Leo’s Answers #313 – December 13, 2011

Twice now, in as many months, I've been hit with the Win 7 Home Security 2012 trojan. First time, I was able to kill it with Malwarebytes in Safe Mode. This time, it even showed up in Safe Mode and my system now won't boot. I had to take my desktop to Best Buy to get it cleaned and fixed. Do you have any recommendations for preventing trojans like this for infecting my system in the first place? I have a PC running Windows 7. Personally, I think these sociopathic oxygen thieves that create this digital fecal matter should ....

I have this nice new laptop, but the display is smaller than the screen. What I would normal see across the entire screen is smaller than it should be, and it's surrounded by a black border. How do I get rid of the border and use my whole screen?

I would like to clear off/erase all of the programs on my hard drive and clean it up before I donate my computer to a worthy cause. What's the best/simplest way to do this?

Leo, I am a Charter Cable customer and as a result, I have a charter.net email address. I travel every week, and when I am away from home, Charter's email will not let me SEND email when I use Outlook. I can receive email all day long using Outlook when I'm off the Charter ISP, I just can't send any email. Now, using my iPad, it works just fine! But using my laptop? It's a no-go! I have questioned Charter about this several times and each time, I get a “canned” response from them and they want me to jump through hoops. They know doggone good and well that it isn't going to work, regardless of what I do. I have a sneaky suspicion that it has something to do with their nasty, ugly, user-unfriendly web-based email system! I downloaded Thunderbird after reading your newsletter, but that didn't work either. Have you got any idea of a setting or something of that nature that I can adjust/change that might make my Outlook work with my Charter email address when I am away from my home base?

Yeppers writes:

A recent article in PCWorld magazine took a look at cleanup utilities from another angle: PC speed improvement. In an article entitled, "Cleanup Utilities: Can They Speed Up Your PC" (August 2011 issue), the conclusion reached after testing was that in most cases the cleanup utilities scarcely made a difference in overall system performance. After running a utility, your PC's overall performance is unlikely to change much. The magazine's advice was to uninstall old programs and save your money for hardware upgrade instead. The magazine tested four popular cleanup utilities (Ashampoo WinOptimizer 7, Iolo System Mechanic 10, Piriform CCleaner, and 360Amigo System Speedup) on five well-used PCs of various specs and generations. The test results surprised even the magazine. Perhaps another reason, in addition to those stated by Leo, for PC users not to be so eager to use system cleanup utilities.

Theo writes:

How do I "Make sure that the computer's boot sequence includes the CD or USB before it attempts to boot from the hard drive."

Duane Ferguson writes:

This 'feature' often causes problems for Help Desk staff, as users are unable to locate icons needed to activate some remote desktop connections (as well as volume controls and other useful tools). I make a habit of clicking the 'always show all icons...' option. It makes no sense to provide user tools - and then hide them.

Andrew Keir writes:

and yet - older readers will understand that some arrangement has to be made for executors. I have a list of passwords, account details, etc in a safe place (no I'm not saying where) and the same lawyers who wrote my will have a 'to be opened in the event of my death' letter saying where the family should go to get access to my money. That letter won't be handed over without seeing my death certificate. Otherwise, how on earth will my kids access - or even know about - the various online accounts I have? I trust the lawyer - especially as they don't know what's in the letter. If everyone is too cautious about online banking there's going to be a whole lot of unclaimed money in a decade or two...

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Why do I receive junk emails that are not addressed to my specific email address but to several subtle variations of my address? Why do these emails get delivered to my address when they are not addressed specifically to my address? And how should I most properly dispose of them?

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