marmite

I try and keep start-up stuff to a minimum. As you say, it's not something that needs to be constantly running by any means. I've just had a go with SUMo. If you leave the Windows stuff out (as indeed it suggests in its settings) then it does a pretty good job. I certainly found a few things that I was out-of-date on ... not security updates, just general app updates.

Just for the craic, I turned off my software firewall for a mo ... I still got full stealth protection from the router's firewall ... always nice to know

You're saying that like it's 'a bad thing'. Port-stealthing is a fairly fundamental firewall function, so you'd hope the Windows firewall is up to it. So it's doing its job as it should. I guess you may have a hardware (router-)firewall helping out along the way too? The GRC scan is a simple port scan, nothing more. A machine might fail just on one port because of some bad setting somewhere ... so it's still a useful basic sanity check. If you're feeling brave turn your firewall(s) off and see what happens ... don't leave it off for long though

Thanks hazelnut; Tom mentioned that too ... sometime less is more, eh

Good info link Tom, thanks. I'll give SUMo go at some point.

Okay, well I've just tried FileHippo updater. FileHippo is aware of 21 programs. PSI is aware of 119 programs. And this is just on my 'lightweight' netbook. FileHippo updater is clearly designed to monitor a specific set of software. I'm sure it's very effective for monitoring anything you get from its own site but it's of no substantial use from a security point of view.

Which feature are you referring to ... CCleaner has 1 and 2 (as explained above) ... so are you talking about 3? If so please explain exactly why it would be useful to you?

You can expect a couple of ports to be opened by certain services and applications; 135 for example. But if you're running a stealth test and these are coming up as hidden then that's pretty healthy. Steve Gibson's site has a good port check ... follow the Shields Up links and do a scan of 'All Service Ports'.

I'm running XP. In XP the Windows Firewall does not control outgoing connections. Also my free firewall (Agnitum Outpost) is more feature-rich.

I happen to like PSI. Though I must admit I have not tried any other similar programs. I don't run it at start-up though, just fire it off every week or two. From a security point of view I pick Windows updates automatically, which usually sorts out the critical stuff. Other software updates are very rarely that critical that they need to be picked up immediately. If there is anything like that I'll usually be aware of it via other sources anyway.

Hi This has been raised quite a few times on the forums. General consensus is not in favour of the idea. Here's one such thread ... http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=18666 There are quite a few other threads like this if you can find 'em

Hi Kane7414 (If I understand you correctly) ... 1) Uncheck Internet Explorer 'Recently Typed URLs' on the main CCleaner Windows tab. 2) Uncheck Internet Explorer 'Autocomplete Form History' on the main CCleaner Windows tab. 3) Why would this be a useful addition to CCleaner? How would you expect to be able to empty some files but not others - I assume you wouldn't want to empty all files ... you'd still want to delete temp internet files for example. 4) This feature has been requested by other users ... I'd like to see that included too

I updated the software earlier today and I've just done a definitions update; no probs with either.

Do you have any Adobe products installed Mike? Have a look at this post. PS Since this question isn't ccleaner related, it should have been posted in the Software forum

Me neither !! I've struggled to find much in the way of objective information. Panda Cloud AV still requires updating ... it just doesn't do it in the conventional way ... more 'behind the scenes' I guess. Here are a couple of articles ... http://research.pandasecurity.com/ and http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-sec...cles/59809.aspx

Yeah - that wasn't aimed at you Andavari, just a general comment ... it's probably one that quite a few people miss. I generally only pick Flash updates up when I run PSI! Though I think the regulars using these forums are more likely to be up-to-date than your average PC user.

Hi Ranchman It's also quite possible you have an application or (as Aethec suggests) a driver that's playing up. You could use various utilities like this one from Sysinternals to temporarily disable your start-up programs and drivers (so with that particular tool you'd be looking at the Logon and Drivers tabs). Use with caution - you need to be fairly sure of what you're doing or at least be confident in your ability to restore your system back to a working point. If it's a recent problem try disabling the applications you installed last, and work backwards. The Windows stuff is generally well-behaved; try looking at third-party apps first. Also if you're disabling a driver (particularly a third-party one) it makes sense to look for a corresponding start-up app to disable - the app may well not work without the driver. And I'd leave the Windows drivers alone. The simplest and safest route is just to disable start-up programs at first. Either way make a note of what you're doing. You can always boot back up into safe mode and re-enable everything. Obviously the whole process can be quite time-consuming to pin-point a problem; neither is there any guarantee that this will identify it

Lol; yeah that figures

Musical, looks like JD's recent experience is the same as mine. Maybe it is the ol' dial-up thing that's giving you grief But as he says ... if you haven't actually tried it since their changes you don't really know how it would behave for you now. Maybe give it another go if that's the case.

I was complaining about Avira earlier in the year when they had big download issues, but I haven't had a single problem with Free Avira since they sorted their servers out a month or two back ... so I'm more than happy to stick with them.

I was wondering earlier whether I could remember it being on Win 2000, but didn't get around to looking it up. According to this article it wasn't present on Win 2000, but it was on Win Me! ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Restore

Sorry you're still getting problems Eli. I've successfully created Linux and PE rescue disks before ... it's may be worth persevering if only to get to the point that gives you a future recovery option. I do seem to remember that the PE stuff was a little fussy about where certain files were located ... unfortunately I don't have it on this machine so I can't check that. The Macrium forum is pretty good - not heavily used but you'll usually get a reasonably quick response (holiday season not withstanding!).

Just don't forget updates to Flash player ... so many sites use this these days.

Just passing by ... the log file (at the end) says that Recuva created an exception dump file. I know that's not mentioned in the debug instructions but that might be useful to include here.

And the rumour mill suggests it ain't gonna get any better for a while ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/29/se...edictions_2010/ ... so keep yer reader / flash up-to-date in the coming year [Quick plug for checking your software patch state with Secunia PSI ... http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/ ]