Dealing With Computer Errors Caused By Malware
Malware or malicious software is an epidemic disease infecting millions of computers across the world every year. Malware programs come in various forms and they vary in the extent of damage they cause to the computers. They can be classified mainly into two large categories: viruses and spyware. Viruses are infectious software programs capable of reproducing and transmitting itself from one machine to another. Spyware programs are bundled with other programs and install stealthily on your computer.
Malware in early days of computing were confined to pranks created by college students for fun. Over last three decades, they have developed into sophisticated tools to commit online crime.
Unfortunately, most of the PC users today are not aware of the extent of threats caused by these programs. Therefore, they fail to equip their computers to combat this menace effectively. In fact, more than three-fourths of computer owners are at serious risk at any given point of time.
You must not wait for malware to strike your computer to start preparing a protection plan. Take the steps to deal with this problem right now.
First step that is extremely essential to combat virus infections is user vigilance. The following are some NEVERs and ALWAYS that you need to follow:
- NEVER download shareware and freeware software, media, games etc. from dubious looking Web sites. One of the common traps are the Web sites that provide cracks and keygen software that enable you to run pirated software. If you want to be able to use your PC for a long time, you must stay away from such software.
- ALWAYS scan any external media for viruses before copying data from it.
- NEVER open emails attachments that you are not sure of what they may contain—even if the attachments have come from known source. Many viruses spread by sending email with infected attachments to all people who are in the address book of the infected computer.
- NEVER forget to or postpone updating software on your computer. Several virus infections are built around the vulnerabilities detected in these products. When you update your software these lapses are patched up making the software and your PC more secure.
- ALWAYS run a full system antivirus and antispyware scan if you notice suspicious files, such as d.exe, or files similar to legitimate files, such as wscntfy.exe and smss.exe, running on your computer. As soon as a virus infection is detected, you must take your PC off the network, disconnect it from the Internet and then run the scan. To ensure that your antivirus and antispyware tools are able to scan and combat malware, you must update them regularly.
- ALWAYS scan and clean your registry after completing antivirus and antispyware scan. Malware programs need to add entries in the registry in order to carry out their malicious activity. Many of these entries are embedded entries, which are almost impossible to remove manually. To get rid of these, the best and the most efficient way is to use a reliable registry cleaner tool.
