Software

Keeping Your Windows PC Clean – Part 2: Malware and You

January 1, 2008 by Devindra 1 Comment

This is the second post in my “Keeping Your Windows PC Clean” series. If you haven’t yet, check out my first post on using Windows Update.

Virii Plush Dolls
Picture from Paul Holloway @ Flickr

I realize now that the first post may not have been one of the most exciting topics, but when talking about the more advanced elements of Windows troubleshooting I believe it’s important to have your basics covered. Today we’ll be moving on to the most common issues Windows users face: Malware.

What is Malware?

Malware is an umbrella term that includes such computing staples as viruses, trojans, and spyware. In terms of risk prevention, it’s best to keep all of the different sorts of malicious software in mind. Simply put, there’s more to worry about than spyware and viruses. You can read an exhaustively complete explanation of all the different types of malware at Wikipedia.

Here are a few steps you can take to hopefully prevent getting malware in the first place:

Pay Attention to What You’re Installing

Once you get used to installing Windows programs, the installation process tends to feel the same after a while. It’s often tempting to simply click Next until the installation is finished, blithely ignoring the options presented to you. While it may speed up the installation process, this also opens you up to unwittingly installing malware on your computer.

The solution to this is to simply pay attention and read everything you see during installation. While an antispyware program will save you if you install junk on your computer, it’s always better to avoid putting it there in the first place. Pay attention and you’ll notice far more software trying to sneak onto your system than you previously thought. Also, choose the “custom” installation option if possible to see exactly what the software is putting on your system.

Some examples of malware include the software that tries to sneak into your system when you install the Weatherbug application (just stay away from that entirely), and the variety of junk you’re presented with when installing RealPlayer.

Take note: This isn’t just good practice for preventing malware, it also prevents tons of legitimate software which I find wholly unnecessary. These sorts of things won’t actively harm your computer, but pile enough of them on and you’re bound to notice a performance decrease. Some examples of this includes the auto-updating features of Quicktime and the Google Applications, as well as anything that masquerades as a “helper application” in your system tray.

Be Wary When Using Downloaded Files

Semi-related to the topic above, you should also pay attention to the files you download from the web and P2P applications. If possible, make sure the files you’re downloading are “clean” (checking comments usually helps with this, if they’re available), and don’t contain any strange executables. Things to look out for include random .exe and .dat files when you only expected to find music.

If you have antivirus software (which will be covered soon in this series), you can scan the files you download to make sure they’re not harboring malware. This is a last resort method of course, and the best course of action is not to download anything from sketchy pirate sites at all.

Use Firefox and Internet Explorer 7

Anecdotally, I would guesstimate that around 80% of malware that the average user installs comes from Internet Explorer 6. It’s no big secret that IE6 was one of the biggest security holes in Windows XP. This had to do mainly because of the way IE6 was integrated into XP. The tight integration was seemingly a good idea to Microsoft for development reasons, but in reality it opened up some gaping security holes.

After Service Pack 2 for XP was released, IE became a bit more bearable with a few security upgrades. Then came Internet Explorer 7 which offered greatly improved security (especially for Vista users), but unfortunately still couldn’t compare much to Firefox.

My advice for this section boils down to this: Use the latest version of Firefox for your primary web browsing, but also make sure to have Internet Explorer 7 installed because you need to have some version of IE installed. You might as well have the most secure version. (Of course if you followed my advice from the first column, you’d already be covered.)

Coming Up Next Time

The next article in this series will cover what you need to do to remove malware from your system. I didn’t include it in this one because it’s honestly a very different topic, and if you followed my advice in this section to heart you may never actually need to remove any malware 😉

Also, I realize that everyone has their own theories when it comes to computer maintenance, so I welcome you to offer your suggestions for avoiding malware in the comments.

Keeping Your Windows PC Clean – Part 1: Using Windows Update

December 13, 2007 by Devindra 1 Comment

Windows Vista Logo Working in tech support, I constantly run into a wide variety of users who seem to know very little about taking care of their Windows computers. This isn’t necessarily their fault, since most people simply don’t have the time or patience to dig beyond the surface-level workings of their computers. Ideally, users shouldn’t have to worry about the way their computer works, but that sort of blissful utopia is still several years away in my opinion.

Luckily for the uneducated Windows users out there, it’s actually much easier to take care of their computers than they think. This series of posts will offer simple and free ways for even the greenest users to maintain their computers. Let’s start with something basic:

Keeping your computer up to date with Windows Update

Despite Microsoft’s penchant for buggy operating systems, in truth they do a good job of keeping both Windows XP and Vista up to date. Of course, to take advantage of these updates you need to make sure you’re actually downloading and installing them. You can do this manually from Windows XP by going to WindowsUpdate.com in Internet Explorer (not Firefox), or in Vista by navigating to Start Menu > Control panel > Windows Update.

Check for updates by clicking the appropriate buttons or links in XP/Vista, and then simply proceed through the installation process. If you’re an XP user who hasn’t updated in a while, you may be asked to go through some extra updates before you’re allowed to install actual Windows Updates.

You can also configure both Windows XP and Vista to download and install your updates automatically. Personally, I recommend just enabling the option to download updates but not install them automatically. When Windows installs your updates automatically it also reboots your computer once it’s done, and this could pose a problem if you accidentally leave an unsaved document open. You’ll end up losing all of the unsaved data.

To enable automatic downloading in Windows XP, navigate to Start > Control Panel > Automatic Updates. Choose the option to “Download Updates for me, but let me choose when to install them”, and click OK.

To enable it in Windows Vista, navigate to Start > Control Panel > Windows Update and select the Change Settings option on the left side of the window. Choose “Download Updates for me, but let me choose when to install them”, check off the two check boxes at the bottom of the screen, and click OK.

Once automatic downloading is enabled, you will receive notices in your system tray telling you when you have updates to install. You can either install them by clicking on the relevant icon, or, my personal favorite, choose to “Shut Down and install updates” when you click Start > Shutdown.

You’d be surprised at the sort of performance improvements that you get from making sure your computer is up to date, not to mention the numerous security benefits, so it’s always a good idea to make sure you’re doing so.

Coming to Terms with Windows Vista

November 17, 2007 by Devindra 2 Comments

It’s been almost a year since Windows Vista launched, and I think it’s about time to take a step back and look at its current situation. We have Vista Service Pack 1 on the horizon, and there’s been a sufficient amount of discussion around all of Vista’s quirks.

Why do we need to come to terms with Vista at all? While it would be a thoroughly easy suggestion for us all to go back to Windows XP, that honestly isn’t practical advice for the majority of users out there. Those who’ve bought new computers since the beginning of the year have had it forced upon them, and others will soon be using it at school and work. No matter how you feel about Vista, it is an inevitable upgrade for Windows users.

So as a Vista user, voluntary or otherwise, what exactly is there to like about it? Let’s face it, the response to Vista hasn’t been all that positive. While I don’t necessarily disagree with all of the criticism, I also think Vista does grow on you due to a few great usability and work flow improvements. Here are a few things I continue to like about Windows Vista despite its many flaws:

The Start Menu

The new start menu is a vast improvement over Windows XP’s. If you’re not using the Start menu search, then you’re missing out on one of Vista’s best features. The best way to invoke this is to simply hit the Windows key on your keyboard, and then immediately start typing. If you don’t have a Windows key, just click the Start menu and begin typing. By default it searches your personal files, internet history, and your All Programs folder. This can be tweaked to speed up search results by right-clicking on the Start menu, choosing Properties, and then clicking the Customize button under the Start Menu tab.

Human Readable Options

In Windows past, configuring the operating system was to average users a skill akin to magic. The problem was multifold: options were generally confusing, overabundant, or both. It was the sort of unfriendly user experience that insured people like myself always had a paycheck. Vista makes significant strides towards remedying those esoteric options and making them clear to users from all skill levels.

For example, when you visit the Control Panel in Vista, you’re greeted with a selection of nine functional categories. By digging deeper into them, you discover even more functionality that logically follows from the parent category. I should also mention that all of the categories in the Control Panel also feature descriptive shortcuts to commonly used functions. Techies may despise this as a “dumbing down” of Windows, but I honestly can’t deny the value this move has for typical Windows users. Those who prefer the old Control Panel format can simply choose the “Classic View” option to revel in its familiar anarchy.

The Shiny

Vista is unequivocally a good looking operating system. While it may lack the polish of Mac OSX and some modern Linux distributions, it’s a vast improvement over Windows XP. Part of this definitely has to do with Vista’s new Aero interface, which takes advantage of 3D hardware in your system to render transparent Windows and other graphical niceties, but it certainly shouldn’t receive all the credit. After all, Aero’s main function, the pretty but useless Flip 3D feature, still pales in comparison to Expose in OSX.

Rather, much of the joy in using Vista stems from seemingly minor additions. Everything from the new screen friendly system fonts, to the themes, color schemes, and icons, all work together to create the best Windows user experience yet. Even the included wallpapers show a commitment to a higher quality user experience by Microsoft.

The Shape of Things to Come

We all know Vista isn’t perfect, but hopefully as I’ve shown there are at least a few things to like about it. As with pretty much every Microsoft product, it will certainly get better over time. We have Service Pack 1 to look forward to early next year, and I anticipate that we’ll begin to see more significant upgrades throughout 2008. There are a slew of promised features that Microsoft had to drop from Vista to release on time, and as those get plugged back in I believe Vista will shape up significantly.

Update

I guess with the Vista SP1 Release Candidate out, this article has been seeing a bit of Digg traffic. With that in mind, I think it’s worth mentioning a few other benefits of Vista that I’ve come across:

Improved Windows Update

Windows Update is now an actual application in Vista, rather than a website that you have to visit. In fact, if you try to visit WindowsUpdate.com in Vista, you get redirected to the application instead. I’ve found that because it’s an application, Vista’s Windows Update performs much faster than any previous version of Windows. I’ve also noticed that it does a much better job than XP ever did of finding drivers updated or missing drivers.

Introducing the Resource Monitor

Vista finally adds built-in functionality to monitor your system performance. The resource monitor allows you to track an obscene level of information on the CPU, memory, hard drive, and network performance of your system. While this functionality has existed in third party applications for some time, there’s always a benefit to having it built-in. It’s great for supporting other people’s computers, for example. Also, it’s one of the best examples in Vista that shows Microsoft isn’t necessarily “dumbing down” the OS. This program is a power user’s dream!