Your first line of defense is your dedication to safe computing. Stop and think
before installing any program on your machine: Do you know what company is
responsible for the product? Does it come on an original CD or other media and
not someone’s bootlegged, hand-labeled copy? Is the web site you are visiting
legitimate, and does the company behind it present a digital certificate of
authenticity? (A digital certificate, provided by a recognized authority, is sup-
posed to guarantee that the software or web site you are dealing with comes
from the company you expect and not from a fraudulent or malicious source.)
Most importantly, do you really need this additional code on your system? Your
second line of defense is a fully updated and capable set of security hardware
and software devices and utilities: a firewallto protect against unwanted intru-
sions and an antivirus program to stop sneak attacks before they do damage.
Installing an Application .............................................................................
In the old, old days of computing — back before Windows was born and
years before your laptop was a twinkle in the eye of its designer — many
programs were self-contained files. A word processor was a single program
called something like word.exe. (exe is computer-speak for executable,mean-
ing it is a file that does something when it is invoked, as opposed to a data
file that contains information.)
Putting a new application on your computer was often as simple as copying
the executable file to your system and creating a shortcut (called batch files
in early DOS) to invoke the pieces when they were needed. Alas, the installa-
tion of programs has become much more complex even as Windows has
made their use so much simpler.
In a nutshell, a modern program that is installed into Windows is often made
up of dozens or even hundreds of little pieces distributed all over your hard
drive. Some are placed in a subdirectory that holds the main executable pro-
gram and can be spotted by using Windows Explorer and going to the folder
for Program Files. (For example, you may see a subdirectory called Microsoft
Office or Norton SystemWorks.)
However, it does not end there. Not by a long shot. Applications running
under Windows use all sorts of shared functions and libraries of icons, fonts,
and commands. (Among these are the DLLs,or dynamic link libraries, which
are part of the mechanism that allows any software company to make its
product nearly identical in appearance and command structure to any other.)
As part of the installation, pieces are put every which where. And most pro-
grams installed under Windows also make changes to the Windows Registry,
which is a special file of instructions that the operating system consults at
startup and at other times.
Chapter 18: Adding or Removing Software, for Better or for Worse .......................
