Technology for the Future
How to remove Spyware, Adware, and Malware
Feb 8th
I have been asked by numerous people on how to remove spyware, adware and malware. They also asked how do they know if they have it on their computer.
Well this tutioral will explain what spyware is, why it is bad, how you can tell if your computer is infected with these types of software, and what you can do to get rid of it.
Spyware are little programs that run in the background of the computer so that the user cannot see it loaded. These little programs acts as servers – sending out pop ups, and even spam, while using your internet and such.
Most spyware contain viruses – including trojan viruses. Trojan virus are what are known as “key loggers”. Key loggers keep track of the sites you go to, your username and password. The others are just annoying.
There are several ways to tell if your computer is infected with spyware. Here are a list of most things.
1. Computer takes a while to boot up
2. Computer is very laggy
3. Internet very slow on a high speed internet
4. Computer freezes up
5. Computer randomly reboots itself
To remove these “little programs” from your computer. I would recommend a few programs.
1. CA Anti-Spyware
2. Spybot
3. Xoftspy SE
4. A_Squared Free
Hope this helps you out, and remember, always have more than one spyware remover!
Xenium Mod-Chip for Xbox
Jan 11th
I recently had purchased the Xenium mod-chip thro an online modchip store. I must say that I am very happy with it. I can have more than one XBE boot-up with it, as with a soft-mod you can only have one. When the Xbox boots up, it loads off the chip, not the harddrive-like the soft-mod. I can even have more than one harddrive. I can fun many services, such as http, ftp, and even ssh servers with this chip. You can customize the boot screen to use different themes.
The Xbox is basically a very torn down version of a computer. The specs are:
- Intel Pentium III 733 Mhz Processor
- 64 meg ati/nvidia video card (depends on which version you have)
- 64 megs of ram
- 8 gig harddrive
- 10/100 LAN NIC card
- DVD ROM
I have upgraded the regular 8 gig harddrive to an 80 gig harddrive. Instead of the regular Xbox boot screen, I load off the XBMC, which is the XBox Media Center. I have components installed on the unit, such as eb browser, network browser, DVD to harddrive copier, play Xbox games off the harddrive, i can even play other gaming systems with emulators.
What is an emulator? They are a piece of software that allows your computer – Xbox to pretend it is a gaming system at which you load a ROM.
What is a ROM? A ROM is a small file that the whole game is loaded into- think of it as the cartridge.
The emulators that are included are Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Nintendo Gameboy, Atari, NeoGeo, Sega Genesis, Playstation, Playstation 2, and even DOS. I can also stream videos that are sourced by my server and by online sites. I can also upload videos to the harddrive to the Xbox harddrive and watch them that way. It has a Mp3 player so you can either upload your music, or stream them off a server or over the internet. So I pretty much have a Home Media Center……Hence is why it is called Xbox Media Center.
So with this being said, I-myself- would rather have have the hard-mod.
DNS Servers
Jan 11th
I have been surfing around the net looking for fast DNS Servers to speed up my network a little. I stumbled upon OpenDNS there DNS Server are also phishing site safe.
What is a phishing site? A phishing site is a website that looks just like another site (bank sites, credit card sites, myspace sites) where you put very important information and it records it and sends it to the attacker. Anyhow, back to what I was talking about.
One way to understand what a DNS Server does is to think of it this way. Is it alot easier to remember a word, such as http://google.com or a group of numbers http://64.223.167.99. What a DNS Server does is it translates the word or words into a set of numbers, also known as an ip address. I have put together a few DNS Servers that I have found that sped up my network.
OpenDNS
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
QWest
205.171.3.65
205.171.2.65
Mediacom
204.127.203.135
216.148.225.135
Virtual Memory Tweak
Jan 11th
Tweaking your computer using Virtual Memory. You can get to these settings by going to:
Right Click My Computer -> Choosing Properties
Advanced Tab -> Under Performance select Settings
Select the Advanced Tab -> Under Virtual Memory select Change
Select custom size, under the Initial size this number should be 1 1/2 times the amount of RAM in system, the maximum size should be 3 times the amount of RAM in system. Click OK and we are finished.
You may have to restart you computer to start these changes.
Tweaking Windows by Disabling Unwanted Services
Jan 11th
I have been recently trying to increase the speed of my computer and decrease the amount of RAM the system needs to operate. I figured out a few services that are running by default, which you don’t even need to use. I have put together a list, and hopefully you will find this useful as well.
Here is how you can get into see what services are running and are not running. First you go to Start and Run Second you type in services.msc
This is the list of services you can disable:
Error Reporting Service – This just shows you a report if your computer ever crashes. Don’t really need this.
Help and Support – This just helps you with troubleshooting windows. If you are not good with windows, keep this enabled.
Indexing Service – Indexes the hard drive to find files faster. How many times do you really search for files on your computer. I have this disabled.
Messenger – This is not the same as MSN Messenger or any other type of instant messaging services .A very bad service to leave running. This service allows your computer to send out spyware, if you are infected with it. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TO DISABLE!
Remote Registry – You only want to change the registry locally, not from another computer. Disable.
Secondary Logon – Do you really have to log in twice into one computer? Disable.
Telnet – Not sure what this is. Disable it.
Terminal Services – Unless you don’t have people looking at your desktop, you will want to disable this as well.
Wireless Zero Configuration – If you use wireless internet, DO NOT DISABLE THIS! If you are running off of Ethernet or other type devices, disable it.
Speed Up Internet by Tweaking TCP/IP Settings
Jan 11th
Windows has set a limit on all their operating systems to cap it at 3 Mbs. So if you have an 8 Mbs connection, you are losing 5 Mbs.
What is TCP/IP?
TCP/IP is a protocol all computers use to access the internet. Without this protocol you cannot browse the internet, play online games, listen to internet radio, not even check you e-mail.
In this article I am going to help you tweak your internet to run at optimal speeds. First we need to look at the program we are going to use. Speedguide.net has written a little but powerful program called TCPOptimizer. Once you have downloaded this software and save it to you desktop, you want to run it.
NOTE: Windows Vista users will need to right click this software and run as Administrator.
Make sure that you have your network card selected on the Network Adapter selection window. Now, what we need is to know how fast of internet you have, for instance – I have 15 Meg down and 1 Meg up. In other words, that is about 15,000 Kbps down and 1,000 Kbps up. So for the Connection Speed, I would slide the bar to 15000. Next we want to click at the bottom, Custom settings. Now, we need to make sure that the MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) and TTL (Time To Live) settings correct.
MTU Settings
Dial-up = 576
DSL = 1492
Cable Modem = 1500
Now with that said, I have cable modem, so I would set my MTU to 1500. I would also set the TTL to 128.
Click apply changes and finish following the on-screen directions, the reboot. Now go to Speedtest and run a bandwidth test. To see if you see a difference in speed of the internet, run a scan before tweaking and run a scan afterwards.
As far as trying to tweak Vista or Windows 7, 32 or 64 bit, it is already optimized.
HAPPY TWEAKING!!
Avast! Pro
Jan 11th
Once upon a few years ago I was having a lot of issues with my computer running funny. I was running Norton Antivirus, yeah, enough said. I then spoke with a good friend of mine John, he had pointed me toward Avast! I installed it and ran it scan. It has found 32 Trojan Horse Viruses! Why didn’t Norton find these? Well, to this day every machine I run and operate Windows or Linux has Avast! installed on it.
You can grab a copy for yourself and try it out Avast! Pro
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