It’s every Windows user’s worst nightmare. You boot up your machine to play some games do some work, but instead of seeing your usual desktop, you get a hideous pop-up claiming that viruses and hardware errors are destroying your computer. The warning is completely bogus, of course, generated by malware that’s trying to scare a credit card number out of you. But the phony program is right about one thing: your system has been infected, and now you have to deal with it. There are lots of genuine malware removers available for free that can help, but even with such noble code on your side it can be tricky to completely undo the damage—modern malware digs into a system like a tick, employing devious tactics to prevent its own removal.

Here’s how to deal with some of the most common infections.

Go to your nearest mall, library or school, and you’ll probably have an easier time finding an open wireless hotspot than a washroom; that’s just the way things are. Not that we’re complaining, of course. Blanketed, city-wide Wi-Fi has been a long time coming, and we can’t wait until that pervasive vision comes true.

However, the risks associated with public wireless hotspots should be abundantly clear — and increasing the number of hotspots will only make those risks worse. With some freely available software, it’s trivial for unencrypted information to be intercepted or sniffed, often without you knowing. Here are a few tips for safer public browsing, with the hopes of keeping your identity where it belongs.

Google has had more than a enough time to develop some sort of unified backup solution for Android. They haven't, and we don’t expect them to ever do it. Google, and by extension Android, are about the Cloud. A lot of the data on your device ends up in Google’s servers, ready to be pushed back down to your device should you ever need it. But for the data that isn’t handled by Google, you’re on your own.

A year ago we went over how to backup your Android phone, and it’s about time we revisited the issue. Technology marches on, things change, apps fall behind, and new services appear. Read on to find out what you can backup and how to do it.

Quick! Check your pocket. Is your phone there? Is it supposed to be? If your Android handset has gone missing there are a number of useful apps you can use to find it again. Depending on the gravity of the situation you can pinpoint its location, make it ring, lock it down, or even wipe the device if it isn’t coming back.

There are quite a few apps on the Market that purport to handle this functionality for you. Some are free, some cost a few bucks up front, and some require a subscription. Join us as we talk about four of the top apps and service to find your phone.

Home networking equipment has reached a point of such ubiquity that it will soon be counted among common household appliances such as your TV, microwave and refrigerator. Unfortunately, it seems that the extent of most people's troubleshooting knowledge ends with rebooting their router and whining at the closest person they consider their personal tech support representative. This guide aims to provide a series of tools which can help you repair problems yourself, thus alleviating the pressure placed on those around you with any tech knowledge at all.

We've covered networking before, I won't be detailing tips for improving your Wi-Fi network, or configuring your router. Instead, let’s take a look at some common tools you can use in administrating your own home network.

Google has worked hard to make the Android Market more usable in the last few months. The phone client is easier to navigate, and the web Market has totally changed the way people install applications. But despite all the improvements, there are still some confusing bugs and limitations people run into.

We’re going to go over some of the most common Android Market issues, and give you a rundown of potential fixes.

One of the obvious benefits of having multiple hard drives is that you have more than one place to put all your stuff. In most cases, this involves creating a couple of ad-hoc folders for music or games on a secondary drive — folders that live outside your traditional home directory. But what if you’d prefer to keep everything in one place? More importantly, what if you want to move your user files or applications to another drive entirely?

The benefit here is not only speed, but reliability. If your boot disk fails, all your files are stored safely on another drive for a speedy recovery. And for those using solid-state disks, you can free up space and keep only the necessities for a speedy OS. It beats messing about with RAID.

Of course, neither Windows or OS X offer an obvious way to do this. By default, both operating systems place all their system files and folders on one drive, and one drive only, leaving you to deal with additional drives on your own. But with a bit of tweaking, it’s easy to move your applications and files to a secondary drive — leaving your computer none the wiser.

You know what's handy? Devices that perform more than one useful function. Take smart phone headsets, for example: They have headphones which give you the ability to listen to music without annoying your fellow public transit passengers, and the in-line remote and microphone allows you take calls without needing to put your phone to your ear. Unfortunately, the ear buds included on most bundled headsets are almost uniformly low quality. If you've ever wished you could use a pair of headphones you already own with your phone without sacrificing the features of your headset, you're in luck.

This guide will show you how to mount a female headphone socket to your headset, giving you an in-line microphone compatible with any headphones you'd care to connect.

Welcome to the worst news day on the Internet. While every other site is busy posting fake news, the humorless bunch at Tested .com will be gluing people's mice to their desks and filling people's offices with styrofoam peanuts. Oh, and we're going to show you how to prank the hell out of your friends too.

There are veritable cornucopia of killer pranks you can pull on your coworkers and friends. Everyone's heard of the old standbys, like plugging a spare wireless mouse in to someone's computer, then making their cursor go crazy throughout the day (for bonus points, control the mouse with your feet, so they won't catch your hand movements), the old tape over the mouse sensor trick, and the always classic desktop wallpaper instead of desktop--although we do have a killer variant of that one that will actually melt your brain. 

Oh, and don't forget to lock your workstation (that's Win+L on Windows, but you can use LockTight to do the same thing on the OS X) any time you get up tomorrow, or risk being the fool, rather than the fool-er. Oh, you didn't prepare for your prankery before you came to work? Fear not, six outta seven pranks require no preparation.