One of the very few programs I have gone on record as officially recommending is the excellent WinPatrol monitoring utility. So to keep you updated, earlier this week a new version was released which adds registry monitoring: I frequently get recommendations from pros on new registry locations which should be monitored.  In some cases, these locations are...

As many readers may know, I am not a big believer in anti-virus programs as an essential program for computer protection, however I ultimately had to cave due to customer VPN requirements and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. But enough about me and onto an interesting article with some statistics about the effectiveness of AV programs. From the...

As you know, April Fools Day is only a few days away. While this is a popular day for pranksters and web sites to publish bogus news, it is also a popular day for trojans (malware which waits for a certain condition) to launch. While the odds are your system will be fine, to make your system as ready as it can be for any “unexpected” events here are...

Whenever your anti-virus program fails or you are having to clean someone else’s computer, a way to clean your system is by using malware scanners. If you ever have the need for these types of tools, one you should take a look at it is a-squared Free. Like most tools in it’s class, a-squared Free scans for the typical set of malware and cleans it...

In case you have not heard, there have been several malicious Firefox extensions discovered. File this one under the “it was bound to happen” category. It is important to remember that whenever you install a Firefox add-on, you are installing executable code which can run in conjunction with the browser. Add-ons can access anything Firefox can...

Mark your calendar: this Friday (Jan 29, 2010) only , WinPatrol Plus will be available for only $0.99. If you want to upgrade to WinPatrol PLUS on January 29th, I’ll give you a lifetime WinPatrol membership for less than a dollar. Instead of the regular price of $29.95 I’ll provide a coupon on WinPatrol.com that brings the price down to $0.99 USD. As many of...

If you have ever had to clean up your computer to get rid of garbage programs such as browser toolbars and unknown “utilities”, it is important to know how these get on your system so it will not happen again. For the most part, unless you specifically installed these programs, they probably get installed by sneaky installers. For a more in-depth...

System security always seems to be hot topic. However, the way people approach it and the tools used can vary greatly. While most of our readers probably use a mainstream/popular tool for system security, if you looking for other programs and utilities out there, then check out “Probably the best free security list in the world“. This post covers...

Since AVG is one of the most popular free virus scanners our readers use, this tip is simply a reminder that the free edition of version 9 is now available. The new release boasts a faster scanner and phishing protection: The new 9.0 edition is faster, safer and easier to use. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition gives you free rock solid protection for your basic...

As I wrote in a tip not too long ago, Microsoft recently released Security Essentials which is their free anti-virus offering. While there are several free anti-virus programs you can choose from, there is a stipulation in most that says you cannot legally install the free product on any machine used for commercial purposes, which would include home...

You may have seen in tech news articles in the past that Microsoft was working on it’s own release of an anti-virus product to compliment Windows Defender. A couple of days ago their solution, Security Essentials, was released (from beta). Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware,...

I have mentioned in previous posts, the only security program I use on my computers is WinPatrol. I do this because it is lightweight, non-intrusive and provides all the protection I (personally) need. So when I found WinPatrolToGo, I immediately added this to my flash drive: This single exe portable version of WinPatrol is designed to run from a USB flash...

With today’s tip I am going to do something a bit different. I am going to pose a question and see what you think. By protection / clean-up utility, I am referring to software such as anti-virus programs, registry cleaners, defraggers, etc. Personally, I tend to avoid these types of applications. I don’t use anti-virus programs, don’t mess with...

One way which viruses are distributed are through system script files such as files with VBS and JS extensions. One on the more well known attacks which used this method is the ILOVEYOU virus which spread as an email attachment and counted on the user running the script file attachment. To help protect yourself from these types of attacks, check out Script...

As you have probably gathered from some of my posts, I work as the IT resource for a small business. The wonderful (and terrible) thing about this is I have to be able to manage just about every aspect of the technologies we use. This means I rely a lot on contacts I make as well as, of course, Google and other search engines. On that note, I found a really...

Many of you probably have programs which start when you login to your machine, including monitoring applications. While this is useful, if you want to run these programs on a server or an AV client such as ClamWin, it can become a security risk to have your computer set to automatically login. The solution is simple: have the computer automatically login and...

If you have ever researched free anti-virus tools, you have probably come across an open source application called ClamWin which is built on top of the ClamAV engine. One big feature that ClamWin lacks, however, is it does not have ‘active’ scanning protection. Simply put, files are not automatically scanned when they are opened, you have to manually...

There are many tools out there which analyze and report on Windows start up applications, but what if you want to know a bit more information about these start up programs and whether or not you actually need them? If this is the case, check out Sysinfo.org which offers a searchable listing of start up processes. One thing to note regarding this list: This is...

Normally, I do not post anything about Windows updates for tips, but today is an exception. Last night Microsoft released a patch for all versions of Windows. While the details of what this patch addresses are not released, the description states: The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an affected system received a specially crafted RPC request....