10 Things to do for a Healthy & Secure PC
by Darren Miller
Published on this site: January 31st, 2006 - See
more articles from this month
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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”
- 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 perfomance 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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
[email protected].
If you would like to know more about computer security please
visit us at http://www.defendingthenet.com
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