Dell 1520 User Manual 2

TY2009 AARP Dell Vostro 1520 Laptop Tune-up

In preparation for the Tax Year 2009 filing season in 2010, this procedure
verifies software settings and applies maintenance and upgrades to the
Windows and other software of the Dell Vostro 1520 laptop computers that
were purchased by the AARP Foundation in early 2010 for use by AARP Tax­Aide volunteers.

Some of these steps verify settings that may have already been established.
Some of the steps are optional, and are so marked. In tailoring this
procedure for their state, a TCS may omit some or all of the optional
material. If a step is not marked optional it should be performed as part of
this tune-up.

Several of the steps below assume that the target computer is connected to
the Internet via a broadband connection. If such a connection is not
continuously available to you, or if you have several computers to tune up,
you may prefer to download some of the large updates one time onto a
flash drive or CD and run them many times from there, rather than
download them onto each computer that needs to be updated. When this
option is available it will be described below as an alternative to the online
update step. Some of these downloads may be included in your state-level
AARP Tax-Aide Resource CD.

1. The Numeric Lock shift may be turned on. The light above the keyboard that looks
like an arrow with a 9 inside it should not be lit. If it is, turn it off by pressing Fn +
NumLk. The NumLk key is in the first row near the right end.

2. Unplug any Ethernet cables from the computer and turn off the Wide Area Network
wireless adapter radio. The WLAN switch is on the left side of the case on the end
away from the hinges.

3. Log in to Windows using the Administrator login from your AARP Tax-Aide
Password letter.

4. Cancel any AVG scan that may be running.

5. Use the separate instructions provided with the AARP Tax-Aide Dell 1520 Image
DVD dated Jan 10, 2010, to re-write the software image on the hard disk drive.

6. Log in to Windows using the Administrator login from your AARP Tax-Aide
Password letter.

7. Cancel any AVG scan that may be running.

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TY2009 AARP Dell Vostro 1520 Laptop Tune-up

8. Under START > Control Panel > Security Center, turn off automatic updates. This
is important so that we can control the sequence of update events as we use
Windows Update, below.

We do not recommend that Windows Automatic Updates be turned back on during
the tax season so that unwanted updates that may disturb tax preparation will not
be installed automatically. We do recommend running with AVG Internet Security
updates enabled.

9. OPTIONAL: If you do not want error balloons to be displayed that complain about
Automatic Updates being turned off, you can disable the Windows service that
displays them, as follows:

a. Click START > Settings > Control Panel > Security Center >
b. Click on the “change the way Security Center alerts me” in the Resources

box.

c. Now uncheck the three checked boxed for ‘Firewall’, ‘Automatic Updates”

and ‘Virus Protection’.

d. Click OK and close the Security Center.

10. This is important to your EROs.

In Control Panel > Date and Time > Date and Time > Time Zone, select the
appropriate time zone, click Apply, and set the clock to the correct date and time.

11. OPTIONAL: This step changes a user account and password to correspond with

those established for TY2009 on the IRS Computer Loan Program machines. This
is a suggestion, not a mandate. One reason for doing this is for IRS and non-IRS
computers to network with one another more easily. It is a better security practice
for the Windows volunteer user log-in password to be different in each Tax-Aide
district, rather than be the same password that is known to all Tax-Aide volunteers
nation-wide.
In Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools >
Computer Management > System Tools > Local Users and Groups > Users:

a. Right click on the “volunteer” account and select Properties. Set Full Name

to “volunteer” and click OK.

b. Change the password of the volunteer user account to the password of the

user account from the IRS password letter for tax year 2009, or to a different
value specified for use in this tax season by state, district, or local AARP Tax­Aide technology leaders.

12. In Control Panel > Folder Options

a. On the General tab, select “Show common tasks in folders.”
b. Click OK.

13. In Control Panel > Network Connections, Disable the 1394 connection.

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