Mike Rochip

Thanks! I forgot the Hosts file is part of Windows and not SpyBot or Hostman.

Thanks englishmen- I did as you said but in the Hosts section I couldn't find an export function. I also highlighted all the entries and tried to copy them but right-clicking didn't bring up a menu. I'm using version 1.4, maybe I missed something?

Hello- I tried the above on my computer and it didn't work. Sorry, I should have done that before I posted. I also tried other ideas from the VideoLAN forum but had no luck. Even looked for a free video format converter but only found "free to try." According to their forum, it may be a video card issue such as not enough memory or not supporting overlays. Maybe someone else has a solution.

Hello- I found a thread on VideoLAN's forum that may address this. It recommended: Please go to your preferences -> video -> output modules and select another output module such as GDI. Restart VLC and try again. Note that you need to enable the advanced-flag to see this option. The entire thread is here. There may be other info on the forum, this is just the first I found... Hope it helps and Good Luck!

Hello- Do you remember what settings you changed? I keep getting the server not found error and page can't be found errors on both crystalxp.net and rapidshare. thanks

Thanks! I've been using a program called Hostsman that Englishmen found (thanks E.) and I figured better safe than sorry and locked it. I figure I can manually update it when needed. It's been doing a good job blocking questionable sites.

Should I lock my Hosts file? Some poeple say yes to keep malware from writing to it, others say no because it would prevent antispyware from adding new bad sites to it.

I did and I was. It made my brain hurt!

The "English as a second language" bit really cracked me up! On eBay, when viewing a site in the UK from here in the USA they always put in this disclaimer: This translation is provided as a service. eBay cannot guarantee its accuracy. It would be so much more convenient if you English folks would adopt English as your FIRST language !

I hadn't heard of that before. I can't believe Microsoft went after the guy. Of course who hasn't accidently typed in MikeRoweSoft when they meant Microsoft? It's so confusing! This is the weird part, apparently Microsoft settled with Mike Rowe. Now there is no MikeRowSoft.com but there is a MikeRoweSoft.com. ?

Thanks for the help! And actually, it's Dave, Mike Rochip is my lame atempt at being clever (say it fast).

Hello all- I received a rather strange PM yesterday and I'm wondering if anyone else did also. Now I'm wondering: Who is Mr. Clean? What is he talking about? Why would he recommend these things? Is deleting C:/Windows really a good idea? Control Delete seems to be for editing text, not removing files. Microsoft does not list it in keyboard shortcuts for XP. In another post he recommends downloading "the firewall of china." The firewall of China is a concept or figure of speech relating to censorship of the Web by the Chinese authorities. Xoftspy is considered by many (but not all) malware sites to be spyware. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but some of these suggestions seem to me to be counterproductive in regards to preventing or removing malware. I would appreciate any thoughts you all may have on this, including Mr. Clean's.

Hello- Need some help... What is spamming on a forum? Did I do it here? Can someone other than a moderator request a member to delete a post? If I did spam, of course I would be happy to remove my post. Thanks for the help!

According to CNews, a Canadian news site, The Wall Street Journal reported that ABC News had to use electric typewriters to prepare copy for "World News Tonight." I'm surprised they still had some around. It also said that an entire network could be infected if it had just one computer running Windows 2000.

Hello all- Thanks for your input everyone! I've been running PrevX for a few days now and this is my (humble) opinion: It seems like it would be good to have in that it will catch anything trying to install without your knowledge. It's best to suspend it when doing a legitimate install or the popups will drive you crazy. The combination I've found that I seem to like is SpywareBlaster, MS Antispy, and ZoneAlarm Free, along with occasional scans with AdAware, SpyBot, etc. and an online scan once in a while. I haven't had any spyware issues using this combination. Since PrevX doesn't seem to use a lot of resources I guess I'll keep it just in case something manages to get by all the other stuff. Will probably give Prevx1 a try after a while. Never did find the five letter swear word, though.

Thanks! Worked a lot faster than through IE.

$2.35 Gallon here in Denver Over $3.00 in Vail. News last night showed how you can buy a parking space in Vail for $110,000. All 114 are sold out and are being offered by some of the new owners for up to $170,000. Of course that's a bargain compared to NYC. Gas prices wouldn't seem so bad if our illustious leader didn't just sign legislation giving the oil industry billions in tax breaks even though they are experiencing record profits already and the prices are expected to keep increasing throughout the summer. Once gas prices stabilize it will be time to work on heating oil and natural gas for the winter. they are saying a 30% increase is possible. Ucomics

Nice to see some valid info, according to the 10 O'clock news where I live they stated it affected Win95 and above. People with some security knowledge should already know about closing port 445 since it has previously been susceptible to security threats. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I know what you mean, the local news here just said all Windows OS's are vulnerable... I never thought to check if I had open ports. I found this site that has a pretty comprehensive system of tests. ZoneAlarm passed with flying colors.

Information can be found here: PC World Article

Hello- Found this cartoon I thought was pretty funny...

Hello all- Another forum that analyzes HJTs is Spywareinfo.com, but they are seriously backlogged and my experience with them was unpleasant. What stands out about this forum in my mind is that the people here are patient, knowledgeable, concerned with others, and good-natured. Of course there are moments and exchanges that aren't positive in nature, but I would guess that anywhere a varied group of people come together that is inevitable. I have learned a lot, had quite a few laughs, and been helped in many different ways by all the posters in this forum, and I hope everyone stays and continues to contribute to it. YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST!

Hello- My 2 cents worth (due mostly to inflation) is I use the same combo Tarun does and between all 3 hardly anything gets by and they're all easy to configure and use. I didn't use SpyBot that much but since V 1.4 came out it's becoming my favorite. It seems to catch a lot more stuff than previous versions. The only thing that bugged me about MSAS was that CWS.msconfig sailed right past it pretending to be msconfig.exe. Seems like with the constant onslaught of new spyware definitions comes ever increasing scan times. I did finally figure out that it helps to have CCleaner and a good firewall to reduce the need to scan so often.

Hello- I'm surprised you haven't got an answer yet, this is what I found out but I'm not sure it'll be any help because of the way I partitioned my hard drive: The C: partition is Windows98 SE formatted with FAT32 The D: partition is WindowsXP SP2 formatted with NTFS Because of this XP can read and write to the C: partition but Win98 can't see anything on the D: partition, which is what I wanted. I had to put a separate copy of CCleaner on each partition but other than that everything worked great. Since both your partitions would be formatted the same under a single OS it may work differently. I have a feeling you'll still need CCleaner on both, though. Off topic, I'm glad everyone got off that plane OK and real sad that Peter Jennings passed on, I really admired him. Thanks for replying to my goofy posts, I appreciate it!

There's a pretty in-depth forum here with comparisons to WinPatrol. PrevX is upposed to be more advanced. One thing I noticed is the PrevX people respond to all the complaints and seem to really care about what people think. I'm so paranoid about viruses now after dealing with all the evil Coolwwwsearch variants I'm trying everything I can find. I don't surf anymore, I just run virus scans for hours on end. I've never seen a program like this but I'll let you know what I think after I try it for awhile.

Hi rridgely- I posted the same question and then found your post. I chuckled about the "most of them sounded kind of dumb though." Then I read the reviews on cnet. And laughed some more. My post is here I'm trying it out now. Have you tried it yet?