How To Clean Up My Computer Files

clean my pc for free

How to clean your PC from junk, viruses and speed up your PC

Wisecare PC clean up

Wisecare

Wisecare 365 will do most of the work for you. It will clean up your PC by deleting temporary files, unwanted junk and other stuff wasting space on your PC.

Fsecure Antivirus Protection

Fsecure

You will begin with Fsecure. This software will clean up a virus and any other threats on your PC. It will clear the way for you to start work on the clearing out the system.

Avast Anti virus to protect your pc.

Avast

Once you have cleaned out the system, you will install Avast antivirus which will protect your PC from any future threats that the internet has to offer

Image of computer virus

What is a Virus?

A virus will disguise itself as a real program. Viruses are often rewritten and altered so that they cannot be detected. Anti-virus programs and their definitions must be updated regularly to look for new and re-written viruses. Viruses are a parasite, programs that are written to enter a computer without the user's knowledge. The word parasite is used because a virus attaches to files and replicates itself, and thus continues to spread through the infected system. Some viruses can cause serious damage and slow down system performance. clean my pc will rid any infection on your computer.

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image: Stephen Hawking

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Image of computer Trojan

What is a Trojan?

A program which has harmful code is hidden inside another program. When the program is executed, the Trojan performs a certain task, mostly working towards staying on the computer. Trojans allow hackers to open back doors on a computer, giving them access to your system and even network. A program is hidden away in a legitimate program. A Trojan carries viruses that may be harmful to your computer once you run the program where the Trojan is hidden.

After all, one Trojan on a computer is one too many: Glenn Turner.

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Image of computer spyware

What is Spyware?

Some Web sites track users' online activity through the use of what is known as spyware', usually coming in the form of cookies', they enable the cookie writer to gather information about what you are doing and which websites you are visiting. There is software available which detect and delete spyware. They gather information about a person without their knowing about it. Spyware is programs that are installed into someone's computer to secretly gather data about the person and send that information to advertisers.

One of the most feared expressions in modern times is 'The computer is down: Norman Ralph Augustine

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Image f computer adware

What is Adware?

Software that is installed onto your computer by a remote site. Some free programs that you download will install hidden software that transmits information about the websites you visit and other information from your computer to advertisers so they can target you with spam and pop up advertising. Although not malware, adware goes much further than reasonable advertising. A separate piece of code designed to be installed when other shareware or free applications are installed, adware continues to advertise even when the originally desired program is not executing.

"The only truly computer is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards": Gene Spafford

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The Nasties!

A bit about specific Viruses, Trojan horses and worms etc that clean my pc will protect you from.

Code Red

A Windows system infected by the Code Red virus locks out the user, because the worm creates a backdoor into the computer's operating system, allowing a remote user to access and control the machine. In computing terms, this is an exploit. It's not good for the computer's owner. .

The hacker controlling the virus can access information from the victim's system or even use the infected computer to steal personal information such as passwords, banking details etc. That means the victim not only has to deal with an infected computer, but also may fall under suspicion for crimes he or she didn't commit.

Confiker

Confiker is a computer worm and is supposed to be one of the most widespread viruses. Also known as Kido, Downup and Downadup. It first appeared in October of 2008 and infected 10 to 15 million systems worldwide. It infected the systems used by the House of Commons, the ministry of defence and hospitals. The usual evidence of being infected with this virus is slow browsing, it also prevents the running of anti-virus applications making it very difficult to remove.

The virus hangs about in the system doing nothing but is triggered on certain events such as April fools day.

I Love You

Is probably the computer virus that is the deadliest. Created by two Filipino programmers Reonel Ramones and Onel de Guzman All around the globe, this was a virus that was truly a dangerous and destructive infection affecting a large number of systems. It contaminated more than ten million Windows systems by 4 May 2000.

I Love You began as a message in an email with the attachment "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs". Millions of systems ended up being damaged by this virus that is resulted in a cost of approximately 10 billion pounds. It infected 10% of the computers of the world's biggest companies.

Melissa

David L. Smith created this virus in March 1999. It infected word documents and Outlook and was passed around as email attachments. These attachments usual contained a list of passwords to adult websites. It is estimated that the cost of this virus was around the 80 million pounds mark. The email contained the title "Important Message From and usually a friends email accounts name. When the email message was clicked the body shows: "Here's the document you asked for. Do not show anyone else )".

The attachment was titled "list" and had the .doc extension. List.doc showed a list of adult sites with login details. Melissa then mailed itself to 50 friends or colleagues on the host email list. Smith was arrested due to efforts made by the FBI, Monmouth internet and N.J. Police state. He pleaded guilty to writing the virus and sentenced to 20 months in prison along with a fine of £5000

Sasser

18 year-old German Sven Jaschan was arrested in May 2004 for releasing the worm on his 18th birthday in 2004. Microsoft offered a bounty of £250,000 for information leading to the arrest of Jaschan. One of his friends told Microsoft that Jaschan had written the worm and also Netsky.AC, another variant. Sasser.E was infecting systems around the globe after he was arrested.

Typical indications of infection are files on the systems hard drive named C:\win.log, C:\win2.log. 100% central processing unit running at 1005 as well where the PC would crash due to the file transfer protocol software running randomly. Jaschan created the worm before his 18th birthday, this meant the German courts could only try him as a minor. He was found guilty of committing computer sabotage and altering information held on the system. He was sentenced to 21 months suspended.

Zeus

Zeus is a Trojan horse, a malicious piece of software that infects the Windows operating system. It was first detected in 2007 and its primary goal was to steal banking details. Also known as Zbot, it infected millions of systems across the world. Zeus creates a "botnet" which is a network of infected systems, it is a keylogger which spies on a users input to the keyboard.

This Trojan horse can infect mobile phones which is why companies are moving forward to two-factor authentication. Billions of pounds were lost to this malicious software that stole banking details from users infected machines. The way Zeus infected machines was by phishing, a type of email or website created to look like the real sight. Cisco, Amazon and Oracle were targeted in particular. Over 100 hackers were responsible for stealing 80 million pounds.

Microsoft continually release updates for Windows which incorporate patches to deal with a lot of these nasties however, pirated versions of windows will not be able to install these patches so, if you are running a legal version of Windows, be sure to get the regular updates and install them to give you further protection.

Watch a video showing computers sending cyber threats across the globe.

This is a video of cyber attacks which are taking place all over the world at any given time, night or day. Below you will see a visual representation of such attacks. The yellow boxes are the attackers and the green circles are the victims. Occasionally you will see an orange trajectory, this is an attack known as an APT or better known as Advanced Persistent Threats.

It is a fairly new threat that targets Linux servers which once installed, will take control of a command server and then have the ability to edit, delete, move files on the system. This visualisation was taken on Friday 23rd April 2021. You can see the timestamp on the right-hand side of the window which also shows the number of attacks that have taken place that day.

As you can see, cyber crime exists and is a real threat to businesses where they attack important servers and also, individuals in their own homes.

See live version

Arctic Wolf is a cyber security business who provide security solutions for small and mid-sized businesses to detect and act on cyber crime. This company is a major player in this area and will obviously charge big money for their services. Following the clean my pc for free step by step guide will protect your PC and home network just like Artic Wolf but using software called Fsecure and Avast antivirus which are free.

Speed

Your PC is sluggish and slow, sometimes even crashes!

Security

You may not know that there is a Virus in your system!

Privacy

Companies are spying on every move you make on the internet!

Efficiency

Your Notepad, Laptop etc. will be using valuable rescources such as battery power!

Photo of a computer

Image of website author

What is the point of the clean my pc for free website?

Firstly, a bit about me Clive Jackson, designer of clean my pc for free. I have been in the computer game since the late '80s. I was out of work and had to find a hobby to fill my time whilst job hunting. The local library had the answer. I found up a book "how to build a computer". At first thoughts, it was quite daunting. I, at that time, didn't have a P.C. as we now know it.

I was the proud owner of an Amstrad colour personal computer 64 which had a tiny memory of 64 kilobytes, that's not megabytes! When eventually I got my first P.C. it was what is known as a "bare-bones system".
What does this mean? Well, since the system is sold as a pre-built unit, with the motherboard and power supply already installed, it was the cheaper option to build your own.

Image of barebones system

A Barebones System.

After purchasing the necessary parts such as the CD-ROM, hard drive etc. I was pleased to strike it up for the first time and see my new creation alive! The problem is you need to continually upgrade and update. Processors were slow and needed upgrading to a faster specification.

Next was to install the operating system which in those days was Microsoft DOS which came on three floppy disks 4MB each. Listening for the DOS beeps was crucial as you had no user interface to see what went wrong if anything.

Once DOS was in, it was time to install windows. At that time, it was windows 3.1 which came with 7 floppy disks if I remember correctly. Windows would load the welcome screen, deep joy!

Image of Dos disks

Microsoft DOS disks.

Next was the awkward step of installing a modem (modulator-demodulator) to connect to the internet. Sometimes an absolute nightmare. My ISP at that time was Freeserve dial-up.

This was an internet connection that you could not access until 6 pm in the evening, wow, those were the days! Firstly, you had to install the drivers which came on CD-ROM. Pretty straight forward nowadays but, back then a nightmare!

Image of Windows 3.1

Windows 3.1

If you could not afford an Anti-virus then, you were at the mercy of the bad guys out there. Many times I had to re-install the system from scratch as there was no imaging as such and, what was out there was very expensive and, no back-up, restore like we have today. Because I had self-taught all this stuff, I was at the mercy of my friends whose own system had crashed. They wanted me to repair their PC's which then, I did for free. It took many, many hours of my time and, to be honest, became quite annoying.

One day I decided to write down on paper a step by step guide for them to follow to repair their PC. Yes, I did get many telephone calls asking for help but, I was happy to do that. One day it dawned on me that, if I designed a website to help clear out people's PC's, it would be such a great help to them and to help the rest of the world do the same. This is where I came up with this site… clean my pc for free. I hope you can make use of it, to increase the security, performance, speed etc. of your own machine.