You have just been struck by the Blue Screen of Death. Anyone who uses Mcft Windows will be familiar with this. What can you do? More importantly, how can you prevent it happening?

5 Fatal OE exceptions and VXD errors

Fatal OE exception errors and VXD errors are often caused by video card problems.

These can often be resolved easily by reducing the resolution of the video display. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-Display-Settings

Here you should slide the screen area bar to the left. Take a look at the colour settings on the left of that window. For most desktops, high colour 16-bit depth is adequate.

If the screen freezes or you experience system lockups it might be due to the video card. Make sure it does not have a hardware conflict. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Device Manager

Here, select the + beside Display Adapter. A line of text describing your video card should appear. Select it (make it blue) and press properties. Then select Resources and select each line in the window. Look for a message that says No Conflicts.

If you have video card hardware conflict, you will see it here. Be careful at this point and make a note of everything you do in case you make things worse.

The way to resolve a hardware conflict is to uncheck the Use Automatic Settings box and hit the Change Settings button. You are searching for a setting that will display a No Conflicts message.

Another useful way to resolve video problems is to go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Performance-Graphics

Here you should move the Hardware Acceleration slider to the left. As ever, the most common cause of problems relating to graphics cards is old or faulty drivers (a driver is a small piece of software used by a computer to communicate with a device).

Look up your video card’s manufacturer on the internet and search for the most recent drivers for it.

6 Viruses

Often the first sign of a virus infection is instability. Some viruses erase the boot sector of a hard drive, making it impossible to start. This is why it is a good idea to create a Windows start-up disk. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-Add/Remove Programs

Here, look for the Start Up Disk tab. Virus protection requires constant vigilance.

A virus scanner requires a list of virus signatures in order to be able to identify viruses. These signatures are stored in a DAT file. DAT files should be updated weekly from the website of your antivirus software manufacturer.

An excellent antivirus programme is McAfee VirusScan by Network Associates ( www.nai.com). Another is Norton AntiVirus 2000, made by Symantec ( www.symantec.com).

Troubleshooting and Maintaining Your PC All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies (For Dummies (Computers))

1. RATE SITES Download and install McAfee SiteAdvisor for Internet Explorer and Firefox from www.siteadvisor.com – this provides traffic-lights ratings for web sites and search engine results. It’s not infallible, but it adds an extra layer of protection.
2. INTERNET SIGNS Red sites should be treated with extreme caution, but roll the mouse over the red icon to get more information – click ‘More info’ for a detailed rating, including what others think about the site and McAfee’s rating.
3. SCREEN EMAILS Most anti-spam and anti-virus apps only deal with mail once it’s been downloaded. PopTray lets you preview mail before downloading it, enabling you to delete unwanted emails without letting them onto your PC first.
4. SENSIBLE PASSWORDS Don’t rely on a single password for all your online log-in details. Use a program like KeePass to securely store them all for you. Also avoid logging into web sites by clicking on links in emails.
5. DOWNLOAD SAFELY Try to avoid downloading files from any other source than the program’s own site, or a reputable site such as www.download.com. Avoid downloading software from peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa – it could be infected.

A simple package that combines two detection engines for maximum efficacy

German security specialist G Data has been producing anti-virus software for over 20 years, but there’s nothing retro about anti virus 2008.

Open it up and you see a basic user interface giving direct access to the main functions (starting and scheduling scans and updates), as well as a few information panels. Click on “Options” and you can set some default behaviors  and toogle options like heuristics. As with Spyware Doctor . the emphasis is on practically.

G Data Anti Virus secret weapon is it “Double Scan” technology, which uses two independent detection engines to scan suspect files. They’re referred to simply as “Engine A” and “Engine B”, with Engine A described as the more effective but slightly more resource –heavy of the two. In reality, Engine A is a licensed implementation of Karspersky’s scanning engine, while Engine B is licensed from Avast. You can use both in combination or just one if you’re worried about resource usage we saw no penalty to using both engines, as per the default configuration.

This raises a potential concern: since G Data doesn’t own the scanning engines, it’s reliant on third parties to keep its libraries up to date. But the Karspersky engine has a great track record, and runs to a commendable hourly update schedule.

G Data supplements this with its own “Outbreak Shield” system, using data from email security specialists  Commtouch to identify traffic patterns that look like a virus outbreak. In theory, this lets it keep malicious emails off your system even before the threat is identified. It may be largely redundant in these days of web mail and hardened email clients, but it’s good to have.

Despite its multiple engines, G Data anti virus added just six seconds to our boot time (CPU spikes and hard drive activity continued for around 20 seconds afterward, though that’s always a hazard on a Vista system). It then occupied 46mb of RAM when idle-same as Kaspersky.

It was only to be expected that, in our tests, G Data anti virus would duplicate Karspersky’s excellent score. But, thanks to the Avast engine, it also flagged up the eGuardian chile-protection package that the Russian scanner considered harmless. That’s a very impressive performance.

G Data anti virus has its share of interface foibles. We’ve never known a product to provoke so many Vista UAC prompts-even anodyne actions such as opening the “options” window caused a system interrupt. And many windows( such as the virus scan details view) don’t appear in the taskbar, which can be confusing.

Another slight downside to G Data anti virus is its price. It isn’t extortionate by any means, but Karspersky 2009 can be found more cheaply online. Since the Russian offering is also more configurable , and gives practically identical protection, we’ll keep Karspersky as our A list choice.

But G Data anti virus is a simple, functional package, and when it comes to ppeace of mind it’s hard to fault its “belt and braces” approach to malware detection.