Necessity Of Having Antivirus

By: Jay Moncliff

You hear the word virus and a chill runs down your spine! With computers and laptops becoming an integral part of our lives, the risk of your PC getting infected but a malicious virus increases as well. So if you own a PC you better have antivirus software too. Be it Trojans, Spyware, Adware, Worms, Brontox, etc. your PC is vulnerable by all such viruses. Such antivirus software creates a firewall against the innumerable perilous viruses that can infect your computer.

So how exactly does your PC get infected? There are two most common reasons. The first one is through emails. Yes, if you open an infected attachment from an email and save it onto your drive, your PC will get infected. What exactly happens is that the moment you save such an attachment onto your hard drive, the attachment may release and execute a code that will perform some harmful action on your computer. The action that may be performed by this code can vary greatly like hacking passwords or confidential information like credit card numbers, etc. which may be stored on your computer. It may then even transmit this confidential data to the sender of the virus. Another way in which your PC might get attacked is extremely creepy and that is by accessing any website, the server of which has been infected by a virus. Such a virus is passed via the internet onto your hard drive and once gain the damage is beyond repair. At times, some viruses get stored in the address box and are automatically transmitted to all the people in your address box via an email. This is one way though which viruses spread like a rapid fire.

So what can you do to stay protected? Well, install antivirus software on your computer. In market McAfee, Norton, AVG, etc are the antivirus softwares that are on the top and most widely used. How exactly do such softwares help? Antivirus will scan you email attachments before you download and save them on your drive. In such a way, email worms are prohibited from infecting your PC. If your PC is already infected and you run antivirus, then the antivirus will first try to delete the intruding file and all its components. If this is not possible, it will try to repair the corrupted file which has been tailored by the virus. If repairing is also not possible then the antivirus will simply situate the corrupted file in quarantine so that it may not infect other files.

Although antivirus softwares are available for free on the internet it is always sensible to buy the full version to stay protected. Always scan your PC with antivirus every alternate day. Do not open or download attachments which you are skeptical about. Keep a check on the websites that you visit. With antivirus, there can be a cure for the infected files but it is always said that prevention is better than cure!

Article Source: http://articlesportfolio.com

Antivirus Software - Using More Than One Program

By: Dawn Smith

If you are familiar wih computers you may have heard that using an alternative operating system or internet browser such as firefox is safer. The reason for this is that Creators of Viruses, Trojans, Spyware, Worms and all the other types of malicious bugs are very clever. They know that almost everyone uses Internet Explorer. They also know that 80% of people use one of 5-6 big software brands.
When the viruses is created it is usually intended to reach as many computers as possible. Therefore it is only logical that the first targets to overcome are the big named brands. If the virus get get past this antivirus software undetected then it stands a very good chance of infecting thousands of machines. Now this is where the problem lies. Norton, McAfee and other big names are always the first target. There is nothing they can do about this other than to be as prepared as possible.
This is where the consumer needs to get wise. As stated above I would always recommend owning one of the recognised antivirus software packages as your first line of defence. But if this was all there was to it, then nobody would ever get a Virus on their machine. We know for a fact that thousands, (maybe more) still get infected everyday. so how do we prevent this?
The anwser is very simple and inexpensive. There are hundreds of lesser known antivirus downloads available on the market. These are not frequently targeted by the creators of viruses because there is less opportunity for their virus to spread. Many of these programs will run quite happily alongside your main software, or you can just use them to run a scan periodically.
So, to ensure you are as fully protected as possible here is what you should do. First, buy or keep your current recognised 'big brand' software. This is a vital step that should not be missed (the smaller cheaper antivirus downloads are unlikely to cover completely on their own). Secondly, buy a lesser known spyware scanner and remover. Thirdly, Also buy a lesser known adware stopper. It is important to note that there is no need to spend vast sums of money here. You can very easily purchase both of these products for far less than half of the cost of Norton, or McAfee.
This may sound like a time-consuming effort, but once it is installed you can simply set it to run once a week and forget about it just like your current software. By buying seperate programs like this you maximise your chances of spotting anything untoward on your PC. For the sake of a few $$ you could potentially save the security of your bank account or credit card details. Don't delay in taking action!

Article Source: http://www.thearticlenet.com

Top 10 Ways To Make A Computer Run Faster

by: Brooks Carver


Today I am going to be talking about different ways you can make a computer run faster. There is actually a lot you can do yourself that will boost your PC's performance. So lets take a look at different ways we can remedy that slow computer of yours!

1. Free Up Disk Space

A great way to make a computer run faster is to free up some disk space. Windows comes with a disk cleanup tool that helps you free up space on your hard disk. The utility identifies files that you can safely delete without messing anything up, and then enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files.

How to use disk cleanup tool.

* Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Cleanup. If several drives are available, you might be prompted to specify which drive you want to clean.

* In the Disk Cleanup for dialog box, scroll through the content of the Files to delete list. (If you have multiple hard drives you will have to select which one to scan.)

* Clear the check boxes for files that you don't want to delete, and then click OK.

* When prompted to confirm that you want to delete the specified files, click OK.

2. Use Defrag Tool

When you add a file or a new program to a new computer, the hard drive is relatively empty so new data is saved to the hard drive in one whole block. When you need to use that information, the computer can quickly access it because it is all in one place. Defragging your system is definitely a way to make a computer run faster.

How to use defrag tool.

* From the start menu point to "all programs"
* Point to "Accessories"
* Point to "System Tools"
* Click on "Disk Defragmenter"
* The disk defragmenter will display the hard drives on your computer. Just select and click Defragment.

3. Get rid of spyware

Definition

Spyware is software with malicious intent - by design; it does something bad to your computer. Usually, it gets installed without your knowledge. It sometimes takes advantage of the fact that most people click "I Agree" to software licenses without reading them.

The only way to get rid of spyware is to have some kind of scanner, sort of like an anti-virus. In order to make a computer run faster and keep it safer your going to need an anti-spyware program. This is tricky, a lot of the spyware programs out there are malicious and will actually add viruses and spyware to your computer by using the "spyware scanner and blocker". So please remember to be very careful when choosing your anti-spyware program.

4. Find and repair disk errors

Detect and Repair Disk Errors

In addition to running Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter to optimize the performance of your computer, you can check the integrity of the files stored on your hard disk by running the Error Checking utility.

How to run the error checking utility.

* Click Start, and then click My Computer.
* In the My Computer window, right-click the hard disk you want to search for bad sectors, and then click Properties.
* In the Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab.
* Click the Check Now button.
* In the Check Disk dialog box, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start.
* If bad sectors are found, choose to fix them.
Tip: Only select the Automatically fix file system errors check box if you think that your disk contains bad sectors.

5. Get an external hard drive

Adding an External Hard Drive to your computer will allow you to clear out a lot of the things you don't need to be storing on your normal hard drive.

A great example would be your music or pictures. All those songs and pictures are sitting on your computer making it go slower. You will see a decline in your computers performance as soon as you use over half of your hard drive space.

Moving all your songs or pictures to your external hard drive will free up a lot of space on your main hard drive. You can even move applications such as photoshop or games.

An external hard drive is also handy because it is portable. You can unplug it from your computer and take it to a friends house and plug it in there, sharing photos and pictures very easily.

This is truly a great way to make a computer run faster.