Computer Related Articles

Those of us who have access to computers already know a lot about computer viruses. Perhaps some of us have experiences with this pesky computer problem. And even in news we hear and read about viruses, those that cause damages worth millions of dollars. Recently we hear about computer programs that are being used to steal other people’s identity. Because of malicious software that includes computer viruses, spyware, trojan horses, spyware, and worms, security systems have been breached and confidential documents have been accessed.

Computer viruses could be dangerous, but there is a way to stop them. You can learn how to get rid of computer viruses by following a few steps. The first thing to do is determine if a virus infected your computer. You can find this out by observing your computer’s performance. If anything changed in the appearance of your computer programs, if your computer responds slowly to commands, or if it just suddenly turns off while you are using it, then your computer could be infected by a virus. The next step is to find out what virus infected your computer.

How will you find out what kind of virus is on your computer? You should have an antivirus software. Having an antivirus software is an affordable way to assure that your computer is protected from malware. You can get antivirus software online; you can either purchase it or download it for free. If you want really effective and efficient antivirus software, you have to buy one. This is because free software often has fewer features and options than paid software. Also, paid software is more likely to be up to date with the newest antivirus solutions. With many programs being developed nowadays, it is essential to have an antivirus software that can keep up with current malware trends.

If you have an antivirus software, run a full system scan of your computer. By doing this your software will find any corrupted files and suspicious software in your system. You can wait for the system scan to finish. Scans usually take much longer if you have a lot of files and folders in your computer. If your software finds a virus or a malware, it will prompt you to isolate it. Isolating a virus means putting it in a safe “area” in your system where it will not infect any other files. After isolating the virus, you will be given the choice to either delete it immediately or keep it in isolation for a while. If you choose to delete it, remember to restart your computer afterwards.

Now, if you cannot remove a virus from your computer you can try researching about it. Viruses have names, so try researching about them online. If you cannot find anything about the virus infecting your computer, contact your antivirus software’s company. They might have any information about certain viruses and they might be able to give you tips on how to get rid of computer viruses.

If your computer continues to perform sluggishly, you may need to start from scratch. That is, you need to delete everything in your hard drive. Do not forget to save all of your important files in an external hard drive or in a CD before deleting.

Author Bio: Find great deals on the best internet security software and best antivirus software. Download antivirus software directly from Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, Zone Labs and save instantly with special internet price.

Hello to all of those reading this article! For this article, I decided to write about the top 4 reasons one should use Anti-Virus software. Anti-Virus software is fairly common, and a lot of people use it. However, there are also millions of users who insist that they do not need any type of anti-virus software. Perhaps they think that viruses aren’t enough of a threat to make downloading anti-virus software an important part of owning a company. Other people might have the false impression that their computer can be protected without anti-virus software. These people are wrong though. To prove this, here is my list of the top 4 reasons you should use Anti-Virus Software.

1. Viruses Are Everywhere!

This is so true. Viruses are everywhere. Millions of e-mails are being sent per day with viruses included with them. Virus removals is by far one of the most common services requested at PC repair shops. The sheer number of viruses makes it likely that you will get hit with a virus sooner or later, even if you make it a habit of staying safe on the internet.

2. Virus Severity!

When people think of computer viruses, they think of them slowing down your computer or making the computers unable to load. However, viruses can do much worse. Viruses can delete all of your data. Viruses can e-mail all of your friends and infect them as well from your computer. Viruses can even obtain your credit card numbers and send them to hackers resulting in charges of thousands of dollars. Viruses can literally ruin your life. This is why it is so important to get anti-virus protection.

3. Ease Of Infection

Another reason to download anti-virus software is that it is fairly easy for a virus to infect your system. Viruses can some in many different ways. For instance, you can even be infected by a virus just by going to a website. There are many security holes in Windows which can lead to a virus infection. While you can update windows and install patches for these critical security holes, you may not get to these patches right away. Windows security patches are released fairly often, and even waiting a few hours to install one could be enough time for your computer to be infected by a virus.

4. It’s Easy!

It is fairly easy to install anti-virus software. In addition, there are many anti-virus software programs that are absolutely free to use. You don’t even have to pay for future updates. These anti-virus software programs are used by millions of users every day and prevent a countless amount of infections.

I hope you enjoyed this article. Most importantly though, I hope I convinced you to download anti-virus software. It takes only a few minutes to download anti-virus software, and it can later prevent you from losing all of your data and having to spend hundreds of dollars to fix you computers. Good luck, and stay safe on the internet!

Author Bio: Greg has been using computers for close to 15 years. Over the years he has advised hundreds of people on various computer issues and how they can be fixed. On his blog Greg’s Reviews, he reviews various programs such as registry cleaners, and gives his views on the best software to use.

You heard the old saying “were not alone”. Well, the same can be said about your Wireless Home Network.

Have you ever wondered if someone else is on your network, with out your knowledge, watching every site you visit or stealing account information from your GMail or bank account?

Sure you probably went to great lengths to implement and secure your wireless home network, but any Network Security professional will tell you NOTHING is bullet proof.

While nothing is bullet proof, being proactive with monitoring can catch the un-wanted guest…off guard.

So what can you do to monitor and identify if someone is wondering around on your home network?

You can use some simple tools, when combined, will help you see your Network and give you a view of who’s online.

NOTE: With these tools chances of identifying someone on your network increases, but will NOT prevent them from gaining access to your Network. Other tools exist than described in this article, but the goal is to show you the different type of tools and how to use them.

1 – Firewall Logs – is a good place to start. If you have a Firewall running on your Computer or on your router, look for suspicious activity by scanning the logs for anything out of the ordinary with inbound and outbound traffic.

One method you can use is to look for patterns. For example, if someone was scanning your computer to see what ports are open, the logs will show continuous activity from the same IP Address (an intruder’s computer) sending a stream of data to many different ports to a single IP Address or range of IP Addresses.

Obviously, with a smart hacker, they can do many things to cover their tracks, but one thing is for sure, data must be transmitted to probe your computer, and patterns is one method to use for spotting trouble on your Network.

2 – DHCP Logs – if the unwanted guest is not Network savvy, or security on your router is not up to snuff, they may be able to drop in unannounced, by receiving an IP Address from your wireless DHCP server.

You can easily view a list of active addresses by connecting to your router and checking the DHCP log. For example, on my Linksys router, the log is located in the Wireless MAC Filter tab, where I can see and identify all active hosts on my Network. But this does not guarantee that these are the only active PC’s on my Network.

Why?

Unfortunately, a more sophisticated hacker can get around the need to rely on DHCP. If they did their homework (you can be sure of that), they probably figured out the range of IP Addresses in use on your Network, found an unused address in that range and configure their PC with a static address.

3 – Check Who’s Connecting To Your Computer – Now that you identified who the trusted computers are on your network (from the DHCP logs), you can check who is connected to your computer.

To do this, open a command prompt and enter the following command:

netstat -an

where:

a = Displays all connections and listening ports

n = Displays addresses and port numbers in numerical form

Netstat is a useful tool that displays network connections (both incoming and outgoing) on computers. This will allow you to see all IP Addresses that have made a connection to your computer.

Netstat shows you the type of connection (TCP or UDP), IP Address and port number (number after addresses separated by a colon) for both Local (your computer) and Foreign addresses.

To find your IP Address, just enter ipconfig at the command prompt.

You should be able to easily spot any addresses (Foreign column) that is outside the DHCP range on your router and investigate.

You can also see what executable are involved in creating each connection by using the -b switch with the netstat command (netstat -b)

Now this is great for checking connections on your Computer, but what if someone is on your Network and not connected to your Computer?

4 – Scanning your entire Network – When Computers communicate with each other, they do so with ports (as you saw with the netstat command). Some ports that may be familiar to you are 80 (HTTP), 443 (SSL). 25 (SMTP), 110 (POP). For example, when your Computer browses a website, it opens up port 80 and sends the request out,

To see open ports on a Computer, a tool called Port Scanner can be used that can scan a Network and identify devices by probing for open ports.

Information that can be found is the connection type (TCP or UDP), type of port and IP Address.

Many Port Scanners exist, such as Advanced Port Scanner (Famatech Software) and can scan a range of IP Addresses.

By scanning a range of IP Addresses, you can quickly see who is on your Wireless Network and what they are doing from the list of open ports.

You can easily find out the entire range of addresses (including addresses outside the DHCP scope) your router uses. To do that, connect to your wireless router administration of interface and look for the router subnet mask information.

On a typical Linksys router, the default setting for the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. Using a subnet mask calculator you can determine the range of IP Address that can be used on your Network.

For example, the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 with the IP address of the router – 192.168.1.1 (Class C) has an IP address range of 192.168.1.1 – 192.168.1.254. (Note that DHCP reserves address 192.168.1.100 thru 192.168.1.149 which means all other addresses in that range can be used as static address).

Time To Be Proactive

As you can see some of the methods used above are good for random check ups on your Wireless Home Network.

But just being proactive is not enough and using a combination of monitoring, tightening up security and changing your passwords often, among other items, can help from having your identity stolen.

Author Bio: Get free Tech help for Windows and Ubuntu Operating Systems at watchingthenet.com. Subscribe to our newsletter now and receive a free ebook: “Home Networking Tips & Advice”, and learn how to build your home network the right way without spending a fortune.

The Internet has undeniably changed the world, and nobody can argue about the fact that the Internet is a marvelous thing, but it’s also a very dangerous place, particularly if you’re a regular surfer using a PC for which you did not download antivirus software. There are millions of websites out there, but unfortunately this also means that some of them don’t have your best interests at heart, and these are the ones that aim to infect your computer with a potentially lethal virus. This is exactly why you need to download antivirus software regularly or else your computer could suffer irreparable damage.

You may at this point be wondering how you can go about preventing a website from infecting your computer with a virus. If you are, then you need to know that there’s no other option but for you to download antivirus software. There are a number of ways to obtain antivirus software, and while some antivirus programs are free, others are not. As is to be expected, both types of antivirus programs come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

The first type of antivirus software is the kind you’ll need to pay for, and because this type of software is usually more dependable, and more stable, it’s the type of software that some people tend to prefer. When you purchase “paid” antivirus software, you’ll usually be entitled to receive daily updates, real time protection and you’ll also have access to 24/7 customer support, which of course is something that the free software packages don’t include. For the most part, you’ll be able to either download your software from the manufacturer, or else you could opt for purchasing a boxed copy at a store.

There are many free options out there for those who don’t like the idea of dealing with irritating serial numbers and ongoing upgrade costs. Contrary to what some people believe, some of the free packages work extremely well, and there is even a few antivirus websites which will scan your computer without a need for downloading any programs. If you’re interested in such software then you can simply do an online search, and you’ll be presented with hundreds of results.

Even though you can have your machine scanned by certain websites, that’s not to say those websites will actually remove a virus from your computer if one is detected. Although some Internet users may feel this is unfair, one needs to bear in mind that everyone would like to make a profit if they can, and antivirus websites are no different. Some computer viruses can also prevent you from visiting the free virus scan sites.

Most of the free antivirus software programs one comes across on the Internet nowadays tend to include an upgrade option. This essentially allows you to purchase access to the program’s advanced features in order to ensure your machine has the maximum amount of protection. Those Internet users who are very computer savvy usually require nothing more than a very basic antivirus program.

As you’ve seen by reading through this article, you have nothing to worry about if you wish to download antivirus software, and of course the sooner you do, the sooner your machine will be protected, providing of course you’re willing to take the time to familiarize yourself with the way in which your antivirus software works. Best of luck, and please make sure you keep your computer safe when surfing.

Author Bio: Download antivirus software directly from Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, Zone Labs and save instantly with coupon discount. Find out more about the best antivirus software and the best anti spyware now.

I dare you to look in your browsers cache of saved files. You might be surprised at seeing many megabytes of files wasting space. Not only that, but tracking cookies, ad ware and malicious files may be sitting there sending your info to someone else.
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