How To Get Rid Of Malware

Malware programs such as virus, Trojans, worms, spyware and adware can infiltrate your system through many different sources. These malicious programs replicate quickly and not only generate several computer errors, but also cause frequent computer freeze ups and crashes.

So, if your PC is suddenly bombarded with several computer errors and your system becomes so slow that you just can’t get any work done, its time for you to do an immediate malware scan and removal. The following are some of the tasks that you can perform to get rid of malware from your system.

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Use Malware Removal Programs

First and foremost, you need to use malware removal programs, such as antivirus and antispyware to perform a full system scan and detect and remove all malicious data. Before performing the scan, it is essential that you update these tools to ensure that they are well-equipped to detect the latest malware. It is also recommended that you perform the scan in Safe Mode. Because your Windows system loads with only essential processes in Safe Mode, malware scan and removal processes in this mode are more effective.

Clean your registry

Just like all other software on your Windows PC, even malware programs need to add entries in the registry to carry out their malicious activities. Some of these programs are notorious for adding embedded registry keys that cannot be removed manually using the Windows Registry Editor (regedit) tool. These nonremovable keys are usually added to enable the malicious spyware programs to reinstall themselves after they are uninstalled. To scan and remove these malicious keys, it is advised that you use a good and reliable registry cleaner tool to perform a thorough registry scan and clean up.

It is not good to have malware programs on the system. This is the reason why as a vigilant user, you must take steps to prevent them from infecting your system. The following are some of the tasks that you can perform to prevent malware infections:

Update your system

Software and hardware manufacturers release regular software updates of their products. These updates not help in improving the performance of your system, but also help in patching up any security vulnerability in the product. Because many malware programs are developed to exploit these security threats, it is recommended that you regularly update your operating system, device drivers and other software programs installed on your PC.

Install a firewall

A firewall is a great tool that helps in blocking non-trustworthy traffic to your computer. Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems come equipped with a built-in Windows Firewall tool. You must enable this tool to block malicious data.

Enable realtime protection

Many good malware removal tools comprise the real-time protection feature. When you enable this feature, all incoming traffic to your system is analyzed by the malware removal tool and any malicious attack is reported before it can affect your system.

Be a Vigilant User

Last but not least, it is essential for you to be a vigilant user. You must:

• Never open attachments that come with unsolicited emails.
• Avoid downloading software from unreliable sources.
• Avoid giving away your confidential information on dubious and noncertified Web sites.
• Check any external media before copying data from it to the system.
• Regularly use the malware removal and registry cleaner tools to maintain a healthy PC.

What you’ll need

- A Computer (…duh)
- A Windows XP Installation Disk
- Windows XP License Key
- The ability to follow simple instructions

These directions are for someone who is going to re-format a disk and do a fresh installation of Windows XP

- With the computer on, put the Windows installation disc in the CD-ROM and restart the computer
- First you want to make sure your computer is set to boot from CD-ROM
- You can do this by pressing the button the computer specifies on startup to enter setup (usually Del or F2).
- Then move over to the boot menu and make sure CD-ROM is the first boot device in the list, if it’s not, change it to where it is the first boot device
- Then save and close (usually F10) and allow computer to reboot
- When the computer restarts and boots from the disc allow it to load the installation files
- When it asks what you would like to do, press Enter to install Windows
- Then when the Licensing Agreement comes up press F8 to agree
- Then the setup screen shows the partitions and OS’s already on the computer
- To format the drive to install a fresh version of Windows you will press ESC
- Then on this screen highlight any existing partitions and delete by pressing D
- Then press Enter to delete the partition
- Then press L to confirm the deletion of the partition
- Then you should have a whole disk full of Unpartitioned space, press Enter to install Windows in this space. (If you would like to create additional partitions, you can do that here as well)
- Then here you will want to choose “Format the partition using the NTFS file system” (it should already be highlighted)
- Then the formatting process will start and it could take a while so go grab a sandwich
- Then the setup will begin copying all the Windows installation files which will take a while also so grab some chips to go with your sandwich
- Then allow the computer to reboot (don’t “press any key to boot from cd”)

- From here on the Windows Graphic Installer will guide you through the rest of the simple setup.

I’m sure you have heard people using the word Format when you talk about computers and drives, but what does it mean to actually format a drive. Formatting, blowing out, wiping clean, or emptying a hard disk simply means erasing all data from the disk and preparing it for fresh Operating System install. When you format a disk it removes everything that was stored on the disk, fixes any errors (unless you’re doing a quick format) and re-writes the file tables, and mbr (Master Boot Record). Formatting is the ultimate cleaning process for any hard disk. It’s actually a good idea to format you disk after a while and re-install your OS and programs (maybe once a year) just to give it cleaning. But always remember to back up anything on the computer you want to keep and put back into it after you re-install the operating system.

People usually format their disk when they are manipulating partitions, encounter viruses, or get a computer from someone else and just want to clean it out and start fresh. Before you go formatting your drives all willy nilly, please remember and take into consideration that formatting your disk will delete EVERYTHING on the disk, including the operating system (Windows, Linux, etc.). So if you are interested in doing a disk format for a fresh start then you need to make sure you are prepared to install an operating system.

There are different ways of formatting because there are so many different circumstances that people want to format. When you are setting up a dual boot, there are different ways you can go about formatting the partition you want the secondary OS to go on. If you just want to erase everything and start fresh then you will need either the OS Installation Disk(s), a boot disk, or the OEM OS disk(s) that may or may not have came with your computer.

The easiest way to start fresh is to just use the installation disk(s) of the OS you are installing (assuming you are using Windows and installing Windows). When you go to install Windows it will allow you to format the disk during the installation.

A Motherboard (or System Board) is a one of the most essential parts of not just the computer, but many electronics such as televisions and stereos. Also referred to as a Mobo, this component is in charge of relaying information between all the different components connected to it. It’s safe to say the microprocessor is the heart of the computer and the motherboard is the body and structure. The system board itself is made up of chips, transistors, and circuits. The different components, such as the video card, pci cards, and the memory modules talk to each other by transferring data and information along the circuits, or buses on the system board. Pretty much all the internal components of a computer are connected to the system board.

Every motherboard operates off of a BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), which is basically a small program inside a chip on the board that controls how the motherboard operates and handles the components connected to it. When you first turn your computer on, before your operating system loads up, you are seeing your BIOS in action. All those gobbled up words running across the screen is your BIOS running its self tests to see what all is connected to the motherboard, and if there is any problems with any of the components.

When building your own computer, making sure the motherboard you choose has the correct socket for the processor you choose is crucial. Most computer builders pick out a processor first and then choose a motherboard accordingly. So I you were to pick out a Socket 478 Pentium 4 processor then you have to make sure you pick out a motherboard that will fit a Socket 478 Pentuem 4 processor. It’s also always a good idea to purchase a motherboard with more slots (pci and memory) than you currently need, so you can have room for expansion.

An Operating System is what controls your computer’s hardware and software. It is responsible for the overall operation of your computer system and components and their interconnectivity. In other words, through the OS is how you talk to your computer and tell it what you want it to do. Without it your computer would just be a bunch or hardware and components connected together sitting in an enclosure. Microsoft Windows leads the OS industry because of it’s user-friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface) among many other reasons. Windows XP is probably the most popular in use right now. XP earned it’s popularity because of its increased stability over the previous Windows versions. It’s also very user-friendly, and very easy to maneuver.

Microsoft likes to give different flavors of their OS’s such as Windows XP Professional, Media Center Edition, or the even newer Vista Home Edition, Home Premium and Ultimate. The different flavors are meant to aim at different audiences. The Home editions are for the general computer user who prepares essays, surfs the web, burns some cd’s here and there, and don’t really care about the super visual effects that Ultimate can give them.

Apple is Microsoft’s biggest competitor with their line of Mac operating systems which come loaded on their iMacs and MacBooks. Their are also open source (meaning freely distributed code) Operating Systems such as Linux which is based on the Unix platform. Linux comes in a variety of different flavors because anyone can take the code, have fun with it, and develop their on distribution of Linux. Distributions of Linux include Red Hat, Knoppix, SuSe, MandrakeSoft, and many more.

The microprocessor is basically a silicon chip that houses your computer’s CPU (Central Processing Unit). The terms CPU and Microprocessor are generally used interchangeably. This is the heart of the computer where are the logical processing takes place. Any time the user requests an action (as in clicking on something, typing something, printing something, etc.) the request goes straight to the microprocessor from the OS where the CPU decides what to do with the instruction. If a user clicks the Internet Explorer icon the request goes from the OS (Operating System), to the microprocessor, to the hard disk where the program in stored, and then the program is moved to memory where it is held until terminated.

A Hard Disk (Hard Drive) is where everything is stored on your computer. All of your programs, files, OS(’s) (Operating System(s)), and any other data that you save or install in all stored on your Hard Disk. In computer terms it is proper to spell disk in hard disk with a k rather than c (disc) because disc is used for cd’s and the term disk is used for the magnetic disks which are used in hard drives. Hard disks, unlike RAM (Memory), is considered non-volatile which means it keeps information stored even after the computer is turned off. The amount of information a hard drive can hold is usually measured in Megabytes (MB’s) or more often these days Gigabytes (GB’s). They also have some servers that use hard disk’s that hold massive amounts of information that amount to Terabytes (TB’s).

The most popular hard disks fall into two main categories: Parallel ATA and Serial ATA. Parallel ATA is more less the standard for hard disks but Serial ATA is becoming more and more popular. The main differences between the two are cables size, speed, and price. PATA hard disks use big flat bulky cables to connect to your power supply and motherboard within your tower enclosure. SATA hard disks use a serial cable to connect to the different components with your computer. Because SATA hard disks are still fairly new, they are generally more expensive than PATA drives because of there faster speeds and newer technology used.

A hard drive is basically a magnetic disk enclosed in a metal casing that spins. It kind of works like a cd in a cd player. When you request information to be retrieved from the disk, the read/write heads on the drives locates and find the wanted data and then transfers it to the system’s memory where it is held until either the user terminates it or the computer is shut off. The hard disk is a very important component in the computer system. Without the hard drive, there would be no working computer system.

Memory is just another word for the technical term RAM (Random Access Memory). It is basically a holding place for data so it can be easily retrieved by the microprocessor. Unlike a Hard Disk, RAM is volatile meaning when you turn your computer off, whatever is stored in your memory (RAM) is lost. Please do not get memory confused with hard disk space, they are two totally different things. There are many different types of RAM, which usually fall into these two main categories: Static RAM and Dynamic RAM. To keep it simple the main differences between the two are speed, space, and price. Static RAM is much faster than Dynamic RAM because Static RAM doesn’t have to continually refresh as Dynamic RAM does. Static RAM is generally also capable of holding much more information than Dynamic RAM. With that being said you can see Static RAM is generally more expensive than Dynamic RAM.

Every time you open a program, your adding data to your holding place (memory). The more programs and processes you have running at the same time, the more memory you are taking up, and the slower your computer’s performance will be.

So say your computer has 512 MB’s (Megabytes) of RAM and you take a look at your processes and you are using about 400 MB’s or memory, you may want to close some programs. When you get to the point where you have used up almost all of your memory and virtual memory, your computer with give you a message stating that you cannot open anymore programs or applications until your close some of the ones you have running.

You can see how much RAM you have by following these steps…

(Windows XP)

1. Click Start
2. Right-Click on My Computer
3. Click Properties

Virtual memory serves the same purpose as Memory (RAM) but works a little different than RAM. Virtual memory basically helps out your computer’s RAM by taking on some of the data it needs to hold so it won’t become overwhelmed so to speak. RAM is actually a component which is physically installed in your computer, where Virtual Memory is actually specially allocated space on your hard disk.

Windows actually tricks the microprocessor into thinking that this space on the hard disk is actually the same thing as RAM so it treats it as RAM. Of course data in Virtual Memory is retrieved much slower than data in RAM because RAM uses electrical signals to transmit information and data where the hard disk uses read/write heads to input and retrieve data onto the disk. Information kept in virtual memory is stored in a special place called the Page File. The pagefile.sys is hidden so that it can’t be accidentally deleted or corrupt, it is not recommended to manipulate your page file unless you know what you are doing.

You can actually set how much space on your hard disk you want to allocate for Page File usage by following these steps…

(Windows XP)

1. Click Start
2. Click Control Panel
3. Click Performance and Maintenance
4. Click System
5. Click the Advanced Tab
6. In the Performance Section Click Settings
7. Click the Advanced Tab
8. In the Virtual Memory section you’ll notice how much space is already allocated for Page File use
9. To change it click Change
10. From here you can change the page file size to your preference, but I don’t recommend going over the recommended size.

Phishing is the act of convincing or tricking a user into giving away personal information. Phishing can come in all kinds of flavors. They can come in e-mails saying you won something and all they need to process your winnings and have them ship it out to you is your name, address, credit card information, and maybe even your social security number (which you should NEVER give out online unless you know your information is being transferred over a secure encrypted server). They always promise they won’t charge anything to it, it’s just for security purposes (yea right).

You may be thinking, I’ll never be tricked by one of these foolish scams, but think again. As I said before, phishing comes in many different flavors. Say you got an e-mail from you bank stating that there has been strange activity on your account and they need to verify you information. So the e-mail asks you for your personal information such as your name, address, SS#, etc. DON’T GIVE IT TO THEM, because it probably is an impersonator pretending to be your bank. This has happened plenty of times and is one of the leading causes of identity theft.

First of all, your bank (if is a legitimate bank) will NEVER ask you input your personal information into an e-mail and send it to them.

Secondly, even if there is a link in the e-mail they ask you to click on to go to the banks website and fill in information, pay attention to the address bar and make sure it displays your banks url. And look closely because a lot of phishers like to disguise their url’s to look as if it were the real site.

• Eg. Real - Phisher -

For Internet Explorer user, their is a great phishing filter already included in the newest version (Internet Explorer 7) to help protect against being phished. You can download the latest version of IE from Download.com or Microsoft’s website directly. To make sure your Phishing Filter is turned on…

• Open your Internet Explorer
• Click Tools
• Hover over Phishing Filter
• When the pop-up menu shows up, the second option should be either “Turn On Automatic Website Checking” or Turn Off Automatic Website Checking”
• You want it to say “Turn Off Automatic Website Checking” because this means that it is already on.
• If it says “Turn On Automatic Website Checking” then click on it to turn it on.

For Firefox Version 2 or later users, the Phishing Filter is automatically activated. To test to make sure your Phishing Filter is on and working you can go to the site below. A warning dialog should appear and you can just click “Get me out of here” to exit the site.

• Firefox Phishing Test site

If the site doesn’t show the warning dialog, then make sure your phishing settings are on by doing the following in Firefox…

• Click Tools
• Click Options
• Click Security
• Here make sure the options “Warn me when site try to install add-ons” and “Tell me if the site I am visiting is a suspected forgery” are checked
• And under the “Tell me if the site I am visiting is a suspected forgery” option make sure the “Check using a downloaded list of suspected sites” option is selected. Firefox does a great job keeping the list of suspected sites updated.

A lot of Internet Security Suites, such as Norton, comes equipped with Phishing filters also.