Fun with puters part three

Wear protection.....

Published on May 21, 2005 By Jafo In Personal Computing

A friend complained her XP machine was 'acting up' and brave old me said 'no sweat...I'm a consumate genius and modestly can fix it in a jiffy'.

She brung it over me joint and I rolled up the proverbials and got stuck into it.

Bit of a mess was putting it mildly....it hadn't a firewall or AV running for 'some time'.

I found a dozen or two 'issues' with it ...before pulling out the drive and chucking it in a caddy to load into my own machine...to do a thorough clean....

Norton got about 39 .... Pest patrol a further 26 then Ad Aware got the last...another 20 or so.....about 75 in all, ranging from key-loggers, 4 virii, trojan loaders and trackers...usual crap.

Then it was a simple case of copying all the 'data' to backup, full format, repartition and dump the data back on the 'D'.

All well and good.

Put the drive back into her machine...installed her XP and loaded a freeware ver of AVG.

Of course, that was out of date....needed new signature files, so I got on dial-up to update them....went to make a coffee.

Came back half an hour later....

ERROR on download.......

Something was wrong...so I did a drive scan with the 'old' AVG, and Ad Aware.....

303 hits

Oops, thinks I....perhaps it'd be wise to load that Zone Alarm first, before hooking to the net.

ZA pops up....."Ist.exe" wants access...."bugger off", I say.

A rush of frantic denials and several sweeps of the system later and I'm back to squeaky clean again.

Still....she's happy, now....

Moral of the story....get yer protection BEFORE hooking to the pox-ridden net...

Comments (Page 1)

Double Zero

on May 22, 2005

Moral of the story....get yer protection BEFORE hooking to the pox-ridden net..

Very wise advice...

kona0197

on May 22, 2005

You know Jafo - I run weekly ad-aware tests and they usually come up with 20 to 30 critical objects. Mostly IE tracking cookies. Anyhow I haven't had any problems yet. I have heard that I have a hardware firewall or that my ISP blocks stuff. I'm not sure.

Erk.

on May 22, 2005

Stone the flamin' crows, Jafo ...thats a lotta muck and dander on the one rig...

It never ceases to amaze me just how many people still put themselves in harms way ~by not staying protected.

There's so many good "free" apps available to protect your valuable 'puter with nowadays, there should be no excuses as to why somone has no protection.

Perhaps in the case of your friend there's a good reason, but I know of quite a few folks who still surf the net without any form of protection.

Silly, really.

Jafo

on May 22, 2005

Oh...forgot to mention how the 'error' manifested itself....

Every minute or two there'd be a message 'Explorer has encounted a problem and needs to close'...then the message would go, along with the Explorer shell [desktop] which would simply reload itself and repeat the message.

The simplistic re-install of XP over the system was a waste of time....hence the reformat, etc....

Tominated

on May 22, 2005

I did a scan with Ad-aware for my friend...

...700 something hits.

Double Zero

on May 22, 2005

One suggestion..MS Anti Spy..http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Real Time Protection + deep scanning..
It seems to be a great program so far..
I use Ad-aware also..but rarily now..MS Anti Spy seems to do the trick..

Double Zero

on May 22, 2005

There are a few other nifty things I do to my friends PC's when im called upon to get them out of a jamb..::laughs:: It's funny but you know..I think there are more people like Jafo's friend than there are like "us"..

Set-up IE prefs to dump cookies/history/temps every time the browser is closed.. In IE this works "Okay" it isnt great and not 100% like it is in Firefox..but it's better than not setting the prefs at all!

Of course I already mentioned MS-Antispy ..the "Real" time protection of the program is awesome..there is another free program that I use in IE that is also "Real-Time" protection..

GoGo Data Toolbar - http://gogodata.com/
It also has many other features, some of which are built into the Firefox browser as a standard, but IE lacks. I dont recommend putting it on a Win98 machine..

Last of all, a file and registry cleaner/repair that was actually posted here in a thread.. It cleans out so much more than what the other programs mentioned do. I actually no longer run "Disk Cleanup" This program, Ccleaner, pretty much wipes out ALL the junk you could ever want to wipe out... More than "Disk Cleanup" does..
You can get it here http://www.ccleaner.com/

Ontop of all that, the standard ZoneAlarm, Nortons, AVG, etc..etc...
LoL..Sad isnt it?? all these utilities just to be able to keep a healthy running machine connected to the internet...::SIGHS::

Ah well, These are just a few of the programs I use against all the junk out there we are bound to run into & collect, im sure there are a ton of other progs, since it is obviously a HUGE problem..

Just remember your protection!,
Dont log-on without it..LoL

thomassen

on May 22, 2005

Ja. When I got my Dell, the first thing I did was to format it in reinstall the system my way. However, I found it hard to get the updates from Windows Update because the computer kept giving me a message that the system will shut down in 30 seconds shortly after I connected. Solution was turn on the built-in firewall while I downloaded the updates. (At that time I didn't have a firewall, just a anti-virus program.)

Now I keep some essential programs on my USB flash drive. Ad-Aware, Spybot, Deamon Tools. I should put some freeware antivirus and firewall on it. Quite nice when someone I know need an emergency binary operation.

iTZKooPA

on May 23, 2005

I think far too many people don't realize that if they just spend some time using their machines and understanding them then they wouldn't need to "abuse their friendships" or waste actual money getting it fixed all the time. A few simple things and about 30minutes a week can keep your system up to date which will help it stay clean. Of course then there is the problem of those blasted kids always doing crazy crap, but I guess thats there job, keep parents on their toes and lint in their pockets.

iTZKooPA

on May 23, 2005

Oh and thomassen you were getting hit by one of the numerous RPC virus that are out there. Simple Windows Update will fix that problem but since you gotta be online to do that and you'll get hit again if you are online the best thing to do is just download the stand alone patch, disconnect (pull out ethernet cord if you have to) and then update, then go back online and finish the rest of the updates.

Jafo

on May 23, 2005

Latest update...no sooner had I sorted my friend's machine than my Niece's one turns up on the doorstep... she's 14 and her IE is being hijacked to porn sites...and it's a particularly feisty infection....quite likely a full reformat again...

If I ever get my hands on one of the retards who thinks Hijackers are kewl I'll slit his nostrils...

....and feed his gonads to my cat....

tjesterb

on May 23, 2005

OW!

tjesterb

on May 23, 2005

Jafo, the sad part is that most times you will end up doing the same clean-up a few months later. Most people seem to just click on whatever little thing pops up in front of them, or fill their PC full of spyware cause they just have to have that weatherbug and all it's little friends sitting in their systray. (Not saying that will be the case with your friend or nephew. It just seems to be a pattern with a lot of people.)

Corky_O

on May 23, 2005

I finally got a Notebook computer.

Since they don't sell the cases, keyboards, and monitor's that are standard in compatibility - I bought a Dell (really nice). Decided before hand that I don't want all the prepackaged stuff, so -

Step #1 - Download all board and hardware drivers from Dell (all there!).

Step #2 - Do clean install Windows XP w/SP2 (including reformat NTFS - Raw).

Step #3 - Install all drivers.

Step #4 - Go to Windows Update and install all patches I want.

Step #5 - Install AV and Internet Security software (I like Symantec, so that's the one).

Step #6 - Install all software programs I use, including the all important customization stuff.

Step #7 - Run Ad-Aware and Spybot.

Step #8 - Done - all is well and I love this Notebook (first one ever!).

Simple, practical approach and common sense precautions = a wonderful future with computers.

kona0197

on May 23, 2005

Corky - the best way to ruin a new PC is by installing SP2 - you know that right?

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