Join Early Retirement Today
Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Tech question
Old 01-04-2006, 09:58 PM   #1
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
wildcat's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Lou-evil
Posts: 2,025
Tech question

I have McAfee Anti-Virus on the my desktop. It found a Trojan - Downloader - ASN but I can't delete the file or quarantine it. What gives? It is fairly new and considered to be low risk but I can't stand the friggin pop-up reminder every second. Any clues? McAfee and Msoft updates are current.
__________________
"These walls are kind of funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them"
wildcat is offline   Reply With Quote
Join the #1 Early Retirement and Financial Independence Forum Today - It's Totally Free!

Are you planning to be financially independent as early as possible so you can live life on your own terms? Discuss successful investing strategies, asset allocation models, tax strategies and other related topics in our online forum community. Our members range from young folks just starting their journey to financial independence, military retirees and even multimillionaires. No matter where you fit in you'll find that Early-Retirement.org is a great community to join. Best of all it's totally FREE!

You are currently viewing our boards as a guest so you have limited access to our community. Please take the time to register and you will gain a lot of great new features including; the ability to participate in discussions, network with our members, see fewer ads, upload photographs, create a retirement blog, send private messages and so much, much more!

Re: Tech question
Old 01-05-2006, 01:23 AM   #2
Full time employment: Posting here.
bruce1's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Hagersville
Posts: 794
Re: Tech question

Good Morning

Boot into safe mode and then try to delete the file manually either from a prompt or from windows explorer.

I have used this methold to delete stubborn virus related files.

Bruce
__________________
I wish I was half as good as my dog thinks I am!
bruce1 is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-05-2006, 07:13 AM   #3
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Eagle43's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: DFW
Posts: 2,016
Re: Tech question

I got a question.

When I go to log in, the browser warns me my CAPSLOCK is on. Fair enough. But, does this mean it can read keystrokes and if so, can it read passwords?
__________________
Resist much. Obey Little. . . . Ed Abbey

Disclaimer: My Posts are for my amusement only.
Eagle43 is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-05-2006, 07:57 AM   #4
Recycles dryer sheets
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 283
Re: Tech question

Good suggestion from bruce - additionally you can run a McAfee scan (or Norton AV scan) while in safe-mode that will have an improved chance to delete most stubborn viruses.* McAfee or Norton will not only clear the offending file but will get rid of bad stuff in your registry, system, system32 and startup folders - there are just a bunch of places where the badguys can hide!

If I suspect a named virus, I put that name into google and do a little investigation first - NEVER, NEVER go to the free virus, spyware, etc removers advertised there on the right side of the google page - they will only add a new virus or spyware and then ask you to pay for their product to remove what they just installed!*

Eagle - the browser knows all! Its' warning is a friendly reminder - any real keystroke reader would hijack your info without warning.*

Practice safe computing - use quality antivirus and anti-spyware software.

JohnP
__________________
Dad's Dream; to have enough money someday to live the kind of life my wife and kids do...
Life is what happens while you are making other plans... John Lennon...
the more you look, the more you see...
JohnP is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-07-2006, 11:08 AM   #5
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
ladelfina's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 2,713
Re: Tech question

Egad. Just buy a Mac.
ladelfina is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-07-2006, 11:29 AM   #6
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
cute fuzzy bunny's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Losing my whump
Posts: 22,708
Re: Tech question

Yeah, then you wont know if you have any problems in the first place, and if you do, you'll have no chance of fixing them
__________________
Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. Just another form of "buy low, sell high" for those who have trouble with things. This rule is not universal. Do not buy a 1973 Pinto because everyone else is afraid of it.
cute fuzzy bunny is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-07-2006, 12:18 PM   #7
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
ladelfina's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 2,713
Re: Tech question

Huh?


Mac OSX viruses=0

Strangely, my computer keeps working on and on without error messages or crashes despite all the "problems" I know nothing of.

I guess ignorance is bliss!
ladelfina is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-08-2006, 06:59 AM   #8
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
BUM's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Mid Hudson Valley
Posts: 1,781
Re: Tech question

Quote:
Originally Posted by wildcat
I have McAfee Anti-Virus on the my desktop. It found a Trojan - Downloader - ASN but I can't delete the file or quarantine it. What gives? It is fairly new and considered to be low risk but I can't stand the friggin pop-up reminder every second. Any clues? McAfee and Msoft updates are current.
Get rid of that downloader. But save the Trojan. Hey, you never know with those friggin pop-ups.






__________________
In a panamax down by the river.
BUM is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-08-2006, 07:39 AM   #9
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
cute fuzzy bunny's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Losing my whump
Posts: 22,708
Re: Tech question

Quote:
Originally Posted by ladelfina
Huh?


Mac OSX viruses=0

Strangely, my computer keeps working on and on without error messages or crashes despite all the "problems" I know nothing of.

I guess ignorance is bliss!
Actually there are a few dozen well established mac viri that are "in the wild" at this time and hundreds that have been cataloged. Theres a chance you have one or have had one, as many mac users do go the bliss route and dont install a virus scanner or antispyware product.

We've had this line of discussion before. If you added all the device driver and software support to osx that windows xp has, then ran it on the range of hardware products that windows does, it'd have all the same problems. I'm not a microsoft fanboy or a mac basher, i've owned both. I just want to pierce that nice marketing aura that the mac is made of superior parts, has a bulletproof virus free operating system and is worth 2x the price of a windows machine. It aint so.
__________________
Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. Just another form of "buy low, sell high" for those who have trouble with things. This rule is not universal. Do not buy a 1973 Pinto because everyone else is afraid of it.
cute fuzzy bunny is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-08-2006, 07:53 AM   #10
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 1,352
Re: Tech question

Wildcat,
Combining a couple of the posts above.

1. Do a Google on the Trojan and get the name of the executeable.
2. Boot into safe mode.
3. Delete the executeable or run McAfee in safe mode.

But, a great site for computer virus/Trojan help is www.grc.com and use their free products. When Microsoft first gets hit this site always beats em to the fix.
OldAgePensioner is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-08-2006, 08:11 AM   #11
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
ladelfina's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 2,713
Re: Tech question

Quote:
hundreds that have been cataloged.
For OSX? Or are we talking System 7? Can you point me to a list somewhere?

Quote:
worth 2x the price of a windows machine
My $450 mini does everything I want a computer to do, and I sleep at night knowing my stuff is as safe. Are you telling me I can find a comparable PC for $225 and not have to spend hours tearing my hair out with DLL idiocies and shelling out $$$ year after year for anti-virus and anti-spyware?

There is a Huge Savings in not having to waste your time fixing broken stuff. How many billions of hours would you say PC owners spend collectively just to keep their machines hobbling along?

Worth waay more than twice the price to me to avoid all that.

Don't know if you read the "What Computer Do You Have?" thread, but I posted this, which I found eye-opening:
Quote:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=828574


Quote:
When you run a virtual machine in Virtual PC for Mac, the operating system that is installed on the virtual machine may be vulnerable to attacks by Windows-based viruses if the virtual machine is configured to connect to the Internet directly through Virtual Switch networking. In Virtual Switch networking mode, the Windows operating system directly connects to the Internet. As a result, it may be vulnerable to attacks from Windows-based viruses and other malicious programs.

If the Windows operating system is connecting to the Internet by using Shared Networking, it is in fact connecting through the Macintosh operating system and the Macintosh networking connections. This type of connection can help protect your operating system from network-based virus attacks.
To summarize, according to Microsoft, the safest way to run Windows is on a Mac.* *
I think folks just have so much invested in the M$ universe that it's hard for them to step back and see the forest for the trees. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want to help. You can survive and thrive without the M$ monkey on your back, that's all. Best of luck to all, and happy computing!
ladelfina is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-08-2006, 08:41 AM   #12
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
cute fuzzy bunny's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Losing my whump
Posts: 22,708
Re: Tech question

Baby's gonna be up any minute now, but let me see if I can answer the questions.

Before I even start, yes, you can buy a mac and have a perfectly good user experience, and if thats what you're familiar with and what works for you, keep buying them.

You can go to the network associates virus pages and do a search there for mac viri. One guy did that and did an interesting rationalization report. He found 612 viri that affect the macintosh. He 'decided' that some of them werent really viruses by his definition (which is a little hard to agree with), took out a few dozen that only affect classic mac apps (which do run just fine on os x so you really cant take those out either), and then took out any that had anything to do with microsoft applications running on the mac. By the time he was done winnowing out everything (which I believe was his intention) he came up with zero. Note that this list he used did not include any bugs in os x that were acknowledged and repaired by apple.

By applying the same criteria to Windows, I believe the number of bugs still existing and unpatched by the manufacture, excluded of things I whimsically decide shouldnt be included, caused by apps made by another company, or primarily affecting older unpatched versions of the OS, the number is also zero.

You should have an up to date virus and spyware scanner for any machine; mac or windows. You'll get by better with the mac, I wont dispute that. But you're not 100% safe, 90% safe, or even 4% safe

On a windows machine of quality construction, with just the operating system and the core apps installed, you will experience the same level of quality use and stability one gets from OS X and a mac. I have a cheap home-built machine of no pedigree and XP, it doesnt crash, it only does funny things when i've just installed a new piece of software where the fault lies with the software, and i've never had to reinstall the os in many years...even though i've installed and removed thousands of pieces of software.

Mac mini - MSRP $499. Current Dell PC offering, $299, which includes a monitor, keyboard and mouse which I believe you have to add to the mac mini...?

Just to redux (babys still snooooozing). Macs are good. You add a bunch of funny hardware and software to them, they'll have problems. "regular" pc's are good. You add a bunch of hardware and software to them, they'll have problems. Ounce for ounce of computing power, you'll pay less for a "windows" platform than a mac platform. Usually half. You may or may not find an app you want to run in a mac version; usually what you want will run on a pc. Macs are more stylish than most pc's, but if you want to pay for a pretty box, chances are someone makes one that runs windows that you'll find appealing.

You may hate bill gates and microsoft...thats ok...they're eminently hateable. I've met and spoken with both bill gates and steve jobs many times over a period of decades and sat in business meetings with both of them. If steve jobs was in the position bill gates is in, trust me, you'd hate him and the company he ran more.

The only points I wish to make is that there is nothing "magical" about a macs hardware, software, build quality or manufacturers "quality". In equal settings, both serve well and both exhibit the same approximate level of "badness".
__________________
Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. Just another form of "buy low, sell high" for those who have trouble with things. This rule is not universal. Do not buy a 1973 Pinto because everyone else is afraid of it.
cute fuzzy bunny is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-08-2006, 09:12 AM   #13
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
BUM's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Mid Hudson Valley
Posts: 1,781
Re: Tech question

Quote:
Originally Posted by OldAgePensioner

But, a great site for computer virus/Trojan help is www.grc.com and use their free products. When Microsoft first gets hit this site always beats em to the fix.
Very cool site OAP thanks.
__________________
In a panamax down by the river.
BUM is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-08-2006, 09:47 AM   #14
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 1,352
Re: Tech question

BUM,
The guy who runs the site got DDOS'ed and took it personal.

ShieldsUP is awesome for a free service.

EDIT: I used a site called www.blackviper.com but it vanished. Here is one of his best services. Your computer is running about 3 times the number of processes that you really need. In other words XP is bogging and crashing on things that could be disabled.

check out this: http://www.dead-eye.net/WinXP%20Services.htm
OldAgePensioner is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-08-2006, 01:39 PM   #15
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
wildcat's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Lou-evil
Posts: 2,025
Re: Tech question

Thanks OAP.
__________________
"These walls are kind of funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them"
wildcat is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-08-2006, 04:57 PM   #16
 
Posts: n/a
Re: Tech question

Quote:
Originally Posted by ladelfina
Egad. Just buy a Mac.
JUst make sure you have plenty of friends that have a PC to download software that won't work on your Mac. -- MY Mac friends ask me all the time!

It's a windows world.
  Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-09-2006, 03:38 AM   #17
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
ladelfina's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 2,713
Re: Tech question

Yep, Cut-Throat, it shore is.

But you can't keep us Mac fanatics down! Just about the only piece of PC software I envy would be the PC version of Quicken; the Mac version is terribly hobbled and broken. On the Quicken forums a significant number of people run Virtual PC on their Mac in order to have the best of both worlds, though they do complain about the sluggishness of this setup.

--
(), thanks for your thoughtful reply. I take Network Associates with a grain of salt, since after all they are the ones trying to sell us their anti-virus. Their virus database does not have an OS-specific search param, so I wasn't able to confirm what the "one guy" you mention supposedly found. From what I have read, the "mac viruses" out there (a few hundred vs. tens of thousands for PCs) are either for ancient systems (not OSX; don't run System 9 if you don't want to), or are M$ Word macro viruses. Get rid of those and what are you left with?

I still have yet to read about one virus actually affecting any Mac running OSX. Not one. Rewards have even been offered for proof of a OSX virus, but I don't see where anyone has collected on the bet.

I don't and won't claim that there are no potential weaknesses and that someone in the future won't be able to expoit these. But Unix has good enough security for DARPA and the DoD, so I'm thinking it's good enough for me. Given the challenge, and the five years that have passed since the introduction of OSX, I am not losing sleep over it, though I know it may just be a matter of time. Dashboard widgets could be an entry route, so I am trying to be circumspect with those.

As far as anti-viruses are concerned, looks like the cure could be worse than the disease: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05...c_false_alarm/


As for adding "funny" H/W and S/W, I try to add only "serious" H/W and S/W.* *


Cost, again---All I remember is a colleague who spent two (2) days trying to undo the damage wrought to his PC when he (gasp!) tried to attach a basic external hard disk. That kind of carnage never happened to me in 20 years' use of several different Macs in a small-office setting (5 various workstations and print server, high-end printers, scanners, etc). I would just take a hard disk, plug it in, and there it was.* What is two days worth to me? A lot more than the $200 difference, I can tell you that . And that's just one instance.

The untold billions of lost hours wrestling with crappy PC software (come on, all you Powerpoint and M$ Publisher users, you can tell us a tale, I am sure..) vastly outweigh the nominally higher entry costs of a Mac system. Most people have an extra old keyboard and monitor lying around from a superseded machine.

I'm not doubting that both Gates and Jobs are probably monomaniacal. If they weren't, they wouldn't be where they are. I wasn't trying to make it into a personality contest; I am just looking for the best user experience, which I think I have found. Apple from the get go tried to be true to their "computers for the rest of us" slogan, albeit with some mis-steps, while MS cavalierly ignored this aspect for a long time. XP is supposedly an improvement, but for me they are a day late and a dollar short. They were certainly brilliant in their take-no-prisoners approach, quckly establishing a monopoly and then resting on their laurels. The better businessman is Gates; the better product is Apple. It's not magic, it's engineering. Open a Mac and look at its guts. It's a thing of beauty. Open a PC and you'll see a holy mess.
ladelfina is offline   Reply With Quote
Re: Tech question
Old 01-09-2006, 08:57 AM   #18
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
cute fuzzy bunny's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Losing my whump
Posts: 22,708
Re: Tech question

Unfortunately even I cannot undo 20 years and billions of dollars in good marketing with a few posts on a message board.
__________________
Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. Just another form of "buy low, sell high" for those who have trouble with things. This rule is not universal. Do not buy a 1973 Pinto because everyone else is afraid of it.
cute fuzzy bunny is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Professor Fired Over Va. Tech Discussion - Victimhood dex Other topics 3 04-24-2007 02:59 PM
A serious question (for once), about the theory of buy and hold and down markets AirJordan FIRE and Money 60 03-12-2007 09:29 AM
How to answer questions. ???With a question or assignment????? dex Forum Admin 2 02-25-2007 07:56 AM
Cost Basis - Capital Gains Question Jeb-NY FIRE and Money 16 11-13-2006 07:24 PM
Question on Wills............ Cut-Throat FIRE and Money 31 08-31-2006 10:18 AM

» Quick Links

 
All times are GMT -6. The time now is 06:43 AM.
 
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.