News Archive

You'll Be Sorry. . .

September 26, 2003

If you don’t learn from my recent experiences! You may have noticed that the site hasn’t been updated for quite a while. That’s due to a complete computer meltdown that happened a week and a half ago. I’m still working on getting things back to normal! Not exactly sure what happened, except that my dear IBM ThinkPad T22 running Windows XP suddenly became almost completely unresponsive. It would boot up just fine, but try to actually use a program and no matter what the application was, the CPU would immediately get pegged at 100% usage and the system would come to a complete halt. No error messages or blue screen of death, just a computer with pretty desktop wallpaper that refused to do anything at all. Thankfully I had another hard drive with Win 98 and my essential programs ready to go, plus a CD with all of my data, so what could have been a disaster ended up as nothing more than a temporary inconvenience.

So while this isn’t a Windows or general computing site, I thought that I would offer some helpful advice in the hopes that none of you will suffer the same frustrations that I have.

#1. BACKUP OFTEN. We’ve all heard this a thousand times, but how many of us actually do back up on a regular basis? I must admit to not doing a spectacular job on this, though I do usually remember to do it on a weekly basis. I have an external CD burner, and I manually copy over all of my data files and take the disk home for safekeeping (never leave your backup in the same spot as your computer, or one environmental disaster can wipe out everything at once!) After this experience though, I’m going to invest in something easier and more practical, so I’ll be more likely to do it on a daily basis.

#2. USE ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE. This is another must, but it’s surprising how many people don’t have an up to date virus scanner on their computer. I use McAfee and it automaticallysearches for updates whenever I connect to the internet. Whatever brand you use, make sure it is regularly updated. Norton is also good, and there are even some free antivirus programs out there if you know where to look.

#3. USE A PERSONAL FIREWALL. With more and more worms and viruses and hackers out there every day, it only makes sense to maintain control over the traffic that goes into and out of your computer. Remember the MSBlaster worm? I didn’t get it, but my parents did—and it was my firewall that stopped it. I use Kerio Personal Edition, a free download from Kerio.

Another tip is to disconnect your computer from the Internet unless you are actually using it for email, downloads, surfing, etc. I leave my computer connected all day at work, but disconnect it from the Internet when I go home for the day.

#4. KEEP YOUR SOFTWARE ORGANIZED. I had to format my hard drive and start completely from scratch. Having all of my software CDs in one place, knowing the proper URLs for download, and having a record of all of my license codes made this entire process much less painful than it could have been. At least I got Windows XP reinstalled, along with all of my must-have software applications, relatively quickly and easily.

I hope that if you aren’t doing these things, you’ll start today. As we become more and more reliant upon computers, we need to take more precautions to protect our data. I don’t hold myself out to be a security expert or a computer guru, but I’m offering these tips as good common sense ideas to hopefully prevent computer meltdowns (due to viruses and such) and make recovering from computer “disasters” as easy as possible (with good backups).

All content copyright 2001 - 2007 PocketGoddess.com
XHTML | CSS | RSS | 508