marmite

Yeah I guess it could

It can help you if you get problems with your system ... it doesn't take up much room and you may never use it but it's handy to have installed just in case. If you read some of the Spyware Hell posts you'll see it mentioned there. This explains how to install it ... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058. And some other info here ... http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000627.htm You may not be comfortable using it yourself but it may help others to help you in future, should you have a problem. The only thing I would add is that after you've installed it you'll get a choice of boot options in future; your OS or the Recovery Console. I'd edit boot.ini to reduce the time from the 30 secs it takes to take the default boot action - easy peasy and you'll see what I mean if you open up boot.ini after you've installed it Mine is set at 5 secs ... so after 5 secs it boots into my OS as normal. Having said all this, you can do it at any time in the future if you don't want to tackle it now. I mentioned step 5 just to get it in before the defrag.

Somewhere before 5 ... install Windows Recovery Console.

Sticking my oar in ... no, stealthed What you have to bear in mind with something like ShieldsUp is that you may have other protection that's masking your machine's 'visibility' ... e.g. a router's firewall. But if you always connect like that it's less of an issue. It's more of an issue for things like laptops which you use out and about and you need good protection on the machine itself.

Very recently in fact ... http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=26700&hl= Before that I didn't know you could right-click the headers or the tabs to effect this. It's not completely consistent though. In Registry Settings, you can't right-click for a context menu but you can left-click on the icon. And trouble is you can't cancel out, so if you change your mind and you can't remember what you had, then tough!

A bump for the bumper patch Tuesday ... http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/...n/MS10-feb.mspx ... coming very soon at a Windows update near you Just the 5 'criticals' this month!

Really good article on the internet down under ... http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/0...proud-of-it.ars

Ah okay ... I was just citing the message that it came up with when I tried to install. I only have Open Office on here (plus Word viewer) but I can use it on another machine.

10 points just for following the link

Another relevant article on ECCN for anyone interested (probably not many! ) ... http://www.apache.org/dev/crypto.html

They relent ... well, pass the buck anyway ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/08/so...anket_blocking/

Added to the arsenal thanks For those interested be aware that with this version you do need to have MS Office installed.

Because as a user you can't tell what emails are infected or not. You can probably spot most junk mail but not 100% (and neither can your spam filter). And even the 'good' mail from known senders ... someone you know might send an infected attachment to you by mistake. If you have software that's capable of spotting that then take advantage of it! It's just another thing that helps to protect your PC and your data. A bit like car insurance ... it's there but hopefully you don't need it Only difference is that you know when your car gets knocked. If you get a trojan you might not know until it's too late ... all it takes is one dodgy email to get through.

If you want to use the email shield then long as Avast is providing the secure layer you should be okay ... it just means that your incoming is unencrypted when it gets to Avast, rather than getting through to your client. And your outgoing is encrypted by Avast after it leaves your client, rather than by your client. Personally if you have the option of an email shield I'd use it.

Nice one; thank you.

I remember a post where you said you use a few copies - you might be interested in this ... http://support.macrium.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1587 ... it's a discounted 4 license pack at 50% off!

I like the 'message momentum' that's gathering on this thread. A recent viable back-up is probably by far the the most overlooked thing by home users (and a good few small businesses I dare say!). It's your safety net. If you have back-up system. And you know how to use it. If you keep regular back-ups. If you've tried and tested it to iron out the glitches. ... then you're probably in the top 0.0nn percent of home users in your ability to recover from serious trouble. I dread to think how many users on these forums alone are here because of data and system recovery issues. Recuva is grand ... but if everyone backed up properly it should rarely be needed ... and generally that's just 'data' - the easy bit. Your system is a lot harder to get back and if you can recover that you're pretty much laughing. I think a lot of people just don't really know how or where to start. But there is some fantastic, specific advice given on these forums and I'm sure a lot of people's systems are in much better shape because of it.

Have a look at this article ... http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/9780...-cache-csc.html If you want to leave it permanently disabled then this advice on clearing the cache may be sufficient.

Interesting post Dennis, some food for thought there. I'll be taking a look at mine for sure. We tend to assume (and certainly expect) that what's been put on our PCs before it gets to us has been done properly!

More info here ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/05/ma...fox_extensions/

That's understandable - I would feel the same. Do you have your file extensions hidden? Do the files you're creating definitely have .reg extension? What do you mean? Do you have a key that you have backed up with CCleaner since you applied doug knox's reg association fix? I'm just wondering whether back-ups that you take now will actually restore okay.

Yep.

That could well be your browser's temporary internet files from the previous session.

If I understand the OP correctly, the requirement isn't just 'to clean external drives'. It is to clean a system volume which has been mounted as an external drive. So you're cleaning all the usual places ... windows system temp folders, dll cache etc ... but where the system partition from another machine is mounted externally. Mounted like this, it also means (registry hives aside) that all of the profiles can be cleaned.

Yes that's exactly what I said .....