PC Placement & Initial Setup For Trouble Free Operation

Having now parted with your hard earned cash, you’ve arrived home with lots of boxes full of various bits of computer gadgetry, so where do we start? Well first of all put the kettle on, make yourself a brew & spend 5 minutes deciding where you intend to put your new PC. Just because a particular location may be nice & comfortable for you, it does not mean that it is a good place to site your new computer. If you want trouble free PC usage then we can discount the kitchen & bathroom, steam, airborne fat particles and large columns of smoke from burnt toast are no good at all for your PC, in fact they are downright killers and would soon bring even the best PC crashing to it’s knees!

Right so with kitchen & bathroom discounted, we are left with living room, dinning room & of course the bedroom! Well as most living rooms or bedrooms have a nice fluffy deep pile carpet, then my own preference would have to be the dinning area (as long as it is not part of the kitchen). Dinning areas are usually cooler, have wooden or ceramic tiled floors and are less likely to be constantly full of cigarette smoke. If you have ever doubted what cigarette smoke does to your lungs then just take a peak inside a PC that has been sat in a smoke filled environment for the last 2 years! So my choice is the dinning area, but it is your PC & your house, so please bear these points in mind when trying to decide;


Steam & airborne fat particles are obviously no good for electrical appliances. There are fans sucking air into your PC to try and keep it cool, so placing it near nice fluffy carpets is no good at all, because a large intake of fluff will choke your fans and end up frying your processor. Cigarette smoke has a similar effect, it slows down your fans with a nice layer of tar & eventually your PC croaks (unless you do first) Do not place near a radiator, if the fans in your PC are there to keep it cool, what do you think a nice warm radiator is going to do to it ? Obviously direct sunlight would have the same effect.

Ok so let’s start unpacking, please take your time, and keep all manuals & discs safely put to one side. You would never believe the number of software discs that get thrown out in the rubbish after unpacking your PC. If you’re anything like me you’re going to ignore this advice and dive straight into the boxes ripping at the tape and hurling bits of polystyrene in all directions! Ok go for it, but don’t say you were not warned. Just put this book down for a minute and return to it when your excitement has diminished a tad.

DO NOT FORGET TO USE A SURGE PROTECTOR WHEN CONNECTING TO THE POWER SUPPLY

Now I could spend the next 3-4 pages showing you where to connect all the relevant bits and pieces, but to be honest, if you can read this blog then you have sufficient intelligence to be able to assemble all the parts and insert the various plugs in the correct sockets. Just take your time, look at the shape of the plug and then find the matching socket on the back of your PC, some like the keyboard and mouse are colour coded and also have a small keyway to ensure that the plug goes in the correct way DO NOT FORCE ANYTHING! If it does not plug in easily then you have probably got the wrong socket. Failing that, check to see if in your wild excitement to unpack your new PC you may have stepped on the plug and deformed it slightly. Assuming all goes well, you should have it all set up & in place ready to switch on, so look on the front of the monitor & switch that on, then do the same on the front of the tower.


After a few seconds you should see this screen on most mass produced PCs. If however you have had a PC purpose built then you may well see the Windows login screen first. There are obviously variations on the initial setup screen, mainly the amount of pre-installed software or the background image. But both of these items will be dealt with in more detail a little later in the blog. Quite often on mass produced PCs you will find that an account named USER has been set up on your new PC. This is usually done when installing the operating system & any software package. So lets now spend some time personalizing your new PC and setting up Internet Explorer and any other software you may have. Lets start with changing your name from USER to the name of your choice, or in my case, Steve!