the infant PC

I was speaking with my father earlier tonight, and he was lamenting about the latest problems he is having with his computer. As I am the "computer guru" of the family, I am generally the one to dispense tech tips and software recommendations, and also the one to spend an occasional eight hours trying to clean up one someone's computer for them.

I started thinking, though. I believe we are on the verge of the "infant PC" age. What do I mean by this? Simple - that computers are quickly becoming a throw away item, to be replaced every year (while they are still in their "infancy"), once it has been trashed by viruses, trojans, hijackings, etc. I see many triggers for these problems, many of which are results of inexperienced users. I'm talking about people who are still opening attachments from strange email addresses, responding to strange emails to "take them off of their list", not using any kind of personal firewall, and worst of all, still using Internet Explorer as a browser.

My father's latest problems had to do with his installation of DSL for the first time. Qwest, partnering with MSN, installs all kinds of MSN crap on new DSL users computers, and (of course) they expect you to use Internet Explorer as your browser. I had Qwest DSL for a while, and it was difficult to get all of that crap removed from my PC when I left them.

Fortunately, there are a few things that people can do to better protect their PC's and make them last longer than a year or so. Here's the list I just emailed to my father, along with instructions for use. This should work for most Windows XP users, but I'm not responsible if they don't work for you, or cause any problems. Everyone's computer is different, but they work great on several computers that I have installed them on.

I hope that some of you find this list useful:

First, grab yourself Firefox:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
After downloading it and installing, launch Firefox and click on the "Tools" menu and select "Options". Go to the "Content" button and make sure the box marked "Block pop-up windows" is checked. Use this instead of Internet Explorer, and you've probably solved 80% of your problems already.

Antivir free anti-virus program:
http://www.free-av.com/down/windows/antivir_workstation_win7u_en_h.exe
Once installed, open the program, click on the "Scanner" tab, then the magnifying glass icon to scan. The scanner part of the program is called "Luke Filewalker" - pretty funny name, but it works well. There's also a "guard" that you can activate that will watch your system continuously for problems.

CWShredder:
http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/online-tools/cwshredder.exe
This is a free scanner that checks for some common trojan horse viruses and hijackings. Just click on the "FIX" button to scan and get rid of any problems. It's a very small program that checks for very specific problems, but it works well.

Adaware:
http://www.download.com/3001-8022_4-10399602.html
Install this one, click the "Start" button and then the "Next" button to scan for problems. If it finds any "critical" items, click on the "critical" tab, check the boxes next to the critical items, and click on the "Next" button again to get rid of them. Click "OK" when it asks you to confirm removal of them, if you are okay with getting rid of them. Many times, all it finds are cookies.

Spybot Search & Destroy:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/download/Spybot_Search_and_Destroy/1043809773/1
This one is important. Once you install, there are several things it can do to protect your system. Run the program, and you will see several buttons on the lefthand side. First, click on the "Immunize" button. Then you will see a green plus sign in front of you with the words "Immunize" next to it. Click on the plus sign. This will block most of the trojans and hijackings that occur in Internet Explorer.

The top button is a "Search & Destroy" button. Before running this scan and "fixing" anything, you may want to walk through the results one by one. You don't want to delete anything that might not be harmful. Next, look for the "Tools" box in the bottom lefthand corner. Click on it. You should then see a little shield icon with the word "Resident" next to it. Click on this, and it will bring up a new dialogue box. In the area that says "Resident protection status" there are two checkboxes. Make sure the first one (Resident "SDHelper") is checked. As for the second one (Resident "TeaTimer"), this is a small application that will notify you anytime the computer tries to change a program in the background. It is useful for watching the actions of viruses, but can get annoying if it notifies you of legitimate changes. Try turning this on by checking the box, and then turning it off later if it bugs you. It doesn't pop up very often, and is worth the extra protection.

Sygate Personal Firewall:
http://www.tucows.com/start_dl/213160_90233_6648
This is a free firewall that you should install as an extra precaution. The first time you run your internet browsers after you install this, it will ask you to confirm whether you want to allow them access to the internet. Check "yes" if you recognize the program...check "no" if it looks suspicious, and it wasn't a program you were trying to launch. Lots of programs (unfortunately) access the internet in the background without us knowing it, but having a firewall like this will show you which ones are trying to get on the net, and give you the option of blocking them if you want to.

If you have these programs installed on your PC, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to stay free and clear of most viruses and problems. I live by all of them, and have been using them for years.

Best of luck.

PS - As this post ages, many of these links may go bad. However, a simply search by program name should reveal download locations for the latest and greatest versions.