PC Maintenance & Error Prevention

Now that you have had your system optimized you might be curious how to maintain optimal performance. This page was designed to assist you with maintenance and error prevention of your PC. If you have any questions or comments about this page E-Mail Us

What are all these drives and how do I use them?

How do I prevent my PC from causing the infamous "Illegal Operation"?

What is all this talk about the "computer virus" and what can I do to protect my PC?

How do I prevent "Hackers" from accessing my files and messing with my computer?

Why is ScanDisk telling me that I have "lost chains", "lost clusters" or "Bad Sectors" and what should I do about it?

How can I improve disk performance by defragmenting my hard drive?

 

The Drive Structure System

As complicated as it may seem, the ACS drive structure system is easy to use if you follow these basic rules:

  1. DO NOT install any software or copy any files to your Win95 C or SWAP drive unless it is absolutely necessary.
  2. Save all of your documents and important data to your DATA drive. Saving all data to one drive centralizes your important information and makes it easier to find.
  3. Install everything else to your APPS or GAMES drives. If your GAMES drive fills up you can start to install your games to one of the APPS drives. If you have been installing all of your other applications to APPS1, then it is recommended that you start installing games to APPS2 if your GAMES drive is full this keeps the games separate and isolated from your important applications.

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The Infamous "Illegal operation"

 Illegal operations are a tricky error code to troubleshoot. Microsoft's own Windows 95 Resource kit, a book for system engineers doesn't even mention this common problem. Usually a specific program or piece of the Windows 95 graphical user interface causes this error. If it is a specific application try uninstalling and reinstalling the program that is giving you the error. If reinstalling doesn't work you probably have a corrupt configuration file and at that point it is best to call us. Here are some tips to prevent illegal operations from occurring:

  1. Only install software from reputable vendors who have a good track record of selling quality products.
  2. Do not shutoff your computer without going through the proper shutdown sequence (START, SHUTDOWN).
  3. When installing software if you are prompted to replace a newer file say NO unless you are 100% positive that you must replace this file.

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The "Computer Virus"

In a world of global communication with file sharing and e-mail one has to safeguard against the computer virus. Your first line of defense is to only accept and execute files that have originated from a reputable source. This includes asking your friend where he acquired the file. Additionally you can purchase a virus scanner to inoculate your files before using them. You should choose a company that is willing to give out frequent virus patch updates to help keep your scanner current with the most recent virii. Try the following sites to download a virus scanner:

http://www.symantec.com/nav/index_product.html

http://www.nai.com/products/default.asp

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"Hacker" Prevention

The term "Hacker" is loosely defined as someone who wishes to either steal your information or damage your system. Due to the determined nature of the Hacker to "Hack" away at a system it is nearly impossible without extensive measures, to be 100% "hack proof". Although with a few basic steps you can make your system 95% hack proof. The following is a list of the steps the common user can take to prevent hackers from gaining access:

  1. Disable file and printer sharing! This can be accomplished by clicking START, SETTINGS, CONTROL PANEL, NETWORK, FILE AND PRINTER SHARING if the FILE AND PRINTER SHARING button is grayed out or when you click on it the two boxes are not checked you have it disabled.
  2. Visit Microsoft's Windows 95 web site and download the most recent patches for your system.
  3. Do not give out your Internet account password to ANYONE! I recently discovered that a technician at my Internet Service Provider used my password to forward one of my messages to his own account for personal reading.
  4. If the information you are sending through the internet is private in any way use E-mail encryption and only provide information to web sites that use Secure servers (Identified by the prefix https://)

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ScanDisk Errors

The Microsoft disk repair/scanning utility ScanDisk can be your best ally against preventing data loss. If you are running Windows 95b or later ScanDisk will start automatically if you didn't shutdown your system properly. If scan disk starts up automatically on system boot up it is more then likely that it will find some kind of error with your disk. When you are prompted to either save or delete always choose delete. The files that ScanDisk would save are useless for recovery purposes anyway. If ScanDisk discovers bad sectors on your disk drive you should call us immediately for further diagnosis. Bad sectors can lead to serious data loss which can be prevented if they are detected early.

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Defragging your drives with Defrag

Running Defrag on your drives frequently will improve disk performance. The program should be located in START, PROGRAMS, ACCESSORIES, SYSTEM TOOLS, DEFRAG or you if you right mouse click on a drive in MY COMPUTER, Select PROPERTIES, TOOLS, DEFRAG NOW. This program takes the scattered files on your disk and puts them in a sequential order to improve disk reading.

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Copyright Affordable Computer Services, All rights reserved.
Last revised: April 13, 1998