Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Damian

This handy utility removes a variety of different viruses and malware, and is available free!

Here is a list of some of the viruses it can remove.

Some key features:

  • Support for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.
  • Light speed quick scanning.
  • Ability to perform full scans for all drives.
  • Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware Protection Module.
  • Database updates released daily.
  • Quarantine to hold threats and restore them at your convenience.
  • Ignore list for both the scanner and Protection Module.
  • Settings to enhance your Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware performance.
  • A small list of extra utilities to help remove malware manually.
  • Multi-lingual support.
  • Works together with other anti-malware utilities.
  • Command line support for quick scanning.
  • Context menu integration to scan files on demand.

The program is available now from Malwarebytes

Of course, not all viruses are that easy to eliminate. Give us a call if you just can’t get rid on 0800 7879 258 for some free advice, or to arrange an appointment.

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How-To: Install a Graphics Card in Your PC

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Damian

Tiger TV have an easy to follow walkthrough on installing a new graphics card into your PC:

Both Maplin and Insight are good places to buy a graphics card – Insight is a little cheaper than Maplin also (if you are prepared to wait for the card to be delivered!):

Of course, if you aren’t confident, or just can’t get it working – give us a call on 0845 310 2750 for some free advice or to arrange an appointment.

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Alternatives to Microsoft Office

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Damian

openofficelogo

Sun Microsystems have now released v3.0 of their popular ‘OpenOffice.org’ productivity suite. It’s a fantastic alternative for current users of Microsoft Office, or those who wish to have the functionality of the Microsoft Office suite, but do not like the high pricetag.

It has compatibility with all the Microsoft Office file types (including new .docx for Microsoft Word 2007)

Installation of OpenOffice.org is easy – follow the links below for walkthroughs:

For online only use, perhaps consider Google Docs – you can download and upload files from here also, meaning that at a push, you could use it to edit a file where you do not have your normal office suite installed.

There is a huge list of other alternatives at wikipedia – our preference definitely lies with OpenOffice.org however.

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Using a BlackBerry with ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Damian

Mad Analogy has a nice walkthrough on how to charge or backup your BlackBerry device under Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. This also works fine on Hardy Heron 8.04.

Barry, the software package he reccomends installing can also be installed by double-clicking on the RPM files that are available on the SourceForge.net site for the tool:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=153722

You will need to download and install the following packages:

barrybackup-gui_0.14-0_ubuntu804_i386.deb
barry-util_0.14-0_ubuntu804_i386.deb
libbarry0_0.14-0_ubuntu804_i386.deb
libbarry-dev_0.14-0_ubuntu804_i386.deb
libopensync-plugin-barry_0.14-0_ubuntu804_i386.deb

Which some may find a little easier than the normal apt-get malarkey!

Link to Mad Analogy walkthrough:
http://www.madanalogy.com/2007/10/blackberry-support-in-ubuntu-gutsy.html

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Free alternative to Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Damian

Norton Ghost is an extremely useful utility that allows you to duplicate one hard drive to another. In How to install/replace a PATA (IDE) hard drive we shared a video showing how to physically replace an ATA or IDE hard drive.

But what about your old data? Well, you can copy this from your old hard drive with a number of utilites, Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image being some of the more popular commerical programs.

You can use a nifty utility called Clonezilla to do this for free.

Some of the key features of Clonezilla:

  • Free (GPL) Software.
  • Filesystem supported: ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs of GNU/Linux, FAT, NTFS of MS Windows, and HFS+ of Mac OS (testing feature provided by partclone). Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows and Intel-based Mac OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.
  • LVM2 (LVM version 1 is not) under GNU/Linux is supported.
  • Multicast is supported in Clonezilla SE, which is suitable for massively clone. You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported in your clients.
  • Based on Partimage, ntfsclone, partclone, and dd to clone partition. However, clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.
  • By using another free software drbl-winroll, which is also developed by the same people, the hostname, group, and SID of cloned MS windows machine can be automatically changed.

For most home and small business users, the live CD Clonezilla live is probably your best bet. By recording the ISO (CD image file) to CD with a free utility like ISORecorder you can boot from the CD and duplicate your hard drive.

Links:

Petri.co.il – A walkthough of CD burning with ISORecorder
Clonezilla – A walkthough of using Clonezilla live (technical)

Of course, Jaytag are on hand to assist in dulicating your data – give us a call on 0845 310 2750 for free advice, or to arrange an appointment.

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Learn the 5 Mistakes Most Everyone Makes…

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Damian

Watching the net have made an interesting post about making the mistakes that everyone makes with their computer – but shouldn’t!

All of the points made are accurate, and we would recommend making the changes discussed.

http://www.watchingthenet.com/computer-problem-tips-are-you-messing-up-your-computer-learn-the-5-mistakes-most-everyone-makes.html

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Free alternatives to Norton Internet Security and McAfee Internet Security

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Damian

Both Norton Internet Security and the McAfee Internet Security suite are excellent products for ensuring your PC is protected while online. Both offer anti-virus tools, spyware blockers, trojan detection etc. However, the fees associated with keeping them up to date (often £20-30 annually) can be prohibitive.

There is an alternative in the world of anti-virus however, and this comes in the form of AVG.

The AVG free edition is just that – free. It does have a few limitations:

  • Less protection – AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0 provides only base level protection against viruses, spyware and safe searching. It does not provide safe surfing (drive-by download protection) nor protection from crackers, keyloggers, spam, phishing attacks and malicious file downloads that can come through instant messaging and attachments from seemingly friendly sources. This protection is only available in the commercial versions of AVG products.
  • Slower updates – AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0 receives updates via a lower priority service. Priority updating via high-speed servers is only available for the commercial versions of AVG products.
  • No telephone or e-mail technical support – There is no telephone or e-mail technical support provided by AVG for users of AVG Free Edition products anywhere in the world. AVG Free Edition users have access to support via the self-help AVG Free Forum.
  • No customization – Scheduling options in AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0 are very limited (only one scheduled update per day, one scheduled scan per day etc.). The AVG Resident Shield configuration is limited with no exclusion settings. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition does not offer advanced testing options, password-protected archives reporting, adjustment of scan process priority and many other features.
  • No server support – AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0 cannot be installed on server operating systems (such as Windows Server 2003), nor can it be used for the scanning of network drives.

However – most of the above are not a serious consideration for home users. Jaytag reccomend the installation of AVG instead of the products from Norton or McAfee for two reasons:

  • Cost
  • Performance

One of the biggest benefits of AVG is its small resource requirements – the AVG Free Edition requires just 16 MB of RAM and 20 MB of space on the hard drive.

You can download the free version of AVG here.

It should be noted that the free version of AVG does not feature a firewall or email anti-spam. However, the following free tools are excellent alternatives:

Comodo Firewall Pro – a free software firewall
SpamBayes – a free bayesian spam filter

Posted in software, virus removal, windows | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

How to Remove Msevents / Trojan.vundo / WinFixer / Virtumonde

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Damian

Vindo and Virtumonde seem to be everywhere at the moment, but there is an easy way to remove them – with a tool called VundoFix. You can download this from the author’s website.

Here is a step-by-step walkthrough from geeks to go:

  • Download VundoFix.exe to your desktop
  • Double-click VundoFix.exe to run it
  • Click the Scan for Vundo button
  • Once it’s done scanning, click the Remove Vundo button.
  • You will receive a prompt asking if you want to remove the files, click YES
  • Once you click yes, your desktop will go blank as it starts removing Vundo
  • When completed, it will prompt that it will reboot your computer, click OK

Note: It is possible that VundoFix encountered a file it could not remove. In this case, VundoFix will run on reboot, simply follow the above instructions starting from “Click the Scan for Vundo button” when VundoFix appears upon rebooting.

If VundoFix doesn’t do it, give us a call for some free advice on virus removal, or to arrange an appointment on 0845 310 2750.

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How to add more RAM to your desktop PC

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Damian

Have a look at this video from howstuffworks.com – it explains all you need to know about upgrading the RAM in your computer:

A cheap place to buy RAM on the high street? Somewhere like Maplin is a great idea – they are cheaper than PC world, and will allow you to return the part it if is not correct.

Online, somewhere like play.com or insight.com are good – although watch the shipping costs! It often becomes cheaper to buy on the high street when you add that £10.

Links:

Jaytag would be happy to assist in adding more RAM to your PC if you are not confident – give us a call on 0845 310 2750.

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Repairing a corrupt PST personal folders file

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Damian

I wrote previously about corrupt PST files. The first you may know about it may be an error message like this:

Unable to expand the folder. The set of folders could not be opened. Errors could have been detected in the file drive:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst. Quit all mail-enabled applications, and then use the Inbox Repair Tool.

Thankfully, Microsoft provide a PST repair tool for just this occurance:

  • On the Start menu, click Run.
  • In the Open box, type:
  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\LocaleID\scanpst.exe

Where LocaleID is the locale identifier (LCID) for your installation of Microsoft Office. For example, the LCID for English (United States) is 1033. For a list of LCIDs, see Microsoft Office Help.

  • Click OK.
  • In the Enter the name of the file you want to scan box, type the path and file name given in the error message above.
  • Note that you may not be able to use the Browse button to locate this file because it is located in a hidden folder.
  • To change the options for logging errors during the scan, click Options. If you choose Replace log or Append to log, the log file is saved to the same directory as the .pst file.
  • Click Start
  • When the file scan is completed, select the Make a backup of scanned file before repairing check box.
  • Click Repair

If the file is successfully repaired, you will see a Repair complete message. If the Inbox Repair Tool was unable to repair the file, you will need to use a backup of your file.

There are third party programs available which could also help:
http://i4you.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/about-microsoft-outlook-errors-and-outlook-pst-repair-tool/

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Posted in MS Office, outlook, software, windows | Tagged , , | 1 Comment