Weekly System Maintenance
- a tip from me to youAnother week passes and it's time again
for weekly maintenance. I really have to put extra time in to keep this
old WindowsME system from self-destruction. Here's what I did this
morning.
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website
1. Booted to floppy and
ran Scandisk.
2. While still in DOS ran delindex.bat to remove IE cache and temp files. (Win9x only)
3. Boot to Windows, ran RegSeeker to clean registry out.
4. Updated and ran Adaware.
5. Updated and ran Spybot S&D.
6. Updated and ran A2 looking for trojans, keyloggers, and dialers.
7. Updated and ran AVG 7 Free antivirus.
8. Opened up WinPatrol and peeked at the following to make sure nothing new popped in.
a. Startup Programs
b. IE Helpers
c. Scheduled Tasks
d. Cookies (now emptied because of delindex)
e. Hosts file checking for new entries I didn't put there.
9. Kill all running processes except Systray and Explorer then run Diskeeper Lite to defrag the hard drive. (for Win9x mostly)
2. While still in DOS ran delindex.bat to remove IE cache and temp files. (Win9x only)
3. Boot to Windows, ran RegSeeker to clean registry out.
4. Updated and ran Adaware.
5. Updated and ran Spybot S&D.
6. Updated and ran A2 looking for trojans, keyloggers, and dialers.
7. Updated and ran AVG 7 Free antivirus.
8. Opened up WinPatrol and peeked at the following to make sure nothing new popped in.
a. Startup Programs
b. IE Helpers
c. Scheduled Tasks
d. Cookies (now emptied because of delindex)
e. Hosts file checking for new entries I didn't put there.
9. Kill all running processes except Systray and Explorer then run Diskeeper Lite to defrag the hard drive. (for Win9x mostly)
10. Run BigFix to
check on my system security for updates.
11. Go to Windows
Update and check on updates for Internet Explorer and Outlook
Express
Done! But it took about 3 hours altogether. Nothing detected, No problems.
After I did all that, I rebooted and the system seemed a little snappier.
That could be my imagination, but I feel safer now knowing nothing sneaked in this week.
Bad stuff sometimes still get's into my PC because I am it's worst enemy.
I download and run software by the dozens and sometimes I get burned.
I use Opera internet browser as my default for surfing the internet in general.
It doesn't have any Active-X in it to help the spyware get in.
I still use Internet Explorer at certain websites like MSN Groups where I feel safe.
I test both browsers at Scanit.be to make sure their security is up to date.
Done! But it took about 3 hours altogether. Nothing detected, No problems.
After I did all that, I rebooted and the system seemed a little snappier.
That could be my imagination, but I feel safer now knowing nothing sneaked in this week.
Bad stuff sometimes still get's into my PC because I am it's worst enemy.
I download and run software by the dozens and sometimes I get burned.
I use Opera internet browser as my default for surfing the internet in general.
It doesn't have any Active-X in it to help the spyware get in.
I still use Internet Explorer at certain websites like MSN Groups where I feel safe.
I test both browsers at Scanit.be to make sure their security is up to date.
I use WinPatrol
as Intrusion
Detection so that I get notified when some program tries
to change my system settings.
I also have a NAT router as a firewall.
I use a good software firewall in addition, like ZoneAlarm free.
I use an old copy of ZA because I don't want to take the additional system load on.
That's all for now - you can try all these at home - I recommend it ...
Everyone, have a good day.
I also have a NAT router as a firewall.
I use a good software firewall in addition, like ZoneAlarm free.
I use an old copy of ZA because I don't want to take the additional system load on.
That's all for now - you can try all these at home - I recommend it ...
Everyone, have a good day.