Random Lockups and Restarts - Means Your Computer is Getting "Stupid?"

There is nothing more frustrating than working on an elaborate document and all of a sudden the computer reboots. I told you to save often, right? Well, that's another story. You can't possibly anticipate every single type of computer failure. You can only do your best, save your work when you can, and plug along like the rest of us.

Computer lockups (crashes) and especially random and sudden reboots are very difficult to troubleshoot and solve. Usually, however, these symptoms are an indication that you have a failing hardware component somewhere. Either the hardware is failing outright or the software drivers that make the hardware work have become incompatible. In some instances viruses and malware can corrupt drivers, make pieces of software incompatible with the system, or wipe out critical system files.

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“Bring Your Computer in For a FREE Health Check – a $40 Value!”

Okay – so I was watching TV and this commercial came on for some store (probably an electronics store or something). I wasn’t paying attention, when all of a sudden they blurted out “Bring in your computer for a free health checkup, a $40 dollar value.” That got my attention because I am wondering just what it is that Geek Squad (or whomever) is going to do to my computer to justify $40 worth of work. Obviously this is a “loss-leader” to get you in the door to buy more stuff. Or perhaps – you get the health checkup only to find out that your pathetic computer is just short of dead and you desperately need a brand new one!

Let's talk about computer "health" just for a second. Many equate computer health with its ability to run like the wind. Computer health is as much a matter of security as it is performance. Many of the tools I mention in this article will help speed up your computer because they get rid of viruses and malware, as well as to eliminate clutter and organize your file structure. Viruses, malware and unpatched systems all contribute to vulnerabilities that can allow your computer to be open to attacks that affect safety as well as speed. These vulnerabilities can enable an attacker to inject clutter and unwanted services, not to mention processes meant to do you harm. Likewise, fragmented hard drives and unneeded temporary files can make your computer work harder and slow it down over time. Computer health, then, is a matter of looking at the whole system and optimizing all aspects of its operation.

So now to the heart of the article - If you are feeling generous, just send me the $40 because I am about to save you the money many times over. Remember awhile back, I said something about “knowing thy computer?” Well – that includes knowing how to do the basic things to take care of that expensive, electronic door-stop of yours. You should know how to do basic things such as making sure your virus definitions are up to date, doing a virus scan regularly, making sure your patches are applied, and checking for spyware. Given the threats these days, the aforementioned items should be done daily. Some less frequent, but still needed computer “health” activities involve running a Disk Cleanup and a defrag now and then.

All of the above have been made extremely easy for you. Virus signatures, scans, anti-malware maintenance, and applying security patches have practically automated themselves – all you have to do is set them and forget them.

You can do all these things yourself; forget about lugging your computer down to the pimply kid at Geek Squad, and save yourself $40 in the process. Here’s your computer “health checkup” routine:

• Visit Windows/Microsoft Updates and make sure your patches are up to date. Just open a web browser, select “Tools” and then select “Windows Update.”
• If you haven’t installed Microsoft Updates, do so now – you will see the link on the left side of the Windows Updates screen using the procedure above.
• Open your antivirus program and make sure your virus signatures are up to date. Given the number of AV programs out there, the procedure for this will vary.
• Open your antivirus program and do a scan on your system. Better yet, make sure it is scheduled to do the scan regularly.
• Open your anti-malware program and make sure your malware detection signatures are up to date. Given the number of anti-malware programs out there, the procedure for this will vary.
  
• Don’t have one? Get one for free:
  o Ad-Aware SE
  o Microsoft Defender
  o Spybot S&D
  
• Open your anti-malware program and do a scan on your system. Better yet, make sure it is scheduled to do the scan regularly.
• Go through your “My Documents” folder and archive everything you haven’t used in awhile.
• Copy all that stuff to CDs, external storage, or a secondary hard drive. Make sure it copied successfully and then delete it from your computer’s main (system) hard drive.
• Do a Disk Cleanup – see my procedures article for doing that. Better yet - Automate it!
• Run a Check Disk – Right click on My Computer, select Properties, right click on your disk drive(s), select Properties, then Tools, then click the Check Now button under error checking.
• Do a DEFRAG – see my procedures article for doing that. Better yet – Automate it!
  

These are some extremely easy things you can do to keep your computer healthy. Do them regularly and better yet make your computer do them on its own. Performing these things on a regular basis will keep your computer running well, and save you $40 trips to the neighborhood computer store.

P.C. Health Checkup Summary Checklist (Do these things in this order):

• Windows/Microsoft Updates – set to automatically download and install.
• Virus signatures current and scan computer – set to automatic, periodic scan.
• Anti-malware signatures current and scan computer – set to automatic, periodic scan.
• Archive all unneeded files and clean out “My Documents” folder
• Disk Cleanup – you can automate this also.
• Run a Check Disk to make sure your hard drive is healthy.
• Disk Defragmentation (DEFRAG) - you can automate this also.
• Mail me the $40 the first time you do this, but then it’s free after that :) – I am kidding, of course.

Are You “Giving Away” Your Personal Information?

Sooner or later you have to dispose of that old computer. Maybe you will throw it away (shame on you!), or you will do the right thing and recycle it (much better), or you are giving it away to a non-profit organization (bless your soul). Just a sidebar plug here – but if that old computer is still serviceable and in working order, why NOT give it to a non-profit agency or a needy family? Many agencies will gladly take that old computer, go through it to make sure it is good to go, and give it to someone who needs it. Think of the disadvantaged kid who gets your old computer, gets more out of their education, and then one day becomes a doctor who saves your life.

I have digressed. Anyway – when you give that computer away, what was on the hard drive when you gave it away? Tax records, some private letters, account numbers and passwords? Oh – but you deleted all of your files, all of the stuff in “My Documents” and it is all set to give away. Well alrighty then – no worries. Here’s the bad news. When you deleted all those files, you only deleted the reference to them in the part of the hard drive that indexes them for retrieval by your system. The data is still there, and anyone with the right tools can retrieve it. In other words, it’s like ripping out the table of contents in a book you plan to give away. You have torn out the pages that tell you where to easily find what you are looking for. But if you keep turning the pages in the book, you will see that all of the words are still there, and you can read the pages just as if nothing else were missing from that book.

It is absolutely necessary that you completely delete anything on your computer that might disclose personal data, such as social security numbers, birth dates, tax records, or even personal letters. Either that or remove the hard drive and destroy it. But you want to give away a complete computer, don’t you? So the lucky recipient will be able to put together a complete system for someone to use, and spend less money doing it.

Well – here’s the good news. Many of the tools you need to obliterate all of your personal data are free or very inexpensive. Many of them will even erase a hard drive to strict Department of Defense (DoD) standards for disk erasure. I can’t emphasize enough: you MUST obliterate everything on that hard drive before you get rid of it. Anything and everything can be used against you by a crafty hacker. There are things buried deep in your operating system that contain information that you may not be aware of.

If that hard drive has failed, be sure to remove it before you give the computer away. Even if the electronics have failed, the drive can still be opened up and all of the contents retrieved. Remove it and destroy it. Take the drive apart and completely destroy the platters. You can use strong magnets or better yet a device called a “degausser” to erase the data if necessary. Whatever you do, be sure you are not giving away your personal data just because you thought you erased everything on that ard drive.


Additional Resources:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,22920;order,1;page,1;c,All%20Downloads/description.html (PC World Article)
Church Crosstalk Killdisk
Darik’s Boot & Nuke

My Computer is Really Slooooooow!

You may have heard before, from me or others, about doing periodic maintenance on your computer, including running Disk Cleanup and Defrag. These built-in tools will help speed up your computer and make disk operations more efficient. You may also know that viruses and malware can slow your computer down. So just to be extra careful, you keep you keep your antivirus definitions up to date, and do regular virus and spyware scans. An overly full hard drive makes it hard for your virtual memory to work efficiently. You need disk drive space so that your physical memory can “swap” paging files with the virtual memory set aside on your hard drive. So you clean off some unwanted programs and archive those documents and pictures that you want to save but no longer use frequently.

You have checked all those things, so why is your computer still running slow and sluggishly? Now it may be time to do a little troubleshooting to find out what is slowing down your system. You could have an application causing problems, or it could be a virus or other malware. A recently applied patch could also be causing an application to run improperly. To find out what is going on, you will have to take a look at graphical performance indicators as well as a list of running processes. This is tricky, because even if you see which process is causing your problems, you won’t know if it is good (normal) or bad (caused by a virus) unless you do some additional research and find out what they are. Even I don’t pretend to know what they all are just by looking at them. I spend a lot of time researching processes to find out what they are and how to fix them if they are causing a problem. Troubleshooting computer problems is not always easy – that’s why us computer geeks aren’t worried about job security quite so much :) I have listed some resources below for you, however, so you won’t have to spend so much time researching these things.

Read the full article

A Little Preventive Maintenance for your Computer:

It is the hottest time of the year here in Colorado. With record temperatures all over the country, there are all sorts of heat related problems including fires, heat exhaustion, and fatigue. Heat has a way of affecting your computers in bad ways as well. Just as you feel kind of worn down and sluggish from the heat, your computers have similar problems. When they get too hot, they will do anything from rebooting themselves without warning, to ‘blue screening,” to shutting down (for their own protection), or even just outright failing. The central processor (CPU) and memory components are most susceptible to heat related problems. There are some things that you can do periodically to prevent these things from happening, and even prevent costly damage to your machine. Your machine has some built in self-protection measures, but you need to periodically make sure that these built-in measures are able to do their job properly.

Read full article...

CNET Article: Clean up your Grungy PC

Gonzo's Garage Computer Page

Free Microsoft Tools to Help Your Computer

With the almost daily barrage of news about computer viruses, hacker attacks and other malicious intrusions, it is no wonder that people find computer security a daunting, almost intimidating venture. There are so many sources coming at you from all directions, that it is hard to know what is important (do it as soon as you can), and what should be considered urgent (do it yesterday).

The other thing that amazes me is the seemingly endless supply of people who want to **sell** you the same tools you can get for free on the Internet – good tools at that - to allow you to clean up your computer and keep it safe. Walk into Best Buy (or CompUSA, or Circuit City...) and there is always some "expert" waiting there to tell you that the ONLY thing that will help your poor computer is the $159 suite of tools on their software rack. I am not dissin' the hard working college kids that work there - I am simply saying that these folks are typically not "experts," and usually only know enough to parrot what they have been told by the person who trained them. One of my hobbies, after all, is to hang out in computer stores and eaves-drop on the conversations that these people have with customers. It is amazing the amount of hyperbole and B.S. that these kids spew out in order to make a sale.

Having said that, I can now tell you the good news – there are a lot of tools available for free. Microsoft has really done a good job of improving information about security updates for their software. Not only that, but they are making a wide variety of tools available for free as well. Now you can get all sorts of things from them that will help you to eradicate spyware, remove malicious software, tune up your hard drive, provide phishing filters, and even find out about the latest patches and updates.

Windows Live Safety Center (Beta):

This one is a free online suite of tools for checking for and removing viruses, cleaning out your disk drive and registry, both of which will help improve your PC’s overall performance.


Malicious Software Removal Tool:

This is also an online tool that scans your computer for a variety of malicious software. If any are detected, it allows you to select the right tool to remove the specific malware that it caught.


Windows Defender:

Still in Beta, this utility catches and removes a wide variety of spyware. Windows Defender evolved from Microsoft Antispyware Beta, a tool that Microsoft bought from Giant Software. In my own testing, this one got rid of spyware that AdAware and Spybot S&D weren’t able to. Both of the others found the spyware but couldn’t clean it off whereas the Microsoft product did.


Microsoft Security Bulletins Summaries and Webcasts:

Find out about the latest patches here. If you are extremely curious (or it is your job, as in my case) you can sign up for and attend free monthly webcasts that discuss the implications of the patches being released on “Patch Tuesday” each month. You can even sign up to get advance notification.

Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 3):

This is the next version of the Microsoft browser. This version (also available standard in Windows Vista) will include phishing filters, malicious web site warnings, RSS feed viewer, and tabbed browsing. I will caution you though – it is unlike your current version of Internet Explorer in every way. IE7 has a completely different look and feel. Don’t install this unless you are willing to take the time to learn this new browser, however.

So before you go out and spend a ton of money at Best Buy, because some pimply kid tells you that you can’t live without their $79 antispyware package, give some of these free tools a try. I guess what I am telling you is that you don't need to become a computer geek to be informed - you just have to know how to read - the sources above are a good place to start. You will find many of these tools embedded in the new version of Windows (Windows Vista) due out in 2007, but can take advantage of many of them now.

For more computer stuff, see my main web site!

Are You A "Responsible" Computer User?!

By “responsible,” I mean do you take the time to understand that your computer is only a machine that can do work for you? In other words, the computer can’t read your mind, it can’t open your documents just by you thinking of them, it has no way of guessing where you want them kept, and it has no way of predicting what catastrophe is going to wipe out the last four hours of your work. Do you take the time to understand what you need to do to keep your computer in tip-top running order?

You do read your car’s owner’s manual right? I mean, you took the time to find out what the little buttons on the dashboard do, and what it really means when that funny light turns on? Well – that little piece of electronic real estate on your desk is more sophisticated and more powerful than the computer that put a man on the moon. You should probably get to know it little. Read the instructions, use the embedded “help” tools that came with it (Start --> Help and Support), buy a book (even if it has “…For Dummies” in the title), explore online news groups, read my blogs. Whatever it takes, but do some homework.

Visit the "Computers" section of my web site: http://www.wflinn.com/computers/

Okay – you’re up and running now. Do you know how to save your documents? Did you know that when you hit the “save” icon you actually have to take the time to find out where it is saving the document to? You can also choose an alternate location to which to save it. I have seen many people frantically call their IT support people and rant about how they can’t find their documents – the computer obviously lost them! “Where did you save them to?” the IT person asks. “I don’t know!” (Translation - "that's not my problem, the computer was supposed to figure that out!") replies the frantic customer. Take the time to know where your documents are being saved. Explore ways to organize your “My Documents” folder so that you can easily find things.

“Oh -$#@&-, the power just went out!” That’s OK – when you power your computer up after the outage is over, your document will magically reappear and all will be well. In your dreams, perhaps. Another crazy thing about these electronic gadgets is that they can’t tell the difference between a quick note you are typing up (that you have no intention of saving) and an elaborate spreadsheet with the past million and six lines of data and formulas that you need to keep forever and a day. While you are working on these precious documents – save them! Save them immediately upon creation so that the document gets named and properly saved to a location of your choosing. Save frequently as you go along. Then when the power goes out, you may lose a little of your work, but not the whole last four hours worth. In Microsoft Office products, you can also go to “Options” and tell it to save “AutoRecovery Information” every “x” minutes. I have mine set to 10 minutes.


Being a responsible computer user, particularly if you are in a corporate setting, also means watching what you install on your (er-uh, your company’s computer). Is your computer always broken and you can’t figure out why? Does it seem like your computer never seems to work right? Let me ask a follow-up question: Are you one of those people who always downloads and installs every “free” toolbar, game, or other neat looking gadget? This is one of the leading causes (in my opinion) of computers not working correctly with corporate applications and needless calls to the service desk. You have a responsibility NOT to install unauthorized software at work, and you have a responsibility to yourself to be a little more discerning at home not to install every cool gadget that comes along. Your corporate service desk will tell you it’s unauthorized, and when you call tech support for your home computer’s woes, they may not support you either.

Finally, your computer, again using the car analogy, needs maintenance. You wouldn’t drive your car 100,000 miles without changing the oil would you? Do a periodic “Disk Cleanup” and “Defrag.” These simple tools will help your computer run as efficiently as possible. You can even automate them. Use antivirus software, personal firewalls, and for Pete’s sake – stay patched. Here are some procedures to help you get your maintenance routine started:

• Disk Cleanup and Defrag
• Automating Maintenance Routines in Windows XP
  
  

Your computer, for all its sophistication, is nothing more than an expensive doorstop – until you bring it to life and put it to work. You have to know at least a few fundamentals about it, and you have to know how to take care of it. You and you alone are responsible for where you put things in a computer – I mean you don’t blame your house when you forget where you put your keys, do you?