An Ounce of Prevention
Posted on January 31, 2006
Filed Under Software, Windows |
I’ve never been a huge fan of formatting (wiping clean) computers to fix problems. In a previous life I managed a number of technicians who were responsible for installing broadband Internet connections for cable and satellite TV companies.
Sometimes a computer technician would run into problems with a particular machine and would suggest that the hard drive should be formatted and the operating system should be reinstalled fresh. If there were in fact a problem with the operating system this would in fact fix it, but:
• All the data on the computer would be lost if not backed up.
• Even if the data is properly backed up it is usually painful to reproduce personalized settings and restore e-mail and favorites.
• It can sometimes be difficult to find the right drivers for unknown hardware like sound cards and video cards. Without the right driver the hardware won’t work again.
• Often a problem involves hardware and only appears to be operating system related. Formatting is useless in this case.
I cringed at the idea of formatting a hard drive and would always find a way to resolve the issue without going to that extreme.
In the past few weeks I’ve had as many computers cross my bench and I’ve been forced to format hard drives. One computer in particular had some 7000 spyware and virus infected files. The computer ran so slowly, and so many files were damaged, that fixing it would otherwise have been impossible.
Another would reboot itself as soon as the user logged on. Every trick in the book failed to show any promise of fixing it and finally I resolved to format this one too.
Spyware in particular has become extremely insidious. By definition, spyware tracks your surfing and other computer habits and reports this information to back to a marketing company or whoever might be interested.
It is an invasion of privacy, the software is often poorly written, and it can eat bandwidth and computer resources to the point of grinding the computer to a halt.
Worse, the best tools out there to rid a computer of spyware actually only get less than 2/3 of it. The authors are always producing more effective versions spyware that can hide much more effectively from even manual tools like HijackThis.
The best way to deal with spyware is to prevent it in the first place. A working firewall, antivirus and antispyware programs, up to date patches, and knowing what to watch for are the most effective preventative tools.
When it gets to the stage where the computer has become barely useable, there’s little chance there will be an easy fix. The fixes that are available can be extreme, expensive, and a huge inconvenience. That’s going to be true for at least the foreseeable future while malware authors manage to stay one step ahead of those making tools to fix them.
Visit http://www.bowesit.com for information to help prevent malware.
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