If your regular antivirus program — the  one you already have up and running — hasn’t stopped the questionable  software, it probably can’t. What you need is a second opinion, and  possibly a third and a fourth.

Start with the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware,  a utility with an exceptional record of finding and removing malware.  Download it, install it, launch it, update the database, and then  perform a full scan.

Since installing and updating a cleaning  utility are tasks that the infection may interfere with, it’s a good  idea to follow your Malwarebytes scan with other scans that don’t  require an installation or even an update.

On someone else’s PC, download SuperAntiSpyware Portable and copy it to a flash drive. Boot the infected PC into Safe Mode, plug  in the flash drive, and run the program. Since SuperAntiSpyware.com  updates the portable program every day or two, you don’t need to update  it before the scan.

For a fourth opinion, try the F-Secure Rescue CD.  This is another .iso file from which you can burn a bootable CD. Just  boot from the CD and run the scan. The program will try to update its  database over the Internet. If it can’t, you can download an update on  another PC, put it on a flash drive, and keep that plugged in while  running F-Secure on the infected PC.

The original article appeared on infoworld.

If the wrong person leaves your company in a huff, one or more PCs could be left stranded. With no one in the  company knowing the password to an administrator-level account, you  can’t install software, change important settings, or possibly access  encrypted data.

Fortunately, you can remove the password, letting you log on to that account. You do that with the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor,  a bootable, text-based free program that you download as an .iso file.  Double-click that file, and Windows 7 will start the process of burning  it to a CD.

Boot the CD and follow these instructions. I’ve put the on-screen prompts in italics. After you type your answer, press Enter.

boot: Just press Enter.

Select: [1]: Above the prompt you’ll see a list of hard-drive partitions. Select the right one by typing that number.

What is the path to the registry directory?…: The default is probably correct. Just press Enter.

[1]: 1

What to do? [1] ->: 1

or simply enter the username…:  Type the name of the administrator account. If you’re not sure what it  is, all of the account names are listed above the prompt.

Select: [q] >: 1

Select: ! – quit…: !

What to do [1]: q

About to write file(s) back…: y

New run? [n]: n

# Remove the CD and reboot.

You should now be able to log on to the administrator account without a password. For security purposes, don’t forget to create a new password for the account. Just be sure to remember what it is.

The original article appeared in infoworld.

Windows 7 keeps logs of “Stop Errors.” To view the logs and make sense of them, download and run BlueScreenView,  a free, portable program by NirSoft that shows you what drivers  were running at the time of the crash, and highlights the likeliest  suspects. If the same drivers come up from multiple crashes, you should  definitely update them.

Speaking of updating drivers, you should make sure that all of them are current. SlimWare Utilities’ free SlimDrivers makes this chore remarkably easy, as it scans Windows and lists which  drivers need to be updated. If you register (that’s free, too), it will  find the drivers and run the update for you. It even offers to create a  restore point before each update. Don’t update all of your drivers at  once, however; if you do, and one of them makes things worse, you’ll  have a tough time figuring out which one.

Frequent BSoDs can also  be a sign of hardware problems, especially bad RAM. Although Windows 7  has its own memory-diagnostics program, I prefer the free Memtest86+,  which you have to boot separately. You can download the program either  as an .iso file — from which you can create a bootable CD — or as an .exe  file that will install the program and its bootable operating system  onto a flash drive.

The original articles appeared in infoworld.