Regular Maintenance of Software

• Use a computer anti-virus program. This should be updated regularly, at least once a month, to cope with new viruses.
• Carefully check any data sources coming into the practice for viruses, no matter where it has come from. Some practices have a "quarantine PC", which is totally isolated from any other computer. The quarantine PC can be used to test all data sources (data and software) for viruses.
• Don't use non-standard software, for example, from magazine covers, friends, clubs.
• Regularly back up your files and keep the copies safe off-site, see A Sound Backup Strategy and Off-site Storage of Backups for details.
• Make copies of your Windows registry files.
• Password protect your data. Password lists should not be stuck up on noticeboards!
• Regularly run hard-drive maintenance tools, particularly surface scans, and defragmentation routines. This helps to avoid writing to damaged disk sectors.
• Discourage staff from tinkering with the program files.
• Screensavers in Vision 3 are compulsory and blank screens after a short time interval.
• Where possible, archive material from the hard disk.
• Delete duplicated documents from a word processing package and zip up other large word-processing documents. A "Disk Full" message could mean disaster.
• Join the Tape Verification Service.