AA 12-Step Rehabilitation Plan

What does the "AA" part stand for? "Adiposity Anonymous" - The Mirriam-Webster Dictionary defines "adiposity" as being fat or heavy, from the Latin adiposus and the French poids. It's time to admit that your PC is suffering from computer bloat - it has become fat and lazy! It's time now for your PC to confess that it has forsaken its former sleekness and leanness of its youth, and it has accumulated loads of big programs and files that you don't need and are holding it back from running efficiently. It's time to "cast off every weight and the sins that so easily beset it, and run the race!" So we've developed the following AA 12-Step Plan to rehabilitate your PC:

1. Acknowledge a Higher Power
2. Secure Your Data
3. Use PortableApps
4. Synchronize Your Files
5. Backup Your Files
6. Keep Your Programs Up-To-Date
7. Take Out The Garbage
8. Remove Old Checkpoints
9. Defragment Your Hard Disk(s)
10. Install Internet Security
11. Protect Against "Zero-Day attacks"
12. Increase Available RAM

(Disclaimer: the author receives no financial or other material benefit from recommending the free programs he mentions on this page. They have been carefully selected over several years, and are listed here solely for your benefit. May God bless you!)

1. Acknowledge a Higher Power
Step number one is to acknowledge a Higher Power, and that you're not it. Many people are using their computers day-to-day as if they're the Higher Power. They login as administrator and work all day and night in the admin account. When they bought their PCs (especially with Windows XP), the salesperson set up just one account - it had to be an admin account - and often without a password. That was a huge mistake, but understandable because people were just migrating from Win 98 or ME that didn't have any logins or passwords at all. Also, in 2001 when XP was introduced, not very many PCs were connected to the Internet all day and night, not very many programs were written to automatically "call home" to update themselves... and not very many viruses, trojans, etc., were written to "call home" and steal your personal info. The sad fact, however, is that when you use the admin account, it opens wide the door for viruses and other malware to infect your Windows Operating System and Program Files folders.

So you need to acknowledge that there must be a Higher Account that you don't use for your day-to-day work. If you haven't already done this, you need to go to Control Panel → User Accounts and check to be sure that the admin account is protected with a strong password using a mnemonic device, such as taking the first letters in a phrase and including a special character or a number or two, for example: "I graduated from University of Minnesota in 75!" that becomes "*IgfUoMi75!" (without the quotes, and don't use this one because hackers probably have visited this web page!). Next, if you're running Vista or Win-7, set up a new admin account with a new strong password, jot down these new passwords on a piece of paper, and only login to this new account when you really need to, change your old admin account to a "regular" account for day-to-day work, and do not stop here - go to Step 2!

But if you're running XP it might get a little sticky because XP doesn't always change permissions on all your files and folders automatically: you may have to set up a new "limited" personal account in XP for your day-to-day work, also with a different strong password, and be sure to begin using your personal account after finishing Step 1. Jot down this new password on a piece of paper. Then if viruses or other malware try to invade while you're logged into your personal account, they can't penetrate into the Windows Operating System and Program Files. So let's do this right now!

If you had created lots of documents in the old XP admin account's "My Documents" folder, while still logged in as admin, move them to the All Users' "Shared Documents" folder. If you downloaded your email from the Web to your computer, your email folders are probably tucked away in some cryptic-named folder - you'll have to search for them - and move them to an All Users folder. Then logoff, login to your personal account and copy those documents from All Users to your personal "My Documents" account. You might also have to create icons on your new desktop to run your favorite programs. Login again as admin, and delete those files in the "Shared Documents" folder. If you need to use the admin password later for installing programs, in XP you can right-click on the setup- or install-program and then select "Run As" to use the admin name and password; or in Vista or Win 7, a UAC (User Access Control) window will pop up asking you to enter the admin password. The admin account has to exist so that you have an admin password for things like this, but don't login to that account unless absolutely necessary. Wait! Don't stop now, be sure you at least do Step 2 below...

2. Secure Your Data
You need secure places where you can keep your data. The first place is a password vault where you can store all of your logins and passwords for computer accounts, email accounts, online banking, bill paying and shopping accounts, etc. Using the same password for all accounts means that if a hacker or spyware gets that password, he has access to all your accounts. With a password vault all you need to remember is one master password that uses a mnemonic device, such as taking the first letters in the phrase and add a number or two: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a Wretch like me!" that becomes "1Ag,hststsaWlm!" (without the quotes). Then the password vault program will generate passwords that are nearly impossible-to-guess random strings of capital and small letters, numbers and special characters.

So go to C:\Documents and Settings\[your login name]\ in XP, or C:\Users\[your login name]\ in Vista or Windows 7, and create a "PortableApps" folder there. Next, go to http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/keepass_portable, download and install Keepass Portable to the "PortableApps" folder you just created. Run theKeePass program and click on the blank-page icon (the first one on the left) to create a new master password using your admin password (this way, you'll use that password every day and won't forget it!), designate the KeyPass folder as the place to store your password vault file, then press Ctrl+Y to enter your new admin and regular user passwords, save your new password vault file... and destroy that piece of paper! Passwords written on paper are a great gift to snoopy "friends", pickpockets and burglars.

Along with a password vault, you need a secure place outside of your PC where you can store your other data files. Download SafeHouse Explorer from http://www.safehousesoftware.com/SafeHouseExplorer.aspx, install it, and copy the SafeHouseExplorer.exe and SafeHouseExplorer.chm files from their Program Files folder to a new flash drive. If you don't have a flash drive, plan on buying one with at least 4-Gigabyte capacity. Meanwhile you could use a DVD. Run SafeHouseExplorer and click on "New Volume" to create a password-protected encrypted volume 3.9Gb in size on your flash drive or DVD. (I suggest using your Windows admin password so you won't forget it, but if you use a different password for this encrypted volume, enter it in your KeePass password vault.) This encrypted volume will appear as a new drive letter, and is where you'll store your backups, documents and portable programs (see Step 3). You can use the SafeHouse Explorer file manager on a guest computer such as at an Internet cafe to open files with your regular programs, or drag-and-drop files to and from the encrypted volume. You have the option, however, of installing some drivers on a guest computer (this requires entering an admin password) which will make the new drive letter visible to that computer.

3. Use PortableApps
I strongly recommend PortableApps - see our 29 Aug 2009 issue of CN.Net-News about the PortableApps and other programs that I recommend. This way, you can have your most important programs, settings, email messages, documents and your password vault at your fingertips, even if you're away from your computer, or it breaks or gets stolen. You can use these programs and your documents on any computer, and without knowing that computer's admin password. So go to http://portableapps.com/download, decide which basic PortableApps setup module you want, "Suite Light" or "Suite Standard", download and install it to the "PortableApps" folder that you created in Step 2. There are lots of other free PortableApps programs, such as Skype and the Google Chrome browser made portable - take a good look at their website!

4. Synchronize Your Files
Fourthly, you need to acknowledge that "most computer problems stem from a loose nut located between the keyboard and the chair" - the majority of messed-up programs or missing information arises because of user error or negligence: most computer users don't regularly back up their files. Then the computer malfunctions or files are accidentally erased, and they have nowhere to turn. Your computer is replacable, but the information stored on it is irreplacable! The single greatest cause of data loss is user error and the failure to do daily backups, not hard disk failure or viruses. The reason most people don't do backups, however, is because they don't know how, or even if theoretically they know how, it takes a huge effort to get started, or they just never "get around to it." But well begun is half done, so let's begin...

If you decide to "roll your own," here's what to do: First, keep your documents, email files and settings, etc., in sync between your C: drive and flash drive by downloading the FreeFileSync program from http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/ that can copy new or changed files to specified folders. Install it in the "PortableApps" folder mentioned in Step 2. Now you need to start with an identical set of files on both drives. Go to the "[your login name]" folder in Step 2, and you'll see a new folder called simply "Documents" that the "PortableApps" setup program created: copy that folder, the new "PortableApps" folder and the "StartPortableApps.exe" program to the encrypted volume on your flash drive, along with any other folders on your hard drive that you want to keep in sync with your flash drive.

Next, start FreeFileSync, and on the left side of its window just under the words "Drag & Drop", enter the folders on your C: drive such as "My Documents" that you want to keep in sync with the corresponding folders on your flash drive, then just opposite this field on the right side of the window, enter the corresponding folder on your flash drive. To add a second set of folders, click the little green circle with a "+" in it on the right side of the window. Click on the "gear" icon in the upper-right and select "mirror." To actually synchronize your drives, first click the "Compare" button on the left, then click the "Synchronize..." button on the right. If you need help setting it up (it gets a little technical), please contact us at www.ComputerNerds.Net.

On a daily basis, or at least just before you go on a trip without your PC (or just before it breaks down or gets stolen ;-) ), use the FreeFileSync program to mirror-sync your new and changed data from your C: drive to the flash drive. When you return from your trip (or when you repair or recover your PC), simply click the double-ended arrow in the middle of the window to reverse the direction, and mirror-sync your new and changed data from your flash drive to the C: drive. Synchronizing your files on the C: drive with your flash drive, however, is not a complete backup system, so you really should keep incremental backups, as explained in Step 5.

5. Backup Your Files
I've been raised in the "old school" that believes my information belongs to me, it defines my identity, and I don't want to give away my identity or have it stolen - we've experienced identity theft once and it hurts! - so I'm the person primarily responsible for keeping it safe and secure. I've done my own backups for over 20 years and I have identity theft insurance. The next few paragraphs (through Step 5) describe how I kept my own files backed up and in sync all those years. But I've now realized that it takes 10 minutes/day to do partial backups and 45 minutes/week to do a full backup: that's at least 8 hours/month to manually do my backups - and if offsite backups cost about $5/month, that means I'm paying myself $0.625 per hour to do my backups manually. So I've decided to use Mozy to automatically backup my files to my D: drive and to their remote servers - see my Offsite Backups page, and consider whether this option is right for you too!

A complete backup system must provide a version history: let's say today is Saturday and you remember that you added some information to a file on Tuesday, but then you changed it again on Thursday. Now you need to recover Tuesday's info... but your C: drive and your flash drive only contain Thursday's info. Or the file somehow got corrupted, so your sync copy is corrupt too. Or you were cutting-and-pasting some text when the phone rang and it was an emergency, so you left your desk and your computer evetually turned itself off. "Stuff happens!" This is why you need a version history for at least the previous seven days, or the past 30 days is even better.

The Windows Backup program, available only in the "Pro" versions of Windows, defaults to backup your your whole hard drive. If you really want to do a complete system backup and don't have Windows "Pro," you can also use the free Easus ToDo Backup program (http://todo-backup.com). But you don't need to do this: just keep copies of your Operating System and programs on DVDs, not only on your hard drive because it can fail and you lose all your programs and data, including the OS on your hard drive's hidden recovery partition. Test those DVDs so that you know they are good copies, and keep the registration keys for your OS and other programs on your flash drive. Windows Backup can let you create a weekly "Normal" full backup for folders you specify and a daily "Incremental" backup for new or changed files in those same folders. But if you need to restore a file, Windows Backup defaults to restore everything in the archive, which can overwrite changed files that you didn't want to restore, thus destroying any new data in those files - "That's a real Duh!" as teenagers say. The backup program in PortableApps is even lamer: it only makes full backups, not incremental backups.

So if you decide to do your own backups, I recommend Personal Backup (http://personal-backup.rathlev-home.de/) - free, it lets you make full and incremental backups, it uses the standard *.zip format, and it lets you restore individual files. Once you set up weekly (full) and daily (partial) backup routines, all you need to do is click on the desired backup icon to run it to save your files locally, or upload them to your own website. Also, if you have a home network, you can first run your backups on other people's computers, then run the backups on your nominal "home server" (which can be your regular PC) and then have Personal Backup automatically run a batch file to copy each user's files to your central backup hard disk, DVD and/or flash drive. Here are copies of my backup *.bat files that I used for several years. Before doing your weekly backup, insert a different DVD, and let the batch file erase the month-old daily backups and move the 2-week-old backups to the 4-week-old folder: this will allow you to keep at least a one-month version history of your partial backups on the previous DVD. Businesses often keep daily backups indefinitely, but I can't remember what I did each day more than a month ago anyway, so a one-month version history is good enough for my purposes.

6. Keep Your Programs Up-To-Date
Perhaps you've occasionally seen a little window pop up saying "an update is available" when you run a program, and you're busy so you decide to "do it later" - but "later" never comes. Those program updates, however, very likely include security patches! A free little program that periodically scans your computer to see if you have programs that need security updates is SecuniaPSI. Login again as admin, download it from http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/, run it, and it will show you which of your programs need to be updated and how to do it. As the slogan says, "Just Do It!" Also jot down the names and version numbers of the old programs you're updating. You'll need to login again as admin periodically, let's say once a month, to run SecuniaPSI and check for obsolete programs.

7. Take Out The Garbage
Now it's time to "cast off every weight" and clean out those unneccessary programs and files. Go into Control Panel → Add and Remove Programs, and uninstall the old version numbers of the programs you've just updated. Then scan down the list in Add and Remove Programs for programs you haven't used in several months, and uninstall them too. This can free up several Gigabytes of disk space. Then download the free CCleaner program from http://www.ccleaner.com/, install it in the "PortableApps" folder mentioned in Step 2, and run it to clean out dead temporary files in various locations and orphaned entries in your Windows Registry. This will speed up your boot time as well as free up much disk space. Then copy the "CCleaner" folder from your C: drive to your flash drive.

8. Remove Old Checkpoints
Each time Windows Automatic Update installs new or updated Windows software, it keeps a copy of the old software and the downloaded update files in your Windows folder, and creates a System Restore checkpoint file. Some software updates from other vendors also create a System Restore checkpoint file, and/or may leave behind their old versions, so go to Control Panel → Add and Remove Programs and see if you need to uninstall the old versions. Then open the Start menu → Accessories → System Tools, then run Disk Cleanup to clean out these old Windows Update and Checkpoint files up to the last System Checkpoint, thus freeing up more disk space. This will take several minutes.

9. Defragment Your Hard Disk(s)
Now that you've cleaned out the dead wood, you can reorganize the remaining files by defragmenting your hard disk(s). open the Start menu → Accessories → System Tools, then run Disk Defragmenter. This may take over an hour so let it run undisturbed while you're having lunch. Defragging can significantly speed up your computer by moving your files around so that each file is located in the right place on the disk so that it can be accessed faster.

10. Install Internet Security
Up to now "we've found the enemy, and he is us." Most computer problems stem from users always being logged in as admin, neglecting to backup their files, not updating obsolete programs, etc. So it's more important, but psychologically more difficult to take responsibility for our own PC problems, and much easier to blame them on external threats such as viruses, trojans and other malware. But now it's time to deal with those external threats.

Hopefully, you're running an up-to-date firewall and anti-virus program. But if not, or if you're disgusted with having to pay out money every year to renew your license, let me recommend the free COMODO Internet Security program. I've tried five or six other free Internet Security programs over the years, and this is the best all-in-one internet security program I've found. And it doesn't bug you or try to trick you into upgrading to a costly "pro" version, like many other such programs do: http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/download_firewall.html. Also, recently Microsoft has brought out a highly-rated, free security package, Microsoft Security Essentials: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ - much smaller in size (no built-in "Pro" version that they try to upgrade you to) and it works quite unobtrusively.

First, disconnect from the Internet and uninstall your old firewall and anti-virus program(s), if any. Then if you're running Win-XP, right-click on the Comodo (or other) install program and select "Run As" to use the admin name and password, or if you have Win-Vista or Win-7 simply click on it and Windows will prompt you for the admin password, to install and run Comodo. Now reconnect to the Internet. At first Comodo will update itself and the virus database, you may have to restart your computer, then it will be fully functional. Here are several other free Internet Security programs: http://windowssecrets.com/2008/06/26/05-Get-top-flight-antivirus-without-spending-a-dime.

But whether or not your anti-virus program finds anything, there's a fair chance that a "rootkit" might have installed itself at a very deep level on your computer (the "root" level, before Windows fully boots up) and thus is invisible to most anti-virus programs. Download SpyDLLRemover from http://portableapps.com/apps, install it into your "PortableApps" folder and run it, which may take several minutes. It will let you delete any "rootkits" that it finds. It's advisable to run this program periodically, about once per month.

11. Protect Against "Zero-Day attacks"
A recent variety of malware consists of "Zero-Day attacks" in which hackers inject a 1 pixel x 1 pixel "web bug" image, a zero-width x zero-height iframe, a trojan that asks for your password or credit info, or other malware into perfectly legitimate, well-known websites such as e-Bay, Amazon.com, your bank, etc. These malware injections usually last just a few hours or no more than one day before they're caught and removed, but meanwhile thousands of visitors to those websites can become infected and have their credit card or bank account numbers stolen: AVG detects between 100,000 and 150,000 such infections per day! To avoid such "real time" malware that won't be added to your standard antivirus program's virus databases until it gets updated the next day - "Day One" (when it's already too late), you need a program that scans each website you're going to visit immediately before your browser opens up that website.

AVG has just come up with a brilliant solution to this threat: "Link Scanner," and you should download and install it right now for free from http://linkscanner.avg.com. It guards against well-known but infected websites, and also rogue websites hiding behind a "http://tinyurl.com" or similar link - those extra-long website addresses that can be shrunk down to a tiny URL - people love to use these short URLs on Twitter, etc. But hackers also realized right away that they can hide their malware websites behind these shortened web addresses, or by displaying a descriptive name on a web page instead of the actual web address it's linking to.

Link Scanner will prevent you from going to these websites that can infect your computer simply by opening up the web page. On the very same day that I installed Link Scanner it found an infected website hiding behind a tiny URL, and it prevented my browser from opening that web page - it really works! Also, if you use the Firefox browser, or if Link Scanner conflicts with other programs on your PC making it run too slowly, you can have similar protection (even on a Mac): see "10 Firefox extensions that enhance security" at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1160&tag=nl.e055 - one of them, WOT (Web Of Trust), right away found an infected website as I was about to open its home page.

12. Increase Available RAM
Is your PC still running too slow, after all we've done so far? It ran faster when you first got it, but today's programs have grown larger and many of these modern programs have "little" (from a few megabytes to ten or more megabytes each) modules loaded in memory at all times. Right-click on the Task Bar (or you can press Ctrl+Alt+Del), then select Task Manager and click on the "Processes" tab - you'll see that 50-75 modules are always loaded in memory. If there is one process (program) running that's gobbling up 80%, 90% or more of your computer processor's cycles, that program may be the problem and you should disable it.

Otherwise, if you have lots of "little" processes that all together add up to a huge amount of memory, there may not be enough RAM (Random Access Memory) for all of your active programs and modules, so the operating system swaps some of them out to a "page file" on your hard disk. But the hard disk access time is 100 to 1000 times slower than the PC's electronic RAM. When you have too much paging going on, the operating system is "thrashing" around, spending most of its time moving modules between the RAM and the page file, which really slows down your ability to get any real work done. The solution is to add higher-capacity RAM chips. Download CrucialRAMChipScan from http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/index.aspx, run it, and it will tell you how much and what kind of RAM chips your computer should have for today's programs, and help you order them.

I sincerely hope this AA 12 Step Rehabilitation Plan has been helpful. If you need assistance with these steps, or have other computer problems, please go to www.ComputerNerds.Net/online_pc_support.html and contact us. Some computer service people recommend reinstalling Windows once a year to get rid of computer bloat, but my experience has been that a good computer cleaning every six months can avoid the painful work of reinstalling Windows and all of your programs, settings, and documents, which can take a few days to get everything set up the way you want. Only if you have the original setup files and registration keys for Windows and all of your programs, drivers, etc., and if the above 12 steps and any other attempts fail to resolve your computer problems should you consider reinstalling Windows.

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