Some really great Freebies!

Some of the best software out there is available for Free!! I have listed a few favorites below and also a link to PC Worlds list of 100 favorites. There is really no need to spend any money at all on software with all the opensource and freeware available to us. We are all guilty including myself on sticking with the name brands when hey the generics will do just fine.

GIMP a free photo editing program is just as good as photoshop, and how much is photoshop?????? Gimp was created by two Berkeley students more than 10 years ago and it is available for almost any operating system. You can do the basics such as crop, color correction, re-sizing plus the advanced stuff like retouching, painting, layering and EVEN animation support. To download your free copy of Gimp simply click here http://www.gimp.org/

OpenOffice is almost identical to Microsoft office. It has all the same applications, like word, excel and even opens word documents. Openoffice also works with PDF files. Again Openoffice is free and is available for just about all operating systems. You can download and read more about it here http://www.openoffice.org/

Avast has a great internet security suite that includes a firewall, antivirus, anti-spam and malware. My favorite tool of Avast is the boot scan, Avast will scan and clean your computer in DOS mode which many trojans will hide. Avast has a professional version and a free home version. After downloading just register for free key and you are good for one year. You can download avast here http://www.avast.com/

Ccleaner is one of my favorite free utilities. I can not imaging living without this program! I run this tool just about every single day as it cleans all the crap that my computer will pick up on the internet while surfing, downloading and shopping. This utility even cleans out temp files, empty's your recycle bin and gets rid of some virus and trojans. It is super easy to use and just takes a moment to speed up your computer. You can download ccleaner here http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner

This is just a small list of a few of my favorites but you can find a list of 100 here at PC World.

I also have a internet resource page on my web site with a few of my favorites listed at http://www.computer-gal.com/resource.htm
This page has a lot of great tools for repairing a virus infested computer. You can scan your computer online for free and download some of the tools listed above to keep it clean.

Do you have a favorite? If so let me know and I will provide a link.....

Thanks again to my readers/customers and Oh Happy New Year!!!

Computer Gal

Post I received regarding a SVCHOST.EXE Problem

Our two home machines (XP-home and XP-pro) both start a SVCHOST task that uses 100% of the CPU from startup until the task is canceled. I applied HotFix KB927891 on top of SP/2 with no effect - I also stopped MS Automatic updates - no effect.Canceling the looping SVCHOST has no adverse effect I can see. I ran AVG free virus scan, no problems.Any idea where I look next?Thank you.


December 9, 2007 9:27:00 AM EST
Blogging with Computer Gal said...
Hi,Sounds as though you have a bug that has attached itself to the svchost.exe. As you know by now it is one of the most annoying as it pretty much brings your computer to a stand still, and is dangerous to your pc running it at 100%.I would recommend restarting your computer in safe mode, by hitting the F8 key upon reboot. You should receive the safemode boot screen and choose the option of safe mode with networking.Connect to the internet and scan your pc with one of the free online scans such as bitdefender found here http://www.bitdefender.com
then I would download cleaner which is a wonderful free utility that cleans your pc of alot of the crap downloaded while on the internet, cleaner is available from file hippo here http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner I would then uninstall AVG and try Avast. I have had much better luck with Avast keeping a pc safe than AVG lately. You can find Avast and all the other mentioned utilities on my web site on the resource page here http://www.computer-gal.com/resource.htm After doing the above simply reboot normal and your problem should be solved :)Good Luck and let me know how it goes...Computer Gal
December 14, 2007 9:03:00 PM EST