Some would say keeping your windows up to date is essential in keeping it free of the newest, worst viruses and the like. Others would say that updating your windows is overemphasized, unneeded and a waste of time and with the windows zero day attack is it safe it use windows XP update? do you need to protect your PC?

Microsoft has ways of detecting whether your version of windows is actually store-bought, or pirated. With so many copies of pirated windows on the market, such a move by Microsoft is  required in order to continue cornering the OS market. For instance, when SP 1 (and 2) came out, you had to have an authentic windows serial code in order to download the update. There are of course ways of getting around this, but it deterred much illegal upgrading to the new service packs. Had you have had a pirated copy of windows (and the majority does), then you could have downloaded a copy of windows SP 1/2, but you would have had to completely re-install and possibly format in order to install it.

If you had an original windows serial code that came with the product, you could have just downloaded the packs from the windows update servers.

So yes, having a non-pirated copy of windows is a convenience. However, some would remember a stunning virus that was released not too long ago; MyDoom. It managed to find its ways onto the Microsoft windows update servers. When you got the virus, you would have 30 seconds before the computer shut down. Should you have formatted, just to re-install windows with automatic updates turned on (and they are by default) you would get the virus again abd now there is the windows XP zero day attack that works through windows XP support on your PC.

Not to mention Windows Updates are a large time factor. Some updates (especially the first time you use Windows Update) are colossal, and the download speeds are not always at their greatest.

Now, you ask, what exactly is Windows XP Update? It’s simply Microsoft engineers working hard to fix bugs, problems and backdoors in Windows. What are these problems, you ask? Well, when Microsoft released windows it wasn’t exactly a perfect OS. With every version of Windows, it becomes more and more hi-tech. But there has always been problems with Windows being insecure.

The only way to find that Windows has a certain vulnerability is first for that vulnerability to be exploited. Eg, Microsoft using white hat hackers (the good guys) to breach windows, or for a hacker to break into a version of Windows and it is reported.

For a home desktop, even for a home network, windows updates really are that important. No one wants to get hacked or find their computer full of malware.  Should you use a simple firewall, even the windows in-house firewall, you are protected from ony a few threats.  Windows Updates cannot really help prevent all attacks, but they can prevent hackers, crackers, viruses and the like from entering their network computers from faults in the windows code or browser and at the moment windows update is safe from the new windows XP zero day attack.

So to answer the question – should I use windows update? the answer is yes. You should also download a system scanner to be safe to check your PC for malware and spyware that can get onto your PC without you knowing. Click here to scan your PC now.

It is pretty safe to say that a majority of people have been affected by the phenomenon of adware. Whether or not adware’s impact is a positive or negative one is up to the user to decide. The goal of this article isto simply help distinguish the good and bad attributes of adware.

The Negative Affects of Adware:

For the majority of people, the negative characteristics of adware are pretty obvious. People’s primary problem with adware is its ability to display advertisements in pop up form whenever it wants. In addition, adware also has a reputation of decreasing the speed and performance of computer’s.

Digressing from the functionality aspect of adware, people have also had a lot of difficulties in terms of removing adware from their computers. From restarting the computer, to Internet-suggested manual methods, to virus scans, some adware will just not seem to go away, no matter what is done. In these situations, it seems the only proven solution to removing adware is to wipe the computer hard drive clean by reformatting and then just reinstall everything, which most are not willing to do.

Having stated the above, a lot of people can probably agree with the fact of adware having qualities that most do not appreciate. It would be no surprise to hear additional complaints from people aside from the points listed earlier, but these are just the primary frustrations people have. So, if adware causes all of these problems to people and their computers, you may be wondering how on earth it can have any positive traits whatsoever. Read on, and you’ll see that this is not a myth.

Adware and the Good it has Provided:

Here is a question for you: have you ever downloaded something for free (legally, of course) and the owner/developer of whatever you downloaded asked you for a donation? That being said, have you ever donated to freely download what these owners/developers offer? And no, donating your time to visit their site and use their software doesn’t count. It is probably safe to say the majority of people won’t donate any money to download stuff for free. This is where adware comes into play.

For the majority of the time, where there is adware, there is money to be made. Since there are not enough monetary donations to cover expenses incurred from developing a download, advertisers are usually willing to contribute money. In return, they simply ask the download distributors to add their adware with whatever they are offering. Since there are no other alternatives for the developer, (s)he agrees to bundle the adware.Having adware bundled with the initial software, you are then allowed to acquire the download for free.

How about that? Adware does in fact serve a positive aspect to the Internet. It doesn’t matter if you do or do not utilize free downloads, because so many people already do. Having said that, adware is responsible for making so many downloads available for free.

In Microsoft Windows based computer, when the boot process fails on a system with mirrored boot drive, and failure is resulted by an issues that has struck both mirror and primary partitions, such as corrupt or bad device drivers or other system changes, using the Fault Tolerance device doesn’t enable you to boot the system.

This situation occurs because both of the drives have same problem. In these cases, the system can not boot up and your Windows hard drive partitions become inaccessible, causing partition loss. At this point, it becomes essential to go for Partition Recovery to overcome this problem.

In such circumstances, the general process is to boot your system to an alternative OS, such as any other installation of Windows operating system or MS DOS, and use this for possible Partition Recovery. However, if the boot drive is mirrored, this process is not feasible, unless the mirror in manually broken.

How to manually break the mirror

In order to break the mirror, you need to use the Disk Editor to alter the Windows partition table and byte, which suggests the type of partition. You could use third party utilities to carry out this operation. In Microsoft Windows, the partition table is stored in first physical sector of hard drive.

The Windows partition entries begin at an offset. On the mirrored drive, the partition entry bye is either 0×87 (for NTFS file system partition) or 0×86 (for FAT file system partition). This byte requires to be modified to 0×07 (NTFS file system partition) or 0×06 (FAT file system partition. To do so, you are required to use a third party disk editor tool.

Although, using the disk editor is helpful in resolving such situation in most of the cases, but it should be used only as last resort. Using the disk editor to directly modify the information on hard drive is unsafe and could cause further drive corruption if this is not performed appropriately. When it happens, carrying out recovery of lost partitions through Partition Recovery Software becomes need of hour.

These applications are specifically designed to throughly scan entire hard drive using advanced scanning algorithms and retrieve all of the lost Windows partitions. The Partition Recovery Software are quite easy to use and do not require high technical skills to achieve absolute recovery.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the most comprehensive and robust tool to provide assured recovery of lost Windows hard drive partitions. This software recovers FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system partitions. It is compatible with Microsoft Windows 7 RC1, Vista, 2003, XP and 2000.