What’s ( secretly) KILLING YOUR PC?
Remove the 10 deadliest hidden processes
1 Corrupt drivers
2 System-tray hogs
3 Update schedulers
4 Prefetch processes
5 Microsoft settings
6 Built-in bloatware
7 PUPS and adware
8 Flash and Java
9 Startup junk
10 Out-of-date software
What on Earth is your PC up to this time? There you were, happily writing an email and touring Spain in Google Earth, when your computer had another one of its funny turns. Your mouse cursor got stuck, the little spinning circle went haywire, and then the screen turned blue. Or maybe everything just ground to a halt again.
When things like this happen, it’s easy to blame malware or even ransomware. And yes, it’s good practice to run an antivirus scan whenever your PC goes bump in the night, and remembering to keep your antivirus up to date and properly configured. If you need a recommendation, Kaspersky Internet Security 2015 consistently wins our rigorous lab tests ( www.snipca.com/ 17394; see our Reader Offer on page 68).
However, this isn’t a feature about malware, and you’d be wrong to assume that malware is responsible for all your PC’S funny turns.
So if it isn’t malware…?
Malware’s ego is its fatal flaw. Malicious hacking is basically vandalism, so it loves to make its presence felt, which makes it easier for you and your antivirus to detect it and deal with it. It’s destructive but often avoidable.
The stuff that’s really killing your PC is quieter, gentler and much harder to pinpoint. It generally has good intentions, too. Drivers and startup programs, for example, don’t mean to annoy the heck out of you or send your PC to an early grave, but that’s what they’re doing, especially when there are lots of them. Then there’s the system-tray junk that comes bundled with software and lives like a parasite on your hard drive, eating memory and slowly extinguishing your computer.
In this feature, we’ll highlight your PC’S 10 most likely stealth assassins and reveal the best free tools – some new programs, some long-standing favourites - for finding, fixing, stopping and removing them for good.
There are plenty of third-party drivermanagement tools on the market, but their installers tend to be stuffed with PUPS (junk, in other words), and these are the last things you need if you want to improve your PC’S health.
Iobit Driver Booster 2 ( www.snipca. com/17395) is popular and works in all versions of Windows since 2000, but it angered us from the moment its Download button redirected us to the download mirror site Cnet, whose installers are notorious for PUPS. Sure enough, there were unwanted extras in the Driver Booster installer. You can opt out, but we’d rather avoid the risk of adware.
Free new program Drivermax ( www. snipca.com/17393) sounded like a refreshing alternative, with an option to export all your current drivers (or just the ones that work properly) to a folder or a ZIP file for reinstalling later – for example, when upgrading to Windows 10. But its installer is a horror show. First it slaps you with the adware Wajam (see ‘Named & Shamed’, Issue 454) and then it tries to sneak in the safe, but uninvited, browser Opera.
Adware is there to make money for the developers of free software, and we understand that’s just business. But the line between adware and malware is blurred, which makes all adware risky – and even “safe” adware can harm your PC’S wellbeing, as we’ll see on page 55.