Sometimes, a Microsoft Office program will “freeze” or “hang”, meaning that it is still actually running, but is totally unresponsive - usually this happens just when you are on a deadline and have some critical work not yet saved…

This tip may just save the day - it won’t work all the time, but when it does, it’s magic. You do need to have several Office programs open at the same time, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook.

1. Decide which of the Office programs has the least important data - for example, it might be Word, when you have a critical Excel spreadsheet open with unsaved changes
2. “Kill” the least important program - usually you just click the red ‘X’ button to close its window, and Windows will ask you to confirm. In some cases you may need to use Task Manager (right-click on the task bar, or Ctrl/Alt/Del on Windows and select Task Manager) to end the process.
3. Usually, the surviving program (Excel in this example) will spring back to life. Be sure to save its open files right away!
4. Just to be safe, quit all of your Office programs, including Outlook, and start them again.

I had to do this the other day and it worked like a charm.

Of course, there’s always a chance that you will have to “kill” all of the Office programs, but this tip takes only a few seconds to try out.

If you do end up killing Outlook, you might need to read my article about how some Outlook repair tools actually make things worse, even before you use the Microsoft Inbox Repair Tool.

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Recovering From Microsoft Office “Freezes”

In my recent posting on fighting back against phishing attacks, I mentioned the excellent Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector), which tracks which of your non-Microsoft applications have security holes and need updating.

Secunia have released a new version 1.5 of PSI - this now checks that Internet Explorer, Firefox and other web browsers are secure. This version now scans extension programs that run within the browser (Firefox addons, Flash plugin, ActiveX, and other jargon soup) - basically the things that let you see video and have a nicer time online.

I’ve already installed the new version on my home PCs and it’s working well - recommend you install it too. Note that it will warn that Internet Explorer 6.0 or 7.0 is insecure due to a security issue that Microsoft has not fixed. It’s not the most serious security issue, but generally you will be a lot more secure on the Net if you use Firefox, so I recommend you start using that if possible.

If you’re on a corporate PC and can’t install Firefox, it’s even more important to get Secunia installed - they have a commercial tool for non-personal use.

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Keep Internet Explorer and Firefox Secure With Secunia PSI 1.5

The simplest way to avoid falling prey to any phishing attack is to always be very suspicious of emails asking you to “confirm your details” or enter a password on any website, anywhere.

photo credit: DeclanTM

First, some general tips before we get onto software that helps:

• Never click any links provided in emails unless you are very confident of the source and content of the email.
• Always check the URL of a link that’s shown in an email - “hover” the mouse over the link without clicking it.
• Remember that malware is getting better at faking not just the From address of emails, but the name of the person sending it too (by grabbing real contact details from a victim’s PC). Sometimes it will look like an email from a friend or colleague, but something will be a little “off” in the message. If in doubt, contact the sender to confirm.

PC software tips to help combat phishing

• Use the free anti-phishing features in your web browser - Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3 include this, so make sure it’s turned on. There are free anti-phishing tools as well.
• Be sure that Active Scripting is turned off in Outlook 98 or earlier (it’s the default in later versions). This makes it easier to fake the URL in a phishing email, and there’s absolutely no reason why this should be enabled. See Tools, Options, Security, and put Outlook in the Restricted Zone.
• Check the good advice from Antiphishing.org on how to avoid this and other phishing scams.

General security tips

• Make sure you have good anti-virus and anti-spyware tools installed, and that the anti-virus being updated daily. But even the best tools will miss 30 to 50% of viruses and spyware, so that’s not enough on its own.
• Make sure that you have enabled Microsoft Update, and let it run automatically to apply all the latest Office and Windows security updates.
• Install and use Secunia Personal Software Inspector - this free tool scans all your software (not just Office and Windows) and lets you know which programs need updating to close security holes. This is really important to close some very commonly exploited security issues. (Secunia estimate the average PC has 12 applications with security vulnerabilities.)

While these last few tips won’t help with phishing attacks, they will help with some Outlook security issues where even viewing an email can let hackers into your PC.

I haven’t mentioned firewalls, largely because the Windows built-in firewall is not too bad, and most add-on firewalls generate so many alert messages with questions that only experts can really know how to answer. Something to write about in the future maybe…

What are your tips to prevent phishing? Do you know someone who’s been a victim of phishing, and what lessons did they learn? Feel free to let me know your thoughts below.

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8 Ways to Counter Phishing Attacks

Here’s an unpleasant twist on those phishing emails that ask for your online banking passwords to commit identity theft against you.  This new phishing attack is carefully crafted so it appears to come from Microsoft, and tries to get you to enter your Outlook email account details into the phishing site.

The reason the attackers do this is that once they control your email account, they can reset your passwords for online banking, online shops, social network sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook, and more. Their motives may be to steal from you directly, or simply to spam everyone you know, through email or your social network sites.

Want to avoid being hit by this and other types of phishing attack? Read my article with phishing protection advice.

What do you think about this new type of attack? Any tips on preventing it? Let me know your thoughts, just leave a comment below.

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New Phishing Attack Targets Outlook Users

How would you feel if an Outlook repair tool actually lost more of your data? Well, it does happen, probably every day…

If you use Outlook all the time, it’s easy to forget just how much you depend on it for emails, contacts and calendar appointments. The scary part is how Outlook stores your precious emails and attachments in a complex, fragile “.PST file” or “Personal Folder” that is very prone to accidental damage even in routine day to day use.

The end result is an incomprehensible technical error message from Outlook. After the initial disbelief that your emails are gone, you frantically scour the web to find a fix for the problem, all the while hoping your emails can be recovered.

Bad News: Microsoft’s Inbox Repair Tool Can Lose More Data…

Microsoft does provide an Inbox Repair Tool, called SCANPST.EXE, which can help in some limited cases where Outlook repair is needed. But often it actually makes the problem worse by further damaging the .PST file, losing data that could have been recovered. I know this may be hard to believe, but the priority for this tool is to simply let you access your .PST file, and it “thinks” that’s the priority, even if it means wiping out a lot of important emails. (The word “overkill” springs to mind for some reason…)

Another trap for the unwary: if your .PST was nearing 2 GB in size, the Microsoft tool will consider it “oversized” and refuse to work anyway - though perhaps that’s actually a blessing in disguise.

In any case, Microsoft makes it quite hard to find this tool on your hard disk - this is actually a good thing, as it means a ton of people are saved from trashing a perfectly fixable .PST file.

Some Good News: More Competent Tools Do Exist

Fortunately for all of us, a number of enterprising software developers have written specialist programs known as Outlook Repair Tools. Although they do involve paying for the tool, they are very good at what they do.

In many, many cases they can recover all of your emails, and in most other cases they can recover the vast majority. They also cover calendar details, contact information, and so on, and they handle the full range of Outlook PST errors including where the the .PST is over 2 GB in size.

You don’t have to be a technical whizz-kid to use these repair programs, either - they are a lot simpler than Outlook as they only do one thing. These tools are also very safe, as they always make a backup copy of the .PST before attempting the recovery.

The One Way Bet: No Recovery, No Charge

Most of these Outlook recovery tools work on “try before you buy” model: you download and install the program, and set it to work on recovering your damaged emails and attachments. The recovery tool shows you the subject line, sender and date/time of the emails it can “see” in the file, then lets you review what it has found.

Only then, after you have seen that it can recover the emails that are most valuable to you, do you pay for the tool so that it can actually do the PST file repair. You can pay online and receive an electronic license key immediately, which you can then use to finish the PST recovery process.

If you aren’t happy for whatever reason, most tools also come with a guarantee providing a no-questions-asked refund if required. So they are really a safe bet - you either get your data recovered, or your money back.

Which Outlook Repair Tool Should You Use?

There are quite a lot of PST repair products on the market, but the one I know and recommend from personal experience is Stellar Outlook PST Repair.

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Beware The Outlook Repair Tool That Makes Things Worse …