Computer technician blog

"Access to your computer was denied" browser piracy virus removal instructions

The message, "Access to your computer was denied. Illegally downloaded music tracks (in other words, 'pirated copies') have been detected on your PC", appears when browsing the Internet and is a scam. It is a ransomware virus that affects Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari.

This rogue pop-up is created by cybercriminals hoping that unsuspecting Internet users will fall for the fake message and pay a $100 or 100 Euro bogus fine using Paysafecard. The fine is purportedly for the user having pirated copies of music files (supposedly detected) on their computers. In fact, paying this fine is equivalent to sending money directly to cybercriminals.

By default, Windows 8 is configured with a blue theme, nature wallpaper, and windows with wide borders - an appearance that may not satisfy all users. Fortunately, it is possible to customize the default settings to create your own theme. In this step-by-step tutorial, we describe how to configure the width and color of the windows' borders, desktop background, and how to save the preferred theme.

Windows 8 is configured with certain apps installed by default. Fortunately, very few occupy more than 100 MB on your hard drive, however, some third party apps can be several times larger when installed. In order to keep your computer clean, it is important to know the size of installed apps and how to uninstall them if necessary. This tutorial describes how to view the list of installed apps, size of each, and how to uninstall them.

Windows 8 incorporates a new feature called Windows apps and some related information has been provided in our previous article, 'Viewing the size and removing apps in Windows 8'. One of these Windows apps replaces Windows Media Player as the default software for playing music files. In this tutorial, we describe how to revert to Windows Media Player as per previous versions of Windows.

Following the release of Windows 8, many computer users have noticed that the advanced boot menu access using F8 key has been removed. The main reason for this was that Microsoft implemented a new faster booting system for Windows 8. As a result, the advanced boot menu, including the Safe Mode option, has been removed. In order to boot into Safe Mode, you must first boot Windows normally, and then restart in Safe Mode. There is, however, an option to make it available again. This tutorial describes how to enable or disable the F8 boot menu on Windows 8.

When a user boots a fresh copy of Windows 8 for the first time, the desktop is empty apart from the Recycle bin icon. By default, Windows 8 does not display any other icons (My Computer, Documents, Control Panel, etc.) In order to add these additional icons, you need to configure certain desktop settings. In this tutorial, we describe how to add/remove desktop icons.

Regular computer users often lack knowledge of malware and the methods employed by cyber criminals to infect computers connected to the Internet. Cyber criminals trick PC users into installing rogue programs by hiding file extensions and using deceptive icons. By default, Windows 8 does not show file extensions, and consequently, developers of rogue programs commonly exploit this setting. For example, you could potentially download a '.exe', file which has the icon of an MS Word file and named 'something.doc'. Since Windows 8 does not display the file type at the end of the name, you may be tricked into opening such a file without realizing that this could be malware. This tutorial describes how to change the Windows 8 settings to view file name extensions, and thus avoiding this problem.

Windows 8 provides a facility to administer several user accounts on a single computer. One of the main reasons for providing this functionality is security. Owning one user account with administrator rights and maintaining the other accounts with standard permissions makes the computer more difficult to infect with malware. Furthermore, it is more convenient, since personal files are stored separately and thus users do not have to worry about data loss. Windows 8 also allows the creation of a live Windows account. This type of account provides more options, since you can download live applications, use Mail, Calendar, and other features. This tutorial describes how to add or remove user accounts in Windows 8.