Answers and advice from a geek who knows stuff
You’ll know right away if you’ve been infected by this nasty malware virus because you’ll see a warning popup when you log into Windows, or try to open a web browser, or click on a web link in an email message. Here’s how to make it stop.
Could you please tell me how to transfer the contacts from my iPhone onto my computer? I’d like to have them in my Outlook email program if possible.
If you spend any time shopping on the Internet or reading email, then the answer to this question is most likely yes.
Most people don’t realize just how many spyware programs are currently running on their computers. In fact, I thought my home computers were clean until I ran an antispyware program and found 444 various forms of spyware infections lurking on my system!
The program I used to clean my system was Spyware Doctor. I’ll discuss it in more detail below, but first – here’s some helpful information about malware, spyware, adware, trojans, and viruses:
What is Malware?
Malware is a generic term used to encompass malicious spyware, adware, Trojans, browser hijackers, keyloggers, dialers and tracking cookies.
Spyware is an application that makes use of your Internet connection, gathering and transmitting information on various activities you conduct on your computer to third-parties. This information is often collected and sent without your knowledge or consent. Like adware, spyware often installs as a third-party component bundled with a freeware or shareware application, which can make the distinction between the two somewhat ambiguous.
Trojans (also known as Trojan horses) can slip into your system and run without your knowledge. However, they are capable of possessing a variety functions. For example, some use your computer’s modem to dial long-distance or toll numbers (like a dialer), potentially generating expensive phone bills. Unlike viruses and worms, Trojans do not replicate themselves.
Adware components install alongside a shareware or freeware application, after you have provided initial consent and bring targeted advertisements to your computer. These advertisements create revenue for the software developer. Adware displays web-based advertisements through pop-up windows or through an advertising banner that appears within a program’s interface and can be very annoying.
Keyloggers, also known as ‘key loggers’ or ‘keystroke loggers’, these are programs that run in the background on your computer and are capable of recording every keystroke you make on your keyboard. Keyloggers can store such information, which could very well include personal details and passwords that you have typed into your computer, such that it can later be retrieved by third-parties.
Tracking Cookies – Internet browsers write and read cookies, which are small text files with small amounts of data (such as web site settings) which are placed onto your computer by visiting certain web sites. In many cases, cookies provide a benefit to users as they can retain settings for when you next visit a web site. In some instances, however, cookies are used to consolidate and track your behavior across different web sites, providing marketers with information about your web browsing habits.
As you can see, there are numerous ways that malicious software can barge into your system and make your life miserable. Some spyware programs can even collect your sensitive logon information, helping spyware vendors gain access to your financial accounts – personally I consider that a very high threat!
Fortunately there are programs like Spyware Doctor that will search and destroy these threats and keep your system protected from future threats. After running Spyware Doctor, it showed me a list of each threat on my system, along with a description of how dangerous it was.
Here’s a link to a free Spyware Doctor download, which includes a free scan of your system. You’ll be able to see how many threats are lurking around and will learn what kinds of damage they can do if left unchecked.
You might be surprised at what you find, and I recommend taking a few minutes to run the scan to make sure your system is clean.
Last year I trashed on Norton because it failed to protect my home computers from Malware Alarm. A rep from Norton reached out to me a couple weeks ago, and asked if I’d give them a second chance with their new flagship program Norton 360…
For some reason the Snipping Tool in Windows Vista tends to frequently lock up, resulting in the familiar error message “The Snipping Tool is not working on your computer right now”.
Question: Windows seems to take forever to start up on both my computers, and some programs try to run everytime I start Windows (even though I didn’t ask them to). I’m running Windows Vista Home on a fairly new laptop with 512 mb of RAM, and Windows XP on an older desktop with 1GB of RAM. What can I do to speed things up?
Answer: Those extra programs take away time and precious memory, which makes Windows take longer to start up and also makes it run slower once Windows has started.
There are a couple of things you can do right away that will speed up Windows startup and stop those unwanted programs from running.
Clean out your Startup folder
Some programs will install themselves in your Windows Startup folder, which makes them run each time your system boots up. All you have to do is delete the menu shortcut, and they’ll stop loading when Windows starts up. The programs will still remain installed on your system – they just won’t run until you run them (which is what you want).
1. Right-click on the Start button in your task bar (lower left corner of your screen).
2. Select Explore from the shortcut menu.
3. You’ll see a folder called Startup, and you can delete all of the programs listed in this folder. You’ll only be deleting the menu shortcuts, not the programs themselves.
This is a good first step that’ll speed up Windows startup and free up memory on your system, but there are still a couple other things to check.
Defragment your hard drive
Over time your hard drive can become defragmented, which means that files get saved in different places on your hard drive. Windows can’t just look in the same general area each time it tries to find files, which slows things down noticeably, and can directly increase startup time.
Windows comes with its own disk defragmentation tool, but it doesn’t work very well and you can’t schedule it to automatically defrag your hard drive on an ongoing basis.
I use Diskeeper for that, which rearranges files stored on your disk to occupy contiguous storage locations. This speeds up access time because it can look in the same general area for files each time it needs them.
You can set Diskeeper to run automatically in the background so that you basically never have to worry about your hard drive slowing down due to defragmentation.
Turn off unnecessary services
Some programs create Windows services that run behind the scenes to check for updates online, or watch for system events like inserting a music CD in your CD drive. iTunes is one such program, and there are even spyware programs that can load at startup by installing themselves as a Windows service.
These services take up valuable memory, and considerably slow down Windows startup. For example, a program called Vongo was installed with my new laptop, and it tries to check for updated downloads every few minutes. This eats up processing time, takes up extra memory on my system, and poses a potential security risk to my system.
If you’re fairly technically inclined, you can view the services that are installed on your system and disable unwanted programs from loading at startup. All of the Windows services that are running on your system can be viewed by opening your Control Panel and selecting “Administrative Tools” and then “Services”.
But be careful, because if you turn off the wrong service you could end up rendering your system unusable.
A safer way to control the services that run at startup is to use a program like SystemSuite 8 Professional. It will show you a list of all the services that are running on your system, and will identify the ones that are safe to turn off.
SystemSuite will also show you if there are any spyware or malware programs lurking on your system, and will let you protect your system by blocking them from loading when Windows starts up.
For example, SystemSuite’s built-in NetDefense Firewall recognized the Vongo program I mentioned earlier and asked me if I wanted to block it from connecting to the Internet in the future. I happily said yes to block it, and now I don’t have to worry about it connecting to the Internet in the future.
I’ve noticed a big improvement in startup time using these approaches, and especially with System Suite. It’s received some excellent reviews like this one from Laptop Magazine:
“Consistently better than any all-in-one-system-maintenance suite, Avanquest’s excellent collection has all the core strengths and exciting extras.” – Laptop Magazine July 2007
Let me know how it works for you.
Enter Coupon Code AFFSS8 during checkout to save 25% on SystemSuite 8.
Question: When someone puts RT before your name on a tweet, what does that mean?
Answer: RT means “retweet”. It’s similar to forwarding an email to someone else, but in this case you’re forwarding a tweet to anyone who is following your updates on Twitter.
RT’s are used when you find something interesting that someone else said, and you want your Twitter followers to read it (because your network is probably different then the network of the original Twitter poster).
Here are a few other useful Twitter shortcuts:
Adding d in front of a twitter address (e.g. d@rickysays) will send your message directly to that person in the form of a private direct message that won’t be visible to anyone else.
Direct messages are great for taking Twitter conversations offline that are private or too detailed for a broader audience.
Sorry, there’s no way to edit tweets. Once they’re out there, they’re out there.
But don’t stress too much about things like typos or abbreviations. Twitter users are very good at figuring out what you’re trying to say, even if you’ve highly abbreviated your message.
At the time of this writing, Twitter doesn’t offer any built-in support for posting pictures. However, you can use a free service like TwitPic to store your photos and post links in Twitter.
Once you create your TwitPic account, just enter your Twitter user name and password to get an email address you can send pictures to as file attachments. The email subject is the tweet that will show up in Twitter (no email body needed), along with a link to the photo that you attached to the email message.
If you’re using Twitterrific on your iPhone, it also has a built-in feature for posting pictures as a tweet – using existing pictures or letting you take a new one on the spot.
Question: I have a lot of books on my Kindle, but sometimes I’d like to read them on my laptop instead of on my Kindle. Is there a way to do that?
