Well there are lots of things you can do to unknowingly accomplish this. And I'm sure there are many more that I have yet to discover. Therefore, the purpose of this web page is to hopefully sensitize you to the Microsoft operating system and specific issues by showing some of the mistakes others have made.

The Paranoid Mistake

Everyone is concerned with Trojans, viruses and spyware. So you try to protect your PC by listening to friends advice and their recommendations on what software to install. The unfortunate part about this is most friends don't want to spend money for software so the recommendations are usually for software which can be downloaded for free from the internet. So you download a free spyware remover from the internet. Now think about this, why would a programmer spend his time writing a program and even more time keeping it up to date to clean spyware for free. And is he going to spend the time to have Microsoft certify that the program is compatible with the operating system. One example of how to break an OS is SpyStopper. They installed it and then wondered why the PC was so slow! Turns out SpyStopper is a Trojan which catches a few spyware programs but also hijacks your browser to a sales web site. Also talks to an add server to regularly get new pop-up adds for their screen. And sends activity data to a marketing company and opened a door for other web sites to exploit while surfing so there were three more Trojans installed. The bottom line is, install a simple antivirus program like Norton or BitDefender and let it do the job. If they can't protect your PC, then the others aren't going to either. In fact, all the other free programs do is add more overhead to your processor and also replace some key parts to the Microsoft operating system with their patches. Many of these patches break other programs or OS features.

The Gamer Mistake

Most homes have two or more PCs. One for the parents and one for the kids. And somehow the kids PC is always broken so they begin installing their games on the parent's PC. This is an excellent way to break your PC. The rule is, if the parents use their PC for work or kids homework and you need to depend on it, DON'T install anything in the PC without checking with someone who knows what the install will do. An example is a PC which had all the latest in graphic drivers and Microsoft DirectX 9.0c graphic acceleration support software. They installed the SIMS game which downgraded the DirectX 9.0c graphic acceleration software to 9.0b and then wondered why other programs didn't show graphics correctly anymore. Then when they reinstalled 9.0c, wondered why the PC was working at half speed. Well 9.0b removes all the components to 9.0c except for two parts it didn't know existed because it didn't exist when 9.0b was written. Now installing 9.0c puts back all the parts including additional copies of the two new parts. Now all screen data is routed through double drivers resulting in very slow graphics refreshing which makes it appear as if the PC were running at half speed. The moral of the story is don't play games on a PC you depend on. Install them in the kids PC and break that one. And don't install free games from the internet, they are usually adware.  Windows XP Pro consists of 9,896 files which are spread out over 394 folders and uses a total of 1,296,347,594 bytes of disk space. And of the 9,896 files, 2,251 are global libraries which contain hundreds of small sub-routines which are shared by other programs to perform tasks such has writing to a CD or sending data to a printer. If any one file becomes corrupted then something somewhere isn't going to work correctly. Good luck finding which one out of 9,896 is broken!!

The Update King Mistake

Another good way to break your OS and programs is updates. Everyone knows about Microsoft's security updates which eliminate those newly discovered system vulnerabilities. So many want to make sure all updates are installed by turning on the automatic updates feature within the operating system. Then wonder why a lot of programs suddenly stopped working one day. Well Microsoft decided to take full control and stop all hackers from messing with their software. So they rolled out Service Pack 2 which contained all the security fixes to date and a new firewall along with other OS improvements. Any system which had the auto update feature turned on had SP2 automatically installed. Go to Google and type in "sp2 problem". You will find some 2,290,000 hits of which I don't have to say anymore about why things broke. The moral of the story, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Heck, SP2 even broke Norton who had had more experience with hackers and firewalls then Microsoft. And to add insult to injury, hackers already discovered two exploits in SP2 so there are two updates already out. LSI turns off auto updates and only installs updates which are really needed and will alert you if there is a new one required.