| Author |
Message |
    
Ron Ward (Ronward)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 08:56 am: | 
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Hi all,
I just added Norton AntiVirus 2003 and a firwall to my home PC (400mhz, Pentium I, 65mb RAM, cable modem ISP link to internet). Although she boots slower now, I am confident she is safe from hackers and most virii. Since the boot up time is longer now with these two programs having to load and run in the background, and since I have the firewall is it a safe idea to just leave it running all the time? Prior to the firewall and updated virus software I boot up when preparing to us it and then shut her down when done.
Any comments? |
Leslie N. Bright (Leslie)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 09:02 am: |
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Ron,
It depends... which OS are you running? How do you have it set up?
-L |
Rans (Rans)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 09:41 am: |
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Don't be so paranoid Ron.....do you have anything on your puter to cause someone to WANT to hack you?? Don't answer that, just food for your thought....if you have Norton Antivirus running, and you keep the virus strings updated, you are pretty safe. The Firewall makes it safer yet, just relax and enjoy, you'll be fine leaving it up.
(what's your IP address?? LOL ) |
Ron Ward (Ronward)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 10:10 am: |
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I got nailed by the Klez virus last year and had to ghost the 'puter and start all over. Big pain in the neck for a PC dummy like me. So I've finally added a bunch of security. I suppose the real issue is all this security crap is loading up my memory and making boot up times longer than I am used to. I can avoid that alltogether by just leaving it running (like a diesel). |
RVR OVR (Tom)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 10:45 am: |
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by another 64 megs of ram and boot like a mad man. it's only about 20 bucks, you will be amazed at the difference.
also, setup your windows swap file to be one size (not variable) and defrag your hard drive once/week, preferably with norton utilities. you can then put your swap file at the beginning of the hard drive as a static block where it can be accessed the fastest.
these three things will make a world of difference on boot times and overall performance.
tom |
Steve Andrews (Sillybus)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 10:47 am: |
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FWIW, I run a hardware firewall in a Linksys wireless router into a wired hub that feeds my network.
All my boxes at my house run either XP Pro or 2000 Server.
I never shut them down unless I absolutely have to. |
Diesel
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 10:52 am: |
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Ron,
I actually took a different approach to adding firewall security to my system. I bought a Linksys Cable Modem/DSL router. It can be configured as a firewall, supports up to four LAN connections and doesn't impact you system performance at all. Of course the antivirus software is still required.
http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11008648&m=488&cat=540&scat=0
P.S. I saw that you made it to the MAR, hopefully without anymore series difficulties. After setting up camp on the island I lost track of you and didn't get a chance to say hello. |
Leslie N. Bright (Leslie)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 11:13 am: |
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I'm gonna second what Tom said, you NEED more memory.... 128mb RAM at a minimum, will make a good difference. 256mb is even better... I'm running 512 here at work, it's sweet.... 
Good luck...
-L |
Al Oliveira (Offroaddisco)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 11:17 am: |
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Another way to reduce your risk is to avoid Outlook at all costs. |
Greg P. (Gparrish)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 11:21 am: |
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Yeah, memory will make the biggest bang for the buck to performance when prices are cheap. The hardware firewall will also make a huge difference for a broadband connection because your computer is relieved of one more chore. Plus, you can use multiple systems online at once. I'm running the D-Link Print/wireless/switch/router with firewall at my place. I use a full size computer hard plugged at the desk, and my laptop is wireless with the same setup at work. |
Rebecca (Mavryke)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 11:39 am: |
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Never realized how many techies owned disco's. Wonder what everyone does for a living... |
Al Oliveira (Offroaddisco)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 12:17 pm: |
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There are actually more computers in my house than there are people. Sad but true. |
Rebecca (Mavryke)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 01:02 pm: |
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There are only 2 computers in my house, one for each of us. Lots of wires running everyhwere!! |
Steve Andrews (Sillybus)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 01:36 pm: |
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Same situation here. 6 online computers, 5 people. I use 5 of the puters and wife and kids share the remaining one.
Rebecca,
I am a web developer. |
Rebecca (Mavryke)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 01:38 pm: |
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I have seen your name on some of the emails, but I don't think I have met you yet. |
perroneford
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 01:44 pm: |
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We've got 5 machines at the house, switched 100Mb full duplex network, hardware firewall and software firewall on all machines. Cable modem, and soon wireless access so I can browse the web from outside and in the garage.
I'm a Govt. Computer Geek, and well organized soccer coach.
-P |
TPH
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 01:45 pm: |
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The Klez virus has hit me twice!! However it was my fault for not being heads up. Completely wiped me out last time. Now Norton takes care of it. Anyone have suggestions for good economical firewall software? I had some installed (My ISP reccommend it) but it caused me tons of problems so I removed it. |
TPH
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 01:47 pm: |
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The Klez virus has hit me twice!! However it was my fault for not being heads up. Completely wiped me out last time. Now Norton takes care of it. Anyone have suggestions for good economical firewall software? I had some installed (My ISP reccommend it) but it caused me tons of problems so I removed it. |
perroneford
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 02:09 pm: |
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I use Zone Alarm. Works great for me. Black Ice is also supposed to be good, but I haven't used that for a few years.
I also use Yahoo as my ISP because they filter most virii and spam.
Good luck,
-P |
alhang
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 02:39 pm: |
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Use linux, it's what the D-web runs on. RedHat, Mandrake, gentoo. It will be a learning curve but you will be happy, personally it's my preferred O.S. |
Andrew Clarke (Aclarke)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 03:01 pm: |
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If you're running Windows XP, it comes with a software firewall. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I haven't HEARD of any cracks yet. Also, if you're running a firewall and don't have anything to hide, most script kiddie types will just pass you over for the hordes of people with no firewall at all. Unless of course you're running a business in which case it's different.
I use a NAT hardware firewall contained in my SMC barricade DSL router. Most varieties of linux also come with a firewall you can configure.
As for leaving your computer running, there's nothing wrong with that except for the higher electricity bill. Just set your monitor to shut down after an hour or something and leave it running. |
Blake Luse (Muddyrover)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 03:05 pm: |
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don't buy another stick of 64
just buy 1 stick of 256
but the ram won't make it boot faster
i went from 128 to 512 and now it boots alot slower
and i leave my cpu on all the time, i'm connected with dsl
as long as you have norton it will pick anything up , just keep it updated |
Al Oliveira (Offroaddisco)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 03:28 pm: |
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Blake, you're right... adding more memory won't speed boot times and I think boot times is a real poor measure of performance but it will help speed the computer if you're trashing your HD when it tries to swap.
Personally at home I use different versions of Windows, Linux and HP-UX. At work I use just about all OS's across over 25,000 host machines. There are some OS's from Redmond that no matter what you do you're open to attacks. Remember when they said Win2k was unhackable? |
RVR OVR (Tom)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 05:35 pm: |
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Memory speeds boot times. Boot time to the end user is from the power on button is pressed until the computer is useable. With 64 MB of RAM, he is more than likely maxing out the physical memory of his system loading the OS, fireall, and anti-virus software, and whatever else he's got going on. It takes time to swap memory to the hard disk as it makes room in physical memory to load the different applications as they become active. This causes the Windows screen to be up while the hard disk churns and the pointer is either an hourglass or clicks are unresponsive.
That is also why with a system with low physical memory it is imperative to defrag often and try to keep the swap file as one contiguous block of space as near to the center of the disk as possible.
Tom |
jim
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 05:52 pm: |
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There really is no way to be completely secure. There will always be someone that will be able to hack into your machine. I also run multiple machines on varying OS's Windows XP,2k,NT, Linux RH and Mandrake, Mac OS 10.2. There are always ways to get into all of them one of Microsoft's biggest flaws are the usage of Outlook.
If you are using a wireless network 802.11 I would suggest not leaving your computer on that is connected via wireless network. You have to remember your sending data via air.
The XP software Firewall is pretty good one this it lacks is the logging of hack attempts and such. Make sure you download all the upgrades for XP to make sure your security is good. There have been quite a few security patches for XP since it's release. Along the same lines make sure you download the latest patches or firmware for any software or hardware firewall you use. I only leave one of my computers on most of my other computers are development machines. For security reasons make sure you use good preventive measures on your machine and for your own sake use numbers and both upper and lower case for passwords. But as stated earlier hackers will usually pursue hacking into your computer if you have valuable information on there. This is one reason that I keep my development machines off unless I am working on them and can monitor what is going on. Zone Alarm, Black Ice, Hardware Firewalls are all good preventive measures. If you are more worried about losing information on your machine from viruses or hackers messing up your machines. Keep a backup of your information. Store your personal files on cd's, disks, tape's dvd's and such. CD-R/CD-RW drives are so cheap these days that having a backup of your personal data on other media other than your hard drive is the smartest thing you can do. Plus it will save you room on your hard drive and keep your machine running more efficiently.
Norton software is pretty good. It is true that it slows down your boot time because it has to start services on your computer before you start using it. You can leave your computer on. In the BIOS of the machine you maybe able to control the power management of your computer via the BIOS if it is supported or via your Operating System.
Either way Good Luck.
Jim
Solutions Architect/
IT Solutions Consultant |
Al Oliveira (Offroaddisco)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 06:36 pm: |
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"Memory speeds boot times. Boot time to the end user is from the power on button is pressed until the computer is useable. With 64 MB of RAM, he is more than likely maxing out the physical memory of his system loading the OS, fireall, and anti-virus software, and whatever else he's got going on."
True but based on what he said with a 400MHz P1 I'm guessing he's running Win95. Win95 did okay with 64megs of ram and I don't think there would be much of an improvement in boot time. However once he was up and running it might. Either way you could add a gig of memory to his machine but if his HD is slow and fragmented on a slow bus with a 400MHz P1 all the memory in the world won't help much. 128 megs might help a little. It's kinda like trying to add a K&N filter to get an extra 11hp out of our Discos... you won't get much of a return but it might make you feel better.
Al
Technical Manager
Network Operations Center
Network & Datacenter Operations |
jim
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 06:58 pm: |
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I added a K&N and got an extra 30+hp. Oh wait maybe it was the supercharger that did it ! LOL
Good info Al
Al has it nailed. if you HD is fragmented and on a slow bus your are most likely limited to that.
The ata 100 drives and controllers make a big difference expecially for the price.
jim |
RVR OVR (Tom)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 08:41 pm: |
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You guys need to scroll all the way back up and read the poor man's symptoms. He added more software that loads at boot time, and it takes longer to load it. He is definately beyond his 64MB even with Win95 when you add in Anti-Virus and that fat software based firewall. He is swapping to disk. Going to 128 will make him swap less as he gets up and running, even with a ATA133 and a 7200 rpm drive, or shit, even a SCSI. You gotta swap, so it is going to be a slower "boot" no matter how perfect the drive.
I also said to defrag and to place his swap file at the beginning of the disk. 128 MB helps, but that helps as well for overall performance.
Ron - your PC is not a Series, it has no charm, so just buy a new one.
Now let's get back to talking Rovers.
Tom
"Insert Fancy Title Here" |
Al Oliveira (Offroaddisco)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 09:35 pm: |
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Remember that these programs run as TSRs. If a TSR in Win95 with 64megs of ram is causing swapping then yes add the memory. But I still don't think that's Rons problem. Another thing to check is for free disk space relative to the swap space. If free disk space (not swap file size) is under 50 megs then that will cause thrashing. But it's hard to play vitual tech when I'm not able to get more information on the computer.
FWIW, I do have a P166 with Win95 (my 2 year olds computer) and a couple of TSRs loading at boot time with 64megs of ram and there is no swapping. |
Ron Ward (Ronward)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 09:59 pm: |
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lol! Buy a new computer? Right. So anyway I have Windows ME running on this jewel and following tonights scandisk and defrag, boot time is improved.
Thanks all for the input...I'm buying more memory this weekend...
Ron Ward |
Kyle
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 10:07 pm: |
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Oh my , fucking windows ME..... lets not start on that..
Kyle |
Al Oliveira (Offroaddisco)
| | Posted on Friday, October 11, 2002 - 10:27 pm: |
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Yikes... a whole new can of worms. |
Steve (Scrover)
| | Posted on Saturday, October 12, 2002 - 12:51 am: |
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Ron, I second that. More memory, and loose ME, it's crap. BTW I think your 400mhz is a PII. I could be wrong but I don't think there was a 400mhz PI. Not that it makes much difference!
Steve |
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