How do you tell when
Your PC is Messed?

Some messed PC problems are obvious from the smell. Burning electronic components after a sever thunderstorm have a very distinctive odor. The easy solution here is to have BG&E add surge suppression to your home for an extra $8 per month. They have a new residential service that installs surge suppression on the electrical system for your entire home. After loosing a 42” plasma monitor, I ordered this service.

Software problems are much less obvious. They are caused by malicious software loading into your PC from the Internet. E-mail used to be the principal delivery mechanism for malicious software, but today most email is scanned by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to remove malicious software. Consequently, malicious software now enters your PC via your Internet Explorer web browser.

At first software invited into your PC by the Internet Explorer was designed to permit Internet centric businesses to track your browsing their website with the goal of focusing your attention on areas in which you were most interested. Soon that expanded to loading helpful additions to the Internet Explorer into your PC. These additions called browser helper objects (BHOs) may add tool bars (like the common Google and Yahoo tool bars) to your Internet explorer. Sometimes they claim to speed up Internet browsing but they really do not. They do cause you to see what they want you to see much like the Twilight Zone program controlled your television for a half hour. The net result is that your PC and Internet connection is a little slower and your Internet connection begins to display more advertisements and advertisements targeted at your specific interests or loosely related to your specific interests. You see these ads on the Google, AOL, Yahoo, and other news sites in side panels on your screen.

More aggressive and malicious software causes annoying popup ads to appear on your display screen. My favorite type of popup ad is the ones stating that you are vulnerable to spyware so you should visit their site for protection. This is blackmail plain and simple. One should never go to such sites. Any spyware protecting programs advertised in this manner, typically add spyware to your PC. The net result is that your PC now begins to run slower and you have less control over what it does especially when surfing the internet. You mouse may become less responsive and jumpy.

The next step is for this malicious spyware software to invite more buddies into your PC. When these programs gain a toe hold in your PC, they weaken the PCs defenses and begin to invite more of their buddies in for the party. This often opens the door for viruses.

Viruses now make your PC run very slow. The Internet connection may fail. The CD drawers may open and close inexplicably. Trojan horse viruses gather specific Windows information and sent it to places on the Internet. They do not understand all the good information that may be in your PC so they most often go after the juicy Windows files with passwords and other sensitive information. The most evil virus software is backdoor programs that permit someone to take over the PC and use it for their own purposes. A backdoor can permit your PC to be used to send spam. It may then become very obvious that your PC is sick, because your ISP calls to say that your service is temporarily blocked because you are sending too much email.

Mostly a messed PC runs slow, misbehaves, displays unwanted popup ads, or has some one call you. However, there is always the chance that the bad PC may also stink a little.