Rapid Web News

A recent automated update to McAfee Anti-virus software caused the software to mistaken detect a key Windows system program as malicious and move it out of its proper location to a McAfee anti-virus quarantine. Due to the critical nature of the quarantined system program, ‘svchost.com’, affected computers failed to start correctly and were sent into a rebooting loop.

According to Microsoft, the affected file ‘is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries’.

McAfee responded to the problem by withdrawing the definition update and later releasing a clean one. The security giant also published advice on how to manually fix affected computers. The influx of interested parties trying to look up this advice through McAfee’s forum caused the site to become unavailable for a short time on Wednesday evening.

Source: The Register

McAfee had the following to say on the matter.

McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false positive error due to this release. Corporations who kept a feature called “Scan Processes on Enable” in McAfee VirusScan Enterprise disabled, as it is by default, were not affected.
Our initial investigation indicates that the error can result in moderate to significant issues on systems running Windows XP Service Pack 3.

The faulty update was quickly removed from all McAfee download servers, preventing any further impact on customers. We are not aware of significant impact on consumers.

We recommend the use of ESET Anti-virus products including NOD32 Anti-virus and the Smart Security Suite. If you are interested in a secure, reliable anti-virus and computer security solution for you business, please feel free to contact us for more information.

So now you’ve had a little taste of Windows 7 I’m going to continue to explore the features with you, kind of hold your hand in a virtual way.

HomeGroup

“…HomeGroup takes the headache out of sharing files and printers on a home network. Connect two or more PCs running Windows 7, and HomeGroup makes it easy to automatically start sharing your music, pictures, video, and document libraries with others in your home. The new “Share with” menu, meanwhile, provides a speedy way to share individual files. Concerned about privacy? So are we. That’s why HomeGroup is password-protected and puts you in total control. You decide what gets shared—and what stays private. You can also make your files “read only,” so other people can look at (but not touch) your stuff. You can join a HomeGroup in any edition of Windows 7, but you can only create one in Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate…” Once again the ‘ghetto’ copy (Microsoft call it starter) seems to exclude quite a large feature, XP Home and Pro both allowed workgroups to be created but only pro allowed connection to a domain and I’m failing to see why this couldn’t happen again across all versions of Windows 7. Not a bad feature though, you absolutely MUST have IPV6 enabled to make a HomeGroup but sure it’s an improved way to share files. Nothing overly groundbreaking except it works much faster.

Jump Lists

“…Jump lists—new in Windows 7—takes you right to the documents, pictures, songs, or websites you turn to each day. To open a Jump List, just right-click a program icon on the Windows 7 taskbar. (You’ll also find them on the Start menu.) What you see in a Jump List depends entirely on the program. The Jump List for Internet Explorer 8 shows frequently-viewed websites. Windows Media Player 12 lists commonly-played tunes. Your Jump List missing a favourite? You can “pin” whatever files you like there. Jump Lists don’t just show shortcuts to files. Sometimes they also provide quick access to commands for things like composing new e-mail messages or playing music…” Simple idea this but very effective, it’s like having everything you use regular in one place! Kind of like browsing history for you whole computer followed by a quick launch instead of just information.

Windows Live Essentials

“…What is Windows Live Essentials? Simply put, it’s free software that makes a PC running Windows 7 do more great things. Things like e-mail, instant messaging, photo editing, and blogging. Windows Live Essentials is available from the Windows Live website…” I bet a lot of us are using some of this software already it’s just a convenient way to get all of them in one place.

The free download includes: Messenger, Chat instantly with friends and family on your PC or mobile phone. Photo Gallery, Find, fix, and share your photos. Mail, manage multiple e-mail accounts (like Hotmail) in one place. Writer, Compose your blog, add photos and video, then post it on the web. Movie Maker, Turn your photos and videos into great looking movies and slide shows. Family Safety, Manage and monitor online activities so your kids stay safe. Toolbar, Search instantly from any webpage. So they’re pretty self explanatory right? Mostly quite basic but they will give you a good ‘foot in the door’ feel, anyone who’s wanted to get a blog off the ground or make their first photo slide show will find this software perfect.

Windows Search

“…In Windows 7, you can find more things in more places and do it faster. Start typing into the Start menu search box—and you’ll instantly see a list of relevant documents, pictures, music, and e-mail on your PC. Results are now grouped by category and contain highlighted keywords and text snippets to make them easier to scan. Few people store all their files in one place these days. So Windows 7 is also designed to search external hard drives, networked PCs, and libraries. Overwhelmed by your search results? You can instantly narrow them by date, file type, and other useful categories…” it’s a search engine, nothing here to get too excited about, sure its quick and it does narrow the searches well but again it’s something that has been somewhat overlooked in previous versions of windows, Vista’s version was a vast improvement but the search engine in Windows 7 is now actually a feature and not just programmers panicking at the last minute and rustling something up.

So Google announced in July that they’re going to have a crack at making an OS (operating system). Interesting, we all mused here at Rapidweb. Will it be just a fancy GUI (graphical user interface) for Linux? Will it just be a proverbial middle finger to Microsoft? I guess most importantly will it be any good? Most of these I can’t answer but let’s look at what we know already.

I’m going to start with a list of technology companies that say they will design, build and I quote “devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience” – exciting prospect. These companies are: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba – some REAL big hitters! But are they just talking about pre-installing Google OS on existing netbooks and smartphones? After all it is Linux based and Linux as we all know could run on an 8o’s calculator watch. As you can see from the quote though it does suggest specific hardware to run on, this could just be Google branded products though with sponsorship advertising from the above mentioned manufacturers.

I really like how Google have re-vamped the web browser, I like how quick it is, it keeps the last bunch of webpages on a kind of active favourites homepage – in theory you could always have your favourite webpages on a single page! I also like the fact that the search bar is also the URL bar, something that Firefox also boasts but will all these innovations be enough to push an OS? One of the biggest features they’re talking about is a near instant boot up, this is interesting, and a lot of netbooks do carry a small SSD drive but it’s still not near instant, perhaps they are talking to manufacturers of chips to make their OS embedded? This in itself creates a number of potential problems, firmware flashes instead of updates? Sure it’ll be quicker initially but if it is going to be embedded wouldn’t that be a step backwards? I mean, for instance, how many people actually update their BIOS (basic input/output system) regularly on their motherboard? Ok techies do, sure but it does make it a niche market and not a widespread user friendly piece of software.

According to reports Google are currently working on a video player and a jukebox style program to roll on their new OS. Again I think it’s good that they are deciding to develop their own, after all if they use Linux based applications Google Chrome OS would just be a re-branded version of Ubuntu. This also keeps other companies on their toes, iTunes may face fierce competition if Google’s jukebox style program can sync with an iPod and I doubt Google would accept money from media goliaths like NBC to enforce DRM (digital restrictions management) so that users are prevented from recording television shows that they have the legal right to record (allegedly).

There are some supposed leaked screenshots of Google OS which you can take a look at here draw your own conclusions though, some claim them to be real some not so convinced, one thing is for sure though – it free so it’s got to be worth a look.

With the Internet constantly being flooded by hundreds of new and more vicious viruses daily it’s never been a more important time to be well protected. It’s quite difficult to fully explain what a virus is as there are so many variations, we’ve know virus’ to be as timid as changing your desktop background to some rather unsavoury pictures to the more severe end of viruses which can launch on a particular date or time to transfer complete control of systems and networks to a single remote user, this could be to soak up all your internet speed or simply to steal important documents, log in details or secure site information such as bank details. These viruses are rare but they do happen, identity theft is becoming a very real problem.

So which Anti-Virus program should you choose? There are so many on the market and everyone has their own opinion as to their favourite. Well we’ve found a little known Anti-Virus package called NOD32, a nifty little package that will not constantly pop up asking you a hundred different questions about program access it also doesn’t slow your system to a crawl as some Anti-Virus packages can. It will occasionally pop up if there is something attempting to penetrate your PC but other than that it’s very much a stealthy program. Don’t take our word for it though you can try a 30 day free trial from here:  http://www.eset.com/products/nod32.php

Sadly no Anti-Virus package is 100 percent full proof, occasionally one may slip under the radar so to speak, so what next? If your Anti-Virus fails to remove or quarantine a virus the last thing you want is to have a rogue virus on your system doing heavens knows what so what we’re aiming to do is assist you in removing the tricky ones.

Again I feel that everyone has their own way of dealing with things but hopefully we’ll give you enough of an idea what you can do in this situation. Firstly you should fully update the Anti-Virus package you are using in the hope that the latest definitions file (the file that contains a catalogue of different virus names) contains removal details, do this until the Anti-Virus package your using reports that it is fully up to date then run a full scan. A full scan of your system can take quite a while so it’s best to do it at the end of the day or if you have to leave to office for a couple of hours. If the update still fails to remove the offending virus then more steps need to be taken, next I would find the “System Restore” option.

***CAUTION****

More and more PCs have built in destructive recovery programs where a small portion of the hard-drive is reserved for the operating system (2000, XP, Vista etc) and can be accessed via the start menu, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU USE THE MICROSOFT WINDOWS SYSTEM RECOVERY AND NOT THE MANUFACTURER’S VERSION AS THIS CAN AND WILL FORMAT YOUR SYSTEM. When you’ve located this tick the box that reads ”Turn Off System Restore” as this is a well know place for viruses to attach themselves to. Now you should restart your PC and continually tap “F8” as the system is booting (this means start pressing “F8” as soon as the system starts to power on) if done correctly you will see a menu listing various different options, at the top of which is an option called “Safe Mode” this is a way of loading your operating system with absolutely nothing running in the background so don’t panic when it finally loads as it will look VERY basic. In “Safe Mode” most of the drivers will not be initialized. The next step is to re-run your Anti-Virus package because in this mode it may find the rogue virus that you cannot remove.

If the above steps still fail to remove the virus then there is one last thing to try, write down the name of the virus and then open your internet homepage, or whichever search engine you favour, and type in the name of the virus followed by “Removal Instructions” at this stage if it is a know virus there will be specific programs and or deletion steps advised to be taken, this may involve additional downloads or deletion of certain files in the registry. I cannot stress enough at this point if you are at this stage and you don’t feel confident poking around in the registry of your PC it’s time to give Rapid Web a call because if you delete the wrong items in the registry this could lead to loss of data or worse still it could cause your PC to stop working altogether.

So what if it’s not a virus it’s actually Spyware? Well you can follow the same steps as above the only real difference is the software you use to remove this, we can recommend 2 products for this, again personal choice but very effective, one of which is called Spybot: Search And Destroy – free version available here: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html and the other is Adaware 2007 by Lavasoft which you can get from here: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad_aware_free.php again free version. As before just make sure both programs are up to date before using them as these can also take some time to complete.

Ok, so we’ve all heard that Microsoft are producing another operating system called Windows 7 but will it be any good? After their last lack lustre release of Windows Vista will people still put their hard earned cash into another Microsoft flight of fancy? Well after having used the release candidate version, that has been available for several months now free of charge, I can say YES! It’s everything Vista should have been! Over the next few weeks our techie supremos will break down the main features for you, perform comparisons to the current Windows XP favourite that the majority of us are still using and give some hints and tips to lesser known features from an end users point of view. Below is a little taster of things to come.

Let’s start with how it installs, after all this will be the first step for anyone, if you’re upgrading from Vista the install process can take a while as Windows 7 will change the settings and keep all the user information as is on your system but as with any new OS (operating System) it’s always advised to do a fresh install. I’ve been a techie for quite a number of years now and as with all techies anything that happens REALLY quickly gets us excited, I have quite a mid range PC just now (AMD X2 6000 processor, 4 gig RAM, 4800 series ATI graphics card) nothing particularly punchy, sure it’s not the slowest of PC’s but for the hardware that’s out there at the minute its mid range for sure. From putting the disc into the drive, allowing the CD drive as the first boot device and selecting the type of install I would like to perform it took 20 minutes, that’s right 20 MINUTES! I was astonished, sure it was missing a couple of drivers but only a couple, bearing in mind I installed this months ago when there was little to no drivers available an all round great result so already I’m impressed.

If anyone has used the help system in Windows XP or Vista you’ll know it’s pretty dilute however not so in Windows 7, it advised me that it had problems installing my Creative X-Fi sound card and would I like to use the online support, here we go I thought, a breadcrumb trail that leads nowhere… it proved me wrong! It advised me that I needed to download an additional driver from the creative site and put the web address on-screen for me, I thought ok, it’s better than the last help and support but I know where the homepage is, I clicked on the link anyway just to see where it would lead me. As I clicked the link a download dialog page appeared asking me where I would like to download the driver too, GENIUS! Although I’m not sure I should have got so excited about an enormous company like Microsoft finally getting their help and support system finally working after 2 OS’s and over 10 years of development.

What this does show us though is that Microsoft is finally listening to customers’ feedback about how users would like the software to work with the key responses being “…just make the features included work correctly and quickly…” – sadly something that Vista fell short on, very short.  So next time on the blog we’re going to go through some of the new features of Windows 7 and how they compare to Windows XP and the equivalent Vista features, stay tuned.

Here is our follow on article on the Look and Feel of Windows 7.