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By now, many people have heard about companies that will buy your used laptop for cash. These companies buy your laptop and refurbish them to sell as used. It’s essentially laptop-recycling, and can be a great option for people who may have an extra laptop that isn’t being used or a laptop that doesn’t work (as many companies will buy it from you whether it’s working or not).

Selling your used laptop is also a great way to get some extra cash if you are trying to save up for a newer laptop. Technology is always changing, and eventually you will want to upgrade to a newer, faster computer that is more compatible with ever-changing software. Why not get rid of your old laptop while at the same time making some cash to put towards a new one?

No matter what the reason, once you decide to sell your laptop, there are a few things that you should know. There are many companies that will buy your laptop and some are better than others to do business with. The following paragraphs will help guide you through some of the important things to know when starting the process of selling your laptop.

The most important thing that you need to consider when selling your laptop is the protection of your personal information. It is vital to your security and identity that you choose a company that will remove all information from your hard drive before refurbishing it. This is especially important if your laptop isn’t working and you can’t access the information on it yourself. Make sure that the company that you sell your laptop to will erase all the information off your laptop as soon as it is received.

The next thing you’ll want to look for is a company that will get you the best used laptop value. Some companies will give you an instant quote for your laptop. If you can get an instant quote online this is the best way to find out right away of you are getting the best value for your laptop. Check this out and find out how much you may receive for selling your laptop before you send it in. And remember – you should never have to pay to ship your laptop. Sell your used laptop to a company that will pay for shipping and ensure that you pay absolutely nothing in the process.

Once you find a good value with a good company and decide to sell your laptop, another thing to look into is when you will be paid for the laptop. You should be able to find out from the company approximately how long it will take for them to receive your laptop and send you your check. It might take a couple of weeks from the time you get your estimate, but if you know when to expect it, you shouldn’t have to worry. If you want to receive your check as soon as possible, you may even be able to get your check over-nighted for a fee.

You can use the cash to save up for a new laptop, or just make some money from a laptop that isn’t used or doesn’t work. No matter what your reasons, selling your laptop can be financially beneficial, environmentally-friendly, and a smart move for people who like to upgrade.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Keylogger is a software program or hardware device that is used to monitor and log each of the keys a user types into a computer keyboard. The user who installed the program or hardware device can then view all keys typed in by that user. Because these programs and hardware devices monitor the keys typed in a user can easily find user passwords and other information a user may not wish others to know about.

Keyloggers, as a surveillance tool, are often used by employers to ensure employees use work computers for business purposes only. Unfortunately, keyloggers can also be embedded in spyware allowing your information to be transmitted to an unknown third party.

A keylogger is a program that runs in the background, recording all the keystrokes. Once keystrokes are logged, they are hidden in the machine for later retrieval, or shipped raw to the attacker. The attacker then peruses them carefully in the hopes of either finding passwords, or possibly other useful information that could be used to compromise the system or be used in a social engineering attack. For example, a keylogger will reveal the contents of all e-mail composed by the user. Keylogger is commonly included in rootkits.

A keylogger normally consists of two files: a DLL which does all the work and an EXE which loads the DLL and sets the hook. Therefore when you deploy the hooker on a system, two such files must be present in the same directory.

There are other approaches to capturing info about what you are doing.

Some keyloggers capture screens, rather than keystrokes.
Other keyloggers will secretly turn on video or audio recorders, and transmit what they capture over your internet connection.

A keyloggers might be as simple as an exe and a dll that are placed on a machine and invoked at boot via an entry in the registry. Or a keyloggers could be which boasts these features:

Stealth: invisible in process list
Includes kernel keylogger driver that captures keystrokes even when user is logged off (Windows 2000 / XP)
ProBot program files and registry entries are hidden (Windows 2000 / XP)
Includes Remote Deployment wizard
Active window titles and process names logging
Keystroke / password logging
Regional keyboard support
Keylogging in NT console windows
Launched applications list
Text snapshots of active applications.
Visited Internet URL logger
Capture HTTP POST data (including logins/passwords)
File and Folder creation/removal logging
Mouse activities
Workstation user and timestamp recording
Log file archiving, separate log files for each user
Log file secure encryption
Password authentication
Invisible operation
Native GUI session log presentation
Easy log file reports with Instant Viewer 2 Web interface
HTML and Text log file export
Automatic E-mail log file delivery
Easy setup & uninstall wizards
Support for Windows (R) 95/98/ME and Windows (R) NT/2000/XP

Because a keylogger can involve dozens of files, and has as a primary goal complete stealth from the user, removing one manually can be a terrifying challenge to any computer user. Incorrect removal efforts can result in damage to the operating system, instability, inability to use the mouse or keyboard, or worse. Further, some key loggers will survive manual efforts to remove them, re-installing themselves before the user even reboots.

Popularity: 18% [?]

It’s late in the evening and you’re at home, using your computer to update a document you need for work the next day. You make your final changes, save the document, and submit it to print. You turn to the printer, only to find nothing there. You print the document again, and again get nothing. Thinking that maybe there’s something wrong with the printer connection, you decide to reboot your computer.

But you’re getting error messages that you’ve never seen before. After clicking on two or three dozen “Okay” buttons, your computer finally starts booting up again, and you sigh in relief. Until you start getting error messages stating that certain files are out of date or can’t be located. Eventually your computer comes back up, but it seems that everything has gone wonky. Programs load with errors, or don’t load at all. Utilities that worked fine last night lock up when you try to launch them, including your virus-scanning software. In short, something’s very, very wrong.

Ordinarily this would mean taking your computer into a repair site and have a tech look at it to determine the problem. The fix could be as simple as running a few utilities on the computer, or as complex as rebuilding the hard drive from scratch. Even the simpler solution can be expensive. But if you are running Windows XP as your operating system, you may not need to go into a blind panic. A utility included with Windows XP called System Restore allows you to recover your hard drive from a previous point in time. In effect, you’re turning back the clock to a point in the past where your computer was working properly.

Give Me a Reason
Why would you restore your computer to, say, yesterday afternoon’s settings? There are plenty of reasons why you might want, or need, to do so. The incident described above could be caused by a virus that got through your computer’s firewall and installed itself on your computer. Remember the new game you installed on your computer late last night? It could have overwritten system files in the operating system, replacing them with older files, or deleting required files altogether. Maybe somebody got a little trigger-happy with the mouse when selecting files to erase from the system, deleting required system files. Then there’s always the possibility of an “act of God”, like a power outage or power surge, which may have corrupted system data on the computer.

Convinced? Good. So how does System Restore work? Let’s take a look.

Start at the Beginning
When Windows XP is installed on a computer system, the System Restore utility is turned on by default, so you don’t have to do anything to start the process. System Restore also automatically creates “restore points”, points in time you can select for restoring your computer. They’re usually created when a new program is installed, or updates to the existing system are implemented (generally through the Internet). Good news.

Unfortunately Windows XP isn’t consistent about the frequency of creating these restore points. You might go two or three days before an incident occurs where the operating system feels it’s necessary to create a restore point. Not-so-good news. However, you can go in yourself and manually create a restore point any time you want, say, just before you install a new program. If you’ll do this on a regular basis, even once a day, you’ll have a good number of points from which to restore if you ever need to.

A Good Recovery Place
You may want to create a restore point of your own, or need to find a restore point to recover your system. In either case, you start the same way. In the menu bar at the bottom of the desktop, click on Start, then Help and Support (the blue question mark icon). Under “Pick a Task” in the right column of the window that appears on your screen, select the option marked Undo changes to your computer with System Restore. This launches the System Restore utility, bringing it up in a new window.

If you want to create a new restore point, select the second option in the menu and click Next. You can enter an appropriate description for this restore point, and then click on Create. Windows XP automatically attaches your description and the date and time from your computer system to the restore point and adds it to the calendar list. Click on Close and that’s it – you’ve created a restore point. You can go on with your work (or play) now.

When You Need Some Restoration
If you need to restore your system to an earlier date and time, in the System Restore menu select the first option in the menu and click Next. You can use the calendar on the left side of the window and the restore points described on the right side of the window to pick the particular restore point you wish to use. Once you’ve selected the desired restore point, click on Next, and then Next again to start the restore process. Don’t power down your computer during this process, as you could end up with some serious issues if the restore process doesn’t complete properly. (Helpful hint: Don’t do a restore if there’s a possibility you might have a power outage, such as during a thunderstorm!) Once the restore is done, the computer reboots, you log in, and there you are – your system is the way it was at the date and time of the selected restore point.

Helpful Hints
You’ll avoid a lot of grief if you follow a few guidelines when using System Restore.

Regularly create manual restore points. It only takes a few minutes to create a restore point. Even if you only do this once or twice a week, it gives you that many more options to choose from when you need to select a restore point.

ALWAYS create a restore point before adding anything new to your computer! Whether you’re adding a new printer, installing a second hard drive, or upgrading your favorite software program, create a restore point before starting the process. If anything happens and problems develop, you can restore your computer to the way it was before the installation started.

Save important data before starting a restore. Remember that anything that has changed on your computer between the time of the restore point and the time you begin the restore will be reset to the way it was at the time of the restore point. If your restore point is from ten days ago, every program and data file you have added to your computer in that ten-day period will be gone. Files that were on the computer at the time of the restore point and that you have deleted since then will be back on the computer after the restore. So if you have files on the computer that you want to keep, copy them to diskette or RAM stick, or burn to a CD, before you start the restore process.

Popularity: 29% [?]