PC running a tad slow, time to upgrade?
Before you buy a new system, hold your horses! Does your system seem to crawl along at a snail’s pace and is getting progressively worse as time goes on? Do you have pesky popups that come up when web surfing for no reason? Have you scanned your computer of virus and it comes up clean and assume it’s just your PC getting old? If so, read on…
You could very likely have some form of malware (or numerous malware instances) installed on your system right under your nose. It’s important to know that not all anti-virus software can detect this type of issue, in fact they usually are not monitoring for programs such as malware. What is Malware exactly? Malware can sometimes be lumped in with traditional virus programs, but more recently is software installed by accident by opening a website or installing a program (usually shareware or freeware) that hides malicious program code used to do everything from track your keystrokes (bank passwords) to annoy you with pop ups when it senses you are on a site. This is where the scary terms Trojan Horse, Root kit and Backdoors are used. Bottom line, it’s a program used to infiltrate your computer system for some reason (and one I can assure you that you don’t want).
You may say to yourself that this only happens to people visiting unsavory websites or install risky software, right? WRONG! A lot of times unsuspecting websites are the target and can infect your system without you are the web site owner knowing. So unfortunately, staying away from the creepy crawly places on the Internet no longer is a guarantee that you will be safe.
Software defined as Malware is incredibly prolific on the Internet and oftentimes traditional anti-virus cannot keep up with the latest malware outbreaks.
Fortunately, a sub industry continues to grow that caters to eradicating this threat. One of my favorite programs is Malwarebytes, http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php. In fact, this program won the cNet Editor’s Choice award in April 2009 as it is incredibly adept at locating and wiping out Malware on your system and provides a basic version that is FREE.
If you are experiencing less than stellar performance, I would highly recommend giving your system a scan with Malwarebytes or an equivalent program; you might be surprised at what you find.
Happy Computing!
Tony Nestor
CTO, Progress Technologies, Inc.
(239) 985-0335 ext. 623
tony@progresstechnologies.com
http://www.progresstechnologies.com
http://twitter.com/progresstech
Tony Nestor is CTO for Fort Myers, Florida based Progress Technologies, Inc. Progress Technologies, Inc. is a leader in the development of website and database applications for city government, real estate, financial and manufacturing companies nationwide since 1998.
