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Another possible way in which cookies can negatively affect your computer is when they are stored on your hard drive for too long. Generally, the information there is safe because it is non-executable text files. However, if malware or spyware is installed on your computer, it may be possible for it to access those cookies and start retrieving your login, email, and personal information and sending it back to whomever installed the spyware. There are enhanced search and sorting options so any suspicious activity can be easily traced.

There are quite a lot of keyloggers currently available on the market. Quality depends and so does the price. Keyloggers are usually very simple to install, setup and use and require no special skills from the user. Most of them cost around $30, though there are more sophisticated species that may cost a little bit more. Keylogger software usually operates in the invisible mode and children don’t know their parents have an eye on them. Data loggers, key loggers are just a few programs which harvest info from your computer. Winclear is the only program created specially to auto remove such spywares. The company responsible for SpectorSoft is currently defending itself stating that its program was never marketed as a way to steal information. That is why every computer owner needs winclear.

Protect With Winclear :History Of Internet Banking Uk
Identity theft protection is quickly becoming a hot topic. Every day, computer users are haunted by stories of people falling victim to identity theft. The biggest culprit in this recent rise in cyber crime is spyware, the buzzword that is on the lips of every internet user. Experts are now saying that nothing is 100 percent secure on the internet anymore, and users must take steps to protect themselves. Winclear is the only software which is capable of removing keylogger programs. While cookies are often stored in text files only used to track information that is already provided to various websites and are set to expire in short periods of time they can be used for malicious purposes in certain instances. Winclear has been the industry leader in fighting keyloggers for the last 8 years.

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In fact every big PC security vendor has its avid advocates and most determined haters alike. That is the reason why you need Winclear installed onto your computer. As the holidays approach there will be plenty of cyber criminals taking advantage of the card-sending season by using this or a similar exploit to steal information. Protect your computer security by using Winclear! More about Winclear here: Winclear Reviews.

I’ve just finished setting up a new PC for a friend and I think some of you will be interested in some of the tweaks I make to all of my PCs to make them just a little bit quicker. I’ve focused here on the ones which are simple to do and won’t cause problems if you get it wrong, rather than listing registry tweaks etc.

1. Disable Indexing Services

Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:

1. Go to Start

2. Click Settings

3. Click Control Panel

4. Double-click Add/Remove Programs

5. Click the Add/Remove Window Components

6. Uncheck the Indexing services

7. Click Next

2. Optimise Display Settings

Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:

1.Go to Start

2. Click Settings

3. Click Control Panel

4. Click System

5. Click Advanced tab

6. In the Performance tab click Settings

7. Leave only the following ticked:

- Show shadows under menus

- Show shadows under mouse pointer

- Show translucent selection rectangle

- Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop

- Use visual styles on windows and buttons

3. Disable Performance Counters

Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea.

To disable:

1. download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/exctrlst-o.asp

2.Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom.button below.

4. Speedup Folder Browsing

You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

1. Open My Computer

2. Click on Tools menu

3. Click on Folder Options

4. Click on the View tab.

5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box

6. Click Apply

7. Click Ok

8. Reboot your computer

5. Improve Memory Usage

Cacheman http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Cacheman/982371189/1 Improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings.

Once Installed:

1. Go to Show Wizard and select All

2. Run all the wizards by selecting Next or Finished until you are back to the main menu. Use the defaults unless you know exactly what you are doing.

3.Exit and Save Cacheman

4.Restart Windows

6. Optimise your internet connection

There are lots of ways to do this but by far the easiest is to run TCP/IP Optimizer. http://www.speedguide.net/files/TCPOptimizer.exe

1. Download and install

2. Click the General Settings tab and select your Connection Speed (Kbps)

3. Click Network Adapter and choose the interface you use to connect to the Internet

4. Check Optimal Settings then Apply

5. Reboot

7. Optimise Your Pagefile

If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.

1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties

2. Select the Advanced tab

3. Under Performance choose the Settings button

4. Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change

5. Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

8. Run BootVis - Improve Boot Times

BootVis will significantly improve boot times

1. Download and Run http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664

2. Select Trace

3. Select Next Boot and Driver Trace

4. A Trace Repetitions screen will appear, select Ok and Reboot

5. Upon reboot, BootVis will automatically start, analyze and log your system’s boot process. When it’s done, in the menu go to Trace and select Optimize System

6. Reboot.

7. When your machine has rebooted wait until you see the Optimizing System box appear. Be patient and wait for the process to complete

9. Remove the Desktop Picture

Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.

1. Right click on Desktop and select Properties

2. Select the Desktop tab

3. In the Background window select None

4. Click Ok

10. Remove Fonts for Speed

Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.

1. Open Control Panel

2. Open Fonts folder

3. Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.

Hope you find these 10 tips useful. Let me know if you did below, or if you have any other simple tips you want to share with other readers.

The author runs a blog following developments in the internet and mobile internet sectors. With over 10 years experience in strategy consulting and business development, and has seen and lived through the highs, and the lows of the industry.

Based in London, the author can be contacted on admin@connectedinternet.co.uk and his blog can be found at http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk

If you have been running Windows XP for a couple of years or more you may find that it is not running quite as quickly and smoothly as it was when you did your first install. I am constantly ‘evaluating’ software and uninstalling and reinstalling beta software on my computer and have always gradually become more and more disappointed after nine months to a year with the performance of my PC. So I regularly do a backup and reinstall all my software, including Windows.

Please note that this is completely different than doing the standard things to troubleshoot and fix individual problems such as system errors or application errors. These things are better fixed by using a systme Restore which is a great new feature to Windows XP

For anyone that has reinstalled their operating system a few times the process seems pretty straightforward as they have found all of the gotchas the first few times. I have lost mail and contacts but not much else over the years by following (or not following) a system to reload my operating system and software. This purpose of this guide is to give you a checklist to follow so that a reloading of Windows goes smoothly the first time.

The steps are as follows:

1. Backup all data

2. Document your current system drivers and software
3. Delete the Windows and profile directories
4. Reload Window
5. Reload software and data.

6. Get some sleep

1. Backup data.

There are two methods of the process of reloading your operating system. The first is to just delete the system files and the second is to backup the files to CD or DVD and then format the hard drive completely, my preference is to delete the system folders and work from there as the actual formatting is not needed as much now as it was in the past.

It is very important to be sure to get a backup of all of your data. My current practice is to create a folder in the Root of the C: drive called “backup for reload” and copy all of my files in there. The first few times that I reloaded my machine I either saved all of the data to another hard drive so I could format my main drive or I would just create a folder to save my data in that was in the root of the C: drive and just deleted the Windows directory. One thing to be aware of is that a new install of Windows is going to delete your current profile where your data is kept, you will be warned in the install and I am warning you here as well!

First of all Windows likes to keep all of your documents in your “My Documents” folder and even though the icon is on the desktop the folder is actually in the following location: c:documents and settings . The documents and settings folder is quite important as it does have all of the files that are associated with you as a user. Other folders in documents and settings are “Favorites” “Application Data” and “Local Settings”.

If you use Outlook Express for your mail you will want to back up its folders. Open up Outlook Express and go to tools to options to maintenance and there is a button called “Store Folder” this will tell you where the folder is that holds all of your mail, usually located in

c:–> documents and settings(logon name)–> local settings–> Application Data–> Identities–> Microsoft–> Outlook Express”. Hard to find spot but important.

If you are using Outlook for your mail and contacts my policy has always been to search for all .pst files on your PC this will give you your main as well as archive folders and maybe even some long lost mail from before.

I also do a search and put the following in the search box *.doc;*.xls;*.ppt;*. mdb;*.pub this will search for all office documents on the PC, when I get the result I only backup the files that are not in my documents and settings for my name or in the my documents folder.

How big is your “Backup and Reload” folder now that you have all of your data in it? Can you back it up to a CD? Or two, or a DVD? This would be a nice time to do that save to a CD so that in the event of a catastrophic failure of your hard drive you can go back and reload your data later.

2. Document your current system drivers and software

So often when I am working on a computer I find that after a format and reload of Windows that I am missing a network card driver or a video driver. Before you turn off the computer to format it or delete the system files make sure that you have a copy of all of the drivers, realistically the only drivers that seem to change are the video drivers. What other drivers might you need? Well If you have the CD that came with the motherboard then you will probably only need to download the sound card, video, monitor, modem drivers and you can find the type of hardware by right clicking on the my computer and going to properties and then depending on your version of Windows look for the device manager. I do not tend to format my drive I only delete the Windows directory and the Documents and settings directory when I do a reload so I can then find the files later still sitting on the hard drive. My preference is to create a folder called mydrivers in the root of the C: drive so that after you reload Windows you will have a central place to go to find the drivers. Now just go out and download the drivers that you need.

3. Delete the Windows and profile directories

Now, this is where you have to take a deep breath before you get started as when we delete files we are not going to be able to get them back. When I delete files on the computer before I reinstall Windows I do not delete all of the files or format the drive. The only way that you can delete what you want is to use some kind of a boot disk that does not load Windows from your hard drive. I use the Ultimate Windows Boot CD and after I boot the drive up I move some data instead of deleting. More often than not I will have missed some important file so I create a “backup” folder that contains all of my data. I drop my current “Documents and Settings” folder into this backup folder and then also any applications from the “Program Files’ folder that may have some of their own files. This would include databases like Act or Maximiser and Tax software or book keeping software like Quicken. Most of the data files for applications are kept in the “My Documents” folder.

In the install of Windows you will need to have at least 2 gigs of free space so make sure that you have freed up enough space to do the install

When I am deleting folders I am most interested in deleting the” Documents and Settings” and “Windows” folders, as this is where you will find user settings as well as the registry both good and bad. If you are really aggressive you can also include the “Program Files” folder so that after you have reloaded Windows you can have the default settings for each application. I also delete any files that are sitting in the root of the C: drive.

4. Reloading Windows

Now that you have deleted the unneeded files and directories you will have to give yourself an operating system to reload all of your software into. I prefer Windows XP now although if you have a bit of an older computer Windows 2000 will probably be fine and takes less system resources.

Just a note here, Windows 98 is a bad choice and there are a few reasons why. Windows 98 is not supported anymore by Microsoft so it does not have any new security fixes or drivers being written for it. One other issue is that the underlying file system that Windows 98 supports is FAT32, if you are loading Windows 2000 or XP you will likely want to take advantage of NTFS but the only good way to do this with a fresh load is to format your machine, this will delete all of the data that you have on your PC now. If you are moving from Windows 98 there will be a spot in the install asking if you would like to format or convert the drive to NTFS, I would avoid this as you can convert after you have switched your PC to Windows XP in Disk Management from the Computer management application in Windows.

The rest of the install should go smoothly and after you have finished you will have a nice new clean install of Windows with only the recycle bin on the desktop and no applications. Perhaps the desktop is only 256 colors or the size is not quite right but this is where you will fix that problem by reloading your drivers. Go to start and right click on the “MY Computer” icon and select properties, go to the hardware tab, now find the device manager and anything with an exclamation point or a red X will need a new driver. Right click on the icon, select update driver and walk through finding your drivers. If you can not find the driver in the lookup then you may have to go back to the mydrivers folder and run the executables for the drivers which may quicken the process of loading new drivers.

5. Reload Software and Data

Now the slow torturous part of the Windows install begins. I always do this reloading of Windows because my computer has gradually slowed down from all of the software that I have loaded up and pledge never to do again, I have proven time and time again that I don’t live up to the pledge. The only software that I load first is Office XP and setup my personal settings and mail folders from Outlook (check around for this documentation as it varies with your version of Office) and I also install my commonly used utilities. I keep my software install disks close by and just load software as I need it over the next few days.

6. Get Some Sleep

Congratulations. This process is very long and occasionally we do lose data that was missed in the backup but after you are done you have a computer that is at least as good as the day you started using it. There are fewer errors, less hiccups and the computer is fast and responsive. Although it takes a long time I am more than willing to do it as long as I cleared some time beforehand as the difference in working with the computer for some time after is a real treat.

Bill Nadraszky is a Computer support specialist that has worked with various versions of Windows for 15 years. You can get up to date information on computer support at http://www.xptechsupport.com