Mar162009

Today's Tip: Update to AntiSpyware XP2009

Last week I alerted you to a common trojan trap that is surfacing all over the web under a variety of names. AntiSpyware XP2009 is just one name. Rather than update the original post, I have decided to post this once again because of the EXTREME DANGER this type of threat poses.

A colleague of mine recently passed away. While searching for news about him, I navigated to a site where I was greeted by this pop-up window:


AV360 Pop Up


Pretty scary huh? It gets better. It matters not how you exit the pop-up message, as soon as you do, a fake "scan" animation is displayed that makes it appear your system is being scanned. It is important to note that the script is NOT PERFORMING A SCAN. What you see is only an animated webpage made to resemble an actual scan. A full size screen capture of this scan animation is displayed here
So how do we know the scan is a fake? Well for starters, the fake animation displays only 2 Local Disk drives and a DVD-RAM drive. In reality, there are 9 Disk drives on my computer and one DVD-RW drive. Secondly, while "local disk" is the name Windows assigns Hard Disk Drives during installatioin, I rename all my drives to unique names. It's a neat little trick that can help you spot these fake screens. Renaming HDD's to a friendly name will be the subject of a future post. And lastly, we know this is a fake screen because the layout is based on a Windows XP Explorer window, I'm actually using Windows 7 Beta on this computer.
Finally, take a close look at the final screen capture below:


AV360 Pop Up


Under no circumstances should you select the "OK" option to install. Clicking on the X, or the Alt-F4 keystroke combination just puts you in a repeated error message loop. Close the actual BROWSER window to cut this trojan off at the knees.
It's easy to be fooled by these tricks and a lot harder to clean up after, so surf smart. Don't panic when you see a pop up like this, but if you get taken in, call the St. George UT PC doctor for disaster cleanup.



[KickIt] [Dzone] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Twitter]

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

E-mail | Permalink | Trackback | Post RSSRSS comment feed 0 Comments

Mar142009

Disabling IE8 in Windows 7

Published by dave at 2:15 PM under Windows 7 | Daily Tips

There's been a lot of buzz in the last week about Microsoft making it possible to disengage Internet Explorer from Windows 7. This is largely seen as a move to satisfy EU regulators so that launch of the new OS is not hampered by regulatory questions.
Not only do I like to talk about present technologies, but those that are emerging as well, and the ability to disable IE8 is certainly something that a lot of people will want to know how to do. If you're running the 7048 beta build of Windows 7, below are the steps and screen capture of how IE8 is disabled. Credit of course goes to Bryant at Aeroexperience and Chris at Chris123NT for the discovery and original post of instructions on how to remove.
See the original articles in full here or here

 

 

Disable IE8

 
To Remove IE8 from Windows 7, enter the Control Panel and look at “All Control Panel Options” Click “Programs and Features” In the left sidebar, click “Turn Windows Features On or Off” (you will be thrown a UAC prompt if you elevated UAC) Wait for the list to load. Look for Internet Explorer 8 in the list and uncheck it. Click OK. You will see a prompt notifying you of a reboot. The machine will reboot once, configure things, and reboot again. Upon completing the second reboot, you will notice that Internet Explorer 8’s components are actually still in Windows. The major changes will be that IE8 will be missing from “Set Program Defaults,” Windows won’t complain about IE8 being missing, and iexplore.exe will no longer exist underneath the Internet Explorer directory even though the directory and every IE8 dependency therein will still exist.



[KickIt] [Dzone] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Twitter]

Tags: , , ,

E-mail | Permalink | Trackback | Post RSSRSS comment feed 0 Comments

Mar122009

Amateur PC "Repair" people everywhere!

Published by dave at 11:56 AM under blog | computers | Microsoft Operating Systems | Opinion | technology

In a tough economy, you'll find them everywhere. Who are "they"? I'm talking of course about the people who once replaced Aunt Gertrude's defective mouse. They're the same kind of people that stumbled upon the free utility Spybot Search & Destroy and now they are computer repair experts!
Don't get me wrong, there are legitimately knowledgeable and professional people offering computer repair services in Southern Utah. So how do you distinguish between true experts and posers? That is part of the reason I started St. George, UT PC Doctor, because nothing is more upsetting than to see someone being taken advantage of by fly by night opportunists. Here's a hint, a poser is usually one that attempts to exploit your fears and lack of knowledge. They use impressive sounding "buzzwords" to make you believe they really must know what they are talking about.
Offers to perform "Free System Checks" is usually another clue that somebody is just looking for a way to make a buck off you. You really think after that "free checkup", they aren't going to find "something" that needs to be fixed?
It's my belief that the better informed you are, the less likely you are to fall for an unwarranted PC repair scam. Frankly, I would rather help you keep your computer OUT of the shop, and empower you to keep it running properly through helpful articles written with minimal technical jargon.
If you've got computer questions or would like to see an article about anything specific, please post your comments or reach me directly through the email link on the Contact page. Oh, and one more thing, if your computer really is broken, I can fix it.



[KickIt] [Dzone] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Twitter]

Tags: , ,

E-mail | Permalink | Trackback | Post RSSRSS comment feed 0 Comments

Mar112009

Today’s Tip: Security Updates from Microsoft

Microsoft released critical patches to it’s Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista consumer platforms Tuesday March 10th. In addition, critical patches were released for Server platforms as well. If your system is not configured to automatically download and install automatic updates, you should run Windows Updates to insure you have the latest security fixes. This is one of the most important things you can do to protect your system from malware.



[KickIt] [Dzone] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Twitter]

Tags: , ,

E-mail | Permalink | Trackback | Post RSSRSS comment feed 0 Comments