OfficeRescue Blog

There are many options for backup that did not exist or were expensive  just a few years ago.   Modern hardware and technologies such as flash drives, external hard drives, copying (ghosting) of hard drives, Internet backup and  syncing files to another computer are now readily accessible even to home users. At minimum, whether your important files were generated for home or office, you should have at least one copy of anything that is important and that copy should be updated frequently.  In a business environment I’ll often have five different backup techniques protecting data.  We’ll mirror server data to 2 or more hard drives, periodically create images of the server’s configuration, setup rotating nightly data file backups to internal drives, external drives or both, sync important files to offsite commercial services or the customers own website, sync files to other workstations at the site .  The goal is to quickly recover from any disaster ranging from a simple hard drive failure to the site being flooded or destroyed by a tornado!  More frequently, a file is inadvertently deleted or an older version of a file needs to be retrieved.

Viruses are getting more sophisticated and difficult to remove  every year.   About a year or so ago I began to see viruses programmed to destroy System Restore points and damage the Windows registry – in some cases so severely that rebuilding the configuration was faster than repairing the damage.  That’s why my current practice is to install an automatic registry backup program.   As long as I have a current backup of the registry I’m able to restore the computer to normal operation without resorting to a rebuild.   To remove viruses I often use process explorers, utilities to remove files and folders on reboot, direct registry editing, the manually deletion of files and folders from the command line, booting XP from a special CD, booting in Safe Mode, etc.   The old technique of scanning takes too long and modern viruses once installed are typically not removeable by antivirus progams anyway.

Computers often arrive cluttered with many unnecessary programs that load every time you startup. There are a number of benefits to disabling and/or uninstalling these programs but you’ll notice faster startup and operation first.  Over time you’ll experience fewer pauses, lockups and crashes.   A tuneup is not complete unless the latest Service Packs and security patches have been applied to the operating system.   Most people are not aware of what security patches do or that you can get a virus just from your computer being on!   Hackers (usually automated processes) are clever enough to find ways into your computer whether you’re running a program or not.  Known weaknesses in Windows and other common programs are the target.  It works like this:  1)  an automatic process systematically scans remote computers until it finds a known weakness/entry point.  2) The exploit is implemented by an automatic process  3)  You are hacked and your data is potentially harvested.   The best defense is a combination of techniques such as applying security patches as they are released, using a good firewall, using a fully updated web browser, leaving User Account Control on or for XP installing a program to monitor installation processes.