Disable Autorun on All drives :

All the USB related viruses exploit this feature to spead themselves. Autorun was mainly introduced for removable disks like CD/DVD ROMS so that they automatically run themselves without troubling the user to find the particular file. The root directory of the Drive consists of a file called Autorun.inf that contains the information to run the executable. For eg. Path of the presentation exe etc. We will just disable this feature , which will help us in a great deal to prevent the USB Drive virus.

To disable this feature :

• Go to Start > Run (windows key + r)
• Type gpedit.msc  (This opens the Group Policy)

• Browse to Administrative Templates > System

• Double Click on “Turn Off Autoplay” for the right side Settings
• Select Enable and in the dropdown box select All Drives and click OK.

Delete Any Autorun.inf files :

The first Tip will only disable Virus from spreading itself. There is a good chance that your drive may contain this Autorun.inf file from your previous infection. This file is actually hidden and made readonly so it is not directly visible on your local drive. I personally use a tool called “Filezilla” to see the contents of the USB Drive before I access it via Windows Explorer.

Filezilla is basicaly a free FTP Client software that helps you to download or upload files via the FTP protocol. But Filezilla shows all the files in the directory irrespective of it’s visibility. So I use this feature of Filezilla to look into the USB Drive. If the USB Drive has any autorun.inf file, just right click on the Autorun.inf file and click edit. This will show you the content of the Autorun.inf file. Autorun.inf file is basically a text file. See the path of the exe it points to and delete that exe, com, pf from there.

You can download filezilla from here.

Kill Running process :

I use another handy tool called Task Killer . This is a small freeware that is very helpful to kill the running Virus Process. You might be asking why I need a tool to kill a process, when I can directly kill the process from Task Manager. Well, yes you can kill any task from the Task Manager but the problem is few of the viruses does not allow the Task manger to be visible. It automatically closes the Task Manager window and thus stopping yourself from identifying it. Task Killer is a small utility that sits on the Task Bar. Just click on it and select the Process you want to kill.

Make sure you don’t end up killing any windows task. Make sure you have saved and backed up all your important data before you attempt to do any of these methods which I have mentioned here. Since we are forcing windows settings which can make the OS unstable. Most of the time the virus process name will be exactly same as windows process name, making it a bit harder to identify. But another small tip that can help you is.. all virus process runs under “Your username” process. Windows critical processes run under System Process.

Keep Your Antivirus Updated At All Times :

This is a pretty obvious tip, but it saves a lot of trouble later. I have seen many of my friends who have disabled the Auto Update feature, I strongly disagree to it. Just enable the damn Auto update and it will take care of the updates. After all Anti viruses are meant to detect virus and save your time from manual removal.

Use Linux :

This is probably the weirdest tip but trust me if you use Linux you don’t have to worry about any of the tips mentioned above. Linux has probably the least number of viruses available. To those who have come late, linux has come long way from being a Geeks only OS. Some distro’s like Mandriva, Linspire,Open  SUSE are customized to be more user friendly. With KDE 4.0 you can be sure you have all the eye candy that can even put Vista to shame.

I hope you would have found these tips useful. Do let me know how did these tips helped you. Feel free to share your tips too.

The biggest diversion is our social network. When you are the most busy, everyone seems to be remembering you and start diverting you to the topic which they like to discuss. Which makes us to loose focus to our topic, ultimately loosing interest in the post itself. There can be situation when you are expecting someone at those times you can be in invisible mode. Let us see the various social interactions that can act as a diversion.

Messenger service ( Yahoo, MSN, GTalk etc.)

These are probably the biggest trouble makers, mainly because of the reason other user can start an interaction. Even though you might not be interested to start an conversation they can start it and it would be too rude to tell them no. You can use a status message like “I’m Busy” etc. But it hardly adds any value. People will just buzz you to ask, what are you busy with? The best way to avoid this situation is by either staying invisible or signing off completely from the messenger service. If you still want to chat while working, turning off the chat sound would be of great help. So you can chat with them at your pleasure without much diversion.

Social networking websites ( Orkut, You tube, myspace etc.)

Another trouble maker are social networking websites. Sometimes as you will be busy blogging, just to check who’s online you login into your favorite social network only to be sucked up into it. It is a well known fact that social networking websites can be addictive. There is not much you can do this to avoid it. Couple of things that you can do is

• Use a url blocking software. Enable the software as you start blogging. So even if you enter the url it will be blocked which can remind you to resume your work.
• Another way to avoid this is by not using the browser itself. I always prefer to blog on a word processor first and then transfer it to wordpress. This way I don’t have to run my web browser until I am finished with the content.

Your mobile phone

Your own personal mobile phone too can be a big distract . Specially those forward messages that can reach to you at random timings. Personally I have lost many good points while blogging just because my phone started ringing suddenly. It is better to put your mobile in silent mode. If there is a call let it ring, if there is a message let it not notify me. You can always change this in your mobile profile. If you want to completely get rid of your mobile phone while blogging, I would recommend you put the mobile for charging. As the charge lasts longer when the mobile is charged after turning it off.

Browser Crashes

This can be really frustrating, you are almost done with your post and dang this software has performed an illegal operation and the browser closes. I would bet after this happens you wont have enough courage to write the post all over again. Browser crashes can’t be avoided but we will see how to recover if it ever happens while blogging.

• Don’t open too many tabs/windows while writing your post. A lame website is enough to make your browser crash.
• As I mentioned early in the post do not blog directly into wordpress, blog it on a word processor and later move the text to your wordpress blog. If you still love blogging directly into your wordpress blog I recommend you use the “Save and Continue” button as frequently as possible. This will save the file as a draft, so in case of a browser cache last saved content can be recovered.
• Close unnecessary applications, specially if you have a lower memory in your system.

It will be tempting for you at the beginning but as you will get used to this you will realize that you are blogging more frequently and more importantly blogging better than ever.

There is nothing new in this as guys are always curious to find out what there opposite sex is up to. When they find you have a female blogger blogging in your blog they tend to bookmark it and come back to find out what’s new. It really doesn’t matter what she blogs all that matter is her presence. Even though I haven’t tried this myself but I can guarantee you it will surely help you add some traffic to your blog.