Leaving computer unattended?

[Zhar]

Is it alrite to leave my computer on unattended for about 5 days downloading?? I wont be in the same city as it, and i have left it unattended for a day without any problems. If i did do this, wat would i need to do in order to minimise any risks?
Thanks

 

[Jiggz]

You can except if somebody tried to break in to your system you will never know and no one is there to stop them. Now if you do not have anything to worry about data being broken in, then you do not have to do anything. Although, I recommend scheduling a system scan once a day while you are gone.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I left mine on for about 3 weeks while I was away from college on Christmas break. I wasn't really worried about anything happening to it.

 

[Deathcharge]

if someone wants to break in they can do that at anytime regardless if you are there or not, i mean do you worry about people breaking in when you leave it on at night? i travel quite a bit for 2-3 weeks at a time i usually schedule few things to DL while i am away never had a prob

 

[oog]

you can also schedule a shutdown with the "shutdown" command.

 

[SnoMunke]

If you have a decent firewall, it will keep the kiddie hackers off your system. As for the pros, you won't keep them out...but they're not interested in small fry like us anyway...

I would be more worried about bots and trojans running and using the power of your system to do mischievious things against other systems...this as noted before can be aleviated by having schedule system scans run on a regular basis.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Risks of what exactly? That would help a lot.

 

[theMan]

make sure your home electrical circuits are good. a power surge, or something like that, could do a lot of damage.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

when you are gone. And you want your system to shut down at some time. Just go to command prompt.

type:

shutdown -s -f -t xx (xx stands for the number of seconds to remain on) for instance, to make your comp shut down in 5 days type:

shutdown -s -f -t 432000

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: theman
make sure your home electrical circuits are good. a power surge, or something like that, could do a lot of damage.

Is the risk of that any higher when you're away though?

 

[vegetation]

There's no issue with that in itself. At worst, if you have an unstable system or software running, then expect your system to go down and possibly hang, thus not being functional at all until you're able to reboot it manually.

 

[pibb]

unhook your cat5 and stick a condom onto the end of it, then reinsert it (it may take a little pressure now, push hard) that will protect you from all the common viruses in the wild

 

[CrispyFried]

If youre on a good UPS or surge supressor, youre fine. You should already have a firewall and a properly setup UPS should safely power down the system automatically before the UPS runs out. Lock the keyboard out if you have cats so you wont find 2000 copies of Firefox running when your cat falls asleep on the keyboard. A screensaver that asks for a password on resume will do fine. Or switch to the log in screen (stay logged onto your account though so whatever you run stays running).

Make sure that in the BIOS it is set to stay off after a power fail (unless you want it to come back up and autostart something) and I have no restart on BSOD either.

The only thing I ever worry about when Im away is thunder storms.

 

[SnoMunke]

Originally posted by: theman
make sure your home electrical circuits are good. a power surge, or something like that, could do a lot of damage.

HUH? Power surge could happen whether he/she was there in front of the computer or sipping MaiTais in Hawaii.

 

[corkyg]

Echo Crispy Fried. With a good UPS and firewall, it should not be a problem. Thunderstorms in October are fairly rare. Enjoy!

 

[zest]

I left mine doownloading and seeding multiple files for 8 weks.

Just do a full system clean..Disabe unnessesary progs ffrom start up.

I also reccomend uing "Anti-crash" it aoutomaticaly fixes many knds of crashes to give a piece of mind especially when leaving a system unattended.
Also disable any aouto updates for software running.

 

[leegroves86]

lol

 

[xanis]

At least put a start-up BIOS pw and when downloading puto n your screensaver and set a password to that. make sure that yopur firewall is set up, you have system scans scheduled, and lock your doors.

 

[zest]

Originally posted by: Xanis
At least put a start-up BIOS pw and when downloading puto n your screensaver and set a password to that. make sure that yopur firewall is set up, you have system scans scheduled, and lock your doors.

Yeh,

Disable task scheduler.


5 Days should be no problem.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

*sigh* No the PC monster is not going to jump out of the closet to attack your PC while you're gone...lol

 

[Splinter000]

http://www.logmein.com

Sign up there, and leave it on, if you can get to a PC, you can check the status of it, and shut the PC down if needed

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: zest
I left mine doownloading and seeding multiple files for 8 weks.

Just do a full system clean..Disabe unnessesary progs ffrom start up.

I also reccomend uing "Anti-crash" it aoutomaticaly fixes many knds of crashes to give a piece of mind especially when leaving a system unattended.
Also disable any aouto updates for software running.

Good god, if there ever was a reason for a built-in spell checker :laugh:...

 

[Zhar]

Thanks for all the info guys, I have much greater piece of mind . One minor problem i may have is that the computer will be locked up in my 'closet' room - Im at a uni hostel and the rooms r not that big. Do u think temps may gradually increase over the days to a point where it would be overheating - sort of like a sauna heating up - with no way the hot air can escape - except maybe under the door? Thanks again

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: Zhar
Thanks for all the info guys, I have much greater piece of mind . One minor problem i may have is that the computer will be locked up in my 'closet' room - Im at a uni hostel and the rooms r not that big. Do u think temps may gradually increase over the days to a point where it would be overheating - sort of like a sauna heating up - with no way the hot air can escape - except maybe under the door? Thanks again

I know a guy from college who kept all his servers locked in his closet to cut down on noise. He didn't seem to have any problems with overheating.

 

[CrispyFried]

Originally posted by: Splinter000
http://www.logmein.com

Sign up there, and leave it on, if you can get to a PC, you can check the status of it, and shut the PC down if needed

I tried that link, didnt work. Maybe someone logged in and shut their server down instead of their own machine lol.

Also, make sure windows update isnt set to automatically dl and install updates, some of the updates will auto reboot your machine. Happened to a bud of mine during a huge overnight dl. was he ever ticked off