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10 Things To Do For A Healthy & Secure PC |
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Title
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10 Things To Do For A Healthy & Secure PC
A Top 10 List That Can Save Your Computer
----------------------------
Many who read this article may find these recommendations
to be old news. However, think about the number family, friends,
and associates that ask you for help fixing their PC and I
believe you will understand why I chose to write this article..
This list of recommendations for a healthy & secure PC
is by no means a complete list of everything you can and should
do. It is however a great start if you want to keep your computer
running properly for an acceptable period of time. It will
also help prevent some of the most common issues related to
PC security.
A Top 10 List That Can Save Your Computer
----------------------------
Many who read this article may find these recommendations
to be old news. However, think about the number family, friends,
and associates that ask you for help fixing their PC and I
believe you will understand why I chose to write this article..
This list of recommendations for a healthy & secure PC
is by no means a complete list of everything you can and should
do. It is however a great start if you want to keep your computer
running properly for an acceptable period of time. It will
also help prevent some of the most common issues related to
PC security.
1. Hard Drive Fragmentation
--------------------------
Believe it or not, many people have never even heard of hard
drive fragmentation, or the process of Defragmentation. In
a nutshell, when you install software or create files and
data, the Operating System stores this data on your hard disk
drive. The most efficient way of storing this data would be
in one continuous disk file. However, files are not always
stored this way, or are initially stored this way and later
become split up, or fragmented. Because of this, when the
data or file is retrieved, the hard drive must be searched
in multiple places just to combine data that makes up one
file. This slows things down tremendously. If you are running
Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you should perform a disk defrag
at least once every two weeks, more if possible. All of my
systems run this process automatically once every week in
the evening hours.
2. Installing Games & Disk Intensive Software
--------------------------------------------------
If you're a gamer, or regularly use disk intensive software,
the above Defragmentation process will help. However, you
can also take another step to make things move a little faster.
If you have two physically separate disk drives in your system,
I suggest that you use one primarily for the Operating System
and related software, and devote the other physical disk for
installing games and other disk intensive applications. This
cuts down on the competition for disk resources between your
Operating System and other applications. There are other things
you could do as well, such as configuring the appropriate
type of RAID where multiple disks appear to the operating
system as one big logical disk drive. This takes a little
more planning to get the most out of your drives so I’ll
cover that in a future article.
3. Virus & Spyware Protection
----------------------------
The bottom line here is; make sure you have installed some
sort of anti-virus and spyware protection. Furthermore, don’t
just assume that the default configuration of the program
is best suited for your environment. For instance, I can’t
tell you how many people I know whose computer has contracted
a serious virus because of just one minor but very important
task. When the anti-virus software pops up a message and tells
you that your subscription is about to expire, don’t
just hit the ignore button. Take a five minute break from
what you are doing and renew your virus signature subscription.
Not only will this keep you up to date on newer viruses, it
will allow your software package to update to newer versions.
The same thing goes for spyware protection. There are plenty
of free spyware protection solutions out there, none are perfect,
but most do the job. I suggest using Microsoft’s AntiSpyware
Beta package at the least.
4. Software & Hardware Firewall Protection
-------------------------------
If you are not using a firewall, then you are just asking
for trouble. Actually, there is a significant chance that
your system is already compromised if you have no firewall
protection at all. Many cable/DSL router combo devices have
built in firewall protection, and this is at least a good
start. However, if you have Windows XP SP2, go ahead and enable
the built in firewall as it will provide you another level
of protection. Oh, yes, and when the system pops up a message
about whether or not to allow a certain application or communication
to take place, don’t just hit the ok button, read it
thoroughly then make a decision.
5. Installing & Uninstalling Applications
----------------------------------------
Just about every time you install a new application or piece of software you increase the time it takes to boot your PC and in some cases decrease its performance. On thing that drives me crazy is printing software. For the life of me I cannot understand how or why printer support software could total 400MB in size, but they sometimes do. Not only that, they tend to load all kinds of unnecessary real-time running applets. HP printers are notorious for this. Be very aware of what it is you are loading and only load those components that you need. Even some off-the-shelf software packages load adware and other not so helpful applets. Also, when you uninstall software, not all the software gets uninstalled in many cases. One thing I suggest is to purchase a registry cleaner. This can dramatically decrease boot times and in many cases increase the overall performance of your PC.
6. Purchasing & Downloading Items On The Internet
-------------------------------------------------
When you download or purchase any software from the Internet,
make sure you pay close attention to everything you are agreeing
to or checking off on the various pages that lead up to the
final purchase or download. As with everything else, make sure
you read the fine print. You may be agreeing to download and
install something you don’t need or may impact the security
and performance of you PC. Also, how many more mailing lists
do you really need to be on? How many Internet Explorer tool
bars do you need? Most of these tool bars should be renamed
to “adware / spyware bars”
7. Installing Operating System & Application Patches
---------------------------------------------------
In a nutshell, if you are using Windows XP, make sure that automatic
updates are turned on. This is very important. Microsoft releases
security and bug fixes routinely and some of them are critical
in nature. Something people tend to overlook is updating and
patching their applications. For instance, Microsoft Office
has critical security patches and performance enhancements available
in the form of patches and service packs. It’s not just
Operating System bugs that can put you at risk, applications
can too.
8. Updating Drivers
-------------------
Similar to the above, hardware manufacturers routinely update
their drivers. This includes video cards, sounds cards, capture
cards, system boards, you name it. Some manufacturers have
started to release automatic updates for their hardware, but
many have not. Make sure you check these sites regularly and
when a driver update is available, install it.
9. What Do Your Children Download
-----------------------------------
This is a really big one. I can’ tell you how may times
I have been told by people that they have no idea how something
got installed on their computer. Usually their second sentence
contains “one of my children must have downloaded it”.
The first thing that comes to mind is “why do parents let
kids download what ever they like in the first place”.
Not only can this severely impact the security and performance
of your computer, who knows what your kids are getting their
hands on. Do you know what one of the most frequently installed
application installs I see on a teenagers machine is? Kazaa,
BearShare, eDonkey, all P2P file sharing programs. I don’t
care what anyone says regarding how convenient and safe these
applications are now, they are wrong. Monitor what your children
are doing / downloading on the Internet. Install a parental
control software package if need be.
10. Rebuilding Your Operating System
-------------------------------------
If you are not familiar with system imaging software, I suggest
you read up on them. One of the most popular packages is “ghost”
and it’s been around for quite some time. I rebuild my
systems pretty much on an annual basis. When I first configured
them, I used an imaging package to create a complete image
of the basic OS and application install. This allows you to
not only re-install the base operating system and applications
by hitting just one button, but can save you big time in the
event of a system disaster.
Conclusion
----------
Many of my peers and other technical people will read this
and say it’s all common sense and very basic. Well, if
this is what you do for a living then yes, it is. But many
people don’t know these things or did know about them
and have forgotten. So many PC are in such bad shape and it’s
beyond me how the average person even deals with it. It has
to be frustrating not knowing where to turn or what to do,
especially if you don’t have a tech friend or family
member to call on. I hate to sound pessimistic, but things
are not getting better for the average home or small business
person. Technology should not be this difficult to maintain.
The average person just wants something that will work, and
stay working.
You may reprint or publish this article free of charge as long
as the bylines are included.
Original URL (The Web version of the article)
http://www.defendingthenet.com/newsletters/
TenThingsToDoForAHealthyAndSecurePc.htm
About the Author:
Darren Miller is an Information Security Consultant with
over seventeen years experience. He has written many technology
& security articles, some of which have been published
in nationally circulated magazines & periodicals. If you
would like to contact Darren you can e-mail him at Darren.Miller@defendingthenet.com.
If you would like to know more about computer security please
visit us at http://www.defendingthenet.com.
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