On Jan 19, 11:28*pm, Higgs Boson wrote:
OK, here goes:
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition *Version 2002 *Service Pack 3
Computer Intel (R) *Pentium (R) 4 CPU 2.80 GHz
2.79 GHz * 750 MB of RAM
Ext HD *160 GB
I lost track of the pie chart that showed C drive HD usage, but it was
quite a bit *-- maybe 75% or more. *Wherethehell did I find that?!
OK, good. You're in pretty decent shape hardware-wise, and running
Windows XP is not such a bad thing! (My home PC runs on XP like a
champ, and has for 7 years.)
The pie chart you referred to can be found by going into "My Computer"
or hitting both the Windows key (looks like MS's logo) and E at the
same time. In the left hand pane of that window you found an icon
labeled "C:\" or something similar. Right-click on the icon and in the
menu that comes up choose "Properties". /Voila/, pie chart!
NOW Some q, which I also posted on alt.computer.workshop:
1. *Can I install Avast -- *the virus program people are recommending
-- w/o Uninstalling Hog Norton? * Or will they fight and mess me up
even worse?
As someone else said, you REALLY should uninstall Norton. These sorts
of protection suites are notoriously unfriendly towards each other,
and for good reason: they're both trying to do the same job at the
same time. Think of it like two armies trying to defend the same
territory at the same time, but there's no united commander to
coordinate it. There will be friendly fire and collateral damage.
3. *Should I use the Avast FREE PROGRAM or spring a few bux for the
paid one? *I don't mind paying if I get a lot more for my money.
The free version of Avast! should be just fine for most everything you
do. The paid version has a lot of extras that are nice but not
necessary if you take the more reasonable path of being careful on the
Internet. What do I mean?
- Never use your debit card when making purchases, only a credit card;
if there's fraud or a dispute,
you're out no money while you dispute it, but if you use a debit
card the bank can take their sweet
time giving you your money back.
- Ditch Outlook (Express) and either go with a good, solid web-based
email provider like Gmail, or
use a better email application like Thunderbird (http://
www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/),
made by the same folks who gave you Firefox.
- Do not post your email address on-line, like in places such as this
forum. 'Bots can harvest your
addy and use it to spam you.
- If you're really concerned about attacks against your computer, get
a router. A router, among other
things, is a type of hardware firewall. The Intartubes would only be
able to see past your modem
to the router, and would not be able to see or find your PC.
Some of this stuff duplicates what is offered by Windows, such as
Firewall.
Windows Firewall is a one-way firewall: it only protects against
things that are coming _at_ your computer. Avast's firewall is two-
way: not only will it protect you against incoming bad stuff, but it
also monitors outgoing traffic to make sure it's legit. The benefit of
this is if malware has secretly gotten onto your machine, Avast's
firewall will either stop it from getting out to connect with its
master, or it will alert you to the fact that something wicked is on
your system.
In theory, if you install Avast's firewall, Windows will not bug you
about its own firewall.
Can ANY Antispam really work?
No, in that it won't stop the amount of spam, but yes in that it can
automatically kill a lot of it, which will help reduce the amount of
spam you see.
Dunno anything about the Sandbox technology, which claims to "protect [me]
from dangerous websites. *Who decides what is "dangerous"?
Honestly, if you're running Firefox you have this capability built-in:
Go to Tools--Preferences. In the Preferences window, click on the
"Security" tab, and look for "Block reported attack sites" and "Block
reported web forgeries" and Firefox will access the same web-wide
database of known bad/evil websites that Norton, McAfee, Avast!, and
others use.
4. *Norton does AUTOMATIC BACKUPS AND FILE RECOVERY. *Those are
valuable programs which I would be sorry to lose, as I have always
been VERY stupid * about backup and have lost valuable files as a
result. *Does anyone have recommendation for *idiot-proof backup/file
recovery* that is not too fat?
This is something that can be done by Windows, and I would bet that's
what Norton does is activate and monitor the Windows built-in back-up
utility. To find out how to set this up yourself for worry-free back-
ups, read PC World's excellent article:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...n_too ls.html
(the first page of the article is all about how to create a space for
doing the back-up, which you already have on your external hard drive)
6. *What's the connection between HD *RAM and Virtual Memory?
OK, let's get some terms clarified: HD and RAM are two different
things. HD is your hard drive, RAM is the computer's working memory.
Think of your computer as an office: the hard drive is the file
cabinets and bookshelves in the office, and RAM is the size of the
desk. RAM is your work space, the HD is your storage space.
Now, imagine you're juggling a lot of projects in the office—too many
to fit on your desk at the same time. So you take some shelf space on
your bookcases and stick one or two of your projects on there to give
you enough space on the desk to work. As you switch between projects,
sometimes you have to pull a project off the shelf and move one from
the desk onto the shelf. That's what your computer does with virtual
memory. If your computer has too much stuff that won't fit on the desk
and you have WAY too much stuff stored on the bookshelves that you
don't have room to stick projects there temporarily, the computer gets
constipated.
That's what it sounds like is happening with your virtual memory
problem, which is why I recommended some _serious_ housecleaning to
free up some space on your hard drive—the bookshelves.
5. Even if I go through all the clean up and discard steps that one
of my honorable friends listed in such thoughtful detail, will that
free up enough from my
6 year-old, underpowered C Drive HD?
Maybe. My own storage drive is actually smaller than yours, and my
computer is also older. Part of that, I think, is that I'm a freak
about yearly housecleaning on the computer along the lines of what I
suggested, which has kept us from running out of space. So my own
inexpert guesstimate-from-a-distance is that you need to free up some
space or find some new space.
I suggest doing the housecleaning no matter what, because we are
notoriously bad about throwing away our digital trash. Since hard
drives are so cheap we'd rather just move all our junk to a bigger
hard drive than go to the effort of cleaning up the one we have that
otherwise works perfectly well. It's akin to the proliferation of self-
storage places: we'd rather pay some company to hold our stuff for us,
which we never use, rather than live within our means by going through
our households, tossing what's trash and donating what we don't use or
_TRULY_ need.
If not, what do I do? Buy another HD?
Or use External HD as main drive?
Run _NOTHING_ from the external hard drive. External hard drives are
meant for storage, not operations. They aren't mean to be run like that
—you'd wear it out very fast—and you'd hate how slow it would be.
Using that office analogy, the external hard drive is the storage
closet down the hall. You wouldn't want to have to get up from your
desk every single time you need something because you stuck it in the
closet.
If your 160GB hard drive is nearly full, I'm guessing you probably
have a lot of music or video or photos stored on the drive. You have
three choices: move some of that stuff to an archive somewhere else,
get a second internal hard drive strictly for storage of media, or
replace your existing hard drive with a larger one. The benefit of the
latter is that you only have to worry about space and connections for
one physical drive; the benefit of the former is it's easier to back
up as you tell your system "back up this entire drive."
Mind you, that same "just back it up" benefit can be derived by
something called partitioning: making Windows see a single large
physical hard drive as a few smaller drives with separate drive
letters. I did this with the system at home—C:\ is the Windows OS and
programs, K:\ is where we store all our "stuff" (my wife and I both
have names that start with K, so it's easy to remember which drive our
stuff is on), and L:\ is for the Linux OS (which I am still VERY
experimental on). Monthly I plug the external hard drive in and back-
up K:\, leaving C:\ and L:\ undisturbed.
Either way, you'll want to have your friendly neighborhood geek do the
installation for you, or at the very least be there to guide you
through doing it yourself. I highly recommend the latter, if you
really want to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding for how
computers work.