Looking after your Computer

by: Iona D'Souza

If you are going to work and do a lot of browsing on the Internet, the first thing you need to learn is how to take care of your computer. It is far better that you take the trouble to look after your computer regularly, rather than have it freeze or crash when you lose everything on it, at which time you’ll have to pay out a lot to have it fixed. Here are some tips to prevent disasters: 1) Set your virus checker to update itself automatically. This way, it is always updated with the latest protection. 2) Scan your computer daily when you finish working on it. 3) If on a certain day you happen to download many pages, software, programs, zipped files, exe files, etc., immediately after downloading everything, scan your computer. This way, just in case a virus existed in anything you downloaded, you will catch it in time before it infects your entire Hard Drive. 4) Use your online scanner to scan your computer once a week. 5) Use your adware/spyware checker once a week. 6) Do not open any attachments in emails from people you do not know. 7) Do not open any attachments even from people you do know, if you are not expecting anything from them. 8) A virus could replicate itself to everyone on the address book and send itself out by email, without the owner even knowing this has been done. 9) Do not download free music on the Internet – these free sites are always infected. 10) Do not download any free games from the Internet. 11) Adult sites are particularly prone to viruses. 12) Back up all your data on a daily basis. Use floppy disks, flash drives, memory sticks, zip disks, CD-Roms, etc. 13) Print out contracts, payment forms, agreements and all legal documents and file them away in a ring-binder. 14) Try not to keep anything to do with your finances, payment details, payment processor passwords, credit card details, etc. on your computer. 15) A hacker could easily access all these details, if they are anywhere on your computer. Sadly, despite all these precautions your computer might still get infected, as the people who invent these malicious programs are getting even sneakier. When this happens, the easiest way to rid your computer of a virus is by rebooting your computer. This is not as difficult as it may sound, and if you learn how to do this yourself you could save yourself hundreds of dollars in repair bills.