What is Spyware

You hear a lot about spyware these days and unfortunately many of us have dealt with it first hand. I think anyone who has had to deal with spyware knows at least one thing about it; It's annoying. Sometimes it can be even more than just annoying, sometimes spyware can be used to steal your identity.

So many of my customers have spyware on their computer and don’t even know it. Spyware is software that is loaded on the your computer system and you have no knowledge of it. This spyware software is loaded on the computer and collects personal information and other sorts of data about the user(s) of the computer that it is running on.

Spyware is intended to do several things. It can be intended to steal your financial information and steal your identity or it can merely be trying to collect data on you for advertising purposes. While the latter may not be nearly as serious it is and can be very annoying to the computer user.

There are several ways to get spyware on your computer. Some of the more common ways is by visiting websites that are questionable. Another way is from emails that you open, especially from people that you don’t know. One of the best methods of preventing spyware is to be careful of what websites you surf to and what email you open. Never open an email that looks suspicious and has an attachment (even if it's from someone you know.) Sometimes emails are forwarded that have very bad attachments that the person who is sending it to you may not have any clue about. Avoiding certain types of websites will also improve your odds of avoiding spyware.

One good thing, there are several options on the market to remove spyware from your computer system. Adware and Spyware Removal Tool is an excellent piece of software for removal of these annoying spyware data collectors. NoAdware is another great piece of Spyware removal tool.

Take charge of your computer and remove any spyware that is on your computer today. Make sure that your identity is not being stolen as you surf the internet. Spyware can be dangerous so make sure you are spyware clear.

Here’s what Microsoft had to say about the new private cloud offerings

Quite a number of suppliers of system software, application frameworks, database software and applications are rushing to grab the high ground and direct the industry in its move towards using cloud-like approaches and architectures to create an in-house self-provisioning, self-managing, pay-as-you go environment. Like the others I’ve seen, Microsoft appears to be working with a “Microsoft-only” view of clouds when, in reality, most datacenters today could be viewed as a multi-vendor, multi-platform, multi-decade computer of IT’s finest thoughts about application design and platforms.

My questions revolve around such ideas as:

Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track: This is nice, but will it include assistance to help users of mainframe or midrange systems that do not run Windows and yet are essential to corporations? I would suspect that the goal there is to get companies to migrate to something new.

Hyper-V Cloud Service Provider Program: Will this also support UNIX and Linux-based applications?

Hyper-V Cloud Deployment Guides: Let me guess, these guides will only show how to use Windows in a cloud-like environment even though cloud is a much broader environment.

Hyper-V Cloud Accelerate: Once again this is a nice concept, but is it also designed as a way to get people to abandon investments in other operating systems, development tools, database software and the like?

Source

The Panda Cloud

The first Cloud Anti-virus Programs

Are you looking for a virus protection that takes very little resources from your computer, and then consider Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition?

Panda Cloud Antivirus is a free version of Panda's security software. It is cloud-based, meaning that scanning of the files is handled on a remote server rather than on a user's machine. This less useage of computer resources which mean that your computer will run faster than some of the competitors that are not cloud based.

When it originally debuted, Panda Cloud Antivirus was notable as a free security solution for two reasons: Panda traded on its reputation as a solid security suite vendor making its first foray into the realm of freeware, and the program attained its goal of freeing up system resources by putting much of the program's heavy lifting in the cloud. Now we can add a third reason to the list: it's now known as an effective alternative to the security powerhouses.

Antivirus software makers and security analysts alike agree that the number of new viruses and other malicious applications appearing every day is growing exponentially. The traditional signature databases used by antivirus software to identify them all would eventually crowd out all other data on your computer—insanity! To prepare for this signature singularity, Panda Security has spent the last few years mastering behavior-based detection, cloud-based antivirus scanning, and free security software. Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.1 (free, direct) brings all these threads together. This free virus protection relies on the cloud for its virus signatures. Its new edition adds behavior-based detection. And for personal, non-commercial use it doesn't cost a penny.
To find out more about the Panda Cloud go to their blog to find out all the awesome work that Panda is doing to help protect the public.

Windows Data Eraser

Computer Data Eraser

Are you looking to junk your computer or give it too a thrift type store? Are you afraid people may find stuff on your computer even after you’re formatted the hard drive? Worry no more. With today’s technology there are some very good computer programs on the market that will help in erasing that old data on your hard drive. One of the programs we are going to look at today is WinClear.

Windows stores history of all the activities that you perform on your computer like internet surfing in secured areas of your hard drive. You can run History Clear but it still does get to these areas of your hard drive, so this offers very little protection when erasing history and data from your computer. If someone gets ahold of your computer you don’t want them finding this information that is stored in these hidden areas.

Here are some very important reasons to erase your Inernet History:

Every site that you come across on the internet even if it was by accident is stored on your computer.

Every image that you have ever looked at on the computer either be pictures or files or even images that were sent by email are still stored on your computer even if you thought you had erased them.

So you think the windows delete button and cleaning out your recycle bin is all you need to do to clean up your computer think again. These files are still stored on your hard drive.

There is a record of every program that you have ever downloaded or used on your hard drive. What you use on your computer should be your business and nobody else's.

Improve the speed of your computer and free valuable space taken by your computers history files.

With a program like WinClear you can put your mind at rest and you can sleep more soundly knowing that you do have a spotless computer machine. That the files you erased are truly gone and your internet surfing history is truly gone. So check out WinClear today.

Windows Not Shutting Down Properly

Does your computer not shut down when you tell it too

This is due to a program that is not shutting down properly and is preventing Windows from turning off. Most of the time, you won’t even know that a program is running because there is nothing on the screen showing a program running. So you think, well everything is off and now I can shut down my computer, wrong. Even though your computer is running and you have a pretty background picture and some icons on the screen there are several things going on behind the scenes and one of these things is causing your computer not to shut off. Now this could be because a virus has entered your computer or maybe malware has gotten into your system. Scan your computer to see if it one of these problems either virus or malware. Once you have done this now it is time to start figuring out which program is hanging your computer from shutting down.

Shut off programs that are running.

To determine which program is hanging your operating system from shutting down your computer you will need to be an investigator and go in behind the scenes of your computer and throw some switches to shut down all the programs that are running in the background. To do this you need to go to your start button and find either the search key or the run key and type in msconfig. You will have a window that opens up looking like this . After you get to this point you will want to look at the tabs on top and go to the tab that says “Services”. Open this tab and you will have a window that looks similar to this . At this point you will want to turn off all services that you recognize that should not be running. You will need to click apply and then ok to shut the window. You will be asked to reboot the computer, do so at this time. If all fires back up ok then shut down the computer again the normal way and see if it shuts down properly. If so go back into services and enable the services one at a time and find out what service is the culprit that is causing the problem. Once isolated, you will need to see if Windows has an update for this product to fix the problem. If not then maybe you will need to uninstall the product and reload the product and see if the manufacture has a patch for this particular product.

Is Your Computer Running Slow

Get your computer back up to speed

We here all the time my computer does not run as fast as it did back when I purchased the machine. This question comes out of every ones mouth every time we go out on a service call. There are many reasons why the computer does not run as fast as before but we are only going to take a look at a few. First thing you need to do before you do anything is back up your hard drive which holds all your files. If you do not back up your data you are asking for trouble and you may lose everything. See my page on computer backup.
Let’s take a look at why your computer may be running so slow.

Why Do Computers Start Running Like a Turtle

Computers slow down and cause the owner to get frustrated for many reasons. Some of the main reasons are due to hard drive fragmentation; lack of resources, viruses is a huge on, over heating, and a computer with low amount of ram. If you are contemplating trying to fix your computer on your own it is now before you do anything to back up your files such as you document folder to a flash drive or external hard drive. This should save most of your files safely and easily. You may also want to copy what is on your desktop to your flash drive or external hard drive also. It is better to be safe than sorry.

Getting your computer back up to speed

At this point if you are computer savvy enough the optimum thing to do now is totally format your hard drive and reload the operating system. If you have enough resources in the computer you should consider installing Windows 7 Ultimate edition. Most people are not computer savvy enough so here are a few other things you can try on your own to see if you can get some more speed out of your machine.

First make sure your compute is up to-date with all the Microsoft updates for your operating system. You do this by opening your Internet Explorer Web Browser and going to tools and then computer update. Click on compute update and then Microsoft will scan your computer and see if it lacking any of the updates for your operating system.

Next, download the freeware of AVG or another virus scan software that you prefer and check your system for any viruses. In my years of computer repair I have not seen so many viruses on computers as I have the past 7 years. Viruses slow down a computer and steal a lot of the resources your computer needs to make it run at top speed. Computer virsus enter the machine so many different ways and they come from all over the world. It is really scary what is taking place in the cyber-world. The biggest thing is to make sure that your compute is virus free and keep it that way in order to have a fast running machine.

Next you should take a look at how much ram (Random Access Memory) your computer is running. To do this you need to go to Start and then go to your Control Panel and then go to System. When the system page opens towards the bottom it will say how much ram your computer is running. In today’s world you should have a minimum of one or two gig of ram installed for optimal computer use. If you are running less than this there are many places to purchase ram memory or contact your local computer technician or contact us for consultation.

After you have done these chores to your computer it is now the time to clean up the registry of the computer and get rid of all that garbage that is stored in hidden areas of your computer to make things run smoother. A great utility that I install on customers computers is called CCleaner. CCleaner is a great free utility that cleans a machine squeaky clean and also can be used safely to clean up the registry files (the little hidden file cabinet that makes your computer run). I find CCleaner to work much better than Disk Cleanup which is built into Microsoft accessories. If you are more comfortable in using Disk Cleanup go ahead, each one of us have our own preference in cleaning up a computer.


What Is That

A computer does not take much to make it run hot. So make sure that you computer is in a location that is dust free, plenty of space surrounding the computer for good air flow and is free inside of computer dust webs. One should clean around the fan and power supply fan with compressed can of air. If you are not scared to open the case you should take extra time and clean out all the dirt and dust webs that have built up inside the case. Use only can compressed air and do not blow using your mouth. Your air has moisture molecules and will short out the mother board. Be very careful also to make sure you do not have any static electricity on your body for this will also wipe out the mother board. The cooler you can keep your computer the more optimal speed you will get out of your computer.

Dont leave your hard drive unattended

Take your hard drive back.

If you are looking for a couple great pieces of freeware to take your computer back and or restore it to a good clean hard drive that can be restored in minuets we have a couple good solutions for you. Both are freeware, one backs up your hard drive to a previous time and the other is a clone of your operating system but not only your operating system but also your data and all applications.  The one piece of software restores your computer each and every time you boot your system. The other software creates a clone of the drive so you can restore your computer whenever you need it.

Let’s take a look at Cloning the Hard Drive Software.

The first we will look at is FBackup

FBackup is free backup software for both personal and commercial use. It protects your important data by backing it up automatically to any USB/Fire-wire device, local or network location. The backed up data can be either compressed (using standard zip compression) or an exact copy of the original files.

The second is Easeus Todo Backup

Are your system, photos, music and financial data protected? EASEUS Todo Backup, supporting Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 and Windows Server 2000/2003/2008, is potent FREE backup software providing system backup & restore, hard disk or partition backup & restore, disk clone to protect your system and disk. It can back up whole PC, including the operating system plus your data, applications, settings and everything!

If your system is crashed or Linux based bootable CD fails to restore the system, we recommend you to restore system with WinPE based bootable CD which is more powerful than Linux one: operate without installation, support Windows 7 and Hardware Raid, etc.

Windows SteadyState

Windows SteadyState is a great application that sends a computer back to a known state each time the machine is rebooted. The primary advantage of this machine is once you get it setup to your exact requirements, it will go back to that way each time you restart the computer.

Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet cafe, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them.

Summary

If you are afraid of a virus wiping out your system or stealing all those pictures that you have saved on your computer, either one of these freeware utilities can bring you piece of mine. So don’t hesitate give them a try today.