Well I got all geared up to fight my customers Spyware/Malware attack.

It was a Smitfraud variant I located a rather nifty removal tool.

Link: http://siri.geekstogo.com/SmitfraudFix.php

I did some reading about the manual removal process just incase this infection was a new variant that the removal tool could not deal with.

I also took some time to update my mini arsenal of Anti-Spyware tools.

Sysinternal tools like Process Monitor and Autoruns amongst others.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx

I also discovered a good online video from Mark Russinovich creator of Process Monitor called Advanced Malware Cleaning that was pretty good and worth watching. (1 hour long).

Link: TechNet On-Demand Webcast- Advanced Malware Cleaning

I  spent more time preparing than I did actually removing Smitfraud as the removal tool worked flawlessly.

With Spyware/Malware problems you can never be too prepared.

I have never lost a computer to Spyware/Malware however I have come close a few times. In this case I was lucky having the removal tool at my disposal.

I am responsible for keeping 250 computers up and running every day.

A few years back I had to get really focused on Internet security to deal with rising problems of Viruses, Spyware and Malware affecting my clients.

I went out of my way to educate my clients/users about e-mails with attachments and not clicking yes to suspect browser plug-ins etc.

I have enjoyed a good year without any major problems of that front. Until today.

A user gave his brand new laptop to his spouse to use on the Internet for a short time. Now the laptop is compromised with Malware

The above balloon popup up box is fake by the way, if you see one on your laptop don’t click it.

Well I suppose I get to test my chops battling against it, trying to rescue the PC.

The lesson to learn is, no matter what anti-virus you use or what firewall you are behind. If you have a willing participant (in this case a human) who will click yes, when they really should click no. Bad things are bound to happen.

This was on a fully patched Windows XP Pro SP2 / IE 7 build. Less than a week old.

I suppose I should give a shout out to Windows Vista if this laptop was running it (it wasn’t) things might have not been so bad. 

1987, 1997 or 2007 you decide, Moving on

Vostro is a business product range from Dell for the small business community from 1 to 25 users.

This means we now have yet another range of business computer to choose from. It must be so confusing to customers.

Vostro (Desktop and Laptops) Entry Level

Optiplex (Desktops) Latitude (Laptops) Mainstream

Precision (Desktop and Laptops) Workstation Class.

Some of my clients fall into the category (1 to 25) but I can’t see me recommending the Vostro product range any time soon. I like my clients too much.

The UK Laptops looks like Windows Vista Only. At this point this does more harm that good to the small business.

I have two words for you Black and Plastic. it’s like 1999 all over again (The retro  launch campaign makes more sense now).

I feel sorry for anyone that has to carry a brick like that around in this century.

I could go off on a rant about this but will save my energy for another day. Besides the comments on the Dell Blog link below seem to do a fair assessment.

Note to Dell: Using the word “upsell” in your video post. Mmmm interesting choice.

As someone who buys a lot of small business computers per year I am not convinced and I look forward to reading some peer reviews.

Link: http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/07/10/20547.aspx

Lots of people seem to be hitting my site because I did a post about the Dell XPS M1330. I assume they are looking for more info.

Check out the above video clip.

The clip comes from: http://www.youtube.com/user/TechnologyGuide

Or read the PCMag review here
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2150810,00.asp

Since January 2007 I have had to manually force my  Dell XPS M1210 video output onto my external Dell 2007WFP display. The laptop is running Windows Vista.

By default you would receive a “out of range” message on the display because the old drivers were supply some wrong information, a resolution the monitor could not cope with.

The video card in the laptop is a Geforce Go 7400

So finally Nvidia have released a set of Drivers for the Geforce Go 7400 that fix this problem.

I downloaded them from Windows Update. They appear as an optional download.

Six months is too long to wait for a fix but I am glad it has finally be addressed.

I took a look at the Windows Experience Index score of the new drivers:-

Desktop Graphics: Before 3.7 After 3.7

Gaming Graphics Before 3.4 After 3.3 

So you drop .1 on the gaming performance, it would be nice if newer drivers improved performance as opposed to losing it.