Messages

351

General Software Discussion / Re: Massive malvertising campaign on Yahoo, AOL and other sites delivers ransomware

« on: October 24, 2014, 09:06 AM »

Hopefully Malwarebytes will protect users from this.^
What I would do if hit with something like this, is;
-Shut down.
-Kill power physically (as in unplug for 30-60 seconds) [to prevent virus  hiding in the RAM chips between boots].
-Reboot with a CD of Derik's Boot & Nuke (freeware).
-Write zeros to the drive (takes 3 hours on average size drive).
-Not sure if Derik's will do same to any thumb drives, but it's worth considering.
-Shut down.
-Reboot from backup hard drive.
-Run backup restore using any drive cloning software from alternate drive which has been kept physically unplugged.

Once, I forgot to kill power first, and a virus in the RAM jumped to my #1 backup drive and killed that one also.
So I killed power, and got it all up and running using my #2 backup drive.
Now, I also keep a #3 backup drive.
Backups tend to get a little out of date, but are easily updated when needed.

I avoid CNET at all costs.
I picked up a couple of PUPs with a download of 'little registry checker' from MajorGeeks, and Malwarebytes caught and stopped it.

Norton 360 initially gave the download a clean bill of health
Then, after I had clicked on 'littleregistrycleaner.exe', Malwarebytes ran a pop-up warning me of two PUPs.
By that time, I was presented with the option to proceed with either 'Install' or 'Cancel'.
I clicked on 'Cancel', and 'littleregistrycleaner' was quite 'in your face' about wanting to 'install' and ignored its own 'cancel' button.
The little hack was like, "I've got you now; screw you."
So I ran a scan with Malwarebytes which shut it down.

352

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox windows and CPU slow-downs and restarts

« on: October 23, 2014, 08:00 PM »

On certain websites I frequent that I know will try to load a lot of stuff, I watch the side slider until it jumps from long to short, count quickly to 3, and click on 'Stop' in the Navigation bar to cut off extra junk loading up.

353

General Software Discussion / Re: need duplicate word scanner

« on: October 22, 2014, 08:33 AM »

Like the hungry fish said, "No corpus is truly complete until you finny shit." 

354

General Software Discussion / Re: need duplicate word scanner

« on: October 20, 2014, 09:24 PM »

SmartEdit's 'Repeated Word Settings' can be changed to 'Display when word occurs at least [2 to 100] times'.
I set it to [2] times.
For example, with the word 'again', it should only pop up any sentence -or fragment thereof- which shows [2] instances of 'again' in it.
And it has a results exclusion list of 'a, an, and, the' and so on that is quite comprehensive enough.
However, the 'Repeated Word List' does not seem to work properly according to its own parameters; it simply is not finding what it purports to find.
A search for all instances of the word 'again' pops up sentences which only use 'again' [1] time, not [2] times or more.
Perhaps I am somehow not using the software properly, but that's as far as I have managed to get with it yet.

I just reset it to find only sentences or fragments of sentences which contain only [3] or more instances, and it is still finding single instances of words.

Well...I think...it means [2] to [100] times in 'entire document', not 'individual sentences or fragments of sentences'.
That's too bad; if so, the 'Repeated Word Search' feature is not truly useful to me.
If I'm right, all I can do is hope SmartEdit will get an upgrade soon to fix that deficiency.

It does have a 'Repeated Phrase List', but that misses the ball too, by not singling out duplicates of [2] or more instances of individual words in sentences.

While I'm at it, I might as well wish for the Moon, and hope SmartEdit will one day include a feature to search for sentences containing [2] different specific words in the same sentence, such as 'again' + 'stenography'.

I would still highly recommend SmartEdit to whoever asks; it is feature-rich in some very nice ways.

355

General Software Discussion / Re: need duplicate word scanner

« on: October 19, 2014, 09:37 PM »

i like the idea of a program that can analyze a corpus and then identify when you have two many of the same "rare" words in a sentence, or too many "ultrarare" words in a document/paragraph.

-mouser (October 19, 2014, 04:05 PM)

It would be sort of a 'duplicate wild card' search.
Something like the old DOS 'star-dot-star' [*.*] that would define 'any' duplicates between period dots, for a whole document, without having to name particular words.
Also to be able to exclude simple common words like 'a', 'and', 'the', and so on.

It really seems quite simple, and Google already does it;
-'x' = 'any dictionary word' (the original DOS 'wild card' or star-dot-star *.*),
-find 'x', where 'x' repeats 2x and < (is less than [i.e. 'within (the borders of))] '.' --'.' (period dot/exclamation point/question mark) to 'same',
-exclude list; a, an, and, the...
A few variables might need to be written, to include every way a sentence can begin or end, as with quotes, and so on.
Well anyway, it's always fun to 'dream' or have a 'wish list'.
Forget about that new fad, the 'bucket list'; all I want when I get that far, is a dreamy-looking 'wish list' to fasten my eyes on.

356

General Software Discussion / Re: need duplicate word scanner

« on: October 19, 2014, 01:58 PM »

Have you looked at SmartEdit? There used to be a free version I think, but maybe the trial version will do the job, too.

-dr_andus (October 18, 2014, 05:12 PM)

Yes, SmartEdit is really quite awesome.
I got the basic non-MS Word model to work with MS Word 2003.
However, I don't seem to be able to get it to do what I originally wanted, which is to find unnecessarily duplicated words -such as adverbs- in the same sentence.
It just doesn't seem to have any way to do that.

357

General Software Discussion / Re: need duplicate word scanner

« on: October 18, 2014, 07:42 PM »

Have you looked at SmartEdit? There used to be a free version I think, but maybe the trial version will do the job, too.

-dr_andus (October 18, 2014, 05:12 PM)

^Way cool. Tnx!

358

General Software Discussion / need duplicate word scanner

« on: October 18, 2014, 04:27 PM »

In Microsoft Word 2003, which I'm not terribly familiar with, is there any way -or app- to scan documents for duplicate words?
A way is needed to discover if any sentence is buried deep in the document, which uses the same descriptive word twice in an obviously redundant manner.
There would also be a need to exclude common words like 'the', 'and', 'of', and so on, and to choose if the search is case sensitive or not.
Or, if there is any other program, for instance Thunderbird Compose or whatever, which the document could be copied & pasted into, to accomplish the same goal.
Any help would be most gratefully appreciated.

359

Living Room / Re: DRM in your coffee maker, to stop you from brewing unlicensed coffees

« on: October 15, 2014, 09:09 AM »

So, now you'll have to jailbreak your coffee maker to be able to brew the coffee of your choice?  

-app103 (October 12, 2014, 07:45 AM)

jailbreak>virus>Google>Images>"coffee monster"

360

Living Room / Re: DRM in your coffee maker, to stop you from brewing unlicensed coffees

« on: October 13, 2014, 04:35 PM »

So, now you'll have to jailbreak your coffee maker to be able to brew the coffee of your choice? 

-app103 (October 12, 2014, 07:45 AM)

Didn't they justify anti-jailbreaking rules or laws with dire warnings of letting in viruses?
If your Keurig unit was jailbreaked and got a malicious virus I wonder what it could do to jinx up your coffee?

361

General Software Discussion / Re: TOR problem

« on: October 12, 2014, 04:23 AM »

...

362

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 13, 2014, 11:47 PM »

^Yes, I don't actually play computer games so much anymore.
I mean, if you wanted to play a modern game, you're looking at maybe $50 to $100 for the game, then $35 or more for a guide booklet to keep you on track and avoid getting hopelessly lost and confused, then you need the reflexes and free time of a teenager.
Plus my obvious problem of needing an up to date machine, vid card, ram, and so on.

And if it's a console game, you'll need a few hundred bucks for that, plus all console gaming accessories.

Me, I just like to find playthroughs on youtube that include all mo-cap -motion capture- cut scenes and play through them that way.
If I really liked doing that with a particular game, I'll wait a week or two, then find someone else's playthrough posts to youtube and do it all over again.
By that time, the urge to actually pay to play starts to be counter-balanced by my awareness of how much money I'd be spending to gear up my System, and how worn out I'd be actually playing it myself.

Not to knock actual game play, some games are pretty awesome.
I just don't have the time, energy, and money to do it like that so much anymore. 

363

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 11, 2014, 05:28 PM »

^tnx.  
I confirmed that Media Streaming is on.

I did some research and found this--
frame skip
Maybe 'frame skip' is not a Microsoft or NVidia feature.

My NVidia Control Panel 'adjust image settings with preview' can be set to one of 3 options; Performance, Quality, or in between.
Mine is already set to 'use my preference emphasizing' & 'Performance'.
(update) I just set it to 'let the 3D application decide'.

Here's a Youtube index of 'frame skip' search results.

364

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 11, 2014, 03:03 PM »

Does anyone know where the option is, to play or drop missed video frames?

365

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 11, 2014, 08:41 AM »

I have a printed manual for the mobo.
Can't afford anything new -or even used- at this time.
Tnx for everyone's advice. 

366

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 10, 2014, 08:46 PM »

http://www.geforce.com/drivers

Have you already updated the drivers??

-Cuffy (August 10, 2014, 08:35 PM)

Yes, thank you, 'No new drivers are available'. 

367

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 10, 2014, 08:20 PM »

I goofed again.............
for some reason I thought you were running  Win8.1.1 so the bit about media streaming options may not apply  

I went back to the beginning of the thread..........
malwarebytes and a change in video cards was when your problem started.

Malwarebytes is gone..........
seems like the video is now prime suspect  

-Cuffy (August 10, 2014, 07:16 PM)

One fine day about a month ago I received a spoof email from a relative saying 'click on this', so I did, went to a pointless web page, and thought it might be infected and -not- actually from my relative (turned out, it wasn't).
I ran mwb, which wanted to do shutdown and reboot.
On attempt to reboot, my old video card, an NVIDIA 6800, was DOA (dead), and my box refused to boot; nothing, not even BIOS, big zero.

I had a spare video card from a friend, a newer Nvidia GeForce GTS 450, which my computer never would 'see' before.
At that time, if I had onboard video, I suppose that it should have worked, but I don't recall actually trying to boot with no vid card, and am reluctant to risk it now.
But if there is a way to tell from this, my mobo is an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium, in case anyone can figure out if it has onboard video or not.

In desperation, I tried the GTS 450 again, and now my box 'saw' it, and it's the current vid card I use.
I forget what else I did, but I also took steps to protect my box from any possible virus.

After successfully rebooting to Desktop with the new vid card, I do remember finding an option whether to tell the video software to play 'dropped video frames' (my words) or to skip over them.
I chose to play them, not skip over.
I suspect if I were to find that option, which I can't, and switch to 'skip' dropped frames, it might improve the situation.  

BTW, I set up my email client to block further emails from the 'spoof' source.

368

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 10, 2014, 06:23 PM »

Sounds like you're getting closer?

Have you get Media Streaming turned on in the control panel?
Network and Sharing ???
 

-Cuffy (August 10, 2014, 06:20 PM)

Tnx. Sorry, but I don't follow your meaning?

369

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 10, 2014, 05:49 PM »

Thank you, it's a 650 watt power supply and the only card in any slot is the video card, and it only has one HD actively plugged in.
Switching to the 10K rpm HD helped noticeably.
Uninstalling MWB helped even more.
But I didn't install Superantispyware yet, since the occasional BSOD still happens.

I had an idea though.
I remember seeing an option choice whether to let the computer drop video frames it lags behind in showing, or sort of catching them and playing them in a sort of catch-up process.
I know that's lousy terminology, but that was the general idea.
I recall choosing the option not to drop missed video frames but to do catch-up.
Sometimes the computer screen freezes, then shows the vid frames in fast-forward as it catches up now; and sometimes it just freezes and either crashes or needs a reboot.

If anyone can tell me where this option is, I think if I switch to the option to just drop the missed frames, it might help considerably.
Sorry for the rotten pseudo-terminology.

370

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 07, 2014, 01:15 AM »

I just got another BSOD, this time on my newer Western Digital 250GB 10K rpm drive....and I wasn't even watching any online vids.
I was just switching views between browsers and Desktop.
My Win7Pro is the first OS I ever had that consistently self-recovers and reboots successfully to Desktop.......if I run CCleaner and then 'create restore point' faithfully after every BSOD.
And lately I've been getting them almost on a daily basis.
Seems like these BSODs started sometime about when I began running MalwareBytes, or when I switched to a slightly newer video card....not sure exactly.
I have a whole collection of bootable recovery 'wizard' disks for earlier OSs such as WinXP, Win98, Win95, that -never- worked....
....which is why I keep multiple HDs unplugged with backup copies of the OS.

371

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 07, 2014, 12:38 AM »

On the comic relief side, if price is no object and you -really- want to speed up your hard drive....  
HyperOs solid state flash drive
((click at top horizontal menu on 'hardware'))...
....the HyperOs HyperDrive 5 with 8 ram stick slots...

quote...
175MB/s Sustained Read rate.
145MB/s Sustained Write rate.
65,000 IOPS. Hard disks do 200-300 IOPS (File Inputs or Outputs Per Second).
10 microsecond disk access time. Mechanical disks take 5-15 milliseconds.
It finds files 500x faster than the world's fastest mechanical SAS hard disk.
No drivers needed, connects like any other SATA HDD.
Boots Windows XP in 4 seconds

372

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 06, 2014, 08:26 PM »

Hmm, one way...just divide up the whole drive into multiple partitions, say 10 of them (10% per partition), then run speed tests on each partition until you find the fastest one.

-bit (August 06, 2014, 12:32 PM)

You can only create 4 partitions on a hard drive, unless you switch to (old school) logical drives, or (new school) dynamic disk. DD has performance issues (e.g. overhead) of its own...and I've just never trusted the logical drive thing.

-Stoic Joker (August 06, 2014, 01:54 PM)

Yes, I see that.

BTW, EaseUS Partition Master v9.1.1 said there was an update...
Got ready to run the update to v10.
MalwareBytes detected OpenCandy PUP; clicked on quarantine/delete OpenCandy, installed v10.
A Desktop pop-up ad appeared several times to upgrade to 'pro'.
Uninstalled EaseUS PM v10 and ran registry checker...
Ran ADWCleaner to doublecheck for PUPs.
Reinstalled the older EaseUS PM v9.1.1.

Then I used EaseUS Partition Master v9.1.1 to create 4 equal partitions on the 750GB drive.
But then I discovered HD Tune v255 won't benchmark individual partitions, only the entire drive.
I guess I'll convert the 750GB drive back to 2 partitions, the active primary being limited to 181GB and the rest unallocated (the way it was before).

BTW, I tried to run MHDD on the drive, and there were just too many unfamiliar options to know what to choose to check the drive. Sorry.

373

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 06, 2014, 12:32 PM »

Rereading this article;
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-short-stroke-your-hard-drive-for-optimal-speed-1598306074
it says;
"Connect the drive you want to short-stroke to your machine as a secondary volume and run HD Tune's Benchmark test. You'll see your hard drive's transfer rate (the blue line) creep down as the test runs.
When the test is complete, look at the graph and find a point where you see a significant drop off in transfer speed. Every hard drive is different, so look at your graph closely to identify your hard drive's sweet spot.
Once you find the sweet spot, that point is the size you want to make your main partition. So, for example, if you see the speed drop off significantly at 100 GB, you'll want to make a 100 GB main partition."

It says nothing about choosing -where- to partition the HD, just -what size- to limit it down to.
That sort of implies to me that one might possibly not even use HD Tune, but just take a very large HD, reduce the size of the partition to say 10%, or with my 750GB made over into 250GB = 33%, and automatically get improved performance, which is similar to what tomos posted, quote:

"I didnt get a chance to read any of those^ links yet, but I remember when 2TB drives came out, reading an article saying that if you made a smallish partition, say 150GB, that the speed of that partition would be a lot faster - the claim was along the lines of: the bigger the drive, the faster that partition would be. But I dont know how multiple platters fit into that."

IOW (to me), 'the bigger the drive, the denser the platter'.
Repartitioning a 1TB or 4TB drive to 200GB just limits the side-to-side movement of the read-write arm, speeding it up.
The 'magic trick' of true 'short stroking' as per the HD Tune article, is to somehow position your downsized partition on the outside of the platter, not the inside.
I'm not sure if HD Tune can do repartitioning, or if it just tells you results done with other software.

HD Tune does tell you overall results, helping you to determine if you've chosen the slower inside tracks or the faster outside tracks.
But how would you be able to intentionally choose the inside or outside of the platter? (plz excuse me if I'm using wrong terminology for 'platter'/HD disk).
I'm oversimplifying this in order to solicit any feedback.

Hmm, one way...just divide up the whole drive into multiple partitions, say 10 of them (10% per partition), then run speed tests on each partition until you find the fastest one.
Then...deactivate the other partitions, and leave the fastest one active as Primary.
That way, -any- speed testing software will tell you which partition is fastest.

BTW, an earlier version of HD Tune v255 at MajorGeeks is now shareware, whereas it is the HD Tune Pro 5-something that is $34.95.

374

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 05, 2014, 11:05 PM »

^Yes, many tnx, I've already taken your advice and migrated from the BSOD-prone 750GB Western Digital to the 10,000 rpm 250GB WD.
I will have to see about downloading MHDD and checking out the 750GB HD.

I do all my HD disk cloning now with EaseUS Todo Backup Free 4.0, whether copying the active HD to a backup HD, or restoring a goofed-up active HD from a backup HD.
And I use freeware EaseUS Partition Master 9.1.1 Home Edition for HD partitioning.
Both work great and are free for home use.

Every time I run a backup restore from my reserve IDE Maxtor HD back to either my 750GB 7200 rpm WD (Western Ditigal) or my 250GB 10K rpm WD SATA HD, Win7 makes me put in my installation disk to fix the boot files, which it always does and then boots up successfully.

But when I try to do a backup restore and boot with my 500GB 7200 rpm WD, even with the Win7 install disk, it fails to boot now.
It used to succeed when I first bought it and did an original scratch install of Win7 to it.
It's a good drive, and makes a good reserve OS backup unit, but there seems to be some kind of problem generating a viable MBR for it.

375

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: August 05, 2014, 02:34 PM »

Here's a more current article on short stroking a hard drive, with a link to a product for doing it;
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-short-stroke-your-hard-drive-for-optimal-speed-1598306074
"How to Short-Stroke Your Hard Drive for Optimal Speed"; dated 07-01-14 which is pretty up-to-date.
It contains a sub-link to HD TUNE, which has a less-options freebie or a 'pro' version for $34.95 .
I'm airing this here, altho it almost deserves a new thread for itself, b/c I'm curious what cheaper but comparable alternative programs to the payware 'HD TUNE' Pro might be around?

I'm also curious what anyone thinks of using HD Tune to short stroke a Western Digital 750GB 7200rpm drive down to about 200 or 250GB.

Here's the Western Digital drive, and I see they discontinued the 750 size;
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD1002FAEX/dp/B0036Q7MV0/ref=pd_cp_e_1
The specs say it has 'an integrated dual processor, and dual actuator technology'.
I'm not sure what 'dual actuator' means, but the 'dual processor' sounds way cool.

One of the reasons I originally got the WD 750GB was b/c it had a 64MB cache which when repartitioned down to 250GB gave me a larger cache plus the on-board dual processor on a resized smaller drive partition.  
But now with 'short stroking' as an option, I could do even more with it.