Windows Tools, Help & Guides

I am an Engineer of Telecommunications that love computers. My first computer was a Commodore 16kb, about 25 years ago and since then I am always fighting computers problems. Please visit my entries and ask me about whatever problem you have, I will be pleased to help you. My email is discoveryourpc [at] gmail [dot] com. You can follow me on twitter @agenlu or read my blog www.discoveryourpc.net

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First of all, it is fair to say, that this article is written by a former Mozilla Firefox user of many years and a current Google Chrome user.

Microsoft is planning to release the beta of Internet Explorer on September 15, 2010. Before the beta arrives, we can see many of the new features in the Internet Explorer Platform Preview.

The most recent Platform 4th was released on august 4.

Since the beginnings of Internet Explorer, it’s had two main problems: support of web standards and poor performance.

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No matter how much money you have invested in a new computer, sooner or later you will face performance problems.

These problems are usually related with the CPU or the memory. Computers are becoming so complex that you need all the help you can get to find the source of the problems.

The first thing I do when I notice that my computer is not acting as it should is run Task Manager. With this tool you can easily see the usage of Memory and CPU of every process on your computer. I always do the same: look for the processes that are using more CPU and see if there are enough physical memory available.

So, why not have a utility that do the same with just one click and that can be easily found in your Windows 7 Taskbar?

To do this we are going to use one component of Windows 7, PowerShell, that can be also used in other Windows versions.

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Use of USB devices is sometimes the easiest way to get infected by a virus.

Perhaps you want to control the usage so that another user cannot copy something to an external device.

Learn, in this guide, how to protect yourself from attacks via a USB drive.

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My last post was about looking for basic signs of malware infections: 6 Signs Of Malware Infections

That post was a little introduction, about how to know if a virus and other sort of malware is on your computer.

Now, we are going to use utilities to look for that creepy software.

I am sure that many of you are thinking, why I need to know all of this stuff if I have an antivirus?

The answer is pretty simple: many times these applications cannot remove the virus, so it is very useful to know other ways to get rid of infections.

We are going to use free utilities that exists in the operating system that can reveal if any undesired program is in your computer.

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Virus, spyware and other types of malware are here to stay. Our main problem is becoming a little paranoid about the subject. One of the reasons that drives to this situation is that many people–even skilled ones–are not aware of the symptoms of having a malware infection.

This post is just a basic list, I am preparing a more advanced article about the same topic so take this one as an introduction.

The best way to know if your computer is infected by some sort of malware is by using an antivirus to detect infections. So, what is the point in this list? Sometimes, the security utilities have problems detecting some sort of virus, as happens with the more sophisticated viruses out there.

Slow performance could be seen a sign of infection, but as there are so many reasons that can drive to this behaviour is not included in the list.

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Operating systems have become more complex over time. For an every-day user, it’s really a hard task to find what programs are slowing down their machine and for what reasons.

The most common performance problems are related with physical memory.

As I wrote in a comment answering a reader, Ben, in another post:

5 Things You Should Know About Microsoft Security Essentials

Programs use more RAM (another name for physical memory) if there is more available. Thus, you cannot associate high memory usage with bad memory usage. If your machine has resources (one of these resources is RAM), there is no problem using them if they’re available for use. But what about when you hit the limits of your physical memory?

What can an every-day user do to find out if their machine is using all of it’s current physical memory and, therefore, needs more RAM?

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