5 ways to speed up your PC.

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Boy my computer is running a lot slower than it used to!" Lots of people do and they must, based on all the television commercials offering to speed-up your computer. These commercials offer "free" scans, but what they don't tell you is that you have to buy the software to fix what the scan finds.
Speeding up your computer isn't that difficult and you already have all the tools on your Windows computer. Sure there is better and faster software to accomplish this task, but Microsoft supplies stuff already embedded in Windows to accomplish this task.
Here are the 5 things Microsoft says you need to do to speed-up your computer.

1. Free up disk space: Use Disk Cleanup
2. Speed up access to data: Use Disk Defragmenter
3. Detect and repair disk errors: Use Check Disk
4. Protect your computer against spyware: PC safety scan from Windows Live OneCare.
5. Learn all about ReadyBoost: Only for Windows 7 & Vista.

For more a more detailed explanation on each step mentioned above, see the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/maintenance/speed.aspx

Just to show that I am not on Bill Gates payroll, although I'd love to be, here are the 6 things I do to clean up & speed up a computer:

1. Tune up and clean your registry: I use a free program called "CCleaner."
2. Clean up Temp, Prefetch, & Temp. Internet Files: "CCleaner."
3. Manage Start-up Programs: "CCleaner."
4. Move large files to a separate back-up: This involves either burning these files to a CD/DVD or moving them to an external Hard Drive. Once you do this, delete them.
5. Out with the Old: Delete all your old files when you are done with them.
6. Get rid of viruses, malware, spyware: I recommend "SpyBot Search & Destroy," "AVG," & "Malwarebytes." All of these are free online.

For even more advice on this subject, here is another link to checkout:
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_speed_up_my_windows_xp_pc.html

I hope this helps and as always, keep your comments & questions coming.

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$161.84 to Infect 20,000 Users

I came across the following article and thought someone beside myself would find it interesting.
This might explain to some of you that have asked me, "How did I get a virus, I only go to "good" websites?" This may explain it! I hope you enjoy the following article & find it very infomative.

"In a paper titled “Is the Internet for Porn? An Insight Into the Online Adult Industry” and presented at The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security conference, researchers spent $161.84 to have approximately 49,000 visitors directed to their adult web sites.
As visitors arrived, the research adult web sites would check to see if the browsers had current versions of the Adobe Flash plugin, the Adobe PDF plugin and a Microsoft Office plugin. All of these plugins have had remotely exploitable vulnerabilities.
The researchers discovered that over 20,000 of their visitors had at least one outdated plugin, which means that these visitors are easy victims for drive by infections.
The researchers did conclude that adult oriented web sites tend to be more dangerous than other web sites, but you would be wrong to believe that the risk is insignificant if you don’t visit such web sites.
The criminals are also targeting legitimate web sites. The criminals are always trying to make sure that when you search for something on the web, their malicious web sites will be at the top of your results.
I’ve said it on many other occasions, but it is worth repeating again, keep those third party programs up to date!!! I highly recommend that home users take advantage of the Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) at http://www.secunia.com/. This free utility can help you keep your software current. Even if you limit your browsing to “clean” web sites, having vulnerable software puts you at considerable risk."

Randy AbramsDirector of Technical Education

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