April Fools Worm.... ugg...

Who here remembers when the worlds computer systems were going to shut down on Jan 1 2000? Raise your hand... OK good. Now I am not going to say that the Conficker Worm is not real, but I am going to say that there is a whole lot of undo panic being raised for a Worm said to be first released in 2008 and set to deploy itself April 1st 2009. Microsoft released security patches months ago in expectation of this and anti-virus companies have already released tools to clean your system of any dormant Conficker strains.

The Conficker worm will embed itself deep and is difficult to track and if not removed it will recieve silent updates on how to mutate and evolve to get around patches and anti-virus programs. One thing it for sure will do is disable Windows Automatic Updates and remove Restore Points saved by Windows. It is also what experts are calling a "new age" threat where as viruses and worms of old used to destroy data and/or render a PC useless, the Confickers purpose is believed to install programs on your PC that will SPAM out to everyone in your contacts, it may also steal your identity.

You should only be worried about the Conficker if you have not recieved any Windows Updates in more than 1 month. If you believe you have been infected you can download a removal tool from Symantec here.

So let us sit back and hope for a day when they catch these basement dwelling bottom feeders who have nothing better to do than concoct these nuisances and stone them in the streets!

Creative ZEN X-Fi Wireless MP3 Player

I recently purchased the Creative Zen X-Fi MP3 player because my Creative Zen Vision W was just too bulky to use as a go anywhere player.

The X-Fi is very sleek at 3.3" wide and 2.2" tall with a thickness of .5". I purchased the 32GB model with built in Wi-Fi capability. I have been very pleased with the X-Fi's sound quality it is unsurpassed by any other player I have listened to. The Creative software that comes with the X-Fi is very easy to use with drag and drop similar to iTunes. I did have problems trying to use Windows Media Player 11 to sync with the X-Fi, if I tried to remove too many files from the player through Media Player it would freeze up the player. This problem was not present when I would use either the Creative software or just browsing the device in windows explorer. The player has a built in FM Tuner and the ability to record FM Radio. It also plays MPG, WMV, and DiVX formatted video files, the software comes with a video converter that will convert any video to be compatible with your player.

I was able to attach to my home wireless network in seconds with the device and it does a search for Creative compatible Media Servers, and it just so happens that my Iomega StorageNAS where I store all my music is compatible and was recognized as a device I could browse and add music to the X-Fi from. You can also install Creatives Media Server software on any PC you want the X-Fi to recognize.

The only con that I can see with the device is that all the buttons do not light up so you have to be able to feel your way around the buttons in a low-light situation.

The X-Fi comes in 3 storage capacities; 8GB,16GB, and 32GB. The 16GB and 32GB are the only ones that the Wi-Fi is available on.

Digeste.dll is not a valid windows image

The inital complaint was that this message popped up when the machine booted into Windows XP, and once they clicked OK on the box the desktop was blank and they could only push the power button to shut off the computer.

When I fired up the PC I booted directly into Safe-Mode first and noticed that explorer.exe kept crashing and restarting, so I knew I was dealing with a virus. I booted to the desktop and saw the message about digeste.dll was actually in a window titled "dwwin.exe Bad Image". Explorer still kept crashing and eventually didn't restart itself. I could manually start it by opening task manger and starting it in a new task. But it would just start the crasing and restarting all over again. I opened a command prompt and did a regsvr32 /u digeste.dll in c:\windows\system32 - I then deleted digeste.dll. Upon reboot I was able to use Webroots SpySweeper that was already installed on the system to run a full system scan and remove all other infections. I then installed AVG anti-virus as the system did not have any anti-virus software installed. A scan of the registry and HiJack came back clean. Problem solved.

Antivirus 2009 and other malware!

I began working on a computer where the owner was complaining of "pop-ups" and not being able to browse the web.

The computer is a Gateway running Windows Vista. I logged in to the Administrator account and got to the desktop, before I could do anything else about 9 "Windows Security" pop-ups came up telling me to download various removal tools. Most of them were recommending I download Antivirus 2009. Then I noticed the owner must have already taken the advice because Antivirus 2009 was running in the background asking to run a complete scan.

Antivirus 2009 is Malware, or software designed to infiltrate and damage a computer. One of the best removal tools for Antivirus 2009 is Malwarebytes Anti-Malware software. Upon searching for this software from the computers web browser I discovered another problem. The go.yahoo.com / go.google.com virus. This virus prevents you from actually going to any website by redirecting you to an unlimited amount of search websites. I downloaded Malwarebytes on my laptop and transferred it to my flash drive and then installed my flash drive in the computer. When I tried to run the mbam-setup.exe file it wouldn't run, which is another symptom of Antivirus 2009, it blocks the installation of things that can kill it. A simple work around for this was to rename the .exe file and then it allowed the install to happen. After installing I rebooted into safe mode (this is accomplished by hitting F5 or F8 during the boot process before the Vista splash screen comes up) I then ran a Quick Scan which completely cleaned the Antivirus 2009 off the system, but upon reboot into normal mode I discovered that the go.google.com virus was still present, so I disconnected the ethernet connection and rebooted into safe mode again and ran a Complete Scan with Malwarebytes, this found 8 more infections in which it cleaned, and upon reboot I ran another Complete Scan in normal mode and it found 5 more infections which required a reboot to clean. When it came back up everything seemed to be working great.

I always run HiJackThis on all systems I am working on just to make sure that no malicious Browser Helper Objects (BHO) are left behind that will continue to allow malware / spyware to be installed. The HiJackThis log looked pretty clean, but I removed a few toolbars and search assistants that only slow the functionality of Internet Explorer down. After a final reboot the system was running smoothly with no further infections showing up in either Malwarebytes or Windows Defender. They were using an expired version of McAfee so I uninstalled this and installed AVG Free Anti-Virus and updated it. A complete scan from it reported no infections / problems. All in all it took around 4 hours to remove all infections, but most of that was time spent performing the scans which doesn't require direct intervention so I was able to do other things while they ran.

There are also manual removal methods for the Antivirus 2009 software which involves booting into safemode and killing certain processes (av2009.exe, etc.) and then deleting registry keys and deleting all files related to Antivirus 2009, but I find using software not only does the trick but also removes items you may not know was infecting the system.

First off let me say welcome to my new blog. I created this blog because I wanted a blog that I could use to discuss my interest in all things tech.
Now on with the show. I just built a new PC for The Pinnells, they had a Dell XPS 400 and the motherboard went south. We decided on a budget of around $700 just for the tower because they had everything else already.

I began shopping around and I chose to buy from www.zipzoomfly.com because I have had great success from their service department in the past and also they have lightning fast shipping for cheap. Tigerdirect.com has some good deals on bare bones systems, but I really like being able to choose all aspects of the build. With a budget of $700 I decided to not go to expensive on the case, but I didn't want anything to flimsy either, so I decided to see what Cooler Master had to offer. I decided to go with the Cooler Master Centurion 5 case which I found for $55.

I decided to go with a Intel processor on this build because quite frankly their Quad Core processor line really out does AMD by leaps and bounds. So I chose the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33Ghz processor for $195. With memory prices as cheap as they are now I decided to just max out the system (he wanted WinXP 32bit installed) and put 4GB in it. I found a killer deal on Corsair XMS2 4GB Kit for $55. They didn't really have alot of PCI cards in the old system that they ever used and didn't plan on expanding the system much anyways so I saved money by choosing a economical motherboard, the MSI G31M3L for $43 is a small board for the big Cooler Master case, but it will get the job done. They don't game much, but he does use AutoCAD, but on the $700 budget a Quatro or similar card is pretty much out of the question, but I figured a card with alot of memory on board should fit the bill just fine, so I chose a ASUS GeForce9400GT with 1GB DDR2 on board for $80. Hard drives have come down in price so much I decided to go with a 2 hard drive setup, one for the OS and applications and another for storage of music, videos, etc. I chose a Seagate 250GB SATA II 7200RPM drive for the OS and a Seagate 1TB SATA II 7200RPM 32MB Buffer for storage both drives came to $160. I figured a 500W power supply should power this rig fine, but had limited cashflow left so I wasn't able to go with a detachable cable power supply but I found a nice OCZ 500SXS power supply for $60.

I really liked the simplicity of the Cooler Master case and its tool-less design. The Intel processor runs lightning fast and overall the system is extremely quiet. I deliver the system tomorrow and hope The Pinnells will be happy with it.