Mike Rochip
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Posts posted by Mike Rochip
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I was just reading about DEP the other day for some reason. Not sure why but now it may come in handy after all.
I found a detailed description of DEP from MS here and an SP2 settings guide. There is also a FAQ that is for Vista but it's easier to understand [at least for me, lol].
DEP is designed to prevent malicious code from running on a PC. It looks like the settings depend partly on whether a specific PC supports hardware based DEP or not. Also, if you set DEP to protect all programs and settings security is increased but so is the possibility that some programs you may normally use will be prevented from running. One of those nifty MS trial and error scenarios I guess.
Hope this is of some help.
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Also, there's some security software (I recall BOClean is one) that do delete the Hosts file whenever removing malware that's known to modify it...
That's an interesting tactic but it seems a little extreme. I wonder if it lets the user know that it did that and/or creates a new one.
Anyway, I created a new one from the link you provided which is the same one rridgely recommended some time ago. I think it's probably one of the best hosts files out there. When I used it earlier I noticed it blocked all kinds of ads and other annoying stuff from loading in Opera.
Thanks again!
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Thanks for the quick reply Tony!
And the advice about saving it as "all files." I wasn't aware of that and would have probably created a text file.
Wierd that it disappeared but I haven't noticed any problems so far but I'd rather have it than not just in case.
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Here is a bit of info about how an empty prefetch folder can slow down boot times
Oh no. You said the "P" word. Run away, far far away, while you still can! Have you forgotten about the Ccleaner Prefetch Wars of 2005 and 2006? I was reading about the same thing in another forum and they were fighting about it tooth and nail like this forum was in days gone by.
Just kidding with you and the link you provided is one of the saner discussions about prefetch I've seen in a while. Seems like leaving it pretty much alone is the best bet.
I just let Ccleaner clean the Old Prefetch Data once in a while and that seems to be OK.
I just hope no one ever mentions prefetch and the Yahoo! toolbar in the same thread.
Uh oh...
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Basically I don't seem to have one.
When I look in System32\drivers\etc there is no hosts file in the txt format like there always was before. I ran a vbs script from kellys-korner to Read Host Files In Notepad and it said "This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft" and there were no entries in the file itself. Then it says Cannot find the Imhosts.txt files and asks if it should create one. There is no imhosts.txt file anywhere in the computer.
I'm wondering what would have deleted the hosts file if that's what happened and whether I should download a new one.
Thanks for any advice.
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Something that I didn't notice about Bootvis is that if you select an area in some of the graphs and then right-click within the selected area a context menu appears with additional options. The option for Show Summary Table presents the information in a spreadsheet format and goes in to quite a bit of detail. There may also be options for viewing the results differently auch as by process or by module. If you choose Show Detail Graph you can do the same things in the new graph that is displayed.
You may already know that but I thought I'd mention just in case.
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I did a Google search for "boot tool" and the majority of the sites were flagged red or yellow by McAfee SiteAdvisor. Including Freedownloadcenter where software is hardly ever free and apparently is dangerous as well
. I guess boot tool is one of those key search terms that sends you on a trip to Malwareland. -
The stats are here, funny how I didn't notice the link the first time when I read the article.
Thanks Andavari, I didn't see the link either.
Doesn't seem like a bad deal like you said. The upgrades for the HD and the memory seem pretty reasonable also.
And thanks Humpty for the original post.
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Interesting rant Mike!
Yes things were censored a bit then, at the time only people in the "know" realised that songs such as Purple Haze, Mellow Yellow, and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds were all about LSD. The first 2 being particular brands and the Beatles one just being the initials.
I didn't know that about the first two. Then again I'm rarely 'in the know
.'I had a gym teacher who said "Let It Be" was about pot because of the line "Mother Mary comes to me." I think he must have smoked some before coming to that conclusion
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They actually expect it to go for $25,000 to $30,000. It boggles the mind. I wonder what mine would be worth. Obviously it isn't of the same quality but I have a whole lot of quantity. In fact, I'm full of it.
What about the guy who was disappointed that the high resolution image was corrupted? Not sure exactly which details he needed to check out before he placed a bid.
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@Zaphirer. I don't think it did. It said they were still figuring out what to charge the members for the service. I heard from a reliable source it better be 5 cents or less.
@rridgely I didn't see the MTV show but every review written about it says it was boring and out of touch.
Warning! Rant ahead. You may want to hit the "Back" button on your browser before it's too late.
rridgely, I agree with you about the state of today's "music." Occasionally I'll try to listen to a station playing today's artists and by song number two or three it's back to the oldies or classic rock station. The only modern songs I guess I hear regularly are on TV commercials and that just scares me. I have yet to hear a song that doesn't give me a headache on any of the mobile phone commercials and whatever the heck that thing on the Old Navy commercial about 'getting your fash on' is I'll never know because I can't understand a word she is saying. Another thing that really irks me [yes, there are a lot of those things
] is using classic songs in commercials. I find it hard to believe "All You Need is Love" was written as an ode to financial institutions. That thumping sound you hear is John Lennon spinning around. Debbie Harry [blondie] is reduced to singing about a dust mop. I know the owners of the music have to approve the use of their songs [and sometimes the owners are not the artists themselves] but when songs are used that way it changes the memory of their songs from reminiscing about the good old days to thinking about modern day commercial cr_p. So in other words, new music is too cr_ppy to use in commercials and old music is too good.A lot of music actually grows on me after awhile and groups and artists I hated in the 60's and 70's are now some of my favorites.
Speaking of the good old days, albums used to be priced so if you liked one song from an artist you could take a chance and buy it. If the rest of the album stunk you weren't out of a sizeable amount of money and if it was good you got a bargain. That's one advantage to iTunes and the others. You can buy only the songs you know you are going to like. But you're probably missing out on a lot of good music that way.
On the lighter side, it's kind of hard to believe that years ago (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction from the Rolling Stones had to be censored before it was allowed to be performed on TV. The line "Let's spend the night together" had to be changed to "Let's spend some time together." The song Sex Offender on Blondie's first album had to be changed to X Offender before the music label would allow it on the album.
Times sure have changed.
I have to go now. The Old Navy commercial is on again. I'm late for my lobotomy.
Bet you wish you hit the "Back" button. Can't say I didn't warn you!
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This actually leaves me speechless, which isn't easy to do.
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I thought this was kind of an interesting idea. I can't decide if it's a good idea or a bad one, though
.LOS ANGELES - MySpace.com will soon enable members of the popular online social networking hub to sell downloads of their original music directly through MySpace Web pages, company executives said Friday.
The initiative, which is still in a test phase, has the potential to turn millions of computer users, many of them independent or aspiring artists already using the site to build a fan following, into online music retailers.
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VBS "Visual Basic Script" is completely different from Visual Basic Runtime files.
Actually, I knew that and was trying not to confuse the two. Unfortunately, confusion takes up most of the resources in my brain and my efforts to keep it under control often do not work out very well
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Microsoft has just released Windows Vista Release Candidate 1, a major milestone on the path to shipping Windows Vista. RC1 will be one of Microsoft's most widely distributed test versions ever, available to an estimated 6 million users who will have a chance to experiment with it and provide feedback ahead of Vista's planned release in November for enterprise customers and January 2007 for consumers. At this point, Microsoft says the product is largely complete, although it is continuing to fix bugs and to work on improving performance, stability, and compatibility.
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I was surprised you have to manually check for updated versions of VBS. Mine was sp5 and sp7 is the latest version. If it wasn't for this thread I would have never known a newer version was available.
I guess it's not important enough to be part of Automatic Updates.
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You might give Bootvis a try. It's a discontinued free tool from Microsoft that monitors the bootup and then presents a series of graphs indicating how long each process is taking.
Since I don't really know how to interpret the graphs I'm not sure how helpful it is.
It monitors:
Boot activity
CPU usage
Disk I/O
Disc utilization
Drivers delay
Process creates
The Microsoft Bootvis page is here.
If after reading the info you want to use the tool you can download it here.
Hope this helps.
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I may be totally off track here but if you are referring to the request for password at the Command Prompt and you don't have one you can just hit enter to continue.
Sorry if I misunderstood the question or the answer.
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I thought this ws an interesting idea but wouldn't running searches all the time use system resources and bandwidth? I guess it wouldn't be an issue on a broadband connection but I would think it would slow down a dialup connection quite a bit.
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I've noticed that there are often many more Guests than Members browsing the forums. If I remember, you have to be a Member in order to search the forums. I bet there are a fair number Guests who join the forum just so they can ask a question about Ccleaner or to get help with a specific issue or to post a HJT log, etc. Many probably just don't think to do a search first or may even be unaware of the search function.
Maybe it would be helpful to mention using the search function before posting for help somewhere on the new member screens when people first sign up for membership.
I don't know if the board keeps a record of searches but if they do it might be worthwhile to see what the most common items searched for are and devote a section to those specific terms.
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You could do a search on your pc for msvbvm60.dll which is used by Ccleaner. On my pc the file was located in C:\Windows\system32.
If you don't think you have it you can download it from Microsoft:
Fore more detailed information you can search on the forum for "runtime" (without the quotes). There are quite a few threads and posts about Microsoft VBS.
EDIT: I see Andavari posted a reply while I was writing mine.
Sorry about that...
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Yeah and if the price changes at all as in cheaper then you're stuck paying more with a pre-order from Amazon.com.
That's true. I think you'd have to be pretty diehard to pay $400 for the ultimate version.
There's also rumors going around that soon some PC makers will be offering coupons for free upgrades to Vista if you buy a PC before it's released. They don't say which version the upgrade will be, however.
On a side note, MS has already released two patches for the beta versions.
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GENEVA, Switzerland - Keep your distance. Avoid eye contact. And even if it looks cute, never hug a Swiss cow.
Responding to numerous "reports of unpleasant meetings between hikers and cattle" along Switzerland's picture-perfect Alpine trails this summer, the Swiss Hiking Federation has laid down a few ground rules.
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SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. will charge $239 for the version of the Windows Vista operating system it hopes most consumers will buy, according to prices listed on Internet retailer Amazon.com's Web site.
. I guess boot tool is one of those key search terms that sends you on a trip to Malwareland.
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] is using classic songs in commercials. I find it hard to believe "All You Need is Love" was written as an ode to financial institutions. That thumping sound you hear is John Lennon spinning around. Debbie Harry [blondie] is reduced to singing about a dust mop. I know the owners of the music have to approve the use of their songs [and sometimes the owners are not the artists themselves] but when songs are used that way it changes the memory of their songs from reminiscing about the good old days to thinking about modern day commercial cr_p. So in other words, new music is too cr_ppy to use in commercials and old music is too good.
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Data Execution Prevention
in Windows Security
Posted
I tried to find some more information about DEP.
In How to Configure Memory Protection in Windows XP SP2 it says:
"If you configure DEP to protect all applications and programs on your computer, you can exempt individual 32-bit applications from software DEP protection if they have compatibility issues. You cannot disable hardware DEP or exempt 64-bit applications running on 64-bit Windows XP systems with DEP compatible processors."
And in kb912923 it says pretty much the same thing again:
"In 64-bit versions of Windows, hardware-enforced DEP is always enabled for 64-bit native programs. However, depending on your configuration, hardware-enforced DEP may be disabled for 32-bit programs."
But it also states:
"On some computers, you can disable processor support for hardware-enforced DEP in the BIOS. You must not disable this support."
I noticed it says "must not" which is technically different from "can not." It sounds like maybe it's possible to turn off hardware based DEP entirely but it's not a good idea.
My best guess is that they are referring specifically to the -for essential Windows services and programs- setting when they say you can not turn off hardware based DEP.
From some of the other sites I Googled it seems like the all programs setting is good to use and on the rare occasion when DEP prevents a program from running it's fine to make an exception as long as the program is known to be safe. The exception will then disable both hardware and software DEP for that program only.
I'm really hoping this made some sense, answered your question and is accurate. My ancient PC doesn't support hardware based DEP so I couldn't use it as a crash test dummy to be sure.