10 Things To Do For A Healthy & Secure PC

By: Darren Miller

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.

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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. Please visit us at
http://www.defendingthenet.com