All right, the last anti-viruses I mentioned were real-time anti-viruses. What that means is that if I open something that may be infected, then one of my two anti-viruses will pick it up and ask me if I want to allow, or deny the program access to my computer, or ask if i want to delete it. The Emergency Anti-Viruses do not have real-time scanning (Well it does, but you have to pay for it) so I basically use it when my computer is feeling sluggish, or I want to do a quick security scan to see what I have.
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| Click Picture to download |
The first program I really like is
Malwarebytes. I enjoy this scanner because it allows you to scan, and delete a virus. This scanner is also able to run in safe mode. What safe mode basically is, is a mode of the computer in which your Operating system only runs the bare essentials, most of the viruses that take over computers do not run in safe mode, so it is a safe bet that I can open
Malwarebytes and scan my computer in safe mode. You may be asking yourself how can I get viruses that take over my computer if I already have two anti-viruses? Well like I said before, those two are free, and even though it is very rare that I get an attack on my computer that forces me to use safe mode and
Malwarebytes, I still like to have it as a just in case thing. On average a full scan with
Malwarebytes takes roughly an hour to two hours, but its detection system is great, and updated almost daily, or even every 2 to 3 days (not sure exactly) But That is my emergency program.
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| Click To Download Adaware |
Now to clean out my cookies and stop people from accessing the important stuff on my computers through tracing cookies I use
AdAware. Now I currently do not use this program, because it is kind of annoying to use because it always asks me to buy the full version, and well, I am cheep haha. So I do not really use it much, but when I am paranoid I start it up and run a scan on my computer to see what is going on, but other than that I have it disabled on start-up and do not really mess with it.
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| Click picture to go to Eraser page |
Another program I like to use is a program called
Eraser. What this does is, it erases files from your computer permanently. Well you are probably asking me just use your recycle bin. Well yes this is true you can use the recycling bin for files you don't care about other people finding, because recycling your files does not permanently erase them, it just hides them and marks the sector that they were in as a 0 so they can be filled. There are programs that can bring back that file, but using eraser makes it near impossible to bring back the file because what it does is it overwrites the file you deleted 32 times (or however many times you want it to) so it cannot be recovered (well not very easily).
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| Click picture to download |
Finally my last program that I think is a must have for a clean PC (I save the best for last) is a nifty program called
CCleaner, now this is not an antivirus or does not detect viruses, but it is a cleaner that scans your computer for unnecessary files like cookies and stored .tmp files on your computer that can be erased without harming your OS. Now I use this on a weekly bases, and every week it finds around 2Gb of erasable data on my computer, that is a lot of space for someone who is needing a couple hundred megabytes for some software they want. This is not even the best part of the program (though it is a good one)
CCleaner has a registry cleaner, that erases unneeded registry files that clutter your registry. This may make your computer start up faster if it has a slow boot or something like that.
CCleaner also has an easy to access uninstalling feature which allows you to uninstall programs from your computer, or remove the program from your add-remove list. There is a computer start up editor too, but I would not recommend the average computer user to mess with this. What it does is it enables or disables certain programs that turn on when you turn your computer on. There is also a drive wiper, but I have never used it because I want everything that is on my hard drives hahaha.
Sorry for the long blog, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Tell me what you think, Have a good day everyone! Please comment and I will reply when I can and remember to subscribe for daily updates on my blog, and check out my buddy Chris Pirillo at his websites,
www.Lockergnome.com, and
www.lockergnome.net look at his articles and comment, like subscribe, +1 them anything.
Internet Explorer- Well, the one and main reason I have IE on my computer is basically because it came with my computer. I really do not like to use this for much of anything, but I do have it set up for my homepage to go to my Kent State account, so if I want to do anything with my Kent State Collage stuff I just click on IE and it opens up. I also use IE to access certain Microsoft websites, because Chrome and Firefox are not compatible with some of their sites (which stinks, but oh well). Finally I use IE to download other web browsers. I know it sound's lame, but that is basically the only other good thing IE is good for, I have to admit, though, after the updates it has gotten better, but I still prefer Chrome and Firefox over it, they just feel better.
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