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Hello,

I guess it was a slow day at CBS Interactive's CNet web site, or perhaps they are not very familiar with using Windows. This behavior can easily be disabled by a simple registry tweak. Here's a .REG file which does exactly that:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers"=dword:00000001

If you would rather script it using a .CMD file, that's easy enough, too. You can even do it in one line:

REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU /v NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers /t REG_DWORD /d 1

Or, for the PowerShell-inclined, here's a three-line version:

New-Item HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
New-Item HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
Set-ItemProperty HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU -Name "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers" -Value 1 -Type DWord

As always, you are responsible for your computer and should make a backup before making any changes to it.

Yes, Windows can be difficult to use at times, and the learning curve can be quite high. But these days that's pretty true of any operating system if you're coming to it for the first time. You can find the answers to a lot of questions by searching the web, and in case you can't (or you still have questions), you can go to a web site with an active Windows user forum like BleepingComputer. GeeksToGo, Neowin, Scot's Newsletter,Sysnative, WindowsForums or even Microsoft's own Microsoft Answers forum and someone will help you. Those are just a few off the top of my head, there are plenty of others, although you should probably avoid CBS Interactive's own CNet forums.

Regards

Aryeh Goretsky

From many years of working with Windows PC's there's one thing I know for sure and that's that one of the major reasons for Windows to slow down over time is the default setting of the virtual memory paging file which is "Automatically manage paging file size". As the page file expands and contracts on this setting the file gets ever more fragmented and access to it gets slower. When I first setup a new computer (with Windows pre-installed) one of the first things I do is change that setting from automatic to a custom size and make the initial and maximum size the same so hopefully it's allocated all in one piece and as close to the beginning of the disk as possible where access is fastest. If a computer has been running for years on "Automatically manage" it's page file many be in thousands of pieces and that could possibly slow the computer significantly when the page file is used. There was a utility called PageDefrag for Windows XP that allowed you to defragment your pagefile but the author Mark Russinovich never updated it to work with newer versions of Windows so there is no easy way to defragment a pagefile on Windows Vista and up but one method I've used with success is to use a partition manager to reduce the size of the boot partition (pushing it farther along the drive) and create a small block of space (perhaps 40 to 60gb) in between the system reserved partition and the boot / Windows partition; after that format it and give it a dive letter like X: and then put the page file there. When you do that it's as close to the beginning of the drive as possible and at a static size Windows never has to work to expand or shrink it and it never gets fragmented.

One other thing is that the author mentions Windows 7, at the end of 2014 over about a three month period I built eight new computers for people who wanted quality hardware (all eight were identical in motherboard, CPU, RAM and hard drive) and seven of them I installed with Windows 8.1 and one the person requested Windows 7; I noticed during installation and in general using the computer with Windows 7 that it was noticeably slower than the computers with Windows 8.1 so Windows 8 appears to be faster than Windows 7 on the same hardware, at least that's my observation. (and that's Windows 7 x64 versus Windows 8.1 x64)

Another thing that slows computers down is the accumulation of temporary files, there's a tool someone recommended to me called TFC (temp file cleaner), you can find it here http://www.geekstogo.com/forum... and it really does a phenomenal job; many computers that I've used it on show marked speed improvement after running it.

In order to perform certain actions on Facebook with a non-edu e-mail account, or in some cases just to log in, a user needs to verify an account by linking a unique mobile phone number, shared by no other Facebook user, that can send and receive SMS text messages. This costs money if a user uses a land line or a wireless phone that can't text (such as several landline-replacement adapters sold by wireless carriers), if there are fewer mobile phones in a household than Facebook users (my cousin's case), or if the user is on one of the pay-per-text plans typical of low-minute plans intended to replace payphones (my case). I am not the only affected person. Google facebook roadblock phone to see others.

Manually? UMAD?!?! HiJackThis is woefully out of date, don't bother with it. Use one of these: 1. http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/topic/277391-otl-tutorial-how-to-use-oldtimer-listit/ 2. ComboFix - You'll have to enroll in a school to get the in-depth guide 3. AVZ - Includes a really powerful scripting ability. Each of the

Use Avira AntiVir Rescue System to get the system into a state where it can boot into Safe Mode, then finish off with MBAM and possibly SmitFraudFix.

      --- Mr. DOS

It was a real pain to remove as I remember.

SmitFraudFix.

Download the tool here: http://siri.geekstogo.com/SmitfraudFix.php Boot into Safe Mode and run it. Then run an antivirus and spyware scanner. I suggest Clamwin portable if you don't want to install one. Then run Spybot Search and Destroy. That might do it. AG

Yes, it took me many hours and three trips to the client to clean the crap up the first time. Now, with all the experience I gained, it still takes 3 hours to clean up. SpyAxe installs crapware on a computer which falsely claims that it found spyware on your computer. If you then follow the link supplied, they offer a 'free' removal tool, which only works when you pay them $40 and of course, it doesn't really remove anything and probably installs more crapware. You can get a cleanup tool here, called Smitrem: http://noahdfear.geekstogo.com/ This tool cleans up a whole family of similar crapware.

How did you remove the critter? A similar piece of work called Smitfraud-C can be removed with the smitrem tool: http://noahdfear.geekstogo.com/

Isn't this just another incarnation of the Smitfraud extortion by the nice New Zealand company SpyAxe?

The tool to remove that crapware is called smitrem, available here: http://noahdfear.geekstogo.com/

These are all good generic suggestions. As for Aurora in particular, a Google would lead you to this post that also identifies it as Bolger and a few other names. The reason it's so sneaky is that it installs as a print monitor that is hosted by the print spooler exe. The dirty work is done by a randomly named exe file. If you try to kill that, it spawns another randomly named exe to take its place.

The post above has some registry edits to fix the problem. However, I can tell you that won't always fix the problem. The newer versions seem to work differently. You CAN remove them using the spyware maker's uninstaller which I hate to recommend but it does work.

Funny you should ask :) I just removed this very same program from a friend's computer this weekend. I searched all over the web to find out how to remove it. The best answer I got was here.

I loaded Ewido Security Suite, rebooted, and on the way up, it detected and removed all traces of it (as far as I could tell).