Virus is a common word that will harm you or your computer, of course we are talking about harmful computer viruses here. But is there any computer viruses out there that could potential harm you physically? Well.. if there's one, it'd be trojan horse. Trojan horse are considered as one of the virus too, but instead of messing up your computer, it drops a backdoor script or keylogger in your PC and steal your personal information such as password and credit card information. Nowadays, more and more people's are doing their purchasing online using credit card, we use it to buy items or pay our bills. Some people's may also have internet banking account or Payal to do their daily transaction. And trojan horse is mainly targeting at such groups of user, placing keylogger into your PC to track your internet & keyboard movement without you knowing it. They might even steal your email addresses since it's usually linked to many other sensitive information.
There are software out there to help you to remove trojan horse from your computer, but still the best solution is to prevent it. If you have antivirus software in your pc which more people do, update your virus definition database from the company website or update directly through the software auto update function. If you don't habe one, you seriously need to get one, try avg or avast it's free to use and it's pretty good.
Although antivirus software are good in detecting viruses, they might still let one or two slip through. To make sure your computer is clean from trojan horses, I recommend you to use trojan hunter. This software focuses on detecting trojan horse, removal & prevent it from running on the background. You can find a trial use at: www.misec.net
Beside a good antivirus & trojan removal software, you also need a good firewall. I already mentioned this in my previous post, but I'll say it again in case some of you missed the article. Zonealarm is currently the best firewall out there, you can get it here: www.zonealarm.com
Combining with these three software, you are pretty much safe. The rest is up to you, try not to download from unauthorized site or install software from unknown sources. Use your antivirus software or trojan removal software to scan the file before opening it. And make your software are up to date.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
How to edit File extensions
This might not be the biggest secret out there, but it might be new for some users. As you may already know, by default Windows XP doesn't show the extensions of a file. Some users don't know that and keep wondering how they could change the extensions when it's not even visible. In my last post, I talked about 7z extension, if you didn't turn on the extensions visibility, all you'd see is a winrar icon if you have it installed of course. It showed in Winrar because that's your default compress software and the file is compressed. But that doesn't mean that it's .rar file and you'd never know that if you can't see the extension of it. I'm not sure why Microsoft would want to hide the extensions by default, even though it says it was for security reason, but I think most users are clever enough to know what they are doing. Maybe Microsoft should disable the delete button so we couldn't accidentally delete any files? That's what happened with Windows Vista, Microsoft think they are only the clever one. Every action you do in Vista is pampered by the UAC, and keep asking you if you are sure what you want to do. That's why the most searches word for Vista are "how to disable UAC".
Anyway, I'm off topic again. So to enable the extensions, goto my computer, on the top menu select tools and folder option. A new windows will pop up, select view tab. On the second bracket, scroll down a little and you'll see "hide extensions for known file types". Untick the box and click apply. Now go back to your deskyop and you should be able to see the extensions. To change it, just click on the icon once, then you'll be able to change the file name or extension as you like.
Anyway, I'm off topic again. So to enable the extensions, goto my computer, on the top menu select tools and folder option. A new windows will pop up, select view tab. On the second bracket, scroll down a little and you'll see "hide extensions for known file types". Untick the box and click apply. Now go back to your deskyop and you should be able to see the extensions. To change it, just click on the icon once, then you'll be able to change the file name or extension as you like.
Monday, September 7, 2009
How to extract .7z file
It seems like .rar has dominate the market for a while until we start seeing quite a lot of .7z compressed file being uploaded to the net. Actually, .7z is just another file compress software just like .rar, so why do people start shifting to 7z? That's because .7z compress the file better than .rar, in another words, 7z software can compress file into much smaller size than winrar. Another advantage is 7 zip software support all kind of compress format including .zip, rar, 7z...etc. But Winrar doesn't support 7 zip format yet and it might never happen. 7-zip is another innovative free software that people love, it's easy to use and the features are much better. It's no surprise why people would want to change what they have been using for years. Well.. I was kind of forced to use but I'm glad I did. I have downloaded a 7z format but unfortunately winrar can't extract the file. So I start searching for some software that can open the file, it's not too difficult to find. As its format 7z, just type in 7z into google search and you'll see the site on top of the page. Here's the official site: www.7-zip.org
7 zip overall is a great freeware that do exactly what it says. Although the interface doesn't look as great as Winrar, the features is unbeatable. It's more practical than a pretty software that eats up your computer resources. Winrar is not bad either, and I'm still using it. But one thing I do notice that the new version is not compatible with the old version. That means that if the file is using newer version of winrar to extract, you may not be able to extract the file using an older version of the software.
7 zip overall is a great freeware that do exactly what it says. Although the interface doesn't look as great as Winrar, the features is unbeatable. It's more practical than a pretty software that eats up your computer resources. Winrar is not bad either, and I'm still using it. But one thing I do notice that the new version is not compatible with the old version. That means that if the file is using newer version of winrar to extract, you may not be able to extract the file using an older version of the software.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
MP3 Music Player software for your PC
There's a lot of free mp3 music player software on the internet, and winamp is probably the most popular one out there. I have used it before, but that's quite some time ago. I don't listen to a lot of music on my PC, at least not playing constantly on the background. Thus, other video player such as VLC, KMplayer and Windows Media Player are doing a fine job. But the best music player among these three I'd have to vouch for Windows Media Player which I hate it totally as a video player (You can read my previous post to know why). If you are a heavy music user's, you should have hundreds if not thousands of song on your list. It'll gets boring very soon if you keep listening to the same songs over and over again. Windows Media Player (WMP) have this function to save your music list in different album. You can choose what to play in each days, maybe you like some heavy music in the morning, and prefer softer songs in the night. WMP do just great by separating the album. You can always delete or add new songs to the album anytime. WMP save your list so you don't have to select and add your favorite songs again next time. As for vlc & kmplayer, it's good to play one or two song randomly in a day as it doesn't save your playlist like WMP and Winamp. It's fine with me as I preferred quite most of time, but listem to one or two of my favorite songs from time to time.
Wmp is a good music player and it's free bundled with the Windows. But if you perfer individual software other than WMP, I'd recommend you to try winamp. It's not famous without a good reason. As I mentioned, I haven't been using Winamp quite a while, so I'm not sure how far it evolved todays. From my experience, the music player is light on resources and very easy to use. Basically, you just click on the add button and select all songs from your PC you want to add to the list, then press ok. There you go, it'll start playing all the songs you have addded one by one after you click on the play button. There's also this repeat function that will continue playing the list of songs over again and again, you can choose to switch it on or off. It's the same as in Windows Media Player.
Ok, I just visited Winamp official site and it has three different version, pro, bundle & full. There's just one free version back then as I remembered. So of course, you'd want to download the free version first, it's around 10 MB in size. You can download it at http://www.winamp.com/player
It seems like there's a lot more features now, not sure if it's a good thing. Winamp also available in 16 different language version. Try it and let me know how it compares to WMP. Is it better or more of less the same.
Wmp is a good music player and it's free bundled with the Windows. But if you perfer individual software other than WMP, I'd recommend you to try winamp. It's not famous without a good reason. As I mentioned, I haven't been using Winamp quite a while, so I'm not sure how far it evolved todays. From my experience, the music player is light on resources and very easy to use. Basically, you just click on the add button and select all songs from your PC you want to add to the list, then press ok. There you go, it'll start playing all the songs you have addded one by one after you click on the play button. There's also this repeat function that will continue playing the list of songs over again and again, you can choose to switch it on or off. It's the same as in Windows Media Player.
Ok, I just visited Winamp official site and it has three different version, pro, bundle & full. There's just one free version back then as I remembered. So of course, you'd want to download the free version first, it's around 10 MB in size. You can download it at http://www.winamp.com/player
It seems like there's a lot more features now, not sure if it's a good thing. Winamp also available in 16 different language version. Try it and let me know how it compares to WMP. Is it better or more of less the same.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Clean up Adware, Spyware to speed up your PC even more
No matter how hard you try, there's always a hole for adware & spyware to slip in your PC. Some time it's not your firewall fault, but you yourself let them in without knowing it. There's no guarantee that trusted site wouldn't place some sneaky code to track your internet movement. Or some free software might install some other extra software in your PC without your conscience. Did you experience slow down on your PC? Did you always gets some weird advertisement pop-up when surfing the internet? This could be the act of adware and spyware. And these malicious software are everywhere on the internet, website, software & email. They may not be as harmful as a virus, but they can be anonying casuing major slow down or errors in your system. There's no way you can block them totally, unless you cut ties with the internet. But some company developed some nice adware & spyware removal tools to help you clean up your PC fast and easy.
The one I'm using right now is Ad-aware from Lavasoft. I've been using it since 5 years ago and it's also the best I've used so far. I haven't been trying a lot of different adware removal software since then, and I know there's some other good malicious removal software on the market including spybot. But personally, I haven't try it yet. Adaware is doing a good job cleaning up all useless junk from my PC, and it's still one of the most popular adware and spyware removal software on the market. The best thing is, most of them are free for the normal version of course. If you love what you use, you can buy the more advanced paid version of the software.
In our last post, we talked about how registry can slow down your PC. It does slow down your computer if you install & uninstall a lot of software and never clean it for a long time, but it's not significant, you might not even notice the difference. The real culpit that can really slow down your computer are adware & spyware. Many of them could be running on the background and eating up your system resources. If you notice your computer is not running as fast as before, you may want to do some clean up.
Many antivirus these days does find & clean adware & spyware, but they are still not in the league of standalone malicious cleaner. I'd still recommend you to download the free version of adaware and test it out, there is no harm trying it. You can find all these software at download.com
The one I'm using right now is Ad-aware from Lavasoft. I've been using it since 5 years ago and it's also the best I've used so far. I haven't been trying a lot of different adware removal software since then, and I know there's some other good malicious removal software on the market including spybot. But personally, I haven't try it yet. Adaware is doing a good job cleaning up all useless junk from my PC, and it's still one of the most popular adware and spyware removal software on the market. The best thing is, most of them are free for the normal version of course. If you love what you use, you can buy the more advanced paid version of the software.
In our last post, we talked about how registry can slow down your PC. It does slow down your computer if you install & uninstall a lot of software and never clean it for a long time, but it's not significant, you might not even notice the difference. The real culpit that can really slow down your computer are adware & spyware. Many of them could be running on the background and eating up your system resources. If you notice your computer is not running as fast as before, you may want to do some clean up.
Many antivirus these days does find & clean adware & spyware, but they are still not in the league of standalone malicious cleaner. I'd still recommend you to download the free version of adaware and test it out, there is no harm trying it. You can find all these software at download.com
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Clean up Registry & speed up your PC
Ok, some of you might already knew that every time we install a new software, whether it's Microsoft words, video player, antivirus or any other third-party software, it creates entry in the registry. But when you try to uninstall these software, the entry in registry doesn't remove along with the software. The registry list just keep building up every time you install a new software and eventually slow down your computer.
If you are an advanced user, you can do this manually by deleting the useless entry. To do that, click on start on your taskbar, select "run", type in "regedit" and click ok. Important: Do not randomly delete any entry in the registry, it might cause errors in your system or crash your Windows. But even the most advanced Windows user wouldn't want to do this themselves, it's a time consuming work and doesn't guarantee result. Therefore, software developer came out with all types of registry software that will clean, repair and fix your registry at the same time! It's an easier process with one mouse button click.
The problem now is which is the best that actually works? There are countless of such software either for free or paid. I normally won't use the paid version as there's a lot free version that actually works better. But if you try a trail version of a paid software and it does actually speed up and fix your registry problem, why not consider buying the software to support the developer. Still, most registry software I found cost around $29.99 which I found it quite expensive for the little speed improvement on the PC.
Here's the best free registry cleaner I found with the best users review, Auslogics Registry Cleaner. You can either type the name & search in Google or download directly through download.com, it's free and small in size, just a little over 2MB. Auslogics Registry Cleaner is light and fast, it'll clean up and speed up your PC in no time. It does what it supposed to and it's better than the defragger that comes with Windows XP & Vista. The software developer claims that after the cleaning, you will see a 2% increase in performance. It's not a lot and may not be noticeable, but hey every little bit helps and the software is free!
If you are an advanced user, you can do this manually by deleting the useless entry. To do that, click on start on your taskbar, select "run", type in "regedit" and click ok. Important: Do not randomly delete any entry in the registry, it might cause errors in your system or crash your Windows. But even the most advanced Windows user wouldn't want to do this themselves, it's a time consuming work and doesn't guarantee result. Therefore, software developer came out with all types of registry software that will clean, repair and fix your registry at the same time! It's an easier process with one mouse button click.
The problem now is which is the best that actually works? There are countless of such software either for free or paid. I normally won't use the paid version as there's a lot free version that actually works better. But if you try a trail version of a paid software and it does actually speed up and fix your registry problem, why not consider buying the software to support the developer. Still, most registry software I found cost around $29.99 which I found it quite expensive for the little speed improvement on the PC.
Here's the best free registry cleaner I found with the best users review, Auslogics Registry Cleaner. You can either type the name & search in Google or download directly through download.com, it's free and small in size, just a little over 2MB. Auslogics Registry Cleaner is light and fast, it'll clean up and speed up your PC in no time. It does what it supposed to and it's better than the defragger that comes with Windows XP & Vista. The software developer claims that after the cleaning, you will see a 2% increase in performance. It's not a lot and may not be noticeable, but hey every little bit helps and the software is free!
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Best Download Accelerator Download
All browser we are using have built in download function such as IE & firefox, but they are only good for small size download. If you are downloading file that's over 20MB in size, I highly recommend you to use a download accelerator software as it is much more faster and most importantly it support resume download. Of course, such features must be supported by the site too, or else it'll be useless.
I'm using firefox as my main browser, I don't use IE too much. I love firefox because of its speedy browsing speed and addons, unfortunately firefox built in download function is not as good. I often had this problems where the download just stop in the middle and totally not moving. It frustrated me especially when it's over 90% complete and end up downloading it again from the site. As I mentioned, if you are downloading files that are large in size and the site support resume download, use a download accelerator software to avoid such problems. Most software & major website should allowed the use of download accelerator, but most file hosting site are not except for mediafire.
There's two download accelerator I used before, netants & flashget. I haven't been using netants for so long, so I don't really have any comment on it, but it was good at the time. Currently, I'm using flashget for my download, the download speed is a lot faster that the firefox. I'm not sure why, but it just download faster on flashget. Maybe it's because it can separate the download work. It's like 5 download going at once at a single download. Flashget is a freeware, you can download it from its official site for free.
Flashget is an individual software. If you're using firefox and preffered to have it built in your browser, you can download the download accelerator addon on mozilla site. This will definitely save you trouble to open up the software everytime you want to download. By using firefox download plugin, it'll pop up with the choice of using the firefox download plugin. The plugin from what I heard is much better than the current firefox.
There's also another very cool firefox plugin that let you download files from site such as rapidhsare hands free! How do you fo it? Basically, you just copy all the rapidshare file URL into the software and let it run by itself. The software will automatically check every URL and make sure there's no broken link. This happened a lot when the file is too old or has been removed by the admin or uploader. After done checking, it'll start to download all files added in the list one by one. Now you don't have to go throguh rapidshare clicking this and that, and you don't even have to wait for the timer. The software will automatically wait for the rapidshare timer and download it, how cool is that?
So if you want the best download accelerator software, try flashget. If you want the best download tools for file hosting site, try the firefox plugin!
I'm using firefox as my main browser, I don't use IE too much. I love firefox because of its speedy browsing speed and addons, unfortunately firefox built in download function is not as good. I often had this problems where the download just stop in the middle and totally not moving. It frustrated me especially when it's over 90% complete and end up downloading it again from the site. As I mentioned, if you are downloading files that are large in size and the site support resume download, use a download accelerator software to avoid such problems. Most software & major website should allowed the use of download accelerator, but most file hosting site are not except for mediafire.
There's two download accelerator I used before, netants & flashget. I haven't been using netants for so long, so I don't really have any comment on it, but it was good at the time. Currently, I'm using flashget for my download, the download speed is a lot faster that the firefox. I'm not sure why, but it just download faster on flashget. Maybe it's because it can separate the download work. It's like 5 download going at once at a single download. Flashget is a freeware, you can download it from its official site for free.
Flashget is an individual software. If you're using firefox and preffered to have it built in your browser, you can download the download accelerator addon on mozilla site. This will definitely save you trouble to open up the software everytime you want to download. By using firefox download plugin, it'll pop up with the choice of using the firefox download plugin. The plugin from what I heard is much better than the current firefox.
There's also another very cool firefox plugin that let you download files from site such as rapidhsare hands free! How do you fo it? Basically, you just copy all the rapidshare file URL into the software and let it run by itself. The software will automatically check every URL and make sure there's no broken link. This happened a lot when the file is too old or has been removed by the admin or uploader. After done checking, it'll start to download all files added in the list one by one. Now you don't have to go throguh rapidshare clicking this and that, and you don't even have to wait for the timer. The software will automatically wait for the rapidshare timer and download it, how cool is that?
So if you want the best download accelerator software, try flashget. If you want the best download tools for file hosting site, try the firefox plugin!
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