Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

sorry to get off trck J7, its strange that avg did not pick up anything............did you use the anti-malware version?

Johnnie.... you mean this folder "$VAULT$.AVG"?

i.e. the AVG quarantine area.....

If that's the case then AVG is moving the files there.... for a reason...

If you go to the AVG Virus Vault... does it show any "found" files??

Post the detected virus/trojan name and the location of the files

Will research it for you.

Suspect it's probably storing them in the hidden "System Restore" folder...

Do you know how to clear the System Restore area?

No,

It is putting them in a directory C://quarantine.


21 last night.

OK, that's the default McAffee area.

Are you running (have installed) AVG and McAffee at the same time Johnnie? What version of McAffee.

Can you start a command line process .... goto "start", "run".... type "msconfig".....click on the "Startup" tab

Can you post a list of the entries or a screen dump?

Last week, Microsoft made the Release Candidate (RC) test build of Vista Service Pack (SP) 1available to a private group of testers and will release it to the general public this week on December 10.

Microsoft made the Vista SP1 RC bits available on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet On Thursday December 6.
And as from the 10th, Microsoft plans to make the Vista SP1 RC build available to anyone interested in downloading it from the Microsoft Download site.

Even with the “release candidate” label, this is still a beta, so I can’t recommend SP1 yet unless you’re willing to assume the risks that come with beta software.

Vista SP1 includes security, performance and reliability updates. Microsoft is emphasizing that in spite of the security updates, Vista SP1 won’t break applications on anywhere near the scale that Windows XP Service Pack 2 did when it was released in 2004.

Microsoft has also managed to significantly shrink the size of the standalone installation packages for Vista SP! By between 37 - 58% depending on language packs. Microsoft has also cut back “significantly” the amount of disc space needed for SP1.

The size of the SP1 has been one of the major points of criticism by testers of the early builds of the service pack.

Microsoft is planning to make available, as it did with Windows XP SP2 and other Windows releases, a blocking tool that allows administrator to prevent Vista SP1 from being pushed onto users’ desktops before they have tested sufficiently the update.

Microsoft has said it is planning to deliver the final SP1 code in the first quarter of 2008.

Microsoft is promising some pretty hefty improvements for users who install SP1. — that Vista SP1 will:

Improve by 25 percent local file copying on the same disk on the same machine

Improve by 45 percent the speed of copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system

Speed up by 50 percent the rate of copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system

Improve the reading time for large images by roughly 50 percent

Improve the time to resume from standby for a “certain class” of USB hubs by about 18 percent

Improve the performance of user login on corporate PCs outside of the corporate environment so that it is comparable with login inside companies

What else will Vista SP1 fix? Microsoft is dangling these other SP1 improvements :

Reduction of the number of User Account Control (UAC) prompts from four to one when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location

Improvement of compatibility with third-party diagnostic tools that rely on raw sockets

Addition of a password hint during the initial set up of Vista SP1

Resolution of many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Vista, especially those involving Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player and a number of other drivers included with Vista.

Also included with SP1 is a significant backflip by Microsoft in regard to the default behaviour of the WGA code.

I'll address the performance issues and the WGA code in seperate posts below ....

But so far, the results I’m seeing are extremely encouraging.

When SP1 ships sometime in early 2008, it will strip away one of Vista’s most annoying features and remove one of the most persistent objections to Vista’s adoption.

Microsoft plans to remove the infamous “kill switch” from Windows Vista when SP1 is installed, restoring the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program to its original role as a series of persistent but non-lethal notifications:

Beginning with the final, released version of SP1 next year Microsoft plans to roll back WGA to its original format as a series of notifications that nudge and nag but don’t block access to any installed programs or Windows features.

Microsoft have always denied that this is a “kill switch” for Windows Vista, Technically, they’re right, I suppose. Switching a PC into a degraded functionality where all you can do is browse the Internet doesn’t kill it; but it’s arguably a near-death experience.

In current retail copies of Vista, there are dire consequences for failing to activate a retail copy of Windows Vista after 30 days or ignoring the three-day “grace period” when a system falls out of tolerance after too many hardware changes. When the timer runs out, the desktop turns black and its icons disappear and the Start menu vanishes.

You can copy your personal data files, but you can’t open them, and you’re granted the right to use Internet Explorer for one hour before being forcibly logged off.

After the installation of SP1, the penalty for ignoring these activation notices is … more activation notices.

The most annoying change is an Activate Now dialog box that forces you to wait 15 seconds before the matching Activate Later option is available to be clicked.

With SP1 installed, a Vista system that fails validation - one that Microsoft calls “non genuine” - will continue to work exactly as before. All programs will run, the Aero interface will keep its transparent window borders and whizzy effects, ReadyBoost will remain enabled, and there won’t be any time limit on your user session.

If your copy of Windows is flagged as ”non genuine,” you’ll have to deal with some minor annoyances: the desktop background is a solid black (the better to see the “non genuine” label in the desktop’s lower right corner). If you change your desktop to something less stark, a scheduled task will paint it black again one hour later, and you’ll see a small “Activate Now” alert in the same location, which you’re free to ignore.

Restrictions on Windows Update will remain unchanged. If your system is flagged as “non genuine,” you’ll still get critical security updates, but you’ll need to pass a WGA validation check before you can download optional updates and new, signed drivers.

But that’s it. Under the new system, you can run Vista indefinitely as long as you’re willing to put up with a few nag screens.

The new SP1-era WGA code is designed to detect two of the most common Vista cracks: one tries to fool Vista into thinking that it’s an OEM copy with a matching OEM BIOS; the other rolls the mandatory activation checks ahead to 2099 or some other ridiculously distant date.

Both the OEM BIOS and Clock Timer hacks are detected when SP1 is installed; the goal, according to Microsoft, is to alert innocent or naive consumers who’ve been ripped off by crooked system makers or who purchased hacked Vista copies from shady online vendors.

But even those known fakes will run indefinitely if you choose to ignore the messages.

If Microsoft’s decision to ditch the WGA kill switch in SP1 didn’t convince you, would you be interested in a tripling your network file transfer speeds?

OK, forget the reports you might have read about SP1 resulting in no performance boost.

In the real world, where gigabit network connections are now commonplace, you should see at least one huge improvement when transferring files over network connections.

In its original release, Vista had some design problems with its networking stack, resulting in slow file transfers, especially when connecting to computers running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Home Server (all three of these products share a great deal of their code base, including core networking components).

In Vista SP1, file transfer speeds are dramatically improved.

In this post, I’ll describe what I saw.

I did two sets of file-transfer tests using two separate systems configured to dual boot between Vista RTM and the new Vista SP1 release candidate.

The first group of files consisted of two large DVD images in ISO format, totalling 4.2 GB. The second group of files was a folder filled with more than 3,000 files of all types, in 299 subfolders, totalling roughly 6.5 GB.

For the first test, I transferred the two groups of files from a shared folder on a Windows Home Server to the two test systems running Windows Vista RTM, recording the total transfer time for each one.

Then I rebooted the two systems into an SP1 installation and repeated the test. I converted the times into throughput rates.

The file transfers under Vista SP1 were dramatically faster than the Vista RTM times. For the directory full of many small files, the throughput was more than 300%; for the large files, the speed was roughly 260%. Note that you can expect similar results when transferring files from Vista to systems running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

For the second set of tests, I performed transfers between the two machines running equivalent versions of Windows Vista: RTM to RTM, SP1 to SP1. Here, the results were less dramatic. For the folder full of small files, the throughput rate increased by about 50% under SP1, and the large files transferred slightly slower, although still faster than the transfer from Windows Home Server.

When I spoke with Microsoft about this phenomenon a few months ago, they explained that the issue was caused by a design change in Vista that eliminated the buffering used by XP and its siblings when transferring files over a network. Bypassing the cache read-aheads and deferred writes makes for better disk-to-disk performance and provides better control over how much data you’re pushing over the network, but the mismatch slowed down transfer speeds in Vista RTM. That’s been addressed effectively in SP1, as these results show.

Unfortunately, the other big Vista networking issue doesn’t appear to be addressed in SP1. If you run an application that uses the Multimedia Class Scheduler (such as Windows Media Player), you’ll continue to see a performance hit when transferring files over gigabit network connections.

But when I fired up Windows Media Player while a network file transfer was in operation I saw a sharp drop in throughput when the music began playing and then saw throughput pick back up when WMP was closed.

No news as yet on the anticipated release of XP SP3.

I know this is an oldie, but a goodie!
Please diregard if seen before....
Subject: GM vs. Microsoft

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would
all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh! would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive -- but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

Hahahahahahahahaha! How true!

I particularly like no.7

If Microsoft made vacuum cleaners, it would be the first time their product wouldn't suck!

Good one nico... sooo true.

Hi all.

I'm trying to to set up 'Mail washer' and I'm having problems. The program is running fine, I just can't tell it what it needs to know.

I'm trying to set it up manually 'cause though it can import settings from my 'e-mail client' I haven't got one set up 'cause I could never work out how to do that ether.

When I click 'set up accounts' then 'add' I get the options:

POP3
Hotmail
IMAL
AOL

Thats it. I want it to do my BigPond account. What do I do now?

So, am I correct that you've only been doing your mail via web-mail.... you don't have "Outlook" or "Outlook Express" configured?

If that's the case...

Start "Mailwasher".... go to "Tools".... select "Accounts".... select "Add" ....

See the picture below and just replace your username and password in the appropriate places

Yes, thats right. I think I can follow that.

I'm still trying to get through the initial instillation at the moment though, now it's asking for the name of my SMTP server? What is that?

EDIT: Sorry, just spotted it in the pic.