Understanding Different Types of Malware and What They Do

You may have heard of terms like malware, virus, trojan, keylogger, worm, rogueware, fake antivirus, rootkit, ransomware, adware, spyware and dialer. Here’s a brief and easy to understand explanation for the majority of known forms of malware to help you differentiate between them.

4 Repair Utilities to Fix the Majority of Known Windows Problems

 

When you have a nice and clean install of Windows, everything should work properly and it will be no problem to use. Unfortunately after installing and uninstalling third party software and drivers etc, the potential for minor or even major issues to appear quickly starts to increase. This is often caused by third party software or even malware leaving traces behind and not reverting back the changes they may have made to the system.
Not every Windows user knows how to analyze the problem in order to logically figure out a solution, so the best option is to look for possible fixes on the Internet. It shouldn’t take too long to come across a utility that will claim to fix your problems with the click of a button, sometimes even for a fee.

Convert PDF files to Word Documents, Text or Images

 

Some people like the Portable Document Format (PDF) and some are not great fans. The certainty is that at some point you will come across one to read. Not a problem because there are some good PDF readers around. Foxit Reader, Nitro PDF, SumatraPDF to name a few, and that’s assuming you don’t want to use Adobe Reader. If you want to edit or alter a PDF file, a popular way of doing it is to convert the document into Microsoft Word format and then do your editing from there.

5 Tools to Easily Install FreeDOS or MS-DOS onto USB for BIOS Flashing

 

Back in the days when floppy disks were still being commonly used, flashing your motherboard’s BIOS could only be done by booting the computer into DOS. When DOS is booted up on the computer, you’d probably have to switch to the floppy disk that contains the BIOS update file. Unlike today where updating a modern BIOS is far easier and convenient and you can update the BIOS directly from Windows using the software provided by the manufacturer, or simply put the BIOS file onto a USB flash drive and the inbuilt flashing tool inside the BIOS will recognize it.

A Useful Tool to Get an On Screen Volume Level Indicator

 

A lot of PC keyboards and a good number of laptops will usually have a couple of hotkeys somewhere to control the system volume, either by pressing an ‘Fn’ qualifier key and a number key, or some extra added on buttons. You might even have a nice little dial or slider to handle it for you. Sometimes there will be a function in the provided driver or software that shows the volume level status in a nice on-screen display. But if it isn’t available, you’re stuck with the basic Windows volume control options using the icon in the system tray. My Logitech keyboard has a dial and a mute button but nothing to display this on the screen.

4 Solutions to Restore Missing or Disappeared Safely Remove Hardware Icon

 

We’ve previously written about a trick on how to hide or remove safely remove hardware try icon. Although the tip has it’s uses, it’s is probably not useful for most of us because the majority of users own a USB flash or portable hard drive nowadays and we need the Safely Remove
 Hardware icon to eject or unplug our USB device so that
 the files in our USB flash drive won’t get corrupted.

Right Click Context Menus Added to your Desktop

 

The right click context menu is obviously an important part of Windows and can be very useful for providing shortcuts and options to do numerous things. From scanning a file for a virus or adding something to a zip file, to running a program as administrator, the list of possibilities is huge. Sadly, a lot of software tends to leave behind data in the context menu as well, even when it’s been uninstalled and no longer on the system. A utility that did that exact thing to me recently was Winpatrol. Obviously, it didn’t take long to get rid of it with a tool like ShellExView.