Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Flamer, Flame or Flamy

UPDATED: Cyber Espionage Reaches New Levels with Flamer | BitDefender Labs

Download the 32 bit or 64 bit  and find out if you’re infected with  Flamer, the world’s most discrete and dangerous piece of malware ever. If you are already protected by a Bitdefender security solution, you do not need to run the removal tool.

Installing Win7 Driver In Vista Compatibility

Windows 7 deserves applause for getting a computer up and running with a fresh install. Occasionally a stray driver gets missed because the Vista driver has never been brought up to Win7 recognition. I just had this happen with an Intel board on a Gateway Desktop. I right clicked on the setup.exe file and chose Vista compatibility. (After tearing my hair out finding the driver in the first place.) Then when I ran the setup file, it worked. Good thing too because the system had noticeable benefit. It was MgmtEngine driver in case you are interested. The error was "PCI Simple Communications Controller".

Monday, May 28, 2012

Antivirus Remover or "This crap is worse than a virus"


AppRemover Helps You Thoroughly Uninstall Antivirus And Internet Security Software
There are over fifty anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware, and other security related software available to secure your PC and data. Most of us use at least one antivirus or Internet security suite to protect against viruses, trojans, malware, and other threats.
When I saw this a few days ago I wondered if I would ever use it. Then I set up a new Dell Vostro for the office that had TrendMicro insisting that I install it. I wouldn't use TrendMicro if you paid me so I tried getting rid of it. Even though it had not yet "installed" the Dell setup had zillions of TrendMicro entries in the registry. I finally gave up and remembered reading about AppRemover. It worked like magic. Great time saver.
Now I can use Microsoft Security Essentials and be happy.

Happy too soon. I still had to hunt down some TrenMicro and Roxio stuff left over. Search and delete with regedit and searching with Everything.exe fially did it. The roxwatchtray.exe is still hiding and starting.

*** The trick with roxwatchtray (after deleting all references I could find) was using Ccleaner to clean the registry. Ccleaner's reg cleaner is fairly harmless and won't take anything out that is not obvious.

Dell's local backup needed to be done manually and had a bunch of reg entries. Look for folders in the reg that can be taken out while doing a search.

The next time I use an off the shelf machine, I am formatting and clean installing. It would take much less time.

Win 7 Bootable USB Install and Backup

Josh Cell Softwares: WinUSB Maker - The Windows Setup to USB Solution

I just used this to make a Win7 USB install thumb drive. I added a few files and then backed it all up using the restore function for the next time I want to throw it on a USB stick and install Win7 somewhere. It worked great. Thanks Josh.

While on his page check out his other software. Looks like if you have trashed you activation, he may have a solution for that, too.

Do you need a copy of Windows Ultimate with SP1-U? ('u' means update to sp1)
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1-U ISO:
English 32-bit
English 64-bit

Friday, May 25, 2012

Backup Without Windows

Bare Metal Restore Solution GUI Backup Open Source GPL Recovery
Redo Backup and Recovery is so simple that anyone can use it. It is the easiest, most complete disaster recovery solution available. It allows bare-metal restore. Bare metal restore means that even if your hard drive melts or gets completely erased by a virus, you can have a completely-functional system back up and running in as little as 10 minutes.
Other options exist but this is free and has many features. Use Unetbootin to install on USB.

I don't use this and can't remember even trying it. I'm using Macrium Reflect currently.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

New Rogue Software Remover

Here it is. I normally don't have use for this stuff but when I do it is nice to have a current version. Eset is the Nod32 antivirus people.

Pin Not Available

Crazy Error I had not seen before. Pin not available blah blah. I restarted a few times and it finally worked. If it doesn't some say to...