Windows 2000 Monthly Maintenance

[Carrie Breton]

I have to come up with a monthly checklist that can be used on all PCs in
the office to ensure everyone is up to par. This way, when I go around to
everyone's machine, I can check off what I've done as I go so I know
everything's been done on every machine.

I'm VERY new to the IT field (as in...2nd day on the job, first job in the
field) and really don't know what should be on this checklist. As of now, I
have the obvious stuff, like update and run antivirus, update and run
spybot, defrag, and delete cache.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[GO]

Not really something for a checklist but something that will save you a lot
of headaches.....make sure everyone is a "user" rather than an administrator
or power-user on their workstation(s). Regular users with admin priviledges
will cause you nothing but trouble as they will have free reign to install
new software and change system settings, etc.

 

[Michael Bednarek]

I have to come up with a monthly checklist that can be used on all PCs in
the office to ensure everyone is up to par. This way, when I go around to
everyone's machine, I can check off what I've done as I go so I know
everything's been done on every machine.

I'm VERY new to the IT field (as in...2nd day on the job, first job in the
field) and really don't know what should be on this checklist. As of now, I
have the obvious stuff, like update and run antivirus, update and run
spybot, defrag, and delete cache.

Proper anti-virus software should update itself - once a month is not
enough. It should run on server(s) and all workstations and laptops.

Spybots should be unnecessary, given proper anti-virus software, a
working firewall, and appropriate Internet Usage Guidelines. Maybe one
of your first jobs could be to review your company's Computer Usage
Policy.

Defrag is overrated, and IMHO highly questionable on (file-)server(s);
Exchange servers must never be defragged.

Why do you want delete (IE's?) cache? I find left-over files in the Temp
directory a much greater problem.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

View the server(s)' eventlog; check backup and firewall logs daily.

Good luck.