Mike - Fantastic suggestions! I, myself use Hijack This! and keep it in my arsenal as well. You are very right about the drives failing with no warning, and I have lost a few back in the day. Have not lost any flash drives over 4 Gig yet, but my very first one 512 MB (Bought about 7 years ago) went, about 2 months ago. Fortunately I always back up every 6 months or so. (For more important documents and files, even more often). One of my mottos is "BACK UP! BACK UP! BACK UP!"
For RSS software, I've heard of people who backup to DVD and CD. Make a master copy and stick it in the safe. ANything happens to the subsequent copies, they have an instant master to copy from. Flash drives work just as well, as this group can attest to. Cheers! John Hymes La Rue Communications 10 S. Aurora Street Stockton, CA 95202 http://tinyurl.com/2dtngmn ----- Original Message ----- From: Mike Morris To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 9:32 AM Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] Sorry everyone At 09:20 PM 08/11/10, you wrote: >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Tim Sawyer" <tisaw...@gmail.com> >To: <Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com> >Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 10:29 PM >Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] Sorry everyone > > > >Was your machine on while you were away? If so you may have gotten a virus > >or spyware. Sounds like your wife got it too. Spamers like to >infect > >machines just to get control of them for sending spam. The really bad news > >is that most free spyware removal software is spyware itself. A >really > >good PC guy might be able to remove it. Good luck man! > >-- > >Tim > >:wq > >Nonsense! Spybot Search & Destroy, Ad-Aware, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and >SuperAntiSpyware are all EXCELLENT free anti-spyware programs. I routinely >use all 4 of them to clean up infections for people. No spyware in ANY of >them and, between the four programs, I have yet to run into something I >couldn't clean. > > >George, KA3HSW / WQGJ413 Add "Hijack This!" to your toolkit. Excellent for clearing crud out of hijacked browsers. I keep a copy in my virus removal toolkit - and the copy is named iexplore.exe so that the malware that does filename checks lets it run (like some blackmail-ware). Add Mike Lin's Startup Control (the single file exe version, not the installed version) as it helps resolve issues with programs that start when the system starts up. I have all my antivirus tools on a SD card that is in a USB flash drive reader. Why an SD card? Because the card has a write protect switch. Load the card, flip the switch, and it can't be written to like a regular flash drive can. Other than write protection I treat it just like any other flash drive. See <http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/SDR-1/SD-CARD-READER/WRITER-USB-2.0/1.html> The reader costs $4. A 4gb card is under $20. Naturally larger cards are more expensive. The SD card and matching reader is cheap protection for the antivirus / malware remover part your computer toolkit. The only complaint I have is that the All Electronics reader is a bit "fat" and blocks the adjacent USB jack on some systems. A 3 inch USB extension cord fixes that. Lastly - never use a flash drive / thumb drive / pen drive as your permanent storage - only as a secondary or transit storage device. I've seen too many die with no notice, and be irrecoverable. One client's daughter lost a three week vacation / honeymoon worth of photos. Another lost several hundred photos of a Grand Canyon raft trip. Both my 16bg regular toolkit and my 4gb antivirus toolkit have a backup copy as a folder on a raid-protected server and as a folder on my laptop. If the flash drive dies (and it has twice in three years) I just buy a new one, load it up and use it. Mike WA6ILQ
