My favorite anti-virus

One Question i have gotten from a reader is

What is my favorite anti-virus program? What if money was no object?

Well i use to Recommend Avg no mater what, i now recommend McAfee. If you can afford it, but if money is tight than Avg is a good choice.
Some of the things i like about McAfee are :

• It is has a good anti-virus engine
  
• It stays out of your way
• It has a good firewall
• It catches all the viruses i have ever had
  

Another Software that i have used and like is Avast
The anti-virus software i recommend you never get now is Nortan they use to be good but now they slow down your computer and likes to block certain internet programs that are commonly used.

No Recycle Bin Vista

After my last blog post i got a Email from a reader stating that his/her desktop is set to show Icons and they still can't see there Recycle Bin, after looking into this problem there is a reason for this in Vista you can set the Recycle bin to not be shown on your desktop

solution: Right click on your desktop -> click personalize -> click Change desktop icons (it is on the left hand side) -> check the Recycle bin check box (in the Desktop Icons group) -> aply the settings and exit the windows and you should have a Recycle Bin icon on your desktop

No recycle bin on my desktop

A question i got on from my post here is that thair is no icon for the recycle bin or any Icon for that mater.
Sulution: you Icons are being hidden right click on your desktop and in the "Arrange Icons By" menu click "Show Desktop Icons" should salve your problems

FireWalls

This is not so common of a question but something i believe should be answered here

Should i run more than 1 firewall?

This is simple no. Firewalls work by filtering your internet trafic so it slows down the internet for you by a small amount. Now when you install 2, 3, i have seen them all the way up to 8, you start noticing a difference as one filter filters the other. I will not go into detail about firewalls here but you should run just one. If you run Windows XP sp2 than you can use that firewall without to much worry.

If you would what to read more about firewalls than here



ANY OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE ARTICAL

Clean your keyboard

One Question which was extremely common after the MRSA outbreak in the state city of Detroit and maybe the rest of the USA is

How do i clean my keyboard so i do not get MRSA?

answer is clean your keyboard with these steps:

1. Shut off your computer.
2. get a rag and some light cleaner like window cleaner.
3. put the cleaner on the rag and wipe you keyboard with it.
4. use a dry rag, dry the keyboard.
5. wait about 15 min's and you can turn on your computer.

William Edward McCormick

How to Erase your Hard Drive

One Common question i get is this

William I what to sell my computer to my friend, but i do/did my banking on that computer. How do i Make sure that no matter how hard he tries he can never get it?

Short answer is change the hard drive. If that is not a possible solution, which is common, use a program called eraser (http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/), this program has a feature called create nuck boot disk, make sure your old computer has a floppy disk drive. The boot disk will overwrite your old hard drive with random numbers so it will be very extremely hard to recover the old data. you can also use eraser to make sure that just the data you want to erase is only erased but not a secure. there are blogs on more extreme way to protect your data but if your friend is trying to get your information that you need to resort to that level of extremes than well do not sell him the computer .

Some Common Computer Problems

Thair are some Common computer problems that people call me to fix that i am going to post here for the average computer user. these problems are basic and are often times forgotten by the average user.

My computer had low hard drive space even if i delete a lot of stuff why?

OK do not laugh but this is common with the new computer user when you delete a file from your computer most of the time it is just moved to a folder called Recycle Bin, most of the time on your desktop. Just right click on it and click "empty recycle bin". that should take care of the not freeing up space next alternative is to buy a second hard drive and ether have someone install it or install it yourself.

My Computer has a lot of pop-ups why?

This is more than likely spy ware my preferred program to get rid of them is ad-aware and after use windows defender to help prevent further infections, but spy ware is getting more and more complicated everyday so no garentees on if it will work sometimes the computer might have to be completely Reinstalled to fix the problem

ANY OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE ARTICAL

Weird Repair solutions I've Seen

I what to talk about why people online keep posting "Speed Up your computer Tricks", Most of the time involving Registry hacks. Now i have no problems with people posting msconfig help they are all good but most of the time they recommend going into your registry and editing some setting. Now the only thing i like about this trick is it keeps me in business when i have to clean the mess up. some of the registry tweaks are just plain stupid like one speeds up the time in witch the menus open up, now let me tell you a safer way to speed up opening the menus, ready, click on them. Most of the novices are going to be using the mouse to open menus anyway so just click. Now in the next few days i will be posting some useful but small advice about computer maintenance and when i get a video camera working i will also post youtube vlogs about computer repair. So `tell next time peace and please post useful tips on computer repair and maintenance.

William Edward McCormick