Backup - Pulling it All Together

Again I ran into into a question that I get asked quite often. I believe it is worth another one of the instances where I quote my email reply to the customer:  

Backup and Restore likely are for the non-technical home computer user the most misunderstood area of handling a computer. I have learned the hard way that discussing that over the phone usually is fruitless, mostly because a non-technical home computer user lacks basic background knowledge.

I am very reluctant to  advise about that area without the customer having a decent understanding of the terminology involved. Additionally a solid understanding of the different Pro and Cons of available technologies is requires.
If you want to read up about Backup/Restore than I can give you a few links to articles that expound on the basics.

1. TechTerms' basic explanation of Backup
2. PC Magazine's Beginner's Guide to PC-Backup
3. How-To Geek's How to Use All of Windows 10’s Backup and Recovery Tools

And here are some of my own musings from my blog related to Backup; these links are  in no particular order!

• Backup Devices from April 2012
• Why I recommend a Backup Program for $$ from June 2012
• On Line Backup - Not For Me from September 2012
• Cloud Storage - Again from July 2014  

I trust that you will find or take the time to digest all this reading. I will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

It may happen that you run into problems with single terms or technical words; please do an internet search yourself before you ask me, I would only have to send you links to Wikipedia that you easily can find yourself...
I know, all this may sound like I try to avoid a direct answer to your suggestion but, sorry, you will have to "do your homework".

After reading through above text I have to add one more article to the first group of links:

• How-To Geek's What's the Best Way to Back Up My Computer?
  IMHO  this is one of the best articles about backups that I ever have read!
  
  My experience shows that on-line backups to remote servers are often VERY time consuming; UPload speed for data from your computer to a remote server is generally MUCH slower than download speed from the same server!
  

For the average home computer user who is not a computer geek and does not plan for his house burning down my recommendations are

• Use an external SSD for backups. See note below.
• Use Macrium Reflect Free for system images. See note below.
• Use Macrium Reflect Free for backing up your data files.

Re. SSDs:
Whether you  use an old fashioned HDD for backups or an SSD, you need a drive with USB 3 connection. USB 3 is much faster than USB 2. 

• If your current computer does not have USB 3 then your next computer will for sure.
• Laptops can generally not be upgraded from USB 2 to USB 3.
• Desktop computers generally can be upgraded to USB 3 for reasonably low cost.

Re. Macrium Reflect:
Even if you upgrade to the paid version of the program I want to remind you that I DO NOT get any kickbacks or any other hidden compensation!

Well, that was it for today. Stay safe, computer and health wise.

Avoid or Mitigate Ransomware Risks

A big THANK YOU to the Emerging Threats Team at SophosLabs and their blog Naked Security for their excellent recommendations on this nasty but important topic.

I have taken the liberty to add some remarks just to help you remember important little details that are easy to forget in cursive.

• Backup regularly and keep a recent backup copy off-site. There are dozens of ways other than ransomware that files can suddenly vanish, such as fire, flood, theft, a dropped laptop or even an accidental delete. Encrypt your backup and you won’t have to worry about the backup device falling into the wrong hands.
  
  But do not, I repeat, do not leave your backup device connected to the computer. Always unplug the backup device after the backup is complete!
   
• Don’t enable macros in document attachments received via email. Microsoft deliberately turned off auto-execution of macros by default many years ago as a security measure. A lot of malware infections rely on persuading you to turn macros back on, so don’t do it!
  
  Naturally they don't tell you that the click they ask you to do will turn macros back on. They rather trick you into believing that clicking is the thing to do to be able to read what they sent you...
   
• Be cautious about unsolicited attachments. The crooks are relying on the dilemma that you shouldn’t open a document until you are sure it’s the one you want, but you can’t tell if it’s the one you want until you open it. If in doubt, leave it out.
  
  Currently I do not open ANY attachments; I call the sender and have them explain what and why they sent the attachment and even if all that checks out I additionally check the attachment on Virus Total. 
   
• Don’t give yourself more login power than you need. Most importantly, don’t stay logged in as an administrator any longer than is strictly necessary, and avoid browsing, opening documents or other “regular work” activities while you have administrator rights.
  
  Quite a lofty ideal as I am currently experiencing first hand.
   
• Consider installing the Microsoft Office viewers. These viewer applications let you see what documents look like without opening them in Word or Excel itself. In particular, the viewer software doesn’t support macros at all, so you can’t enable macros by mistake!
  
  Now is a good suggestion, I will have to do that!
   
• Patch early, patch often. Malware that doesn’t come in via document macros often relies on security bugs in popular applications, including Office, your browser, Flash and more. The sooner you patch, the fewer open holes remain for the crooks to exploit.
  
  As I always preach: Update, update, update.

That is it; certainly to a large part common sense but here it is, nicely packaged and in one place.

Stay safe!

Backup - Windows 7 and 8

Please click this link if you are looking for information on Windows 10.

Here are links to articles that should answer most of the questions I get asked about back up.

Windows 7
Build a complete Windows 7 safety net

Windows 8  Understanding Terms
Understanding Windows 8's File History
TechNet: Windows 8 File History explained

Windows 8 Prepare like Microsoft wants it

Microsoft: Set up a drive for File History

Mastering Windows 8's backup/restore system

If you are adverse to Microsoft's built-in tools there are proven free third party backup programs available:
Free Backup programs - Not from Microsoft 
Sadly this otherwise excellent article does not mention Macrium Reflect, an  often recommended free third party backup program.

And here is an interesting discussion about the question where to store the back up:
Internal or External Hard Drive for Backup

And since two customers recently asked about here some words about 
How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Cloud Storage - again

May 5th 2013 I documented my opinion about cloud storage based on a real life example with Google's service.

Today I ran across a similar example based on Microsoft's service named "LiveDrive". Here is the original text:

LiveDrive has started closing people's accounts without warning.  Not everyone's account, of course.  Just a few.  And when those people contact the company to ask why, they're told that they were breaching the terms of their "unlimited storage" package by, er, storing too much stuff.

If this happens to you, and you make a fuss, LiveDrive will restore your access in order that you can retrieve any important data.  However, in the experience of a couple of friends of mine, this access has its bandwidth throttled to such a degree that it is virtually impossible to download anything.  So your files are pretty much lost.

So again, as a reminder, cloud storage services may be convenient but:

Your data is not safe!

You can lose access any time without warning! 

Always keep the original file locally stored and locally backed up! But does that not blow the loudly touted advantages of cloud-backup clearout of the water?


Sometimes I am outright fascinated by how easily people can be made to believe in third parties they have absolutely no control over.

IMHO at least the cloud is no place to entrust my most important documents and irreplaceable memories (aka pictures) with.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Micro$oft's new Terms and Conditions - A Bombshell

Microsoft Corp. changes their Terms and Conditions. Not that big an issue for me but when I think of millions of Windows 8 users who get tricked, conned and arm-twisted into establishing a "Microsoft Account", well, then I get a queasy stomach.

If I add in the many millions of unsuspecting users of email accounts with hotmail.com, outlook.com, live.com and other M$ server names then the I get really nauseous.

And when I think of hundreds of millions of Windows 8 and Office 2013/365 users whose data gets "automatically stored in the cloud" plus many small businesses that think "cloud backup" is a good solution, man, then I actually want to p**e. 

To spare you (and me) wading through lots of legalese details here only hree quotes from Micro$oft's original text (highlights by me, some editing lost in transferring the text): 

• 10.3. Binding arbitration. If you and Microsoft don't resolve any dispute by informal negotiation or in small claims court, any other effort to resolve the dispute will be conducted exclusively by individual binding arbitration governed by the Federal Arbitration Act ("FAA"). Class arbitrations aren't permitted. you're giving up the right to litigate disputes in court before a judge or jury (or participate in court as a party or class member). Instead, all disputes will be resolved before a neutral arbitrator, whose decision will be final except for a limited right of appeal under the FAA. Any court with jurisdiction over the parties may enforce the arbitrator’s award.
• 10.4. Class action waiver. Any proceedings to resolve or litigate any dispute in any forum will be conducted solely on an individual basis. Neither you nor Microsoft will seek to have any dispute heard as a class action, private attorney general action, or in any other proceeding in which either party acts or proposes to act in a representative capacity. No arbitration or other proceeding will be combined with another without the prior written consent of all parties to all affected arbitrations or proceedings.

• 11. NO WARRANTIES

  
  

  MICROSOFT, AND OUR AFFILIATES, RESELLERS, DISTRIBUTORS, AND VENDORS, MAKE NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, GUARANTEES OR CONDITIONS WITH RESPECT TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES. YOU UNDERSTAND THAT USE OF THE SERVICES IS AT YOUR OWN RISK AND THAT WE PROVIDE THE SERVICES ON AN “AS IS” BASIS “WITH ALL FAULTS” AND “AS AVAILABLE.” MICROSOFT DOESN'T GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY OR TIMELINESS OF INFORMATION AVAILABLE FROM THE SERVICES. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED UNDER YOUR LOCAL LAW, WE EXCLUDE ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING FOR MERCHANTABILITY, SATISFACTORY QUALITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WORKMANLIKE EFFORT, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. YOU MAY HAVE CERTAIN RIGHTS UNDER YOUR LOCAL LAW. NOTHING IN THIS AGREEMENT IS INTENDED TO AFFECT THOSE RIGHTS, IF THEY ARE APPLICABLE.

  YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT COMPUTER AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS AREN'T FAULT-FREE AND OCCASIONAL PERIODS OF DOWNTIME OCCUR. WE DON'T GUARANTEE THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE OR THAT CONTENT LOSS WON'T OCCUR.  

 If I still can read correctly the very last part of the last sentence "... or that content loss won't occur." contains the admission that Micro$oft can not guarantee availability of their services and that you data will be available to you when you need it.

This is much worse than expressed in my previous diatribe about cloud storage services.

And trust me, just by using any Micro$oft service you have agreed to these Term of Service.  Even if you only use your copy of Windows 8 that you set up with a MS account you have agreed to these Terms!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

 

Warning - W A R N I N G - Warning

On October 23rd 2013 I wrote about a really, really bad new virus called CryptoLocker.

Back then, only three and a half weeks ago, CryptoLocker was an acute danger mainly in the UK, parts of continental Europe and in some Asian countries.

This has changed dramatically. Computer users in the USA get hit with this virus increasingly often. Since a few days I receive about five emails every day that offer me "free money" or pre approved credit cards "ready to be shipped" my way. Would I ever click on a link in such an email? Would I ever be tempted to open one of the attachments? You bet not!

A free(!) protection method is available but it will interfere to some degree with normal computer operation. When this happens the computer user needs a certain amount of technical know-how to correctly diagnose the reason for the interruption and the to create an exception; this has to happen every time when it happens. If you can do that you should look at CryptoPrevent.

For everybody else I shout as loud as I can:

Disconnect your external backup drive when the backup is done!

If you don't disconnect the backup drive your backup files will be encrypted as well! They are totally useless once encrypted.

As usual I welcome suggestions and comments right here in the blog.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Warning: Old Fiend With New Muscle

In the title I say "old fiend" and it is an old adversary in new clothes and with significantly more muscle. 

Instead of repeating the background story please first head over to my September 2012 article and come back here after you have read it.

So what's new?  Besides the new name, Crypto Locker, a couple of major improvements have been made to that nasty piece of maliciuos software:

• The encryption is now "NSA grade", meaning there is no way out! Your data files most likely will remain lost!
   
• The ransom has been raised in some variants of this malware  to close to $1000.
   
• Now even files on other than the system drive C: will be encrypted. That renders restore partitions useless.
• Is your backup disk permanently connected to the computer? Then the files on this drive get encrypted as well and all your backups are totally useless!
   
• Now even files on network connected other computers can get encrypted.
   
• Many victims that actually did pay the ransom got a decryption key that did not work! Their files remained inaccessible and were totally lost.
   
• To pay ransom in some instances credit card information was given to the obviously wrong people; credit cards got maxed out in minutes! That is much more trouble than the loss of years of pictures, emails and other files!
   
• Many attempts to save files turned out to be more expensive than a brand new computer would have been, Even with a new computer your files remain lost!

So far, and that may change soon, CryptoLocker 

• arrives on victims computers in an email from an arbitrary sender they often don't know.
   
• arrives on victims computers as an email attachment; this requires the victim to explicitly execute the attachment, that is double click on it and eventually even ignore the warning from Windows about running a downloaded program.
   
• arrives on victims computers after the victim clicked on a link in an email without first checking the link and it's real target.

You say you don't do either of these arguably fairly dumb and dangerous things? Good for you! Are you 100% certain that everybody who eventually uses your computer is as careful, as attentive and as cautious? Think about your sweet teenage granddaughter, your kid's friends, visitors and so on.


You ask why your anti virus program did not catch the bad program? Simply because this form of CryptoLocker is new. It requires time and quite some effort to design detection methods and find secure ways to neutralize these modern and very sophisticated threats.

As of this writing we all are unprotected and need to use due diligence. Always wear your common sense hat!

The only currently known "protection" against damage by CryptoLocker is to have a recent image backup of your system drive and/or to have a set of restore DVDs that were created when the system was still functioning correctly.

If you need to use either of the aforementioned a System Repair disk is required. Did you already create one?

If you need help to set up a sensible backup routine and/or to create the disks mentioned above please contact me. You find a useable email address in the left sidebar at the end of the text titled "Welcome".

As usual I welcome suggestions and comments right here in the blog.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.
 

Stern Warning - Be Careful!

I don't want to repeat almost the whole article that I stumbled upon today.You can read it here but please read all of it, that is please click through to page 2.

Every word of this article is true and please, take these quoted words to heart (emphasis added):

In the vast majority of cases, victims do not regain access to their computer unless they hire a computer technician to remove the virus manually. And even then, they risk losing all files and data . . .

That begs a few questions:

1. Do any of your files, documents, poetry, articles you wrote, tax files, pictures of the grand kids or a deceased loved one or of important events in your life, whatever you have stored in your computer, does any of that have a value to you?
    
2. Are these files and what they represent emotionally important?
    
3. Are these files and what they represent financially or even legally important for your business (accounting, contracts a.s.o.)?
    
4. Are these files professionally important? Think of your résumé, your CV, contracts and bids.

 I am sure you can think of other things on your computer that may be important to you. If you answered Yes to any of the questions above then I have to ask you:

Do you have a stable backup solution in place?

A backup solution that does not depend on you remembering to actually start the backup but rather does it's job automatically in the background as long as your external disk drive is plugged in and turned on?

Please remember that any data stored in a computer can vanish in an instant. Computers break, hackers get in and do damage, lightning strikes or the little sweet grand kid stumbles over the power cord of the notebook computer left on the couch table and the computer crashes to pieces . . .

If you do not have a stable automatic backup solution in place then it may be time to call me or to send me an email. "Call him" you ask? My customers have my phone number, listeners of WTKM hear it all the time and you have two different ways here in the blog to contact me via email.

As usual I welcome suggestions and comments right here in the blog.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.
 

On Line Backup - Not For Me

Yesterday I wrote in my article "Free Trials - User Beware!" the following:

In my opinion some of these services are bordering on useless and/or the promised services lack a sound technical base. An example for the latter are in my opinion the numerous online data backup services. All these offers pitched to the unsuspecting consumer do not mention the speed problem.

Practically all normal Internet connections, whether via DSL, cable or wireless technology have the same big drawback in common: The transfer speed from your computer up to the service's computers is significantly slower than the download speed that you experience when you browse web pages or watch a video or peruse Facebook.

Today I can give you numbers from the hard reality of what that means in real life terms.

I read on a fairly techie-oriented website a glowing endorsement of the online backup service CrashPlan and decided to give it a try. I downloaded their software, installed it and set it up to back up only the minimally required folders with my most important data.

Several hours later I wrote this email to Crash Plan's customer support:

Based on a recommendation at Lifehacker.com I bought your xxxxx plan for 2+ home computers instead of signing up for a trial. What a mistake.

After paring down the directories to the absolutely necessary minimum your program tells me after over 5 hours of run time that it still estimates another 12.2 days of run time remaining.

I am sorry, but this is absolutely unacceptable for me.

I herewith cancel my purchase. I have stopped the transfer by killing the process in Task Manager. I have uninstalled your software and deleted the downloaded installer file.

According to the promise on your web site

Our risk-free cancellation policy will automatically credit you for the
remaining unused months on any plan if you decide to cancel at any time.

I request that you please refund my payment.

Well, I warned you and promptly, on the very next day I stumble by my own free will directly in the trap. Dumb old man that I am!

As usual I welcome suggestions right here in the blog.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Why I Recommend A Backup Program for $$

Update June 20th 2016: Changed software recommendation

Again a customer's question required an answer that might be of general interest. Thank you Carrie L.

The lady asked: 

So you would recommend the xyz external disk drive PLUS the fully automatic solution which is the software that runs the xyz drive?  Or can I just get the fully automatic solution?  If I do, where does the backup go - to a company who stores it?

I would never recommend to store backups on a third party's computer or "in the cloud" as the many Internet based services are called now. Uploads (from your computer) to the Internet are just too slow! All these advertisements are an appeal to our complacency and unabashed attempts at getting a sticky finger into our wallets. These solutions may be feasible when a company has leased a fast connection into the Internet; technically we talk about T1 lines or faster. For the average home user this is simply cost prohibitive.

Storing backup data in the computer itself does not offer any security against data loss in case the computer fails badly. Everybody who has been around computers a little bit will agree that you need to store your data files outside of your computer; for the home user that is on an external disk drive! Ideally the files should be stored in the same format that the operating system uses.

So, yes, you need an external disk drive. These disk drives usually come with some sort of backup software. Mostly these programs create proprietary formats. Whether you can restore your data files from these proprietary formats on other, new computers is questionable at best. This specific piece of software might not run on a new machine or not be available for a new operating system.

Above mentioned proprietary formats usually are compression and/or encryption schemes of some sort. This makes backed up data files inaccessible for normal, standard means of the operating system. I totally oppose any of these schemes for home use, especially if the users are "normal" people that do not have a degree in computer science.

Every other backup program I know needs to be either run manually or be scheduled to run automatically. Manual operation usually gets forgotten or postponed until it's too late; I confess, I can't do it dependably!
Automatically scheduled solutions require

• that your computer is always turned on at the scheduled time and on the scheduled day of the week and
   
• that you do not work on the computer while the scheduled backup runs (the problem here are "open" files, files you are working with whether you know it or not; many backup programs can not handle open files correctly(!) and
   
• that the computer does not enter sleep or hibernation mode while the backup is running (all Windows computers are by default set to go into sleep and hibernation).

Update June 20th 2016:

All too often a backup does not get done because, honestly, to run "that darned backup program" is an additional chore. And such chores get "forgotten" too often. But this something I can not change; if you want to be secured against data loss you will have to run backups - and you will have to do backups regularly! 

And to be totally honest, you will have to learn about the different basic backup concepts and functions and their names. There are literally many hundreds of tutorials about that on the Internet.
 
For Windows PCs I recommend the $70 (one time payment!) program Macrium Reflect. The free version is sufficient for most home users but you always can pay to upgrade.

You may want to read additionally this article about backup devices.
As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Stay safe.

Backup Devices

Update June 20th 2016: Software recommendation changed.

Again I got a good question from a customer (Thanks Brian). The answer became this article.

So far I did not write about backup devices because the offers out there are in constant change; what I give as an example might not be available any more tomorrow. But here are quite a few generally applicable bit and pieces of info to that issue.

General: I favor 2.5" external hard disk drives over 3.5" drives. 3.5" drives need an external power supply; who likes more cables?

Brand: Over many years I have personally had too many failures with drives from Hitachi, Toshiba and Fujitsu. For years Seagate was a dependable drive but at the time of writing up to 20% of Seagate drives reportedly fail almost "out of the box". That leaves us currently only with Western Digital. This may change at any time. Stay away from drives with other names, you never know what brand of drive really is in there.

Capacity: 500GB to 1TB (1TB = two times 500GB) is currently the "sweet spot" where you get the most GB per $ spent.

Speed: If you can get a drive with 7200rpm that is still quiet go for it.

Interface: The vast majority of computers still have only USB version 2 interfaces. But version 3 is available and MUCH faster. If you have a choice buy the drive with USB version 3, your computer can likely be  upgraded with a USB 3 add-on card; that is not cost prohibitive at all.

Software: Most external drives come with some sort of (often manufacturer specific) back up software that sometimes even installs automatically when you connect the drive for the first time to the computer. GRRRR! Who guarantees that this backup program will be be running on your next computer when you want to restore the backed up files to that new computer? Additionally some of these programs encrypt and/or compress your files; you can restore them only with exactly this program. Windows Vista and 7 come with a decent backup program, but it's only decent.

Backup is the only instance where I recommend to pay for software!

Update June 20th 2016:

All too often a backup does not get done because, honestly, to run "that darned backup program" is an additional chore. And such chores get "forgotten" too often. BUt this something I can not change; if you want to be secured against data loss you will have to run backups - and you will have to do backups regularly!

And to be totally honest, you will have to learn about the different basic backup functions and their names. There are literally many hundreds of tutorials about that on the Internet.


I recommend the $70 (one time payment!) program Macrium Reflect. The free version is sufficient for most home users but the paid version can do it automatically.

Update May 2020:

For backups I strongly urge you to completely ignore conventional Hard Disk Drives. This is by now an outdated technology!

Prices of SSDs (Solid State Drive) have in the meantime come down into a price range where there is IMHO no reason at all any longer to shun them. The speed advantage alone can no longer be ignored.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Stay safe.

Windows 7 - Everything Else Is FREE

I read a two part article series on the WindowsSecrets blog written buy Woody Leonhard. If you follow my blog you have read about WindowsSecrets before. I like the skinny of these two articles so much that I "stole" their text from the second part of the article to post it here, with some textual changes and additions to enhance the readability and understanding by non-geeks, IMHO at least.
Most if not all of the software that stores will try to sell you when you buy a new computer does not need to cost any additional money. But since stores and dealers live from selling you something they will try - and sometimes really hard. The most often applied method to up-sell an unsuspecting not-too-PC-literate customer is good old FUD, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. The sales guys in some stores can scare the daylights out of you just to get you to buy some additional software.
The kicker is that if you steadfastly refuse these software add-ons they sometimes even will throw it in the bag anyway "because it's free"; stuff they five minutes ago wanted to charge you for! If my customers got any antivirus program in this manner I always tell them to give it as a gift to their best enemy.
If you buy a new PC with Windows7 Home Premium pre-installed then there is hardly anything else you need to pay money for besides your fast Internet connection.
Let me go into a few more details for the most commonly offered add-on packages. This first part is from the WindowsSecrets blog with some textual additions.

Antivirus: Microsoft Security Essentials is free and works for the average PC-user just as good as commercial products and often even better.
It runs totally unobtrusive in the background and it's work load balancing is so good that even on weaker older computers you hardly ever will recognize that it is running.
Even while it is scanning your machine you can still work with your computer; I don't know any other antivirus program that does that in such a graceful way.
And if it has to "talk" to you it speaks in clear, simple English; you don't need a college degree to understand what it's telling you.
Backup programs: Windows 7 backup isn't particularly neat or fancy, but it covers the bases automatically and (almost always) works well.
I strongly recommend to invest a little bit of time to learn the ins and outs; it's all right there in the Windows 7 Help and Support displays.
And I strongly recommend to buy an external disk drive to keep the backups outside of the computer. A backup on the C: drive is no backup at all, at best it's a fig leaf.
Defragmenters: Windows 7 defragments your drives automatically (once a week by default), and you don't need to lift a finger or spend a penny. But you can set it to your liking, like have it defragment daily at a certain time - or only manually started. The latter then very soon gets forgotten anyway.
Disk Partitioning: Windows 7 does all you'll need!
No, Windows 7 doesn't have a full-fledged disk-partition manager. But it does everything with partitions that most people need (if you need it at all!) -- and it gets the job done without messing up your hard drive. Which is more than I can say for some third-party disk-partition managers.
Where is Windows 7's partition manager you ask? In an administrator account, click Start and in the Search box type "Administrative Tools", without the quotes naturally. In the resulting window double-click Computer Management. In the left panel, under Storage, click Disk Management.
You will see all your disk drives and the partitions on the disk drives.
Again, I strongly recommend to invest a little bit of time to learn the ins and outs; it's all right there in the Windows 7 Help and Support displays.
Registry Cleaners: Some do more harm than good.
I have never seen a real-world example of a Windows 7 machine that improved in any perceivable way after running a registry cleaner. Registry cleaners and Defragmenters may have been useful for Windows XP (before SP 2) and certainly were a good thing for Windows 98 and ME as long as these programs worked correctly - what sometimes they did not. With Windows 7 I think they're useless, if not worse than useless.
In my experience, working with hundreds of Windows 7 machines, I have never found a single Registry cleaner that caused any perceivable change in performance.  The Registry is an enormous database, and all this cleaning really doesn't amount to much. It is like sweeping out one parking space in a parking lot the size of Texas.
Even Microsoft has abandoned its Registry cleaners. E.g. Windows Live OneCare (precursor to Microsoft Security Essentials) once included an online scanner and Registry cleaner.
(Disclaimer: I can not confirm this claim but usually Woody Leonhard is a dependable source of such information.)
Windows 7's Firewall works only one way, that is inbound.
Like its predecessors, the Windows 7 firewall only keeps outside threats from getting in — it is an inbound firewall. Outbound firewalls alert you when an unauthorized program attempts to send data out of your computer. At least that's the theory. In practice, many outbound firewalls bother you mercilessly with inscrutable warnings saying that obscure processes are trying to send out data.
If you simply click through and let the program phone home, you're defeating the purpose of the outbound firewall. On the other hand, if you take the time to track down every single outbound event warning, you might spend half your life chasing firewall snipes.
Some people think an inbound-only firewall is woefully inadequate. I think it's good enough for almost everybody. It certainly is big time good enough for the computers in my household.

It's surprising how much old advice isn't valid any more!

So much for the part that was inspired by and partly copied from WindowsSecrets. Let me add a few categories that are not part of MS Windows.
Office software: Almost all new brand name computers I have seen over the last 6 or 7 years came with some Microsoft Office package pre-installed.
When you just start to use these programs they will work for 30 or even 60 days. After that point in time you will have to buy a license from Microsoft or your favorite computer store. Depending on the version of MS Office the sales clerk talks you into that is anything between $100 and $300. Ka-ching says the cash register and sales guys in the store smile.
You don't need to pay for this! There are at least three packages with office programs around that will not cost you a single penny! They can read and write files in the commonly used Microsoft formats, at least for texts, spreadsheets and presentations.
Currently I favor LibreOffice; it covers 99% to 100% of what the average home user ever uses or needs; only in very "tricky" formatted text or spreadsheet files you will find some features that maybe are not 100% compatible; in this case the Help forum mostly has a workaround.
A category by itself: Google Earth just because it is such a great toy. Whether you want to check out a new vacation location before you book or just see the Kremlin or Tiananmen Square from the birds eye view, it is worth trying it. Even on average decent basic computers like I recommend to my customers it works very well; the speed of the Internet connection is much more important.
Photo Management and Editing: For the average home user Google's program Picasa IMHO is unbeatable. just watch it finding and removing the red rabbit eyes from the photos of your loved ones. And that for FREE! You can build albums with it, publish photos to the internet so the family members on the other side of the planet can see them and, and, and…
Web browser: If you are my customer or listen to me on WTKM then you know that I strongly favor Mozilla's Firefox web browser. Although quality and security wise Google's Chrome browser is a very serious contender as well.
Email Client: If you are my customer or listen to me on WTKM then you know that I strongly favor Mozilla's Thunderbird email client. I don't even know whether there is another alternative still around.
Should you require any other software and don't know where to begin to look for it, I will gladly help. For much if not most of what you may want to do on your computer there likely is a free solution available.
As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.
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