My sons’ IBM laptops are riddled with spyware and viruses. I have purchased software that takes care of viruses and software that takes care of spyware, but I don’t want to add more software. I would rather have a disk I can use on any computer that disinfects the entire machine.
A. The problem here is that you are describing a magic bullet, and magic bullets go into the same mythical category as free lunches and quick fixes.
I can offer a couple of suggestions, and even though you are down on getting more software fixes, I’ll describe a new program that, as one Web-surfs, simply stops the computer from downloading anything through the browser. It’s Aura, by ATKA Software (www.getmyaura.com). The $70 software pre-emptively blocks all those tiny memory-clogging applications that are downloaded to make websites deliver many of their features, such as animation, sound and video. As you know, some of these applets also can be used by spyware operators to do nasty things such as monitor and report on which websites one visits, redirect default home page to a sales site and monitor keystrokes.
The problem with Aura – also its strength – is that whenever anything is allowed to be written to the hard drive, the user gets a nagging pop-up message warning of possible dangers and asking for permission to accept the download. Most other anti-spyware and anti-virus products spare most interruptions by scanning the hard drive at the end of each day to find problematic downloads.
So, it doesn’t hurt to run Aura and a traditional anti-virus package.
Meanwhile, you can eliminate a lot of this stuff by deleting the temporary folder where Windows stores most of the applets that are downloaded. Click on Tools in the Microsoft Internet Explorer menu, and select Internet Options. In the next display, open the General tab and you will find buttons to Delete Files from the Temporary Internet directory and to Delete Cookies in a separate operation.
Q. My daughter’s Toshiba laptop would not recognize her printer, and when I tried to reinstall it, it kept telling me that maybe the connection was not proper or that there was another error.
A. Your problem lies with the so-called Plug and Play feature of Windows XP, which is supposed to recognize any device plugged in to a USB port and load the driver software that runs the printer or whatever. After it recognizes something once, Plug and Play will never again try to install that device. So, you need to erase all memory of the printer from the computer’s records.
Right-click on My Computer and pick Properties and then Hardware and Device Manager. In Device Manager, click on the plus sign next to “Universal Serial Bus.” Look for the problem printer’s name and give it a right-click. Select Remove. The computer will recognize the printer again, and you’ll be able to install it correctly.
