Housekeeping Your PC. for XP

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Housekeeping Your PC

University of Sussex IT Services

Housekeeping Your PC

for

XP

Course documentation

Material at:sussex.ac.uk/its/training/material/housekeeping

University of Sussex Updated: June 2011

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Summary of Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Your PC

Introduction

A computer, like a car, needs regular maintenance. It is possible to do nothing and let your computer slowly come to a grinding halt, either by virus attack or neglect. This document is intended to provide a few suggestions on how to improve security and performance of your PC at home. It assumes that you are using Microsoft Windows XP and have an Internet connection supplied by an ISP (Internet Service Provider).

Summary of Good Housekeeping

This following table summarises the tasks to be completed and gives a guide to the frequency of each task.

Task How

Often How to do it!

1. Keep virus checking

software up to date Daily/ Weekly Update your virus definitions. Done automatically or by manual updates 2. Use Disk Cleanup Weekly/

Monthly See Disk Cleanup section in this guide

3. Backup Weekly/

Monthly Back up to CD/Zip or other

4. Defrag 3 to 6

Monthly Use disk defragmenter 5. Delete unwanted

Files Monthly Manually search through your hard disk to ensure that files no longer used are deleted. 6. Empty the Recycle

Bin Monthly Be sure to empty the Recycle Bin

7. Scandisk/ Chkdsk Monthly Use Scandisk

8. Windows and Microsoft Office Update

Automatic Go to:

windowsupdate.microsoft.com

9. Use Anti-Spy ware Monthly Update spyware definitions and run a deep

scan (thorough) check.

10. Check MSE

(Microsoft Security Essentials)

Annually Check for new versions of software as released by IT Services

11. Check Anti-Spy ware Annually Check for new versions of software as released by vendor

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Where to back up your files Housekeeping Your PC

Page 2 University of Sussex IT Services

First Things First - Backing up your Data

Before starting any updates of your OS system (Windows) you should backup any important files (CVs, reports, essays, and dissertations).

Where to back up your files

The following are some storage devices and locations to consider.

• External hard drive • CD

• DVD

• USB flash drive

• Online backup and storage service

How to back up your files

A good step-by-step guide for backing up files in XP is:

microsoft.com/uk/athome/security/update/howbackup.mspx For more information also see:

sussex.ac.uk/its/help/guide?id=50 sussex.ac.uk/its/help/guide?id=51

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Housekeeping Your PC Security

Security

Setting up Safe Passwords

Passwords add a level of security to your computer. When sharing a computer with others, your customized settings, computer programs and system resources are more secure when you assign a password to your user account. Some passwords are better than others. A password that is easy to guess or break into is described as WEAK. You can help to protect your information by choosing a STRONG password. Strong passwords are described in:

microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/passwords-create.aspx

Setting your password

• Click Start > Control Panel • Select User Accounts • Click on your username • Click Create a password • Type the new password

• Type the new password in again to confirm

• Type some descriptive or meaningful text to use as a password hint to help

you remember your password

• Click Create Password

Add a new user to your computer

If more than one person is using your computer, then you should create separate user accounts for each person.

• Click Start > Control Panel • Select User Accounts

• Select Create a new account

• Type a name for the new user account • Click Next

• Click either Computer administrator or Limited, depending on the type of

account you want to assign to the new user

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Versions of Windows and Office Housekeeping Your PC

Versions of Windows and Office

To find out which version of windows your have:

Click Start and choose Run

Type winver in the box, and click OK

A box will pop up showing you the version of Windows and which service packs you have installed

The box below was taken from a machine running Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2.

To find out which version of Office you have:

It is useful to know which version of Office (Word, Excel etc) you have installed when discussing problems or looking for relevant information.

In Word 2007:

Start Word

Click the Microsoft Office Button then click Word Options at the bottom of the window

Click Resources, and then click About In Word 2003:

Start Word

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Dealing with Viruses and Other Nasties

This section briefly describes computer viruses and how to protect your computer by using Anti-Virus software.

What is a computer virus?

A computer virus is a program that has been written with a malicious or mischievous intent. This is called a virus because it will usually include some mechanism to copy itself to other computers and therefore spreads in a similar way to a biological infection.

A combination of anti-virus software and regular updating of Windows and Office will help to protect your computer.

Anti-Virus software has to contend with new types of virus appearing daily. So it is important to regularly update your anti-virus software definition list (not the software itself but the list of all viruses). Anti-Virus software on IT Services computers has been configured to update its definitions list daily.

Installing MSE Anti-Virus Software (FREE)

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is the free antivirus software that we recommend for home users.

Before installing any Anti-Virus software please ensure that you do not have any Anti-Virus software already installed. Running two Anti-Virus packages could cause your PC to become unstable but there are special removal tools that you can use to delete Anti-Virus software that you no longer need.

To remove Anti-Virus software, see the section on “Removing Unused Software”. We recommend that you disconnect your computer from the Internet before uninstalling one antivirus software product and installing another. This is because your computer will not be protected while this is being done.

You can get a copy of MSE Anti-Virus software, and step-by-step installation instructions, from the Microsoft Website at:

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Dealing with Spyware Housekeeping Your PC

Dealing with Spyware

Several other types of malicious programs are not detected by anti-virus software; these are known as malware or spyware. These have become common on the Internet and many computers have become infected with them. These programs can compromise your privacy and cause your computer to run slowly.

Malwarebytesand SpyBot are two tools that can help you to get rid of spyware. Free versions are available for personal use, see:

sussex.ac.uk/its/services/programsandsoftware/software/owncomputer Notes:

To install Malwarebytes click on the link to download the free software, select Save, then when the download is complete run the software to install Malwarebytes on your PC. You are recommended to run this program regularly to check your PC for

spyware.

When installing Spybot, you don’t need to donate, just click the download button for the free version. There are several download sites that you can select. Select the site, select Save, then when the download is complete run the software to install Spybot on your PC. You are recommended to run this program regularly to check your PC for spyware.

Configure Windows file names

Windows often hides the full names of files. This can make it more difficult to spot files that might be unusual or harmful. You can make a simple change to see the full file names in Windows XP:

• Double-click My Computer

• Click the Tools Menu item and then select Folder Options • Click the View tab

• Scroll down to the line "Hide file Extensions for known file types" and

uncheck the box next to it

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Installing Windows and Office Updates

When Microsoft becomes aware of problems, especially security concerns, they release updates (also called patches) to fix them. If you install Windows updates regularly, you will avoid many potential problems.

If you haven’t installed updates before, they will take several hours to download. You can decrease the amount of time necessary by installing the latest service pack from CD first. We strongly recommend that you install Service Pack 3 (XP sp3) which has many security enhancements. If you haven’t got XP sp3 on your computer, you can borrow a copy of the CD from the enquiries desk in IT Services.

Once you have installed the latest service pack, you must visit the Microsoft Update Site at:

update.microsoft.com

To get the updates that have been released since the service pack was issued. Details of how to find out which version of Windows and which service pack you have currently installed can be found in this booklet or from the Online Help Desk, FAQ at:

sussex.ac.uk/its/helpdesk/faq.php?faqid=1135

Setting up to automatically download future updates

Once you have caught up with current critical Windows updates, you'll need to install any new ones that come out. You can do this manually, or you can set up your

computer so that it happens automatically. Your computer will check for updates, download them, install them at a time specified by you, and reboot all on its own. If your computer is turned off at your selected installation time, it will perform the installation the next time it is powered on. To set up the automatic updates, follow the instructions at:

microsoft.com/windows/downloads/windowsupdate/learn/windowsxp.mspx

More about Office and Windows XP

You can find more information about Office and Windows XP at the following URLs: windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/windows-xp

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Reading Email at home Housekeeping Your PC

Reading Email at home

For general information about your Sussex email account, see:

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/services/programsandsoftware/emailandcalendar

Student email

All Sussex students are allocated 1GB of storage space. The Sussex student email system allows emails of up to 50MB in size to be sent or received.

You can use webmail (roundcube) to read your email from home, by going to: webmail.sussex.ac.uk/

For information about using webmail, go to: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/guide?id=1

Staff and research Postgraduate email

The Outlook Web App (OWA) is a very good way of using your email. There’s nothing to install or configure and you can simply login with almost any web browser including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome.

All staff and research postgraduates are entitled to a calendar stored centrally on the University's system which can be accessed from anywhere using OWA.

To use OWA:

Go to exchange.sussex.ac.uk/owa

• Enter your normal username (e.g. ano23)

in the Domain\user name box

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Housekeeping Your PC Performance

Performance

You should periodically store (archive or backup) or throw out documents and files just as you would with a paper based filing system. Your computer will then run more smoothly.

Disk Cleanup

The disk cleanup program attempts to consolidate the removal of all unused and temporary files. This is useful but you should also make regular checks yourself, even if only to familiarise yourself with the structure of the file system on your hard disk (the C drive). To delete the files manually see the information on the next page.

• From the Start button select programs • Trace through Accessories and then to

system tools.

• Here you will find the Disk Cleanup option and the Disk Defragmenter

• Select Disk Cleanup

A dialogue will open asking for the Drive (disk) you wish to clean up.

• Select Drive C: • Click OK

A dialogue box will open offering several tick boxes.

• Each tick box can be selected to indicate the areas of the disk you wish to delete unused files from.

• Tick the boxes next to:

Temporary Internet Files Temporary files

Recycle bin.

A tick box indicates that the files will be removed. • If you are unsure about what the files are,

select the item of interest (so it is highlighted) and click

This will show the files to be removed. If you are in any doubt do not delete them.

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Deleting Temporary Internet Files Housekeeping Your PC

Deleting Temporary Internet Files

When you browse web pages, Internet Explorer automatically saves a lot of the information into a temporary folder. This helps to speed up web browsing but the temporary files take up space on your computer. You should regularly remove temporary internet files from Internet Explorer:

• Start Internet Explorer

• From the Tools menu, choose Internet Options • Under the General tab, click the Delete button

• Now you can delete you temporary internet files, cookies,

history, form data and passwords that have been saved by Internet explorer

• Click OK

Finding and Deleting Temporary (TMP) files

Temporary files have the suffix *.tmp. They are created temporarily by Windows programs and Utilities, such as Word and are normally deleted when the program is closed down.

Temporary files should be automatically stored in a TEMP directory. However, it’s possible with Windows XP that a number of TEMPorary locations have been set-up for each user.

You can use Windows Explorer to locate the tmp files on your PC.

• From the Start button, select Search

• From the sub menu select All files and folders • Type *.tmp into All or part of the file name • Select Local Hard Drives (C:) from Look in: • Click Search

• After a time you will see a list of many files and

folders which contain the characters .tmp

• If the files are in your C:\temp folder and are more

than a week old, you can delete the file

• Select each file individually and press the

<<delete>> key

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Housekeeping Your PC Performance

Emptying the Recycle Bin

When you delete files, they end up in your Recycle Bin, to remove them completely:

• Double click the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop

• Check that all files in the Recycle bin are either backed-up or no

longer required

• From the file menu, select Empty Recycle Bin

Disk Defragmenter

Files on a disk can become fragmented. This means that files are can be stored in two or more chunks on different parts of your disk, which can slow down your system, as it takes longer to read and write files that aren’t stored neatly in one place.

Defrag is a utility that squashes all your files together neatly. Using Disk Defragmenter can speed up access time to your hard disk.

• From the Start select All Programs > Accessories > System Tools

• Select Disk Defragmenter • Select the drive you want to

defragment (Drive C) • Click

• This will show how fragmented your hard disk is.

• If you hard disk requires defragmenting click

• This can take a long time (hours) so don’t start it unless you have time to spare!

Checking the Hard Disk for Errors

Errors can appear on your hard disk and may affect performance. You can use the “check disk” tool to identify and possibly remove disk errors.

• Double click the My Computer icon • Select the local disk you want to check (C) • On the File menu, click Properties

• Click the Tools tab

• Under Error-checking, click Check Now

• Under Check disk options, select the Scan for and attempt

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Removing Unused Software Housekeeping Your PC

Removing Unused Software

If you share your computer with other people or often install software to try-out, then you will find that your hard disk (however large) may become full. Computer games are particularly large, often requiring in excess of a Gigabyte of space. Consider regularly looking at the software you have installed and deciding if it is still required.

• From the Start Menu,

select the Control Panel

• Select Add/Remove

Programs

• Wait until you list of

installs programs appears

• Select the program you

want to remove and click the Change/Remove

button.

• Wait for the program to be removed and follow any on-screen

instructions

You may receive a message that parts of the software (file or folders) could not be removed. This may be files that you have created yourself and were not installed by the software (installer). In the case of computer Games this will be ‘game saves’ i.e. information relating to your current status within a game. You may wish to back-up these files or remove them manually using Windows Explorer.

Manually Deleting a File or Folder

It is useful to be able to find files or folders on your computer to delete them manually. This is how to delete using Windows Explorer:

• Start Windows Explorer • Select the C: drive

• In the right hand pane, double click the Program Files folder

You may be warned that the Program Files folder is protected and you may need to click a link to confirm that you wish to view the contents of the folder.

• Select the file or folder you want to delete and press the <<Delete>> key on your keyboard

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Housekeeping Your PC Finding out more

Finding out more

There is lots of information on the ITS web pages: sussex.ac.uk/its/help

There are plenty of web pages offering information about “using and maintaining your computer”; here is a sample:

Security Advice

microsoft.com/security/default.aspx Performance Advice

microsoft.com/atwork/getstarted/speed.mspx For Windows XP

microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/default.mspx Performance options in Windows XP

Housekeeping Your PC. for XP