Thousands of free electronic books!

Here's another Kim Komando hint. Thousands of free electronic books at http://google.books.com.

When to take photos...

Kim Komando had a recommended site today that I'm passing along. It is http://www.golden-hour.com/. What she said was that the best time to take a picture is during the "golden hour," which is around sunset or sunrise. This site gives you the info you need to know the exact time of the "golden hour."

A site that has an inventory of all that's bad in the internet

If you want to find out if something is a hoax, a virus problem, spyware, scam, etc, go to http://www.snopes.com/ for a inventory.

Is your bellsouth/att modem correctly set up?

I encountered a situation recently where browsing, email, etc appeared to work fine, and had worked fine for some time. However, recently when someone tried to log on to a certain site, a message popped up that the site wasn't available. I "pinged" the site, which is a way to go directly to the site without using a browser, and sure enough, the site was unreachable.

The first steps were to check the firewall(s) on the computer in question. Two firewalls were on, which is a no-no. I fixed the problem by turning off the Windows firewall.

I also checked on another computer- couldn't get to the web site either. It's firewall was OK.

To make a long story short, despite the fact that generally everything was working fine, the modem- the little black, silver or white box that connects to your telephone through that DSL adapter- was set up wrong. All this time...

The modem has to be set to "pass through" to any router... the specific option is "Bridged Ethernet." This disables the modem firewall; the router firewall takes over as the firewall and in controlling the internet activity.

The way it was set up, there were two firewalls turned on- a NO-NO in this particular situation.

So, if don't know if your internet connection is set up this way, let me know and I will check it for you.

My Work with Trojans

I put this post on the "Secure Channel" today, a web site for security gurus:

I encountered Green AV 2009 on a customer's computer and googled for a solution. I found several. None worked. In fact, with some of the sites, as has been mentioned earlier, there were entries that seemed to be purposely misleading- removing some of the infection but leaving other parts that allowed it to continue to operate.

I didn't trust any of the old standbys, such as Malwarebytes, to completely remove the thing, since the various instructions on the internet are wrong. I didn't want a partial removal that would hid the total signature of the problem.

I believe I have a process that removed all the threads, but it required a long time using HighJackThis, reviewing and searching the registry, and cross referencing the registry to the possible modules on the computer, etc.

On another customer's computer I had a W32Lovegate variant. That one had disabled windows update by deleting an entire branch of the registry. Working with MS Support, we had to reconstruct the branch, as well as run a couple of different malware programs. Now I have the branch as a local reg file, as well as all the other things I did in "snapshot form" so I can quickly go after the thing if I again encounter it.

These are all stories leading to a couple of questions. How in the world can the good guys communicate amongst each other without the bad guys mucking up the information or using it to change their "signature." Do we have to end up sending the information to the big Security Application sites, where they then use the information to make a profit? Is there some web site where I can contribute solutions I find, get some credit, and not have the information misused?

WARNING: Scareware on the Loose

A trojan of the "scareware" class is loose in the community. It shows itself as antivirus ware and has the title of Green AV 2009 or something of that nature. This bugger is a serious infection. Again, more detail later. If you get it, call me.

An new scareware item is out, described here. Call me if you get the symptoms.

Best Hospitals in SC for different specialties

I got this tip indirectly from Kim Komando's newsletter. Here is a web page that ranks all hospitals by specialty. Set the State to SC and then select the specialty and you will get a rank. You can also follow the "crumb" trail at the top of the page to find the rank of all hospitals across the country by specialty. The link.

Flash Drive Security

Depending on where you go with your flash drives, you should think about security. There are two kinds of security associated with a drive:

1. Password security- let you "see the files on the drive"
2. File security- encrypts information on the drive so it can be read only by you.

The 2nd type only makes sense if you use a password; that is, you have to have a password to "see the files on the drive" and the files on the drive are in a special format that is encrypted. The 2nd means that, if you lose the drive, the information on it can't be extracted using sophisticated file extraction programs.

Many drives come with a good security program. However, like me, I expect most haven't actually used the program. So the information on the drive is NOT secure. You lose the drive, the finder gains the information on the drive.

So use your flash security program on the flash drive if you have information that might compromise your privacy or the privacy of others.

If you don't have a security program on your drive, you can get a good free one. It is called Safehouse Explorer. (I got this information from PC World.)

Problems with IE8!

If you have automatic update, or start a Windows update, you'll have encountered or will encounter a replacement for Internet Explorer (your browser) called Version 8, or IE8. I've discovered that this browser can cause a lot of problems. At the extreme, if you use the IE8 it can appear that you no longer have internet access. You'll get errors that indicate you have firewall problems.

The problem is when you configure IE8- as IE8 is installed, you are given options having to do with configuring it- you can create such strict security that you can't get to any website.

Right now I have no idea what options cause a problem. I'm searching the Microsoft forums for information.

The workaround is to NOT configure any of the options for IE8- just pass by the configuration part. (There's an option to do that.)

The long term solution is to use Firefox. The Internet Explorer series, at least to date, has been buggy from the start. It has been a resource hog and it's slow. Firefox has thousands of add-ons and neat features that have not been available in IE. So, download Firefox and set that as your primary browser.

Note: Nasty Microsoft has made its web sites not work with Firefox, so you have to keep some version of IE around and you have to use IE when you browse to a Microsoft or affiliated website.

Flash drives (thumb) drives don't last forever

Flash drives have a definite lifetime that must be considered if you are using flash drives to store valuable information, such as photos.

The basic "rule of thumb" is that a flash drive cell will last about 10,000 changes/uses.

If you are using a flash drive for pictures and just "add" pictures, then the drive should last a very long time. Nevertheless, back up the contents on occasion to a DVD or CD.

At the other extreme, if you use a flash drive for Readyboost (see another post for this), then cells can be expected to change quite often. Perhaps a cell will change 100 times a day. Then 10K/100 is 100- you can expect some odd computer performance about 100 days after you start using a flash drive for Readyboost.

This is just an estimate, of course... there's all the caveats. Microsoft claims that flash drives will last 10 years. I worked in computer manufacturing at IBM for 25 years. This seems to me to be a typical mis-statement by someone who is only a software engineer. Flash drives and all other computer equipment have a finite lifetime of about 10 years, as a rule of thumb. This is because the are made from plastic and other materials that become brittle- they literally evaporate over time.

So if you use a flash drive and make a lot of changes to the data, keep the lifetime limitation in mind.

Increasing Vista performance with a flash drive

If you have a Vista operating system, you can improve your computer's performance a little by using a flash (thumb) drive as "RAM" memory..

Let me explain how this works. There are several levels of "memory" in your computer. Let's call them L1 to L5. Each level has a "speed" attribute; ie how fast the computer can get to information in that memory and how fast it can read or write information to that memory. More on each level:

1. L1. This is the fastest. It reside on your CPU chip.
   
2. L2. This is next. It either resides on your CPU chip or in the module containing your CPU chip.
3. L3. This is the level I'm talking about for this post. It is called "Readyboost" and involves using a flash drive as special CPU memory
4. L4. Any flash drives plugged into your computer (in the photo ports or in general USB ports)
5. L5. Your hard drive. Yes, hard drive is slowest.

Here's an article on how to use Readyboost: http://www.brighthub.com/computing/windows-platform/articles/4334.aspx

I use one of the photo ports for my Readyboost flash drive.

If you want some help installing this, please give me an email or a call.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 and AMD processors

I discovered that installing Windows XP Service Pack 3 on an HP computer with an AMD processor can lead to a "blue screen of death." In general, you should have "automatic update" for Windows updates turned on to receive the latest security releases. You can select to either install automatically or to install whenever you wish. Regardless, if you have an HP with AMD, then, when you restart the computer, you'll get the blue screen of death. I can help you if you get this. Give me a call.

Tax Free Weekend in SC is for Computers, etc

This weekend is Tax Free Weekend in SC. It applies to computers and related supplies. For more info: http://www.sctax.org/NR/rdonlyres/88D5B34E-6969-4BE4-A123-A81EE580A7C7/0/IL099.pdf

Microsoft office readers

I've been asked how Microsoft Office documents can be read without installing MS Office. A typical situation is you receive an MS Office document as an email.

The answer in a second. First, WARNING: MS Office documents are a favorite way bad people install virusae, trojans, and other bad things on your computer. There are several PDF creators (free) available. They should use those. If they want to "share" a document for your editing, it is best to use something like Google docs to do the sharing. If you need help with this, let me know.

The free programs you can use to read (only) MS Office documents can be found by entering {name of the office application} reader in your search window; eg "Powerpoint reader"

Usually at the top of the returned list is a link to a Microsoft web site, with the description being "Powerpoint reader download" or something similar. You may see different versions, such as 2003 and 2007. If you click on the link, you'll also find a description of the operating systems, such as Windows 95 through XP, for which the reader works: eg The Powerpoint reader page for XP

Be sure to go only to a Microsoft web site. Pick the reader appropriate for your operating system AND for the version of the document you want to read; eg XP for operating system, 2007 for the Powerpoint 2007 ppt or xppt document.

Any questions? Please use the comment.