An operating system (OS)
An operating system (OS) is a type of system software that operates on a computer (Stallings, 2014). It handles hardware and software resources while also providing common services to a number of computer programs. In essence, the OS provides a user-friendly environment for interfacing with computer hardware. There are several operating systems available, including Windows, Linux, and macOS. OS tools are programs that are either preinstalled in the operating system or purchased and installed separately. These tools can be used to alter the display of the screen, adding of hardware and other programs, to optimize and clean up disk drives, formatting and recovery and for security of the system.
Basic operating system tools
There are some very basic operating system tools. First is the Graphical User Interface (GUI) which is the type of that allows information technology users to view programs operation easily, by utilizing the capabilities of computer graphics (Stallings, 2014). Second is the control panel that gives access to various tools which form part of the OS. It also allows users to change features of the system, including but not limited to appearance, network connection, sound speech, time and dates of the computer. File manager is yet another system tool that displays the contents of all the storage devices ranging from internal hard disks to removable storage devices such as flash disks. It also allows alteration of files and folders such as moving, renaming and deleting. The file manager also shows the capacities of the various storage devices. In addition to these, there is the command prompt feature which gives users an environment from which they can be able to efficiently effect troubleshooting.
Other Operating system tools
Other Operating system tools include repair disks which are used for restoring the computer to its original state, SFC that scans windows system to restore files that are corrupted and Fixmbr that fixes master boot record whenever possible. Safe mode is another tool that will boot an OS with minimal services to allow users to correct problems (Schneide, Rasband& Eliceiri, 2012).
Installing an Operating System
Installation process of an operating system varies depending on the type of the OS one wishes to install. This essay will elaborate on the installation of a Windows 10 Operating System. There are two ways to do this. The first is by using a bootable flash drive while the second involves using a CD-ROM. In both methods, the first step always involves creating Boot Disks. Once the installation media is made bootable (either flash drive or CD-ROM), insert the installation media in the CD tray or the USB port. This is followed by booting the computer and selecting the boot menu of the computer to display the boot device. If the boot device does not show, one should boot into BIOS setup to change the settings.
Once the boot device is recognized, select it using the arrow keys and press the Enter key. Now the system should boot to the device, preceded by the next step which is to select "install" option and pressing the Enter key. Subsequently, select the "Custom Installation" option for pure installation (Liang, Yin& Song, 2008). This should then be followed by selecting the disk partition (if it has any), where you wish to install windows in order to continue with the process. The installation process will take an approximation of an hour.
Operating System Configuration
After successful installation, there is need to configure various aspects of the OS. This ranges from network and drivers’ configuration to security settings as pointed out by Su, Attariyan&Flinn (2007). For the network configuration, click the "network and sharing center" in the control panel or look for it through the search menu. Under this feature, select the required network settings that suit you such as file sharing and network connection type. After all is done, click the OK button to save the altered settings. Load the drivers that come with the computer or search for specific ones from the internet. If the drivers are outdated, update them to make sure that the computer operation is in its best state. Subsequently, adjust the security settings to make sure that only authorized people can access the data in the computer by setting the password and installing an antivirus that protects data from being corrupted.
Personalizing an OS
Personalizing of an OS is the process of adjusting the appearance of the graphical user interface to suit the preferences of the user (Su et al., 2007). To do this, one can access settings in the control panel in order to perform activities such as adding themes to your screen, using screen savers, changing background and adjusting computer brightness. Keyboard styles and mouse pointer movement as well as speed can also be changed to personalize the operating system.
Application of Monitoring and System Monitoring Tasks
Within the operating system for example windows, we have a monitoring tool referred to as Windows Task Manager as pointed out by Okolica & Peterson (2010), that can be useful for basic troubleshooting and monitoring. It can enable the determination of bottlenecks on the network, disks, processes and memory of the computer. To open it, click the 3 keys on the keyboard, Ctrl, Alt and Del all at the same time and select Task Manager then choose "performance" tab. It can also be used for other performance analyses. The alternative option is using the Windows Performance Monitor, which is a tool that supports performance metrics such as SQL Server, database and many others.
References
Liang, Z., Yin, H., & Song, D. (2008). HookFinder: Identifying and understanding malware hooking behaviors. Department of Electrical and Computing Engineering.
Okolica, J., & Peterson, G. L. (2010). Windows operating systems agnostic memory analysis. Digital investigation, 7, S48-S56.
Schneider, C. A., Rasband, W. S., & Eliceiri, K. W. (2012). NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis. Nature methods, 9(7).
Stallings, W. (2014). Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles| Edition: 8. Pearson.
Su, Y. Y., Attariyan, M., & Flinn, J. (2007, October). AutoBash: improving configuration management with operating system causality analysis. In ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review.
