anyweb

http://vistarewired.com/2007/02/16/how-to-...-windows-vista/ cheers anyweb

spot the difference http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=o...rdforummvz8.png http://img463.imageshack.us/my.php?image=f...orummainqy8.png cheers anyweb

if you are testing vista and the 30 days are about to run out (and you want to preserve your MSDN keys...) then try this for an extra 30 days Approx 29.5 days in, press Windows + R and type cmd.exe then Enter. When the Command Prompt appears, type: slmgr -rearm (press Enter) cheers anyweb

welcome to the forums !

if you have windows vista and 4gb ram you might not see it all reported in the os, if so consider getting the 64bit edition of vista instead, but make sure that your hardware will run with it (plus 64bit drivers are harder to get) cheers anyweb

have a look at this photo (top) found on the intarweb today http://www.googlethedamnthing.com/mirror/v...owned/owned.jpg reminds me of this one (bottom) a few years back http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/3107/xplaunch8vs.jpg

during windows setup you got an error 'no hard disc drives found'. This is due to the fact that windows doesn’t know how to communicate with the AHCI sata controller, and hence, cannot see the hard discs, To solve this we first had to determine what Massstoragedrivers section he had to add to his winnt.sif file (same applies to unattended and Ris installs of xp..) Here's a sample one (note- the sample below is only for precision 470/ 670) [MassStorageDrivers] "Adaptec Embedded Serial ATA HostRAID Controller" = "OEM" "IDE CD-ROM (ATAPI 1.2)/PCI IDE Controller" = "RETAIL" The first line (in bold) is the line that tells the unattended (ris) install what driver it should be loading from the corresponding TXTSETUP.OEM file, Below we can see the reference to that in the TXTSETUP.OEM file Ok now that we know the above, let's apply that logic to the Precision Workstation 490, Looking at the TXTSETUP.OEM file (suplied from support.dell.com here > http://ftp.us.dell.c...ATA/R126479.EXE ) We can see the following sections:- However, adding the following secion to winnt.sif or ris.sif file does NOT work [MassStorageDrivers] "Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver" = "OEM" "IDE CD-ROM (ATAPI 1.2)/PCI IDE Controller" = "RETAIL" The above will still generate 'hard disc drive not found' type of error messages, so how exactly DO we determine the correct controller from the 9 listed, The answer is suprisingly straight forward, Go into device manager Once you've opened Device Manager,expand the IDE/AHCI/SATA controller listed double click on it and choose the details TAB. Scroll down to hardware IDs section with the drop down menu Now here's the important bit….. Make a note of the PCI\VEN….. Linesand verify if any of them MATCH with the corresponding lines in TXTSETUP.OEM In the case of the Precision Workstation 490 (no screenshots sorry, don't have the hardware) the pci ven/dev ID's matched to the following line in the Hardware.Ids.scsi section of TXTSETUP.OEM [HardwareIds.scsi.iaAHCI_ESB2] id = "PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2681&CC_0106","iaStor" That line above in turn is tied to the second one in the 'scsi' list of TXTSETUP.OEM [scsi] iaStor_ESB2 = "Intel® ESB2 SATA RAID Controller (Server ESB2)" iaAHCI_ESB2 = "Intel® ESB2 SATA AHCI Controller (Server ESB2)" iaStor_ICH7MDH = "Intel® 82801GHM SATA RAID Controller (Mobile ICH7MR/DH)" iaStor_ICH7DH = "Intel® 82801GR/GH SATA RAID Controller (Desktop ICH7R/DH)" iaAHCI_ICH7R = "Intel® 82801GR/GH SATA AHCI Controller (Desktop ICH7R/DH)" iaAHCI_ICH7M = "Intel® 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH7M)" iaStor_ICH6R = "Intel® 82801FR SATA RAID Controller (Desktop ICH6R)" iaAHCI_ICH6R = "Intel® 82801FR SATA AHCI Controller (Desktop ICH6R)" iaAHCI_ICH6M = "Intel® 82801FBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH6M)" So armed with this information you can now add the correct values to your [MassStorageDrivers] section of winnt.sif/ris.sif file for precision workstation 490/690 And in case you havn't figured it out yet, here's what it should now look like

I'm sure some of you have come across this problem (or will..) so I'm going to tell you how to solve it, Please archive this, you'll need it one day... Customers scenario:- The customer has a whole load of computers and they want to do RIS (remote installation services) installs on their new computerss and they want to use the OEM provided Windows XP SP2 OEM cd, I normally would NOT recommend this method as it is troublesome and may lead to activation issues amongst other things. If you use the OEM cd to install computers using RIS, please note that the OEM cd has modified files on it that can cause errors during the RIS process. The first error you may encounter is likely to be something along the lines of File iastor.sys caused an unexpected error (21) at line 3540 in d:\xpsprtm\base\boot\setup\setup.c. The above error is misleading as you might think you actually need this file (and you most likely don't as the drivers you require can be installed properly via the oempnpdrivers path or install.bat). NOTE: This error can also be seen on workstations, and if so, have a read of this http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=7454 To get around this problem we have to understand where it's coming from. When risetup is run on the RIS server, a read only file called txtsetup.sif is created at risserver\risdrive\remote install\setup\english\images\<baseinstallname>\I386. Remove the read only properties from the file then open it in notepad and find the [sCSI Load] section. In this section you will find the driver that is causing the error. Comment out any lines that produce a similiar error when you try to load the system. DO NOT comment out all the lines in this section, as the system will not be able to find a hard drive after getting past the errors. What happens here is the OEM cd has several references to drivers (for raid/scsi and so on) that you won't find on a Volume License Key cd's txtsetup.sif file. Have a look at the two samples below, the first part is from a (danish winxpsp2) OEM txtsetup.sif file, the second part is from the VLK cd txtsetup.sif file. And now here's the same part from the VLK txtsetup.sif file… As you can see from above, there are quite a few differences between the OEM txtsetup.sif file and the one on the VLK cd. So the first step in resolving your customer's 'iastor.sys errors' is to very simply copy/paste the VLK section directly into their original OEM txtsetup.sif file's [scsi.load] section (marked in RED above) replacing the OEM references with the original VLK references (which leaves out the OEM iles which cause the issues in the first place). Once this is done, you can restart the RIS service and attempt another RIS install. Things will look much better but then half way through the RIS install there will be several references to files 'not found… press ESC to ignore' , the files that are 'missing' are likely to be any of the files below (or more) To resolve those issues we need to edit the TXTSETUP.SIF file some more. We need to locate another section in the TXTSETUP.SIF file called '[sourceDisksFiles]'. NOTE: you will find SEVERAL references to [sourceDisksFiles] in the TXTSETUP.SIF file, but only ONE of them is the one we need to edit, the one we need to edit will have the following line in it bootvid.dll = 1,,,,,,3_,2,0,0,,1,2 So once you've located the right one do as follows:- delete everything between [sourceDisksFiles] and bootvid.dll = 1,,,,,,3_,2,0,0,,1,2 so it now starts to look like... (the file list continues on and on and on, only delete the lines BETWEEN '[sourceDisksFiles] and bootvid.dll = 1,,,,,,3_,2,0,0,,1,2 Ok, now that you have completed editing the TXTSETUP.SIF file, save it, and restart the RIS service, then complete another PXE boot to the RIS server and enjoy the fact that it's working now !! For your reference I'm including a copy of the VLK TXTSETUP.SIF file and the Danish TXTSETUP.SIF file (there will be minor differences between the languages but the scenario will always be the same, to fix an OEM ris install, you must edit the TXTSETUP.SIF file. txtsetup.sif_fromVolumeLicenseKeyWINXPsp2CD.txt txtsetup.sif_fromOEMcd_Danish_.txt

Hi, In case you come across this one ... Problem:- Customer is using a windows 2003 server (probably Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition) and attempts to do a RIPREP install on their newly acquired computers. The first phase of the RIPREP install (ie: getting riprep to run on the computer and copy the contents over to the server) works fine, nothing to report. However, when the customer then boots the computer via PXE to test RIPREPing the image back they get the following cryptic error message: Unable to display the operating system (OS) choices. You may not have sufficient network permissions to view the OS choices on the server, or the server might not contain any OS images. For assistance, contact your network administrator. Workaround:- Verify if the customers Group Policy settings for end users on the active directory are set to the following settings:- (On the server select start/programs/administrative tools/group policy management or the GPMC snap in in MMC.) If they appear as above (and by default they do if you are using active directory on your domains….) then get the customer to set them as follows Restart the RIS service and the customer should be able to see the OS coices (sif files) stored on their server, please note that if they have only RIPREP'd one machine that the menu will auto RIPREP the machine without displaying the os list, you need at least 2 or more SIF files in order for RIS to list the 'choices'. If the customers Group policy settings are not being used then try editing the SIF file directly and rem out the HalName=halmacpi.dll entry and it will become visible...or enter the correct one. here's a list of HAL's you could experiement with HAL descriptive name HaLname=halmacpi.dll HaLname=halaacpi.dll HaLname=halacpi.dll HaLname=halsp.dll HaLname=halapic.dll HaLname=halmps.dll HaLname=hal.dll HaLname=halborg.dll

http://blogs.msdn.com/ts/archive/2006/11/2...y-released.aspx cheers anyweb

if you try to edit your hosts file (for example to add a local ip address as your webserver) manually in Vista you;ll be denied from doing so by the file security laid down in Vista. To fix it, you'll need to change the user 'users' file permissions to 'modify' on the hosts file. To do this right click on the file, choose properties, security, advanced, then click on 'Edit' Accept (continue) the UAC warning dialog, and click and highlight the 'users' username. click 'edit' and make sure to select all of the following attributes once those are selected and you apply your changes you can indeed 'finally' save the hosts file changes...

I logged in, and started windows update, and it told me there were 8 new updates, so I chose to install them. One of the updates was for Internet Explorer 7 ! so now it's available via windows update ! try it out

here's all the info I have Windows Vista RTM Announcement - 11AM PST Today - Vista - RTM = 6000.16386.061101-2205 cheers anyweb

More here and here. cheers anyweb

fixed it by going into intenet options, advanced and choosing 'reset' seems the google toolbar from ie6 may have caused some confusion cheers anyweb

why when i click on a link in IE7 in windows xpsp2 I get no option for 'new tab' even though the tab is clearly visible to the right of the main window, and in internet options tab's are enabled as is quick tabbing ? cheers anyweb

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=74211 cheers anyweb

ok, At this stage Internet Explorer 7 in Vista 5728 is looking a mess, over half the screen's real estate is taken up with toolbars, but I want to take this further and try installing some more toolbars. In addition to looking ridiculous, opening TABs no longer works and IE crashes with ease. Once I've subjected it to some more toolbars, I will then attempt to 'reset' IE to it's default settings to see can it remove most of the junk I stuck onto it. Next up on my list of toolbars is one called toolbarbrowser. I clicked on the download link and chose 'run' I got the usual Internet Explorer Security warning, followed by accepting it. Next up, UAC asked my permission to 'allow' the installation. I accepted. As a result, IE7 now looks like this Groovy ! Time for yet another toolbar, this time one that'll help you get a job. Without restarting IE, so that i'm not bugged by UAC, i click on the download link. I install the activeX plugin when prompted then install the software after accepting yet another license agreement. At this point IE becomes unusable with 17 popup windows saying 'error' and i have to kill the tasks in task manager. On with the show, time for another toolbar. This time its one called goodsearch toolbar. It installed painlessly and I didn't notice any warnings about security. Looking closely I could see Internet Explorer protected mode was off, but I restarted IE after killing all it's processes so that was odd. No UAC at all this time. I can still see some real estate in IE so I decide to torture it some more and go in search of yet another toolbar. After some googling I find one called 'http://www.spiderpilot.com/toolbar/' so i go ahead and attempt to install it. I click on the download link and choose 'run'. Strangely enough UAC now prompts me to give the file permission to install, I allow it. It installs fine. I'm not done yet ! so I install a few more toolbars namely:- Fox News Toolbar SPSFAQ toolbar At this point I couldn't seem to add any more toolbars, so I called it a day, here's what IE looks like now after my toolbar mayhem. Mission accomplished I think ! Lastly, I decide to test if Internet Explorer can reset itself, so I click on tools, internet options, Advanced, and click on Reset. I had to close messenger live to continue, so I did, and tried again. And considering what I put Internet Explorer 7 through, the reset tool did a very very very good job, see below. Update:- The yahoo toolbar was sucessfully removed via add/remove programs in Control Panel, in addition, even though the RESET worked very well in IE, all of those toolbar programs were still listed as installed in add/remove programs in Control Panel. Cheers anyweb.

In Part 1 and part 2 of this article, I have subjected IE in Vista 5728 to an assault of 'toolbars' and it has coped quite well. In some cases refusing to install them and in every case warning the end user of what is happening. However one thing bothers me and that's what happens after UAC prompts you to install some software, If you allow it then IE remains with 'protected mode OFF' until you restart it. I hope this is fixed in later versions of IE7. I'm now going to continue attempting to install toolbars in IE7 to see how it copes and also to see if I can reproduce the following infamous screenshot Next on my list is a toolbar that many use, Yahoo's own toolbar. After accepting to click on the 'ActiveX control' warning bar at the top of IE, I was then prompted (as usual) to review my decision to run the software via the UAC prompt, I chose 'continue. After accepting that, I'm shown another Internet explorer security warning (below) to which I chose 'install'. I want more toolbars ! Next up I was prompted with yet another security warning, and once again UAC popped up (which I wasn't expecting considering my point above...). Well after accepting the EULA I was now installing the yahoo toolbar along with Norton spyware whether I wanted it or not. As we can now see, the toolbar installed just fine, and next I'm now going to try and install another toolbar without restarting IE to test my 'protected mode off' concerns. What would IE be without a google toolbar, so off I go to install it. I clicked on the 'download google toolbar' link and was prompted with a 'file download security warning' to 'run' 'save' or 'cancel'. Obviously I clicked 'run'. Yet again I chose 'run' but this time I saw NO UAC SECURITY PROMPTS AT ALL. After agreeing to google's 'yada yada' EULA, it completed it's installation. No errors, totally painless, no UAC prompt whatsoever. Ok, on with the next toolbar, Groowe toolbar. As before, I will not restart IE as I want to see if UAC comes back or not. After clicking on the download link i was brought to another site and then Internet Explorer crashed (or rather, restarted itself), which is ok as by this time it was unstable (right clicking on a link and choosing open in new tab did nothing). I tried again, same thing. So I closed IE completely as it was obviously confused. After restarting IE, I got an Internext Explorer Security warning about 'norton'. I chose to 'allow' to both prompts (it asked again). After doing this I successfully downloaded the Groowe toolbar by accepting the 'popup warning' from Internet Explorer to allow me to download the file. I now had the file on my desktop and I have to manually run it, so i did. Up pops the usual security warning followed by UAC asking me to 'allow' it or not. (remember IE was restarted before this...). I clicked allow. Funnily enough, Groowe ended up installing it's toolbar in Firefox which wasn't what I had hoped for, but what the heck, on with the show. I decide to continue with my mission to try and install as many toolbars as I can, so I get busy with the following:- Altavista toolbar . Aol Toolbar. Wordz Toolbar. The above websites were found after a quick google with one of my new toolbars (can't remember which one ;-)) Checkout how IE7 looks now in Vista. part 1 - smileys anyone ? part 2 - a handful of toolbars part 3 - more toolbars !! part 4 - more toolbars plus can we reset Internet Explorer ?

As we saw in Part I IE7 did quite a good job of stopping software from installing, forcing me to manually install the application. Next up we'll install some more toolbars ! First on the list, Alexa toolbar I started up IE7, and headed over to Alexa's website, and chose to download the toolbar that they are offering. Interestingly it's 'supported' on IE6 and Firefox, so I thought this should be interesting with IE7. I clicked on the 'Install Toolbar' icon on the webpage, that opened up a window which prompted me to 'run' the downloadable EXE file. So I chose 'run'. This prompts Internet Explorer to give you a Security Warning so as usual, I chose 'run'. This in turn pops up a window which you can't miss, User Account Control (UAC) which asks do you really want to allow this executable file to install. I chose to continue, and the Alexa Toolbar installer program appears. I chose next, accept the EULA for Alexa toolbar, and continue with its default installation options. When the installation is complete, Alexa restarts IE, and I here a 'bleep' to signify that something stopped a popup, but what ? I check if 'mywebsearch' did the business but no, it didn't (or at least it's not listed in 'my recently swatted popups') and in addition, the yellow popup bar on the top of IE's window does not appear. So I'm none the wiser, It looks like Alexa's toolbar has failed to install but I can't be sure. IE opens one of Alexa's webpages but nowhere do I see any sign of my new Alexa toolbar. Where is it ? The only evidence I see that I tried to install it is if i right click on the toolbar area in IE, and it's listed there, but no physical signs of it otherwise. Oh well... Once done looking for Alexa, the alexa installer very nicely brought me to one of their antispyware webpages. While there, I was still looking for the Alexa toolbar so I clicked on 'unlock toolbars' and found the missing Yellow Information Bar which beeped at me earlier. It informed me that it wanted this website to install the following add-on, 'AlxTB Module'. Well I was curious so of course I clicked to install it. Once I chose to 'Run ActiveX control' Internet Explorer finally had the alexa toolbar. Woohoo !. So after jumping through a few hoops, IE7 is starting to look like IE6 in the original screenshot in Part 1 of this article, but I must stress that so far, IE7 is making it DIFFICULT for these additional apps to install themselves at all. On with the show ! Next I headed over to dogpiles website to install their toolbar. I clicked on the 'Install the Dogpile Toolbar' button and got the IE7 ActiveX warning line at the top of my browser, I chose to install the ActiveX control. Yup, by now I am getting used to the routing, so I clicked on 'Install' to install the dogpile goodies. After accepting yet another license agreement i was prompted to enter some personal info (date of birth etc) in order to get some targetted assistance while browsing (or something like that). After dogpile is done installing, it opens up a new Internet Explorer window for you, and comes complete with its new toolbar. All in all, dogpile was the easiest of the toolbars to install so far, but the reason for that is because Internet Protected mode in IE7 was OFF. It seems that once you knock this mode off by accepting some UAC program dialogue, it remains off until you completely restart the browser. So that's what I did next, I restarted IE7 completely. Now after the restart, Internet Protected mode is ON again but my Alexa toolbar looks 'blank'. Next on the list of my toolbars, was (in no particular order) was Ask's toolbar (formally Teoma from what I can make out). I downloaded and installed it and was prompted with the UAC prompt once again, and once again I accepted the risk. The only difference this time, is that the Ask Toolbar told me that IE7 wasnt supported (will not work correctly) and that I could run the addon anyway or disable it. I chose to run it anyway. Now IE7 is starting to look more interesting, I've got 4 new toolbars installed ! Note that in the screenshot above, that 'Internet Protected Mode' is OFF (as I mentioned above). This seems to be a bug in IE7 from what I can see, as once you accept ONE UAC prompt in IE7 is disables the protection for subsequent browsing until you completely restart IE7. This make it easy for malware to install itself without alerting you (too much) that it is doing so. Next up on my list is Download-Accelerator-Plus. So I restarted IE7 (closed all windows, then start IE7 again) to set it back into Protected Mode, then clicked on the download link, as usual an UAC prompt appears asking for permission to install the software. I chose yes. After going through the installtion routing, the only thing i had to manually add was to tell the program that I wanted the toolbar added to IE, by default, the option wasnt selected. After yet more configuration screens with DAP reminiscent of Realplayers installation routines in times gone past, I was hoping to see a new toolbar in IE7, but instead, I got an error message stating that DAP has stopped working.... However, some quick thinking on my part, and a restart of IE7 plus right clicking in the browser toolbar area and selecting the DAP bar, all seemed ok and I now have a new toolbar ! Checkout IE7 now !!! (sadly the Alexa toolbar doesnt seem to display properly when Protected mode is enabled). The last toolbar for this part of the article, is the Searchit Toolbar, so I did the usual (restart IE7 to re-enable Protected Mode) and clicked on the download link. Funnily enough, the DAP program installed above, now prompts me with an Internet Explorer Security warning text box I chose to allow the program to download the software. Unfortunately it seems that DAP and IE7 are not too compatible so i had to manually download the ZIP file for searchit by using Firefox as DAP has confused IE7 a bit. Ok, now that I had the 'windows installer package' for Searchit, I ran it and proceeded with the installation. UAC popped up asking my permission to install the MSI, I chose 'Allow', however once done, i can find no evidence of the toolbar whatsoever in IE7. I noticed a searchit icon on the desktop, and clicked it, and got an JAva Virtual machine error, I guess that is why the searchit toolbar doesnt work at all in IE7. part 1 - smileys anyone ? part 2 - a handful of toolbars part 3 - more toolbars !! part 4 - more toolbars plus can we reset Internet Explorer ?

This test assumes that the user clicks 'yes/apply/accept/next' to just about anything, so security or not, how will IE7 cope ? The test was carried out on a full install of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition version 5728 (Aero not enabled) with IE7 as shipped. I used the default user that Vista prompted me to create at the end of the install which according to Users/Groups, is a member of Administrators. Unless otherwise mentioned, all of the software 'installed' for this test is not considered to be spyware (according to the manufacturers of said software), I'll leave you to make up your mind about that. Part 1 - Smiley's anyone ? After looking at this picture from some poor noob's pwn3d Windows XP desktop, I wanted to see if IE7 in Vista 5728 could hold it's own. So I set about testing it ! first of all here's how IE7 looks before I started the test. Pretty standard. Nothing much to write home about. ok now lets head over to a well loved hated site called smileycentral (why anyone WOULD go there voluntarily is still beyond me...). IE7 prompted me to install Adobe Flash Player 9 as you see in this screenshot so I clicked on 'install' and IE7 now renders the smiley site correctly (so i believe, trust me when I say this was the FIRST and LAST time I went to that site) and still no smiley things stuck to my IE7 yet. I decide it's time to start installing some stuff. I click on 'download now' and I'm prompted to install an Active X script via a yellow WARNING bar at the top of IE7. Good. IE7 is trying to protect me. Next I click on that warning bar and choose 'install Active X script', then I am prompted twice to accept some new software, the first time the details of which are listed as some cryptic {Bd......} registry class looking key, the second time it mentions 'Ask Jeeves' So I click 'install' of course !. Once done, another big box appears 'Internet Explorer Security' This one is interesting as it notes that the spyware, er program, will open OUTSIDE OF PROTECTED MODE. Ok, I click 'Allow'. Amazingly enough, IE7 or vista, or something seems to have caused the smileycentral program to FAIL TO INSTALL. But All is not lost, as it wants us to try a 'manual install' instead. After clicking on the manual install download link, i chose 'run' to install it. Vistas User Account Control popped up asking me did I want to allow the program to 'run', I clicked 'continue'. I clicked 'accept' to the smiley EULA, and 'Finish'. Ok, now I'm getting somewhere ! IE7 is now starting to look more 'used'. Next I type in http://www.live.com (IE7's default page) to see whats new. I can now see that IE7 displays the page fine but at the bottom right hand corner in IE, it says 'Internet Protected Mode OFF' whereas in the first screenshot in this post, on the very same website, it was ON. Hmm, ok time for the next stage, I opened up windows Task Manager to see if things look interesting, and sure enough, our smileycentral fiends have added a new process to my list - gee thanks. In addition to loading a new process, they have very kindly placed some registry entries on my computer, one of which is pictured below. Next up I closed IE7 and restarted it, this time http://www.live.com came up in protected mode, instead of smiley's search site. Interesting !. Part 2 - http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9

the original article was written for Windows XP Professional but many of the points raised apply also to Windows 2000 Pro/Server and Windows 2003 server if you plan on using IIS.

hi everyone, i'm anyweb (the person who setup, runs, and maintains www.windows-noob.com), real name, Niall C. Brady, i'm an irish man, 39 years old (grey hairs too) and with three sons (Christopher - 7 and Sebastian (nearly) 3, Benjamin 1 and a half), and a girlfriend Annelie. I live in Sweden. I love working with computers, and my job involves that, I'm an SMS/SCCM admin by day... I was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1966 and lived in Zambia, Africa for about 7 years from the ages of 3 to 10 or so. I've travelled to alot of different places in the world and am very happy living in Sweden now. I've always been interested in computers, right from when i first got a ZX81 from my dad, i then progressed to an Amstrad CPC 6128 and taught myself how to program in assembly language in Z80 using a MAXAM rom and disassember. I started to first 'hack' games, and then went on to change the games by adding entire new levels and even new maps, it was fun fun fun. And very addictive. I was publised 14 times on popular English magazines at that time and all the results of that are here I hope you all enjoy using these forums, and that we develop into a strong community. cheers anyweb

Protect yourself from Spyware. This article is broken down into the following sections:- Introduction Enable a Firewall Update Windows Install Microsoft Windows Defender (anti-spyware software) Use Antivirus software Use a different Web Browser Disable System Restore (optional) Install LavaSoft Ad-Aware Install HijackThis Get Spybot Search And Destroy Get or Enable the Browser popup blocker Install an Anti-Phishing toolbar. Conclusion Introduction Windows gets a lot of bad press because alot of it's users are generally clueless about protecting themselves from virus's and trojans (until it's too late). They get infected easily either by clicking on attachments in email or just browsing some lame site. If you have come here to try and fix your broken Windows then I wish you all the best, do try and consider a web browser other than Internet Explorer, such as Firefox or Mozilla, and do try to follow all of the steps below to make your eXPerience with Windows, a better one. If Windows is running incredibly slow, acting weird or you notice that lots of popup windows are appearing on your desktop advertising stuff, or if Internet Explorer seems to have lots of unwelcome new websites loading, or if you are plagued with millions of Search 'Assistants', then try ALL of the following in the order listed. Enable the built-in Firewall A firewall is a computers way of protecting your computer from unwanted attacks via your internet connection. An unpatched Windows XP computer, with no firewall enabled will quickly succumb to worms such as Blaster. Protect yourself now and enable XP's built in FIREWALL if you don't have a hardware or software one running. It's included with Windows XP, but prior to Windows XP SP2, it was NOT enabled by default when you installed Windows. You could of course get one free like ZoneAlarm or even better a dedicated one such as Smoothwall. . Go to http://www.windowsupdate.com and update Windows Amazingly, there are people out there who are still running Windows XP, as in, not even Windows XP SP1 (service pack 1) let alone Windows XP SP2 (the current latest service pack). Windows update allows your computer to be 'patched' with the latest security updates from Microsoft, if you are not updated, then every second you spend on the internet is a second nearer being 'owned' by the bad guys. Keep updating Windows until it reports 'no updates available'. Reboot when prompted. Download, install and use Windows Defender Believe it or not, this piece of software from Microsoft actually does a great job and has got good reviews all over the internet. Check it out right here on Microsoft's download page. Install it, check for updates, and do a full scan to see if you are infected by any Spyware. Use AntiVirus software, and UPDATE it There are no excuses nowadays for not having antivirus software installed. AVG is a really good alternative to Norton/Mcaffe, and guess what, its FREE as in beer. Download it yourself from http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390/lng/us/tpl/v5#avg-free. This antivirus product works very well in Windows XP and is compatible with Service Pack 2. Needless to say, there is no point in having antivirus software if you don't update it regularly, so get updating and scan your hard discs often. In addition to the FREE AVG they offer a FREE antispyware application too. Use a different Web Browser Using a web browser other than Microsoft Internet Explorer will probably halt most of the bad stuff you are getting (at least until IE7 proves itself in Vista). Consider excellent alternatives such as Opera or Firefox. Once you start using browsers such as those, you'll notice life in Windows can be much less of a pain than you were used to. Disable System Restore This is an optional step. Disable SYSTEM RESTORE if it is running. To do this, right click on My Computer, choose Properties, and click on the 'System Restore' tab. Why disable this ? well because those nasties can hide themselves in your 'restore points' and the same is true for virus's. so, I'd recommend disabling it, it's not necessary anyway and saves on hard disc space. Download Lavasoft Ad-Aware Ok, next step is to download and run a few programs to remove the nasties. Download and install Lavasoft Ad-Aware® SE Personal Edition. Once installed, the first thing you need to do is to download the latest updates reference file. once done, Ad-Aware will want to perform a full scan, let it and make sure to quarantine any stuff that it finds. It is also a good idea to look through the list of 'problems' it finds for any real references to files, for example c:\windows\bundles\bundles.exe. If you see something like that, then manually delete the file. Once done, reboot, then run Ad-Aware again, hopefully it shouldnt report anything but if it does, keep going through this list or post your problem on the forums right here. Download HijackThis Now download the following program to check Internet Explorer (and the registry RUN commands) for any 'hijack' attempts (very common). Download HijackThis from here. Run the file and see what it reports, please note that not everything it reports is a problem, if in doubt, ask someone who knows or post the results on the forums. Download Spybot Search And Destroy Ok we are still not done, now we want to be absolutely sure that all the crap is gone, so lets install and run Spybot Search and Destroy. As above, it will scan your system for any bad stuff and report the results to you, if in doubt, ask an expert ! Download a popup-blocker Install a popup blocker in Internet Explorer, so in case you end up using Internet Explorer (instead of FireFox or another browser) then at least you'll have some protection from the nasties out there. Thats Easy, either update to Windows XP service pack 2 (a popup blocker is included in Internet Explorer updates from SP2) or, download the popup blocker (toolbar) from MSN or (preferred) get Google's Popup blocker toolbar. These popup blockers are customisable and allow you to block those annoying advertisements and a whole lot more in Internet Explorer. Now that you have your popup-blocker installed, make sure to set it's internal settings to HIGH. In other words, block ALL popups. You can easily 'unblock' certain sites (such as banks) later on a site by site basis. Install an Anti-phishing toolbar Phishing spam is becoming very very popular with criminals, and is one of many methods they use to get your private details. You will most likely receive emails in your inbox claiming to be from your Bank, or from PayPal, or Ebay, asking you to 'update your records'. These are 'phishing' emails, and unless you know what to look for (view the source of the email in html to see if the web site URLS really ARE pointing to where they say they are) you might be one of those unlucky enough to get sucked in. This toolbar takes the hard work away from you and tells you when you are being stung before it happens. Conclusion By now, if you have followed the steps above, then your Windows box is hopefully a bit more secure than it was when you arrived here. Hopefully your malware, popups, popunders, worms, viruses and what not are now history, and not only that, but hopefully you have learned an important lesson in modern day computing. Failure to update and/or protect your computer operating system, will leave you vulnerable to attack. cheers anyweb