As we have discussed many times, you should not only have a current Antivirus program installed, but you should also have it set to update itself automatically. I like for my systems to check for updates on a daily basis. One of the readers e-mailed me with a question that I thought would be good to explain here. He said that he had installed Norton Antivirus 2004 but he could not find where to change the setup for the update interval. For those of you with this program installed you would go into your scheduled tasks for Windows and view the properties of the Symantec NetDetect task. Adjust the schedule of the task to whatever interval you choose and the update of Norton Antivirus 2004 will follow.

I would suggest that if your antivirus program is more than two years old you should buy the latest version to give you the most protection. There are a number of Viruses and Trojans that the older programs will not detect. After a period of time you will not be able to install the virus definition updates. Mcafee 4.03 is one such version of antivirus program that falls into this category. Not only are there viruses and Trojans that it will not detect, you will also have to manually update the product to stay protected.

Windows Critical updates are very simple to deal with. If you are using Windows 98 or ME there is an update that will install a program to check for critical updates every time you connect to the Internet. If a critical update is found a screen pops up asking if you would like to download and install the update or be reminded about it later. If you are using XP or a similar operating system the default setting is to download any critical updates and notify you with an icon in the taskbar. This way the downloading takes place in the background and all you have to do is click on the button to install the update. You can also change the schedule and choose to have the updates installed automatically without the need for your intervention.

Let’s take a look at the hardware rules that you need to follow. The first item on the list is heat. It is not a good idea to have a computer system in an area that has a lot of direct sunlight. Heat can also come into play with the other two items on the list, dust and new noises. Dust can cause the fans to not have the same amount of cooling power that they once had. If you are blowing air on a heat sink that is covered in dust, you are not getting the full effect that you could get if you were blowing the air directly on the heat sink. This means that the CPU is going to run at a higher temperature than it normally has to. You only have a certain amount of time before the dust gets so bad that either the fan fails or the CPU overheats and dies. When the fan fails you will find out about the new noises issue. If you start hearing noises then you need to find out what they are and fix the problem now. Later is usually a bad thing.

There is no way that I can give you a definitive answer as to how often you need to clean your systems out. Once a year would be the minimum unless you have some great filters in your air conditioning system. If you have never taken the cover off your computer and it is more that one year old, now would be a good time to learn the basics. You can buy a can of compressed air at most of the office supply stores in town. Take the cover off and use the air to blow the dust off of the CPU fan as well as the vent of the power supply fan and any case fans that your system might have. Some of you will be surprised at the amount of dust you will find.

There are many more things that can go wrong with computers that the basics will not be able to help you with. There is always the possibility that you could have a hard drive die or a video card or memory chip go bad. These are the types of failures that you will have no control over. All you can worry about is the things that you can control. Keep the hackers and dust out of your system and hopefully the only problems you will encounter are the problems that occur between the seat and the keyboard. You are on your own for those.