Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

P3/D1

Unit 2: Task 3/Task 5


Antivirus software & Firewalls

Antivirus software’s purpose is to protect your computer from viruses and malware while firewalls protect you from harmful websites that can potentially damage/harm your computer which can either permanently damage your computer or lead to a number of different things depending on how the computer is damaged. Firewalls can have settings to how high the protection is and which websites and what kind of websites would be banned or protected against to minimise computer damage. An Antivirus software like ‘Avast Antivirus’ is free for the coverage of your own computer and protection from potential risks, viruses and malware. By paying, you can have all computers in your house protected against not only against viruses, malware and potential risks that can damage your computer but also it filter’s internet files and e-mail to narrow it down from spam to e-mails you can trust. The Avast Antivirus also has a sandbox feature which allows you to open a program under the surveillance of Avast which then checks if the program is safe or if it has any viruses or malware attached to it. By having an Antivirus software scan your computer daily, it can find corrupted and damaged files which can potentially slow your computer down. What some antiviruses can do is delete or try to fix the damaged files to stop your computer from slowing down.  This can also help speed up your computer and increase the performance.

 

 

Clean up tools for removal of cookies, Internet history and defragmentation

Clean up tools are on the Control Panel in Internet Options on a Windows computer.


Internet-option

In temporary internet files, you can clean your computer up by deleting cookies that are saved from websites, passwords saved on the computer, internet webpage history and form data which is saved data that is typed into forms e.g. surveys online like an auto-fill feature. By deleting these stored files, you can improve your computer's performance because less space is being used up for saved passwords, history, etc...

 

On Internet explorer there is ‘InPrivate’ Browsing which allows you to use the internet without your computer saving any history, cookies, form data or temporary internet files. This enables the user to have no saved excess memory on their computer and thus having nothing to clean up. Defragmenting is a process of which that your computer’s fragmented files are defragmented. Fragmented files can slow your computer processes and can leave your computer running very slow. Defragmentation and optimizing your computer’s disk drives makes it so that your computer takes less time to load programs and enables your computer to run smoother with the best settings.

 

Drive Formatting

By formatting your drive, you can clear all data on your computer and return it to factory condition so that the computer is in a brand new condition where the files are all default. You can also format your computer to save certain parts of your computer  to keep while clearing sections you don't need or want. By cleaning up your disk drives, you end up with more space in the drives that have been formatted which allows your computer to run faster and smoother.