Posts Tagged ‘FREE’

Instructions from the I.T. Department

1. When you call us to have your com­pu­ter moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of post­cards, baby pic­tu­res, stuf­fed ani­mals, dried flo­wers, bow­ling trophies and children’s art.
2. Don’t ever write anything down, espe­cially the error mes­sage that was on your screen.
3. If we ask what the last thing you did was, always res­pond with, “I didn’t do anything.”
4. When we say we’ll be right over, imme­dia­tely find a rea­son to leave so you won’t have to ans­wer silly ques­tions from us, like “what’s your screen saver password?”
6. When desc­ri­bing your pro­blem, just tell us what you were ulti­ma­tely trying to do. For exam­ple, just say, “I can’t get my email”. We don’t need to know that the com­pu­ter won’t even turn on.
7. Feel free to ignore any email sent from us, espe­cially those mar­ked with high impor­tance. You don’t really need to know about the latest virus that wiped out your neigh­bors hard drive.
8. Always send impor­tant and urgent emails in all uppercase.
9. When the copier, or anything else remo­tely elec­tro­nic, doesn’t work, call us. Heck, if we can fix com­pu­ters, we must know all about copiers too.
10. If the docu­ment you sent to the prin­ter didn’t print, send it at least 20 more times. One of them is bound to work.
11. Don’t ever learn the pro­per name for anything tech­ni­cal. We know exactly what you mean by “my thingy blew up”.
12. Don’t waste your time using the built in help files. We already had to learn the hard way, why should you?
13. If any of the com­pu­ter cables are in your way or keep moving, be sure to route them across the top of your por­ta­ble hea­ter or set something big and heavy on them to hold them in place.
14. Never bother rea­ding any mes­sage that pops up on your screen. Just click the X to close it or the first but­ton your mouse gets to.
15. Don’t ever try reboo­ting the com­pu­ter your­self. Call us imme­dia­tely. Only expe­rien­ced, highly-trained pro­fes­sio­nals should attempt that.
16. Feel per­fectly free to say things like “I don’t know anything about this com­pu­ter crap”. We love hea­ring our area of pro­fes­sio­nal exper­tise refe­rred to as crap.
17. When you receive a huge movie file that’s really funny, be sure to for­ward it to all your friends. We have plenty of disk space and bandwidth.
18. Don’t bother brin­ging a radio to work, just lis­ten to music over the inter­net. Like I said, we have plenty of bandwidth.
19. Don’t even think of brea­king large print jobs down into sma­ller chunks. Some­body else might squeeze their one-page docu­ment into the queue.
20. When an I.T. per­son is carr­ying heavy equip­ment, worth thou­sands of dollars, that’s the best time to ask why your screen saver quit working.
21. Don’t bother to tell us when you move com­pu­ter equip­ment around on your own. We cer­tainly don’t need to keep track of those things.
22. Your com­pu­ter case makes a great flat sur­face for sit­ting drinks or pot­ted plants on.
23. Do wha­te­ver you can to cover up those ugly open air slots in the com­pu­ter and monitor.

Clampi Virus targets online banking

In the modern world, most peo­ple never see their bank (with the excep­tion of ATM with­dra­wals).  We use bill pay, direct depo­sit and bank debit cards.  This is the exact beha­vior that the Clampi virus is living on.

Clampi is a very stealthy virus, just biding it’s time on a com­pro­mi­sed machine and watching for con­nec­tions to online finan­cial web­si­tes.  So many so that the Lon­don Times Online reports:

The tro­jan has a list of more than 4,500 finance-related web­si­tes that it moni­tors, inc­lu­ding Bri­tish high street banks. Secu­rity experts war­ned that it was one of the stealthiest and most per­va­sive threats to com­pu­ters using the Mic­ro­soft Win­dows ope­ra­ting systems.

The virus appears to be gea­red with more of the busi­ness users ins­tead of the nor­mal home user (though it does infect home users).  If the virus does end on a work com­pu­ter, it will attempt to cap­ture login cre­den­tials admi­nis­tra­tors and spread itself through the net­work.  As it spreads, it con­ti­nually moni­tors for login infor­ma­tion to the watch list of finan­cial web­si­tes.  If this virus does infect the finance group of a com­pany, it will attempt to send wire trans­fers from that account.  You can ask Slack Auto Parts.  It has been repor­ted that they lost $75,000 July 3–7, says owner Henry Slack. Clampi-infected com­pu­ters sent nine pay­ments to six dif­fe­rent mules � and fai­led to trans­fer an addi­tio­nal $69,000 in eight other attempts.

A word of war­ning, if your com­pu­ter is desig­na­ted for finan­cial usage, please do not surf the inter­net or use social media sites to mini­mize the risk of infections.

Since this virus has been out for a while, all the major anti­vi­rus ven­dors have upda­ted defi­ni­tion files that inc­lude the scan for this par­ti­cu­lar virus.  Make sure your sys­tem is always upda­ted and scan­ned on a regu­lar basis.  If you would like to run a quick check, using a dif­fe­rent ven­dor, I recom­mend these online scanners:

Trend­Micro: http://housecall65.trendmicro.com/
Syman­tec: http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/WelcomePage.asp
McA­fee: http://home.mcafee.com/downloads/freescan.aspx?cid=60447
Panda: http://www.pandasecurity.com/activescan/index/

Must Have Application for Thumb Drives

It’s a sign of the time, you can buy a thumb drive almost anywhere.  I have even seen them in Gas Sta­tions in the Omaha area.

There are many rea­sons to use these dri­ves: size, por­ta­bi­lity con­ve­nience, and sto­rage space, all come to mind quickly.  A lot of my exter­nal users do not even take their lap­tops to mee­tings any­more because they can keep all their pre­sen­ta­tions and such on a thumb drive and just plug into any machines.

On the other side of the coin, there are some inhe­rent risks to the trans­por­ta­tion of these devi­ces.  You may for­get them on site, lose them while get­ting something from your poc­ket, so on and so forth.  No mat­ter the rea­son, if you lose your drive, all of that data is now avai­la­ble to the per­son that finds it.

Here are some exam­ples of the type of data that can be lost by anyone:

Firm ‘broke rules’ over data loss

Home Sec­re­tary Jac­qui Smith has bla­med a pri­vate con­trac­tor for losing the details of thou­sands of cri­mi­nals, held on a com­pu­ter memory stick.

Tax web­site shut down as memory stick with sec­ret per­so­nal data of 12million is found in a pub car park

Minis­ters have been for­ced to order an emer­gency shut­down of a key Govern­ment com­pu­ter sys­tem to pro­tect millions of people’s pri­vate details.

The action was taken after a memory stick was found in a pub car park con­tai­ning con­fi­den­tial pass­co­des to the online Govern­ment Gate­way sys­tem, which covers everything from tax returns to par­king tickets.

Two exam­ples may not seem like a large amount, but if you look at the amount of data that was lost in these two exam­ples you will rea­lize how much data is at stake.

With that being said, I have found a free appli­ca­tion that will help with this.  Rohos Mini Drive Encryp­tion.  This app has a very small foot­print and once your drive is setup, you don’t have to ins­tall soft­ware on any other com­pu­ter to access that encryp­ted file.

Accor­ding to the deve­lo­pers web­site they list the fea­tu­res as:

• Crea­tes a vir­tual encryp­ted par­ti­tion volume (disk) within a USB flash drive free space
• Auto­ma­ti­cally detects your USB stick con­fig and crea­tes encryp­ted partition
• Pro­gram does not require ins­ta­lla­tion to work with encryp­ted par­ti­ton on a guest com­pu­ter. You can start it right from USB drive
• Encryp­ted par­ti­tion is pro­tec­ted by password
• Encryp­tion is auto­ma­tic and on-the-fly
• Encryp­tion algo­rithm: AES 256 bit key length. NIST approved.
• Rohos Disk Brow­ser to open encryp­ted par­ti­tion without having Admin rights
• Vir­tual Key­board — to pro­tect your encryp­ted disk pass­word from a key logger
• Auto­run Fol­der. Saved program’s/file’s short­cut will auto­ma­ti­cally start/open up upon disk connection
• The limit of encryp­ted par­ti­tion size is 2 GB

I find the soft­ware very easy to use and intui­tive.  In no time, I had car­ved 500 megs on one of my dri­ves and was moving files over to the encryp­ted por­tion.  To try out the func­tio­na­lity I han­ded the disk to my co-worker and watched as they put it in and sure enough none of the data sho­wed.  Just an exe­cu­ta­ble.  When run, the pass­word cha­llenge screen comes up.  I really do like the idea of a vir­tual key­board, par­ti­cu­larly if you are on a com­pu­ter that you do not know.  Bet­ter safe then sorry in this world.  Once the correct pass­word is ente­red and accep­ted an explo­rer win­dow is ope­ned and all your files are acces­si­ble.  It did take a few moments for me to see how to add new files to the encryp­ted volume.  Just so you know, in the explo­rer win­dow you can right click and import file.

As I said before, in this world, encrypt everything.  I highly recom­mend this pro­gram to anyone with a thumb drive.

The System Administrator from Hell

Some days I get emails that just have to be sha­red.  This is one of them.  All cre­dit to the ori­gi­nal author, though I don’t know who it is.

Recently someone called me from one of the “Out on the Floor Offi­ces”, an ethe­real place rumo­red to exist only in hypers­pace, popu­la­ted by mys­te­rious beings called Users.

She was quite fran­tic. She was having trou­ble run­ning a pro­gram through the com­pu­ter, and her mes­sage was clear enough, although rather ill-conceived: “My files are full!”

I furro­wed my brow, lit a smoke, and explai­ned to her, “Really now, Miss Rus­sell, I don’t have time for this.” I slowly exha­led the menthol vapors as I stop­ped her pro­cess, crushing any hopes she may have had of ever again seeing that docu­ment she had spent three hours sla­ving over.

“I was typing this really impor­tant let­ter, and it has to be ready in an hour… there’s all this stuff on my screen that I didn’t type… it says something about an error, should I read it to you?”

“No point. Just press return.”

“Oh my, it wants my user­name. Can I res­tart that where I left off?”

“Not a chance.”

I drew another puff and tos­sed the phone aside. It occu­rred to me that if I had to hear one more of those whi­ning com­plaint ses­sions, heads were going to roll. Where do you peo­ple get this stuff? I’m going to tell you what’s really going on here. Now lis­ten up. I’m not going over this a second time:

Com­pu­ter

The black box that does your work for you. That’s all you need to know.

Res­ponse Time

Usually mea­su­red in nano­se­conds; some­ti­mes mea­su­red in calen­dar months. The gene­ral rule is: Shut up your com­plai­ning about res­ponse time.

Hard­ware

See “Com­pu­ter.” Again, not your concern.

Soft­ware

If we want you to know, we’ll tell you about it, other­wise, leave us alone.

Net­work

Don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of it. Use it to send mail among your half-wit sel­ves, and don’t think we won’t read it all. What do you think we do all day? By the way , Rus­sell… shame about your mother’s Pancreas.

Data

The gene­ral rule is: Don’t use any data files and if you find any, delete them before I find out about them. In fact, just stay off the com­pu­ter. (See “Res­ponse Time”)

Sys­tem Crash

Don’t ever call the sys­tem mana­ger to tell him you think the com­pu­ter is down. Don’t call him to ask him when it will be up again. The more you bother him, the lon­ger it takes.

Down­time

Like I said, don’t ask.

Uptime

Be thank­ful for it, use it wisely, and get out of my face.

Over­time

Don’t be ridiculous.

Vaca­tion

A time during which I don’t have to put up with your sni­ve­ling. Don’t try calling. There’s no point.

Com­pu­ter Room

Keep out, you’re not invi­ted. Don’t knock on the door — don’t even think about it. I broke the phone last time one of you jerks called me, and I’m not about to replace it. And keep your greasy fin­gers off the windows.

My Office

The name says it all… it’s mine; stay out.

Your Pro­blems

The name says it all…

Dead­li­nes

The gene­ral rule is: Dead­li­nes are not ack­now­led­ged by me; they’re not my res­pon­si­bi­lity. Go tell someone who cares.

Main­te­nance

1. A valid rea­son for shut­ting down the sys­tem at any time.
2. Much more impor­tant than anything any of you bozos do.
3. Anything I choose to call “main­te­nance” is maintenance.

Soft­ware Upgrades

Far too com­plex for you to com­prehend. If I tell you I’m upgra­ding the sys­tem, just be quietly thank­ful. It’s for your own good, even if it does mean exten­sive down­time during peak hours.

Elec­tro­nic Mail

I delete it before it’s read, so don’t bother sen­ding any to me.

Defaults

We like them just like they are; we chose them for a rea­son. Don’t mess with them; con­si­der them mandatory.

Error Mes­sa­ges

I’m not inte­res­ted. I’m going to kill your pro­cess any­way, so keep them to yourself.

Killing your Process

1. Don’t ever ask why
2. Beyond your control
3. No war­nings are given
4. The high­light of my day
5. If you call, it’s going to hap­pen. No exceptions.

Pass­words

I reserve the right to change them without notice at any time. I choose them, and the more you bother me, the more degra­ding yours will be. (Exam­ple: jrus­sell: SNOTFACE)

Users

1. They slow down the computer
2. They waste my time
3. A gene­ral nuisance
4. Worse than that, actually

Soft­ware Modifications

You don’t know what you want — we’ll tell you what you want. It stays like it is. Period.

Pri­vi­le­ges

I’ve got them, you don’t need them. Enough said.

Prio­rity

Mine is higher than yours, accept it. That’s the rea­son my games run fas­ter than your lousy accoun­ting pac­kage. (See “Res­ponse Time”)

Ter­mi­nals

Before calling me with a ter­mi­nal pro­blem, con­si­der this:

1. Are you pre­pa­red to do without one for weeks?
2. Do you REALLY want your pro­cess killed?
3. Did you just trip over the cord again?
4. Of course you did.

Disk Space

I set the quo­tas, you live with them. If you need more space, check “Data Files”.

Ope­ra­tor

I hired him and I trai­ned him. He does what I tell him to. Usually armed; always dangerous.

Bac­kups

A good idea if I gave a shit, which of course I don’t.

Lunch

The only time that calling my office won’t result in the killing of your process.

Data Secu­rity

That’s your pro­blem. I’m cer­tainly not going to lose any sleep over it. My files are loc­ked up tight. I feel secure.

Jiffy

Length of time it takes me to resolve your pro­blem by killing your process.

Eter­nity

Length of time it takes me to give a shit about any pro­blem that can’t be resol­ved by killing your process.

Impos­si­ble

1. It can’t be done (as far as you know)
2. I can’t be bothered
3. You’re star­ting to annoy me

Ine­vi­ta­ble

1. Couldn’t have been avoided
2. Not my fault (as far as you know)
3. The result of anno­ying me

Menus

If it’s not on the menu, don’t ask for it. It’s not avai­la­ble. If it is on the menu, it’s pro­bably of no use or it doesn’t work. We’re wor­king on it (See “Eternity”).

Uti­li­ties

I find them quite use­ful, you’ll find them quite inac­ces­si­ble. Besi­des, they’re not on your menu, are they. What did I tell you about that?

Nui­sance

You.

Of course, I reserve the right to add, change, or remove anything from the above list. I’m not asking you to accept these mat­ters without ques­tion, I’m telling you.

Now that we all know where we stand, I’m sure there’ll be no future pro­blems. If you have any ques­tions or com­ments please feel free to keep them to your­self. If you feel the need for more infor­ma­tion, I highly recom­mend that you ask someone else.

Sin­ce­rely,
The Sys­tem Manager

P.S. The new disk quota of 30 blocks per user became effec­tive yes­ter­day. Anyone caught excee­ding the quota will lose their accounts (this means you, Russell!)

What’s old is new again

Yes­ter­day, Mic­ro­soft put out an advi­sory to a secu­rity vul­ne­ra­bi­lity spe­ci­fic to the Win­dows Vista, Win­dows Ser­ver 2008 SP2, and Win­dows 7 RC ope­ra­ting sys­tems.  No other Win­dows ope­ra­ting sys­tems, inc­lu­ding Win­dows 7 RTM are impacted.

Holy cow, once again the older sys­tems (you go XP) are more secure then the new sys­tems.  Why is that you say?  Well this exploit was first found a decade ago.  Yes, you did read that correct, in 1999 this was dis­co­ve­red and patched for the ope­ra­ting sys­tems at the time.  Yet no one thought to put that into the: Newest, Most Secure, Latest and Grea­test ope­ra­ting systems.

So what is this vulnerability?

Accor­ding to Microsoft:

What might an attac­ker use this vul­ne­ra­bi­lity to do?
An attac­ker who suc­cess­fully exploi­ted this vul­ne­ra­bi­lity could take com­plete con­trol of an affec­ted sys­tem. Most attempts to exploit this vul­ne­ra­bi­lity will cause an affec­ted sys­tem to stop res­pon­ding and restart.

I like the last four words, “stop res­pon­ding and res­tart”.  We had an acronym for that back in the day.  BSOD.  But out of all of this, the thing that bothers me the most is Microsoft’s response:

Mic­ro­soft is con­cer­ned that this new report of a vul­ne­ra­bi­lity was not res­pon­sibly disc­lo­sed, poten­tially put­ting com­pu­ter users at risk. We con­ti­nue to encou­rage res­pon­si­ble disc­lo­sure of vul­ne­ra­bi­li­ties. We believe the com­monly accep­ted prac­tice of repor­ting vul­ne­ra­bi­li­ties directly to a ven­dor ser­ves everyone’s best inte­rests. This prac­tice helps to ensure that cus­to­mers receive com­prehen­sive, high-quality upda­tes for secu­rity vul­ne­ra­bi­li­ties without expo­sure to mali­cious attac­kers while the update is being developed.

Mic­ro­soft is con­cer­ned that this new report of a vul­ne­ra­bi­lity was not res­pon­sibly disc­lo­sed? Excuse me what?  It’s not new, it was disc­lo­sed pro­perly the first time.  Why do others become res­pon­si­ble for your oversight?

With that said Mic­ro­soft has issued two do it your­self reso­lu­tions until they can get a patch pushed.

The first is to Disa­ble SMB2 in the registry:

Impact of wor­ka­round. Host will not be able to com­mu­ni­cate using SMB2.

1. Click Start, click Run, type Rege­dit in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the follo­wing registry sub­key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
3. Click Lan­man­Ser­ver.
4. Click Para­me­ters.
5. Right-click to add a new DWORD (32 bit) Value.
6. Enter smb2 in the Name data field, and change the Value data field to 0.
7. Exit.
8. Res­tart the “Ser­ver” ser­vice by per­for­ming one of the following:
   • Open up the com­pu­ter mana­ge­ment MMC, navi­gate to Ser­vi­ces and Appli­ca­tions, click Ser­vi­ces, right-click the Ser­ver ser­vice name and click Res­tart. Ans­wer Yes in the pop-up menu.
   • From a com­mand prompt and with admi­nis­tra­tor pri­vi­le­ges, type net stop ser­ver and then net start ser­ver.

The second is to Block TCP ports 139 and 445 at the firewall:

Impact of Wor­ka­round: Seve­ral Win­dows ser­vi­ces use the affec­ted ports. Bloc­king con­nec­ti­vity to the ports may cause various appli­ca­tions or ser­vi­ces to not func­tion. Some of the appli­ca­tions or ser­vi­ces that could be impac­ted are lis­ted below:

• Appli­ca­tions that use SMB (CIFS)
• Appli­ca­tions that use mails­lots or named pipes (RPC over SMB)
• Ser­ver (File and Print Sharing)
• Group Policy
• Net Logon
• Dis­tri­bu­ted File Sys­tem (DFS)
• Ter­mi­nal Ser­ver Licensing
• Print Spoo­ler
• Com­pu­ter Browser
• Remote Pro­ce­dure Call Locator
• Fax Ser­vice
• Inde­xing Service
• Per­for­mance Logs and Alerts
• Sys­tems Mana­ge­ment Server
• License Log­ging Service

Per­so­nally, I would block those on your inter­net facing fire­wall of you broad­band router.

Forget Park Place, I want to buy the Red Square

In case you have not hear about it, Mono­poly is going glo­bal.  Accor­ding to Daily Mail UK, Goo­gle has been in con­tact with Has­bro to make a new Mono­poly game that uti­li­zes Goo­gle Maps.

With the release of the game, you will not only be able to buy the stan­dard upgra­des – House or Hotel, you will also be able to say, put a sta­dium on your pesky neigh­bors house.  Don’t like your current office buil­ding?  Buy the area, put up a skyscraper.

Not only will there be the stan­dard modi­fi­ca­tions to the lots and upgra­des, the chance cards will now give the option to build a pri­son or a gar­bage dump.  The pos­si­bi­li­ties of where to put that are endless.

Accor­ding the article:

Pla­yers start the free game with three million Mono­poly dollars and can buy Dow­ning Street for $231,000, while Pennsyl­va­nia Ave­nue in Washing­ton, where the White House stands, costs $2 million.

Rent is paid auto­ma­ti­cally each day, from $50,000 for a house to $100 million for a skyscraper.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211686/Monopoly-goes-global-giant-online-game-using-Google-Maps.html#ixzz0QX6bL8Ps

I for one, look for­ward to pla­ying.  I have been wai­ting for a major change in the game for a very long time.  Next one they need to do is Risk.

Free Online Games

Ori­si­nal - Gor­geous Flash ani­ma­tion, per­fect for kids

Web Sudoku- Are you addic­ted to sudoku? Then you’ll love Web Sudoku, the place for a new sudoku puzzle every day.

Games.com – Lots of free Online games Like Puzz­les, Cards, Spots, Arcade and More.

1980 Games- My favo­rite – I love Pac­Man! Take a walk down the 1980’s memory lane with 1980 Games, a site dedi­ca­ted to the great 1980’s clas­sic video games.

Minic­lip Games- This is where you’ll find Runes­cape, Heli Attack, and more free Web game goodies

MSN Games- The nume­rous multi-player games that are avai­la­ble encou­rage a sense of com­mu­nity as pla­yers inte­ract in online game rooms or lob­bies, while pla­ying games using Win­dows Live Mes­sen­ger, and while on their cell pho­nes when pla­ying Win­dows Mobile ver­sions of the games.

Hallo­ween Games Online- Any­time is the right time for a spooky Hallo­ween game.

Fan­tasy Sports- Get your fan­tasy sports game on.

Teagames.com is a great place to find good, free multi-player games, as well as lots of extreme sports free web games.

Pop­Cap Games should carry a war­ning label, because these free web games are highly addictive.

AddictingGames.com should not be visi­ted if you have any work to do. You’ll find games here ran­ging from Mayhem in the Skies to Ulti­mate Field Goal Kicking.

c64s.com -  You can play all sorts of free Com­mo­dore 64 games at c64s.com, inc­lu­ding Com­mando, Bub­ble Bob­ble, and Bruce Lee.

Crazy­Mon­key Games – Flash based games, a lot to choose from

Armor Games – More Flash games.

Thanks to Tech­no­buzz for star­ting the list.  if you know of any, please add to the comments.

Free PDF Writer

By now, most ever­yone has noti­ced that PDF files have become the pre­vai­ling for­mat for secure and relia­ble dis­tri­bu­tion of elec­tro­nic documents.

So how do you, the nor­mal per­son, create these handy files without paying an arm and a leg? I have found a great and easy ans­wer. CutePDF wri­ter.  I admit, it’s not as full fea­tu­red as the pay ver­sion by Adobe, but for the savings, I can do without those fea­tu­res anyways.

Like with the MS Office pro­ducts, it appears that the more you pay for the pro­gram, the more “fea­tu­res” you will never use in your life.  I know someone somewhere would have a use for them, but at least for me, they just slow me down and make the pro­duct cost more then it’s worth.

I per­so­nally like the way CutePDF works, no inter­face to deal with, no con­fi­gu­ra­tion.  Ins­tall and go. I like plain and simple.

When you get the pro­duct ins­ta­lled, to create a PDF all you have to do is print.  That’s all.  You have a web­page (I know this one is at the top of your list) that you want to con­vert, go to file print and select the CutePDF Prin­ter.  You can use this con­ver­ter for any appli­ca­tion you can print from.  For the price you can’t beat it.

I Love this utility

One of my favo­rite web­si­tes to look at daily (ok many times a day) is Life Hac­ker.  Today as I was going through some of their archi­ved pos­tings I found this.

A few days ago I tal­ked about a pro­gram called smart ins­ta­ller, but I must say I am over the top impres­sed with life hacker’s ver­sion.  The uti­lity itself is ultra tiny (292k) with an xml file.  The Smart Ins­ta­ller is in excess of 200 megs.  The size dif­fe­rence is due to Smart ins­ta­ller having the ins­ta­llers inc­lu­ded whe­reas life hacker’s ins­ta­ller auto­ma­ti­cally down­loads the latest ver­sion from the net.

Another great fea­ture, to me at least, is that the Life hac­ker Pack has an XML file that you can add or remove appli­ca­tions in.  So if there is an app you like to ins­tall, modify the file in any text edi­tor, get the down­load path, and away you go.  With Smart Ins­ta­ller, you have to hope they add it.

Please don’t get me wrong, Smart ins­ta­ller is very good for a machine that you do not have on the inter­net.  But for size and fle­xi­bi­lity, I will be adding the Life Hac­ker pack to my arse­nal.  You can down­load the pack here. Other users have crea­ted some addi­tio­nal XML files:

PC Res­cue Pack

The PC Res­cue Pack’ll come in real handy in a few weeks at Thanks­gi­ving when Mom and Dad ask you to fix their com­pu­ter. Down­load the Ins­tall­Pad PC Res­cue Pack list, which includes:

• Ad-Aware (mal­ware scan­ner and cleaner)
• CClea­ner (sys­tem optimization)
• Clam­Win (anti-virus)
• Spy­bot Search & Des­troy (spy­ware scan­ner and cleaner)
• Spy­ware Blas­ter (spy­ware prevention)

Media Pack

Oh, you free-loading, Bit­To­rren­ting, DVD-ripping, MP3-sucking, pod­cas­ting, remi­xing, iPod-trading media whiz, you! Down­load the Ins­tall­Pad Media Pack list, which includes:

• Auda­city (sound editor)
• Azu­reus (Bit­To­rrent client)
• Democ­racy (Inter­net TV player)
• iTu­nes (media player)
• Picasa (photo manager)
• Quick­Time (media player)

VLC (media player)

• Do your­self a favor and give it a try

When is an antivirus really a virus?

Today I recei­ved a call from one of my exter­nal users that was una­ble to access any web­si­tes because some new anti­vi­rus was saying he was unpro­tec­ted and every web­site had mali­cious code.

Since I know that we have McA­fee 8.5 deplo­yed to our users, I knew that this was not a McA­fee issue.  As we dis­cus­sed it a little further he was men­tio­ning that the Anti­vi­rus wan­ted him to purchase the software.

This isn’t the first I have heard of this.  There is a soft­ware com­pany Inno­va­gest 2000 that is pro­du­cing this soft­ware.  They adver­tise it as an antispy­ware appli­ca­tion, but it is the spy­ware.  On some less then savory web­si­tes you will get a pop up that says that your com­pu­ter maybe infec­ted and they offer a free scan.

The fear of being infec­ted moti­va­tes a lot of peo­ple to run this free scan.  Unk­nown to them this appli­ca­tion ins­talls under­neath and now you are stuck.  On that note, I do recom­mend only doing the online scans from repu­ta­ble sites.  I per­so­nally recom­mend the follo­wing: Syman­tec, Panda, and McA­fee.

This appli­ca­tion is extre­mely hard to get rid of.  It rere­gis­ters and ins­talls if it is not com­ple­tely unins­ta­lled correctly.

I hate pro­grams like this.  But it is a fact of life out there.  The modern day snake-oil salesman.

While the pro­gram is run­ning you will see the follo­wing unde­si­ra­ble behavior:

• A “Win­dows Secu­rity Cen­ter” sta­ting that you should purchase Per­so­nal Antivirus.
• Nume­rous alerts sta­ting that your com­pu­ter is under attack or that you have mal­ware run­ning on your com­pu­ter. If you click on these alerts, Per­so­nal Anti­vi­rus will be ins­ta­lled, or you will be brought to the purchase page for the program.
• Your Inter­net Explo­rer brow­ser will be hijac­ked to show secu­rity war­nings when brow­sing the web that stop you from reaching your desi­red page.

As I men­tio­ned before this bug­ger is very hard to get rid off.  But not impos­si­ble.  I found these ins­truc­tions at BleepingComputer.com.

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