This was a common enough piece of advice, however to computer geeks it meant one very particular thing: stability. When we had slaved in teams for months installing, testing, debugging and updating software, and finally reached the stage where everything was working just exactly the way we wanted it….. hands off! Woe betide the poor soul who changed anything.

Which brings me to one of my pet hates – automatic software updates. They are propagating like rabbits, and in my opinion, causing about as much damage as the aforementioned rodents in a cabbage patch.

Virtually every computer system these days will have at least several programs installed on it which will attempt to update themselves, with or without warning, every single time they detect a live internet connection. These programs include the operating system (Windows) itself, your office applications, your antivirus software, music players, software for your digital camera – to name a few.

Why do they do this?

In theory, it’s a fantastic idea. The logic goes something like this: “Our programs are improving all the time, it is natural that our customers want the latest and best available version of our software delivered to them automatically”. In an ideal world, it would be hard to fault this philosophy.

So what’s the problem?

Firstly, I’d like to refer back to the key word I mentioned earlier – stability. Let me put to you a couple of scenarios that we have seen not once, but many times in our workshop over the past couple of years.

Imagine you’ve spent several months setting up your system exactly the way you want it – you’ve removed any unwanted programs and malicious nasties, organized all your files just the way you want them, got your system running like a dream – you click “shutdown”, and the next thing you see is the following message:

Installing update 1 of 38. Do not turn off your computer, it will turn off automatically.

So you go to bed feeling well pleased with yourself, knowing that your system is protected with all the latest security updates and performance enhancements available. The next morning, you turn on your computer, and instead of the familiar Angelina Jolie (or Brad Pitt) wallpaper, all you see is the following:

NTLDR is missing

Or perhaps a pretty blue screen with lots of unintelligible white writing that reminds you of the movie The Matrix. Or maybe your PC just gets as far as the message Loading Windows XP (or Vista, Or 7)…. over, and over, and over….

Congratulations, you’ve just become a victim of a Windows automatic update!

Or how about this one:

You decide one morning at work to forward the latest batch of email jokes to a friend (with the subject line “Last month’s expense report”, of course). You hit the send button, and are presented with a little box containing the following message:

The host ‘mail.nowhere.com’ could not be found. Please verify that you have entered the server name correctly. Account: ‘mail.nowhere.com’, Server: ‘mail.nowhere.com’, Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 11004, Error Number: 0×800CCC0D

Has your mail server been the victim of an overnight terrorist attack? Possibly. Or it could be that it’s just got a problem.

Another possibility is that your firewall software has just been updated (without your requesting it), and unfortunately, they didn’t get the changes quite right….

The problem is, this is not a perfect world, and occasionally (try not to faint with surprise here) even the biggest and best software companies get it wrong. Do you really want their mistakes automatically delivered to you daily to wreak who knows what havoc on your system?

Now there is one type of automatic update we have no problem with whatsoever. Nearly all antivirus companies deliver virus signature updates automatically – and this is a very good thing. Virus signatures are simply little packets of data used by the antivirus programs to identify potential viruses on your system – and the more often these are updated, the better. However, in recent times, all of the antivirus companies have started delivering not only updates to the signature files, but also the programs that use them, without the customer’s request. This is bad—It leads to the sort of problems seen above.

The second problem that we see with the idea of automatic updates relates to internet usage. Consider that a bunch of Windows updates may be anywhere from a few megabytes to tens of megabytes. Similarly for antivirus software updates. And, as we pointed out before, you may have half a dozen to a dozen or more programs that want to update themselves every time you are on the internet.

We mentioned in our last edition that malware, such as viruses, trojans, etc could make our internet connection appear really slow. Well, now we can add another perpetrator to the list – automatic software updates. When it takes you 15 minutes to open a web page, you may think you have a virus, when in fact it is only the software companies keeping your “best interests” at heart! At the same time as your browser is valiantly attempting to show you the morning’s news, your antivirus, operating system and music player are all hogging the bandwidth in the background, without you even being aware of it. This can all lead to a noticeable degradation for broadband internet users, for those with dial-up or slow wireless access only, it can be crippling!

Then, of course, there is the fact that many internet users are on plans that include a charge per megabyte for traffic (“downloads”). When you get your monthly bill, and wonder how it includes a $25 surcharge when you only sent 8 emails and visited 20 web pages for the month, guess who you can thank?

So what can I do about it?

Well, I seriously doubt we are ever going to see a change of heart on the part of the software companies here. Like it or not, I’d say automatic updates are here to stay. One thing you can do is to be aware of the above. If you suspect that automatic updates to your software may be costing you large amounts in excess usage charges, or slowing down your internet access you may be able to turn the automatic updating off.

Windows can be set to automatically update (Microsoft’s recommended method, not mine, as you may have guessed) or not – at least you are given a choice. Click “Automatic Updates” in the Control Panel to find out more.

Your antivirus software may have the facility to turn off program updates, while still receiving signature updates. Each one is different, so check yours out, or ring their help desk and ask.

Other programs may or may not have the ability to turn off this feature. It’s worth checking out.

Even if the software does not have the facility to turn it off, you may be able to disable the part of it that does the updating in your windows startup, or use your firewall software to block the program from accessing the internet (be aware that this may cause other unwanted side effects with the program, but it’s worth a try)!

The final suggestion we’d like to make is always take regular backups of your system, every week at least, using system restore – so that in the event something does go wrong, you can go back to a previous configuration, and hopefully recover without a lot of pain.

A number of our clients have told us that they have been contacted by phone, in the evening, by a company claiming that their presence on the internet has been detected by the company, and they have a serious problem with their PC, or a virus infection. They are directed to a website, and are offered a “solution” to this “problem”. This usually involves downloading a piece of software which allows the remote “technician” complete control over their PC. Astonishingly enough, in about 50% of cases that we know of, the victim has actually willingly complied!

This has obviously caused several of our clients some distress. Please be aware that this is nothing more than a scam.

Firstly, it is no business of any company (with which you do not have a direct association) when you are on the internet. In fact, they don’t know this at all – it’s just a trick to lure you in to buying their “services”.

Imagine you get a phone call at 8pm from someone saying they know that someone in your house is on the internet. That’s a fairly safe bet, but if they’re wrong, they’ll just hang up and dial their next victim. Ask yourself how they got your phone number. It’s not a basic piece of information stored in your PC. And if you do happen to have it stored in a document somewhere, or in your address book, what business do they have looking in there? The simple answer is (and we suspect this is true in every case): from the phone book!

In one case we actually followed through, the web site given was a genuine one (only in the sense that it actually existed), however it was constructed using poorly produced graphics, and full of spelling and grammatical errors and advertisements. Would you expect such a company to provide a worthwhile service?

If you receive a call from these people don’t visit their website, don’t do anything they suggest, don’t give them any information, simply hang up.

There are other reasons your PC may be experiencing problems, but infection by the above types of programs is by far the most common, and cleaning infected machines makes up a large percentage of the repair work we do. Cleaning machines can be expensive because of the time taken to find all of the nasties – we have seen machines with tens of thousands of infected files – and can require a lot more technical expertise than the average PC user possesses.

The best idea is to avoid the problem in the first place, and for this you need anti-virus and anti-spyware / adware programs. A number of people (perhaps justifiably) resent having to pay for these, but be assured – if you use the internet, or share files with friends via floppy disks, CDs or USB drives, you WILL get infected! You may lose important data, unknowingly give out sensitive information (like credit card numbers, and personal details), and end up cursing your computer and your friends as you fork out large sums of money to get rid of the problem!

Unfortunately, in our experience anti-virus programs, especially “suites” which also include anti-adware/spyware and firewall programs, often cause problems. There is none that we know of which always operates correctly. Nevertheless, the alternative (i.e. not using one) is not, in our opinion, an option in today’s world.

Over the years, we have stocked most of the major antivirus suites – by Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro and Vet (now CA). For the last couple of years we have recommeded only the Kaspersky product, as we have found that it causes problems far less often than any of the others, and catches nasties that the others don’t.

We would like to offer the following tips to all our customers to help make sure that we don’t see your computer in our workshop, or at least not to have it disinfected!

Do back up all your important information. It is amazing how many people don’t, and then are devastated if a virus or hardware failure causes them to lose months of work, or critical data. USB flash drives or external hard drives are a very convenient way of saving your work, or for a more permanent backup, use CDs or DVDs.

Do have a good antivirus program and anti-spyware/adware program installed, and most importantly, keep them up to date! These programs require regular updating, or they quickly become ineffective. Regularly check the date of your last update to make sure.

If you share files with others via floppy disk, CD, USB drives or over the internet (this includes emails), always scan the file before you open it!

Avoid web sites which offer any of the following:

- Cracking / hacking programs or illegally copied software.

- Unlimited music downloads for free or $x per month.

These are illegal for one, and secondly, the software involved opens up your computer to all sorts of nasty activities by the unscrupulous. Stick to sites like Yahoo Music, Apple iTunes, etc. where you pay by the download, and don’t need to share your hard drive with the whole world.

Pornography – there are some sites which are most likely safe. These would tend to be sites with well known names (like the magazines), where you pay for what you get. Many, many more are not safe.

Never, ever respond to an email or browser page that asks you to re-enter your banking details or personal information, no matter how genuine it looks, without checking by phone or personal visit first! No financial institution to our knowledge will ask you for this information over the internet.

We don’t recommend having Windows set to download and automatically install updates (that’s a whole other problem area!), but we do recommend regularly installing Windows updates after you have created a system restore point yourself, in case something goes wrong! (See Help & Support on the Windows start menu to see how to go about this).

If you see a pop-up message to the effect that your computer is infected with 10,000 spyware programs, and you need to take action NOW to remove them, do not respond – it is a hoax. You are already infected, and if you respond, it will only get worse! Do not click “yes”, “download now”, or even the “X” in the top corner. Just leave the window alone, close any other programs, turn your computer off, restart it, and run your antivirus / anti spyware programs. Learn what genuine warning messages from your antivirus program look like.

All of the above may sound rather horribly daunting, but with a little common sense and by adopting good practices, you can ensure that you are seldom bothered by these pathetic nuisances.

Happy and safe computing!