Monthly Archives: July 2011

Online Virus Scanners: How They Could Help You

Posted by admin on July 19, 2011 No comments

It’s always good practice to install anti-virus and make sure that it is constantly updated; however running more than one anti-virus program on your computer at the same time can have negative effects on the security and performance of your system, and is not recommended. You may think that you have increased protection, but many of these programs can conflict with each other, which may leave you with effectively no protection whatsoever. Furthermore, the extra burden of running multiple anti-virus programs has on system resources such as the hard drive, memory and CPU is substantial. Your computer will usually grind to a halt under the extreme demand being forced on it.

However, if you require extra protection because you are not entirely confident with your current protection, and would perhaps like a second opinion, there are alternatives to installing another anti-virus program on your computer. That alternative is online antivirus scanners.

These free scanners require no installation. They will simply run as an add-on to your internet browser that will scan your system without disrupting your current protection. They are designed to work around your current configuration.

The add-on allows the online malware scanners to be browser independent, which means that it doesn’t matter whether you’re using Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or another browser, the online malware scanners are designed to work with all of them.

Online virus scanners are useful in many situations. You may have recently suffered from a virus on your PC that your current anti-virus solution has eradicated, it might be best to get a second opinion and to check if there are any more viruses your current protection failed to detect. Perhaps you have downloaded a file you suspect is suspicious and you wish to scan it with an online malware scanner.

Online malware scanners can offer you the same, if not increased flexibility over your installed protection, with full scan, quick scan, individual file scan, and many more options, whilst using minimal system resources to automatically remove or warn you of infections on your system.

With online malware scanners you can be sure that it will detect and destroy the latest viruses, as the virus database is updated constantly. Some of these solutions will even alert you if your current protection is out of date.

There are many online scanners available from all of the major anti-virus companies, including AVG, BitDefender, Kaspersky and many more!

Note: Because online scanners do not offer real-time protection, they should never be used as your main antivirus solution, only to complement your existing protection.

Getting Rid Of Your Old PC: Something You Should Bear In Mind

Posted by admin on July 4, 2011 1 comment

Have you recently purchased a new PC or laptop and wish to get rid of your old one? You may take it to be disposed of, or you may sell it to accumulate some of the money lost buying a new one. It’s easy to forget about your old computer. However, just think for a second. What did you use that computer for, and what did you have stored on there? Did you do any online shopping or banking? Did you store any private documents? You may have deleted all of your private and sensitive information from the hard drive, but unfortunately, simply deleting those items isn’t enough anymore. There are free tools that exist, that even an amateur computer user could use to easily recover data that has been deleted. Once you have disposed of or sold your computer, you don’t know whose hands it may fall into. This could lead to all kinds of things, such as becoming the victim of fraud.

Fortunately there are ways to make sure that your data is completely safe from recovery:

You can physically remove the hard drive from the system. You may wish to keep the hard drive and install it in your new system, or purchase a hard drive caddy and use it as an external hard drive.

Alternatively if you don’t wish to keep the hard drive you can physically destroy it. How you do this is up to you, but you will need to make sure that the platters inside the hard drive are destroyed, as these contain the data. Exercise caution when destroying the hard drive so you do not cause yourself injury. This method will guarantee that no one will be able to recover any information on the drive. However if you intend to sell your old system, this may not be the best solution.

At Ugeek we have the tools that enable us to securely remove everything from your hard drive to the highest possible standard, without having to physically destruct the hard drive, making sure that there is not a trace of information left. So you can be safe in the knowledge that no matter where your old computer ends up, your personal information will not be there with it.

Note: After performing the secure format there will be absolutely nothing on the hard drive, not even an operating system (i.e. Windows). However we are able to also reinstall the operating system that came with your PC if required.

If you are interested in this service, call us or email us for more details and a quote. You can find our contact details on our homepage.