Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 10:05 AM

The file is just a log file generated by the install - it only contains information about what was happening during the install process; it's an ordinary text file, not part of the system setup. If you don't want to do anything with it, you could submit it to MS as suggested near the end; it should enable them to tell you what the problem is and how to fix it.

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: wilbyhillbilly
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 10:10 AM

Brilliant, I'll do that, thanks.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: wilbyhillbilly
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 10:28 AM

Typed a nice little note, copied the log file into it, put the security code in the box, clicked submit, guess what, received this message. Our support ticket service is unavailable.

I really could just say something rude right now!

BUT I WON'T!!

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 10:50 AM

wilby, learning how to get under the hood yourself is not only a good thing to do for your self-esteem (gives you some control over the Bleeping Computer!) it can save you money. But these software things--there are some good sites with advice out there, but you have to search on the problem and find the one that you find easiest to navigate and understand. I like the site called Bleeping Computers (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/).

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 02:26 PM

willy - now they're just toying with you!

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Feb 10 - 01:07 PM

Microsoft Office and Win7 have a lot of indexing activities that are downright annoying. I've spent time this morning turning off features that hijack simple functions, like sending a page to the printer. MS has some program it wants to use instead of letting me use my printer controls. Grrrrr.

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 10:21 AM

This Win7 Ultimate OS keeps setting me as a user not administrator. I understand why--a user without administrator rights is safer because malware in theory isn't supposed to be able to write to the registry if it gets into the system. The trouble is, today it isn't letting me assume those administrator privileges (previously it looked like I had two accounts, now it shows only one). I can't get my Spybot Search and Destroy to completely finish installing updates because of this.

I'm sure I'll find an answer, this is an annoyance. I'll proceed by restarting the computer.

I'm posting this morning mainly to say that after going for a long time not using Lavasoft's AdAware (the free one) I've installed it to see how it works. I think it was incompatible with something in XP-Pro after a while and was removed and replaced with AVG, if I can recall the steps I took.

Anyway, now I have Spyware Blaster in the background, along with Spybot Search&Destroy. I use WinPatrol and Kerio firewall (the last free version) and I'm running avast! antivirus. So AdAware may be overkill, but I think there is a niche it serves that might have prevented the malware I had to dredge out of my system a couple of weeks ago. We'll see how it goes.

Win7 is a rather bossy operating system.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: olddude
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 10:40 AM

SRS
Open office is Microsoft office compatible and it is free and very very powerful so if you still have problems with office I would suggest downloading and installing open office. Most of my clients have migrated to Open office for a number of just reasons.

Dan

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 10:53 AM

I had a version of it running in XP. I ran all of my programs and stored my data on a different letter drive than C: so I've been going in and reinstalling those programs without a data loss. I do use OpenOffice every so often just to see how it compares. I also have a version of WordPerfect because a friend uses it still for a book he wrote and he sends me files for it every so often. Knock wood, so far most of these programs have been loading and running. I couldn't get my old version of Nero to load though. It says Nero 6 isn't compatible, but I liked it because it didn't slow things down with the indexing it wanted to do.

I understand that Win7 has an "XP Mode" but I haven't gone looking for it. Do you know anything about that?

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 12:56 PM

Stilly -

I believe Joe O(?) has had comments about checking out the Win7 "XP Mode."

I don't believe he was too happy with what he found.

Win7 calls it "Virtual WinXP" and advertises it as if it's something any Win7 can do; but in reality it only exists in the two (or maybe it's only one?) most expensive versions of Win7. If I recall what I've seen, you have to have WinXP running on the machine and do an "upgrade to Win7" rather than starting with a clean Win7 install. Installing Win7 first doesn't work. I believe that if WinXP was installed, and you "upgraded" to any version of Win7, you could do a subsequent upgrade to one of the super versions of Win7 and get it; but the instructions I looked up months ago were somewhat vague.

The cost to upgrade from the common Win7 versions to one that includes "Virtual XP" capability is pretty steep.

Note that it has been several months, IIRC, since I've looked at any of this, so my recollection may be a bit fuzzy.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 02:07 PM

That's the upgrade I did. I had to re-install XP and the upgrade using the version of Win7 from work. This is Windows 7 Ultimate, from an academic source. And it was the guy working there who told me about being able to use the XP mode. So I guess I'll have to poke around some more. The thing is, if Win7 evicts software that XP can use, it isn't quite XP mode, is it?

Just finished installing another device, for capturing video from VCR to convert to DVD. I've had it for ages, and wondered if I could install it, but it seems to have gone. I'll give it a trail run later.

I have to get the latest Ghost (15) because of the new OS. I think Ghost 12 was out when Vista was in use but Win7 wasn't on the horizon much at the time. And it's one of those bundles (from Fry's) where I pay for it and get the full price back as a rebate. I will end up with a copy of Norton Security that I'll give to someone.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Re my: Help! Serious Virus Plea.
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 01:31 AM

Of course, there is always the "oops" factor in this kind of work, and in my case, it's that I didn't go to HP first and find out what was and wasn't going to work. I've been updated my HP drivers and I'll be tracking down a few. There are some incompatible things going on; so far (knock wood) nothing to knock it out of the water, but things that do slow the smooth operation of some features.

Updating BIOS and finding drivers for devices will probably continue. I have a device (for converting VCR tapes into DVD files) I picked up a while back that I hadn't installed and it looks like I won't be able to install it now, at least not until the manufacturer comes up with some Win7 drivers.

SRS