happy seniors pc users: Signs of Malware

Signs of Malware

You all know there are millions of malware infections out there today. How do I know if I have a virus?" I will cover some of the signs your computer will show if it's possibly infected with a virus or some other type of malware.

1.) Your computer slows down majorly. If your system slows down drastically, you may have an infection. Viruses and adware use resources on your computer. They can destroy files, send spam e-mail, redirect your browser and many other things that will slow your computer down.

2.) Internet browser crash. If your Internet browser stops working or shuts down often, you may be infected. Since most malware programs use the Internet to spread themselves, they will affect the performance of your browser. If your Internet browser just starts closing with no warning, you need to check for viruses.

3.) Random e-mails. Many viruses spread through e-mail. If you use an e-mail client, such as Outlook Express, MS Outlook or Thunderbird, a virus could infect it and start sending spam e-mail out to all your contacts. If you start to receive strange e-mails like "Message Undeliverable" or "Mailer Deamon," a virus may be sending e-mail with your address.

4.) Error messages at startup. If you start receiving error messages when you turn your computer on, you may have some type of malware infection. Malware programs usually turn on at startup and they sometimes cause errors, so you need to keep an eye out for that.

5.) Things look "strange." I know that seems a little vague, but sometimes you open something and it just looks funny. If you didn't install something or make a change to your system, there's no reason why something would change. Computers don't make decisions on their own. If something has changed and you didn't initiate it, you should scan for viruses and malware.

Those are the five most common signs of an infection. Many of them may indicate a virus, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're infected.

Some of the signs could indicate a hardware issue or a program conflict. As a general rule, if you know of a recent change that caused the actions, it's probably not a virus. If the signs happen for no reason at all, you should be concerned and get your computer checked.

OverType!

Have you ever gone back to change a thing or two while typing and instead of moving the text to the right to accommodate the space, the text was overwritten? You probably ended up having to re-type an entire paragraph because of it. You were a victim of the Insert key!

Somehow during the course of your typing, a stray finger accidentally tapped the Insert key. Normally, you can squeeze words between other words with no problem.Tap that Insert key, and you'll overwrite instead of insert. Next time that happens, just tap the Insert key again to get back to normal.

the Recycle Bin

Here are a few things you can do to make your recycling experience more enjoyable:

No Confirmations:

Ever notice how every time you delete something, Windows asks you if you would really like to do it? If you find yourself shouting "YES, I wouldn't have hit delete if I didn't want to delete the stupid thing," then you may want to disable the deletion confirmation.

To do so, just right-click the Recycle bin, Properties, and deselect the checkbox for "Display delete confirmation dialog box."

Recycle Size:

By default, the Recycle Bin sucks up a percentage of your hard drive. If you have a 500 gig hard drive, Windows is setting aside around 5 gig just for digital garbage.You can adjust this to take up more or less space based on the size of your HDD. Windows Vista even allows you to specify how much you want the recycle bin to reserve by entering an exact number.

Skip the Bin

You'll notice that you can also set the computer to bypass the recycle bin and just permanently delete files. I WOULD NOT do this. I've accidentally deleted more than my fair share of files, and I'm embarrassed to admit how often that the Recycle Bin has come to my rescue.

Next time your 100% sure, without a doubt, for certain, that you want to delete a file, hold your Shift key down while you delete. The file will be deleted—skipping the Recycle Bin completely!

Speechable

Great site that lets you add speech bubbles to your favorite photos! It is very easy to use and when you are done you can share your photo via e-mail or your favorite social networking site.

To begin just click the button for the way you want to upload. Your choices are directly from your pc or from a URL. After the image has uploaded you will be on the creation page where you have three options of how to customize it. You can Bubble, Ab Text, or Doodle.

Bubble – clicking this will open up the bubble tool where you can select the shape of your bubble, as well as, the border and font style. You can also drag the bubble around the image to place it where you want it. To add text to the bubble, you’ll need to click on the Type Here text. It will give you a cursor and you can type in your text.

Ab Text – this will give you a text window to just add text to your photo. You can change the font and color in the handy text tool that opens. You can resize the text box by clicking and dragging the green circles on the text box. And you can move the text box to where you want it by dragging it there.

Doodle – the doodle option basically gives you a paintbrush that you can doodle on the photo with. You can change the size and color of your paintbrush with the doodle tool box that opens.

When you’ve finished your photo you can click the Save button. This will take you to a page where you’ll be provided with a link to share your image and the option to share it over several different social networking sites. (Click the Share This button to get the options to come up.)

If you don’t like what you’ve done, or have made a mistake and need to start over at any time before saving, just click the Undo button. You’ll find it next to the Save button.
This is an awesome site for adding speech bubbles and text to your images. Check it out today!
http://www.speechable.com/