Keeping Your PC Malware-Free, For Free

I’ve talked about not using an antivirus in an opinion article last week and quite honestly, had an overwhelming response to it – some of you agreeing that an antivirus may not be necessary while many others feeling strongly about using an antivirus to keep the PC completely secure.

In this feature, we look at some of the ways that you can reduce the chances of your PC being infected by viruses or any other kinds of malicious code by using just a couple of handy utilities and by following a few rules of your own.

Disabling Windows File Sharing
A lot of the malware comes from other infected PCs on the network. Most users end up enabling Windows file sharing when they run a clean installation, which leaves the systems prone to worms and viruses. One of the easiest ways to stop this from happening is to turn off the file sharing feature completely especially if you have no other PCs at your home. To do this, browse to the Network Connections window through the Control Panel. Right click on the network adapter and click on Properties. Uncheck Windows file sharing checkbox. If you need to be able to share files on a network, make sure you use complicated passwords for network shares and disable all open network shares. Also, allow write access only if it’s absolutely required.

Monitoring network connections
Gone are the days where worms and viruses would corrupt files or slow down the system. Most of the malware today are designed to spam or remotely attack other PCs and sites. So, if your PC is infected by a worm, there’s a good chance that it might be sending out packets through your internet connection.

Network activity monitoring using Windows 7's Resource Monitor

One of the easy ways to know for sure is to use a network bandwidth monitor. Windows 7 for example, already comes with a built-in network monitor called Resource Monitor. Start it and access the Network panel to see all the connections being made by applications and the amount of bandwidth being used.

Using a secure browser
If you’ve been using an old version of Internet Explorer or any other unsecured browser, it’s high time you moved to Firefox, Chrome or Opera. Later versions of Internet Explorer are more secure, so it’s recommended you upgrade to the latest possible version if you prefer using IE.

Free malware removal tools

Symantec's free Power Eraser malware removal utility

It’s a handy to non-intrusive malware removal tools around at all times. Some of these free tools available are Spybot , Hijackthis and Symantec’s Power Eraser tool which is available for free from their respective sites. There are many other similar tools offered by antivirus manufacturers. These are handy to remove commonly found viruses and worms.