In today’s world, we all use computers. Well, most of us do, and the underprivileged are using it, maybe not directly, but indirectly. Somehow, even the tiger in the Indian jungle today relies on the computer to remain alive. Not that the fellow gets to use one. However, the environmentalists, the scientists, and all who care, keep their tabs on the guy through computers. Maybe even poachers do so. As far as Murphy’s Law goes, whatever can fail, will. So, the mighty computer can also fail, remember HAL?

In a computer, say a desktop, there are several working parts. They include mechanical, electrical, electronic, firmware, and software. As per reliability theory, more the number of components available, greater are the chances of failure. So, with five sciences present in the computer, failures do crop up sometimes or the other.

If you look closely at your computer, you will find some moving parts. These are called fans, which allow air circulation. While operating, the computer generates heat, and this has to be removed, which the fan does. Just as when you feel hot, you sit under a fan. Computer fans rotate at high speed, which causes a lot of wear and tear on their bearings. When a fan starts to make a lot of noise, it means, the bearings are degenerating, and it is time to change the fan. Failure to do so will cause additional problems due to heat build-up.

Heat build-up is a major headache for any machine, especially machines that have a sophisticated structure like computers. Heat causes the Electrolytic capacitors and heat conducting pastes to dry out, solder joints to fail, and reduces the reliability of all the electronic circuitry. This type of failure is very difficult to diagnose because of its intermittent nature. The whole computer may just freeze up and refuse to start, until it has cooled down. The power supply is the area where the maximum heat is generated, and the failure here, is also the most frequent. Therefore, if your computer has been acting strange recently, get it checked up.

Similar to heat, dust is also a great contributor to damage in computer moving parts. The sliding tray of your DVD drive may be malfunctioning because of dust entry. Dust entering the back of your display, may cause the high voltage generator inside to stop functioning. Some LCDs have Plasma back-lights, which also work on high voltage and are susceptible to dust. Fortunately, LCDs are changing over to LED back-light, which are more rugged. Mouse and track-balls are other devices, which choke on dust and lint. Frequent cleaning helps to increase their life.

Most people take their hard disk drives for granted, and never bother to keep backups. This is the biggest folly anyone can make. The hard disk drive is also a mechanical item, and is subject to wear and tear. It is generally quite rugged, but then there is a chance it can fail. Better to be safe than sorry, keep backups frequently.

Software is one of the most important parts of the computer, without which the computer is but a pile of junk. There are two types of software in use, the Operating System and the Application software. An Operating System should be efficient and unobtrusive. It should not require any maintenance, but there are some that do. Some need their registries cleaned or their hard disk space de-fragmented, on a regular basis or the OS may slow down or even choke. Some OS do not maintain their file systems with proper care, and malicious software (virus) can steal your data.

The Application software running on your computer should be from authentic sources. Unknown application software may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and could steal your data or cause a serious crash. It is always wise to use an Operating System, which does not allow unauthorized software to run and special anti-virus software to check for malicious software.

I just tr?ed Limewire software due to a recent suggestion of my friend. As soon as I intalled the software, my Spy-bot program warned me and found a spware in Limewire program. I am attaching the information from the Spybot log file:

2/1/2010 6:31:44 PM Encountered and terminated Win32.Agent.oc in C:\Program Files\LimeWire\execNoWindow.exe!

So, Limewire software installed Win32.Agent denen spyware. This spyware is a very tricky one as I did some research about it. It saves itself in Windows registry with a different name and automatically installs other spywares to your computers. And, without your permission. If you see any program in your task manager, it means that your computer is infected with this spyware.

sskupdater.exe
ssk.exe
sskupdater.exe5102.exe
ssk.exe
5102.exe

The easiest way to clean this spyware is install Spybot and run a complete scan for your computer. It is also important to uninstall Limewire to stop unauthorized usage of your computer by others. Of course, this spyware is known one and if you consider about the ones that haven’t been discovered yet, you can think about the security threat of your computer. For more tips and information about computer security, feel free to browse our website, CleanPC.org. Good luck.

Holidays are one of the busiest times during  the year. While everyone tries to plan the travel arrangements, it is a popular time of the year for the viruses to spread easily. Especially Fourth of July has the highest computer risk because most people don’t like to update their anti-virus software because there are more fun things to outside.

When most people are in vacation, they would like to turn off their computers. When they get back, they tend to forget to update their anti-virus software. The computers that are not updated in a quite long time are in a serious risk. Therefore, it is highly recommended to update the anti-virus software before using the computer and scan the incoming emails before opening them.

Leaving the computer on is also not a good solution. It can create an excessive wear in mechanical circuits in the cooling fans and the hard drive motor. Frequently turning on and off the computer can also create problems in the motherboard circuits. These problems can be flexing and fatigue failure due to excessive temperature changes. It is a great practice to turn on the computer and turn it off at night or whenever you don’t use it. It is also highly recommended to clean inside the desktop to remove the dust that can create overheating in the system.

During the internet browsing, we are often exposed to pop-ups. These pop-ups can be dangerous and can lead us to a malicious website. Instead clicking the pop-ups, try close it by clicking X  mark on the upper right corner of the window. Some pop-ups can fool us by acting that they are cleaning or checking the spywares in our computer. They are often malicious and it is recommended not to click those pop-ups as well.

For better computer security and safe internet browsing, you can visit CleanPC.org for more information.

When you’re trying to find the best advice about computers, it is often difficult to get information from misguided computer comparisons and it is important to have some ideas on what kind of computer you are looking for.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that Macs don’t get PC viruses. That’s true. and Mac has the bigger protection and alerts. Considering Windows is more widely used, there are less viruses that were written to attack to MACs.

It is also important to have a checklist what components in the computers are essential for you and how much money you would like to spend. People often spend a lot of money to buy the fastest  computers with the latest technology but in six months later, the same computer depreciate in value since there are better technology is released to the market.

When obtaining information from the internet, it is important to check who is providing the information and how recent the information is. You can check the ownership of the website and the verification can show you who is behind the website. For verification, you can simply check the “about” or “contact” page of the website.

Most website provide “about” or “contact us” page to reveal the website owner and designers. With this way, you can verify the knowledge of the website owner and you can learn about the site creator’s education and practical knowledge who is offering guidance on computers.

As we used computers in almost everywhere in our daily lives, many of us would like to keep our computer safe and keep running with maximum performance. Making computers clean and running with best performance is not difficult if you follow these tips:

1- Update your anti-virus software. Make sure that your computer is installed with a good anti-virus software to be less vulnerable for the viruses.
2- Keep your operating system up-to-date. Operating systems such as Windows often releases new security updates, better scripts to make sure that computers are safer to operate. To update your operating system, you can adjust your computer to update itself automatically. If you are running something very important, you can manually update your operating system to prevent the data loss.
3- Use anti-spyware software. Using a good anti-virus software is not enough to keep computer safe. You may need an anti-spyware software to detect and remove spywares, malwares and any malicious softwares for you.
4- Regularly delete temporary files that you download from internet. Every time you visit a webpage, your computer downloads the web pages and the files from the websites in order to display the site. Some of those files might be malicious your operating system, so it is important to clean the temporary files occasionally.
5- Check that website is safe to visit. Every time you search about something on the internet, search engines list the relevant websites and warn that some of those websites may contain malicious files and can harm your computer. It is important to pay attention the remarks from the search engines.
6- Uninstall the programs that you don’t use. Whenever you install a program, it creates a registry and uses some spaces in the hard disk. It may also tries to reload itself during the start-up so, it is important to uninstall the programs that you don’t use.
7- Be selective when you download a software from internet. It is a good rule of thumb you need to be wise when you download software from the internet. Especially using softwares without a license is a crime and you can have a trouble if you are caught. You can visit Cnet or download.com to make sure that the software has the good reputation among the other users.
8- Defrag your hard drive in every 6 months. Defragment is a process where the data on the disk is merged to a specific region in the disk and it allows the computer run faster. It is recommended to do a defragment at least in every 6 months.
9- Add more RAM if necessary. For better performance, it is always good to have more RAM in the computer. More RAM, the computer runs faster.
10- Cancel some of the extra features of the operating system that you think it is not necessary. It is possible to choose your operating system run faster instead of better visualization. With this way, you can have a better performance from the computer.
For better computer tips and suggestions, you can visit CleanPC.org for more information.