Has your computer

been running a little slow lately?

 It very well may be that your computer has caught a cold... (actually... your computer may have come in contact with a 'Virus' or a 'Trojan' or  'Worm' or... 'Spyware' that follows you around the internet).

These nasty little creatures can, and do, wreak havoc on your machine, slowing it down to a crawl, and... even logging your every keystroke and reporting this information back home to the writer.  In addition, some viruses can, and do, delete files and destroy hardrives. Well... we can help. Please come see us.

Free downloads

If you think that you may have any of these pesky critters... and need some help, you may download, for free, some very good detection and removal tools shown below or you can bring your 'puter into me and I will help you get rid of these nasty little pest.

Ad Aware... looks for and removes unwanted ad ware from your computer. This is a must have if you're on the internet... and this personal edition is free.

Host File... The Hosts file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. This file is loaded into memory (cache) at startup, then Windows checks the Hosts file before it queries any DNS servers, which enables it to override addresses in the DNS. This prevents access to the listed sites by redirecting any connection attempts back to the local machine. Another feature of the HOSTS file is its ability to block other applications from connecting to the Internet, providing the entry exists. You can use a HOSTS file to block ads, banners, 3rd party Cookies, 3rd party page counters, web bugs, and even most hijackers. This is accomplished by blocking the connection(s) that supplies these little gems.

SpyBot Search 'n Destroy... hunts down spy-ware and ad-ware and destroys it (gently removes it from your computer). This application ranks at the top of it's industry for hunting down and finding Trojans and Spyware... and again, this is a free download and use.

WinPatrol... now here's a neat little application.  'Scotty' the 'pup' keeps a constant sniff on your computer for anything trying to install itself... or changing a system file... or making changes to your 'host' file... or changing your default browser page.  For me, this is an absolute 'must have'. If you don't have anything else, you should be running and using WinPatrol... it's free.

VideoLan Player... an excellent multimedia player with it's own plugins for playing different video formats, so it doesn't need any codecs to be installed. It works great for previewing partially downloaded files too. It can also be used as a server to stream on a (wired or wireless) high-bandwidth IP (Internet Protocol) version 4 or 6 network in multicast or unicast. VLC (VideoLAN Client) is cross-platform and supports Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Debian GNU (GNU's Not Unix) Linux, Gentoo Linux, Mandrake Linux, Red Hat Linux, Slackware Linux, Novell's SuSE (System und Software Entwicklung = System and software development) Linux, Turbo Linux, Zaurus, NetBSD (Berkeley Software Distribution), OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris and QNX. The installer includes the eMule partfile plugin, which lets you preview eMule partfiles more efficiently.

ZoneAlarm... firewall, firewall, firewall... if you surf the internet, the best advice I know is, use a fire wall.  Although, a hardware firewall, such as a router, is best, not everyone can afford this and it is not practical for use with a dial-up modem... hence, software.  This is ZoneAlarm's free version, so enjoy... and you would be well advised to do a free computer scan for spyware here  prior to installing ZoneAlarm.

MailWasher Pro... this is a great e-mail filtering software... is it better than Microsoft Outlook's filter engine?  Probably not... but it is vastly different, as it allows you to read the mail directly off the mail server before, and without, downloading it to your computer... giving you the option to delete it... or, better yet, bouncing it back to the sender's computer (filling up his mail box with his own medicine) before ever taking possession of it.  This one I use religiously... and I highly recommend it.  I have made an older free version available here (if it is still available) or... you can go for the 'kill' and download the full, easily affordable, MailWasherPro version, with all it's "bells and whistles", from the link below...