PC Maintenance and Security Lab

So for this week's homework I need to complete the PC Maintenance and Security workshop. Typically I would be teaching something like this so for me to be the student it is exciting. I am able to take a look at how the subject is taught and possibly learn something new!

My assignment was not to complete all the labs (Thank goodness cause there was a lot!), but to instead choose a few that were least familiar with.  At first glance there was not a lot that I was not already familiar with, but after reading further I thought I could choose a subject that I typically teach to see if I could learn something new.

Many times when I fix a computer for someone they have questions like how did that happen? what did I do? how can I prevent that from happening again? This can be difficult to explain. I found the tutorial on "How does malware spread?" to be a great way to explain to a user how they open themselves up to such threats. Sometimes users want to know EXACTLY what they did, that is not always possible to explain, but by explaining the way malware is spread might be a good starting point for users to not get infected again.

Another topic that peaked my interest is "Using MSCONFIG to speed up your system".  Although I have used MSCONFIG to fix a problem program from starting up, I preach to my classes that this is not the tool you should be using. It surprised me greatly to see that this was being taught. The program that is starting up can be fixed directly through the program itself and MSCONFIG should not be used to control it.  MSCONFIG should always be used as a last resort! I would never direct a typical user to use that utility.  Doing this is right along my pet peeves of using a sweeper program to clean up unused files. If you don't know what you are doing then don't do it! (Sorry for the rant!)

On the positive side I LOVED the topic of "Consolidating files into folders for better organization". Most users have no idea where things are located on their computer and how to store them to be most productive. This is a topic that I have taught to many first time users. File management is the number one skill the average computer user need a refresher in! Everyone could learn from this!