The Cleaner 5.2.0.1100 Free Edition

The Cleaner is a system of programs designed to keep your computer and data safe from Trojans / Worms / Keyloggers / Spyware and all manner of malware. By actively monitoring files and processes on your computer it can detect a virus in action and catch it before it has a chance to do any damage to your valuable data.
If you cruise the internet or send and receive e-mail, you can't afford to be without The Cleaner! Never again worry about e-mails you open, or programs you run - The Cleaner detection system will take care of business so you don't have to!

How The Cleaner Protects Your System ... The Cleaner searches your hard drive and cleans it of all known Trojans. Using a unique patent-pending technology, The Cleaner compares each file against a list of all known Trojans. You can scan your entire system or just one file. The program also allows you to periodically update your Trojan database file to keep it current with the latest research. If you're going to expose your system to the dangers of the internet, keep it clean with The Cleaner!

The Cleaner Pro includes background scanning of all activity in memory; a faster, redesigned scan engine (about 100 files per second); a newer, tougher, Trojan fingerprinting process; scanning inside compressed archives; and a completely redesigned Interface (GUI). Objective tests have shown that The Cleaner blows the competition away, both in speed of scans and in number of Trojans found.

Download : The Cleaner 5.2.0.1100 Free Edition

SpyBot - Search & Destroy 1.6.0.31 Final Update

Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove a multitude of adware files and modules from your computer. Spybot also can clean program and Web-usage tracks from your system, which is especially useful if you share your computer. Modules chosen for removal can be sent directly to the included file shredder, ensuring complete elimination from your system. For advanced users, it allows you to fix Registry inconsistencies related to adware and to malicious program installations. The handy online-update feature ensures that Spybot always has the most current and complete listings of adware, dialers, and other uninvited system residents.

Download : SpyBot - Search & Destroy 1.6.0.31 Final Update

Yahoo! Messenger v9.0.0.1912 Final

Yahoo! Messenger is a popular advertisement-supported instant messaging client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!, that allows you to see when friends come online and to send them instant messages. It also can alert you to new e-mail in your Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Personals accounts, or when you have upcoming events recorded in your Yahoo Calendar. Yahoo Messenger offers firewall support, a standby mode that minimizes the program until an Internet connection is made, the ability to save and print your conversations, and a tabbed interface that provides quick access to your favorite stocks, news, and sports scores. Yahoo! also offers PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service, file transfers, webcam hosting, text messaging service, and chat rooms in various categories.
Yahoo! Messenger is provided free of charge and can be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo! ID" which also allows access to other Yahoo! services, such as Yahoo! Mail, where users can be automatically notified when they receive new email.

Other features include the ability to create a chat room automatically, stock price alerts, the ability to send messages to friends (even if they're not online when you are), a Quick Compact mode that hides the Messenger tools to maximize your viewing area, Messenger Themes, and voice chat, which allows you to talk for free to anybody else on the Internet. It also includes Launchcast Radio, Yahoo Games, and Yahoo Audibles. Using a Webcam, you can see who you're chatting with or view the Webcam of any Yahoo member who has granted you access.

Download : Yahoo! Messenger v9.0.0.1912 Final

Which Programs Should I Run To Scan A Computer For Malicious Software?

The amount of security applications for the end user has reached a point where the choice is adding to the insecurity and confusion of the user. So called experts all have their set of tools that they recommend for certain situations but it can happen that you get a set of totally different applications for the same task when asking two advanced users.

To give an example. Should a user run Ad-Aware, Spybot Search And Destroy, Spyware Terminator or one of the other dozen or so anti-spyware applications that can be used freely for personal non-commercial use.

To much choice can be confusing and this article tries to narrow down the list to security applications that are recommended most of the time. Some users will disagree with the choices and they have every right to do so. You can rest assured on the other hand that the selection of tools should be sufficient to scan a computer system thoroughly

Anti-Spyware:

Spyware usually refers to malicious software that tries to spy on the user or serve advertisement to him. This can be done with tracking cookies, changing the user's homepage or showing popups from time to time.

• Spybot Search And Destroy - Spybot Search and Destroy is updated regularly and does not confuse the user with different versions like Ad-Aware does with Ad-Aware Free, Plus and Pro.
• Spyware Terminator - A tool that has been downloaded more than 17 million times should do a good job. Spyware Terminator is fast and efficient.

Anti-Virus:

Anti-virus applications create probably the most controversy. There is so much choice of free and commercial applications that makes it nearly impossible to make a decision. The applications protect the computer in realtime and can scan the computer thoroughly.

• AVG Anti-Virus - A classic anti-virus software that provides protection against viruses, rootkits and spyware.
• Free AV - Antivir protects the computer against viruses, rootkits, dialers and phising.

Rootkits:

Rootkits have been gaining popularity in the last years and one could say that Sony did not have a small part in raising the public's perception of rootkits with their music CDs that contained a rootkit in order to prevent customers from copying the music.

• Rootkit Unhooker - a portable rootkit scanner with a size of under 100 Kilobyte.
• Gmer - is another tool to scan the computer for rootkits.

Write Protect (Read only) Your USB Drive with USB Write Protector

There may be cases where we may want to connect our USB flash / pen drive to computers only for reading the data from it. If the host computer in which you plug your USB drive may be infected and may infect your USB flash drive. If the USB drive is only being connected for data reading purposes then it makes sense to make them write protected (read only) so that the Viruses won't be able to infect the drive.

Certain USB flash / pen drives come with write protector switch in them, using which you can write protect the USB flash / pen drive or make them read only drives. If the write protect feature is missing in the USB flash / pen drive then you can use USB Write Protector utility.

USB Write Protector is a free utility that allows you make write protect your USB flash / pen drives. This is a very small utility that you can always carry with you in your portable drive.

Note: This utility does not make your USB drive write protected rather it makes the host computer on which this utility is run unable to write to removable storage media like USB flash drives.

Download USB Write Protector

Google Chrome Now Available

The new browser by Google called Google Chrome is now available for download in various languages on the Google Chrome website. The installation file has a size of 474 Kilobytes on Windows XP and downloads additional components during installation. The first thing that users will realize after starting Google Chrome is that it will import bookmarks from Firefox and Internet Explorer blazingly fast. It took no longer than a second to import all of my Firefox bookmarks into Google Chrome including the saved passwords, browsing history and search engines.

If you remember the comic that introduced Google Chrome or the article on Ghacks or at other websites you might remember that Google Chrome uses tabs that are independent from each other. If you analyze the computer memory usage of the browser you need to check all instances of chrome.exe that are visible in the Windows Task Manager which is one instance of chrome.exe for the browser itself and another instance for every open tab that displays a website on the Internet. The interesting fact about this method is that the browser will never use more memory than it needs and that the memory will be cleared completely when the user closes a tab. This principle works extremely well during the tests.

Websites are loading faster than in other browsers which can be attributed to the new Javascript rendering engine and the browser engine. Everything about Google Chrome feels faster than in the other browsers.

Speed is one of the major factors of each browser but what about other features and compatibility? Google Chrome is displaying all websites that I tested perfectly fine. I went to flash video game websites, blogs, websites from corporations and some social news websites and everything seemed to display correctly.

The new tab feature which displays the most visited websites plus the last closed websites plus the last websites that have been added to the favorites and a search function works extremely well and is time saving most of the time.

The Google Chrome Task Manager was another feature that sounded pretty exciting. It displays a Task Manager that is displaying the memory usage, cpu and network stats for the browser, all open tabs and plugins. This makes it easy to identify a process that is using lots of memory and end it right away in the interface. It also contains a Stats For Nerds link which opens the about:memory configuration in the browser which displays detailed statistics about the memory usage.

Google Chrome basically uses the same keyboard shortcuts that all browser share. CTRL T opens a new tab, CTRL N a new windows and so on. The Task Manager can be opened with SHIFT Escape. There is a handy shortcut to perform a search on the default search engine. Pressing CTRL E puts a "?" in the address bar and a search will be loaded for the phrase that the user enters afterwards. This is focusing the address bar automatically. CTRL Shift N opens a window in incognito mode, the mode where no data is saved on the computer.

The Google Chrome beta version is impressive. It lacks a few features that are very important to users like an adblocker or the option to disable scripts but it's pretty good for a beta version. The part of the url that starts behind the domain extension is not that readable, some options to change those colors would be welcome.

The browser is showing lots of promise already. It would be nice if Google Chrome would offer more options to customize the interface and settings.

Google Chrome Now Available

JkDefrag 3.36

Free (released under the GNU General Public License) disk defragment and optimize utility for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with two optimization strategies, and can handle floppies and USB disks/sticks. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version (for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), and versions for Windows X64.

Download : JkDefrag v3.36 (Freeware)