Keep Your Computer Healthy: How to Avoid Contracting a Virus

Follow @ryderskull88

What do you do to keep yourself healthy? Perhaps you stay active, take vitamin supplements, eat fruits and vegetables and get lots of sleep to keep your immune system strong? If you feel a little run down, you go to bed early and give your body the rest that it needs to fight off an impending illness. However, although you take care of yourself to prevent illness, do you take the time to protect one of your most important possessions; your computer?

Your computer is just like you; if it gets exposed to viruses and it’s immune system is lowered then it is at risk of coming down with an illness. However, rather than causing stomach flu, headache or sore throat, a virus in your computer can compromise your personal information and even destroy the computer completely. Even though viruses have a devastating effect on your device, many people pay very little attention to the health of their personal computer until it is too late.

However, there are many ways that you can keep your computer healthy and ensure that it has a great “immune system” for fighting off potential viruses. Here are a few ideas of what you can do to stay one step ahead of computer viruses and keep your device safe:

Vaccinate with an Anti-Virus Program

When it comes to computers, an anti-virus program is like a vaccination, it allows your computer’s immune system to recognize any invading viruses and stop them before they cause infection. You should always have a quality, trusted anti-virus software installed on your computer from the very first day that you use it. Every time you surf the internet you are exposed to countless malware, viruses and spyware so it is crucial to be protected.

Keep Your Immune System Strong

Every now and then, your anti-virus software will ask you to do an update. You should always click “yes” because this is very important to the strength of your computer immune system. Internet hackers keep coming up with new viruses and so your anti-virus software needs to keep updating itself so that it stays one step ahead of infection. If you miss this step, your computer could be infected by a virus that your anti-virus software doesn’t recognize yet.

Avoid Possibly Infectious Websites

You wouldn’t lick the handrail on the subway, or share a straw with someone in an infectious disease ward, so why would you hang around suspicious websites which could harm your computer? If you have a good virus protection program it will warn you whenever you are visiting a website that will put your computer at risk. Whenever you get this warning, close the browser window or navigate away from the website; it’s not worth the risk.

Be Careful What You Download

If you are like most internet users, you will probably download music, movies and other fun things. However, these downloads could be hiding a virus. Make sure that you only accept them from websites that you trust and that you scan them before you open them.

Know the Symptoms

Sometimes your computer can be ill for a while before you even notice, because you don’t know what symptoms to look for. You should have an idea of what normal pop-up windows on your computer look like and be able to spot the tell-tale signs that your machine is coming down with something. This will help you catch virus risks right away and fix them before they cause too much harm.

These are just a few ways that you can keep your computer strong and healthy and avoid a virus which will erase all of your important data. Your computer is important to you, so take the time to look after its health and it will run smoothly for a long time.

Taking care of your computer’s health such as by installing a program like&McAfee antivirus , will help prevent the loss of your valuable information.

Related articles

• Keep Your Computer Healthy: How to Avoid Contracting a Virus

  ---

• What to Look for in an Anti-virus software?

  ---

• What is Anti-Virus Software?

  ---

• Computer Virus Information

  ---

Computer 101: Protect your Computer without Logging Off P2

On this article we will take a look on how to safeguard your computer when ever you feel like leaving it for a few minutes or more without closing all your open files and applications. But before we proceed this safeguard that we are going to take a look this time may only work in the early version of Windows NT, 2000 and XP. We are not going to use any third party software to safeguard your computer. Instead we are going to use a Windows Native security feature by setting a few minor adjustments on the way how we log in.

On the part 1 of this article we use the Windows screen saver to lock or protect our computer. For this part 2 where to look the three following key of the keyboard they are the CTRL, Alt and DEL keys.  But before we do that we need to change a few setting on how we would like to access our computer. First take a look at the picture below

To access the picture above, look for the control panel then click it. Once the control panel is open look for the user accounts and double click it then the picture below will appear. What is all the relationship between this and the security feature that we are going to use. Well in Windows XP the common login process is we choose the login picture on the screen and click on that login picture to access our computer. Let say there are three login choices. In order to use the computer we need to choose one of the login options and then click it and Windows will prepare everything about the computer user accounts that we choose.

But there is another way of logging in the old way of logging in to the Windows system. This old way of logging in is the one that we need to use in to be able to lock or use the safeguard that is built in the Windows system. Remember the three key we mentioned earlier the CTRL, ALT and DEL keys. Once we have change the way we log in then we can use these three key without logging off to secure the computer. Now to set the old ways of logging in the user accounts look for this option “CHANGE THE WAY USER LOG OFF OR ON”, once you have found it click it and you will be looking at two options to unchecked. 

Both options must be UNCHECKED on the box before them, or make sure to remove the check mark on the box before if these boxes have check in them. After verifying that both options have been check then clicks the Apply options button. There you’re done, now if we press the Ctrl + Alt Del key then a menu will appear. On these menu the LOCK the Computer options is present. Just press this option and the computer will be automatically lock Just follow the instruction on the screen to unlock the computer. You will be require a password to unlock your computer, use the same password that you use to log in to unlock the computer.

In this manner no files has been close or application has been turn off. You can left alone your computer without closing all of them by logging off.

Computer 101: Protect your Computer without Logging Off

Ever tired of always logging off your computer whenever you leave it for what ever reason? Well the reason for this question is that, whenever the user leaves the computer he or she needs to log off and closes all open files and application to save all those files, because if the user did not close all the open files and application and he tried to log off chances are windows will close all of them without saving all the open files and this may result in lost of data and damage to software application.

Also another reason we need to close all our open files whenever we log off is for protection or security. If we leave them open without logging off then someone might try read, copy or delete all your important files create problems for you by deleting some files of your computer that is related to the operating system that runs your computer, thereby causing great damage to your computer and also to you as the owner of that computer.

There are some ways in which you can keep your files open and not logging out even if you leave the computer open, no one will able to access your computer. The first way is to use the windows native screen saver to protect your computer. How do your go about it. Well by now everybody knows that the native Windows screen saver has a password protection capability. But wait before we go on I need to remind everyone that this step may only be applicable to the old windows like NT, 200 and XP. To set up just follow this simple step.

1.      Using the mouse Right Click in any blank spot on your desktop.

2.      Then a pull down menu will appear. From the Menu select Properties 

3.      Then the display properties will appear.

4.      From the Display properties select the Screen Saver Tab.

5.      Then Select which type of Screen Saver to use.

6.      Set the time to 1 minute and check the box for the password.

7.      Then click apply and the OK button.

Before you leave the computer make sure that the screen saver is active. The Password for the screen saver is the same as the password that you used when you log in the computer assuming you have a Windows NT, 2000 or XP. When you try to use computer again the screen saver will ask for a password, enter the password that you used in logging in to your computer. This will save a lot of time compare to closing them and opening all of them again because you log off. Another way of protection your files and computer without logging off on my next blog.

Computer 101: Self Back UP for Windows 7 Continued.

It's a good day today for me why, because i am well again although not yet totally but going there. Ive been sick for a whole week. I have not been able to do a lot of things when sick. One of those things is to post the last part of this blog. Now that I'm on my why to recovering my good health status i will be able to do this post. To begin with, in Windows 7 and in previous version of Windows, there is a difference on the back-up process when you get to the actual processing where in you see the process bar actually creating the back-up file for all you files. Now how would it look like. Before we go that look at the picture below. I highlighted  that the back-up destination must be selected in order for the for the next button to be enable. I the NEXT button is not click able after selecting the back-up destination then you should choose to select or supply other back up type for a new destination.

Now press the next button to go to the next step which should look like the picture below for Windows 7 user.In this picture you one will be asked to select a choice of whose going to do the selecting of files for the back-up. Again this brings us back to the earlier post that said prepare your all your files first organize them so that it will be easier locating them if there are all in a single location. In the picture below one have two choices that's either let the system choose the file to back-up or let the user do the selecting. If you are not sure if all your files can be located in a single folder, then choose the first option which is to let the system do file selection process. Okay let say you choose the first option then press the next button to go to the next part.

Notice that the picture below tell us, this is your backup setting, review it first before starting the actual back-up process. Yup folks make sure all your setting is correct. That means the destination folder and the items to be back-up are all there. If all things are in there proper places then just press the button labeled SAVE SETTING and RUN BACKUP to begin the process.

Now after pressing that button the picture below will appear. The picture below will appear, yup the backup process windows and as one can see the backup process has started. Now on this part the time it take to backup the selected items will overall determined the time duration for the backup to be completed. If you have a very very large amount of files to backup and this is your first time to do it then do something else while you wait because it would take quite some time to finish the process. As you can see the green bar is still on the beginning stage as one observe the process it will get longer and longer until it fill the entire space alloted to it. In this stage just sit back and relax or do other things while we wait for the process to finish.

Now lets say that the backup process is finish, then the next picture will appear. The backup process bar is gone and if one observe it right, you'll see that the last backup process has been log or recorded as highlighted by the red rectangle. Okay now that the backup process is done, how do one verify if the back-up files is created or all my files were back-up properly. Well the ways to do that, one simple way is to go to your destination folder and check for the back up files.

Now if one is the backup destination then please look at the picture below. There are two highlighted parts on this. First the location folder and second the backup file itself which is represented the icon below highlighted by the red rectangle. To verify if this is the backup files, the just double click the icon and it will activate to ask three questioned. But if your satisfied that this is the correct one, then your done. you have correctly completed your first back-up process. I quick note this is for Windows 7 user the actual process for the older version of windows will on my next post. Hopefully that tomorrow or the next day.