Guidelines To Identify And Prevent Malware Infection

Viruses and other malware can be traced back to the time when the computer was invented, but before the advent of the Internet the extent of damage done by malware was very limited. After the Internet became an integral part of the computing world, malicious software content has increased exponentially as computers are now constantly online, and this provides an easy mode of transmission.

Not only are more malware, including viruses, worms, spyware and adware, being launched everyday but malware is becoming more dangerous. Every year millions of users lose critical data, financial information and suffer irreparable damage to their computer due to malicious codes floating on the internet.

Today, malware programs are quite advanced and use various deception methods in order to gain entry into your system. Therefore, you need all the help that you can get to deflect these assaults. This includes following the guidelines given below that will help you in malware prevention.

1. Keep your eyes open for any abnormal behaviour by your computer. Your computer may try to signal you about being infected by displaying symptoms, such as slow computer, slow browsing speed, pop-up messages, repeated shutdowns and so on.

2. You must have reliable anti-spyware as well as anti-virus installed on your system. You must also keep the real-time protection always ON. You must also update these tools regularly in order to get the optimum protection, otherwise your PC will become vulnerable to new viruses and other malicious code.

3. You should select an email client that provides adequate protection against unsolicited emails. You can also install good quality anti-spam software as a large number of viruses are being spread through email.

4. The next step for protection is installing a Firewall, especially if you use the internet extensively and are likely to leave your PC connected for long hours. This will also help keep the hackers and other online criminals away from your system.

5. Adopt safe practices while using your computer. You must avoid dubious websites and should never download any program from them as they are most likely to be infected with spyware or virus.  You must also be cautious of emails that you receive. Never open an email from unknown sources. Always look at email attachments with suspicion and scan the attachments before opening them.

6. Malware can come in deceptively similar names as genuine files and you may invite a virus assuming that you are downloading a legitimate program. A case in point is the iexplore.exe virus that deceives a lot of users.

7. Many viruses are known to cause registry errors in your system. Download a good quality registry cleaner that will help remove any changes that malware may have made their way into your Windows registry. It will also help you get rid of stubborn malware that refuse to go away.

8. Be careful while sharing files or compact disks with others as this can lead to the transmission of viruses from one machine to another. It is always advisable to perform a scan before installing any programs from such CDs.

We all eagerly wait for the day when all computer error messages will give clear and concise information in simple English about what has gone wrong, what could be the probable causes and how to solve the problem. Until then, there are two options available to computer users. The first option is to call on a computer maintenance professional to solve the problem, which may result in a loss of time and money in addition to frustration. The second and more logical solution is to spend some time in performing regular PC maintenance and prevent these errors from occurring in the first place.

Let us have a look at some good tips that you can use to perform PC maintenance and ensure yourself an optimal and error-free computing experience.

Windows computers provides several tools that you can use to monitor and maintain your PC. One such tool is the Task Manager. On Windows XP, you can launch this tool by clicking the Ctrl + Del + Tab key combination. The Processes tab of the Task Manager provides you information about how system resources, such as CPU and memory, are utilized by currently running processes. Depending on the software you have, you may find processes, such as cntaosmgr.exe, consent.exe, and coh32.exe running on your computer. If you find any of these processes consuming high amounts of system resources, then you can stop them temporarily by using the Task Managerâ€"Right-click on the process you want to stop and then select the End Process command. This will disable the process temporarily. Most of these processes start when your system starts up. So, if you want to disable them permanently, you may use the System Configuration Utility (msconfig). If you want to disable processes that don’t start at system startup, you may use the Services management console (services.msc).

Malware infections pertaining to viruses, spyware, Trojan horses, worms, and adware are also common causes of many computer problems and errors. To protect your PC from these malware programs, you need to scan your PC on a regular basis with efficient and updated antivirus and antispyware tools. You must also install a firewall to block unauthorized access to your PC. A firewall is especially essential if your PC is connected to the Internet most of the time.

Quick Fixes For Frequent PC Problems

The architecture of computer is a complex combination of hardware and software components, both working together in harmony to enable you to accomplish your tasks easily.  When your PC is working smoothly, you may have no problems finishing your work and meeting deadlines. However, if you are not careful, you may put your PC at risk and open your system up to various issues and problems. The following are a few such activities that you may perform that put your PC at risk.

• You access unsolicited and suspicious looking websites and at times, even download software from such sites.
• You frequently download freeware and shareware software from the Internet. These software programs are known to be loaded with unwanted shareware programs.
• You opened attachments of one or more e-mails from unsolicited sources such email attachments are usually infected with viruses that spread easily across your computer, network, and even to the people who are in the address book of your e-mail program.
• You fail to update your antivirus and antispyware tools or fail to run full system scans on a regular basis.
• You do not uninstall programs using legitimate methods - leaving behind loads of junk files, folders and registry entries that generate errors.

Looking at these probable causes of errors, there is one thing that should pop-out at you about how to prevent frequent PC problems - you need to be a vigilant user and avoid accessing and downloading from unsolicited web sites and you should always use legitimate methods to uninstall software from your PC. In addition, the following are some of the tasks that you will need to perform in order to keep your PC secure, error-free and at its best performance.

Update your Software

One of the most important tasks to maintain a healthy PC is to keep your operating system and other software on it updated. For instance, to fix ccsvchst.exe error, which is quite common with Norton 2007 users, you just need to update your Norton 2007 product. However, if you want to prevent these errors from occurring in the first place, you need to regularly update your software. Your Windows operating system comprises the Windows Update feature, which is designed to automatically download updates of Microsoft products. Also, several third-party software and device drivers comprise the live or automatic update feature that you may enable to ensure that your PC stays up-to-date at all times. If an update feature is not available, then you may have to go to your software manufacturer’s website and download updates if any are available.

Remember, failure to install regular updates may put your PC at risk to several malware infections that are built around the bugs fixed in these updates.

Scan for Viruses and Trojans

At times, you may notice, files such as aspimgr.exe that do not actually belong to any legitimate software on your computer. These files are actually virus or Trojans that infect your PC and prevent normal functioning. To fight these virus files and fix exe errors generated by them you need to scan your PC with reliable and fully updated antivirus and antispyware tools.

Clean your Registry

Last but equally important to prevent PC problems is to maintain a healthy registry. Because the main cause of registry problems is the accumulation of a large amount of unwanted entries, you should use a good registry cleaner tool to regularly scan and clean the unwanted junk from within your registry.

• Slow system start up and shut down.
• Drop in system's performance.
• Frequent system freezes and crashes.
• Frequent system errors, such as ActiveX errors, DLL errors and Rundll errors.

In more severe cases, registry errors may cause your computer's hard disk to crash, making your PC unbootable.

Let's see why a computer is so dependent on the registry for its smooth functioning. The registry is a central hierarchal repository that contains all configuration information related to hardware and software installed on a computer. The registry supplies necessary information to the operating system, applications and all other tasks that are performed on your computer. Being such a critical component it is important that you maintain a compact and healthy registry.

When you buy a new PC, its registry is compact and free from any unwanted information. In due course, a number of invalid entries or keys creep into the registry. For instance, when you close a program or uninstall an application, at times its corresponding key does not get automatically deleted from the registry. Also, software crashes leave corrupt entries within the registry. Malware programs, such as viruses, spyware, and Trojans add malicious entries in the registry or alter existing registry entries. All this put together may cause severe damage to your system's registry.

Now that we have explained the importance of the registry for your system's sound performance and how a registry can become corrupt, the question in your mind might be how to maintain it. Thankfully, nowadays maintaining registry health is easy and hassle free. We recommend you use an advanced registry cleaner to fix registry error(s). A number of top-rated registry cleaners are available on the Internet and you can easily select one that meets your system's requirements.

An advanced registry cleaner allows you to perform a deep scan to remove obsolete entries, invalid entries and registry holes from the registry. It also enables you to remove embedded registry keys added by malicious softwares, which are otherwise untraceable and irremovable. A registry cleaner tool also allows you to defragment the registry by removing registry holes. This makes the registry file contiguous and enhances the data access time. With the help of a registry cleaner you can easily make regular back-ups of the registry, which allows you to restore the registry to its last working condition in case of any problem. Another important feature in a registry cleaner tool is that it allows you to schedule registry scans, which means that your registry cleaner software will automatically scan the registry in case you forgot.

To keep your registry error free, it is important that you regularly run antivirus and anti-spyware scans on your computer. Also, keep your PC updated with the latest virus definitions and security updates.