Internet Cafe

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

A layer of email protection, not formerly mentioned is mail forwarding.

For instance..... I have a GMail account and it offers email forwarding.
I can forward my GMail to a throw-away account, for instance, at my local ISP.

A heavy duty Firewall like Zone Alarm, as opposed to the Windows firewall, only offers outgoing protection in addition to the normal Incoming protection. My contention is that if you keep your PC clean and free of malware, you won't have to worry about some "ET" wanting to "Phone Home". Wink

Remember, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".

I used ZA years ago before XP-SP2 introduced the Windows Firewall.
ZA was always causing me some sort of problems, so it was with GLEE that I deleted it after installing the Service Pack 2 from MS.

After every venture out into the world of public Wi-Fi, I do a full scan of my computer with AVG, Malware Bytes and Spybot S&D. So far, nothing adverse has ever shown up. I feel perfectly confident that the Wi-Fi hot spots that I use are completely safe.

I also have a Ghost backup of my Netbook hard drive, on an external drive, just in case things get wonky on my Netbook. Again, the old "ounce of prevention".

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?

The Doctor Cool

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2636

Live linux cds on laptops... (note laptops are more problematic than desktops - I learned this by lots of experience with things working but most times not working)
a) do not use a USB mouse; some laptops hang on discovering USB. If you have no PS/2 port, then do not use a mouse when you first fire it up. You might be able to plug in the USB mouse later.
b) always select more options. Do not go for the default live bootup.
c) choose Vesa, at least you will see something on the screen. You can always tweak the settings later.
d) the last item is eluding me and I can't find all my notebook notes. I think it is something like no apcia. I'll search and see if I can find exactly what it is.

I have a mind like a steel strainer lately!

I think I found it. My note says acpi=off (you'll probably see that listed in the other options at the bottom, where you can change certain items. Or another note says noacpi. I guess it depends on the distro which you select. Also on my notebook, I have a note nolapic. (I'm not sure what either of these are for but if I add that, the live CD boots).
I found a note that says to try noscsi if it doesn't run.

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 924

Watching the text as it loads & noting where it "craps out" will USUALLY give a clue as to what needs to be done. But this only works if you know what it SHOULD be doing as sometimes the portion that it is stuck on doesn't display. I usually run the distro on a machine that it WILL work on & see where it failed. (distro I can't get to work at all go into my archive - to mostly collect dust Laughing

)

Also, a while back I had a working distro refuse to load after I switched the CD-ROM drive (the original one had the tray gears go out) I now have to use NO-DMA (or something along those lines) to get it to go. (figured this one out as an EDUCATED GUESS) - sorry I didn't give much detail, been to long for me to remember & I don't use it that much.

FishyMike · Joined: Dec 14, 2005 Posts: 290

FishyMike · Joined: Dec 14, 2005 Posts: 290

There is a new twist in the laptop. Spybots S&D discovered some registry entry named MyWay.MyWebSearch.
I did some google searches that gave me some information on subject. The files and folders that i am supposed to have I cannot find on my laptop. That doesn't mean that they are not there.
Before I go deleting these entries from the registry, i want to be sure that there are no other files on the laptop.
My AVG 8.5 found nothing om my Laptop.
What more must I do to clean out this machine.

FishyMike · Joined: Dec 14, 2005 Posts: 290

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Anyone in the 'business' knows that almost ALL search bars are spyware.

The "My web search" is certainly NO exception. Let Spybot S&D delete it.

I find that POC on probably 90+% of the computers that I work on, and that I've never cleaned up before.
Ask a user where that came from and they have NO CLUE.

After many years of using Spybot S&D, I've grown to trust it and depend on it.
False positives are almost NON-Existent, so if it wants to delete something, I just let it.

For Spybot S&D to really be effective, it must be set up correctly.
Switching it to Advanced Mode is just the first step.

The entire setup procedure is on my web site.

A great companion program to Spybot S&D is "Spyware Blaster".
It keeps a lot of garbage from ever getting on your PC, by blocking it
at the browser level.

The Doctor Cool