How To Avoid Computer Viruses.

Viruses affect most computer users in today's world of high speed internet access. Although you can get a virus without being connected to the internet, it most likely will strike when you visit questionable sites on the internet. Sometimes, your employees might bring a disk from their home computer and put it in your computer at the store and transfer a virus that way. There are lots of Anti-Virus software packages on the market that do a good job of removing a virus AFTER YOU GET ONE and Anti-Virus programs usually slow down your computer. So, we want to help you avoid getting a virus in the first place without having to purchase Anti-Virus software and keeping it up to date.

5 Tips for Avoiding Computer Viruses Without using Anti-Virus Software.

TIP 1 - Setup Default Windows Protection. Microsoft Windows has some pretty good virus and spam protection built in. Make sure you have the default protection setup correctly so that you will be warned when a virus attack is attempted. Follow these steps:

Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7:

Start Internet Explorer (Check your provider for other web browsers).
Select the Internet Options.
Select the Privacy Tab and find the "Pop-Up" blocker section.
Click on the Pop-Up blocker Settings button.
Set your Blocking Level to High or at least Medium and save the settings.

Now anytime a pop-up or active-x control tries to run, you will see a Yellow line at the top of your computer screen. NEVER select "Allow" in this yellow window unless you are at a trusted site that you know won't give you spam or a virus.

TIP 2 - Don't Let Outside Disks into your Work Computer. You may have one or more part time employees at your store. These part timers may also be students in high school or college. Schools are notorious places to pick up viruses. Make sure you have a strict policy in place that no outside floppies, CD's, Flash Drives, or other media types are allowed into the store. Students sometimes do their homework on your store computer at slow times at night. Make sure they understand the risks of loading outside information onto your stores computer. Windows XP can be set up to not allow access to different parts of the computer if neccessary.

Similarly, you should uninstall any applications you haven't used in over six months as well as back up and delete any files or documents that you won't need in the foreseeable future. Uninstalling an application on a Mac is as simple as dragging it from the Applications folder to the Trash Bin, but this method often leaves other files behind.

TIP 3 - Don't Visit Questionable Sites. If seems that for every valid and helpful legitimate internet web site there is, there is an illegitimate site just waiting for you to visit it so it can put spam or a virus on your computer. If you followed Tip #1 above you have the spam blocker turned on in your computer. Just NEVER unblock any pop-ups from questionable sites and you will avoid 99% of the problems. If you end up at a web site that is not the one you intentionally visited then exit out immediately EVEN IF YOU GET A MESSAGE THAT SAYS TO CLICK HERE TO AVOID GETTING A VIRUS. Most times the action to avoid the virus or spam is the action that loads it on your computer. TRICK: You can exit any current screen in Windows XP by holding down the ALT key while pressing the F4 function key.

TIP 4 - Watch For Pop-Up Scams Some sites advertise themselves as Anti-Virus removal sites but they are actually the site that put the "fake" virus on your computer and want you to pay $20 for the software to remove the "bad stuff" they loaded in the first place. They run a fake "SCAN" of your hard drive and show fake statistics of viruses and spam that actually don't really exist. A general rule is that a real virus will do something harmful to your computer like shutting it down. The fake Pop-Up scam sites show a regular and annoying message but don't actually do any harm.

TIP 5 - Lock Down Your Computer Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 all have degrees of security you can assign and set up to lock down areas of your computer. Check with a local computer shop to see how they can set up your system so that it is password protected and locks your employees out of accessing dangerous sites.

How to Speed Up Your Dry Cleaning Computer

TIP 1 - Get rid of unused programs You might not even realize it, but when you first log onto your PC, dozens of programs and services are starting that you most likely don't need. Some rear their ugly heads in the system tray (that little collection of icons next to the clock in Windows), but others run quietly in the background with you none the wiser. Now, don't get scared, these instructions will take you to corners of your operating system (OS) you may not have seen before, but follow our instructions below and you should notice slightly quicker performance and potentially much faster boot times.

Windows:

In XP select Run from the Start menu, under Vista you can hit the Windows key and "r" at the same time to bring up the Run dialog.
Run msconfig.
Select the Services tab.
You can safely uncheck the following services: Fast User Switching (if you only have one account on the PC), Indexing Service, Remote Registry, Smart Card, Telephony, Computer Browser (unless you have a home network), Messenger, Net Logon, Telnet, Terminal Services, NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing, Remote Desktop Help Session Manager, Uninterruptable Power Supply.
Now navigate to the Startup tab.
Uncheck any applications that don't need to be running the minute you startup your computer -- like AIM, iTunes Helper, and QT Task. But leave the antivirus.

TIP 2 - Clean Up the Junk Sometimes just doing some basic housekeeping can have a positive, if small, effect on PC performance. It is easy to manually clear out your browser's cache and delete temporary files. Be careful what you delete and have an expert do it if you're not comfortable doing it yourself.

TIP 3 - Turn Off Visual Effects In Vista, you can turn off the fancy Aero window decorations by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Personalize. Click the Windows Color and Appearance link, and follow the 'Open classic appearance properties for more color options' link at the bottom of that window. From there choose the Windows Vista Basic theme to disable the fancy transparencies. For even better performance, right-click on My Computer and select Properties. Click on the Advanced System Settings and then, under the Performance section, select Settings. Here, you can uncheck all the fancy animated effects and windows previews. The same tip also works for Windows XP.

TIP 4 - Defrag the Hard Drive Files saved on a Windows PC get broken up in pieces and scattered (physically) in different locations on your hard drive. Thus, half of a file may be on the opposite end of a disk from its other half. This happens because, rather than re-save an entire file, Windows only writes the new data, placing it in the hard drive's next available empty space. Initially, this improves speed. Sometimes, though, the next empty spot is not in the same location as the original file and your document becomes fragmented. As your files become more fragmented, your computer needs to work harder to find all the pieces. As a result, performance slows over time. Defragmenting (or "defragging" for short) rearranges the files on your disk, reuniting the disparate parts to make your files more quickly accessible. It should noticeably speed up the launch of programs and searches. Windows XP and Vista both have a built-in defragmenting solution. Fragmenting isn't an issue for Linux and Mac users.

TIP 5 - Get More Ram The most obvious, and most effective, way to speed up your PC is to add more RAM (random access memory). You can check how much RAM you have by right-clicking on 'My Computer' and selecting 'Properties' on a Windows PC. If you have less than 2-gigabytes (GB), it may be time for an upgrade. Even most Net books come with 1 GB these days, and 2 is considered the bare minimum for a Vista PC. You can get 4 GB of memory for as little as $40 from an online retailer like Newegg.com or TigerDirect.com. Just make sure to check what kind of memory your computer takes.

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