sepia
06-13-2004, 04:10 PM
Hey Everyone--
A few weeks ago, I started having some really wild stuff happening to my computer, actually it was about 6 weeks ago. There were alot of precursors to this so i had to do alot of trouble shooting and of course hit the net for information.
Things my computer did: It suddenly started running really slowly, I had trouble getting to certain web pages I had gone to before. When I read the news I like to see all sides so one of the sites I hit is Al-Jazeera, not really a popular site with the gov't. I know politics aren't to be talked about here but it is pertinent to this. I am not pro_bush. I'm not too hot on the other guy though either. So my mail is full of petitons from the Sierra Club, Bush GreenWatch, etc. I sign them with my real name. I couldn't access my Paid email account exsept through IE. When sending pics to someone through yahoo messinger, I got a pop up window saying that they were uploading to a site that was a usgov site. I couldn't send anything through msn messenger. My computer got slower. Within two days, it totally crashed leaving me with a black screen and a white cursor arrow. no beeps, nothing. I couldn't get in through safe mode. I live across the street from a college and have friends who are computer techs. We couldn't figure it out.
I switched out computers and within a few days, computer number 2 started doing the same thing. During this time, I quickly researched different sites to find out what could be going on. In my search, I found this article.
It deals with the hidden system files on the DOS level and Explorer files that are in there that feed info back to Microsoft and how you can go in and manually turn them off. It's a long but interesting read. When I called the cable company to find out what had happened to the cable, they said it had been interupted and pinged and all that, I needed a firewall. I have an external and internal firewall. Spybot, Norton systemworks Pro2004, AVG, and even got a Key log thing for a bit that came out with a 52 page report. I switched from IE and disabled IE, after downloading Mozilla Firefox which has its good and bad spots. But, my computers work now.
Except that during the switch out the HP tower got tossed on the bed breaking the clip that holds one of the RAM chips so it can't be touched if I want to run the full 2 gigs and I kinda tweeked out my Dell with the disc that came with that Hacker Book advertised on the bottom of the page.
Anyway, I am attaching the article that I got from bfarber.com, a very nice site with some great tutorials in photoshop but also in computer security and maintenace and p2p. Nice folks over there. But I call this place my pasture.
Oh yeah, I still believe this all started because of the upload to the net of a poster I made in class, an anti-RIAA/anti-Homeland poster I made that was never meant to go up there. It was made for a class and had an official govt logo on it, non-altered and really slammed America on the whole downloading thing. I got an A on it though.
A few weeks ago, I started having some really wild stuff happening to my computer, actually it was about 6 weeks ago. There were alot of precursors to this so i had to do alot of trouble shooting and of course hit the net for information.
Things my computer did: It suddenly started running really slowly, I had trouble getting to certain web pages I had gone to before. When I read the news I like to see all sides so one of the sites I hit is Al-Jazeera, not really a popular site with the gov't. I know politics aren't to be talked about here but it is pertinent to this. I am not pro_bush. I'm not too hot on the other guy though either. So my mail is full of petitons from the Sierra Club, Bush GreenWatch, etc. I sign them with my real name. I couldn't access my Paid email account exsept through IE. When sending pics to someone through yahoo messinger, I got a pop up window saying that they were uploading to a site that was a usgov site. I couldn't send anything through msn messenger. My computer got slower. Within two days, it totally crashed leaving me with a black screen and a white cursor arrow. no beeps, nothing. I couldn't get in through safe mode. I live across the street from a college and have friends who are computer techs. We couldn't figure it out.
I switched out computers and within a few days, computer number 2 started doing the same thing. During this time, I quickly researched different sites to find out what could be going on. In my search, I found this article.
It deals with the hidden system files on the DOS level and Explorer files that are in there that feed info back to Microsoft and how you can go in and manually turn them off. It's a long but interesting read. When I called the cable company to find out what had happened to the cable, they said it had been interupted and pinged and all that, I needed a firewall. I have an external and internal firewall. Spybot, Norton systemworks Pro2004, AVG, and even got a Key log thing for a bit that came out with a 52 page report. I switched from IE and disabled IE, after downloading Mozilla Firefox which has its good and bad spots. But, my computers work now.
Except that during the switch out the HP tower got tossed on the bed breaking the clip that holds one of the RAM chips so it can't be touched if I want to run the full 2 gigs and I kinda tweeked out my Dell with the disc that came with that Hacker Book advertised on the bottom of the page.
Anyway, I am attaching the article that I got from bfarber.com, a very nice site with some great tutorials in photoshop but also in computer security and maintenace and p2p. Nice folks over there. But I call this place my pasture.
Oh yeah, I still believe this all started because of the upload to the net of a poster I made in class, an anti-RIAA/anti-Homeland poster I made that was never meant to go up there. It was made for a class and had an official govt logo on it, non-altered and really slammed America on the whole downloading thing. I got an A on it though.