The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Ask George George Skarbek gskarbek@melbpc.org.au |
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Question:
Being a new and senior computer owner, I was wondering if you could recommend any free Virus protection I could install.
Answer:
There are a number of good free antivirus programs. The one that has been receiving the best reviews is Avira AntiVir Personal Edition protection against virus, spyware and rootkits. AntiVir has a small footprint and the detection rate of malware is very good but there are some reservations. First, AntiVir does not include e-mail scanning as this is only available in the paid version. It will detect a program if you open an attachment and try to run it. The other problem is that AntiVir's updates are quite slow. It can be downloaded from: http://www.free-av.com/en/products/1/avira_antivir_personal__free_antivirus.html.
You also can consider the free versions of either AVG or Avast. They can be downloaded from:
http://free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition?cmpid=fr_bn_free_670 or http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html respectively.
However, I suggest that you also download some free anti Trojan products as well. If you are running XP or Vista then the Microsoft free product Defender is quite good. Some other good free software to consider is Ad-Aware and Spybot from: http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php and http://www.safer-networking.org respectively.
The Vista firewall is quite good but the XP firewall does not check for outgoing data. If this is of concern to you then a good free firewall is Comodo from: http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/ but this one for the more experienced users. For average or new users can to try a simple free firewall, Sunbelt-Kerio Personal Firewall that work well in its default settings, so no configuration is required and gives excellent inbound protection
Question:
I get the message "Windows cannot open file, needs to know which programme
created it".
How do I solve that one! And I get the message..."this file does not have a
programme associated with it for performing this action create program in
control panel ...options"...what do
I look for?
Answer:
Both error messages are because someone has sent you a type of file that
your software does not recognise. To find out what program is needed you must
look at the file extension, which are the last three characters of the filename
after the dot. In order to see that extension type in Windows Explorer, you
must click on Tools, Folder options and remove the tick from "Hide extensions
for known
file types".
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To re-associate a file type do the following: The association is done from Windows and the wording on the dialogues boxes will vary a bit depending on version of Windows.
Some users still struggle to know what program is required to open a .docx or a
.pptx file. These are the new Office 2007 Microsoft formats. There is a free 27
MB patch can be downloaded to allow users to read and write to the formats. It
is available from: |
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Reprinted from the June 2009 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
