Operating System Maintenance: Goals, Objectives, Significance, And Solutions

Problem Statement

Discuss the goal and Objectives of the Study, significance and Relevant of the Study and review on the Operating System Maintenance?

The operating system is a vital program for running any device like computers, mobile phones, and tablets. Every computer needs to have an operating system for running any applications or programs. The operating system efficiently controls the peripheral devices and other computing devices. To maintain the proper working of the operating system, it is very much essential to concentrate on the maintenance of the operating system (McKusick, Neville-Neil & Watson, 2014). Regular maintenance of the operating systems keeps the computer up to speed and helps the operating system to overcome annoying problems. Few steps that need to be followed for proper maintenance of operating system includes disk cleanup, defragmentation of the hard drive, deletion of the temporary files, and securing the computers from malware and virus attacks (Locker et al., 2013).

This research paper reflects the study of the background of the research upon the maintenance of Operating Systems. Then the research paper illustrates the research focus which comprises of the research problems, research questions, and research aim. The research paper discusses the literature review and summary of the research. Then the research report then concentrates on the research methodology that includes qualitative research, quantitative research, data collection, and data analysis. Finally, the research report provides a conclusion and future scope of the research. 

The main research problem is related to issues that are encountered while maintaining an operating system.

The research paper mainly focuses on identifying the issues related to the maintenance of the operating system. For keeping an operating system up to date and to let it work in an efficient manner, the running needs to be maintained adequately. But during the maintenance of the operating system, few problems arise and which requires addressing for overcoming such problems.

The primary goal of the study is to identify the problem that is encountered during the maintenance of an operating system. Then it focuses on the identification of the possible solutions for maintaining an operating system. Finally, the research paper will verify the effectiveness of the potential solutions for better maintenance of the operating system. 

The research paper focuses on the maintenance of the operating system. The operating system is regarded as the heart of the computer system because when the computer is turn on, the operating system first performs the task of booting and, later on, it makes all the elements of the computer to work properly (Cui et al., 2015). Hence, it is necessary to maintain the Operating System in an efficient manner. But during the maintenance process, there are several problems arise and which need to be reduced for better functioning of the computer system (Rácz & Petersen, 2016).

Goal and Objectives of the Study

The objectives are:

• To identify the problems arises from the maintenance of an operating system.
• To identify the possible solutions to maintain an operating system.
• To identify whether the options are practical for better maintenance of the operating system.

As the new operating systems are becoming complex, for that reason all the necessary techniques need to be identified for maintaining an operating system. This research study is very much essential for identifying the problems that are encountered during the maintenance of large operating systems. Then the solutions are also identified during the research work and accordingly the maintenance team will perform the activity to maintain an operating system in an effective manner.

1. Problems Encountered During Operating System Maintenance

Some researches are being conducted for identifying the problems which encounter during the maintenance of an operating system. Firstly, there is a problem known as Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) which is an error that is encountered during operating system failure (Peter et al., 2015). This STOP error arises on the computer screen due to several reasons such as failing of the hardware, damaging software, corrupted DDL files, and problems encountered in the drive (Le & Tan, 2013). Several codes are provided by the maintenance team to fix such computer problems. Secondly, there is a problem that clashes with Dynamic-Link Library (DDL) files that store information on the operating system to perform several operations. Sometimes the DLL files get loses or damages and which in turn affects the performance of the operating systems. By downloading the missing DLL files, the problem can be solved, and the better functioning of the operating system can be maintained (Finkelstein & Gertsbakh, 2016). Thirdly, during the maintenance of an operating system, another common problem arises, and that is the applications are not installing correctly. The reason for this issue is that the computer doesn't have sufficient space on its hard drive. For overcoming such problem, it is necessary to delete the duplicate files and temporary files for better functioning of the operating system (Balasubramaniam et al. 2014). Fourthly, the patches and updating to the latest operating system are the crucial problems that the users and administrators are encountering. The vendors of the operating system are continuously publishing an increasing volume of patches (Capek & Pickover, 2013). These patches need rebooting and restarting the services repeatedly, which results in downtime and becomes very much costly to afford. Again this process of rebooting an operating system led to the loss of transient state which in turn becomes a grave threat to the users.

2. Possible Solutions to maintain Operating System

Few types of research have been conducted for identifying the potential solutions to keep the operating system in an efficient manner. The process of maintaining an operating system comprises of security fixing, bug fixing, and improving the performance of the operating system. New features are hardly released for the maintenance of an operating system because the application software needs to be updated for taking the advantage of those new features. The new updates are regularly released depending on the emergency (Chiang & Torng, 2014). Later on, the updates are developed and tested by the vendor of the operating system to distribute it to the system administrator.

Significance and Relevant of the Study

The solution regarding the problems related to reliability and updates is to use a redundant hardware which may be either commodity hardware or some specialized equipment that the processes requested on matching machines. When the commodity hardware is used, and when the service upholds state, at that time the software support need to be provided for sustaining the synchronization between the systems that are redundant (Edwards, Teddy & Camp, 2013).

Virtualization can also be used instead of separate hardware structures. It also needs the support of software for maintaining the synchronization between the virtual machines during the time of update (Sangregorio et al., 2015). Now the most general approach towards the dynamic updating is to use the built-in support for getting the updates in particular languages or specific domains.

The efficient maintenance of the operating system can be done by providing a dynamic update support inside the operating system which is necessary for loading an update within the operating system. This process is similar to the loading of kernel modules in an operating system for adding more functionality within the operating system. The fundamental approach is on reducing the obstacles during the updating of code and data inside the module without influencing the overall structure of the operating system (Bishop, Hlucka & Vanderzweep, 2015). This research identifies the mechanism of updating safely any particular module and to change the data structures which is maintained in that module. There is a repetition in the use of those identified mechanisms for updating all the modules to achieve updates of the whole operating system.

Various essential requirements are there for an operating system to provide the capability of dynamic updates. Among all the most crucial system is the modular system structure. It is a mechanism which is used for identifying a secure point for updating a given module, tracking the state, and transfer mechanism for locating and transforming the state information which is maintained by the module (Frankel, 2013).

The process of a generic update for a single module includes the following steps: Firstly, the code which is related to an update needs loading into the system with the help of kernel module loader. Secondly, there needs to be a state tracking mechanism which is required to locate the overall data instances which get affected by an update of an operating system (Sidibé et al., 2016). Thirdly, the maintenance team of the operating system needs to use the level of indirection upon the module for blocking any new accesses to the influenced module (Housel, Hom & Guertin, 2013). Fourthly, when the mechanism of certain point identifies that that the module is inactive, the maintenance team of the operating system need to update the code within the module and need to change the data structures with the help of state transfer mechanism. At the end of the update session, the new module is ready to be accessed as well as the blocked calls get resumed (Alam, Katsikas & Hadjiefthymiades, 2015).

Review on the Operating System Maintenance

3. Effectiveness of the Possible Solutions for better maintenance of the Operating System

All the options identified by the researcher is very much valid for better maintenance of the operating system. For running an operating system in an effective and efficient manner, it is necessary to follow few steps. The steps include regular disk cleanup; the hardware needs to be fragmented; the temporary files need to be deleted (Bauer & Bock, 2015). The most important measure for maintaining the operating system is to secure the operating system from any malware or virus attack.

This designing of this research study depends on two tasks including data analysis and maintenance. For the purpose of measurement planning, it is necessary to have a close collaboration with the maintenance team of the operating system. Hence, there are some problems with the research paper related to the exchange of knowledge and amount of communication (Hunt & Ernst, 2015).

The main strength of this study is to help the maintenance team to maintain the operating system in an efficient manner. This study is meant for identifying the active support of the operating system. 

The research study is entirely dependent on the information related to the management team of the operating system and for that reason the research study may not be transparent (Locker et al., 2013). This is identified as the primary weakness of this research study.

For collecting information from the primary sources, the analyst conducted interviews with the help of video calling or through a face-to-face interview. The overall population is 100 for conducting the research study. The questionnaire for this survey is distributed among the overall population.

The sample size which is selected here for collecting the appropriate information regarding the maintenance of the operating system is taken from the maintenance team of different operating system maintenance organizations.

The process of random probability sampling is used during the research study. This process allows the researcher to choose appropriate respondents in a successive way.

During the conduction of the survey, for collecting the primary data, the researcher utilizes an online survey. For the collection of the secondary resources, the researcher reviews the newspapers, books, different relevant journals, relevant websites, and library sources. Furthermore, for the completion of the research work the database of the operating system maintenance organization is surveyed.

The researcher conducts the task of data collection for two and a half weeks. After the completion of the process of data collection, the results are analyzed by describing the problems that are encountered during the maintenance of an operating system and to identify the possible solutions for maintaining an operating system. For collecting the information regarding the problems of operating system maintenance, the researcher consults with the maintenance team and from other relevant sources (Peter et al., 2015). For obtaining the data regarding the possible solutions to maintain the operating system, the researcher asks with the solution providers of operating system maintenance. For identifying whether the solutions is sufficient for the maintenance of the operating system, the researcher surveys in different operating system maintenance provider organizations for collecting the data (Finkelstein & Gertsbakh, 2016).

Possible Solutions to maintain Operating System

During the maintenance of an extensive operating system, there is much involvement of the experimental analysis of data collection. The collected data is related to the problems of the commercial users of the operating system. It also consists of details to avoid the issues and to patch the errors based on the problems (Capek & Pickover, 2013). Different notices regarding the problems and relevant solutions are collected, assembled, and analyzed in a statistical manner for a range of two years. At first, the analysis is done at the global level for confirming whether there was confirmation in the earlier observations or not. In the sub level, the analysis is done regarding the following release of the article (Chiang & Torng, 2014). The analysis clearly shows that the data regarding the maintenance is observed at the global scale.

The research work is wholly based on the identification of the essential features for maintaining the operating system in an efficient manner. This research paper identifies the major problems or issues that are frequently encountered by the maintenance team during the proper maintenance of the operating system. After analyzing the problems, the researcher investigates on the fact of finding the possible solutions to overcome these issues. At the end of the research work, the researcher verifies the effectiveness of those identified possible solutions to enhance the maintenance of the operating system. 

Conclusion

The research work that is carried out in this particular thesis is mainly concentrated on the preservation of an operating system in an efficient manner. Though a possible amount of research has been performed earlier to find the potential solutions for maintaining an operating system but that was a challenging task with various complexities. This research paper clearly identifies the problem related to the maintenance of the operating system and which includes problems like Blue Screen of Death where there is a failure in hardware and damaging software and identified a necessary solution. The researcher also identifies the problem with corrupted Dynamic-Link-Library and improper installation of any application and found solutions to overcome it. Then the question related to the patches and updating of the latest operating system is identified and accordingly the solutions are identified to reduce these issues. The solutions are also determined by the analyst regarding the dynamic updating facilities in an operating system. Finally, the effectiveness of the options is discussed by the analyst based on the better maintenance of the operating system. The methodology that is used during the research work includes research design, strength and weakness of the study, the approximate population upon which the research is performed and the information collected, the sampling design, the research instrument used, the method of data collection and data analysis for the investigation work. At last, a brief summary is given for understanding the comprehensive research.

 The problems have been analyzed properly by the researcher who is commonly encountered by the maintenance team while maintaining an extensive operating system. In addition to it, some valid solutions are also identified by the researcher who led to adequate support of an operating system. But there has been few limitations found in the research work while carrying out the overall thesis. One of the limitations is that there is no well-established solution identified in the research work which will be able to fix the bugs encountered during the installation of an operating system and which can secure the infrastructure of the operating system in an efficient manner. Some pitfalls are also present in the research work which consists of performance improving solutions as those are not useful enough to overcome the problem related to the maintenance of an operating system. The method of dynamic updating needs improvement for maintaining an extensive operating system in an efficient manner.

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