Defrag your hard drive!

Good advice! I try to keep my computer maintained on a regular basis and I suspect that's one of the reasons I don't have too many problems. But..................

There's always a 'but' isn't there!

A very irritating situation with Defrag for me was what appeared to be two huge files that would not defrag. A report said the file that had two fragments was 'hiberfil.sys'. Apparently this file cannot be defraged. (I found out about the report from 'The Langalist".)

Research let me know that this a file used by Window's 'hibernation'. (You know, Windows goes to sleep when you aren't using it. Supposed to save power.) This option is one I NEVER use, so I turned it off. Voila! The fragmented files are gone and my system shows no fragmented files or folders!

To remove the file, go to Start/Control Panel/Power Options, select "Hibernate", and uncheck box "Enable Hibernate". Reboot your computer, and Windows will delete hiberfil.sys for you.

'Useless' Virus scanners

I just read in an online forum that a certain popular virus scanner is 'useless and so are (the writer named two of the most popular scanners)' because the writer got a virus.

What a silly statement! For one thing, no virus scanner is perfect. There is always a lag time between when a new virus appears 'in the wild' and the anti-virus companies can write and deploy a 'fix' for the virus.

More importantly, how did this user get the virus? More than likely the user opened an email with the virus contained within. How many times do people have to be told, 'Don't open attachments unless you are expecting one'? And was the scanner in question updated? A virus scanner is only as good as the most recent update! I could tell from the tone of the writer's message, he/she is totally clueless!

The moral is, don't blame someone/something for something that is probably your own fault! Just check here for more information! Martha's Virus Info

Windows XP SP2, I did it, I installed it!

I must say, the installation of Windows XP SP2 went very smooth. I have been reading about problems that other people have had and was very hesitant to install SP2, but hey, I have the CD, I have my system backed up using PowerQuest Drive Image,I printed all the instructions on how to remove SP2 and if that didn't work, maybe it 's time to do a re-install! (Shudder!)
But everthing went just fine. I did disable everything on my computer that normally runs in the background like Norton Anti-virus and Norton Firewall, Spyware blaster and PestPatrol. It took less than 45 minutes from start to finish and so far everything is working ok. I hope I don't find programs that won't work! If I do, rest assured, they will be posted here and on my web site, Martha's Web. I have a lot of programs, so it may take awhile to scope this all out!