Mod the parent up. But just to be clear, unlike the submitter and someone in the thread mentioned, you do not want to use any of Symantec's Norton or NAV (home) products. You do want to use Symantec Antivirus or SAV (corporate/enterprise) products. SAV offers central management, deployment, quarentine, and updates, and is far less resource intensive for those older machines. That price from Tech Soup is crazy good, normally it would ten-fold. Like some of the other posters have mentioned, there are other managed antiviruses available for business from every major antivirus company (Trend Micro, Network Associates, Kaspersky, CA, Sophos) and they're generally all quite good.
What does linux, piracy, and privacy have in common? Nothing. Yet they all are mentioned together in the summary which only strengthens the misconception that the only people who care about this stuff are linux-using hippies wearing tin foil hats and downloading "moviez" all day long.
Mod the parent up. What on earth does this have to do with privacy? It's all about intellectual property. The closest word that I could think of that would at all apply would be piracy.
Unfortunately this site came a little late into my life, for myself, and some of my friends, we had to resort to finding our mates the hard way.. on IRC.
Any "computer technician" who doesn't know about slipstreaming or any of Microsoft's other Windows deployment methods probably isn't any more qualified than a random computer enthusiast. As its been posted here, there are also several other third party alternatives found with a simply phrased google search. Additionally, if you know what you're doing, you shouldn't have to be re-installing Windows on a regular basis. The more knowledge and experience you have, the more you'll be able to fix the problem, rather than dicking around or giving up and re-installing.
Despite these exhaustive measures, I can guarentee you there is spyware that will not be removed by this. If the parent doesn't believe me, I can send him some examples that he can execute on a system and see for himself.
I can tell the parent has had enough experience with spyware to know something most people do not: running any one product is good, and multiple ones is great, but in the spyware environment of yesterday and today, it is still not always good enough. Hence why the original submitter labeled it "stubborn", as in those not detected by current products.
Even though I rely heavily on HijackThis and Google, I also rely heavily on the fact that I've seen so many hundreds of systems, that I can go through the typically enormous lists HijackThis generates, and reliabily filter it down to just a few unknown entries which I can google. One small problem with all this is spyware using legitimate file and process names (getting the thumbs up from anywhere on google) but storing them in a different, unsuspicious path. Finally, there are places spyware can run that aren't listed by HijackThis, but these are covered by StartupList, a utility from the same author. The StartupList lists are grossly enormous (such as the dll lists in each process). Yes, its kind of grim.
Ok, so lets assume by using the above methods you do find each offending entry with complete accuracy. A product could even theoritically do this (one day). Then comes removal. The actual stubborn spyware will automatically regenerate entries deleted with HijackThis or any other method (including products). The files will be locked as well, even if you attempt to kill processes, and in the most stubborn of cases, even in safe mode. In these cases, you need to boot to a independant operating system (recovery console, BartPE, etc), and delete the files from there. In the most extreme of cases the files are located in NTFS's alternate data streams which makes virtually untouchable (assuming they use a critical area). These are identified by colons in the pathname (ie: C:\windows\system32:fdsafdas.dll). This makes fdsafdas.dll unaccessible by windows explorer, the command prompt, the recovery console, or pretty much anything else. If you google around, there are some limited and complicated means to deal with these.
Maxtor OneTouch III is available upto 1TB, doesn't require special drivers or software to interface, and is cheaper, easier, and arguably more reliable than the build-your-own cheap raid PC ideas already mentioned. Only disappointment is that it uses USB1/2, Firewire 400/800, but has no network interface. If this is required, you could use something like a Linksys NSLU2 (under $100).
If you read the one sentence of mine that you quoted, you'll note I clearly said not retail kits, not external drives. The reason I discluded them wasn't out of laziness, it's because retail kits account for a insignificant amount of hard drive sales--I would assume something far less than 1%.
Stop the misinformation! Ignoring all the previous nonsense, I'll tell you what the warranty scenerio currently is, and my take on desktop drive reliability in the past 8 years.
As of today, when it comes to standard size drives (3.5", not retail kits, not external) the warranty from Maxtor, Hitachi, Samsung, and Western Digital is 3 years on "desktop" class drives and 5 years on "enterprise" class drives. Seagate is 5 years on both. Desktop drives (ATA,SATA) are found in home computers, standard workstations, and consumer electronics, while enterprise drives (SATA,SAS,SCSI) are found in high-end workstations, servers, nearline applications, and NAS devices. Computer enthusiasts like us could end up with either, usually depending on our budget. Each manufacturer lists in detail which models are considered which.
A lot of the current confusion is due to two years ago when all the manufacters seemed to have followed one another in changing from 3 to 1 year on desktop drives. However, Western Digital quickly started offering "special edition" desktop drives with 3 years warrenty and Samsung re-appeared on the scene with 3 years on all their drives, to whom I believe we owe the gradual return of 3 years on all desktop drives.
Now, reliability is a funny thing, because as history has proven, a manufacter's prior performance does not reflect their current offering. In short, if you buy a new drive today, nothing exists to base its expected reliability on, so it really is a crap shoot. That said, in my recent memory, there has been three severe drive problems in the past:
Every Fujitsu MPG3- and some MPF- desktop drives had a controller defect that showed up years after they were manufactered resulting in eventual complete non-detection. What no one seems to have picked up on is the fact that as the heat started piling on Fujitsu, they quietly exited the desktop drive market completely! I'm not bashing them, I think they're a great company, but it was an interesting move.
Then there was the birth of the geek-notorious Deathstar drives, also known as IBM Deskstar 60GXP and 75GXP. Most died, some still live, lawsuits abound. Also interesting is that once this defect became "notorious", IBM also exited the desktop drive market by selling it to Hitachi.
Lastly, and this one is a bit fuzy, is the transition of Quantum to Maxtor. One of Quantum's very last series of drives was the Fireball Plus AS, which I've seen an uncharacteristically gross amount suffer mechanical-related deaths. The next line of drives from the now merged Maxtor were these odd "slim" drives that seem to lack a top plate from their enclosure and instead have what appears to be a drive-sized metallic label. I saw abnormally high rates of acoustic problems and mechanical failures, but the problems seemed to subside in future generations. Maxtor is the only one to attempt this style of enclosure, and I personally don't trust it.
In my experience, once you get over a few dozen systems, managed solutions are required to avoid spending your day hoping from machine to machine. Am I wrong? Also, for the managed winner, Symantec Client Security, is it not exactly the same as Symantec Antivirus but with the addition of a client firewall? I haven't worked much with Symantec Antivirus in environments with spyware problems, but I do see a lot of computers with Norton Antivirus (which uses the same detection definitions file) and it has proven to be the absolute least effective in detecting and removing spyware.
I watched the movie when it was released, enjoyed it, and have been seeding it ever since in hopes it'd help more people watch it. At this moment there's actually more seeds than peers. I say bring on the slashdot effect, this is what torrents were created for after all.
Well that makes it sound ideal for me. For small business clients, we've always defaulted to a program called Maximizer, but some aren't willing to spend the $169 per seat. If anyone is familiar with Maximizer, would you consider Zimbra a fair replacement? Any other suggestions?
Uh no. Its one bench, all the monitors can be checked with the flick of one's pupils. I don't know how you can confuse keyboards when each station has the keyboard mounted in front the tower. Fatigue of occasionally moving between stations should be acceptable for anyone under 500 lbs and 80 years of age. Yes, automation and reports is the norm, but you still need to know when said task is done. An audio alert? Unless its set to emit constantly, or you're sitting around waiting for a beep, you're likely to miss it. Its always easiest to just glance. Simple.
I'll agree that if you're running something en masse, like ghostcasting several identical systems, you need to start considering other means. I think the scope of this guy's question is like work we do, where you're doing individual jobs and building systems for home and small business.
While a kvm may sound like a grand idea, in practise it really isn't (or shouldn't be). When a system is busy scanning, installing, etc, you need know when its ready at a glance, anything else is wasting time. At our shop, we simply have a big 6-station bench. Each station has its own 15/17" CRT, keyboard, and mouse, and room for 1 or 2 towers.
I also never recommend the buying computers at the area Ma and Pa computer stores. I always recommend they buy from a larger company with an established reputation, support and warranty system, and will be here next month or next year when the machine has problems.
The "Ma and Pa" store I work at has probably been around longer than the average "larger company". Digital, AST, Packard Bell, and countless others--we've survived them all. Even with that aside, I'd like to think we support our customers better than the corporate giants. A regional magazine published an annual survey of customer satisfaction, and who would of figured, we rated above every one of the big box stores. Do I sound overly proud? I guess that's the difference between me and the minimum-wage phone monkey at Dell.
I always set the folks up with some of the better pieces of free software like Mozilla or Firefox, Thunderbird, AntiVir, AdAware, and others. I tell Windows to auto-update without user interaction
Speaking of user interaction, while Ad-Aware may be great, it seems most home users can't be bothered to both update and scan with Ad-Aware every so often, despite it costing them dearly in the past. And then Lavasoft has this habit of releasing new software versions, and leaving their previous version stagnant and reporting no updates needed (or at least, not obviously so). For all these reasons I have to admit that Microsoft AntiSpyware is the new essential item for the home PC.
Once when I was re-wiring some fans in my case, my CPU fan was left off for about 10-15 minutes. When I came back and looked in the BIOS, it was displaying a CPU temp of 99C. The thing didn't seemed bothered, its worked fine to this day. As for the 99 number, perhaps the BIOS wouldn't go over 2 characters, but its a fact I can live without knowing.
I also installed P4 Xeons with 1U heatsinks (no fans) in a well ventilated tower. I kept telling my boss he ordered the wrong CPUs, but he wouldn't believe me, until the thing hit 78C in about 2 minutes.
Some the early DDR mobos had 184-pin DIMM slots that would actually snap in a DDR DIMM backwards (ignoring the tab). It took more force than normal, but it would close just fine.
When I turned it on, there was a weird sound, and the RAM wouldn't post in any system anymore. Upon inspection, there were two pins on opposite sides, equal distances from the center, that were badly scorched.
I can't believe no slashdotters have pointed out timothy's mistake of calling it "ATi's newest All-In-Wonder". This is not an ATI card, it is a GeCube card. The reviewer gets it right in all occasions, as does the poster. ATI does indeed make All-In-Wonders, but they don't make them all. While I see this mistake all the time, I don't expect it from any self-respecting geek with any hardware knowledge.
Since its also my job, I try to limit myself to just relatives and close friends. Generally the free meal is how it goes, but simply having someone's appreciation and indebtedness can go a long ways too.
...or you can install the version of Windows you bought for your old machine (which, assuming you remove it from your old machine, you won't violate any likely-to-stand-in-court aspects of the Windows EULA).
Actually in most cases you can't. Any computer that ships with Windows comes with an OEM liscense that is non-transferable. If you purchased a retail Windows upgrade, you would still be missing a liscense for the Windows you're upgrading from. The only way its transferable is if you purchased a full retail version and removed it from the old system.
I can't view the NYT article (my first born seems a little steep), but I found this, which is a year and half old:
Phase II requires more precise location information be provided to the PSAP. Phase II requires the wireless service provider to provide the call back telephone number of the 9-1-1 caller, cell tower location, cell sector (antenna orientation) information, plus longitude and latitude (X, Y) information. Phase II E9-1-1 services exist today in a handful of locations, by a few wireless service providers, but these numbers will grow.
We can't go around playing copyright police if we want to make money and keep customers.
Amen to that. I tried it once or twice, the customer just goes to another shop who doesn't care (like most).
What is your approach to reinstalling?
If we don't expect to be able to fix the problem in less than 2 hours, we recommend a reload. If the system is older than one of used systems we sell (ex-government systems supplied to us), we recommend they just purchase a used system.
What do you do when people don't have the original media for the software they had?
We keep a catalogue of common applications on hand and use them when need be.
What do you do when they registry is so hosed that you can't get a Windows key out of it and the customer doesn't have the original paper copy?
In terms of CD keys in general, we use their original ones when its convenient, otherwise we just use our "shop" key. Although its becoming increasingly difficult as newer software requires activation (ie: Windows XP, Norton AntiVirus 2004, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
Mod the parent up. But just to be clear, unlike the submitter and someone in the thread mentioned, you do not want to use any of Symantec's Norton or NAV (home) products. You do want to use Symantec Antivirus or SAV (corporate/enterprise) products. SAV offers central management, deployment, quarentine, and updates, and is far less resource intensive for those older machines. That price from Tech Soup is crazy good, normally it would ten-fold. Like some of the other posters have mentioned, there are other managed antiviruses available for business from every major antivirus company (Trend Micro, Network Associates, Kaspersky, CA, Sophos) and they're generally all quite good.
What does linux, piracy, and privacy have in common? Nothing. Yet they all are mentioned together in the summary which only strengthens the misconception that the only people who care about this stuff are linux-using hippies wearing tin foil hats and downloading "moviez" all day long.
Mod the parent up. What on earth does this have to do with privacy? It's all about intellectual property. The closest word that I could think of that would at all apply would be piracy.
Unfortunately this site came a little late into my life, for myself, and some of my friends, we had to resort to finding our mates the hard way.. on IRC.
Thirded. They're amazing for portables. They're open. Mine show no signs of physical weakness.
Any "computer technician" who doesn't know about slipstreaming or any of Microsoft's other Windows deployment methods probably isn't any more qualified than a random computer enthusiast. As its been posted here, there are also several other third party alternatives found with a simply phrased google search. Additionally, if you know what you're doing, you shouldn't have to be re-installing Windows on a regular basis. The more knowledge and experience you have, the more you'll be able to fix the problem, rather than dicking around or giving up and re-installing.
Despite these exhaustive measures, I can guarentee you there is spyware that will not be removed by this. If the parent doesn't believe me, I can send him some examples that he can execute on a system and see for himself.
Even though I rely heavily on HijackThis and Google, I also rely heavily on the fact that I've seen so many hundreds of systems, that I can go through the typically enormous lists HijackThis generates, and reliabily filter it down to just a few unknown entries which I can google. One small problem with all this is spyware using legitimate file and process names (getting the thumbs up from anywhere on google) but storing them in a different, unsuspicious path. Finally, there are places spyware can run that aren't listed by HijackThis, but these are covered by StartupList, a utility from the same author. The StartupList lists are grossly enormous (such as the dll lists in each process). Yes, its kind of grim.
Ok, so lets assume by using the above methods you do find each offending entry with complete accuracy. A product could even theoritically do this (one day). Then comes removal. The actual stubborn spyware will automatically regenerate entries deleted with HijackThis or any other method (including products). The files will be locked as well, even if you attempt to kill processes, and in the most stubborn of cases, even in safe mode. In these cases, you need to boot to a independant operating system (recovery console, BartPE, etc), and delete the files from there. In the most extreme of cases the files are located in NTFS's alternate data streams which makes virtually untouchable (assuming they use a critical area). These are identified by colons in the pathname (ie: C:\windows\system32:fdsafdas.dll). This makes fdsafdas.dll unaccessible by windows explorer, the command prompt, the recovery console, or pretty much anything else. If you google around, there are some limited and complicated means to deal with these.
Maxtor OneTouch III is available upto 1TB, doesn't require special drivers or software to interface, and is cheaper, easier, and arguably more reliable than the build-your-own cheap raid PC ideas already mentioned. Only disappointment is that it uses USB1/2, Firewire 400/800, but has no network interface. If this is required, you could use something like a Linksys NSLU2 (under $100).
If you read the one sentence of mine that you quoted, you'll note I clearly said not retail kits, not external drives. The reason I discluded them wasn't out of laziness, it's because retail kits account for a insignificant amount of hard drive sales--I would assume something far less than 1%.
As of today, when it comes to standard size drives (3.5", not retail kits, not external) the warranty from Maxtor, Hitachi, Samsung, and Western Digital is 3 years on "desktop" class drives and 5 years on "enterprise" class drives. Seagate is 5 years on both. Desktop drives (ATA,SATA) are found in home computers, standard workstations, and consumer electronics, while enterprise drives (SATA,SAS,SCSI) are found in high-end workstations, servers, nearline applications, and NAS devices. Computer enthusiasts like us could end up with either, usually depending on our budget. Each manufacturer lists in detail which models are considered which.
A lot of the current confusion is due to two years ago when all the manufacters seemed to have followed one another in changing from 3 to 1 year on desktop drives. However, Western Digital quickly started offering "special edition" desktop drives with 3 years warrenty and Samsung re-appeared on the scene with 3 years on all their drives, to whom I believe we owe the gradual return of 3 years on all desktop drives.
Now, reliability is a funny thing, because as history has proven, a manufacter's prior performance does not reflect their current offering. In short, if you buy a new drive today, nothing exists to base its expected reliability on, so it really is a crap shoot. That said, in my recent memory, there has been three severe drive problems in the past:
Every Fujitsu MPG3- and some MPF- desktop drives had a controller defect that showed up years after they were manufactered resulting in eventual complete non-detection. What no one seems to have picked up on is the fact that as the heat started piling on Fujitsu, they quietly exited the desktop drive market completely! I'm not bashing them, I think they're a great company, but it was an interesting move.
Then there was the birth of the geek-notorious Deathstar drives, also known as IBM Deskstar 60GXP and 75GXP. Most died, some still live, lawsuits abound. Also interesting is that once this defect became "notorious", IBM also exited the desktop drive market by selling it to Hitachi.
Lastly, and this one is a bit fuzy, is the transition of Quantum to Maxtor. One of Quantum's very last series of drives was the Fireball Plus AS, which I've seen an uncharacteristically gross amount suffer mechanical-related deaths. The next line of drives from the now merged Maxtor were these odd "slim" drives that seem to lack a top plate from their enclosure and instead have what appears to be a drive-sized metallic label. I saw abnormally high rates of acoustic problems and mechanical failures, but the problems seemed to subside in future generations. Maxtor is the only one to attempt this style of enclosure, and I personally don't trust it.
In my experience, once you get over a few dozen systems, managed solutions are required to avoid spending your day hoping from machine to machine. Am I wrong? Also, for the managed winner, Symantec Client Security, is it not exactly the same as Symantec Antivirus but with the addition of a client firewall? I haven't worked much with Symantec Antivirus in environments with spyware problems, but I do see a lot of computers with Norton Antivirus (which uses the same detection definitions file) and it has proven to be the absolute least effective in detecting and removing spyware.
I watched the movie when it was released, enjoyed it, and have been seeding it ever since in hopes it'd help more people watch it. At this moment there's actually more seeds than peers. I say bring on the slashdot effect, this is what torrents were created for after all.
Well that makes it sound ideal for me. For small business clients, we've always defaulted to a program called Maximizer, but some aren't willing to spend the $169 per seat. If anyone is familiar with Maximizer, would you consider Zimbra a fair replacement? Any other suggestions?
I'll agree that if you're running something en masse, like ghostcasting several identical systems, you need to start considering other means. I think the scope of this guy's question is like work we do, where you're doing individual jobs and building systems for home and small business.
While a kvm may sound like a grand idea, in practise it really isn't (or shouldn't be). When a system is busy scanning, installing, etc, you need know when its ready at a glance, anything else is wasting time. At our shop, we simply have a big 6-station bench. Each station has its own 15/17" CRT, keyboard, and mouse, and room for 1 or 2 towers.
While I think FOSS stuff is cool, is there any actual advantage for Windows/Mac users to play freeciv over Civilization 3, besides the price tag?
I also never recommend the buying computers at the area Ma and Pa computer stores. I always recommend they buy from a larger company with an established reputation, support and warranty system, and will be here next month or next year when the machine has problems.
The "Ma and Pa" store I work at has probably been around longer than the average "larger company". Digital, AST, Packard Bell, and countless others--we've survived them all. Even with that aside, I'd like to think we support our customers better than the corporate giants. A regional magazine published an annual survey of customer satisfaction, and who would of figured, we rated above every one of the big box stores. Do I sound overly proud? I guess that's the difference between me and the minimum-wage phone monkey at Dell.
I always set the folks up with some of the better pieces of free software like Mozilla or Firefox, Thunderbird, AntiVir, AdAware, and others. I tell Windows to auto-update without user interaction
Speaking of user interaction, while Ad-Aware may be great, it seems most home users can't be bothered to both update and scan with Ad-Aware every so often, despite it costing them dearly in the past. And then Lavasoft has this habit of releasing new software versions, and leaving their previous version stagnant and reporting no updates needed (or at least, not obviously so). For all these reasons I have to admit that Microsoft AntiSpyware is the new essential item for the home PC.
Once when I was re-wiring some fans in my case, my CPU fan was left off for about 10-15 minutes. When I came back and looked in the BIOS, it was displaying a CPU temp of 99C. The thing didn't seemed bothered, its worked fine to this day. As for the 99 number, perhaps the BIOS wouldn't go over 2 characters, but its a fact I can live without knowing. I also installed P4 Xeons with 1U heatsinks (no fans) in a well ventilated tower. I kept telling my boss he ordered the wrong CPUs, but he wouldn't believe me, until the thing hit 78C in about 2 minutes.
Some the early DDR mobos had 184-pin DIMM slots that would actually snap in a DDR DIMM backwards (ignoring the tab). It took more force than normal, but it would close just fine. When I turned it on, there was a weird sound, and the RAM wouldn't post in any system anymore. Upon inspection, there were two pins on opposite sides, equal distances from the center, that were badly scorched.
I can't believe no slashdotters have pointed out timothy's mistake of calling it "ATi's newest All-In-Wonder". This is not an ATI card, it is a GeCube card. The reviewer gets it right in all occasions, as does the poster. ATI does indeed make All-In-Wonders, but they don't make them all. While I see this mistake all the time, I don't expect it from any self-respecting geek with any hardware knowledge.
- a rhubarb pie
- a giant frozen salmon
- free meals
- used computers and printers
- wads of $20s
- my gf's appreciation in bed
;)
Since its also my job, I try to limit myself to just relatives and close friends. Generally the free meal is how it goes, but simply having someone's appreciation and indebtedness can go a long ways too.Actually in most cases you can't. Any computer that ships with Windows comes with an OEM liscense that is non-transferable. If you purchased a retail Windows upgrade, you would still be missing a liscense for the Windows you're upgrading from. The only way its transferable is if you purchased a full retail version and removed it from the old system.
Phase II requires more precise location information be provided to the PSAP. Phase II requires the wireless service provider to provide the call back telephone number of the 9-1-1 caller, cell tower location, cell sector (antenna orientation) information, plus longitude and latitude (X, Y) information. Phase II E9-1-1 services exist today in a handful of locations, by a few wireless service providers, but these numbers will grow.
Amen to that. I tried it once or twice, the customer just goes to another shop who doesn't care (like most).
What is your approach to reinstalling?
If we don't expect to be able to fix the problem in less than 2 hours, we recommend a reload. If the system is older than one of used systems we sell (ex-government systems supplied to us), we recommend they just purchase a used system.
What do you do when people don't have the original media for the software they had?
We keep a catalogue of common applications on hand and use them when need be.
What do you do when they registry is so hosed that you can't get a Windows key out of it and the customer doesn't have the original paper copy?
In terms of CD keys in general, we use their original ones when its convenient, otherwise we just use our "shop" key. Although its becoming increasingly difficult as newer software requires activation (ie: Windows XP, Norton AntiVirus 2004, etc).