pbuckne

I wanted some opinion on antivirus software. I have used a number of different products over the years, ranging from Norton and McAfee to Avast, AVG, Antivir and F-Prot. I have recently begun using Avira, which offers a free trial version for download. http://www.avira.com/en/download/downloadproductform.html/id_prd/5/index/0 Anyway, I turned up all the scan options, and have been finding things that never came up before, on my system and other peoples systems. I have used products like spybot, ad aware se, and e-wido, aluria, etc, and all have done well, but the antispyware feature built into avira has done the best out of all of them. Incidentially, I understand they have a division dedicated to the USA coming soon, www.avirausa.com I believe they have a free version for Unix based machines as well.

Hopefully I have used the term correctly. I live in a fairly rural area of the United States, we have only one highspeed internet provider locally, and only two that provide dialup, but neither one have coverage for the entire county. Here is my question: I am interested in knowing what it would take to start up a 'Point of Presence' if you will, DUN/RAS that would log people in to AOL (yuck) and other national providers. I understand that I would need to contract with them to set this up, but a lot of people would like to have alternatives to the local brand of internet, whether they want faster or cheaper. Are there websites I can visit that are informative or documents or books I should consult? Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Are you using a PS2 keyboard, or a USB one? You might try using a different one in the interum, in leiu of the above working. Other BIOS keys are F1, F8, F9, (these are much more rare than DEL) or you might try using the DEL key over on your number pad. It could be something as simple as a defective keyboard, just a suggestion. Good luck Peanut.

It sounded like a PIII board, so I googled your motherboard number and came away with the usual thousands of hits. It looks like a mainstream Intel board, so you can google the rest by tightening the search. Your ceiling is closer than you think, it being a PIII board, you may wind up wanting to build one yourself, or purchase a second, newer machine.

The idea of working with national providers like AOL, Juno and PeoplePC is exactly what I am after, I would rather not sign up folks myself and the like, too much hassle, and far too many end users just don't know what they are doing, I would rather see them making that support call to someone else, and continue to work as the 'node'. Thanks for the encouragement. I have a small business doing computer repair that has a good name and makes good money, but I would like to see something else going on for the community that also makes me money. Does anyone know any books, any online resources I can get my hands on that will help me get started? I have a couple of guys who can configure the software, but they have no experience with licensing or other things than I do. I am a hardware guy, and I know I can build whatever servers are needed, etc, I just need direction on configuration. Thanks, Pbuckne

I agree with the above, and would add this: Do you see the screen flash blue for a second before it restarts, if so you need to turn off the restart on error under system properties. You may want to blow out your systems CPU fan in case it is heavily dust covered, it could be causing it to overheat. Does the system restart during other heavily disk intensive activities like running an antivirus or spyware scan? Have you installed the latest patches for the game? Does this only happen on the one game or a lot of them? Have you installed the latest drivers for your video card?

It sounds to me as though a file in your system.ini or registry run keys is linked to something on the web, such as a picture or something. Unfortunately if this is the case it requires going into the registry and having a look. This requires some pretty decent computer knowledge and nerves of steel (not to mention backing up your registry first) Your run keys are located in the registry under \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in the same section of the registry you will find the runonce and runservices keys, with almost identical keys located at: \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and runonce and runservices The problem is knowing what to delete. You have to be very careful rummaging around in your registry, else your computer may come up with an even more serious error.

Since you blew away all that was there before, you can restart the install process, deleting the partition, and tell the XP setup to repartition the drive, using whatever partition size you want. You will want to format both partitions before proceeding to install windows on the first partition.

I guess knowing for sure what version of windows you are running would help. You might also try plugging it in to a different usb port to see if it will redetect. Does it have a small activity light on it, and if it does, is the light on, or does it come on when you plug it into a different usb port. If not, have you tried plugging it into a different computer?

I just wanted to see what everyone thought of Microsoft's legal decision that prevents people from buying Microsoft COA keys. You can check it out at this link. http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.327906/sc.12/category.-112/it.I/id.6/.f Personally, I feel that Microsoft is going to push its millions of customers into the arms of another lover, er, software manufacturer.

The simplest suggestion is to download, update and run adaware, spybot and aluria, then follow it up with a very thorough antivir scan from www.free-av.com. This could very much have to do with spyware, or trojans, I have seen it many times. It could also be a number of other things. Have you tried downloading and installing leechget (www.download.com)? It is a very nice way to get you downloads faster, whether or not you are having a problem getting them in the first place. Kind of generic answers, but let me know if it helps.

Can he pull an IP address, it didn't sound like he could, but if he can, then go to another machine and download winsockfix from here (you will have to have winzip or another zip program). If all the above does not work, then make a startup disk for windows 98 in the control panel, under add and remove programs. Once the floppy is complete, restart the computer with the windows 98 cd in the drive. If it is set to boot from floppy, it will use the floppy diskette. If it is set to boot from cd, it will prompt you to either boot from harddrive, or boot from CD. Choose CD. Either way, the next question will ask if you want to boot with CDrom support. Choose to. Once it boots up to an A:\ prompt, then start looking for which drive letter contains the 98 CD. This could be D:\, E:\, F:\, etc, depending on how many drives your laptop has. Once you find the 98 CD, type cd win98 then hit enter. Type in SETUP then hit enter. You will want to follow the prompts through the setup program until you come to a prompt that asks if you want to install to c:\windows.000 or something similar. Make sure to backspace it down to c:\windows, and then continue. The next thing to watch for is the 'save system files' prompt. Choose yes, and it will save his data. Walk through the rest of the install. Let me know if that helps.

I would agree with the spybot, adaware, and antivirus scan. Make sure all are up to date before scanning. There is another program I like to use called aluria (www.download.com) that I have found will find and eliminate a lot of spyware too. I couldn't hurt.

You may want to follow that up with another scan with a program like aluria, you can download it from www.download.com I would also get another antivirus. Try uninstalling the one you have and downloading the one from www.free-av.com. Once you turn all the configuration options up, like heuristic scanning set all the way up, if finds almost anything virii and even some spyware. I use it to cover my rear when working on a clients machine. You never know what small piece of spyware might remain just waiting to do it all over again. You can also download a program called enableregedit.vbs, which almost always works to re-enable the registry. You never can be too helpful.

Most of us will need more detail before we can post an educated answer. Are you upgrading to windows 98, if so, from what version of windows?

I would check to make sure you are pulling an IP address. Then make sure you can ping something out on the internet, such as www.com (worlds shortest webaddress). If you can ping out, but nothing works, I would suggest trying a program called winsockfix. You can download it here: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=257 I have used this many times when an overlay or back and wipe/load seemed the only option. It repairs your winsock files for you, which is a pain to do manually (seems obvious from the name, but) and I have seen an incredible success rate with it. It even offers the option to do a registry backup before proceeding. Hope it helps.

I have used AVG 6 and liked it, as above have not used 7, have had quite a bit to do with AVG's free edition, lot of customers use it. Also have used F-prot, would not recommend it for a multi user/multiple login install, but like its interface as do I AVG's. AVG will detect a virus before most AV I have encountered, and cleans decently, F-prot cleans very nicely. My 2 cents...

I agree with the last note of the above, it sounds like a hung process. I would try overlaying IE, and Outlook Express by association. If it is IE 6, you can download it from www.download.com and then go to windowsupdate for the rest of the security updates it if needs them. I have seen this fix similar in the past...

I may be thinking too simple here, but I have seen it done by copying the program folders over (paht and all, such as c:\program files\program name) to the other drive, then reinstalling the software, and pointing the installer to the corresponding drive, thus retaining all program data, and taking care of the registry in one fell swoop... It would eliminate having to uninstall the program and then you could simply delete the original information...

You will need Norton Ghost (and a suitably sized harddrive for backup purposes), which I have picked up for as little as 20.00 online (depends on your definition of expensive), I can't guarantee this will work, but I have succeeded in the past. If you have another harddrive, you can use Ghost to make a duplicate of your existing harddrive on another, and then wipe the existing drive. This will give you an exact duplicate in case this doesn't work, so you can go back. Once the original drive has been backed up erase the partition on your 40gb , and create a new one, dividing it according to your needs. Create a FAT32 partition as the primary, and install win98 on the primary partition. Boot up on the win2k CD and format the secondary partition for NTFS. Then grab that ghost diskette you created from the Norton Ghost CD, bootup on it with the backup drive as slave and use the partition-to-partition copy to copy the duplicated Win2k install over to the secondary NTFS partition on your 40 GB. Once your ghost is complete, you will need to immediately boot up and run a repair on the win2k install, thus connecting it to the fact that it is now in a dual boot environment. I have seen this work, but it may not in your situation. If it does not, however, you do have that clean backup to go right back to where you were. If (you decide to try it and) it works, let me know.

The guys at the shop came up with the worlds worst possible custom configured machine. If it's not the worst, it's gotta be close. We decided that if ECS built a current motherboard that would run cyrix, and was entirely usb, no ps2 or parallel controllers, that would be a good start. Add some cheap ram, your choice. Put in a maxtor harddrive and cable it to a packard bell CDrom, something from the P166 era, 4x or so. Add a Hyperion based PCI IDE controller and put a Futjitsu and Samsung harddrive, one on each, then a Gateway CDburner, and an Emachine DVD Add an HP combo card for sound and modem. Integrated NIC from ECS, of course, one with a guaranteed memory leak. Load Windows ME to really get things rolling, but be sure to install it under the FAT 16 format, to make things really interesting. add Roxio GoBack, then Norton System Works, then McAfee Firewall, TrendAway Antivirus 90 Day Trial, and top it off with any version of AOL you care to mention. Just to be truly evil, add Bonzai Buddy, with Bearshare for the final blow. Remember, this is a poll, if it isn't the most evil machine you have ever seen, customize it with your own hardware. May the worst machine win!

www.grisoft.com www.f-prot.com Both of these websites boast antivirus with Dos based scanners. The AVG one will attempt to remove the virus, the f-prot one will let you know where the infection is. To launch the DOS-based AVG antivirus (which is a free download), pull up a command prompt and go to cd progra~1 cd grisoft cd avg6 avg "Click continue or hit c", and then ignore if necessary. This will launch the scanner and will scan for and attempt to remove wha'ever ya have. I hope that helps (and wasn't too detailed). You might update the AVG antivirus before you scan, and a reboot is not necessary to run the scanner.

Try using the Full free version of Grisoft's AVG virus scanner from www.grisoft.com. Before downloading I would recommend turning off system restore in the system properties, system restore tab. Once it is installed, boot into safe mode and pull up a command prompt. Type in the following to enter into its 'DOS' based scanner, and see if it helps. C:\progra~1 (enter) cd grisoft (enter) cd avg6 (enter) avg (enter) This free tool has saved my bacon many times. We also have recently used a tool from pcguardian if I remember correctly.

If your system supports usb, being win95b or up, you might look into a pcmcia usb card, it fits into a free pcmcia slot and allows you to do just what you're wanting to do.

What about an automatic configuration script? I have seen a script called netsetter do this exact thing a number of times. The option is found just above proxy, but getting rid of it is a little harder. Do a google search and they will give you some good info about it. Usually if it is a script like netsetter, it will readd itself upon booting without intervention.