On Mon, 20 Sep 2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
> > You can't rely just on those two tools. To properly clean a system, I
> > start with AdAware, then run Spybot S&D, then run CWShredder, then run
> > HijackThis! to do any final clean-up (HijackThis! is a manual process and
> > you must know what you're doing). The first three programs only get
> > most/some of the problems but not all, so it's important to run all of
> > them, IMO.
>
> ?! (asks rhetorically I guess) it's really necessary to do all this crap
> and rigamarole (never mind the recently documented high crash/reboot
> rate) just to operate a machine to read your email and store data!?
Um, yeah. It sucks. But only if you are lame and click on every shiny
banner ad that promises to fulfill your every whim and desire and you
always click "Yes" when some random plug-in wants to be installed.
> I assume this is Windows, when people dont' mention the OS it usually
> means that...
Yes, as far as I know there are no equivalents of this nonsense in Linux
and MacOS.
> I try to be OS agnostic (though I run open-source OS's whenever I can)
> but sheesh, you have to stop and ask yourself, is the above really worth
> it?
Again, only if you're lame. If you are disciplined then you should never
really have to go through the process. I've fixed a few computers so far
for people and one major part of the fix is to educate the owners about
navigating the Internet in a safe and sane manner.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Mon Sep 20 2004 - 20:19:28 BST