Playing It Safe with Program Installations

Programs you buy in a store aren’t likely to contain any malicious code such as viruses, worms, or spyware. Those things tend to be spread by e-mail attachments and free downloads from the web. However, there’s always an outside chance that the new program is incompatible with Windows 8 or a hardware device on your computer. So there may be times when you need to uninstall a program and then get all your system files back into shape to undo any changes made to your system by the new program.

Windows 8’s System Protection greatly simplifies the task of getting things back in shape should a program installation or upgrade cause problems. But it helps only if it’s turned on and you know how to use it. For details, see Chapter 31.