AllfatherBlack

As a PC tech in my medium sized city, I often get asked this golden little question; " How do I protect my computer from malware? " And, and I love saying this because it always falls on deaf ears, I respond;" The only way to keep your computer safe is to browse intelligently. "And thats often when the customers leave, probably instantly forgetting what I said and changing their thought process to something along the lines of what theyre going to eat for lunch or who they would do if that person were there right now. But I digress. Now, since I never get to FINISH my goddamned suggestion with the slack-jawed locals that come into my store ( We specialize in serving white trash! ), Im going to finish them here. These are some things Ive learned while scouring the net for all but the filthiest of pornography...1. If It Looks To Good To Be True, Its Going To Install Spyware On Your Computer: This is a slightly altered version of a common tip, but of course, it rings true in the tech world as well. Say youre looking for an application online, lets say one that allows you to download the latest underground music, legally of course. You stumble across a little piece of software called " FileSlap " and follow the link to their homesite. Plastered all over the front of the page are pictures of half naked women clearly enjoying music in some shape or form. Off to the side are some guys playing basketball, and a banner on the bottom of the page screams " FREE! Download Music, Movies, TV, Porno, Government Secrets, Etc. " Now that sounds pretty freakin sweet. Its not often that you find a p2p program that will let you play basketball... or something... or that attracts half naked women with mini-disc players ( where di they get those? ). But guess what; this is a classic case of "too good to be true." If this program were so great, it would stand on its own merits. It would NOT need to convince you with nudie pics and it DEFINETLY wouldnt scream out that it allows to to do something thats almost definetly going to be legal as if this is no concern to them. Because maybe it is no concern to them. Because they live in another country where our laws dont apply. So keep a sharp eye out for things that seem " out of place, " and ALWAYS check the legitmacy of an application on multiple REPUTABLE web sites. 2. Sin Begats Sin: This is something to keep in mind for all of us who choose to scour the seedy dark alleys of the internet for the latest cracks and free warez. If you pursue something " less than lawful", you are likely to fall victim to a less than legal action yourself. Every time you visit a web site with warez, crackz, or serialz ( may not hold true for words spelled with 's' instead of 'z' at the end ), malware automatically installs on your computer unless you are thoroughly protected. Another thing that may not seem obvious to anyone with a crooked moral clock is that gambling is a sin. Now Im not a Christian and I dont hold much stock in some sins, but gambling is DEFINETLY a seedy act, especially online. If you gamble online YOU ARE BEING CHEATED. Unless, of course, you are cheating yourself. Its estimated that half of the "people" at any virtual poker table are actually poker-bots, automated programs setup to WIN, and I guarantee, they WILL, every time. Some sites are safer than others, but none are safe enough. Get robbed on the race tracks, where atleast youll be getting some fresh air. The same applies to porno. While there are hundreds if not MILLIONS of entirely... ermmm... legitimate porn sites out there that DONT install malware, the ones that have "the good stuff" that you dont want other people to know youre into often are the scummiest places online. Get a decent firewall and get naughty for a day. Watch as youre BOMBARDED with installation attempts and mysterious port connections. Congrats. Your penis got you in trouble again.3. TRUST NO ONE: Just because an email comes from your closest, dearest friend doesnt mean he had anything to do with sending it. We're all fully aware that millions of virii spread via email yearly, yet few of us seem to freakin care. We just open up our little attatchments all willy nilly like theyre effin Christmas presents. Well I know I wanted my credit card info stolen this year. Maybe next year Ill have my scrotum torn off with a meat hook. I love the holidays... if the title of your "buddys" email sounds a little off, that because it is. You should know these people. You should know better. If you dont, get to know them better. Be suspicious of all attatchments. Duh.Unfortunetly, theres little hope for properly getting my ideas across because I am as erratic as they come. Hopefully though, someone who doesnt get it already will get it now. To sum things up, just be suspicious. Everyone IS out to get you. Some suggested software to keep yourself protected is Sunbelts Kerio Firewall. Install it, use advanced mode, and visit some warez sites. Now slap yourself in the forehead and say "Doh!" if you visited these sites without proper protection. Youre now aware that youre infected. Sorry

...That just went my panties a little.Good show.

I take slight offense to the inclusion of religion in this topic. I felt I asked a simple question about perception, and while I now feel I worded it wrong, I in no way intended for religion to be involved. We should all be mature enough by now to have come to our OWN conclusions about religion, and while I try my damnedest to respect them all, hearing about them agitates the crap outta me. But then I have to admit, some true and valid points were brought up ( if you swim through the preaching ) about my topic. So, Im gonna let it go this time. But next time... *shaking fist* I guess what Im trying to say is, support your ideas with your OWN beliefs, not the beliefs of others. I want to hear from the individual, not... siighh... the majority.

WOO HOO! Finally, someone asking a question I can answer well! Since youre a gamer, I have PLENTY of suggestions for ya. 1. Kill unneccessary start up items: Use Msconfig or the fantastic Autoruns from Sysinternals.com to stop programs from loading automatically at boot. Not only does this speed up the boot, thats a lot less stuff thats constantly eating up resources whether or not you use them.2. Kill unneccessary services: Go to "run..." in the start menu and type "services.msc". This will open a list of 'services' windows uses for common functions, like that annoying error-reporting when something crashes and basic media burning functions, as well as a whole lot of other things. Turning off things you dont need in the services applet will free up TOOOONNNNNSSSS of resources. Error-reporting is useless, so you can disable that. Remote registry is a massive security threat so you can switch that to manual. So on and so forth, there are a great many websites that explain each of these functions and suggest what to disable ( or, preferrably, set to manual ). Be careful though, turning stuff off all willy nilly can make your computer mighty inconvienant. Once youve set all the stuff you dont need to manual, you will see the greatest performance boost you can from making ANY single software adjustment.3. Paging file on its own partition: Placing the paging file on its own partition keeps it from fragmenting your hard drive, as well as keeping it from fragmenting itself ( making it take longer to find data ). Some people will argue that installing your operating system on its own partition ( seperate from the page file AND the partition you intend to use for data ) also helps, and while Ive tried it both ways many times, I havent seen any significant improvement either way. Do it if you want every boost possible, but it can be inconvienant. 4. Defragment your drive: Do this constantly. Do it while you sleep. Do it if youve moved a lot of files around. Do it if youve installed anything thats 1 gig or more. Just freakin do it, because its the most commonly overlooked performance booster there is, and it can take a PC from clunker to... well, less cluttered and slightly faster clunker.5. Remove Viruses: This is a big duh, but if youve been online for more than a week ( since the last time you formatted ), you have been attacked by and likely HAVE some kind of malware on your computer. The best way to get rid of a virus is to format. But since most people dont like doing that ( I effin love it ), you can try virus removal apps. I suggest AntiVir, Spybot, and AdAware ( only AntiVir runs in realtime ). There are many great anti-malware apps out there, but a LOT more that really are malware THEMSELVES. So always check to make sure its legit, and remember; if you have to pay for it, it sucks.Ive posted a LOT of computer stuff specifically geared towards setting up windows based systems to perform their best. Check out some of my other posts to get a LOT more info on speeding things up. If you plan on doing all of these things, I suggest you format and THEN do them. Its always best to start off with a COMPLETELY clean system. I hope this helps!

I would like to thank all the people who humored me and responded to this stupid post :)Now to post some more stupid stuff! Its what I do best!

I think everyones missing the point; I just want to be loved *tear*But hosting credits do rock...

Arrrggghhh!Im sure we've all had this happen but Im going to ask anyway...Have you ever gone through quite some trouble to contribute something only to have ( seemingly ) nobody care? My example here will be a thread I posted in the computers section called " Avoiding Bottlenecks w/ Dual Channel Memory. " Now, Im aware this may not be the most entertaining topic, but I put a lot of effort writing the damn thing and I like to think its full of helpful information that might keep a lot of people from making regrettable purchasing decisions. It seems like a lot of people have viewed it, but dag nabbit no one commented! I want responses people! I want to know someone actually read the whole thing and I want to know if they think Im right, but I especially want to know if they think Im a jackass so that I dont make the same mistake in the future.But Im really just venting. And if youve gotten to this point, you damn well better reply, atleast to point out that Im a jackass :DOh, of course, this thread isnt intended to be about my complaints. I actually would like to know some things you guys have done that you were proud of but still went unnoticed. Im sure there will be more than a few golden nuggets in there.

Hahah, leave it to me to blab on and on and on and on and on and not cover a very simple trick that honestly didnt even occur to me. See, this is why I like forums. When I miss something, someone else just picks up where I left off and makes sure that we get all our bases covered. Thanks for making this a better thread, boyos!

We've all dealt with viruses. Some of us deal with viruses a lot. And others make their living spanking 'em like the naughty issues they are. With any amount of virus-slapping experiance youve likely come across that mysteriously " undeletable " file that, for some unGodly reason, cant be removed from your precious eMachine. Please note that if you consider your eMachine precious then your standards are ludicrously low, but I digress. The reason you cannot delete the file ( assuming some kind of permission has not been modified to lock it down preventing deletion in the first place ) is because it is tied up in some active windows process. For example, many viruses will load themselves up as part of explorer.exe, which is what provides you with that pretty little taskbar you have on the bottom/left/right/top of your screen. Since the virus is " in use " by explorer.exe, which loads at startup in both normal and safe-mode, you can not remove it, pretty effectively locking the virus onto your computer semi-permenantly. Our goal, of course, is to remove that permenant part.The easiest and most reliable way to remove a file tied up in a system process is to boot into another non-Windows OS and modify the file on your drive from there. Bootable Linux CDs are nigh infallible and pretty much the best way to go about doing this. There are other alternatives available, such as Bart PE ( Google it ), and you would be surprised how often just loading the command prompt will allow you to remove a file ( recovery console for XP ). For those of you who havent restarted since '97 and would like to keep the record going, another alternative is killing system processes that may be using aforementioned virii ( apparently thats not a real word but I like it nonetheless ). Task Manager allows you to kill most processes, but a few processes are considered essential for Windows to function properly and cant be shut down via Task Manager ( Csrss.exe, lsass.exe, etc. ). A few apps, such as Killbox, will allow you to kill process TM wont. Of course, when you do this, a little window will pop up and say " Hey buddy, I needed that. So now Im gonna be a like ' bweeeewww ' and shut off on your **bottom** ". Of course, it doesnt say that at all, but its something fairly similar. You now have approximately a minute to sob quietly before your computer restarts, whether you like it or not. But we're going more for the not, so to stop the countdown, simply click on Run... ( which can be found in the start menu and in task manager ) and type " shutdown -a ". And there. Now the computer can be used again. Note that, obviously, you will lose any functionality related to whatever system process you kill. Its possible to kill all but one single system process and continue using the computer ( in some manner ). Csrss.exe. if terminated, will blue screen your **bottom**, so dont do it. Its not often required that you kill all possible processes, as viruses arent often complicated enough to tie themselves into many processes. In order to determine what services may need to be shutdown to hunt down a virus, simply use an application like Hijack This! or SysInternals Process Explorer to view the .dlls associated with system processes. Deleting illegitimate .dlls often "breaks" malware, just like itll break normal software. Most .dlls without any identifier other than a filename are malware-related, but its absolutely crucial that you research ALL of them before deleting them. If you dont know why, you shouldnt be monkeying around with this in the first place. Killing the appropriate process or .dll often allows you to delete the malware abusing it, but not always.Occasionally, a file cannot be deleted in apps such as Bart PE or by killing any reasonable system process. This leaves the last option I will be covering; the registry. Normally people put big caps here and say " DONT MESS WITH THE REGISTRY UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOURE DOING OR HAVE MADE BACKUPS. YOU CAN BREAK THE *BLEEP* OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM OTHERWISE ". But I wont do that. Again... Actually, the registry can be a very scary place, but isnt as dangerous as most people make it out to be. You CAN break the *BLEEP* out of your system jerking around with it, sometimes irrepairably (excluding formatting, of course ), but assuming you make sure that any entry you delete will not be associated with anything you care about ( like malware ), you can fix a lotta virii ( viruses ) this way. Open Regedit by going to " Run... " and typing regedit or regedit32.Find the filename of the item your attempting to delete, which will often be a long string of absolute gibberish, then use the search function in Regedit ( make sure to highlight ' my computer ' on the left so you search the WHOLE registry and not just a part of it ) to find any key that mentions that file. ONLY delete the item the search function finds for you. ONLY hit delete once. When you delete an entry, the next entry is automatically selected, so beating on the delete key like a masturbating monkey will delete God only knows what and make your life Hell, which you deserve for touching your computer like that. Make sure to find every entry that mentions the filename of the file you want deleted. Once youve killed them all, try deleting the file youve grown to hate again.This should provide a nice stepping stone for those of you who are no longer willing to leave your security to antivirus scanners alone. Feel free to chew me out if you *BLEEP* up your system using any of these tactics. I mean, I should pay for trying to enlighten you, right?

I realize the title makes this post seem more important than it really is, and Im sorry for that. I was just reading an article ( okay, actually I just remembered an article I read ) by CNET or some other fairly large news source that mentioned " ... Firefox 1.5 users being unable to visit certain web pages, with no consistencies between the unviewable pages... " If you happen to be experiancing this problem ( I experianced it too for about 5 pages until it clicked ), and you use Firefox extensions, you might want to disable them sequentially to determine whether or not that may be the problem. FasterFox, a common and VERY popular extension, was keeping me from visiting web pages ( first thing I disabled, immedietly fixed the problem ). Considering it "enhances" network performance ( read: jerks with your network settings ), its really no surprise that it causes problems like this. Especially considering I was using the newest just-released version of not only Firefox but Fasterfox also. I saw improvement in not only load times for Firefox but browsing ( well, atleast page loading speed ), making this an unfortunet loss until the kinks get worked out. If youre having issues, consider your extensions and whether or may not they may be causing it ( especially if theyre less than official ). For example, if for some reason you can no longer download things ( or something akin to that ), and you have a download manager, suspect the download manager may be causing the problem. Disable it, or try another similar program and determine whether or not that helps. Hopefully, this helps. Now, its 3:30am people, go to bed....

(excessively long intro, skip to 'suggestions' for immediate tips) Its almost 2 am and I just finished an email detailing some ideas I had to keep systems a little more secure than usual ( tips that can be applied to most any Windows users system ). I dont feel like re-editing it so it doesnt sound I copied and pasted it from my email, cause I did, and its late. Please note THIS IS NOT SPAM. I did write all of this, just in an email before I copied and pasted it here. These are entirely valid and ( I hope ) helpful tips for most anyone. Of course I hate just yapping away like I know everything, cause Ill be the first to admit thats no where NEAR true. If you have ACTUALLY TRIED these things a reasonable amount of times and dont think theyll be that helpful, PLEASE SAY SO. I need all the feedback I can get to come to an intelligent conclusion. If someone TOLD YOU that wont work, or you read somewhere online that it wont, or you just THINK it wont, please shut your mouth until youve actually TRIED it. Someone might accidently read your ignorance and think you know what your talking about. Good luck kicking *bottom*. ------------------------------------ Suggestions - Install windows to a partition NOT lettered " C, D, E, or F " and name the system directory anything but "windows" : I dont think this will stop even a single decent piece of malware, but this might stop simple bombs or viruses simply programmed to install to " C: " or the " windows " folder, by far the most common primary drive letter and system directory name. Can be done during a new OS install or done with Partition Magic ( or an app like it ) - Ensure NO new OS install or customers computer leaves with administrative rights : Admin rights arent needed or often used by the common user, but using the Admin account can enable malware to molest your system like little boy at Neverland Ranch ( ba-ZING! ). Of course if they use a lot of different apps with saved user settings ( that might not get kept automatically when deleting an account ), we can just set their account to " limited. " - NO ONE should use IE as their primary browser : Its not like the damn thing is going to go away if you dont use it. People need to understand that theyre easy prey for malware and using something like Mozilla or Opera can save plenty of heartache ( not to mention Mozilla actually does kill pop-ups. IE claims it does, but sure as hell does a horrible job of it ). - Auto-blocking known bad sites and malware wildcards : Both IE and Mozilla offer options to block access to certain sites and wildcards ( ex *.trustedsites.com, *.adhost.com, etc. ). There are plenty of sites that offer extensive, constantly updated lists of known bad sites. Simply copying and pasting should prevent a good number of potential issues. - Kill unnecessary services : This might sound like an optimization kind of thing but also helps ensure the integrity of a system. Kind of like closing doors on a house, disabling unused services prevents malware from using flaws in those services to do... well, malicious things. Not to mention the system will be noticeably faster after a reasonable number of services have been killed. - Extended Anti-Virus Options : The Trinity is great; does what its supposed to do VERY well and without chewing on system resources like theyre delicious cupcakes covered in dual inline memory modules. But NO anti-virus is perfect. For advanced users who are willing to sacrifice a little hard drive space and extra memory, ClamWin is, in my opinion, the BEST anti-virus in existence. Updated every night at midnight, it offers no real-time protection and takes forever ( proportionately ) to scan even a single file, but its still the best. It takes forever because its ridiculously thorough ( it DOES open and check archived files, unlike AntiVir ), and real time protection can either be left to AntiVir, or, for mega-advanced users, WinPooch can be installed and associated with ClamWin, providing not only real-time protection, but the ability to see what malware is trying to do and the option to allow, deny, or fake it out, making the app in question THINK it successfully completed what it was trying to do when, in reality, it did not. This will keep malware from simply retrying if it fails until it succeeds ( not to mention constant attempts like that consume unseen resources ). Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta is also fantastic, and I suspect potentially better than spybot and/or adaware, though I have no substantial experience to justify that suspicion just yet. Its done fantastic for me a number of times, though, leaving one to question why they still call it " beta. " - More thorough suggestions as to what users should keep and NOT keep : I dont care what P2P app you use, from the worst ( Kazaa ) to the best ( Limewire ), ALL are potentially MASSIVE security threats. Most make it fairly simple to take IPs all willy-nilly, which is obviously not good, and ALL of them have infected file-sharing networks, from Paris Hilton-like disease buckets ( Kazaa ) to "who knows how dirty" like Lindsay Lohan ( Limewire ). NO ONE should be using AIM. AIM is the most popular IM service ( like Windows is the most popular OS ) and the target of most viruses because of it. Trillian offers a far more versatile and non-ad-intrusive experiance BY FAR. Also, rather than just removing Norton and/or McAfee, we should probably suggest users remove ALL ( ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL I cant say it enough ALL ) programs they may have downloaded to prevent malware because more often than not, what they download IS MALWARE. The ones that arent are usually *BLEEP* anyway and are only eating up HD space next to the *BLEEP*ing masters, so they should bow down like the ankle-licking *BLEEP*es they are before AntiVir gets uneasy and karate chops the *BLEEP* out of them. This INCLUDES spamblockers. If users are worried about spam, they need to 1) get a better mail service and/or 2) learn better browsing tactics. And will someone please explain to me what the hell the appeal is with Outlook? Cause thats *BLEEP*, and I never have and never will use it. ---------------------------- I jabber on about some of my other suggestions in other topics, so feel free to check em out if you think Im not an idiot ( or you think I AM an idiot but I might keep your computer a little cleaner ). Well Im squeezed for now. Chew on that!

Moldboys response seemed a little... "Back From The Future" so I thought I would update it a little. If your computer was purchased within the last EIGHTish years you have PCI slots guaranteed ( obviously not on laptops ), and more than enough of them ( probably ). If youre computer is about fiveish years old, you almost definetly have an AGP slot. If your motherboard is maybe a year old you might have a PCI-Ex x8 or x16 slot, and if so, you WONT have an AGP slot ( they serve the same purpose ). 95% of the time you can disable onboard video in the BIOS ( only do this with another video card installed and being used, otherwise youll have to reset the CMOS to regain video ). Assuming you have a EISA/PCI/AGP/PCI-Ex slot, you can ALWAYS add a video card and use that instead of the onboard ( integrated ) video. Onboard video ALWAYS blows goats. A PCI video card will always beat onboard PCI video and often beat onboard AGP video ( unless the onboard AGP is of higher quality compared to other integrated AGP video chips ). ALL integrated video also consumes your RAM ( some more than others ). This is part of the reason that youll almost always see improvement using a video expansion card. I hope this is helpful.

Hahaha, its great when your about to post a question, then you read down a little bit and find that someone already answered you! Lucky me. Thanks for inadvertantly answering my questions!By the way, I love Google, not sure how much I love them slapping ads on anything they can. DEFINETLY not okay with the AOL deal...

A new ocean? Thats kind of strange... why wouldnt we just call the new body of water, once it connected to an existing ocean, the name that the ocean it connects to goes by? And what if its not a new damn ocean? What if the damned world is splitting half and we're all like " Hey a new ocean... " Okay thats just stupid, but you never know. We've been wrong before.

Well there ya go! I could have easily Wiki-ed it myself but that wouldnt have been any fun! ;)I appreciate the prompt and helpful response. Not to mention its always good to hear what people think of a tech. Wiki said Bluetooth has already been hacked as proof of concept, though. And as far as Im concerned, once its been done, it will continue to be done until tech advances and we stop using stuff that had so many holes in it.Thanks again!