Windows Users: keep your virus definitions up-to-date
11-18-2010, 04:51 PM
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Windows Users: keep your virus definitions up-to-date
A business which I frequent asked me to look at their computer on a friendly level because it was running slow. They said that Their virus scanner has blocked a lot of problems and the computer is working, but slowly. Something that everyone should know is that AT LEAST 1 virus per day is discovered.
I discovered that they have Norton Security 2004 installed on their computer. Their subscription was expired since 2005. It's now almost 6 years later and the virus definitions have not been updated. This means over 2000 new viruses have been discovered. No matter how much you scan with old definitions, it will not catch new viruses. This is a big cause of slowdowns on a computer.
Without up-to-date virus protection you can check for a specific type of virus called a "root kit" by looking at your task manager (hit ctrl-alt-del and select task manger). A root kit virus will eat processor cycles in the background and not show up on the task manager. Sort by processor usage and count up the totals. If the total processor usage does not add up to 100%, then you most likely have a rootkit. The virus masks itself from the task manager in order to survive longer.
Another thing. Schedule a defrag routine. That can be accessed in start>accessories>schedule, set this up to run "C:\windows\system32\defrag c:" once a week. This will take care of slowdowns due to fragmented files. Windows filesystems (NTFS) have a problem; When a windows filesystem is used, the files get mixed up and placed in non-contiguous blocks. Defragmenting fixes that problem.
You can avoid all of this by switching to Linux. Try Ubuntu and relax. Just click the "install updates" button when it pops up and know that the entire community is looking out for you. Ubuntu is not trying to squeeze that extra dollar in royalties which Windows uses pay for using Microsoft's OS. Of course I did not recommend that to them, they have entire business practices built around that system which may need to be reworked. For the average user, just copy your music to ~/music, videos to ~/videos, pictures to ~/pictures and documents to ~/documents.
I discovered that they have Norton Security 2004 installed on their computer. Their subscription was expired since 2005. It's now almost 6 years later and the virus definitions have not been updated. This means over 2000 new viruses have been discovered. No matter how much you scan with old definitions, it will not catch new viruses. This is a big cause of slowdowns on a computer.
Without up-to-date virus protection you can check for a specific type of virus called a "root kit" by looking at your task manager (hit ctrl-alt-del and select task manger). A root kit virus will eat processor cycles in the background and not show up on the task manager. Sort by processor usage and count up the totals. If the total processor usage does not add up to 100%, then you most likely have a rootkit. The virus masks itself from the task manager in order to survive longer.
Another thing. Schedule a defrag routine. That can be accessed in start>accessories>schedule, set this up to run "C:\windows\system32\defrag c:" once a week. This will take care of slowdowns due to fragmented files. Windows filesystems (NTFS) have a problem; When a windows filesystem is used, the files get mixed up and placed in non-contiguous blocks. Defragmenting fixes that problem.
You can avoid all of this by switching to Linux. Try Ubuntu and relax. Just click the "install updates" button when it pops up and know that the entire community is looking out for you. Ubuntu is not trying to squeeze that extra dollar in royalties which Windows uses pay for using Microsoft's OS. Of course I did not recommend that to them, they have entire business practices built around that system which may need to be reworked. For the average user, just copy your music to ~/music, videos to ~/videos, pictures to ~/pictures and documents to ~/documents.
