Antivirus 2010 is a rogue anti-malware program. It’s also older brother to Antivirus 2008 and 2009. It’s usually picked up via internet ads claiming that your computer is infected and also through trojan horses. It tries to force it’s victim to purchase it as well. Yeah right.

While it’s quite annoying and can produce different pop-ups including a fake blue screen of death, it’s actually rather easy to remove thanks to the free Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

Per a member’s request, I have posted a quick and easy removal guide here on our free support forums.

It should also be noted that Antivirus 2010 and other malware like it can be easily thwarted by using solid anti-malware protection. I have listed many free programs here to choose from that will help keep you safe and free of malware going forward.

Update: JS-Computing.com forum member, torquemasterice, has recommended a free program aimed at simplifying this process called, WinToFlash. WinToFlash works with Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 2008 and Windows 7. It is important to note, however, that WinToFlash is currently in beta. If you run into bugs with WinToFlash or choose not to use it, you can continue reading the tutorials here.

A few folks have asked us if there’s a way to install Windows from a flash drive. Well, there sure is.

I have posted the simple methods here on our forum.

There are a couple of reasons why we prefer installing Windows from a flash drive. One, installing from a flash drive is much faster than installing from a CD or DVD. And number two, we waste fewer disks!

Have an easier method that you would like to share? Drop us a comment below or on our forum thread.

On my primary computer, I’m currently running Windows Vista Ultimate.  This computer has three internal SATA2 hard drives.  I have one 140GB primary drive along with two 500GB secondary drives.

Soon after installing and optimizing Vista, I noticed that when I opened a portable application or file on one of my secondary drives, there seemed to be a delay in Vista of about 10 seconds.  I would notice the pause… then the drive clicked a few times before finally opening the desired file.  I started thinking, what the heck is going on?

After some digging around, I found out that Windows Vista — by default — turns off hard drives that are not in use due to inactivity, in order to conserve energy.  If people rarely access their secondary drives, then it made sense.  However, in my case I’m constantly accessing files on these backup drives when using my main PC.

The solution to this frustrating problem?

Read the rest of this entry »

Via our contact form, we received an e-mail from Jim asking us for a recommendation on a free, easy to use video converter. Jim said he has several video files he would like to transfer to his iPod, but that they are in the wrong video format and he hates using iTunes. Can’t say we blame you there Jim

Well Jim, I’ve been using this piece of freeware for a while now and love the simplicity.  WinFF is a frontend GUI (graphical user interface) for the popular commandline video encoder known as FFmpeg. 

In other words, WinFF makes it very easy to convert your video files to DVD, AVI, WMV, VCD, Quicktime, cell phone format, etc.  Yes, you can convert your video files to MP4 as well for use on your iPod. A great thing about WinFF is that is supports batch jobs, so you can queue up all your files at once. Keep in mind though that depending on the size of your video files, they can take a while to convert.

You can also use it to convert your audio files to MP3, M4A, WMA, WAV, Ac3, etc.

It should also be mentioned however, that while WinFF is a great file converter, it will not transfer your converted files to your iPod. Since you dislike iTunes, you can use the free Winamp + the ml_ipod plugin to accomplish this task.

Download it here and give it a shot.



Have other suggestions? Leave us a comment!

If you’ve been noticing lately that your system seems to be slowing down, it could be an indication that it’s time to cleanup and defragment your hard drives as well as your computer’s registry.  A lot of people spend money on expensive software to help keep their computers running healthy.  While some software is almost necessary to purchase, I prefer freeware over shareware whenever possible.  I use three pieces of freeware once a month that do just that.

The first program I run is called CCleaner by Piriform. CCleaner is great for cleaning up accumulated junk on your hard drives.  It also includes a registry cleaner.  You can check out all CCleaner’s features here.

The second program I use is called Disk Defrag by Auslogics. With this you can defragment each hard drive installed inside your computer.  It also supports USB hard drives (you’ll have to enable this option in settings) and has a built-in scheduler.

After I run Disk Defrag, I run a third free program from Lars Hederer called NTREGOPT. This small program will defrag your registry on your Windows machine. Once you run this program, it will ask you to reboot to complete the registry optimization process.  However, if you are running Windows Vista, you will need to run NTREGOPT with administrator privileges, otherwise you will receive an error message.

While there can be many more processes to run through when cleaning up and optimizing your computer, this is a good place to start.