I use Norton Ghost to backup my C drive. Ghost will make an exact bit for bit mirror image of any partition onto another partition.  You can even access the files on the backup partition. Also, you can backup your image to a server on your network if you like (requires a special boot floopy with NIC drivers).


Basically, I have a 2nd hard drive on my system. About once a week, I'll backup my C drive to a partition on the second 250GB hard drive that has numerous partitions. I'll keep a few older backups in case the latest one has a problem. I also keep a "base install" of WinXP incase I need to start from there. If anything bad happens to my C drive, I can recover in less than 5 minutes. Assuming that I can copy my outlook.pst file and the My Documents folder before I erase the C drive with the backup, I can be fully recovered in 6 minutes. If the C drive is totally toast (like a hard drive failure), at worst, I recover with a week old or less backup after spending 5 minutes replacing the hard drive.

I have been using this setup for about 6 years and it has saved my bacon about a dozen times. Occasionally, I'll be in a hurry and will inadvertently click some message on a web page that will give me some malware or trojan that I can't remove......Or a BIOS update or driver update will hose my C drive. Shit happens no matter how careful you are if you work on a PC all day. If it does, I'm about 6 minutes away from full recovery.


Get Norton Ghost and save yourself countless hours rebuilding your Windows installation. It's the best $70 you'll ever spend if you own a PC. I simply use the ghost.exe file that is on the Ghost CD and copy the ghost.exe file to a bootable floppy. I do everything I need in Ghost from DOS. I don't even install the Windows Ghost program.

BTW, if you only have one hard drive, you can backup your C drive to a second partition on the same hard drive. You just won't be covered if your hard drive fails.

Quoted: I wipe all my computers about once every year or so. I did my brother-in-laws a month ago. It went from crawing to sprinting for about three weeks. Now it's fucked again. Why? His 16 year old daughter installed AOL IM to chat with her friends. Needless to say its screwed.

BTDT.  After fixing my uncles computer (again), the kids no longer have install privileges.  

Quoted: Quoted: I installed a very effective anti-malware tool on my computer. It is called linux! All kidding aside, I think most people could make do with a simple linux installation. Unfortunately linux is still a really big pain the ass when it comes to driver support and software installation. I spend a lot of time fooling with linux and cursing it, but one thing I've never spent time doing in linux is looking out for viruses or malware. Galland When there's a mass-distribution with all the ease and familiarity of Windows, and 80% of the world is running Linux, bet your ass there will be viruses and vicious ware for it. Windows isn't a tight ship, but as it stands it's the one being attacked en masse. THAT is the whole problem.

Not ENTIRELY the whole problem, but certainly a huge factor.

The Microsoft security paradigm is backwards to what is intuitive to most network security personnel.  I'm not promoting linux either.  They seem to fall to many of the same design flaws.

Quoted: Quoted: I wipe all my computers about once every year or so. I did my brother-in-laws a month ago. It went from crawing to sprinting for about three weeks. Now it's fucked again. Why? His 16 year old daughter installed AOL IM to chat with her friends. Needless to say its screwed. BTDT.  After fixing my uncles computer (again), the kids no longer have install privileges.

I try to keep my moms, computer running tip top, but my little sisters install all the stupid IM "extras" and animated pointers and 7087 different IM programs.

Quoted: By now,  all computers SHOULD do this: Respond to any type of program or input that comes from any input other than the local hard drive or the keyboard by quarantining it, analyzing it, determining if the file will modify any existing file or create any new files,  and if so, prompt the user for action. It can't be THAT difficult! CJ

Right you are.  This is exactly what would happen if you attempted to write a program for Mac OS X to reformat the hard drive, delete critical files, etc.  

The program wouldn't have permission to do those things unless the user/administrator had deliberately given permission. You would see  a dialog box asking for an administrator password.  

Of course, the most prudent thing to do is simply do your best to avoid downloading/opening strange files from unknown sources combined with ensuring that all your important files and programs are backed up on CD.  

Ideally, you want it on CD as opposed to another HD because Murphy can strike.  Hard drives sometimes just die, and it's expensive to have them reconstructed.  

CD"s can last for up to 100 years provided they're stored properly.  

Quoted: How about severe, strict-liability felony penalties for distributing, using, or profiting from these programs? Sort of a Sarbanes-Oxley for the corporate cocksuckers who own whatever is being advertised/sold/done, with an opportunity to cut their sentences down to 10 yrs in FPYITAP by identifying the authors, who pull 20, no questions asked? As far as I'm concerned, writing, using, and/or profiting from what amounts to the theft of a computer and web connection is not much different from a burglary.

It's been done already.  I've heard stories of FBI tactical units raiding suspected hackers, I can't substantiate that, though.  

It is already a felony and it is taken seriously, IF you are caught.  That being the big problem, it's hard to track down the people responsible, but when/if they do get tracked down, LE hits them like the fist of an angry god

Technically speaking, though, if you hack someone's computer and they're in a different state, the crime has taken place across state lines, which would make it a federal matter.  

Quoted: It's viruses, not virii.

Hmm, I always heard otherwise.  

Quoted: I wipe all my computers about once every year or so. I did my brother-in-laws a month ago. It went from crawing to sprinting for about three weeks. Now it's fucked again. Why? His 16 year old daughter installed AOL IM to chat with her friends. Needless to say its screwed.

Is she going to unknown web pages and/or downloading programs without knowing what they are ?  AIM itself doesn't open you up (except opening Port 5190 ), but you can transfer files through AIM and people can cut/paste links.  

There are a lot of add-on "goodies" for Windows AIM that are primarily eye-candy type BS that do tend to slow things down.  

I have a ex g/f whose little sister was screwing up the computer every week (requiring a system restore, it was Windows XP) by downloading files off the Internet that were supposedly freeware computer games.  Anybody seen any of that ?  

Quoted: My dad got one that I could not remove.  When I finally broke down to format the drive, it turned out that the malware had partitioned a tiny, invisible drive and the program was running off of that.  I don't really understand how these companies don't get their doors kicked in and their machines smashed.

They do if they're caught.  The Internet makes them fairly anonymous, though, also when you factor in that people are downloading this stuff from third-party means, often without the third party knowing it's a virus.  

It can be hard to trace it all back well enough to be able to legally without a doubt point the finger at anyone.  

Quoted: i completley agree with his statement i see the damage of trojan, spyware infected machines daily.  i've given up on trying to fix the majority of them.  and end up doing a fresh install antivirus is a false sense of security.     you still need it, but absolutely non of them will catch everything.

The only real protectiosn folks have is to be slightly intelligent when using a computer. Some mpeople download EVERYTHING and click yes to EVERYTHING that pops up on their screen.

Quoted: Quoted: i completley agree with his statement i see the damage of trojan, spyware infected machines daily.  i've given up on trying to fix the majority of them.  and end up doing a fresh install antivirus is a false sense of security.     you still need it, but absolutely non of them will catch everything. The only real protectiosn folks have is to be slightly intelligent when using a computer. Some mpeople download EVERYTHING and click yes to EVERYTHING that pops up on their screen.

Exactly.  That's the biggest single reason that this stuff is so prevalent today.  You have large numbers of people with zero common sense and technical knowledge using a system with known. obvious security holes.  Given that, there's bound to be problems.  

Quoted: Quoted: We got hit last year with an Adware/Spyware bomb.  We had to take 140 machines down to bare metal and rebuild each one.  We are now deploying Novell's Zenworks across the enterprise.  When completed, we should be able to rebuild every machine in the building within a few hours (or less).  Keep your fingers crossed. What version of Zen are have you deployed? The reason I ask is I am about to do the same thing here, I run Win XP on desktops, NW 6.5 servers, GroupWise 7 Email, and ZenWorks 7. Spyware and Adware eats Xp alive and spending hours removing it is complete nonsense. I have close to 400 PCs and 4 hours to remove infections is out of the question.

I can't remember the version number.  It is the most recent version, though. There is a fairly steep learning curve but we're getting there.  

Quoted: I wipe all my computers about once every year or so. I did my brother-in-laws a month ago. It went from crawing to sprinting for about three weeks. Now it's fucked again. Why? His 16 year old daughter installed AOL IM to chat with her friends. Needless to say its screwed.

IM is the devil.  A few years ago, I had a friend who's computer whent FUBAR just before she had a project  due so she asked me if she could use mine so I told her no problem.  The next thing I know, she has installed WeatherBug on my system without asking me.  Stupid bitch.

Quoted: Agreed... ONce something starts become popular people will attack it. Its only a matter of time before all this crap hits MAC, Linux firefox and so on.....

That's one reason I've stayed with 98. It's good enough for my purposes, and I've had very little trouble with it (knock on wood).

Quoted: Quoted: Agreed... ONce something starts become popular people will attack it. Its only a matter of time before all this crap hits MAC, Linux firefox and so on..... That's one reason I've stayed with 98. It's good enough for my purposes, and I've had very little trouble with it (knock on wood).

98 secure? haha. Want to be an admin on that machine? Create a new admin account on logon. At least with 2000 on up, you have to have admin rights to create an account.

Oh, and the latest thing I see at my work is the Smiley Central-find that in the progs list, you know that funweb and mywebsearch are there too <groans>.
One user a few weeks ago had a magical changing cookie that bombed usmt-followed the log and looked at this cookie, it was changing names while we watched.

Nick

IP've always done the customized installation option whenever I am installing software. I find that doing this gives me the option to keep a lot of bullshit off my system, especially through AIM, Winzip, Quicktime Etc.

I'm satisfied with my Mac Mini to say the least though. All the bullshit for Windows is just ridiculous.

A few years ago I built a server, put my data there and kept the local HD just for Winblows and apps.   What a joy to be able to fuck around, screw things up and reformat without losing anything but some time.  Now I just use a NAS drive and be done with it.

Much easier to recover from bad drivers, weird installs and my own hacking.  Never have had an issue with virus or malware.  I guess using computers since my VIC-20 and being a self-taught IT geek paid off.

I bought my first PowerBook (15") in September and bought my daughter an iBook (12") at the same time.  I supported Mac's as a Network Admin back in the 90's and it sucked but watching what was happening with OS X made me a switcher.

My son kept bitching about how trashed his Windows box was always getting (he's smart, but not a geek) I made him a deal.  Restage the Windows machine for games only, nothing else, and I'll get him a Mac for "real" work.  He agreed so I gave him my 15" PowerBook and upgraded to a 17".

His Windows box still busts his balls from time to time, but the PowerBook (and my daughters iBook) just keep on humming along.

I'll be building an XP box for games here shortly, but I'll never go back to Windows as my primary machine ever.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: We got hit last year with an Adware/Spyware bomb.  We had to take 140 machines down to bare metal and rebuild each one.  We are now deploying Novell's Zenworks across the enterprise.  When completed, we should be able to rebuild every machine in the building within a few hours (or less).  Keep your fingers crossed. What version of Zen are have you deployed? The reason I ask is I am about to do the same thing here, I run Win XP on desktops, NW 6.5 servers, GroupWise 7 Email, and ZenWorks 7. Spyware and Adware eats Xp alive and spending hours removing it is complete nonsense. I have close to 400 PCs and 4 hours to remove infections is out of the question. I can't remember the version number.  It is the most recent version, though. There is a fairly steep learning curve but we're getting there.

Remote assistance/Remote desktop/WSUS/SMS/DFS/shadow copy actually works in our organization.

I just do not see a need for an Altiris/Zenworks type “solution.”


I really do hate to sound like a microsoft fanboy but their stuff is just so much more effective and flexible that we actually got rid of Novell and HP (Yes, we had running versions of both Altiris and Zenworks at one time) Getting rid of both also got rid of several nasty issues we had with them. Not to mention saving us huge amounts of money.

bump

Its a simple matter of economics....

I can pay my techs to struggle with virus removal tools for hours, then do research to figure out ways to clean the malware out of the registry.......or.....I can hand them a disk, tell them to put it in the drive, reboot the machine....go back out doing support calls, come back in an hour and redeploy the machine.

I see re-imaging a PC kind of like letting people use calculators in math class.....first, you learn how to perform the actual function, then use automated tools to be more efficient with it in a real production environment.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: ....................................... businesses should consider investing in an automated process to wipe hard drives and reinstall operating systems as a practical way to recover from malware infestation. ................. We already have that with Ghost.. Saving images and backing up your data is the only way to go... Altiris works well too.  In about 30 minutes I could have a machine wiped, reloaded, and back on the network.  Within a couple of hours they would have all of their machine specific aps back.

You guys doing this with XP Pro?

Quoted: By now,  all computers SHOULD do this: Respond to any type of program or input that comes from any input other than the local hard drive or the keyboard by quarantining it, analyzing it, determining if the file will modify any existing file or create any new files,  and if so, prompt the user for action. It can't be THAT difficult! CJ

And 75% of users would still click "Yes" at the prompt "Install and Run SuperVirus.exe?".

Plus it is a little harder to do then that.  Modern computers are pretty complicated, hardware-wise, software-wise, and otherwise.

Quoted: Well, just nuke Windows from orbit, then buy a Mac

Then all the retards will run the Mac version of windows on it.  Why you would want to ruin perfectly good Mac with windows is beyond me.  Oh, and by the way, I haven't had any problems with spyware on my Mac.  

~Dg84

Quoted: Quoted: I wipe all my computers about once every year or so. I did my brother-in-laws a month ago. It went from crawing to sprinting for about three weeks. Now it's fucked again. Why? His 16 year old daughter installed AOL IM to chat with her friends. Needless to say its screwed. IM is the devil.  A few years ago, I had a friend who's computer whent FUBAR just before she had a project  due so she asked me if she could use mine so I told her no problem.  The next thing I know, she has installed WeatherBug on my system without asking me.  Stupid bitch.

There is the problem. Even if there is a warning screen saying this could toast the pc, I've watched people just click ok.  When I ask them 'do you know what you just did?' or 'why did you do that?' I get this 'are you dumb' look and they say 'it always asks if I really want to do something...of course I do'.   It isn't always the females either.  
Think the saying these days is 'Stuck on stupid'.

In addition, we have a lot of folks running around on the Internet who don't even know what a port is, let alone how to open/close one.

Well, Mr. Know-itall, I know enough not to lease my port operations to Dubai!!

Quoted: In addition, we have a lot of folks running around on the Internet who don't even know what a port is, let alone how to open/close one. Well, Mr. Know-itall, I know enough not to lease my port operations to Dubai!!

that's a good one

Quoted: www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsgfx/apple/mac-aqua-scr-.jpg