Coronagold

A good point you brought up there. I've never had the pop-ups you've mentioned. That could be a BackWeb/WinME throwback thingy from my old days that inadvertantly saved me somehow. Who knows.

Woah, I wasn't checking on that. One thing you may want to know is if you do install AVG8 you have the opportunity to fully uninstall it, Toolbar & all, via Add/Remove Programs.

I remember seeing that old guy jump from platform to falling platform in an excellent student video.

And you're worried about compression because why? Cheap videos are what they are because of the phone market. And what advance in tech did they have. Not much. But if video compression is on the top of your complaint list, you're lucky. And that's a good thing. Marge Simpson - "Now let's all have a big bowl of strawberry ice cream!"

I'm not surprised. A lot of early free progams, if they're successful, will go for profit. That was what they were aiming for in the first place. Y' know, feeding family & kin & such.

Got a ciggy?

That AVG Toolbar is incorporated into the Yahoo Toolbar. Bingo! You surpassed it. That's what I'm gonna do right now. I can't stand Yahoo and Google Toolbars. They eat up too much browser space for junk I'll never search. If you search a lot, go for it. I don't need it. (/grumpy old fart)

Well, blue seems to be popular lately, don'tcha think? I just installed and fired it up. Here's the very first gist of it. It warns you that you have another av program installed and that you should uninstall it before installing AVG8. Does it mention which av app it is? No. So you hunt and you ponder....till you hit the Next button. "You have AVG7 installed, which you should uninstall before installing AVG8." Oh boy. Okay, maybe it was the translation shuffle or something. Okay, we've crossed that barrier and come upon the next snag....but not before it's to late to change. After it. I was wondering as I zipped through the 2 EULAs in the beginning, "why were there 2 EULAs?". Now I know. The 2nd EULA must've been for Yahoo Toolbar, which you somehow mysteriously 'need' in order for AVGs' anti-phishing security to work. I wonder how many man-hours Yahoo personaly put into this security for the benefit of mankind. These are the 2 screenshots I grabbed during set-up and reboot. Needless to say (but I will say it anyway ) I'm gonna uninstall AVG8 and re-install it without the 'extra security' thingy in the installation process.

That's interesting. I never thought of something like that before. Typically I set no apps as 'default' but still all are accessable (if I have that choice) and let things be. Are there certain Services that won't work unless an app is set as default?

Woah, I'm getting dizzy reading this. I use K-Lite codecs, set to Windows Media Player being the 'default' instead of Classic Media Player. I still have WMP, QuickTime, and WinAmp installed. Those 3 are fine. 5 years ago I wouldv'e been tempted to install Real Alternative but I'm not sure it even existed then. Real Player was like the codec hog of choice back then by a lot of big media hosts. (Kinda sweet to see it die off now. mwaahahahahaaaaa.) Any media that uses a codec that's not available to my 3 normal updated media apps and all those extra K-Lite codecs, well, they can bite my big shiny metal... I'm not gonna bother with them. (Hey comon', I'm old. I have the right to be cranky.) They can keep their DivX and xVid and all that other pr0n junk. (Oh good, this isn't the hjt forum. I can actually post this! )

Reformat? Bleagh. I haven't reformatted since 2004 (because of an nVidea issue). And before that was around 2001. Back when I had my old PowerMac 8500 I was reformatting on a daily basis. I tore that machine up just to see how much punishment it (I) could take. That was back in the day when dialog boxes didn't have Cancel or Close options. Good ol' OS 7.3.2.

Adobe Reader isn't neccessarily bad. It's just so dang bloated. The Reader Speedup app sounds good. You'd think Adobe would've incorporated something like that within Reader in the first place. But nooooooo. Ever since Adobe bought Macromedia they've gotten fat.

AVZ claims it can fix rootkits? Hmmm. ---------------- I just ran AVZ (without the AVZPM or Guard) and it came up with a false positive on an AVG file as a possible rootkit. It also listed an MS Money installer from 2001 as a Trojan/Dialer. It did list an online game demo as suspicious, that's probably correct. And it listed 2 $restore files as infected but I'm not worrying about them. I'd rather a program came up with a false positive than "everything's okey dokey!" The help section is all in Russian. Drag. But it looks like they're interested in getting as much English translation as possible. There certainly are a lot of toys within that program.

Ah, so this is what you want Foxit Reader for, eh? I think SP3 is available to "businesses" April 29th. I'm guessing that it will be available for all to download from Microsofts' site a bit later. SP3 will be available as an automatic update in early June.....I think. Sort of. I'm in no rush to get it. I'll wait for all the rantings and ravings to die down.

It's an excellent alternative. I read some guys' critique of Adobe Reader. He basically said that it was like opening up a humungous ram-hungry Photoshop application in order to look at...a typed page. (I know there's pics in some pdf's but it was an exaggeration.) I never saw the appeal in pdf's. Navigation is horrible.

I read an article a month or so ago about Chinese people getting operations on their legs in order to be taller. It was pretty disturbing stuff. Then again, look what Geisha women do to their feet.

I don't trust Symantec anymore. But that doesn't mean their prescience of an XP3 hack is unwarrented.

I know what you're talking about but I have no idea what damage can or can't be done by doing that. I don't touch those files myself. It's tricky enough for me playing with Registry files that I have no business touching. Hopefully someone who's more knowledgable on the subject will answer here.

Any free ones?

I looked at some of those links you provided and it looks really interesting. I never thought there'd be a blog about this stuff. Kinda cool actually. I only run Adaware and Spybot about once every 2 weeks or longer. They never find anything stronger than a cookie anymore. I use Firefox 2 with Adblock Plus and NoScript. And I use CCleaner a lot. I guess that's why it stays so clean.

I almost know what you're talking about. Are those like the hosts Spybot runs through? Sometimes it's weird. I'll see BitDefender addresses and such, then I'll see something that looks suspiciously like a porn or haxxor site zip by. "What the?"

That's what I tried with the Photoshop CS3 demo when it wouldn't fully uninstall. But it wouldn't re-install either because pieces of it were still in the registry. Reminds me of that whole QuickTime 7.0.1 debacle. What a mess that was. Wish I knew about Revo back then.

Okay, but after this ciggy... By reading this sentence you absolve me of any mistakes that may result from my diagnosis, forever, in perpetuity throughout the universe, Amen. And DennisD doesn't want his fingerprints all over this train wreck. Revo Uninstaller is a free program that can uninstall stuff, uninstall stuff deeper, and can actually turn your PC into shredded underwear if you're not careful. ERUNT (I know) is another free program that is used to make registry backups. It's best to use ERUNT 1st before using Revo. (At least use XP's System Restore to create a Restore Point before using Revo.) Here's the link to ERUNT. (I know.) And on that St. Josephs' aspirin colored page I noted a good link to use. (See the thumbnail below.) (I did that myself.) There's another program that comes with ERUNT called Ntreptibumpy something. I never used it. ERUNT is all you need to use. Okay, and here's the link for Revo Uninstaller. Click on the big green DOWNLOAD NOW on the right. After installing Revo and are running it, I suggest you stay away from the big shiny "Hunter" icon that looks like a guns' crosshairs. I'm not sure what it does or how it works but it looks deadly. Anyway, find the program you want to uninstall and click on it. You should get this... Click uninstall and you get this... Notice the 4 choices of removal. To play it safe try Built-in first. If that doesn't work try Safe. And if that doesn't work try Moderate. I've never had to use the Advanced mode. That's the "turn your PC into shredded underwear" mode. Avoid that choice. Notice that the default setting is for Moderate when the choices first come up. Ignore that and play it safe by trying the Built-in and Safe modes first. When you use it there will be several confirmation dialogs along the way. That's normal. It asks you to check them all. Only the bold checked items are removed, not the thin checked "tree branches". Anyway, there it is! DennisD is the one who showed me these programs and they're keepers for me. Good free schtuff.

Yeah but your dork meter is through the roof. Meh.

I was going to refer to a way of removing it but I'm kinda new here and I don't want to steal any thunder. Ask DennisD about this thing.