Twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday mornings, certain directories are backed up to tape. These directories include the network share winusers (which contains your Desktop and My Documents folder), MMMOnly, and MMMPublic.
It is recommended that you store your files on the server to ensure that they get backed up. If you store files on your local hard drive (C:\ drive), then you are responsible for your own backups. There are many different methods to backup files, please see the section Performing Backups below for more information.
If you read e-mail using either Eudora or Netscape Messenger, then your e-mail resides on the local hard drive. Eudora stores e-mail in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Qualcomm\Eudora. Netscape stores e-mail in C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\username\Mail. Refer to the section Performing Backups for information on backing up this data.
NOTE: Application Data is a hidden folder. If you do not see it, then under the My Computer Tools menu select Folder Options, click on the View tab and select "show hidden files and folders."
You can backup files that you store on your local hard drive (C:\) to a variety of different media, such as CD-ROMS, Zip disks and Floppy disks.
Writeable CD-ROMS, called CD-RWs, can hold approximately 650 MB. This is the recommended way to backup files and the most economical. A CD-ROM can be used if a system has a CD-Reader/Writer drive or CD-RW drive. For more instructions on how to determine if you have a CD-Reader/Writer and to write to CD-RWs, please refer to Chapter 9.
Zip disks can also be used to backup files, and they hold approximately 250 MB. They are more expensive than CD-RW's.
Floppy disks can hold approximately 1.44 MB. Since floppy disks only hold a small amount of data, they are mainly used to store just a few files.
There are a variety of ways you can perform backups of files that reside on the local hard drive including:
[include Jose's backup scripts information]
You can use the Roxio software to copy files to a CD-RW. For more information on using Roxio, see Chapter 9.
Windows 2000/XP comes with a backup utility that you can use to create a backup of your files. If you use this procedure, you need to use the restore facility (included in the backup utility) to read the backup file. To open the Backup utility, click on Start, then Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and finally Backup.
A computer virus is a program designed to spread itself from one file to another on a single computer. It is very similar to a biological virus like the flu. Just as the flu can spread from person to person causing outbreaks, a computer virus can spread from computer to computer. For some people the flu virus is an annoyance, but after a few days they are fine. Similarily, benign computer viruses can cause minor annoyances, but not do any harm to the data on the computer. On the other hand, just as some strains of flu can be harmful to people and cause death, malignant computer viruses can destroy data on a computer.
Both biological viruses and computer viruses can mutate. Mutating computer viruses are called polymorphic. An example of a polymorphic virus is the LOVELETTER virus. It changed its name 29 different times. The e-mail attachment was first called "LOVELETTER", then it mutated into different names such as "Very Funny" (which infected a computer in MMM), "Mother's Day", "Important! Read Carefully!!" and "antivirusupdate". You can see how tricky these viruses can be.
Futhermore, just as biological viruses can infect different parts of your body, computer viruses can infect different parts of a computer. A macro virus infects a file such as a Microsoft Word document, a program virus infects a program such as the Microsoft Word program itself, and a boot sector virus infects the boot sector of a disk. When DOS was a popular operating system, most viruses were boot sector viruses spread by sharing floppy diskettes. Today, the majority of viruses are macro viruses spread by e-mail attachments. You should be cautious when opening/accepting e-mail attachments, especially from someone you do not recognize.
A worm is a destructive program that replicates itself throughout disk and memory using up the computers resources and can eventually bring the system down.While viruses are spread by human behavior, such as sharing a diskette or sending e-mail attachments, worms rely less, or not at all, on human behavior to spread themselves. Instead of spreading from file to file, they spread from computer to computer, using a network medium such as e-mail. Because of this they spread much more rapidly than viruses. The "Melissa" virus was actually a worm.
A Trojan Horse program is disguised as another program, usually something useful. When executed, Trojan Horses can cause significant damage to a computer, or open the door for further attacks. These do not replicate themselves.
It is very important that you have an anti-virus program installed on your computer and that you use it effectively. In MMM, we use the Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition software. You can tell that the software is running because a little shield will appear in the system tray. If you do not have Norton AntiVirus installed, please submit an assist request to get it installed.
When Norton AntiVirus is installed properly, it will be loaded when your computer starts. It will automatically scan every file opened on your system.
Norton AntiVirus is automatically configured to scan your system every Sunday for viruses. If you turn off your system over the weekend and turn it back on Monday morning, then the scan will occur. You can tell this because your system will be working very hard and you will hear the disk spinning. This is normal.
If you have a virus on your system, you will need to run a manual scan . To run a manual scan, open Norton AntiVirus; after clicking on the Start menu, select Programs, select Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition and click Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition. The following window will be displayed.
Under Scan on the left side, click on Scan Computer. On the right side of the window, select the drives that you wish to scan. To select the drives, click on the box next to them. It will place a check mark in the box. If you wish to scan everything, click on the box next to My Computer. Click on Scan.
Since viruses are being discovered on a daily basis, it is very important that you keep Norton AntiVirus software up-to-date. In MMM, this is done for you automatically. The server empress is a Norton AntiVirus server. empress checks Norton's web site daily for virus updates. When it detects an update, it downloads it. The client software on your system will download the update from empress daily.
If you do not put your laptop on the MMM network very often, then you should update the software manually. To do so, open Norton AntiVirus; after clicking on the Start menu, select Programs, select Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition and click Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition. When the following window is displayed, click on LiveUpdate, located on the right side of the window.
This will start the LiveUpdate process. It will go through the process of downloading new virus definitions and installing them. Follow the on-screen instructions.
When it has completed, click on Finish.
It is your responsibility to protect your computer against viruses. Follow these practices to insure that your computer is safe.
Microsoft is constantly improving their software and fixing bugs by releasing patches (bug fixes) and service packs (a group of patches). The Systems Management Group will determine which ones are necessary and attempt to deploy them automatically to systems on a reboot. When you receive an e-mail from the systems group, please reboot your system for the patches to get installed to ensure that your system is up-to-date.
It is recommended that you turn off your monitor when you leave work for the day. This will not only save electricity, but will avoid burning an image onto the screen (true of older monitor types). Another way to avoiding burning an image onto the screen is to set a screen saver.
You can also set power saving features on your monitor to automatically turn off the monitor when the system is idle. To set power saving features, right-click on your Desktop and select Properties. Click on the Screen Saver tab. Set your screen saver, if desired, and select the button labeled Power.
In the option Turn off monitor, set it to approximately 20 minutes. For laptop users, you can also set System standby and System Hibernates options. For more information regarding the standby and hibernate features, see Chapter 10.
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Last Modified: 23-Jan-2003