Posted: 7/2/2010 1:54:02 PM EDT
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My computer has had gona, sipha, herpa, aids for a week now. Norton stole my money and let me down again. Whatever this thing has is bad and I have no clue how to fix it. Are there any sales going on this weekend? I am going to give it lead and go buy another one. I hate these damn things.......
Accountant |
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If you buy another cheap PC then I have a strong belief that you will be in the exact same situation in 2 years tops. It is like comparing a pot metal Hi Point to an Kimber custom 1911.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQb_Q8WRL_g
The truth about Macs (NSFW). |
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Quoted: Quoted: If you buy another cheap PC then I have a strong belief that you will be in the exact same situation in 2 years tops. It is like comparing a pot metal Hi Point to an Kimber custom 1911. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQb_Q8WRL_gThe truth about Macs (NSFW). |
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As far as the nasty-grams go there are several very important things that everyone on a PC needs to do. A few of these seem silly but do them anyway:
- Verify you have all current updates. Keep going back until it says "No critical updates": http://update.microsoft.com - Verify you are on the latest and greatest java release: http://www.java.com - Verify that you have BOTH Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader updated completely: http://www.adobe.com - Verify that you have a REAL antivirus program and that the virus definitions database is current. I say real because there are quite a few viruses out there pretending to be antivirus programs. Mannn, if you want to see the 9 vs 40 vs 45 vs 22 and 223 vs 7.62x39 vs 7.62x51 vs 5.45x39 all rolled in to one go on to a tech support forum and as what anti virus program to use and watch the geek mahem. As long as it isn't Norton or McAfee you are headed in the right direction. My favorite is AVG Free for home users and AVG for businesses. Avira or any of the other home user oriented ones seem to do fine too. - Use an anti malware program or two every few weeks. Spybot - Search & Destroy or Malwarebytes Ant-Malware or both. - Switch to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html. Please. Pretty please. It makes a difference. It doesn't stop everything but it helps. They developed it from the beginning to not do stupid shit automatically that a random web server asked it to. Besides that you can install Adblock plus to cut out a HUGE portion of the crap and All-In-One Gestures which makes things a lot faster once you are used to them. - Stop and think when the computer asks you something. The answer is not always yes and the answer is not always no. "I found a virus, should I remove it?" is a yes. "HEY, neato nifty fun time smiley happy toolbar wants to download eighteen of its friends in exchange for porn!!! Continue?" is a no. - The email based ones are tricky because they can come from someone you know. If you see a subject that sounds nothing like your contact leave it alone and use fallback communications to find out what is up. If you were to hear how I speak daily (or type here for that matter) and then receive an email from me that has the subject "I FOUND TEH AWSEOME SITE U GOT TO SEE D00D HAWT!! CLICK NOW!!!" don't open it. If it is your special cousin from Alabama why not. The other primary email trick is "Thank you for your purchase from Hewlett Packard's website. Your card has been charged $857.23. The invoice is attached.". People see that, freak, and open the attachment. Oops. Edit: I forgot a very important one!! If you get a message from a program that is not your normal anti virus program do not do anything it asks. It will want a credit card and you lose. If you use AVG and Antivirus Guard 2010 pops up it isn't real. |
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And if you can't clear the crap off your pc, reinstall Windows and reformat your drive while you're doing it. That gets rid of everything.
Hippiewithguns, I read an article a day or 2 ago where researches found that there was a higher percentage of every day sites trying to inject pcs with nasties than porn sites. Link |
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And if you can't clear the crap off your pc, reinstall Windows and reformat your drive while you're doing it. That gets rid of everything. Hippiewithguns, I read an article a day or 2 ago where researches found that there was a higher percentage of every day sites trying to inject pcs with nasties than porn sites. Link That is absolutely correct. The ad servers are how a large number of them happen. A legit company tries to supplement the costs of running a web site by selling ad slots. The ad slots link to the advertiser's ad server. The "advertiser" puts up a rotation of legit ads for the larger rotation slots. After they are in comfortably paying for their views they switch the ads to ones that have malware built in to them. At that point Java or Flash will crash and execute whatever code the ad server asked it to. At that point it downloads its friends and asks you for a credit card to remove it. This is where Firefox will not save you. If a web site tells Firefox "This is a Flash object" and Firefox hands it to Flash and Flash says DERP DERP DERP and runs the infected code you are screwed anyway. Java is in the same boat. Quoted:
Hippie is right on all accounts. i get stuck fixing so many computers from guys at work because they do dumb $hit. And refuse to update there systems. I have a client who turns off Automatic Updates because he believes that Microsoft are the ones that send in the crapware through Windows Update. His assistant goes in there weekly and manually updates his machine. Edit: Grammar crackers. Edit again: It could happen here easily. Youtube type videos are Flash. If someone embeds one here and you click it on as an outdated Flash loads it will come right through. |
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I do it for a living. I'll clean it up for ya! I have cleaned literally thousands of computers. And he does a great job too! +1 for HWG!! 
awwwww *blush* While I'm ranting about my industry, this is a guy's hilarious rant on a hoax called the Good Times Virus from 1994. http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/goodtimes-spoof.html. The guy was pissed because he was getting FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW: emails from everyone he knew about it. It was impossible for what the Good Times Virus claimed to be able to be done but everyone freaked out. Well, it used to be impossible and now it happens thousands of times per day. WHAAAARGARBL! Edit: Grammar crackers again. |
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Btw, HWG's comment about updating Adobe (Reader, Acrobat, etc.) and Flash is important. They just released some critical fixes.
Also, a comment on one of the earlier comments. Buying a "cheap pc" is not the problem when it comes to malware/spyware/viruses. Keeping your pc updated with the current antivirus/antimalware/antispyware programs and updates, staying away from known bad sites, using a little common sense, and doing regular scans of your pc is what saves the day. The other thing that most people don't do or don't do regularly is BACK UP YOUR FILES! That saves the day if your pc gets infected, your hard drive dies, or your pc ingests a fraction of a nearby lightning bolt. ETA: My favorite hoax virus. (of course it would have worked better if you forwarded it before you zapped the files on your pc  )
***Amish Virus Alert*** You have just received the Amish virus.Since we have no electricity or computers, you are on the honor system. Please delete all of your files on your hard drive, then forward this message to everyone in your address book. Thank thee. |
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If you buy another cheap PC then I have a strong belief that you will be in the exact same situation in 2 years tops. It is like comparing a pot metal Hi Point to an Kimber custom 1911. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQb_Q8WRL_g
The truth about Macs (NSFW). I'm with you, best $1,300 I've spent. I went Mac about a year ago. I have never had any trouble and it is loaded down with tons of media. I spend more time pissed off at my pc than I do using it. |
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Btw, HWG's comment about updating Adobe (Reader, Acrobat, etc.) and Flash is important. They just released some critical fixes. Also, a comment on one of the earlier comments. Buying a "cheap pc" is not the problem when it comes to malware/spyware/viruses. Keeping your pc updated with the current antivirus/antimalware/antispyware programs and updates, staying away from known bad sites, using a little common sense, and doing regular scans of your pc is what saves the day. The other thing that most people don't do or don't do regularly is BACK UP YOUR FILES! That saves the day if your pc gets infected, your hard drive dies, or your pc ingests a fraction of a nearby lightning bolt. ETA: My favorite hoax virus. (of course it would have worked better if you forwarded it before you zapped the files on your pc )
***Amish Virus Alert*** You have just received the Amish virus.Since we have no electricity or computers, you are on the honor system. Please delete all of your files on your hard drive, then forward this message to everyone in your address book. Thank thee. BINGO! The definition of a backup is the data being in two or more places at once. Please do it. External hard drives are CHEAP these days! |