The Gibson Research Corporation (www.grc.com) has, amongst other things, some excellent free utilities which allow you to test the security of your computer. ShieldsUP! allows you to test your computer and firewall for any open ports which could be vulnerable to attack. LeakTest is another useful utility, allowing you to test the outbound program authentication on your firewall. All the utilities on the website also come with easy to understand explanations of what they are designed to test and why they are important. (more…)

My computer is regularly crashing, freezing, or giving the blue screen whenever I run or load certain software. For example, in the past I used Norton Antivirus, but this caused the system to freeze. Now I have changed to PC-Cillin, which runs without any problems. Another example is Macromedia Shockwave, which causes the blue screen to appear. Uninstalling the software fixed the problem. Interestingly, the problems do not occur immediately, but after the computer has been switched-on for an hour or so. I regularly do virus and spyware scans, and the computer comes up clean. The computer has been reformatted and Windows reinstalled by a computer store twice over the past 8 months, but this has not fixed the problem. The computer is a Celeron 2.2 GHz with a C-Media AC97 sound card and nVidia GE Force MX440 (AGP 8X) graphics card running Windows XP Professional. (more…)

Recently I purchased a second-hand computer with Windows 98 installed. An article I read said the best way to clean up the hard drive was to uninstall and reinstall Windows 98. I have attempted this procedure, but a message appears saying the version of Windows 98 on my computer is more up-to-date than the version I am attempting to install. How do I tell the difference, and should I reinstall Windows? (more…)

When a CD is inserted into the CD-ROM drive after Windows has loaded, Windows will not read the CD and My Computer reports the data content of the CD as ‘zero bytes’. The same occurs for discs inserted into the DVD drive. However, if a disc is inserted into the computer before Windows loads, Windows will recognise and read the disc. I can also eject the disc, and insert a disc, and Windows will read the new disc (although the name of the disc remains the same as the disc in the drive prior to Windows starting). The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

When my computer mouse (an HP Cordless) is not in use, the cursor slowly creeps up and to the left side of the screen, seeking out the top left corner of the screen. How can I stop this ‘cursor creep’? A second question relates to Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware. When I run a scan using Spybot, normally no items are detected. However, if I immediately run an Ad-Aware scan, this will often detect a ‘critical’ intruder. Why is this happening, and do I need to scan using both utilities? The computer is running Windows XP Home Edition. (more…)