OT: the common folk

Cleaned out this lady's virus ridden system last night. A fairly new HP computer with an AMD XP 2800+ cpu. It had a small flat LCD screen and a Geforce 2 MX onboard video. It should have been a fairly speedy system. But it took hours to update. The Hard Drive was incredibly slow. I couldn't beleive, with the fast cpu included, how pokey that bugger was. They had 3 different viruses, 80+ infected files and about 150 spyware programs. You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him that somebody knew every site he had been too. :) So I spent hours installing a firewall, and spyware programs and then doing the windows updates. Charged my usual fee...a 12 pak of diet coke. Here I sit with 7200rpm ATA drives, a non pro 9800 vid card and the same 2800+ cpu and I keep thinking how outdated my rig is getting. :) It's good to get out amoungst the commoners now and then. dave henrie

> Here I sit with 7200rpm ATA drives, a non pro 9800 vid card and the same > 2800+ cpu and I keep thinking how outdated my rig is getting. :) > It's good to get out amoungst the commoners now and then. It's been a while since I've been asked to take look at an 'off-the-shelf' PC (HP, Dell etc) that isn't riddled with viruses, spyware & adware. I guess the authors of that stuff are achieving their goals - they certainly seem to be reaching their target audience.

"Dave Henrie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... <snip>You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him that somebody knew every site he had been too. :)<snip> Yup... ;-) Same reaction I get when I point people to AV, Spybot and Adaware and they find hordes of nasties on their systems. The ones that DL lots of music via P2P are the worst-hit, it seems. Haven't run into any who even know about binary newsgroups, fortunately. But the funniest were the ones who's Dell came set up to Defrag AND Deep Scan their the entire 60GB HD EVERY time they booted it up. They just thought it was normal for a computer to take a half-hour to start up. And yet they still turned it off whenever they weren't using it!

> They had 3 different viruses, 80+ infected files and about 150 spyware >programs. You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him >that somebody knew every site he had been too. :) I just worked on a system for a lady in the office. No viruses, but it Ad-Aware got 782 hits! It's amazing how much faster the system runs now that those are cleared.<g> Eldred -- http://www.umich.edu/~epickett Screamers League IICC League GPLRank -6.0 MoGPL rank +267.80 Ch.Rank +52.58 MoC +741.71 Hist. +82.34 MoH:na N2k3 rank:in progress Slayer Spektera lvl 72 assassin Slayer Spectral_K lvl 38 Necro US East

In article <[email hidden]>, EldredP <[email hidden]> writes

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>> They had 3 different viruses, 80+ infected files and about 150 spyware >>programs. You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him >>that somebody knew every site he had been too. :) > >I just worked on a system for a lady in the office. No viruses, but it >Ad-Aware got 782 hits! It's amazing how much faster the system runs now >that >those are cleared.<g> >

Sorted a mate's computer out after his ISP refused to allow him to send out any more emails until his system was looked at as it was just emailing out viruses everywhere. AV software found over 300! virus infected files. It was amazing it ran at all. :) -- Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington) Remove ALL_STRESS before replying via email If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :) GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -25.01

Evidence Eliminator... Cleans Registry Streams, Hidden Start, Run,Click, History menus, Application logs, Erroneous Binary Data, *.tmp files, hidden java scripts, subkeys....(the list goes on) and then defragments the registry and compacts it. Best piece of software I've ever had for increasing performance...and privacy. "EldredP" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > > They had 3 different viruses, 80+ infected files and about 150 spyware > >programs. You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him > >that somebody knew every site he had been too. :) > > I just worked on a system for a lady in the office. No viruses, but it > Ad-Aware got 782 hits! It's amazing how much faster the system runs nowthat

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> those are cleared.<g> > > Eldred > -- > http://www.umich.edu/~epickett > Screamers League > IICC League > GPLRank -6.0 MoGPL rank +267.80 > Ch.Rank +52.58 MoC +741.71 > Hist. +82.34 MoH:na > N2k3 rank:in progress > Slayer Spektera lvl 72 assassin > Slayer Spectral_K lvl 38 Necro > US East

Yep, first thing I do for my mates when they get a PC is format it and install the software for them they actually need and want. "Damien Evans" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > > Here I sit with 7200rpm ATA drives, a non pro 9800 vid card and thesame

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> > 2800+ cpu and I keep thinking how outdated my rig is getting. :) > > It's good to get out amoungst the commoners now and then. > > It's been a while since I've been asked to take look at an 'off-the-shelf' > PC (HP, Dell etc) that isn't riddled with viruses, spyware & adware. I > guess the authors of that stuff are achieving their goals - they certainly > seem to be reaching their target audience. > >

They can't spread if they kill the user pc. Only those meant to cause mass financial harm really effect major system files. "Peter Ives" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> In article <[email hidden]>, EldredP > <[email hidden]> writes > >> They had 3 different viruses, 80+ infected files and about 150 spyware > >>programs. You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him > >>that somebody knew every site he had been too. :) > > > >I just worked on a system for a lady in the office. No viruses, but it > >Ad-Aware got 782 hits! It's amazing how much faster the system runs now > >that > >those are cleared.<g> > > > > Sorted a mate's computer out after his ISP refused to allow him to send > out any more emails until his system was looked at as it was just > emailing out viruses everywhere. AV software found over 300! virus > infected files. It was amazing it ran at all. :) > -- > Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington) > Remove ALL_STRESS before replying via email > If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :) > GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -25.01

Rich wrote:

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> Evidence Eliminator... > Cleans Registry Streams, Hidden Start, Run,Click, History menus, Application > logs, Erroneous Binary Data, *.tmp files, hidden java scripts, > subkeys....(the list goes on) and then defragments the registry and compacts > it. > Best piece of software I've ever had for increasing performance...and > privacy.

Or, just use a Mac ;) Best piece of hardware available for increasing performance (well.. if you get a G5, anyway) and certainly privacy. Believe it or not, but there's an advantage to just not having Windows installed - it makes virtually immune :) (Even though it's basically a BSD Unix these days...) Regards, Rudy -------------------- GPLRank: -22 >>> They had 3 different viruses, 80+ infected files and about 150 spyware >>>programs. You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him >>>that somebody knew every site he had been too. :) >> >>I just worked on a system for a lady in the office. No viruses, but it >>Ad-Aware got 782 hits! It's amazing how much faster the system runs now

It seems Macs are still relatively popular in the US but everywhere else they're very obscure. Still quite big in professional desktop publishing but that's about it.

On Fri, 21 May 2004 02:11:53 GMT, Rich wrote: > Best piece of software I've ever had for increasing performance...and > privacy. > Linux works quite well in all these aspects, too ;-) Cheers, Uwe -- mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox) Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/ Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E) GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

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>Evidence Eliminator... >Cleans Registry Streams, Hidden Start, Run,Click, History menus, Application >logs, Erroneous Binary Data, *.tmp files, hidden java scripts, >subkeys....(the list goes on) and then defragments the registry and compacts >it. >Best piece of software I've ever had for increasing performance...and >privacy.

Thanks for the info - I'll check it out. Eldred -- http://www.umich.edu/~epickett Screamers League IICC League GPLRank -6.0 MoGPL rank +267.80 Ch.Rank +52.58 MoC +741.71 Hist. +82.34 MoH:na N2k3 rank:in progress Slayer Spektera lvl 72 assassin Slayer Spectral_K lvl 38 Necro US East

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>Or, just use a Mac ;) > > >Best piece of hardware available for increasing performance (well.. if >you get a G5, anyway) and certainly privacy. > >Believe it or not, but there's an advantage to just not having Windows >installed - it makes virtually immune :)

But the big disadvantage it that I couldn't run a lot of the stuff that I run now. That, and the fact that I couldn't justify spending money that I don't have to get yet ANOTHER computer platform... Eldred -- http://www.umich.edu/~epickett Screamers League IICC League GPLRank -6.0 MoGPL rank +267.80 Ch.Rank +52.58 MoC +741.71 Hist. +82.34 MoH:na N2k3 rank:in progress Slayer Spektera lvl 72 assassin Slayer Spectral_K lvl 38 Necro US East

Spyware is the bane of my existance right now. It's taking up around 30% of my available support time. And you can't just run one utility any more. You have to run several to get it all. I run, in order, CWShredder, SpyBot 1.3 and then Adaware 6. -Larry "Dave Henrie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> Cleaned out this lady's virus ridden system last night. A fairly new HP > computer with an AMD XP 2800+ cpu. It had a small flat LCD screen and a > Geforce 2 MX onboard video. It should have been a fairly speedy system. > But it took hours to update. The Hard Drive was incredibly slow. I > couldn't beleive, with the fast cpu included, how pokey that bugger was. > They had 3 different viruses, 80+ infected files and about 150 spyware > programs. You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him > that somebody knew every site he had been too. :) > So I spent hours installing a firewall, and spyware programs and then > doing the windows updates. > Charged my usual fee...a 12 pak of diet coke. > > Here I sit with 7200rpm ATA drives, a non pro 9800 vid card and the same > 2800+ cpu and I keep thinking how outdated my rig is getting. :) > It's good to get out amoungst the commoners now and then. > dave henrie

There's another exploit out there now that's really killing systems. If you go to the wrong site, it puts up a window that says "Your system is infected by Spyware. Click here to download, or for a free scan, or ....." As soon as you touch the window, even to CLOSE it, whammo! You get nailed with several multi-level exploits that are damned near impossible to get rid of. -Larry "Steve Blankenship" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> "Dave Henrie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:[email hidden]... > > <snip>You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him > that somebody knew every site he had been too. :)<snip> > > Yup... ;-) Same reaction I get when I point people to AV, Spybot and > Adaware and they find hordes of nasties on their systems. The ones that

DL > lots of music via P2P are the worst-hit, it seems. Haven't run into anywho

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> even know about binary newsgroups, fortunately. > > But the funniest were the ones who's Dell came set up to Defrag AND Deep > Scan their the entire 60GB HD EVERY time they booted it up. They just > thought it was normal for a computer to take a half-hour to start up. And > yet they still turned it off whenever they weren't using it! > >

Alison H. says she solved her probs just be switching to onscure browsers and mail clients (almost all the evil stuff is designed to attack IE and OE), so she still has Windows avail for running favored apps (GPL, etc.). "Uwe Sch�rkamp" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> On Fri, 21 May 2004 02:11:53 GMT, Rich wrote: > > > Best piece of software I've ever had for increasing performance...and > > privacy. > > > > Linux works quite well in all these aspects, too ;-) > > Cheers, > > Uwe > > -- > mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox) > Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/ > Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E) > GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

On Fri, 21 May 2004 18:23:21 GMT, Steve Smith wrote: > Alison H. says she solved her probs just be switching to onscure browsers > and mail clients (almost all the evil stuff is designed to attack IE and > OE), so she still has Windows avail for running favored apps (GPL, etc.). > Hi Steve, I can well imagine that picking lesser used browsers like Mozilla and Firefox reduce the risk of infection as their security settings tend to be a bit more stringent out of the box. Good to hear that Ali is in good shape OS-wise ;-) Personally when forced to use windows, I prefer firefox for browsing and firebird as a mail app (although mutt works well within cygwin, too). All the best, uwe -- mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox) Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/ Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E) GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

...erm, make that "oBscure browsers," etc. "Steve Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:tOrrc.64576$[email hidden]...

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> Alison H. says she solved her probs just be switching to onscure browsers > and mail clients (almost all the evil stuff is designed to attack IE and > OE), so she still has Windows avail for running favored apps (GPL, etc.). > > "Uwe Sch�rkamp" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:[email hidden]... > > On Fri, 21 May 2004 02:11:53 GMT, Rich wrote: > > > > > Best piece of software I've ever had for increasing performance...and > > > privacy. > > > > > > > Linux works quite well in all these aspects, too ;-) > > > > Cheers, > > > > Uwe > > > > -- > > mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox) > > Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/ > > Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E) > > GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61 > >

Being the nerd of the neighborhood, I usually have to look at everyones PC's. I got sick last year of cleaning off viruses from people every week, despite telling them "Microsoft doesn't email you patches!" or that .exe's aren't the "document they requested". So I don't usually go to people's houses any more for that stuff -- Mike Beauchamp http://www.therevox.com - custom electro-theremins and stuff. http://www.mikebeauchamp.com - mike's personal site. "Dave Henrie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > Cleaned out this lady's virus ridden system last night. A fairly new HP > computer with an AMD XP 2800+ cpu. It had a small flat LCD screen and a > Geforce 2 MX onboard video. It should have been a fairly speedy system. > But it took hours to update. The Hard Drive was incredibly slow. I > couldn't beleive, with the fast cpu included, how pokey that bugger was. > They had 3 different viruses, 80+ infected files and about 150 spyware > programs. You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him > that somebody knew every site he had been too. :) > So I spent hours installing a firewall, and spyware programs and then > doing the windows updates. > Charged my usual fee...a 12 pak of diet coke. > > Here I sit with 7200rpm ATA drives, a non pro 9800 vid card and the same > 2800+ cpu and I keep thinking how outdated my rig is getting. :) > It's good to get out amoungst the commoners now and then. > dave henrie

EldredP wrote: >>Or, just use a Mac ;) >>installed - it makes virtually immune :) > But the big disadvantage it that I couldn't run a lot of the stuff that I run > now. True. Well, you run Explorer, M$-Office, NR2003, Unreal, MoH, CoC, or Quake? In that case, no problem then ;) > That, and the fact that I couldn't justify spending money that I don't > have to get yet ANOTHER computer platform... I did it the other way 'round: use a Mac (well, as said, on OS X basically a BSD Unix machine these days) and do most of my work and Net stuff on that. (Tiny risk of security breaches THERE). Then bought a very cheap PII pc for $ 80 to fill my GPL racing need. Sure, it cost a bit of money but buying a PC emulator like VirtualPC (legally) would've cost more, really. For the PC I've got a Live-Linux-on-bootCD distro, for HD checking in dire emergencies. Regards, Rudy -------------------- GPLRank: -22

> I can well imagine that picking lesser used browsers like Mozilla and > Firefox reduce the risk of infection as their security settings tend > to be a bit more stringent out of the box. Good to hear that Ali is in > good shape OS-wise ;-) I like Firefox. Trouble is, there's a lot of sites that use non-compliant javascript that messes it up. My bank's site for one. Naturally they work with IE and that's probably all the web designers seem to care about.

Or you could just have a Windows PC that can play absolutely anything. I hate Microsoft as much as anyone but I don't let practicality go out the window because of it.

Tnx, Uwe! "Uwe Sch�rkamp" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > On Fri, 21 May 2004 18:23:21 GMT, Steve Smith wrote: > > Alison H. says she solved her probs just be switching to onscurebrowsers > > and mail clients (almost all the evil stuff is designed to attack IE and > > OE), so she still has Windows avail for running favored apps (GPL,etc.).

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> > > > Hi Steve, > > I can well imagine that picking lesser used browsers like Mozilla and > Firefox reduce the risk of infection as their security settings tend > to be a bit more stringent out of the box. Good to hear that Ali is in > good shape OS-wise ;-) > > Personally when forced to use windows, I prefer firefox for browsing > and firebird as a mail app (although mutt works well within cygwin, > too). > > All the best, > > uwe > > -- > mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox) > Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/ > Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E) > GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

On Thu, 20 May 2004 07:40:07 -0500, Dave Henrie <[email hidden]> wrote:

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> Cleaned out this lady's virus ridden system last night. A fairly new HP >computer with an AMD XP 2800+ cpu. It had a small flat LCD screen and a >Geforce 2 MX onboard video. It should have been a fairly speedy system. >But it took hours to update. The Hard Drive was incredibly slow. I >couldn't beleive, with the fast cpu included, how pokey that bugger was. > They had 3 different viruses, 80+ infected files and about 150 spyware >programs. You shoulda seen the husband's face go slack when I told him >that somebody knew every site he had been too. :) > So I spent hours installing a firewall, and spyware programs and then >doing the windows updates. > Charged my usual fee...a 12 pak of diet coke. > > Here I sit with 7200rpm ATA drives, a non pro 9800 vid card and the same >2800+ cpu and I keep thinking how outdated my rig is getting. :) >It's good to get out amoungst the commoners now and then. >dave henrie

I did the same thing recently on someones computer. I tell you, we are sorely underpaid. I spent a good four hours getting everything in order.

On 21 May 2004 12:01:48 GMT, [email hidden] (EldredP) wrote: >But the big disadvantage it that I couldn't run a lot of the stuff that I run >now. That, and the fact that I couldn't justify spending money that I don't >have to get yet ANOTHER computer platform... > >Eldred I live in a very small town and they have only one computer store. And the morons only sell Macs, duh!

On Sat, 22 May 2004 05:58:25 +0200, Ruud Dingemans <[email hidden]> wrote:

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>Sure, it cost a bit of money but buying a PC emulator like VirtualPC >(legally) would've cost more, really. For the PC I've got a >Live-Linux-on-bootCD distro, for HD checking in dire emergencies. > >Regards, Rudy >-------------------- >GPLRank: -22

Or you can just dual boot Windows and Linux and have the best of both worlds. No need for a Mac to run more securely.

On 21 May 2004 11:59:14 GMT, [email hidden] (EldredP) wrote:

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>>Evidence Eliminator... >>Cleans Registry Streams, Hidden Start, Run,Click, History menus, Application >>logs, Erroneous Binary Data, *.tmp files, hidden java scripts, >>subkeys....(the list goes on) and then defragments the registry and compacts >>it. >>Best piece of software I've ever had for increasing performance...and >>privacy. > >Thanks for the info - I'll check it out. > >Eldred

Evidence Eliminator is a known major spammer too. I don't buy anything from scum sucking spammers.

On Sat, 22 May 2004 05:58:25 +0200, Ruud Dingemans wrote: > stuff on that. (Tiny risk of security breaches THERE). Then bought a > very cheap PII pc for $ 80 to fill my GPL racing need. > GPL & friends also run fine under WINE in Linux, using OpenGL drivers. Cheers, uwe -- mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox) Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/ Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E) GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61