This paper considers the problems of practical stability analysis and synthesis of linear descriptor systems subject to time-varying and norm-bounded exogenous disturbances. A sufficient condition for the systems to be regular, impulsive-free and practically stable is derived. Then the synthesis problem is addressed and a state feedback controller is designed. To deal with the computational issue, the conditions of the main results are converted into linear matrix inequality (LMI) feasibility problems. Furthermore, two optimization algorithms are formulated to improve the system performances. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the obtained results.