Your laptop or desktop computer and
its systems, however sophisticated and complex they may appear to be (and
actually are) at face value, are also susceptible to freezes, crashes, the BSD
(the feared Blue Screen of Death) or at worst a complete and total breakdown of
your system.
How this affects you will depend
considerably upon the nature of the failure and what you were doing at the time
of the failure. For instance, if you do not store important data on your
computer and it has a complete breakdown whilst you were engaged in nothing
particularly important, this will not be a particularly big deal for you.
However, if you do store data on
your desktop or laptop computer and you have not backed up that data, a total
system breakdown could have the most disastrous of consequences, not only for
your personal convenience, but also for your commercial situation.
When you relate the latter
hypothesis to the fact that a personal computer, whether it is a laptop or
desktop, has become almost an essential for the vast majority of people in the
world, either in the personal field or in their business and financial lives,
the importance of doing everything possible to avoid a computer failure becomes
all the more palpable.
But how do you minimize the chances
of this happening?
The first and absolute rule is to
make sure that your computer is not vulnerable to attack from outside parties.
There are literally millions of infections that can invade your operating
system and your hard drives that can, quite literally, disable your computers.
All kinds of virus, malware and spyware is out there waiting to slip inside the
computer's defences, if there is even a small trace of vulnerability. Trojan
horse, keyloggers and a variety of other infections can not only make your
computer stop operating as it should do, or altogether, in some cases. They can
also steal valuable files and dishonestly obtain sensitive stored There are
numerous types of infections out there. An up to date protection system is
therefore vital if you want to preserve the safety of your computer and the
information stored on it. Antivirus protection and anti-malware and
anti-spyware programmes are all available, often at no cost. These can ensure that
your laptop or desktop continues to work and safely store your information. The
best way of accessing these protection programmes is by checking out computer
review sites on the internet. There you will be able to share advice from other
computer enthusiasts about the best deals available to you. Whatever you do,
and however you do it, make sure that you get your computer protected. It is
the single most important thing to do.
Of course, it is possible that you
will become infected with a virus, even with the best of protection. In that
case there are tools that can be employed to eradicate the infection or you can
get online advice about how to eliminate the threat manually. Modern operating
systems such as Windows also provides a system restore programme, which will
put your system back into the shape it was in before the computer was infected.
However, not all viruses will be
eliminated by using system restore in this way, so a total clean up is usually
necessary. Sadly, some viruses are so stubborn or so skilful in hiding
themselves within your computer that the only way that you can be sure to get
rid of them is by formatting your hard and reloading your operating system and
your files and programmes from the manufacturer's CD. It is vital therefore,
that you back up all your files on a regular basis so that they can be reloaded
onto your computer if you do indeed need to carry out a format. If you are
storing important information it probably makes sense to back this information
up - meaning copying it onto some portable storage medium such as a CD or a USB
drive or an external hard drive - at least once every week. That way your files
will be protected and capable of being restored to your computer if you are
unlucky enough to have to carry out a complete re-writing of your hard drive.
The vast majority of computers have a large amount of random access memory
(commonly referred to as RAM) The amount of RAM will affect how quickly your
processes run. If you have an older desktop or laptop computer and it is
running more slowly than you would like you may consider upgrading the amount
of RAM. Memory cards can be purchased easily on the internet and you might be
pleasantly surprised at the increased efficiency of your computer after
carrying out an upgrade.
The same can also be said about
reducing the amount of data held on your hard disk. The fuller this hard disk
is the slower your computer is likely to run. There are two basic ways to free
up space on your hard drive. The first of these is simply to uninstall any
unnecessary or unused programmes that you have stored there. This can free up
lots of hard disk space, particularly if you are uninstalling large programmes.
The second way is to defragment your hard drive. This process collects the
files on your computer that have become fragmented and re-organises then
tidily, thus saving space and also causing the programmes to run more
efficiently. If you find that you still have simply too much stored on your
computer you might try to move photographs and other heavy space using files,
such as media files onto an external hard drive. This can also free up lots of
space.