How to Obtain Microsoft Windows Updates

Obtaining updates for your Windows OS at regular intervals from Microsoft is a must to keep your Windows computer up-to-date and running smoothly.

Microsoft updates for your Windows system in general includes updates for your operating system, software and hardware, third-party device drivers and also bug fixes to help protect your computer frommalicious software and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

There are two ways to obtain Microsoft Windows updates:

1. Directly from the Microsoft Download Center, where you can choose your desired updated versions from the list of new and popular downloads.

1. By using Automatic Update feature in Windows. This is the recommended option of the two because by turning ON the automatic updates feature, Windows automatically searches and delivers all the critical and security updates to your computer and you never need to visit update web site to scan for updates. All you have to do is keep a check on an icon that appears in the notification area at the far right of your taskbar every time new updates are available for your system.

Here is how to turn ON Automatic Updates and help protect your Windows PC

1. Click Start ► Run… then type control and click OK to open Control Panel.
   

1. If your are viewing Control Panel in Classic View, click System and head on to Automatic Updates tab under system Properties windows and change settings for automatic updates.
   

   » Instead, if you are under control panel category view, click Performance and Maintenance ► click System, and then click the Automatic Updates tab to choose the update option you want. Update option Automatic is recommended as it automatically downloads and installs updates at your chosen time.

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Tips on How to Speed Up Your Computer

Computers are the most used innovation that has come up so far. It connects the bridges on people and allows us to have communication with our loved ones that are far from us. However, using our computers often can cause problems and eventually slow them down when we don’t take action on fixing them.

Listed here are tips on how to speed up computer:

• Remember to free up your disk space using disk clean-up or disk defragmenters. Unnecessary files like temporary internet files can slow down your computer so get rid of them, empty your recycle bins frequently, and make sure that your important files are placed on the external hard drive.

• Scan for viruses and worms, spyware and adware. Always check for these nasty programs because they make your computer work slowly more than anything. You need to purchase PC fixer software that can remove these programs.

• Clean up your desktop. If your desktop is flooded with files your computer will eventually function slowly.

• Uninstall unused programs. Your computer might have lots of unused programs installed on it; uninstall them because once a program is installed, it makes a connection between the program and the operating system which also make your system run slower even if you do not use them.

• Do not start up programs automatically when turning on your computer. Make sure that you close programs you do not use that open when you start up your computer.

• Defragment your hard drive. Defragmenting your hard drive places all of your information for each file in one place which will result to a faster computer experience.

These tips on how to speed up my PC might be able to solve your problems on your slow running computers. Following these tips are a big help on your troublesome computer systems.

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How-to Remove System Tool 2011 Virus Easily

Aias: System Tool 2011
Damage Level: Medium
Systems Affected: Windows 9x, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7

Image Credit – Life StreamsYou may have tried for hours trying to remove this virus just like I did in vain but finally here I found a very simple method to remove this malicious software made to look like a legitimate anti-virus program.Screen Shot Image:

1. All you have to do is enter the serial key to register “System Tool” and follow the rest of the steps.
   The key is WNDS-S0DF5-GS5E0-FG14S-2DF8G

1. After inputting this key wait for little and you PC will restart automatically and all is okay again.

1. Then you can go ahead and delete icon from desktop and remove the software from program.

Share with all your friends. Its useful…!
Thank you.

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Windows Vista tweaks to speed up your system.

Default settings that Windows Vista comes with are more meant for hardware of future than hardware of today. If you are looking for your vista to run faster and perform better, it is essential that you optimize your Vista settings. Read on to find out 4 powerful Windows Vista tweaks to speed up your system.

• Tweak 1 ► Get Rid of Unnecessary Programs from System Start Up

One of the most powerful vista tweaks is to remove all unnecessary programs from the start up menu. Start up should only contain those bare minimum programs which are really necessary to be started up when your program boots. If there are some programs which are not that essential, but still need to be there in start-up, you can reschedule them to a lower priority & attach them to one of the multi-processes.

• Tweak 2 ► Turn off TCP Auto Tuning and Remote Differential Compression

Vista uses these to augment the gigabyte network. However, these end up being too much of an overhead for normal networking. The networking speed is enhanced by up to 30 percent when you disable these options.

• Tweak 3 ► Defrag Your Hard Disk

Over time, application and files become scattered in different places on your system’s hard disk, affecting the system’s performance greatly. When you defrag your disk, it brings all these scattered pieces together, thus, improving the Windows system’s speed. You can run the disk defragmenter from
Start ► Menu Programs ► Accessories ► System Tools ► Disk Defragmenter.

• Tweak 4 ► Disable the “System Restore” Feature

It was with Windows XP that this feature was first introduced. Windows Vista enhanced it further with introducing additional document versioning. Though it does sound very good and useful, it does have a great impact on the resources. If you think your system is already not running as it should be, you surely won’t want additional duplicates on your system further downgrading your system’s performance. Thus, another of effective vista tweaks would be to disable this feature.

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Strategies For Removing Malware and Viruses

Perhaps these tips will save you some money during these dark economic

times.  I can’t promise that these tips will work for you but for the DIY user who’s not afraid to get their hands dirty, it might prove to be very useful.  So lets get right to it:

Phase 1:  Safe Mode (with networking?)

Almost every version of Windows out there (from Windows 95 all the way up to the most recent Windows 7) have a hidden menu you can access at boot that gives you access to a diagnostic profile called Safe Mode.  Safe Mode is a sort of back door mode into Windows that loads the absolute (or nearly) bare minimum of device drivers and background services.  It’s sort of a bare bones environment that is suitable to start your repair from primarily because most viruses aren’t auto-started by the system in this mode, but it’s not perfect.  More on that in a moment.

To access Safe Mode you need to press the F8 key on your keyboard at a VERY specific time.  Typically when you turn your computer on you’ll see a screen that either has the logo of the manufacture of the PC or perhaps some generic startup relating to your BIOS.  At some point that all goes away, your screen will be black for about 3 seconds, and then Windows will proceed to boot with the little scroll bar loading away.  It’s during (or just before) that 3 second window of blackness that you need to start tapping the F8 key.  If done correctly, you’ll be presented with a menu that looks like this:

You’ll use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the highlighting selector bar.  Typically I will select Safe Mode With Networking, as this allows me to access the Internet and download utilities as well as give these utilities access to definition updates for itself later.

After you select Safe Mode With Networking and press Enter your screen will be bombarded with a slathering of strange and mysterious words…

Don’t worry, this is normal.  (Note: If instead of this screen above you get another menu asking what version of Windows you want to boot, just press Enter again).

Eventually you will get to the familiar blue colored user login screen and you might see an account called Administrator shown there that you’ve never seen before.  If you do, go ahead and select it to log in as “Administrator”.  Otherwise, select your own user name.

Once you’re logged in you have a few options you can take.  The safest way to get started is to actually bring a copy of your utility software with you on a thumb drive or CD to install it from, instead of downloading via a web browser.  The reason it’s not a good idea to try and download via a web browser is because a lot of viruses tend to wrap themselves around a browser’s EXE file so that when the browser starts, so does the virus.  This could potentially happen with a lot of other software so it’s best to try and resist the temptation to run any programs except for the cleaning utilities we’re about to install.

Phase 2:  Cleaning

There are only three pieces of software I typically use with great success in the field for removing viruses and malware.  They are:

• Malwarebytes
• Combofix
• Microsoft Security Essentials

All of the above are free with the exception of Malwarebytes, which functions with all its features on a 30 day trial when you first install it (note that you will see an error message appear when you tell it to start the trial while in Safe Mode; this is normal and you can ignore the error by clicking the OK button when it appears).  To keep the full version running you have to buy it for the low one-time payment of $25 and I strongly recommend it.  Apart from these three the only other tool I use is Google, which I’ll use to lookup exact phrases found within suspicious malware to see if I can find other people talking about that particular virus somewhere online and hopeful discover what unique thing they did to remove it.  Fair warning:  Your mileage may vary.

I typically start by installing Malwarebytes first (however I have had one experience where I wasn’t able to do this until after I ran Combofix so you might need to flip the order of these two tasks), applying the most recent update for it and then running a full scan, removing all infected objects it finds.  A typical scan can take around a half hour to do.  When it’s finished, you just need to click the “Show Results” button and then make sure the results listed all have check marks next to them and then click “Remove Selected” in the bottom left.  If an object doesn’t have a check mark when you first view the results it means Malwarebytes thinks it could be a false-positive result.  Use your best judgment and google to determine if either the file is malicious and/or if the file is a necessary part that can be removed without grief.  A reboot will likely be required when it is finished.  Be ready to hit F8 again when you do this so you can come back into Safe Mode and continue your work.

One thing I’ll often do while I’m waiting for a Malwarebytes scan to complete is take a look at the MS Config utility and see what items are enabled to auto-start when you boot into the system.  To access this, click Start, then click Run (or just click into the search box if you’re using Windows 7) and type in “msconfig” without the quotes into the box and click OK.  Then click the Startup tab at the top.

In this startup list are programs that are told to run right away when you first log into your system.  Almost all of these items are non-essential and to be on the safest side you could probably get away with unchecking all of these items, but that’s usually overkill and might rob you of some convenient feature you’d like to have.  Look carefully down the list for items that have empty path names, or very bizarre characters in their name… I have to admit that at this point experience with this stuff comes in to play.  If you don’t know what something is you could look it up by name with google on a separate computer before deciding to uncheck it  Alternatively, you could use the uncheck-all-the-things strategy and then go back later to add check marks back into the few items you know you need enabled.  You can also check out the Services tab which is to the left of the Startup tab, check the box that says “Hide all Microsoft items” and then use the same judgment to decide if there are third-party services running in the background that don’t need to be.  Google is your friend here for helping to determine if a service is useful or not.

Another thing I’ll do while waiting for a scan to complete is open the Add/Remove Program (Programs & Features) applet from the Control Panel to view all the software that’s been installed on the system.  I target toolbars of any kind first, next by software that is unfamiliar to the user.  Again, google is a useful reference here because you don’t want to remove something that’s known to not be malicious.

The next step is to run Combofix which you can find a tutorial about by clicking here.  It is pretty strait forward:  double-click on the combofix.exe file that you downloaded and follow the on screen instructions.  It’s own scan will also take about 30 minutes or so but it is very sensitive so once you kick it off, don’t touch the computer until its finished.   There is almost no interaction required with the software and it will automatically remove anything malicious it finds, producing a log with a lot of interesting jargon at the end that you can forward on to an expert for further analysis if you’d like.

After all this I’ll typically reboot the system and let it boot normally and then install Microsoft Security Essentials, running a full scan with it right after and checking to make sure the trial mode has been enabled on Malwarebytes.

If all of the above didn’t work, something I’ll try next is to reboot back into safe mode and use the control panel to create a new user account, then log off and log back in under that new account and repeat all the same steps above.  The reason this might help is because viruses tend to damage registry entries for accounts that existed when it found and infected the system.  Because we’re creating a new account in an environment that hopefully didn’t auto-launch the virus, we can then create a fresh account with it’s own default settings and preferences that hopefully won’t be manipulated by the virus.  This kind of problem could also be reversed using the System Restore utility but I’ve found that a lot of times (not always) I try to use this utility none of the restore points are any good.  I wouldn’t be surprised if previous restore points are destroyed by certain viruses making it even more difficult to undo the damage done.  In situations like that I’ve occasionally just created a new user account and migrated all the important user data (documents, etc.) from the old account to the new account, deleting the old one in the end because it’s irreversibly broken.

One last tip I’ve run across in a training video for a competitor of mine who will remain unnamed is to shut the system off by force instead of doing a soft reboot during this cleaning process.  In other words, hold the power button down for 5 seconds and then turn the computer back on after 20 seconds.  The reasoning behind this is that there are a few viruses out there that alter the shutdown script of events that take place during an ordinary shutdown and one of the events it injects into the script is to reinstall the virus during shutdown from a rogue location, as a Plan B so even if the live version of the virus is caught and removed it might be able to recreate the file from an encrypted copy of itself elsewhere.  If you decide to do this my only advice would be to backup the entire hard drive before doing so.  It’s technically dangerous… but probably not THAT dangerous… it’s best to remain on the safe side and not use shortcuts.

Finally a word about a couple of common viruses in particular I’ve run into in the last year:

A few of these viruses going around exhibit the symptom of making all your files and shortcut icons on the desktop vanish.  This is often done with a combination of changing the file attributes to enable the hidden flag, or by moving the files to a hidden location.  It is sometimes also conjoined with malware that tries to frighten you into thinking your hard drive is on the verge of failure, or at the least, claims to be antivirus software itself.  The goal of all such attempts is to get you to give up your credit card number.  Please don’t.

I’ve had great success removing the virus that causes these files to go missing but after it’s been removed it’s not always so easy to reverse the damage and restore the missing icons.  Fortunately there is one program out there that, for the most part, has been able to do this for me very simply and it’s simply called “Unhide”.  Use this program after going through all the above steps to be sure you’ve removed traces of the virus and hopefully it will get all of your stuff back for you.  You can download Unhide from here.

One other common symptom I’ve seen certain viruses exhibit is hijacking certain registry entries to alter file associations, specifically one which makes your computer forget what to run EXE files with, asking instead what program you’d like to open another program with.  I have found that in Windows 7 one trick of working around this is to right-click on a program shortcut and then click Run as Administrator.  This uses a separate registry association which hopefully has not been affected by the virus.  Using this Right-Click>Run as Administrator trick you should be able to run your scanning utilities like Malwarebytes and Combofix from within Safe Mode.

Phase 3: Prevention

Now that we know how much of a pain these kinds of viruses can cause we should talk a little about where they come from and the different ways they can end up on your computer.  I wrote a much longer blog about this topic which you can read here.  Basically it boils down to this:

• Make sure you install all available software updates for Windows itself as well as 3rd party software and plugins like Adobe Flash, Acrobat and Java (among others).  Updates are your friend and help to patch recently discovered security vulnerabilities.
• Pay attention to links people send you in emails.  It’s quite possible their email account has had its password stolen and is being used by a robot to send spam email with links to malicious websites out to everyone in their address book.  Warn your friends if you suspect their account has been compromised and suggest they change their email accounts password before following the steps above to attempt to remove a potential infection.
• Use good anti-virus software.  As recommended above, I prefer MSE and Malwarebytes.  Combofix is only to be used as an emergency utility; it doesn’t have a real-time monitoring feature.
• Consider using a software firewall to block unwanted inbound traffic and unexpected outbound traffic.  Zone Alarm Free is an excellent choice for this.
• Use an ad-blocking plugin to further reduce the chances of a virus sneaking in through a flash-based advertisement.  Ad-Block for Firefox is a great option.  You can also get it for Google Chrome from here.
• Along with these plugins, consider using a better browser.  Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have both become superior to Internet Explorer, especially in terms of security.
• Avoid installing “toolbars” for your browser.  If you install one by accident, disable it in your browser or better yet uninstall it via your control panel.
• Avoid using P2P file-sharing software like Frostwire or MP3Rocket.  These methods of file sharing do not have any form of user moderation and anybody can wrap a virus inside a file then name it something innocent/sensational looking to trick people into downloading it and installing a virus.
• Consider adding a parental filter to your computer; you don’t need kids for this.  Having a web filter like K9 Web Protection can be helpful to block your computer from accidentally trying to connect with a known malicious server.
• Lastly, though this is too extreme for most people:  Consider switching to Linux on your desktop.  Linux is free, open-source and is even more secure than MacOS.  Seriously.

I hope this advice has been helpful.  Please leave comments or suggestions about other tips and tricks you use to help remove malicious software in the comments section below!

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How to Create a Backup for Outlook Express Account Settings?

Your entire internet emails are now can be found in one single location – the Outlook Express. This desktop mail program retrieves and saves all your mail messages. After you have setup your email account and provided all the credentials, Outlook Express keeps checking your account periodically.

This program downloads your mail messages from your account and helps you to view them from the Outlook. What will you do if you plan to change your computer system? In that case it will be wise to keep a backup of the settings and your accounts. Email backupservice providers are the best guide to take the assistance from.

Setting up Outlook Express Information

Step 1 : First of all make one backup folder in your PC. Browse the location you wish to save your folder and choose New, then Folder and finally naming it as Outlook Backup.
Step 2: Go to the Outlook Express folder either from Start or any other type of shortcut you have for accessing this folder.
Step 3: Click on Tools > select Accounts.
Step 4: Click on Mail tab and you will get an entire list. Then choosing the account setup you wish to create a backup for, click on Export.
Step 5: Go to the box of Save In and after finding your created folder, click on Save.
Step 6: When you are done with the entire process, click on Close.

If there is any issue with any of the st

How To Fix The Common Problems In Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer may not be the favorite browser among geeks, but sadly, it is still the most widely used browser in the World. In this article, let us take a look at the common problems in Internet Explorer (IE8 specifically) and its fixes.

Some of the common problems seen in IE8 include:

• You have more toolbars that you desire. Some of them are uninstallable.
• The browser does not go to the website you want it to go. You type a web name, press Enter. It brings you to another site that is full of ads.
• Your searches doesn’t look normal. You are being redirected to another search provider.
• The home page changes without our knowledge.

If you are experiencing one of the above, don’t be alarmed. Here are the ways to fix them.

1. Remove Uninstallable Toolbars

Occasionally, when you install a new program and you didn’t read the fine print, it will automatically install toolbar(s) in your IE. These toolbars are often annoying, disruptive and take up valuable screen estate. In most cases, you can uninstall them via the Add/Remove Program panel, but there are times when they are very persistent and refuse to disappear from your browser.

In this example, we are going to uninstall the Alexa toolbar (this is only for illustration purpose. in no way did I mean that Alexa toolbar is not useful). The tool we are going to use is Autoruns.

Autoruns is a tool designed by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, you can download the program using this link: Autoruns for Windows

This tool can configure what programs run during startup. It can also be used to find out what plugins are installed in Internet Explorer.

To use the utility, run the application as Administrator:

Autoruns classify the objects, basically dynamic link libraries and programs, using different tabs. Just go to “Internet Explorer” tab:

In the screenshot above, we can see that the tab is split into three groups.

• First group contains the browser helper objects. They are plugins designed to provide a new functionality.
• Second group is a list of the toolbar in the browser
• Third group are extensions.

In this case, we are going to remove the Alexa toolbar. Highlight the entry, right click and select “Delete”.

Done. You have just removed an uninstallable toolbar.

2. Remove Search Providers

If you see an unwanted search provider (as shown in the image below),

Click on the button and select “Manage Search Providers“.

Internet Explorer doesn’t allow you to remove the default provider, so before you can remove it, you have to set another search provider as the default.

Now you can remove “Alexa Web Search“.

3. Reset Internet Explorer Settings

If all the tricks don’t work, the ultimatum is to reset your Internet Explorer to its default settings.

Using the search function in Windows 7, search for “internet options“. Alternatively, you can also access the Internet Options from the browser File menu.

Now go to the “Advanced Tab” and select “Reset“:

You need to quit all browser windows before using this function. You will see a popup window explaining the stuff that are going to be reseted:

This should restore your IE back to its original state.

Do you use any other ways to solve Internet Explorer 8 issues?