The PC Tune-Up and Protection Thread....

I'm sure there are several IT people who visit. I'm not a professional geek, But I am the guy who seems to get all the dead computers in the neighborhood for repair.

Here are some suggestions:

1) Download a copy of superantispyware. It's free. It works. And did I mention it's free? Install it, download the latest updates, and run a complete scan on your computer. Don't do anything else until you do this.

Superantispyware will set itself up to run whenever you boot windows. I find this unnecessary. Hit the preferences button and uncheck "Start when windows starts." Just make sure you run it once a week, at least.

2) Now download a copy of TuneUp Utilities 2009. When you run it the first time, it will scan your computer and make recommendations. Go through each one and accept the ones that seem reasonable to you.

Then run the 1-click system maintenance that comes with the software.

TuneUp is trialware. You'll probably find this useful enough to buy a copy. If not, it still took care of a lot of problems, free.

3) Stop using Internet Explorer and get a copy of Firefox. Keep your copy of IE for those websites that just won't work without it. But for general surfing, you want Firefox. Why? Read on.

4) Add "Web of Trust" to Firefox. You can add it to IE as well, but there are other reasons to use Firefox as your main browser. This will keep you from accidentally surfing to malicious sites. If you for some reason cannot live without IE, install this. It will save your bacon regularly.

5) Add AdBlock Plus to Firefox. No more annoying advertising. This doesn't work with IE, and is reason enough to switch.

6) You can put a lot of other useful addons into Firefox. Here's where you get them. Don't go crazy though, all of these eat up a little bit of memory. Just get the addons that you know you'll use.

7) People are going to think I'm a shill for Mozilla, but if you have Outlook Express, it's time to get rid of it. Most email worms and viruses are written specifically for Outlook. Get Thunderbird. It's not 100% safe, but it's safer.


I'm going to sign off for tonight. Any one else have suggestions?

Great advice especially for those of us that just don't have a clue! Thanks for sharing.

Overall great advice

ScoopLV said:

7) People are going to think I'm a shill for Mozilla, but if you have Outlook Express, it's time to get rid of it. Most email worms and viruses are written specifically for Outlook. Get Thunderbird. It's not 100% safe, but it's safer.


I'm going to sign off for tonight. Any one else have suggestions?

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There are other free utilities and non-Microsoft programs that will make your computing experience a better one but your suggestions go a long way toward having less problems and avoiding major spyware / virus infections.

Don't forget to keep your Windows update except for IE 7 or 8 (use Firefox instead) and avoid Vista (use XP instead). Better safe than sorry.

timeos2 said:

Don't forget to keep your Windows update except for IE 7 or 8 (use Firefox instead) and avoid Vista (use XP instead). Better safe than sorry.

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I keep IE up to date, because some websites simply will not run without the latest and greatest version of IE... sigh.

I also have no problems with Vista. I've been running Vista Home Premium 64 for a couple years now. Vista takes more resources and has a steeper learning curve. The payoff is it's Media Center, which I find to be worth the hassle. I agree, however, that XP is fine for most users.


Here's a few other tips:

1) See all those little icons at the bottom right of your desktop, near the clock? More than six is too much. Right click the "updaters", media playback icons, and such. See if you can change preferences to not load when windows loads.

If you double-click a quicktime movie, it will still run. You don't need quicktime running all day long. It's unnecessary.

Same with updaters -- Adobe and Install Shield are notorious for this. Most of the time, the software will check for a new version when you load it. All these updaters do is sit around wasting memory.

2) Put your swap file on another drive, if you have one. Windows now calls it "virtual memory." It's a very large file on your drive that simulates extra memory. If you have two hard drives, change the location of the swap file. That way windows and the swap file aren't on the same disk -- leads to less fragmentation and less disk thrashing.

3) Go to start -> control panel -> add and remove programs -- AND GET RID OF ALL THAT OLD SOFTWARE. If you haven't used it in more than three months, uninstall it. Every installed program slows your computer down a little bit with it's .dll files and registry entries. The less you have on your computer the better. (Keep what you need, naturally. Even keep what you THINK you might need. But reassess your position every few months.)

4) THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL.

Keep all your saved files in one directory on your hard drive. All your music, recorded videos, documents, saved email, EVERYTHING. Change the settings for each of your programs to save it's work in one easy to find directory.

Mine is called C:\BackMeUp - there are folders in C:\BackMeUp for each program I use: Music, Documents, Pictures, Movies, and (most importantly) the driver files for every piece of hardware in your computer. There's nothing worse than crashing your computer, and not having an ethernet driver. (No internet to help you fix your computer).

Care to guess why it's called "BackMeUp"?

Now click on My Computer, and then find the BackMeUp folder. See how big it is. If it's less than 20 gigabytes, you can back the folder up onto four or five DVD-Rs. If it's more than that, buy an external USB hard drive and copy it there. When you're done copying, UNPLUG THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE and put it somewhere safe.

Back up this folder every time you save enough new files that replacing them would be more of a hassle than backing up.


WHEN (not if):

1) Your hard drive dies
2) Windows becomes so corrupted you need to format and reinstall

You can pull out those DVDs or the External Hard Drive and put all your important stuff back.

I can't imagine putting all my data files in a single flat folder.

If you just backup My Documents (or Documents on Vista), you will tend to get most of what you need. But you won't get email and bookmarks and stuff like that.

The best solution for email is to use an imap server if you have a choice. All emails are stored on the server with imap, so it's all always accessible from any computer. In other words, your inbox or mail folders will all look the same for that imap-based email account on any computer you access it from, and there's no need to back up any of the email on your PC or MAC.

gmail let's you setup and use an imap server in their settings in the browser interface. If you just use the browser interface, all the emails are already stored in your gmail account unless you explicitly delete them there. If you use the browser interface for yahoo mail or hotmail, all your emails are stored on their server also, up to their limits. If you use a normal email client with gmail (eg, windows mail, outlook express, outlook or thunderbird), you should make sure you are setting it up as an imap client and not as POP client.

For bookmarks and stuff, I just export them every now and then, and save the exported file somewhere under Documents.

-David

Vista is fine.

Icarus said:

I can't imagine putting all my data files in a single flat folder.

Click to expand...

I can't imagine that, either. That's why I suggested having multiple folders (for everything people save) in a single flat folder. It's a better solution to what most people are doing for back ups -- nothing at all.

The idea is to have everything as easy to back up as possible. The harder it is for people to clone their data, the less likely they are to do it. Not every Windows program defaults to saving it's work in Documents. Some are all over the map.

Besides, restoring to C:\BackMeUp is a lot easier for many people than restoring to C:\Users\Jimmy\Documents. Especially for computers that have multiple user accounts. It's also a lot easier for many people to FIND the files they're looking for in such a location.

Regarding backups,

a one TERABYTE drive is now under $150. They come with Firewire transfer (fast). Most of them are configurable as RAID... what that means to you is that it is either double or quadruple backup (2 500gs or 4 250gs).

There's really no excuse anymore. Every picture I've ever taken digitally, every track I've ever downloaded or ripped from CD, all the photos I've scanned, all since 1997, is less than 250 gigabytes. I have everything backed up on a 1 terabyte drive and on a 500G drive.

What is amazing, to me anyhow, is that 10 years ago I used to have everything backed up on 5 100mb Zip discs. Each Zip disc now would hold about 10 photos! My first Compact Flash card was 4mb. I remember how empowering my first 20mb card was; it would hold 200 photos at 640x480! That 20mb card would be good for one shutter click on my 40D.

SuperAntiSpyware... great program. Better than the old standbys AdAware and Spybot. Pair it up with the free program Malwarebytes.

I use something free called CCleaner to keep my registry clean. Once a month I run it, it clears out all the crud.

For photo resizing, I use FastStone Photo resizer. It is free, and it does batch processing; if you need to resize 300 photos, you can sic FastStone on the folder and in 10 seconds they're all nice and small for email and websites. They upload a lot faster into Photobucket that way, too; Photobucket resizes them if they are too large, so you can do them all in advance on your hard drive first.

Most antimalware programs come with a default scan day and time; change it. I have no reports of this, but my mind just says that if Norton has the default day and time as Sunday at 12:00AM, the trojan guys are releasing their bad guys Monday at 5:00AM, right after all the default scans finish.