Slashdot Mirror
The Cost of Computer Naivete
wiredog writes "What happens when you put an unprotected Windows 98 box on a broadband connection? Two perspectives from two reporters for the Washington Post (frr,yyy): The User's " an odyssey that has taken $800 and roughly 48 man-hours over nearly three weeks" and Digital Doctor's "Her PC was in such bad shape, it required 10 1/2 hours of surgery to restore it to working condition.""
Geez... it takes 10 1/2 hours to install Linux these days? Have all distributions gone the way of Gentoo?
(Yeah I know, fair to Microsoft... on Slashdot!)
Windows 98 is 6 years old and isn't sold with computers anymore. This test just shows remaining Windows 98 users they should keep up to date or upgrade to XP.
It is bad enough with 98, but what if the same experiment where conducted with XP, considering all the wild RPC attacks?
"Here's a spoiler: You're will die alone."-Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
And I am putting windows 2000 on it. I have read here, and on other sites, that it will likely be infected before I can download the proper security applications.
How do I avoid this?
Boxing Equipment Reviews
(frr,yyy): (free registration required, yada yada yada)
Anyone that takes that long to backup a hard disk, reinstall Windows 98, some office apps and maybe Quicken,and then copy the data back on should be fired. This is the work of "consultants".
"Her PC was in such bad shape, it required 10 1/2 hours of surgery to restore it to working condition."
It takes me a lot shorter to install Win98 on a box and that includes saving any or all documents.
1.5 hours tops.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
It's said "Washington Post (frr,yyy)" Free Registration Required, Yadda Yadda Yadda.
In Soviet Russia, the profit overlords welcome you!
nevermind... i'm partially illiterate.
Whatever happened to:
Format, fdisk, re-install do da, do da?
Pull all the useful data off onto a spare disk and clean the machine. Just don't be like my neighbor, and wipe, then install your new os on the spare disk.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Very few machines are worth 10.5 hours for me. Factoring in labor, I can save a lot of money by saving the data elsewhere then FDisking and reinstalling the OS. Even considering windows install time, program install time, and configuration, I don't have 10.5 hours in it and the user probably has a less glitchy machine for it.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
I read Why? WHY? WHY?!?
and there was
I wanted to take a 98(non-second edition) box, no patches, no firewall, and no updates and visit a frew pr0n sites with IE, and see how much I could get it to be 0wned with spyware, plugins, popups, etc before it was rendered unsuable. Make it a competition to see how quickly it would bring the system down.
The screenshots would have been hilarious. If I only had VMware.
I think someone thinks a little too highly about their profession.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
While Apple's track record on security isn't perfect, I hope she'll realize that she has these problems because she chooses to use Microsoft products. That it's a choice is debateable, given MSFT's documented predatory practices. However, it's ultimately up to her to stand up to the monopoly, since the government refused to.
If she buys an Apple Mac computer next time, she will have a computer that functions better, works better, and breaks much more rarely than her current Windows computer. It's simple, really.
(Me, I use Debian GNU/Linux because I value the freedom that is in Debian's goals. I recognize that Apple shares to some degree these goals, looking at its KHTML-based Safari goals.)
Flame me, since many of you will, but consider that whether you blame the creators of Gator, Microsoft, or worm writers, she would have a better experience on a Mac.
"choice"
|/usr/games/fortune
"This repair will take 40 hours Cap'n and not a minute less!"
"Scotty, you have 10 and a half."
"Aye sir, I'll do my best!"
(10.5 hours go by...)
"Scotty, I need that computer working NOW."
"Almost done Cap'n."
"Scotty...."
"There! Now Cap'n!"
"You're a miracle worker Scotty."
So are they naive because they let their computer get that bad or because they paid a ridiculous amount of money to fix it?
What do you do with an unprotexted Win98/2000/ME/XP and modem connection? Before you get the first servicepack you have to reinstall the system.
10.5 hours to run:
/mbr
C:\>fdisk
And reinstall W2K?
Damn that tech was milking it.
This
It would have made more sense to take the drive out of the machine in order to correct problems on it. Or at least not boot off it...
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
yikes, hopefully the grandparent won't sue for "pain & suffering"...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
'Surgery' is a little misleading since it suggests hardware damage was incurred. If I was determined to use a metaphor, I'd go for 'therapy' :)
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
C'mon now! IF runing Spybot S&D and Microsoft's own repair process didn't fix it, you could have just reinstalled Win98.
Total time, 2 hours MAX!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Looks like the first story of 800$ could have been avoided by switching to linux. You can run MS Office in CrossOveroffice, which costs $40. And you'd avoid the virus issues, and the cost of upgrading.
She could have avoided the $800 headache too.
These stories just make me sad. If only people knew what was out there.
If you ever have problems using linux, head over to one of the friendly irc chans for your distro on irc.freenode.net (use xchat or a graphical irc program, it's really easy to use.. just type /join #nameofdistro, e.g. /join #mandrake or /join #suse once you're connected)
I find it interesting (and a little frightening) how otherwise educated people (reporters, for instance) can be so clueless in critical areas. Is this inevitable for people?
And yes, I do consider basic computer literacy a critical skill; your computer is not just an appliance. Letting your computer get 0wned is much like letting your car run out of oil.
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
frr:yyy
I think you are going to run into year 1000 issues with a format like 'yyy' *adjusts foil hat*
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Consider a hypothetical Win98 user. For the sake of argument call her 'my mum'. She runs a Pentium II-450 and uses it for email, word processing, web browsing and very occasional other bits of office. The computer runs all these tasks fine, but it really isn't powerful enough to run XP. Windows 2000 would make life better, but it will go out of support soon and if you worry about getting legal copies, it's not available in a home edition so it's very expensive. Windows ME can hardly be called an improvement.
So you're saying people in this position need to spend money to upgrade their hardware despite the fact that the current computer runs all the software they want to run at a speed they find acceptable.
Yes I know; install Linux.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
I seem to get a call from some family member every few weeks where their computer is unusable due to viruses/spyware/adware...
Basically what happens is I spend at least an hour or two, (but not 10-1/2), removing programs, installing programs like Adaware, Spybot, ZoneAlarm (or make them buy a NAT device) and some decent Antivirus software.
What happens if you put a six year old piece of software that was never designed for always on networking on broadband?
Or an unpatched version of XP - which is now 3 years old?
What happens if you go on holidays and leave your all you doors and windows open, and you change your answering machine message to "Hi, we're out and we won't be back for ages. Help yourself to whatever you need!"?
This is all Microsoft's fault.
..of my initial days of tinkering around with RedHat 6.x.
My old office had two RH boxes on a static IP. There was no such thing as an administrator. As a programmer, I was supposed to install all applications, configure them and also *ensure* it was up and running.
Got a call from the ISP two days later. They had shut down the machine because of complaints from other users - apparently some application from these machines were flooding the network (I never did find out what they were doing though). Got the ISP to restart them. Frantic googling and few "security guide" downloads later, I started exploring what was wrong with them (incidentally, I was *still* accessing those machines remotely - my office wouldn't pay for me to go to the site to check the machines). Turned out there were THREE rootkits installed on one of thsoe machines. Found the traces of one of the possible three attackers - was some IP space in netherlands. Later found that that range of IP addresses was actually under contention and was thought to be not allocated and probably belonged to some malicious/rogue ISPs (I haven't understood this part yet).
Not knowing much, I got them to reinstall the OS. Of the three, two rootkits appeared within 2 days. Another re-install, this time with the Linux security guide implementations for securing the box. Things were ok for about 2 weeks or so. I then had yet another attack and someone was using my box as a IRC relay host (or something) and I was still in trouble.
Finally, after some RH updates and more tweaks (and ipchains and iptables install/config), I was able to have reasonably secure machines.
Trial by fire, but I learnt a lot!
*shiver. I hate to think how it would have been, had those been '98 machines
http://efil.blogspot.com/
My mother's machine was the same way. Win 98, no windows updates for nearly three years. On a cable broadband connection, no firewall. Anti-virus wasn't updated since 2000.
Between an updated McAfee, Ad-aware, and a few other spyware removal tools - I spent nearly eight hours on getting her machine back to a working condition. Once I was able to back up her data, I formatted and moved her to XP Pro.
She had enough trouble learning XP - I wouldn't dare put Linux in front of her.
Almost 20 viruses.
Over 150 spyware components, files, etc.
Three hours of Windows Updates to download over a broadband connection.
Don't clickety-click on everything on your screen. Some of those links are bad.
Worked fine for me...Firefox killed a bunch of popups, though.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I bet he didn't check the hosts file. I bet that was null routing the liveupdate DNS records.
Once the infections were removed, LiveUpdate still could not retrieve the latest virus-targeting data. So I gave up on that and uninstalled and reinstalled the entire Norton AntiVirus program, hoping that its update system would work afterward -- but it did not. I again tried to access Microsoft's Windows Update Web site, but IE still failed to respond.
Suspecting a problem with Internet Explorer itself, I tried to repair IE using the Add/Remove Programs control panel. That didn't work either, producing an error message that indicated some file or files necessary for IE were damaged or inaccessible. Trying to restore the previous version of IE, 5.5, yielded no benefit, either.
Finally, I abandoned ship, reinstalling the entire Windows 98 operating system to repair the damage to Internet Explorer and allow Kathleen's computer to access the Internet and update the Norton AntiVirus definitions.
I always check that file. It always gets hijacked. I'd be willing to bet that was his problem.
The Linux fanboyism on this site is sickening.
Try sticking an unpatched Red Hat 6 box from 1998/9 on the public internet and see how many minutes it takes to be totally rooted.
Then you can put "R3dh/\7 s\_/X04z" in your sig.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I wonder what would happen if OSX 10.1 was left wide open. Anyone still run this OS and can comment?
GroupShares Inc.
-------
artlu.net
I run a computer repair service for home users. I routinely see 98 and Me machines that have been on broadband with no protection (hardware or software firewall) for months. I do not know what kind of surgery these people performed to fix these machines, but short of taking a microscope and tweezers and flipping all of the bits on the hard drive over, there is no way it could take 8-10 hours. When I encounter a machine like this, the operating system is composed of more infected files than non-infected files (ok more Non-Microsoft infected files than Microsoft infected files in the case of Me). Virus scanning is usually impossible due to system stability, and getting rid of the viruses does nothing because there are so many it takes most of the system files with it. I usually just tell people to back up as much as possible, boot with my trusty DOS boot disk (try doing that with a USB drive on older computers), reformat and reinstall. The whole process takes maybe 4 hours on a 400 Mhz machine, not 10.
connection: Cover your ethernet chord with a prophalctic(sp?). Of course, you block out all the interesting stuff on the internet along with the bad stuff, but that is the price one must pay to sleep with a dirty whore!
I think this article spotlights how unfair it is to blame the naive for having infected machines and passing along worms, trojans and such, as Microsoft tends to do more and more these days. I have heard it hear as well, but the fact is Microsoft has created a generation or three of point-and-click drones who expect everything to work out of the box. Microsoft blames security issues on their customer base for not patching (which would be counter to resonable business practice for anything but a monopoly), but most Mircosoft patches are akin to shutting the barn door after the horses are out. I would say let Bill fix the problems he has created, but where would he start?
Oh, come on. Even with Gentoo, you don't have to compile everything. I use precompiled binaries on Debian, myself. (Except for mplayer, which I compiled.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Sheesh, here at the office, if IT is called to disinfect a PC, we'll spend maybe an hour to twiddle with SpyBot, RegEdit, etc. If it isn't clean by then, we fdisk the beast, reinstall from master image, firewall, windows update. Way less than 10 hours.
Things were going pretty well, and we left the systems on overnight. When we signed back on in the morning, my machine was fine; his machine had been compromised -- in grand style. We found the following:
The main data on the system was not compromised and while there was a minor virus infection, for the most part things were not touched. I should say, "things were not touched that we could detect" -- they could have taken a full copy of his HD for all I know, not that anything important was on there (it was just a gaming box).
He probably wouldn't have noticed the attack itself except that his processor wasn't all that hot and he was on a 10M/sec network card; between the heavy compiling and the constant sending of virii system performance had dropped noticably.
The fix?
Unplug from the internet, make sure no data on the box is needed, and format it back to the stone age. It isn't like reinstalls take a long time. (Backups are your friends.
Why the heck didn't the supposed 'Computer Expert' nuke the machine and reinstall. In my experience when things are this pooched; backup what you can to CD/USB HDD/Flash and then fdisk and reinstall. It's the only way to be sure.
Keep Windows 98 patched and up to date?
There are quicker methods.
Drive C: contains a valid NTFS partion, are you sure you wish to format (y/N) y.
To be fair they should use XP in these tests. It knows how to break itself, and has a whole new exploitability. But - and this is quite shocking - sometimes it can fix itself!
After being very devious, and listening to music and idly browsing the web (about 2 days after XP was released) my friends XP stopped rebooting.
Luckily the recovery system worked, and my friend was able to get XP running again!
This sounds like one of those stories where 'friend' is like me, talking about myself in third person, but honestly, it is this friend I have, who used XP...
friend (frnd)
n.
1. A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.
2. A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.
Acronym Definition
XP Experience (Microsoft Windows XP)
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Kind of hard to reinstall it isn't it.
The XP box, which caught Sasser, and probably a few other nasties, but I didn't bother looking, and just nuked the box.
The purpose of the exercise was to make a CD containing all the updates as of April, 2004 that a clean 98, 2000, or XP install required to be usable.
From the article:
"What a revelation: Four programs -- one a firewall and three to combat spyware -- I downloaded FREE worked better than one I paid through the nose for. Why would anyone create these terrific programs for free? Often, as in the case of ZoneAlarm, they hope people will like the product so much they will buy an upgrade or, in the case of the spyware, pay to subscribe for upgrades."
She was right in the middle of the trees, and couldn't see the forest... yes, free software, even WINDOWS free software, works better and does what it says it does.
Talk about leading horses to water...
to take 10.5 hours on ANY windows 98 problem is just ridiculous. If you're not tegging anywher after an hour on ANY client machine, RELOAD THE OS. It's just a better investment of time.
THe only time it's worth doing something like this is if it's an application SERVER, a DOMAIN CONTROLLER, something that can't just be REBUILT.
Honestly, I would NEVER EVER pay 10 hours for anything on a client machine. Isn't this tech TECH enough to realize that : $800 will get them a decent BRANDY NEW BOX from Dell with Windows XP Home?
Sheeeesh....another winner that heard the radio ad 2 years ago making them believe they can "be an MCSE in less than 6 months and make 50k per year!"
I'm not sure who is more at fault here, the person that paid for 10 hours of service, or the person that provided the service and actually thought they did a good job!
I finally decided to install Apache. I had been running an ftpd for a long time to transfer files between home/work/family/friends but so many of them began asking for me to appeal to the least common denominator that I finally did the apt-get install apache. Honestly speaking it was the easiest fileserver I've ever set up. Granted I didn't look into authentication or restricting access yet. I simply wanted to install it and offer files. In terms of basic functionality apache was much easier to achieve liftoff than ftpd or samba.
/24, poking around for overflow vulnerabilities by sending SEARCH and GET requests with more than 8190 bytes.
Here's the rub that fits with this article: Apache was not up and running for more than 2 hours before I had 3 IP addresses, two of them on my own ISPs
Why can't these script kiddies be stopped? It is obvious what the intent was.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
I know people who've had to buy new engines because they didn't know that they had to check the oil, and didn't realize that the little "oil pressure" light on the dash meant that oil pressure was low. Or that the light could fail.
Why should we (or Microsoft) expect computer users to be any more knowledgeable about computers than they are about cars?
Best Slashdot Co
The user here was probably the type of person that would love to see pics from MyParty! (.zip file attached)
I'm not sure how bad this womans system was but reading both stories makes me wonder if Glenn has ever heard of regedit. Where I work I have had to remove several pieces of spyware/malware from users machines (though not part of my formal job description) and to date not one piece of cruft has been able to hide from me.
I use the very simple process of going to Add/Remove and finding out what junk has been installed. I then write their names down and use Add/Remove to start the process. I then delete any and all folders for this crap. Finally I go into the registry and delete any reference to these programs. Reboot the machine and check my work.
So far I have a 100% success rate. Now if only the morons here would stop installing this crap. That and if the powers-that-be would switch to Firebird or Mozilla. *sigh* This is what one gets for working for a government entity.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"...More important, everybody selling to home users -- Microsoft, hardware manufacturers, software developers and retailers -- needs to do a better job of informing customers of the risks and potential problems of Internet access."
I don't know why Apple doesn't pick up this ball and run like hell with it.
Most of the people I know that run 98, 2000 or XP just assume that ANY computer OS, Windows or Mac has the same internet "experience", but it just costs more to have the same crappy "experience" on a Mac.
I like microcars
"Her PC was in such bad shape, it required 10 1/2 hours of surgery to restore it to working condition."
Are you kidding me? Any guy who calls himself "the digital doctor" should have enough know-how and resources to be able to back-up a machine, wipe it clean, and re-install the necessary applications.
It is all too common nowadays for the inept to call themselves experts.
I'm trying to recover a spyware ridden winME (shudder) system at the mo. Nice Co-incidence.
I've been told by the owner that I can't reload it.
Now this is gonna take a lot longer than zapping it with the restore disks but this is what they want.
The point is - reloading it is the sensible option but the computer owner doesn't want it reloaded and is prepared to wait a reasonable amount of time to have it repaired. It may well take 10+ hours but "the customer is always right"!
"goatse? What's that? Anyone have a link?" - AC
I'm suprised that they didn't call their company's helpdesk. If the PC was that badly infected with viruses and spyware, I would boot up with Knoppix, copy critical document files, re-image with the OEM restore CD, or 'ghost' with WP image.
you'll also need to untick the "remember me" tick box or else you'll get stupid cookies-are-needed-blah-blah messages...
Most people expect computers to just work without understanding anything about them. Last week at work someone asked me if I could virus scan her machine because she's never done a scan before, yet all the tools are available network wide and are well documented so people don't have to bother me.
There's two types of people I work with: The ones who are afraid to ask and take hours or days to try to figure something out (and ultimately mess something up) and the people who do ask the most idiotic mundane questions (after ultimately messing something up).
Then there's the people whose machines I service on the side. A friend asked me why her computer was so goldarn slow. How am I to know? So I took 2 hours out of my busy schedule to find out. She went out and bought WinXP and installed it on her p3-800 w/ 128MB RAM. I told her it's slow because her machine is not adequate for XP.
So-called technical coworkers don't understand the difference between a physical drive and a partition. Or why their password doesn't work when they have their Caps Lock on. Or when I tell them to send me FULL EMAIL HEADERS they cut and paste the false Outlook To/From lines. Or why they think external devices (modems, etc) are better than the same thing on an ISA/PCI card.
They don't get it. They assume everything will just magically work, and refuse to follow simple instructions I write up for them that a freakin' monkey could comprehend.
Most people don't understand simple things which makes my job very frustrating. It's gotten to the point that when I leave this company, I will never do IT again.
For example, a tax accountant would probably think you clueless if you ended up having a big tax bill on April 15. Paying your taxes properly is a critical skill, since everyone has to do it.
Or a doctor would think you clueless if your cholesterol was over 200. It's (usually) quite simple to keep your blood cholesterol low.
Unless it has happened to them or someone they know, most computer users are unaware of things like spyware, virii, etc.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
...they want their operating system back.
It sounds to me like Glenn didn't know what he was doing. He's yet another tech who thinks very highly of himself, yet doesn't know what's wrong with your PC.
The ISPs are pushing broadband -- hard -- and should be responsible for either providing a HW firewall with their DSL/cable modem or at least educating their customers that they need to install one.
I felt the same way when the AOLers discovered Usenet years ago. AOL brought them here, so AOL should teach them netiquette.
Also, broadband ISPs should register their dynamic IPs at SORBS.
It's not a Windows problem, it's a PC enduser problem. The domain technical contact is ultimately responsible for his users.
Any computer shop that spends 10.5 hrs trying to fix spyware is either deliberately running up the bill or incompetent. Once the level of destruction was clear the tech should have tossed the drive in an old machine, pulled off anything important and formatted it. As other posters have said, that would have taken 2-3 hours tops.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
If I tried to bill a client 10.5 hours, I'd be fired so fast. It's best when to know when to cut your losses, slave the drive to backup data, reformat, and reinstall. There's no way fixing a computer should take longer than 4 hours. If it can't be fixed fast, wiping it is probably best. I mean, it costs almost as much to fix it as to get a new computer at 6 hours.
Slackware also had NOWHERE REMOTELY CLOSE to the installed user base that windows 98 had. Windows 98 is in all likelihood still beating it.
Virus writers don't give a shit about Slackware. It's like saying that my car has better security because it wasn't broken into when I left it in the middle of nowhere for a week and noone touched it, as opposed to your car which you left in a shady alley way in Los Angeles.
Mod this obvious tripe down.
and a switch is definitely in order. when you have blight, nematodes, and rot in a soybean field, you have to rotate out of soybeans and plant anything else unrelated for several years to clear the land.
in the MS software monoculture, we are also at that point. pick Mac OS or Linux, but switch. you can't grow anything in that MS patch any more.
if you can't/wont, I have had multiple update choke-n-hangs with norton antivirus in the last year plus. each has finally been resolved by switching that user to Grisoft's AVG program, www.grisoft.com... and using Zone Alarm and Ad-Aware to deal with the other types of threats.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's now a major pain to install a windows system from scratch, using the original CD.
You now have to
- think about getting the latest service pack first
- think about getting a firewall with its license key (love it when the firewalls ask to be registered before working, and need an internet connection to be registered!),
- think about getting an anti-virus (same story)
- then install the system (disconnected from the network, of course, so forget about "configuring an internet account" during the install)
- install the service pack
- install the firewall and the anti-virus and make sure that they're running
- go to windows-update and patch your system
- start to play.
This is an impossible task for 99% of the regular windows users, who don't even know what a firewall is and how to configure it. There have been improvements in the installation process of OSes and applications, in order to make it possible for reg. users, but all these efforts have been ruined by virus and worm writers.
And I'm not even talking about spyware, adware and spam...
I'm like Glenn (the IT guy in the story) in that I get to work on family and friends' PCs. I do so happily (which I admit suggests some sort of mental illness on my part) as it's something that I know how to do well and I'm glad to be able to fix their computer problems without them spending a boatload of money. But the main thing I've dealt with lately is malware installed via Internet Explorer on PCs whose owners are not by any means naive.
The last one was a friend who had a broadband connection, was behind a firewall but still had countless malware programs including one of those nasty browser hijacking/popup creating beasties that creates new randomly-named programs if you try to kill it while in normal mode. Try searching for one of those filenames in Google to get more info! Anyway, it took me hours to clean it up, and she was *shocked* when I told her how un-patched IE was. She said, "But I just downloaded the IE6 security patch... it can't have any unplugged security holes! And my network admins didn't say anthing about this." So of course I had to calmly explain to her the details about IE's status and how integration of IE into the OS by Microsoft had been a Very Bad Idea (tm). She was incredulous, but I pointed her to enough articles to convince her. Goes to show how difficult it is for people with non-geek day jobs to be informed about fundamental problems like this. Had it not been for the malware, she'd still be in the dark about it.
She's on Firefox now, and knows to keep it up to date. I told her she needs to start thinking about her employees computers, as they are using IE to browse the web from work... and you can guess how sick that made her to think of what could be leaking out to the world from behind her firewall.
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
So I move in for free with a guy for the summer. Very nice house, but he has this old 450p3 Gateway, Win98, and it's dying (Southbridge going out). I've spent prolly 60 hours on that sucker, and now it runs, albeit barely. What a nightmare. And I feel obligated to get things working, as I'm living there for free.
Anyway, I considered Linux, but then he couldn't run things like MS Money 2004, or a few games that I refuse to put on there. A reinstall with Win2k and FF fixed most of his problems, ZA and NAV finally installed, and he's on his farking own now. While he may not be naive, he doesn't really do much with his computer anyway: look at pornsites, check email, fark, play starcraft and CS. Linux is just too much of a hassle for me/him.
I now refuse to touch Gateways. They suck so bad.
I work at a big company with a big, world-wide intranet. I installed WinXP on a machine at work from a pre-SP1 CD. The machine survived about 30 minutes on the intranet before a Sasser-like thing found it, which is not enough time to get through the Windows Update process. I eventually figured out that if I stick the machine behind a NAT, I could get the OS installed and patched before releasing it into the "wild" of our network.
10.5 hours? You've got to be kidding. What an incompatent moron.
I've completely wiped my hard drive, re-installed Windows, re-installed all my applications and restored all my important data files from a backup CD in less than half that time.
I'm almost positive that is why it wasn't letting it connect.
I don't think I'm alone here; problems like this (although not this exact one) were how I learned about computers. It's during these agonizing multi-hour sessions that you really get a glimpse of what goes on behind the curtains.
;-).
I learned how to build and modify my own box after many agonizing sessions installing new hardware, much like the doctor in the Post story who couldn't get her printer working for love or money. When you go through all the troubleshooting procedures for figuring out why your new RAM, hard drive, or video card doesn't work you learn very quickly how it all goes together. The second or third time you do it is much easier.
I was never really all that interested in computer security until my first Linux box got rooted. Luckily for me I had it configured for a graphical login where all accounts were listed as icons, or I might never have noticed that there was an extra account. After that I became a computer security nut, getting updates from 5 different sites and configuring multi-tier systems. Being interested in security is also what got me into OpenBSD. The experience I got with OpenBSD was extremely useful for me in getting one of my first IT jobs; I think my broad experience with multiple Unices is what got me that job and allowed me to be successful there.
Troubleshooting problems like these, annoying and frivolous as they may seem at the time, is a great way to become the guy that people go to for their problems. Now whether or not *that's* desireable I'll leave up to you
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
If you installed the 98 box, would it be possible to also use the honeypot to download porn and whack your cocok off, you know something of the sort besides letting it sit, would that give you more chances of being anally and/or orally raped?
thank you thank you, I'm here all week.
Compare the computer [in broad terms] to a car:
Both require maintenance. If you cannot do the maintenance yourself you must find - and likely pay - someone who can.
Neither runs forever, even with meticulous maintenace. Both die sooner when abused and/or not maintained.
Both will eventually be replaced - see above.
When purchased new, both will depreciate considerably in the first couple years of ownership. Recognize this and accept it, or buy a used machine.
People are generally more familiar with cars, so analogies in this area may be helpful.
OT: 'Jane Boxwine' is interesting, and [to me] connotes a different sort of person than 'Jane Sixpack'. Bonus points to the individual who coined the term.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Realistically, I would anticipate a similar result if I were to directly connect an unpatched Red Hat 5.1 machine to the Internet. After all, Windows 98 and Red Hat Linux 5.1 are both technologically obsolete, having been released on June 25, 1998 and May 22, 1998, respectively. They are over six years old, and both were available for purchase. Why should Microsoft support Windows 98 if Red Hat doesn't support RHL 5.1?
On the other hand, Red Hat Linux is open source; thus, anybody is capable of backporting patches to their version of the operating system, whereas Windows users remain dependent on Microsoft. Additionally, the operating system still does possess a substantial user base, whereas users of RHL 5.1 are much more likely to have already updated their machine(s). Most importantly, Microsoft is probably financially capable of supporting Windows 98 indefinitely.
I ultimately believe that it is Microsoft's responsibility to provide support for Windows 98 unless they develop an alternative method for the end-user to properly secure it. Not everybody is willing to endure the inconvenience of installing a new operating system every two years, and the Internet certainly doesn't benefit from a prodigious cache of unsupported, vulnerable machines.
Do you like German cars?
So, you talk to someone who's having problems with her Win98 machine on a broadband connection.
#1. Advise her to go out and purchase an inexpensive hardware firewall.
#2. Advise her to go out and purchase a decent CD-rewritable burner and a few rewritable CD's.
#3. Backup all of her data.
#4. Wipe the drive and partition it into 3 segments. OS/swap-n-temp/data.
#5. Re-install the OS and apps. Patch. Configure. Google toolbar is she must use IE. etc. Anti-virus set to auto-update every hour and auto-delete infected files (see #7 before you start screaming).
#6. Copy her data back to the machine. Make sure it is in the data partition.
#7. Show her how to backup the data partition onto the rewritable CD's. Inform her that here hard drive WILL fail sometime in the future and that this is will keep her data safe from that.
These are the basic steps whenever I'm asked to fix someone's computer. And it does not take 10.5 hours. Like you said, 1.5 hours tops.
10.5hours?! Man oh man.. the way I look at it is like this:
.. Going back to sys admin 101, if a box is owned, you have to restore it from trusted media.
.. bwhahhahah.. I can't even type it with a straight face. :)
If spyware, viruses, etc get on a machine, it is effective "0wn3d"
Granted, since I can't make a distro of Win98 (with all the upgraded patches, Office, etc) and reduce the re-install time from the 3hrs+ of most-of-the-time sitting at the computer hitting "next" or rebooting (seriously, the time it takes to backup data, format, reinstall Windows, upgrade patches, install applications, reinstall virus/spyware scanned data, install additional protection measures and configure (spywareblaster, virus scanner, firewall, firefox, yada yada) then I tend to do the following:
Run spyware check & virus check (both run mostly unattended, can do other stuff) -- consider the box good. If there are outstanding issues, run a quick hardware diagnostic (unless symptoms make me believe it is the issue initially) and if it checks ok, then reinstall.
Microsoft could have made it a LOT easier if we as IT pros could make a reliable windows "distro" -- throw all the most-requested software on the disk, be able to install it virtually unattended and have it have an updated driver database so hardware installs, again, mostly unattended.
I do use ghosting/sysprep when possible, but there are some serious limitations that only make it feesible for certain situations (ie computer labs, standardized business desktops).
I suppose to an extent, it is job security, but I'd rather spend my time building solutions, than fixing Microsoft's issues. Oh wait, WinXP SP2 will fix all that
Windows 98 is 6 years old and isn't sold with computers anymore. This test just shows remaining Windows 98 users they should keep up to date or upgrade to XP.
First, no it doesn't - they didn't do the necessary control experiment, which would be leaving an unpatched, no-AV machine with XP hanging around on the broadband network. Do that and your box is fried a lot faster than 98.
...I have some Win 98 boxen around here, as well as some Win XP/2K. I have MANY more problems from the newer boxes, mainly because most of the newer worms are no longer "compatible" with the older machines.
Yes, it's security by obscurity, but that's good in addition to having current antivirus signatures! With the XP/2K machines, we can't patch them fast enough to keep them clean on our notoriously insecure university network. The 98 machines are dedicated to running some specific lab hardware, and are sufficient to the task. They aren't getting replaced, or upgraded. Well, I did upgrade them from 95, but even I'm not that crazy. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
WEll you've not seen anything serious then. How about the crap I tried to get shut of at the weekend which re-installed itself everytime you restarted by running some obscure DLL accessed by an equally obscure registry key?
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
After extensive police trials of medieval armour they found that the chain mail did not provide enough protection against 9mm rounds. Though the full plate mail suits did provide adaquete protection many policemen were unable to actually move.
I recently had a similar issue. I was visiting a friend in Germany and his win2k machine had been infected a few weeks earlier. He had a cousin rebuild it, but the cousin hadn't run windowsupdate. The way that my friend connected to the Internet was directly with ISDN. He would literally be compromised in 5 minutes unless I had Norton running. Then there wasn't enough memory left to run windowsupdate without crashing.
If you can get the thing off of the Internet directly, through a router or something (anything) and you can pull it off, but the direct connection is just WAY too dangerous and counter-productive.
Oh, and trying to read error messages in a foreign language hurts your brain too.
XP won't install, won't work if it tries, over a machine swarming with shitware. so you can't do an upgrade, it's a raze and rebuild mission. best move is to cross-format and wipe the drive by doing an install of linux, picking the wipe-the-disk option to blow all of windows out, then repartitioning and installing the MS virus again.
oh, by the way, this is going to nuke every scrap of user data, because it's threaded through and through with the viruses and other shitware.
this is rather, IMHO, like doing a total strip and rebuild on the museum-grade plan of a 1975 AMC Gremlin, because it had a trailer hitch and you wanted the kid to have a car that can haul his/her crap to and from college. much better to buy a little pickup instead of spending tens of thousands rebuilding what started as a piece of crap and didn't last long when new.
if MS doesn't clear this mess up for its users by end of the year, they don't deserve to survive. it's their legacy holes back to dos 3.01 that cause it, and they have to fix it or die. the mainstream media have clearly realized this by now, and Jane Doe User has gotten the message at this point.
good thing office depot and best buy have started recycling programs for those old computers....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Anyone trying to login to those washington post articles should use the following address and password(thanks to bugmenot.com):
szander2001@yahoo.com
b41four
I deal with these problems everyday and I can clean a computer that bad in about 2 hours. This is one subject all IT computer guys need to get on the band wagon. It is getting worse. The necessary tools to fix all these problems are these. (I'm sure there are some other tools as well.) 1) Spybot 1.3 2) Adware 6.0 3) HijackThis 4) CWShredder, Kill2Me, CWS Mini Removal tool. 5) VX2Finder 6) LSPFix or Winsock XP 7) Good virus scanner (AVG, Panda, Trend) 8) Learn how to identify registry entries for manual deletion. 9) Always clean out Temporary Internet Files and some Temp files and turn off Restore on XP/ME computers. 10) Repeat steps when necessary.
I just hope she remembers the name of the company who got her into all this shit ("Microsoft") and buys a Mac next time. Of course she probably ponied up another $2000 for a brand new computer running Microsoft Windows XP, without a second thought.
Quote from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A644 83-2004Aug14.html
She couldn't "IM." (IM stands for "instant messaging." And for those a bit behind the times, yes, it can be used as a verb.)
Privacy is terrorism.
Techy Nerds generally have poor social, interpersonal skills. This is the largest factor causing the destruction of their IT industry through outsourcing.
:-)
Doctors have Unions, called the AMA. Unions provide "Congress" protection. Dentists have Unions, called the ADA. Their Unions protect their industry by limiting enrollment and limiting both OUTsourcing and INsourcing. There are plenty of willing foreign Doctors prevented to emigrate to the U.S. to alleviate the high costs of Medical.
Doctors and Dentists are smart. They have Congress protection. They have social skills.
Techies and Nerds are stupid. They have poor personal skills. They have poor Congress protection. Hence, Congress screws their IT industry because they can. No protection. No Union. No AMA or ADA for Techies.
This is the cost of Techy naivete. It's the systematic destruction of their industry and jobs through OUTsourcing and INsourcing and Mass Immigration.
Outsource Congress this November.
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
The author ran into problems installing Norton products on a new install. A dependency hell many a
linux user knows too well. The hint, "hours on the phone/web w/ Norton...". All repair tech should at this point give their win98 clients a copy of their
favorite linux live cd. It's the right thing to do (although many don't because the pc in mention will be back w/in 2-3 mos/wks, cha ching). It's inevitable. That's why most repair techs recommend windows, it's a cash cow. How thet sleep at night, another story.
What if Jane has a laptop? My limited experience with laptops is that they are very difficult to upgrade to newer versions of Windows. The factory install has a large number of model specific device drivers and utilities. Most laptop vendors seem to be uninterested in releasing new versions of model specific software to support newer versions of Windows. They only support what was shipped on the laptop. If you need/want a newer version of Windows, their suggested solution is to buy a new laptop.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I was talking computers with my father-in-law the other day. He wanted some instruction on how to burn CDs. I asked him when the last time he ran Windows Update was. "Windows what? What's that?"
Seriously, the collective "we" make up probably no more than 5% of the total home computer users ("we" being anyone that has the slightest clue what they're doing).
I've given up on helping friends and family straighten out their messed up computers. It could be a full-time job if I let it and I have other things to do with my life. If I had a habit of never changing the oil in my car, I wouldn't "expect" one of my mechanic friends to fix my broken car.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Reformat and reinstall seems to be everyone's
answer. Personally, I see that as a final resort.
Do you have any idea how long it took me to get my programs runnning the way I like them? That "personal" data is spread across a registry that, in this case, was probably not good enough to backup and just restore.
I've NEVER reformatted a computer unless it was a new hard drive. NEVER. My job is to keep four different schools' computer networks (all mixed 95, 98, 2K and XP) up and running, everything from mouse cleaning to network installation. I've NEVER had to reformat any of the PC's.
Personally, I run 98, on my main desktop machine, ever since 98 was launched and before that 95 was on my previous main desktop machine that WAS STILL WORKING 5 years later when I decommissioned it (now a Linux router with the original hardware still going strong and the Windows partition still working from a LILO prompt).
Reformat and reinstall is a stock answer that means "I don't know how to fix this." or "It's too big a job for me to be bothered with." My computer has gone up the creek any number of times (99% bad drivers/software, 1% user stupidity, 0% viruses or other rubbish) and it's always salvageable, proof is that I'm running the same machine here and now.
It's 98SE... it's on the net (broadband), it's patched up, it's got AdAware, SpyBot, Zonealarm (with antivirus, though it's disabled because I don't run anything I don't know... never had a virus except a brief glimpse of one from a computer magazine's cover CD demo of SIN... no damage, detected and fixed within a few hours).
People like this poor unfortunate person don't know that their PC is not an appliance. It's not Plug and Play (no matter what MS or Linus may tell you) but it *should* be by now. We put a man on the moon 40 years ago but we can't stop a twelve-year-old writing software that bypasses Microsoft's security. This shouldn't be a poke at the user who had this problem or the techy who took so long to fix it... the problem is much deeper... it's not even a case of user education... user's should NOT have to worry about things like this.
Reformatting someone's PC is damnright rude. They use that PC, they don't want to have to go through all the business of setting up and installing their programs again. It may save you time, but it costs them twice as much in the long run.
It would take a few hours to fix this PC, if you did it properly... especially with reboots, crashes etc in between, but fewer and fewer technicians bother... it annoys me as a technician that people still think formatting is an answer... it's not... it's an admission of defeat.
I had a bug-ridden laptop brought to me a few months back, with Win2K. AdAware showed over 300 seperate pieces of crap on it, not to mention viruses and being unpatched for over three years (it had been on the QE2 cruise liner all that time, with only occasional internet access). It was cleaned, pruned, had a few bits installed to prevent it happening again (as the user is a bit of a tech-dummy) and it's running fine, without the need for a reinstall.
Bad defaults, hole-y operating systems, no thought of a "dumb" user in the design process and lack of a decent auto-update (hey, MS, why not send out a free update CD to every single Windows registered owner and have a single-download EXE online, updating it about twice a year?) are the problems here, not the user.
Oh, and I miss the days of a DOS boot floppy with an up-to-date Virus scanner on it... You need control of the entire computer to properly flush out a virus without getting yourself reinfected or into "this file is in use" trouble, especially on the DOS-based Windows. There's no point virus-scanning when you're running the virus scanner off your hard drive... how do you know that's not been compromised? I'll leave that idea there for the next generation of virus writers.
He probably makes more ca$h writting for the Washington Post than fixing users' PCs.
BTW: A "techno-winnie" is what I call someone who knows enough stuff to REALLY screw up a PC but has no clue when he is about to break something. He's able Wow the average Joe but make any real computer guy laugh inside.
I tried to upgrade my mothers PC to XP, its a 400mhz AMD K6. It didnt work.
But the hardware vendors require patronage, too, and deprecating what is predominantly an OEM bundled operating system is one effective method of "encouraging" the "consumer" to purchase additional hardware. Computer users are realizing that you don't require a three gigahertz machine to browse Web sites; as a result, the corporations are becoming somewhat desperate.
Do you like German cars?
I came to understand that the meltdown of my home computer was my fault, the result of having switched to a high-speed Internet connection without installing a firewall or heeding those pesky warnings to download critical updates for Windows and anti-virus software.
Reminds me of something I read somewhere. Don't remember where it was...
No one will listen, just laugh for ignoring this SERIOUS WARNING.
Z
I have shifted to mozilla(firefox) and it really helps with the adware problem.I've had a lot of problems with adware at office(IE) and my pc used to get completely bogged down.
Any users who are completely caught up can give FireFox a try.You can use at as an alternative or temp browser.Its faster and much lighter than IE.And it helps curb adware(to a certain extent).
Lord of the Binges.
A few "solutions" crop up here (no panaceas, but I think these steps would help).
1. Require users to pass basic computer security awareness/computer literacy test program before allowing connection to the Internet. I am not at all joking about this one. Seems like the vast majority of Windows problems are social engineering hacks that can only be fixed through some necessary education. Alternately, issue state licenses for operating computers - can't connect to the Internet without valid license.
2. For Windows, Apple, Redhat, etc, the connection should be brought up initially with inbound connections disabled, and outbound connections limited to the vendor's upgrade site (or an IT-specified proxy for corporate machines).
3. Only after all "Critical" upgrades have been put in place should outbound restrictions be lifted.
sloth jr
This is really the fault of the user (and unscrupulous ad-ware companies). The average computer user on the Internet is like one of the pedestrians in GTA... It doesn't matter what operating system someone uses, if they don't understand certain concepts, their computer is going to get 0wned one way or another.
At least with Windows 98, you have to do things before you end up with spyware/adware. If you put up a system with a two year-old Linux distro, you're going to get 0wned REALLY fast.
Ten and a half hours? What an idiot. Why, I would have made her buy two new computers, a firewall, a new operating system and a shotgun, installed XP and FreeBSD before lunch and still charged her my usual billable rate, which is $70 gajillion.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
They also get owned through dial up. Just as fast. Once again, the slowness of the connection itself masks the fact that the thing is broken. It makes the user think that dial up is unusable, when I've shared a dial up connection with my wife under Linux without problems. Dial up users are also targeted by a special class of worms, porn dialers, which can cost the user plenty. I've heard users tell me about their computers dialing on their own in the middle of the night. Nasty.
With all the broken Windoze boxes out there able to launch all manner of attacks, the web is a really ugly place right now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I used a win98 box as my game machine for a good while. Just through normal use, the damn thing would degrade over the course of a year and become sluggish and erratic. Grant you, I'm using it like a 15 dollar ho, but that's not acceptable. (I've still got the comp, and its running RedHat8, and STILL getting slapped around, and it's got an uptime of 108 days (Power failure). Vive la differance.)
The secret is to keep a data drive and a OS drive, and when it ends up in the shitter (as it will, without a doubt), copy your data and reinstall. Sure, you can screw with the registry and a vast array of tools that claim they'll fix your computer...But trust me, they're a waste of time. A clean 98 install is good for 6 to 8 months of only minor suckitude.
Even better to make a ghost image of a good install, and then restore it whenever you need to.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Unfortunately for users, computer equipment manufacturers and resellers don't adequately inform Windows users of the risks involved in accessing the Internet without proper security measures.
I don't know about computer manufacturers themselves (I always build my own), but every DSL and cable modem I've ever bought came with tons of warnings to use firewalls and anti-virus software (in fact, the last DSL modem I received has a pre-configured built-in firewall). Is there any broadband service provider that doesn't send the new customer manuals with rather large warnings inside? No amount of warning stickers/labels can inform the user who chooses not to read them.
Hours and days and weeks of work to "fix" her computer? I say fdisk and forget it.
Computer trashed with malware? fdisk
Computer owned by crackers (who I wish I could kill)? fdisk
Computer infected with viri and sending out penis-pill spam? fdisk
I get to fix infected systems at work all the time and I would NEVER spend weeks trying to fix a system instead of rebuilding it.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Maybe nothing too serious but I have had to dig around once or twice for an obscure .dll and other registry keys.
I even had to go into one place where I can't remember how I got into it and don't remember the name of what it was. All I know is that it was the last piece in the puzzle for getting rid of a pop-up box.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The Cost of Computer Naivete: Priceless
Simpy
For $800 she could have just bought a new machine that would have blown the old one out of the water.... Yeah, she's naive all right.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
And I have to tell you ive already had more trouble getting spyware out of XP than I ever had with 98. I've run into several programs that would load themselves at startup (didnt show up in startup manager) And wouldnt allow me to close them through Task manager (said I didnt have authority or whatever even though I was logged in as admin.) I finally had to load Kerio personal firewall to stop the programs from even loading, manually delete them out of the registry and then delete their files.
My boss asked me to look at a bill for fixing her teenaged daughter's computer. $1500 to get rid of all the spyware, adware, trojans, etc... This was on an old Compaq PIII-500, with nothing on it so valuable they couldn't have just wiped the hard drive and reinstalled 98 or XP, for God's sake. And it STILL didn't boot right once they were done. I called the company and, feigning ignorance, asked what they'd done to justify the charges. I got a lot of drivel about how they'd had to "inspect each file to make sure that all the viruses, adware, etc... were removed." My response was, essentially, "OK, so you ran a virus scanner and a copy of Ad-Aware on it. What else? And why won't it still boot right? BTW, you do know you could have just reformatted the HD and installed XP and it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper, don't you? For that matter, you do know you could have replaced it with a BRAND NEW COMPUTER and it still would have been less expensive?" After about ten seconds of silence, the bill was dropped to $50. The cost of a standard service on the machine. More thieves milking the ignorant. And no, I'm sorry, ignorance isn't something that should be punished. Corrected, yes. Punished, no.
Something is dreadfully wrong if it takes you more then a couple of hours to reformat and reload..
Even on a slow machine.
And NO i have not read the article, seems its 'registration required' and i refuse to. So they lost ad revenue on me.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
C'mon now! IF runing Spybot S&D and Microsoft's own repair process didn't fix it, you could have just reinstalled Win98.
... after which a quick 2 minute boot of Knoppix will have them up and running again, safely and securely ... but if they want those old financial records and documents, they have to go through the multi-hour recovery process first.
Total time, 2 hours MAX!
Yes, and in two minutes they can be running foot-loose and fancy free on a Knoppix or other Linux LiveCD. So what?
People's data is far more valuable than the software and hardware it runs under and resides upon, and very few people can afford to simply throw it away in order to expidite a repair.
Should these people have backed up their data and configurations? Yes.
Should they not be running Windows at all? Yes.
Should they switch immediately to Mac OS X or GNU/Linux. Absolutely.
Even if they do all of these things, the fact that they didn't backup previously (or have backups that are hopelessly out of date) means that one will probably spend a good eight or ten hours getting the system into a state where the data can be extracted, prior to booting a Knoppix or other Live CD, reformatting their hard drive, and installing Linux, or alternatively, going down the street to the nearest Apple store and leaving the pain of Microsoft Windows behind for good. Either solution is good (I have provided both to various and sundry non-techie people, all of whom, universally, have expressed extraoridinary gratitude at having been shown how to be windows free, and gone on to enthusiastically laud their new Apple|Linux box).
The pain is there. Any recovery of their data from an infected, corrupted, or 0wned windows box is likely to take many hours
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
maybe the hacker g0d's wouldn't be after her for abusing the english language... ;)
It's cracker lady, not hacker.
- wuftpd
- sunrpc, portmapper
- imapd
- sendmail!!
- bind!!!
- openssh
- openssl
- apache
- php
- samba
I'm sure I forgot a dozen other common packages, but you get the idea. Any outdated, Internet-connected system is a disaster waiting to happen.I have a friend who recently had to take her computer in to Best Buy and spend $210 for them to diagnose, remove viruses/spyware, and install protection. It took them 2 days to do this. All of this because she is very computer illiterate (she uses it for email, visiting websites) and her mom is even morseo.
I tell them time and time again not to open strange email attachments and to keep automatic updates turned on. Still, even though neither of them will admit to ever clicking on "bad" emails or visiting spyware infested websites, the Best Buy techs managed to find over 30 different types of spyware installed.
I find it interesting (and a little frightening) how otherwise educated people (reporters, for instance) can be so clueless in critical areas.
I find it much more interesting how clueless the parent is. If he read the article he would have seen that the user did have computer literacy, with at least basic trouble shooting skills. The problem is that it is not easy to keep a windows box clean from any malware. MS (and others) need to be make it easier for users to protect their PCs (which, by the way, is the point of SP2). Computers should just work correctly, without users having to work very hard.
We in the computer industry need to all work toward this goal. Computers are tools to make things easier; they shouldn't make peoples' lives more difficult.
Are there any adware programs that can be loaded on a Mac the same way as on a PC using IE?
What happens when a Mac user comes across all these adware/malware laden websites using IE? Do files get placed on the Mac?
Long ago, an early Mac ad compared itself to the IBM PC by dropping the corresponding manuals next to each machine. The Mac manual was light as a feather, the PC manual pile was 2 feet high. It was of course an exaggeration, but the point was valid.
I don't see how Apple can afford to not take advantage of the current spyware/security craziness occurring in the Windows world, and put out a ballsy ad along the same lines. Perhaps show each computer out of the box being plugged into a broadband connection, and on the Windows box, instantly a dozen windows pop up advertising things. Something along those lines.
I use both Macs and Windows all the time. My mom has a Mac, because I don't have time for the "family tech support" that her having a PC would require. She does complain about occasional problems with the Mac, but I have no doubt it would be at least 3 times as bad if she was running Windows.
When will the press figure it out?
Virusses and hackers are not the problem. None of those problems got 0wned from either. The problem is SPYWARE.
Anyone on a broadband connection should buy a router with a hardware firewall. They are cheap as hell. Software firewalls are just a waste of system resources for most people.
Viruses... yeah they can cause problems but its pretty rare to get one without being on a large network or being stupid about you email attatchments.
Windoze updates? Never do em. Time consuming to do manually and the autoscheduler takes up system resources. If you arent on a coporate network (which neither were), they just arent that importaint. When a service pack comes around I install it, thats about it.
Spyware tanked all those machines. First... IE is a big no no at this point. Get people hooked up with firefox and 90% of the problem is fixed. Instead of futzing with zone alarm and norton, they should have been more agressive with the spyware stuff. No, you cant just download spybot and forget about it. I use no less than 5 programs (sometimes more) for an infection such as described. Spybot, Spysweeper, Ad aware, Hijackthis!, cww shredder. And even with all these, it is absolutely necessary to manually delete things. Go into msconfig and kill services, startup processes. Go into the registry and manually delete keys.
IMO these techs were irrisponsible. You do a cost benifit analysis for formatting vs repairing. If reparing takes more than 3-4 hours- FORMAT. Nobody should pay for 10hrs of service on a box.
Why didn't they spend $50 on a wireless router that includes a firewall? I guess it sounds like no one in her house owns a laptop, but if they did and could thereby benefit from the wireless access, this would have been a simple way to protect everything on the broadband connection.
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
Man, that was the best laugh I've had all day.
I had an AMD K6-2 450MHz machine with 384 MB of RAM, and I never had any problems with it. You'd probably want to turn off all the fancy stuff, though.
If you are going to be running Win98 on the wild wild internet then that is as good as consenting to "elective" surgery before you even start.
As for the therapy, I think that would only apply with ECC ram so that the memory could repair/replace the bad bits. I guess physical therapy may apply since you are teaching the computer how to "walk" again, but in the end if you are fdisk/formatting/etc., you are really doing a brain transplant on the OS--any you might as well do one on the owner at that point as well.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
That was my first reaction upon seeing it. Unless you're just messing around, trying to find out what exactly it would take to repair it without reinstalling everything. Sounds like the cabbie that drove 10 miles out of the way to get you to your destination. Ring up the bill anyway possible.
This had me infuriated one time when gconfd was hosting a remote network
infuriate...confd...remote network.
Am I the only one that's been through agony with gconfd?
I run KDE, but like a few Gnome apps like Firefox and Evolution.
And I run where my /home/me is NFS mounted.
And I frequently get hosed by
that I've read is probably related to NFS-client server problems that can only be corrected or compensated if you have root on your box and can editI'm not root on this box and am suffering.
[Sorry for drifting - the keywords got me going...
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I'm sure this will be mentioned, but it doesn't take 10 1/2 hours to reintall and then update all of the software. Unfort. with the way win worms/viruses, this is what I now recommend to friends and family that call me for support. funny thing is, I only run Linux and Mac at home, and after a reinstall, I always recommend they look into buying a Mac next.
Also funny is when I couldn't help my friend's dad out with his windows worm any further than trolling google, he said, "Isn't this what you're interested in?" and I told him, "No, not since I've moved on from windows, it's not"
CB!@#$%^&*()
free ipod and free gmail!
Would it really do any better? Remember, the firewall was disabled by default and most, if not all services are enabled by default. It would be a warez shop in no time. The only thing this proves is that old code shouldn't be left exposed to the internet.
You don't need any stinking non-Free software to make ghost images.
/path/to/image.gz
/path/to/image.gz | dd of=/dev/hda bs=128K
Here's how you do it:
0. Set up a recipient (either a second hard disk, a machine on the network - whatever - I do it over the network)
1. Boot Knoppix on the machine you want to ghost.
2. Mount the destination.
3. dd if=/dev/hda bs=128K | gzip >
To restore:
0. Set up the source.
1. Boot Knoppix on the machine you want to install.
3. Mount the source.
4. gzip -dc
Tips: Overwrite any free space on the machine you want to ghost with a huge file filled with 0x00, then delete the file. The disk image will compress much better as you've scrubbed the deleted files.
I use a system like this to ghost many machines at a time (an image server can easily deal out 30+ images at once). It'd cost a fortune to license many copies of ghosting software - with Knoppix and a very small shell script, I've got an automated system which will do many machines at once. (A typical 40GB fresh WinXP install with our apps compresses to under 1GB with gzip).
If you're doing WinXP, remember to either make a Sysprep build or use something like System Internals free (open source but not truly free) tool to change the SID and hostname of the machine when it's booted the first time. (This is the approach we use due to the limitations of sysprep).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Anyone *that cracked* ought to have first put a piece of hardware between themselves and the outside world.
And why aren't these so-called ISP's recommending them for their customers, doing a bulk purchase or something?
Harumpf!
-Mel Brooks
People like this are a liability, and cause suffering to many others by allowing there PC's to not only get infected with spyware and torjans but act as a platform to propergate and spam away to those that do make the effort and as such soak up loads of global bandwith. Were was this 800$ sum dirrived, I mean if you were able to add up how much of the internets bandwith was lost due to these people letting there PC@s act as gateways for the spam world etc then I'm sure they actualy cost the World alot more than that. Anything they paid for to fix the situation was a cheap deal and 800$ is a couple of new PC's, though I didn;t spot any $ values in any of these posts when i glanced thru them. People like this are the first to moan and winge that they catch a cold, yet the first to ignorantly propergate them and believe they are the innocent. Please more tails of fools suffering, it compensates for the stress of having to stay ontop of them and makes prevention seem so much more worthwile. Remember security is as only as good as those your in touch with and on the internet your in touch with alot of fools, you just have to avoid suffering them. One day we will have a two tier internet, those who have there computers nicely dressed and in protective clothing and those that dress how they like :). Hawian shirt or a Tux, tough choice realy - hehe
I saw this in the Washington Post yesterday and thought it interesting enough to send the reporter (Kathleen Day) a note, which follows, summing up my thoughts on the matter. I haven't heard anything back yet (and I don't necessarily expect to).
-Phil
Ms. Day:
I find it absolutely fascinating that problems such as the one you encountered are treated primarily as a user education issue. It's true that there are some things that everyone needs to know in order to use a computer. It's also true that savvy users can often avoid security mistakes. But one wonders, "Why is it that users *have* to be security-savvy in order to effectively use their computers?" I'd submit that the problems you wrote about are mostly the result of design flaws and not naivete. In many ways, I think the computer industry has set the bar far too low by blaming users for problems it has created. Put another way: what would you think if you had a car that would sometimes break down without warning if you drove it on the highway without first buying additional parts?
As I see it, there are two design weaknesses that contributed to the problems that you wrote about. First, basically anything you do on a machine running Windows is done with full administrative privileges. In one way, this makes sense: you own the machine, so you should be able to do anything you want with it. The problem, however, is that this blind trust allows malicious software to do pretty well whatever it wants. Most other operating systems (Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix) require you to take some special action (usually typing a password) in order to install software or alter the operating system. While this can't prevent you from choosing to install malicious software, it makes it quite difficult to do so unknowingly. To stretch the car analogy a little further: people can't modify your car's engine without your knowing about it because you have to open to hood in order to reach it. Computers should work the same way.
The second problem is that Windows doesn't make a strong distinction between programs (the applications that you run) and data (documents and the like). This makes several attacks a lot easier, as malicious programs can sneak onto your machine by masquerading as data when you are browsing the Internet. For most non-Windows operating systems, there's something that you have to do explicitly to say, "This is a program and it's OK to run it." If Windows has these protections, there still wouldn't be anything to stop someone from maliciously sending you data you didn't want--but your computer wouldn't be able to then run that data as if it were one of your programs.
It's a mistake to say that anything is totally secure. There have been (and will continue to be) successful attacks on operating systems other than Windows, of course. But I think it's a mistake to think that Windows has so many (and such severe) attacks just because of its dominant market position. True, it's low-hanging fruit for those with a malicious bent. But it's also so much easier to attack Windows because of the way it's been designed.
The very concept of a computer virus depends on both of these two factors. Take away the administrative powers, and the virus has little if anything to infect. Remove the confusion between programs and data, and it becomes much more difficult for malicious software to spread. Many regard it as unnecessary to run antivirus software at all on non-Windows systems. While I'm personally not sure that's a good idea, it does give one an idea of the relative security levels involved.
I think these security problems may ultimately threaten Microsoft's market position. The bad design decisions that are part of Windows weren't made because Microsoft is dumb (quite the contrary: they employ a lot of very smart developers and architects). They were made for market-driven reasons. Lots of old software (dating back to old versions of Windows and the even older days of MS-DOS) simply won't run in a more secure environment. As
Like others have written in this thread, the articles don't suggest the best solution for solving the problem.
:
Here's what I did this WE with a similar case
1. Partition hard drive in two with partition magic
2. save everything from c to d
format c
3. install windows 98
4. install antivirus zonealarm and adaware
5. check c et d against virus
It's important to save everything because sometimes, the user doesn't have the driver disks anymore (and in my case, the drivers downloaded from DLINK web site didn't worked !)
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
How long do you work on fixing a PC before you just rebuild the thing. The moonlighting rent-a-tech, Glenn I belive, worked on the PC from 11am to 9pm (give or take), and had to come back again?? Slave the drive, copy user info, rebuild, then install firewall/anti-v/anti-spy software, and finally...make a ghost for them.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
I didn't read it all, but $800 and 48 hours to fix some BS software problem. It would be one thing if it was hardware and something had to be replaced, but this is M$ Software crap. I didn't know it costs $800 and took 48 hours to reinstall an operating system.
Using the long obsolete Windows 98 is like using a rope to secure your front door. Anybody who can afford broadband can afford to upgrade to Windows XP.
Of course, you can install Linux instead if Windows compatability isn't important. In either case, you may have to update or replace your computer hardware.
I beg your god damm parden??
$800??
10 1/2 hours of work??
lets see..
10am arive
10:05 boot into safe mode and run anit virus
10:45 (assumming major problems), run spyware removela.
11:30 (assumming major problems) virus free, spyware free, install zone alarm.
12:30 (assuming major problems, computers a ok.
at the worst it being 98, reinstall over its self, and remove a few programs and reinstall them..
that woudl add 2 more hours at the most.
Thats 4 1/2 hours, if your being riped off.
buying more ram?? WTF??
I meen comeon..
Ive restored a 20 gig HD after a major FAT crash useing an old verry slow resore program(in fact twice as there where two ways to recover files and some i had to do the second way) and reupdated and installed all my programs and games in less time..
I also had the same thing happen to my comptuer jsut hte other day when i was installing doom3, opps i got borde and was jsut surfing around and picked up a virus and about 12 malware programs (ok so every now and then i get borde see a file in a newsgroup and go hmmm freeporn.scr wonder how much dammage this can do)..
I still managed to install doom3, reboot 10 odd times trying to get a free virus prgram installed
reboot 10 odd times agine get ad aware up and runing, reboot and instlall zonealarm, trouble shoot the new video card and monitor i added and play doom3 for about 10 mins in the 2 hours i had.
for $800(im assuming US hear) I would of been able to do all that, and get the ssytem close to doom3 specs. Or hey buy a brand new one!!
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
when 1GB hard drives first came out, most of the machines using them only had 8mb of ram! I remember those days. ugh.
well, I had dropped some hard earned cash and bumped up to 32, but that was some serious $$$ at the time.
I still think about that when I buy 1GB sticks of ram these days!
EOM
It's simple enough for the newbies. (I know it's not the most powerful, but it is by far the most convenient).
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Another utility I've found useful in cleaning up trojaned PCs is 'HijackThis'.
.dll's and applications that are associated with IE, some of these are reinstallers for malware.
Once you've got rid of your malware you often find that the malicious crap you've removed is immediately reinstalled as soon as you reconnect to the internet. Your AV software has just removed the trojans themselves, not what installed them in the first place
HijackThis shows all
I do this for a living. I work a regular job trading futures, but I've been playing with computers since I was 6 or so. It is the easiest money to make. I could charge tons, but I just charge around $100 bucks for 1-6 hours of work and usually people are so happy I make everything work that they give me food and beer.
It boils down to having a USB key with 5 programs. They all fit on a 16MB key. Sometimes if I know my client has a virus program ahead of time I will download the definitions, but not that often.
People's problems are always the same. Virus and spyware. I don't recommend that most people use a software firewall since everyone just gets click happy. I usually tell them to just get a router. I have yet to get a call back from any of my clients and each time I do see them they say they never have any problems. They also like the fact that the router is just a one time buy rather than constantly buying new software and upgrading. I know there are free programs out there, but most people just don't trust them (beats me why).
I suggest to all my customers to utilize a hardware firewall in addition to a freebe such as Sygate.
The hardware firewall allows the customer to get on the web to do windows update and install AV software without having to worry about viruses - as long as they stay out of e-mail and stay off of other websites.
For only $19.95, they are well worth it. And you can still find WebRamps on eBay for your dialup users. I have one myself.
Too many customers spend hours dealing with problems that $19.95 would have prevented. It's one very important piece to the internet puzzle.
Personally, I would like to see this built into the cable modems and RAS dialup software. Most folks don't need any incoming connections anyway, while the TOS usually prevent them either way.
Edwin Davidson
www.acmenews.com
No one really (Who had enough say at Microsoft) had foresight of todays problems to make windows 98 still run in 1994.
I wouldn't have predicted it either. It's the first piece of software to travel back in time! Obviously, MS knows something we don't.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
It's true most of us on Slashdot could probabbly fix it in 1/4 of that time.
However, by the time we reach that level of expertise we become too busy or advanced in our careers to do sideline projects like that.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Can be seen here.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
In his case, he needed
- a CD with all of the relevent tools and updates
- a windows boot disk with CD support
- an understanding of the windows command line in order to copy a subset of these tools to a convenient folder on the hard drive from the CD
- The knowledge to run these tools from Safe mode, and how to get there in the first place
- Include in the subset of tools one that can fix the broken LSP setup.
tips - I deal with this stuff all of the time. The best data on this stuff can be found in articles at spywareinfo.net - the forums are not bad either, although spywarewarrior.com also has good forums. also good to have is this list of known rogue spyware cleaners, along with this list of Anti-Spyware Orphans & Outcasts[LSP or Layered Service Provider is a piece of software that can be inserted into the Windows TCP/IP handler like a link in a chain. However, due to bugs in the LSP software or deletion of the software, this chain can get broken, rendering the user unable to access the Internet. Spyware is good at this, and some cleaners leave a broken LSP behind.
With the correct tool, the fix takes seconds. Without the tool, you need to uninstall and re-install the winsocket, or else the same with the entire network support. Otherwise you fall into the trap this poor bloke got into.]
My current recommended free antivirus is Avast! Home Edition, which is very low maintenance for the home user, and requires registration for the free license. It also protect a number of common Instant Messenger clients, as well as several common P2P clients. It is better than AVG in my opinion, and detects many trojans as well as spyware.
You can get a system that is so hosed that it will not boot, not even into safe mode, even under XP. The solution there to remove the hard drive, drop it into an external drive enclosure, and hook it up to another system where you can use scanning software to do a basic clean so you can boot in the original configuration. Once it boots you can install cleaners from safe mode, and then run cleaners from inside every user account.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
In short, you just showed exactly what the article was saying. It looks like you're trying to defend yourself from strawmen here.
The new XP service pack touts an automated and interactive firewall builder. It supposedly starts out with a closed firewall and builds one in response to new packets. Microsoft sometimes does a good job of delivering good features and this is one of them.
- howto/ch6.en.htmla ls/securing-debian- howto/ch-sec-services.en.html
...or whatever. Each big story or release of MS software should be an opportunity to figure out how to do it in linux.
Is Masonthe best tool for doing this on the Linux side? It looks like it has been around a while, and I'm lamely noticing it right now.
A good project for linux advocates might be a translation of MS's sales literature into how to do it in Linux, Debian, Redhat, Fedora, etc.... MS's marketers are good at identifing what they need to write on the box or in the literature to get people to buy it, and I'm certain that for each line item, there is good open source software. Right now you need a guru or tons of time to figure out just how to do each of the features on a MS XP/Office/whatever box, if you could go to to a how to do it in linux site and find a point-by point guide to how-tos, it might make the assimilation easier.
Example: from a current XP/SP2 release:
The software adds a new "security center" that is intended to provide a beefed-up firewall as well as easy ways to tell whether a PC is updated and protected against viruses.
Alternatives:
Mason, (link) the automated firewall builder
LIDS, Linux Intrusion detection software
Tripwire, (link) the system intrusion monitor
* Debian: apt-get mason tripwire
(see http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian
http://www.debian.org/doc/manu
* Fedora: yum install mason tripwire
Does your failure hurt you like it hurts your anus because you also failed to keep it clenched tightly?
Would it not be possible for OS companies (MS, but also Redhat,...) to configure their install so that the computer only accepts connections from the upgrade/patch server until the user specifically "releases" the box? Or would it get hacked anyway?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Ignorant people should pay $$$ if they are not willing to understand the technology to do it themselves.
:p
The funny thing is how indignant they get about the whole thing. They seem to think it should just 'work' right out of the box. Computers and computer networks are complex beasts not easily understood by a layperson. Why? Because computers and computer networks were designed, from the begining, to be as flexible and general purpose tools as possible.
This allows us use the network to do things the original inventors never dreamed of (instant messaging, multimedia delivery, VOIP telephony etc...). This allows computers to 'simulate' just about anything you can imagine (an airplane, a race car, a storm system, a stock market, a map, a book, a writing tablet, the mind for a robot on Mars, etc...).
The day these tools are limited to a few predefined functions is the day computer science will die. Sadly, the anti-intellectuals in power would like nothing better.
I blame it all on Bill Gates.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
The average fourteen year old boy would be happy to come out and fix machines, and wouldn't be distracted by the big, yellow, shiny Symantec boxes.
This just betrays one of the most annoying things in the modern world; the average consumer trusts shrinkwrapped solutions more than competence.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
It was months before I realized that cron running updatedb was the cause of furious hard drive activity in Linux when the computer was otherwise unused.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
All command line utilities are there. To get what you ask for, just type
/svc
/. is sometimes truly amazing ....
tasklist
Amount of ignorance wrt Windows shown on
Besides, the typical "mod parent up" post, can I recommend creating a BartPE boot CD with those tools you mention on it. Then you can skip the step of mounting the hosed drive in another machine.
I used a generic BartPE disk this last weekend to copy a friend's data off a system that was so badly hosed it wouldn't let me log in.
Nice stuff.
And i'll say it agian..
t s.zip
1. Run Spybot.
2. Run Ad-Aware to clean up what Spybot missed. (which is not much)
3. Load a Hosts file filled with nearly all of the nasty URLS in which the 'wares originate.
Were do you get his hosts file, you might ask?
http://www.pelicancoast.net/~nighthawke/hos
Do a file search for hosts and replace it with this one and enjoy your sparkling-clean system as it roars off the blocks at boot and purrs all day long.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Just got done reading the first 3 pages of the first article, and a couple of points occured to me
1. When its that bad, *save your data, wipe the drive, and reinstall from scratch* MOPON!
2. Zone Alarm? Norton Firewall? Utter crap - a 'Firewall' is a piece of HARDWARE. Not software that depends on the machine its supposed to protect to be operting properly in order to protect it. An actual peice of hardware - a router/NAT device. ($60 at best buy, NetGear, Linksys, etc, probably less than he paid for Norton 'Firewall')
The programs you list above are used on servers that are expected to be administrated.
Its been out for 6 years.
Thats 6 years worth of people having to go through this same issue.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I'm using Linux too, but my cable modem is constantly flooded with ARP requests generated by the incoming packets from the hordes of worm-ridden XP boxes that now own the internet and are repeatedly scanning our entire subnet. Perhaps your ISP is smarter than mine - Road Runner appears to be firewalling off incoming traffic to all the most dangerous ports now, but apparantly not in a way that prevents their routers from generating repeated ARP requests to the thousands of unused IP addresses which I must share a cable with.
Furious blinking became normal behavior for many cable modems years ago, and I don't think there's anything I can do (except maybe convincing my more network-savvy friends to go get jobs at Time Warner) to stop it.
Wouldn't a similar thing happen if you stuck a vanilla RedHat 6 box online?
My girlfriend's aunt's computer was acting up, and they asked if I could fix it. They complained about pop-ups mainly. When I sat down at the computer, it was just excruciatingly slow. After I finally got the hardware properties to display, I saw that they were running a 2.6 GHz P4 with 512 MB of RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro. But spyware alone had brought that computer to its knees. It was a mess.
I installed Ad-Aware and Spybot and let both of them run, and just got rid of everything. I removed a ton of crap with Add/Remove Programs, as well (lots of online casino shit and other useless garbage). I then removed those irritating TVMedia pop-ups by booting into Safe Mode and removing the necessary programs and running Hijack This.
I explained to them that, by running Spybot and Ad-Aware regularly, as well as keeping Windows up to date with Windows Update, they could keep their computer mostly clean. But one point I made very clear to them was never to use Internet Explorer unless absolutely necessary. I downloaded Firefox for them and set it as the default browser. I explained that Internet Explorer was probably the cause of 90% of their problems, because it's possible for websites to install things silently by using it or any number of other undesirable things. So I made it very clear that they should stick with Firefox. I also uninstalled Kazaa and installed Kazaa Lite for the kids.
Now their computer is running as it should. No more pop-ups or any shit like that. It took about 3 hours, but I did a damn fine job with that box, and they were grateful. All throughout that ordeal, I was thinking, "God I'm so glad I'm a Mac user."
> (love it when the firewalls ask to be registered
> before working, and need an internet connection to
> be registered!)
I ordered the free security update cd the Microsoft has out.
I do a clean Win98SE install on a friend's computer.
Onboard video won't go above 640x480 without the driver.
I don't have the driver.
I try to install the critical updates before I go online for the first time.
Disc doesn't work under 800x600. ^-^
(Yes, the update files you need are on the disc but how is Jo Sixpack supposed to figure out which ones to use?!?)
Ok tell me I am wrong and tell me why I am wrong please, as I want to learn!
wouldn't a hardware router such as a linksys usrobotics , belkin protect a win98 system from getting owned since to get to the pc port forwarding must be turned on.
Ok you need antivirus and spybot s&d and adaware as well.
secondly for all those people saying install xp dont run an old o/s i must point out
win98 is a good operating system for old hardware and you are not going to put xp on a p133 p200 system and have it work.
take most games out the picture and a p200 running 98 is a useful system.
I have a cafe full of 98se machines they get abused a lot but get a restore about once a month followed by updates to windows and the antivirus and they all have firefox, open office and gimp as standard along with yahoo aim and msn and icq. running xp on them isnt an option.
without the router i guess they would be owned but they are not and even virus infections are getting rare since i created disk images to restore from. instead of running AV and spyware checks which was how they used to be managed.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Thanks for the tip about Avast!, I recently had the experience of having to rescue a friend's PC after he tried to steal a copy of Norton Antivirus, and it blew up on him. That was just plain nasty. I couldn't even format the drive afterward, it would just sit there 'trying to recover sector xxxx'. I had to boot Knoppix, and do dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda, then repartition, and finally Windows would format it. Any low-level format tool would have worked probably, but I never leave home without a copy of Knoppix.
It still amazes me that people will install software they steal from Kazaa in the hopes that it will keep their system secure. Those people need serious thought adjustment therapy. That kind of stuff is the best thing that ever happened to Free Software.
Why is this even newsworthy? An incompetent reporter doesn't update her computer, and writes a rant because she's using an obsolete operating system? She even confessed to ignoring the instructions she was given to install the AV software and firewall.
*grumble* Can we have your job please? It sounds like you'll be out of work once the robots take over.
This is about as newsworthy as me complaining that my Dodge Dart is 'terribly slow' and 'crashes a lot'.
Its funny (to me) that this person had to spend $800 and almost 3 weeks to fix her computer. I have two points to make about this:
1, $800 would have bought her a NEW computer much better than the one they already have. Get an estimate when you are getting work done on anything. Explain that if the total repairs add up to 3x's the cost of the actual machine being "fixed," then screw getting the work done. Its like dropping a $5000 new crate engine in an old rusty Ford Escort.
2, It wouldn't have taken that long to fix the machine if she had just taken the computer to a reputable shop. I don't know why this is but I work support and people never want to take the computer to the place that specializes in repairing computers. They always want me to come and do it. I tell them I fix networks, not computers and if they want me to do it it will have to be later in the week after hours if I feel like it. People actually wait! 15 minutes away there are 2 computer repair shops, but nobody will take them there. The repair guys could have them fixed by the end of the day.... the mentality of these people is crazy.
Just because it's a computer doesn't mean you have to bend your whole logic system around. If your car is screwed, you take it to the mechanic, you don't bug your neighbour for weeks on end to do it because he helped you fix a flat one day and is now supposed to know everything and do everything better than the actual mechanic (even if he can).
It's like there is a mental block if you mention C O M P U T E R. Having people unplug a cord is impossible, but if you asked someone to unplug a toaster, it would be no problem. Click "My Computer" twice with your left mouse button - thats impossible! Set the microwave to cook for 5 minutes - no problem! Its very strange.. there should be some sort of test done on these people as it is toally the subjects mind that makes this so difficult.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
For $800 she should have just bought a whole new computer. These days, $800 buys you a fairly decent one.
Granted, she didn't know that before she started, but once it turns into 3 or 4 hours, you may as well quit while you're behind and shell out for a new system. She could still have done better.
Computers running windows 98 should not be on today's internet. No one who would run 98 is also conscientious enough for taking the steps to protect themselves online. Most people who actually care enough to take precautions also care enough about upgrading.
Would you leave your car doors unlocked downtown? How about paint a sign on your roof indicating that your car is in this status?
Brian
This is the story of a DESKTOP USER.
For the slow in the head (or the microsoft furies): Desktop user != Server
So, you cannot compare servers to desktop usage, apples and orange, yadda yadda.
Honestly the best solution to these problems is: Get a fucking router with built in firewall. A linksys costs $40. (less if you find it on sale)
It's worth the price.
The problem is not Microsoft, the OS, the PCs power or that fact it's on the net. It's the operator. Do you think it was hacked and all that crap was installed with out the user clicking or installing some thing.
I've had to fix a lot of PCs because the user clicked a box, usually misrepresenting what the results would be, and some payload frigs them.
The Problem Exists Between the Keyboard and the Chair
Oh. I thought (frr,yyy) was a (login,password).
I ran a couple of free online virus checkers over it and was surprised to find no evidence it's been owned or infected with anything. Perhaps cos it's only on dialup and he only visits two or three websites - banking type stuff. I haven't managed to educate him about not clicking links in emails though...
That said when I wanted to move some files down to my Linux box, Windows refused to install a NIC without the original access media (you guessed it, some friendly local amateur upgraded it to 98 using their own media.) Knoppix to the rescue :)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I know it's getting old, but Firefox really is better for this kind of thing. The whole IE Browser Helper Objects thing is a massive headache and a great way for all these places to insert their code onto your machine.
I switched my non-techie mother-in-law over to Firefox and she has been ecstatic over it. She thanked me yesterday because she hasn't had her browser hijacked, gotten malicious pop-ups, or been infected with spyware since I installed it.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
Actually, I think WinXP users would have a harder time getting online and staying online and uncracked long enough to get the security updates.
I've had to rebuild XP boxes, and the only ways that seem to work is to either sit them behind something that does NAT (or a firewall if the user has one - yeah, right) or install ZoneAlarm off a CD before connecting it to the 'net.
Even on dial-up. A worm doesn't really care if you're on dialup.
One of the things that surprised me in this article was the report that the problems only started once the user got a broadband service. (a) Really, worms don't care. (b) I was unaware that win9x had any remotely exploitable security holes. Outlook and IE holes aplenty, yes, but listening, exploitable services?
XP, on the other hand....
1. NT4 was launched by the end of 1996. Don't confuse it with NT 3.51. :-) Sorry.
2. NT4 could do everything 95 could do; DirectX wasn't an issue yet, direct-hardware-accessing games were DOS-mode games. Some of those ran under NT4 (on ring3, with DOS+VGA compatibility layer) and some did not. Remember: no 3D fancy video cards in '96!!!
3. Windows 98 only got DirectX right by 1999/2000, way after 98SE.
4. A '96 vintage Slackware has many, many less known exploits than 95 and 98. Or NT4.
5. NT4 had NTFS, done-right file locking and a complete network stack -- which neither 95 nor 98 had.
I *wanted* to prove your point, but I couldn't.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Don't forget...Activation!
..."Great now the next five"..."The next five"..."Ok now enter the next set of five"....."Almost half way there, now the next five"..."You're doing great, the next five"..."EXP just increased +3 , you're about to level up, now the next five"..."Almost finished, please enter the next five"..."Please enter the next five"..."Now for the last set of five"..."This activation code is invalid, please stay on the line for a Microsoft Activation Technician."... "Yallo pleez what are de first vive?"
Remeber it's not safe to go online yet, so use the phone. My favorite part of my modern windows installation is: "Ok Now enter the first five."
Really this is where it get's fun, but I digress.
1. buy $30 Netgear/Linksys router
2. backup important files to USB drive or something
3. format, re-install '98, windows update
4. install AV/Spybot/Adaware
Shouldn't have taken any "Tech" 48 hours.
Definitely a problem between chair and mouse.
#include <sig.h>
The way Macs function, you need admin privileges just to move something into the /Library/Startupitems folder. So you'd have to get authorization to do so, and even then it's pretty easy to get rid of it, simply by finding all the files (using something like grep or find or locate) and then sudo rm.
Not that that's happened to me, but a hosed copy of iPhoto made me do some research into removing programs that had files buried all over the HD.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
If its win9x, you boot from a Win98 boot disk, and then you delete Windows and Program Files directories.
Then you reinstall windows.
Godalmighty, you guys call yourselves techs. You should be embarassed. Its as simple as anything.
You already said you had Windows 98 on the drive.
I bought my laptop in 1999, which came with Windows 98 on it, and never really bothered to change the OS. Back then, I had a slow connection and little interest in learning Linux. Never touched the OS ever since, except for a few restoration operations from DOS for the Registry after a rather nasty programming screwup. I didn't have the cash or the will to upgrade until 2004, and to this day the system is still living with that same OEM Windows 98 installation, although it is now merely a secondary machine.
Yes, the poor thing crashes occasionnally and ran Photoshop 7 quite slowly (300mhz mobile celeron), but it's still working. No reinstallations, no virii, no nothing. I figure I'm an exception to the rule, but yes, even under the rather heavy and daily use, I kept the OS up and running for those several years. The machine even had its display and mouse pad repaired during the years, and got a RAM upgrade for running newer programs.
I'm not your average Jane Boxwine, thought.
What happens when you put an unprotected Windows 98 box on a broadband connection?
If you went back in time (say 1950's) and were able to peer into the future to 2004 and saw how users had to be "educated" in computer usage (install anti-virus, anti-spyware, OS fixes AND having to keep the whole mess updated), I would think the first thing that people would ask is "Can't the computer do it?"
Patching, fixing, protecting: it's a computer for crying out loud! Why shouldn't users be naive? Why should people be wasting their time learning how to fix something that shouldn't be broken in the first place?
Take a step back, and it seems totally absurd that people need to learn to protect an operating system so bad that it can't protect itself. I call that "sickly".
Ruby on Rails Screencast
I could have saved her 79 and 1/2 hours and $800 A free download of BHO Deamon would have found the offending Spyware in record time.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Don't delete their data.
if you delete the windows directory and program files directory, you're all set. You leave My documents, and all their "stuff" is saved.
Honestly, you people make it harder than it has to be.
Blockquote
When I read all this I the first thought I had was, gee I could through a slackware boot cd and be up and running in under an hour, and have all the applications I would ever need to do a great deal of work. Not counting patch time of course, but then slack 10 does not have that many fixes to it yet anyway.
Just my thoughts.
Brendan
P.S. I know we are saving a windows box but after a while is it really worth it?
ive actually been having less problems with windows 98 than xp as far as being attacked goes.. ive had 2 mostly unsecured win98 computers running apache (it was just a test and i decided to keep them up) but i think more people are trying to go after xp vulnerabilities since I really havent had any issues with these computers yet...
I hope someone tells the author that ZoneAlarm, if uninstalled on a Win9X box, has a tendency to delete certain files that are essential to internet usage. What's worse is, a typical Win98 "System Restore" via the Win98 CD won't actually recover the files. Removing and re-adding the appropriate network hardware won't recover the files, either.
e ntVersion\Run and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run and other similar registry keys, noting files that appear like they shouldn't be there, and tracking them down. Next, a trip through C:\Windows\System would be beneficial, if you know what to look for. Win.ini, System.ini, autoexec.bat, and config.sys are also places to look for at-boot problems.
:p
No, the only (guranteed) means of recovering them and having the net settings restored is to use a pre-ZA Win98 directory backup, or else WIPE THE DRIVE and reinstall from scratch.
All-in-all, this guy has (a) no idea what went wrong with his computer, and (b) no inclination to find out what went wrong with his computer. The "Digital Doctor" sounds like he's not very handy with older OS's either. Reinstalling Win98 is certainly an easy thing to do, but there are plenty of other steps he should've taken before the wipe and reinstall.
For starters, there's a command-line FTP program, which could've been used to acquire Mozilla, which would've given him the necessary net access to grab the latest virus definitions manually. He could've also downloaded Isarn Taskinfo or some other utility to better monitor what's in memory (since Win98's CTRL-ALT-DEL menu doesn't display everything). At that point, he'd have some grasp as to the severity of the situation, as well as (hopefully) some running, up-to-date AV software to nuke anything unwanted in the system.
Next he'd need to take a quick trip through REGEDIT to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr
C'mon. I can do better than that. Whoever hired Glenn, fire him and hire me instead.
---
present day... present time... hahahaha...
and im thinking that the guy working on this pc isn't a "tech", though HE may not be aware of that fact. this could have (probably) been resolved in around 2.5 hours. he thinks we (the industry) need to tell poeple the dangers... well we do, if they don't listen...tough. if you make it worse trying to fix it yourself, i hate it for ya, you shoulda come and seen me first. i'll admit that the problem with the symantec products should be put on the cd sleeve, but then again... most techs already know about this. and when i say tech, i don't mean phone tech
I have been fixing machines for a long time and i know that most technicians say "well, it's messed up, let's just reinstall everything. I hope you have backups." this is simply a mistake, a lazy tech who doesn't feel like dealing with the problem, or an uninformed tech who doesn't know how to fix the problem. also, it isn't so much a windows problem as it is a problem with other software. i have a win2k box that i use that has been hooked to broadband (although it is not currently) and it has run without errors for almost two years now and i haven't had to do a single reinstall or even a reboot that i can recall.
The problem is in being able to remove the software that isn't working. if the techs in the story followed symantec's instructions for removal of antivirus products from the machines, then that is the first problem because i happen to know firsthand that those instructions are largely incorrect and leave a lot of registry keys left untouched, which was probably why they were having issues with it.
I have been able to repair most of the computers that i have fixed without a reinstallation of windows. the only time i'll reinstall is if something is highly time-critical, the person's software and settings are stored in their roaming profile, and i have a ghost image or a RIS image of the machine that is tested and ready to go. otherwise, i'll do these things in this order: find the offending peices of software and destroy them manually, run adaware and a fresh install of a current copy of an antivirus program that is different from the one they were using (antivirus.com has a free online scan that's pretty good), delete all unecessary crap from hard drive (temp internet files, recycle bin, temp folders, etc.), then install all current upgrades to windows (except xp sp2, of course) and upgrade all driver files. finally, install a good firewall (like zonealarm) and antivirus program and then reinstall their software and give some instructions on where spyware comes from and how to deal with it.
Newsflash, people: script kiddiez are not just going around and breaking into people's computers randomly. it does happen occasionally, but i have had dozens of people tell me that they were hacked and i'll check things like system logs and firewall logs and various other information and of all the people claiming to have been hacked, only one of them actually was. I don't think that hackers (or crackers, as i prefer to call most of them) are to blame for as much as people give them credit for. it's mostly uninformed users and people who will install anything. our solution here should be focusing on education of the core principles of which technology operates instead of a bunch of "how to do this" and "install this, you need it" without telling anyone what that stuff does. it's kinda like give a man a fish, he can eat for a day, but teach a man to fish, etc.
"If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance."
idiots, running software designed by salesmen and implemented by hamstrung engineers. Sounds about like the SOP for almost any large business these days. Common sense is a liability...What could a home user on 98 have that could not be reinstalled ? I think I'd be looking at the time I was charged...
who is pissed that she is angry at "hackers?" hackers did not destroy her computer, a combination of her own ignorance and the nature of corporate exploitation did. in my vocabulary, hackers would be more likely to help you fix the problem instead of creating it. i believe she is concerned more with crackers, script-kiddies, etc.
/.er is at least a black-belt...he is the real reason she went through so much grief...she automatically waited a full week for him (but tried to solve it herself anyway? wtf!), and then he ends up making her buy more memory (instead of a hardware firewall/router/thing). plus, he encourages the obsession over an obscure AV/software bug. some things cannot be solved with the current set of knowledge! move on! path of least resistance is the solution to problems!
also, if you actually RTFAs, you would realize pretty quikly that "Glen" the tech is a complete dumbass who is perhaps a green belt in fixing-pc-kung-fu...i'm sure the average
argh! this whole article just made me want to bang my head into the wall and cry.
Why would a computer technician spend that much time trying to bring a box with windows 98 back from the dead? 1. Find out what applications they use and make sure you have all cds and cd-keys. 2. Make note of all hardware (especially ethernet card drivers) for driver purposes. 3. Find out what email they use (all users) and all passwords and settings for all. 4. Find their documents, images, mp3s, etc. 5. Buy a new HUGE hard drive for $70.00. 6. Partition new drive so the 2nd partition is big enough to hold all the data from the old HD. 7. Copy data from old drive to new drive's 2nd partition using the image tools that came with the HD. 8. Install a fresh copy of windows 98 on the new HD's 1st partition. Install firewall and antivirus software. Get updates. Install all the apps. 9. Set up email, copy documents, images, etc. 10. I would probably then try to make a copy of the new first partition to the old hard drive after wiping it first. Working your ass off to remove spyware that it takes 3 programs to "mostly" uninstall is a losing battle. This crap is insidious. Especially when you are dealing with a win 98 install that is older than 6 months or so. The spyware folks are well aware of ad aware et all and are making serious efforts to not be detected, etc. Final notes. Several years ago I used to work for a company as a pc tech. We charged $79.00 an hour and the average virus call would take at least 2 hours. I hated taking money from little old ladies and family's with teenagers. The REALLY depressing thing is that I spend a few hours fixing my friend's computers. Come back in a few months and they have crap on them again. Un-fing-believable. Are these @$$holes actually making ANY money from all this? Are they really going to benefit from observing my slashdot and p0rn habits? Or popping up vi@g@r@ ads for a healthy 29 year old? It just seems so pointless.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Common, this article must be some kind of April 1st joke. This whole thing is so ridiculous!!! Install the damn patches, and make VERY sure you don't confuse spyware with anti-spyware!!
...you are only partly right. In 1998 it could be pretty easy to install Red Hat (for example) with total lack of security as well--and I saw the results when friends with no Linux or UNIX experience at all would throw Red Hat on a leftover box, connect it to their cable internet and have it comporimised before the day was out. The total newbie audience was limited, however, and even newbies with an interest in Linux learned quickly how to secure their machines.
That is where the difference lies. The Linux community (from end user right up to the distribution companies) learn much more quickly. Fast forward to 2002 when WinXP was shiny and new and Red Hat and other distros really grew up. By then, you could get SELinux. A newbie could install Mandrake with everything locked down in a very secure configuration simply by clicking "high" or "paranoid" during installation. The kernel and applications were patched and maintained, and features such as packet filtering were included in the OS and continually improved. As a result, you are SAFER with Linux on the net now than you were with Linux on the internet of 1998.
Microsoft learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during that time. Windows XP was released with NO improvements to security--either in the OS itself or with its default configuration over WinNT or 2k. Everything was wide open. In fact, XP Home--despite being based on the same WinNT core as the other editions, had WORSE security. Microsoft figured the concept of protected access to system functions was too complicated for the home user (an admin password would just confuse people). As a result, things such as raw sockets were left wide open to anyone who gained access to the system--which was relatively easy to do with XP home. These huge blunders are only being corrected now with SP2.
Saying that this Win98 demo demonstrates how "users should keep up or upgrade to XP" is misleading. If the same blissfully ignorant user were to put an unpatched, unprotected XP box on a cable internet connection I GUARANTEE you it would be compromised MUCH QUICKER than a Win98 box. I've seen it before myself--witness some poor schmuck upgrade his Win98 box to XP, and in the time it took me to go and grab a bite to eat he had it on the net and connecting to Windows Update. Before the updates were finished downloading it was infected with THREE blaster and sasser variants and started rebooting spontaneously. Users should do more than just keep up to date or chane OSes. Users have to adopt good security practises--don't hook to the 'net without making sure there are not weak passwords, stupid open ports/services present etc. and probably a firewall in place. Keep virus software up to date at least daily and so on. Furthermore, Microsoft and other providers must make it easier for users to adopt these measures (and they are--slowly but surely. Still not up to snuff yet though).
A good Linux distro is a good basis for a secure system (better than any Windows OS I'd say). Sure it's not perfect (nothing is) but even though Linux might not be at the head of the security class, it isn' the retarded, paste-eating child in the corner that Microsoft has demonstrated itself to be.
Win98 is 6 years old. Who the hell cares? MacOS 9 wouldn't do any better if anyone gave a rat's ass about it.
Yep, and some pr0n sites which want to install spyware/adware simply give you the same message: "YOUR BROWSER IS NOT WIN32 COMPATIBLE!"
I know this happens in Linux, but I dont know if I've ever come across it in Windows on Firefox.
format is your friend, rather than pay for 48 hours worth of trouble shotting (aka paying someone to run ad aware) do yourself a favor and back up your files and format that sucker. maybe even splurge a little and pay $199 for xp. this is why people under 15 and over 30 should not be allowed to touch computers.
lose != loose
I was shocked that a search fo Mozilla came up empty. Simply switching to Firefox and making some descent security choices prevents all sorts of spyware. This is something that our reporter can actually do proactively, if only she gets the word. The other useful tool is the Thunderbird Email client. Remove MSIE and Outlook (Express or regular) and you stop all sorts of spyware and virii. Thow in a cheap router with firewall (as others have stated) and some antivirus software and you will have a reasonable chance of being able to use high speed Internet with a Win98 box.
Think global, act loco
Actually, at my shop, the first thing we do now if there is spyware/viruses is remove the drive, and slap it into an external drive bay, and run the necessary scans to kill all the naughty files. Then replace the drive, do a regular boot, clean the registry, and done. This method eliminates all those nasties that like to hang around after reboot the easy way (it's also quite a bit quicker if the client machine is slower than the tech machine).
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
Is it me, or is anybody who doesn't install a basic hardware firewall crazy??? (Or at least foolhardy.)
I've setup DSL and T1s for lots of small companies and friends, and I always install a seperate firewall unit. Post-rebate, these things are sometimes $10 or less. (I wouldn't use one of the $10 units for a business, but it works great for Aunt Petunia.)
With a hardware firewall, you don't need to jump onto WindowsUpdate immediately. And you can get to WindowsUpdate and update the system before your system gets compromised.
Sure, your system is still vulnerable to viruses (via email) and spyware (via stupid user clicking and IE vulnerabilties), but you are very unlikely to get rooted or infected for simply existing on the Internet.
(Firewalls can have security holes too, but they usually aren't so gaping.)
And here's another vote for Avast antivirus (www.avast.com). Great program and free (for home use). Better than some pay programs.
Yet major ISPs like Earthlink still strongly recommend a "bare" broadband connection. I'm using an external consumer hardware router/firewall, and the Earthlink support staff just goes nuts whenever they find out about it. Of course their heads would explode if they found out I'm not using their Earthlink branded software...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
People wouldn't change the oil in their car if there was no plastic sticker in the windshield to tell them to do that. Shit, they probably don't clean out the toaster unless it catches on fire.
If computers want smarter USERS then they have to build smarter COMPUTERS to serve them. Build it the fuck right from the get-go and make it so it is literally as idiot proof as the old pre-celluar age residential telephone.
Until then? Shut the fuck up and keep fixing all the crap you sent us to begin with.
A $40 router would have prveneted most or all of this.
I think the lesson is that all networks should have hardware firewalls or NAT/PAT devices that block all incoming requests by default and only allow them after careful consideration.
No one should have a broadband connection without one.
No it goes like this:
Tech: Where's your backup?
Client: Back what?
Tech: Backup.
Client:What up?
Tech: Backup.
Client What what?
Tech: Never mind.
12:50 - press return.
Q: What's the difference between a used-car salesman and a computer salesman?
A: The used-car salesman knows when he's lying.
John
Ha, I know why it took 10 1/2 hours - in that time he rooted her box and I don't mean the machine :)
it usually takes 1/15th of the time to slave the old HD into a known good disc for backup - then install XP pro...slave the "virus-ridden" disk into a flameable, yet virus protected system and let the scanning begin...clean files on the other end....
win xp (home or pro), is around $70 US for a student to buy...and these people obviosuly knew a student...either the intern who suggested zone alarm, or the actual kid who's computer it was...and slap a bit more ram into the machine so that it can run win xp....256 will do the job for most casual users' needs...
while the tech is at it - they're on broadband already, so why not actually do some real computer consulting and advise them on a $60 router with a built-in hardware firewall to do most of the protection heavy-lifting...
this entire fiasco should have taken approx 1.5-2 hours....as many other people have said...and the aforementioned solution wouldn't have cost $800 bones....
- bliSS
the only difference between a rut and a grave, are the dimensions
My sister-in-law was having problems with Win98 security. I brought over a Knoppix disk, and taught her and her kids how to use Mozilla and Gaim. That took care of their internet needs, and it is damned hard to root a CD.
Next time I visit, I will show them how to mount the C drive and use OpenOffice. That will take care of most school and work needs.
Yes, Linux can be complicated, and the games suck, but this family has modest computing needs, and no time for games. Knoppix, on the CD, is a good fit. It would probably work great for Kathleen Day's needs, too.
Keith Lofstrom server-sky.com
Repeat after me:
Connect the Cable/DSL modem output to the WAN input of a NAT box. You'll save yourself hours of frustration.
My Linksys BEFSR-11 is the best $100
I spent. And, looking at the incoming traffic log will reinforce that conclusion for those with any doubts.
They can get money for your information.
The SWIPE calculator will tell you what a company will get for selling your information. I'm not sure who is buying, but you can make 20-30 USD from each person's records.
Beyond that, "they" can use a compromised box to send out more spam, and enough people buy to make it profitable. The same goes with ad servers and adbots on your machine. Eventually, you'll find an ad that's interesting. Slashdot wouldn't have ads if some of us didn't click them, would they? Ads also keep google afloat - if they didn't rake in the dough from google ads, then the program would have been discontinued.
To put it another way - if they weren't making money, they wouldn't do it.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
$40 for hardware NAT box (any store has em) :)
$400 for a new computer with Win XP and a whole bunch of preinstalled stuff (practically all retail boxes have some sort antivirus with 3-6-12 months of subscription)
$25 for a box of CD-RW for dragging data back and forth.
---------
$465.
Can I have the rest please?
Hyperom.com
Hello slashdot gurus. This is my first ever slashdot post on here. It just so happens that new technology is emerging from under the shadows. No more will websites be able to install their crap undetected. With one tool, and not all these spam removal tools you need to use to clean the system. It's new and there is nothing like it on the market. See for yourself. www.bbxtechnologies.com
at City College who is also a tech support person for a computer consulting company related an experience he had last spring.
One of their clients had refused to update his annual subscription to antivirus definitions for his email server. So of course he was "owned" almost immediately.
The tech spent three days trying to clean the machine. There were gigabytes of spam messages, and a ton of viruses, trojans and spyware on the server. The reason it took three days instead of just rebuilding the server was the tech was trying to get rid of just ONE virus that just couldn't be killed no matter what AV software he used.
Eventually they decided to just rebuild the server. Once that was done and the server brought up, it was instantly hit by thousands of spam messages - the guy's IP address has been seized on by hundreds of spammers worldwide as a "spam server" and the IP address was now totally useless. Another IP address had to be assigned to the server.
So the owner of the server spent who knows how much money per hour for tech support over thirty hours or more because he wouldn't spend $300 or whatever for an annual AV subscription.
I had a client a few weeks ago who allowed the daughter of the secretary to come in and play with the secretary's machine which was on DSL. Next thing they knew, their mouse would freeze, their PC clock was losing time, etc. I came in, ran Ad-Aware - yup, spyware. Not too much - lots of tracking cookies, but only a couple executables. It doesn't take much for this crap to ruin your system.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Cleaning up after clueless users is a pain. When it's a boss who screwed up the Gnome install on his Linux box, it sucks. When it's a luser who installed a "free screensaver" and FUBARed a laptop it really sucks. But neither of those experiences can compare with how painful it is to try and build a network for a kludge of clueless morons who expect one server to do everything without enough money.
You could two brand new computers for $800 if you shop carefully. Or at least one very nice one. Either way you get a brand new operating system with a built-in software firewall.
I'm hoping that the technicians he/she called in didn't actually bill her for this, they just gave an estimate of what they would have charged. It's kind of irresponsible of them to force a poor user to pay so much money just to get her computer back to 1996 specifications.
So yeah blow away her software and replace her OS with Linux and then spend HOW much time installing products that might do what she needs? Then teaching her how to use them? Remember - this was someone who wasn't bright enough to know how to stop this crap in the first place.
:-)
Reinstalling the OS is also not always an option. Computers are much like people's homes in that they become heavily customized over time. Do you level your home and start over everytime the faucet leaks? Does everyone keep track of ALL of their registration keys? All of their passwords stored in cookies? All those tweaks to the interface and 3rd party products that do little things? All those funky drivers for oddball hardware from manufacturers no longer in business? From what I've seen hell NO they don't. Telling someone you have to trash their machine and that they have to reinstall from scratch will put many users in tears. I try VERY hard not to do it unless I absolutely have to. Besides, it's a challenge not to do it
I am now cleaning up machines just like the machines described several times a month. It takes me, on average, about 4-10 hours per machine and I'm pretty experienced at it too. Much of this time is spent kicking off automated programs, interpeting the output, and then cleaning out the crap. I have to do this with a second machine connected to the 'net just to research all of the TRASH I find on machines and sometimes to DL updates to USB fobs. There is even spyware out there that will disable virus scanners, disable Windows Update, and shut down many of the anti-spyware tools. It also doesn't help that these jerks have gone out and put up Web sites that look like they supply spyware cleaners that in reality install *drum roll* MORE SPYWARE! Some of this stuff even redirects searches for these products to bogus pages or to 404 errors. The scum of the Earth builds this stuff, how they actually make any money doing it is beyond me. The last machine I worked on had it's home page directed to an IP address that when visited actively ATTACKED the user's machine. It's tons of fun to finally get a machine back to working, hit MS Update, and find out that there are 35+ "critical" updates out there missed because a piece of crap turned off their update mechanism.
The folks getting hit with this are much like the article's author. They don't understand security, they run sub optimal machines, they refuse to update their AV products when they expire (MicroTrend's Housecall is a godsend as an initial check), and they let their kids download and install anything they want. When I get my hands on them they are fairly glowing chock full of nasty crap. I clean them and I don't charge but it sure as hell takes up alot of my time. I learn something just about each and every time though so I DO get something out of it...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
I've enver run into this myself but a friend who was unhosing a machine this weekend called me up with this very issue. A quick search found this site-> http://cexx.org/lspfix.htm
Ya', it's not a link sue me. I can see how this issue could opccur with some of the "cleaners" out there not being real gentle onhow they rip stuff out of the Registry. I'd also agree that the guy who waded into this fight could've been better prepared. One of my hard rules for thi sort of activity is that I make NO HOUSECALLS! you want your machine fixed you bring the CPU box to my home or meet me somewhere and I fix it someplace where I have FULL access to tools and a high speed connection for updating your crap when I'm done. I don't get paid to do this so if folks want this service they come to me...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Yeah, yeah, firewall, toolkit CD, spare hard drive, blah blah blah. How far do you want to take that? "What kind of half-assed tech doesn't carry around the kit to build a complete multi-tier corporate network from scratch?"
The bottom line is no one should ever have to reinstall the OS just to get rid of malware. Right, wish in one hand, etc.
When I went home for my sister's graduation last June, my parents were in a similar situation to this reporter. They had Windows XP and had never downloaded a Windows Update. Ever. There was too much stuff on the computer (financial records, etc.) to just blow it away and format from scratch.
After about 6-7 hours of actual work and about 36 hours of downloading (yes, dialup, in a rural area to boot), I had the system back to what appeared to be normal. They haven't reported difficulties since then, so I assume it's more or less stayed that way. Ad-Aware, Spybot, Norton Antivirus, mostly judicious and occasional heavy-handed use of regedit, and several boots into Safe Mode were the key. It's tedious, but it can be done, and sometimes should be done.
A lot of times reinstalling from scratch is somewhere between a false economy and a disaster waiting to happen.
-- Old Man Kensey
I can't believe that no-one has mentioned Usenet yet. Always the best option for resolving whatever is the "problem du jour".
I think you are over-estimating the importance of a computer to the average 'naive' computer user. it is an appliance to send email or look at nice things to buy on ebay.
/. hahaha how stupid are these people. I'll bet there are many computer geeks (like me) who don't know the first thing about knitting or making cookies or being a nurse (which my grandmother was for 45+ years) or making an entire x-mas meal for 20+ people in one sitting. Naivete in one relatively new field does not make them morons. 6 years old may be an eternity for software and OS's but 6 years is but a blink to grandma who's refrigerator lasted 26.
Gramdma has a toaster, a microwave and a vcr and all these other items she has ever purchased, they are EXPECTED to work everytime and for the most part they do. Her blender won't try to re-arrange her sock drawer for shits and giggle's and the microwave has made food hot every day for 15 years without fail.
Has gramdma upgraded her microwaves OS? how bout her VCR or sewing machine? NO! She has never had to nor has she ever even expected to have to!
You do not expect to have to upgrade your damn toaster or vcr on a viscious 3 month upgrade cycle, nor should you have to. Why would gramdma expect what is likely the most expensive item she has purchased in the last few years to be any different? Technology naive grandma does not even consider the possiblily of having to 'back up' her computer or upgrade her 'what the heck is an OS?' How come the damn thing can't just work right from the get go?
I see countless posts like this and jokes on
hell, I know about backing stuff up and downloading patches and and running this weeks flavor of OS and running firewalls and I occasionally get stung.
to the average person, the damn beige boxes SHOULD JUST WORK.
Does everyone keep track of ALL of their registration keys?
I've often wondered if the frequency of Win9X crashes/currupted files was a thinly veiled attempt to get users to re-purchase software; not to mention all of the add-on stuff like virus protection, firewalls, pop-up blockers.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Dunno if the site actually crashed the browser, since I never revisited that particular site afterwards (pre-1999)
---PCJ
Half the win98 problems I've had have come from the registry. When I reinstall, I format that drive.
My solution isn't a no cost solution. You're going to lose some stuff. But I learned the hard way that there really isn't any way to "fix" an old windows 98 distribution that doesn't take days and days.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
[LSP or Layered Service Provider is a piece of software that can be inserted into the Windows TCP/IP handler like a link in a chain. However, due to bugs in the LSP software or deletion of the software, this chain can get broken, rendering the user unable to access the Internet. Spyware is good at this, and some cleaners leave a broken LSP behind.
With the correct tool, the fix takes seconds. Without the tool, you need to uninstall and re-install the winsocket, or else the same with the entire network support. Otherwise you fall into the trap this poor bloke got into.]
And the "proper tool" would be...?
me too.
My boss was coming back to use the computer in the shop and I asked him why, he said too many pop ups on his. Went to check, took 4 hours to clean his computer out. 23 adware, 2 trojans later I got it cleaned out. We were trying to figure out how it got so screwed up and I was looking at the programs on his computer, and found a couple of games. I asked him about it, and he said that he didn't install them. Then he said I bet my kids were using my computer while I was gone the week before. Sure enough, they had been online, playing games and something got installed and screwed it up. Why kids are allowed to mess with company computers, I guess is the misfortune of working in a small company. Needless to say, Active X has ben turned off, stronger antivirus software installed, spy cleaning/scanning software installed, and all password protected, and I'm the only one with the password.
Or is it? I keep hearing in my mind: but Macs are expensive.
Face it. People are stupid. They see good alternatives such as linux and Mac OS X and yet keep on sticking for Windows. And you know what? I have no simpathy whatsoever toward her. In fact, I am very happy to hear this. Let the world know that there is more to it than forking cash to a salesman to own a computer.
What a sorry piece of article. At the least, she should inform readers of other alternatives.
...that you are not exactly doing a service to the Gentoo community, reinforcing myths as you are.
"ppl" ??
Come on!
the responsibility should be the users' for the router firewall.
.5 hrs of site time took 2.5 thanks to the stubbornness of the ISPs techs not wanting me to get root access to this router of theirs, and the lack of configuration on the unit, and their iron-fist policy on us using it.
a broadband provider provided a new client of mine a modem/router combo with their newly subscribed connection- and wouldn't take it back.
what a pain. it took an act of god for them to tell us what the admin username/pw was on this combo-unit; I just wanted to get DMZ & port forwarding set up for remote access to this site (via dynsns.org) as we already had a firewall all configured fine, and ready to go; now we're double nating, and i needed to change the address space on the lan, to b/c the nat range behind their Firewall was fixed and GUESS WHAT happened to match what we already had at this site. oh joy.
what should've cost them
they should at least give you the option for a straight layer 2 device.
If she floats, she's a witch.
I should take up computer journalism.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
my policy on pirated software is simple:
If i see the user is using oviously pirated software, i have no qualms in using it (because they don't). if they have no pirated software, i'll explain the idea of installing software sans legal liscense (Windo$e, they rarely have a problem with this), and go with it. I do however offer the legal route first, and after I explain the $100-$200 difference, they go with the 'less legal, but cheaper route). I don't give pirated anything to businesses though, that's bad.
I love this little program. It makes cleaning up a PC fast and easy. None of this 2+ hours to clean it up. Just remove the stuff that you don't need (Must have some experience with PC's to know what is good and bad). It even can remove the software that hooks into IE.
/
I like HiJack this http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html
I run Win98SE on two older computers. Here's what I suggest:
1. Hardware firewall. Forget zone alarm and the rest. Just buy a little Linksys or Dlink high speed router/firewall. There cheap.
2. Virus software. I use Free-AV http://www.free-av.com/
3. Setup FireFox http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ and
Thunderbird http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
Don't worry about much.
And when I need to I use HiJackThis to remove the odd piece of spyware that is installed.
I noticed a lot of spyware comes from Kazaa and other P2P networks. If your just web browsing the previous precautions should be enough. P2P is a completely different story!
When you buy a car, the salesman doesn't teach you how to drive it, doesn't tell you that driving it into a wall is a BAD idea, and doesn't tell you that it won't float if you run it off a bridge and into the ocean.
Conversely, when a major OEM sells a system to an end consumer, should it be responsible if the buyer decides to download porn off of usenet that is infected? Should the OEM be responsible because the end consumer has no idea of how to use the system properly? Computer ownership and usage comes with a responsibility to the buyer holding them accountable for being a dumbass. You don't sue Ford because the sales rep didn't explain and teach you how to drive and you end up crashing into a wall because you can't figure out how to drive. Or maybe you do but its just as stupid and pointless as complaining that I didn't know if I download porn off usenet might expose my machine to worms.
Well done Phil this is spot on.
Back in the 60's the American car industry peddled out a similiar line of "product before safety" . The book, Unsafe at any speed [Ralph Nader, 1965] ...
In the case of the Chev Corvairs even when parked. (you can read such stories from the reader testimonials at amazon. Better still read the book at your local library). As a result of the book and the following movement, the mantra of "Engineering, Enforcement, Education". The legacy that is still applied to Engineering practice today.
It's a sad day for journalists (let alone Journo's from the Washington Post [think Woodward and Burnstein]) that fail to understand Naders legacy and see it's relevence to todays computer software industry.
The lefty ratbag John Pilger's creed should be repeated here to see where this journalist has failed the Posts readers ....
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
I see a lot of mention of various firewall technologies here, but no mention of my personal fave for Win98 boxes: Tiny Personal Firewall. Anyone still use that? I *love* that thing. I actually have a Win98 box that I use as a web server -- it's far too underconfigured to bother upgrading to anything else -- and it runs TPF. After bringing that up, it runs SQL Server, Tomcat, and James. It crawls, but it's functional, and I have no doubt that that is at least in part due to the Tiny Personal Firewall software.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Otherwise, Spybot can fix it.
Xblock will also fix it.
All of which are mentioned at spywareinfo
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
been there, done that.
Tour guide
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Any OS at that time had mechanisms to isolate privileged tasks from normal users. UNIX (of course), mainframe OSes and Linux had root, MacOS, although was a network OS by then (AppleTalk?) only opened network services that were specifically configured to be open, otherwise there was no way to own it remotely.
The dumbtards at MS (for chrissakes, by 1998 I had been using Linux to connect to the Internet for 2 years) did not put any security constraints in their cosumer grade OS.
Sorry, but they failed that Engineering test and they did badly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In 1998 Linux had been in development for a few years and has delimited clearly the sphere of privileges for different users, UNIX and mainframe OSes had done it for even longer. MacOS, was a networked OS and did not allow connections willy-nilly. I don't remember about OS2 but I believe you were required to login to your own machine.
For goodness sake, Novell Netware was making a killing as the network OS of choice and you did need to login to access the network resources, using a prompt you could not ignore.
Sorry but by the time W98 came out there was a big enough body of knolewdge that require a minimum of security architectured in the desing of any OS.
MS failed miserably, so please stop defending them about this one please like if there were no others at the same time doing things better.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Windows is NOT the problem. What you do or don't run on it IS.
Run Firefox/Mozilla not IE. Run Kazaa lite not Kazaa. Run at least one good free firewall (zone alarm) and one good free anti-virus (spybot) and one good free anti-ad (ad aware). Take time to learn mozilla and its options especially ad block.
And most of all : don't connect to the web till you know what you are doing (drive in a field or parking lot before getting on the roads) and don't move from dial up to broad band until you are good at defensive driving (surfing) (stay off the highway till you are good at nonhighway driving).
2... yeah, I had a machine with some 3dfx card too (the ones you had to passthru the VGA cable) ... but the games were normally not DirectX (the showcase directX game was the Microsoft Plus for Windows 95's Pinball)
:-)
4... no, lots of people used late 80's and early 90's Sun / DEC / IBM machines as desktops, and those who did could not go Windows, so they transported their X desktops to linux... both Slack and Debian (hamm)
5... Slack'96 had good file locking, a sane filesystem, and also ran both SIAG and latex (that even up to the present day can make MSOffice run for the money -- even if it's not so ez to use __and I'll grant you that__)
ok. if you were a kid, W95 had the gamez, but if you were an adult (and I was), linux was pretty much ready in 96. and the point to the whole article was: if I put a Slack with Linux 2.0 (which _is_ 96 vintage) directly connected in the net, as of today, I will have a machine with the same capabilities of w98 machine without the hassle of having my machine 0wn3d in the first 48 hours. And remember we are talking Linux'96 vs. Windows'98.
But I bet you will agree in disagreeing with me
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Zeus, what arrogance. I know /. is Geek City, but when are people here going to wake up to the fact that remaining blissfully ignorant of how some of the tech around you works does not, by definition, make people "stupid", "idiots", "drones", or any of the other pejoratives I see constantly slung about here? A good third of you have no idea how the electrical supply system really works, let alone how to fix it if it goes wrong. Yet you depend on it every day to run your cherished machines. Does that make you a "drone"?
The man in the street has every right to expect his tech to work without repeated catastrophic failures or undertaking major surgery on his own -- something every civil or aeronautical or electrical engineer knows (because they get busted if they don't). The moment more than 10% of software "engineers" understand that, the sooner they will have earned the right to that honorific.
Mod me -200 flamebait, but if you're looking around for a reason why your job's departing to overseas semi-competents, re-read the post.
Duh, how about telling us what this Unofficial Patch you speak of is?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Heh. I got owned once... if you could call it that... back in about 1998 or 99 I accidentally on purpose put that trojan netbus on my machine to see what would happen.
I was only on a shoddy install of Win98 at the time, so I didn't really care - it gave me an excuse to reinstall the next day (needed it anyway), so meh...
Oh yeah, and I was on like, flash as 33.6k dialup due to the phonelines...
Anyway, someone came on and said "so you playing [insert random shitty windows card game here], huh?" and I'm like, "yeah, so? im bored as shit." and they're all like [opens cd-rom drive] "did your cd-rom drive just open?" and i'm like "shit your lame. using netbus to "haxor" my computer... you suck"
then i got their email address (iirc it was an @netscape.com address) and subsequently nuked their machine. (courtesy of winnuke. stupid kiddie script, but still fun...)
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)