Not every computer is prone to viral invasions. A number of factors determine your computer’s vulnerability to virus. When you use a browser to connect to the internet, it may automatically let in a virus, depending on the malware vulnerability of the browser. If your laptop gets heavily infected with the virus, it may fail to function properly, and you’ll need the help of a laptop repair service to resume your activities. Considering this, it is not feasible to let viral invasions get the best of your laptop. Let it be Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google Chrome, each browser has its own vulnerabilities. Knowing the weak points of your browser, and setting up its security features will help to avoid any virus from infecting your PC and corrupting valuable data.

Cyber Security

Through internet, millions of computers are linked together, allowing information to pass from thousands of miles. During the exchange of emails, stray virus can also infect your computer. To avoid that, your browser must have an effective firewall. Older versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer did not have strong firewalls, making viral invasion very easy. Systems with Google chrome prior to 33.0.1750.154 were also exposed to the threat. To keep your computer safe from cyber crimes, upgrade your internet browsers to their latest versions to effectively block out the malicious software.

Memory Corruption

A study about the previous version of Mozilla Firefox revealed that it had several memory safety bugs, which cause corruption of the PC memory under certain circumstances, damaging the firewall and making your computer vulnerable to viral invasion. Computer repair will be the only solution to get the virus out of the system in such a case. In the new version, these bugs have been fixed and removed. However Internet explorer does not, welcome memory corruption bugs, and Google Chrome has also improved its firewall to keep unwanted malware from infecting the cache memory.

Windows Clipboard Vulnerability

It is a bad idea to store your passwords in a file on your computer. Windows clipboard is not secure for saving passwords and other sensitive information. Internet Explorer is known to be quite weak against viruses, when they attack the clipboard. Though, the latest version has tried to minimize this issue. As for Firefox and Chrome, if a virus is able to crack open their firewall to seep into your computer, it might also be able to read the stored passwords and information and use it to corrupt your PC. Even though laptop repair services will fix this issue, it is possible that the virus will leak the copied passwords on to the internet. To keep this from happening, upgrade your Internet Explorer to reduce its vulnerability.

Recommendations

Most viruses get transferred to your computer through online hacks. When you are not using the internet, go offline to keep random viruses from invading your PC. Always upgrade your browser when a new version launches and install updated antivirus so that you won’t have to go for computer repair again. Upgrading doesn’t take much time, and it avoids malicious software from infecting your PC and threatening your security.

A computer virus is an uninvited guest that can make your life miserable. For your system to get infected, all it takes is an unknowing mouse click on a link or an email attachment. The virus can rip through your system rather quickly, corrupting data, destroying files and make your system behave strangely. It can affect the overall performance of your system and some strong infections can make it completely inoperative.

Even if your computer is installed with latest virus defense software, todays virus are smart enough to deceive them and invade your system silently. However, an infected system will show many symptoms from which you can identify whether your system is infected with a virus.

The five common symptoms are:

1. Slow System performance: A smoothly working computer suddenly becomes extremely slow to perform basic operations indicating that there is something wrong. The reasons can be a malware attack or a hardware malfunction. You can check the hardware with the help of a Laptop repair or Computer repair professional and if hardware issues are not detected, you can confirm that the problem is caused by the existence of an active virus in your system. A virus, such as Trojan and worm are able to replicate themselves, and download additional spyware and virus in the background without your knowledge. This will eat up your system resources, eventually making it sluggish.

2. Frequent system crash: A virus can cause serious damage to the files stored in your computer. It can corrupt important system files, remove drives or modify administrative settings, affecting the proper functioning of the computer. If your system crashes or freezes repeatedly, you can assume that something has damaged its operating system, most probably a virus!

3. Automatically disabled antivirus and firewall: If you see any of your computer’s security components, such as antivirus and firewall has been disabled without your knowledge, it is a clear indication of a virus attack. The virus has somehow utilized the vulnerability in your system to invade it and disabled the security measures to allow the hacker to easily access your files and data. To prevent such incidents you should check your antivirus for proper functioning and update it frequently.

4. Unwanted hardware activity: Some hardware activities such as CD-ROM tray opening and closing by itself, unresponsive printer or USB devices, increased, or continuous hard drive activity indicates that some malicious activities are taking place in the background.

5. Unusual Error Messages: If you are continuously getting error messages that you have not seen before, most probably it is a virus attack. The messages indicating that your files cannot be opened, your application can’t run, or cannot access specific drives on your computer, it clearly indicates that those specific files are damaged by the virus attack.

Conclusion:

These are the most common symptoms indicating a virus infection on your computer. However, many malware does not show any detectable symptoms, making early detection quite difficult. Therefore, it is always recommended to install a reputed antivirus software and frequently update it to enable your system to defend against all existing and emerging virus.

Microsoft’s flagship email application, Outlook 2013 is really a multi-roles player. It is a perfect tool for managing contacts, calendar, web browsing, note taking, task management and can be used as a journal as well. It is available as a part of Microsoft Office Suite 2013 and its unique features include sleek design, mail previews, weather bar in calendar, social connectors, mail cleanup tools, Attachment reminder, Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), quick message reply through one click, and many more. Microsoft Outlook can be used with Microsoft Exchange Server and with Microsoft SharePoint Server for multiple users in a firm.

Many PC users believe that configuring MS Outlook is a tedious task, and only a Computer repair professional can do it perfectly. However, this is not true; you can do it yourself by following the steps described here.

For you to be able to use Gmail with Outlook 2013, first you must configure your Gmail account to work with Outlook.

Procedure of configuring Gmail account using IMAP:
i. Sign up your Gmail account
ii. Go to Mail or click on the gear icon located at the right top of the browser. From the drop down menu, click settings.
iii. Then click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab to bring up the POP and IMAP settings.
iv. Scroll down to the IMAP access section and select the Enable IMAP radio button.
v. At the bottom of the screen, click on Save Changes and close the browser.

Procedure to configure MS Outlook.
i. Open MS Outlook 2013 and on the menu bar, click on the File tab.
ii. From the drop down menu, click Account Settings.
iii. A dialog box opens, Click on New/ Add Account.
iv. Choose Email Account radio button, which will automatically set up the Gmail account in Outlook. You can also choose Manual Set up or Additional Server Types then click next. In case you selected the Email Account option, enter your name, email address and your account password then click next.

v. For the Email account option, the automatic process may or may not work and in case it does not, the second option of manual is then preferred. For the Manual Set up or Additional Server types, Choose POP or IMAP radio button, and then click Next.

vi. On the POP and IMAP dialog box, enter the following: User, Server and Log on Information. Select IMAP from the Account Type drop-down list on the Server Information. On the Incoming and outgoing server, enter the following respectively.
• Incoming mail server: imap.googlemail.com
• Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.googlemail.com
Ensure that you enter your correct full email address as well as the User Name.
vii. Click More Setting.

viii. A dialog box known as Internet Email Setting opens. Click on the Outgoing Server Tab and select My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication. Ensure that the ‘Use same settings as my incoming mail server’ option is selected.
ix. Once you have completed that, Click on the Advanced tab still on the Internet Email Setting dialog box. Then enter the following
: Incoming server: 993
: Incoming server encrypted connection: SSL
: Outgoing server encrypted connection: TLS
: Outgoing server: 587

Something to note during this stage: You have to select the type of encrypted connection first to avoid the port number 587 for the Outgoing server from reverting back to port 25 when you change the type of encrypted connection.
x. Click OK to accept the changes and close the More Settings dialog box.
xi. Click Next
xii. Outlook will immediately start testing the account settings. When the test has finished, click Close
xiii. A pop up screen appears saying “You’re all set!” Click finish

In the account list, your Gmail address will display alongside any other email addresses that you had added to MS Outlook 2013. The procedure is very simple and straight, just follow the instruction step by step and will have the configured Outlook account up and running. If you encountered any problem or you find it difficult to do it yourself, you can visit a computer repair or laptop repair center to get it done quickly.

After using the computer for a long time, it may become uncharacteristically slow. When the computer is in such a situation, it is prone to crashes, which may lead to loss of critical data. Luckily, one can use several tricks to free up disk space, make the computer work faster, and prevent loss of important data without necessarily doing laptop repair.

Try Rebooting the computer

If the computer has not been rebooted for a long time, it may work slower than usual. Reboot is another word for restart. For a computer, rebooting comes in handy if there is a problem with the drivers, hardware, or a general error. If even after rebooting the computer is still slow, jump to the next step.

Look at the background programs

If there are many programs running in the background, the computer is most likely to work slowly. For example, when writing an article while listening to music, the music is playing in the background. Sometimes this scenario emanates from programs that start automatically when the computer is on. Disable or remove such tools to improve the performance of your computer. To check all the programs running on the computer, open the Task Manager. If you are on Windows 7 or a higher CPU, Resmon gives a better understanding of the computer usage.
In certain instances, the antivirus scanner affects the performance of the computer. Make sure no scanning is taking place in the background.

Get Rid of Temporary Files

During the normal use of a computer such as internet, temporary files are stored on the hard drive. If these files are not removed, they may adversely affect the performance of the computer. These files can be deleted either manually or using the Disk Cleanup utility found in most computers. If the utility does not remove all the temporary files, you can go to the temporary files location by entering %temp% in the search field of start menu.

Check Hard Drive Space and Condition

Ideally, the hard drive should have at least 500Mb of free space. This kind of space is important because it allows for the swap file operation in order to create enough space for temporary files. If you would like to know how much hard disk space is remaining in your computer, contact BytesPC professionals and you will be guided depending on the operating system you are using.
There are also chances that the hard drive is fragmented or corrupted. Check whether the drive has any malfunction and check whether all data is correctly arranged.

To speed up the computer

Like the house, the machine needs an occasional thorough cleaning and computer repair. With time, computers are filled with unimportant temporary files, internet files, and other junk from the internet. There are several ways of reducing this clogging.
We do the full spectrum of computer repair services like computer repair, Macbook Pro repair and data recovery services too so you can contact us if you are facing any technical problems with your computer.

Having a computer that is infected with viruses can be a very stressful situation. A computer virus can destroy important computer files and data. Even computer hardware is at risk from computer viruses. To make sure that your computer operates normally and optimally, it is important to put into consideration the risks posed by viruses.

What is a Computer Virus?

A simple definition of a virus is a computer program that can multiply and infect a computer or computers without the user(s) knowledge or permission. A virus is different from adware, spyware, or malware programs in that it has the reproductive ability.
First, you need to be acquainted with as much information as possible about the different computer viruses. Understand how these “enemies” sneak in and attack your machine. Start with research through the internet and seek information from IT experts since they deal with virus threats everyday.

Antivirus program

When it comes to computer repair for viruses, an antivirus program is the best option. Visit your local computer shop and have a strong antivirus program installed. Remember to update the program regularly- threats increase with time.

Windows Updates

The fight against computer viruses does not stop with the installation of antivirus program; Windows updates are equally important. These updates give users security updates on a regular basis, thus enhancing the fight against viruses. If your computer lacks Windows updates, it is vulnerable to any new threat. To make sure your computer is perpetually safe, update windows frequently.

Watch Out the Mails You Open

Many people are not aware that mails are also sources of computer viruses. It is important to be extra cautious when opening mails from an unknown source. In addition, mails from known sources could bear viruses. If a friend’s mail has a virus, it will be very easy to spread it to many people. Therefore, it pays a lot to install a computer antivirus that scans all mails that come to the computer to avoid major laptop repair in future.

Computer Firewall

If you are looking for maximum computer protection, ensure that the firewall is enabled. Most computers have an inbuilt firewall. If your computer does not have one, try third party software for example Zone Alarm. With a Firewall on the computer you can rest assured of maximum protection from viruses.

The tips given in this article may seem difficult or too much to implement. However, if you are intent on protecting your computer from viruses and potential damage, then you need to try these options for a better service from your computer. If you are already facing problems with your computer and you can’t seem to get rid of the virus or malware, BytesPC does the full spectrum of computer repair and tackling viruses is definitely one of them. We also do Macbook Pro repair, PC computer repair and data recovery services.