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Q. I get many pop-up
windows when I am using my computer, advertising all sorts of things,
telling me that my computer is at risk of infection or open to spyware,
and offering solutions. I don’t even have to be browsing the Internet
when this happens. I have Norton Anti-Virus installed on my computer and
keep it up to date, but it isn’t helping. I have also installed
something called “Spyware Stormer” and “CounterSpy by Sunbelt Software”
which was recommended by PC Magazine. The first does scans every day but
doesn’t seem to do anything. The second seems to have made things worse.
It has gotten so bad that I can’t even turn off the machine without just
pulling the plug.
A. There are several
things going on here.
#1: a search on Spyware Stormer brought up as many complaints as
favorable comments, some of which said that the cure was worse than the
ailment. That is not a good omen. However, one posting you might try
suggested that you do the following: a) bring up Spyware Stormer b)
click on ADVANCED, c) make sure that you do NOT have a check in the
option ‘Autoload with Windows’ and that you do NOT have a check in the
option ‘Proactive Spyware protection’. d) Close the window and restart
the machine.
#2: a search on Counterspy by Sunbelt brought up favorable comments and
no negatives. My guess is that it is benign but falling victim to other
problems. #3: An anti-virus program will not protect you against spyware
or intrusion by popups that are making use of a ‘feature’ of Windows
called the “Windows Messenger Service”. Let’s describe it so that you
understand what it does. Windows Messenger Service is intended for
corporate use where a user within a corporate network (or subnet) can
pop-up a window on a fellow-worker’s screen with a message - such as
“Meeting in 10 minutes” or “There are donuts in conference room B”.
Unfortunately, if you are on broadband without a firewall then you are
part of a much larger network.
You have several options, and you probably should apply all of them.
#1: You can turn off the Windows Messenger Service. The easiest way to
do it is to download a minuscule utility called “Shoot the Messenger”
from Gibson Research. Go to www.grc.com, click on “Shields Up!” and then
scroll down about 1/3 of the page to the “Your Three Musketeers” and
click on the link for Shoot the Messenger. Follow the instructions
there.
#2: You indicated that you are on SBC/Yahoo! which has thousands of
others on the same subnet. Someone else on that net is a spammer and is
sending you these popups. Once it gets out that there is a live
un-protected machine you will be deluged. The way to cure it is with a
firewall - preferably a hardware firewall. It is a device that goes
between your modem (cable modem or DSL modem) and your PC(s). It
isolates you from the outside world - nobody can get in, and it keeps
track of what you connect to and only permits responses from sites that
you have originated the connection to. #3: You probably don’t want to
have more than one anti-spyware program running at any given time. Based
upon a simple search on Google, it appears that of the two you have, I’d
suggest leaving CounterSpy active and disable Spyware Stormer and see
how things go once you’ve set up your firewall and turned off the
Windows Messenger Service.
Some further comments: Windows Messenger Service is not the same as
Instant Messaging.
You indicated that you have not installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 -
that you had tried and it failed. SP2 fails if spyware is running, as
spyware refuses to let go of the machine to let SP2 make changes. You
have to rid the machine of spyware and then install SP2. SP2 includes a
firewall that will activate by default. It is a good thing.
Q. I have hundreds if not thousands of things on
my computer - how do I identify what I can remove?
A. Start by going
through Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and then clean out things.
(Elaboration: I see things such as “Microsoft Hot Fix Q- nnnnn” - What
are these?)
Those are the ‘critical updates’ and the likes. You want these. For
other things, you can often identify things by doing a Google search on
the name of the program (i.e. wumpus. exe) to find out what it is and if
you want it. There is a site - blackviper. com - that tells you what
Windows components are present and what they do and whether are needed
or not.
Q. I have purchased an external
hard disk case which uses a USB 2.0 interface for use with my notebook
machine. I also bought a 160 GB hard drive to put into it. The drive
shows up as being there, but doesn’t have a drive letter assigned, so I
can’t use it. What do I have to do in order to make the drive available?
I am running XP.
A. The drive probably
hasn’t been partitioned and formatted. How you do it varies depending
upon which version of Windows you are using. For XP, you need to get
into Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Storage,
Disk Management. There you will see the device and can right-click it
and select partition. Once part-itioned, you will have the opportunity
to format it. Once formatted, you will be able to use it. Some further
comments—if the drive is bigger than 137 GB your system’s BIOS might be
only able to create a partition of 137 GB. It might permit you to create
two 80 GB partitions.
Q. Is there a keystroke mechanism
to tell Excel to add a column of cells?
A. By playing around, we
found several methods -
#1 - The menu shortcuts INSERT and FUNCTION followed by two enters will
do it. (To get INSERT, press Alt-I, to get FUNCTION, press F.) The two
enters make use of the default choices. Note that you could use other
shortcut keys to select a function, such as Alt-N to specify the name,
and then a cursor-down to select ‘Avarage’. Alt-C selects category of
function. It will ‘guess’ which column of cells to process.
#2 - Hold down the Alt-key and press the “+” key will also do it.
Q. I have a small home network
consisting of several machines. They are running Norton Anti-Virus. They
can’t see each other’s files if Norton is running. It I turn off the
firewall, then I can share files. Does this remove my protection from
outside? How do I fix this?
A. It isn’t the
anti-virus that is preventing it, it is the firewall that is blocking
access. And yes, if you disable it, outsiders could get in, unless you
have a firewall running in your (presumed) broadband router. You need to
establish permissions on the machines running Norton’s Firewall. If your
network uses the usual IP subnet of 192.168.x.x, then you want to tell
the firewall that other machines within the subnet 192.168.x.x are
permitted to access the machine. This applies to all computer-resident
firewalls, such as ZoneAlarm, SyGate, etc.
