Google Chrome after-virus effect

Before the chrome problem:

Ok, I got a virus. I was sadly using Windows (I needed IE), and I went to a website which somehow got onto my system. It installed XP antimalware 2010 and basicly wrecked my machine.

So, I reinstalled. Which was surprisingly simple. Only a case of a booting CTRL > F10 and reinstalling. So, I then restored all my programs and files(which I had obvously backed up earlier). Then, I went into Google Chrome and went to one of my client's websites.

Then, the virus returned. Somehow, when it had primarily got onto my PC, it had found the registry file(lying around in my folder) with the username and password, and then redistributed itself. So, I changed all my passwords and blanked the contents of the website(I had a backup which I later restored to it, luckily!).

So, I removed the virus for a second time. I did not reinstall this time, because I didn't deem it necessary. But, that had concequences:

Opening Chrome:


So, I opened chrome after a victorious complete removal of the virus(so it seemed), and a popup came up saying I had a virus. At the same time Windows Defender(My favourite anti-virus) said there was a virus. But, when I killed the pop-up, defender was fine. I even did a full scan and it said it was fine. Ok, then ran msconfig and I found an odd startup application. Sadly I forgot the name. But I looked it up on the internet and it said it was a virus!

So, I found the file, removed it and rebooted. The problem persisted and the file was back!

I removed the file again, and it still persited, so I booted of a puppy linux cd, reached into the hard drive and deleted the file. Hey Presto! It worked.

The real problem:


Now, I opened chrome and it said loading. I was impatient so I opened another tab and hit the 'Home' button. Still, it did not work. It only did an odd thing to the bookmark toolbar. So, I tried firefox, and I accessed the internet.

Now everywhere I looked, the solution was to and --disable-sandbox, which worked. But not very well. For it also set loose bookmark sync which meant that you may randomly be brought to one of your bookmarks when you clicked on a links.

So I read further into 'sandbox' and it looked as if it disabled chrome's own little security 'firewall', which was the last thing I wanted. So, I removed chrome.

Don't worry! That wasn't my solution. In the end I found this forum post, which linked to this executable which removes the problem, and lets you browse with chrome in peace and with the sandbox on!

I hope this helps anyone out there!

A Little Competition

I love linux. I use it on everything. But... I still know that linux is not perfect and there are some advantages of using 'Microsoft' Windows on your PC instead of linux.

So, here, I have made a little list of advantages and disadvantages of windows and linux:

• In windows, when you install a program, it goes into program files and can be copied onto a usb. A containable way of installing applications onto your computer can be a very big advantage to people who constantly switch and movve around. Yes, in that way, Windows is better!
• In Linux, security is never a problem. Sudo only comes in when a password is entered. No need for virus scanners and no need for firewalls.
• In Linux, you usually have to be a bit of a geek to use it. Because unless something is closed source and payed for, it's guaranteed that it's going to have a few bugs. But, I don't mind that and neither do quite a few people.
• Windows does have viruses. Windows is the most used and therefore the most hackable operating system around.
• But, because Windows is the most used operating system, you have barely any incompatibility problems.
• And last of all, linux is free!

I hope this has added to your knowledge of Windows!

The Tale of Two Hard Disks

A while back (not so long ago) I decided to try and add RAM to my ancient 'deb' machine and it didn't work out so well. I had three hard disks in it at the time, one 40gb with a dual boot of XP and ubuntu, another one an 8gb with XP only and the third was a 2 gig with some old backups on it(it was unplugged at the time because I wasn't in need of it). Ubuntu worked fine with the change of RAM and sped up as I had wanted it to. The Xp on the big hard drive died of a blue screen and the other XP wouldn't log on. (That just shows how capable ubuntu is doesn't it?)

So, I tried to fix the Blue Sceened XP by putting the RAM back exactly where I found it but it didn't work. So, I put it all back like it was in the end, two OS poorer.

Then, I used the ubuntu and played around with it a lot. But one day, I was playing around with the users and groups and I accidentally made all users guests (I don't have a clue!)!?!?!

So, it was then useless to me but I left it because I had other things to do at the time. The day before yesterday, I booted from the 8gb to see what would happen and it worked perfectly. I was happy then and so I switched to the other one and reinstalled ubuntu successfully therefore havin two OS back up and running.

Then, I did the stupidest thing in the world, I decided to copy the contents of the 8gig hard disk to the xp partition on the 40gb. It went OK at first(but for the fan that was spinning tons of RPS; Remember, this is an old computer though) and then I went out for a bit and when I came back, the fan was spinning at it's usual, slow rate and the screen was blank. Nothing I did could change it so I hit the turn off button and rebooted. Then, it said "Disk Reader Error" then nothing.

So, (I thought *!*!*!) I supposed that the cable connected to the hard disks had died. I unplugged the cd and dvd drives and plugged one of them into the 40gb. Nothing. The 8gb. Nothing. Then I left them both alone and went to bed!

The next morning, I got another cable from a bag of stored cables and I tried it. At first I only plugged it into the 40gb(for no particular reason) and booted. It worked. Perfectly. Straight back into the same old ubuntu(the xp was flat obviously!). So, as happy as an angel. I took the other cable out. I then plugged in both hard disks making the XP a slave and booted. "Disk Reader Error"(*!?) So, I unplugged the 8gb and booted, making it work fine again.

That was what it was like until I wrote this post, supposing that the 8gb was dead and diseased. Half way through the post though, I tried the 8gb seperately and it worked!

And that is the end of the tale of: TWO HARD DISKS!

The Four Fighters

Apple, Microsoft, Google and the Open source world are the four competitors in this big electric game. All competing to be better than the others. Not so much the open source world but definetly Apple, the old shiny one, Microsoft, the middle age dusty dying one and Google the young, big and growing fast one.

This post is made mainly to point out that google is growing fast and Microsoft is being over-run. You could put it into a sort of dinasour analogy where Microsft is the big Braceasourus, Apple is the smaller herbivore(the one with the horns, I forgt what it's called) and Google is the Velociraptor family with the rest of the small selection of dinasours being the open source world.

Sorry about yet another short post but that's all I wanted to point out.

Os Wars

At the moment, everyone is talking about the OS wars between Mac, Linux and Windows, and here I have a little to say about it...

It is a stupid war, they all have pros and cons, don't fight, just get what's best for you and be hapy with it! Linux's advantage is it's open source freedom and virus proof stuff. Window, well, windows... has... popularity and cheapness?
But then Mac, Virus Proof, good hardware but expensive.

I just say again, get what you need, be happy with it and Shut Up!

An Ubuntu9/WinXP Dual Boot

Not long ago, I got hold of a 40GB hard disk and decided to do a WinXP/Ubuntu9 Dual Boot. I thought It would be rather simple. So I installed WinXP on it partitioning the whole thing, then I installed all my favourite software on the XP while listening to an old Floss Weekly Podcast about Wubi, which probably made me over-confident, then I got out the Ubuntu installer disk, (a while before I had downloaded the .iso form the ubuntu site and burned it onto the disk) booted onto it and tried installing it.

It was as slow as a dead donkey and crashed constantly. So after 4 or 5 tries, I gave Up and tried something else. I plugged in my WinXP hard disk jumpered it as a master and turned the 40GB into a slave.

Then after reading up, I went into XP, right clicked on my Comuter, manage, manage hard disks (or something like that) and in that I formated the 40GB hard disk as an NTFS file system.

Then I rejumpered the hard disks to what they were before and tried installing ubuntu on the 40GB, It worked perfectly and I managed to partition exactly half the disk, and got ubuntu working perfectly in about 30min.

Then I got the WinXP installer disk out, installed it and got it woking. In the end, it worked fine (untill I started fiddling around with the RAM cards!).

Windows 98-XP (on that old deb machine)

So after that ubuntu, I got out another hard dsik and ...

I just wanted a windows, so after a bit of editing it, (Opening it up and changing hard disks, jumpers etc.) I installed Windows 98 on it.

It was left like that for a while with me putting a few good aps on it and then I started getting annoyed with the fact that most of my programs were Xp+, so I borrowed an XP disk of a friend and put it on that PC.

Then I found out that that OS was a bit like a 30 day trial and I could only run it for more than 30 days if I 'registered it with microsoft'. But, I couldn't, because that particular PC couldn't get a connection to our router, so I tried the clock trick.

I changed the time to a year before the proper time and tried running the 'subscribe to microsoft' AP and it still said '29 days left' so, I gave up and did something else.

In that same session, for some stupid reason, I changed the clock forward 100 yrs and a bit after, I turned of the PC. When I turned t back on, I couldn't log-on beacase I was '100 years past the expiry date'. I could have pulled all my hair out in that second. I thought 'why didn't I go 100 yrs BACK in time' and that was the end of that OS.

Then, I left that PC alone for a bit, (again) and a while later, (6 months perhaps)
I got hold of another XP disk, this time, it was XP prof instead of the previous XP Home. I wasn't sure whether it was going to be a 30 day trial again or not.

So I booted the CD and started going through the installation and then I got to a stage where it asked for a code. At this bit, I didn't have a clue, the last one had the product-code on the box. But this CD didn't have a box, so I was stuffed.

Once again, I left it alone and one day I watched a more experienced computer tech use the XP disk onto another machine. And when he got to the product-code bit, he took the disk out, put it into another XP machine and browsed it finding a text document that had the product-code in it.

I was surprised and it worked, so when he was done with the disk, I took it and tried it on the old deb machine and it worked perfecttly on a 8gb hard disk. Thenn started using it and beaause I didn't have any essential programs (Firefox, An antivirus ...) so I went back to that old ubuntu disk put it in and put Blender, Firefox2 (old, but it works), a virus scanner and I was happily running XP.