The following is an excerpt from "Let’s just collapse that bridge when we come to it".

"Software is incredibly complex, much more complicated than most people realize. Millions of lines of code interact with each other thousands of times per second, all of it running on systems whose configurations can be –and usually are—wildly different from one another. As much as the science of software development has evolved and as sophisticated as testing and development tools have become, it is not yet possible to flat-out guarantee that any given piece of software will do the job for which it was designed.

We wish it were possible, of course. In fact, we’d really like our computing experience to mirror our driving experience. Modern automobiles are straightforward devices, at least from the operator’s perspective: You get in, you turn the key, the car starts up, and off you go. (Well, usually. If you drive a ’69 Bronco, as I do, things get iffy.) You don’t need to be a mechanic to drive a car; few people know what’s going on under the hood because few people need to know. After all, your car doesn’t suddenly stop for no discernible reason. (Again, 35-year-old broncos excepted.) It doesn’t (yet) need to be protected against virus-writing miscreants. Above all, you don’t have to keep getting updates so that your car will run, just because someone repaved a road or built a new highway".

Publication Editor, Smart Computing
http://www.smartcomputing.com/

Reprinted with permission from Smart Computing.
October 2004 Vol. 15 Iss. 10

The point is, to keep your computer running smoothly and more secure, it's extremely important to perform regular updates for your operating system. To read the complete article referenced above, you can also click here.

I would like to extend my appreciation to the editor of the article above for allowing me to use it, and my sincerest condolences to him upon the loss of his daughter.

Along with running regularly updated anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall programs, performing regular maintenance on your computer can help keep it running quickly and efficiently. Every time you use your computer to perform routine tasks, it keeps back up copies of just about everything you do. Over time, build up from temporary and internet files, recently accessed programs and many other trails from numerous programs begin to slow down your computer and take up valuable space on your hard drive. Cleaning your computer regularly can greatly improve your system performance.

Several people have repeatedly requested information on how to perform basic maintenance on their computers, or where to find different utilities in Windows XP. Listed below in very simple terms is some information to help find and use those utilities as well as a few basic tips.

All the utilities below are included with Windows XP (both Home and Pro) and should be performed at least once month unless otherwise noted. Most of these tasks can be automated if you prefer. You should regularly update your windows as well.

Important: You will need to log into your computer with administrator privileges.

The Disk Cleanup Utility will help remove useless files that windows no longer needs, compress files that aren’t used frequently and free up space on your hard drive. Disk Cleanup does not affect your data or program files, only specific types of files and files it no longer needs.

The Scan Disk utility from previous versions of Windows has been replaced by the Check Disk (chkdsk) utility It’s used to check for file system errors and bad sectors on your hard disk. Check Disk can correct some problems automatically or you can set it to report errors, so you can decide how to fix them.

The Disk Defragment Utility organizes noncontiguous files into contiguous files and optimizes their placement on the hard drive for better reliability and performance. As files are created, deleted and modified they become fragmented, or scattered across various sectors of your hard drive. The more scattered they become, the longer it takes for your drive to read them.

Running these utilities mentioned above monthly, or on a routine basis can help keep your computer running quickly and effectively. Directions and help with finding and running them are below.

Tips for using system restore, deleting temporary internet files and cookies, and correcting the .net automatic framework log in screen are listed below. Click the link you’d like or scroll down to find them.

Disk Cleanup Utility
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You can run the disk cleanup utility in one of three ways:

Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup,

Click Start > Run > in the run dialog box type cleanmgr > click OK, or

In Windows Explorer or My Computer, right-click the disk drive you want to clean up, click Properties, click the General tab, and click Disk Cleanup.

Click ‘OK’ and Disk Cleanup will analyze the selected drive to determine the files that can be safely removed and the amount of space that can be freed. The analysis can take a long time depending on the size and contents of your hard drive and how often you perform it.

You can go ahead and automatically clean the drive, or you can review categories of files to be deleted. You’ll need to physically select (click to put a check mark in the box) the categories you want cleaned. Clicking on any of the categories brings up information for files in that category.

If you're not sure you want to delete the files in a category from the description, you can use the ‘View Files’ button where applicable to see a list of files that will be deleted in Windows Explorer. If you don’t want to delete a particular file, you can drag and drop the file to your desktop or another safe location. If you don’t want to remove any of the files remove the check mark from the box if it’s checked.

Once you’re satisfied that you want to remove the files, click the ‘OK’ button and Disk Cleanup will delete the files.

The More Options Tab

The more options tab gives you three more ways to easily remove files and free space. You can perform the same three functions elsewhere in windows, but this presents it to you in one place.

Windows Components – launches the Windows Component Wizard. You can select Windows components to be removed.

Installed Programs – opens the Add/Remove Programs applet (also in your Control Panel applet) to allow you to individually uninstall programs.

System Restore – opens a dialog box allowing you to remove all but the most recent restore point. Over time, these files can take up quite a bit of space on your hard drive. If you’re sure you don’t need them, remove them.

Windows XP Check Disk (Error-Checking utility)
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The Scan Disk utility from previous versions of Windows has been replaced by the Check Disk utility to check the integrity of your system. It’s used to check for file system errors and bad sectors on your hard disk. To access the Check Disk utility, follow these steps:

Double-Click My Computer (desktop icon), or Click Start > My Computer, and then Right-Click the local disk that you want to check.

Click Properties, and then click Tools.

Under Error-checking, click Check Now.

Under Check disk options, select the ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box’.

Click Start.

If your computer is in use you’ll receive a message asking if you want to perform the disk checking the next time you restart your computer. Select that option and when you restart your system disk checker will run.

Disk Defragmenter Utility
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The Disk Defragmenter Utility organizes noncontiguous files into contiguous files and optimizes their placement on the hard drive for better reliability and performance. As files are created, deleted and modified they become fragmented, or scattered across various sectors of your hard drive. The more scattered they become, the longer it takes for your drive to read them.

Before you perform this function, you should check to make sure you have no programs open and try to have nothing running (anti-virus, etc.) in the background if possible. Some programs interfere with this process and some don’t.

The easiest way to access the Disk Defragmenter utility (there are a few other ways to access the utility not listed here):

Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

This will open the Disk Defragmenter utility window.

Select (Click) the drive (C: is usually the primary drive) you want to defragment and Click ‘Analyze’.

Windows will analyze the drive to see if it needs to be defragmented. When it finishes analyzing the drive, you have the option to view a report with the results, perform the defragmentation or return to the main Disk Defragmenter window.

If you want to read the report, click the ‘view report’ button. If you want to defragment the drive click the ‘defragment’ button. Even if it says you don’t need to defragment the drive, and you feel you should, you have the option of performing it anyway.

Depending on how large your drive is, how often you defragment it and what programs you have running in the background, this function can take a few minutes to an hour or more. Once you’re finished defragmenting the drive, simply close the program. If for some reason you have to stop defragmenting before it finishes, it will not harm your computer and you won’t lose any data.

Deleting Temporary Internet Files
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Every time you use internet explorer to view web pages, your computer stores all the files in your temporary internet file folder (cache) to allow web pages to load faster when you return to the site. It doesn’t take long for thousands of files to accumulate. As more files accumulate, your computer becomes slower. These files can take up several megabytes of space in a very short time. I prefer to clean these files out on a daily basis.

There are a couple of ways to access the applet you need to delete these files:

Click Start > Control Panel > Double Click Internet Options, or

If Internet Explorer is open, on the menu bar (just below the title bar at the top of Internet Explorer), Click ‘Tools’ and on the Tools menu, Click ‘Internet Options’. The internet properties dialog box appears.

There are 7 tabs at the top of this box: General, Security, Privacy, Content, Connections, Programs and Advanced. Make sure the ‘General’ tab is selected (it usually is by default). You’ll see 3 (three) sections under the General tab: home page, temporary internet files and history.

For Internet Explorer 6.xx:

In the temporary internet files section, click the ‘delete files’ button. A Delete Files dialog box will appear asking if you want to delete all files in the temporary internet files, and telling you that you can also delete all your offline content stored locally with a little box to delete all offline content. Click the box next to ‘delete all offline content’ to select it (check mark) and click the ‘OK’ button.

Next to the ‘delete files’ button you’ll see a button that says ‘delete cookies’. Unless you log into a lot of sites requiring passwords, or have some other reason to want to save cookies, click that button too. That will delete all the cookies. If you want to view a list of all the temporary internet files and cookies, click the ‘settings’ button.

In the history section of the general tab, click the ‘clear history’ button to clear the history. You can change the number of days to keep pages in history box to whatever number you want.

System Restore
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System Restore allows you to roll back your computer to a time before certain events occurred in case mistakes were made. Note, that while it usually allows you to restore your computer to a previous state, there are circumstances where restoring your computer to a previous state won’t help. System Restore monitors your system for changes to your computer and some program files and automatically creates Restore Points. You can create your own restore points any time you want to. This function is turned on by default in Windows XP. There are occasions where you will want to turn this function off. System Restore in turned on by default.

One of the rare occasions you would turn this off is if your computer has been or is infected by a virus. You would want to purge the backups because it could be possible that a virus was backed up by the System Restore function. Your anti-virus scanner could detect the virus in the backup. Because Windows prevents the backups from being modified your anti-virus program would not be able to remove it. To purge your restore points you need to turn off System Restore and reboot your computer. When it reboots you can turn System Restore back on and create new restore points.

Turning off System Restore does not harm your computer or tamper with any other data you have. Only restore points created by System Restore would be removed.

To find out more about System Restore, click Start > Click Help and Support and do a search for System Restore and Understanding System Restore. Also see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sr/sr/using_system_restore.asp or http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_restore.htm for more help.

To turn off System Restore:

Click Start

Right-click My Computer (if the ‘My Computer’ icon is on your desktop, just right click on it instead of clicking the start button), and click Properties.

Click the System Restore tab.

Click (put a check mark in) the ‘Turn off System Restore’ or ‘Turn off System Restore on all drives’ check box

Click Apply.

The following message appears; ‘You have chosen to turn off System Restore. If you continue, all existing restore points will be deleted, and you will not be able to track or undo changes to your computer. Do you want to turn off System Restore?’

Click Yes

Click OK.

To turn System Restore back on:

Click Start.

Right-click My Computer (again, if the ‘My Computer’ icon is on your desktop, just right click on it instead of clicking the start button), and click Properties.

Click the System Restore tab.

Click (remove the check mark) the ‘Turn off System Restore’ or ‘Turn off System Restore on all drives’ check box.

Click Apply, and then click OK.

To manually create a restore point:

Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore

Click the ‘Create a Restore Point’ button on the first screen and Click ‘Next’. Type in a name you’ll remember and Click ‘Create’. The new restore point will be created with the name you gave it and the current date and time.

To roll back the computer to a previous Restore Point Click the ‘Restore my computer to an earlier time’ button and Click ‘Next’. A calendar will appear. Days in bold type are days that have Restore Points. Select a bolded day and Click ‘Next’. Windows will shut down and restart with settings from the highlighted day.

Automating login after installing the Microsoft® .NET Framework 1.1
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If you installed the .NET Framework 1.1 (without installing service pack 1), after you reboot your computer, you lost your automatic login and need to login manually. Service pack 1 for the .net framework corrects this problem. You can download it from Microsoft. It fixes the login issue as well as other issues.

If for some reason you don’t want to install the patch you can correct it this way:

Click Start > select Run > in the Run dialog box type “control userpasswords2” (without the quotes) > press Enter

The User Accounts dialog box appears. Remove (click to uncheck it) the checkmark in the box next to where it says ‘users must enter a user name and password to use this computer’ and click ‘Apply’. Please Note: you will need the user name and password for the account you want to use when the computer reboots.

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