Prevention is better than cure

I am afraid that it is a truism that no matter how hard you try or how scrupulous you are in looking after your computer or laptop, some virus, worm,  trojan horse, malware or spyware will inevitably find their way on to your hard drive.

Joan Rivers famously described my attitude to PC maintenance when she said, "I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes, and six months later you have to start all over again."

Odious as PC housekeeping can be, get into the disk-maintenance habit: make backups, defrag your hard disks, and check them for errors. Fortunately, you can use XP's Scheduled Tasks utility (Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks) to automate or partially automate these chores

There are simple and effective ways to protect your machine and this starts with ensuring you have an anti virus program installed and running.  Whether it be a paid for version like Norton or a free downloaded one like Avast, the important thing is to ensure you have it running and use the scanning facility every month or so or if it seems your machine is not running quite right.  I will give you a few for instances at the end of this article.

Likewise always have installed an antispyware program and an anti malware program, again these come with paid for anti virus packages or if you want to save money then the free downloadable ones are just as good and in my experience even better than the paid for variety.  Superantispyware and Lavasoft ad-aware rate as good freebies.

Finally ensure the windows built in firewall is turned on and the windows updates is set to download automatically.  All these can be checked by clicking on control panel then security centre.  Ensure that they are all switched on before going on the internet, windows will tell you if any of them are not switched on by way of a small red shield which appears on the right hand side of the tool bar at the bottom of the desktop.

So on a monthly basis or thereabouts, here is my list of housekeeping tasks to keep your machine free of unwanted nasties.  First if you have windows xp, check and see if the hard disc needs defragmenting, go to programs, accessories, system tools and defragment, click analyse and follow the instructions.  If you do not do this regularly, particularly if you are regularly installing and reinstalling programs then you will notice a slowing up of the machine.

Windows vista users have an automatic defragmentation process built in to the operating system.

Also in order to clear space on the hard drive to get rid of temporary files, go into programs, accessories, disc cleanup and again click analyse and follow the instructions.

Computers are extremely complex devices and on the whole are very reliable.  It is invariably a software problem rather than a hardware problem that makes them misbehave.  failure of the computers power supply is probably in my experience the most common problem, literally nothing happens when you switch the computer on and this will require a return to manufacturer if under guarantee, it happened to my 2 month old machine but was fixed under warranty, or if no guarantee then a computer repair shop.

So what kind of thing will you notice if you have a virus, worm, keylogger et al.  Well you may notice pop up adverts appearing unrequested when you are on the internet that have no connection with what you were looking at.  The machine perceptively slows down or internet access is not possible.  Your home page is changed without you requesting it or certain programs cannot be accessed including the anti virus programs.  The machine crashes or you get the bluescreen of death as it is comically referred to.  The machine will not load windows or can only be loaded in safe mode.  This is not a definitive list, merely a small selection of what I have experienced personally and with friends and neighbours machines over the years.  No virus can physically hurt your machine, it can do a lot of damage to the operating system; it can steal your bank details or passwords, but if you are aware of these dangers and are sensible about what sites you visit and what you download you will be as safe as you can be.  Check carefully emails sent with attachments and if you do have a problem that persists, always refer to the manufacturers  handbook, if under guarantee contact the shop or manufacturer or if you live in the Mayenne or surrounding  area, send for me