Laptop Survival and Management Help Desk Services Pat Valiquette Mark Miller Campus tools – Fall 2006

What is spam? A lot of different things but for our purpose it is any unwanted Why don’t we stop it? Well, we block a lot of but it is not always obvious Like asking the Post Office to only deliver the mail you want

RESPITE Rensselaer Enterprise Spam Interdiction Technology Web based spam filter An opt-in application. Scans sent but not if sent from within Only scans messages smaller than 250K. Owners of lists need to submit request to to opt-in

Viruses, Trojans, and Worms, Campus wide license for Symantec Anti- virus Enterprise edition Install from of the RPI web Live updates from Symantec – online Definitions file available daily from Symantec - software

Symantec Anti-virus If you think your system is infected and are having trouble booting the system – try Safe Mode – during boot sequence press F8 Run SAV scan If you need a new virus definition file use the With Networking option – go to and download the latest definition file.

Spyware and Adware Malware, while not as obvious as spam or as destructive as viruses, degrades system performance. Adaware, Spybot, Microsoft's Windows Defender Install and use a malware client. We have instructions on installing and using Adaware but there are others that are equally effective. No cost and live updates. - Software

Which Updates are Important Microsoft Windows updates daily at 3 AM My Computer – right click – open properties Symantec Antvirus – daily at 8PM Malware software

Microsoft Office Updates If you want the Office media you can get it from the Campus Computer Store for $15.

Data and Physical Security Laptops – Computer Security – security cable 250 MBs RCS file space – Connecting to AFS space – now another file space EZ-snapshot – register online – 10 GBs – Other Service – EZ- snapshot service CD/DVD writer – tend to be one time USB connected backup or thumb drive IBM Rescue and Recovery – ThinkVantage button

Laptop image Available from the VCC Help Desk for MCP – T60 – full and base – T43 back to T22 – base image only Base image includes: – Windows, MS Office, VPN, SAV, Internet Explorer – Get remaining software either off the software download web page or – Off software server – MS Visual Studio.Net 2003, Maple, SecureCRT

Items of Interest Use Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the task manager. System hung – hold power button down for about 10 seconds and system will power down. Disk check will usually at next power on About once a semester run Disk Defragmenter – Start – Program – Accessories – System Tools. Use the Analyzer first

Items of Interest Check the Event logs – possible problems – Right click on My Computer – Manage – Event Viewer The Switch Users option is nice but each user logged on is sharing the same system resources. Ruckus – music service is available – – join – need your RCS userid Polytechnic Newspaper is online –

Items of Interest Adding printers is easy and fast – Start – Printers and Faxes – add a printer Be sure to use the pmanager that was installed for your system. Want to set up a web page – use your AFS file space. Your home page will be Open your afs space and put the web pages into your public_html directory

Items of Interest Windows Firewall – leave it on so that it will help protect your system. It will ask about allowing connections. Battery life can be extended if you allow the battery to run down prior to connecting the AC adaptor.

Questions?