The Weekly Geek

It was bound to happen: on-demand, web-based fraud that mirrors the efficiency, sophistication, and universality of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

In his recent white paper, entitled “Fraud Trends in 2010,” Rick Van Luvender, Director of First Data’s InfoSec Incident Response Center, has forever characterized this thriving underground economy as Fraud-as-a-Service, or FaaS. [Read more →]

May this Memorial Day not be about burgers, hotdogs, skiing and picnics, may we instead stop, remember, cry, share, resolve, help, share and regain strength through sadness, courage through heartbreak and resolve through patriotism. III

It took a while for me to confirm this, McAfee claims it will reimburse users whose computers had to be serviced due to a faulty update it issued last week that caused people’s computers to act all wacky. We had a few show up at our shop and it took some major surgery to get them going again.

The alert, which was issued in error, caused computers running Windows XP Service Pack 3 to go into a continuous reboot cycle. Other users were met with blue screens, loss of network connectivity, and inability to use USB devices.

The company says it will reimburse “reasonable expenses” for service repairs. Users who have already incurred costs to repair their PC are also covered.

In the rare case a computer was rendered inoperable or severely impaired due to the faulty file release, McAfee (News – Alert) is offering the user a free, two-year extension of their existing McAfee subscription. The company said only a “small percentage” of its customers had permanent damage to their computers

Meanwhile the company urges users who are experiencing problems to contact its call center to see if technicians can resolve those issues remotely — before taking the computer to a repair center. If a technician is unable to solve the problem, McAfee said it will provide the necessary software, either via a download or express delivery.

As per a report on PC World, the problem began last Wednesday (April 21st) when a faulty signature update DAT file disrupted the svchost.exe file on “a subset of systems” using McAfee VirusScan Enterprise on Windows XP service pack 3. Users with VirusScan Enterprise 8.7 experienced more severe problems than those running version 8.5, McAfee said, “because of the different implementation of memory scanning within the products.”

McAfee said the problem occurred when a faulty DAT file got through the testing process. Apparently the DAT file recognized one of the Windows .exe files as a virus and continuously tried to remove it.

It appears McAfee will be offering reimbursement both to organizations whose IT departments had the resolve the issue on a computer-by-computer basis as well as individual users who brought their computers in for service. This could get expensive for McAfee: As one user wrote in the comments section of one article: “I’m a PC Tech at a major corporation. Not only is the direct costs very expensive, but the impact this has caused in the delay to address other IT issues is huge.”

Although the company has a special page posted to its website telling affected users what to do, and offering self-serve fixes, it has not yet posted any information posted concerning the process for getting reimbursed, saying that it will be posted “within a few days.”

Here is a link to their web site http://us.mcafee.com/en-us/landingpages/np5959.asp

This artilcle was taken from Lockergnome. I felt it covered and important topic and wanted to pass it along. Here is the link to the origional article. http://www.lockergnome.com/it/2010/04/14/customize-system-restore-in-windows-7/

Many of us have, at one point or another, installed a program or made some change that was harmful to our computers. For such times, you can use Windows 7’s System Restore to restore your computer to a previous point in time without having to reinstall the operating system.

Unlike Windows Vista, Windows 7 provides a few options for configuring the System Restore option. For example, you can prevent System Restore from backing up your Registry, which means the restore points won’t consume as much disk space.

To access the configuration options:

1. Click the Start button.
2. Right click the Computer and click Properties.
3. Click System Protection.
4. Click Configure.

The configuration options available are summarized below:

The Restore Settings let you configure what you want to restore. The three options available include: Restore system settings and previous versions of files, Only restore previous versions of files, and Turn off system protection.

The Disk Space Usage setting lets you adjust the maximum amount of disk space used for system protection. A larger value allows more restore points, while a smaller value saves disk space.

Finally, you can delete all the restore points by selecting the Delete button.

Over the last month I have been working on an article about Wireless N. My last article on this subject was in October 2007.

My problem is that I start getting too geeky, even for me so I stop and come back to it later only to trash it and start over and then get too geeky again.

Here is my brief synopsis. You can now buy Wireless N, but please stick with same brand products (and same “series” if at all possible). [Read more →]