I’ve mentioned Technibble before. It’s my favorite site for computer techs, especially those starting a computer repair business. But today I’ve found a new site for new techs called Emerging Techs. It has some good tips for both new and more established techs. Other people besides techies who want to know more about maintaining their computers might find it helpful too.

Here’s a wonderful training video on how to use Process Explorer to remove viruses manually. It’s more for computer technicians than regular computer users, but I’ve found it helpful in removing the more difficult viruses.

You’ll find out how to use the Process Explorer and other Sysinternals tools to identify malware infections, from standard spyware to kernel-mode rootkits, and clean them off your computer.

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/sessionh.aspx?videoid=359

There’s a new USB worm about. It loads on your computer when you stick an infected USB drive (Flash memory drive) into a USB port or an infected CD into the CD drive. Since it installs through the Autorun function on Windows, this type of worm is easy to prevent. Simply turn off Autorun.

To turn off Autorun do this:

1. Go to Start button then Run.
2. Type in “gpedit.msc” without the quotes.
3. The Group policy window will open.
4. Choose “System” under “Administrative Templates.”
5. Find “Turn off Autoplay” and double-click it.
6. You’ll see three choices with radio buttons (round check boxes) in front of them: Not configured, Enabled, Disabled. Pick “Enabled.”
7. Underneath the radio buttons you’ll see the words “Turn off Autoplay on.” Choose “All drives.”

Not only will this prevent the USB worm, it will also let you play some CDs without all the manufacturers’ restrictions.

Sometimes spyware gets so bad, it’s hard to do anything. You can’t go online and download Malwarebytes or Spybot or any anti-spyware (see this post), because your browser–that is, your Internet Explorer or Firefox–is hijacked and redirected and won’t let you go anywhere of use and certainly won’t let you download anything. So you take the next step, and reboot your computer into Safe Mode with Networking by tapping F8 as the computer restarts. But sometimes even in Safe Mode, the malware keeps you from downloading anti-spyware or, if you manage to download it, running it. So now you face reformatting your hard drive and losing all your data and the programs, at least the programs you’ve lost your disks to, or never had disks for in the first place.

What do you do now? You take the computer to a tech who nine times out of ten will recommend reformatting. Or you find a tech like Ms. Ducktoes who will fight the malware without reformatting. Ask your tech if he or she will do this. Ask if he will use Malwarebytes or SuperAntispyware or Spyware Doctor with Antivirus.

Or…you can do this.
1. Go to the computer store and buy a device that lets your hard drive to another computer by USB. It’s called a USB to IDE/Sata Adapter and costs from $25 to $35 dollars.

2. Find another Windows computer either your own or a friend’s or relative’s. Download and update Malwarebytes and AVG and SuperAntispyware and Spybot to that second computer. (You have many choices, just make sure you use Malwarebytes and AVG among them.)

3. Turn off the power to badly infected computer and unattach the cables. Open up the case of the and remove the hard drive. Some cases will have large buttons to push–like Dell– others will have screws. Remove the case.

Make sure your computer is turned off and unplugged before you do this.

4. The hard drive will have a wide-band white/gray cable attached to it and a four-prong power cable.

Here is the power cable. You can see a bit of the ribbon cable in back of it.

5. Remove the cables. (Take a digital photo with your camera or cell phone if you think you may forget how they are attached.

What a ribbon cable looks like

5. You’ll probably have to unscrew the hard drive from the where it is attached to the case.

6. After removed, attach the hard drive to the right (same size) IDE/SATA adapter and plug in the power.

Here the hard drive is attached to the adapter.

7. Connect USB cable to the USB port of the second computer.

Plug the USB cable into the USB port of the second computer.

The computer should recognize that new hardware has been attached. If you go into My Computer, you’ll see it as a USB mass storage device and listed as a letter such as E, F, G, or H, depending on how many cd/dvd and hard drives are on that computer.

You'll see this alert "Found New Hardware" in the right-hand corner of your computer screen.

This window will appear on your desktop. Choose the "Open folder to view files" option.

Your hard drive is attached!

7. Now run the anti-spyware and anti-virus programs one at a time. If you can, do a custom scan and single out the attached hard drive. Let each anti-spyware run and then remove or quarantine the viruses.

This is the AVG interface. It allows you to pick the hard drive you want to scan. Here E and F are selected.

8. If you have enough skill, go into the desktop of that drive (the one that is connected by USB) and copy and paste the Malwarebytes installer to the desktop of your user. Find the All Users desktop folder and drag the MBAM installer icon into the window.

Drag Mbam icon into the "All Users" desktop folder.

Then you can run it later when you reattach the hard drive in its own computer.

9. Unattach the hard drive from the USB and put it back into its own case. Reattach the cables all the way so they fit snuggly. Start up the computer. You should now be able to go into Safe Mode with Networking and download the anti-spyware and run it. You still will have a lot of spyware to contend with but now you have more of an edge. If you put the Malwarebytes icon (Mbam) on the desktop you can click on it and run it. Make sure that you update it.

Good luck and let Ms. Ducktoes know how it goes. Please feel free to comment and make suggestions.

See this post for more detailed information on how to download and run the anti-spyware.

There’s no way a tech can remove and clean up all the spyware on a badly infected machine in just a couple of hours. So, if you remove the spyware on-site, you end up having to charge a lot to remove a little. It’s better to take the machine “to the lab,” and run and apply all your removal and clean up strategies. Since then you can also do other things, like write your blog, or change out someone’s video card, while you are running everything, you can afford to charge for just a couple of hours of labor, while you work on the computer for 12 or 15 or more. Also the client doesn’t end up paying a huge amount to have spyware removed. Once you have the computer “at the lab”, do your magic. If you want suggestions on what to do follow my anti-spyware guide and then speed up your client’s computer while you’re at it, by following the suggestions here on the Ducktoes Tutorial.

The only difficulty is with clients who don’t want you to remove their infected computer. Then you have to do the best job you can within a short amount of time. I recommend installing Spyware Doctor and run it. Click the below ad.

This is Part Five of a five part series about how to speed up your computer. Here are the other four posts.

Why should you clean the registry? The registry is a listing of all the settings and options in Windows. They are listed in the form of “keys”. When the registry gets cluttered with unfunctional and useless keys the computer still has to refer to and process them and this slows booting, running applications and going on-line. To fix this and speed things up, you can delete or edit the keys manually, which is tedious and risky, since changing the registry is a good way of messing up the computer completely, if you don’t know what you’re doing.

There is a free registry cleaner called EasyCleaner by Tony Arts. It works well. If you use it, please leave the creator/owner a donation. You should use EasyCleaner as part of your regular computer maintenance routine.

The best registry tool is jv16 PowerTools by Macecraft. The trial of 30 days is not limited but gives you access to the full version. In some computers, it is the tool that makes the most significant difference in speed. Use both the Registry Cleaner and the Registry Compacter components.

Ducktoes to the rescue!!

Sometimes as techies, we want to keep programs from running at startup. This helps get rid of spyware that is running in memory. Once stopped, we can eliminate malware with Spybot, for instance, without running Spybot again on reboot, which is time-consuming. Also techies often are asked by clients to speed up old computers or new computers running Vista (lol!!), and stopping unwanted programs from running at startup is a good way of doing this. Using msconfig is another way, but problematic since it turns off System Restore, which is another useful tool to return to a computer to more pristine state without reformatting.

Here is a site that tells you how to stop startups by editting the registry. I have found it extremely helpful. However, only edit the registry if you make a backup first, since editing it incorrectly can cause major damage or problems.

Oh my gosh am I excited. I just found a site that has everything you need to defend your computer and much, much more. And all free, free, free. It’s called The 46 Best-Ever Freeware Utilities, by Gizmo. Don’t spend all day there, just bookmark and come back over and over. Or sign up for his newsletter. If you used some of these utilities, you wouldn’t need me. Actually, my goal is become obsolete, so you don’t need to reformat your harddrive every year or more to get your computer back up to speed. Ducktoes, always at your service.