3 Steps - Keep your computer Crap Free

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Layzie Bone
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3 Steps – Keep your computer Crap Free

1. AVG Anti-Virus
2. Ad-aware
3. Spybot S&D


There are three programs I abide by that is AVG Anti-Virus, Ad-aware, and Spybot. AVG is free, and most of all it works. The worst antivirus I have found is Bit Defender, here’s why: It doesn’t run in safe mode. It is very critical that your anti-virus runs in Safe Mode, anytime you get infected, 99% of the time you’re going to have to run a scan in Safe Mode, hell sometimes you got to yank the hard drive, but leave that to the professionals. The 2nd to worst Anti-Virus is McAfee, it’s too unorganized, I hate programs that tell you oh you have a problem, click here to fix. I want to know what’s wrong. I can understand the idea behind McAfee and their over-simplification, sell to the stupid. Norton Anti-Virus, only problem with them is all the errors that can arise that and the fact AVG does all the same ***** for free, who the hell cares about a firewall, Windows already has one, and don’t let some chucklehead tell you it don’t work, because it does, leave it alone and leave it enabled. Figure the following, if you have DSL, you’re behind a firewall most likely, then Windows has a firewall. That means you’re behind two firewalls, and figure this who is really interested in the porn that you have stored in you’re my documents. No one is going to hack a home PC. You don’t need Zone Alarm or any of that crap.

The next thing Ad-aware, works wonders, but it is nothing without it’s enemy partner Spybot, Lavasoft actually sued the guys at Spybot over some crap, but the funny thing is how well they work together. I find that Ad-aware does what it says it gets rid of the adware, Spybot I have found to be more effective on the “nasties” and Trojans. I usually run Ad-aware first. Be sure to select Full System Scan, not smart scan, not anything else. After you scan and remove one bag of trash, run spybot, if you still have problems after that, you need a technician to look at your computer, if they can’t fix it there’s one of two possibities, 1. your technician sucks, 2. you need to reload windows. I have tried and used Anti-Rootkit software both from grisoft and F-secure, and I’ve yet to find a rootkit.

Other things. You don’t need to run Disk Defragmenter, I don’t care what they say, look at it like this. Your hard disk might be an 80 GB, well each sector is usually 4 KB in size, by putting the blocks back together really don’t do a whole lot, when there is 100 million of them. All you’re doing is putting your hardware under additional stress. Computer running slow, edit the start-up, you can do that by clicking Start>Run and type msconfig. Be ware of what you take out, generally the average user doesn’t need to modify any Services. If you have Windows Vista you have it a little easier as you have descriptions on everything.

Where can I find all this?
Go to download.com, type in the keyword, it’s easy to find.
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garmabeaneth
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i like avast anti-virus
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battye
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Layzie, would you like this posted as an article on the new site? It is well within the "guidelines" (minimum 300 words, the post is over 500) :)

I will sticky it when we are on Olympus as the forums will be rearranged a bit :)

Cheers
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Layzie Bone
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Sure :) I'm a little late for a response though, eh?
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nesman
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That's pretty much the setup I use to keep Windows clean. The only other thing I suggest it Firefox/Thunderbird, just in case something nasty comes through either a web page or an email.
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Layzie Bone
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The only argument is the Firefox on Windows to me would be sort of like having Internet Explorer on a Mac. IE7 is much improved, I'm frankly impressed with it. Security and scalibility are much improved. If you get junk coming through, hit the reset button and you'r back to square one. I really dont think IE is all that bad, but when you have 50 million eyes looking for a way in, someone gets in; whereas firefox being a 2nd choice to Firefox, things that are specific to IE don't effect Firefox, that's the only advantage you have.
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battye
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Layzie Bone wrote:The only argument is the Firefox on Windows to me would be sort of like having Internet Explorer on a Mac. IE7 is much improved, I'm frankly impressed with it. Security and scalibility are much improved. If you get junk coming through, hit the reset button and you'r back to square one. I really dont think IE is all that bad, but when you have 50 million eyes looking for a way in, someone gets in; whereas firefox being a 2nd choice to Firefox, things that are specific to IE don't effect Firefox, that's the only advantage you have.
Firefox has it's fair share of issues too, but because Firefox users tend to like the program so much they are reluctant to put it down in the same way they do IE, so the problems are not highlighted or publicised so much.
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"OK, life [as you chose to define it] repeats until there are no more lessons to be learned." - nrnoble (June 12, 2005)
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nesman
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I've been using IE at work (no choice) and I have to say it still makes me a sad panda. Finally adding tabs helps, but there's still no inline search. Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror all start searching when you type a forward slash, and they don't make you close a search box when you're done. Looking for the "download" link? Forwardslash, d-o-w-n-l (there it is!) Enter. In IE it's ctrl+F, d-o-w-n-l-o-a-d (might as well type the whole word, since you don't start searching until you hit enter) Enter, (there it is!) Esc, and mouse over to the link. Bleh.

The one good feature that I used to recommend IE for was the ability to become an ftp client on the fly. IE7 has dropped this.

Finally adding a search box is great. You might think that this box is just one "tab" away from the address bar, like in similar programs. Tab takes you to the refresh/go button. Yay! Oh, wait. There's already a button for each of these functions (F5 or enter, respectively) that I've been using for the last million years.

Firefox 2 makes it easy to reopen a recently closed tab, and Opera has had this feature forever (ctrl+alt+Z). I might have missed it, but I'm pretty sure IE doesn't do this.

I just find the entire experience off-putting. Inline search is probably the one that gets me most often. I'll find myself halfway through typing a word before I notice that I'm not actually searching.

I guess if your hand is glued to the mouse, it doesn't really make a difference what browser you use, but if you're fond of having power-user options, IE just doesn't cut it for me.
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Layzie Bone
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It really depends on how you look at things. There's really no way of telling which browser is actually better, where IE is lacking is where Firefox is not, and vise versa. In IE it's eaiser to open a tab, instead of adding the button to the toolbar in Firefox, or doing File>New Tab or what have you, at least in the version of Firefox I was using.

Obviously there no way to determine it either way....
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p2p-sharing-rules
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instead of adding the button to the toolbar in Firefox,
I did the same thing too, it makes it easier to open new tabs in Firefox.All I have to do is click new tab in the toolbar to open a new tab. I only use IE7 for Winblows Updates.
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PC Decrapifier 1.8.6
http://forums.cricketmx.com/viewtopic.p ... 444#p84444




I've been using "Control T" for so long... I sometimes forget my handy Firefox button!!
"Control F" is another well-worn favourite of mine for searching!!
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battye
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Layzie Bone wrote:It really depends on how you look at things. There's really no way of telling which browser is actually better, where IE is lacking is where Firefox is not, and vise versa. In IE it's eaiser to open a tab, instead of adding the button to the toolbar in Firefox, or doing File>New Tab or what have you, at least in the version of Firefox I was using.

Obviously there no way to determine it either way....
You could use Ctrl+T, that is the quickest way across all browsers I think. (In Safari it is Cmd+T)
CricketMX.com in 2022: Still the home of bat's, rat's and other farmyard animals!

"OK, life [as you chose to define it] repeats until there are no more lessons to be learned." - nrnoble (June 12, 2005)
"the new forum looks awesome, it's getting bigger & better" - p2p-sharing-rules (11 Jan, 2008)
"Looks like CMX is not only getting bigger...but, also getting better!!" - moongirl (14 Dec, 2007)
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garmabeaneth
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sweet... learn something new every day
ctrl t
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Sometimes when you are worried... no one sees your pain.
Sometimes when you are happy... no one sees your smile.
But fart just one damn time ...
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Layzie Bone
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Everyone is entitled thier own opinion on browsers. WIth Windows Vista, IE is better suited being that it is tied into the whole Windows Defender (which I think is a POS when compared to Spybot). I can't really complain about IE about performance. The bottom line comes to interface...do you like the interface that your browser has?

More on to topic. I have come accross a lot of new spyware apps that are hard to get rid of.

What I have seen is the "System Alert" popup that tells people thier computer is infected with spyware and blah blah blah. There is a fix to the older versions, however, this new version is not found anywhere, i can't even find an entry in the registry! It implants inself into explorer.exe somehow, either through some sort of rootkit, or registry entry that would appear to be "normal"

I know a lot of you don't go around clicking on random thing to get junk like this on your computer, but being a technician, i see this everyday. Anyone with information reguarding removing this little bastard would be honored greatly, as this would save a lot of people from getting thier machines reloaded.
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