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December 9, 2009

Your security policy?

Your Security Policy
It doesn’t need to be formal, but everybody who wants anxiety free computing needs some kind of Security Policy. Ignorance isn’t bliss when there are so many threats. And the biggest aren’t from the Internet. Let me scare you first and reassure you later. Consider a few common scenarios from my computer consulting experience:

Careless users
Teenagers
Your teenage son gets on your computer and decides he needs a ton of free music – which he gets just by joining an online music sharing service. What he doesn’t know is that by downloading and installing that music sharing software he could be setting up your computer as a “world wide music server”. Then anyone on that world-wide service has access to your computer, in order to download his shared music.

Suddenly your computer is wide open to hackers. Also, such services sometimes make money by accepting money to install advertising, spyware, 3rd party cookies and other bad stuff onto your computer. After all – with your son providing them with access to your machine, why shouldn’t they?

Relatives
What if your Uncle Fred wants to give you a free copy of some of his software, so you don’t have to buy your own copy? Aside from stealing bread from the mouths of the programmers and others in the company that wrote that software, dear Uncle Fred doesn’t realize that his computer is infested with viruses. He puts the CD he burned into your PC and installs the software, along with a few invisible viruses. Neighborhood kids sharing games, music or videos are excellent computer infection vectors too. And even if someone on your network has their own computer, your home network can allow their malware to spread.

Guests
Your in the process of buying stuff online or doing online banking when the doorbell rings. It’s your new neighbor asking for a copy of that recipe you mentioned. While you’re off in the kitchen searching through your paper recipes, your neighbor is looking at your credit card details on your unattended computer screen.

Employees
One of your employees wants to do some work for you on his computer at home. So he needs some of your software. It’s expensive software, so you don’t want to make him buy his own copy. You loan him your company copy of the program CD. A week later, your program starts crashing just when you need it most - you have to re-install the program immediately or miss your client’s deadline. Late Friday night you discover that your employee still hasn’t brought the program CD back from his house – and he and his family have gone out of town for the weekend.

Bad Guys
Occasional visitors with bad intent
Your office cleaning service has just hired a new guy with criminal intent. He likes to “keep track of every lock that ain’ t locked when no one’s around”, to quote a song.

One of your employees left her computer on overnight, so some maintenance software can run all night. But no screensaver password is enabled. Now the cleaning guy is wandering through your employee’s Windows files looking at your financial information and discovering your employee’s insecure file where passwords are listed. In the desk drawer he also finds a slightly hidden company credit card. In a place your employee thinks is safe, but is actually obvious to one “experienced in the art” he finds a written list of passwords and credit card info.

Risky computing
You’ve been really busy, so you haven’t taken time to make a full backup image of your hard drive for a month or two. You figure you’re pretty safe anyway, since you’ve been uploading your work documents to one of those online backup services at the end of every workday for a couple of months now. Too bad the web is so slow that you can’t back up your whole computer that way.

Suddenly your hard drive starts making clanging sounds, then Windows crashes with a blue screen and a “STOP_ERROR…” message.

Oh no! You call your computer consultant. She can’t get there for a few hours, then says you need a new hard drive and she needs to go buy one and then install it. An hour later she’s done and needs your latest full backup image to restore everything. Turns out that two month old backup image file is bad (you never tested it) and you didn’t keep any older ones. But all is not lost – you find an old hard drive from last year that was replaced when she installed your current larger one. She installs that old drive as a secondary “slave” drive, re-installs Windows on your new drive, gets your printers and network running, downloads a dozen Windows updates from Microsoft (with a computer restart after each), gets your Internet connection and email working and re-installs, configures and tests all your programs (except the ones you can’t find the disks or license keys for) – finally she downloads your backup documents from that Internet backup site.

After a non-billable day of expensive consulting time, you’re back in business – kind of. There’s a big gap in your stored work product, between what’s on the old hard drive and what you backed up online. You’ve lost a lot of important email and there were probably lots of things on your failed hard drive you don’t even remember having – but will painfully miss eventually.

Another learning experience
You’ve learned the hard way why you should make a validated full image backup of your whole hard drive (and an emergency recovery CD), not just back up your work product. And why you want to keep several older backups too. If you’ve been computing for a few years, it takes many hours to re-install Windows and all your programs and hardware and to get your network and Internet connections working and secure again – to say nothing of your years of emails and the risk of loosing all that stuff you don’t even remember you have.

Cracked!
You notice that your computer is busy all the time and is constantly accessing the Internet. You get an email from your bank saying your credit cards have been compromised and they have disabled them. They are sending new credit cards – sorry you won’t get them for a few “business days”.

Your computer has been ‘hacked into’ – actually the correct term is “cracked” and “hacker” should be “cracker”. I’m a “hacker” myself (someone who builds stuff, usually electronic or high-tech devices, out of junk and surplus equipment – ‘hacker’ is an old praise term with mad scientist implications). Someone who breaks into other people’s computers is correctly called a “cracker”. The mass media often make these dumb mistakes and confuse everyone.

Anyway, your credit card info was stolen and sold online. Furthermore your computer is now a “zombie”, under the remote control of the cracker, or someone he sold that control to. Oh joy! Your computer is now spewing email spam, viruses and spyware onto the Internet, or is forced to serve as a member of a vast zombie computer army in a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack on the Pentagon’s computer network.

Natural Disasters
Power problems
A thunderstorm develops while you’re busy working. The lights flicker, the power goes down and your computer dies while you’re saving some QuickBooks bookkeeping data. After a few minutes, the lights come back up and you start up your computer. Your QuickBooks company file is trashed and you have to restore it from last weeks backup – loosing a half hour of bookkeeping work.

Not too bad, right? So, you go to restore your backup file from your external USB hard drive. But for some reason you can’t access that drive! Turns out the power company sent you a big electrical surge when your power came back up – quite a common thing really. That surge fried your backup drive. Your computer has some (limited) surge protection built in, so it survived – this time.

Hot Time – Summer in the city
It’s the middle of summer and a real scorcher today. And your home office has no air conditioning. You’re running 5 Windows programs at once and you launch a 6th one. Suddenly your computer shuts down and won’t restart. When you get close to it, to try the power button again, you smell a hot electrical insulation smell. After twenty minutes, it lets you turn it back on again – a typical “processor overheat incident”. Is your computer permanently damaged? Prematurely aged?

OK, enough computer nightmares. I hope you’re convinced by now that you need a security policy.
Here are some concepts behind a Security Policy you can customize for your own situation:

Limit Computer Access
No one but you is allowed to use your business computer. Your employees, family members and everyone else must use their own computer. You enforce this with a Windows password login where only you know the password. If you use a network, you have one desktop folder where you move things which you want to share over that network – no one can access any of your other folders over your network – especially the boot drive root (the main folder of your hard drive – which contains all your other folders).

Because you realize that anyone who knows much about computers can get to your data without even starting Windows, you also put the same password you used for Windows into your motherboard’s BIOS setup settings (see your computer manual or Google your computer vendor’s web site to find out how to access your BIOS setup).

In this way no one can start your computer without your password – unless they’re pretty darn computer savvy. If you want even more protection, you need a lockable computer case which you indeed keep locked. Even then, someone could just carry your computer off.

This is a good time to point out that security is never 100% secure. You do what you can and don’t sweat the small stuff. Most problems are caused by ignorance, angry employees or petty criminals, not skilled burglars.

Naturally, you memorize your password and keep it to yourself. And you don’t hide a written copy someplace – since those who know you best are the most likely suspects and can most easily find your “hidden” password note.

You also use a Windows screensaver. It automatically activates after 10 or so minutes of computer inactivity and is itself protected with your Windows password. That way, if you leave your computer unattended for a while, no one can see what’s on your screen or get into Windows.

You protect against cracking attempts by securing all hardware “service ports” on your computer. To do this, you use the software firewall supplied with your AVG Internet Security product and turn off the Windows firewall (not good to have 2 software firewalls running at the same time). For even better (incoming only) security, your cable modem or DSL modem/router comes with an NAT (Network Address Translation) hardware firewall – they almost all do. Chances are that’s already completely setup and you don’t need to touch it.

You know your software and hardware firewalls are working well because you went to Steve Gibson’s cool web site and used his “Shields Up” test to actually try to crack your computer’s service ports – and you got an “all green” (or at least no red squares) as a result. Now you know your computer is either invisible or at least closed to hackers.

Security Smarts
You get smart
You take the time to understand online threats – like the dangers of file sharing sites for music or movies. And you’re using all the features of your AVG Internet Security software, so it will warn you if you stumble across a dangerous web site – while it blocks those annoying pop-up ads from all web sites.

Password protect your passwords
You don’t allow written passwords to be hidden around your office. Instead, you buy an inexpensive password protected database program, install it on all your computers and make sure people keep all passwords, credit card numbers and such in there – using a memorized (not written) password to protect it. That way, you can memorize just one password to protect them all.

No info in your spare parts bin or backups
When you upgrade your hard drive by buying and installing a larger one, you don’t leave all your data on that old drive – where someone could easily steal it. Maybe you leave the old drive in your computer for a month as a backup, or wipe it and use it as additional storage space – but once you are done with it you “scrub it clean” of data, such that no one can run a data recovery program and get all your info back again. Your JV-16 ‘Power Tools’ program can do that for you (and a lot more).

Inoculate from malware infections
You install and automatically update an excellent anti-virus and anti-spyware program, such as AVG Internet Security. You also have Windows Update set to automatically download Microsoft’s updates – but to ask you before actually installing them (see my previous post).

Scan and track media
Before you install (or let anyone install) anything from external media, like a CD, floppy disk or memory stick, you scan it with your anti-virus program.

Whenever you save something to external media, you know it’s virus free – because you have your anti-virus program set to do an automatic scan of your whole computer every night. So, you attach a little green adhesive dot to that media, meaning that it’s known to be virus free. If you ever insert that media into someone else’s computer, you remove that little green dot – because (if the media is writable) it may have picked up an infection from that ‘foreign’ computer.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be”
You never ever let your program CDs, textbooks, manuals or other vital stuff out of your office. But you keep a printed inventory of all your computer hardware and software off-premises for insurance purposes. Every 6 months to a year, you make a new computer inventory using the free ‘Belarc Advisor‘ program.

Backup often – backup right
You have an excellent full backup program, like Acronis ‘True Image’, which makes a full “image” type backup of your whole main hard drive – such that you can completely restore your Windows installation and everything else – to “bare metal” (like a new computer or a new hard drive) if need be, with a minimum of time and fuss. And you can use the same backup to restore individual files or folders. You understand that not backing up EVERYTHING could result in error-prone, expensive and time-consuming re-installations of Windows and other programs. You realize that you can’t rely on the company that made your computer to help you restore your data. They will only help you return your computer to the state it was in when you bought it – that is, working, but with none of your programs on it. Without your own full backup all that will accomplish is to erase anything you might have been able to save.

You backup every night to an external USB hard drive. You have 2 such drives (high quality drives made by Seagate) and you keep one off-premises, in case of a fire or other serious office disaster. You swap these backup drives once per week, so you will never lose more than 1 week’s work. Each drive contains not only the last backup, but several older ones – that’s why you bought large drives. You’ll keep an eye on the price of the new solid state (no moving parts) hard drives, since they will be so much more reliable – once they become affordable.

You keep a few old backups before you backup program deletes them to make more room, because you realize that you might not catch a problem file, which needs to be restored, until after the bad version of that file has been backed up – overwriting the last good version. You’re also sure to set your backup program to “validate” each backup it makes. Even though that makes backups take twice as long, you really need to know that each backup is a perfect one.

Once a month you make an ‘archive’ backup of critical data to a large memory stick, so that older info you may need in the future, and which will eventually be lost as your oldest backup files get deleted, is always available. Because backups slow down your computer, you backup at night – using a schedule which does not conflict with your nightly anti-virus scan. You (optionally) save backup time by doing a full backup only once per week, but backing up all new or changed files every night (called an “Incremental” backup).

When you installed your Acronis ‘True Image’ backup software, you took their advice and burned their “Emergency Recovery” program to a blank CD. Now, if you have a computer disaster, you have only to start your computer up from that Emergency Recovery CD and the tools are right there to easily restore everything to your hard drive, or to a new hard drive or even to a new computer – whether Windows can run or not. All you need in addition to that CD is the backup file from your external USB hard drive. And if you make major changes to Windows or install new hardware or get a new computer, you’ll remember to burn a new Emergency Recovery CD.

Safe clean power – Automatic shutdown
When those inevitable power outages happen, you know you’ll be safe because you have your computer, monitor and Internet connection devices plugged into an excellent UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) unit, like the ones from APC. You’ve connected their USB cable to your computer and installed their software, so when the power goes down, the UPS battery will keep your stuff running long enough for their software to gracefully shut Windows down – even if you’re not around.

And their surge protector will protect your phone lines and power lines from most surges and electrical noise (maybe even from lightening strikes) because you’ve got all your phone and critical power lines plugged into your UPS.

It’s also comforting to know that your Vonage VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phone service will still run during power outages – since you’re also running that off your UPS. Not good to loose your Internet phone service during disasters!

Chill out
It’s a summer scorcher of a day and your home office is sans air conditioning. But your computer is humming along happily without overheating – because you made sure it had enough cooling fans installed in that “thermally well engineered” high quality case you made part of your system design. And because you installed it in a location with lots of free air space all around it, rather than trying to jam it into some kind of office furniture. Last week you opened up the case and cleaned all the dust from the fans, heat sinks and hard drives with a small dry brush and a can of compressed air. You do that every couple of months – so you know cool air is getting to all those hot electronic chips and hard drives. You realize that nothing prematurely ages a computer like excess heat.

Well, I hope that wasn’t too grim or scary and that you’ll implement a Security Policy and get some peace of mind.

Please comment and let me know what I’ve left out and how to deal with whatever that may be – thanks!

Until next time – here’s to safe and secure computing…
     _jim coe

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December 9, 2009

Worried about a Flash update?

One of my computer consulting clients just called to ask if it was safe to install an Adobe Flash Player update from an automatic notice he received. The answer is “yes”, if it looks to be from Adobe and not a fake.

Computer paranoia
Don’t mean to scare you, and I haven’t heard about any such fakes – but a bit of paranoia is a good attitude when it comes to computer security. So it was smart of him to double-check by calling me.

Adobe Flash Player is installed on 99% of Windows computers, according to Adobe, and I don’t doubt it. It’s always been quite safe, and this recent security update from Adobe should make it even safer.

Beware web page scan or repair offers
In general, it’s always a good idea to install any genuine and familiar update arrives automatically as part of a program you already have and which mentions improving security.

It’s not safe to click on Internet web page offers to scan your computer or fix problems, unless you know the program and the vendor well. There are many sites which will invite you to infect your computer with a virus or spyware, disguised as some diagnostic or repair software. Some even infect your computer, then charge you to remove their infection! 

Until next time – play it safe…
     _jim coe

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December 10, 2009

You know you should.. Backup!

If you’ve already suffered a data disaster you probably have “backup religion”.
If not, there’s no time like the present to prevent an inevitable computer nightmare!

I say “inevitable” because the hard disk drive containing your Windows operating system and all your data is guaranteed to fail – sooner or later. It’s a hot, fragile, high precision device with platters spinning at 7,200 RPM. And it was mass manufactured for a mass market, with razor-thin profit margins. That is, unless you have one of the new, and still very expensive, Solid State Drives (SSD), with no moving parts.

I like to assume that some of my readers are total novices, so lets stop and define “backup“:
A “backup” is a disaster recovery copy of your computer’s data, kept on a different medium, in case of corruption or lose of the original data on the original medium.

I hope to convince those of you who are not religiously backing up EVERYTHING on your computer’s hard drive to go ahead and setup an automatic, periodic backup method – with this video tutorial. It’s about setting up and using the best of the small office/home office computer backup software products (according to me and many other professional computer consultants). That is, Acronis True Image backup.

Like other software developers, Acronis updates their products frequently. That means the product version you download and install today may not look exactly like the one I used in the following video. Even if the buttons are in different locations and the screens look a bit different, the concepts and operations remain pretty much the same.

Please note the control on the video player which opens the player to full screen size.
http://www.well-made-webs.com/windows-wisdom/wp-content/video/acronis1.flv

Until next time – “Backup well and often!”

Have questions? Want to comment? See below…

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December 10, 2009

Don’t download ‘Antivirus Pro’!

This years version of the ‘Antivirus pro’ Trojan virus is even more damaging and harder to clean out than last years!

livesaver300 Dont download Antivirus Pro!

Antivirus Pro (2010 or other)
Is a Trojan (attempts to fool you into letting it through your firewall) type virus installer. It wants you to believe that it is an anti-virus product, but it actually installs a nasty virus onto your computer. It appears (as advertising) on some web pages.
DO NOT CLICK ON ‘Antivirus Pro 2010′ on any web page!

Also be on the lookout (as I mention in other posts) for ANY web page offers to clean, scan or repair your computer. And don’t fall for those pretty free screen savers or emoticons either – many are only there to install malware or spyware onto your computer.

’nuff said…
_jim coe
Questions? Comments? See below…

 

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December 14, 2009

Slow Internet connection?


internet danger 164x300 Slow Internet connection?Is your slow Internet connection because of your own software, or Windows, or your Internet connection hardware, or your ISP (Internet Service Provider), or some of each, or what?

To know for sure, you’d have to check each of the above possibilities. Checking how your ISP is doing on the Internet is easy. Just visit One of these Internet monitoring sites and check out your ISP’s network status:
Internet Health Report
International Network Traffic Report

To see how your own connection is doing and compare it to other people’s, try this site:
Test your own connection

Gotta rush off – that’s all for now…

      _jim coe

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December 28, 2009

Windows Maintenance Schedule

ww ad110b1 Windows Maintenance ScheduleYou can download my list of maintenance items and intervals to help keep your Windows operating system fast and reliable. You’ll receive a ZIP file containing my list in Microsoft Excel format and also an Adobe PDF version of the Windows maintenance schedule.

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October 19, 2010

When Windows is slow

waiting300 When Windows is slow

My list of things to check when Windows slows to a crawl just got longer. Today, I was trouble-shooting a laptop running Windows XP, when my client came up with a great clue. “When I start Windows, it’s fast, but after a while it gets slower and slower.”

After confirming to my satisfaction that all programs were slow, consulting the windows System Event Logs to look for clues and doing some routine maintenance, I turned to that least used of diagnostic tools. I stopped everything for a think.

“What”, I asked myself, ”comes to mind about ‘It does one thing at first (goes fast) and another thing as time passes (goes slow)’?” “What does that?” Then, “Wait – I’ve seen this before: It works when you first turn it on but it soon stops working …. when… when it’s a thermal intermittent!”

Stepping around to the back of the desk, I opened the laptop cover (the owners run it while shut – I don’t recommend that) and felt the air coming out of the laptop’s cooling fan at the outside back of the case. It wasn’t warm, as usual – it was HOT. So was the top of the case above the keyboard keys. I bent down with my nose close to the exhaust air and sure enough there was a faint “burning insulation” smell.

When Windows is slow, your CPU chip may be protecting itself from burning up, just as it was designed to do, by going slower and slower as it gets hotter and hotter.

Not wanting to stall the fan while things were so hot, I waited to blow out the vents with compressed air until I’d shut down the computer. Sure enough gouts of dust and tight packed “dust bunnies” flew out when I hit the intake and output vents with concentrated air from that little tube on my duster can.

Opening the case of a desktop PC and cleaning out all the dust with compressed air and a small brush, is something I do routinely – part of periodic PC maintenance. But over the years, I’d gotten used to thinking of laptops as sealed units which you didn’t get inside of unless they needed memory chips or a new hard drive.

CPUs and other VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) chips have been using 10x, 100x, 1,000x as many transistors in the same tiny package every few years for decades. And no transistor (or anything else) is 100% efficient. Some of that electricity you feed them turns into heat.

A few years ago laptops started having internal cooling fans. And those do suck in lots of dust during months of use – just like their larger cousins, the desktop cooling fans. The manufacturer’s of consumer computers don’t dare to protect them with dust filters. Dust filters have to be cleaned regularly to prevent over heating from lack of air flow. They have to be cleaned even more often than open fans, and who will ever do that?

So here’s your take-home. Every month or three, clean all that dust and debris out of both your desktop AND your laptop computers – with the power off.

Oh, and read the label on those duster cans – it’s not really compressed air in there these days – it’s a more or less toxic chemical propellant. Best to open some windows (the kind on house walls). Also, don’t shake that can. And use short bursts. Expanding gases get real cold (which is how your frig works) and if you hold that release button down long enough, out will come a stream of nearly frozen liquid – not air. Not so good to squirt that into your computer.

Until next time… stay cool…
_jim coe

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October 23, 2010

Are online backup services enough?

livesaver300 Are online backup services enough?

I hope online backup services aren’t your only safety net!

 

Don’t be lulled by a false sense of disaster recovery security
By using only a remote backup service like Mozy or Carbonite. If all you care about is disaster recovery for your (smaller than their size limits) personal files, photos and the like, these services can be fine. That is if you don’t mind how slow uploading to the Internet can be. Remember that upload speeds are much slower than download speeds.

Think a bit
What are the most likely of all the possible serious personal computer disasters?

  1. A stolen laptop
  2. A failed hard drive

Recovering from computer disasters like those often mean:

  • Re-installing Windows
    • With dozens of Windows updates and computer restarts required
  • Setting up your Internet connection all over again
  • Configuring your email program and getting it working
    • Importing your old email message file – if it’s not gone forever
    • And your email message file may be too large for online backup services
  • Installing and configuring all your programs
    • Locating the license keys for all the programs you’ve purchased in the past
  • And more…

It’s a huge hassle
And if you pay a pro to do it for you, a huge expense!

And online backup services can’t backup your critical Windows operating system files – so they can only recover your data, not restore Windows or your programs for you.

Now contrast all that with using a great local image file backup application, like Acronis True Image Home backup ($49.99 for a download). When you first install Acronis TI Home, you burn a disaster recovery CD in your CD/ROM drive (and if you’re smart, you do a new one every year, or after any major changes to your computer or software).

Now, if your hard drive fails or you need to recover everything to a new computer, you start your computer from that CD you made and use the Acronis TI program on it to restore everything (including Windows) from your backup drive. Instead of a risky, complex, day long (or more) hassle, you recover everything with a few clicks of your mouse, you go do something else and when you come back 45 minutes or an hour later, you find your computer is now just as it was when you made your last backup.

File-by-file Vs image backup
Those online remote backup programs, the backup programs built into Windows and even some commercial backup application only backup your files. They do what’s called a “file-by-file” backup. A good professional backup application like Acronis True Image ($49.99) makes a “snapshot” of your whole hard drive. So, when you restore that image to a hard drive (even one in most new computers) you get everything back, just as it was when you made your last backup.

A time saver
Making a full backup image can take from 1/2 our to over an hour – but you can schedule it to run at night, so it can be pretty painless. I expect you can do the same with online remote backup programs, but I’m not sure those would be finished by the time you wanted to use your computer again.

There is no problem with running current versions of Windows overnight, and you can turn off your display monitor to save energy. You should restart Windows at least once a week though.

My usual disclaimer
I get paid a (tiny) sales commission if you buy an Acronis backup product by clicking on one of the links here on my blog. And I’d be a happy blogger if you did icon surprised Are online backup services enough?

But like all the products I recommend (with or without compensation), I use Acronis backup on all my personal computer consulting service’s client’s computers, and all my own - because it’s the best. Meaning that I don’t have to constantly fix it for free, like I would if I’d made the mistake of recommending an inferior brand. And if my client does experience a computer disaster, I know they can have an easier full recovery, if they make Acronis backups regularly and follow my  recommended methods (please see also this post:  ”Backup software for your computer disaster” )

By the way, Acronis True Image is not the only image backup program I recommend. Shadow Protect Desktop is also quite good, though not as popular, more expensive ($89.95 Vs $49.99) and not quite as user-friendly in design as the Acronis products.

Until next time – Don’t forget to make your image backups…
_jim coe

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December 12, 2010

Don’t leave your files open!

surprise2 2502 Dont leave your files open!

Experts take data security for granted that they forget to warn others.

(* See below for an exception)

It works like this:
Basically, only one software application can use (open) any single software file at any one time – into your computers volatile electronic memory, where your file is located during the time you’re working on it. Until you save or close that file from electronic memory back to disk storage, no other program can use it. Their are exceptions – special database programs meant to be used at the same time by more than one user, such as some accounting programs and the like.

Your computer’s electronic memory chips are called “volatile” because without electricity and a fully functional computer, they can’t work. They’re not like your magnetic hard drive storage medium, which “remembers” your data while the power is off.

In practice, all this means two things:
• Work you don’t save is lost during a power outage or crash.
• Your backup program may not backup open files, or may back them up more slowly.

Since I recommend Acronis ‘True Image’ backup software, I’ll mention that it does successfully back up files which are open – and doing that does slow it down.

Back in the bad old days of less reliable computers and software, we old-timers learned to stop what we were doing and save our work every few minutes, force of habit. You only have to lose your work a few times to force you to develop such a habit. And stopping to do a save was pretty easy back then because computers could only do one thing at a time, so you were only concerned with saving one file.

Nowadays in my computer consulting practice I sometimes see users leaving a dozen files open over their lunch break, overnight or even over the weekend! Decent computer security [excuse me while I stop to save this file] calls for a backup to a different medium every night. But all those open files are either not being backed up or slowing down your backup process!

Example:
For instance, here I am typing this topic into MS-Word – to be pasted into my WordPress blog later. If I had not saved this Word doc onto my hard drive by now and I had a power failure or other glitch – it would be gone forever.

But I did save it after the first couple of paragraphs. If there was a power failure or a crash right now, I would still lose my most recent work – everything I’ve typed since that most recent save.

Who’s looking at your work?
There’s another issue with the security of open files.
Suppose you leave your files open while you go to lunch and you don’t have a password protected [I'm saving this file now] screen saver running – which will cover up your work after a few minutes. Anyone walking by your desk can see, copy or alter your work. If you do the same thing overnight or over the weekend, people like office cleaning staff can also see, copy or alter your work. In fact anyone could get access to your computer and do anything with it or your data or any online web site they wanted. And you could be blamed for their nefarious activities.

So – words to the wise:
Save your work often, use a password protected screen saver to stop access to your computer when you leave it on while you’re away, and don’t leave your files open for long.

* An exception:
Some people use their Windows desktop as more than the usual tool to open and close major applications.

For example, I have one client who must constantly manage several projects having many complex details - often while being interrupted by phone calls.

He uses his Windows desktop to preview and track his workflow. That is, he leaves open all the programs he has used for the day’s tasks and will need to use later. This serves him as a series of project workflow reminders and place-holders. By looking at his Windows 7 open items, he can more easily focus on and return to the right place in his workflow, after interruptions. And he can also see what should be done next.

With Windows 7 and a new 64 bit computer, he can have a great many applications open at the same time, without slowing his work.

Such uses of the Windows desktop are exceptions to my “Don’t leave your files open!” rule – if you save your work as you go, so that none of these open items represent work which has not been saved.

Hope this helps…
_jim coe
[now saving this file]

What about you? Do you sometimes leave your unsaved computer files open too long?

Filed Under: security, working Tagged With: , , , Leave a Comment
January 9, 2012

Computer Disaster – Hard drive heat stroke

inside pc2 470 Computer Disaster Hard drive heat stroke

A Computer Disaster that Didn’t Have to Happen

A business computer client of mine, whose home computer I’d never visited, emailed me about a problem with that home computer. Seems it wouldn’t start Windows, only display a black screen with white type and an error message asking him to insert a boot medium (CD) and complaining about his (non-existent) network.

Maybe you know what that means? Unable to access its hard drive, his computer did what it should have. It tried to start Windows from a bootable CD, but found none. Then it tried to start from his network and again found none. Then it gave up and displayed the usual cryptic error message in a language only a computer expert could translate.

Diagnosis – Hard Drive Failure from overheat:

My first visit soon confirmed the worst:
A failed hard drive – probably due to overheat. Everything stored on that computer was gone – a computer disaster.

Causes and Contributions:

There was no automatic image backup system – just household financial files and some Word docs and photos copied to a USB thumb drive from time to time.

My client had bought a small (10.5″ high x 14″ deep)  “mini” desktop computer, not the usual full size “mini-tower” (about 17″ x 17″). Inspection showed that this small computer case had fewer and smaller cooling fans than the usual full size case and naturally had a more crowded interior, with less room for airflow.

In particular, the hard drive was not well served by the cooling air stream. This case had a hot air exhaust vent on the top, which his wife had accidentally covered up by resting a plastic paper tray there. It had a cool air intake grille on the right side, which was unfortunately jammed up against the wall.

The case interior, vent grilles, CPU cooling fan, CPU heatsink, motherboard chip heatsink and power supply fan were also blocked by a lot of dirt and dust clumps from months of full-time operation with no cleaning inside the case.

And things looked even worse when I was unable to recover the data from his failed hard drive, after installing it in one of my computers and running the best data recovery program in the world (short of the CIA) on it for several hours.

Like many a computer disaster, this one was the result of a series of bad moves. Also like every computer disaster, it has lessons for us all.

Here is some advice from Seagate  (my favorite hard drive manufacturer) on hard drive cooling.

How to Clean Out Your Computer

Cautions:
Read the warning label on the compressed air can before using it. The contents can be toxic. Use short bursts to prevent spraying freezing liquid, keep the can level and don’t shake it.

Even if you situate your computer in a cool environment with plenty of space around its intake and exhaust grilles, it can still accumulate a burden of dust and dust bunnies inside the case which prevent efficient air cooling.

How often to clean?
Help to avoid a computer disaster – free your computer of dust buildup at least twice per year, and much more often in dusty environments.

How to clean out a desktop PC:
Shut down Windows normally, turn off any “master switch” (to be sure the motherboard is completely unpowered) remove the AC power cable and open the case. Don’t worry, the voltages inside a computer are only 12 volts and 5 volts, as long as you don’t uninstall and open the power supply box – and there is no reason to do that. Usually there are 2 screws on the back of the case, that let you slide off the side panel farthest from the motherboard and from the back panel connectors.

  1. With the case open, use a small dry brush and a can of compressed air with a plastic tube in the nozzle to remove dust from:
    1. The CPU cooler, its fan blades and its heatsink
    2. The case fan(s) and fan blades
    3. The heat sinks on the motherboard
    4. The air grilles
    5. The hard drive(s) and optical drive(s)
    6. Anywhere else you see dust.
  2. Now plug in the AC power cable, turn on any “master switch” and start the computer.  Then carefully spray compressed air into the intake grille of the power supply box from inside the case. Then spray compressed air from outside the back of the case into the power supply’s exhaust grille.
  3. Shut down Windows normally, turn off any “master switch” and put the case side panel back on. You’re done.

How to clean out a laptop PC:
With a laptop, all you can do is turn it on and spray compressed air into the air intake and exhaust grilles.

Use a vacuum cleaner?
People seem to like the idea of cleaning out their computer case with a vacuum cleaner. Actually my method works better.

Computer Cooling and Backup Lessons

A modern computer’s worst enemy is heat (no, not its user)

Today’s typical CPU (“Central Processing Unit” – the microprocessor chip at the heart of any personal computer) consumes about 75 Watts or more of electrical energy. But nothing can be 100% efficient (as “Carnot’s Law” of thermodynamics tells us). Inefficiency means that energy not used directly to do work makes heat instead. With millions of “not 100% efficient” microscopic transistors inside a solid block that’s only about 1” on a side, the CPU gets too hot to touch.

It’s smart enough to slow down or even shut down entirely, if it overheats enough. This is one of the typical causes of a slow computer. And the CPU has a fancy cooling heat sink and cooling fan, attached with special heat transfer paste. There are also a couple of other big hot chips running the motherboard and doing other jobs. And the power supply that converts 120 volts AC to the various DC voltages needed by the computer also gets hot and has its own fan and heatsinks.

The hard drive itself has a CPU of sorts inside – nowadays most computer equipment is “smart” like that. And it also gets rather hot. It senses its own temperature and can report overheating to Windows. But it doesn’t do anything about that condition.

Lesson 1: Keep It Cool:

Buy a computer with adequate cooling. I recommend one with a full size case, if you’re getting a desktop machine. Install it where it has several inches of space around, behind and above it, especially near where air must enter and exit the case.

Clean Out Your PC Periodically:
Shut down your computer, disconnect the power cord, open the case and clean out the dust with a soft brush and a can of compressed air. Be sure to clean the fans and fan blades, the heatsinks and inside the power supply box, through its own fan openings. Do this at least twice a year in the average clean environment and much more often in workshops or other dust prone areas.

Lesson 2:

Have an automatic image backup system and a disaster recovery plan, if you have any important data at all on your computer – or even just to avoid the hours of toil required to install a new hard drive, operating system (with many updates and restarts), get networked and back online, re-install and re-license all your programs, do your email setup, etc., etc.

In another post I detail how to best do backups and make a disaster recovery plan.

Lesson 3:

Restart your computer at least once per week. Windows was not designed to run for weeks at a time. It will probably get slow, start to misbehave and eventually crash, if you don’t “refresh” it by restarting it every few days.

Until next time, avoid a computer disaster – Keep it cool!

_jim coe

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