bitdefender Archives - The Silicon Underground

How to clean viruses off your computer for free

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 12:00:50 +0000

Whether you’ve gotten a tech support scam phone call or not, it can be helpful to know how to clean viruses off your computer for free. And yes, I do mean free. A lot of people get ripped off due

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Antivirus progress

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:00 +0000

When Microsoft Security Essentials first came out, it was an improvement in antivirus performance. Now, it’s middle of the pack, according to PC Magazine. That’s great. Vendors are finally taking performance seriously. What that means is that by replacing MSE

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Bitdefender 60-second virus scan: a review

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:00:14 +0000

I mentioned Bitdefender 60-second virus scan the other day, but didn’t give it a proper review. It’s time I remedy that. It’s a small 160K stub that downloads a few more megabytes worth of stuff after you run it. Unlike

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The men (boys) who spy on women through webcams

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:00:11 +0000

Ars Technica made a bit of a splash this week with this provocative headline. This is real. The article gives the usual advice, like not opening e-mail from strangers, not clicking attachments from strangers, and not visiting dodgy websites. That’s

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Advice on dealing with ransomware

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 10:51:38 +0000

PC Mag has some advice about ransomware. The most important bit of advice is to have a secondary machine that you can use to go get help. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. When you upgrade, keep one old machine

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Windows Medkit cleans up the damage after removing malware infestations

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 11:15:21 +0000

I’ve written before about cleaning up Windows boxes using a Bitdefender Live CD, but the live CDs often don’t clean up all of the collateral damage that the malware does to try to keep you from uninstalling them. That’s where

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Ways to speed up an aging laptop

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 13:57:38 +0000

Yesterday Lifehacker did a feature on laptop tweaks and upgrades, that basically came down to reinstalling the OS, adding memory, and upgrading to an SSD. All of those are good things to do of course, but there’s more you can

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How to clean viruses off other people’s systems safely

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 03:07:33 +0000

What should you do when someone hands you a computer, tells you they think it has a virus, and asks you to clean it? Proceed carefully, that’s what. You don’t want to infect your other computers with whatever it has.

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