Saturday, March 12th, 2005

I have seen a few challanges this week. Wednesday morning I visited the home of a family; the problem - spyware/adware and viruses. After two hours of eliminating almost 3,000 infected files the client began asking if I was almost finished. This might be the beginning of a trend, people rushing me out the door. The funny thing is that it took these people months to get their operating system to the point at which I come in. Sometimes I think that the expectation level is a bit low when it comes to spending money to fix a computer. Anyway, I installed the correct tools, ran a few scans, rebooted, rebooted again, rebooted again and again, scanned, booted, scanned, installed a firewall, anti-virus (This client previously had Norton but I uninstalled due to the fact that AVG Antivirus found over 30 viruses while this non-updated version was running.), gave the family some quick tutorials and general safe web browsing habits and off I went on the answer the next call.

The next stop was at a small business. They were having problems with the built in Windows backup program called ntbackup.exe. The problem was (and still is) that when ntbackup runs, as it is scheduled to do, it stalls almost halfway through. I have read about such an error and microsoft says that there is a patch for it. I have to get back into the office (Monday), find the patch and install. Hopefully it works because I have had the same issue with ntbackup on my Windows XP machine.

Thursday I didn't have any troubleshooting work but I used this day to put the near finishing touches on this site.

Friday morning I had a client drop off a laptop running Windows ME. Yes, the dreaded Windows ME. I run Windows ME on my laptop and believe me, the OS is problematic. The client told me that if the bill was getting up too high he was going to buy a new laptop instead of spending the money on his HP. The process to clean the machine went as follows: booted - ran msconfig - disabled any start up ideas known to be a problem, ran AdAware - found 417 problems - tried to delete and failed. Installed AVG antivirus - ran found 17 viruses. Installed/ran Spybot Search and Destroy - found 79 problems - removed successfully, booted into Safe Mode, ran AdAware - found and removed 269 problems, rebooted, edited startup menu again, found one suspicious entry ADMANCTL.EXE, after reading up on this process I was informed that this was indeed spyware. I deselected the item restarted the machine, ran msconfig and found ADMANCTL.EXE was back again. I rebooted into Safe Mode, ran AdAware - found/removed 217 problems, unchecked ADMANCTL.EXE, ran AVG and didn't find a virus, ran scandisk, converted lost file fragments, ran disk defrag.

The next step was to disable system restore to make sure that nothing was hiding in the restore files. Then I enabled it and created a restore point. I emptied all cookies, TEMP files, and Temporary Internet Files and the Recycle Bin. I installed Zone Alarm firewall and configured it. Then I created a network connection to my DSL, updated AVG, AdAware and Spybot. I ran Windows Update to get the 48 critical updates for Windows ME. Next I ran Spybot found 17 problems and fixed them all. Ran AdAware found 14 problems - removed them. Ran AVG - no viruses. Ran AdAware - no problems, ran Spybot - no problems. I looked up at the sky, held my hands in the air and proclaimed "this machine is clean". I am just kidding, I didn't do this at all.

My other client for yesterday involved installed an 80 gig harddrive as a second drive in a Windows 98 machine. The other task was to install a Verizon DSL wireless router. I had two and a half hours to do it. The harddrive install took about an hour. It was difficult to find the right BIOS setting that allowed the computer to recognize another drive. Then it came time to set up the router. The old harddrive (1.5 gig) had about 150 MB of space left. I cleared out any excess files to make room for the Verizon installer package. I ran the installer and it almost worked but stalled. I was able to make the network connection for short periods of time but I have a feeling that the low amount of disk space is keeping the computer from making successful long term connections to the Internet. Unfortunitely, I had to leave the client without Internet access. I asked her to back up all of her important data and set up a return visit appointment so I can go back and transfer all of her data/settings from the old drive to the new 80 gig. I think that the computer will run much happier with some space to play with.

Last night I spent some time working on the index page of the Welcome Kitchen Catering website which I have not posted yet. I am waiting for content on the site but I have started the old wheels turning in the brain.