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Download Trinity Rescue Disk version 3.4

Burn it or place it in a flash drive

At boot select “Run Trinity Rescue 3.4 …”

Select “Windows Password Resetting”

Select “Clear administrator password” and follow the instructions

Reboot and press F8 to go into get the Windows boot options screen

Select “Last Known Good Configuration” (This step is important, otherwise you get a blue screen)

Listo!

Laptops are prone to more wear than desktops. The Windows product key is usually attached on the bottom of your laptop. A Windows product key is required if your hard drive failed and you do not have recovery media. With time, they key may wear and tear to the point where it becomes illegible.

You can protect your serial key by simply covering with transparent tape.

I have been getting clients whose computers have been infected with virus fake alert, this virus displays a fake alert informing the victim that their computer is severely infected and attempts to collect payment to fix the problem. A new version seems to be emerging with a new symptom, it makes your files hidden making the victim think their information has been deleted.

If you have been infected by this virus follow my instructions for removal.

Removal of this virus is fairly easy if you take some preemptive actions.

If you have not gotten infected, make sure Windows Restore is running

• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7

Update your antivirus definitions.  Most antivirus programs do this automatically and will display an alert if the definitions are not up to date. Your virus definitions may be out of date because of loss of internet connection, or the computer has not been on for a while.

You may still get infected if the virus definitions do not contain instructions to detect the new virus. In that case, system restore becomes very handy. Simply reboot your computer and press F8 key repeatedly (this is one of the keys on the top of the keyboard that are labeled F1, F2, F3, … F12). In some keyboards with extra fucntions, the labeling may not be obvious, but their location is the same on all keyboards).

When you get to a black screen with white letters. Select the following depending on your operating system

• Windows XP – Select “Safe Mode”
• Windows Vista and 7 – Select “Repair your computer”

Since the virus runs as soon as we get into Windows in normal mode, we need to run the operating system in safe mode, which basically means the operating system would only load the bare essentials and hence the virus wont be able to run.

This allows us to access the system restore and revert the settings on your computer to a date before the virus infected you . Follow these steps to complete the restore process.

1. Windows XP
2. Windows Vista and 7

As soon as you get back to normal Windows, you will notice the virus is not running anymore. We have won the battle but not the war…yet.

Download and run ComboFix by doing a quick google search. This will get rid of the files that belong to the virus. (Opening these files will get your computer reinfected)

After this, run your antivirus program to get rid of other traces.

Finally, follow the preemptive actions described above so you can be ready if the virus attacks again.

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Even though hard drives come equipped with monitoring sensors, like SMART, the average user does not know how to check the “health” status of their hard drives. Sometimes people find out their hard drive is malfunctioning because they hear a clicking noise. By then it is too late, and recovering data is very difficult at that point.

Thankfully many companies have come out with software to monitor your hard drives. Most Linux distros already have this feature, but OSX and Windows do not come with hard drive monitoring software. The software I have been testing for the past two months on some of my clients computers is Acronis Disk Monitor. It warns you about potential hard drive failures and determines the health status of your hard drive based on SMART flags. best of all, it is FREE.

I recommend anyone to install it on their Windows machines (unfortunately its not for OSX). Try it out and report your experience here.

This week we received several computer that were acting slow. After further diagnosis of the problem we found they had the following symptoms in common. After installing Malwarebytes, the update fails. If you try to install an antivirus, the install wizard reports that Windows Installer is not running.

This other symptom may be unrelated, but the frequency of computers arriving with the same problem on the same day is higher than usual. These computer all have the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Simply running CHKDSK /r in windows recovery console allows the computer to enter Windows again, but then the symptoms described above are exibited.

At this point performing a Windows repair fixes the system. Running tools like COMBOFIX, WINSOCKFIX, and WINDOWS RESTORE do not fix the problem.

We will continue to conduct an investigation to confirm that these symptoms are the result of a virus. We will post any results here.

Intalling Windows on a computer with a SATA hard drive may require drivers and|or changing the SATA mode in the BIOS.

Senario 1: You insert the Windows CD and the hard drive is displayed, ready for installation.
In this case you have a good chance of having a sucessful installation. Sometimes you may get a blue screen after the installation, if this happens follow the steps on  senario 2.

Senario 2: Hard drive is not dectected.
In this case download the SATA/IDE driver for you motherboard. The driver is sometimes a standalone driver or it comes with the chipset drivers.

• For Vista and 7, place these drivers in a flash drive, insert the flash drive in the computer you will install Windows on, and when you get to the formatting options screen select Load Driver. Locate the drivers on your flash drive, select it and press Next.
• For XP, install a Floppy disk drive and place the SATA/IDE drivers in a floppy drive. Insert the Windows XP CD and press F6. Follow the instructions on the setup to add the SATA/IDE drivers. In case you do not have a floppy, then you need to create a slipstream cd using nlite.

In the rare event installing the drivers still gives you a blue screen, and you already scanned your ram using Memtest, and tested your hard drive with the vendor’s diagnostic utility, then the problem might be related to the version of Windows (i.e Reatail vs OEM, SP1 vs SP3, etc). Different versions of windows can be made using nlite.

This is a problem related to the Fake Alert trojan virus. Some antivirus programs delete, quarantine, or modify windows system files when they get infected or are errouneously identified as a virus. When this happens, Windows services wont start properly because their files have been compromised.

For this particular problem, namely when the Network Location Awareness is corrupted, the solution is to reinstall Windows service packs. Follow these steps to reinstall/install the service packs for your operating system.

1. Identify which service packs are installed  (Windows XP: Right click My Computer->Properties. Vista or 7: Right click Computer->Properties)
2. Remove currently installed service packs (Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs) 
3. Reinstall the service packs ( Download the service packs for your operating system )

This problem can also be fixed, if only a few files have been deleted erroneously, by following the steps here.

So you got infected with spyware eventhough you have antivirus and antispyware protections, or maybe you have become skeptical of how effective anti-malware software is at preventing and removing viruses (or viri) from your computer. In this article I will describe three different setups that are effective at preventing virus infections. Each setup is aimed at a particular type of user. You can then choose which setup best suits you.

First up is Windows protected by anti-malware software. This setup is best for users who want the ability install hardware and software they can find in the store (the kind that is mostly compatible with Windows operating system). I recommend using Kaspersky Antivirus, and Malwarebytes Free Edition.  The effectiveness of preventing a virus infection on this setup depends on keeping Windows and the anti-malware software up to date.
Effectiveness 85-70%

Lets move onto a similar setup. Windows protected by OS restoring software. This setup is best for people who want to keep the compatability with popular software and hardware but make little changes to their system. I recommend using Faronic’s Deep Freeze. With this setup, once you have installed all the software and hardware you want to use, you then “Freeze” the system to prevent any further changes. Any changes that occur while the system is in the “Frozen” state get deleted when the system is rebooted. So if you catch a virus, no problem, restart and you are like new. Data is best saved permanently using this system in external media, like flash drives, external hard drives, or optical media.
Effectiveness 99-95%

This next setup is Linux based. Linux is a public (open source  for the otaku audience) operating system. Most Linux distributions are free. This setup is aimed at people who only need to browse the internet. The Linux distribution I recommend for this is called xPUD. It is an operating system focused around a web browser. The chances that someone will write a virus for this OS is minimal because the operating system is so small and contains no valuable data. Other than being very effective at preventing a virus infection, it is also very fast.
Effectiveness 99-98%

There you have it. Post comments to discuss further details about each setup. Tell us what you use your computer mainly for and we will tell you which of these setups or other setups will best suit you. These setups are mainly geared to home and small business users. Corporate users with web servers and domain servers, that is a whole different animal.