We've all been in our browser, and suddenly there's
a pop-up on the screen.
This pop-up may be something completely legitimate.
It might be coming from an existing application that's
on your computer.
It might be part of the browser, or it may come from the website
that you're currently visiting.
Or the website you're visiting may
be attempting to infect you with malware by popping up
a message that they're hoping you're going to click on.
Or you may already be infected with malware,
and the pop-up is simply a symptom of the infestation.
It's important that we have browsers
that are running at the latest version,
because there are always security updates
to these browsers that might prevent some of these well
known attacks from occurring.
You also have the option within your browser
to disable any pop-ups.
That way, if someone is trying to present you with something
on the screen that really is not appropriate,
you will have already stopped it before it
had a chance to display itself in your browser.
But if the pop-up doesn't seem to be related
to the site you're currently visiting,
and it doesn't have anything to do with other tabs
that you might have open in your browser,
you may want to scan to see if you're already
infected with malware.
There are number of really good third-party scanners
that can look for all kinds of infection types.
So you should consider using those, and perhaps
a very good malware cleaner.
I always recommend that instead of trying
to clean the malware off your system, which can sometimes not
be 100% percent effective, that instead you delete everything
on your system, install a brand-new version
of the operating system, and restore from backup.
Alternatively, you may have a backup that is already
an image of your existing system,
so it may only take a number of minutes
to revert back to an earlier version of your system
that was not infected with this malware.
Here's another common browser problem.
You're typing in a Google search,
and the results that come back are not from the Google site.
They're from some other third-party site, which
obviously should never happen.
If you're asking for a Google search,
then the result should obviously come directly from Google.
This is usually caused by a malware infection.
It's often called a browser hijack,
because the browser itself is hijacking the results
and taking you somewhere else.
One option to fix this might be with an anti-malware or
anti-virus cleaner.
But of course this is not 100% effective.
The only true way to get rid of malware on a computer
is, of course, to delete everything and restore
from a known good backup.
If you've ever been browsing around the internet,
and you've come across a site that
provided some type of security alert in your browser--
maybe it tells you that the site certificate is not trusted,
or there may be another message relating
to the certificate of the server that you're visiting.
When this happens, the browser's giving you
a warning that something is not quite
right with this communication.
And you should look deeper to find out
why this particular error is occurring.
One way to get more information is to look at the lock icon.
You're visiting a site over an encrypted connection,
and that's why you're receiving this message.
So there should be a green lock icon somewhere in your browser
that you can click on.
The lock itself might be yellow, or it
might have a line through it.
But by clicking on this, you could get more information
about this particular error.
It may be that you're visiting a site that
has an expired certificate, or the certificate
is for a different domain name than the one you typed inside
of your browser, or the certificate
may not be properly signed.
It may be a certificate that was not
signed by a well known certificate authority.
And since it was not signed by something your browser trusts,
it's going to provide you with a message that
tells you that this certificate may not be from a safe source.
If malware does infect your system,
it can really create a lot of problems
with your network connections.
It could certainly cause very slow performance
when you're trying to browse the internet.
Or it may lock up completely and not
allow you to communicate to any particular site.
You might also find that you're not
able to go to certain sites on the internet, or the sites
that you go to may be redirected somewhere else.
The malware is in complete control,
and it can decide where you go inside of that browser.
This obviously becomes a problem if you'd
like to download some malware cleaning software,
or you'd like to update your operating
system so that it no longer has this particular vulnerability.
The malware will not let you visit these locations,
so that it remains on your system
without you being able to download a cleaner.
You could try cleaning this malware
by downloading a malware cleaner on another computer,
and bringing it over to the system.
But usually the best way to resolve this
is to completely delete everything on this computer
and restore from a known good backup.
Malware can wreak havoc with your operating system,
because there's so many different things that they
can change once it gets on your system.
It can take your system files and rename them
to something completely different,
or it might delete files completely, or encrypt files
and prevent you from accessing the information
inside of a file.
Your file permissions may change completely,
and files that you normally would have access to
are suddenly locked out from your particular username.
Or you might not have any access at all
to these particular system files.
The malware likes to lock itself away and prevent anything
from being able to remove it from inside of your system.
Obviously, the only way to remove this then
is to get a malware cleaner that can really
go into the operating system and clean it out,
or to completely remove everything from your computer
and restore from a known good backup.
One of the most challenging things to troubleshoot
is when your system completely locks up.
There's no warning message, there's no notification
that it's going to occur.
Your system suddenly comes to a halt.
You're not able to move your mouse around the screen.
Your keyboard is not responding.
And you can try even pressing the Caps Lock and Num Lock
keys to see if the status lights might toggle on and off,
to see if there's anything that's
happening at all with the operating system.
Even when you have this type of lockup.
If the operating system's still running,
you might be able to close certain applications
by starting the Task Manager.
In Windows and some versions of Linux,
you can interrupt the user interface with Ctrl-Alt-Delete
and choose the Task Manager.
In OS X you can perform a similar function
by pressing Command-Option-Esc, and hopefully interrupting
the operating system enough to show you
that dialog so that you can choose certain applications
and terminate them from that dialog box.
Once your system starts up again,
you may be able to find out more information
about why it locked up by looking at the event logs.
This might give you at least a clue
as to what was happening prior to the lockup.
It might be that you are indeed infected with malware
or a virus, and this is what's causing this instability
with your operating system.
But it could just as easily be something
related to the hardware.
You might want to run a hardware diagnostic just
to make sure that the hardware is performing as expected.
If you're in the middle of using an application,
and the application crashes, you might
get a message that says that the application is
no longer working, or the application
may disappear completely from the screen with no notice
whatsoever.
One thing you can do is go to the event log.
There's usually information in there
that can tell you why the application happened to fail.
There might also be more information
in Windows Reliability Monitor.
This could be useful on systems that you're not familiar with,
so that you can see over time how has this application been
performing.
Has there been a history of this failure in the past?
And Reliability Monitor might also
be able to check for certain resolutions
so that it can fix the problem before you even
have to worry about it.
The Windows Reliability Monitor is a great utility,
but you have to know where to look to find it.
You want to go to your control panel--
I'm going to choose Start and Control Panel.
And inside of the control panel, choose the action center.
Inside of the action center are a number
of different categories listed.
There's a security category, a maintenance category.
And you'll find the Reliability Monitor
under the maintenance view.
If you click on the Maintenance title,
you'll notice that it expands out,
and underneath you have the option
to check for solutions to problem reports.
And the last option on this line is
to view the reliability history.
Clicking on that will then launch the Reliability Monitor,
and you can find out what's happening
with these problematic applications.
Here's a screenshot of a reliability monitor.
You can see that it shows you information
on your system over a number of days.
You could also show it over number of weeks.
Each one of these columns is a single day.
And on this day it shows you application failures,
Windows failures, miscellaneous failures, warnings,
and information.
And then you can highlight it.
And it will show you, for a particular day,
what the critical events were.
It'll tell you exactly what occurred
with what application, any warnings that
might have occurred, any informational events.
And you could begin to gather a longer-term view
of how this particular system was working,
and how the applications might be running in your operating
system.
If you continue to have problems,
you can try reinstalling the application.
And it might be worthwhile to call the application developer
and see if there's a known problem that might be causing
this application to crash.
There are also a number of applications
you can categorize as virus alerts, or virus hoaxes.
Sometimes these are not actual viruses,
but they certainly look as if they could be actual viruses.
There might be logos that you recognize,
and it may be asking you to register or subscribe.
And it would certainly ask you for a credit card
so that they could bill you for this fake anti-virus.
There's also a fake type of ransomware
that doesn't actually encrypt or lock down your system,
but it does lock it down enough that you can't normally
access the operating system.
They usually will ask for money to unlock your computer,
or require you to subscribe to a particular service
so that you can then gain access back to your computer.
Like normal malware, these hoaxes and alerts still
need a malware cleaner to remove them from your computer,
or of course you could always delete everything and restore
from a known good backup.
There is also a number of security concerns associated
with the email that you use.
One of these concerns revolves around spam.
Spam is when you're receiving unsolicited email messages.
These might just be simple advertisements,
but occasionally they can be phishing attacks
that are asking you for personal information or login
information so that they can then
gain access to your accounts.
These can very easily spread viruses and malware.
So it might be useful to have a spam
filter or some type of filtering system
to get rid of unnecessary email.
Once malware infects your machines,
one of the things that it can do is make you
a sender of all of this spam.
Your machine now becomes an email
sending device that is under the control of the malware authors.
If you're receiving replies to messages you didn't send,
or you're seeing bounced messages come back to you
that show that you sent the original message,
then you might have a hijacked email application.