It seems that having raffles of unneeded goods sparks a whole bunch of interest, so we will have more raffles as soon as I can get the computer lab in my house shoveled out. All of the materials were snatched up except for that 10% that went to electronic heaven at the Palo Alto Recycle Center the next day.
Just prior to that time, I became aware that a computer was not acting properly and Symantec's Norton Anti Virus was grousing about a worm that was supposedly uncleanable.
Because the computer is in daily use by the customer, I chose to shortcut the time I spent on it and took it to Hank Skawinski of Datawise. It was from this visit that I was introduced to the Trend Micro House Call program which can be downloaded when you want a check of your computer to have any offending worms/viruses/Trojans deleted.
In the case of the computer that had received the worm, the Symantec product was unable to clean out the worm by merely running Norton Anti Virus.
Hank was able to do so. Because he knew that if the infected hard disk that is mounted on a clean computer as a second (slave) drive and then diagnosed, the virus scanners often can clean a drive that is infected as no files are active (exclusive).
The reason the de-worming has to occur in this manner is because the worm will remain in memory and will reload itself from memory each time the active hard drive has the anti-virus program run on it. Hence the requirement for a second computer in your shop that is a known clean computer and is available for mounting suspected additional drives.
Then again, the use of Trend Micro House Call means that by downloading the de-worming program the program can run through RAM to assure that the worm is removed from memory. Only then is it safe and expedient to run through the slave hard drive with the suspected worm on it for final cleaning.
But don't think that you can use the Trend Micro House Call without using a regular (paid for) anti virus scanner because the scanners catch the viruses as they are entering onto your computer, not several days later when a scan is run.
Partly to introduce members to the Trend Micro House Call capabilities and also to assure that the members of the Club actually assured themselves that they didn't have any surprises, I requested, in an e-mail, that all Club members run Trend Micro House Call and then report back to me what they found.
The findings were that about 30 members took my advice and ran the program. All but two were clean and I was glad that they were.
One had a virus and did not know it and the virus was cleaned up immediately. He stated that he had no idea he had any problems.
The last person had 1146 viruses and it took Trend Micro House Call 14 hours to clean up the computer - but it did so. He said he was totally unaware that he had any worms.
So the message is clear: Scan every day - not the weekly that is the Symantec default. Set the scans to operate automatically on a timer. You do that by going to the SCHEDULER, right-clicking, choosing PROPERTIES and setting the interval to be DAILY.
Update the anti-virus program daily. In the time that a virus is released "in the wild" and the time that a fix is made available, a week can go by and if you only update once a week, about two weeks of being without protection is encountered, which is entirely too much time without effective protection.
And finally, if you did not send me a report, I am requesting one now.
Bebo White of Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) gave an interesting and informative peek into the history or the World Wide Web. He described how a difficult-to-use application and a "what's it good for?" project were combined to end up as the World Wide Web we know today. Bebo was present at Stanford and CERN when the WWW was "born". He remembers when there were five sites in the whole world.
If you have a bunch of viruses and spyware on your system and want to reinstall XP, the XP install disk will reformat the hard drive if you tell it to. Sometimes that's the best way to disinfect a PC. When you install Windows follow these steps to make sure you don't get re-infected:
Make sure to run Windows Update regularly, or better yet, turn on Automatic Updates by opening the System Control Panel, click the Automatic Updates tab, then check either "Download the updates automatically" or the scheduled updates installer. You should also enable the automatic updates in your anti-virus and keep all the spyware programs up-to-date, as well.
Abbot: Super Duper Computer Store... Can I help you?
Costello: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den, and I'm thinking about buying a computer.
Abbot: Mac?
Costello: No, the name's Lou.
Abbot: Your computer?
Costello: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.
Abbot: Mac?
Costello: I told you, my name's Lou.
Abbot: What about Windows?
Costello: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
Abbot: Do you want a computer with Windows?
Costello: I don't know. What will I see when I look in the windows?
Abbot: Wallpaper.
Costello: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.
Abbot: Software for Windows?
Costello: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What have you got? .
Abbot: Office.
Costello: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?
Abbot: I just did.
Costello: You just did what?
Abbot: Recommend something.
Costello: You recommended something?
Abbot: Yes.
Costello: For my office?
Abbot: Yes.
Costello: OK, what did you recommend for my office?
Abbot: Office.
Costello: Yes, for my office!
Abbot: I recommend Office with Windows.
Costello: I already have an office and it has windows! OK, let's just say, I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?
Abbot: Word.
Costello: What word?
Abbot: Word in Office.
Costello: The only word in office is office.
Abbot: The word in Office for Windows.
Costello: Which word in office for windows?
Abbot: The Word you get when you click the blue W
Costello: I'm going to click your blue W if you don't start with some straight answers. OK, forget that. Can I watch movies on the Internet? .
Abbot: Yes, you want Real One.
Costello: Maybe a real one, maybe a cartoon. What I watch is none of your business. Just tell me what I need!
Abbot: Real One.
Costello: If it's a long movie I also want to see reel 2, 3 & 4. Can I watch them?
Abbot: Of course.
Costello: Great, with what?
Abbot: Real One.
Costello: OK, I'm at my computer and I want to watch a movie. What do I do?
Abbot: You click the blue 1
Costello: I click the blue one what?
Abbot: The blue 1.
Costello: Is that different from the blue W?
Abbot: The blue 1 is Real One and the blue W is word.
Costello: What word?
Abbot: The Word in Office for Windows.
Costello: But there's three words in office for windows!
Abbot: No, just one. but it's the most popular Word in the world.
Costello: It is?
Abbot: Yes, but to be fair, there aren't many other Words left. It pretty much wiped out all the other Words out there.
Costello: And that word is real one?
Abbot: Real One has nothing to do with Word. Real One isn't even part of Office.
Costello: Stop! Don't start that again. What about financial bookkeeping? Do you have anything I can track my money with? .
Abbot: Money.
Costello: That's right. What do you have?
Abbot: Money.
Costello: I need money to track my money?
Abbot: It comes bundled with your computer.
Costello: What's bundled to my computer?
Abbot: Money
Costello: Money comes with my computer?
Abbot: Yes. No extra charge.
Costello: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?
Abbot: One copy
Costello: Isn't it illegal to copy money?
Abbot: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.
Costello: They can give you a license to copy money?
Abbot: Why not, they own it!
A number of people have had their browser hijacked. A recent LangaList item covered the fix:
"FREE FIX - About:Buster v1.26 [23K] Win2k/XP. Is your Internet Explorer hijacked to something similar to res://.dll/index.html#37049? Symptoms include an about:blank home page and popup ads. This one is a bear to remove, but a couple of tools have been released to help remove these, including About:Buster. The download page has instructions on using this tool...---Michael H. Bell
Hi Fred. With regard to the "about blank" browser hijack, I had 2 friends systems infected with this Trojan and after some searching found this very useful site with information about Cool Web Search (CWS) which it is part of + the CWS shredder program removes all traces completely, even ones that Ad Aware did not pick up. Recommended. www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/cwschronicles.html ---Geoff Wilkinson"