Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
December 9, 2007

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 3, Number 26 — Sunday, December 9, 2007

Part 1  | Part 2

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IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   Backing Up and Restoring Your Computer
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   Slow Hard Drive
   4.   A Look at NOD32 Antivirus Version 3.0
   5.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   6.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

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1.  Backing Up and Restoring Your Computer

This week, subscriber Scott Adler wrote to me about his experiences with the online backup system called Carbonite (www.carbonite.com). He wasn't happpy...

Good Morning

I have been using a web based back up system named Carbonite and I had recently had to use it. I found it extremely difficult because one had to,of course reload the programs onn the POC and then find on your hard drive then locate the file you wished to restore and then export or otherwise move it into that program. Even with on lione telephone assistamce I found that the techy assisting me seemed to fl;ounder around even more than I did. You recommend "ZipBackup". Does this program easily restore files and documents to their proper place after programs have been reloaded??

TIA

I wrote back to Scott to say:

Scott, I've never heard of "ZipBackup."

I recommend Acronis True Image for system backup. I back up across my home network to a folder on another computer or I back up to an external drive. I can restore the image, additional differential or incremental backups, or restore individual files from the backups.
http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/more-about-acronis-true-image.php

 

2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday. This week did not include Patch Tuesday.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
No new version. Version 2.0.0.11 was released on Friday, November 30, 2007. This was a stabilityi update to correct a problem that was found in the previous release, Firefox 2.0.0.10.

However, I'm still seeing some stability problems in v2.0.0.11 that first showed up in 2.0.0.10. I normally load seven (7) tabs at one time for one of my daily steps. I'm seeing some unusual delays in loading, where Firefox seems to be freezing for 5-6 seconds. It resolves itself without further action by me, but it's just not working quite right.

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
No new version this week. Version 9.24 was released on October 17th. This release is a recommended security upgrade.

Opera 9.50 beta 1 became available on October 25th. Based on the changelog, there are a lot of changes coming to Opera. But, bewware, if you're using OperaMail, this is a one-way upgrade as it will change your mail storage system.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
New version this week! Version 9.0.0.4 was released during the week ending December 1st. The new release includes security fixes that were included in Firefox 2.0.0.10.

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): New version! Version 1.1.7 was released during the week ending December 1, 2007. This update includes security and stability fixes.

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. Eudora is now free, with no ads and no "paid mode" option.

The first beta version of v8 (v8.0.0.b1) was released several weeks ago and is available from http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope_Releases .

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
No new version this week. Thunderbird version 2.0.0.9 was released on November 14, 2007. This is primarily a security update.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free): New Version! Version 2.3.1 was released during the week ending December 8th. According to the Release Notes, this version does not include any ew features.

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3.  Slow Hard Drive

This week, subscriber Jack Carmena wrote me about some problems with Trend Micro:

Trend-Micro is taking 5-7 hours to run doing a virus check.
Is that indicative of a problem I ought to be concerned about?

I wrote back to ask if he was seeing anything else that might indicate slow hard drive access? Windows will try to reread and reread and reread when it has trouble getting data from the hard drive.

He'd been running Trend Micro PC-cillin for a long time, so I wondered if this was the same version or a new update...

This is the same version I have been running for 6 months or more except for the periodic auto update.
I am seeing some slowness in reaction time when I open a program, etc.

At this point, I don't know if he has a configuration issue, if he has shifted from a "smart scan" to scanning all files, if his hard drive has files so fragmented that fragmentation is causing the slow access, or if he has a hard drive that's starting to go bad.

I suggested three steps, with the last one probably running overnight:

1. First, we need to make sure that the hard drive is not failing.
1. Download, install and run HDTUNE ( http://www.hdtune.com/ , freeware).
2. Check the Health tab and make sure it all shows OK in he Status column.
2. Run a file system check (used to be called scandisk).
1. Start > My Computer, right click on C:
2. Select Properties.
3. Clck on the Tools tab.
4. In the Error-checking box, click on the "Check now" button.
5. Click the checkbox "Automatically fix file system errors" (If you knew you had a hard drive failure, you might not want to do that).
3. Defragment the hard drive.
1. Next box down, click the Defragment Now button.
2. Select the partition you want to check (you might have only one big C: partition).
3. Click Analyse, which will take maybe 1-10 minutes.
4. Then, click Defragment.
5. This will probably run several hours.
6. Reboot.

At this point, if the problem was hard drive fragmentation, it's probably been solved.