Bad news for onboard computer users

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But one thing I wouldn't trust are the "multitude of solutions ... many of them free". Neat little security freebies, specially the ones that insist they can't be run alongside other malware protectors, are a #1 source of trouble.

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The likes of Hijhackthis, Gmer, and Malwarbytes, are examples of the free solutions. They are not just free. They are cutting edge

There are tools that are even better. Non geeks can't use them

There are a host of other free solutions around .Do a google on anti root kit, and things like Ice Sword. The problem is, few of these are suitable for beginners to use.
 
Re: Unfair to Mac

Not at all, I have two friends in two seperate parts of the world, who would disagree. They have both had battery boilers on new Macs within the last month. Far from sorting the problem, it still remains. One guy has spent a lot of money with a data recovery company who say that the data on his heat affected hard disc is completely unrecoverable. The girl has lost a lump of thesis work. Whilst they have been given new laptops, as they were both less than three months old, the bad taste remains.
Robin
 
Re: Use Linux

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Actually Apple OSX is BSD based

[/ QUOTE ] I suspect most of us with the remotest interest in Unix and its branches are well aware that OSX is BSD based, I was making a "joke", look it up on Wikipedia, if your OS/2 machine is capable of connecting to the "world wide web"; that was another "joke". (in a previous life one of my desktops was dual boot freeBSD/RedHat4 for BSDs multimedia capabilities when Linux was still rubbish at it)
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but as everyone is talking rubbish

[/ QUOTE ]To give you the benefit of the doubt (as you can't be all bad judging by your avatar), I suspect the word "everyone" is a typo, you meant to type "one".
Then your sentence would read "but as one is talking rubbish, I'll repeat my suggestion to convert to OS/2".
There you go, that sounds better doesn't it?
You could, of course go the whole hog and recommend that LadyJessie brings his, perfectly good, yacht back from the Med to the U.K. sail it up the Conwy estuary right under the bridge, put it on the mud (after cutting off the mast, keel and rudder with a chainsaw), thus making the boat entirely useless for purpose, and liveaboard there until it delaminates and will no longer float when the tide comes in.(while watching old videotapes on his recently acquired Betamax)

This scenario being synonymous with what you are suggesting he does to his computer!

I hope I'm speaking for the other helpful and knowledgeable people who've posted replies to the OP and are *not* talking "rubbish" at all. (but if not nevermind, I'll still listen to their collective sailing/liveaboard wisdom)

EDIT: oops, Charles_Reed beat me to it there while I was ranting /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Best Regards

Kim /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Re: Use Linux

Actually I've been using Linux for the last 10 years. I thought there may be some BOFH readers on the thread hence the OS/2 rubbish. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Re: Use Linux

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Actually I've been using Linux for the last 10 years. I thought there may be some BOFH readers on the thread hence the OS/2 rubbish. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[/ QUOTE ] Actually I'm a diagnostic systems engineer not a Sysadmin so I should'a kept out of it in the first place /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Guess we should add Operating systems to the "Which anchor" list. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
Re: Use Linux

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LJ *is* using Linux, it's a Mac /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif Q.E.D.

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It's actually unix, based upon FreeBSD.
 
I was going to ask you guys a question about my laptop and the fact that it now has a time delay on absolutely everything it does, but my fear is that you will now mock me and give me some highly technical answer containing words that I neither understand nor wish to look up or "google".

Or guide me to websites designed to remove the cash from my matress, and remove the gold fillings from my molars that I was saving for a rainy day.

so I'll not ask. the internet connection at the library beckons

/forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif
 
I had exactly this problem with my cheap Acer laptop trying to run Vista and all the stuff Acer had loaded it with, without enough CPU capacity to cope with all of it. It slowed to a crawl.

I was a bit nervous about uninstalling all the Acer extras, as they don't supply a Vista disc to reformat.

I just prevented all Acer programs from starting up with Windows, reducing 72 running processes to about 50.

Now everything runs smoothly.
 
Well this is a real big topic!!
To cut to the chase, it looks like Comodo Internet Security is a good option.
It also seems a good option to have an "Internet" computer for communications and a "Non-internet" computer for chartwork and archiving important documents and photographs.
The worry is that any transfer of data between the two say, on an external hard drive,or USB stick, might also involve the risk of a virus transfer. Is that correct?
 
@ribrage
Why should anyone mock you, you're on a sailing forum, you're not supposed to be a laptop expert /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
1.What is your laptop, what processor & speed, how much RAM, what operating system does it have; these things can be found in Start>My Computer>Properties
2.How much space is left on the hard drive
3.When did you last defragment the hard drive
These things are the first to look at before necessarily suspecting a "malware" infection.
4.As JamesFrance says, sometimes these programs and utilities you think are useful or fun, like screensavers, animated cursors, window animations etc are just processor and memory eaters; if you investigate your running processes with task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and learn which ones are really necessary, that can help.

@saltwater_gypsy
Yes Comodo looks good, and it *is* good to have a sacrificial lamb for internet browsing *and* email opening.
That's why I suggested that people try a Linux live CD; Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX are all variations of Unix for which there are far less security holes and are not targetted as commonly as windows machines; if you have a CD drive on your laptop you can try a few different Linux "distros" like e.g. PCLinuxOS 2007, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Suse until you find one that picks up most or all of your laptop's hardware; a "live CD" doesn't have to be installed to you hard drive, it just runs from the CD so you can web browse in total safety until, as you rightly say, you download stuff and transfer it to your Windows system drive.
If you install downloads to Windows or open infected documents from an external drive or usb stick then yes you can transfer any infections. The trick is to run your spyware and AV applications on the suspected packages or documents *before* you open them.

Unfortunately, due to the complex nature and multiple routes that these attacks can take there's no way to be fore-armed without being fore-warned, you have to bite the bullet and learn something about the way your machine and OS operates, e.g. by learning to recognize the processes which are normally running and suspect/check those that you don't recognize.

Hope This Helps

Kim
 
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Well this is a real big topic!! To cut to the chase, it looks like Comodo Internet Security is a good option.

[/ QUOTE ]Sorry, but my take on all the posts above is very different:

To cut to the chase: life is really TOO short to have to worry about which malware detection program is the most efficient for your PC. My advice to my fellow liveaboards is this: get a Mac and get on with enjoying your life. Sailing is so very much more healthy for you than sorting out PC problems. Leaving the land based problems behind you is such a basic part of the liveaboard life and Windows issues are just one good example of those problems you don't really want to deal with anymore. Throw that PC overboard and get a Mac. Then you can get back to enjoying sailing, as opposed to rebuilding disk drives and hunting spywares.
 
I only scanned the contributions on this thread to see if any mention was made of the mainstream methods used to dodge these problems.

I noticed EdBeynon aluded to the type of thing you may wish to consider. Most software (and as a result most naughty software) is written to work in Windows software. Simply use a more obscure browser or operating system. They are generally free. I believe this step alone will reduce risk to around 10 to 20 percent.
 
@ LadyJessie, as you've discovered that already owning a Mac means that you're relatively safe from malware that's easy for you to say /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif , what about the people with only a PC who are on a limited budget, they presumably still need a consensus of good advice.
By all means concentrate on sailing, but as a sailor you presumably wouldn't burn your sails and cut down the mast or go out and buy a motor cruiser the first time you had a scary experience on a lee shore, would you?
By the same token, would you refuse to repair your engine when it needed fuel or a repair and not have it available when maneouvering in the marina? /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

@ neutronstar, you have put very simply what we were all trying to say in response to LJs original post and I for one fully agree with what you say, except that I think that using Firefox and being aware of phishing etc reduces the risk to about 10 percent, using Linux or MacOS reduces it to about .1 percent.

Regards

Kim
 
Be aware that the hard drives in mac's are similar to those in PC's and laptops and come from the same sources. Mine failed on the iMac just after two years (guarantee out). Fixed it with the aid of a utube video somebody had kindly posted, and the drive was available in PC World near me.No hope of data recovery unless sort of CIA level intervention, which I cannot afford (moneywise that is!).So your data needs putting on another drive. So if you have not by now got an external drive, pick one up asap.Recently we got a spike on the mains here in Dublin, which took out a line of pixels on the iMac.Reason, I had had to move furniture about for the builders coming in to extend house, and had forgotten or, mixed up the leads and there was no spike prevention in the lead I had used for the mains.At least there was no data loss this time around.Hope Apple produce a netbook soon so I can have GPSNAVX aboard and still run XP for my old nav programs.via VMware, which really works well.Good wintering to all.
 
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