Most damaging Windows Worm (2 million infections / day)

A new strain of computer virus is spreading across the Interet, called either Conficker or Downadup worm. It is infecting PC’s at a rate of close to 2 million machines a day.  Menlo Technical takes these infections very seriously and will do everything possible to prevent loss of productivity and security of client data.

As part of this effort, consider going to the Microsoft website and downloading a FREE update to its monthly protection utility called the Microsoft® Windows® Malicious Software Removal Tool . If you have called in Menlo Technical to recently perform a seasonal update and refresh to your computers, you will not have to worry about installing and running this update.

Menlo Technical makes it a common practice to update your Windows operating system regularly, as well as install an effective antivirus tool; eset.com’s Nod32 Ativirus product.  If your machine is not being updated regularly by Microsoft, then please click on this link and download the removal utility to your computer,  restart it, and run this file to scan your entire machine.

If you plan on watching videos and tutorials, consider using the Microsoft.com website.  Be sure to ALLOW the computer to install Microsoft’s Silverlight runtime software, which will enable you to view Microsoft videos and tutorials.

For more information, please consult these links from Microsoft:

Microsoft Defender :  Microsoft Defender Demo Video : Prevent Spyware

Windows 7 less Secure?

Just as in political issues, much confusion exists in technology between what is right and wrong. In the battle between what is the most reliable and most secure computer to use, the biggest problem many Geeks have with Microsoft is how bloated and insecure it is. It was noble, on the part of Microsoft, to include more security in their recent operating system: Vista. In fact, many more security features were on the drawing board for Vista, but few made it into the released product. What WAS released is a better, more secure version of Windows XP. The only problem with Vista is that it is much slower and at times requires triple the ‘horsepower’ of what Windows XP required.

The next version of Windows is called Windows 7, and Microsoft has released an early test (beta) version for people to test before it is available to everyone. Some of the early adopters claim that it is less secure than Vista, but EVERYONE agrees that it is fast. Faster to install, faster to start, faster to shut down. In this case, this single adjustment is more important than any change that is requested before the actual release.

In exchange for these features, I am perfectly content with installing a hardware firewall on my network and a software firewall on Windows 7, just for the speed.

A recent article complaining about Windows 7 security claiming it is not the perfect mix of security and speed. The author is asking Microsoft to admit there is a security issue with this operating system. This is silly, since Microsoft is in the business of making money, and not in the business of telling people that there are security holes.  I STILL prefer Apple and Linux over Windows, but I will not request Microsoft to add security at the potential sake of losing the most significant feature to come from them in nearly a decade;  Speed.