Computer Tips -Tech Info

Tag: time

  • Disinfecting a PC… part 5

    OK, we’re moving on to BHOdemon to take care of the browser helper objects. Unfortunately it looks like BHODemon is not being currently maintained, the developer has had a housefire.

    I am very sorry, but BHODemon is currently on hiatus, as I no longer have the time to devote to it (due to a house fire). You will not be able to download updates or upload reports, and I will no longer be answering emails. At some point, BHODemon may return. I would like to thank everyone for their support over the years.

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  • Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 5 – Update your software

    Okay – so after the last article you’ve inventoried what software you use on a PC and you know what services (server’s) the pc runs that you’ve told it to. You even know what passes as “normal” startup programs. Now it’s time to put that to use. It’s time to keep up with updates for the operating system, any of the programs you use form time to time, and any programs that listen as a service (actively listen for incoming network connections.)

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  • Disinfecting a PC… part 4

    So, AVG has been scanning away finding things we’ve really got a foothold on the system and the malware has a fight on it’s hands. It’s good to see progress. Up to this point we’ve had multiple Spool32 errors (printer related). These errors are what prompted the system to be brought in initially. There’s a lexmark system tray item that loads on boot. No time to investigate that yet. Here’s the log of the AVG antivirus scan…

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  • Microsoft moving display drivers outside the kernel

    In what will undoubtedly make Vista a more stable release of Windows… Microsoft will be moving display drivers outside the main kernel and run them in “userland”. Display adapter/driver problems have been one of the greatest source of instability and crashes for some time. That should make for a noticable improvement.

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  • Disinfecting a PC… part 3

    Picking up from last time… AVG was failing to install with a peculiar registry error. (Which I didn’t see much reference to online.) OK, so here is another fruit of the online search (so many bugs to identify…)

    jawa32.exe is listed as spyware.seekseek in sarc’s database.

    OK – let’s see if we can kill of some of these suspects… it’s time for a couple cycles of ctrl-alt-del to remove running processes that look suspect, followed by msconfig – disabling of processes running at boot, reboot, repeat.

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  • The 2nd journey begins… Mandriva 2006 upgrade 2 – Part 2

    OK – copying of the most crucial files are done. It’s time to start the process. First I’ve gathered a list of URPMI sources that I can use from online. No local mirror this time, so it may take a while to pull all the files I need. Second, it’s time to say #urpmi.removemedia -a to clean out our list of software install sources.

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  • The 2nd journey begins… Mandriva 2006 upgrade 2 – Part 1

    I’m writing this from the laptop. Having run Mandriva 2006 without any real significant bumps for a couple weeks I’ve come to a point where I’m ready to take the plunge on the desktop. The desktop is my primary workstation. The laptop get’s occasional light use and is the one I’m more likely to play with when it comes to possibly losing configuration information or scripts (because I’ve got things copied to the desktop and server.)

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  • Tools of the trade…. USB network adapter

    For a long time I really disliked seeing USB network adapters. The main reason is the performance. USB 1 can only do ~ 12Mbps which compared to a 10/100 ethernet controller “significantly limits your ability to do more than 10…” Even USB 2 supports 480 Mbps which should give you the ability to get full throughput of up to 200mbps with full duplexing. However, I still cringed at USB network adapters….

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  • Clamantivirus may get support from eEye?

    This would be a good thing for clamantivirus. eEye is considering “adopting” clamav for inclusion in their Blink product. The idea is that they would improve clamantivirus and then start integrating it as antivirus scanning functionality in their product. This would be really promising for the prospects of having clamav (clamwin) do real-time, on-access scanning on the windows platform.

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  • Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 1 – A Hardware firewall

    Computers can communicate over networks. (Surprise!) That’s how you’re reading this post. The machine that this site is hosted on is listening for requests for connection. When it receives a request it answers back with a web page. In fact, computers can listen for a great many different kinds of connection at the same time. In networking we talk about a computer listening on a given “port”. The web server for this site (and most web sites) listens on what’s called port 80. There are 65535 possible network ports that a computer can listen for incoming connections on.

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