PC Service

Are you experiencing general PC problems, Internet issues, network failures, intermittent wireless connectivity, does your PC take ages to boot, is it painfully slow to use? Familiar blue screen errors? You could benefit from a system check and optimisation.

Is your PC as secure as it can be?

Your first line of defence is a firewall, without one you are a very easy target. If you use a modem and dial up connection you need a properly set up software firewall on your PC. If you are on broadband the router generally has a built in firewall and assuming it is active, these work very well. By default all programs on your PC will automatically access the Internet when they want to, this is OK for some software but you'd not want everything on your machine going on-line without your knowledge - especially spyware and malware. In order to control this, a software firewall that works 2 ways is called for. Apart from blocking incoming threats, they can stop programs automatically accessing the Internet without your consent, this helps enormously with stopping rogue software and trojans dialing home with your data.

Most wireless routers supplied by ISP's have very poor wireless security, they use a system wide standard password for wireless encryption. This is primarily to enable you to very easily connect any PC or laptop to your wireless router - but if you can do this easily, so can anyone else sitting outside with a laptop or from a house in the next street. If they download anything illegal or get up to any mischief using your Internet connection it would appear that it was you. We can set your wireles router up to significantly reduce the chances of this ever happening.

Do you have up to date anti-virus protection?

It is absolutely essential to have a good up to date anti-virus program that monitors your system and checks your incoming emails if you use a desktop email client, this stops you machine becoming infected and the possibility of you sending a virus to your contacts, and in extreme cases you machine becoming part of a botnet - a botnet is a network of computers controlled remotely without the user's knowledge, these are used to spread malicious code and malware to others. Your machine could become infected via spam emails, video and music downloads, software and so on.

Are you protected against spyware and malware?

Spyware and key loggers are another cause for concern as they can record your keystrokes when you are typing emails, letters, chatting, shopping on-line, bankimg etc, this collected information is then relayed back where it is processed for any useful content i.e. credit card numbers, personal data, etc they can use for fraudulent purposes. Malware (malicious software) can damage your system, it can also corrupt your data making it useless, unless you back up regularly you stand a good chance of losing everything!

We check for / remove any virus infections, malware, ad-ware, or spyware that would slow your system or compromise your security, we then look into the system services running and check for any non essential start up programs. The system registry is then checked and cleaned up to increase performance, this is followed by a thorough system defrag including the registry. Finally your Internet connection will be optimised.

If your machine needs re-installing, you can opt to have a standard or custom re-install, the custom re-install will give noticeable benefits in speed, we disable all the non required services and start up programs so you are left with a slimmed down system that will boot faster and perform better.