Getting To Know Your Computer And How To Keep It Out Of Harms Way

Viruses are everywhere. They run ramped across the internet and your computer just might be a virtual playground for these computer bugs. But is simply does not have to be that way. There are certain measures you can take that will stop almost all viruses, trojans, spyware, adware, and worms dead in their tracks. In fact if your computer is running slower than when you first got it you should start practicing what I am going to tell you about immediately.

You can catch these nasties by simply checking your email or downloading a program from an un reliable source. All viruses and things like them are man made and there are several reasons why people make viruses. Most of the times though the maker does it to just be destructive or build a reputation in the virus making or hacking community. If these people would take the energy they put into being jerks they could really help do some good for people. Hell if you are going to do a bunch of work for nothing at least make it so people enjoy your work instead of making everyone hate you.

Below is a simple six step plan to protecting your computer from these harmful nasties. If you follow it religiously you should not have problems with this kind of garbage again. But if you fail to do so you are just opening a window of opportunity for something to happen. Following these steps may not get rid of every thing that you have accumulated up until now though, so it is best to start with a clean install of Windows to assure that your system is clean to begin with. However these steps will stop any further damage to your operating system.

6 Steps To Protecting Your Computer:

1) Update your Operating System Regularly:
The first step to protecting your PC and your valuable data is to ensure that the operating system (OS) is updated with the latest security patches. This is critical as OS manufacturers such as Microsoft Windows update security features of their products continuously to cover any potential and actual loopholes.

To check whether you have the latest update, click on the Start Menu->All Programs and select the Windows Update icon. Windows will take you to their update web page. From there just click on the appropriate button to download and install and required updates. We usually advise that this be done at least once every two weeks.

2) Buy Good Anti-Virus Software:
Secondly you should have updated anti-virus software running on your system.

Make sure to choose one of the better ones on the market today - a few dollars won’t break you but malware will. I use and recommend Macro Virus. Go to their site for a free scan. It it is also a spyware / adware removal tool and a pop up blocker all in one. They come out with frequent updates and have proved to one of the best I have found. Another great online virus scan to use is Trend Micro’s House Call. They also offer a free scan.

Make sure that the anti-virus software is updated frequently (sometimes even daily if needs be) with fixes to the actual engine and to the database files that contain the latest cures against new viruses, worms and Trojans.

The anti-virus software must have the ability of scanning email and files as they are downloaded from the Internet to help prevent malware reaching your system. You should also make sure that the anti-virus software chosen awards you protection while on the Internet.

3) Know your Processes:
Knowing what is running on your computer will increase your ability to identify potential harmful processes.

Call up the Windows Task Manager (press CTRL+ALT+DEL) and familiarize yourself with the processes running at any point in time.

Many are using processlibrary.com to learn about the processes they have running on their computer. This web site is a free resource library containing a comprehensive description of over 9000 that may be running on your computer. Searching for the processes is similar to using a search engine - type in the process name and processlibrary.com returns the full description including information on security threat levels if any and ways on removing the malicious code.

If you don’t want to go through the rigmarole of typing in the search, processlibrary.com has an InfoBar which is essentially a plug-in for your Task Manager. You may download this free of charge (not a trial version) from here .

Just click on the i-button next to process and you can pull down information from the Internet regarding the process in question. With the Task Manager and process library data you can identify some of the threats. We say some because the Task Manager does not show you all the processes and dll’s running at any point in time. For that you need a more powerful tool (such as WinTasks, read, WinTasks 5.0 Professional Unplugged).

4) Use Firewalls on the Internet:
You should also seriously consider installing firewall software or using the native Windows firewall.

To activate your Windows Firewall click on your control panel and select Windows Firewall. Switch the firewall on by ticking the “On” radio button.

A good firewall prevents unauthorized use and access to your computer from external sources (e.g. hackers or hijackers) plus giving you additional protection against the more common Trojans and worms. A firewall on its own will not get rid of the virus problem but when used in conjunction with your OS updates, anti-virus software and processlibrary.com information, it will give you deeper system security and protection.

5) Know your Registry:
The latest statistics show that about 94% of computers have corrupt and possibly harmful files. On average, almost each PC will have about 150+ errors on them due to registry fragmentation, and corrupt, unused, missing, orphaned or obsolete entries.

Residual files, unused and undeleted drivers, and corrupt or bad entries in registry settings will quickly litter even the newest of computers.The result? Frequent error messages, slow start-ups, declining and poor performance and registry integrity, unstable and frequent application errors and crashes, and, at times, even an inability to start Windows.

Some malware does effect your registry. If you keep your registry clean and know what is inside, you will be in a better position to realize immediately when performance has taken a downturn. We advise you to invest in a good registry cleaner, one that allows you to scan your registry deeply and fix all errors. Moreover, the cleaner must be able to backup your registry.

6) Backup your data
Prevention is better than cure however you may still catch a virus no matter how tight your security is. It is always advisable to backup all your data regularly - at least once a week. And, if you are a frequent PC user, you should backup your data on a daily basis.

Most people do not even realize that their system has been infected when it first happens. This is because the people that write this junk don’t want you to know that it is on your computer. In other cases though you may notice that something did happen. Some of these things can be a new toolbar at the top of your browser, new home page, changes to security settings, changes to your bookmarks, or an overwhelming amount of pop-ups even when you are not doing anything.

Invest In Your Computers Future

The first and most important thing you need to buy for your computer is a good anti virus software package. There are a few good ones out there but some professionals recommend going as far as installing two or three of them. This is because not any one anti virus program will catch everything. These programs are made to remove known viruses. Some companies find them and find a way to fix them before others do and there is not one of them that knows of them all. This is also the reason why completely free virus software is not that good. The people that put out completely free anti virus programs really have no motivation to upgrade them. They are not receiving money from people to keep up their virus definitions so it is simply a project put on the back burner. I strongly recommend getting Macro Virus.

The second thing you need to get is anti spyware / adware software. There are several out on the market today and just like anti virus software there is not one that catches it all. The free ones that are on the market are ok. Free anti spyware software is just like free anti virus software though. You can expect to get fewer updates and wait longer for them. In this world you really get what you pay for and in this situation you simply cannot rely on free software alone. I recommend that you run at least two of these programs just like your anti virus. Macro Virus will handle doing this for you as well. A few other good free ones are
The third thing you need is a great registry cleaner. This will take allot of pain and guess work out of doing it yourself. Your registry is a very sensitive thing to mess with and I highly recommend you don’t try to alter it before you get a good understanding of what the entries mean as well as what hkey’s they are in. I use Error Nuker to take care of this hard work. They are one of the only ones that uses a Windows registry map so you know it isn’t going to accidentally mess something up.
Last but not least you need to invest in a firewall. Windows firewall does work to an extent. But after all this is Microsoft we are talking about. The rest of their software is released with bugs and other problems. A firewall is one of those products that even the free ones work well since they don’t need nearly as much updating as a anti virus or spyware application. I recommend Zone Alarm myself. You can get their free version that works very well in my opinion from www.zonelabs.com/.

Practice is six step process frequently and you should not have any problems. But whatever you do don’t put this on the back burner. If you keep putting it off eventually your computer will crash hard and all of your valuable information will be lost. Once you have things clean and running good continue to practice these steps and you should stay free and clear of any software related problems. Trust me a little bit of work right now is worth saving a major headache down the road.

This article originally posted on Information Resource / Solutions Site where they supply you with the solutions to your problems.

technorati tags:computer, registry, virus, antri-virus, spyware, adware, clean, keep, fast, quick

A Clean Registry Equals A Quick And Happy Computer

I am sure that you and most everybody youknow that has a computer has gotten errors. That error that you see onstartup or when you are doing just about anything else is most likelycaused by a registry problem. Even though you do all of youruninstalling, virus checks and regular spyware / adware removal by thebook that still doesn’t mean those problems still are not effectingyour computer. Often times when something gets uninstalled or removedfrom your computer it leaves old registry entries behind.

These old entries that are hanging around in your registry caneffect your computer in many ways. Not only can they cause errors. Thisgarbage in your registry can also slow it down considerably. So much infact that it can cause your computer to crash or reboot frequently. Asyou probably know this can become anything from a major pain in thebutt to a complete disaster. But if you can tell what the error you arereceiving really means you can fix the problem.

Usually when an error pops up it will say that X program caused Xerror. If you write that program name down you just might be able tofind the piece of the registry that is causing this problem for you.Usually the left over registry entry will have the name of the programor the name of the programs maker in it. You may even find that it willrefer to a certain file usually ending in .exe. If you see this makesure that it is nothing windows related before messing with it. I willshow you how to get rid of these problems below but I must state that Iam not responsible for anything you do as the registry is verysensitive. If you make sure to backup though you should be completelyfine.

The registry is very fragile. It can be looked at like the spinalcord of your operating system and is basically the nerve center of yourPC. If one little letter is messed up it can cause big problems. Beforeever messing around with your registry you must make sure you have acurrent backup. This backup should be kept off of your computer and ona floppy disk or cd. One easy tool you can use to make the backupprocess easier for you is ERUNTwhich stand for The Emergency Recovery Utility NT. This program can beused on Windows NT / 2000 / 2003 / XP. Once you have this program youcan easily make a backup of your registry files to a bootable disk injust a few clicks.

Now that you have a current copy of your registry on backup just incase something happens we can get down to business. To browse yourregistry go to START and click on RUN. Now type “regedit” in the boxand click on OK or hit enter. A window should open that says RegistryEditor in the title bar and there should be a tree type directorystructure with +’s next to a bunch of hkey entries. This is where youroperating system is told to find and do basically everything it does.So be extra careful not to accidentally change or delete anythingwithout knowing what it actually does.

We are not really going to worry about looking around and what eachhkey does. We just want to do a basic search and delete a few leftoverthings that are causing some problems. The first thing we want to do isclick on “Edit” at the top of the window. It should drop down a menuand now you want to choose “Find”. This should open up a small windowthat says Find at the top. In the space provided type in theinformation you gathered from the error. Make sure that Keys, Values,and Data are all checked, you may also want to check “Match WholeString Only” your first time thought the search. This will insure thatyou only get an exact match and will reduce the chance of messingsomething up.

Now that you have done all of the above click “Find Next”. A littlewindow that says searching the registry should come up. It may take alittle while to find what you are looking for so don’t get impatientand close everything down. Just give it a little bit and it shouldbring you to the place it found an entry at. The entry should behighlighted. If you see that it refers to a place on your hard drive(C:/windows/ or something like that.) it just may be your problem. Butdon’t delete it yet. If you look over on the left you should be able totell what directory it is in. Does it look like it belongs to theprogram the error is referring to?

If the entry found looks like it does in fact belong to the programthe error refers to go ahead and delete it. To do this simply rightclick on the entry and choose delete. This may of just fixed theproblem but lets not stop here. Lets get rid of anything in therepertaining to that program. Go ahead and choose “Edit” and “Find”again. Now go ahead and choose find next and determine if the nextentry is related to the program. If it is delete it. Keep doing thisuntil you get a message that says “Finished Searching Through TheRegistry”.

Now that we have finished that go ahead and restart your computerand see if you still get the error. Most likely it should be gone. Ifyou do however still get the error you may just need to use a programthat will do all of this for you. A registry cleaner will take care ofall of these registry problems for you. There are usually close to ahundred registry problems on any given computer. These problems areeffecting your computer in one way or another without you even knowingabout them. If you are having a problem that the above did not fix orif you are scared of messing your computer up I suggest you use asoftware utility to do this for you.

I this I have to recommend Error Nuker,since it has features that most others do not offer. There is a link inthe author bio at the end of this article to scan your computer forfree. It is one of the only registry cleaners that I know of thatcleans your system registry completely safely. This great utility usesa certified windows registry map to make sure that it does not alteranything that is linked to your operating system. Error Nukeralso automatically creates a backup of your systems registry beforemaking a single alteration. This way you can rest assure that if thereis a problem it can be easily and automatically fixed.

This article originally posted on Guru Of Info where you can find the solutions to your problems.

technorati tags:clean, registry, quick, happy, computer, education