Monthly Archives: June 2009

Win32.Brontok Removed!!

win32.brontok

Fake Security Center Warning

Just today I ran into a nasty peice of malware called Win32.brontok.  It basically does the following:

1.  Hijacks your web browswer to a site that says you need to purchase this software to clean your pc

2.  Pops up a fake security center warning asking you to enable protection

3.  Upon enableing protection it opens you to a web page promoting a fake anti-virus product.

4.  Infects memory modules, and dll files (in this case it seemed to be .dll’s in the Google folder)

Some of the side affects of the malware were constant explorer.exe crashes and memory errors for the exporer process.  It was really annoying to have exporer crash more than 3 times in a minute, since it made it hard to work in the file system for very long.

How to Remove

To remove win32.brontok, first download Maleware-antibytes from this link:

1.  Download Maleware-Antibytes

2.  Install Maleware-Antibytes and Run a “Full Scan”

3.  Remove all infected objects it finds.

4.  Reboot

5.  Done!

And thats what removed it for me.  If you still are having trouble removing it, you might want to try smitfraudfix to remove browser hijackers.  ccleaner would be nice to try out as well, since it does an excellent job cleaning out temporary files and cleaning up the registry.

You can download ccleaner from this link:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/download/79cdedf2243b113d4f269134bfa9a19f/

You can download smitfraudfix from this link:

http://siri.urz.free.fr/Fix/SmitfraudFix.exe

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Schedule Disk Defragmenter to run automatically in Windows XP/2003

schedule-defragmenterYou can schedule the disk deframenter utility to automatically defragrment your hard drives, by creating a scheduled task.

  1. Open Control Panel, double-click Scheduled Tasks
  2. Double-click Add Scheduled Task
  3. On the Scheduled Task Wizard dialog, click Next.
  4. Click Browse and navigate to windows’system32 folder. Select defrag.exe and click Open.
  5. In the Scheduled Task Wizard dialog, type a name for the scheduled task (for example type Disk Defrag).
  6. Under Perform this task, select how often you wish Disk Defragmenter to run. Click Next.
  7. Set the time at which you wish the Disk Defragmenter scheduled task to run. This should be a time when your computer is turned on but not under heavy use (i.e. at night time).
  8. Enter a user name under which the Disk Defragmenter scheduled task will run. This user must be an administrator on the local machine (see note above). Enter the password for that user and confirm it. Click Next.
  9. Check Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish, and click Finish.
  10. In the Run text box, you can see the full path and command for defrag.exe.

Add the drive letter for the drive you wish to defragment to the command in the Run text box. If you want to defragment drive C:, your Run command should look like this:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\defrag.exe

Click OK

  1. In the Set Account Information dialog, enter and confirm the password for the user listed in Run as and click OK.
  2. Task Scheduler will automatically run Disk Defragmenter with the settings you selected at the time you selected.

Only one instance of Disk Defragmenter can be running at any given time. If you have multiple partitions you’ll need to add a separate scheduled task for each one, and make sure you give each task a different starting time, allowing for the previous one to finish.

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Windows Market Share Diminishing

OS Market ShareAccording to marketshare.hitslink.com, the Windows operating system is slowly losing market share to Apple and Linux.  Over the past couple of months Apple has gained ground and popularity, and soon will approach 10%.  Linux appears to be approaching th 1% milestone as well, and in my opinion is well overdue.

The overall negative opinion of Windows is one reason for the diminishing market share, plus the attrative ad campains by Apple Computers that have greatly improved Apple’s image as a legitimate and stable Operating System.

Ubuntu Linux has also eaten a chunk out of Windows market share, with it’s innovate open-source linux distribution.  Ubuntu has proven to be a rock solid OS with many windows equivalent applications and features, like Open Office and Gimp.   Ubuntu is also free and can be downloaded via ftp, http, or even through torrents!  You just can’t beat that, plus linux runs on any hardware!

And that is the current state of the OS Market Share.  At this point it looks like Windows is losing ground to it’s competitors Apple and Linux, however we will have to see what happens on October 22 when Windows 7 will be official released.  I am predicting that it will go up to 90% again, but hey it’s just a guess at this point.

What do you think?

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