Computer Advice

Just recently I came across a virus while browsing the Internet. It was one of those moments where I didn’t ever think it would happen to me, but it did. I had anti-virus software running and it didn’t even hesitate when it hacked in and infected my computer within a matter of seconds. It was a rather simple virus, not very complex so essentially I got off fairly lucky. I immediately used my secondary computer to research what type of virus it was and how to remove it. The virus had a fake anti-virus screen that would repeatedly pop-up notifying me that my anti-virus was out of date and I needed to immediately upgrade. The virus appeared to be created for the intention of stealing people’s money by tricking them into believing that their computer was at risk and needed software updates.

Fortunately, it wasn’t very difficult to get the virus removed. In fact, all I had to do was shut down my computer and reboot. During the startup process you instruct Windows to restore to a previous state using the handy “Windows Restore” option. Usually when Windows detects that there’s a problem it will present this option for you. If you can’t find it you can access the BIOS and find your boot options. Here, you will be able to tell Windows that you need to restore your files. Now this was all that I had to do, but it might not work for everyone. If you’ve been infected by a virus, try to find the name of the virus. Typically viruses have a purpose like for instance, the virus I encountered was designed to steal money. It had a name called “AV Security Suite.” By searching this name I was able to find easy remove options from my secondary computer and those can come in handy if you’re unable to solve the problem on your own.

The lesson to be learned from the virus that my anti-virus was unable to detect is to always be aware. Make sure you have decent anti-virus software and it’s enabled and always activated for Internet browsing detection. I have a free anti-virus known as AVG which has been highly regarded in the computer industry. However, it was unable to perform like it should during this instance, perhaps upgrading to a more sustainable anti-virus would be more efficient. Always remember to double check the website you’re on. I was using a forum and browsing websites that were being sold. One of the sellers allegedly had this virus activated on his website. To ensure it doesn’t happen again, I won’t be viewing very many untrustworthy websites.

There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding computer hardware and what actually works to speed up your computer and provide promising results. However, most of the confusion resides around the various computer software applications that claim they can provide similar improvements. However, as a computer technician, such claims are completely unjustified and can instantly be ruled out. Software that claims it can speed up your computer can only function to an extent. In reality, there is only so much that software can accomplish, once it has reached its maximum capabilities, it’s likely that your computer will still be running at its same, slow speeds. In fact, there’s actually more that you can do yourself to improve upon your computer speeds with free software that’s available on the Internet.

If you’ve tried some of the free tools like CCleaner and Disk Defraggler, as well as running your anti-virus software and you haven’t seen any improvements, the next step is to purchase computer hardware. Inside your computer you have several main components. If you’ve ever seen the inside of a computer then you might think it looked rather technical, however it’s really not very complicated at all. The main part to a computer is the motherboard. Essentially, the motherboard is what all of the other parts in the computer connect to. Connecting to the motherboard you have the power supply that provides power to the computer, the hard drive, CD Drive, RAM, Processor or CPU and any custom modifications you’ve made to your machine. You can pretty quickly distinguish which of these components actually provide importance in the functionality of your computers speed. The hard drive provides space for you to store your files, the CD drive allows you to insert disks that will operate on the computer, and the processor and RAM work together to improve the functionality of running programs and opening files. Typically, if you have a slow processor or not enough RAM installed in your computer then it will suffer from unrecoverable slow speeds. There’s no software on the market that can improve upon the speed of your computer if the hardware is what’s at fault. If your processor is not dual core, it’s recommended that you upgrade to a dual core processor with at least 2.0 GHZ. Secondly, if you don’t have a minimum of 1GB of RAM then you should consider upgrading. Even with 1GB of RAM your computer might still suffer from operation issues and you could try installing up to 2.0GB for better performance.