There are symptoms that can help us greatly cure our PCs before it's too late. By being too late I mean the time you learn to be infected and unfortunately you may have lost something including but not limited to, your credit card numbers revealed to strangers, your email password stolen, your stable operating system deformed, etc.

Nowadays especially Windows XP users prefer to use the built in hibernate feature of their Windows and less and less they restart their PCs everyday.

You might know that whenever a Trojan, malware, adware, virus and other newly created online or offline threats enter and resides in your computer, a restarting of your machine gives these new guests a golden opportunity, some of them multiply, others simply hide inside other files like photos or txt files and others actively gain more power by being able to access some system resources they like.

So, first note, whenever you visit a suspicious website, or download something especially a file from unknown sources like p2p programs or from unverified Urls, scan the files downloaded and then scan your computer before hibernating or turning off.

If after restarting your computer or coming out of hibernation you are encountered by an error message that you didn't see before downloading the specified file, this might, be a sign of an intruder.

Read the error message exactly, if it asks you go online and visit a website, it strongly can be an adware or spyware commanding your internet connections to allow it use your online resources, or complete downloading some other malwares onto your computer.

In some cases if you see some errors that are related to your VGA status, for example Windows warns that your color settings are too low or something like that, it's better to scan your PC with your several updated anti-virus and anti-spyware programs and if the case persists, just uninstall your VGA software and reinstall.

Make sure that whenever being online, your pop up blocker is active, cause many adwares and spywares are downloaded through pop up windows. Also pay very attention to messages asking you turn off your firewall, it's a proven trick that some sites exporting malwares, usually offer free softwares and exciting programs and when you begin downloading an error message appears on your screen that in order to download or continue downloading of this software, please turn off your firewall, Never download such things and Never turn off your firewalls in such cases.

Spam emails too are among the new evolved methods of sending malware to people through unrealistic messages, for example you receive emails that your bank account is in danger and your bank asks you change your account password.

In such cases, if you use mail clients like Outlook, just right click on the email message and read about the senders real email address, in fact you very well know what email address belongs to your bank. These emails usually come from free online email addresses.

Don't forget to make a phone call to you bank and inspect if such action is needed or not.

Nowadays, quite unlike the past some keyloggers and malwares do not need to reside inside an attached email message, instead they hide inside html and picture emails and load onto your computer through mere reading, it's a trusted word that when you receive an email from an unknown source with a strange title like: I Love you or You have won the jackpot, delete it unread.

In some cases when you scan your computer and your anti-spyware programs find some malwares, your scanner wants you to restart your PC, so that the cleaning take effect, if this is true about you, turn off and rescan after restarting to see if the Trojan has been successfully cleaned.

The two major internet browsers Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are both familiar names to millions of online browsers and there is not yet any exact evidence as to which one is safer against online threats but you can test them, download and use them updated and then browse with each one for a while and after using each one, just scan your PC, after a short while you will learn that which one is right for you.

But a note must be mentioned here, neither of these two browsers can make you immune from online threats if used by themselves, so be equipped with several anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, scan everyday and after suspicious behaviors.

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