Ruth Sheets
CCO Moderator
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Blitzer
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How do you keep track of the health of your computer? Hopefully you have some antivirus scanner that you use, but what else do you have in your tool kit?
A few years ago my computer was on the fritz, and I called my friend, the "computer doctor", to come over and check it out. (One of the few doctors who still make house calls.) The diagnosis was "impending hard disk failure", which I managed to replace, even doing it myself, without electrocuting myself!
During his house call, my computer doctor told me about a nifty program that he recommended, namely, Belarc Advisor. You can download it for personal use only at: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
Truthfully, I had forgotten about this program until this weekend when I was looking at some old notes I had taken. I downloaded a copy and ran it. It produces a report -- mine is 6 pages long. The report has all kinds of interesting information about my system and flagged some things for me to fix. For example, it told me my Java was out of date. Actually, it was 15 versions out of date! When you have an outdated version you miss function and also security updates. I have since rectified this and turned on automatic Java updates on my system, and also fixed some other problems thanks to the Belarc report.
There probably are other software applications that do similar checks for you, but I recommend you use something to help you keep your computer(s) healthy. With so much riding on having a working computer these days, it pays to keep you computer in good repair.
A few years ago my computer was on the fritz, and I called my friend, the "computer doctor", to come over and check it out. (One of the few doctors who still make house calls.) The diagnosis was "impending hard disk failure", which I managed to replace, even doing it myself, without electrocuting myself!
During his house call, my computer doctor told me about a nifty program that he recommended, namely, Belarc Advisor. You can download it for personal use only at: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
Truthfully, I had forgotten about this program until this weekend when I was looking at some old notes I had taken. I downloaded a copy and ran it. It produces a report -- mine is 6 pages long. The report has all kinds of interesting information about my system and flagged some things for me to fix. For example, it told me my Java was out of date. Actually, it was 15 versions out of date! When you have an outdated version you miss function and also security updates. I have since rectified this and turned on automatic Java updates on my system, and also fixed some other problems thanks to the Belarc report.
There probably are other software applications that do similar checks for you, but I recommend you use something to help you keep your computer(s) healthy. With so much riding on having a working computer these days, it pays to keep you computer in good repair.