Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
June 27, 2005
Volume 1, Number 2 -- Monday, June 27, 2005
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
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3. Was it a premonition or just coincidence?
The day after I drafted the above section about not having a Windows CDROM or recovery CDROMs, I got a call from a friend. Unfortunately, he had experienced the thrill of destructive software, probably multiple viruses and adware. The signs were bad -- antivirus program installed but not running, firewall disabled, occasional warnings from the AV program's monitoring routine that it couldn't confirm the integrity of the antivirus programs, AOL starting up automatically when he booted, missing "All Programs" from the Start button, no software in "Add/Remove Programs", unable to edit, add or change users, browser hijackers infecting Internet Explorer, and multiple strange programs starting automatically.
There was also something I hadn't seen before -- the recovery partition that HP had put on the machine was visible as a "drive" while he was in Windows (it is supposed to be hidden). The bad guys had apparently edited the hard drive's partition table some time so that, on subsequent reboots, the hidden recovery partition was no longer hidden and no longer protected from changes. The bottom line was that his best option was to copy his data to another physical hard drive (he had two) and then use the recovery partition to restore his hard drive to the original condition.
You can probably guess what happened when we tried to boot into the recovery partition - it was corrupted, too. I left him with instructions to call HP for recovery CDROMs so he could get back in operation.
If you don't have original Windows CDROMs or Recovery CDROMs, get them, because you will need them eventually. Whether it is a software problem, a hard drive problem or just wanting to use a bigger hard drive, the CDROMs are a necessary backup for you. At best, without them you will be down until you can get them. At worst, you may no longer be able to get them.
Followup: HP came through with flying colors. He called on Wednesday and had the restore CDROMS in his hands on Saturday. His recovery options are a full, blow it all away recovery and a partial recovery which should save his data. Since he's copied his data to another drive and to make sure that all the nasties are gone, he's going to do the full recovery.
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4. LINUX FOR WINDOWS USERS
As I upgraded my Xandros installation on my dual-boot notebook (it runs Windows XP Pro and Xandros), I was struck by some of the really neat programs included in Xandros. First, this is the only distribution that I know has the ability to play an MPEG-2 (also known as .mpg or .vob) file - the file format used by DVD's. It is also the file format used by my home theater PC for recording television shows so I can watch them later. Viewing an MPEG file was as simple as double-clicking on the file to start up the viewer program.
Another neat program, included in the default installation, is an desktop planetarium program called KStars. With this program, you tell the program where you are -- city, state, country or lattitude and longitude. The program draws the sky that you would see and allows you to rotate it, zoom, display stars, solar system objects, nebulae, constellations and more at your control. You can also move backwards and forwards through time to see how the sky would look. When you right-click on an object in the sky, you can pull information on it and pictures of it from the Internet.
Sure there are Windows equivalents, but I don't know of any that are this quality and free. This was a very pleasant surprise in a "Desktop" operating system. Not only are there numerous free programs and suites to do almost anything you do in Windows, but there are fun things like this, too.
Xandros, of course, offers even better versions of their Xandros Desktop, including a standard, deluxe and business versions of the desktop and also a business server version. All these can be ordered directly from Xandros.
Continued in Part 3
Volume 1, Number 2 -- Monday, June 27, 2005
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Copyright © 2005 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.
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