Computer UtilitiesThe Effects and benefits

Getting the best out of your PC

By Jordan Munro

Virus Protection You will need protection from viruses as other wise your

computer could go wrong and files could become corrupt. This will make your computer run slower and affect performance.

Anti Virus installation When dealing with viruses your best bet is to buy an Anti virus from a well known

company such as Norton. Anti Virus programs can be quite expensive and this one can cost around £25. However, you can get some very good free software online like AVG. I personally like AVG and decided to install it my self, it is very easy to do and you can get it up and running with 15 minutes.

After it was installed the next screen checked the system status of the computer took around 10 Minutes. After the installation and nothing was found I set it up so it does a Virus scan once a week so that I can make sure that I will always be virus free on my computer.

Full System ScanFull System Scan What a full system scan does what it says. It scans the whole

computer for general things such as cookies, viruses and Trojans.

By doing a full system scan you will be able to find things harmful to your computer. By deleting them or by putting them in quarantine you will be able to improve the performance of your computer.

Doing a full system scan

So after waiting until its finished I then had the choice to whether I can delete, Quarantine and leave the potential hazards. Obviously they were all deleted and another full system san can be done whenever you like.

Doing a full system scan is relatively easy. I opened the Anti Virus software and almost instantly you will see a button which says ‘Full System Scan’. I clicked on it and it started up, a full system scan may take a while to complete as the name suggests it will scan everything on your computer.

Scheduling a Full System Scan

You can set up a full system scan you be done weekly and when you want it done in that week. By doing this you do not need to do it yourself every week and therefore cannot forget.

Service Pack 3 Installing a Service Pack 3 will sort out any bugs that were in

the previous service packs. It will fix any bugs and will install some protection features to deal with any new threats. This should in general make your computer more efficient.

Installing the Service pack can be done from the Windows website for free. And to do this is quite simple. I went to the windows website and searched for the service pack 3 after finding it I then proceeded to Install it. I just then waited for it to install and the re-set the computer.

System De-fragmentation A De-fragment is utility that sorts out your files to make it

easier for your computer to find them when needed and as a result speeds up any processes involving files.

Doing a Disk Defrag To do a Disk Defrag I opened up the control panel and

proceeded to open of the Performance and Maintenance tab and then I clicked on the Disk Defrag button. It opened up and I chose to start it up. The rest is done for you, I waited till its finished and then re started the computer.

Drive Formatting Formatting is a process of restoring components back to factory

settings. For example on a hard drive, Floppy Disk etc. It will delete all the files and clean it up of any viruses. In doing this you will have lost everything on their but now you got a lot of more space to put other programs/files on there.

Formatting my hard drive Before formatting my hard drive I backed up everything on my

computer just in case I need it in the future or something goes wrong. I then got my Windows disk and put it into the disk drive. After that I re started the computer and booted from the CD you can then decide whether you want to completely remove your hard drive and all its saved files and installed windows from scratch.

I decided to do this as I have backed up my files on a external hard drive. It took around 45 minutes to do it all but afterwards I had a completely clean hard drive with just the operational system on there.

Installing and Running a Firewall A Firewall basically helps protect and inspect any things

coming through to your computer and hopefully stop any thing harmful. They usually come built in with windows.

Windows will have a firewall already installed on the OS and so when I installed Microsoft XP it asked my whether I wanted to turn it to which I responded ‘Yes’ and from that moment I have not turned it off or needed to do and it has kept my computer safe from any unauthorised access.

Creating Folders By creating folders you will make your files for organised

therefore making them easier to find if you have a lot. It also looks a lot neater and cleaner when everything is organised.

All you need to do it right click on where to want to create a new folder and choose ‘create new folder’.

Copy and deleting files Obviously deleting files you don’t need or use will free up

space on your computer making your computer work faster. And by copy files you can either use them as a back up or alternatively say you want to edit a file but not risk ruining it you can copy it allowing you to do what you want.

Backing up to Cd’s Backing up files and programs to your Cd’s frees up space on your

hard drive. Allowing more space on your hard drive to download more files etc. By transferring the data your computer will be able to run faster as it won’t be clogged up with data.

Utility Software for Windows and MACDe-FragMicrosoft's Windows Disk Defragmenter /

File Vault for MAC

What these utilities do is increase the access speed by moving around files. They optimize the speed in which it takes to find files as they have been grouped together and cleaned up with the disk defrag

Clean UpWindows Cleanup Utility/

OnyX for MAC

Disk Cleanup Utility can easily find out which files the hard drive may no longer be needed and delete them. In addition to freeing up a substantial amount of hard drive space, using Disk Cleanup on a regular basis will improve computers performance.

System Profilers Apple System Profiler/ Windows can use a program called CPU-Z

A system profiler is a program that provides the information about the software installed and hardware attached to your computer. It will tell you all of the specs the computer has. Windows doesn’t have one on the Vanilla OP but many can be downloaded off the internet.

Spyware Removal

MacScan/ Windows Defender

The spyware removal is designed to detect, isolate and remove spyware, trojans, and alert the user of any malicious programs that have found their way to your computer.

Thank you for listening to my presentation and I hope now that you have a clear understanding on what these utilities do.