Computer Virus Alert For All Computer Users

   I was just reading that a virus called the SoBig.F virus hit over 134 countries last night. This happened in just about 96 hours and was generating millions of emails. I am reading that the experts believe it could increase the volume of traffic over the internet by at least 60 percent. This could basically cause the the internet to slow down to a crawl. It could cost businesses hundreds of millions of dollars as well as crashing systems. They are saying that individual companies are being hit with millions of emails and home users have seen their emails pile up over 6,000.
  If this hits here we may see a lot of computers coming in for virus cleanings. It seems as though lately we have been seeing the bench full of mostly virus cleanings where I work as a computer technician. This seems to be a spam or unwanted junk type of virus that will clog the system by filling up the servers at the various isps. Other major viruses that had recently come out were the Blaster and Nachi. But the SoBig.F virus is by far going to be the worst virus we have seen so far. I have a feeling that this sort of thing is only going to get worse.
  My advise to anyone out there is to make sure you have good Virus Protection Software . Also make sure that it is up to date for you best protection. A couple of other pieces of advise are make sure your email program is set so the preview reading pane is set to off. This way it will not open the first email it sees. Also remember if you do not know the person who sent you an email DO NOT OPEN IT !!!!
  As a final bit of advise remember that no virus program is 100% safe. So always back up your data to either the cloud with carbonite or to an external hard drive by using the back up program in windows 7 or 8.
  Thank You for reading and stay safe.

 

Viruses, Malware, Spyware and Adware...OH MY !!!!!

Hiren's

  Some of the virus cleaning sources have updated their software. Malwarebytes has come out with a new 2.0 version. The look is a little different, but it does look very good. You can select what to scan for and what drives you want to scan. Their first version of Malwarebytes 2.0 did take a long time to scan if you set it to scan for rootkits as well. The only other part I did not like was that you can not always get information to show in the log file. You also can not select all items quarantined. They just have no choice to select all items found. This means that if you are looking for a total of items found  you will have to select each one at a time and keep count. For the causal user at home this number may not be important, but for the computer technician who has to keep track of the amount of found items it becomes a tedious and time consuming job. All in all Free Malwarebytes does a good job of removing viruses, spyware, adware and malware.
 MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GOOD Virus Protection Software AND KEEP IT UP TO DATE.


The next virus cleaning software that has a new version is the Spybot program. They had a new 2.1, 2.2 and now a 2.3 version. It has a portable version that works very well and is free. It does have a newer look than the older versions, but is easy to work with. You do have a choice to save the log file. You can save the log file before you clean what was found or after you have chosen to fix or delete the items found. You can also uncheck anything if you feel it is not an infection.
  I still like the Combofix virus cleaning program. The best place to get it from is bleeping computer. Just remember to reboot the computer after it has finished and shown you the log file of what was found. The log file is automatically saved to the root drive. If there are a lot of items found and deleted it may be too long if you need to have the total number. A trick that I found is to use the excel program in windows. First select the group of deletions found by highlighting the group. The easy way is to place the curser on the first item, then go to the last item in the deletion list, hold the shift key down click your left mouse button. This will select the group you want. Next click the right mouse button and you will get a drop down window. At this point you can click the copy choice. Now open the excel program and choose to paste your copied items in it. The nice this is that excel has all the lines numbered, so you can scroll to the end and get the total number. Just remember Combofix does not run in windows 8 or 8.1 yet. Hopefully they will get it working for it, because it is such a good cleaning tool.
   There are other tools that the technician can use in their cleaning arsenal. Some of my favorites are Eset Online Scanner, TDSS Killer, Super AntiSpyware Portable, A-Squared and Clamwin Portable. I am looking into a portable virus cleaner by Comodo, but have done nothing with it yet. Another item I strongly advise getting are Hirens 15.1 and 15.2, which are bootable ISO files that can be burned to a cd or to a usb flash drive. The nice capability is that you can copy your virus cleaning tools to the root drive in a folder and run them from with in Hirens. The newer version of Malwarebytes does not run unless you can get it to update. Just remember to click on the internet explorer icon to connect to the internet. Make sure you have a good Ethernet connection. Also superanti spyware must be started first in Hirens before you try to run your portable version. It also will not run on the Hirens 15.2 and will cause a bluescreen error. This tool is awesome if your computer keeps looping or can not be run in the normal or safe mode due to the infection. One other piece of software I would recommend is the Revo Uninstaller program. It does come in a free portable version giving you the capability of removing those pesky junk programs that get on your computer.
  There are other bootable repair disks that can be very helpful to the repair technician or the home user that knows what they are doing. Some of these are the Falcon Repair disk, which is a variation of the Hirens CD. There are also the Ultimate Boot Disks, Win7 PE and Win8 PE disks that have plenty of tools. All of these have various plugins and your plugins can be adapted if you are capable of doing so. There are also other paid versions and tools available on the internet. Just be careful of where you get them from.
  Finally if you are not comfortable with cleaning up your computer, then seek out the professional computer repair shop in your local area.
  Thank You for reading and stay safe.  
 

Common Signs Your Computer Has A Virus, Malware, Spyware or Adware

  So what are some of the commons signs that your computer is infected. The common signs are as follows.

• Is your computer running very slow or taking too much time to perform something that used to be much quicker.
• Are you receiving a lot  of spam in your email inbox or spam folder.
• Are your friends telling you that they received an email that you never sent.
• Your computer keeps rebooting.
• Your computer starts to boot up, flashes a bluescreen error and may reboot.
• You go on the internet and get redirected to another website.
• When on the internet you are getting a lot of pop ups trying to sell you something.
• You get a call from Microsoft, they tell you that you are infected and they sell you something.
• You let someone take control of your computer so they can clean infections they claim you have.
• You get a picture on your computer from the FBI.
• You have a icon on your desktop or in the task-bar that says 24x7 Help.
• You have programs popping up, running scans and telling you that you have problems. You never bought or installed this software.
• NOTE: Some problems such as slowness, rebooting or hanging up of programs can be caused by a defective hard drive, motherboard, memory or microprocessor.

  Okay so you see some of these problems and ask yourself what do I do. Well you have a few different choices. It all depends on how much you know about computers. If you have no data to save, then I recommend to use your software to wipe out the hard drive and reinstall all software fresh. You will need to reinstall all drivers for the system, windows updates, programs and components such as printers and scanners. If you are not comfortable or have no one who knows how to do this I recommend to take it to a professional.
  The other option is to download some programs that I mentioned in an earlier post to thoroughly clean the computer of all viruses, malware, spyware and adware. I would download the current versions and follow the order I recommended. If you are not comfortable or have no one who can do this, take it to a professional. Be prepared to pay $100 to $300 dollars to have this done.
  Thank You for reading and stay safe.

How do I Upgrade My Old Windows XP Computer To Windows 7

 If you want to determine if you can upgrade that old windows xp computer here is what you need to do.

• The very first thing I would do is download the windows 7 compatibility checker program. Run the program and it will indicate what hardware and software may be a problem.
• First get the model number and brand of your computer.
• Go to the manufacturers website for your computer and look for the specifications.
• Generally you will be looking for the Microprocessor Speed, total memory it can take and largest hard drive size it can take.
• Look to see if there are software drivers for windows 7 or windows 8 at the manufacturers website. There may be some for 32bit or 64bit.
• If it has 64bit drivers available I would go with a 64bit operating system.
• Now look at your computer for what it has in it currently for hardware.
• You should look to see how much memory you currently have. If you have less than 4gb of system ram memory I would add enough to bring it up to at least 4gb. Some computers may only have two memory slots while others may have 4 slots. Also older motherboards may need the memory installed in certain amounts in different slots.
• The next item I would look at is how big is your hard drive. I would recommend at least a 500gb hard drive. If you for example only have a 250gb hard drive you can install a new larger hard drive and make the smaller hard drive the second for data or programs.
• If you can tackle this job yourself then it is okay for the cost. If you take it to a local computer shop it may be more cost effective to go with a new computer. 
• The advantages of a new computer are faster, larger amount of faster memory, larger hard drive capability and a warranty.
• Other parts of the job may be transferring your old data. This can be done with a free program called unstoppable copier. If you are not capable of doing this yourself, I would have a professional do it or a family member who knows how to do it.
• Some other issues that can arise are old video cards or sound cards with no drivers for windows 7 or windows 8. I would not install windows 8 on a older system, mainly because it was made for touch screen systems and tablets.

                                       
  So as you can see there are quite a few different steps you may encounter trying to upgrade an older computer to windows 7 or windows 8. My advise is if you can afford to go with a new computer, go for it. Some other advise I would give is to make sure you have a good warranty with a new computer. Some local shops may only have a 1 or 2 year parts and labor warranty. Components such as motherboards and hard drives may have at least a 3 year manufacture warranty. If you are going with a laptop it may only have a 1 year warranty. I would see if a extended warranty can be purchased and see if it has accidental warranty coverage.
  Other items that could be replaced are a lcd display, keyboard and mouse. Older lcd monitors may not support newer video cards with higher resolutions. You may only have an old cathode ray tube monitor and this will just not work properly. Another item that may be upgraded is a power supply. Going with 500 watts or better would make a very good upgrade.
  So that covers just about everything I can think of.
 Thank You for reading and stay safe.