Introduction
Utility software is the software employed to take part in the daily upkeep and maintenance of a computer system, a utility software package is essential to any given computer as it ensures that the computer is protected from malware, viruses and hacking. It is a piece of software that is there to help in the daily management of a PC. The utility software package helps directly improves the efficiency of the PC, by performing basic housekeeping tasks, such as cleaning the hard disk (defragmentation).
Anti-Virus Software
An antivirus software is a package of applications that search, detect and either constrain or eliminate viruses, computer worms or Trojan horses. By this I mean
Firewalls
A firewall in terms of computers performs the exact same job as a firewall in real life. As you may or may not know, firewalls are specially designed walls or even doors that restrict the access fire can gain to a building, so instead of whole building burning the room in which they fire is burning is where the fire stays, or there could be a single room that does not burn due to the fire wall surrounding. Now a firewall in regards to computing does limits access of intruders and malicious content that could reach an individual from the internet or network, it does this by regulating incoming and outgoing data packages according to you preferences. The best way to imagine this procedure is to think of a fort from the medieval times, this fort has an unbreakable wall made of layers upon layers of strong, heavy rocks. The only exit and entrance to the fort is via a single exit or entry point, this point has guards that inspect imported and in coming individuals, they then upon a set of rules refuse or allow passage into or out of the fort. You may be looking for how this is related to firewall at all, well let’s say the firewall is the fort wall along with the guards that maintain it and you are the lord of the town and the law is set upon your preferences. So what you deem worthy of entering your town enters, everything else rejected, removed or deflected. The same wall that protects the walls can also be shut to maintain or quarantine a virus from spreading to other nearby towns. This is how a fire wall works.
Clean Up Tools
As the time goes by, the computer becomes populated by rubbish, by rubbish I mean unwanted documents, temporary files, installation details, dead shortcuts and so on. Microsoft recognised this problem and created a tool for cleaning up unwanted memory. What this utility tool basically does is search for setting which are not required, or for programs which are slowing down the computer. Running this utility regularly can help improve the performance and speed the boot-up/load time so that the computer starts much faster.
Formatting
Formatting is basically organising your virtual filing cabinet, it is the process of preparing a hard disk or other storage medium for use, including setting up an empty file system. A variety of utilities and programs exist for this task. Large disks can be partitioned, that is, divided into distinct sections that are each formatted with their own filing system. This is normally only done on hard disks because of the small sizes of other disk types, as well as compatibility issues. When you format a disk the OS erases all existing bookkeeping information on the disk, tests the disk to make sure.
Below is a print screen of formatting in the Ubuntu OS.
Scheduler
This tool is a slightly different tool to the rest of the bunch, in that it organises the organisers and the cleaners. This tool gives the user the power to update his virus tests on a schedule, the user has the choice of having a systems antivirus check, firewall update and defragmentation every one, two or even three weeks. The user can also schedule a one off pc check-up, this maybe at times at when you just want an update of the systems health randomly.
