Fast antivirus solution for home use

Most people usually complain of Antivirus software slowing down their computers. They look for a fast scanning & reliable antivirus program that wont miss new virus threats, already combined with an integrated shield protecting their system from further infection.

This time I'll present you the new free Spyware Terminator antivirus program.

http://www.spywareterminator.com

After playing with it here are the results & features of Spyware Terminator which I've found:
It has a light and almost intuitive easy to use interface. Virus scanning is fast and the program virus definitions are being updated daily. The software is reliable and could be used together with ClamAntivirus.
Program's executables take around 15mb of computer's memory. When compared with Norton Antivirus, BitDefender, Avast, Kaspersky(KAV) and Nod32 the program takes smallest amount of computer's memory.
The integrated real-time antivirus shield functions alright and actually stops virus infections. The program catches objects (spyware, adware, trojans & viruses) that both SpyBot and AdAware are missing.

For advanced users
Spyware Terminator has easy explainable processes database, allowing you to choose and keep only those that you actually need.
The full spyware and virus cleaning involves the free integrated antivirus ClamAV. Hint: If you experience that your computer has become slower than before just disable the ClamAV shield and you'll be fine.

Once finished with full spyware and virus scanning Spyware terminator enables its unique HIPS protection.
HIPS is short for Host Intrusion Prevention System - a system that maps the local files on your hard drive. Then if an unknown virus is found the antivirus easily restores the infected file without damaging it. There's no need to worry: the whole mapping will not slow your computer or take lot of your hard disk drive space.

Also nice feature of the program is that it manages and uninstalls easily the resident(remaining in computer's memory) viruses and trojans even the one spawned from processes such as explorer.exe without a need of system restart.

After each cleaning you'll see that Spyware Terminator creates a clean windows restore point. This allows you to get your system back when the computer has been in a good shape.

In case you find an unknown adware, virus or a trojan you can send the infected file to the spyware terminator labs for an examination - either with the application itself or using their website forum. In a few weeks the updated antivirus definitions will be released thus fixing your problem.

Deep file scanning
I recommend you to do a monthly deep file scan with SpywareTerminator & ClamAV combined and an option checked on detect alternate data streams. This way ST will scan for files hidden in the NTFS file system. The scan could take a while but it's worthy of discovering hidden rootkits and spyware on your system.
HOW to enable: Go to Settings->Scan Settings and check the option Scan Alternate File Streams

Playing games, installing software
If you switch to install mode you'll receive less notifying pop-ups from the application when installing a new trusted software. When done, just uncheck the install mode.

Don't forget
After downloading and installing, please update program's definitions.

Overall I can recommend this software to people who want to have a fast free antispyware/antivirus scanner & schield.

for more information please read: http://www.net-security.org/review.php?id=160
by Nevyan Neykov

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Hard drive defrgamentation

Remark: If you have SSD hard drive - do not use defragment - it will only eat up your precious hard drive life write cycles!
First lets have some background about the file systems, then I'll explain the actual need of defragmenting.
What is a file system?
When files are stored in the computer, the operating system or OS(Unix, MacOs, Windows...) needs a simple way of sorting them. Next when we need to access a file the OS must know where to find it on its exact place. Moreover the OS also needs: its occupation on the disk, size, name, creation date and so on properties and attributes. There are many ways for this arrangement to be accomplished and that is the primary role of the filesystem. Which is also responsible for allocating free space over the disk media, arrangement, indexing and more. For example Windows uses the following file systems: FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS.

File system problems
As with the previously mentioned, the operating system is solving many important issues.
Example 1: when we save file on the hard-drive it is stored continuously (without breaks in the drive's space). Next to the first a 2nd, 3rd one and so on filesare being stored. But when а file is deleted its allocated place becomes a gap, having length(size) exactly like the file size. Later on when the continuous free space on the drive finishes, the file system uses the previously open gap where places another file. But as we know files have different size. So for example if we have 40kb. left from previously deleted file and we save a new one with size of 30kb. then the last 10kb from the free space will be free(gap). For that reason the file-system maps the drive. The map describes how much free-space is left and its location on the drive.

Need of defragmentation?
Let's suppose that we have a 10kb. free space from an previously erased file, and a 90kb free-space on the end of hard drive. We want to store a new 100kb. file on that drive.
We have that 100kb. space, but it is not continuous - it is in the form of two small parts: 90kb. at the end and 10kb. left from the erased file. How this could be done?

Solution to the problem
To accomplish the above task the filesystem takes the file apart into several pieces and saves the first part(10kb. in that case) in the first found freespace. The lasting 90kb. are placed on the free space left at the end of the drive. This process of separating the files in small parts or fragments is called fragmentation. This way the more separations or fragments exists the more the loading of 1file is prolonged. The usual software uses 10-100 or even 1000 files. Imagine this way how much the loading could be prolonged. For that reason it is good once in a month an arranging of the files to be done(defragmentation). This way you'll increase the performance of the computer. Usually this procedure takes time:

In order the defrag to be faster follow these simple steps:

1. Stop your antivirus/antispyware programs.

2. Do not use the computer in the time of defragmenting.

3. Ensure that there is a lot of free space (>20%) on your harddrive.
4. For extremely safety you can defrag in safe mode only.

There are lots of programs offered, but I do recommend to try the free either portable or standalone installation of Auslogics Disk Defrag. It is very quick and has options to even re-arrange your most used/system files in one place in order to become more quickly accessible! by Nevyan Neykov

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