Re: Stupid Fscking Windows

On 28 May, in article
<Xns97D15E42EC8A1spamtraplexregiacom@xxxxxxxxxxx>
spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxxxx "Stuart A. Bronstein" wrote:

"Dave {Reply Address in.Sig}" <"noone$$"@llondel.org> wrote:

My father's machine has picked up some nasty virus thingy. I was
talking to him on the phone and got him to fire up the VNC
server on his machine so I could go poke around things. He
wanted to uninstall his (expired) Norton virus stuff and
ZoneAlarm and install the PCGuard stuff supplied free by his
ISP. So we duly went through that with a few reboots. Of course,
installing the new software with firewall defaults to blocking
everything, including the VNC server. Worse, it had the cheek to
classify it as spyware and delete it! Then it popped up windows
saying it can't delete some dodgy virus so I can't even
fault-find it. Trying to second-guess a program I've never seen
over the phone is definitely out.

I had a vicious virus (actually a worm that implanted a sort of
spyware deep in the bowels of my computer) last year - got past
both the Symantec virus protection program I had paid for and the
free software from my isp. Norton was useless and couldn't find
it.

I have taken Bloatware like Norton, Macafee and Panda off of peoples
systems installed AVG (free version) and before going online and doing
updates in some cases it has found and cured over a dozen REAL trojans
on most systems. Actually installing AVG tends to be more less of a load
on most peoples systems.

I must dig out the link to potential security hole in Norton.

Personally any antivirus package that relies on Internet Explorer to
provide its front end (Norton, Macafee, Sophos and others) is stupid as the
first thing hit by most viruses is Internet Explorer.

The one program I found that worked better than any other was one
from an eastery European group called Ewido. At one point I had a

Ewido has recently been bought up by AVG group.

Other spyware packages that are free for single home users, that I recommend
people use are

Spybot Search and Destroy (please make donation if you use)
Adaware by Lavasoft

They work well and have got several peoples systems going that I know of.

little trouble understanding something about what the program did -
it said it got rid of something in my email folder, but it didn't
really. Turned out that I had to compress the folder (or something
like that) before it could be truly gone. The tech support guys
were so geeky that it took four or five attempts to tell me what to
do before I understood it.

Ah Outlook Express and never really deleting messages, I can give you an
explanation of it using each folder as a notepad, and deleted messages
are just pages with a red cross through them.

Check it out - they have an on-line free version that really seems
to work well.

I half-seriously suggested he
might like to try Linux instead, it'll do everything he wants
(mail, web, simple office apps, print). So I think I'll work on
that one. The only downside is that my nephew probably won't be
able to run his games on the machine, but as I suspect he's the
cause of the dodgy stuff anyway, I don't think that will be too
great a loss.

Good idea, actually. Get the kid his own machine - perhaps a mac.

Childrens insistence on installing anything and leaving it on the system
regardless of how good it is, and just because it is gimmicky or
recommended by one of their "knowledgeable" friends, is a lot of my business.

--
Paul (who the hell does this guy think he is?)
Post pen-pal/date/web-site adverts in uk.adverts.personals

.

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