[ultragod]

THE ANSWER TO ALL YOUR VIRUS AND SPAMWARE PROBLEMS...

Run multiple hard dries! At least 4 drives bare minimum. It is not costly to do so. You can get a small drive these days used for about $30. Every computer should have at least 4 because you need one for DOS file system, one for NT, plus a backup of each. Partition each of these minimum 4 drives to boot, and data. For example, a 200 gig drive could have a 20 gig boot area, and a 180 gig data area. When something gets infected or corrupted and does not remove with Norton Antivirus or something simple like that, the first thing to do is simply delete every file under windows except your 'application data' and 'all users' and 'favorites' folders. Then replace them with fresh copies from the backup drive. Whenever you have installed some stuff and it's working well, save the Windows area to the backup drive (it is otherwise a mirror of all the files of your boot drive). About once a week you should back up the ENTIRE boot drive. That way you never really lose more than a week's work in the worst case.

It is unfortunate people spend hours on trying to 'remove' or 'fix' problems. You can simply ERASE YOUR PROBLEMS and REPLACE WITH FRESH AND CLEAN in about THREE MINUTES! The process I describe above doesn't take more than that (no joke).

Tell this solution to all your friends. If we work together to get these facts out, adware and other forms of spam will be rendered mere pests, rather than cripling crimes (if it is not a crime to write adware, it SHOULD be - god knows how many computers have been destroyed by adware - it's worse than viruses in lost productivity terms it seems).

Yeah why not write your congressmen and request a new law to outlaw adware and spamware like viruses are already? It's about time.

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Oh - and I should add, if you ever get a 'crash' - like things don't run right or don't boot, just run from one of the backups! I guess that is implied in a way, but it is certainly not just for archive purposes. The backup 'boot' partitions are 'mirrors' of the ones you normally use - but uninfected, clean-running, etc (be sure not to backup your mirror unless it is running well).

Another neat trick people don't know much about is you can ADD information to your registry and windows instalations simply by installing a fresh copy to a new machine - like adding video drivers and other things - rather than having to reinstall everything from scratch. Personally I prefer to just strip the boot partition down here and there (as far as motherboard drivers and things) and simply run the thing on a new machine and let it autorecognize the stuff. Then I delete what is not needed via file managers and registry cleaners. You can 'construct' a huge and complex windows installation and never have to start from scratch really. I've been running the same Win98 since '98! Why keep redoing it from scratch if you can just clean and modify? That way, you don't lose your previous work arranging things the way you like

Remember, operating systems are nothing more than a collection of files. If you just manage the files themselves you don't have to be bound to other instal techniques. You can just mix and match as you like, from machine to machine. THis goes for drivers and everything else too! Getting a good registry cleaning helps as well (to make things more stable) and also to ELIMINATE ALL ANIMATION EFFECTS FROM YOUR OS. It slows things down like crazy - and it doesn't look any more snazzy really. It's fun to have things just snap open instantly dontcha' think?

[ultragod]

Oh - and I should add, if you ever get a 'crash' - like things don't run right or don't boot, just run from one of the backups! I guess that is implied in a way, but it is certainly not just for archive purposes. The backup 'boot' partitions are 'mirrors' of the ones you normally use - but uninfected, clean-running, etc (be sure not to backup your mirror unless it is running well).

Another neat trick people don't know much about is you can ADD information to your registry and windows instalations simply by installing a fresh copy to a new machine - like adding video drivers and other things - rather than having to reinstall everything from scratch. Personally I prefer to just strip the boot partition down here and there (as far as motherboard drivers and things) and simply run the thing on a new machine and let it autorecognize the stuff. Then I delete what is not needed via file managers and registry cleaners. You can 'construct' a huge and complex windows installation and never have to start from scratch really. I've been running the same Win98 since '98! Why keep redoing it from scratch if you can just clean and modify? That way, you don't lose your previous work arranging things the way you like

Remember, operating systems are nothing more than a collection of files. If you just manage the files themselves you don't have to be bound to other instal techniques. You can just mix and match as you like, from machine to machine. THis goes for drivers and everything else too! Getting a good registry cleaning helps as well (to make things more stable) and also to ELIMINATE ALL ANIMATION EFFECTS FROM YOUR OS. It slows things down like crazy - and it doesn't look any more snazzy really. It's fun to have things just snap open instantly dontcha' think?

[melcheck]

Although I share your sentiments about the developers of adware, it might be a tad difficult to fit 4 hard drives into my laptop!

[Darkmocha]

That's certainly an...interesting strategy. While it might not be too costly to get 4 small drives it is pretty impractical. IDE cables have 2 places to plug drives into so that means IDE ports on the motherboard. That's fine, most motherboards have 2, but no more. What about CD/DVD drives? Mostly, enthusiasts are the only computer owners with more than two IDE ports.

Even ignoring that, this is an utter pain to do, at least to initally set up. No casual computer user in their right mind would do this.

[ultragod]

If your computer has no facility for multiple hard drives, get one that does and back up the boot partition(s) to that machine If things get trashed, hook up to that machine and transfer the 'fresh' copy after erasing the bad stuff on the ' infected' machine. Typically the most you ever have to do is replace the windows files.

[blythy]

Surely as with all new precautions to stop spyware/adware the programmers will just find ways to search for other windows installations on other drives etc to copy the viruses etc over?

Just like when apple stopped that guy buying songs from iTunes without the DRM protection, as soon as they fixed it, in 24 hours they guy found another way. I guess thats the challenge for most virus writers, they'll just try to find away around it.

[Salient]

Doesn't sound like a totally bad idea - but you could eventually run into problems -
If your running all 4 hard drives at the same time, and catch the right virus/trojan, it can infect the domain controller - thus infecting any drive connected to the system.

This theory may be convenient though if the user had swap drives (and the cash for 4 drives or 2 seperate systems) and the willingness and know how to dig into their PC. Go for it.

But to the non-tecnical average user - if you have to open the case and connect and disconnect drives, and swap info from one drive to another - you may as well just do a low level reformat and re-install windows (IMO). I do love the smell of a fresh re-install . Plus back everything up to Disc - hard drive failures are still fairly common.

If you really want to be totally infection free - disconnect your hard drives all together when online, and just use any Live CD that you want - with the OS running off a CD-Rom and no hard drives connected to the system - their is nothing to infect except the Ramdisk which resets after a reboot anyway. These OS's are also FREE, which makes it the cheapest route to go as well.

Or a user can purchase and install Deep Freeze on a clean system.
http://www.faronics..../deepfreeze.asp

[ultragod]

Answers to recent posts: "Surely as with all new precautions to stop spyware/adware the programmers will just find ways to search for other windows installations on other drives etc to copy the viruses etc over?"

Programs cannot infect others if they are not run. When booting from another partition, you are not running the infected stuff. Infection is an apt word because anything that seeks out and instals to other partitions without your consent is a virus, classified as a federal crime - not so common. I've never seen an 'adware' or 'spyware' or 'mailware' that does this 'seek and destroy' stuff, but if it does, just restore from a backup partition on another drive - offline drive. You do keep a drive or two off the machine altogether yes? What if your stuff gets hit by lightning! =:-o

As for I-Tunes, this has nothing to do with that.

As for the 'domain controler' comment, again we are not talking about viruses. Viruses are illegal, and there are programs like 'Norton Antivirus Corporate' that do a good job of cleaning those out. I once had 'pinfi' all over the place! ;( Norton got me squeaky clean I've had a few worms, a few bugs - no biggie. I would say (and I am sure most agree) that spamware and adware are FAR more intrussive and DESTRUCTIVE than any virus - save those that erase AND OVERWRITE files (even if it deletes files, you can get them back with a program like 'restoration' quickly and easily).

I think we should focus on activism to make adware and mailware and spyware ILLEGAL - a federal crime - to reduce it. Email your representatives in government. I have!

You do not need swappable drives to do any of the stuff I mention. Personally I have 16 drives on a single server. I have 4 bootable partitions, and 4 backups of them. Everything is on one machine and it is always on. Whenever there is a 'problem' I simply boot from another partition and overwrite the problem partition's 'winblows' files - problem solved. It really is that easy.

Nothing I talk about requires opening a case or swapping any sort of cable inside or out. As for hard drive failure, it is not common at all IF drives are kept cool! The only time I've had drives fail is when they get hot. 'Micrapolis' MAY be an exception (I hear those went bad even if kept cool). When I say cool, I mean you should touch it and it doesn't even feel warmer than room temperature. It should NEVER feel 'hot' to the touch. It does not make them fail straight away when hot - in fact many 'claim' high operating temperature lifespan, but it is in real-world-applications much shorter when allowed to get warm (it makes the components on the controler boards fall out of their ratings typically, with the dreaded 'click click click'. If you have a hard drive 'failure' typically it is just the board. Get another drive of the same model, and swap the controler boards on them - and you are up and running

The comment about booting from CD to go online is overcomplicated. You can run the same machine for everything (offline and on). I do and what I say always works. It is always on, always running, and 'cleanup' is always easy (follwoing the simple 'overwrite the winblows with fresh' and 'scan with NAV once in a while' method. All this other stuff I say is in answer to your 'glass half empty' responses.

You do not need to purchase 'deep freeze', but I WOULD suggest getting a hold of NAV corporate The topic here is not viruses though, but adware and mailware and stuff - which NAV will not cure, but the 'copy over' method WILL.

[ultragod]

I read your 'deepfreeze' program link. Sounds to me like another ripoff program like that $30 wonder that switches on 'scandisk' lol

Deepfreeze seems to be nothing more than a simple registry restore utility - overwriting any changes to the registry (spamware stuff can't infect you unless the registry is set to turn it on, etc.). As for it's 'virus control' (which I doubt) perhaps it has a scanner run in the background.

You don't need registry backup utilities when you replace the winblows files. The registry file is already in there and will get restored! You can also just make copies of them and restore that. After a while you (or any user - novice included) will get a feel for which files control what. Also using 'regedit' is not that hard - most programs have their name in front of the keys. Another good program is the older version of 'JV16 Powertools' - a fun registry editor - makes editing out the junk relatively easy. Scanning with 'registry mechanic' program and others is also fun. Again - this is if you want to tweak. To restore, just overwrite with fresh! That's all 'deep freeze' does, but they charge you $$$, whereas the 'copy from fresh' method is a freebie! Enjoy!

[ultragod]

I should mention with some files Winblows Explorer doesn't like to overwrite. If this happens, you can try deleting the old 'winblows' destination that is infected. If it still hangs, use something like 'GXExplorer' as it doesn't have the finicky stuff built in and will delete or overwrite or copy whatever you like (except a file that is in use from the same location at the same time).

It is important also to mention that software companies (at least commercial software) are in business to MAKE $$$ - that means they are typically full of bugs ON PURPOSE so they can sell you 'upgrades' later. IMHO 'winblows' reached it's zenith in 1995. The rest are a few noodly acoutraments like active desktop, web integration adn so on into the shell. You do not have to run this. You should also deselect all 'animation' features in teh shell if you want to increase speed. NT and it's variants like SP, Winblows 2000, Winblows 2003 etc, are all the same and all slow as molasses compared to 95 (way more management overhead is why). DOS, 3.1, 95, 98, and ME (which I haven't tried - ME) are all DOS. Microsoft basically makes TWO products - DOS, and NT. Everything else is marketing BS. To expand their market (to resel the same people over and over basically because everybody has it WInblows anyway) they constantly introduce new bugs and security holes into their 'latest greatest' OS - prompting the same buying circle - upgrade this and that - it is a game. Let me assure you as soon as www.sysinternals.com enables WRITE as well as read from NTFS I will be deleting all those molasses NT-based OS partitions (keeping the file system tho - all hail 512b clusters with compression - saves tons of space! with small stuff anyway). OK I'm ranting - what the world really needs is an A.I. program that ports EVERYTHING to binary/assembly - THEN things will really get fast

Hey didja' know when U 'upgrade' to SP2 XP you limit the net connections to 10? You can't even get it past 50 with tweaks? Say goodbye to spiders and P2P~! DOS (95/98) lets you run UNLIMITED! Yes, I am usually running over 100 threads, and when spidering run several hundred net connections - 98 basically kicks XP's [bleep]. All you should see when you boot up is 'explorer' (or whatever shell you choose). Everything else is SPAM. NT is a different story - full of 'serivice processes' and other junk slowing you down. And yes you can networkk with 98. All you do is use 3rd party aps to do it (which are superior to MS aps anyway as they are written often in more streamlined lingo and stuff).

All hail 98! Please Bill stop superloading your 'new' stuff with bugs! And no Apple and Linux won't save you - who writes aps for them??? very limited.

Binary/assembly! We need an AI ap to rewrite everything to binary All hail binary! Woo hoo! ANybody wanna start a binary lovers group? We can petition programmers to make an AI ap to automatically rewrite everything to work on binary - will speed things up like 100X Go binary! I tell ya' when somebody finally gets out some AI to rewrite things based on performance and reliability rather than commerce and 'cripple fixes' as the business model, then things are really going to take off. As it is now, we need user groups like this one to take care of silly little things like hot wo overwrite your windows files - and people still think it is such a 'racical' thing to just overwrite some files? Come on. Think outside the box. Join me soldiers and wage war on 'crippleware'