VARIOUS TIPS 'N' TRICKS
ANTI-MALWARE/SPYWARE/VIRUS (Updated : 17/01/09)
Unfortunately, this day and age, computers are more like humans, they are fine, work fine, play fine etc. until one day it catches a disease.
For the humble PC, this usually come in one of the three forms of Spyware, Malware or a Virus.
These three PC illnesses are described below...
- Spyware : This infection commonly "spies" on the user, collecting information in regards to where they go on the internet, what items they are interested in and so forth, sending the information back to a company usually so that they can either send out more information to other linked companies, or to try to contact you to sell their products.
- Malware : This type of infection is commonly known as "malicious" software as it usually annoys the PC user or fools the computer user into purchasing software that is no good and didn't need in the first place, a good example of this would be one that's been doing the rounds called AntiVirusPro2009 which basically pretends to be a super cool anti-virus which detects lots of "fake" infections that the software is generating itself, it then tries to get you to purchase the software for around $90, nasty and do not buy it!
- Virus : A virus is definitely the worst of all three, simply because a virus can literally be structured to do pretty much anything the programmer desires, this could be to generate spyware or malware from within itself, to hiding in the background and stealing personal information and in addition to this can spread from your computer to others that you may know simply by having contacts in your address book on your PC.
Other names a virus can go under is a Trojan or Worm depending on what it can do and it's intentions once infecting your system.
The good news is, with developments of these diseases, comes along also the development of software to combat them and usually keeping the infections off your PC.
I will list the good ones I know below, and the not so good.
There are mixed views about what I recommend, but I think some views are clouded by people who are trying to sell certain products, but each to their own and respect their views.
Good Products (Alphabetical)
- Avast Home Edition : This FREE home anti-virus has been around for ages, and has recently added anti-spyware/malware to it's weapons, making it my top pick for the FREE anti-virus selection.
- Bullguard : This is not free, but in all fairness, if you have spare coin, then it's certainly worth the money.
- Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware : This FREE anti-malware software is unbelievable, super simple to use as it pretty much does everything for you, can't get much better than this really, has never failed to remove the main infection on systems I've had to clean.
- Spybot Search And Destroy : This FREE anti-malware / anti-spyware utility is developed by univercity students and had some great "advanced" utilities hidden inside which can help to maintain a high degree of your system.
Go to Available Downloads to get any of the good products.
Bad Products (Alphabetical)
- AVG Free Edition : It's a shame about this, recently they downgraded the free edition which means no "RootKit" detection, which is the main area that shoud be protected by any anti-virus, regardless if it's free or not, I am now removing AVG off clients computers and replacing it with Avast.
- McAfee (ANY) : This just doesn't seem to keep an eye on the system as much as it should, like Norton, I think I've seen McAfee spend more time doing updates more than anything else on the system and again not detecting things as good as some of the cheaper or free software out there.
- Norton (ANY) : Simply avoid this like sour milk, I have worked on many a computer where I've removed Norton trash and installed Avast etc. to find that Avast instantly detected a virus running in the background, Norton simply does not work as good as it should, the only thing it's good at is slowing your system and emptying your bank account.
BACKUP YOUR DATA
I hear and see too many horror stories about individuals and unfortunately companies that simply do not take the time and effort to make a backup of their important documents.
So many people out there simply think, "I'll do it tomorrow" every day until the unfortunate day where the system fails and they lose everything.
You are probably many that are reading this and thinking, "Well I have a new PC, it can't happen to me", that's what about 20 PC users in Earsdon, UK thought one day until a bolt of lightning struck a telegraph pole and fried their PC's.
Yep it happens!
Do yourself a favour, go out and buy a backup drive for your computer, they aren't expensive, starting from as little as about £30, and could make a difference between all your data being saved or none at all!
CHKDSK (Check Disk) AKA SCANDISK
Not a lot of PC "users" know about CHKDSK.
CHKDSK or "Check Disk" is a disk repairing utility built into Windows to allow you to fix parts of the hard drive that becomes messed up or worn out over time.
You can access this simply by going to command prompt (START > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt), then in the command prompt window, type CHKDSK /F, it will usually say it can't do it while in windows, so say yes to schedule it at boot time.
You can also sometimes use this comand to repair a Windows system that's not booting by using your Windows CD/DVD and using the recovery console, type CHKDSK /P.
NOTE : Windows Vista Users will usually have to right-click on Command Prompt and give Administrator access to use advanced commands.
DEFRAGGING
A lot of people ask me, "
What do people mean by Defragging?".
The answer is reasonably simple to explain using a deck of cards...
Imagine the pack of cards in order from Ace to King and in their correct suits as one file on your hard drive.
When you use your hard drive and add more and more information, it starts to get to the point where a complete file no longer fits in a gap on the hard drive and needs to be split up into smaller pieces elsewhere on the hard drive.
Over time these pieces can be tiny and spread all over the place, getting back to the deck of cards, imagine you lay the cards out the way they were at the start of this example, all in order etc.
Now if I were to ask you to find for example, the Three of Hearts, you wouldn't have much trouble, and could locate it in one or two seconds.
Now, throw the pack of cards in the air, so they land all over the floor in a mess, try to find that same card, yeah, it would take you longer to locate that Three of Hearts again, probably at least twice as long.
This mess on a hard drive is classed as "
Fragmentation", this doesn't sound so bad really, but when you have 1,000 of files on the system, then it can get pretty messy, considering the PC needs to recollect the pieces of that files it wants to use before it can do much with it.
We are pretty lucky as a computer can locate and build most files back up at nearly the speed of light depending on the age of the PC.
Still, defragmenting or "
Defragging" the drive means that files are sorted and rebuilt on the hard drive so that the computer doesn't need to spend the extra brain power and time on searching the drive for the bits.
Yep, thats more speed, less waiting, and a more efficient system.
You can simply defrag your system by going to
Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter, you might want to put some time aside as it can take a while.
Those of you running
Windows Vista are fortunate as it automatically defrags in the background when you aren't doing anything.
I came across a brill little
free utility called
Defraggler by the same people that brought you
CCleaner, this still gives you the full defragging options but with the added bonus that you can select which files you want to defrag.
How cool is that!
Go to
Available Downloads to get
Defraggler.
GRAPHICALS
So many people don't realise that you get a significant performance and memory boost by simply disabling things that are simply not needs to operate your PC.
I will list the area's below that you can safely switch off and gain huge gains...
- Desktop Background : AKA Wallpaper, if you simply don't use a picture for your desktop background you will regain the memory that the desktop background would have used.
For example, most pictures taken on your digital camera are usually no less than 2megapixel, this isn't too bad if it's in JPG format as it's a compressed format, but guess what, Windows still needs to decompress the image to use it in the desktop background, using valuable processing power and memory space.
If you use BMP, TIF etc. then you will find the image will take up lots of memory, anything from about 2MBytes!
That doesn't sound like a lot but for those still running on a mere 256MBytes will find a huge performance hit to their system.
- Animated Desktop : I see a lot of people using all the bells and whistles when it comes to sliding menu's, fade effects etc. and they wonder why their system takes so long to respond.
All these special effect play a huge role in the performance impack area and should be disabled for anyone with a lesser PC.
REGISTRY
Before I go any further, I
MUST stress that trying to modify the registry in any way can be potentially dangerous if you get it wrong, you are on your own!
You can get lots of free registry cleaners off the internet, but please be careful and always use the option to backup your registry before doing a clean if the program asks you.
One such utility that I recommend for cleaning the registry is
CCleaner, which is not only a registry cleaner but actually a full system cleaning utility.
Go to
Available Downloads to get
CCleaner.
SECURITY
A lot of people ask me about security, I will lay it out simple and straight to the point, you only really need the following for a secure system.
- Firewall : Most router owners are safe as they all come with some form of firewall built in, any xbox owners can tell you this simply because most have to specially configure the router to allow the xbox to connect properly.
PC owners listen up, you only need the Windows Firewall running. If you want to be annoyed by stupid notifications on every single program, then get some third party firewall.
Windows Firewall will only alert you when it needs to!
- Anti-Spyware/Anti-Malware : Since most of these are manual scanners, you can use more than one on your system, and are a must have.
- Anti-Virus : A must have but NEVER run more than one anti-virus or security suit on one PC.
What you choose for your protection is your call, for a reference to whats bad, simply click
here and read a little.
SOUND
I know this is probably going to come as a shock for a lot of people looking for a little boost to their Windows.
You can shave off quite a few seconds of your PC boot up time simply by switching off the Windows start and login sounds!
Obviously you can do what I did and simply turn off all Windows sounds as I just find most simply annoying to the ear.
Even on my system I have seen a big improvement in Windows applications when they don't have to call sounds for the notifications etc.