Greetings Friends,
We all use our computers to go onto the web for research. Harmless right? Wrong!
The other day when searching for how to train a dog, a malicious software attached itself to my computer. This malicious software, virus or malware whatever they are calling it, immediately corrupted my computer causing it to become unresponsive and unusable within seconds (my avg antivirus program to recognize it but didn’t stop it). This all happened by simply going to Google…researching how to train a dog and then clicking on what appeared to be a harmless website. This is my first infected computer in many many years and came as a big surprise.
Without going into too many technical details here’s how to protect yourself from unwanted loss of data and hours and hours of frustration:
1.
Get a good anti-virus program:
a.
I would recommend a program called nod32 by www.eset.com (credit to my buddy Chris for saving me hours of downtime). This program saved me big time. I was able to remove the hard drive from my computer attach it to another computer via an external usb drive and then scan it for viruses which it found 20 and then removed them all thanks to Nod32 anti-virus software. Cost is around $50 for two years I believe.
2.
Upgrade to Windows 7 or Vista (Aumonts good recommendation)
a.
Win 7 or Vista have built in “user controls” that ask anytime a program wants to install itself to your computer, thereby limiting your exposure to unwanted software. Win XP does not. Cost is ?... it’s probably over $100 not sure but can find out at www.microsoft.com
3.
Use a backup software solution and set a back up schedule:
a.
I’m using Acronis true image for home www.acronis.com which is probably one of the best that I’ve seen and really easy to use as well. Basically, get a big hard drive, usb external 1tb from Buy.com http://www.buy.com/retail/usersearchresults.asp?querytype=home&qu=fantom&qxt=home&display=col
Then back up your data to that drive… making a drive image and boot discs in case you need to recover the hard drive. Acronis…cost? An external 1terabyte backup hard drive cost on sale around $80
If you have any questions let me know…
Hope that helps!
Ter
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