This is my site for links to Genuine Free Stuff as well as some useful advice. I use most of these programs regularly. It's good gear. It's all worth having.

** April 2014. Major revamp and update for relevance happening, especially now that support for Windows XP has ended, and now that we all are addicted to our Android phones. A lot of old stuff is going.

This post in particular started this whole website...

I have been building and using computers since about the Ice Age, from DOS 3 through to Windows 7.
I have been mucking about with mobile phones for quite some time, using Symbian S60 and then Android.

Press F8 at boot to start in safe mode - Windows XP and 7
To see the details of you computer, download, install and run 'Speccy' - shows Operating System, Firewall, Anti-virus and hardware.
If you think you have a virus, start here 'Free Online Virus Scan'. Try any or all, and be patient.

September 14, 2010

Turn Windows Updates ON, repeat ON.

Here's today's very important piece of advice. Turn Windows Updates ON, not off, ON.
** April 2014 - still relevant except that Windows Updates is now built in to the Control Center of Windows

Now that's a little obvious for a topic for a blog post, but I have just debugged yet another friend's computer. They could barely use it because all their software was out of date and they had weird pop-ups etc.

They were still using Internet Explorer version 6. They couldn't even view some websites because of this.
They now have IE 8.06 as well as Firefox and Google Chrome to play with as web browsers.
Their original one year anti-virus had lapsed. They now have free Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus which is up to date.
But worst of all, they had turned off Windows Updates because they were 'annoying'. Sigh. My father does this too (hi Dad.)
They now have Windows Updates turned ON and they have all the latest Windows Security Updates, Windows Malicious Software Removal Tools, Windows updates for Word, Excel etc, and all the other good and useful things that come with those updates.

Check yours now !
Click on Start-Control Panel-Security Center and make sure that Automatic Updates are ON.



Grab all the updates. Reboot. Grab all the updates. Reboot.
Make another cup of tea and do it again.

Cheers. Si.
Checked for links and relevance, April 2014. Still very relevant for Windows XP and Windows 7

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