Day 6.

 

Top 11 “To Do Now” – Windows XP Maintenance Summary

 

With XP, you can do a quick check to see the state of your security by going to the Control Panel, and selecting Security Center.  All three: Firewall, Automatic Updates and Virus Protection should be on (green).  If not, do a quick fix if you can, but look at the suggestions below, regardless.

 

1. Auto updates: @

Go to the Control Panel, Classic View, and select Automatic Updates.  Select Automatic, and have it occur Every day at a time that your computer is most likely on.

 

2. Check Hard Drive Free Space: @

Check the amount of free space you have on your hard drive.  Just hover the mouse over the hard drive in My Computer to see free and total space.  If you have more than 80% of the hard drive full, you need to delete big files, or get another hard drive. 

Big files to consider, in particular, are movies; why not just back them up to DVD.  And/or, for a second hard drive, the easiest way to go is an external USB hard drive, and put all of your video, music, and image files there.

 

3. Use Disk Quota: @

To prevent your hard drive from becoming too full in the first place, right-click your hard drive (in My Computer), go to Properties, and the Quota tab.  Then click Enable quota management, and Limit disk space to be around 80% of your hard drive’s size.

 

4. Clean up your disk: @

Go Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Do this in the case that your hard drive is almost full, and there are some items in the list which are taking up many hundreds of MB. Check all the items, unless there’s an obvious reason not to, like you’re not sure you want to delete the recycle bin just yet.  This is not an urgent task, but it's easy, and could free up significant hard drive space, and so it is especially useful in a situation where you don’t have a lot of free space available.

 

5. Defragment: @@

First remember that you always should BACKUP YOUR IMPORTANT FILES first - burn them to CDs or a DVD if you have no other means of backup; on occasion de-fragmenting can actually cause problems.  But you should defragment occasionally, so go to My Computer, right-click on your hard drive, and select Properties.  Click the Tools tab, and select Defragment Now. The other thing to keep in mind is if this has not been done in a while, the defragmentation will take a long time; let it work away at it over night – and DO NOT interrupt it.

 

6. Check RAM Amount: @@

Check to see how much RAM your computer has. Go to the My Computer window, click on View System Information, and then select the General tab. You should consider upgrading to at least 512 MB if you presently have less.  For Windows machines I would suggest getting someone who is tech savvy to do the RAM replacement/upgrade.

7. Anti-virus: @

Make sure you have Anti-virus software installed. And make sure it is scheduled to update the virus definitions frequently; once every day at least. Also make sure that it is scheduled to regularly scan your computer for viruses, at least once a week.

 

If you don't have Anti-virus software, you need to go the computer store and buy some, or download a good brand-name anti-virus package (like Norton, McAfee, or AVG anti-virus software). Alternatively you can download a free anti-virus application; two I’d suggest for XP are Avast! and Avira (log on to download.com and go to the Security & Spyware category).

 

8. Uninstall Frostwire @

And finally, in spite of doing the above, you should consider uninstalling Frostwire  Much of the adware, spyware, and viruses that you need to combat come through files downloaded from peer-to-peer applications like Frostwire  Furthermore you are very much opening yourself up to hacking, in spite of your Firewall's best efforts, through the use of such applications.  Go to Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs to uninstall Frostwire

 

 

The following 3 items in this list can be covered by a for-purchase, all-in-one utility program, or they can be handled separately by free applications.  I’ll list them separately with free solutions first, and then offer an all-in-one suggestion.

 

9. ***Registry check: @@@

You should check/optimize your hard drive’s registry regularly.  Registry Mechanic and WINASO Registry Optimizer are both proven, and though no longer free, are reasonably priced.  Meantime the one free one I’d suggest is Glary Utilities.  For any of these go to download.com and do a search for them.

10. ***Firewall: @

First of all do make sure your Windows firewall is on; go to Control Panel, Classic View, and Windows Firewall.  But I’d also suggest for Windows XP that you get another, good third party firewall, like Norton Personal Firewall.  A slightly cheaper download possibility is ZoneAlarm, and the totally free download I’d suggest is PC Tools Firewall.  Again, download.com is the safest place to be looking for downloads such as these.

11. ***Adware/Spyware: @@

Adware/Spyware software isn't as important as the above two categories, but it’s easy to obtain, and running it will almost surely make your Internet access much faster.  The good free one we use in the lab is Ad-Aware (once again, use download.com and look in the Security and Spyware category.)

***All-in-one-alternatives:

The last three utility categories are possible to get all together by buying an all-in-one maintenance and security suite.  And these suites will also have additional categories of security software not mentioned here.  The all-in-one I’d suggest (summer 2009) is Norton 360, available from www.symantec.com for a yearly cost of $79.99.

 

And one final coda: Here’s what I figure are the top 3 reasons kids have problems with their computer:

-       Full hard drive

-       Not enough RAM memory

-       The use of Frostwire etc., and the resulting malware