer generally speaking we're using

the latest uh hardware functionality

which is 802.11n remember that can get

you up to 600 megabits per second which

is pretty fast we also have tethering

which is what allows you

to use

your

cellular data

on another device such as a laptop

this is also called a port makes your

phone or your ipad or your tether your

tablet or whatever into what's called a

portable hotspot

finally we looked at bluetooth the

important thing to remember here is

these are really for small personal

connections remember personal area

network is what they create and on these

devices you're generally going to see

them used for keyboards or for uh

headsets

great so uh we've talked about this

connectivity let's keep being in a way

at these mobile devices uh talking about

what specifically you need to know for

the

a plus exam

[Music]

welcome to module 21 lesson 2a mobile

device connection types

look at nfc proprietary vendor specific

ports which are the most annoying

micro usb and mini usb

lightning

ir infrared

nfc is near field communication it's a

wireless comms technology that allows

compatible devices to exchange data

within a distance of four centimeters

you may have used this if you've

upgraded one phone model to the next

model up and wanted to pull all of your

data

from one phone to another and all your

settings and

and if you use this it will um you sit

you sit you put two phones together use

the application and after however long

it takes it will copy all the data

across

the nfc enable mobile devices can also

be used to pay for transactions if

you've enabled it on your phone and

obviously if you if your

banking app supports it

and the nfc tag can store information

that can be read when waived over the

nfc enabled mobile phone

yeah this allows you to get information

by scanning tag to posters displays or

books

also allows users to provide their

credentials for access control systems

without the need for a physical card

proprietary vendor specific ports

earlier mobile phones had different

ports or connectors

among these was one use for power

another use for data it turned out

very expensive

and very cumbersome and if the cable

broke you had to try and find one for

the for your model phone i'm very

unpopular with customers who'd already

probably spent a lot of money

and then they realized they needed

needed to go out and buy another

um cable just so they could spend more

money with the manufacturer

so they're non-standard and i've got a

drawer i'm sure you have as well a

drawer full of different ports and

connectors and

adapters

and so you can't reuse them when you uh

switch your phone

uh there was a need for a universal

phone charger that not only reduced the

charger clutter but also the associated

electronic waste the eu standard uh came

up with a universal charger which was

micro usb

micro usb is widely adopted

for power and data

it's designed to reduce the mechanical

wear and tear used by all of the

plugging in

and plugging of usb data

micro usb connectors are thinner than

mini usb you could see it on the um

on the right there on the diagram

and tell you to replace mini usb

you may if you've got an ultra phone you

may still have a mini usb cable sitting

somewhere

mini usbs were thicker

lightning is an 8-pin connector that

carries the digital signal and was

introduced by apple as a replacement for

its 30 pin connector

obviously lightning is smaller you can

see blown up version

used to connect iphone ipads and ipod

devices to computers monitors

and other peripherals

it allows for reversible

use either face up or face down and

gives you the flexibility

handles a higher power of 12 watts

required by newer mobile devices

compared to 9 watts by micro usb

by design the pins are pin connectors

are moulded onto a single solid piece

making it more durable

than micro usb

infrared it's a type of

electromagnetic radiation with longer

wavelengths than those of visible light

we can't um actually see using infrared

we'd have to use a special device

it can be used for short range wireless

communication between compatible devices

if you've got an infrared port on your

mobile phone it allows you to transfer

data to another infrared

enable phone by using a beam of light

to establish a connection both phones

require a clear line of sight with it

within a distance of about one meter

some ir enabled smartphones can be

configured to control televisions and

other media devices you just have to

download the relevant app for that

so we've looked at nfc proprietary

micro and mini usb

lightning and infrared thanks for

watching

[Music]

welcome to module 21 lesson 2b mobile

device accessories which is a new

entry for the syllabus

introduction to mobile device

accessories

headsets speakers gamepads docking

stations

battery chargers external battery packs

protective covers credit card readers

memory and microsd

so you can get a whole bunch of

accessories for your mobile phones

obviously to increase its use or make

certain things easier and

to do

headsets for example like to have a

hands-free conversation without having

to hold the phone near your ear

and most

countries it's illegal to drive while

holding your phone

may well depending on the credential be

legal for you to use a headset

but even if you're walking around doing

it then it does make it easier for you

headsets can be wired or wireless

why is it wide is obviously plugged into

the headphone jack wireless can be

bluetooth especially integrated with

your car

speakers i think it's pretty obvious

what they do and how they work

external speakers can be wired or

wireless and come easily carried around

the certain um categories are

specifically designed for use with

mobile phones

and bluetooth such as the boom ue boom

which is a bestseller certainly on

amazon very handy if you're teaching

fitness classes outside

a game pads type of controller that puts

input to a video game continuous

smartphone or tablet into a portable

gaming console and give you a better

gaming experience

i'm not really sure how great the games

are on phones at the moment not that i'm

sure that can change

gamepad is held in two hands operated

with the fingers and thumbs to provide

input

they can be connected to smartphones or

tablets through bluetooth pairing

a docking station will hold your mobile

device in a frame that has more ports

which enables a mobile device to connect

to a full-size monitor printer keyboard

mouse and even ethernet and so on

makes it easy for your mobile device to

make or break connections to your

computer peripherals without more cables

a docking station for smartphones will

keep your phone charged and docked at an

angle which is comfortable for you to

use

station could also have a usb cable that

allows you to transfer data to other

devices

you could even have a

am fm radio and an alarm clock

battery chargers allow you to charge

your mobile phones and to be specific

they charge the mobile phone's battery

a stereo battery pack you can actually

um

find it but buy these at airports

especially and

just charge it with the battery pack and

then use that to charge you with phone

doesn't when

uh normally charge any mobile device

that you plug into it

when you have many portable devices to

carry um it wouldn't be prudent to carry

extra batteries so the battery pack

would come in handy for those protective

covers obviously handy if you

drop it or you want to keep the screen

protected whole bunch of different types

for that

credit card readers

i've seen these for

available in

local and computer shops and stationery

shops

they allow you to set credit card

payments anywhere and anytime using your

mobile phone you just plug in

this reader onto your phone and um you

think you can tap or swipe the card

works with the vendors app and i know uh

paypal

certainly have them but i'm sure some

other vendors use them as well

square credit card reader works in

conjunction with a square app to accept

credit card payments

memory micro sd

has

data storage based on flash technology

these work in a bunch of devices you'll

also find them in cameras

and um

dashboard cameras for your cars also i'm

sure they

work on their body cameras as well

secure digital sd is the type of memory

card that is adheres to the standards

developed by the

sd card association

comes in original mini and micro

micro is the smallest

so we've looked at intro to mobile

device accessories headset speakers

game pads docking station

battery covers credit card readers and

sd cards

thanks for listening

[Music]

mobile devices

email and synchronization

one of the main forms of communication

nowadays is of course email and making

sure that our mobile devices such as

tablets and smartphones can have access

to our email is of course one of the

major selling points of the devices

themselves the other thing is making

sure that our devices are kept up to

date with all the other things that we

keep on them for instance our calendars

files documents even music and so email

and synchronization although

similar to what we've seen with

our pcs and our laptops

is still a major a selling point of

these devices and something that's major

on the a plus exam so what we're going

to talk about is uh really quickly email

configurations how it works uh if

there's anything that makes it really

different uh from

our laptops and so on and how we just

sort of make sure everything

everything's copacetic with them and

then synchronization uh there's

different ways to synchronize our

devices of course we can do it using usb

which means plugging it in but we're

going more and more into a cordless

world one in which everything should

happen automatically and instantaneously

and that's why wi-fi is the major

selling point now of synchronization and

sort of the gold standard as well

so let's start with talking about email

configuration obviously it's gotten

easier and easier to set up email on

these devices

you can connect to a web-based email

such as gmail or yahoo etc using your

mobile browser

like safari or chrome or whatever the

mobile browser is on your device or

through a mail app client

meaning that it's built in or downloaded

as like an app and then you configure

that app to access your email and this

is a little simpler than doing it

through a mobile device

especially sorry a mobile browser

especially because you can access this

stuff

uh using uh even when you're not on the

network or don't have uh

network connection or data connectivity

so uh this is similar to desktop

communication configuration we're

generally want to use imap sometimes

pop3 or if we're in a big enterprise

setting exchange we can see that

exchange is right here and all of the

other ones are sort of automatic based

on the service you use and actually it

will set this up usually using imap if

possible

and so uh the reason being that imap and

exchange works similarly in that they

both if you recall can allow you to

create folders and if you read it on

your device it'll then be shown as read

on your home computer or on the web

the setup is automated for you based on

your service so if you select gmail it's

automatically going to fill all the

details for you if you select yahoo it's

going to fill in the details for you

same with aol hotmail and so on now

exchange same thing sometimes you might

have to select other if

it doesn't fall into any of these

categories and by the way when you hit

email over here it's going to do the

same exact thing of course there is a

specific google setup

any yahoo mail one as well but you can

set up email for just about anything

depending on the service and generally

speaking it'll recognize the settings

that need to go in there limiting the

amount of faults that you can have but

also limiting

the uh

errors that will occur

sometimes you may require manual setup

as i said in that case you're going to

go to other or sort of the generic email

setup now

we also have an option whether we want

to push or fetch the email and these are

slightly different so let's talk about

them for a second push automatically

pushes new emails or is pushed to them

to your device whenever they arrive so

if a new email comes in the server then

pushes that out to your device obviously

then your frequency of checking the

email you don't have to worry about

checking it because it's checked

automatically for you of course the

downside of this is it's going to take a

lot more battery life and data usage and

it's not always available for instance

on the service some services maybe a

gmail or yahoo depending on how you're

setting it up might not allow you to use

push setup maybe your other

device or your other service that you're

using and so sometimes we have to do

what's called fetch what fetch does is

it asks the server for new email on a

set time frame every 15 minutes every 30

minutes or even manually when you choose

to do it and as a result it's not

automatic right you can get an you can

get 10 emails in the span of 15 minutes

but it's only going to collect them

every 15 minutes so some people will say

actually what you should do is set it to

like hourly um that way

you're not going to worry about you know

emails coming in and having to respond

to them immediately or do it manually so

you're in more control of course push is

going to be the most up-to-date which is

the reason why it's sometimes the most

popular

so fetch is not as up-to-date but it

does conserve more battery life and data

now when we're troubleshooting email

when it comes to these devices we're

looking at the same things we're going

to look at

when we are in a regular pc or laptop

first of all the best place to start i

always say is to go to your email

provider's help desk or knowledge base

because you might have uh specific

settings that you need

you know for your device and those the

only person is going to know that best

is the organization providing you your

email so double check all of your

settings including ports for instance

we know that smtp the sending out email

works on port 25 but when we're on a

mobile device we're moving around

all the time and we're going to be

accessing different servers remember

that smtp only works if you're on your

local server right and so if i am at a

hotel i'm not on my local server anymore

so i need to double check my ports it

might be for instance port 587 which

works on a mail relay

and so this is important to keep in mind

you want to check your ports remember

what the other ports are this is going

to help you 110

right is for pop3

and 143 is the default for imap again

check with your knowledge base or your

email provider's help desk in order to

figure out if these are in fact the same

ports they're using only because they're

the default doesn't mean it's what

they're going to use you also want to

ensure that there aren't any special

setup requirements for instance with ssl

or tls or one of these secure

setup

choices and so

you need to make sure that you've you

know taken care of those on your end you

also want to double check all your your

passwords and your username as well

sometimes for instance uh let's say i

had josh gmail.com

they're gonna require you your username

to type in this entire thing not just uh

your

uh you know this part of it okay so

that's important but when you have a

small keyboard and using your fingers

it's very easy to make mistakes uh when

typing and so you really want to double

check uh your password if you're having

any errors

finally you can always make sure that

you have connectivity if you're not

getting email especially if it was

working previously the biggest reason

could be that you're no longer connected

to the internet

so let's talk about synchronization

obviously we want to keep email up to

date and we can do that using push or

fetch but there are other things we're

synchronizing uh our apps we're

synchronizing our

calendars uh documents etc and so we

want to match up files and emails as

well as other types of data between our

devices because the idea is i can work

on my smartphone and then go over to my

computer and it's going to work as well

so for synchronization a mobile device

can actually connect via usb

wi-fi

and bluetooth sometimes even a serial

connection although we see that very

rarely these days on these devices but

it's important however you're going to

synchronize to set it up in such a way

that it's going to continually

synchronize now of course one of the

problems with usb is you always have to

plug it in so if i go three weeks

without plugging in now i'm not going to

be up to date on my phone that just

doesn't make sense so that's why

generally speaking uh wi-fi is going to

be the current gold standard for that

because no matter or cellular

actually but any sort of sort of non-uh

plugging in way you can do it and in

fact you can still

synchronize the same way of via itunes

for instance for

your apple device even through wi-fi

these days so you don't have to plug up

now when you're doing an android usb

synchronization uh you plug up your

usb port uh to the android device and

you plug it up to the computer and

you're gonna have several different uh

options that appear as you can see here

i just want to go over a couple of them

the first is a charge only so basically

it's not going to deal with any data all

it's going to do is charge the device as

you know it charges it through a usb

port as well you can also synchronize

with your desktop using

something called htc

uh htc sync for some of these android

devices but any sort of desktop software

whatever that software is that you're

going to download

it's provided by your manufacturer you

can use that to sync as well

you can also use your device as a disk

drive which is another option that's not

really available to

ios users as easily although it is sort

of available if you jailbreak your phone

or if you set it up through itunes but

you can use your device as a disk drive

meaning that the device mounts looks

like a usb removable drive or an extra

drive on your system and you can just

drag and drop stuff over to it which is

the main benefit there's also an

internet connection mode which is like

tethering okay so that shares out your

cell network with the computer uh

similar but different is the internet

pass-through this shares the computer's

network with the device so if i don't

have wi-fi for some reason and i don't

have a cellular network i might use my

computer's network uh abilities through

to allow my htc phone or my android

phone uh to get internet there's also

this media sync which is going to

synchronize like pictures photos movies

etc but that's not as important for this

setting again

any of these you have to plug up via usb

which is sort of the downside of it

because that that requires sort of a

certain degree of

um

discipline to make sure that you're

going to plug it in all the times that

you need to to keep everything up to

date

now with ios usb we're going to be using

um an iphone and so i'm sorry itunes and

so you need to

have itunes on your computer whether

that's a mac or a windows pc it is the

device it is the software that it uses

and you may or may not be able to charge

your ios device when it's connected to

your usb port it really depends on the

power uh

provided

by the usb

um

port some ipads for instance will not

charge if you plug them up to your

computer and so that's just something

important to know so only because it's

plugged up it might not actually be

powering uh and that's important because

you could sync and then lose all of your

um all of your battery now when we

synchronize we're gonna use itunes as i

just mentioned because that's the sort

of software that it requires uh you

don't have to have itunes necessarily to

use your iphone you just have to have it

if you want to be syncing it with any of

these things apps music movie tv shows

or photos everything else for the most

part you can actually do over the

wireless connection

you can also use itunes to determine

what to sync so by clicking on any one

of these things you can go through and

say what do you want to sync and how you

want to sync it now the other thing is

you can actually on the latest version

of ios once you've done this once you

can check a box right down here that

says sync with this iphone over wi-fi

and from then on you actually don't have

to plug the device up to your computer

what it does is anytime your iphone or

your ipad or any ios device is on the

same wi-fi network as your itunes

computer it'll automatically recognize

it and sync it wirelessly so as long as

you're at home with your computer on and

itunes on it's going to do it

automatically for you generally speaking

when the phone is plugged in okay so

this is sort of why we're where we're

going and we really want that because

then i don't have to remember to plug it

in it's always going to be up to date

now with wireless synchronization in

both cases there are services such as

google and dropbox that allow for

synchronization through the internet for

instance your email you don't have to

plug up your your usb uh to get your

email up to date because it's doing it

through the internet so any service

that's going to synchronize over the web

over the internet is a good thing

dropbox synchronizes over the internet

google synchronizes over the internet so

if you're using dropbox safe for your

files and let's say you're using google

for like your contacts and your mail and

your calendar etc then these are going

to synchronize automatically now

ios

apple has released a service that will

do this for you as well which is called

the icloud icloud allows you to

synchronize any of these things

including something called find my

iphone which we'll talk about a little

later which allows you to locate your

phone in case it's stolen or lost but

you could synchronize say bookmarks on

safari uh reminders to help you remember

things that you need to do for instance

set a reminder on your um

iphone and then when you come home it'll

remind you on your computer contacts

obviously a big one we don't want to

lose any of that stuff so icloud is sort

of apple's answer to these services you

can also notice

sync certain documents and data

specifically those that work with apple

products so the only problem with icloud

is they have to be apple products for

the most part and if you're not sort of

embedded into the

apple uh ecosystem we'll say then this

is not going to work so well for you

in a perfect world i just want to say

this you should only plug in your device

to charge it you shouldn't have to plug

it in to synchronize stuff of course

that sometimes doesn't work so well but

nowadays just about everything can be

done wirelessly and that's where we want

to go so that way you don't have to

think about it it just happens

okay so as a short video but an

important one in the last we talked

about email configurations remember

we're really going to want to lean on

imap or exchange because they allow the

organization of folders we're going to

want to check our ports to make sure

they're good and you can don't forget

use a mobile web browser

to access your stuff but we're generally

going to want to configure

a client computer a client app rather we

also talked about synchronization

wireless being the de facto uh we can

plug in through usb and there are

several options but that requires us to

plug in and remember the problem with

plugging in is you have to be

disciplined

and remember to plug in

as opposed to wi-fi where you don't have

to remember at all right it does it

automatically anytime you're in uh well

not only whenever you're connected to

the internet in case of like icloud or

google but if you're on the same network

as say your itunes device then

let's say rather your itunes computer

then it'll automatically happen and sync

all the other stuff as well

great so now that we've talked about all

of this stuff email configuration

synchronization usb wi-fi let's finish

up this talk about uh mobile devices

with a little look at security and what

we can do in case we lose our device or

what we should do to make sure that

they're not going to get

our information won't get hacked

[Music]

welcome to module 21 lesson 3a

mobile device network connectivity

we're going to look at smartphone

processors a baseband processor

pri prl

imei

imsi

vpn

so smartphones are equipped with two

different processors a baseband

processor bp and an application

processor ap

the application processor takes care of

general purpose computing this is your

user interface

and running all the applications that

you have on your phone

the baseband takes care of

communications over wireless cellular

networks

the basebomb processor has its own

firmware and its own memory

a baseband processor runs real-time

operating system it manages your radio

communications between your smartphone

and the base station wherever that may

be that belongs to your um mobile

network operator

your baseband processor firmware is

updated over the air

you don't normally um

you're not normally aware of this

actually happening

pra stands for product release

instructions

pri is the radio settings that come

pre-installed on a cdma mobile phone

that contains

information such as the network code

your country code your cdma channels

your prl version

and your phone lock code etc

it's updated over there also

prl is your preferred roaming list it's

a database that resides in a cdma mobile

phone it's used when the phone is

looking for the cdma service

the prl contains a list of mobile

network systems that a mobile phone can

access and the frequencies

on which they're available

the prl assists the mobile phone in

selecting a serving mobile network

system based on the order of preference

so you could have one two three four and

so on

the prl information is set by the mobile

provider and is not accessible by you

the

user it can be updated over the air

again

where an updated prl ensures that you

have the updated network settings and

you can get the best coverage i'm sure

they change these settings over time

based upon new

maths and contracts with other providers

imei stands for international mobile

equipment identity

typically a 15 digit unique number

assigned to a mobile phone

it's used to stop a solo mobile phone

from accessing the networks you'd

normally call up and report it stolen

and

they would hopefully already know what

your imei is

imsi is the international mobile

subscriber identity

15 digit number provisioned in the sim

card for the gsm network

it's used to identify the user of a

cellular number

vpn we've discussed another context i'm

sure

virtual network built upon an existing

public network

used to provide a secure secure

communication between two networks

and mobile operating systems usually

support the vpn feature just check all

your release notes for example ios and

no phone supports vpn protocols such as

layer 2 trunking protocol

ipsec and cisco ipsec

we've covered

types of smartphone processor pri and

prl imei imsi and in brief vpn that's

all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

mobile devices security

so let's wrap up this mobile devices uh

lesson by talking about security since

we've talked about security when it

comes to everything else including our

computers our networks and so on

we need to make sure that these devices

which are portable small and easy to

steal are also secure so we're going to

talk about screen locking

basically a password that allows entry

into your device in the first place as

well as something called remote wipe in

case you do in fact lose or the device

is stolen you need a way to get all of

the important information off of there

before someone else does

we also want to talk about keeping the

device up to date since this is one of

the major security problems we have with

software in general is making sure that

the device's software is up to date

patched and unable to be hacked finally

we want to just briefly talk about

stopping applications uh not so much

security risk uh except when we have too

many devices running and one can perhaps

take down the system uh because uh it

crashes and then we lose something we're

working on so it's security in a very

different way all right so let's start

with talking about mobile device

security in general these are

huge security risks

anything small that can be easily

infiltrated into a larger area is a huge

security risk don't forget not only are

these security risks because of the

information they hold but the

information they can gather think about

it videos movies um

pictures text emails you know

they're always on your person but

they're smaller and easier to steal so

it's like having a laptop but instead of

it you holding it it's now in your

pocket or in a you know a back pocket or

in a coat pocket or something and so as

a purse so as a result they're easy to

steal easy to take to take advantage of

and get off of you they also have email

access and don't forget access to your

email is access to your digital life if

you ever want to reset a password on a

site like your banking site what do you

do they send you an email that allows

you to reset it and so if someone has

access to your email or to your mobile

device they have access to everything so

this is the main reason it's so

important not just because of all the

information that you would be gathering

on it all right so let's start with

screen locking over here we have two

examples of

screen locks one is of course the

passcode from ios and the other here

for an android device this is a code or

password or a series of gestures that

must be entered in order to access the

device generally speaking these are not

set by default so it's important that

you do set this otherwise you're opening

yourself up to a major security risk it

can also be a pattern that's drawn on

the display for instance here on the um

on this

android it's not

a code of numbers it is a pattern and

the windows 8 surfaces are doing the

same thing now so either way a pattern

is a little harder to memorize a little

harder to hack perhaps than numbers

which is the reason it's been getting so

much

support lately one thing also to note is

on both of these you can always make an

emergency call

to like get the police or the fire

department or whatever uh without having

to enter the passcode and that's done

for security precautions as well um

the pin number uh that's like a passcode

four number four a simple passcode a

simple pin uh could be a a

small four number code obviously easy to

hack but also easy for you to get into

we don't want to make it too difficult

for you to get into your device because

then you probably will stop using it and

finally you can have a password or

passcode you can set those in either of

these

not by default in ios but you can set it

so that you could have an entire

keyboard pop up here instead of just the

numbers

so here's where we can set these

settings here over here you'll see

passcode lock right here and in this

case screen unlock both the same thing

with android we're going to go to

settings and security uh we're right

here and you can see that we have

none which is something we don't want a

pattern which i showed you previously a

numeric pin which would be just numbers

and then a password which is

alphanumeric with ios settings we're

looking at uh going to the general and

then to the passcode lock whereas you

can turn it off you can change it what

we're looking at here is a simple

passcode meaning it is a four digit

number you can also change this to off

and that is when you would get a full

password so the same thing available

then you can also set how quickly you

want it to lock the device and when it

asks for a passcode so um although you

can on this page necessarily i can't

show you exactly where uh it's going to

lock the device or how how soon after

the device has been on or has not been

used it's going to lock but what you can

said here is how soon it's going to

require a passcode maybe you're someone

who wants to give a minute of use before

the passcode is asked for

notice also you can choose what to allow

access to when it is locked so you can

still get access to siri the passbook

and you can reply to a message

or reply with a message rather to a

phone call even though the device is

locked so if you really want to harden

this you would probably turn all of

these off

you may also want to set a device to

automatically erase data after a certain

number of attempts you can see that

available here it's also available uh in

android when you click into one of these

but what you generally want to do is you

know i think it's 10 attempts on your

iphone the device will automatically

wipe it's probably not a bad thing to

have set the reason being if someone

tries to get in 10 times and they don't

get it right that's probably not you

that's probably someone else who's

trying to hack in and so you'd prefer it

to wipe before they got in rather than

to keep it open

now speaking of white let's talk about

something called remote wipe there's a

device called find my iphone i pointed

it out when we were looking at the

icloud earlier and it's on the ios and

it allows you to locate and then

remotely wipe a lost device now of

course that device has to have internet

or

connectivity in order for to find it and

then of course to send it the signal to

wipe but in both cases you're going to

want to set them both to remotely wipe

if you ever lose them uh especially if

you don't know where they are it's much

better to wipe it and then try to

restore it from a backup rather than

lose all your information and have

someone get it on

android you have to install a

third-party app it's not built in uh by

the way i should mention as well that

although this is an apple app for find

my iphone it is not built-in you do have

to download it through the app store but

it is free uh with android you also have

to install another app to to accomplish

this

but in both cases you want some sort of

remote wipe utility that can locate the

device you could probably send the cops

to that area or alternatively you want

it to be able to wipe the device clean

so that way none of your information is

on there larger organizations by the way

may use something called mobile device

management it's a specific system that

could load on all these a third-party

thing if they are passing out iphones or

android devices to their employees for

instance they probably know there's

going to be some proprietary information

they don't want getting out about their

company such as the government as well

or a big organization that deals with

healthcare and so they're probably going

to install this stuff on the device

anyway

now when we're talking about updating

this the device we want to make sure

it's kept up to date that way hackers

can't sort of hack in from a software

standpoint in android we're going to go

to settings about the device or about

the phone and uh

system updates which is right here you

can see the current version there and

again i just want to point out because i

mentioned this a couple times um

you're gonna get different uh it's gonna

be a different way to get here depending

on the device okay now with ios you go

to settings general and it's right there

under software update it'll also notify

you if it's up to date on later versions

of uh both of these you can actually

update the device without plugging it in

earlier versions of the ios at least you

had to plug in in order to update

nowadays you can do it all from the

phone all wirelessly and it will notify

you it'll push out a notification when a

new update is available so it's

important to keep these completely up to

date finally we want to talk about how

we stop applications obviously the more

applications that are running the more

resources are being taken up with

android we can go to settings

applications and run services uh running

services and that'll show us what

services are running it's not as uh

sort of one of the downsides of android

is it doesn't tell you sort of all the

applications that are running it just

tells you the services you generally are

also going to want to purchase some sort

of third-party software to do this for

you

you can select the services you want to

close and then you can close them with

uh uh and as i mentioned you're probably

going to want to download a third-party

app to really clean up things it's one

of the downsides of android with ios you

can double-click the home button uh once

you double click that home button which

again is down here uh you can hold your

finger down on any application whichever

one it is you just hold your finger down

eventually all of the apps begin to sort

of jiggle and you will see a little

minus sign in the upper left corner

pressing that minus sign will close the

application of course the reason it

keeps the applications open is not so

it'll just take up resources it's so

that if you jump to another application

and come back it'll still be where you

left off

okay short and sweet video but we

covered the information we needed to

again we want a screen lock which is

either using a passcode or a password

the difference being that this is just

numbers and the other one is going to

have alphanumerics

um or a combination like a pattern on

the screen in order to unlock the device

we also have remote wipe capabilities

which means that we can remotely erase

the data

on the device uh while i'm mentioning

that too by the way we can set a

passcode or screen lock to automatically

wipe the device after a certain number

of attempts of course the downside here

uh which i hadn't thought about until

just this moment is if someone knows you

have erased the device after say 10

attempts they can just do 10 attempts

it'll wipe the phone and now they have

access to the phone albeit not your

information uh as with software update

as well we want to keep our software up

to date on these devices generally it's

push you can do it over wi-fi these days

but you do want to make sure to keep it

up to date and it can be done uh from

the phone you don't need to plug it in

uh necessarily anymore to do that

finally stopping applications good not

just for resources but to avoid avoid

crashing

uh and you can do that

usually we need a third party app um

it's gonna be the best way for an

android device and you can do that it's

built into

ios by simply a double clicking

uh the home button and then holding down

an application

great so now that we've discussed

security with the mobile device uh we've

talked about everything when it comes to

mobile devices again

you want to make sure to keep up to date

on your own since this information is

going to be changing much more rapidly

than some of the other other information

we've talked about since it is the

newest sort of technology out there

but now i haven't talked about that

let's finish up wrap up by talking about

some of the technical professionalism

things that you need to know for a plus

actually a large part of it not hard

skills so to speak but the soft skills

personality uh how you go on a call et

cetera et cetera

[Music]

welcome to module 21 lesson 4a security

we're going to look at screen locks

biometric authentication full device

encryption

multi-factor authentication

authenticator applications

trusted versus untrusted sources

firewalls policies and procedures

okay screen locks first i'm sure you're

familiar with this helps you secure your

mobile phone

you can use your fingerprint to secure a

mobile phone like the samsung galaxy s6

using the fingerprint sensor

otherwise it's um could be password or

pin code

if the mobile phone supports it you can

use the face unlock feature scan your

face with the phone's camera to unlock

it

biometrics refer to human

characteristics such as fingerprints and

um iris detectors unique to you

and since biometrics are unique they're

used to verify your individual identity

volumetric grants access only if the

feature is validated

for device encryption in order to

prevent unauthorized access you can use

the full device encryption

for example full disk encryption on the

android phone secures all user data

the decryption requires the correct

passcode

multi-factor authentication is a

a

using been authenticated based upon two

or more pieces of information

because it could be something you know

it's typically a username or password

something you possess typically some

sort of identity card although it can be

um a key generator

so it would generate various um keys

every 30 seconds or so on

something you are is typically your a

physical characteristic like an iris

voice so on and so forth

an authenticator application is an

application that implements two-factor

authentication for verifying users

these generate a new random code every

30 seconds

the security code is used along with

your username and password to sign into

an account often when you need remote

access to a network

especially if your network engineering

you need to log in that will give you

access

or limited access to the networks you

can

do your troubleshooting or fixing

for example two-factor authentication on

an account such as mailchimp we need a

username and password and the security

code to log in

trusted versus untrusted sources if you

want to avoid malware it's critical not

to install apps from untrusted sources

sources such as

ptp file sharing sites unknown software

vendors

you can often go to somewhere to

download an app that fixes a certain

problem but they bundle a lot of um

spyware with it

so it can cause you a lot of problems in

our software team and the well-known

reputable app stores are considered

trusted sources

examples of well-known reputable app

stores are google play and apple's app

store

firewalls we'll probably already of this

it protects your network from

unauthorized access monitors and

controls inbound

and outbound network traffic

there's no built-in firewall in

smartphones and it's uncommon to have

firewall apps on them smartphones

however if you have one it ensures that

no seemingly legitimate app establishes

suspicious communications

there's a few firewall apps available

for um smartphones but most of them are

for androids

policy policies and procedures byod

versus cope

byod means bring your own device it's a

concept that allows you to bring your

own mobile device to the workplace to

work for the organization

it allows you to choose your own device

that meets both the personal and

business needs

organizations that permit this have

policies regarding

the use of personally owned mobile

devices for business purposes

for example a policy would approve

devices such as smartphones and tablets

with android ios or blackberry

in a corporate owned personally enabled

model the company provides your mobile

device that can be used for personal

needs within permissible limits

so this is obviously dependent on what

the company procedures are so the it

department has full control over the

device and can even wipe the phone's

data

security requirements refer to minimum

security requirements enforced on any

mobile device that accesses a corporate

network

for

example device would be required to use

any available native encryption

mobile devices that don't adhere to the

security uh profile for the company may

not be able to access the corporate

resources

all right so we've looked at screen

locks biometrics

full device encryption multi-factor

authenticator application trusted and

untrusted sources

firewalls policies and procedures that's

all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 21 lesson five

troubleshooting your mobile operating

system and application security issues

looking at dropping our signal power

drains slow data

unintended wi-fi connections and

bluetooth

leaked personal data

restoring data

unauthorized account access route access

location tracking him

accessing your camera or your microphone

high

resource utilization

so your signal drop can be caused by a

couple of reasons obviously too far away

from your nearest tower

buildings around you can actually block

your signal if you're in um especially

our older buildings with thick concrete

walls

or if you go up into a basement

or um the

roaming may not be um

correctly enabled in a particular

building so if you go between one

um wi-fi adapter to another you may just

lose your signal

when there's a weak signal a cell

repeater can help solve the problem

power drain we've probably all

experienced this when we when the phone

battery seems to be draining faster than

it should be there could be apps that

are running in the background and you

can normally go into your device manager

and see what's running and it can even

tell you what's draining the most power

apps that check for updates you should

normally be able to

manually approve updates or set them to

automatically

update and you can also set them to only

update when you have a wi-fi connection

screen brightness especially if the

screen is lit at all times when it

doesn't need to be

uh lock screen notification from apps

bluetooth wi-fi especially gps can be a

big drain on your battery

in order to prevent you can do the

following you can force stop the

applications

turn off the apps background updates

reduce the amount of time the screen is

lit you can set all of your power

savings normally there's a

various levels that you can choose that

automatically set them for you

disable lock screen notification from

the apps

disable the things you aren't using like

bluetooth wi-fi and gps

slow data

could be your low signal strength your

type of mobile technology you could drop

from a um

a 4g connection

to a slower speed connection depending

on where you are and what's working

apps that run in the background taking

up

processor time ads on free apps

consuming data

malware causing network traffic

you can get um

virus scanners such as avg that will run

free or sometimes if you've got a

license on your pc you can also download

it for phones

for free

exceeding your bandwidth limit so your

provider may have throttled it

but not told you

the following can be done to increase

data speeds install a cell repeater to

boost the signal

activate the phone's mobile technology

disable apps that consume data in the

background

install adblock to stop ads

keep your antivirus app updated and

check whether the um a mobile app is

safe before installing it

monitor your bandwidth to stay on high

speed

unintended wi-fi

if you've got unusual network traffic in

your mobile then there's a chance you

may have connected to a rogue access

point

you can use the wi-fi analyzer to get

detailed information such as manufacture

security etc

ensure that you're connected to a

trusted wi-fi connection so this is down

to you to set your settings on your

wi-fi automatically or not

and also you can download and wi-fi

monitors to show you

um

what you're connected to and even give

you a um a direction to tell you where

you're connected to

unintended bluetooth

uh

provides a security risk obviously

and it removes uh remove bluetooth

pairing and you can actually disable

bluetooth if you don't need it for

whatever reason

and leaking personal data happens

because of malicious apps

apps though not malicious have got your

permission to access personal data and

then they can pass it to advertisers

use an app scanner to check whether the

mobile app is safe or an anti-malware

you can do a factory reset and a clean

install if you have to

you can restore your data from the

icloud google or onedrive if you've

backed up all your settings

unauthorized account access don't store

usernames or passwords in a mobile phone

uh don't write them on a piece of paper

and stick them to the back either as i

know some people have done

reset your password if your mobile phone

is stolen or if you think someone's

accessed your account

root access gives and whoever is

using it administrative privileges of a

root user to your mobile operating

system

it says circumvents the security and

placed by the mobile operating system

uh geo location

is um

gener data generated by the smartphone

used by various companies to locate the

smartphone and you wherever the you'll i

guess you'll be where the phone is

uh for example gps services track the

location for navigation

an authorized location tracking is done

for criminal purposes you can actually

do it for legal purposes say you've got

um kids or teenagers with phones you can

enable it so for safety you can see

where they are at any given time

criminals can track a user's location by

taking advantage of the apps installed

by the user such as facebook that

provide the user with opt-in location

tracking

unauthorized camera use this obviously

applies to pcs and laptops also there's

been

um documented cases of people's cameras

been accessed and security cameras

the camera the microphone in your

smartphone can be remotely activated by

hackers

they can spy on you or people nearby to

avoid an authorized camera microphone

activation you can disable them

you can also come cover the camera with

the tape

and plug your cord into the microphone's

jack this is real old-school i'm not

sure how many of us would want to stick

a piece of tape over our camera

um you may get it you may be able to get

a cover with a flip and a little flip

thing that will cover it

a high resource utilization a device is

busy doing something

you can monitor the resources normally

on the phone settings and see what's

been used and then you can benchmark it

so we've covered a lot of stuff um

weak signal power drain slow speeds

wi-fi and bluetooth pairing leaked

personal data

restoring data unauthorized access

an authorized camera

high resolution a high resource

utilization

that's all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

technician professionalism

troubleshooting process

so as we wrap up this a plus course we

need to delve into some of the soft

skills that go into being a technician

some of the things that comptia and the

a-plus certification want you to be

aware of as a professional technician

and the first thing we need to talk

about is this troubleshooting process

there's actually a specific set of steps

which may seem like common sense to you

but which we need to go over anyway that

a plus wants you to be aware of and they

will ask you questions about on the exam

so this is a six step a plus

troubleshooting process that you need to

be aware of this is um

some of this seems like it might overlap

a little bit and some of it might be

common sense but we need to be aware of

the six step process and which comes

before the other

when you're taking the test because they

will ask you so the first step is to

identify the problem

the second step is to establish a theory

about the problem

the third step is to test the theory

before we get to step four which is

establish and implement a plan of action

i.e fix the problem uh step five is to

verify full system functionality a step

that actually a lot of technicians fail

to do and causes a lot of repeat

business and then finally step six which

is document everything your findings

actions and your outcomes these are the

six steps that a plus wants you to be

aware of and so it's important to at

least be familiar with them and be able

to recognize it on the test so let's

quickly just briefly go over uh these

six steps and sort of how we can

translate them into real

uh real world uh language step one

identify the problem

what exactly is going on here uh that's

how i would say identifying the problem

so for instance

my computer will not turn on my

computer's not working might be the uh

what the user the user might say my

computer's not turning on and so what

you need to determine is what exactly is

the problem if the computer won't turn

on well then

then the problem is the computer won't

turn on if someone calls you and says um

hey i can't print well the issue is uh

printer's not functioning correctly

okay now what the cause of that is

that's where we get to step two

establishing a theory so someone says my

computer won't turn on and the next

thing you need to think of is well what

is the most likely cause of the problem

uh so this would be if the computer's

not turning on then maybe the system is

unplugged or if the printer is not

working then perhaps the cord is not

plugged in or perhaps the drivers aren't

there so we need to do is first

establish a theory as to what we think

the problem is based on the issue at

hand or the problem again the problem

and i just want to point this out the

problem is actually the issue computer's

not working computer keeps restarting

it's very slow it's sluggish what are

the

symptoms

okay then we get to testing a theory

which is what is your prognosis of the

situation what do you believe the issue

to be

just like with the medical profession

troubleshooting is not exact in exact

science so we need to figure out based

on what we see what we think the problem

is now of course once we've established

a theory we need to test that theory to

see if it actually works so you want to

make sure your theory quote unquote

holds water as we would say now i think

that actually step three and step four

sort of overlap a little bit but for the

purposes of the exam keep them separate

what i mean is that this theory would be

look the computer isn't plugged in or

the computer's plugged in so my theory

is incorrect in which case we'd have to

actually repeat uh steps one and two but

we need to test the theory the computer

is running sluggishly oh well i believe

that you have a virus the next thing i

have to do is test the theory now how do

i do that well if i think you have a

virus i might boot you into safe mode

and see if you're still running

improperly i might take a look at some

of the settings and see if i see any

virus problems or virus

sort of information in your registry or

in the ms config whatever

then we get to step four once you've

tested theory and you're sure that the

problem that

is related to what your theory is that's

when you establish and implement a plan

of action now the reason i said that

step four and step three sort of meld

together for me is i think sometimes

when you're testing a theory you need to

implement a plan of action in other

words if i think there's a virus on your

system i might run a virus scan to catch

it by running the virus scan i'm testing

my theory and at the same time

implementing a plan of action but this

is in other words simply fixing the

problem

short and sweet i need to figure out how

i'm going to fix it and then i need to

fix it based on the problem that i've

seen a theory i've come up with and me

verifying that theory is actually

correct so the in our

analogy that i've created fixing the

problem would be plugging in the

computer remember step one my computer

is not turning on step two well if your

computer's not turning on we should

check to see if it's plugged in step

three oh look it's not plugged in step

four i'm gonna plug this in once you've

done that we can get to step five which

is verifying full system functionality

this is a really important step a lot of

technicians forget to do it sometimes

you're so in such a quick rush to get to

your next client or to get to the next

computer that you don't check out

everything correctly sometimes when you

remove a virus for instance you can

actually remove

files that will cause the computer not

to run properly in this case we actually

need to do more work to verify full

system functionality

so sometimes fixing the problem doesn't

necessarily resolve all the issues it

might actually cause other ones so in

this case we're going to turn on the

computer and test that everything works

if we just remove the virus we probably

want to work on it for a little bit make

sure that we're not getting any error

messages sometimes this can be a tricky

one to do too because sometimes full

system functionality we don't know if we

have until we start getting error

messages or weird things start to occur

and so sometimes you'll have to leave

your information with uh

the client and just test it to the best

of your ability getting to step six

you're gonna document everything and

then you're gonna let them call you in

case something goes wrong again so in

this case the computer bit

boots up and then it's been working for

about five minutes i don't just want to

boot up the computer and look that it's

working because what if i go away and

suddenly the computer shuts down again

well then maybe it wasn't the fact that

things weren't plugged in correctly

maybe the system is overheating so we

need to give it a little time of course

you can't spend hours and hours there

that's probably too expensive for the

client and takes too much time for you

so finally step six this is a really

really really important one especially

when it comes to this a plus exam you

need to document your findings you write

it all down for the next time

you don't only write it down for

yourself but you write it down so other

people know how to fix the issue so if

i've plugged in the issue the computer

and then someone else gets a call and it

says my computer's not working well a

they might realize this user somehow it

keeps unplugging their system or b i've

already tried to unpl unplug and replug

in the system and that is actually not

the real uh real issue so it's really

important to document everything and i

mean write it all down write too much

down you can never be too exhausted in

what you write a lot of places will

actually use what are called ticketing

systems a ticketing system uh allows you

to sort of figure out

uh uh to keep track of users and the

problems they've had it also allows you

to do what we call escalate a problem in

case it's a little out of your means

which sometimes happens still in the

case of escalation you need to document

everything so the next person this

perhaps level two or level three

technician can fix the problem that you

weren't able to

all right

so really quickly i just want to review

this six step process since again this

is really important and it will come up

on the exam

step one we're going to identify the

problem look computer's not turning on

oh internet's not working oh the

printer's not printing step two

establish a theory i think the printer

is not printing because the network's

down or i think the printer is not

printing because the device drivers

aren't installed correctly step three is

test the theory perhaps you plug up that

printer to another computer you know

works oh it's working here so it must be

a software problem or you test the

theory by checking to see if the network

connection works for another computer ah

it's working i can print from another

computer therefore it must be something

to do with this computer not with

necessarily the entire network's

connection step 4 establish and

implement a plan since i know the driver

is not installed correctly i know i need

to download and install new drivers once

you do that you do it and then you

verify full system functionality i'm

going to print to that printer and make

sure it works i'm going to work on the

computer for a little bit i'm going to

print from different types of

applications and finally we document the

findings actions and outcomes basically

everything we did everything we saw and

everything that happened that way the

next user knows how to fix it if the

same problem arises or knows what you

tried in case a different problem arises

alternatively so you have a nice log of

what you've done in the past to fix

issues

great so that's the six step

troubleshooting process you need to be

familiar with for a plus let's continue

on talking about some other technician

professionalism uh issues that you need

to be aware of for this exam

[Music]

technician professionalism physical

safety and environmental control

just as there is a specific way to go

about troubleshooting computer problems

according to a plus we also need to be

aware of physical and environmental

factors that can cause damage to either

ourselves or the equipment so i want to

briefly go over some of the physical and

environmental considerations that go

into being a technician

these include not only the physical

safety things but environmental so first

let's talk about the physical safety we

want to be aware of securing cables

loose cables uh cables that we are

working on cables that have already been

put there cables that are put there by

people who don't know as much etc we

also want to look at lifting heavy items

or any heavy items in general whenever

you apply for a technician's job it'll

generally say you have to be able to

lift at least 50 pounds

or that equivalent in

kilograms which is rather heavy and if

you are uh not 200 pounds then you

shouldn't be lifting this stuff so it's

sort of ironic and we'll talk about that

we also want to talk about hot

components you're dealing with stuff

with electricity therefore they get hot

and you don't want to burn yourself and

finally ergonomics

ergonomics you're going to be working on

computers a lot so not only eye strain

but also repetitive

stress uh from your hands etc i think

we've talked about this a bit but i want

to

go back over it again another thing to

be aware of is there is an organization

at least in the united states called

osha which is occupational safety and

health administration and

they put out guidelines as to a lot of

these things and a lot of the stuff

we're talking about is required by them

uh since the department of defense

requires the certification a lot of this

stuff has to do with osha requirements

so if you hear about osha i'm not going

to mention it specifically in this exam

or in this

video just because uh you might not be

in the united states so you don't have

to follow osha guidelines but anyone

dealing with united states does have to

follow osha guidelines and they say all

the stuff having to do with safety and

hazards and so they're not a bad

resource to go look up if you're on the

internet osha.gov

is the

website

then we're going to talk about

environmental controls these are more

for the computer's sake rather than

yours

and this includes of course air quality

which we have mentioned especially when

we talked about emi we're going to talk

about that again too

electromagnetic interference

we also want to look at radio frequency

interference or rfi similar to emi but

more is going to get in the way of our

wifi connections rather than our bound

connections and finally i want to talk

about the msds material safety data

sheet

which tells you what to do in case of an

emergency with specific

chemicals that you may be encountering

finally we want to look at disposing of

batteries toner all of these things

because we're dealing with stuff that

has chemicals in it we want to make sure

we're dealing with it in the right way

and that means disposing of it the right

way not only for our our own healthy but

also for the environmental uh safety of

our entire globe all right so first

let's talk about securing cables we

should be professionally installing

cables in permanent walls or permanently

being installed in walls

just because if they're done by someone

professional they're done right then

you're not gonna have to worry about a

getting you know tripping over them uh

getting hurt etc we also wanna try

nowadays to rely on unbounded stuff

wireless stuff as much as possible uh

however in certain instances this isn't

the case we have temporary cables uh or

we have cables that we have to install

that we can't get a professional out or

somebody's temporary cables turn into

permanent cables and so we need to make

sure we keep these out of high traffic

areas uh for instance if it's going

across a carpeted area

that is a

constantly dealing with traffic foot

traffic then we need to make sure we

tape that down secure it we use tape on

the floor we use guards you can purchase

or we wrap it something this is a huge

tripping hazard and the worst thing you

would want is for someone else to trip

not even yourself to trip um

but someone else to get injured off

because of you and again if someone gets

injured on the job they file in the

united states at least for workers

compensation and that's going to cost

the organization more money

we also want to be careful when we're

unplugging and rerouting cables

because you don't know what data is

going on over those cables at that

moment you don't know if they're hot you

don't know if it's connected to an

electrical source so always be careful

and in any instance that you're not sure

of something just contact your

administrator and definitely don't do

anything during the work day because you

might bring down the network and even

though there might not be people

necessarily working on it there are

certainly nowadays computers that are

doing and sending information over these

and if you shut down a computer or shut

down a network rather while the

computers say batching a lot of uh bank

information then you're going to be in

major trouble with your employer

next we need to talk about lifting of

heavy items the easiest way to injure

yourself is through improper lifting it

just happens constantly and everyone

does improper lifting so i just want to

go over this although you probably know

this the first thing is don't attempt

any to lift anything especially from the

ground up um

that much distance if it is more than a

quarter of your weight meaning that if

you are if the item is 50 pounds uh and

you are 175 pounds right that is not

enough right you need to be at least 200

pounds to lift something that's 50

pounds if you're not then get a partner

have someone help you determine where

you're going before you start lifting

and so on you also want to lift from

your legs with a straight back

this is difficult to describe it's

better easier to do but basically

speaking a lot of people will lift

straight from their back they'll bend

over uh not bending their legs just

their torso and just sort of come up the

problem is you're putting so much stress

on your back your back is not meant to

take that much stress bend your legs and

stand up from your legs bending your

knees

and straightening them that way the bulk

of the weight is going into your quads

into your hamstrings and into your calf

muscles rather than into your lower back

also immediately and this goes in any

case report injuries to a supervisor and

get it in writing if you are injured on

the job you want to make sure that

you're protected and if you don't get

that written down if you don't

get something signed and in writing

describing exactly what happened and

everything that happened then you're

going to be in trouble in the future and

they probably won't want

the company's not going to want to pay

for your you know your health issues

so make sure to get everything in

writing any lawyer barrister will tell

you that

we also need to talk about hot

components obviously we're we're dealing

with electricity and so we need to be

very aware of heat that is caused

because of electricity so you always

want to mate i would say at least 15 to

30 minutes for a hot component to cool

um

hot components could be hard drives

power supplies batteries really anything

electrical wait for it to cool turn it

off let it sit before you open it or do

anything a good rule of thumb is uh you

know you can take the back of your hand

and you can slowly move it towards the

item if you feel heat emanating just

don't even bother you can sort of try

dabbling at it with your hand and if you

feel heat then you're probably um you

should wait even longer

if it's always possible uh if something

holds a charge don't even open it best

example these are those cbt monitors

they hold a charge they're a large

battery if there's anything that you

think still has electrical charge in it

don't even bother opening it this isn't

just with heat this is with electricity

because it will shock you and you could

potentially harm yourself or even

mortally you know hurt yourself

kill yourself more or less

we also need to talk about ergonomics i

i found a public domain picture over

here that sort of sews some of the nice

um

you know how you should be sitting and

how no one is couple things one our

bodies are not made to sit in front of

computers all day just biologically

speaking however you um

think we were brought onto this earth it

doesn't matter what does matter is we

know that you know two or three hundred

years ago we didn't have computers and

thousands of years ago we didn't have

any sort of electronics whatsoever and

so we weren't meant to sort of just sit

all day we're meant to go out we're

meant to do things typing is not regular

etc now that doesn't mean we can't do it

we can do anything safely we just have

to make sure we follow some rules so

first thing is you might need some

special eyeglasses because um if your

reading glasses are meant to be things

that are read very close

and seeing glasses for long for longer

distances

there's nothing that's in between and so

what we need is special glasses

sometimes for the length of a computer

which is away from you generally uh one

and a half to two feet away that's

different from reading a book so you

might need special glasses and as you

can see right here we're looking at this

18 to 24. also one thing to notice is

that we want to use proper typing

techniques we want to have a nice

straight line of our wrists we don't

want to be putting a lot of pressure on

our wrists or have something supporting

our elbows because that's going to

actually put a good deal of pressure

when we don't need it

so you can always talk to an uh

ergonomics expert who's going to be able

to help you with this or look up

anything on the internet we'll give you

some good information but this is a

really quick way especially when using

mice and moving them around or using

them in an odd way you can very easily

develop a carpal tunnel

which

impacts some of the nerves in your

wrists and that can cause real pain and

can also hurt you in the future we also

want to make sure our monitor is at eye

level otherwise if you imagine the

monitor is here which a lot of people

have you're going to be craning your

neck this way in order to look there and

that's going to put a lot of just

imagine all the stress that that puts on

the back uh and and our our bodies are

perfectly balanced when we're standing

straight and when you're sitting as well

we have a tailbone that sort of balances

our body so if you're putting that out

of whack you have other muscles that are

going to have to compensate and that's

going to end up hurting you

wrists and hands in line with the

forearms as i mentioned when you use

proper typing techniques where our

wrists and our arms are i get pain often

in my wrist from early back in my career

i i did not type correctly and use my

mouse incorrectly also we're seeing this

a lot nowadays because the mouse isn't

over on the right it's sort of centrally

located on the keyboard

or below the keyboard of a laptop and

that can cause major issues as well

finally you need to get up and take a

break at least every two hours i would

actually do it at least every one hour

recommendation is every two hours just

because we need to stretch you need to

get your muscles up and going and this

is going to keep you from developing

repetitive stress

issues

all right now let's talk about some of

the environmental controls first let's

look at air quality we want the

temperature to range anywhere from 68 to

76 degrees fahrenheit i'm not a

mathematician but i believe this is

anywhere from 20 to 25 degrees celsius

for those of you who don't use

fahrenheit like most of the world we

also want to remember that we want to

keep our humidity between 20 and 60

degrees remember low humidity is going

to cause electrostatic discharge and so

having a bit of humidity but not too

much in the room is going to be good we

have too much humidity then things start

to stick together such as paper in our

printers we can jam stuff and also it

can cause um you know electricity

you could have some more issues with

electricity and electrical components

including them getting too damp so you

wanna have a nice mix of the two of the

two to do this you're gonna use an hvac

system the hvac system isn't only gonna

keep things

cool and keep things humid to an extent

but they're also going to remove

contaminants from the air which is good

for your own safety for dealing with a

lot of electronics a lot of computers

it's blowing a lot of dust in and around

the air that can get into our lungs so

we need to make sure we replace filters

in the hvac system frequently of course

there are some newer ultraviolet filters

uh that use lights as opposed to sort of

um uh like a filter that's going to

catch particles and those of course need

their own

replacement and upkeep

but it's slightly different so those are

sort of the new it thing to do

electromagnetic interference if you

remember was unwanted disturbance

affecting electrical circuits and it can

also cause

network interference and electrical

interference and so electromagnetic

interference we want to be aware aware

of when we're setting up and installing

cables and

electrical

devices so we want to keep cables and

other large things away from each other

we want to keep our cables away from

electrical in

electrical sources junction boxes and

just about anything magnetic as well if

you have a large magnet for instance a

very large powerful magnet you

definitely want to keep that away from

other uh from your electrical devices

away from your laptop away from your

mobile devices etc uh radio frequency

and interference or rfi is slightly

different this is basically caused by

cordless phones microwaves and so on

that use the same 2.4 gigahertz

frequency range that 802.11 bg and n use

don't forget and also uses five

gigahertz as does a um but they're still

on 2.4 and that can still cause

interference so we want to make sure

that we don't put our wireless access

points near cordless phones microwaves

and so on and that we keep those out of

the line of area where we're going to be

working a lot of the time so be aware of

this when you're installing wi-fi

networks especially

we also need to talk about something

called the material data sorry material

safety data sheet this is going to come

with

any product that uses chemicals so any

product that has chemicals in it whether

that's ink uh toner batteries etc it's

gonna come with an msds this also

doesn't it's not just for computers it's

really anything in the in you know that

that is produced that could have some

sort of

safety issue has to come with this and

this identifies not only the chemical

substance that are inside of it it's

also going to tell you hazards that

those chemical substances can have

handling and storage of this of the

device including how to get rid of it

which we'll talk in a minute and what to

call in case an emergency if you call

for instance the poison control center

which would be

who you would call in case for instance

you had a dog or a child eat some toner

they're going to want to know exactly

what's in that toner and that's why

you're going to need this msds so it's

really important to have this at hand if

you don't have one you can generally

find them online just google search or

go to the manufacturer's website and

they'll be able to give you the same

information that an msds will

finally i just want to talk briefly

about disposal we've talked about that

when we talked about batteries and toner

but batteries and toner cartridges

should not be thrown away with normal

trash they have stuff in them that can

be damaging not only to the environment

but to other people and animals and so

we need to make sure to dispose of them

properly check your local municipal or

epa guidelines for drop off areas

locations and proper techniques to

getting rid of this stuff again this is

really really important you no one's

really going to follow up on this

sometimes larger companies will get

fined if they're discovered but you need

to do this not only for yourself but

also for our environment for our world

and for all the people who are living in

it

all right so now we've talked about

physical safety we looked at securing uh

cables and again a lot of these physical

safety things are going to be osha

standard

we looked at heavy items specifically

lifting those heavy items

from the legs not the back we also

talked about hot components we want to

wait a good deal of time for things to

cool off before we open them ergonomics

this is eyesight

wrist strain and so on

we also talked about environmental

controls including air quality remember

we want a good deal of uh

humidity

we also need to keep things in a pretty

reasonable temperature between 20 and 25

or 26 degrees celsius we also talked

about electromagnetic interference which

can be caused

by anything creating a magnetic field

which could be electricity metal

anything and then radio frequency

interference which is generally that

4.2.4 gigahertz frequency it's going to

be really going to bother us when we're

talking about our wi-fi networks and can

be caused by anything including a

microwave or a cordless phone

finally we looked at msds the material

safety data sheet which is going to come

with any of any device or any substance

uh for with poison or with anything that

could be toxic and so it tells us what

is in it and how to dispose of it and

speaking of disposal we talked about

checking with your local municipal

guidelines um on how to uh dispose and

recycle of say

batteries and also toner and anything

else that might have some sort of

chemicals in it

all right so uh we're nearing the end

here let's finish up this chat by

talking about how you're going to act

personally as a technician and sort of

the things a plus wants you to know all

this by the way you will be questioned

on on the exam

[Music]

technician professionalism customer

relations

so let's close up this entire a plus

course marathon by talking about some uh

ways of dealing with customers that a

plus wants you to know

now some of this might be common sense

but i'm going to go over it anyway

because there are a lot of questions

you'll see on the test that ask you

stuff that's not even related to a

computer it's related to how you deal

with people while you're fixing a

computer

so we're going to talk about first

response what happens when you first

arrive at the scene and then we're going

to talk about the chain of custody both

of these really have to do with security

and in some cases litigation or going to

court

that's because a lot of times we have

people who are doing forensics

investigations and these two things how

you first respond and the chain of

custody can actually have quite a big

result on what happens when they finally

get to court let's say this is someone

who's been using their computer for bad

instances or

when the when the computer is finally

fixed what if the user

says that the first technician you did

something wrong so that's why this is

really important these first two and

we're going to talk about some qualities

that you should have and you should

present such as punctuality listening

uh clarifying the problem

positivity always important in just

about any field

speaking clearly and lucidly

and setting expectations that are

realistic

also distractions and how you should

keep away from distractions and keep

everything focused on the customer

we also want to talk about

confidentiality you'll see a couple a

couple issues on the test we'll come up

about this what do you do when you come

across something that's not your

information either at a person's house

or at a location or even perhaps at a

certain desk like the accounting desk

that deals with other people's finances

finally we want to deal with

professionalism which really everything

here deals with but just sort of close

things up looking at professionalism all

right so first first response this is

identifying exactly what happened and

recognizing whether it's simple or major

if it's major then it's probably going

to require some form of escalation

meaning that you have to move it up in

the chain of command to someone who's a

little higher than you

the important thing here is to identify

exactly what's going on and to try to

capture as much information at first

before you start working on something

don't forget if i show up at the place

and everything's working fine and then i

start working and 10 things wrong start

going on i'm going to be in trouble so

sometimes what we want to do is back

everything up check out figure out

exactly what happened which is what

we'll be talking about

next we've got to talk about something

called chain of custody chain of custody

is actually more about documentation

it's a chronological paper trail of

evidence from beginning to end meaning

from the moment i arrive at the computer

to the minute that it goes to say court

we need to have a chain of custody so

everyone knows who touched everything

and then we can determine and verify

that nothing has been changed along the

way now we'll deal more with this when

we get into security plus uh because it

really is having to do with a lot of

forensics and security but it's

important again that you never want to

change anything uh when you get to the

at first especially if this is an

investigation you also want to document

everything that happens so that way when

it moves on to escalation everything

you've done has been documented and

there won't be any surprises if there

are surprises that could lead to

problems for you and perhaps even for

your organization this verifies that

evidence in the case of a court case has

not been modified which is really the

importance of chain of custody it's

especially necessary in forensic

instances for instance forensic

investigations cyber crime and so on

now let's talk about punctuality

punctuality of course being timeliness

how on time you are we always want to be

on time and i've seen questions on the

exam that ask uh what happens if you're

running late you're at another client

and you're running late because it's

just taking longer to fix which happens

i mean we all expect this but you also

probably have another client after when

you're scheduled well in this case if

you're running late you want to contact

the customer apologize let them know

you're running late and perhaps even

offer to reschedule the appointment for

another time when they'll be available

they won't be happy about you

rescheduling but i guarantee they'll be

more unhappy if you don't let them know

that you're not going to be running late

so it's always important again these are

all going to come back to communication

communicate communicate communicate over

communicate if necessary we also want to

listen it's very important to listen not

interrupt the customer even if the

information they're telling you isn't

necessary let them finish their

explanation for all you know they're

going to say something that you wouldn't

even have thought to have asked and that

can be the key to figuring out the

problem the other thing is it's rude to

cut them off and it makes them feel like

you don't respect what they have to say

after all they are the experts on their

computer in it to an extent because

they're the ones who work on it the most

so they know what changes have been made

and they know what they've been doing on

it and when the problem occurred some of

these things you just can't get from

reading through logs into the event

viewer you have to listen to the client

first

but we also need to clarify the problem

so once we've listened we need to

clarify exactly what the issue is and

that's going to be asking open-ended

questions now notice here i said don't

ask yes or no questions you can do that

later on but these are what we call

close-ended questions and the problem

with closed-ended questions is they are

also what we call leading questions they

lead someone to go to the uh answer that

you are looking for so for instance if i

say hey that this this you might you

have a virus yes and they say yes well

maybe they don't have a virus but

they're just saying that because i've

led them to that what i really want to

do is ask them what's going on with the

computer uh

what happened as opposed to did you

uninstall this program so if you say

what happened and they say oh i

uninstalled this program well then

that's probably a better indication that

that's the actual issue rather than

telling asking what happened now

sometimes they won't be as open uh with

what they did especially if it's

something that goes against business

policy and so sometimes you really have

to dig a bit but it's important to be

polite when you're doing that and to

clarify using open-ended questions

you also want to do this to narrow down

the scope of the problem again we have

to figure out exactly where in the

computer and the network and anything

the problem is occurring and so the

easiest way to troubleshoot is to narrow

down the problem into the smallest

possible thing before you start fixing

that thing otherwise you're going to be

running up the wrong pole

you also want to repeat repeat excuse me

and restate the problem to the user this

is actually a great active listening

technique it's called active listening

and i'll put that up there because what

you're really doing is you are repeating

to verify that you have heard what they

said and you're restating it in your own

words so that they understand

that you understand the problem so

restating it is really key there not

just repeating you never want to make

the user feel like they're at fault

either this is important oh so you

uninstalled this and that's when it

happened huh

you don't want to do that oh yeah well

this happens to a lot of people we've

been seeing this a lot in the field

people install uninstall this and then

it has a problem must be a bug with the

software that's a better way to go about

it than to accuse someone you want to

make them feel good feel like they

didn't have anything to do with the

problem of course you may need to

educate them at the end once you fix it

but their immediate concern is the fact

that their computer is not working

properly or that their system is not

working properly and therefore your

immediate concern is fixing the problem

not making them feel bad

we also in that vein want to keep

positive and so positivity is very

important sometimes problems that appear

to be terrible have easy solutions

sometimes what you think is a major flub

up is actually just a checkbox someplace

and so it's important before you start

freaking out and getting negative that

you stay positive and think that you can

fix the issue in fact there's always a

solution although it might not be what

the customer wants so be calm be

positive and know that as you are a

professional who is certified and who's

been doing this that you're going to get

to the bottom of the problem it might

take a little bit of time it might take

a little bit of work but you know what

you're going to figure out a way to get

them back up and running even if it's

not perfect they'll be glad that they

can do something remember you know more

than they do so there's no so if you

start acting uh negative and upset and

freaking out then they're going to start

acting negative upset and freaking out

and what we never want is for the

customer or the client to feel that way

we also want to be realistic in how

positive we are we don't want to say for

instance and i've seen stuff like this

on the exam oh

someone lost their paper because they

didn't back it up and you say no problem

i'll definitely have this done for you

by the time the paper is due well that's

not realistic in your expectations

and we'll talk about that in a minute

we also need to speak clearly and i

don't just mean physically enunciating

and slowly

i also mean maintaining enthusiasm while

you speak and also avoiding jargon and

acronyms things that they're not going

to understand so i don't just mean clear

speech and enunciation i mean clear

speech in how

uh you talk to them

are you using a lot of

a lot of

a technical speak or mumbo jumbo that

they don't understand that's going to

confuse them and frankly it's going to

scare them one trick here is to use

metaphors and analogies if necessary

just like at the very beginning of this

course we use the metaphor of the human

body in order to explain computers to

them like the spinal cord etc well what

we want to do is use metaphors in order

to explain what's happening to their

computer if they understand what's going

on with this very important tool in

their life and how you're going about

fixing it they will feel a lot better

about what you're doing and sometimes

they're also going to want to know how

to fix it for themselves in the future

which will mean less tedious work for

you

so let's talk about expectations i

mentioned that just a minute ago when

you have a clear idea of the problem

and sometimes it's only a clear as mud

but when you have a clear idea is the

problem you want to provide them with a

realistic timeline and realistic

expectations as to what to expect now of

course sometimes timelines change and

sometimes things happen that you have no

control over or the problem gets deeper

and deeper and you didn't realize it was

going to take you this long in that case

you want to stay in contact with them

give them updates at intervals and offer

different options if necessary perhaps

the first thing you thought isn't going

to fix it perhaps your original estimate

was not necessary uh was not necessarily

on point in this case you need to be

open and forward with them and tell them

what they should expect they're counting

on this computer to get

you know to make stuff happen and uh you

need to therefore be able to be counted

upon

you also want to file all company

policies and so if they want you to do

something like install a piece of

software that you're not supposed to or

something like that you need to set the

expectation that you'll do everything

within your power and that follows

company policies for you to fix their

problem never do anything illegal never

install any software that they can't

have and in any instance you need to

report uh you know any sort of problems

or things that are on the computer that

you shouldn't that shouldn't be there

you need to report that to your

management always take yourself out of

the equation unless you are the boss uh

make yourself what i like to call uh

above reproach meaning you don't want

anyone to approach you for something you

did follow all of your company

guidelines don't do anything illegal in

that way you will be above reproach and

if something happens you have nothing to

worry about

now it's also distractions occur because

we are in a digital world we have cell

phones and mobile phones we have email

we we have people contacting us

especially if we're really good and you

want to make your customer or your

client feel that they are your priority

not the other people calling you not

someone at home they are your priority

as a result you need to screen your

mobile calls and only answer ones that

are from your boss or perhaps from

another client the vast majority of them

you want to send to a voicemail you can

always listen to the voicemail and if

it's something urgent then respond of

course texting also makes this a lot

easier but you don't want to be texting

while you're fixing a computer if it is

another client what you probably want to

do is refer it to a manager or quickly

explain you're with another client

you'll call them when you're on a break

this is important because i see this

question pop up on the exam quite a bit

you do not talk to co-workers while

you're on

on a call this is really important when

i say on a call you're out of the client

i've seen this one pop-up co-worker

calls you about a work related issue

well generally speaking you're at work

and you don't want to deal with it again

use common sense when it comes to this

but in most instances your customer

needs to be your priority and if

anything ask them for permission to go

out and take a call however even asking

for permission might not be

uh appropriate because of course they're

gonna say yeah go ahead and take the

call but then they're gonna feel like

they're being slighted

now when it comes to confidentiality

you're probably going to see and know

things when you're working on someone's

computer

you don't want to see and know and so

the first thing you always want to do is

not to look or touch any confidential

information just

don't just try to stay away from it if

you can ask the customer to move

confidential items in the case of say

passwords sometimes they say oh give me

your password what i'll tell them is

change your password give me the new

password and then i'll use that or give

me your old password and then let's

change your password when i'm done i

don't want to know their password

remember a lot of people use the same

password for 10 different things correct

and if i'm using the same password for

my computer for my bank and my bank

attacked who's the person going to blame

you so make sure that you are uh

again keep yourself above reproach in

this instance also do not look at or

touch confidential materials if you come

upon say

pay rates in the accounting department

uh as someone printed it off you're

working on a printer just shred them

don't even notify anyone don't do

anything just get rid of this stuff

anything that's printed someone can

print off again and in most cases it's

better to destroy it or return it to the

individual rather than deal with it or

tell someone

you also do not want to do anything

illegal or that would break company

policy especially when it comes to

confidentiality even if you think you

know someone's going to get fired a

friend of yours for instance are laid

off you cannot tell them this is falling

under confidentiality and by telling

anyone something you're probably at risk

of losing your job not to mention

possible persecution for breaking laws

now we also need to talk about here

professionalism all this stuff is

professional right

and this is how we're going to close up

here customers can come from all walks

of life and you need to be patient with

them you need to be understanding

respectful they might not have like you

did perhaps be in this course they don't

have the understanding of computers you

do and so you need to take the extra

time to explain things to them you're in

a privileged position and they respect

you and the best thing you can do is

respect them we have an idea of the i.t

guys being rude and and

mean and i just think that that's wrong

uh we need to be above you know

nice and and considerate and fix their

issue but be ex you know set

expectations that are real and be on

them and be honest with them they're

humans and so are you

we also never argue with customers or

ever take a defensive or offensive

stance you are switzerland you want to

be neutral at all times of course you

want to set expectations and you want to

be right but you're never going to get

defensive or offensive if someone blames

you of something then explain what

happened make sure you have

documentation and if you need to always

rely on your company or on your

supervisor to help take some heat off of

you that's what they're there for

great

so now we've talked about all this stuff

we talked about first response what

happens when you first arrive again you

want to make sure to document everything

for chain of custody purposes remember

this can have a major implication when

it comes to litigation chain of custody

again it tells you

who touched what when

uh

and it'll also tell you that uh you can

guarantee

that nothing has changed

except for what you touched which should

be noting

uh of course in the case of a forensic

investigation we want to make sure that

nothing has changed that you couldn't

have added anything we also need

punctuality you're going to arrive on

time and if you're running late you want

to communicate

with the other client we also need to

listen we need to use open-ended

questions not close-ended questions in

order to get a response clarify the

problem not just by asking questions but

also by narrowing the scope uh perhaps

offering some suggestions or offering

advice on on what to check if you're

working with them on the phone or if

you're out if you're there try to figure

out exactly where in the process the

problem is occurring we need to be

positive remember all problems can be

solved

although we might not like the answer

so remember that

and remember that you also have the

internet which is your friend and can

help you solve almost any problem speak

clearly not just enunciating but more so

we want to make sure not to use jargon

that can confuse our customer we want to

set realistic expectations and a

realistic timeline as well

avoid distractions don't talk to

co-workers don't talk to other customers

unless absolutely necessary and if so

keep it short and sweet and to the point

we also need to be very confident uh we

have to have strong confidentiality when

we're dealing with customers don't look

at anything you shouldn't have you

shouldn't um and shred any important or

sensitive documents

put yourself

above reproach make sure no one can

accuse you of anything finally be

professional don't argue uh don't be

rude

do what you think uh you you know live

by the goals and rule right you act to

others as you would want them to act

towards you

[Music]

welcome to module 23 lesson one mac os

best practices which this and all the

following modules and lessons actually

are new additions to the syllabus

and it's just the way the a plus goes

they expect you to know

a little bit about a lot of things

whereas other vendors for example and

cisco if you're doing

a voice qualification they'll expect you

to know a lot about a little

so that's more expertise where is there

the a plus is general knowledge

so expect it to know a bit and then

obviously if you had to go and

troubleshoot a mac os for whatever

reason you'd actually know where to look

and um you know spend a bit of time

learning how to do it

so we're going to look at scheduled

backups scheduled disc maintenance

patch management

system updates and the app store

driver firmware updates

antivirus anti-malware updates

all right so schedule backups first

uh when the time machine's turned on

which is of part of the mac os one of

the features

it can automatically perform hourly

backups daily and weekly or depends on

how you want to configure it and there's

a screen capture there

the oldest backups are deleted when the

backup drive is full so it goes the

oldest

get one removed and the space is used

for the newer backups which makes sense

it's the same with most backups

schedule disk maintenance mac os

periodically runs maintenance tasks to

remove temporary files and log files

if the computer was powered off during

the schedule maintenance you can

actually force

and

force it to run these tasks you have to

run a command

sudo sudo periodic daily into the

terminal

as part of the maintenance this utility

can be used to verify the volume in the

computer startup disk this feature is

called live verification

patch management

regular software updates to mac os and

apps are necessary

basically there's exploits found and

discovered on a daily basis so you need

to and patch all of these

and it can be done automatically

actually it usually is the mac

app store shows the software updates

available for mac os and apps

the app store right in the doc will also

show the number of updates available

system updates and the app store

the mac app store is a central

repository that keeps track of the

updates for mac os and apps

to see if there's an update available

you have to open up the app store and

then click on the updates button on its

toolbar

when they're available you can click on

the update button and the corresponding

um to the software or app to download

and install

you can also configure as i said the app

store to automatically download and

install

mac os and app updates which is probably

the

preferred choice most of us would have

maybe different on a corporate install

if

you wanted to test

um

if it

affects the actual app in any other way

that you don't want to happen

uh i certainly know with some apps that

people

do run legacy versions

for different reasons

all right devices require a driver and a

firmware to work properly in an

operating system drivers installed such

as a mac os

which lets the device communicate with

that operating system

driver updates are available through the

app store

firmware basically makes the uh

uh divided

so firmware's the software available on

the device and makes the device work

it's in it it helps the device obviously

interact and controls how it boots and

works with the main os

firmware's developed and maintained by

the company that developed the device

obviously you've got to be careful that

they um regularly update this firmware

sometimes a company will develop the

firmware for the device

and they could go burst or could get

taken over by another company and then

the firmware isn't updated and

eventually it can cause serious issues

or could obviously have a vulnerability

on your system then

antivirus anti-air malware the macos is

relatively less prone to virus and

malware attacks not completely

um

but less less so than pcs

you might want to have a mac antivirus

such as clans have to check incoming

emails so that you do not send a windows

virus to other people through an email

attachment

clamsav is a open source antivirus

database updates for antivirus program

can be downloaded automatically which is

generally the recommended feature

so we've done an overview of schedule

backups disk maintenance patch

management

system updates app store driver firmware

updates

antivirus anti-malware updates that's

all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 23 lesson two mac os

tools

we'll look at the backup time machine

restore snapshot

image recovery

disk maintenance utility and the disk

utility

shell terminal screen sharing

force quit

all right

so time machine is built a built-in mac

os tool that allows you to back all your

files to an external drive

you'd usually use a usb drive

um

at home

in order to use the time machine you

need to have an external hard drive

connected to your mac or an os x server

on the network so i guess it depends if

you're in a office environment or you're

doing a home backup for whatever files

you're using

time machine also saves some of its

backup called local snapshots to the

startup drive of the mac

computer once the time machine's set up

we can automatically make hourly backups

daily or weekly whatever you wish it to

happen

and not only backup files externally can

help you restore these files later

a time machine presents timelines on the

right-hand side of your screen and the

timeline may include local snapshots

now you'll need to find the file you

want to restore at a particular date and

time and by using the timeline and then

click restore

which will then restore that file

disk image is a file that can contain

contents of a cd a dvd or even a disk

the disk image has a file extension dot

dmg

and it looks and functions like a

mountable volume or drive

when we create a disk image it contains

files and folders and functions like a

disk

there is a disk utility

uh on the mac os to create a disk image

you can see the screen capture there

uh create a disk image of a disk that's

failing or with encrypted data is not

recommended

because such a backup may not be

reliable

in order to restore a disk image to a

disk you have to first erase that disk

if there are multiple partitions on a

disk image then each partition must be

restored individually

the disk utility is the built-in mac os

tool that allows you to complete

maintenance tasks such as

managed disks disk images and raid sets

disk utility allows you to do the

following checking repair errors on

disks partition a disk create a disk

image and restore a disk image to a disk

securely erase data from the disk in

order to prevent it from being recovered

you can also create raid sets by

combining multiple hard drives again i

think this is more for a commercial

environment

the shell or terminal which i've circled

in red here

is the command line the cli

and in unix and unix-like operating

systems called shell

since mac os is a unix-based graphical

operating system it provides shell

access through a terminal emulator

program terminal is actually called

terminal as you can see

it can be found under applications and

then utilities

it provides direct eye and access to the

underlying underlying unix system allows

you to manage the mac os through text

based command line environment not

something i recommend you play with

unless you actually know what you're

doing

you can run certain commands and shell

scripts to carry out various

administration tasks

and mac os is a screen sharing feature

that allows you to remotely view and

control another mac computer on the same

network

for screen sharing to work you have to

enable a screen sharing obviously for

security reasons it would be turned off

and may need an administrator to

actually do that

in the finder window you can choose the

computer you want to share and then

click share screen you can also connect

to a mac computer by using its ip

address or the dns name

screen sharing helps you solve a problem

on a remote mac computer

on a remote

mac computer or to collaborate with

others often user for collaboration

especially when you're working on their

movies movie studios or design and you

want to collaborate with other designers

or with the customer

and mac os screen sharing is compatible

with vnc virtual network computing this

is an industry standard so you may well

have heard about it or used and used it

before controls another computer using

tcp

and now if an app freezes then you can

forcefully close it by using the force

quit

feature

and it'll show which

applications are actually running at the

moment

it can be accessed from the apple menu

or you can press command option escape

if the finder window stops responding it

can't be closed but it can be

restarted and selecting the finder in

the force quick window and clicking

relaunch

if none of the apps are responding then

you will have to

force your mac to restart

so we've covered a backup time machine

restore snapshot image recovery disk

maintenance dish utility

shell terminal

screen sharing and force quit that's all

for now thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 23 lesson three mac os

features

we look at mission control keychain

spotlight icloud

gestures

finder remote disk

dock

and boot camp

firstly mission control which you can

see in the uh screen capture there uh

stroke modes of multiple desktops

it gives you a bird's eye view of all

the windows open on your desktop

you can access mission control by

clicking on the icon

in the launchpad area

the top portion of the screen

is called the spaces bar it's used by

mission control to show the number of

desktops you have including the current

one and any windows in full screen view

and split view

below the space bar mission control

shows all the windows open on your

desktop

all right keychain you can see there

again in the screen grab the keychain

feature allows you to store account

names and passwords for various websites

apps and servers in one place and it's

accessible through a master password

i know there's

uh versions of this for windows paid for

versions

uh like robo form and i'm sure there's

other ones available as well obviously

if you forget your master password then

you're in big trouble because you you

can't do a recovery for that for

security reasons

the keychain can be used to store

confident information such as credit

card numbers pins and so on

can also store certificates that are

used by web browsers mail and texting

apps

spotlight feature is the search option

that allows you to search your mac

computer for apps documents images and

any number of other files

uh it can also show suggestions from the

internet such as new sites maps movie

listings itunes and so on and so forth

you can see the capture there it can be

accessed by clicking on the magnifying

glass located in the top right hand

corner of the menu bar or by pressing

the command space from any app

in order to search for something you

have to type related words

for example you can type the name of the

app a word contained in a word document

or tag

attached to a file

all right so spotlight when you type in

the first few letters in the search

field spotlight automatically populates

with suggestions obviously this is the

same for any number of um

searches for example searching the

google toolbar it will auto complete

searching on spotify searching for

youtube videos etc

you can select deselect the categories

you want to appear in spotlight by going

to system preferences and spotlights

icloud is the

cloud service that allows you to manage

and share information

across mac computers and ios devices

you can keep your email contacts

calendars and

so on on your icloud

using icloud you can store and organize

all kinds of documents that can be

accessed on all your different

devices it can be used to locate your

ios device apple watch or mac on a map

the icloud provides a backup and restore

option for your ios devices it

automatically backs up your ios device

over wi-fi when the device is turned on

locked and connected to a power source

if you need to you can use the icloud

backup to restore your ios device

all right gestures

such as tap swipe and pinch allow your

multi touch trackpad to perform useful

actions

example uh tap with one finger on the

trackpad allows you to click tapping

with two fingers allows you to right

click and so on

they can be turned on or off on the

apple menu system preferences by

clicking on trackpad

all right finder is a feature in the mac

that allows you to find and organize

files and folders in your computer

it shows you the context of your map

the contents of your mac using windows

and icons

you can open up documents apps and files

within the window just by double

clicking on it

you can create a move rename or delete a

file folder within the window so it's

like windows explorer but for macs

some folders that come with mac can't be

renamed obviously

finder similar to windows explorer as

i've said the finder feature can be

accessed by clicking on the

finder icon on the dock

remote disk allows you to access file

stores on a cd or dvd hosted on another

computer

it also allows you to share disks from

the optical drive of another computer

that's on the same network

you can show the optical drive of a

windows computer if it has a dvd or cd

sharing installed

dvd or cd sharing must be enabled by

going to system preference and then

sharing

and remote disk won't appear and find if

your mac has an optical drive connected

to it

uh dvd or cd shown is not designed for

optical discs but

such as audio cds blu-rays or dvd movies

or copy protected stuff

all right doc is the bar of icons

located on the bottom of the screen

provides quick access to your favorite

apps documents and folders

to access an app in the dock all you do

is click on the icon for example safari

in the screen grab here you just click

on

safari

to open it

the apps are kept on the left hand side

of the dock folders documents and

minimize windows on the right hand side

to let the user know which application

is open the dock illuminates the

applications icon with the dot beneath

it

if you have applications really but

minimized then

to make a currently running application

the active one you have to just click on

that applications icon in the dock

bootcamp now the bootcamp feature allows

you to install microsoft windows on your

mac

after installing

microsoft windows you have the option to

dual boot between mac os and windows

when you restart

installation of windows in your mac is

done through the bootcamper system which

we've got on the right hand of the

screen here

it creates a bootcamp partition and

downloads software drivers for windows

so we've looked at mission control

keychain spotlight icloud gestures

finder remote disk dock and bootcamp

that's all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 23 lesson four linux

best practices

we look at automate

automation sorry of system

administration tasks

damon

depends on where you are in the world by

the way these things will be pronounced

differently demon damon

schedule backups

schedule this maintenance

system updates

app store

patch

management driver firmware updates

antivirus anti-malware

all right

automation of system admin tasks

there's a bunch of system admin tasks

such as backup dis maintenance that can

be automated by scheduling these tasks

to run at a particular time

it uses a

piece of software called the cron daemon

and other scheduling programs

a daemon is a non-interactive program

that runs in the background ready to

execute an action at a particular time

or in response to a specific event or a

condition

backups can be scheduled using two

commands the cron tab

or the at command

the crontab command is used in as used

for scheduling backup tasks once or

repeatedly

command works by reading a chrome tab

file that has the list of tasks added to

it and the chrome will run these tasks

as per the schedule

the at command as you can see here is

used for scheduling backups uh tasks

once

tar refers to tape archive command

tar command can be used to create

backups

since the atari command is executed at

the command line it can be used in shell

scripts which can be run using a cron to

perform backups at a specific time

rsync

it's a command used to copy files from

one location to another

the location can be local or it can be

remote

again since it's executed at the command

line it can be used in shell scripts and

then run using chrome

schedule dis maintenance

disk utilities such as e2 fsck can be

run on a regular schedule using chrome

e2 fs ck can be used to check the drives

or any errors on the drives

and mounting the disk before checking

his file system as necessary

otherwise it could result in damage to

the file system

patch management regularly regular

software updates to your linux are

necessary because there's a lot of

exploits and these are discovered on a

daily basis the same with any other

patch man patch management

the young command allows you to download

and install software updates in rpm

format from software repositories on the

internet

the apt-get is a command tool used to

install packages from the command line

using the advanced package tool or apt

there's also graphical interface

utilities available on the linux that

allows us to download software updates

an example is fedora distribution has a

gui utility call package kit and we use

this to download updates

similar to the app stores in android and

ios mobile operating systems linux has a

system that allows us to download the

latest stable and trusted version of

software

uh the an example is the app store in

ubuntu distribution is called ubuntu

software center

i mentioned driveway and firmware before

you need this to have the software

running correctly or running at all

and

installed in an operating system such as

linux it lets the device communicate

with the os

firmware is available on the device that

is the software that makes the device

work

developed and maintained by the company

that developed it

again when you install a particular

device there may well be a firmware

update so check that there is one and

check that it won't cause any problems

first before installing it

and many drivers and firmware are

available as part of the kernel or part

of the kernel and updated through the

linux kernel sources

an example is ubuntu distribution the

linux image package contains the linux

kernel and licensed firmware

if the driver isn't available in linux

then it has to be manually installed

using the command line or you can use

the gui

you've got less chance of getting a

virus or malware on linux but it's still

a target of attackers you need the

antivirus anti-malware software to

protect your linux system

example of some linux viruses are

you'd also want to have a linux

antivirus scan on your windows drive or

to scan drives that you're going to

center with the people as you don't want

to actually distribute viruses to others

an example is their virus on your email

attachment if your antivirus detects and

filters an email attachment containing

the virus then we can prevent that virus

spreading and infecting a windows

machine

there's also a danger of installing

software that's not available from the

official distribution channel because it

could be a malicious linux software

popular open source antivirus is clam av

which can be used to detect viruses move

any infected

files into a quarantine folder it can't

remove the virus from infected file zone

recommends you download regular updates

to your antivirus database

so we've looked at automation of system

tasks daemons

schedule backups schedule disk

maintenance

system updates patch management

driver firmware updates antivirus

anti-malware that's all for now thanks

for watching

[Music]

look into module three lesson five linux

os tools

i'm gonna look at backup and restore

image recovery

disk maintenance screen sharing

force quit

there's a large number of uh tools in

linux that help system administrators

carry out

many different tasks such as backing up

and restoring

recovering the image disk maintenance

screen sharing force quit

backups are generally done at regular

intervals to

secure your data

this is obviously regardless of

operating system

a quick backup can be done on removable

media such as cds dvds and usb flash

drives

and there's several utilities in linux

that connect aid system administrators

in backing up and obviously restoring

important data

uh the linux distribution could have a

gui based backup application specific to

your particular distribution

for example uh linux distribution fedora

has a backup application called desired

two common backup commands used in linux

are tar and rsync which we've actually

covered earlier

tar is the tape archive

i'll just go over these quickly because

we've already covered them our scene

copies files from one location to

another

image recovery the dd command in linux

can be used to backup or restore an

entire hard drive or partition

you see the command down here in the

screen capture the hard drive or

partition can be backed up to an image

backing up to an image is faster and

restoring from a

backed up image is much easier

creating a dist image is done as shown

in the following example

i want to read all that out you can see

it for yourself

restoring from this image is done as

shown in the following example

third-party tools such as clonezilla can

also be used to create an image of a

hard drive or partition

and to restore it from that image

maintaining your disk is done by the

root user

are usually done on the data disk or not

on the system disk or partition

disks on linux are referred to as names

such as forward slash dev forward slash

sda1 and you can see an example here on

the output the screen grab

these system disks must be mounted to

mainta mounted to a directory name in

the file system if you want to access

them the mount command is used for

mounting the disk device onto a

directory or folder name

normally the system automatically mounts

the devices listed in the fs tab

to check what devices are mounted you

can use the command df minus h

now each disk has a file system on it

for example the linux file system is

called ex2 or ext3

and we'll use the file system check

command e2 fsck to check the drive sdb

for any errors and you can see this on

the screen capture here

before you execute the command it's

necessary to unmount a disk before

checking the file system

otherwise and it may damage that file

system and you can see

the

warning down here it's a mounted file

system

you will type unmount forward slash dev

forward slash sdb and then we'll check

the file system of the sdb command and

you can see the file there

this will fix errors in the file system

of sdb

if there are no errors then you can

continue using the disk by mounting it

again

shell

strike terminal

shells the command line interpreter for

linux

all linux commands are executed in shell

or terminal

the shell provides a powerful means for

configuring consequence configuring and

administrative administrating the linux

system

almost every task in linux such as

installing new software or in

configuring software can be done from

the shell

in a non-desktop linux has no gui so the

shell can be accessed as soon as a user

logs in

and from a text prompt

in the desktop linux that has gui the

shell can usually be accessed from the

system tools which you can see here

system tools

and then we click on the terminal

command there the terminal icon

screen sharing i think we've already

covered this actually earlier you can

share your desktop with remote users

it allows the remote user at a different

computer to view and interact with your

computer with your commission uh

permission sorry

useful for troubleshooting or if you

want to demonstrate a feature or

something to another user

uh

lenox um distribution called fedora uses

vnc which uh again we've covered earlier

and i'm sure you may have heard of that

already

force quit uh sometimes linux programs

stop responding and we need to force

them to stop running

you can see the kill command here

actually view the system monitor before

executing the kill command

and you can see 2656 is referring to

the firefox process the kill command

helps us force quit or terminate a

process by using its process id number

now you can see the kill command 2656

and then you can see that it's killed

the process in question

uh the kill or command helps us force

quit all processes by using its name

and you can see kill all firefox

is the command there

kill all and then the process name

and you can see again it's gone

the graphical interface of linux can

also be used to force quicker process

all right so we've covered backup and

restore image recovery disk maintenance

screen sharing

force quit

that's all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 23 a lesson six basic

linux commands

uh an introduction to basic linux

commands ls grep cd shut down pwd versus

password

mv cprm

they pronounce it c c h mod chi mod

depends where you are in the world again

chown

iwconfig ifconfig ps su versus sudo

apt-get

vi

dd

i think uh it's quite important now if

you want to remember these commands that

you get your hands on and

linux somehow

you can put it on an old laptop i

suppose you could dual boot as well if

you wanted get an old pc

and play with it so you remember these

commands you don't actually have to use

it as your main device

but um if you're expecting to just

remember these commands off a piece of

paper or just watching the videos then

you're going to find it

quite a lot harder

so uh the internet as most of the

servers run in linux or unix-like

operating systems

and the power of the linux is actually

in the command line although you do get

gooey uh to run a lot of the common

parts of it if you don't like using the

command airline

knowledge of linux commands is essential

because most of the configuration and

troubleshooting in linux is done in the

command line

most of the day-to-day use as i said you

could get away with using the gui if

you're just a casual user

so ls is command used to list

directories

ls without any options will list the

files in the current directory

the ls with the dash m option will list

all of the files in a single line

ls with the minus x option we'll list

the files horizontally

ls with the minus l option we'll show

more information about these files

grep is a command used to search

patterns in a file

so you can see

the grep command being used on the

screen capture on the right for example

to find a plus in the file

text.txt we we can use the grep a plus

text.txt

and then it will do a search

cd refers to change directory it's a

command used to navigate from the

current directory to a different

directory in the file system and it's

the same command actually in dos if any

if you remember using dos many years ago

microsoft

to navigate to a directory type the

command followed by the directory name

containing its path

cd forward slash usr forward slash bin

for example in this

screen capture

shutdown is used to safely shut down

linux

syntax is shut down with any options you

wish duration and then any message

for example shutdown minus h plus five

it says system will be shut down in five

minutes from now

where minus h is the option to power off

the system and plus five is the number

of minutes to wait before the beginning

of the shutdown the warning message is

sent to all users to give them time to

save um any work

pw

sorry pwd versus password

password refers to a print uh working

directory pwd

pwd is a command that lets us know the

current working directory

for example if you're in a forward slash

usr forward slash bin

pwd will show the result as usr forward

slash pw bin

past wd is a command used to create a

password for a new user to assign a

password you type the command followed

by the username you can see the screen

capture here

pass wd user

executing the command above will x ask

us to enter the password for user one

and to retype the password in order to

verify it

mv is a command used to move files or

directories from one location to another

source it also used to rename files

the syntax for moving files and

directories is as follows

mv and then the options source and then

destination

for example mv the document text dot txt

dot forward slash backup

here the text is moved to the directory

backup and it is deleted from the source

location

syntax for renaming files or directories

is as follows

mv and the existing file my file name

and then the new file name

so for example mv file1.txt

and then file2.txt

cp is a command to copy files or

directories

syntax is as follows cp source and then

destination and again you can see this

in the um

screen capture there

for example cp fold to txt

dot forward slash backup

here file2.txt is copied to the

directory backup without deleting it

from the source directory

as a result you'll have the same file in

the source and the destination

a c p command can also be used to create

a copy of a file

for example

cpfile1.txt file2.txt

here file2 is created which is an exact

copy of file1

as a result you'll have the two files

with the same content

and you have to be careful if there's

already a file2.txt then it'll be

replaced with the content and contents

of file1 so you better check what files

you've got in your directory before you

do this

rom is the command used to remove files

or directories

so rm and then the file name to be

deleted you can see the output there

rmfr1.txt

the file obviously has to exist in the

current directory we probably went

without saying

to remove a directory the syntax is as

follows rm options directory name to be

deleted

minus d option can be used only if the

directory is empty

the minus r option can be used

used to delete the contents of the

directory

example rm minus d test

here test is a non-empty directory that

exists in the current working directory

and we'd like to remove it

but the rm command with a minus d option

will fail because the directory is not

empty

the our own command with the minus i

will will successfully delete the

directory test

the rmdia command can also be used to

delete a directory but it can only

delete an empty directory

chmod

it's a command used to modify the

attributes or permissions of a directory

these attributes are read write executed

can be applied to the user group or

others

ownership representation is given by the

following symbols

you use a g group o others a all

attributes

attributes representation is given by

the following characters

our read w right

x execute

okay the syntax is as follows

chmod option mode file name

the mode can be a combination of the

symbols picked from the following

ugo a represents the ownership user

group others and all

plus minus equals is used to add

subtract or set the mode

rwx represents the attitude read write

and execute

for example let's say we want to add the

execute executable permission to a file

file to txt for everyone then the

command is gmod

a plus x

file2.txt can see in the screen capture

there

chow ch own

this is a command used to change the

owner of a group

of a file or directory

it should be noted that files and

directories in linux have an owner the

syntax is cho owner dot group

file forward slash directory name

so you want to change the ownership of a

file file2.txt to user1 then the command

is user1 file2.txt

moving on to iw config forward slash

iefconfig

iwconfig is a command used to view or

configure the parameters of a wireless

network interface

to view the configuration the syntax is

as follows iw config interface

to modify the configuration such as the

network name we can use the following

syntax iw config interface

e double s id and then the name

so if ethernet one is the wireless

network interface then to change the

network name the command is iwconfig

eth1 e s id home network

ifconfig refers to the interface

configurations

the ipconfig if you were using the

windows command line

this command is used to view or modify

ip configuration such as the ip address

subnet mask default gateway another

common ip settings

the

syntax is ifconfig and then the option

so for example to display the details of

all active network interfaces the

command is ifc is ifconfig

to display the details of the network um

interface ethernet 0 the command is

ifconfig eth0

ps refers to process status

it's a command used to view information

on the current processes running on the

linux system

this command provides information such

as process id numbers terminal type cpu

and the name of the command that

launched the process

the syntax is as follows ps with options

example is

to display the processes of the current

user use the command ps

to display all the processes use the

command pss

minus ef

su versus sudo in linux there are two

ways to run applications that require

administrative rights

through the use of su or sudo

the su command effectively logs in the

user as the super user or as the root

this command requires the user to type

in the root account password to log in

as the super user

with the su command the user stays

logged in as root until the user exits

the su command with the command the user

can also switch to any other user

account

for example if you execute su mic it

will prompt you to enter the mike's

password and with successful login you

will be switched to mike's user account

sudo is used when a user wants to run a

command with root privileges

this command should be entered before a

command that requires administrative

rights and the root privileges exist

only for that command

sudo is considered safe because it

provides root privileges but only when

needed

apt-get

apt stands for advanced package tool

apt is the package management system of

linux

and for example to install packages from

the command line using apt

the command is apt get install and then

package

vi via editor is also called visual

editor

it's a popular text editor in unix type

systems

in linux is a free version of why editor

called vim which stands for vi improved

there's two modes of operation available

command mode and insert mode

every character entered in the command

mode is a command that does something to

the text being edited

every character entered in the insert

mode is added to the text of the file

being edited

to start vi on a file in the command

line type vi followed by the file name

for example vimytext.txt

this command opens my text.txt in vi

editor

if the file is already exists otherwise

it creates a new file name name my

text.txt so that the user can enter text

the via editor begins it um in command

mode so to insert text you have to type

the i key followed by the text you want

to enter

vi also allows you to copy paste and cut

paste selected lines

so when the user's done inserting text

pressing the escape key will switch to

command mode

to save the file and exit the via editor

you have to enter a colon followed by wq

which stands for write and quit in the

command mode

this will save the file and exit the vi

editor

dd

dd is the command line tool mainly used

to convert and copy files root

privileges are needed to execute the dd

command

the syntax for dd command is as follows

ddif equals source file name of target

file name and then any options

can also be used to backup and restore

the entire hard drive or partition

to backup and restore the master boot

record

to convert data formats over file from

ascii to ebcdic

to create files of fixed size

to convert cases of files like

converting a file to uppercase

all right we've covered a lot here and

as i said i recommend you do go through

all of these commands

on a linux command line

and have a play with it so we've covered

ls grep cd shutdown pwd versus password

mvcp rm

chi mod

chon ch own

iw config versus ifconfig

ps su versus sudo

apt-get

vi

dd

all right that's all for now thanks for

watching

[Music]

welcome to module 17 lesson for cloud

concepts i've mentioned earlier well

worth doing the comptia cloud essentials

exam

because uh cloud computing is just one

of the core

subjects that you need to understand as

a network engineer

among there's a few others including

routing virtualization

probably amazon storage

routing and switching for example the

ccna ipv6

so this is just a real brief taster

looking at cloud computing

characteristics on-demand self-service

broad network access resource pooling

elasticity measured service

software as a service platform as a

service

infrastructure as a service

and then private community and public

clouds on hybrid clouds

so best thing is to start with the

definition

so we can kind of have an agreed kicking

off point of what cloud computing

actually is

now cloud computing from the definition

is a model for enabling ubiquitous

convenient on-demand network access to a

shared

pool of configurable computing resources

examples are network servers storage

applications and services that can be

rapidly provisioned and released with

minimal management effort or

service provider interaction we've all

used the cloud already if you've used

any storage for example dropbox

box dot com i think the call for storage

any google services for example gmail or

google documents

and things like that there's many many

others

and are all based on the cloud

so some characteristics that you need to

remember these so make sure you note

them down

there's five characteristics of cloud

computing on demand self-service

broader network access we'll go into all

of these in more detail

resource pooling

rapid elasticity elasticity

a measured service

so on demand basically means the user

can provision

resources as and when they're needed

without getting any human assistance so

you if you needed more memory you

wouldn't have to log a ticket and you

wouldn't have to have an engineer

somewhere

turn off the server or whatever the

device is add more physical memory

reboot it and then answer the ticket as

you may well have had to do in the

not-too-distance past you click a button

and more is available

when consume when consumers provision

the resources based on their needs those

resources are automatically allocated

from a shared pool

and the shed pools provided by the cloud

service provider

broad network access means that when the

consumers have provisioned

the resources they can access these from

a number of devices workstations laptops

tablets and mobile devices and mobile

phones

resource pooling and the service

providers resources are shared among the

consumers on a multi-tenant model

where consumers get a dynamic allocation

of resources based upon their needs

so sometimes

consumers may need more computer

resources and other times they meet

need less so it has to adapt for this

particular requirement

and it's um

resource allocation based upon demand

rapid elasticity i can't say that word

elasticity

now a consumer can be allocated more

rece me more more resources if needed at

the same time if for any reason they

need less because the more you the more

you need the more you pay obviously

if you need less then they can be

downsized to provide whatever

model you need the resources you need

so it appears to the consumer that

there's an actual

unlimited amount of resources for them

at any given time

the

elasticity provides a lot of savings

because it's not possible

when you have a traditional data center

that you've built and you own you can't

grow it and shrink it as and when needed

obviously it's measured just like a

meter so you're charged based upon your

um a number of things such as um

memory you need

storage and

bandwidth

so you get what you pay for which i've

already said it's

tracked normally you can log in and you

can track your use of resources in real

time as well as historical data looking

at um

how much you've used and the projected

requirements based on previous usage and

you can see how much you're going to

have to pay how much you've paid in the

past

there's three service models you need to

be familiar with software as a service

platform as a service infrastructure as

a service

service providers provide the services

to consumers based on these three

service models

so sas swas or sas

consumers can use the service provider

software applications and databases over

a network without the need to install

any software except for

a web browser you need to access

these uh software applications databases

run on the cloud so imagine you're

trying to program um some application

for example or just use a huge amount of

resources or develop a program you can

use the provider's resources and scale

it as and when needed

it's provided as a shared computing

resource to the consumers

it's essentially the aggregation of

hardware and software

uh used to support the cloud services

a few examples you can see there are

twitter and facebook there's a whole

bunch of others you can look into if you

wish though

in the sas model consumers access the

shed applications over a network from

various client devices

it doesn't give you the ability to

control and managing the manage the

underlying cloud infrastructure

so you can't manage the operating system

servers

the network or storage

and you don't you don't want to anywhere

you just want to um use it as is

platform as a service there's an example

there windows azure which you can look

into in your own time

in the platform as a service model

consumers have the ability to develop

and deploy software applications on the

service providers cloud infrastructure

the service provider typically provides

a computing platform comprised of the

operating system and the application

development environment

this includes programming languages

libraries tools databases and web

servers i recommend you look at the

amazon

aws qualifications for more information

on these

in the paa s model

consumers can develop and deploy

software without the need to maintain

the operating system so you can imagine

how convenient this is to fire up an

instance for example if you're logged

into the amazon or the google cloud

and start doing your developing

it's just so easy and quick

consumers have control over the

deployed software application and the

configuration settings

it doesn't give you to again and manage

the control and manage the underlying

infrastructure

infrastructure as a service one example

is amazon ec2 web services

here consumers access a dedicated

physical or in most cases a virtual

machine running on the service providers

cloud infrastructure

a lot of people use this for web hosting

especially wordpress it's quite easy to

fire up an instance and get it all

working

virtual machine typically comes with a

server operating system

consumer has complete complete control

over the os and can control the updates

um

you have control over the operating

system application storage you have

limited control over the selected

networking components such as the

firewall that's protecting your

particular virtual device

again you can't control the underlying

cloud infrastructure probably um neither

would you want to

infrastructure as a service you've got

four models to choose from for iaas

you've got the private cloud the

community cloud public and hybrid

for a private cloud the cloud

is provisioned exclusively for a single

organization

so you get exclusive use of this you

probably hired a company

to create all of the infrastructure for

you and nobody else can have access to

it in all of your

offices and remote

offices will have access

uh owned operated and managed by the

organization itself

by a third party or a combination

a physical location could be within your

premises or it could be located

elsewhere on the cloud

community it's um provisioned for a

specific community of consumers from

organizations that share common concerns

such as security compliance

jurisdiction and so on for example would

be law enforcement

in this model the cloud infrastructure

may be owned operated by one or more

organizations

by a third party or you could have a

combination

the physical location and maybe within

your premises or it could be located

elsewhere

in public cloud it's provision for the

general public so it can be used by the

general public

over a network such as the internet

and

the cloud infrastructure could be

managed by the government businesses

academia or a combination

physical location is within the premise

of the service provider now a hybrid is

a mixture of any of these

separate entities but are integrated

into the benefits for them of the

multiple deployed models

example is when the iot organization

uses a public card as a temporary

solution

to me and an excess capacity demand that

can't be met by their private um setup

so i've looked at quite a few things

here you need to make some notes

obviously because there's a few things

to remember for the exam

service models

software as a service platform

infrastructure

private community and public cloud and

hybrid

okay that's all for now thanks for

watching

[Music]

welcome to module 17 lesson one

introduction to virtualization this is

one of a few

new topics that have been added to the

syllabus

surrounding virtualization and cloud

computing

and come to your offer a cloud

certification actually there's a cloud

essentials and i think there might be a

cloud plus

definitely a cloud essentials because we

host uh host that course

all right module objectives the

definition of virtualization what is a

virtual machine and the software

i'm sure you've heard of it actually

it's the new or one of the very new and

exciting

emerging technologies

that's made life a lot easier for

network engineers

and

companies from a financial and operation

standpoint and also home users who can

do a lot more interesting things on

their um systems at home

so it refers to the technologies that

allow a single physical computer or

server obviously

environment to operate as multiple

virtual machines simultaneously

transforms the physical hardware

resources into virtual hardware

resources

so what you normally have one device

running one operating system you can

have depending on how much hardware you

have and how you apportion it

and two or more virtual machines

a virtual machine is an isolated

software replica of the original

computer so for all intents and purposes

it appears as

a machine in its own right with all

processor instructions

and system resources

so you'll often see

an image like this where you have a

physical computer or server and inside

and it will represent a number of

virtual machines

much in the same way as vlans they

operate in their own right

as if they're

an actual machine

our virtual machines are completely

separate and independent

by running an operating system in each

one it becomes possible to run several

guest operating systems at the same time

so you could have um

microsoft

linux and other operating systems

running on the same physical device but

different virtual devices

a whole bunch of virtualization software

around some free some um you have to pay

for and you get different levels of

um

software up to enterprise and obviously

support contracts

the software transforms the hardware of

the computer including the cpu memory

network adapter into virtual resources

these are shared amongst virtual

machines

it basically provides a layer of layer

of abstraction so for all intents and

purposes there's a divide a virtual

divide between all of these different

machines

the layer of abstraction is basically

there to hide what's happening

underneath what you can see

as a result the abstraction provided by

the software the guest operating systems

are not tied to the underlying physical

hardware so this is how we can actually

get it all to run

as you have a portability of moving

virtual machines from one physical

computer to another physical computer if

you so wish

great if you want to do testing

interoperability stress testing

or just practicing even if you want to

do some

install various operating systems onto

one device in order to practice for

exams or job interviews

so this is just an overview we've got

more to cover in the following

presentations what is virtualization

the virtual machine the software that's

all for now thanks for watching

[Music]

welcome to module 17 lesson two

virtualization components and software

defined networking or

sdn for short

we're looking at virtual networking

virtual network adapters a virtual

switch virtual router

virtual router v via rv rrp

the virtual firewall

and sdn

and while we would want to use stn

so a virtual network is a system in

which the following is true you've got

two or more virtual machines connected

logically to one another they can each

send receive data as if they were

operating as physical devices

i've got an example here esxi which is

software available from vmware i think

they do offer some free software i

haven't checked us to

which um is free for home use or

commercial use

and i recommend you check out the vmware

certifications on

howtonetwork.com

uh they're very relevant for modern day

networking

so they can certainly receive their data

from each other the virtual network

adapter is a software implementation of

a physical network adapter which i'm

sure comes as no surprise

so you have a physical adapter but the

virtual one is acting in exactly the

same mother and same manner sorry

and you've got an immediate diagram here

of a physical network card

and and then you've working as a subset

of this is your virtual machine they're

running virtual network cards

and virtual machines on top of that

the virtual network card interface is a

virtual machine to the network

they can have uh one or more virtual

nics nics or v-necks

each such vmix has its own mac address

it needs to follow the same rules as

physical networking so i need to have a

unique mac

a virtual network card in a um virtual

machine you still have to configure it

all the same rules apply it's just the

fact that it isn't operating physically

so you couldn't go and see and

physically plug and unplug cables

a virtual switch or v-switch is a

software version of a physical switch

it's got network ports similar to the

rj45 connectors you have

and one

1016 virtual ports this all depends on

your software and hardware platform

you're putting it on there's a limit of

4088 ports on all virtual switches on

the vmware esxi host

different vendors may well have

different um capabilities and

rules to follow

a virtual send switch can send

network traffic between virtual machines

on the same host or from virtual

machines to an external network that's

outside the virtual virtualized hosts

you can then go to youtube and check on

videos on how to check a virtual

device to a

live network

and a lot of the time you do it for home

use to overcome um

limitations when you're trying to get

different bits of software and hardware

to work for certification exams it's

quite common

virtual switch joins a network with a

physical network when it connects to a

physical switch using um physical

network adapters

now you can also get virtual routers a

software version of a physical router

obviously performs your layer 3 packet

forward in between

your

subnets or lans

and

vlans obviously you need layer 3

capability of some sort

a virtual router via vrrp which we

covered that protocol earlier

a virtual route is implemented when you

use vrrp

to provide redundancy of the default

gateway so all the hosts still have ip

connectivity

it's backed by two or more physical

routers depending on the protocol you

can have two or three

i'm not sure what the limit is actually

depends on the protocol in it just

change

uh why use a virtual router provides the

same routing function

functionality but it's virtual so you've

got all the advantages of costs

virtual firewalls they're mentioned

again in the cisco syllabus probably

definitely the ccna routing briefly but

i would imagine in the ccna security in

a lot more detail

so it's a virtual version of an actual

firewall

it's either implemented as a follower or

within a virtual machine or as an

appliance it provides security to your

virtual

environment

does exactly the same job as the

hardware firewall

i'm just moving on to sdn now it's um

a big topic and it's been introduced

into the new

cisco ccna exam

and i would imagine um

it's going to have more and more

prominence over the years to come

because cisco have invested heavily in

sdn and there's a lot of um some open

standards that have had a huge uptake as

well

it provides um

a high level administration uh

capability to network admins it allows

you to manage your entire network

through a user interface that abstracts

the complexity so you wouldn't

necessarily need to understand all the

underlying commands that have been

executed

and how it all works

and

just to manage it if you're using sdn

obviously it helps if you're to be a

network engineer that you actually

understand what's happening

but um

now i suppose it's like managing your

car

they've got all these different settings

on the onboard computers that change

your

handling and your engine performance and

all that kind of thing you can turn

different controls on or off like

traction control and you don't

necessarily need to worry about how it

all works

all right sdns are used to control the

operation and network devices um

look into more i think cisco i'm not

sure which ccna version maybe data

center that looks into any more details

but there's a whole bunch of um controls

and formats that have to manage

your um

interface between your network the user

and all of your devices

and apis to name a1

so examples of sdns are cisco open

network environment

nikira's network virtualization platform

why bother it basically makes your life

a lot easier as the network

administrator you can interact with your

entire network without having to

actually

connect or via telnet or physically

connect to your devices or even

understand all the

different commands say if you're using

juniper hardware it's got one type of um

command line interface for um copyright

reasons

your hawaii

and cisco

all got different command lines

different commands all to achieve the

same thing so you don't you don't need

to worry about that if you're using sdm

so get get rid of the command line some

of the benefits again the graphical user

interface provides information about

what's going on with your network

it allows you to specify changes and

behind the scenes the actual

configurations are done with the

interface one of the apis between the

software and the hardware

all right so just an overview we looked

at virtual networking the virtual

adapters virtual switches and routers

vrrp

firewalls and software defined

networking and why why would we be

interested in using it

so that's all thanks for watching

[Music]

module 25 lesson one server roles

module objectives server roles a list of

server roles

web server file server print server

dhcp

dns

proxy

mail server and authentication

so server roles refer to the main

function performed by a server operating

system such as windows 2008

in a client server model

you can have a server performing

multiple roles and certainly for a small

office

that could be the preferred solution and

then obviously they could scale up to

two or more servers as the um staff grow

the network grows and the requirements

grow

so

i've covered this already

web server when the server operating

system performs a role of a web server

it stores processes and delivers web

pages to clients

that request these web pages this could

be

an intranet so an internal server

hosting training websites and company

information and policies and procedures

and a blog

and or it could be an external website

for access by customers where you

actually host

um your own web pages and certainly the

larger companies

have their own web team and because

they're obviously companies like cisco

and microsoft have got many thousands of

pages and they're split off into

different domains for supports and sales

and

technical documentation

the communication between clients and

the server happens through

http

which works on port 80 tcp

on the client computer the browser

requests the web page is using the http

protocol and in response the web server

delivers the content or displays an

error message the standard error

messages available

file server when the server operating

system performs the role of a file

server it provides shared storage in the

host computer for storing files

documents images

these can obviously each folder has

different security settings it can be

available to

one person or a group of people and

these people can have privileges just to

view or um edit documents or they could

be the administrator where they can

delete and add new stuff

server operating is a print server it

allows sharing of one or more printers

among the clients computers over a

network

print server accepts a print job and

sends his print jobs to the appropriate

printers connected to the network

a print server can also be be a

dedicated device on the lan with

connections to the lan and the shed

printers

print servers will use industry standard

protocols such as internet printing

protocol

dhcp server

it assigns ip addresses under the ip

information such as default gateway

to clients

and you configure a dhcp server you can

actually configure a router as a dhcp

server also although it's not

specifically designed for that and

the

the software on the dhcp server will

allocate the ip addresses and other ip

information you can set a range of

addresses within the network you can

exclude addresses you can decide when

the um

host needs to request

a refresh or a new ip address

information

i already mentioned this

other information such as dns servers

and default gateways i've already

mentioned

the dns server hosts information that

allows the clients to resolve the name

of a

website for example to an ip address

generally speaking we don't care what

the ip address is of certain web pages

we'll type in cisco.com

or comptia.com a dns server somewhere

along the chain we'll resolve that to an

ip address and then we'll be able to

contact the server

dns uses tcp

uh udp port 53

proxy server acts as a middle man

between the client and the server you

can do something as

simple as just using it to log which

websites users go to or you can use it

to cache

different information from websites

regularly visited you know in order to

speed things up

um

it could also have the capabilities such

as applying rules as to which websites

you can go and time of day

mail server it's in the electronic post

office the tehran's mail server software

allows your users clients you're running

the ml client software to send and

receive

emails authentication and if it's

authenticating users typically it will

authenticate usernames and passwords and

then it will

decide which services those particular

users can access on the network

so this is just an overview obviously

network plus goes into far more detail

we've looked at server roles list of

server roles web file print dhcp dns

proxy mail and

authentication so for now thanks for

watching

[Music]

module 25 lesson two ids ips and utm

ids stands for intrusion detection

system

the thing to note is the intrusion has

already taken place it's there to tell

you that the intrusion has taken place

so detects the attack and then it will

report it how it sets up to report

depends on the network administrator

and the ids

it can be behavior based so it can look

at patterns of normal behavior on the

network see some sort of anomaly like a

spike to a certain network or a big

download or a large amount of um

network traffic from a group of devices

and see that as not normal

or it can be signature based so it can

look at big bit patterns in the traffic

flows and see that as some sort of

anomaly

the idea is it detects the intrusion and

then will alert the network

administrator

then it's down to you to take whatever

action you see fit

the intrusion prevention system is

actually

an ids and an ips is doing two jobs

it detects attacks but then it attempts

to block the traffic that's been

detected

and by whichever means possible and then

it will also inform you as a network

engineer that some sort of attack is

happening

again how it informs you it could be a

system message or it could be

configured to make a phone call send a

text or a voicemail or something like

that

why do we bother obviously it's an extra

layer of security and you may find um

your struggle to get insured for any um

risks on your company network if you

don't have proper procedures in place

and detect threats that firewalls and

antivirus software aren't able to reach

on their own because they're not

designed specifically for this gives a

record of all attacks as well and this

record can be shared

with other devices on the internet

speak to the manufacturer to see where

to place and if you're spending enough

money i'm sure they will come look at

your network and help you

install and configure it and monitor it

also

tune the alerts to tell you you don't

want it too sensitive but obviously if

you wait for some sort of a serious

attack

to be underway before it informs you

that's probably um

no good either

establish how it's going to monitor if

there's a point single point of contact

or a phone or a device

that is um informed and establish

whatever procedures you want to follow

on your particular network

utm stands for unified threat management

this um is a newer security solution i

think the market's worth well over a

billion dollars and it provides multiple

security services but in a single system

so the kind of features you'd expect the

utm to provide are firewalling ips

a gateway antivirus spam filtering vpn

load balancing

data loss prevention and employance

appliance reporting so it's an all in

one solution

have a look for more information about

who supplies these kind of devices and

what they say they can do and how

but this is an all-in-one solution

it's aimed at the small to medium sized

market also

larger networks will have individual

devices for different um

services

so instead of having to manage many

devices and tackle security the network

administrator can just do everything

from a single console graphical

interface from a utm

so we've covered in brief ids ips and

udm

thanks for watching