Is your computer infected with virus? Do you often get mysterious error
messages? Well this is a common problem faced by almost all the
computer users across the globe. There are many viruses and worms out
there that could infect your computer. Some are harmless, but, they do
have the capacity to do any number of nasty things, up to and
including, erasing all data from your computer. However there are ways
to keep viruses away from your PC. Here are the 12 tips to maintain a
virus free computer.
1. Email is one of the common ways by which your computer can catch a
virus. So it is always recommended to stay away from SPAM. Open only
those emails that has it’s origin from a trusted source such as those
which comes from your contact list. If you are using your own private
email host (other than gmail, yahoo, hotmail etc.) then it is highly
recommended that you use a good anti-spam software. And finally NEVER
click on any links in the emails that comes from untrusted sources.
2. USB thumb/pen drives is another common way by which viruses spread
rapidly. So it is always a good habit to perform a virus scan before
copying any data onto your computer. NEVER double-click the pen drive to
open it. Instead right-click on it and select the option “open”. This
is a safe way to open a pen drive.
3. Be careful about using MS Outlook. Outlook is more susceptible to
worms than other e-mail programs, unless you have efficient Anti-Virus
programs running. Use Pegasus or Thunderbird (by Mozilla), or a
web-based program such as Hotmail or Yahoo (In Firefox).
4. As we all know, Internet is the main source of all the malicious
programs including viruses, worms, trojans etc. In fact Internet
contributes to virus infection by up to 80%. So here are the tips for
safe surfing habits so that you can ward off virus infection up to the
maximum extent.
Don’t click on pop-up windows that announce a sudden disaster in your
city or announce that you’ve won an hourly prize. They are the ways to
mislead Internet users and you should never trust them.
You can also use a pop-up blocker to automatically block those pop-ups.
5. Most of us use search engines like Google to find what we are looking
for. It is quite obvious for a malicious website to get listed in the
search results. So to avoid visiting those untrusted malicious
websites, you can download and install the AVG LinkScanner which is a
freeware. This tool can become very handy and will help you to stay
away from malicious websites.
6. Install a good antivirus software and keep it updated. Also perform
full system scan periodically. It is highly recommended that you turn on
the automatic update feature. This is the most essential task to
protect your PC from virues. If PC security is your first option then it
is recommended that you go for a shareware antivirus software over the
free ones. Most of the antivirus supports the Auto-Protect feature
that provides realtime security for your PC. Make sure that this
feature is turned on.
7. Install a good Antispyware program, that operates against Internet malware and spyware.
8. Never open any email attachments that come from untrusted sources. If
it is a picture, text or sound file (these attachments end in the
extensions .txt, .jpeg, .gif, .bmp, .tif, .mp3, .htm, .html, and .avi),
you are probably safe, but still do a scan before opening.
9. Do not use disks that other people gave you, even from work. The disk
could be infected with a virus. Of course, you can run a virus scan on
it first to check it out.
10. Set up your Windows Update to automatically download patches and
upgrades. This will allow your computer to automatically download any
updates to both the operating system and Internet Explorer. These
updates fix security holes in both pieces of software.
11. While you download files from untrusted websites/sources such as
torrents, warez etc. make sure that you run a virus scan before
executing them.
12. And finally it is recommended not to visit the websites that feature
illegal/unwanted stuffs such as cracks, serials, warez etc. since they
contribute much in spreading of viruses and other malicious programs.
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Wrong! The low level format option is set for any BIOS and can be
easily use if you know some command line programming, like Disk
Operating System (DOS). The low level format can take to be complete a
very long period of time but in the most cases we can obtain marvelous
results. Actually the low level option takes every cluster of the hard
disk and identifies them again and writes down on the memory of the hard
disk what sectors can be written and witch blocks are un-writable.
This procedure is the best that can be because it will need no effort
from your side to try and avoid the bad blocks that already exists and
the hard disk itself know where the bad blocks are.