After cleaning up a virus today for one of my users, I noticed an odd remaining side effect: No executables would successfully launch. This included Explorer.exe under the user's account that got infected, so after they would login it would just sit there at a blank screen. You could press Ctrl+Alt+Del to launch the Task Manager, but trying to run any executable would result in … [Read more...]
Best Way to Recover from Hanging Group Policy Deployed Software
Deploying software through group policy is a great way to ensure all computers are up-to-date and running the same version but unfortunately, not everything runs as smoothly as we would like. I ran into a problem last Friday trying to deploy the updated Java RE 6 Update 18 where the antivirus would tie up the installer until the install process timed out. This only happened on … [Read more...]
From Parts to PC – A Guide to Building a Computer in 25 Easy Steps
After years of working with computers: taking out and replacing components, opening them up, upgrading them, and generally being comfortable inside them, I built my first PC years ago. I'm mostly self-taught on building computers, but I've got a number of from-scratch computers under my belt now and thinking about it, once you have the parts it's pretty straight forward. This … [Read more...]
Is Your Firefox Genuine? Phishing at its Phinest!
Do you have a genuine version of Firefox installed? Did it install a bunch of malware alongside your browser? Is Microsoft allowing this to sabotage your first impression of Firefox? The browser wars are getting ugly. Why isn't Mozilla doing anything to stop this phishing attempt that is ruining their good name and adding more machines to the botnet? The Scenario: You have a … [Read more...]
Extracting Images from Microsoft Word Documents
Despite my attempts to educate here at 404TS, I still continue to receive screenshots and images inside of .doc files. Other times, you might have to revise a document or convert a Word document to a wiki or webpage. In any case where you need to extract the images from a Word document, hopefully the following three methods will help. Here's an example of an image saved in a … [Read more...]