Fun with puters part three
Wear protection.....
Saturday, May 21, 2005 by Jafo | Discussion: 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Of course, that was out of date....needed new signature files, so I got on dial-up to update them....went to make a coffee.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...
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Reply #22 Tuesday, May 24, 2005 7:32 AM
| Do that the other way round. Don't even think about connecting without a firewall being installed |
In most cases, I would agree.
Because I did not want all the extra "stuff" they include - I requested the installation disc, which is XP with SP2 (all drivers are available from site) - so the XP firewall was automatically turned on after clean install.
Grabbed the critical patches from Windows Update, then installed the NIS 2003.
Reply #24 Tuesday, May 24, 2005 12:55 PM
| Should be easy enough to track down... what have you looked at to diagnose it? |
At this point it's just easier to uninstall SP2 and not use it.
Reply #25 Tuesday, May 24, 2005 12:56 PM
| Trust the XP firewall do you? |
Only enough to go to Windows Update - not for anything else.
I prefer to install all the OS files - including available patches - when doing a clean install. I feel there is a greater chance of things going correctly with the OS if I take care of that first, then install the third party software.
If I had to go to any site other than MS to get OS updates - NIS 2003 would go in first.
Reply #26 Tuesday, May 24, 2005 2:03 PM
| Corky - the best way to ruin a new PC is by installing SP2 - you know that right? |
A new PC shouldn't be ruined by SP2. It would be third party software using programming hacks and shortcuts in their software. Some of these had to be blocked of in SP2 because they where liable to security issues.
Reply #27 Tuesday, May 24, 2005 6:55 PM
| At this point it's just easier to uninstall SP2 and not use it. |
*Sigh* Well, it's your loss...
I'm curious though, are you still able to install all the Windows critical security updates that have come out post-SP2?
Reply #28 Tuesday, May 24, 2005 7:19 PM
| I'm curious though, are you still able to install all the Windows critical security updates that have come out post-SP2? |
Yep I am able to install updates that have come out after sP2 - but a few of those screwed my system up as well.
Reply #29 Tuesday, May 24, 2005 11:48 PM
| but a few of those screwed my system up as well. |
I'd be guessing that's because you need SP2 installed!
Reply #30 Wednesday, May 25, 2005 11:14 PM
| If I ever get my hands on one of the retards who thinks Hijackers are kewl I'll slit his nostrils... |
hey jafo, they hang out at yahoo pool, champions zone, might need to use a back door to get in but they'll be there. had some trouble there once, never bet a hacker they can't hack you... lol, its brutal! now i keep everthing on an external drive and only turn it on when i need something from it
Reply #31 Wednesday, May 25, 2005 11:50 PM
| they hang out at yahoo pool, champions zone, |
Good...if they're all in one place a well placed incendiary will clean up the vermin...
We'll all go together when we go....there'll be no-one left in the afterglow....
Reply #32 Thursday, May 26, 2005 11:35 AM
About two weeks ago, my boss tells me he's getting a lot of pop-ups, and if I can check it out.
So I load up Ad-Aware and give it a scan...the results...well..see for yourself..
I just had to take a screenshot of it...I was amazed!
Reply #33 Thursday, May 26, 2005 12:23 PM
Reply #34 Thursday, May 26, 2005 8:44 PM
Record on my own computer was about 500, 100% cookies.
Reply #35 Friday, May 27, 2005 6:50 PM
| Good...if they're all in one place a well placed incendiary will clean up the vermin... |
Good plan...need help?
| We'll all go together when we go |
Bad plan...trick is, to place the device, then move to a safe distance so you can witness your handywork..plus pick off any "lucky" ones that might escape..LoL
Reply #36 Monday, June 6, 2005 7:31 PM
| Corky listed: 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). Fuzzy corrected: Do that the other way round. Don't even think about connecting without a firewall being installed |
Fuzzy, I just felt an apology was due in case you drop by this post again.
Though I would prefer to get the patches for the OS before installing anything else, the reality is that you are correct. The process should have been reversed in these 2 steps.
Sorry for any indication of contradiction to your correction.
Reply #37 Wednesday, June 8, 2005 8:04 PM
I'm surprised you could even get Adaware on the machine to run it! Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.
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Reply #21 Tuesday, May 24, 2005 7:03 AM
I've gone so far as to remove admin access on my parents PC, and tell people if their machine shows up at my desk with Norton or ZoneAlarm disabled, or if they aren't reasonably up to date with WindowsUpdate, I won't fix it again. It's a simple matter to keep your PC in working order... Hell, people change the oil in their cars religiously, this isn't much different from that.