If you are a self proclaimed computer geek and you haven’t heard a squat about Lavasoft, the term “self proclaimed” is a word that I’m glad I used. So having said that, for the ones who have just crawled out of their caves and for the ones who have been using the company’s software without knowing anything about its developers, this article is just for you. Lavasoft is a German company that was founded when computer viruses were dominating the computer crime scene. Spywares were not even heard of during this time. Lavasoft is the original anti spyware company which makes it the pioneer in the anti spyware software industry.

www.lavasoftusa.com is one website that offers solutions to the users who have quite literally given up their war against adwares and spywares by offering them latest anti spyware products and other help in order for them to configure the problem using the Lavasoft support center. There are various products that the website offers with names like Lavasoft Registry Tuner that helps in increasing the overall performance of your computer by cleaning up your registry off of the unnecessary files, then there is the Lavasoft Personal Firewall 2.0, Lavasoft Privacy Toolbox, Lavasoft File Shredder and Lavasoft Digital Lock. And for protection against any adwares, Lavasoft has its own range of products that are specifically designed to counter such threats. These products would include Ad-Aware Plus, Ad-Aware Pro and the Ad-aware version which is free for download.

Lavasoftusa.com was designed on the basis of consumer reporting, social change and of course, ethical advertising. One of the best things about this website is that it works directly with the spyware industry so that they become the good guys which is quite different from their percieved reputation. www.lavasoftusa.com works closely with the spyware industry constantly making improvements in them so that they don’t pose as a potential threat to the users anymore. So with the number of adwares and spywares on the rise, Lavasoft promises to be ready to protect your computers from these malwares.

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Contrary to popular belief, anti-virus software is only protecting you from half of the malicious content that you’re likely to find on the Internet. The other half comes in the form of Malware; an umbrella term for spyware, adware and several other disruptive applications.

It was only just recently that the top anti-Virus suites implemented scanning software to tackle the new problem. But despite the improvement of actually recognising the issue, it’s still important to have anti-Malware software installed if you wish to effectively wipe out the threat.

Viruses, understandably, take much of the media’s attention with their ability to spread like wildfire and cause severe disruption on a global scale. Yet Malware is much more common and can have a similarly disastrous impact on an operating system’s ability to function properly.

Even with the latest version of Internet Explorer, Malware makes it possible for other web users to hijack your browser and re-direct your every request to a third party website, usually one which sells an affiliated virus removal package.

Indeed, almost all Malware instances point to a commercial product which the user is trying to sell. They have several ways of succeeding. One of the most common is to include spyware with download packages.

An unsuspecting user might initiate a download without reading over the small print in the terms and conditions. When they install the program on their system, it will unpack several other applications. Some of these will operate in the background and the user won’t even know that they’re there. They can gather information about the user’s browsing habits, the sites that they visit and even more worryingly, bank details.

Other adware threats are less discrete and will spring up pop-ups on your desktop. You’ll even see your browser toolbar overtaken by commercial icons if you’re particularly unlucky.

One of the most popular tactics for Malware hackers is to spring up an alert box which states that the system is under attack from a deadly virus. The pop-up is dressed to look like a standard system warning, but it acts as an advertisement which will take the user to another third party website. As you can see, affiliation schemes are a popular target for the hackers.

The solution to all this, as you’ve probably gathered by now, is to protect your system with anti-Malware software. Most anti-Virus programs are extremely well designed to keep out the threat of Trojans and worms, yet they do little to fight off spyware which a user willingly installs without a second thought.

Anti-Malware products work in a similar fashion to virus protection software. They sit in the background and run a discrete check on the files that you download. If known instances of spyware or adware are detected, you’ll be confronted with an alert message and an option to either eliminate the threat or continue.

In most cases, eliminating the threat will simply mean not downloading a certain product. When software is packaged together, it becomes almost impossible for an Anti-Malware utility to sift out the good from the bad.

When you install the program, however, you should receive notification of the third party content that you might not have noticed in the zip.

By far the most popular form of Anti-Malware software is the “Search and Destroy” utility. This tool doesn’t prevent all new occurrences of malicious content, but it will scan your hard drive and sniff out the bad files. You can then opt to place the programs in quarantine and have them immobilised from operating on the system.

Inevitably, having spyware and adware running on a computer will decrease the performance. After rebooting with the files destroyed, you should notice that things run a lot smoother. It’s also a good idea to look out for recurring threats.

Some Malware programs are designed specifically to re-install themselves when a system restarts. They can be hard to remove and even with the top Anti-Malware software on the market, your best hope is to enter Safe Mode and remove the threat from there.

You’ll find that Anti-Malware software is cheaper than the better known Anti-Virus varieties. It’s now possible to get sufficient support for Malware removal through the likes of Norton and Symantec. But there are also several free utilities available on the Internet, and these can be efficient for most spyware and adware instances.

Don’t assume that just because you have virus protection, you’ll be safe from Malware. It’s a very different problem and one which the major companies are only just beginning to address.

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Have you opened up Internet Explorer only to find that your browser re-directs and sends you off where you don’t want to be visiting?

If the answer is yes, the chances are high that you’ve been attacked by the notorious about:blank homepage hijacker. It’s likely that if you’ve been affected by the virus, you’ll know it as the Cool Web Search utility that appears on the desktop and in your web browser.

Make no mistake; there are many different homepage hijackers in circulation. They are used for several reasons, most notably for hackers to send traffic to websites of their choosing. Sometimes this’ll be to steal advertising revenue, other times it may be to fool a search engine. And of course, there are those occasions where the pesky hackers will attack for the sake of attacking.

You may have heard the about:blank problem described as a symptom of the HomeOldSP hacker. There is a simple reason for this, and to find it you only have to look as far as the Windows Registry where you’ll find the following key:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,HomeOldSP = about:blank

While you might think that it’s possible to get rid of the about:blank virus by simply deleting the registry entry, it’s not quite as simple as that. Deleting the entry will temporarily disable the virus, but the infestation is designed to undo any attempt to delete it permanently. This means that within moments, you’ll be suffering from the same about:blank problems.

The good news is that the threat isn’t severe. It won’t render your system useless, although the same can’t be said for Internet Explorer which becomes extremely difficult to use with any variation of the Cool Web Search virus in place.

The DLL file at the root of the problem can be found hidden away at the key below:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\

WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Windows\\AppInit_DLLs

Once again, it’s not worth deleting the DLL because it will simply re-spawn. To remove it effectively, we need to download a copy of HijackThis and a comprehensive registry cleaner.

A good registry cleaner will scan and remove the about:blank hijacker. But it’s well known that the virus is capable of avoiding deletion across some anti-Virus platforms. Booting in safe mode is a good way of ensuring that you get to the root of the problem when you run your removal software.

It’s also possible to go in and correct the problem manually, if a little problematic to do so. You will need to use the Windows Registry Editor to locate a key named AppInit_DLLs. In its value entry, you will find the corrupt hidden DLL file that needs to be removed. The only problem is that you won’t be able to remove it unless you go through the Windows Recovery Console and rename the file first.

Before you can delete the file, you will need to lift the read-only protection that the hacker has placed on it.

Open up command prompt, find the stray DLL, and enter the following:

ATTRIB -R *file-name-here*.dll

Once the attribute has been changed, go ahead and delete the DLL file. Reboot the system and load up Internet Explorer. You should find that the about:blank problem is fixed.

We would strongly recommend that you purchase, or download, a sufficient spyware removal tool. There are many which sit in the web browser with the sole purpose of preventing intrusions such as the about:blank homepage hijacker.

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If, like many people, you choose to use Microsoft Outlook Express as your client for sending and receiving mail, you may have come across a 0×800cccod error at some point.

This error usually restricts a user from sending email, despite still being able to receive new mail from the POP server. You may receive an error that mentions invalid passwords, or invalid usernames. In some cases, receiving mail is also disabled and the user may have difficulty in connecting to the ISP’s mail servers.

The first step to take should be to evaluate whether the problem still exists with a firewall disabled. Many anti-Virus suites, for example, will try to scan new mail and they may alter the username and password leading to an error when it gets sent to the server. This is a simple problem to troubleshoot.

Temporarily disable the protection, try to send your message, and if it goes through successfully, you know that the anti-Virus software is causing a collision. It’s possible to disable the firewall for email services but that’s a drastic measure to take. Especially given that many viruses are spread through email communications.

You can breathe a sigh of relief though because even when you do download a virus via email attachment, most anti-Virus programmes will spot the file when you try to copy it across to the hard drive. It has to be downloaded, remember.

Most firewalls are easily accessible through the control panel of your anti-Virus software. There should be an option for “email scanning”. Turn this off and you will notice that sending and receiving mail becomes a lot quicker, not just in connecting but in downloading files too.

Another possibility, and probably more likely scenario, is that you’ve already been affected by a virus. There are many malicious applications which mess with the outgoing email, preventing a user from sending and in some cases, receiving too. Some viruses are easy to spot, while others are much more discrete. It’s not always viruses that cause the problems either.

A 0×800cccod error can even be triggered by spyware and adware. To prevent this kind of corruption, you should run a regular scan of your system. There are many free scanning utilities available on the web, and it’ll reduce the likelihood of an email problem if you have a clean hard drive.

If a system clean-up isn’t enough to solve the 0×800cccod error, you may want to re-enter your account details for the email client. This can sometimes reset the connection so that you can send to the SMTP server, and receive with POP.

Ensure that the details of the mail server settings are correct. If you are unsure of this, you will have to contact your ISP and retrieve the correct information. It’s possible, but wholly unlikely, that the ISP might change your log-in details without informing you. While we’d be surprised if this is the case, it would certainly explain why you can’t connect to send or receive mail! Such problems will usually be marked with an Invalid Username / Password message.

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