A problem.
Twice today I have clicked on two links posted on the board.
One of these is Gary Kellys link to the UP forum and the other is Av's link on the Green Eggs and Ham thread.
Each time I click everything freezes up and I have to end the program and start it up again.
I had a bit of a virus problem earlier and ran a Microsoft clean up program downloaded from their homepage and that seems to have cleared up the viral symptoms but left me unable to link to anything...
Any ideas...
Thanks,
D.
Help needed....
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dubhlinn
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Help needed....
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
W.B.Yeats
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
W.B.Yeats
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ChrisA
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While, being a Linux user myself, I'm fond of that suggestion... but, if you're not ready for that step, you have to understand that you basically have a compromised system. If it was messing up your browsing, it was some sort of url-hijacking... maybe something as 'innocuous' as serving web ads from some fly-by-night instead of from the actual banner ad providers, or something as dangerous as watching for anything looking like a credit-card form and siphoning that information. Microsoft's program -may- have cleaned up the invader, or may not have.
Anyway, the proper procedure for dealing with a contaminated system is to wipe it clean. You should ideally already have backups. If you don't, you'll have to make one now. In theory, you shouldn't back up executable content. But, that would include word documents with their macro problems, and windows media files with their executable wrappers, and so on, so this is probably not realistic. Anyway, back up everything that's 'yours', e-mail, documents, pictures, whatever.
Find your restore CDs. You may not have restore CDs, lately windows machines don't ship with any way to restore the system, and you can't make a restore cd -after- being infected (because anything generated by an infected system is suspect). If you don't have restore CDs, contact the people you got the computer from, and ask for them. If they can't/won't get them for you, you may have to buy a new copy of Windows.
Get a copy of either Norton's Internet Security suite, or McAfee's suite - not just the virus stuff, the most important bit here is actually the 'personal firewall'.
With these two CDs (CD sets) in hand, restore, and security suite, you're ready to go.
First, unplug your computer from the network. A fresh install of windows takes an average of 7 minutes to be infected if exposed to the internet. Now, install a new copy of windows, choosing the option to reformat your drive and wipe everything out.
Follow this up by installing your chosen security suite, again, register later (Norton, irritatingly, doesn't have a 'register later' button, but 'cancel' of the registration continues the install process with a warning to register later.) You don't connect to the 'net until you're secured.
Activate the personal firewall, and configure it to block all incoming connections, and block all outgoing connections except for mail (pop an imap), web (http and https), and ftp.
-Now- you can plug in your internet connection, dig out the info from your ISP, and re-setup your network connection, re-register your windows, and register your security software.
And yes, I'm serious, and yes, this is the procedure I follow to restore a compromised windows box, and yes, it's a royal pain. This is why I avoid Windows as much as possible.
And yes, you have to follow similar procedures for compromised Macs or Linux boxes,
they just don't get compromised as often.
Good luck.
--Chris
Anyway, the proper procedure for dealing with a contaminated system is to wipe it clean. You should ideally already have backups. If you don't, you'll have to make one now. In theory, you shouldn't back up executable content. But, that would include word documents with their macro problems, and windows media files with their executable wrappers, and so on, so this is probably not realistic. Anyway, back up everything that's 'yours', e-mail, documents, pictures, whatever.
Find your restore CDs. You may not have restore CDs, lately windows machines don't ship with any way to restore the system, and you can't make a restore cd -after- being infected (because anything generated by an infected system is suspect). If you don't have restore CDs, contact the people you got the computer from, and ask for them. If they can't/won't get them for you, you may have to buy a new copy of Windows.
Get a copy of either Norton's Internet Security suite, or McAfee's suite - not just the virus stuff, the most important bit here is actually the 'personal firewall'.
With these two CDs (CD sets) in hand, restore, and security suite, you're ready to go.
First, unplug your computer from the network. A fresh install of windows takes an average of 7 minutes to be infected if exposed to the internet. Now, install a new copy of windows, choosing the option to reformat your drive and wipe everything out.
Follow this up by installing your chosen security suite, again, register later (Norton, irritatingly, doesn't have a 'register later' button, but 'cancel' of the registration continues the install process with a warning to register later.) You don't connect to the 'net until you're secured.
Activate the personal firewall, and configure it to block all incoming connections, and block all outgoing connections except for mail (pop an imap), web (http and https), and ftp.
-Now- you can plug in your internet connection, dig out the info from your ISP, and re-setup your network connection, re-register your windows, and register your security software.
And yes, I'm serious, and yes, this is the procedure I follow to restore a compromised windows box, and yes, it's a royal pain. This is why I avoid Windows as much as possible.
And yes, you have to follow similar procedures for compromised Macs or Linux boxes,
they just don't get compromised as often.
Good luck.
--Chris
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ChrisA
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The simplest way is to go to http://www.linuxiso.org/ and download the 'Knoppix'emmline wrote:One can download linux while using windows, then launch either? How does that work?
Live-CD. Then, if you boot off of CD, you're in Linux. Take the CD out, reboot, you're
in Windows.
You can also install both on the harddrive, and choose one or the other at boot time,
and if you really want, you get get VMware and either run Linux inside of Windows,
or run Windows inside of Linux.
--Chris
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Henke
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I don't really know, I just know that it's possible. I can ask a friend who is great with computers. He helps me with everything on my pc. Some board member might know as well.emmline wrote:One can download linux while using windows, then launch either? How does that work?
Another good thing with Linux is that because it's open source, you can edit it any way you want (or like I would do, get someone else to edit it for you
) so that it looks very similar to windows. It's very handy when you're used to the old windows.-
avanutria
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Sorry my link caused problems too - you're really not missing much by not visiting. I was bored when I posted it. 
One question though - what happens if you copy and paste the links into your browser? I imagine you can get to them then?
I'm not sure what browser you're using...before going through the huge procedure ChrisA outlined, you might want to try uninstalling and reinstalling just the browser. Make sure you reboot after the uninstall.
One question though - what happens if you copy and paste the links into your browser? I imagine you can get to them then?
I'm not sure what browser you're using...before going through the huge procedure ChrisA outlined, you might want to try uninstalling and reinstalling just the browser. Make sure you reboot after the uninstall.
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dubhlinn
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Hope looms on the horizon.
Thanks all especially ChrisA for all that tech stuff.I got in touch with a tech head I know who advised a similar approach but I am going to wait till he can drag his ass over here to do it for me, which could be a few weeks from now alas.
Av's suggestion works fine without even having to cut/paste.When I right clicked I got an option to "open"and that works fine. The mystery is that I never had that option before!! I have no idea at all why the little window that opens up after a right click has changed from what I usually get,which is just a series of options with Copy ,Paste etc being the ones I used to get.!!!!
When I had the viral trouble last night the left/right click functions of the mouse were reversed.Took a while to get used to that while I was running Norton scans I can tell ye.
Once again,thanks to all - even the Mac Brigade .
BTW,Av's link on the Green Eggs and Ham thread is absolutely hilarious......providing you know a bit about Gaelic Football and its complex web of inter-county rivalry.
Slan,
D.
Thanks all especially ChrisA for all that tech stuff.I got in touch with a tech head I know who advised a similar approach but I am going to wait till he can drag his ass over here to do it for me, which could be a few weeks from now alas.
Av's suggestion works fine without even having to cut/paste.When I right clicked I got an option to "open"and that works fine. The mystery is that I never had that option before!! I have no idea at all why the little window that opens up after a right click has changed from what I usually get,which is just a series of options with Copy ,Paste etc being the ones I used to get.!!!!
When I had the viral trouble last night the left/right click functions of the mouse were reversed.Took a while to get used to that while I was running Norton scans I can tell ye.
Once again,thanks to all - even the Mac Brigade
.BTW,Av's link on the Green Eggs and Ham thread is absolutely hilarious......providing you know a bit about Gaelic Football and its complex web of inter-county rivalry.
Slan,
D.
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
W.B.Yeats
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
W.B.Yeats
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Jerry Freeman
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As long as we're here ...
Would it be OK if I ask a related question?
I can't play video files of any kind, no matter what video player software I try (Real, Quicktime, Windows Media Player).
It crashes the computer (turns it off completely and then it reboots by itself) every time, except when I try to play CNN news video clips. In that case, it plays the audio, but the video doesn't work right. It plays about one second of video and then the only video is a vertical line at the right of the video box. Audio files play fine with no glitches whatsoever. It's just video that crashes the computer.
I've recently completely restored my computer, reloaded Windows 98 and all my software, backed up and replaced all my data just a couple of weeks ago. Everything else seems to be normal and working much better since the restoration except the video function.
Any ideas?
Best wishes,
Jerry
Would it be OK if I ask a related question?
I can't play video files of any kind, no matter what video player software I try (Real, Quicktime, Windows Media Player).
It crashes the computer (turns it off completely and then it reboots by itself) every time, except when I try to play CNN news video clips. In that case, it plays the audio, but the video doesn't work right. It plays about one second of video and then the only video is a vertical line at the right of the video box. Audio files play fine with no glitches whatsoever. It's just video that crashes the computer.
I've recently completely restored my computer, reloaded Windows 98 and all my software, backed up and replaced all my data just a couple of weeks ago. Everything else seems to be normal and working much better since the restoration except the video function.
Any ideas?
Best wishes,
Jerry
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ChrisA
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The first thing to do is to figure out what kind of video card you have, and get the latest drivers for it and install those.Jerry Freeman wrote:As long as we're here ...
Would it be OK if I ask a related question?
I can't play video files of any kind, no matter what video player software I try (Real, Quicktime, Windows Media Player).
It crashes the computer (turns it off completely and then it reboots by itself)
If that doesn't work, figure out what kind of motherboard you have, see if there's a bios update for it, and get that.
If that doesn't work, you may have an actual hardware defect in the motherboard, which would then need to be replaced.
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Jerry Freeman
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Jerry Freeman
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