Weekly Tasks/Monthly Tasks/Daily Suggestions
1. AVG (Anti-virus Grisoft)
This program can detect and remove viruses
o
AVG should be set to update automatically
during the late night hours.
o
AVG should be scheduled to check your entire
system automatically in the late night or early morning hours.
o
Therefore there is nothing to do except to
check periodically that this is being done
o
To check how current your virus base is,
click on Informationà About AVG:
A window will show you how current your
definitions are:
In this example, the virus base release date
is
o
Next check the Test Results (by clicking on
the TEST RESULTS BUTTON) and you will see the following window. Scroll down to
the latest test. Make sure the test is recent, that a complete test was run,
and that the results were “Green”.
If no viruses were found, you will see a
GREEN icon to the left of “Complete Test”. If
two consecutive tests show RED results, a virus was found and probably was not
successfully removed. Thus, please notify me by LAN email. I may need to do a
manual removal of the virus.
o
You can do a update manually by clicking on
the AVG icon on your desk top followed by clicking on the CHECK FOR UPDATES
button:
followed by clicking on
the INTERNET button (by placing a check in the checkbox, you can eliminate this
step in the future).
o
You can manually run a test for viruses by
clicking on the AVG icon on your desk top followed by clicking on the SCAN
COMPUTER button.
2. Adaware SE
This program can detect and remove adware and spyware
from your computer .
It supplements Microsoft Antispyware, Spybot, and Spyblaster. Each program has its strengths and weaknesses.
o
You need to do a scan of the entire system at
least once a month.
o
You need to update this program and do some
scan at least once per week.
o
See http://www.drennon.org/updates/adaware
for details ( a separate handout will be placed in
your box on how to use Adaware SE.
3. Microsoft Antispyware (MAS)
This program can detect and remove adware and spyware
from your computer .
In addition, it gives active protection
as you surf the net. It
supplements Adaware SE, Spybot, and Spyblaster. Each
program has its strengths and weaknesses.
o
This program updates and runs late at night
or early in the morning. When you arrive at school in the morning you should
see a box greeting you that shows that MAS was updated and ran. You will also
see the test results (Please do NOT select the option to prevent that box from
greeting you in the morning.)
o
If you should be in doubt as to how current
your program is, when the last test was and if anything harmful was found, click
on the Microsoft AntiSpyware icon and observe the
date of the last Scan (Aug 8 in this example), the date of the latest spyware
definitions (Aug 7 in this example), and the last scan results (nothing
dangerous found in this example):
4. Spybot
This program can detect and remove adware and spyware
from your computer .
In addition, it gives active protection
as you surf the net. It
supplements Adaware SE, Microsoft Antispyware, and Spyblaster. Each program has its strengths and weaknesses.
o
This program should automatically update and
runs in the background to protect your computer.
o
To make sure it is current, once per week,
click on the icon and select help à about. Make
sure the latest detection update is current:
In this example the latest detection update
was
o
If you want to check for updates manually,
click on the UPDATE icon (1). Then click “SEARCH FOR UPDATES” (2_.
A search will occur. In the white box, available updates will be shown. Place a
check in each checkbox (3). Click on DOWNLOAD UPDATES (4):
After updating, please click on Immunize
after updating is complete. Your computer is now protected. However, it is
still a good idea to periodically hit the SEARCH AND DESTROY BUTTON followed by
SEARCH FOR PROBLEMS.
5. SpywareBlaster
This program can detect and remove adware and spyware
from your computer .
In addition, it gives active protection
as you surf the net. It
supplements Adaware SE, Microsoft Antispyware, and
Spybot. Each program has its strengths and weaknesses.
o
This program does NOT automatically update.
You should do that weekly. However, it does runs in the background to protect
your computer.
o
To make sur e it is
current, once per week, click on the Spyware blaster icon on your desktop and
click on UPDATES in the lower left section of the window that opens. Then click on the “Check for
Updates” button. (Although
there is an Autoupdate function, it costs money to
register for AutoUpdates. It is free if we update
ourselves.)
o
When updating is complete, click on
“Enable Protection for All Unprotected Items”.
o
Click on “Enable All Protection”.
Your system is now
being protected by a current SpywareBlaster.
6. Windows update
This will update your version of windows with the
latest patches
o
Your system is set to automatically update
your version of Windows
at
o
However, if you want to manually update
Windows or make sure you are current, procede with
the following steps:
o
Click here to enter Microsoft's Windows update site (from this webpage).
o
A new window will open
o
Click on "Scan for updates"
o
Wait for 0% - 33% -67% --- until it is
finished
o
If there are any critical updates and service
packs, click on "Review and Install Updates". Otherwise, you are finished.
o
If there were critical updates, click on
"install now".
o
Take all defaults and accept all statements
from microsoft.
o
Wait for the download and install process to
finish.
o
When the installation of the critical updates
and service patches have finished, a box will ask you to reboot your computer.
CANCEL that request by clicking on the CANCEL button. Instead, boot down and
shut off your computer. Then reboot your computer after a 10second delay
(waiting for all hard drive and fan spinning to stop). It is much safer to powerdown your computer completely than to accept a reboot.
Monthly Task
- Scandisk
This will check for correct file structure and for any
possible disk drive problems
- Open Windows
Explorer (Key stroke = windowsKey-E)
- Right click on C-drive
icon under (If you don't see the C drive, click on the + sign to the left
of "MY COMPUTER" to make it a - sign. Then the C-drive will
appear)
- Left click on
PROPERTIES
- Click on the TOOLS
tab.
- Click on the CHECK
NOW button.
- A Check Disk
dialog box will appear.
- With your mouse
place a check in the check box for automatically fixing file system
errors.
- Click the START
button
- You will get an
error message stating that this process can not srart now. You will be asked if you wish to schedule
the check at the next time you reboot your computer. Select the YES
button.
- Reboot your
computer.
- Your hard drive
will be checked at the next boot.
- Defrag
This will defragment your
hard drive. It should be run AFTER scandisk.
- Open Windows
Explorer (Key stroke = windowsKey-E)
- Right-click on
C-drive icon under (If you don't see the C drive, click
on th e + sign to the left of "MY
COMPUTER" to make it a - sign. Then the C-drive will appear)
- Left-click on
PROPERTIES
- Click on the TOOLS
tab.
- Click on the
DEFRAGMENT NOW button.
- THe
DISK DEFRAGMENTER window will open.
- Click on the Defragment button.
- This will take
some time, depending on how defragmented your
drive is and how large your drive is. I suggest you leave the computer
for a while and let the process finish.
- Full system scan with
adaware SE
(REMEMBER DO A FULL
SYSTEM SCAN with ADAWARE SE at least once per month!!!!!!!)
- Use Search and
Destroy/Search for Problems with Spybot
(Remember to do a SEARCH AND
DESTROY with SPYBOT at least once per month!!!!!!!)
Daily Suggestion
1. 
Clear all
files from your TEMP directory. I have placed a shortcut of your TEMP directory
on your desk top. You may wish to clear this directory more often than once per
day... whenever there are problems such as slow computing or miscomunication to your printer. You may have to close down
all programs first, including Microsoft Anti-spyware!!!! Make sure you restart Microsoft
Anti-spyware.
2. You can clear up RAM, by clicking on 
the “Recover Memory Now” icon.
3. If your comptuer is running very sluggishly
you may wish to close down all renegade processes. To do this, first end all
running programs. Then, click Ctrl-Alt-Del. Click on the Processes Tab. If any porgrams (other than exlorer.exe) are hogiing
more than 9,000 Kbytes of memory usage, end the process. If any processes are
hogging more memory usage than explorer.exe, end the process.