OT: Computer maintenance (Was: Re: Who's out there?)

David French wrote:
Plenty of posts over the last two-three days on the NG - you have an Explorer
problem at your end...

Try unsubscribing from all newsgroups, then de-frag. your hard disk, reboot, and
re-subscribe to the NG's again.

It worked for me with a similar problem last year!

This brings up the topic Preventive Maintenance for your computer. I'm amazed at the people who will take their car in for regular maintenance, but expect their computer to run just fine without any care at all. I guess it's because a computer is an electronic device, and we have come to expect electronics to work reliably - which they do.

Not so with computers. Herewith a few suggestions, all of which are based on my and other people's sad experience:

a) Ant-malware software:
-- Keep it up to date. Pay the $$$ to do so! It's like car-insurance (but much cheaper.)
-- Run a scan at least once every 24 hours (I leave my main computer on 24/7 and schedule the scans for early morning.)
-- Regardless of whether you have the Norton or MacAfee suite, you should also get at least one other anti-virus program, and one other anti-spyware program. Run these about once a week, to catch what the other program(s) miss.

b) Firewall:
-- Buy a router and place it between the computer and the modem. The router has a built-in firewall. You may have to reconfigure your connection software to do this, and you will have to configure the router.
-- Buy a software firewall. ZoneAlarm comes free, but it must be updated manually. I prefer to pay for ZA Pro and get the latest updates within an hour or two of their release. ZoneAlarm's main virtue is its outgoing function: it asks you to confirm that a program may use the Internet, for example. It also asks you to confirm that some program may use a Windows resource - this helps you to block spyware from installing itself, for example. (MS's new software firewall is OK, but limited.)

Do I sound paranoid about security? Maybe so -- but my machines rarely get infected. Last nasty that got in was three weeks ago, it was spyware. No virus or trojan or worm in over a year. :-)

c) Defrag the disks/partitions regularly. (I do it over the supper hour about once a week.) There's software that will do it in the background, for a price.

d) Use Windows' Disk Cleaning utility about once a week, too.

e) Back up. Back up. Back up. CD and DVD writers are very cheap ($100 or less) these days, CD-R disks cost less than floppies ever did, and your data is worth a lot more than you realise until you lose it. You can attach an external hard drive (roughly $150-$200) with automatic back-up software that you can schedule to do the job in the early morning.

f) Create a data-only partition on your hard drive. This way, when (not if) the system on C: goes kablooey, and you have to Repair or Reinstall, your data will be safe. A data/back up partition should be standard on every computer sold IMO.
BTW, the Acer laptop I bought for my wife nagged to make a system back-up/repair CD every time it booted. It also has a D: partition for system back-up and repair. Very Good idea!

Do I sound paranoid about data loss? Maybe so -- but I've learned the hard way. I've used desktop computers since the late 70s, and I've had my share of disasters.

g) Uninstall and clean out all unused programs. If you downloaded *.zip or install files for them, burn those files to CD first, just in case you change your mind.

h) It helps to have a registry cleaner that will identify and eliminate invalid keys (eg, pointers to deleted files and programs). A lean and clean registry speeds up booting, especially on older machines with slower CPUs.

i) Check the start up list, and remove any programs that you don't need to run whenever the computer boots.

There are other things you can do to clean and tweak your system. Programs to make this task simpler and safer are available.

If you don't feel up to doing it yourself, pay a tech to do it for you. You take your car in for regular maintenance, right? Same for your computer.

HTH
.

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