Tech Tips - Is your personal computer optimized? How to keep your PC optimized for best performance?

Another tech-tip to keep your personal computer healthy and fit. We keep installing applications, creating/deleting folders and each time an entry is made in the registry. When we remove the application & do not do a clean uninstall or cut-paste some folders it leaves junk data in your hard-disk & registry and your computer is no longer working optimally.

Here are few things you can do to keep your computer healthy, fit & optimized

1. Don't install software that you don't need. Once every 3 months do a quick check of the installed software and remove the applications that are not used frequently.
2. If you use some software just couple of times a year I suggest you download a portable version of the software and keep it on your pen-drive and save your computer from unnecessary clutter. Portable.com is my favorite site to fins reliable and malware free portable apps.  They even provide a portable app manager that (When you download a software do donate a dollar to help the guys maintain their good work) 
3. Use a free tool to clear junk files from the computer and defragment the hard disk. I use CCleaner freeware to clean junk files and optimize the hard disk once a week.
4. Use a good registry cleaner tool to keep your registry healthy. Make sure you create  restore-point before you clean the registry and do not keep more than 4 restore points on your computer as they occupy real estate. I use a wonderful tool called Wise Registry Cleaner to maintain my registry (wisecleaner.com). The tool is smart and reliable and you can take my word that it will not mess the registry.
5. Backup your assets to a portable hard-disk and only keep the data that you access frequently. I use DSynchronize portable application (installed on portable drive) to take backup of my downloads and I always maintain enough free space on my hard-disk ( more than 50% of the HDD capacity)

  

The New BPM - The Real Time Business Process Management

Enterprises have embraced BPM and have optimized their business processes making their enterprise efficient, agile & adaptive. Business users have most intimate knowledge about the business operations and understand the process improvements required. Business-driven process management lets them manage the design, execution and improvement of business processes. The targets for BPM are the processes that are most important to creating value, those that will yield tremendous benefits if optimized, those that most need to rapidly change and evolve to keep pace with competitive markets. So for large enterprises moving to service based design and degree of process automation of high value processes will provide high business value.

New BPM - Business and IT collaboration and business empowerment are necessary so that business applications can keep pace with fast changing world. Today no body talks about Service Oriented Architecture & Service Oriented Design because they are now integral part of the IT standard guidelines and critical for success of any enterprise application. The new entrant Blockchain Distributed Ledgers on the other hand, creates a business network which can spans across enterprises, introducing disintermediation, distributed ownership and the risks while enabling near-real time exchange of data that can help enterprise in making faster informed decisions. The value add of blockchain is that it would provide means to prevent erroneous or outdated data within the business process. Blockchain adoption will impact existing business processes and they will have to be re-engineered to use Blockchain but it will have a positive impact by further improving quality, agility, trust and networking across business entities.

The New BPM

Tech Tips - Securing personal computer with Microsoft Safety Scanner, Defender, Avast & Malwarebyte

There are times when Windows OS on your computer misbehaves and you are not sure if it is because of some malware or is it a Windows issue. I started getting a message that said  "Interactive Service Detection - A program running on this computer is trying to display a message". 

I had never seen such message in Windows and I suspected a virus or Malware had affected my laptop. I checked Microsoft website and found that this error could also be because of  some Windows issue. But when you are not sure you should DO A COMPLETE SCAN FOR MALWARE.  I found Microsoft Safety Scanner tool (freeware) from Microsoft which can detect & remove malware from laptop.  Safety Scanner gave a cleanchit to my laptop which meant the issue was because of some corrupt files. Next I ran Windows System File Checker tool (it is part of Windows OS) and repaired few corrupted files. A clean shutdown and start confirmed that the issue was resolved. I assume like me, not many people would be aware of Microsoft Safety Scanner so I am sharing the link on my blog. This tool works for 10 days after download ( Microsoft keeps updating the tool virus database) so if you have to again execute it on 11th day you will have to download a fresh copy. 

By the way I have free version of Avast Antivirus & Malwarebites freeware protecting my laptop & I also have Windows Defender installed (only one of the antivirus will be actively monitoring the Windows). There is another good tool called Sourceforge HJT that I use to do random scans for Adware/Malware. Every time I feel the computer is acting a bit funny or is getting slow I run these tools to check for malware & unwanted software.

About Microsoft Microsoft Safety Scanner ( text from Microsoft website)

Microsoft Safety Scanner is a scan tool designed to find and remove malware from Windows computers. Simply download it and run a scan to find malware and try to reverse changes made by identified threats. Safety Scanner only scans when manually triggered and is available for use 10 days after being downloaded. We recommend that you always download the latest version of this tool before each scan.

NOTE: This tool does not replace your antimalware product. For real-time protection with automatic updates, use Windows Defender Antivirus on Windows 10 and Windows 8 or Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows 7. These anti-malware products also provide powerful malware removal capabilities. If you are having difficulties removing malware with these products, you can refer to our help on removing difficult threats.

Click on this link to download Microsoft Safety Scanner

Other useful links -
1) https://www.avast.com/
2) https://www.malwarebytes.com/
3) https://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/
4) Repairing a corrupted file in Windows using sfc command
    a) Using Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool for Windows 8. 8.1 &10
    b) Use the system file checker tool to repair missing or corrupted Windows system files

Linking Aadhar to Bank is a redundant exercise & bad software design

Today PAN & Aadhar are linked (31st Dec 2017 was the last date to link Pan with Aadhar) and this is already approved by the Supreme Court. Now Govt is trying to explain to the court why linking of Bank account to Aadhar is necessary. I am surprised that  Indian goverments IT experts have not realized that this is such REDUNDANT exercise because once government links Pan with Aadhar number, and since it is mandatory to provide PAN for a bank account the bank account automatically get linked to Aadhar ( as Bank account is already linked to PAN number). So there is no need for citizen to provide Aadhar details to the bank (by virtue of PAN-Aadhar data linkage) and Banks can STOP sending threatening mails to the customers!

Wish Finance Ministry & UIDAI would hire few experienced data architects & software engineers who could explain to the government 'how data association works' and stop the bank & government from wasting tax payers money in a redundant effort to link Aadhar to Bank account!


So bank has practically no need to ask customers to give their Aadhar number. Even for new bank customers  there is no need to provide Aadhar number because once they provide PAN number bank automatically comes to know if the person has linked the Aadhar with PAN and only then they would enable his new bank account.  It id critical that government does not go on distributing Aadhar access to 'private entities that çan acheive the purpose of authenticating a customer without knowing their Aadhar number and by just knowing their PAN number.

The following picture explains it. The Income Tax department has PAN-Aadhar linked for each PAN card holder. Bank account is already linked to PAN.  The way data association works if someone has not provided Aadhar to income tax department his PAN will automatically be deactivated and bank will be come to know about customers PAN deactivation.
                                                                        Obviously government has not thought about this because their IT experts have not educated them how data linkage works. I put the blame of this useless exercise on the IT experts who are being consulted by the government of India. Indian IT engineers from private sector are designing state of art software for fortune 100 companies and it is a pity that our government is not consulting these Indian IT experts.

Linking Aadhar to Bank is such a Dumb Idea & waste of tax payers money!

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Govt of India has asked citizen to link PAN-Aadhar and this is already approved by the Supreme Court. Now Govt is trying to explain to the court why linking of Bank account to Aadhar is necessary! It is such foolish thing to do because once you associate Pan with Aadhar the bank account automatically get linked to Aadhar without citizen providing Aadhar details to the bank by virtue of PAN-Aadhar linkage!

Wish Finance Ministry & UIDAI would hire few experienced data architects & software engineers who could explain to the government 'how data association works' and stop the bank & government from wasting millions of tax payers money in effort to link Aadhar to Bank account!  Why ask citizen to provide the Aadhar data to bank when bank account is already linked to the PAN which in turns is getting linked to Aadhar number?