Walt Preston

BitDefender Downadup Removal Tool

I’m sure many of you have heard about the Conflicker (also called downadup or kido) worm on the news.  It has infected over ten million computers due to the many different ways it used to spread itself to other computers, and I’m slightly embarrassed

to admit it had crawled into my network, too.  I didn’t think much of it at first, but it quickly spread to each and every computer.  It was a TERRIBLE week that winter.  There are several variations of the virus and it took some searching to find a scanner that was able to identify the one that had infected my PCs.

Luckily, if you were infected with this virus, it’s unlikely it has caused any irreparable damage to your computer or any of its files.  It does, however, block many security websites, thus, making it difficult to find a program to remove it.  An easy way to find out if you are one of the unfortunate souls who have been struck by the virus, check out the Conflicker Eye Chart.  What it does is display images from several websites, half of whom are blocked if you are infected.

If you are, here are the steps you should immediately take:

1. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx [mirror].
2. Select your operating system and download the patch that will prevent your computer from becoming infected again once we’ve flushed the virus out.
3. Download and run the following tools to scan for and remove any of the Conflicker variants: Sysmantec [mirror] – BitDefender [mirror] – McAfee [mirror] – F-Secure [mirror]

Your computer should now be clean of this virus, but you should download an anti-virus to make sure you don’t have anything else lurking around on your system.  A nice free alternative I use at work is AVG.  Just make sure you set it to scan ALL file types (that was the mistake I made)!

Registry Easy

Windows XP Registry Editor

After over a decade of computer use, I’ve adopted minimalism.  I only want to install what I absolutely need and keep my computer clean and free of trash.  After a couple weeks of use, there are some places on the PC that naturally become cluttered.

If you are experiencing a decrease in your computer’s performance at start up, during software functionality or simply in the speed of response you will likely want to find the best software cleaner for the job. These amazing software programs focus on clearing and organizing the computer’s registry. This is the central database where all the informational data is housed, and it can become quite a mess after a while. Every time you use your computer, thousands upon thousands of pieces of information exchange places. They get stored and moved around at lightening fast speeds. Sometimes they do not end up where they should.

The best software cleaner programs will put the information back where it belongs. It works like it is putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Only this puzzle keeps getting knocked on the floor with the pieces scattering in all directions. The ever-vigilant registry cleaner just keeps picking up the pieces and putting them back where they belong. This process is crucial to the top performance and stability of your entire system. If everything were left in pieces on the floor the computer would be unable, at some point, to function. And this is exactly what happens – the computer crashes.

Another function of the best software cleaner programs is to delete all the unnecessary entries in the registry. These are bits of data left behind from installing and uninstalling different software on and from your computer. If you get new hardware you will need a driver. This may result in making older drivers obsolete. If you do not delete them, or delete them incorrectly, they leave junk in the registry. Chances are you have invalid or missing references in the registry entries. These also do nothing but grow the clutter and size of the registry. They need to be removed as well.

One of the…  Well, easiest cleaners to use is Registry Easy.  It has many options that will thoroughly clean bad registry entries and even includes many features to clear unwanted files.  I’ve used many programs over the years and this bundles many of them up into a single program with a clean interface.