Also keep an eye on your running tasks: ctrl+shift+escape (
taskmanager) and go to the tab called "processes'. Check the column 'CPU' to figure out which programs uses the most CPU cycles and slows down the system. Also check the tab named 'performance'; CPU usage should swing between 0-8% if you don't have anything special running. Check available Phyical Memory or Page File usage; could be a sign of a memory leak if you have less memory over time. Also defrag your hard drive, make sure that you have at least a few 100 MB free space.
Protection advice
- Install
Kaspersky 5 Pro virus scanner. Tests has proven that it catches most viruses of all scanners in the market and it also updates its signatures every 3 hours. It also has one of the best heuristic scanners, which means that it can catch a lot of new viruses for which it doesn't have a signature yet. It's also one of the best scanners for scanning inside archives, it supports an amaizing 700+ archive formats. E-mail scanning, protection against keyloggers, macros, etc, it's all included. Not the fastest scanner though and you'll need at least a 1.5+ Ghz machine, but that's the logical downside of its extensive tests. You can of cause always disable on demand scanning and scan manually.
AVK and
MKS_Vir are less known, but belong in the top 3 after reading several tests. My experiences are the same after trying them out on a test bed of 1,000+ viruses. (For some reason East-European virus scanner manufacturers are the best in the market).
Also run a scheduled full scan during the night. You might consider to use an online scanner if you prefer not to buy a new scanner.
- Install
Sygate Firewall Pro or
Agnitum Outpost, they work great, stable and are not so much of a resource hog like most other programs. If you're having a highspeed connection, use a
router, it serves as an extra protection (hardware firewall)
- Install
Webroot Spy Sweeper. Type
"Spy Sweeper" review in any search engine to see that it's always in 1st place. It has shields for favorites, homes page, hijack attempts, tracking cookies, memory, installation of spyware, host shield, startup shield, ad sites, messenger, etc. It blocks about 26,000 spyware programs and tracking cookies. No anti spyware software is perfect, so make sure that you also have
Spybot Research & Destroy and
Ad-Aware installed (free).
Spyware Eliminator is also good.
- Update the OS with the latest patches. Close as many programs as possible to avoid problems after installing a patch.
If you have XP, make sure you update to SP2 in August(?), because it contains some very important security updates.
- Check security options in IE and Outlook Express or consider alternative browser or E-mail program
- Use the a great program like
Mailwasher Pro to keep unwanted E-mail out. Make sure that your ISP offer spam and virus protection for its email service. Consider free E-mail like Yahoo mail or hotmail that offer this kind of protection.
- Avoid opening attachments in E-mails, avoid funware (screensavers, little free games, explorer toolbars and things like that).
- Use long passwords that contain at least a symbol and number, change passwords on a regular basis and never write them down. If you want to keep some log, write them in a program like
Passkeeper;
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,3176,00.asp
It's free, doesn't need to be installed and huges high encryption. You can put it on a floppy or usb memory stick (it's only 85kb) so that you can use it where ever you are.
Don't worry too much about security, it's not all that bad as it seems, as long as you DO what you have to do to make your system more secure ((and that's the problem many times, people don't protect themselves enough).
... and there is a lot more to it, but I have to run now, c'ya around fellow photoshoppers