How To Prevent Spyware Attacking Your Computer

By: Tom Jenson

Spyware is software or hardware installed on a computer without
a user's knowledge. It gathers information and reports it back
to its source. It ties up bandwidth, slows down CPU speed and
generally is a nuisance.

In its more malicious forms, it can disrupt the PC so much that
it is unusable; it can run up modem bills, it can spam or send
copies of itself to everyone in your address book and it can
download pornographic material to your PC.

The last is probably the one most likely to make everyone stand
up and take notice. Downloading porn at the office can get you
fired, downloading child porn anywhere can get you arrested.

The only way to keep these and all the other problems associated
with spyware from infecting your life and disrupting your
activities is prevention. As the old saying goes, an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure.

There are numerous programs available (both for free and for
pay) that offer protection from spyware and its related cohorts.
Most free programs remove spyware that's already been downloaded
and installed to your machine, such as Ad- Aware, one of the
first original anti-spyware programs.

The free version requires that you scan to capture and remove
spyware. The pay for version includes a real-time scanner that
actually prevents spyware from downloading or installing itself.

There are numerous other products on the market, but don't be
taken in by their pronouncements of being anti-spyware. Be wary,
a few of the free programs are just spyware themselves.

Security for your PC at the home includes using up-to-date virus
software, installing an effective firewall, employing reputable
anti-spyware tools, making sure all patches and being sure to
install all updates for the operating system. The best thing to
do is to avoid risky online behavior or the downloading of every
free offer that literally "pops up".

Never download anything from an unknown source. A lot of home PC
users can find their machines besieged by problems because they
downloaded something they weren't sure about or just assumed was
safe. Don't assume, be sure. You can even check security
settings for different websites you visit. Be sure what you're
downloading is from a reputable source.

You wouldn't invite just anyone who knocked on your door into
your house; you shouldn't let any file or program into your
computer. Spyware at its best is a nuisance, and a potentially
dangerous and damaging element that can cost you real time, and
worse of all, money.

Discover all you ever wanted to know about spyware. Latest
discovery methods, latest incoculation treatments, latest
removal techniques. Click for useful info and daily updated blog
of spyware news and articles.
http://www.spyware-revealed.com/anti-spyware.html

About the author:
Tom Jenson has worked in software development for 20 years. He's
seen spyware develop from an occasional problem, to a daily,
hourly threat to all pc's. He made it a mission to research
these threats, and work out how best to combat them. Now this
series of article helps others protect their computers too.

How to Protect Yourself from Viruses, Adware, Spyware and

By: Ryan Bauer

Spyware/adware is a new major concern for PC users everywhere.
Infecting your computer silently (usually installed with
programs that seem harmless), spyware and adware can collect
personal information about you, as well as cause pop up ads to
come up all of the time, changing your browsers home page,
sometimes even completely disabling your computer's usability.

This article will show you how to protect yourself against
harmful spyware / adware, as well as how to remove current
infections, and how to protect yourself from viruses, hackers
and other general "malware".

The first thing you can do, if you're an Internet Explorer user,
is consider making a switch to the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
Firefox can do everything that Internet Explorer can do, and
much, much more. Plus it is almost completely spyware "proof",
and is much more stable and secure than Internet Explorer. You
can go to getfirefox.com for more information.

Next, you'll want to keep your computer up-to-date. To do so,
you'll want to download all available updates from
windowsupdate.microsoft.com (if you use Firefox, you will need
to fire up IE to do this since Microsoft doesn't like people to
use other browsers, so they have "banned" Firefox from accessing
Windows updates).

Now that you've got a secure browser and have Windows up to
date, it's time to talk about the anti-spyware software. The
following is a list of the top three players in the free
anti-spyware software game:

Spybot Search & Destroy Download from: safer-networking.org If
you're only going to download one program, get this. Spybot is
known as the king of spyware removal - and is completely free,
ran buy a guy who volunteers his free time to keeping Spybot up
to date.

Lavasoft's Ad-Aware Download from: lavasoftusa.com Ad-Aware is
technically a for-profit program, but they have a freeware
version of their paid software, which is just as good, in my
opinion. It picks up a few things that Spybot misses, so it's
good to run both.

Microsoft's Newly Released Anti-Spyware Downlaod from:
microsoft.com Not a must-have if you have the above two
programs, but it actually is a pretty good program, especially
considering it's a Microsoft product. Might as well have it
around to pick up anything the other two might have missed.

Take all of the programs that you have chosen to use, download,
and install them. Then, one at a time, update each program, run
them, and remove anything that they found. This should
effectively remove any active spyware or adware on your system.

Now that you have spyware removed, you'll need hacker and virus
protection. To keep hackers out, you will need to install a
solid firewall. You can either use the old built in with Windows
XP, or download a third-party one.

To activate Windows XP's built in firewall, follow these easy
steps: Click the Start button, and open up the Control Panel.
Open "Network Connections" (or "Network and Internet
Connections", then "Network Connections" if you're using the
category view). If you're using broadband, or another form of
connection through a LAN, right click on Local Area Connection
(or the appropriate network connection), and select Properties.
Click on the advanced tab, and click on Settings. Select "On",
and don't select "Don't allow exceptions". Click OK on all
windows to close.

If you would like to download a third-party firewall, Kerio
Technologies has a great personal firewall that you can use. It
can be found at kerio.com/kpf_home.html.

Grisoft offers a great freeware antivirus program called AVG
Free. It is a great alternative to the common commercial
antivirus software designed to milk you for more cash with their
"update subscription" fees. Updates to AVG are 100% free,
forever. AVG can be downloaded from grisoft.com.

To keep your system completely secure, be sure to scan for
viruses, spyware and check for Windows updates every week or so.
By taking these simple steps, your computer is now many times
more secure and less likely to leak out personal information or
get a malware infection.

About the author:
Ryan Bauer is a computer geek who writes tutorials for his computer optimization
website and runs a computer
optimization and support forum.

PDA Shipments Rise

Secureidnews.com News Story FingerGear Announces USB Flash Drive with Onboard Fingerprint Authentication Monday, August 1 2005 Atmel and FingerGear announced the immediate availability of a new biometric USB Flash Drive featuring software-free operation and a large font LCD display for the ultimate user-friendly experience. The Bio USB Flash Drive, which features the Atmel FingerChip(TM) Sensor, also includes the built-in capability of generating a One-Time Password from a fingerprint match. [Preview]
Gartner Says PDA Shipments Rise, but Appears Conflicted as to What a PDA Is Gartner has released numbers to combat the PDA sky-is-falling reports that continue to come out. Gartner is missing the full picture though, as they don't take Smartphones into consideration. But here's the problem, they have no idea what a Smartphone is. According to their logic, the Treo 650 doesn't count as a PDA but the Sidekick II does. Last I checked those two devices accomplished nearly identical objectives, albeit on two different completely different paths. I'm not sure this confusion is solely Gartner's fault; at some point we're going to have to get comfortable with the definition of PDA and Smartphone. [Preview]

RAM - What is it & why you need plenty

By: Steve Perlow

This is the first article in the Understanding Your Computer
series from aworldofhelp.com. Our goal is to help people
understand how their computer works, not simply tell them what
they need to buy or use. When you know how your computer works,
buying the right system or upgrade is easy. The series is
designed to provide valuable information to users of all
knowledge levels, so if part of it seems too complicated or too
simple for you, I hope you read on and get all you can out of
the articles. If you have questions or comments about this or
any article, please ask in the forums!

RAM - What is it & why you need plenty

Many people picture a computer as consisting in part of a

Processor - CPU

Memory - RAM

Hard Drive

The way these three components interact is important to
understanding how a computer works, and ultimately to
understanding why you need enough RAM for your programs. Around
the Internet and in Magazines you can find recommended RAM
amounts for typical users. You also will find many places
proclaiming RAM as the best performance for your dollar upgrade.
I don't disagree at all, but I want you to understand what RAM
actually does, and why it can be such a valuable upgrade.

I covered this subject briefly in the aworldofhelp Notebook
Buyer's Guide on page 4. The information in that article is
accurate, but I want to try to make things a little clearer here.

The article is divided into four sections, covering:

1. The functions of the three components we are discussing and
their relative speeds 2. Why you need RAM and what takes up RAM
3. Multitasking and how RAM improves performance 4. How much RAM
you need

CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. It is the brain of your
computer. When you open a program, like Microsoft Word for
example, the CPU reads through lines of computer code and
follows the instructions so you can use your program. When you
play an audio file like an MP3, the CPU has to do work to
decompress it while it plays. When you edit a picture the CPU
has to perform many calculations to make even the smallest
changes.

One thing to note is that the CPU actually does have a very
small amount of memory in it. This is the fastest memory in a
computer system, but it is so small it doesn't really affect
this article. Generally speaking, the CPU doesn't store the
information that makes up the program, MP3, or picture, it only
processes it. The data has to be located somewhere in your
computer, and the CPU has to find it and then retrieve it.

That action, the problem of locating the data and how it affects
your overall system performance is what this article is about.

RAM

RAM stands for Random Access Memory. This memory is very fast,
and you will see it in sizes like 256 MB, 512 MB, or 1024 MB.
When you turn off your computer, the contents are erased, so it
is only temporary memory. This is where the CPU looks first to
get data to process. So if you are editing a picture, and its
data is in this RAM, because RAM is fast memory, editing the
picture will happen relatively quickly.

Hard Drive

Your Hard Drive is where you store all of your programs, music,
video, and everything you keep on your computer. This is the
memory where you store your files that remain even after you
turn your system off. You will see them in all sizes, now
typically ranging from 30 GB, to hundreds of GB. Hard drives are
very slow compared to your CPU and RAM because they are
mechanical. Inside the disk there are actually small readers
that physically move around to locate and read data.

If you are editing a picture, the CPU will first look in RAM
memory to see if it is there, because RAM is fast. If it isn't,
the CPU will go to the hard drive and edit the picture there.
Because your hard drive is so slow, this takes a much longer
time than if the picture had been in RAM.

Again, the CPU only stores a tiny bit of data, so it has to get
it from somewhere to operate on. If the CPU has data to process,
it will do so as fast as it can, but if it doesn't, the brain of
your computer simply sits and waits doing nothing. Only after it
finds and retrieves the data it needs can it process it.

So ideally, you want your CPU to find data in the fastest place
possible. As you can see, if the data is in RAM you are far
better off than if it is in your hard disk because RAM is so
much faster. Just take a look at the graph below. It shows the
time it takes to access each memory type in nanoseconds.

Clearly, your hard drive is slow, but when you look at the above
graph, and you see the numbers it is based on below, you realize
just how slow it is. Each is an approximate access time in
nanoseconds:

CPU 1 ns RAM 60 ns Hard Drive 10,000,000 ns

It should be clear why the bars for your CPU and RAM do not even
show up on this graph, your hard drive is simply extremely slow.

So why bother with a hard disk?

Seeing that, you might think that it would be great if you could
just use huge amounts of RAM instead of a hard disk. You are
right, this would be a great situation, but as you might
imagine, the faster the memory in your computer, the more
expensive it is. RAM prices have come down significantly in
recent years, but it will still cost you much more compared to
Hard Drive space.

Computers work within this constraint - that faster memory is
more expensive - by looking in the fastest place for information
first, then moving to slower locations only when they need to.
So if you hear your hard drive making noise or you see a light
telling you it is being accessed, you know the data could not be
found in RAM.

Now you know that the hard drive access that's going on is very
slow, and that is the reason your CPU, and in turn you, have to
wait.

So now you know that you want lots of RAM, at least enough for
all your programs, so you don't have to access your slow hard
drive too often. But what actually uses your RAM, and how can
you see whether your system has enough?

Windows itself takes up a lot of RAM. Microsoft says Windows XP
will run on a machine with 64 MB of RAM, though they recommend
128 MB or 256 MB. If you have even more RAM than that, and I
recommend you do, Windows will use some of it as well.

Everything that loads when you boot up your computer also uses
RAM. What these programs are actually doing is putting
themselves in to RAM, if enough is available, so that they can
be used very quickly. The problem is when there isn't enough
memory for all these programs, and your computer runs very
slowly.

On my machine these programs load when I turn on my computer:

AVG Antivirus Scanner Software Digital Camera Software Gmail
Notifier AOL Instant Messenger And some server software for
testing

Then, everything I run after the boot up uses more RAM. Whatever
Internet Browser I use, for example, takes up RAM. Microsoft
Word does too, as well as all my programs. To see how much RAM
you have and how much free RAM you have, you can open up Task
Manager by right clicking on the start menu and selecting it, it
looks like this

On the right, in the Physical Memory section my RAM is listed.
My total and available memory is listed, and as you can see,
just booting my computer into Windows XP and loading all the
things I do, I have less than half of my RAM available for other
programs.

Your system will probably have less total RAM, but you'll be
able to see how much and how much you have free. You can easily
find out how much ram you have by right clicking on "My
Computer" and going to properties, but it's useful to see it
here so you understand what the Task Manager is showing. You can
use this tool to convert the number shown in "K" to a number
that you may be more comfortable with, in "MB".

K MB

On my computer, 1048040 K converts to 1023.4 MB, which is 1024
MB.

Your own system may give you a number a few megabytes lower than
the actual. For example, 252 instead of 256. That is normal, and
is a result of something else, like a video chip, using a
portion of the RAM. The actual RAM your programs has to work
with is the number listed in the Task Manager.

In my example, I have a hundreds of Megabytes of free RAM. I
sometimes fill the RAM if I am video editing or photo editing,
but beyond that, it is rare. This is a good thing though,
remember the chart. If your RAM is full, your Hard Drive will be
used more, and since it is so slow, your system will grind to
near a halt.

By looking at the Task Manager, you can get a good idea of how
your system is running. If you have lots of available RAM, you
are in good shape. But many systems I see actually have almost
no free RAM, and this is what causes the system to use the hard
disk instead and run slower. Note that the available RAM will
generally never hit zero, but will fluctuate around very low
numbers if your system is out of memory.

Our example so far has been simplified to show how doing one
thing on your computer needs memory. But a real benefit of
having adequate memory is multitasking. Basically, if you are
doing more than one thing at a time, you are multitasking. If
you are reading this article and editing a picture at the same
time, you are multitasking.

Generally, if you can switch between two open programs on your
machine very quickly, they both are loaded into RAM. In this
case, you can likely see plenty of available memory in Task
Manager. On my machine, since I have plenty of RAM, I switch
between two or three Internet browsers, Excel, PowerPoint,
Instant Messenger, my audio player, and more very quickly.

On the other hand if you don't have enough RAM, even with just
two programs open, when you switch between them your computer
may slow down considerably. The program you are switching to is
not in RAM, and the CPU is forced to get information from the
hard disk. As you open more programs, the situation only gets
worse. A check on task manager in this case will likely show
very little free RAM, too little in fact to fit all your
programs.

How Much RAM do you need?

The best answer is that you need enough RAM to run all your
programs and multitask between them quickly. If your system is
running well and you check Task Manager and have lots of
available RAM, you are probably in good shape. If your system is
slow switching between more than one program, look at the task
manager and see if your available RAM is low. If it is, adding
more will likely make your entire system run faster, just by
fitting more programs into RAM.

You'll be amazed how fixing this problem will improve you
computing experience overall. That is the reason so many people
talk about RAM as being the best upgrade for older systems.

If you are buying a new computer 512 MB is a good amount of RAM
for most users. If you edit a lot of pictures or video, or if
you can just afford the upgrade, moving up to 1024 MB (1 GB) is
not a bad idea. Memory prices are much lower than they used to
be, and you'll have extra memory for more programs now. For most
users, the biggest advantage to getting more RAM is that if you
keep your computer for a long time, the extra RAM could save you
an upgrade down the road.

But how much RAM is too much? Well you won't really slow down
your system by adding RAM. Typical systems currently can
accommodate up to anywhere from 512 MB - 2 GB of RAM. The
problem is, after you have enough RAM, adding more really
doesn't get you much, if any performance gain.

With that in mind, check back soon for an article comparing
performance of common applications, including multitasking, with
different amounts of RAM. We'll test from 256 MB to 1024MB, and
you'll be able to see how all we've covered here has a real
affect on the speed of your computer.

About the author:
Steve Perlow is the founder of aworldofhelp.com, where you can
find the aworldofhelp Top Picks in desktop and notebook systems.
Visit aworldofhelp.com to get answers from real people to your
questions about technology, travel and more.

Dusting Your Computer - Keeping it Cool

By: Steve Perlow

My mother always told me to dust, but I never did, mostly
because I was lazy, but also because I couldn't find any
tangible benefit to dusting. I just didn't see how I'd benefit
from my room or my things being less dusty. Well now I've gotten
a bit older, and I finally found a reason to dust - a cooler
running computer. I'm going to give some background on my own
system and circumstances first, then run tests before and after
dusting, as well as explain how and what I used to dust. Be sure
to take a look at this article - with pictures and graphs - plus
a whole lot more, at aworldofhelp.com.

I've had the computer in question for a little over two years, a
dual AMD Athlon MP workstation that while no longer the top of
the line, is still plenty fast enough for what I do. The
computer is running at standard speeds and specifications, and
has always been very stable - but not 100%. When the system was
about a year old I had been getting by with the occasional,
roughly once weekly lock up. At that point, I finally spent the
time to try and diagnose the problem.

To be perfectly clear, I'm talking about a lock up, where
everything stops responding, the screen freezes and I have to
reboot, not simply an application crash, which I can usually
just blame on Microsoft. My initial thought was that the
computer was overheating, specifically the CPUs. I was a little
hesitant though because I was running AMD retail processors at
standard specifications with AMD retail heatsinks and fans, and
I figured that should have been a fine setup. But I've had CPUs
overheat before when I was sure that was the problem and this
just felt like it now. I did some research online and it looked
like the AMD cooling solutions were somewhat underwhelming
performers, so I broke down and bought new heatsinks and fans.
These still weren't top of the line, but they reduced my CPU
temperatures immediately by about 20%.

In unscientific testing I'd say my computer was absolutely more
stable after the reduction in temperature. I estimate the weekly
lockup became a monthly or even every other monthly lockup. This
clearly isn't perfect for a system that really should be 99.99%
stable, but it was a big improvement, and I let the problem go
for a while. I will note that as many of you many assume, this
computer is always on, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week.

Anyway now it's another year later and my computer is
increasingly unstable again. I'm not going to go out and get
better heatsinks and fans again, as I'm sure the improvement
would be less than before. My next though was about how dusty
the whole system is. I know I should have dusted it once in the
last two years, but I never got around to it. I'd say I live in
an average environment in terms of dustiness, not especially
better or worse, and I just never thought it would make a very
significant difference in my CPU temperature. As you'll see, I
was completely wrong - which incidentally might make my mother
right.

Almost all users should really consider the results of both
tests, possibly giving more weight to the one which most closely
matches your typical computing. Even if you run predominantly
business applications, you'll almost certainly occasionally do
something that falls under this content creation test, editing
pictures or an occasional home movie, for example. So consider
all the tests, don't just focus on one graph.

Should you dust your computer? Yes, why not, it can't hurt. But
really, there are tangible benefits of cleaning your computer,
even if it seems stable right now.

Computers and electronics in general don't like heat. Dust
blocks fans in your case, which generally cool you CPU, video
card and motherboard components. Dust also blocks fans and their
airflow into and out of your case. Cool air needs to be brought
into a case, and then the host air dispelled. If the airways are
blocked, system temperature can rise quickly. If your computer
is stable but the CPU is running too hot, you cut down on its
lifespan, potentially quickly.

More important to many people though, may be the result of that
first heat related computer lock up. Even if it's never been a
problem before, if your computer crashes at the wrong time it
can be catastrophic. Usually mine just locks up when I'm away
from it, or overnight, and I just turn it back on and restart
Firefox and haven't lost anything important. But last week it
locked up with unsaved graphs for my last article and Excel
chose no to auto save. I spent the hour it took to redo them
considering ways to eliminate these lock ups.

Of course, reducing heat is also always a priority for people
who overclock their CPU. For those that don't know, overclocking
is running a CPU at a higher frequency than it was sold to run
at. For example, you could take your Intel Pentium 4 that is
running at a "clock" rate of 2 GHz, and try to run it at 2.1
GHz, 2.5 GHz, faster speeds, or anywhere in between. I have an
old dual CPU system that was supposed to run at 366 MHz. Instead
I ran the chips at 500 MHz each, which was a huge performance
gain. Overclocking is actually a great way to get more "free"
performance out of a system, as long as you can maintain
stability. Usually the single biggest factor for success is
reducing heat as much as possible.

Another thing to note is that while it is very important to keep
CPU heat to a minimum, hard drives, video cards, and other
components all need to be kept cool as well. In fact, I don't
really know for sure that my CPUs are the current problem. I
think they are, but my next guess (if I'm correct that it's a
heat problem) would be my video card, since I've checked, and it
runs really hot.

Consider this as well, if my CPU were to actually stop working
because it was too hot, it would probably be a gradual process,
and I could fix the situation by purchasing a replacement. If my
hard drive crashes and ultimately loses data, that could be a
much more problematic situation. I could replace the drive, but
recovering the data could be far more difficult than just
replacing a CPU.

I opened up the system and saw more dust than computer. All the
fans were covered in dust, and their airflow was totally
blocked. I put the case back on and took temperature readings of
my computer both idle and when working. The tests are all run
are on the following system:

CPU - Dual AMD Athlon MP 2000+ (1.67 GHz) Motherboard - AMD K7-D
RAM - 1024 MB RAM (2 x 512 MB registered DDR 2100) Video Card -
Matrox Parhelia AGP 128 MB HD - Segate 5400 rpm- st320410a
Windows XP SP2

I picked that unexciting hard drive because it was the only one
I had that reports temperature.

For the idle readings the computer was freshly booted into
Windows. To get the computer running at full load I ran two
instances of Prime95, a math application that will max out a CPU
(2 copies running, one each for 2 CPUs), and copied 2 GB of
Music on the hard drive to another folder on the same drive. The
entire process took about half an hour.

Without anything to compare them to, those numbers for the most
part aren't terribly interesting. My only reaction was that 63
degrees Celsius seems pretty hot, and the idle CPU temperatures
aren't too wonderful either. Remember, each CPU type has a
different recommended temperature range. 63 degrees may be too
hot for mine, but could be either acceptable, or perhaps way too
hot for your own. Regardless, you hopefully will notice a
relative reduction in temperature after dusting.

Dusting the computer

As I said, I've never dusted a computer before, but I came up
with what ended up being a reasonable plan. I bought compressed
air and a small brush from staples for $7 total and used a rag I
have here. I made sure to unplug my computer, grounded myself to
discharge static electricity by touching something metal other
than my computer, opened up the case and was ready to go.

As long as you make sure your computer is unplugged, don't get
anything wet, and are gentle while you have it opened, you
really shouldn't damage anything. For the most part, the inside
of your computer is delicate, but it isn't brittle. The most
notable exception is your CPU. If you were to disconnect it and
pull it out of the motherboard you would expose pins on the
bottom that are in fact extremely delicate.

You could do a really thorough job by taking everything apart
and getting all the dust out, but I didn't want to spend that
much time doing it and I figured if I left everything connected
their was less chance I'd mess something up. So I used the air,
brush and rag and got the dust off the computer, taking the most
time to clean the fans and the holes they blow out of.

I ran the same tests again, and the results were dramatic.

Idle, CPU 1 saw an 18% reduction in temperature, while CPU 2 is
10% cooler. That's very important, as all those hours my
computer is sitting doing very little it's going to be
considerably cooler.

At full load, CPU 1 is 21% cooler and CPU 2 is 12% cooler. These
are again very impressive results, and very important as well. I
have had lock ups when video encoding and doing other CPU
intensive tasks, and now the chips should be running cooler
while doing those.

It's interesting that originally CPU 1 was hotter than CPU 2,
and after the cleaning they switched. An important fact is that
the temperature reporting on this type of dual AMD Athlon system
is generally uneven. That said, CPU 1 was easier to dust around
because the DVD drives were in the way of CPU 2, so I probably
did a better job cleaning the former and there is still likely
room for improvement in cooling the latter.

One other note, I kept track of the fan speeds before and after
cleaning, and I saw about a 2% increase in the CPU fan speeds
after I dusted. I wasn't expecting this at all, and certainly
can't be certain that this will always result from dusting, but
it could be very interesting for overclockers trying to eak out
every last bit of fan performance.

The hard drive temperature saw a 9% improvement while idle after
dusting, and again a 9% improvement at full load. It's a nice
temperature reduction for a mechanical component that will be
grinding away for thousands of hours over the life of your
computer.

The case temperature stayed the same throughout all the tests.

Conclusion

All in all I was surprised the results were so dramatic. I
expected few degrees for the CPUs and maybe one for the hard
drive, but to see a 20% reduction in temperature is just great.
There is defiantly room for improvement as well. The CPU fans
have covers that I could have taken off and gotten more dust
out, and as I mentioned reaching one of the CPUs was harder than
the other. Further, I'd say I got most of the dust inside my
computer, well over 90%, but I still saw some that proved more
challenging to clean that I was willing to bother with. Taking
all the cards out and thoroughly cleaning the whole system would
have no doubt led to even better results.

My system has maintained the cooler temperatures so far, a week
after the cleaning, and I haven't had a lock up since. I can't
be certain I've solved the lock up problem, but it does appear I
have for now. At the very least, I can be sure CPU heat is not
the problem, as now they are running at very acceptable
temperatures. Your own results will vary, and may not be as
dramatic if your computer wasn't as dusty as mine. Regardless,
you should see some reduction in component temperature after
cleaning your system.

All in all I recommend you take a look around and inside your
computer to see how it looks. If it's dusty, $7 and an hour of
your time seems like a good investment to increase the life of
your computer and prevent system lock ups. I suspect many people
suffer the occasional heat caused lock up, it just isn't obvious
what the problem is, and they don't occur often enough to be a
serious concern. But remember, even if you only have one heat
caused lock up in the entire life of your computer, it could
come at the worst time, or cause permanent damage.

About the author:
Steve Perlow is the founder of aworldofhelp.com, where you
can find the aworldofhelp Top Picks in desktop and notebook
systems. Visit aworldofhelp.com to get answers from real people
to your questions about technology, travel and more.