Some computer users go overboard in trying to save money: Fact.

- ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with trying to save money: After all, why should you pay more than you need to with one retailer if you can get exactly the same product cheaper elsewhere? I myself am always looking for ways to reduce costs; especially when it comes to building computers, both for myself and for my customers. Let’s be realistic about this; whatever it costs me will be passed on to the customer.

I’m starting to wander off the point here; so back on track: There’s saving money and there’s theft. Running pirated software, which is a common way of saving money, is theft. – There it is in black and white. – But hey I’m no moralist or divine authority who has any right to tell you not to do what you may or may not be doing. That’s your choice and your responsibility if you wish to run illegal pirated software: You accept the consequences if you get caught. that’s between you and the law-enforcement authorities. – ‘Not my concern; ‘not my problem.

I’ll tender a little advice on the matter, though, from my own experiences: -

Somebody contacted me because their computer wasn’t working properly and wanted me to overhaul their software. They said that someone had upgraded their box to Vista during a hardware upgrade, in which this person had fitted a dual-cored processor and changed the graphics card. Since then their box had never been right and was getting progressively worse.

I took their box in and had a look at it: Firstly I noticed that they didn’t have a graphics card. – The machine was running on the motherboard’s onboard graphics. They also still had the original single-core processor fitted which had never  been replaced since the DDR motherboard was new.

To cut a long story short I got the order to rebuild the box and install XP in place of Vista. Using the original case, PSU, and hard-drive, I rebuilt the box; fitting a new and better motherboard with a better onboard graphics capability, new dual-core processor, DDR2 RAM, all professionally put together and delivered. Normally I don’t do rebuilds – I usually only build new. Normally I don’t do software overhauls either; but in this case I did. – Well I completely wiped the hard-disc and installed XP. – As this box was the worst bodge-job of pirated-software I’d ever seen and I wanted the chance to examine it. – Yes the Vista installation was pirated, as was almost every installed program bar the free software.

The hard-drive was crawling with viruses and malware too. – Because they were unable to install any patches and updates. They were actually running as an active member of at least two botnets, and I was surprised that they still had any identity or bank balance to themselves. Antivirus was installed, numerous times, all of which had reported thousands of malware incidences in various coloured boxes at the foot of the screen, and were asking ridiculous sums in payment to clean up the damage caused. Vista crashed regularly, behaved slowly and oddly, and half of the programs either didn’t run at all, or only partially worked.

What flabbergasted me most, though, was the fact that they’d payed some “technician” (hacker) to set up their computer so that they could have free computing: Several hundred pounds for a graphics card that didn’t exist, a dual-core processor that was the original single-core processor, and installation of pirated software which put their machine, their bank balance, and their identity, in danger of being stolen. – Also the privilege of being recruited into a number of botnets so that they could participate in a distributed-computing initiative too! If they’d paid for their software rather than tried to get something for nothing then they’d probably never have had to pay me to put the damage right in the first place. They now run a legitimate copy of XP, purchased via myself. I installed free and open-source alternatives to most of their pirated software, and I now have another happy customer.

Look at it this way: You buy a car; a diesel. It’s new. Would you top up the engine oil with used cooking fat to save money? Would you fill up the tank with cheap red diesel (Illegal in the UK for road vehicles, as well as corrosive on the engine.)? When the time came to service it; would you take it to a notorious criminal firm who run a breaker’s yard?

If you answered “Yes” to any or all of the questions in the last paragraph above, then you’re either insane, a redneck, or a fugitive from justice.

- So why would you want to run hacked software on the computer you payed for that instantly renders your computer unsafe? Hacked and cracked software is supposedly free; but it’s full of security holes, unpatched vulnerabilities and known exploits, added to which it’s illegal and you run the risk of prosecution. It’s full of unresolved bugs that will affect the running of your machine; plus the fact that poorly-written malware routines are often used to defeat the keycode on installation.

It’s just not worth the hassle; yet people are doing it nevertheless. Perhaps you’re one of those people? Here’s the bottom line: If you run pirate software it’ll save you money in the short term; but in the long run it’ll end up costing you more than if you’d bought legitimate software in the first place. – And if you get busted and fined for running pirate software it’ll cost you even more than that.

Is it really worth it? You decide.

Mary Landesman wrote an article on About.com, which brought up some interesting points. Three different free antivirus solutions were tested: AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic, AVAST 4 Home Edition, and AVG Free Edition. Of these; AVAST! (Which I use.) fared the best, detecting 92% of zoo viruses. AntiVir came second with an 85% detection rate, and AVG was in last place with only 81% detection rate.

When it came to being fast at releasing updates against major threats though, AntiVir was tops, with Avast! in second place, and AVG once again lagging behind in last place.

Although all three solutions claim to give protection against spyware and adware, they’re all fairly lousy at doing so. Avast! was again the best; despite scoring only 33%. AVG was yet again in last place.

As with everything else, you get what you pay for; so if you need an active all-round security suite I personally recommend the paid-for Kaspersky Internet Security Complete Protection , which has in test after test proved to be one of the best security solutions on the market. Linux users and geeky types may prefer NOD32/Eset Smart Security, which is also one of the best out there – Although I personally found it to be a bit bloated when I tested it last year (2008) in November.

I remember back in the days in the 20th Century when I was running Windows 98SE I had Trend PC-Cillin installed, (Not free) which failed to detect a particularly virulent virus which subsequently infected my system and disabled all protection. I installed a different paid-for solution, (I forget the name of it.) which the virus couldn’t disable and which detected and killed the virus. That goes to show that no antivirus solution; free or paid-for, is infallible.

I’ve always scanned with Lavasoft AdAware on a weekly basis anyway. – So if anything is missed by Avast! then AdAware; probably the best anti-malware solution I’ve seen, even topping Malware Bytes, will remove it.

What antivirus or security suite are you using? How would you rate it? Please comment.

Added 16th December 2009: Since I wrote this article a new free antivirus solution from Microsoft; namely Microsoft Security Essentials, has been released. In the opinion of myself and other testers; all other free antivirus solutions suck in comparison, and I strongly recommend that, if you’re not prepared to pay for an antivirus/malware solution, you download and install Microsoft Security Essentials

If you buy your computers pre-built with the operating system and other software pre-installed, you’ll notice that over time the unit’s operation becomes slower and slower. Eventually things might start to go wrong: Existing programs may crash unexpectedly, new programs that you install may not work properly and/or may affect other programs and/or the operating system itself. Even the operating system itself may seem to start behaving strangely. Why does this happen? In this article I’m going to be looking at the issues from the perspective of a Windows XP Professional user; such as myself.

In a lot of cases the issues arise due to a lack of maintenance. Imagine if you bought a new car but never checked, maintained, or serviced it at all: Eventually it would start to go wrong and eventually break down. A computer is like a car in that it requires constant maintenance. Just like a car won’t work well or long if all you do is fill it up with petrol for a long time, ignoring maintenance; so a computer won’t work well or long if all you do is plug it in and use it for a long time, ignoring maintenance.

In such cases the first thing people normally do is blame their hardware or somebody else. The somebody else is usually a tech; primarily the tech that built it. I once had someone insist that the reason why their machine wasn’t working very fast after they’d been downloading virus-laden files using p2p software and installing pirated software was because I hadn’t built it properly and that it was definitely a hardware fault. – This despite the fact that this person’s computer-literacy was virtually nil, and they had no idea of what went on inside their machine.

Even if the user practices safe-computing to the letter; there’s still a need to maintain the software. If your anti-malware software requires manually updating then do it regularly and routinely; or upgrade the entire program to one that automatically updates. There are free anti-malware programs that update regularly from the internet and will cost you nothing, nada, zilch. The one I recommend is called Avast! .

Even though your anti-malware program may regularly update itself from the web; there are still chances that a new virus might get in before the update occurs. There are also chances that a particular type of malware that’s got into your computer may not be recognised by the program. Always run a full virus-scan at least weekly; using both your installed software as well as an online virus scanner.

There’s also the chance that data residing on your hard-drive, including your hard-drive’s file system itself, can become corrupted. (Especially with Windows.) The more time this is allowed to continue the worse it’ll get; until it eventually becomes noticeable and the user starts suspecting a hardware malfunction after a system crash or some other symptom. I suggest that every month you run the chkdsk program. Although this can be run from the graphical user interface inside Windows; it’s easier to run it from a command line in my opinion: -

Click Start>Run and type chkdsk /r. This instructs the computer to run the chkdsk program which checks the hard-drive for errors. In this case, since you’ve used the /r parameter; it’ll check for any errors that it finds in the file-system and the data, and it’ll do it’s best to repair any errors that it finds. – It’s not infallible but it usually works. If you’re running chkdsk on your primary drive you’ll be asked to reboot so that chkdsk can work while the drive’s not in use.

If you have more than one hard-drive, or a partitioned hard-drive, you may find that you have to specify a drive letter in the command. For example: chkdsk E: /r  This command instructs the computer to run the chkdsk program on drive E: and repair any errors that it finds.

There’s also data fragmentation, which builds up over time. (This only happens with Windows and some Linux distros. It doesn’t happen on a Mac.) What’s going on here?

When Windows writes to disk it writes to the next available space on the disk. If that space is less than the data that it needs to write then it moves on past the data already on the disk to the next available space, where it starts writing again. If it still hasn’t finished writing the file but runs out of space again, then it once again uses the next available space…and so on until the write is completed. As a consequence you end up with several fragments of the file strewn across the disk. Although the system knows where these fragments are, and that they’re bits of a single file; because the information that tells it so is stored in the registry, the read-heads of the hard-drive have to spend longer seeking out and reading all those fragments when Windows wants to access the file again at a later time. If that’s just the one file then it doesn’t make much difference to performance. If it’s lots of files that are fragmented then the hard-drive can take twice as long or more reading them all, and hence performance is slowed down significantly. If it’s a large lot of or all the files that are fragmented them the computer becomes disorientated, sees data errors where there are none due to slow read-times, and crashes. Also the amount of strain on the hard-disk’s mechanisms can vastly increase reading fragmented files; therefore the lifetime of the drive decreases with use.

You can buy programs that automate the defragmentation process. I personally recommend Diskeeper for this purpose. Although it’s paid-software, you can currently use the software free for 30 days trial if you’d prefer to try it out first.

If you’re not using automated defragmentation-software, however, you should manually defragment your hard-drive at least weekly. Failure to do so will result in impaired system performance and eventually a BSOD if you leave it long enough.

Finally the obvious: If you run pirated software you’re breaking the law and are liable for prosecution if found out. Also pirated software might contain corrupted data and/or viruses/spyware/keyloggers. It might also use techniques to bypass the program’s anti-piracy measures that are detrimental to your computer hardware. If you insist on running pirated software than be prepared for anything to go wrong.

If you use p2p software; even if you don’t make illegal downloads, be very careful what you download: There are viruses out there that can get into your system and disable all of its protection; leaving it vulnerable to any and all kinds of attack.

Your computer is a machine: Like any machine; including your body, if you don’t maintain it then it WILL fall into disrepair and eventually break down.

Please comment.

*I am not currently at time of writing affiliated to Avast! or Diskeeper: Therefore whether or not you use these products; I will not gain or lose anything.

In short – Everyone needs them – That includes YOU!

I have seen people using an old computer running Windows ME without any firewall, antivirus, antispyware; totally unpatched. I was so shocked that I commented out loud about having found the local computer virus maternity unit: The owner, who was in the nextdoor room, came scurrying in with a look of puzzlement combined with anger on her face.

This person had been merrily using a totally unprotected computer for years and spreading viruses to all and sundry across the internet for years; totally unaware of any threat to herself or others.

"Oh but I only use it online about an hour a day." She exclaimed.

– How thoughtful of you. NOT!

Some computer users I’ve encountered have no idea what a firewall is. Others have said that they think they don’t need antivirus software because they only have a dialup connection. Still others have antivirus software but didn’t realise that it had to be updated. And yet others even have complained to me that the security bug fix that "Microsoft" emailed to them didn’t do anything but slow their machine down.

The worst instance was a person who had had their machine "upgraded"- Allegedly from a single-core to a dual-core processor, and had supposedly moved from a 32-bit to a 64-bit installation of Windows XP, which they’d paid a sizable amount of money for the privilege of having carried out. On my examination the operating system disk packaging didn’t shed any light on the question of exactly what this person was running, as there was only a clear case with a home-recorded CD inside it. The contents of this CD included a virus that had been rewritten to defeat the Microsoft Genuine Advantage software and reported a legitimate key. It soon became clear that this was an unprotected, non-updated, unpatched pirated copy of Windows Vista, which was being run on a machine that was hardly capable of running it:

The "upgraded" "dual-core" processor was a 2.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 single-core processor and the RAM it was using was still the old DDR rather than DDR2. The motherboard was a rather ancient Asus board made to run the early 1st generation Athlon 64s, which was what it was still doing. The system was riddled with viruses and malware: In fact I was surprised that it was still running. The operating system was totally unprotected and all the software that they were running was pirated also.

Both the cases I’ve written about lived within 15 miles of me, and are just two worst-case examples of the many similar cases I’ve seen that close in proximity to where I live: The possibilities from those statistics frighten me no end. I would estimate that there are nearly a million internet-connected users in England alone who are not using any online protection and whose computers are virus and botnet nurseries.

On the basis of that estimate alone it should be fairly obvious to you why a computer needs protection.

In general I think that most computer users are too lax don’t take security seriously enough.

I am fairly certain that the number of machines that are still unprotected by any kind of firewall is fairly big.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines unprotected by any kind of anti-virus and anti-spyware software is quite high: Higher than you’d imagine.

I am fairly certain that the number of people who have anti-virus and anti-virus software installed, but whose databases have never been updated is quite colossal.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines that have not once taken any update to Windows or Windows components is probably in the twenties.

I am also fairly certain that there are a number of people who’ll click on links or open attachments from unknown sources without giving it a second thought.

Owning a computer could be likened to owning a car: Both require maintenance, both need attention, both need care when using them. When you drive a car you don’t just get in and drive off taking any route that you fancy. There are do’s and don’ts; there are things you can do and things you shouldn’t do:

For instance if you don’t stick to the roads and drive cross-country you’re likely to end up stuck in a rut or broken down in the middle of nowhere. If you try to drive through tree trunks you’ll end up with a busted car. (I know this: I didn’t try to drive through a tree, but I lost it on a corner and hit one once. In that instance I discovered that evolution fashioned trees in a stronger design than Ford fashioned cars.) If you drive recklessly you’ll end up hurting yourself financially and/or physically. Maybe you’ll end up hurting others too.

The same is true when using a computer: if you don’t bother to maintain it and just "drive" it in any old fashion you’ll get reputation and you’ll end up with a computer that’s slow, faulty, and full of malware. That malware will spread from your computer to other users because that is what it is made to do. If a person doesn’t use anti-virus then their computer will become a virus nursery and infect other computers: That is carelessness and selfishness on their part. likewise with anti-spyware, firewall, etc.

People do exactly that though: they don’t bother, they don’t care. They might not mind having a machine full of malware; but other people don’t want that. As a result, we have botnets, spam, and constant virus and spyware attacks.

My advice to every computer user – Whether they run Windows, Linux, or Mac; but especially if they run Windows, is:

Windows is a targeted operating system; but other operating systems are by no means immune to attack.

Everyone needs education: That includes computer users. What do YOU think?