Ask DACS Moderated and reported by Jim Scheef Ask DACS is a Question and Answer session before the main presentation at the monthly General Meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and then answers from other audience members. My role as moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problem. Q – The Google Safe Browsing Diagnostics page shows a lot of malware coming from Google. For example, when reporting on google.com, the first section says that google.com “is not currently listed as suspicious.” A couple of sentences later it says that “49 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent.” How do I make sense of these contradictions? How much of this should I believe? A - Well, the short answer would be, "All of it." But what it is telling us is far from clear. You can see the first page we looked at, http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=google.com, is the diagnostics page for the entire google.com domain. To get a frame of reference, we also looked at the same page for dacs.org (http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=dacs.org). First, from a practical standpoint, it would be highly ironic for Google to list itself as suspicious no matter how many items it found. This diagnostic page is confusing at best as there is no explanation of anything. The first page gives statistics about pages within the Google domain that are infected with malware or that reference (link to) pages that are infected. Since Google is a search engine, the statistics likely include pages visited by the web crawler. This would explain the large number of pages “tested” – nearly half a million. If we assume this to be true, then the other numbers begin to make more sense as the malware is actually on sites in other domains. Occasionally Google search results will point to sites that contain malware. Those search results pages are within google.com and they do link to possibly malicious pages, so the statistics then make sense. It sure would be nice if somewhere they explained the criteria for listing a site as “suspicious”. The key conclusion here is that Google should provide some documentation about what these numbers mean and how they are generated. Q – If I have several browsers on my computer, how do I choose the one I want to run? A – This can be confusing if you normally open your browser by clicking a shortcut on your desktop, either the Internet Explorer “e” or a shortcut to a specific webpage somewhere. A browser is just like any other program, and when you install a new browser, the installation program creates a shortcut in your Start Menu for that program. So, if you want to run Firefox, you can open your Start menu and navigate to and click the shortcut for Firefox. Just like sound and video players, you can make one of your browsers the “default” browser. The default browser is the one that will run when you click a webpage shortcut on your desktop or anywhere. As always, there are more ways to make this selection than we have space here to describe. One way is to run "Default Programs" (Win7 and Vista) or "Set Program Access and Default" (XP). A less cumbersome method is to start the browser you want from the Start menu, open the Settings dialog then find and check the option to make it the default browser. Also check the option to "always check for default". These may not be the exact words and the option may not be easy to find, but dig and find it. Do this in all of your browsers. Now when you run any of the installed browsers, if it is already the default, it will just run and all is well. If it is not the default, it will ask you to make it the default. If you want to switch, say yes, otherwise say no. While this sounds like a lot of clicking, it makes changing between browsers almost automatic. I frequently switch between Firefox, Chrome and IE and this is the easiest way I've found. Q - Is there a free program I can run that will find and list all of the installed software along with the version number of each program? A - Utilities suggested by members include:
Belarc looks to be an answer to the question at hand. Another option is Version Tracker. If your goal for listing the version numbers of the software installed on your computer is to find any available updates, then C/Net Tech Tracker may be a better option. It "is a free application from CNET that helps keep the software on your computer up-to-date and secure. TechTracker works by scanning the software installed on your computer and alerting you when updates are available." Q - Sometimes my computer starts doing something for a minute or so and during this time it is unresponsive. How can I figure out what is going on? A - A member suggested What's Running (whatsrunning.net), a program that gives more information than the Task Manager program that comes with Windows. Another suggestion is Process Explorer. There is now a free Microsoft product since Microsoft bought the SysInternals consulting group. Windows guru author Mark Russinovich wrote this program that dives as deep as you can go into what's running on your computer. I recommend the SysInternals Suite of system utility programs. Q - What tools can anyone recommend for scanning for "registry errors?" [Caveat computator! The Windows Registry has evolved over the years into an exceedingly complex information store that is the nerve center of Windows. Be wary of programs that make promises that seem too good to be true.] A - CCleaner was mentioned as a product that scans the registry, shows any errors and then offers to fix the issues. It has free and paid versions. Another program mentioned was Iolo System Mechanic; cost is $39.95 for the basic version. Q - What does Check Disk do? A - Check Disk is traditionally a command line utility (chkdsk.exe) that has come with Windows, OS/2 and DOS since the very early days. The program reports on, and optionally fixes, the file systems on a disk, both hard drive and floppy. In normal mode, the program simply provides a report. Adding the /f switch tells the program to try to fix any errors it finds. It is always best to first get the report before fixing errors. The switch /? gives very abbreviated help. Exactly what the program does differs between the NTFS and FAT file systems. The Wikipedia article is actually quite interesting with stuff I never knew before. There is now a way to run Check Disk using the GUI with the results written to the Application Event Log. Ever wonder what happened when Check Disk ran when you booted up your computer? These results are also in the Application log. To find them, open the Application log in Event Viewer and filter or group the log for a source of 'chkdsk'. Unfortunately the results are no longer in the formatted lines presented by the command line version, making them hard to read.
Questions for the upcoming meeting can be emailed to askdacs@dacs.org. Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warranty as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!
|
 Click Here |
 |
 |
DacsGear! |