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I agree with keeping windows and data files on seperate partitions. I use a sync program to keep the “My Documents” folder backed up on a seperate drive, in real time. The online backup services seem to work rather well, but you will want to pre-encrypt your data. Different online storage companies have different encryption schemes, sometimes with them holding a “pass key” to decrypt your files if court ordered, unless you have pre-encrypted the data before they get it.

I repaired a computer with the exact same symptoms a week ago and it turned out that the problems were caused by a brownout and the platters slowed down enough to allow the head to touch the platter and destroy that sector of data. I recovered their data then ran Spin-Rite by Steve Gibson of Gibson Research to recover the lost data and recreate the sector in a different location on the platter. Then I played around with another piece of software that mapped the bad sectors onto a pictorial of platters and it was cool to see that the errors followed a curved line from inside to outside edge of platter. That told me that the head skittered off of the platter as it decelerated. After running Spin-Rite, the pc booted up normally and was fine. This is another wonderful reason to use a ups, even on laptops. Spin-Rite is also awesome for refreshing data and giving you a good idea of the exact health of the drive.

When I erase entire drives, I am also testing it’s performance. I use http://hddscan.com/ Both the newest and older v.25 (which I prefer for fast and dirty erase and rough benchmark). I do a clone of each drive then erase and benchmark the original every couple months, just to truly check the health of the drive and to “freshen” the platter. After 3 passes, I think it’s erased well enough for me, and thoroughly tested for speed and accuracy. Then I put the clone back on the original. In-between, I use Ccleaners tool. HDDScan is a favorite tool for testing drives. I test drives constantly, since I have a couple hundred pounds of used drives lying around. Some pc shops will save them for you, if you ask nicely. The cases are aluminum, and good to be recycled, the magnets in them are awesome (@2005 Samsungs have the biggest magnets), and the platters have cool physical properties. Some of the magnets are strong enough to hold a shovel, rake, 3# slegehammer! BE VERY CAREFUL WITH LAPTOP PLATTERS! Some of them are glass-like and if broken are extremely sharp. Also, check out http://hddguru.com/ He has a bunch more info and tools for hard drives.

Be very careful with a dell disk like yours, slipstreamed or not. I was an HP ASP for about 6.5 years and had to do bios recovery on many HP computers where the customer put a Dell restore disk in an Hp and it wiped out much of the bios info such as model serial, build id, and so forth. Windows wouldn’t load the dell disks and would no longer load the real HP restore disks until a special program from HP, only available to Authorized Service Providers, was run and all the data was manually typed back in, and flashed back into the bios. In other words, the wrong manufacturers disk may “brick” the computer until it is re-programmed by only a factory authorized tech. Most of the modern HP restore disks will only work on one specific model because the hardware drivers are pre-setup and there are no “extra” drivers, so HP has a system that the restore disk reads the bios info to see if the right disks are in the right machine. If not the install stops and an error message pops up.

In my opinion, not doing windows updates, especially critical ones, is like ignoring a recall on your car for a bad high pressure fuel line. Sure, it maight not happen to you, but why take the chance? As far as updates trashing your computer, don’t you ever read Susan’s articles? Personally, the only times I’ve seen updates cause problems is when the registry was tweaked manually and not done well, critical services had been messed with, power outages midstream, radical settings in internet explorer, and people trying to be tricky using proxy servers that jump around to try and stay “one step ahead of the man”. It could be that you just have bad luck. It could be all about that nasty letter you sent Microsoft many years ago and they are holding a grudge. Just kidding. I know a guy who won’t do updates and refuses to have any virus protection. He claims that he is so good that he doesn’t need them, yet every time I stop by his house, his computer is off or freshly restored and the norton ’07 icon is by the clock, and he goes for days without responding to emails. I jokingly ask him if he stopped taking his meds and he says that everything is perfect.

As far as security, I’ve tried several lately on my 5 machines, and the top names all work pretty well. MSE seems to be the least resource hungry and simplest while catching everything I threw at it. Avast! works well. AVG Network had some serious issues but they fixed it. Haven’t tried the AVG Free in a year or so but had good results with it when I did. Malwarebytes is an awesome second line of defense except on 64 bit. Super duper A…, haven’t tried yet, but when I first heard of it I thought it sounded silly so I had to look it up to see if was really legit. Comodo AV works well but seems a little complicated for regular Joe Schmo, just doesn’t seem intuitive to me. Norton stuff, well, since Peter has been gone, they’ve done some stumbling. I think they are back though. My mom uses their latest suite and likes it on her new top of the line HP laptop. She’s in her mid 70’s and amazes me with some of the stuff she can do with it. She loves all the suggestions and backup reminders. Very rarely does she ever need help and she does facebook, myspace, hours a day of emails with all the funny stuff and attachments galore, online banking using Norton’s ID security, and anything else she takes a notion to do. She is used to their products and has activated the pre-installed Norton that has come with her HP computers since about ’02. The version she had before 360 was a bit of a stinker, and I had to put Malwarebytes on as a backup, but she got through it. She did upgrade the version that came with this laptop though. If my mom can use it successfully and happily then it gets my approval. I think it is hard to go wrong as long as you use a big name product. Use what you like, but use one of the top names.

Another option is to use a WinPE boot disk with your favorite defrag tool. there are tons of bootable utility disks that do a fine defrag job too.

If I do that, then I would have to update all the shortcuts with the new version name every time there is an updated version. Some people think that having it on the desktop makes it too easy for their kids to uninstall stuff and otherwise mess things up with it. They also don’t want me to set up limited accounts for the kids or use steady state either. I can’t understand some people, but it’s their computer and their money.

You could offer some really big and ugly policeman 60 Ringgits to go to the store with you. I think that is about $20.00. Or offer to buy them dinner afterwards. Big ugly cops can be wonderful friends. He might do it for free just to help you out. Most of them are very nice to ordinary people. They like spending time with people they aren’t arresting. It lets them relax a little and reminds them how nice most people really are. Good luck!

“Doc, it hurts really bad when I shove my toothbrush up my nose.” “Well, don’t shove your toothbrush up your nose” I have never seen a pc where sleep or hibernation worked correctly. Use power management to turn off the display and hard drive at an appropriate time and don’t use sleep!

Windows uses parts of excel, office, powerpoint as part of the operating system whether the whole program is loaded or not. Pieces of them are integrated into windows and the os would not work without them. All of those updates could be necessary to fix holes or bugs in the pieces that windows has to have to run.

Better yet, sign up for free at OpenDNS.org and get filtering and more. It prevents anyone on your network from going to known bad sites, is completely customizable, and misspellings won’t take you to somewhere that could cause you nightmares.

I have never seen a computer with a normal compliment of peripherals capable of using sleep or hibernation correctly. Lost files in the printer cue, corrupted files, network glitches, losing drivers, and the list goes on. Just use power management to turn off the monitor and hard drive at say, 20 minutes and 30 minutes. There will be a few second delay when you wake up the drive and monitor, but no glitches. Using sleep might save you $20 a year, but I don’t think it’s worth it for all the hassle.

Consumer grade NAS is still hideously slow and in my opinion is only good for holding backups done in the dead of night. A cheap but much faster option is to pick up a refurb P4 machine for $130.00, stick a large drive in it, share the drive on the network, and keep your network as-is. Use that drive to do real work with. 100 meg networking is still faster than 4 computers can pass data simultaneously anyway, unless you have more than 4 or 5 computers on it passing huge files all at once. I used to run a network of 16 computers in an office environment with a 100 meg network and the highest usage ever was 76% and those jokers were passing movie files all over the place. Once I convinced corporate to let me ban all the filesharing of bootleg movies and music, it rarely went over 30%.

The responses are all very good, but I just want to add a little tech info. CAD is very special because they are designed to flip a hardware switch that only they can do, then the hardware switch informs windows that they were depressed. What it means is that a human is truly sitting at the keyboard and the command cannot be given remotely. The same hardware switch will reboot the computer too as we all know. The special hardware switch is a great little tool that can’t be duplicated by anything other than actually pressing the buttons.

electrical tape blends in better. Yes it could be doing something that you don’t want it to and if you don’t use it, the best advice is to disable it in the hardware manager and disable the driver. It is just a usb device plugged directly into the main board and can be easily unplugged by a decent tech. Most of the time it is plugged in directly under the keyboard next to the keyboard and touchpad ribbon cables. Sometimes it can be disabled in the bios, but most of the time it is just another usb device and is not recognized as anything special by the bios. The microphones can also be remotely activated. Remote desktop utilities are often not seen as viruses so it is possible that someone tweaked the settings to spy on you. Good auditing and tracking software is also well hidden and can be used by Private investigators, high tech stalkers, and others to spy on you. If you are going through a divorce or have some other reason to think that you are being spied upon, I would back up all documents and write down all your passwords then do a complete restore doing what is called a destructive recovery. The manufacturer will have specific instructions about how to do it for your make and model. Windows polls for connected devices, especially usb devices at a regular interval, so it could be nothing. I don’t want to make you paranoid, but the mics and camera are a window into your house that aren’t that tough for mediocre hackers to get access to, especially if they can have it in their posession for as little as a couple minutes. For your peace of mind, the destructive recovery is the best option and a piece of electrical tape then keep it out of the hands of untrusted people including your kid’s friends and the creepy neighbor who begs to borrow your internet for a little while.

Most “restore” disks from Dell, HP, and so on are model specific. If it’s not the right restore disk for that specific computer, you might end up with a brick. Using the wrong restore disk can wipe out the bios, sometimes permanently, and not repairable by anyone other than a factory authorized tech for that make. I was an HP Authorized Service Provider for over 6 years and ran into many machines where people had used the wrong restore disks and made the computers completely unusable. On some the motherboard just had to be replaced and on some I was able to rewrite the bios with a special program written by HP. I can not go into any detail about how the program works, but is is also used to write into it the make, model, serial number, and so on.

On every computer I have put a raw copy of windows onto instead of using the factory restore disks, the key on the label worked, BUT it has to be the correct operating system, build version, and etc. In other words, If it was xp home build 2600 service pack 2, you have to have the matching copy of windows to match the tag or the key will not work. Some keys are primarily blue, some pink, and etc. Microsoft requires the manufacturers to provide a key that will work with a Microsoft made disk without using the manufacturer’s restore disk, the drivers will not all be there and sometimes it is a real pain in the neck to get them if the previous installation is gone, but the trick is to use the right Microsoft disk that matches the key. The greatest benefit to doing this is that the bloatware was never there to begin with, and after the drivers are installed, will run the fastest it ever has. Borrow a real microsoft disk from someone, most pc shops have them and can loan you one. This is perfectly legal, it is that key that is the “owned” non-tranferrable part. DO NOT download a copy from anywhere except from Microsoft.com, but I don’t think they still have it available for download. They might though, wouldn’t hurt to look. I’ve seen many computers running things like XP Pro Dark Edition and some others, but they are bogus and dangerous. They can’t do updates and most of them have permanently installed viruses to steal any personal info they can and spam-bots to use your machine as a bot to do whoever’s evil bidding. It could even be used to pass around kiddie porn without your knowledge, until the FBI breaks down your door, arrests you and maybe your family, takes all your computer gear and charges you with distribution of kiddie porn. If they ever figure out that you were an unknowing dupe, you will still be paying off some lawyer for the next 20 years. That scenerio has happened and continues to happen, but more often in third world countries where bootlegs and counterfeits are more prevelant. There are also viruses out there that create hidden files to store kiddie porn on unsuspecting people’s computers so that the bad guys don’t have to store them on their computer. McGrewSecurity.com had quite an article on this a couple years ago. The computer’s owner spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending himself against it before an expert verified that the files were in fact never touched or seen by the owner and had been sent and manipulated by a remote user using a virus followed by crafty hacking. All of you who use file sharing programs need to think about this too. One infected file and your computer could be used to distribute all sorts of evil. Maybe your Anti-virus program will stop it in time or your firewall will catch it, but are some free movies and free music really worth it? I am not suggesting that the question poster would use a bootleg, just providing some things to think about.