Death is never easy.  We’ve all had to deal with the loss of a loved one, a mentor, a co-worker, etc.  Today, the Geeks to Go family has to deal with the loss of a colleague, known online as SpySentinel.  SpySentinel was a malware helper here, and in the past year became a mod.  He was a respected member of our staff, and his death leaves a big hole in our hearts. In real life, he was a college student.  He started his college career in the computing field, but realized it wasn’t where his heart was.  He changed his major to elementary education, and was looking forward to becoming a teacher and mentor to young children.  He would have succeeded, had he had the opportunity.

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The passing of Steve Jobs means there will be, or already is, a proliferation of blogs, essays, and articles remembering a man who helped revolutionize how we use computers, how we listen to music, and how we use our phones.  A fitting finale would have been the announcement of the iPhone 5 the day prior to his passing, but it wasn’t to be.  I could write the typical article lauding his accomplishments and mourning his death at much too young an age (being just 5 years younger, I wholeheartedly feel he died much too young).  I don’t feel, however, that I could do justice to his life and accomplishments, and much has been written already. Instead, I’ve decided to give thanks for his creative genius, for that, coupled with the equally creative genius of that other computer company (no, not Dell; Microsoft) has made sites such as Geeks to Go a haven for those desperately seeking help for these sometimes confusing and uncooperative pieces of technology upon which we so desperately rely. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to our friends at Lenovo, we’re giving away an M90z All-in-One multi-touch computer. This powerful, versatile PC would be at home in a classroom, on a workstation, or on your desktop. The All-in-One design eliminates most cables and clutter. Powered by a 3.2GHz Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB DDR3 RAM, Windows 7 Pro (64-bit), and a 500GB hard drive. It also features a huge 23″ multi-touch screen. Read our full review.

So how do you win? It’s easy:

• Login to Facebook
• Click on this shareable link: http://woobox.com/j95fvo
• “Like” Geeks to Go on Facebook, enter your name and email address to enter.
• Share w/friends, get an extra entry for every Facebook friend to enter!

Update: Our contest ended May 14th.  Thank you to all who entered.

OTL by OldTimer is like HijackThis — on steroids. OTL scans your system for malware, and produces detailed logs. It’s primarily a malware diagnostic tool, but has advanced removal abilities. It is used alone, or with other tools to  remove malware completely.

OTL is a flexible, multipurpose, diagnostic, and malware removal tool. It also has some curative ability.

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There are some classic questions in tech support. “Where is the “Any” key?”. After being told to “press any key”. “My cupholder broke.” Actually their CD-Rom tray broke from setting cups on it, etc.

Here’s a very recent one from the Microsoft forums that’s destined to join others as a classic:

I have a question,

I recently took delivery of my new Dell, which came with the 32bit version of Windows 7, however the PC is capable of running at 64bit.

If I install Windows 7 32bit twice would that make it 64bit?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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What certifications should I get? We often get this question in our forums. While certifications seems to have become less important related to job experience, in this tight job market the opposite seems true. Courtesy of networkworld.com, here are the top 5 certifications for 2010. Please follow the source link for all the gritty details:

1. VMware Certified Professional
2. Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist
3. Cisco Certified Architect

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Want to add a little Christmas spirit to your desktop? Microsoft teamed with Sax Fifth Avenue to design the Twinkle Wish Theme, based on the children’s book Twinkle, Twinkle Little Flake.

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More and more frequently, we’ve had forum members and even staff receiving warnings from their antivirus program, from McAfee Site Advisor, or some other source of online protection that Geeks to Go is a dangerous site or contains dangerous links.  This is untrue – Geeks to Go is very safe, but we mistakenly get flagged.  This is known as a false positive.  Why does this happen?  There are a few reasons.

Many security suites and protection programs are adding website screening as part of their overall protection, and some browsers also have website blocking built-in to them.  I’ve had Firefox block sites on more than one occasion while doing research, and I’m glad when it does.  Much of the malware we encounter gets installed as a drive-by download, meaning simply visiting the wrong site can infect your computer.  Protecting against these things would seem to be a good thing.  However, these programs are often relying on heuristics to identify potentially dangerous downloads, meaning they’re looking at the characteristics of a file to try and determine if it’s dangerous.  In addition, there are many different security products available, and they all have different means to characterize potentially dangerous downloads.

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It appears Conficker’s long feared payload is nothing more than another rogue antispyware removal application that attempts to dupe people into purchasing it. Don’t buy Spyware Protect 2009, remove it. Read our Spyware Protect 2009 removal guide.

Having followed the activities of Eastern European online cyber crime for several years, there is one thing we are certain about — these criminals are motivated by one thing: money.

How was Downad/Conficker helping them meet their goals? It wasn’t. A very large botnet of compromised computers doesn’t make money if it justs “sits there” doing nothing.

So now we saw — as described above — that the Downad/Conficker botnet has awakened, and perhaps their desire to monetizing their efforts is becoming more clear.

In the latest activity, we see infected Downad.KK/Conficker.C nodes pulling down new Waledac binaries (perhaps for spamming, as Waledac has been known to do)from a fast-flux domain infrastructure, but also now it is also installing Fake/Rogue AntiVirus  (AV) malware, too. See screenshot below:

Spyware Protect 2009

Source: http://blog.trendmicro.com/downadconficker-watch-new-variant-in-the-mix/

Thanks again to HP, and Microsoft for sponsoring this contest. Special thanks to Chris Aarons and Nick White at BuzzCorps for making it possible, and inviting us to participate.

HP has left the “beige box” behind, and is doing some very creative and amazing work with hardware and software. Just take a look at their TouchSmart series, or HP 1000 mini netbook. We’ll have full reviews of these HP products and more posted soon.

If you haven’t tried Windows Vista, you really ought to. Service Pack 1 and improved driver support have made this a mature and solid operating system. The Windows Live products are some of the coolest software to ever come from Microsoft. They’re all online applications (perfect for that new netbook), and they’re free!

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