Microsoft Security Essentials
This is an excellent, free, easy-to-use option for Anti-Virus software.
If you don’t already have it installed, you can download Microsoft Security Essentials here.
To check what version of Windows you are currently running follow these steps:
In this tutorial, I will be using Windows 7 64bit
1. Click the ‘Start’ button on the bottom left and highlight ‘My Computer’
2. Right click on My Computer and select ‘Properties’
3. Verify the Version of Windows you are running, and the System Type
Once you have verified the version of Windows you are currently running select it from the drop down list and click the download button.
Select the location for the software to be downloaded to, in this example, the Desktop.
Right click on the mseinstall icon and select ‘Run as Administrator’ then click ‘Yes’
Microsoft Security Essentials Install Wizard – Click ‘Next >’
Software Licensing Terms – Click ‘I accept’
You can choose to join the Customer Experience Improvement Program or not. Make a selection and click ‘Next >’
Make sure the selection box is checked to ensure your Windows Firewall is turned on then click ‘Next >’
Click ‘Install >’ to begin the installation.
Once completed, check the box ‘Scan my computer…’ then click ‘Finish’
Microsoft Security Essentials will automatically update the virus and spyware definitions.
Once the updates are completed a scheduled scan will be defaulted to run a Quick Scan on Sunday around 2:00am. If this is your first virus scan, select ‘Full’ and click ‘Scan now’
Advanced System Care – Basic Use
Advanced System Care free tutorial:
This is a great program for optimizing, cleaning and general maintenece of your windows computers.
we are going to go over the basics of using this program. First you will see on your desktop a icon that looks like this:
If you hover over this icon and then double click on it with the left mouse button. It will then open up a window that looks like this.
You will see 4 different options here; Quick Care, Deep Care, Toolbox and Turboboost.
Quick Care:
First we will discuss Quick Care, if you hover your mouse pointer over this you will see this
If you click on Scan Now it will bring up this interface and scan your computer.
It will let you know what problems your computer has in each different category. If you click on Scan and Repair it will bring up this interface and will scan for problems and fix them after the scan is complete.
Now if you click on the words ‘Quick Care’ it will bring up this interface you will notice a button on the bottom right that says ‘Scan Now’ with an arrow on the right side of it.
You can click on the ‘Scan now’ button and you will get the same results as if you clicked on the scan now link when you initially hovered over quick care. Now if you click on the arrow on the right side of the ‘Scan now’ button you will get a few options ‘Scan & Repair’ and ‘Shut down pc after Scan & Repair’ these are pretty self explanatory. The first one will do the same as if you clicked on the ‘Scan and repair’ when you intially hovered over ‘quick care’ on the opening screen. These options will just do a quick ‘surface scan’ which only cleans up the basics and ussually only takes anywhere from 15-45 minutes.
Deep Care:
Next is the Deep Care option, this is just like the Quick Care option except it does a more thorough scan. If you hover your mouse over this option you will see this.
You will notice this has the same options as Quick Care so if you click scan it will only tell you the problems your computer has, but if you click scan and repair it will scan for and repair any problems your computer has. Basically navigating through deep care is the same as quick care except it will find alot more issues on your computer due to the more thorough scanning. This option ussually takes anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour.
Summary:
Both the quick care and deep care scan times are very estimated and is highly dependant on the level of ‘problems’ with your computer. I have done some scans on problematic computers that took upwards of 3 hours. If this is your first time running ASC (Advanced System Care) you will want to do a scan and repair under the Deep Care section and make sure you dont need to use the computer for quite a while. I suggest doing it before going to bed or heading to work and when you come home youll notice the difference right away.
This is just the basic intro for this program where there is alot that hasnt been discussed (for example the tool box and the turbo boost feature we felt it best to just introduce you to the initial scanning features where the tool box and turbo boost features can be slightly advanced for the average user). We were looking to just help people get used to using the program. We reccommend using deep care Bi-weekly or at the minimum once per month. For maximum performance you may want to do a quick care every few days and do a deep care every 2 weeks. And if you decide that you really enjoy this program you can buy the Pro version for a small price from the IObit company, we reccommend this for automated scanning so you never have to worry about it.
Toolbox:
The Toolbox feature has many many different programs built right into it and alot of them are pretty advanced and we dont reccomend the average user to go poking around in here because it is possible to hurt your computer greatly with some of these. We will go over all of the free version ones right now. when you first open the toolbox feature you will see a screen like this.
It may seem overwhelming at first by we will go over each options briefly to help you understand them better. You will notice on the left hand side a column with different options to click on ‘Clean, Optimize, Repair, Security and Control’. If you click on any of these options it will change the menu on the right hand side. First we will start with the Clean option which is the default screen when you first open the toolbox.
Clean:
Clean has many different features which are mostly used for just cleaning out the nooks of the computer and helping everything to run alot smoother. We will skip over the Registry Cleaner which is the first option in clean because it requires the Pro version to use.
