Set Your Windows Clock

Now is a very good time to make sure your anti-virus software is up to date and running on every computer you own. Why? Well, Microsoft has issued an advisory about a computer worm set to activate Friday, February 3. A worm is similar to a virus, and a good anti-virus program will help protect you. This worm is known as Win32/Mywife.E@mm, CME-24, or Blackworm, and it aims to corrupt documents with the extensions .doc, .pdf, and .zip.

Most regular readers of this column have up-to-date anti-virus software running on their computers. Please take a moment to “check for updates” for your anti-virus program. Please also take a moment to make sure your computer clocks are set to the correct date and time. Apparently, there are so many computers out there with the wrong time or date, worms like this can continue to propagate. Like the FedEx commercial where they pretend they’re a day ahead of the world because the other shipping company is sometimes late, an infected computer that thinks Saturday is Friday can still activate the malware.

If your clock is displayed in the System Tray/System Notification Area on the bottom right side of your screen, double-click on it to open the Date and Time Properties sheet. (If not, Start – Control Panel – Date and Time will get you there.) Check the month, year, and date, and adjust as necessary. Check the time and do the same. Clicking on the Time Zone tab will allow you to specify the correct time zone.

If you have an “always on” connection like cable or DSL, you can tell Windows to synchronize with a time server once a week automatically. Select the appropriate box, and pick a server. You can click on Update Now to update manually.

Once a week is enough for most people, but some of us want more frequent time checks. Quite a few programs you can download will do this for you. Some of them, however, also contain spyware. A good, free, clean program that I use is Time Sychronizer Ver 2 from Softnik Technologies. You can download it here. I have a cable connection, and Time Synchronizer is configured to start up with Windows, check the time, and then hide in the system tray, updating every hour completely in the background. This program is useful even for those who have a dial-up connection, because you can configure it to synchronize up when a dial-up connection is made, and then go away!

Even though you have anti-virus protection on your computers, and your time and date set correctly, your friends and family may not. That puts everyone at risk. Please ask your computing friends to install, run, and regularly update an anti-virus program at the very least. It’s harder for worms, viruses, and other malware to spread if we all practice safe computing! If you or your friends are unsure or uncomfortable about installing software, contact a professional for help. There are plenty of us out here, and we want you to succeed!

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.