Off the bat, I have to tell you, I do not have the fastest or the best machine in the world.
I have a machine that is at the max processor and ram for the motherboard’s capability.
Here are the specs for the machine I am using.
Sis 755 A-2 Motherboard
Sempron 3400+ 64 bit Processor
Nvidia 7600GS 512 mb
2 Gigs kingston 3200 ddr Memory
Sony cd/dvd burner
500 watt power supply

Ok for the past 7 or 8 years, The way I have benchmarked computers and operating systems Would be by playing Grand Theft auto III.
Of course I have since then added vice city and San Andreas to the mix. But GTAIII Is the benchmark for me. If you do not like the game sorry
But please hang with me on this.
For a long time I fought trying to make my computers strong and sturdy enough to handle the demands this game calls out. Computers these days are actually strong enough to handle these demands.
After the install of just straight vista drivers I went to pcpitsop and did my first benchmark of my machine. The score was pathetic. I kind of knew what would happen after I installed gtaIII, But I go ahead and start the game. Before the load screen I get a notice saying that there is some sort of dll missing (sorry all, I did not write it down) . I then hear the game start up but minimized in the task bar. I click the notification and the game takes over the screen. I see this look that took me back to the days of 256 megs ram and nvidia 440 on a 800 meg processor. This game looked wretched. But what do you expect with o/s drivers and not vendor drivers? Well since it’s a newer o/s than XP, I would expect better results than xp, not similar to win 98 on a crap machine. Very pixilated simi laggy but not as laggy as you would think with the way it looked.
After the drivers had been installed I start GTAIII again. Again it gave me the notice of missing dll. When the unnamed player in gtaIII walked out of his hide out I noticed artifacts. The garage was covered with imaging from the walls adjacent to the Entry to the garage. The player had openings so you could see through him in many places. I moved on and walked into the garage and drove the banshee down the ocean blvd to check how the game (typically) lags (with bad bad drivers or bad hardware) as you drive under objects, like the over head train, and trees and bridge. The game was very jaggedly laggy and objects where not being displayed properly.
After the gtaIII test I tried the other two Grand Theft Auto games and got the same mess. I swear the game looks better and plays better on linux with just the linux basic drivers, but the lag is way worse on Linux.
So I did searches for help forums and the like. I found that allot of people with the 7000 series nvidia video cards had similar issues. I never found a solution that worked. No, using older drivers did not help. Until sis/ecs releases more than one gart driver I am pretty much stuck in the same spot.

I did notice that the fonts on websites looked a bit bigger than when on xp.
As much as I enjoyed the looks of Aero (makes me think of Ubuntu) I decided to try turning it off. I used Black Viper’s tips from his tweak site .
The game did not change. and my bench score on pcpitstop only went up 10 points from the first test with base drivers.

Vista test was done 3/29/08. So please wait a few months before you tell me they fixed the operating system. I did try all online update and nothing got better that I could witness myself.
I am now back on xp and my machine runs three times a fast. using the same direct version as I used on vista.. 9.0c

Well it seems the lady has come into a few cooties.

She has an xps m1210 laptop.

Since neither of us know just how long the stuff has been on her machine or where or how they all got there, I believe it would be in her best interest if we just back up everything that is important and whip out the reinstall discs. Easy? lol. Newp. No chance. Seems back when she got the computer she lived elsewhere with someone else and obtaining the drivers discs and o/s and all teh bundled software discs had to include a spy. Her little sister had to sneak the border and play friendlies… Now she snuck out with the baggy thing that all the discs are in which of course no one there claims to have seen. We have done some searches and find that one disc on the bag, is not for this laptop that we are about to work on. Ok. Now we have all the discs.

The hard part is deciding what to do after we install everything and well, does the sister go back and act like nothing happened? ( I mean this is a close as family issue, I am not in the family so I have to step back) I am thinking of burning the discs as a back up and bundling some jacked up progs with it.. but will they hate me for it?

well whatever

Ok So now the back up is not going so well. I have been to virustotal ,virscan.org and jotti’s a million times and man, I keep finding malware in everything she wants to backup. I am half tempted to just format and cross my fingers and lie like a dog. I am getting sick of each time they find stuff in the files I end up having to delete them anyway because they are beyond repair. Meanwhile I have a million more files to scan…one by one….. It’s hardly worth it. Then again she is fricken hot and I know what I am doing.
Well I also looked around and saw that ubuntu installs pretty good on this particular model. If I can assure her that open office is just as good as microsoft office/works then I got it made! I wouldn’t have to delete anything!
Tell you what, I will do something with this pretty machine and post it here later

to be continued…….

I bought a domain name for $5.99 from netfirms.com

My new domain name, get this is iworkwithtech.com

I will be helping you with what ever tech support I can give.

I am also running a tech news and updates section, along with a tech news posting area that will be ran with php and a forum that will also be ready for your statements news help and of course questions.

I will be welcoming anyone that comes in . I hope you all enjoy my work.

Not such a bad find on the domain name, since I already have iworkwithpeople.com

TruXter

Owner and writer of :

iworkwithtech.com  and iworkwithpeople.com 

A hosts file is a file located in the ETC folder of almost every operating system (with some exceptions). The hosts file is a file that is scanned at the first accesses of a network. Be it a program that you expect to go to the internet or not. Your computer will first try and resolve the dns with the host. It does this by checking the hosts file.

In your hosts file, you can tell your computer what IP address to assign web addresses. By doing this, you bypass all network look ups on the internet for specific addresses. It is impossible to knock out every single website there is. You can how ever knock out all sites submitted, reported, and confirmed as malware sites.

You can also stop your kid from hitting sites you do not want her/him going to. The way it works is you move to the lowest section in the hosts file and type in the IP address you would like that website to go to. Like this:

127.0.0.1 a_site_you_do_not_want_to_go_to.com

This blocks that site from ever loading on your computer.

If you have a program that goes to “a_site_you_do_not_want_to_go_to.com” by default, the program will not be able to update. This can be used to your advantage if the site that the program is trying to connect to is a virus site, and the program is a virus, trojan or a malware notification type program (like a spider). We call them adware and spyware these days, the program will not be able to contact it’s owner, this hides you from the owner and increases your security. Some malware updates itself by connecting to its owner’s location, unless it is specificly assigned an IP address to connect to. That, of course, would be a mistake on the writer’s part. Much easier to locate that way, and you could actually block that IP address if you took the time.

I use mvps host because he has a much larger list than I do. I just add my stuff to his when i download it and set up my hosts file. If you have a list of bad sites, do what I and a few others do, email it to mvps site. I do suggest that you read everything on the wiki and mvps site before you do anything to change your hosts. Really, if you block yourself from the interenet (god only knows how that could ever happen) you just clear out all IP addresses and domain names in the list and you are back to the way it was.

If you have any questions related to this topic feel free to ask them.

TruXter

Owner and writer of :

iworkwithtech.com  and iworkwithpeople.com 

Tags: ip adress, malware, virus, trojan, security, computer, hack, intrusion, backdoor, safety, privacy, protection, prevention

We all have had infestations, pop ups that never go away, something that changes your home page, or something that redirects the site you type to a totally different site. Even worse than all that, when there is a combination of those problems.

Well, I have some good news and some help for you.

Next time, you might want to consider this stuff first before you even go anywhere on the internet.

For starters, I would begin stopping most malware from even connecting to the net from your computer, this step stops your computer from ever going to the sites where malware is created, uploaded, and/or updated. Fix your “hosts” file by going to MVP’s site and reading up on the subject. I actually just scroll down like 20 lines and he has a zipped file with 5 or so items in it. Extract the contents to the desktop, double click the batch file, and in a blink, I am Protected from tons of malware servers. http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

Please read mvps site to get a full understanding and to be on the same page as me. Yes the hosts project started out as a way to block banner ads, but it was later found that you can do much more. PLEASE READ THE MVPS SITE.

Before installation of new “hosts” file, I head to my existing “hosts” file and open it with Notepad to see if there are any changes made to it that are located here “C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc”

There is a line that should say “127.0.0.1 localhost” which means local host is YOU. If it says anything other than 127.0.0.1, then your machine has been routed to someone else’s server and everything you do and type is being passed through them first. They filter through it and crack what they want. If you have anything different there, please post it here as a comment so I, and others, can help take care of someone like this.

Next, let’s go scan your machine. If you can, install this, “http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/download/” and install a-squared Free 3.1

Run that program and remove anything and everything it finds. Let the scan finish before you start the next step. If both scanners try to remove the same files, it could cause problems.

Next, go get Spybot-Search and Destroy, you will find it here “http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html” spybot - Search & Destroy 1.5.2

Now, go get Ad-Aware “http://www.lavasoftusa.com/single/trialpay.php“

Run Ad-Aware after Spybot. The same rules apply.

If your issue persists, HJT that stands for “hijack this” found here “http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/programs.php“

You can join their forums “http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/forums.php” and get help from people who spend all day, every day just helping people decipher what HJT finds in it’s logs. They all will tell you what to keep and what to kill. They are an excellent group.

In most cases, you would have prevented this from ever happening if you would have started with MVP’s “hosts” file. That is a very good practice. Also, it would be wise prevention to not install anything and everything you find on the internet. First thing you must always do when you download anything is scan it with as many virus scanners as possible. I use Jotti’s site for the online single file scanner. It scans with like 20 different virus scanners at one time and shows you a real time results area at the bottom of the page. If you watch the scan result, you can see what scanners are worth a darn and what scanners are worth being cup holder….. AVG is garbage.. See for yourself. “http://virusscan.jotti.org/“

If anyone has protection tips of the malware kind, drop a note here ..

Good free firewall to prevent this kind of thing:

Sygate firewall:

http://smb.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm

Trojan killers:

http://swatit.org/download.html

Trojan Hunter trial version:

http://www.misec.net/

Do this immediately:

Disabling system restore in Win Xp
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2001012513122239?Open&src=sec_doc_nam&docid=2001111912274039&nsf=tsgeninfo.nsf&view=docid&dtype=∏=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl

More Xp resource:

XP resource info:

www.blackviper.com

http://grc.com/dos/xpsummary.htm

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp
If you do not have SpyBot and Adaware, do this:

Spybot:

Download and Read the SpyBot tutorial here:

http://s89223352.onlinehome.us/mirror/spybot/index1.php

Download it, Unzip the program, and immediately check for updates, install the updates and then do the scan.

Let it fix everything marked in red. Reboot but not with restart, shut it down for two full minutes. You�ve got two measely minutes and it�s worth it, and let Spybot run if it indicates.

To add an item to your �Ignore List� click on the little �+� sign next to the item and left click it to highlight it, then right click it and a menu appears, select the function you want.

When you are done reboot again same way. Two full minutes shut sown is best.

Tea Time discussed by designer here:

http://forums.net-integration.net/index.php?showtopic=13433

Also, go to the update page. Notice 3 icons across the top. Between “Search For Updates” and “Download Updates” there is an icon for the download mirror location. After you click on �search for updates,� the one in the middle will change. If it doesn’t say “Spybot.US by Rootboxen.net USA” click on the dropbox arrows and click on Rootboxen, and use only that one. If you got a “checksum error” trying to download –that’s why.

Ad-Aware:

Download AdAware from http://www.lavasoft.de/

check for updates at “webupdate”.

I use these settings (green check)

From main window click “Start” then make sure ” Activate in-depth scan” has a green check next to it.

Put a black dot nest to “Use custom scanning options� and click Customize” next to it, then green check these options:
“Scan within archives” ,”Scan active processes”, “Scan registry”,
“Deep scan registry” ,”Scan my IE Favorites for banned URL”
“Scan my host-files”

At the top of the �STATUS� page notice the Tweak (gear) icon. Click on it.

The first setting is �Scanning Engine.� Click on the little plus sign next to it, and in the drop-down green check “Unload recognized processes during scanning”, and �include basic Ad-Aware settings in log file�. Next click on the �+� next to “Cleaning Engine” and in the drop-down green check “Let windows remove files in use at next reboot” and Delete quarantine objects after restoring�

Click “proceed”, that will save those settings.

Click “Scan”

When the scan finishes, mark everything for removal and delete it. Right-click the window and choose “select all” from the drop down menu, press �next� and then �yes� to the prompt: �remove all these entries�.

However, if you have certain programs running that will give a false indicator of a browser hijack attempt, such as Script Sentry, which places a monitoring function in the registry and looks like a browser hijacker but is not, then you may want to add that to the ignore list because you want to keep it there to do it�s job. To add an item to the ignore list, put the a cursor on the file it reveals and left click it to highlight it, then right click it and a menu appears. Click on �ignore list.�

Shut down, two minute shut down is best, and let Adaware run on reboot if it indicates.
When you are done all that, go into Safe Mode and run Adaware, SpyBot, and Av. Then go to ’search files and folders’ and search for the file name of the trojan and delete it in Safe Mode. If you are clean there, that’s about it. Re-enable your system restore.

I also use these:

Spyware Blaster

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

MRU Blaster

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/mrublaster.html

and Script Sentry.

Run Adaware, SpyBot and your AV in normal mode. Clean? good. Go here:

Jason�s Browser Security Test:

http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/BrowserSecurity/

Gibson tests:

http://www.grc.com/default.htm

I use LeakTest, DCOMbobulator, ShieldUp, and plugnpray.

Love for the tech community.

Tags: adaware, adware, asquared, computer, hijacker, hijackthis, hosts, infected, infection, log, maliciouse program, malware, popup, redirect, scanner, spybot search and destroy, spyware, trojan, virus

Have you seen jPod yet?

It’s yet, another very good Canadian comedy from our beloved favorite director Mike Clattenburg, the guy known for the viral indy series Trailer Park Boys, based on the Douglas Coupland novel of the same name. No, it does not have Robb Wells or John Paul Tremblay. It is not in any way a remake of the Internet hit that we all know and love.

It is on the other hand something that stands a chance of being one. See, there was a glitch with the Y2k bug that threw a handful of game designers at E.A. into a basement area of their game development building. It’s okay, though. This crew of three guys, two girls and their obsessive leader boss are pretty much the biggest cut-ups in the company.

The new boss comes in and decides to overhaul the game that the jPod crew has been working on for some time and turning it into a few things it should never have been. The new boss has no frickin’ taste whatsoever. It’s a blood and guts game, but Steve, the new boss, wants turtles and role model women incorporated into the game. Not against women, just you can not make that big of a change that far into developement.

One guy is a hacker kid.

One guy has screwed up parents. His mother wants him to bury a body and hide the remnants of an illegal plant she has growing back home. I think his dad used to be “Mr. Seaver” from Growing Pains. His wife thinks he is gay and losing his mind.

One girl is an ex-fatty turned hotty with low self-esteem.

One is a hot Asian female with a strong attitude and a mean dad.

And then there is “Cowboy,” the resident Gigolo. He is cool.

TruXter

Owner and writer of :

iworkwithtech.com  and iworkwithpeople.com 

Microsoft put in a bid to purchase yahoo, this was all over the news and the internet but not everyone has heard this yet. What does this say for the current state of yahoo stock ? Did this do anything to Apple stock? There was a crash in Apple stock right at the same time as the offer purchase. Did the Microsoft stock rise? Did everyone bail out on yahoo?

Is google really on top of the game like everyone seems to be saying?.. I think not. I do not think they have the banks behind them financing them as Msn or the big Y!  have behind them.

I do not believe that Google is beating Yahoo or Microsoft at anything. I work on mess loads upon mess loads of computers every year. What I see when I boot up these computers and open the browser is always the same thing. Yahoo for the home page and Yahoo toolbar.

I would even go so far as to say that one in every 20 computers I work on in a year, have something else other than just plain old Internet Explorer. I mean, if more computers used Firefox (which everyone is saying is the fastest growing browser) than what I see, I would assume that more people are using the default Firefox start/home page, but they just aren’t. We all know that all start pages have search boxes.

Do I believe Google has a superior search? Well, no. Not really. It’s not like it finds stuff that the other search engines do not find.

Microsoft used to have chat rooms. These chat rooms where mostly split by the city you live in. Each populated city had a capacity of 50 people per chat room. If the chat room exceeded 50 people, an overflow room would be created. Some days there where up to 15 overflow rooms. In each room there where three advertisements with “rotating banners,” Microsoft created this line of code. The rotating banner means that the ads displayed in the ad-space would change to a new advertisement every 3-5 minutes. Most “chatters” would stay in the chat rooms for hours or days, just leaving their computer on and never exiting from the chat room. This must have been huge revenue for Microsoft, but they shut the doors on the free chat rooms and decided to put a fee on them. People where there for the free place to congregate, not because they where addicted. MSN closed the doors on the whole chat room idea simply because they have the money to toss around like that. The whole idea of being free and meeting local people in a moderated area was dead.

Yahoo, on the other hand, still has chat rooms divided by location, but not in such detail that MSN had. Yahoo divides by state. Yahoo also mandates you use their messenger because the ads are integrated in the messenger. My opinion, this is a bad idea. You can no longer just join the chat room from a link you find on the internet and install a small flash program then be on your way. You now have to download a massive install program with tons of hidden crap that you can opt out of during the install, if you read closely. This, of course, is another nail in the coffin for yahoo chat. People want their chats simple.

If Google made a city chat that was moderated by humans on an I.R.C. service like Wylderide, there would stand a great chance of zero tolerance of porn bots, additionally age verification could be worked out. Google has nothing that keeps people staring at their stuff, just glances. If Google would acquire Chatcity or revive Excite chat, hell even create something new and better, I would have no doubt in Google being on top.

Next time you are in a computer repair shop, ask the guy behind the counter “What is the most common start page and toolbar on computers you fix?” you will have your answer. Oddly enough, I find myself saying what everyone else says “Google” but truthfully it is not the most common. Not by far.

If they change their home page at all from Msn, it’s Yahoo…………………..

Maybe my parents are weird, maybe this normal.

They have a dell, a 900mhz Dell CD ROM and 15 inch CRT and Windows 98SE ME bundle.

Well they keep getting pop ups and spyware. I keep trying to fix it. that was some frustrating stuff. I mean it is said all over the net that the hosts file is located in the windows directory. Well on their machine, it was not. It was no where. S I download mvp’s hosts from his site. their computer had nothing to uncompress zip files. No wonder they think computers are useless. I mean they can’t even get a bundle of Christmas pictures because no one can send them a compressed file.

Ok 7zip came to the rescue. See you can not tell them you are installing stuff you just have to do it. If you tell them you are putting stuff on there ” that ain’t gonna slow it down is it?. does it take up much space? is it a virus thingy?” so just wait till they go to the bathroom and BANG!

Well the hosts file does go in the Windows directory, even if there isn’t one already.

Well now mom opens here browser and sees in the little boxes where the ads used to be “page can not be displayed” and gets mad because I made it ugly.

WTF!

so I tell her I didn’t do it and something must have broke.

I tell her I will look and see if something is broke inside the computer, because “I thought I smelled something burning earlier.”

I open the computer and pull out all of the dust and hairballs and fuzzy stuff. and clean from motherboard to hard drive, yank out the PCI slot modem because I know they have cable. I throw away teh pci slot modem and close the computer and boot up and surf the net a bit, defragment the hard drive run spyware and online virus scanners , when all is done I shut it down and leave.

for the next week I will not be answering their phone calls.

If you read my earlier post about my cat killing my video card.

You would pretty much assume that the card could not be saved. The card was so bad off it was like the “degause” button was stuck and well you pretty much assume the card was french fried. After 4 hours of wiping with a cotton swab and water then going back with window cleaner the very next day and doing this for about four hours only to give up and say “screw it” and start spraying the video card soaking it in glass cleaner even in the dvi socket and vga socket and s video socket, then going back with a paper towel and dabbing up the glass cleaner after it soaked for a minute then sprayed again and dabbed again. Final spray was a soaker of the entire card to rinse off remaining coffee residue. I dabbed after a two minute soak and drain , then went back and wiped with a paper towel and a hand full of cotton swabs until the card looked brand new. I mean under a microscope you would not find any dust, not one drop. I let the card sit for one more night, and a whole day of work.

Of course I tilted the card so that what ever fluid/liquid that was still in the card in any of the sockets would drain downward back the way it entered.

I dug out my BFG nvidia drivers, I put on fresh heatsink paste (the only heatsink paste I found was the cheap tube I had in my parts box) reinstalled my heatsink

Snapped card back in, connected fans and power to card and booted up and installed the bfg nvidia drivers.

Went to pc pitstop and did my usual bencmark

here is a past work

here is after the clean up and reinstall

To see quick results, go to “compare” at the bottom.

here is the temporary card .

Tags: 512mb, 7600, benchmark, bfg, computer, gamer, gaming, gs, gt, make computer faster, nvidia, overclock, pcpitsop, performance, pny, results, speed up computer, test

We are building him a computer right now.

Well he is , I am just telling him how to do it easier. He spent his Christmas and birthday money  on this build.

We had to go to fry’s and to wal~mart . Wal~mart for the monitor because he had like $200 in Wal~mart gift cards.

He got dual 2.2 x2 Pentium processor , two gigs of of kingston pc2-5300 memory , nvidia 8500 gt pci-e with 512 memory.

He is right now in the middle of snapping the motherbaord in and cussing up a storm .. lol  that’s my midget!!!!

Should go good with the tower I bought him for Christmas  with the 500wt power supply and 3 ( I think it was 3) case fans. with the dvd/cdrw combo .

Right now the only thing on this machine that is old, is the 80 Maxtor hard drive.

Not bad for a 14 year old kid, but guess who his daddy is?