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Anti-virus Suites Tips And Tricks

webtech — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:05:16 +0000

Almost all security suites have anti-spyware, a firewall andoher features, but some minor features take the cake. It’s these that we shall focus on. We’ll compare the features of some fo the most popular anti-virus packages namely Avast, AVG, Norton, Kaspersky and TrendMicro.

Boot time scan:
A boot time scan lets you scan your full HDD even before Windows starts. The main advantage of this over a normal scan is that most dormant viruses and malware that aren’t detected easily during a normal scan are easily found out and removed. Another advantage is that boot-time scan bypasses the Windows file system drivers and uses direct disk access that results in lower scan time and detection of the background root-kits. In Avast, open the main Avast user Interface, right-click and select Schedule boot-time scan from the context menu that appears. Next time you restart your computer, Avast will perform a full system boot-time scan.

With AVG, you can change the settings in the Options menu. The scanner option has the ability to modify the settings. Kaspersky does not have a boot time feature.

Screensaver mode:
Many security suites allow you to run a full system scan whenever the computer is idle. For a lot of systems, a full system scan can slow down your system. In Avast, for example, you can schedule a full system scan whenever your comuputer is idle by using the anti-viurs screensaver feature. It can even be run over your normal screen saver. Whenever your computer is idle for the time that the screensaver is set to come in, Avast will start scanning for viruses and pause immediately once you come back to your computer. To enable this, go to your screensaver properties window and select Avast! Antivirus from the list.

In other software suites, it may not be called Screen-saver mode, Instead, like Norton, it is referred to as Idle Time Scanning. Norton can perform scheduled scans when your PC is idle if the “Only run at Idle Time” option is selected. Select the Settings > Task Scheduling > Idle Time option.

Other systems optimise their scanning to ensure that normal functioning is not disturbed while scanning. Features such as Fast Scan and optimised background scan are prevalent.

Silent mode:
Most security suites have realised the importance of disabling notifications so as to improve the user experience. Except TrendMicro, all the security suites we reviewed for features had an option, either as Silent Mode or Gaming mode or a similar name.

Avast has it, in its main user interface. In Kaspersky, right-click on the Kaspersky icon on the taskbar and click on Settings > Gaming Profile. Click on enable Gaming Profile. You have the option to disable scans, disable updates, or instead of notification, just take action automatically. Kaspersky chooses the best course of actions based on the threat rating and previous choices.

Norton has both options – Full Screen Dectection (Gaming mode) and a Silent Mode. It activates automatically when you watch full screen applications. Similarly, Silent Mode is a manual operation to do the same. you can do so by going to Settings > Administrative Settings. In the Silent Mode Settings, set the Silent Mode to On. In the Turn on Silent Mode Box that appears, select the duration from a drop-down list.

AVG Firewall includes a “Game Mode”. This can be set under Settings. Alternatively, click on Firewall from the Main Control Center and enable Game Mode.

Anti-spam:
If you use webmail services such as Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail, chances are email is secure. However, if you’re using a client such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird, you have to independently scan your mail for viruses. This feature all security suites have. The new Avast v5, goes one up by having a fully integrated anti-spam feature.

In all security suites, you have the option of customizing the sensitivity level of your detector. Go to Real Time Shields or Email Protector, or Mail Scanner or whatever it is called in your antiviurs program, go to settings. Chances are, to specify the level of customisation, you may have to got to Expert Settings or Advanced Settings.

The same sort of sensitivity specification is not restricted to the Email scanner. All Fire-walls also have the same feature (some even have a program specific option).

Auto USB detect:
Though the manual scan option is available to scan specific folder files, some security suites can automatically detect when and external drive is plugged in. Some can even erase malware without notifications. If your anti-viurs doesn’t have this function, it’s a good practice to scan your removable media for malware. In AVG, you can go to Tools > Advanced Settings > Scans > Removable Device Scan. Tick the checkbox to Automatically Heal/Remove Infections. Kaspersky and TrendMicro have the same feature enabled.

P2P Protection:

Frequent downloads from unknown sources using a torrent tracker or a P2P file sharing program often pose a high risk. The security suite monitors all the recognised P2P programs installed for downloads and checks the files as they are downloaded (real-time). Avast has a P2P shield under its list of real-time shields. You can go to Expert Settings and change the list of programs that should be monitored. Kaspersky also has a P2P/File Sharing monitor.

Source: Digit

Teamviewer Tips And Tricks

webtech — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:59:30 +0000

Teamviewer is an excellent collaboration tool with features such as remote access to your PC, and can help you access and share files across PCs. The setup is a small (2.6 MB) file and is available for free at www.teamviewer.com.

The System service is ideal if you want to use your system as a server with complete remote access. Click Full Access, during the installation process. Frequent permission requests get extremely irritating to most users.

Teamviewer generates a specific ID for your computer (not IP) based on your hardware configurations. For those worried about security, TeamViewer ensures all connections are encrypted and protected from external access – even from themselves. The main window has two major functions – it allows you to initiate a connection (outgoing), and at the same time lets you connect to another PC running TeamViewer.

To wait for a session, you need to provide the person with your unique ID and four-digit passkey. If you wish to make TeamViewer a Windows System Service, you’ll need to provide a permanent password. This should be displayed as User Defined instead of the 4 digits.

Click on the Password field. You may change the password (dynamic=random), copy it to the clipboard or set a user defined one. To Create a session, enter the ID of the person you’re trying to connect to. Your TeamViewer has three modes:

1. Remote Support: This allows for remote control and desktop sharing.

2. Presentation: Here, you may show either your desktop or a single window

3. FileTransfer: As is obvious, enabled for transferring files

4. VPN: For this, TeamViewer VPN must be installed; hence we shall skip its functionality.

Enter the ID of the person you are trying to connect with, establish a connection with the Remote Support option. This way you can control the remote PC using your mouse and keyboard.

In the title bar, the person’s name or ID is displayed. The toolbar below this has some additional options:

Switch Sides:
This allows you to change the direction of control. That is, your partner will now be able to control your computer. This has many multifaceted uses, especially when jointly collaborating on projects.
[Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Delete]

As expected, this actually sends the three-button combo and allows you to access the taskbar of the other person. This feature is however, only available if TeamViewer is made a Windows System Service. You can do a Remote Input disables the mouse and keyboard of the remote PC. Show Black Screen prevents the person from seeing what’s being done on his computer. You need to Disable Remote Input to do so.

View has several options, allowing you to adjust and optimise Quality and Speed. You may also scale and change the viewing resolution. This ensures the difference in resolution doesn’t cause errors. If the remote PC has mutiple monitors, you also have the choice of displaying all of them simultaneously. Other options include selecting windows, showing the desktop, a manual screen refresh, removing the remote computer’s wallpaper, and the ability to show or hide your partner’s cursor.

Audio/Video options allow you to make VoIP calls, Video Calls, IM type Chat and conference calls. The File Transfer dialog allows you to transfer files between the two computers. Other options (Extras) include features to record your session as a video. This helps in case you’re working on a project (say, a graphic design scheme), so you can later analyse your actions.

File transfer actions:
You have complete control of both computers and can transfer files to and fro. Your file system appears on the left and the remote computer’s system on the right. The record of all fies accessed and all operations is recorded in a log on your partner’s computer.

In the presentation mode, your computer shares its desktop. If the remote PC doesn’t have TeamViewer installed, your PC can be accessed from it by entering your ID and password at http://go.teamviewer.com.

Presentation toolbar:
Apart from moderating the flow of the presentation (pause/continue) where basically you control whether your screen is displayed live or not, you may also remove the wallpaper (this improves performance), adjust quality settings like bandwidth, frames per second, colour depth. Windows Aero and other minor tweaks. Similar to the Remote Support Mode, you may have one monitor or more, with a maximum of four monitors. The other options are similar to the Remote Support Options.

The widgets allow for video, where you can control your webcam, VoIP so you may give a live presentation and a conference option. You can also chat via the IM interface.

What’s cool is the literal use of the Presentation interface. TeamViewer allows for a drawing palette with presentation tools like markers, erasers and an elementary MS-Paint like setup to draw and modify your current presentation, similar to blackboard learning.

So that’s how you use TeamViewer. Advanced users can fiddle around with the connection options, make groups of people, try out VPN and LAN connection and more.

Disk Management in Mac OS X

webtech — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:26:04 +0000

You can limit the amount of disk space that each user can utilise using the feature called Disk Quota in both Windows 7 and Vista if you share the same computer with other people and need to properly control disk usage.

Enabling disk quota:
In My Computer, right-click on the hard-drive partition on which you want to enable this feature and then click on Properties.

Go to the Quota tab and tick the Enable Quota Management checkbox.

Next, you can check the Deny disk space to users exceeding Quota limit checkbox.

Select the Limit disk space to radio button, and then configure it to the amot that you want each user to have and also the disk space usage at which the user needs to be warned.

Click on Apply and then OK to save the settings.

Get filenames from directory:
If you want to see a list of all the files and folders contained within a particular directory, say your music folder, you can do it with a simple batch file.

Open Notepad and type the following code.
@echo Saving the directory listing to c:\listoffiles.txt
@dir%1 /A /S > c:\listoffiles.text
@REM the /A switch lists all hidden and system files also.
@REM the /S switch lists all subdirectories and their contents also.
@notepad c:\listof-files.txt
@pause
Save it as List.bat

Navigate to the folder where you saved it, right-click on the file and click on create shortcut.

Now open Windows Explorer and type shell:sendto in the Location bar.

Drag the shortcut into this folder. Now when you want the list of files in any folder, right-click on the folder, point your mouse cursor to ‘Send to’ and click on List.

The list of files will get saved as C:\listoffiles.txt and it will open in Notepad. You can save it under a different name or print it if you want it permanently.

Change drive letters:
Mounting partitions as folders in other partitions helps keep your data very simple and easily organised. You can even do it with an external hard drive. For instance, you can store all your music in it and mount it as C:\Music\.

To mount hard disk partitions as folders, open Control Panel from the Start Menu.

Double-click on Administrative Tools and select Computer Management.

In the left pane, Navigate to Storage > Disk Management.

Right-click on the partition you wish to mount as a directory in the lower right pane and select Change drive letter and paths……

Select the current drive letter and click on Remove.

Then click on Add. Choose the Mount in the following empty NTFS folder:button.

Browse to the desired volume, C:\ in our case and add a directory for your drive by clicking on the New Folder button. Click on OK after you are done in all the subsequent windows.

If you wish to return things back to the way they were, simply delete the current drive path (the directory location that you choose) by repeating the same procedure, and then choose a drive letter instead. This can also be used to change the drive letter.

Block pen drives:
Pen drives can be used to upload malicious code to your computer – either deliberately in the case of remote spying software of by accident in case of viruses. They can also be used to copy and steal confidential information from your computer when left unwatched.

Whenever a new USB device is plugged in to a USB port of your computer, Windows checks its device and hardware ID to determine if it’s a storage device or not. If it determines that it is indeed a mass storage device or a pen drive in common language, it will load the appropriate driver, and display the device as a drive in Windows Explorer. All of this is handled by the usbstor.sysdriver.

So, to block your computer’s ability to use USB drives follow these steps: Go to Start > Run and type regedit to open the registry editor.

In the left pane, navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Current-ControlSet\Services\USBSTOR.

Double-click on the entry named Start in the right pane.

Change the Value data: field to 4. Press OK to save it.

If you want to revert back to the defaul configuration and enable your computer’s ability to use USB drives, just set the value of Start to 3 again

Credit: Digit Magazine

Search Is Easy In Apple Mac OS

webtech — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:09:19 +0000

There are several ways to look up a word in OS X. You can use the Dictionary widget in the Dashboard [F12], the standalone Dictionary program, by highlighting a word in various Mac and third-party applications like Mail, Stickiesa and Text Edit. Right clicking on it and clicking on ‘Look up in Dictionary, or even in your web browser by using the dict:// prefix before your word in the URL bar.

Credit: Digit Magazine

Switch Calc Modes In Apple Mac

webtech — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:06:49 +0000

You can switch between the various modes in the calculator (simple four-function memory calculator mode; scientific/programmer mode for students, developers and scientists; Conversion mode that has the ability to perform conversions on anything from area, volume, temperature and speed in both US and metric measures; and currency conversion mode for world travellers) by repeatedly clicking on the green round button at the upper left corner of your application.

Credit: Digit Magazine

Graphical Equations In Apple Mac

webtech — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:02:59 +0000

With Grapher, you can create appealing 2D and 3D graphs for almost any equations. To access this, click on Go > Utilities > Grapher. It can handle a wide range of coordinate systems (polar, cartesian, logarithmic and spherical) and offers lots of canned equations and mathematical building blocks for you to enter your equations. If you are a calculus student, you can even use this to calculate values, intercepts, derivates, integrals, summations and products.

Credit: Digit Magzine

Mac OS X Apple Scripts

webtech — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:00:34 +0000

AppleScript lets you control scriptable applications automatically. It’s similar to AutoHotkey in Windows and lets you generate scripts to do monotonous and repetitive tasks such as resizing images automatically, and outputting your signature with a key combination. You can use sample scripts from http://developer.apple.com/applescript/ and then compile and run them using the in built AppleScript editor.

Credit: Digit Magazine

What is Fring? Experience, Connectivity

webtech — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 08:01:50 +0000

Fring is a social media application available for a gamut of devices running various platforms like Symbian S60 (3rd and 5th edition), Java ME, iPhone, Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and even Linux.

Fring integrates the contact book you already have on your phone with your online contact and you can select a contact and then select which kind of call you want to make including Gtalk/SIP/Skype/ Cellular based on the kind of network connectivity you have and the various tariffs. It supports a tabbed interface for each chat window and social media account, including a dedicated tab for file transfers (one of the very few mobile applications to support this) and contact book. Additionally, Fring also supports call history including mobile calls and roaming across various Wi-fi hotspots.

Check Connectivity:
To check your connectivity, call the dummy user “Fring Test Call.” It gives you a send/receive voice all option. Not only is the presence of a network determined, but the speed or connectivity strength too.

Fring can also be used as a miniuature twitter client with full support of searching twitter.com for latest tweets on any topic of your choice. Fring supports an intuitive interface, and is touch friendly.

Improved experience:
There are two common complains or annoyance reported by users. Fring uses GPRS even when a 3G connection is available. Although this may not make a significant difference with text, in case of VoIP calls, 3G would boost performance. To fix this, select 3G for voice calls. On your mobile device, switch to “UMTS” mode instead of “Dual Mode” or a “GSM/UMTS” mode. This will force Fring to operate only in 3G mode. In Nokia devices this can be found under Settings > Connectivity > Network Mode.

Don’t get annoyed if you can’t place a voice call to a Skype user, even after it says signed in. The fix for this is simple – just wait for a minute or so.

Source: The above written article and tip is by Digit Magazine India. The Magazine reviews many electronic items for your day to day needs.

Understand Google Sync

webtech — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:44:07 +0000

Synching your data isn’t as complicated after all. In fact, all you need to do is set up Google Sync on your PC and cell phone, and let it synchronise.

To set up Google Sync on your PC, go to http://www.google.com/sync/pc.html. Install the 700 kb download. At the end of installation, select two-way synchronisation. Also, choose how often you want Outlook and Google Calendar to synchronise.

After this, set up Google Sync on your mobile phone. To do so, go to http://www.google.com/sync/index.html from your cellphone browser. Choose your handset model. If you have a Nokia phone, select Symbian S 60. Install Google Push email if you use the iPhone or BlackBerry. For your Nokia S60, download the Nokia Business suite software, available for free. Once you’re done, you will be redirected back to the Google page, where you will be given step by step instructions to setting it up for Google Sync. Here too, specify options such as 2 way or 1 way synchronisation and synchronisation frequency.

Now add a calendar event or contact to your cellphone calendar, wait for the time you have specified in your cell phone and PC for synchronisation, and wathc the contact or even appear in your Microsoft Outlook. Google Sync would access the internet while synchronising. If you’re charged by data transfer you could end up with a higher bill.

Source: The above written article and tip is by Digit Magazine India. The Magazine reviews many electronic items for your day to day needs.

Aero On Old Systems In Windows 7

webtech — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:58:02 +0000

Windows 7 automatically disables Aero on slower systems to save resources.

However, you cans still enable it by brute-force in case you want to enjoy the smooth window transitions and transparency, compromising on system performance of course.

In the left pane of the registry editor, navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM.

Right-click on any free space in the right pane, go to New and click on DWORD (32) Value.

Name it UseMachine-Check. Double-click on it and enter 0 in the Value data field. Press OK to save it.

Similarly, add an entry with the name Blur and also give it a value of 0.

Finally, add an entry named Animations and set its value to 0.

In the Command Prompt window (press [Window] + [R] and type cmd), type the following commands to restart the Desktop Windows Manager Session Manager:
Net Stop uxsms
Net Start uxsms

Right-click anywhere on the desktop and click on Personalise > Windows Colour and Appearance and select Windows Aero from the available Colour Scheme menu.