CS2 - The Best Solution - Task 1

Software Utilities

Computing utility software is used to analyse, configure and maintain the main infrastructure to a computer system. Rather than focusing on application tasks and management, utility software is associated more with the operational side of the system and is designed to manage hardware, operating systems, driver software and data storage for example. Because of this, utility software is often quite technical to manually configure.

Throughout this blog i will discuss various software utilities, and highlight their uses. I will discuss virus protection software, clean up tools and drive formatting.

Virus Protection

Anti-virus utility software is designed for the prevention, detection and removal of malicious software such as trojans, worms, spyware, adware etc.

Anti-virus software detects malicious software by scanning executable code on the system that is known to be of a malicious nature, or is similiar to pre-existing malicious code. Some anti-virus software also runs potential malicious software in a 'sandbox' area of the system to see if the software intends to run any malicious actions, if it does then the anti-virus utility can remove the malicious software before it is implemented into the system.

There are evidently large benefits to the use of anti-virus utility software, such as the protection it offers to a computer system and the general maintenance that some anti-virus software offers e.g pop up blockers, registry cleaning etc.

Although there are also some drawbacks, firstly anti-virus software and the RAM in which it uses maintaining a system can cause a system's performance to drop. Also the prompts and actions in which it poses to the user can often be quite technical, resulting in malicious attack if the user fails to do what is necessary to prevent it.

Common anti-virus developers are Norton, Mcafee, AVG etc.





This is a sample of an anti-virus utility. You can see that it offers the user the ability to scan their system, configure privacy settings, track system activity and view a basic overview on how well the system is protected.

Clean up Tools

Disk Cleaner

A disk cleanup tool is a software utility designed to free up hard disk space on a system. It works by analyzing and detecting files that are no longer used by the system, and then removes them. It also prompts the user with files that may be in use, but are recommended for removal these are usually files that lack in importance, but are relatively large in size (e.g temp files).

Many disk clean up utilities also offer the user the ability to compress rarely used files which improves disk space, and prioritise frequently used files to maintain quick file access times.

Common areas in which disk clean up tools target are:

• Temp folders
• Downloaded program files
• Recycle Bin
• Unused applications & components
• Log files

The most used clean-up tool is 'Disk Cleanup', which is a Windows utility that comes pre-installed with Windows software. Although other alternatives exist such as CCleaner, Red Button etc.

Registry Cleaner

A registry cleaner utility is designed to remove unwanted/redundant data from a system's registry in an attempt to improve the system's overall functionality. It works by scanning the registry, and repairing or deleting unnecessary values that are often left from uninstall failures, previous malware operations etc.

The clear advantage to registry cleaners is that due the registry's complexity, being able to maintain it manually would be virtually impossible. So a registry cleaner is essential in maintaining a functional registry.

Although registry cleaners have been known to pose some disdvantages, some experts argue that many registry cleaners classify minor detected errors as being 'critical' and therefore delete vital registry data, which can lead to the system crashing, booting failure and other general errors. This type of utility is also popular among malicious software developers, as it gains access to the system's registry where all the system's configuration settings are stored.

Registry cleaner developers include MAXpc, FixCleaner and Registry Booster.

  

Drive Formatting

Disk formatting is a utility that is built to prepare hard disk drives for an operating system installation, and can completely clean a hard disk of all data so its back to its manufactured state.

Formatting a disk works in three steps:

1. Low-level formatting - Low level formatting is the first step, the utility makes surface markers on the disk in which to indicate the start of a recoding block equipped with the foundation information, for the disk to be able to read/write data. This returns the disk to its initial state (factory settings).
2. Partitioning - Partioning then occurs, and this is to structure the disk data into various areas to raise the disk efficiency. Defective files and sectors are also detected in this stage.
3. High-level formatting - High level formatting is where the utility restores the disk's logical file system, and allows the disk to be detected and accessed. This may occur when installing the operating system. 

Disk formatting is a utility that is pre-installed with all Windows systems, and can simply be executed by the FORMAT command. It works by clearing the FAT entries by changing them 0x00, the root directory is then cleared by changing all values to 0x00 and finally all clusters are tested to ensure disk is fully operational.

Performance

A software utility's primary goal is to improve the overall performance of a computer system, it does this by keeping the system's logical structure maintained and organised. Software utilities can scan a computer system and delete unwanted and corrupt files, re-organise files and other general maintanance tasks in which to ensure that a system is running at its optimum performance level.