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There are many great benefits to keeping your computer’s software up-to-date:

  • Extends the life of your computer
  • Helps protect your computer from malicious software
  • Increases the return on your technology investment
  • Fixes annoying issues, saving you time
  • May speed computer processes
  • Increases your enjoyment of the Internet

Updating your Windows Operating System software

  1. Windows Vista and Windows 7 do much of this automatically for you, but not all, so we suggest you give this a try even if you think your computer is already taking care of these things.
  2. Make sure your computer is connected to the Internet. Since wireless connections can be interrupted during a software download, we highly recommend you use a hard-wired Internet connection.
  3. Open an InternetExplorer Browser. (Note: normally we do not recommend using any of the InternetExplorer browsers on the Internet, but Microsoft requires you to use one of its browsers to update your computer’s software, and its update website won’t work for you in any other browser.)
  4. Visit: http://www.update.microsoft.com/
  5. At a minimum, download and install any high priority updates the website recommends, and any others you might be interested in. (you may be required to reboot your computer following an update).
  6. Now go back through the first few steps and see if there are any more priority updates for your computer. Microsoft’s update website may only tell you about a few of the needed updates at a time, so you may have to repeat these steps several times. Keep downloading, installing and rebooting until the website tells you that there are no updates available for your computer.
  7. Even if the website didn’t require it, it might be a good idea to reboot your computer one last time just to make sure it has had a chance to recognize all the new software.
  8. You should also take a moment to Delete the Contents of the Temporary Internet Files Folder.
  9. Finally, you may be able to improve performance by defragmenting your hard disk.

Updating your Macintosh Operating System software

Apple has a way of asking you if you want to run a software update when you are right in the middle of some convoluted work on your desktop, and most of us will click the “remind me later” button and then totally forget about the update. For this reason, we recommend you set a monthly appointment with yourself to manually check for updates.

  1. Make sure your computer is connected to the Internet. Since wireless connections can be interrupted during a software download, we highly recommend you use a hard-wired Internet connection.
  2. Click on the little apple logo in the top left-hand corner of your desktop and select “Software Update…”
  3. If there are updates, just follow the instruction in the pop up windows for the specific software update.
  4. Some updates may require you to input your main user password for the machine, so have that handy if you don’t have it memorized.
  5. Apple will typically tell you whether or not you need to reboot the computer, but if you haven’t restarted your Mac in several days, it wouldn’t hurt to reboot it just to let it do any self-maintenance it needs when it shuts down.

Updating your Linux Operating System software

  1. Make sure your computer is connected to the Internet. Since wireless connections can be interrupted during a software download, we highly recommend you use a hard-wired Internet connection.
  2. Click: System > Administration > Update Manager
  3. Carefully follow the update instructions.
  4. Finally it’s a good idea to reboot the machine.

NetRaising doesn’t currently have a personal computer running Linux at our office and we would welcome input from an experienced Linux user on how to improve these instructions.