pardon my ranting…

Recently a friend’s computer was reloaded with a clean copy of Windows XP Media edition. After which, a visit to Microsoft’s web site for updates is recommended. There were 91 critical patches, um, I mean updates.

After installing them, and a reboot, which I won’t fault Windows for, even Macs normally reboot after updates, there were 5 new critical patches updates. So either 5 updates didn’t take or there were 5 new ones, were required to patch the patches or update the updates, however you want to look at it?

Next was the Software “Optional” updates. These updates include root certification, Windows Media player updates, .net, etc. There were 8 of them. Not a big deal, but right after I installed these 8 updates, reboot, rerun of windows updates, and there are now 9 critical updates again?

Does this make sense to anyone? (yes sarcasm) And who has done this, a clean install of an OS, and would LOVE Bill Gates to sit down at a computer and do it himself, and see how time consuming and what a pain a clean install is?

A side note, the reason for the clean installation was a week’s worth of trying to remove spyware, not thanks to Microsoft’s security lacking software had infected the computer beyond repair.

Thanks for reading this rant… please return to your regular scheduled program 🙂

Neal’s Notes:  This may or may not work.  On Windows Server 2003, it did not report the right bios (or the one I was looking for) and the registry entry was blank.

(Taken from “How To Find the BIOS Version in the Windows Registry,” written by Tim Fisher)

1. Click on Start and then Run.
2. In the text box in the Run window, type msinfo32 and click OK. This will open the System Information program.
3. When System Information first opens, it defaults to the System Summary, a short list with some of the most important information about your computer system listed.
4. On the right side of the program, locate the BIOS Version/Date entry.
5. This field contains the BIOS version that is currently running on your motherboard. This field may also contain additional information such as the BIOS date, BIOS manufacturer, motherboard manufacturer and the motherboard model number.

   Note: If the BIOS date is shown, it can be useful in determining the current BIOS version from a motherboard manufacturer’s website if the version is not clear here.

6. Close System Information.

Try it from the Registry

Note: No changes are made to the registry in these steps.

1. Click on Start and then Run.
2. In the text box in the Run window, type regedit and click OK. This will open the Registry Editor program.Note: Do not make any changes to any entry anywhere in Registry Editor to avoid causing serious system issues. These steps only direct you to view a registry entry, not to make changes.
3. Locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder under My Computer and click on the (+) sign next the folder name to expand the folder.
4. In the resulting folders, locate and click on the (+) sign next to HARDWARE to expand this folder.
5. In the resulting folders, locate and click on the (+) sign next to DESCRIPTION to expand this folder.
6. In the resulting folders, locate and click on the System folder.
7. In the results that appear in the window on the right, locate the SystemBiosVersion and SystemBiosDate entries.
8. The data in the SystemBiosVersion field contains the BIOS version for your motherboard. This field may also contain additional information such as the chipset manufacturer and BIOS manufacturer.
9. The data in the SystemBiosDate field contains the calendar date associated with the current BIOS version on your motherboard. The BIOS date can be useful in determining the current BIOS version from a motherboard manufacturer’s website if the version is not clear in the SystemBiosVersion field.
10. Close Registry Editor without making any changes.

I recently was setting up a new PC for a friend. After uninstalling all of the “extra” junk that the companies stick on teh machine, I started installing the basics of what the DID need.

There are a number of free/shareware programs that I recommend for new PC computers. This list is really for myself more than others, but I figured by adding it to my blog, I could always find the program list in the future. All of the download links go to www.download.com — a safe place to download software (no spyware allowed on their site).

• Comodo Firewall
  Yep, it is a firewall (download)
• AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
  As one would imagine, an AV program (download)
• CCleaner
  “CCleaner is a system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.” from Download.com (download)
• Ad-Aware
  Scans your RAM, Registry, hard drives, and external storage devices for known data-mining, advertising, and tracking components and can easily clean your system (download)
• Mozilla Firefox
  Alternative web browser. I like it much better than Internet Explorer. (download)
• TrueCrypt
  It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk, encrypt an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive and more. Visit their web site for full details or to download a free copy. (http://www.truecrypt.org)
• JungleDisk
  Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com’s S3 â„¢ Storage Service. More information is at (http://www.jungledisk.com)

There are more I could list, an “Microsoft Office” alternatives, more programs on spyware removal, like Spybot – Search & Destroy (download) and Trend Micro HijackThis (download), but I’ll stop here for now.

Tired of paying an arm, a leg, and a kidney to be able to type someone a letter, create a budget, or make a presentation? I know I am, but for the longest time, Microsoft has had a corner on this market and they have chosen to consumers to look for alternatives or install illegal version of the software on their computer (which I refuse to do, being a novice programmer).

A few weeks ago, IBM announced a free version of Lotus Symphony. It is still in beta, so I wouldn’t recommend using it exclusively, but once it is out of beta, it would be well worth a look at.

Of course, the other popular alternative, which I currently use at my home is OpenOffice.org, and while it is decent, it is lacking with mail merge and a few other features.
Both of the programs support Microsoft Office file formats, which is great for compatibility with the rest of the world.

One other alternative, worth mentioning is Google’s Docs which allows you to use a word processor, spreadsheet and even a presentation program. It is a great service that allows you access documents from any location.

If you Anti-virus software has told you that you have a virus, but you want to double check, here are a few things you can do.

1) Try a few on-line virus testers. Most of them require accessing them through Internet Explorer. Here are a few links to some that I use:

http://housecall.antivirus.com
http://security.symantec.com
http://www3.ca.com/virusinfo/virusscan.aspx

2) Make sure your AV software is up to date. Some times there can be a “false” positive, meaning it isn’t actually a virus, but a file that is being misreported as a virus.

3) If you use AVG for your virus scan program, go to: http://www.grisoft.com/doc/Virus+Encyclopaedia/lng/us/tpl/tpl01 or under the “About Viruses” section, look for the Virus Encyclopedia. If you don’t find your virus there, it could be that it is part of a “spyware” program that has been installed on your computer.

If it appears this is the case, try one of the on-line virus scanners (listed in #1) to see if it will find it as a virus.

If this doesn’t work, then Google the filename of the “reported” virus and see if you can find out what program may have installed it. Then try to uninstall the program. It is a good idea to Google “uninstalling [insert name of program here]” to see if you can find detailed directions on how to uninstall it. Most spyware does not uninstall correctly from just the Add/Remove programs.

4) Delete your Temporary Internet files and temp folders and run the scan again.
Temp folders are usually located at c:\windows\temp
There may also be another one at: C:\Documents and Settings\[insert your username\\Local Settings\Temp.

Delete your temporary Internet files by loading your web browser, going under Tools, then Usually Options, the “delete internet files” or “cache.” Still having problems find it, Google “how do I delete my temp internet files in internet explorer or firefox”

5) Re-run the scan. If the “infected” files still show up, after you have uninstalled the program. You can try and just delete them. Go to my computer, browse to the drive and folder where the file is, select it, hit the delete button. warning: Deleting a file if the program has not been uninstalled could make your computer unstable. So make sure you have tried to uninstall it through the Add/Remove programs.

6) A last option that I recommend, but can be a bit technical, is to run HiJackThis.

Go to http://hijackthis.de and run click on the Direct download link. Download the file to your desktop, uncompress it (you may have to double click on it, then drag the hijackthis file to your desktop). Then run the program by double clicking on it.

Select “Do a System Scan and Save a Log file” Notepad will open up and appear to have a lot of lines of text in it. Click Edit and Select all, then, Edit and select copy

Next, go to http://hijackthis.de in the web browser and click in the text box “You can paste a logfile in this textbox” and paste the information that was copied from Notepad.

Click the Analyze button and look at the results.

I would Google “how to use hijackthis” and read up on it before trying to use it. Be warned you can really make your system unstable if you remove the wrong thing.

Good Luck!

Added on 4/27/2009:

Lifehacker recently posted an article with the 5 most popular Malware removal pprogram.  Here is the link:

http://lifehacker.com/tag/hive-five/?skyline=true&s=t