Got worms?

Got worms? YUCK! I like them in the garden… but not in the computer. I was at my neighbor’s house when she used an online virus detector to see if her ‘sort of safe’ computer was living up to speed. Now, calling it sort of safe made me wonder right there… She googled “free online virus detector” and choose www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner. As it ran through her drives and files, horror crossed her face… there it was, virus after virus with corrupted files. Now what?

This site offered a sure fire fixer upper… but Rose decided it was too late for that. She used the site just to see if there was a problem, and oh my! There was!

Do you pitch the pc with years of photos, letters, and tax documents? More landfill with worms! NO. Review the items that are necessary for sanity, put them in My Documents, rescan to be certain they will not be preserved. Copy only My Documents to an external drive. Dump EVERYTHING from the computer… rather like flushing it clean. Then use the recovery discs that originally came with the computer, reload and boot ‘er up. Just what the doctor ordered!

I asked Rose what was her clue that a problem existed. Her first clue was the applied wallpaper on her screen would not come up. It was blocked, actually it was red x’ed. Start ups were sluggish, so she was concerned. She knew how the machine was supposed to perform, and it just quite was not. It is great to be aware!

The fix was the external hard drive. This is a great storage place for back up, and in this case, cleared the computer so that it can be loaded with protection this time, and used for years to come.

Have you been noticing your computer isn’t what it once was? Do you have a great site that you have used for maintenance? Share your treasures with us, we all need help now and then!byDeborahonTuesday, February 19, 2008Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestMilitary Life:computer,Deborah,free online virus scan