If you get hit by Malware issues often even after having an awesome Anti Virus installed on your computer, its time to check what can be the problem and there can be tons of things on your computer, which you never, get to see or even warned about all the time.
Microsoft has released a Malware Troubleshooter which is more of a pre-checker for possible security flaws in your Windows. This application is designed to first detected problems and gives you a recommendation on how to fix it. Since this comes directly from Microsoft and not from any third party application, trusting them makes sense.
So what does this application checks for ?
- First and foremost it checks if your computer Firewall is turned or not. Many a times we turn off Windows Firewall when it fails to detect any network device, but since we aren’t pro at this, its quite possible that some of the ports are left open making you vulnerable to attack.
- The next checks goes for Antivirus, and if you have the latest updates. This is important because many a times, few applications, can turn them off without your concern. Even though, most of the antivirus software are built with inbuilt detection process, but this helps.
- Turn on Windows Updates : Most of windows users hate it because what windows recommend is to install updates only at night time but not many of use keep our computer turned on. This can turn it on for you and warn you if your computer is not upto date.
- Turn off Remote Registry Access : This feature in Windows is most commonly used in a corporate environment, when they need to deploy certain settings to a lot of computer. This is useless for most consumers and home users.
- Check on Internet Explorer : It also makes a check if you have the latest version of IE which is better when it comes to security and keeps IE clean by deleting the cache and history. I am bit skeptic about this as I will like to have more control on Cache and specially on history of websites I visit.
- Enables UAC : User Access Controls is another hater feature, which have been, featured as non productive feature but what we should also know is that it makes sure whatever is being installed or changed on the file system level, has your permission.
- Apart from these, the package can reset Proxy settings and enable popup blocker.
When you run the program, it downloads required files from Internet and runs the troubleshooter. At the end, you get reports which tell you what needs to be fixed. You can choose to fix them automatically or manually. There is also an option to view detailed report on the issues.
