Internet issues

I have, and it didn't help when I did. Nice try though

Did do a boot scan (before windows loads), Ive had to do that once or twice to get rid of some things.

If you are having this many problems, I would just save what I needed to and format the HD and reload everything back on. Just be careful what you download. Most 'free' stuff on the internet comes with adware. I've never done it, but my dad has. He thought it was normal till I used his computer once. I went crazy after ten seconds and saw about ten webpages open up trying to sell me stuff.

I would search the net for each of the issues you have. Some of the large AV makers (who now scan for adware/malware) usually have a free removal program targeting just a single threat. You may be able to find such items if you look.

But if all else fails, a complete clean and reload may be in order.

Also..some viruses, malware, etc hide in the system section of XP, protected by System Restore. While this feature is on, nothing you do will remove it. Turn System Restore off before tying any removal, being safe mode would also help in removal also. This feature is found by right clicking on My computer, properties, system restore tab.

Flak Monkey wrote:

Also..some viruses, malware, etc hide in the system section of XP, protected by System Restore. While this feature is on, nothing you do will remove it. Turn System Restore off before tying any removal, being safe mode would also help in removal also. This feature is found by right clicking on My computer, properties, system restore tab.

OOOOOPS, forgot about that......Sorry

Moof wrote:

macadamia wrote:

What I want to know is why not run Internet Explorer and whats the difference (if any) between it and FireFox?

Now, Firefox:
IE is inherently insecure. The worm that's giving you so much trouble forcibly installed itself onto your computer via a security hole in IE, using Microsoft's special IE-only software used to "enhance web sites," called ActiveX.

Firefox does not have the same security hole, because it does not support ActiveX. Intentionally. Not only that, but IE is integrated into Windows itself. When it is compromised, your entire computer is compromised. If and when Firefox is compromised, your computer is not.

The only catch is that there are still some websites out there that require ActiveX. One notable site is Yahoo Music, last I checked. In those cases, simply start up IE to view them and then go back to Firefox.

Aside from security, Firefox is far more customizable than IE. Check out addons.mozilla.org - there's stuff there to do almost anything you want!

One of the problems with ActiveX is that M$ decided to give it access to the system in a way that Sun decided to keep clearly away from Java. Part of the reason for this was that M$ could not figure out a better way to do their updates, and so ActiveX can read and write files. Combining this sort of access with general web browsing, and it is yet another disaster waiting to happen.

On a personal note, I have never felt comfortable with M$ software for another reason. Forget the pay-to-use bit, forget the monopoly, etc. When a company is constantly fixing and refixing bugs which have the same root cause (such as not providing a limit on the amount of data copied into a buffer, something which leads to a "buffer overflow"), and this goes on for years (some of the bugs I have seen patched in XP recently, I saw back in 98, 95 and even Win3.1), there is something majorly wrong with their processes. Yes, their code base is huge (I work with operating systems, including on networking equipment, and so can guess at how hute), and they have a large programmer base. But things like coding standards, code reviews and other process improvements don't seem to exist when I look at things from the outside. But all of this is just my personal opinion, and one more reason I avoid things like IE and WMP in favor of things like Firefox and other players when ever possible. Don't get me wrong though, as those programs have their own problems (including sometimes the "too many cooks" syndrome, right alongside of work being done by people who think they know how to program but do not), but at least when there is a problem, most projects seem to learn from their mistakes, and if you are a programmer, you are free to fix it yourself and feed the fix back to the project.

Oh, and on the Yahoo Music deal, I play the videos using Firefox on XP, and I know last time I checked, I was getting really close to being able ot do it on Linux, with Flash being the main stubling block. You might check into using the new version of the player. Of course, I shall have to do the same. I seem to remember reading that Adobe finally got off their behind and released flash 9 instead of leaving the *NIX community stuck with flash 7.

Oh, and on the slowdown... I have some suspicions that with all the viruses, worms and such, network traffic has started reaching a point where certain backbone links are not doing as well as they should. I know with my platforms, malware is not an issue, and so some of the problem is at the network level. Not working at a NSP like I used to, some of the resources are no longer available to me, but I have been seeing some problems with certain routes for some time. Kinda reminds me of the days when I was at CompuServe and we had customers calling in about poor network connectivity, and realized that they were being routed through someone's x86 PC in their garage down in Texas (which was not up to handling the load it was accepting). Nothing we could really do beyond explain the situation and document things so that other techs could know that was going on.

All fixed up, thanks for all your help guys.

Cool that you have it fixed. Was it the system restore bit that did the trick?

Also, even friends of mine who are mega-pro M$, and have certifications like MCSE have said that from time to time, M$ installations are subject to a form of bit rot, and needs to be reinstalled from scratch time to time. The days where you had to occasionally do so (like every 6-12 months) with a low-level format of the HD because of problems at that level seem to be gone, but the M$ OSes seem to gather their own clutter and slow up over time, regardless of the programs like cleansweep seem to be able to do. Don't know how Vista will be, since M$ has apparently done more to segregate the user from the admin functions.

Oh, and on the whole Yahoo Music deal... I am joyous to note that I now can watch my Yahoo music videos **ON LINUX**, where IE ovbiously ain't running.

: <

Doing so as I type this, so on this front at least, I am a very very happy camper. The only glitch is that I am running on a x86_64 system, and I have to intentionally force things into a pure 32-bit environment since Adobe has yet to release a 64-bit version of the Flash 9 plugin for Linux.

Oh, and it is still prone to the usual getting stuck when going from one video to another. But I have seen this problem for ages, and so...

Now if I could only get UT running in my x86_64 environment...

It was part that, part getting AdAware, and part using Housecall

Glad we could help.