To all the people suggesting PE discs - what AV do you use? The vast majority simply do not work in a preboot environment. The ones that do tend to be old versions, which are about as helpful in removing real threats as a dull knife.
You can use the included driverpacks app to include most LAN/WAN drivers and then use an online scanner if you like or you can install PE to a USB disk and install any Antivirus program you like.
In my experience, the overwhelming majority of viruses are removed by MalwareBytes in safe mode.
In my experience those people come back 3 days later with the same virus. MalwareByte's runs in PE now, as does SuperAntiSpyware and HijackThis and a number of Antivirus programs.
get a USB => IDE/SATA adapter from newegg. Pop out the hard drive and hook it up to a clean machine. Mount the registry hives using regedit, and do a scan with your favorite AV product. No relying on a potentially rooted machine, and no relying on an old/gimped AV product that works in a preboot environment.
That works or you can just use an PE Disk which will auto load your hives for you.
Then you can run which ever programs you want like MalwareBytes, SuperAntiSpyware, HijackThis, etc and I normally delete the recycle bin, system restore folder, and all the temp folders while taking a look around for stray files. All this while the other scans are running.
There really isn't any right or wrong way so whatever works for you is great. In my experience however safe mode is problematic.
The best option is to nuke the MBR and format/reload the system but people hate that.
Safe Mode does fine enough for most people. I've been cleaning out viruses
Viruses perhaps but malware keeps loaders running hidden in the background. All those things you remove reinstall themselves. I do system clean up work and I see it all the time plus often the malware won't even let you run programs like HijackThis, SuperAntiSpyware, or MalwareBytes.
And of course, no "security" software is ever going to protect you from everything. No one wants pre-emptive protection because it hinders their experience. If you know what you're doing, you won't fall for
This isn't really true. Things like IE, Flash, Shockwave and Acrobat have zero day exploits that will infect your computer if you stumble on the right email or site. I'd say 85% of infections are from user ignorance but the rest is luck and who you have contact with. (Outlook address books, etc)
As for viruses, trojans, spyware, and the likes - I tried to educate people once.
It's hard for people to grasp "there is nothing you can do to protect yourself except become a techie" You can browse the web with Java,Java Script,Flash,etc etc turned off and still have an APP that has a security hole that will infect your system.
But if you mean telling everyone to run Linux than sure that pretty much takes care of most of the problems but then you have to become their go-to person when ever they want to install something. It's all loose-loose, what really needs to happen is better enforcement of the network and better law enforcement involvement. Take all those people trying to protect the children and make them do some real work.
Yes I agree but I've seen really bad movies that are overflowing with plot holes, such as Transformers 2, gross 832,747,337 worldwide making it the third-highest grossing film of 2009 as of October 13, 2009. Hollywood is not an Artistic consortium.
I'm Mr. Finkelstein of Megalith Studios, and we've decided that you're the perfect person to write a script for our new bajillion dollar robot invasion film. This job pays roughly $8/hr.
WOW sounds great! no really, get that to me in writing and I'll get started ASAP. I work 15 hour days, six days a week so it should only take a year or so.
Well yes, among other places... Why do you think countries are passing three-strikes and you're booted off the internet laws? It's so the overlords have more bandwidth to download pornography and interlink with other overlords via IRC.
1) Random video on YouTube becoming a $30m Hollywood movie is great publicity. 2) You can copy software, books, music and ideas, but you can't copy the talent that created them.
Point 1 - taken. Point 2 - taken but someone needs to let Hollywood executives in on that little secret.
That really is an amazing piece of work for someone to come up with on their own!
No offense intended to the great nation of Uruguay, but why would giant robotic aliens give a rat's ass about Montevideo of all places?
They've been intercepting our interwebs for some time now and as such they've been watching porn from 8thstreetlatinas.net. Like most gigantic robotic overlords they require fresh, nimble, "barely legal" workers for their Energon mines in order to continue to function properly and thus continue to watch even more porn as well as do all those other things that overlords do. Pass pointless laws, monitor the pleebs, protect the children, make deals with other alien overlords, etc.
I know this because I too am a slave of the robotic overlords however, I work in accounting...
I was a "comp sci" major 10 years ago but had to drop out when my mother got laid off from her job and I had to bump up my job hours to support her and couldn't handle both school and working full time in tech support.
The computer classes are boring as hell when you already know the stuff but I was taking hard core math classes at the time.
Try and set some money aside if you can. Just in case shit continues to hit the fan.
First, all of my professors expect us to check our e-mail multiple times each day, and several have specific coursework that must be completed on a computer outside of class. At the college I attend, most of the students have laptops (I can't think of anyone specifically who doesn't). Although these tasks can be accomplished in the university labs, having a laptop makes it considerably easier.
I totally agree, it is easier and better to have a working laptop to do your college work on...
and take rather good care of it. I paid the $3200 price tag for a laptop
The keyword here is I. When you pay for something you are more likely to take care of it.
That all set aside, I strongly support giving children laptops.
I think you are misunderstanding my point. I am all for giving children a desktop computers as soon as possible. Now giving a $1000 laptop to a 10 year old is just dumb and most college age people don't need anything more than a $400-$500 laptop. If those young adults are into computer games and want to chip in some money than sure, if they are responsible with computers and need the extra power than sure as well! What I laugh at is when people think their English major kids need anything more than a basic unit.
Case in point I bought four Compaq/HP Presario F500 laptops two years ago for $399 each. They where being discontinued because they came with VISTA Home Premium and didn't have the Ram/Power to run it.
SPECS:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core processor T53 at 1.7 GHz 15.4 inch WXGA Widescreen Display 1280x800 NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 Video SATA 80GB 5400rpm Hard Drive 1024MB DDR2 System Memory Super Multi 8X DVD plus/minus R/RW with Double Layer Support 802.11b/g Wireless
I wiped them and installed XP. Gave one to my wife, mother, and daughter. The last one I kept for myself as a travel system. Care to Guess which one has had problems??? Yes the 16 year old's because she chooses not to use it responsibly. I even gave her a written list of things never to do and explained how one gets a virus and breaks a laptop but you know how that goes. Lucky I made my own restore disk so I wouldn't have to deal with most of it every month when she's managed to install some spyware. And yes I force her to use Firefox but that doesn't prevent her from clicking on anything and everything she gets from her friends. Nor did it stop her from running the unit on her fluffy bed where it couldn't breath even though I had got her a pad for it to sit on and told her it would cause problems for it. She simply doesn't care because she knows daddy will fix it or buy her a new one (preferable a NEW one). This is the point I was trying to make and it has nothing to do with my kid just with people who choose not to treat things well because they where free. After she cooked the processor I took her lappy away and forced her to use a desktop for six months and now she treats the lappy with a little more respect. Not much but enough not to let the thing cook.
On the other hand, my parents barely ever bought anything for my computer. Being limited to minimal software (Windows and Office, not much else) pushed me to try out FOSS, which I quickly came to love. Being limited by dated hardware caused me to explore Linux and Unix operating systems as well as to learn how to sap the most power possible out of the hardware available to me.
And what would have happened if they had bought you everything you asked them for? do you really think you would know anything about Linux or how to fix your computer when you have a hardware problem?
Just my two cents, take it from a college kid who wasn't spoiled but grew up with computers his whole life. Really, we don't all party, many (most) of us take good care of our laptops and don't risk them being stolen, and often mommy and dad
What we got here is someone who made some really dumb choices but the result of it all has been nothing. He should pay for it, but 18 months I think is more then enough as well as the fact that nobody will every hire his nutty ass ever again.
If he followed written procedure that he signed off on when he was hired I'D SURE AS HELL HIRE HIM!
"What's wrong, would you not trust your child with a computer to take to college?"
If my child wants a $1000 laptop they can save their own money and buy one themselves else they are getting a basic $400 unit that will do everything they need.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you're not familiar with the concept (or practice) of empathetic reasoning. Otherwise known as "putting yourself in someone else's shoes."
Honestly you're still making yourself sound like a total idiot and you remind me of a very incompetent Glenn Beck...
You've heard the phrase "college kid" have you not? What's wrong, would you not trust your child with a computer to take to college? You must be some kind of idiot. Of course, you sound like you're somewhere in the under fifteen range. If so, I can certainly agree that you shouldn't be trusted with a laptop.
College kids love to spill beer all over their laptop keyboards or leave them laying about to get stolen because mommy & daddy will have to buy them a new one. They could never do their college work without one! (A total lie)
And lastly, I'm sorry but your logic really makes no sense. First you question if I have idiot children but then go on to claim I must be 15? Anyway, if I was in fact 15 I would be all for getting an overly expensive piece of tech.
Now, if they meant always on, if I had a kid I'd much rather give him a nice $1000 laptop rather than a crap laptop and $500+/year cellular data subscription.
LoL, you would give a child a $1000 laptop... You must be some kind of idiot...
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To all the people suggesting PE discs - what AV do you use? The vast majority simply do not work in a preboot environment. The ones that do tend to be old versions, which are about as helpful in removing real threats as a dull knife.
You can use the included driverpacks app to include most LAN/WAN drivers and then use an online scanner if you like or you can install PE to a USB disk and install any Antivirus program you like.
In my experience, the overwhelming majority of viruses are removed by MalwareBytes in safe mode.
In my experience those people come back 3 days later with the same virus. MalwareByte's runs in PE now, as does SuperAntiSpyware and HijackThis and a number of Antivirus programs.
get a USB => IDE/SATA adapter from newegg. Pop out the hard drive and hook it up to a clean machine. Mount the registry hives using regedit, and do a scan with your favorite AV product. No relying on a potentially rooted machine, and no relying on an old/gimped AV product that works in a preboot environment.
That works or you can just use an PE Disk which will auto load your hives for you.
Then you can run which ever programs you want like MalwareBytes, SuperAntiSpyware, HijackThis, etc and I normally delete the recycle bin, system restore folder, and all the temp folders while taking a look around for stray files. All this while the other scans are running.
There really isn't any right or wrong way so whatever works for you is great. In my experience however safe mode is problematic.
The best option is to nuke the MBR and format/reload the system but people hate that.
Even if there were a Final Ultimate Security Solution for Windows
My MS Rep told me Windows 7 WAS that???
So the ext4 approach to data consistency?
This is the worse troll ever...
Safe Mode does fine enough for most people. I've been cleaning out viruses
Viruses perhaps but malware keeps loaders running hidden in the background. All those things you remove reinstall themselves. I do system clean up work and I see it all the time plus often the malware won't even let you run programs like HijackThis, SuperAntiSpyware, or MalwareBytes.
And of course, no "security" software is ever going to protect you from everything. No one wants pre-emptive protection because it hinders their experience. If you know what you're doing, you won't fall for
This isn't really true. Things like IE, Flash, Shockwave and Acrobat have zero day exploits that will infect your computer if you stumble on the right email or site. I'd say 85% of infections are from user ignorance but the rest is luck and who you have contact with. (Outlook address books, etc)
As for viruses, trojans, spyware, and the likes - I tried to educate people once.
It's hard for people to grasp "there is nothing you can do to protect yourself except become a techie" You can browse the web with Java,Java Script,Flash,etc etc turned off and still have an APP that has a security hole that will infect your system.
But if you mean telling everyone to run Linux than sure that pretty much takes care of most of the problems but then you have to become their go-to person when ever they want to install something. It's all loose-loose, what really needs to happen is better enforcement of the network and better law enforcement involvement. Take all those people trying to protect the children and make them do some real work.
boot into safe mode, and do a scan of the whole PC
Safe mode will do nothing to keep malware from loading at this point....
Get a WinPE Distro like http://www.ubcd4win.com/
He forgot to mention, they're giving you an executive title so they don't have to pay you overtime.
Hummm, the standard contract then? The one with the hookers and blow clause?
I've seen people tell a story with a still photo.
Yes I agree but I've seen really bad movies that are overflowing with plot holes, such as Transformers 2, gross 832,747,337 worldwide making it the third-highest grossing film of 2009 as of October 13, 2009. Hollywood is not an Artistic consortium.
Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers_2
I'm Mr. Finkelstein of Megalith Studios, and we've decided that you're the perfect person to write a script for our new bajillion dollar robot invasion film. This job pays roughly $8/hr.
WOW sounds great! no really, get that to me in writing and I'll get started ASAP. I work 15 hour days, six days a week so it should only take a year or so.
You mean they have already taken over England?
Well yes, among other places... Why do you think countries are passing three-strikes and you're booted off the internet laws? It's so the overlords have more bandwidth to download pornography and interlink with other overlords via IRC.
1) Random video on YouTube becoming a $30m Hollywood movie is great publicity.
2) You can copy software, books, music and ideas, but you can't copy the talent that created them.
Point 1 - taken.
Point 2 - taken but someone needs to let Hollywood executives in on that little secret.
That really is an amazing piece of work for someone to come up with on their own!
Well, I recently got back from the other end of the galaxy after being flung through a wormhole.
John Crichton is that you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farscape
Yes, I'm curious how he pulled it off. Is it with pirated software and paying his crew 100 pesos a day?
He's in South American so using "pirated" software as you call it is perfectly acceptable.
What I wonder about is why Hollywood just didn't steal his idea they they normally do.
No offense intended to the great nation of Uruguay, but why would giant robotic aliens give a rat's ass about Montevideo of all places?
They've been intercepting our interwebs for some time now and as such they've been watching porn from 8thstreetlatinas.net. Like most gigantic robotic overlords they require fresh, nimble, "barely legal" workers for their Energon mines in order to continue to function properly and thus continue to watch even more porn as well as do all those other things that overlords do. Pass pointless laws, monitor the pleebs, protect the children, make deals with other alien overlords, etc.
I know this because I too am a slave of the robotic overlords however, I work in accounting...
but, but, he got a movie deal out of it and only spent $300 bucks? what have you done lately?
Why is Pat Robertson still alive??? That rat fucker is still alive at 79? I thought you were supposed to be a just God?
The good die young, on the other hand, cthulhu is forever...
You might at least have tried to reference Hadrian's wall
Rubbish, that's ancient history!
Not true. I have done it many times before.
They are cracking down on it more and more. Next time you try you might be surprised when they tell you to fuck off..
.... there's an app for that ;)
It's on sale in the iPhone App store today for only $1.99!!!!
What's the alternative, voting for Cthulu?
Yes... you will vote for Cthulu... When that time has finally come we will know peace..
P.S. good luck with school.
I was a "comp sci" major 10 years ago but had to drop out when my mother got laid off from her job and I had to bump up my job hours to support her and couldn't handle both school and working full time in tech support.
The computer classes are boring as hell when you already know the stuff but I was taking hard core math classes at the time.
Try and set some money aside if you can. Just in case shit continues to hit the fan.
First, all of my professors expect us to check our e-mail multiple times each day, and several have specific coursework that must be completed on a computer outside of class. At the college I attend, most of the students have laptops (I can't think of anyone specifically who doesn't). Although these tasks can be accomplished in the university labs, having a laptop makes it considerably easier.
I totally agree, it is easier and better to have a working laptop to do your college work on...
and take rather good care of it. I paid the $3200 price tag for a laptop
The keyword here is I. When you pay for something you are more likely to take care of it.
That all set aside, I strongly support giving children laptops.
I think you are misunderstanding my point. I am all for giving children a desktop computers as soon as possible. Now giving a $1000 laptop to a 10 year old is just dumb and most college age people don't need anything more than a $400-$500 laptop. If those young adults are into computer games and want to chip in some money than sure, if they are responsible with computers and need the extra power than sure as well! What I laugh at is when people think their English major kids need anything more than a basic unit.
Case in point I bought four Compaq/HP Presario F500 laptops two years ago for $399 each. They where being discontinued because they came with VISTA Home Premium and didn't have the Ram/Power to run it.
SPECS:
I wiped them and installed XP. Gave one to my wife, mother, and daughter. The last one I kept for myself as a travel system. Care to Guess which one has had problems??? Yes the 16 year old's because she chooses not to use it responsibly. I even gave her a written list of things never to do and explained how one gets a virus and breaks a laptop but you know how that goes. Lucky I made my own restore disk so I wouldn't have to deal with most of it every month when she's managed to install some spyware. And yes I force her to use Firefox but that doesn't prevent her from clicking on anything and everything she gets from her friends. Nor did it stop her from running the unit on her fluffy bed where it couldn't breath even though I had got her a pad for it to sit on and told her it would cause problems for it. She simply doesn't care because she knows daddy will fix it or buy her a new one (preferable a NEW one). This is the point I was trying to make and it has nothing to do with my kid just with people who choose not to treat things well because they where free. After she cooked the processor I took her lappy away and forced her to use a desktop for six months and now she treats the lappy with a little more respect. Not much but enough not to let the thing cook.
On the other hand, my parents barely ever bought anything for my computer. Being limited to minimal software (Windows and Office, not much else) pushed me to try out FOSS, which I quickly came to love. Being limited by dated hardware caused me to explore Linux and Unix operating systems as well as to learn how to sap the most power possible out of the hardware available to me.
And what would have happened if they had bought you everything you asked them for? do you really think you would know anything about Linux or how to fix your computer when you have a hardware problem?
Just my two cents, take it from a college kid who wasn't spoiled but grew up with computers his whole life. Really, we don't all party, many (most) of us take good care of our laptops and don't risk them being stolen, and often mommy and dad
What we got here is someone who made some really dumb choices but the result of it all has been nothing. He should pay for it, but 18 months I think is more then enough as well as the fact that nobody will every hire his nutty ass ever again.
If he followed written procedure that he signed off on when he was hired I'D SURE AS HELL HIRE HIM!
"What's wrong, would you not trust your child with a computer to take to college?"
If my child wants a $1000 laptop they can save their own money and buy one themselves else they are getting a basic $400 unit that will do everything they need.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you're not familiar with the concept (or practice) of empathetic reasoning. Otherwise known as "putting yourself in someone else's shoes."
Honestly you're still making yourself sound like a total idiot and you remind me of a very incompetent Glenn Beck...
You've heard the phrase "college kid" have you not? What's wrong, would you not trust your child with a computer to take to college? You must be some kind of idiot. Of course, you sound like you're somewhere in the under fifteen range. If so, I can certainly agree that you shouldn't be trusted with a laptop.
College kids love to spill beer all over their laptop keyboards or leave them laying about to get stolen because mommy & daddy will have to buy them a new one. They could never do their college work without one! (A total lie)
And lastly, I'm sorry but your logic really makes no sense. First you question if I have idiot children but then go on to claim I must be 15? Anyway, if I was in fact 15 I would be all for getting an overly expensive piece of tech.
Now, if they meant always on, if I had a kid I'd much rather give him a nice $1000 laptop rather than a crap laptop and $500+/year cellular data subscription.
LoL, you would give a child a $1000 laptop... You must be some kind of idiot...