Recently, subscriber Peter Killick had a question about protection from downloads:

I was under the impression that my combination of a router plus a software firewall completely prevented anything ever being downloaded on my computer over the web without my approval, typically indicated by clicking a button. My router is a Netgear, properly and carefully set up and the default password was replaced on installation. My firewall is the underrated Ashampoo one – actually very efficient, and it always double checks any initial confirmation click on my part.

A firewall program plus a router does not necessarily prevent downloads. It only does that if the program is not authorized to connect to the Internet.

A program can call home or anywhere else, and can check for updates or anything else, if:

* If you have authorized a program to contact the Internet, or …

Continue reading Internet Protection with a Firewall and Router

Every once in a while, I like to write about new sites (or, at least, new to me) that are designed for fun.

First, let’s take a look at some ASCII art. ASCII stands for “American Standard Code for Information Interchange.” In the 1960’s and 1970’s, before the days of dot-matrix printers and other printers capable of graphics, when the only things we could print were alphabet characters, numbers, and some punctuation codes, one of the great pastimes of computer geeks was to create art using those printed characters.

I remember 132 column printouts, about 15 inches wide, where that width was the width of the image — and the image might be 4 or 5 feet tall!

Continue reading Fun on the Internet

When we use removable storage devices, such as flash drives, external hard drives, and notebook cd/dvd drives, there’s a very important step to take before disconnnecting a device.

Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista have a built-in feature to cache disk writes. That is, they pretend that a portion of the computer’s RAM is a drive. When a program wants to write to a drive, it actually writes to memory (which lets the program finish the step faster, and return to the user’s control). Then, Windows manages the process of writing to the storage device.

The problem is…

Continue reading Safely Remove Hardware the Easy Way

Longtime subscriber Greg wrote to ask:

Terry, My desktop has started to have a couple really aggravating problems and I wanted to run them by you. 1) Every morning when I go to check my email before work, I find that all my desktop icons have disappeared and I am looking at the wallpaper only. My PC is password protected and even the login box does not appear. I have to restart every time. I tried a MS fix but it didn\’t do anything. What may be causing this problem. 2) My machine has started to run incredibly slow when it boot us, when I launch a browser (IE or Firefox) or when I right-click a desktop icon. Re-starting takes absolutely forever every step of the way. When I dbl-click the Firefox icon, the hourglass shows for an instant than disappears. If I am willing to wait 2-3 minutes, the browser may launch. Even after I have FIrefox open, and I select a new website via a new tab, nothing is instant anymore. It just seems to take forever for anything to happen. However, if I am working in Word or Excel, those operations seem to run at normal speed. I run an anti-virus and have done scans with no results. This is driving me nuts and I\’m ready to get a new PC just so it will run right! What do you suppose is behind these two problems?

Continue reading Strange Computer Symptoms

As long-time readers of my newsletter and site know, as does anyone who reads the introduction to the recommended security software article in my weekly online issue, my selection of recommended software is driven by my search for software for me to use. I only recommend programs that I like and that I use. I will sometimes suggest alternatives to my recommendations, but I clearly note if I no longer use them.

My personal experiences with CounterSpy+NOD32 versus VIPRE are that VIPRE has found more malware in email attachment files and that VIPRE is faster. I suspect that the additional malware catches are ones that the antivirus program assumes the antispyware program would catch, and that the antispywere program assumes the antivirus would catch. None of these malware files were live exploits of my system — they were email attachments, in Eudora’s attachment directory, that had not been opened but had not been deleted yet. Some were in zip files and some weren’t.

Continue reading VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware – Question from a Reader

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Reader Teri Scott wrote me to ask about her slow dialup Internet connection:

Hello,

I have a desktop and a laptop and live in a remote area so the only internet I can get is dial-up. We recently moved and in our previous home, my desktop and laptop connected consistently at about 36.8kps. Now my desktop connects at 19.2kps while the laptop is still connecting at about 36.8kps. I have plugged them both into the same line and get this result. I am at a loss as to what is causing this…

Thanks for your help!

Teri Scott

I wrote back to Teri to tell her that sometimes, the problem is as simple as the pool of modems used by the ISP. One or more may be set at 19.2kbps. Been there, seen that…

Continue reading Speeding Up a Slow Dialup Connection

Subscriber James McClellan wrote to let me know he was finally successful with backing up…

Terry, I hadn’t been able to get my external back-up drive to work since buying a new dell. At your recommendation, I tried Karen’s Replicator ( www.karenware.com ) It worked great and I’m now doing daily backups to the external drive. I sleep much better thanks to you and Karen.

Thanks for the good news, James. I’m glad you got the backups going. As I’ve written numerous times, I run Karen’s Replicator on all my Windows computers so that I can back up my data files easily. Those file backups keep me out of trouble — not the hardware failure kind of trouble, but the brain-freeze trouble. Ever make a temporary change to a file(for example, an experimental change) and then accidentally save it over the original? Those backups come in really handy.

Continue reading Backup Success Story

One of the easiest ways to document web pages and other printable content is to “print” them into a PDF file. Adobe’s Acrobat program provides a printer driver to create such files from anything that you can print.

Of course, Acrobat is out of reach for many people, or at least, we don’t have any desire for the program once we find that the price is $250 for Acrobat Standard or $400 for Acrobat Professional.

Fortunately, there are some cheaper options.

I’ve used the program Click2PDf for about six years and been very happy with it. Click2PDF allows me to print multiple times, even from multiple programs, change the order of the “prints” and then save the resulting PDF file. If I don’t like any of those prints, I can uncheck them and print again. My main use for Click2PDF is to document purchases on the ‘Net.

Continue reading Create PDF Files for Free

As a long-time personal computer user, I learned the importance of backing up my data long, long ago.

There are just too many things that can go wrong when you’re working on your computer. Whether it is a hard drive that goes bad (or a floppy, in the old days), or a mental lapse on the part of the user, it is easy to lose the critical file on which you’re working. Or, maybe your computer has gotten infected with a virus or a rootkit, such that you decide that reinstalling Windows is the easiest thing to do.

How many times have you opened a file with the intent to make a new version of it, then edited it, and accidentally saved it again with the original name? I have, so I doubt that you’ve missed that thrill. Fortunately, I make daily backups of my data, so that I can recover from those brain failures.

Continue reading Why Back Up Your Computer?

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If you don’t already have a home computer network and want to set up one, it’s easy. In fact, it’s so easy that I recommend that ANYONE using a high-speed Internet connection should use a router for the added security that it gives their computer.

A wired or wireless router (wireless routers normally have 4 wired Ethernet ports, also, in addition to being able to communicate wirelesly) is pretty much a plug-and-play device.

Most of the time, you don’t really need the directions provided with the cable/dsl wired or wireless router, except for configuring wireless security settings — or if you have a DSL connection.

If you have a cable Internet connection (at home) or an Ethernet connection (at home in some areas, but more often, in a college dormitory), you can…

Continue reading Creating a Home Computer Network

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