Skip to main content

Recovering from Windows XP virus annihilation

Recently, several members of the family have had their computers "owned" by viruses or spyware. At my house, I'm more focused on prevention but if all else fails, here's a great write up of using Windows XP Recovery features to repair your down and out home computer.

Also, a correspondence with one of my pals (a conversation I've had many times with lots of folks):

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Nope. I think you're on the right path. Good write-up:

Afterwards, I would recommend the following:

1. Set only 1 person within the household as an Administrator...I've found the Mom is usually best. Disable the ability to install software for all other users (i.e. they only belong to Users group)
2. Install virus scanning software; set to update nightly, scan nightly
3. Update Windows with all patches from www.windowsupdate.com. Set Windows to update automatically. Make sure you install SP2
4. Enable the Windows firewall from SP2
5. Download and install the latest Zone Alarm firewall
6. Run a hardware router with a built-in firewall in front of your cable/DSL modem
7. Install and set to run regularly a spyware checker such as Ad-aware
8. If you/they are using a wireless network, use 128-bit WEP encryption with a 13-bit passcode.
9. Enable the pop-up blocker within IE6, Windows SP2
10. Don't use Outlook Express but rather a standard browser for email
11. Don't use file sharing programs
12. Don't use chat programs like AIM or Yahoo messenger without a scanner

Also, from my blog:
http://effectivethoughts.blogspot.com
http://effectivethoughts.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-spyware.html
http://effectivethoughts.blogspot.com/2005/03/security-guide-for-smb.html
http://effectivethoughts.blogspot.com/2005/06/avoiding-phishing-attacks.html
http://effectivethoughts.blogspot.com/2005/04/michael-howard-keeping-home-computer.html

Jeff...

On 6/14/05, wrote:

no luck...won't even boot up in Safe Mode...just loops through and says Windows could not start, please choose a mode to boot up in...any option you choose loops back around to same screen. couldn't find his rescue CD to boot from, so I need to order one from HP today. Any other advice? (besides using it as a boat anchor)



-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Hunsaker [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 9:19 AM
To:
Subject: WinXP repairs

How did you fare?

--
Jeff Hunsaker

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fast and Reliable Home Internet: Your Livelihood Depends on It

You're on yet another Zoom call and...wait what did she say? Dang it...Internet glitching again! You quickly mute your audio and video. "Kids! Get off YouTube...I'm on a call!" With everyone working and schooling from home, your Internet can't keep up. The cable company keeps claiming you're on their "super-fast Internet" but everything keeps lagging. It's all so frustrating and you just want to get your work done.  It may not be the cable company's fault. Use this approach to ensure your household enjoys a super-fast, reliable Internet! Start with the Source Run a speed test. Google "speed test" . Run that test a few times on a given day. If you're not getting at least 50Mbps download and 10Mbps upload speeds, keep reading.  Check with your Provider and do your Homework Reach out to your Internet provider. This may be your cable company or telephone provider. Understand your current plan: What package are you currently on? Wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Consulting Exodus Trend?

Is it just me or have a significant number of 'A' players left our consulting firms? People come and people go. Ours is certainly not an industry of "lifers". However, within the past year or so, I've witnessed several of my consulting peers -- the folks I really look up to -- leave the consulting arena for [predominately] full-time technology product firms. A smaller number have left for full-time positions at businesses while an even smaller number left to start their own business|firm|freelance|etc. Their departure struck me as odd because these were the type of folks who [I thought] would eventually become owner / partners at their respective firms. Certainly, the firms will carry on and continue to perform well but the departure of these folks would result in nothing less than a severe case of the hiccups and quite possibly a minor cardiac event. You know who you are. Please comment. Do we [the consulting industry] have a brain drain issue? Is this a norm...
6 comments
Read more

Rollback a Ooops in TFS with TFPT Rollback

Rhut roe, Raggie. You just checked in a merge operation affecting 100's of files in TFS against the wrong branch. Ooops. Well, you can simply roll it back, right? Select the folder in Source Control Explorer and...hey, where's the Rollback? Rollback isn't supported in TFS natively. However, it is supported within the Power Tools leveraging the command-line TFPT.exe utility. It's fairly straightforward to revert back to a previous version--with one caveot. First, download and install the Team Foundation Power Tools 2008 on your workstation. Before proceeding, let's create a workspace dedicated to the rollback. To "true up" the workspace, the rollback operation will peform a Get Latest for every file in your current workspace. This can consume hours (and many GB) with a broad workspace mapping. To work around this, I create a temporary workspace targeted at just the area of source I need to roll back. So let's drill down on our scenario... I'm worki...
10 comments
Read more