Don’t Forget Safe Mode
Posted by Mitch on Jun 8, 2009
A few days ago, a friend called me, distressed because she couldn’t get her computer to do anything. She kept saying something about a program telling her she had multiple viruses and malware, and to buy something. I told her to stop, don’t do anything, and I’d be right over.
I got there, and she said her son admitted to downloading some online golf program from a site he’d never been to before. She then said she’d been trying to download an antivirus program, but she’d lost her internet connection. I told her that if she didn’t already have an antivirus program on her computer that it was too late.
I put in my USB drive and was able to move the programs I was going to try to run onto her desktop. However, none of my programs would open. I tried opening some things on her computer. The browser would open, but it wouldn’t access the internet. The explore window opened, but none of the programs would open. I couldn’t get the task manager or control panel to open. And I couldn’t get to the C prompt either.
I tried rebooting first, but to no avail. I then remembered to boot up into safe mode. That was smart, but none of the programs I needed to access were there. See, when you boot into safe mode, you’re suddenly someone else, probably the administrator, and the administrator didn’t have access to the desktop of the original user. So, I had to reboot normally, then move everything to the C drive, and reboot again into safe mode.
Once it was back up, I went to the C drive and decided to start with Stinger. It’s the quick down and dirty virus checker from McAfee, free always. The problem, though, is that I had a version from last September; you always need to keep up to date if you’re going to use Stinger. It found nothing, which I figured might happen.
Next I decided to run the major program, Combofix. A few months ago, I worked on one of my computers, and I was able to get rid of every virus and spyware/adware piece of junk except one Trojan that just wouldn’t go away. Running Combofix killed it. Usually it likes to access the internet while it’s doing its thing, but in this case, you can’t access the internet while in safe mode. But I knew I had the latest version, as I’d downloaded it before I went to my friend’s house, so I wasn’t worried about it.
I ran the program, and it took about 25 minutes. It needed to; it’s hard to believe, but in one download her computer ended up with almost 200 viruses and registry entries. You never know what you’re going to get if you load something and haven’t verified where it came from. But at this point the computer was pretty clean.
While still in safe mode, I went into the control panel, then into add/remove programs. I knew which programs were associated with the virus; I can’t tell you why, but I just did. I deleted every program, and since it couldn’t access the internet or give me any other grief, especially after the cleaning Combofix gave it, they all went away submissively.
I booted the computer system back into real time, and it came up with no issues except not having any protection. I decided to start off with Zone Alarm, which added a firewall to her computer. You can’t use Zone Alarm with Vista unless your computer is 32-bit, which mine isn’t. But it’s a great program, and fairly easy to use for the uninitiated. It’s always best to start by adding the firewall program first to block anything sneaky that might still be on the computer.
Then I put on AVG’s free antivirus program, and, because I know she and her family don’t have a real clue as to how to protect themselves, I added the security toolbar, which I wouldn’t use myself. Then, for a final bit of protection, I added AdAware for spyware/malware checking, and decided to go ahead and run that. It found 114 instances total of spyware and malware; I started thinking that maybe some of this stuff was there before today’s incursion.
However, after just about 4 hours, her computer was clean, and now it was protected. But it could have taken a heck of a long time if I hadn’t remembered safe mode. So, now you won’t forget it either. But protect yourselves!
Stylish
Posted by Mitch on Feb 14, 2009
For those of us who use Firefox, there are a host of add-ons and other things that we can employ to change the look and use of the Firefox browser. One that I particularly love is called Stylish. Basically, this allows you to change the look of certain websites that you may visit on a consistent, or even inconsistent basis, including colors and styles of those pages.
The first thing you do is download the Stylish add-on from the link above. Then you go to the main page, Userstyles.org and search for sites whose style you might want to change. For instance, here are some of mine:
Main Google page:
Google images page:
Wikipedia page:
This is my Facebook page:
There are many other sites that you can alter, and there are even some add-ons that will change the look and color of your browser, which is really neat. Vista is hard to figure out in terms of changing colors and such in general, so I was glad to find a style and color that I liked to at least change how my browser looks. I’d show you that, but it would look goofy with all the things I have open right now. Oh yeah, you can also use Stylish to change the styles and uses for Thunderbird, if you use that for your email client.
Check it out, if you’re predisposed to do so, and if you’re using Firefox. And if you’re not using Firefox,… why not! 
My New Computer
Posted by Mitch on Dec 27, 2008
There are some things you allow others to buy you, then there are those things you just have to do for yourself. This is one of those things I had to do for myself; I finally bought a new computer.
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For the back story, my previous computer has been nothing but problems from the day I bought it. That sucker just kept shutting down at the most inopportune times (as if there’s an opportune time for your computer to throw up the BSOD), and there was nothing I could do about it. I took it back to Comp USA, where I bought it, seven times. I’d had it put together there, and I’m not sure but that was probably the biggest mistake of my life. I easily spent over $3,500 on that bad boy, first picking out all the components, then in repair costs and replacement parts costs (even though I purchased a service agreement), and nothing.
Then this summer, I took it to the computer repair guy up the street, and had a couple of encounters with him that ended up with my computer still not working, but now it was shutting down more often, and at more inopportune times. Frankly, with everything I did over a four year period, if I was dealing with real world issues I’d have won the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Well, there’s nothing that a good consulting assignment won’t take care of, and in this case, it’s taken care of my being able to buy a new computer; whew! So, what did I get? I got the Gateway FX Desktop with Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor, 3 GB DDR3 RAM, 750 GB SATA hard drive, 2.66 GHz processor, 512K ATI RADEON HD 4850 video card, 10 USB ports, one Firewire, dual-layered DVD player/ recorder,… and a host of other stuff that I’m not quite sure what it does, but I’ll learn it. This thing is fast, and it’s stable; man, I’ve wanted that for a very long time. It’s also expandable for two more hard drives and up to 16 GB DDR3 RAM; like I need more storage and more speed and power. Well, in this case, one never knows with me, right? Still, I’m stuck with Vista, but I have to say that, thus far, it’s working well, though there are some minor irritations I’m having, such as it’s working hard to keep me out of files that I’ve always been able to get into and modify on my own. That, and this weird thing of having two Program Files folders, one for 32-bit stuff, the other for 64-bit stuff; weird.
Now, me being me, I had to talk myself out of getting the computer that was one step up, and I’m glad I did. It came with a 2.93 GHz i7-940 processor and 6 GB DDR RAM and 2 GB video memory along with the terabyte hard drive, but when it comes to RAM, it was only expandable to 12 GB RAM. Of course, it was also set up for wireless LAN, and that would have been nice, but since my hub is less than a foot away from the back of my computer, it’s no big deal.
I had to talk myself out of that for two reasons. One is because I also bought the 22″ HDMI Gateway widescreen monitor that’s taken my breath away thus far (once again, having to talk myself out of spending another $150 for 2 inches; that just didn’t seem to computer). Two is because, since I was throwing my money around, I also bought a 42″ Sharp HDTV for the bedroom to replace the best sounding TV I ever had because the remote control wouldn’t work anymore, and it wasn’t the control, it was the sensor in the TV. Have you tried to find an inexpensive TV repairman in today’s world?
Yeah, I was throwing my money around yesterday, treating myself to a late Christmas present. But don’t think I spent it all on me. I took care of my wife before Christmas, the TV is actually more for her than for me, since I spend almost all of my time at the computer, and I’m still going to be giving her more stuff over the next few days to help her take care of some things she’s wanted to do for a long while. I’m a good husband, but she’s a good wife, and knew I needed a new computer. I gave her my old monitor, and man, there’s no real comparison between a flat screen 19″ and one with a big tube in it, is there?
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Of course, the next big electronics purchase for me will need to be a laptop at some point. My poor laptop is moving close to 5 years old now, and I noticed it was struggling last week as I was running it as the main computer. I hope it can last at least another couple of months, as I have some other things to take care of, and then we’ll see what I go with. Right now, I’m leaning towards the Asus Laptop with Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor Technology, red and black colored (I love colors), Intel® Centrino Core™2 Duo Mobile 2.66 GHz, 320 GB hard drive with 4GB DDR3 RAM, and a 17 inch screen. Right now I have a 15.4″ screen, but if you know me you know I never go lateral or smaller, hence the larger screen. Of course, something else might tickle my fancy, as I haven’t ruled out the Alienware n9750 17″ laptop or their new M17 17″, with the 500 GB hard drive, and I’m still kicking myself for not buying, when it was available, the Superman Area 51 laptop; that was really cool!
No matter. With the new speed and no more worries about shutting down, there will be more blogging articles on all my blogs, and everyone will want to buy new computers eventually. Happy holidays!
Follow Cost
Posted by Mitch on Dec 5, 2008
Do you Twitter? Are you one of those people who writes once every couple of weeks, or are you someone who posts 100 times a day? How irritating are you to follow on Twitter?
Interesting questions, to be sure, but it’s not my attempt to take a potshot at anyone. Instead, I’m introducing this neat little website I came across a couple of weeks ago called Follow Cost. If you’re on Twitter, what you do is plug your Twitter name into it, let it do some calculations, and it’ll give you a quick statistic showing you what the average number of updates people are making on Twitter, and the average number you’re making over your last 100 posts.
Now, here’s the thing. If your close to the average, you only get the statistic. For instance, right now the average is 13.32 milliscobles, and my average is 12.18. However, a couple of weeks when I ran the figure, my milliscobles was around 48, and I got this sound that sounded like an atomic bomb, and the page shook and flickered with colors as it there was an explosion. It would seem the holiday and the trip across the country has slowed me up a little bit.
Of course, if you read my post on what makes Twitter interesting, you remember being introduced to Twitter Grader, where you can see how prominent you are on Twitter based on people you follow and how many are following you. Unfortunately, I had to remove the little badge that would have shown everyone how prominent I am because of that problem with javascript a couple of weeks ago; sigh.
Anyway, if you’re on Twitter, why not check it out and have a little fun with it. I’m wondering if anything happens if one hardly ever uses it; someone try it and let me know.
Javascript Can Wreck Havoc With Blogs
Posted by Mitch on Nov 23, 2008
Over the last bunch of days, sometimes my blog has been very slow to access. I wasn’t sure what it was, though, so I started doing some testing, and it seems that the lethargy has been tracked down to incompatibility of javascript created items that I’ve been adding to my blog.
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Of course, we all have a lot of javascript things on our blogs if we’re monetizing them. Adsense is a javascript program. Widget Bucks is a javascript program. Chitika is a javascript program. I’ve had Adsense almost forever, and my blog never ran this slow. I’m not sure about either Widget Bucks or Chitika. I had two other minor things on my blog, both from Grader.com, and I took those off because each one was a javascript program.
Not that talking about javascript slowing down blogs is new. A blog post that probably didn’t get the attention it deserved comes from Alex Iskold’s Techonology blog, where he wrote a post titled How Javascript Is Slowing Down The Web. In it, he talks about the problems that can occur when multiple “single” lines of javascript code come together from varying sources. He talks about how javascript performs things sequentially and not concurrently, and that anytime a piece of JavaScript is being loaded or evaluated, everything else has to wait.
Now, supposedly there’s things that can be done for different browsers, but none of those things are absolutes. That, plus it’s very technical stuff; most of us regular folks won’t understand it, let alone what to do with it. However, something I’m speculating is that when there’s two javascript programs next to each other, that’s when things have an opportunity to fail, even if the same company created both programs. When I first removed the Widget Bucks affiliate banner that was sitting next to their skyboard banner, this blog was running much faster. Since then, though, it seems to go up and down. Frankly, I’m not really sure what to do next, other than removing all javascript programs, and that’s not about to happen. It’s possible that it’s related to either the LinkXL or Kontera ads that have recently started running on this blog also; I’m just not really sure.
Luckily, the slowdown time is infrequent, so I hope it doesn’t overly disturb anyone. However, if it starts bothering me often enough, I’m going to start moving things around some more, trying to make sure there’s some kind of distance between all the javascript that’s going on. At least the Daily Puppy widget isn’t javascript; aren’t they cute? Anyway, Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome talks about how javascript works in web browsers, so I’m sharing that here; enjoy!
The Computer Is Working Again; For Now
Posted by Mitch on Nov 18, 2008
After literally 12 hours of effort, I finally got my computer back up and running. Truthfully, I’m not sure what did it, but I’m going to detail what went on, which may give information to others who might go through this problem.
What started it all was my trying to get my scanner to work. It just wasn’t having it, and it wouldn’t run with either of the utilities are are supposed to scan items, those being Microsoft Photo Editor, my editor of choice, or its own toolbar; I have a Canon scanner. So, I did what I thought was the logical step; I uninstalled the drivers for the scanner so I could load them again after the reboot.
Okay, the reboot never stopped rebooting. At first I actually just let it go, thinking it would right itself, but that wasn’t going to happen. I then booted up in safe mode to see if I could determine what was going on; nope. I tried loading the Canon program back there, then rebooted the computer again; same issue.
I started trying to think of anything else I’d done since the last reboot. I’ve still been having major problems with the computer shutting down, and I thought I’d traced it to a HID compliance issue (human interface device, used to describe wireless hardware such as keyboards and mice) by adding some files to my computer that I’d gotten from others. That problem didn’t resolve itself, but I’d rebooted after that and the computer came back just fine.
Actually, saying my computer was coming back just fine is a misnomer. For the past week or so, any time I tried to reboot, the computer would hang and just not get it done. But if I rebooted a second time, or if I shut down the computer completely then started it back up, everything was fine. So, there were problems on the horizon.
Anyway, I kept going through the stages of booting and rebooting the regular way and through safe mode, even signing on as administrator, and nothing was working. Then I decided to try to run the Win XP repair option. When I’d accidentally erased my files before, I was actually trying to run a repair instead, but hit the wrong key and ended up doing a full reinstall. With the repair option, and I’m not talking about the Repair Recovery Console, you can have Windows repair itself, almost like a full install because it takes about as much time, but it doesn’t touch those all important Documents and Settings files, which contains all your data files, including your email files. I first had to go into the BIOS and change the boot option so it would look for the CD first, and away I went.
For the uninformed, after Windows loads all its files, it gives you some options. One allows you to hit R to go to recovery; don’t do that if you’re not close to being an expert. More on that one later. Instead, hit ENTER, which looks like you’re going to install, but you’re not at this point. What happens is you’ll come to the next screen where it will give you the option of either repairing or doing a clean install. This is where you hit the “R“. From this point on, you just let Windows do its thing, answering questions as needed, but here’s a very important point: Do NOT do any of this if you don’t have an installation key number! Oh, one more thing. After the install, when the computer reboots for the second time, you’ll want to go back into BIOS and change the boot order back to hard drive, and of course take out the XP CD.
Going on with the story, during the first repair process, suddenly it stopped and was looking for a particular video file. I don’t know why it wasn’t already on my computer, but it wasn’t. I had to go through the process of locating the driver on my laptop, then copying it over to a blank CD (I used a rewritable disk) and putting it into my computer. Of course, things never go easy for me, so it couldn’t find the file. I ended up having to reboot the computer, and when it came back it started the repair process again, but when it came to the file this time and I put the CD in, it found the file. Of course a few minutes later it needed another file, and I had to go back to the laptop and repeat that process, and of course I then had to reboot the computer and start the repair process again. Once it finally had both files, I was good to go.
Or so I thought. Once the repair process was completed, I started the computer again, and it kept rebooting itself; arrgh! I ended up running the full repair process again, just to make sure that it was done properly, especially with what I had to go through with those two files, and this time it ran perfectly.
Good to go again, right; nope! Still was stuck in some kind of loop. Also, it kept flashing a blue screen message, but it was so fast that I couldn’t read it. So I had to boot up in safe mode and go into the My Computer settings to turn that off. I then rebooted the computer, and finally, even though it didn’t boot up, it stopped on the error message so I at least had a chance to see what was going on. I saw the error message and headed to the internet on my laptop. It indicated that there was a possibility that I might have a virus. Oh yeah; you can always type in your error messages, but someone else might not have typed in exactly what your problem is. However, the first two lines of the code will usually get you somewhere close to what your issue might be. I went to McAfee’s site for its Stinger program, which will scan your computer for the latest viruses without your having to load an entire program.
Before I went through this entire process, though, I suddenly thought about opening a restore point and going back to a date when the computer was running fine. Of course, turns out I didn’t have one. Figures, because a few days ago I was thinking I should go in and create a restore point; always follow your first thought.
I booted the computer again in safe mode, then this time I ran the Stinger program. It didn’t find anything, so it wasn’t a virus. I also decided to run two other programs. I ran Error Doctor again, which I’d already run twice, then decided to run this program recommended by PC Magazine called Driver Sweeper, a free utility that cleans out bad drivers, mainly video and audio, but still, it was another check. Then, while I was at it, I decided to run Spybot, a program that looks for spyware and malware, and it found nothing. I also was going to try to run my free AVG program, but it wouldn’t work; odd. And, one final thing, I also installed Service Pack 3, which I’d already had downloaded; you never know when you’ll need those service packs.
At this point, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I decided to hedge my bet. I backed up all my data files from Documents and Settings, which includes all the My Documents files. I was prepared to run the full install if my computer didn’t boot up properly.
I hit reboot, then waited. And this time, the computer booted up all the way. When I heard that wonderful applause (instead of the normal Windows opening, I replaced the sound with applause; who wouldn’t enjoy being applauded more often?), I was ecstatic. I checked the time, and it was 3:35; I’d spent 12 hours and 21 minutes trying to get this to occur. I decided to just turn off the monitor at that point and get back to everything else later in the morning.
Once I came back, I turned on the monitor to see it ready for me to do something. I had to reload many Windows updates, including reinstalling Internet Explorer 7, but I didn’t care. What I cared about was whether the computer would reboot once all that stuff was installed. It did, and that part of the computer is working well once again; whew!
The one bad thing? The scanner still won’t scan. Hey, I’ll take what I can get!
Mozilla
Posted by Mitch on Nov 8, 2008
Most people who use Firefox or Thunderbird know that they got those items from Mozilla. However, I’m betting most of you don’t know that there’s a Mozilla.com and a Mozilla.org, and that, though each of the sites has some kind of relationship with the other, they’re totally different sites.
Mozilla.com is where we all get Firefox and Thunderbird. They also have a store where you can purchase t-shirts and other clothing, and other items with the Mozilla “Firefox” logo on it.
Mozilla.org is where one can pick up news about what’s going on with Mozilla, including updates to Firefox and Mozilla, but it’s also where other software that Mozilla offers resides. For instance, there are two other browsers that they provide, one called Seamonkey and the other called Camino. Seamonkey is an all-in one application where one can do browsing, email, chatting and HTML coding; it reminds me of what the earliest versions of Netscape used to do. Camino is a browser meant for Mac users who want to experience what everyone else experiences with Firefox.
Two things I was interested in learning more about, one of which I have downloaded and now use, were Sunbird and Lightning. Sunbird is a calendar application that works like Outlook, only more colorful. Lightning is actually more of a add-on that you can load into Thunderbird and it adds the calendar application right into that program. That turned out to be the one I wanted, so I downloaded it and installed it into my Thunderbird program, and was happy to discover that it also has a tasks list with it.
There are more things you can see on the second site, such as other projects the Mozilla Corporation is working on, and if you’re interested you can take a look. Happy viewing.
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