Software Virus’ Making the News

Welcome everyone to Technology Basics: PC Troubleshooting and Maintenance. Thank you so much for joining us for today’s event. Before we get started I want to make sure everyone is comfortable using ReadyTalk the webinar platform we are on. You can chat into us by using the box on the lower left side of your screen at a time to let us know if you need help, if you have any questions for our presenter, or if you just want to say hi and let us know from where you are joining. We will keep all lines of muted so we will get a clear recording that you can refer to and watch again at your convenience. You are also welcome to share it with your friends and colleagues. We license all of our webinars Creative Commons so that you can share them out and spread them in your own community.

We want to make these as useful as we can for people. Most of you will be hearing the audio play through your computer’s speakers, so if you are hearing an echo you may be logged in more than once and will need to close an instance of ReadyTalk. If at any time the streaming audio falls out of sync with the slides on screen, we would invite you to dial into the toll-free number that Susan has chatted out in the chat window. That is a good alternative if you have any hiccups or weirdness with the streaming audio. That alternate phone line can be used with a phone or Skype to help you get a better connection to the audio. If you lose your Internet connection, feel free to reconnect using the confirmation or reminder email that you would have received.

And if at any time you do dial into the phone number and get disconnected just feel free to dial into that other number again at your convenience. You can also reach out directly to ReadyTalk support at 800-843-9166. We are recording today’s webinar and we’ll make it available on the TechSoup website. You can find all of our past webinars as well as upcoming events listed at TechSoup.org/community/events-webinars. Sorry, I read that wrong. You can also watch webinars on our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/TechSoupVideo.

Within a few days, we will be sending this full presentation along with the recording out to you in an email so keep an eye out for that for any parts that you may miss or want to re-watch. And you can Tweet us today @TechSoup or using the hashtag #tswebinars. My name is Becky Wiegand and I am the Webinar Program Manager here at TechSoup and I am happy to be your host for today’s event.

I have been with TechSoup for 8 years and prior to that was the accidental techie who never had an IT or tech role in my life, but always ended up having to help manage the technology at the small nonprofits where I worked in Washington DC and Oakland California. So I have been in the position of having to troubleshoot with no real troubleshooting experience. So I hope we’ll get a lot out of this webinar today from hearing from Spencer Day who is our expert on the line, the Outreach & Partnership Development Lead at InterConnection.

And he is, they are one of our donor partners, InterConnection is, for our Refurbished Computer Initiative which is factory refurbished hardware that you can get, computers, laptops, desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, monitors, all that kind of stuff that you can get that are factory refurbished that come with warranties. I will talk a little bit about that program later on. But I just wanted to mention that Spencer is joining us from InterConnection based out of Seattle. He is a techie at heart and he has worked with organizations, meager, mighty, and anywhere in between is what he said in his bio, to help them bridge that technological divide. He leads their efforts to help underprivileged communities gain access to, and understanding of the technology that is vital to their growth. So I’m really excited to have him joining us on the line today because he is an expert in a lot of these areas, and can help give you some tips to start with that will hopefully save you some time, and headaches, and money in having to bring in external help if you don’t have full-fledged IT staff at your organization.

You will also see in the back end assisting with chat, Susan Hope-Bard who is joining us here from TechSoup. She will be on hand to help you with any of your questions or to help with any audio or technical issues today. So looking at our learning objectives for today, what we are hoping that you will get out of this is to gain a list of things to do to help first off, maintain the computer hardware you already have, and to help you maintain your computer software, because both of those are kind of key in helping you solve most of your problems that you may encounter. And then we want you to become more confident with these first steps on how to troubleshoot. So we want you to feel a little bit more able to go in and defrag your computer, or go in and just re-booting things so that it can start up quicker, like shutting down apps that start on startup, things like that we want you to feel a little bit more confident about those.

And then I also would hope that you’ll learn a little bit about hardware and software options if and when you decide you need to upgrade machines because that is also a big part of the process of any kind of technology planning is looking at what you have and deciding is this actually working for our needs. Maybe it is now and here are some things to keep it working. Maybe it is not or maybe it won’t be in 6 months and you really need to be budgeting for how you can improve your technology over time.

So those are the objectives we have for today. And we also hope to answer your questions along the way. Before we get started with the topic at hand, for those of you who aren’t already familiar with TechSoup we are a nonprofit as well. And we are working toward connecting everybody at nonprofits, libraries, foundations, churches, with the technology to help them succeed at fulfilling their missions. We are everywhere on this map that is blue so that is pretty much everywhere with the exception of a handful of embargoed countries. You can find our donation programs. We are not in the Sudan unfortunately. So we are not in every place but we are in many of them. I’d love it if you would chat into us right now and tell us from where you are joining today because I imagine most of you are joining from the United States just based on the time zone of this webinar. But if you are joining us from outside the United States I would recommend giving a visit to our TechSoup.Global site and selecting your country from this drop-down so that you can find a local program in your area or region that will serve your donation needs and technology needs as you move forward.

But everyone is welcome to join us for our webinars. I want to dive into some poll questions right now to get an idea of where you are at, the people who joined us on this webinar today. We have about 100 people in the room. And thank you all of you who are chatting in to let us know from where your joining. But I would love it if you would answer this poll question by clicking on one of these radio buttons on your screen, what is your role in maintaining or managing computers at your organization? Maybe you don’t actually do any of the hands-on troubleshooting or maintenance. Maybe you help out because you don’t have any IT staff which was always my situation. People would look at me and say, “You are young. You must know how to fix the server.” I’d say, “I know how to set up your MySpace,” back in the early 2000s, and laugh at them.

But it was often my role without any IT staff on hand. Maybe you manage all of the PCs and technology as part of your role. Maybe that is your job. Maybe you are the technical staff. And if there is a different role that you have go ahead and comment in chat. Maybe you are the person that helps manage a tech vendor, or a contractor that you work with and it is your role to sort of liaise with them as problems come up.

I have people chatting in. Charles mentions, “We have a solid IT partner but I troubleshoot as able.” So that’s great. You have somebody you can rely on for bigger technical needs but you have somebody you can call in when needed, but when you don’t need them you do a little troubleshooting. We have Laura commenting, “I help out but have IT we can turn to particularly by phone.” Diane comments that she is in that accidental techie role. That’s what we like to call it. Jay comments, “I lead a group of volunteer techies,” so a lot of different scenarios out there. I’m going to go ahead and show the results. So it looks like we have a big chunk that’s in the not really managing technology by choice, but you don’t have IT, staff. And then we have a sizable chunk that manage PCs and technology in their roles.

So keep in mind that we have framed this webinar as technology basics, so we are going to talk about PC maintenance and troubleshooting, but we are looking at it from sort of the basics and moving on from that. But we won’t be covering advanced topics today. So if you are joining us as a network admin or somebody who is a more higher end tech expert, you may not get a whole lot out of this event though you are totally welcome to stay and participate with us and you may have tips to share that we can share back out with the audience, but we are gearing this webinar toward the technology basics, the things that you just want to make sure you are starting out with that anybody can do whether they have tech expertise or not.

And then one other question for you, how many computers are you helping to maintain? And this just gives as an idea of maybe the types of issues you would encounter. If you really don’t have any computers that you are maintaining and you are just interested in picking up some skills or some interesting information that is totally fine. If you are smaller than 20, then maybe you are dealing with an office that is not networked that doesn’t have an Exchange Server or isn’t using a cloud file sharing service like Office 365. We won’t get into Exchange and kind of the bigger more complicated network issues.

We are going to look at this as from kind of an individual PC standpoint today. But maybe you are helping manage a computer lab of public computing machines. All of this is helpful for us to get an idea. So feel free to chat in if those are the things that you are encountering as well. And I will give just a couple more seconds so everybody has a chance to respond. And it looks like’s we have a sizable group that are managing 20 or more machines, almost 30%. But if we add up all the smaller groups it’s about half that are dealing with fewer than 20 computers, more than half actually. So that’s really helpful to get an idea. So thank you for taking a moment to respond to those questions. I’m going to go ahead and jump us into the content at hand today and invite Spencer to the line to talk to us about those basic computer maintenance and troubleshooting tips that he can share with us today so that we can come away having a bit more confidence in how we do this when we are encountering a problem, and how to hopefully set things up so that you are not having to react all the time to “Oh, my gosh! something is broken!” Welcome to the program Spencer.

We’re so glad to have you join us. Spencer: Hi, Becky. Thank you for having me. I am really, really excited to be here. InterConnection has been working with TechSoup before as you said earlier, but this is definitely something that we wanted to jump on and be a part of is to help out this network because I know how important it is for people to have the tools necessary to keep their computer running, keep it going. It is so crucial in today’s day and age that we have our technology still up and running, ready for us whenever we need it because it’s used for networking, its used for working on documents, video editing, picture editing, all sorts of stuff.

So yeah, I definitely think that this is going to be a great opportunity to kind of cover some of the basics. I hope that I can help out everyone that is out there today. To start off basically I just wanted to give you some confidence that some of these things are very simple. These are easy things that you can do to keep your computer healthy, so don’t feel powerless. Don’t feel like this is completely out of your range. You can do this. If you can log on to a webinar you can definitely do some of these things. So my 2 objectives for today are 1, learn more about your computer capabilities, and then 2, learn how to better protect your computer. I think if we can accomplish those 2 things you are going to feel are a lot better about the maintenance of your computers moving forward. Having said that, IT help we discussed earlier, it can be necessary. There are certain circumstances where things are out of your depth.

You are out of your depth and that is fine. That’s the reason why you have those support systems. They do charge money. And it is a little bit pricey at times, especially in the nonprofit world. Because InterConnection is a nonprofit and we were bootstrapped just the same way as many of you out there. So we know exactly what it is like to try to do things like this on a shoestring. But I just wanted to let you know that this is going to get you to a certain point and hopefully, it will help the vast majority of you to keep simple problems away from your computers. So we are going to launch into the next slide. It’s going to talk about computer setup. This is just our foundation. What I wanted to cover with this is verify your computer is plugged in. So I started out as a technician a long time ago fixing computers. I’ve had so many customers come into me over the years and talk about how their computer, how it’s just not powering on.

There are plenty of circumstances where actually like the wall outlet didn’t have power to it. A fuse blew for that particular wall outlet so their computer isn’t powering on because there is no power to the computer. It’s just not possible. So verifying that everything is plugged into the computer, verifying that there is in fact power to the outlet is very important so we can start working on the computer and making sure that the computer actually works. The next part is making sure that your computer has Internet connection either by ethernet connection with a cable or connecting through Wi-Fi. So just verify that you have a connection is very, very important obviously. The next part, and this is probably the most important part about your computer setup is making sure that it is in a good location, cool, dry place, well ventilated. One of the bigger issues that I see in the repair world of computers is that people will take their laptop and set it on their bed and it will trap all that heat into your computer.

Or you’ll take your desktop and you’ll shove it into a drawer of a desk where there is no ventilation. It just traps the heat. Heat is very, very bad for computers. I’m sure you can imagine. But most people, it doesn’t occur to them because they are not feeling that heat. It is not present to them. So that something that is very, very important. Keep it well ventilated so that it can cool itself, because the fan is the only thing for the most part that will cool your computer. Dry obviously, that is very, very important. I had a lady the other day that came in and she, her desk in her house is right in the kitchen next to her pet’s dog bowl.

And she put her desktop down on the ground next to her dog bowl. And her computer one day magically stopped working, and of course it was because there was water damage because her dog likes to drool. So it’s things like that you need to be very careful of, obviously pet hair or something of that nature. These things can get sucked into the computer. Dust can be a factor. So make sure that it is in an area that is away from all of the traffic but is still capable of staying cool and dry. So on the next slide we are talking about operating systems. Let’s kind of set the stage for this in discussing software and hardware. I wanted to address the fact that probably a lot of you are on different operating systems within Windows. I’m not going to really cover a Mac because that’s a whole different issue and there are different instructions for that.

So I’m just going to stick to Windows. However, I know that there are probably many of you that have machines that are all the way back at XP, all the way up to Windows 10 which is the most current one. First off for Windows XP and Vista that is no longer supported by Microsoft. That’s difficult because those machines are no longer capable of doing all of the processes that are out there in today’s day and age. So those are very difficult to keep in good shape, keep maintained just because there is no support from Windows for it. So that is something to be cognizant of. That is something to remember whenever you have a machine like this. If you are having compatibility issues with some of the programs that you are trying to run and you are running Windows Vista or XP, that is probably the reason why because these systems are outdated. Microsoft is going to stop support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Windows 7 they are going to stop support in November. And Windows 8 they have already stopped supporting that because Windows is going to the same model that Apple is where they only support one operating system at a time. So Windows 10 is going to be their operating system. So that’s not anything to panic about, but over time you are going to notice that those operating systems are going to slowly fall behind. We at InterConnection have been using Windows 7 for a long time because it is very, very stable. It has been a very good operating system for us whenever we refurbish computers. But we think this is a good move to Windows 10 and we are going to wholeheartedly embrace it. So how does that relate to the computers that are out there? There are plenty of computers that are in this world that are not capable of going to Windows 10. So it’s very difficult for me to give you a hard and fast piece of advice as far as capabilities for computers whenever there are all different types of computers in the world.

So what I’m going to try to do is give you advice that will apply to Windows 7 through Windows 10. And if there is any difference it is very small as far as the instructions for how to get the desired result. But most of this will be geared toward both Windows 7 and Windows 10. So the next slide, updating your operating system, I can’t recommend this enough. Updating is very, very important. This is Microsoft’s way of keeping your computer in good shape making sure it is compatible with all the programs that are available to it at that day and time. Also it is updating it so that you are protected from some of the more malicious viruses and trojans and those types of things that are out there in the world. So I think it’s very important for you to keep your machine updated as much as possible. However, and this isn’t a hard and fast rule but don’t upgrade your operating system unless you know what you are doing.

That is a very, very big step for your computer and you need to be aware of the risks if you make an upgrade to your system rather than an update. Those are 2 completely different things. Upgrading your system is going from Windows 7 to Windows 10, or Windows 8 to Windows 10. Updating it is just getting it to the newest version from Windows 10 to the newest version of Windows 10. So it is definitely an important distinction between the 2. I am not saying that upgrading is bad. I am simply saying that there are machines or laptops that are say, 5 to 7 years old that drivers are not out for your screen, for video, for audio. Your speakers might not work. Your mouse might not work. So those are the things that you could run into because it’s just not updated.

Windows 10 is very new. So these are things to consider and you may need to call someone that has better knowledge of something like this if you don’t feel comfortable with making that upgrade and risking having some issues whenever you make that upgrade. So I don’t want to belabor the point but that is the difference between the 2. So just be careful if you’re making an upgrade. The next one is talking about startup programs. And we are going to start delving into how to actually make your computer more efficient, just quicker for you, faster reacting. That is kind of the name of the game because it’s a pain in the butt whenever you have a computer that takes forever to load anything, it takes forever to get online once you first open it up and start it.

That bugs everyone. So starting from the very beginning, the programs that launch right whenever you open your computer I think it is crucial to go through this periodically, say once every 2 or 3 months to see what it is that is running with your computer. The way that you can check this is to go to, and I’ve got a couple boxes right there that will show you this, but MSCONFIG in your Windows search bar which the Windows search bar is down there. Whenever you click Start there is a search bar there. And we are going to keep going back to this because this is a great way for you to find whatever it is on your laptop that you are looking for. If you type MSCONFIG into it, and then whenever you select msconfig the program and the box pops up there, if you select the Startup tab it will list all of the programs that launch whenever your computer is started.

So then you can select which ones you want enabled or disabled. Now is a good time to just make sure and be clear that whenever you are choosing some of these things, make sure that you know what that thing is doing. So if Skype pops up there and you are like, “I never use Skype,” you can disable that and that is fine. But if something comes up there and you don’t know what it is don’t touch it. That’s my recommendation. You can Google it and try to find out better what it is, but it can be dangerous if you just get in there and start closing out everything. So I think this is a good way to pare down how many programs are launched at the very beginning. So hardware is an important part of selecting computers that are good for you and recognizing whether the computers that you have are still capable of what it is you want them to do.

So hard drive space is very, very important. It lets you know as your hard drive fills up your computer is going to slow down because there are just more things that your hard drive has to sort through to find the information that you need. Being able to find out how much space you have left on your hard drive, I have instructions on here. It says open File Explorer. That is the little file that is down there in the bottom left. You select that and then whenever the window pops up you select this PC. It will pop up with your hard drive, you’re C drive that is there. It will show you however many gigabytes or terabytes – hopefully, you don’t have gigabytes because that computer is little bit old then. But if you have a certain portion of gigabytes that are available that will let you know your capacity. The next one is RAM and I don’t want to get too bogged down in the technical details here.

But essentially RAM is memory. It is called random access memory. It is memory that is it available to work through things. This is your quick instant memory that allows you to quickly work through things. The more RAM you have the more things you have available to work on at one point time. So if you are one of those people that has a ton of programs open all the time and a ton of tabs open all the time, your RAM is what is going to dictate whether you are able to manage all of those things at the same time or not. Eventually, you will fill up your space. So I have instructions there to check to see how much RAM you are currently using on your computer. Type “resource monitor” into your Windows search bar. Select the Memory tab and it will show you how much of the RAM you have available.

People will have like 4 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, on up to 16 or 32 GB even. So that’s just a good way to check and see how much of that you are using. The processor is the brains. It is what actually works through all of that. So the RAM is what it makes available all the information needed to quickly work on it. Processor is what actually works on it. So this tells you what your computer is going to be capable of working on. Some processors are older than others and that will dictate what you are capable of doing. So if you have a bunch of computers that you are managing and they are say core 2 duos or something like that, but you need to do video editing these core 2 duos are older and they are not capable of handling that.

Whereas, if you get to an i5 or an i7 that will get into the territory where they are a little bit more capable of handling what it is that you do on your computers. Now if you are just doing web surfing and checking your email then it is not necessary for you to have an i7 computer. You can have one because hey, it’s fun. But you don’t necessarily need it. We just touched on the hard drive. What disc defragmentation does is it compiles the information that you have stored on your hard drive which stores all of your information on your computer.

It takes that and compiles it in a way that is very easy to find. So picture your spice rack in your house. If you have your spices all over the place you are going to have to search through all of them to be able to find them. Whereas, if you have them organized by Italian spices, and spicy stuff, and salt and pepper and that kind of thing it’ll make it easier for you to find exactly what it is you are looking for.

That is exactly what this is doing. It is arranging it so that it is an easier way for it to find what it is that it needs. So I’ve listed instructions on here for everyone to find the disk defragmentation program, File Explorer, This PC, and then right-click on Windows C:, and go down to the bottom of the box and select Properties and that will pop up with a new box. Within that new will box you can select Tools. And on that tools tab you will have disk Defragmenter or Optimize, just depends on whether you are on Windows 7 or Windows 10. And once you select that it will pop up with that program, the disk defragmentation program. And you will see all of your drives available to you. So then you can select to the Windows C: which is your hard drive and then you can choose to defragment it. Now on some of these systems, it will allow you to set that up as a schedule to where it will do it in the background.

It will do it for you. It will say, “Hey, would you like to do this every week, or every 2 weeks at AM in the morning?” So that makes it easier for you so that you don’t have to deal with this all the time and think about it. But I do think that this is something that should be done periodically because it just kind of keeps all of your files nice and neat, and it will help your computer run a bit quicker. So I think that’s important. On this next slide, this is for CHKDSK.

This is a different tool that Windows has. This shows you the box there that I was talking about where you select the Tools tab. And you will have available both disk defragmentation and also error checking which is the CHKDSK tool. What CHKDSK does is it scans your hard drive to find file errors and it fixes them if it can. And if not it will block off those sectors. But it does everything it can to try fix some of those file errors that happen over time. Now these file errors are some of these unseen things that you are like, why is this program not working, why is it glitching, or why is it catching.

There are several circumstances that these can play out and cause issues for your computer. So this is another great thing for you to do so that you can keep your computer running well. The process to get this is obviously very, very similar. But all you are going to do is go to that and select CHKDSK. Once you select that a box will pop up which we show there, and I would recommend selecting both of the options that are available and then clicking Check. With Windows 7 it won’t check immediately. What it will do is it will say, we can’t check it now. We are going to check your disk whenever you reboot the computer, whenever you restart it. So that is something you don’t have to do it immediately. There’s no pressure as far as that is concerned, but it is like scheduled for the next time you reboot your computer.

So I think that is also, set aside some time. Whenever it is doing error checking it can take 30 to 45 minutes. It just kind of depends on the size of your hard drive and how many things you have on it but it does take some time. So if you are shutting down your computer at the end of the day maybe it might make sense for you to restart it and let it go through the restart process so that it will check your hard drive as you leave, and you can come back in the morning and it’s ready to go. Next slide. Close your tabs and apps, please. Now, my wife isn’t listening to this but I’ve given her this advice numerous times, never works. I completely get it. On my computer right now I actually have a bunch of tabs open right now so I’m totally guilty. But this is something that definitely slows down your computer, people leaving their web browser open with several windows with a ton of tabs open.

Programs are also a big culprit so you’ll have Word, and Excel, and PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat, and all of these programs that are constantly running at the same time. It causes your computer to get bogged down. It just can’t handle all of these processes that are going on at the same time. And closing down the tabs and apps that you have, or as many as you can will help it be more efficient, will help it run better. I like to say that whenever you have tabs that you go to every day, like for instance, I go to Salesforce every day. I don’t need to leave that one open whenever I leave work at the end of the day because I know I’m going to have to go to it the next day.

But if there is a page that I need working on a document, or there is a page that I need to come back to the next day that’s a reminder, I get it. You can leave it open. That’s totally fine. But this is just a good practice to get into so that you keep things a little bit orderly and your computer is able to handle a lot of the tasks that are going on a little bit better. Becky: I am perennially guilty of that Brian. Or sorry, Spencer. I was responding to somebody named Brian in the chat. I have about 40 tabs open at any given time. So this is a really good reminder to me to do that as well. I’m going to let you keep going.

I just wanted to interject to share that I am like your wife and guilty of that as I’m sure many of us are. Spencer: I totally get it. I’m there too. I keep tabs open and I’m sure a lot of people are like that. I keep tabs open as much as a reminder for me to go back and do certain things as anything. So I totally get it. But it’s one of those things where if you don’t close those down your computer is still working to keep those available to you. That is what it’s doing. So not going through and closing those down just taxes your computer and forces it to work too hard. And then you start wondering why whenever you open up a new program it is taking forever.

That’s why. It has all these things that it says, okay I’m juggling 50 things that I’m trying to make available to you. Eventually your computer is going to cry uncle. So for the next slide, uninstall programs, this one is very, very important. If you have the ability to do this, this can help you remove unwanted programs or programs that you are no longer using, but really programs they got onto your computer that shouldn’t be on there. That is a great way to handle this issue. If you go into the search bar type “uninstall programs” and then there will be a program that pops up that says “uninstall or remove. Select that. And the window that pops up will show you a list of all the programs that are on your computer.

Going back to the startup programs, if you don’t know what a program is, don’t remove it. Just don’t get into a situation where you are taking away stuff that you need. Normally Windows will protect you against that, but it is still a good practice to not delete anything that you don’t know what it is. I still would recommend Google searching it and trying to find out what it is because generally there is pretty good information out there.

And worst case scenario, contact somebody that has more knowledge than you and say “Hey, do you know what this is?” Or call InterConnection. We’d be happy to talk to you about it. But stuff like that, just make sure what you are removing from your computer you actually want to remove. So all you would have to do is find the program that you want and then right click on it and select Uninstall. Now sometimes it will pop up with a Windows version of Uninstall which is very simple and you just follow the prompts. Sometimes it will pop up with say, you are uninstalling McAfee or something of that nature. McAfee will have their own uninstall program that will pop up and you will have to follow the prompts. And it will say, “Do you want to uninstall it?” And I’ll say, “Yes.” And it’ll say, “Do you really want to uninstall it?” And I’ll say, “Yes, yes.” And then it will ask you another 4 times, and then finally you will get to uninstall it.

But generally speaking, all you have to do is just follow the prompts and it to get you to where you want to be which is uninstalling the programs that you don’t need. Going back to the hard drive space, these are ways for you to keep your hard drive as free as possible and not as full as you can possibly get it. You want to keep as much space as possible on that hard drive in order to make sure that it is still running well and that it doesn’t get overstuffed, overloaded. Next slide. Antivirus software, this is a biggie right here. And I could go a number of ways with this, but basically what I am going to talk about is the free version. There are several out there that you have to pay for. That is all well and good. What these are, these are just base levels of protection. These should not be viewed as a catchall that is going to protect you against anything and everything that is out there because frankly there is no such thing short of you just not having Internet.

But antivirus software is a good way to have a base level of protection. So Microsoft Security Essentials is something that is from Microsoft so it works natively with Windows, so you are not going to have any compatibility issues. Most of the paid software that is out there for antivirus works very well. But this is made by Microsoft for Windows. It works very, very well obviously, and it does a good job of protecting your computer for free. So it’s obviously a really good option. The way to enable it, and I want to take a second here and discuss this. If you are trying to put this on your computer you need to be very sure that you don’t have another antivirus program on your computer. That is very, very important. All too often I see somebody that will have 2, 3, 4 antivirus programs on their computer and their computer has locked up, because you have antivirus programs competing against each other. One is saying, “Hey, this is trying to take control of this computer. I’m trying to segment it off.” The other one is trying to do the exact same thing. And eventually what happens is you get these freezes and glitches and stuff gets locked up and it’s just not good.

Make sure you have only one antivirus program going at any point in time. The Security Essentials is easy to turn off. It is very, very simple. But if you have anything else that is on your computer and you are about to launch this I would recommend uninstalling it, personally. I would go through the process that we just discussed, make sure that it is completely uninstalled and gone from your computer, and then launch this. You just don’t want them competing. There is no reason for your computer to get locked up because of an antivirus program. You think you’ve got a virus but actually it is your antivirus program that is shutting down your computer. So that is definitely frustrating. So to be able to enable it go to the search bar And Type in “Microsoft Security Essentials,” or “Windows Defender.” The difference between those 2 is just generations. So between Windows 7 and Windows 10, it’s the same thing. It’s just they named it differently in the effort of better branding, I guess. So if you type that in it will pop up with the program, your antivirus program. And in the Settings tab, all you have to do is select on there and it will launch.

All you have to do is just select that you want to turn it on. And then you can also set it up with a schedule if you want to where it will run at 2 in the morning or what have you so that it will check to see whether there is any virus or anything like that on your computer. It will also keep itself updated so you don’t have to do any of the updating for it. So that is definitely a good scenario for keeping your computer protected. Good Internet practices, so like I said earlier, antivirus software is a good base level but it is not a catchall. There are tons of things. I could give an entire presentation just on this, Internet practices. But the quick and dirty is exit out of pop-ups. Unless it is something that you know of don’t click inside the window.

That is a great way to download something that you don’t want on your computer. Microsoft or Apple will never try to contact you through a pop-up. I can’t tell you how many times I have to take away viruses from people’s computer or reload the operating system to wipe it completely clean and reload it. And these con artists are very, very good at what they do. They send you messages that look very real. I promise you, Microsoft or Apple is not going to contact you through a pop-up. I can guarantee it, so you don’t need to worry about that. The last one there is adblockplus.org. This is just something, it is an extension that works with your browser. Basically what it is trying to do is prevent these pop-ups from opening up to you. There are number of things that you can choose for this to block pop-ups. This is just one that I have experience with and I feel like it is a pretty good one. I’m not going to go through the set up for this because it will take a little bit.

But if you go to their website they do a good job of showing you how to install this on your browser. And the last one is other tools. If you feel like you have the capability of going a little bit further than what I’ve listed here today, these are a couple tools that can possibly help you. Malwarebytes is good at finding malware on your computer which is probably the biggest problem with computers today is malware getting on your computer, I would say. So that’s a good program. That’s also free. There is a free version of Malwarebytes. So that something that you can check into. And then Safe mode on your computer, it is a diagnostic tool for Windows, but it’s not very easy. Unless you have good diagnostic skills to identify problems, I wouldn’t really recommend getting into it unless you know what you are doing. That is the only thing I would say.

I wanted to address that because I’ve had people ask me, “Should I put my computer and safe mode so that it will be safe, and be okay?” Well, that’s not exactly what it is for. What it is for is it shuts down almost all programs and runs just bare-bones so that you can start adding things to identify what is going on with your computer.

So I just wanted to address that really quick. That’s it basically. I wanted to ask if there are any questions out there for me. I’d be happy to address them. Becky: Great, thank you so much for that Spencer, a lot of really great tangible practical tips in a short amount of time here. And we hope that there were some that were new for our folks in the audience. Spencer: Real quick, they were talking about, I just saw something on the chat from the chairperson Malwarebytes.org not dot com. I think it’s very important. There is going to be a lot of, there is a lot of misinformation from stuff that you can download and you can definitely download something that is not what it says it is. So I didn’t address that and I just wanted to make sure that was clear.

Becky: Right. That’s a great point. I did chat that out. That was actually chat it into us by one of the participants who made that clarification. And it is a great point too that if something pops up, I hate those pop-ups that wiggle on your screen and say, “Oh, your antivirus is out of date. Update now.” I think those are almost always not what they project themselves to be, or not what they present themselves as. So go to reputable sources. I shared the link to TechSoup’s security section in the chat as well where we have a lot of articles. We have a whole guide that is 12 Tips to Stay Safer Online. The number one thing that keeps you say for more than even in antivirus product is just your own behavior.

So don’t click on those files. Don’t open the link unless you are really sure you know who it is from. If you get those fake FedEx emails that say you have a package that is being held up, click the link below. That is just not how they do it. So your own behavior can be the biggest predictor of how much spam and malware and virus stuff you end up with on your machine. So lots of great resources there to share. Let’s see, we’ve got some questions. A couple that are related, Jayne and Don both ask questions and I think there was even someone else who asked about if you set your computer up to make updates, or if you set your computer up to de-frag at 2 in the morning which you recommended a couple of times both with defragging, you can do it in the middle of the night, or with updating your antivirus or things like that. Do you need to leave your computer on all night, and is that problematic to leave computers on all night? Like should we be shutting down every day? Spencer: Yeah, that’s a good question.

Most of the computers in today’s day and age are fine running nonstop. Now if you have a laptop and you leave it plugged in, leaving your computer plugged in overnight, basically it is continuing to put a charge into your battery, so that can fatigue your battery and it will reduce the battery life. So there is something to be said for that. But if you have a desktop there is no worries. They are made basically to run nonstop. So that is not that big of an issue. As far as running overnight, if you are doing this once and I would recommend probably once every 2 weeks.

It’s not that big of a deal as far as defragging your computer. Checking for updates, it’s just whenever they come in and they don’t normally take that long. But you wouldn’t need to let that run overnight. And doing CHKDSK, if you did stuff like that once every 2 weeks to a month is plenty. That should be more than enough. So it shouldn’t be that big of an issue as far as wearing down the life of your computer. Becky: Great. That’s helpful to get some perspective on that. We had some folks asking about Norton Security in particular and how to renew that. So I will just respond to that quickly that if you received license of Norton Antivirus or Norton Security through TechSoup’s donation program, it is an annual subscription so you just request that same license again which I think is like $10. And they sell it in bundles, so if you need it for 20 computers or something like that there are a series of different bundles I think for 5 devices, 10 devices, 20 devices something of that [indistinct].

And you can find that product directly by going to TechSoup.org/Symantec which is the company that makes Norton. Or you can just go to TechSoup.org/security and you’ll see all of the security products that are available in the donation program and how they work. Let’s see, we have a question about, Jordana asked about those pesky pop-ups that ask you to update. Is there a way to turn those off or shut those down so that you aren’t getting them all the time? Or do you recommend just telling it to run whenever it happens so that you don’t have to accept in more cases than often I’d imagine reject the update and say you will do it later and have that continue being a thing you click out of and say you’ll do it later for 3 months straight.

Is there way to get rid of that? Spencer: So I see that there are a couple about updates. One is about the Windows 10 update and the other one is about the pop-ups or updates. Windows has tried to get away from the pop-ups so with each new iteration of Windows they have done a better job of getting away from it because Vista, everybody was really critical about the fact that there were just tons and tons of pop-ups for Vista. So they are trying to get better, but essentially it is trying to tell you that there is something needs to be done. Now for Windows 10 on the update, that is one thing I will be critical of Microsoft on. They are putting “Hey, update to Windows 10” down on the bottom corner of your screen and then they will have pop-ups that come up all the time. It is very, very annoying. I completely got it. And a lot of the computers that they are doing that pop up on are not capable of going up to Windows 10. So that is definitely something that’s a little scary. And say you did have a computer that wasn’t capable and you clicked on that icon it will pop up with the box saying, “Let us verify your computer.” And sometimes it will go through the verification process and say, “Yes your computer is ready,” and it is still not.

There are drivers that are not available for your computer to be able to run certain parts of your computer, so your mouse, or your sound card. I touched on this a little earlier but that has been something that a ton of people are complaining of so be careful about that. Is there a way to turn that off? Not really, unfortunately. There are some things that are like aftermarket like bootleg stuff where you are going into the directory and changing it. I would definitely not recommend that. So basically the long short of it is no, there isn’t really a good way to turn that off. It’s a pain in the butt. Becky: Yeah, that is a challenge and one of those things that – I want to get back to questions in a minute, but I want to just show a couple of additional slides quickly that sort of relate that you may find that you are getting that update prompt a lot, or maybe you have some machines that are running mission-critical programs that are not compatible with Windows 10 so you need to keep them on older machines.

But if you have older machines that are running Vista or XP and that are really not going to be compatible with Windows 10, and Windows 7 will no longer be supported after November. I really would recommend that you spend a little bit of time looking at your budget to see when you can make some upgrading of your machines, because your hardware really may need to be changed out if you really can’t get an operating system that is going to be supported on it.

So I want to just highlight quickly, we mentioned earlier that Spencer works for InterConnection.org which is one of our partners in our Refurbished Computer Initiative program. I am going to get back to questions in a minute but I just wanted to just show you that we have access to donated and discounted desktops, laptops, tablets, hot spots, projectors, and a lot more, not just through our RCI program but through a couple of additional programs. So you can go to TechSoup.org/hardware if you are needing donated or discounted hardware so you can get those peripherals if you need a new monitor, if you need new desktop PCs. We have them ranging from low tier to high tier but they are all considered business grade refurbished, factory refurbished machinery. So they have been taken through the process of getting them back up to speed. Many of these are what are considered off lease.

So some of these bigger companies lease their equipment for 2 years and then they get in a new batch of computers 2 years later. And those 2-year-old computers are still high-end business grade machines that are just taken, cleaned out, updated, refurbished, and then put back out there through some of these programs. So the Refurbished Computer Initiative program is at TechSoup.org/refurbished-computers-catalog, so you can find a lot of different resources there. So I’ll just so one picture of some of the examples of what’s available. These are provided by our relationship with InterConnection. So Dell OptiPlex computers, these are coming with Windows 7 installed. Many of them also come with Office 2010 installed so you are getting not only an operating system but you are also getting Microsoft Office so you don’t have to purchase that as a separate license or request it as a separate donation. Some of them are bundles where they include monitors and keyboards. Some of them are just the Tower. And there is also laptops, and tablets and things like that available. And I’ll also mention the Dell Affiliate Program. For a $10 admin fee this is a discount program that Dell offers so it is available through TechSoup.org/Dell.

You pay the $10 admin fee and it gets you access to the Dell website with substantial discounts on their hardware. So if you’re looking for brand-new hardware this is a new option that has just been released in the past few months here through TechSoup. So if you are thinking of buying some new Latitudes or OptiPlexes or whatever their latest greatest hardware is. And it also is for gear, so they sell cameras, and backpacks, and things like that through the Dell site. And this gets you discounts on all of that. So that is another additional option. I did chat out the link to Microsoft operating system donations.

We have not only upgrade options but if you have computers that are running Microsoft Office, not Office, I’m sorry, Microsoft operating systems, if you’ve got Windows licenses and you don’t know if they are legitimate, maybe it was a computer donated to you, or you think that the license that is on there you don’t have any idea who it originally belonged to, you can request full operating systems through the Get Genuine program which I don’t have a link for in here, but you can get to it from the operating systems link where if you need full licenses that are legal Microsoft Windows operating systems, you can get that through our program. But it is a one time only ever request. So if you think you might need 5 computer licenses for operating system this year but you think you might have a couple in the closet that you are going to need next year you need to request them all at once because you can only ever do that once to get full licenses, not just upgrade licenses.

So I just wanted to mention that because it is important to know that it is only one time that you can get access to that. And you can browse for these things by browsing our catalog By Donor. So if you know you need Office 2010, or you know you need Windows 10 operating system, you can go directly to the Microsoft section of our site by browsing By Donor or Provider. Or, I highlight this because you can browse By Category or Solution, so you can browse for hardware. You can browse for software programs. So there are a bunch of different ways to look around the site. You can Browse by Solution, so like looking for computers and electronics will take you to the section where you can see new tablets, smartphones, laptops. So I’m going to go ahead and get back into questions but I just wanted to highlight those resources for those of you who do need to upgrade equipment.

And I’m going to leave this screen up, or this page up on the screen while we get some more questions. But these are just some of the resources that I pulled out that can help walk you through whether you need to invest in new hardware, information about refurbished hardware and how to select the right hardware if you do need to purchase any. And then we’ve got resources on DIY troubleshooting, so more on this same topic that we covered today, and how to configure and set up multiple computers if you are running a computer lab, or have the need to clone or do imaging on different machines. We have an older webinar on PC troubleshooting, and then we have the webinar that was on upgrading your Windows OS, one of the tips that was recommended to upgrade and also not upgrade if you don’t know what you are doing.

This is an event that we did with a couple of experts that walked through the things to do before you even bother even trying to upgrade to make sure that you are protecting your data and information. So back to questions. We have a question asking from Jennifer, their computer is equipped with Windows Defender. Is there anything else that is needed as far as security is concerned? Do you think it is enough to have Windows Defender that is preinstalled or do they need anything else? Spencer: I think the Ad Block Plus is a good thing to have as an extension on your browser.

And I think that if you get into Malwarebytes which is a free version, you don’t want to set up Malwarebytes as your antivirus program where it’s checking for viruses. That is what your antivirus is for whether it be Norton or Microsoft Security Essentials or what have you. That is a very targeted approach towards getting a certain thing for malware. But between those 3 things, I think that’s a good base level to protect yourself. There are other things but it gets really complicated. Dealing with routers for your protection, there are other things. But as far as programs and applications I’d say those are good start.

And then just having good habits whenever you are surfing the Internet so that you don’t get into anything that you shouldn’t. Becky: Great. That is good advice. And I would recommend checking out that security section of our site for resources on the safer habits so that you can adapt your own behaviors to be safer. We have a question, Brian asked, and I don’t know if you have recommendations. I can recommend some folks. But are there any suggestions for how to identify an IT partner to assist with this type of maintenance if you need regular IT support, how do you recommend that people find that? I can make some recommendations if you don’t have any but I’d love to hear if you have any.

Spencer: Yeah, so generally speaking, since we are a nonprofit I work through the nonprofit network to be able to find good IT solutions in certain areas. So I think Becky you would be a good person to refer to on that. Becky: I would say around the country we have been connected with NPower which actually started with a Microsoft grant to help nonprofits with their technology. And there were originally 12 NPowers in various cities around the country. A lot of them have changed names now so depending on where you are located there may be one near you. I would also recommend NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network has a section of their site that is affinity groups and listservs that are called 501 Tech Club, so it is 501s for nonprofits, so nonprofit tech clubs. And those are listservs where you can sign up to one that is local to your area.

They are not in every area but they are in a lot of the cities around the US. And you can post there to see if you can find a consultant. You will see people on their list, “Hey I have a website that needs to be redone. Can you make recommendations for a company to do it?” Or, “here is my RSP, my proposal for what we want done.” Submit your proposal for it. So it’s a great place to connect with other consultants and contractors. We also have some contractors that we work with through TechSoup that we have relationships with. One is Tech Impact and they do phone support and maintenance. So even if they are not local to you which they are located in Pennsylvania but they also have a new affiliate in the DC area but they offer phone support. So that is one option as well. We are just about at time so I’m going to go ahead and move this to a couple of these closing slides while I ask another question just to wrap us up.

But feel free, folks who are watching this screen, go ahead and chat in one thing you learned today so that we can continue to improve our work. We have a question from Don who asks, “Adobe’s really bad about asking to update. Should we say yes or no?” Do you have an opinion on Adobe’s update requests? Spencer: Yeah, Adobe, Java, stuff like that, those are main programs that are on your computer and you do need to keep those updated just because they are doing those patches not only for functionality but also for protection so that your computer is invulnerable. So main programs that you put on your computer I would definitely recommend keeping those up-to-date. Becky: Great, and for folks who are interested in the RCI computers that come with Windows 7, you can also then request to have an operating system upgrade through our program, our donation program if you wanted to bring them up to a Windows 10 machine as well. So that is one option that somebody was asking about on the back end. I’m going to go ahead and wrap us up.

Thank you so much, Spencer, for spending that hour with us, we really appreciate it. I’d like to invite our participants to join us for any of our upcoming webinars and events. Any of you who have participated in any of our storytelling, digital storytelling events in the past couple of months, I just wanted to let you know that we have the contest submission deadline. So if you are looking to send us your short video or photos story as part of the submission where you can win up to $7000 and prizes, the deadline is coming up in just a few days so be sure to do that soon.

And then we’ll have a webinar on PowerPoint for Beginners, so if you are new to this PowerPoint tool or want to increase your skills in it, join us for that. We’ll talk about how to get tech donations before fiscal year-end which is coming up on June 30, so join us on the 7th to learn how to do that. Then we’ll have one for beginners on Microsoft OneNote.

We will spend some time on video editing and production with Adobe Premier. And then we will have a couple that are gear more toward libraries and literacy communities, one on the privacy topics that are happening in libraries, how to respect your patrons’ privacy while also allowing information to flow. And then we will have one on helping children build their literacy skills in this digital age where everyone is glued to their devices. So feel free to join us for those and keep an eye out for more. You can also go visit our webinar archives on TechSoup’s site for any of our past webinars to watch. Thank you so much, Spencer, and thank you to Susan on the back end.

Lastly, I’d like to thank our webinar sponsor ReadyTalk for providing the use of their platform to present these webinars. When we close out please go ahead and complete the postevent survey to let us know how we did and what we can do to continue improving our program. Thanks, everyone and have a great day. Bye-bye.