Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 05:24 PM 25/05/2010, Anthony Q. Martin wrote: No, I don't know a better way...but I have tried myself for basically the same reasons. I got the notion that if they were easily disabled, then that would represent an attack option by viruses trying to get by...don't know if that is true or not. I think you're right. It'd be nice if they offered an easy way to disable, but I guess then users would be disabling them all the time. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 06:15 PM 25/05/2010, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: Can't you boot in safe-mode with network support? Also most of the BootCD utilities (hirens, etc) have network support and a bootable mini-XP to run other windows utilities off USB key or similar. Safe mode works, but file access is slower, and I'm trying to accelerating scan times. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 06:30 PM 25/05/2010, DSinc wrote: Thane, I mean no disrespect here, but perhaps you were not as agressive w/NOD32 as back 4yrs ago when you scared me into the ESET Oblivion! I walked away from all things Norton in 1998; I've lived well without since. :) Duncan, I hate Norton too, but I can't control the clients who come into the shop. :) So I get to see and play with all the AVs. It's great fun. :O T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 06:45 PM 25/05/2010, Mesdaq, Ali wrote: It's probably because there is a TDI or NDIS driver installed as a shim between the network driver and the OS being used to filter traffic. Turning the service off probably just stops the driver from forwarding traffic. It's been a while since I worked on drivers but there should be some manual ways to get around this depending on how much the AV is watching for modifications. One easy thing you could try is stop the services like you did then go to device manager then in the view menu select show hidden devices. There should be a new list of non-plug and play drivers. You can try to figure out which ones are linked to the AV by name then confirm it by opening up the driver properties then click on the drivers tab and the driver details button. Once you have confirmed it you can stop the driver. See if that works. If not then you might need to look at some of the tools published by the driver development community that help in disabling and unloading drivers. Thanks Ali, I'll give this a try. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 07:25 PM 25/05/2010, Christopher Fisk wrote: Yank drive: Plug in USB HDD converter (I have one that does SATA, IDE and Laptop IDE size plug in one) and scan in a known clean machine. That way you can have a known clean system doing the scan and won't have to worry that a rootkit is hiding itself. I do a variant of this myself, but then I do a secondary scan inside the actual OS to deal with registry entries and so that programs like Malwarebytes will work more reliably (MWB) requires the OS to be live to best scanning, according to the writers.) I've run into virus's recently that usurp winlogon in win.ini as well as the explorer.exe shell in the registry. Oh that happens all the time these days. I have that fix pretty much automated now. Hell, once recently even replaced the keyboard driver. Once a machine is infected it is faster just to yank the drive and scan it externally to a known good machine. Have you tried using an MD5 hash on the files in the Windows folder and subfolders and compared it to a known good hash to try to find infections? I've been playing with that. I never trust a virus scan run on a machine that is already infected. I do run a Malware scan once I get the machine cleared of virus's on another machine to finalize the registry portion of the scan. You're absolutely right on this. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 11:54 PM 25/05/2010, maccrawj wrote: Any reason not to just scan with the customer drive attached to a bench machine as a data volume bypass the OS completely? I've come to the conclusion that scanning with a host OS of unknown state is just not reliable anyway. Yes, and I do that as well as my first pass. Imaging the system, a good preventative measure anyway, then uninstalling the AV is another idea. That's an idea - but I'm working on time saving measures here, so imaging might add too much time to what I'm doing. Safemode comes to mind though it disables so much I am not sure it's a viable solution. I do some scanning in safe mode, but I find it's bloody slow. BTW, on a seperate topic, what do the guys on the list who charge for disinfecting computers charge these days to disinfect a machine, and about how long is taking you? I'm charging $47 and it takes about 24 hours. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 11:57 PM 25/05/2010, maccrawj wrote: Yeah, now that I think about it didn't we all discuss this AV scanner machine w/ USB-IDE/SATA converter idea a few years ago? I've always found the performance hit with USB to be a pain. Possibly with eSATA that would be resolved. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
Hello Thane, Wednesday, May 26, 2010, 6:36:20 AM, you wrote: BTW, on a seperate topic, what do the guys on the list who charge for disinfecting computers charge these days to disinfect a machine, and about how long is taking you? I'm charging $47 and it takes about 24 hours. I use a clean system to scan infected systems. Yank drive and go. Takes me about 3 days to a week in real time. Actual time in front of the system is around 3 hours. Depends on HDD speed, amount of data and type of data (lots of archives suck). Charge no less then 100. Check out others around you. Geek Squad charges around 200, IIRC. My local ISP sends out tech support drones for 120. Not nearly as thorough - sounds like they are 'recovery disk wizards' mainly. -- Regards, joeuser - Still looking for the 'any' key... ...now these points of data make a beautiful line...
Re: [H] AV disabling question
On Wed, 26 May 2010, Thane Sherrington wrote: Have you tried using an MD5 hash on the files in the Windows folder and subfolders and compared it to a known good hash to try to find infections? I've been playing with that. Nope, so far I've been pretty lucky by sorting by date changed and seeing if files show up with modified dates that don't make sense. Allows a quick visual infection scan in the various folders that hold dll, exe and sys files. Christopher Fisk -- Jayne: Go hwong-tong [Enough of this nonsense]. No trouble now, little crazy person... we're going for a nice shuttle ride... --Serenity
Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 09:39 AM 26/05/2010, Christopher Fisk wrote: On Wed, 26 May 2010, Thane Sherrington wrote: Have you tried using an MD5 hash on the files in the Windows folder and subfolders and compared it to a known good hash to try to find infections? I've been playing with that. Nope, so far I've been pretty lucky by sorting by date changed and seeing if files show up with modified dates that don't make sense. Allows a quick visual infection scan in the various folders that hold dll, exe and sys files. That's not a bad idea either. I should automate something like that in my system. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
On Wed, 26 May 2010, Thane Sherrington wrote: At 11:54 PM 25/05/2010, maccrawj wrote: Any reason not to just scan with the customer drive attached to a bench machine as a data volume bypass the OS completely? I've come to the conclusion that scanning with a host OS of unknown state is just not reliable anyway. Yes, and I do that as well as my first pass. Imaging the system, a good preventative measure anyway, then uninstalling the AV is another idea. That's an idea - but I'm working on time saving measures here, so imaging might add too much time to what I'm doing. Imaging is a very good policy. I don't do it for all my customers, but I have been seriously considering starting. I had a duh! moment earlier when I read your message about USB being slow and eSATA being an option. Part of the reason we don't image is due to the relative slowness of USB. May as well toss an eSATA port in the machine, we have plenty of USB enclosures that support eSATA. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112 Allows quick plug and unplug of both 3.5 and 2.5 inch drives. If using both drives on the eSATA port your eSATA on your computer needs to support port multiplication. Safemode comes to mind though it disables so much I am not sure it's a viable solution. I do some scanning in safe mode, but I find it's bloody slow. BTW, on a seperate topic, what do the guys on the list who charge for disinfecting computers charge these days to disinfect a machine, and about how long is taking you? I'm charging $47 and it takes about 24 hours. We service businesses only and charge keyboard time for any cleanups. generally $170 for a cleanup for business customers. We have prior relationships for them. Actual employee time for the cleanup is about 2 hours, but due to the nature of the cleanups we try to finish within 24 hours as well. At $47 you better be getting a lot of volume... Might want to try to value add to that. bump the price to $75 and you install a free antivirus and zonealarm free, Foxit, 7zip, vlc media player, etc. Always always give them a quote on upgrading their memory if they need memory, as we all know it is the cheapest upgrade you can do for an immediate speed increase. Christopher Fisk -- Jayne: Go hwong-tong [Enough of this nonsense]. No trouble now, little crazy person... we're going for a nice shuttle ride... --Serenity
Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 09:36 AM 26/05/2010, Joe User wrote: Takes me about 3 days to a week in real time. Actual time in front of the system is around 3 hours. Depends on HDD speed, amount of data and type of data (lots of archives suck). Charge no less then 100. Check out others around you. Geek Squad charges around 200, IIRC. My local ISP sends out tech support drones for 120. Not nearly as thorough - sounds like they are 'recovery disk wizards' mainly. Yeah, I think I'm way under priced. I actually had a machine in two weeks ago that had been to another small shop, then Staples (both of whom had cleaned the computer of infections.) IE still didn't work. I removed another 57 infections. Fixed the IE issues (hijacked DNS and fake proxy) and had them working. Clearly I need to charge more. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
At 09:58 AM 26/05/2010, Christopher Fisk wrote: Imaging is a very good policy. I don't do it for all my customers, but I have been seriously considering starting. I had a duh! moment earlier when I read your message about USB being slow and eSATA being an option. Part of the reason we don't image is due to the relative slowness of USB. May as well toss an eSATA port in the machine, we have plenty of USB enclosures that support eSATA. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112 Allows quick plug and unplug of both 3.5 and 2.5 inch drives. If using both drives on the eSATA port your eSATA on your computer needs to support port multiplication. Yeah, with eSATA, I should be able to do imaging as well (at least as an upcharge option.) We service businesses only and charge keyboard time for any cleanups. generally $170 for a cleanup for business customers. We have prior relationships for them. Actual employee time for the cleanup is about 2 hours, but due to the nature of the cleanups we try to finish within 24 hours as well. At $47 you better be getting a lot of volume... Might want to try to value add to that. bump the price to $75 and you install a free antivirus and zonealarm free, Foxit, 7zip, vlc media player, etc. Always always give them a quote on upgrading their memory if they need memory, as we all know it is the cheapest upgrade you can do for an immediate speed increase. All good points. I'm definitely raising prices here. For $170, what do your clients get? (feel free to back channel if you prefer, since this is a public list.) T
[H] Most annoying Office bug ever (track changes)
This is driving me nuts. At some point in the last few weeks, my copy of Word 2007 has decided that every time I open a Word document, it will turn on track changes and set the view to final. This is incredibly annoying, since it means I have to go in and change those settings so I can actually tell if people made changes or comments in a document. I've tried deleting my normal word template and completly uninstalling/reinstalling Office to no avail. Googling seems to turn out a lot of stuff about track changes but nothing with regard to this issue. Any suggestions on how I can fix this before I tear my hair out? --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US
Re: [H] AV disabling question
On Wed, 26 May 2010, Thane Sherrington wrote: Yeah, with eSATA, I should be able to do imaging as well (at least as an upcharge option.) I do imaging as a CYA for myself, not for the customer. I can then go back to the image and retrieve data if something gets deleted that they needed (Some people store crap in the recycle bin and other stupid places) Always always give them a quote on upgrading their memory if they need memory, as we all know it is the cheapest upgrade you can do for an immediate speed increase. All good points. I'm definitely raising prices here. For $170, what do your clients get? (feel free to back channel if you prefer, since this is a public list.) We don't charge a set price. $85/hour and we charge however long we are at the keyboard of the machine. First off we clean the virus. Yank drive, scan, fix TCP/IP as needed, etc. What they get is a machine that has the junk uninstalled. Dell solution Center? Gone. Trial versions of NIS, trial version of X, trial version of Y, etc. Gone. Lots of different codec packs installed? Uninstalled and VLC put on machine. 5 different versions of malware removal programs installed? Gone. Install Malwarebytes. Upgrade Flash Player, Adobe Player, etc. If it is a personal computer I generally recommend they get rid of whatever AV they have, even if they just bought it and have them install Avast. I show them how to do the registration once the year is up. Windows updates and office updates installed. PDF Creator installed Create optimal pagefile. 512MB of memory? HIGHLY recommend that they upgrade to whatever the max their mobo will take, or 4GB if only 32bit OS. If the machine is used for family photo's I talk to them about picasa. I have not seen a better program for managing your photo's. One of the most important things I try to do (and this is kinda on the sales side) is whenever I point out something I recommend they upgrade I also point out something that I think is ok with the system. If they only have 512MB of memory, I'll recommend that they upgrade the system memory to whatever, but at the same time I will say It looks like your hard drive is only 50% full (Or whatever) so there is no need to upgrade that. By telling them both what they need and what they don't need people will be more inclined to believe you, whereas if you just tell them what they should upgrade they are more cynical, thinking you're trying to make them spend more money and they're more likely to decline. Yes, you're trying to get them to spend more, but only because they really should get what you're recommending. Point out the options for free AV, etc and they'll see the value you're giving them. Christopher Fisk -- You are not my son! -- Homer Simpson, Boy-Scoutz n the Hood
Re: [H] Most annoying Office bug ever (track changes)
On Wed, 26 May 2010, Brian Weeden wrote: This is driving me nuts. At some point in the last few weeks, my copy of Word 2007 has decided that every time I open a Word document, it will turn on track changes and set the view to final. This is incredibly annoying, since it means I have to go in and change those settings so I can actually tell if people made changes or comments in a document. I've tried deleting my normal word template and completly uninstalling/reinstalling Office to no avail. Googling seems to turn out a lot of stuff about track changes but nothing with regard to this issue. Any suggestions on how I can fix this before I tear my hair out? Do you have a roaming profile that could be overwriting the changes you're making to the normal.dot? Christopher Fisk
Re: [H] Most annoying Office bug ever (track changes)
Not that I know of. When I open a document and it does this, if I go into the Word Options, Trust Center, and Privacy Settings, the box for make hidden markup visible when opening or saving is checked. So somehow Word is ignoring its own options. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Christopher Fisk chr...@mhonline.netwrote: On Wed, 26 May 2010, Brian Weeden wrote: This is driving me nuts. At some point in the last few weeks, my copy of Word 2007 has decided that every time I open a Word document, it will turn on track changes and set the view to final. This is incredibly annoying, since it means I have to go in and change those settings so I can actually tell if people made changes or comments in a document. I've tried deleting my normal word template and completly uninstalling/reinstalling Office to no avail. Googling seems to turn out a lot of stuff about track changes but nothing with regard to this issue. Any suggestions on how I can fix this before I tear my hair out? Do you have a roaming profile that could be overwriting the changes you're making to the normal.dot? Christopher Fisk
[H] SSE Firefox?
Ok, this version of Firefox is optimized for SSE? http://www.binaryturf.com/free-software/blazing-fast-firefox-optimized-distributions/ Has anyone tried this? Is it actually faster? T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
Hello Thane, Wednesday, May 26, 2010, 9:00:01 AM, you wrote: Yeah, I think I'm way under priced. I actually had a machine in two weeks ago that had been to another small shop, then Staples (both of whom had cleaned the computer of infections.) IE still didn't work. I removed another 57 infections. Fixed the IE issues (hijacked DNS and fake proxy) and had them working. Clearly I need to charge more. People get what they pay for, if they call me and say 'so and so' will do it for less, I say to them, fine, I will do what 'so and so' does for the same price and then do a 'so and so' level job and recover it. So don't just raise your price - just offer more options to keep up with the scrubs and yet offer that know-how that we have to the people that understand how to spend money. -- Regards, joeuser - Still looking for the 'any' key... ...now these points of data make a beautiful line...
Re: [H] AV disabling question
Hello Thane, Wednesday, May 26, 2010, 9:01:39 AM, you wrote: Might want to try to value add to that. bump the price to $75 and you install a free antivirus and zonealarm free, Foxit, 7zip, vlc media player, etc. I would advise against installing any security solutions. I try not to even offer suggestions. At the end of the day, if you said to use it or installed it, when it fails... it's YOU that failed. Let them deal with that or if you must then make sure you qualify that no security solution is perfect. -- Regards, joeuser - Still looking for the 'any' key... ...now these points of data make a beautiful line...
Re: [H] SSE Firefox?
I'm pretty sure that AMD and Intel both support SSE and SSE2 extensions so what optimization is dude referring to? I'm skeptical there is any speed difference that Mozilla hasn't already taken advantage of. Have you downloaded and tried for yourself? On Wed, 26 May 2010 14:41:49 -0500, Thane Sherrington th...@computerconnectionltd.com wrote: Ok, this version of Firefox is optimized for SSE? http://www.binaryturf.com/free-software/blazing-fast-firefox-optimized-distributions/ Has anyone tried this? Is it actually faster? T -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Re: [H] SSE Firefox?
At 05:10 PM 26/05/2010, Scoobydo wrote: I'm pretty sure that AMD and Intel both support SSE and SSE2 extensions so what optimization is dude referring to? I'm skeptical there is any speed difference that Mozilla hasn't already taken advantage of. Have you downloaded and tried for yourself? I'll put it on a test machine tomorrow and run Peacemaker on it. T
Re: [H] Most annoying Office bug ever (track changes)
do u right click and run as administrator ? Maybe ? Just a thought. hate word 07 wonder if 10 is any better fp At 11:32 AM 5/26/2010, Brian Weeden Poked the stick with: Not that I know of. When I open a document and it does this, if I go into the Word Options, Trust Center, and Privacy Settings, the box for make hidden markup visible when opening or saving is checked. So somehow Word is ignoring its own options. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Christopher Fisk chr...@mhonline.netwrote: On Wed, 26 May 2010, Brian Weeden wrote: This is driving me nuts. At some point in the last few weeks, my copy of Word 2007 has decided that every time I open a Word document, it will turn on track changes and set the view to final. This is incredibly annoying, since it means I have to go in and change those settings so I can actually tell if people made changes or comments in a document. I've tried deleting my normal word template and completly uninstalling/reinstalling Office to no avail. Googling seems to turn out a lot of stuff about track changes but nothing with regard to this issue. Any suggestions on how I can fix this before I tear my hair out? Do you have a roaming profile that could be overwriting the changes you're making to the normal.dot? Christopher Fisk __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5148 (20100526) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com -- Tallyho ! ]:8) Taglines below ! -- Marijuana, nature's way of saying Hi!
Re: [H] AV disabling question
The Rosewill bridge I have came with it's own PSU can be attached w/o removing the drive, very nice. I'm writing a powershell script to get file details, launch md5deep to calc the md5, and then store the results in CSV file to have a DB for this type of testing. There are some degree of checksum databases available from the government sites but they lack file details like path, date version. The most common use for the government DB seems to excluding known files from an image for forensics. Foreign registry .dat's can easily be mounted on a test system, negating the need to test on a suspect box IMHO. On 5/26/2010 4:34 AM, Thane Sherrington wrote: At 07:25 PM 25/05/2010, Christopher Fisk wrote: Yank drive: Plug in USB HDD converter (I have one that does SATA, IDE and Laptop IDE size plug in one) and scan in a known clean machine. That way you can have a known clean system doing the scan and won't have to worry that a rootkit is hiding itself. I do a variant of this myself, but then I do a secondary scan inside the actual OS to deal with registry entries and so that programs like Malwarebytes will work more reliably (MWB) requires the OS to be live to best scanning, according to the writers.) I've run into virus's recently that usurp winlogon in win.ini as well as the explorer.exe shell in the registry. Oh that happens all the time these days. I have that fix pretty much automated now. Hell, once recently even replaced the keyboard driver. Once a machine is infected it is faster just to yank the drive and scan it externally to a known good machine. Have you tried using an MD5 hash on the files in the Windows folder and subfolders and compared it to a known good hash to try to find infections? I've been playing with that. I never trust a virus scan run on a machine that is already infected. I do run a Malware scan once I get the machine cleared of virus's on another machine to finalize the registry portion of the scan. You're absolutely right on this. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
Imaging is not so long that I fret it if I can take the box offsite backup without needing compression. Good ass-protector anyways against repairs that break more than they fix, LOL! Likely I'd charge $50 to do a backup/restore of (all) My Documents folder(s) and a full OS reinstall+updates assuming I can have the machine offsite for a few days. More obviously if I have to stay onsite. It's just not worth the hassle once an infection is found to do surgery and not be able to certify there's no undetected malware lingering. Added bonus we all know: a reinstalled machine runs faster! Time wise it's a few hours of hands on and a few more letting updates install. Insult to injury, most of the people here are too rural for more than dial up, satellite sucks, so bringing a box back to home base where I got 9Mb cable is just more expedient. Now if I could just get enough exposure to get a customer base show 'em I'm cheaper and better than the store front shops + Geek Squad... ;) On 5/26/2010 4:36 AM, Thane Sherrington wrote: At 11:54 PM 25/05/2010, maccrawj wrote: Any reason not to just scan with the customer drive attached to a bench machine as a data volume bypass the OS completely? I've come to the conclusion that scanning with a host OS of unknown state is just not reliable anyway. Yes, and I do that as well as my first pass. Imaging the system, a good preventative measure anyway, then uninstalling the AV is another idea. That's an idea - but I'm working on time saving measures here, so imaging might add too much time to what I'm doing. Safemode comes to mind though it disables so much I am not sure it's a viable solution. I do some scanning in safe mode, but I find it's bloody slow. BTW, on a seperate topic, what do the guys on the list who charge for disinfecting computers charge these days to disinfect a machine, and about how long is taking you? I'm charging $47 and it takes about 24 hours. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
This I can relate to, eSATA would def. be better as would USB 3.0 I think. On 5/26/2010 4:37 AM, Thane Sherrington wrote: At 11:57 PM 25/05/2010, maccrawj wrote: Yeah, now that I think about it didn't we all discuss this AV scanner machine w/ USB-IDE/SATA converter idea a few years ago? I've always found the performance hit with USB to be a pain. Possibly with eSATA that would be resolved. T
Re: [H] AV disabling question
This is my understanding also. GS has a flat rate for onsite plus they charge to backup, never mind restore, your data. Haven't looked recently but GS had their rates spelled out on their site last time I checked. On 5/26/2010 5:36 AM, Joe User wrote: Check out others around you. Geek Squad charges around 200, IIRC. My local ISP sends out tech support drones for 120. Not nearly as thorough - sounds like they are 'recovery disk wizards' mainly.
Re: [H] AV disabling question
Those plug 'n go's do the job if you're gonna pull, still I rather own something I can use myself when not working: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198003 Mine came with second tray for free so if forced to, I use it for repairs. Still amazes me how ATX cheap cases are and how expensive dumb multi-bay drive enclosures are never mind the smart stuff like Drobo. On 5/26/2010 5:58 AM, Christopher Fisk wrote: On Wed, 26 May 2010, Thane Sherrington wrote: At 11:54 PM 25/05/2010, maccrawj wrote: Any reason not to just scan with the customer drive attached to a bench machine as a data volume bypass the OS completely? I've come to the conclusion that scanning with a host OS of unknown state is just not reliable anyway. Yes, and I do that as well as my first pass. Imaging the system, a good preventative measure anyway, then uninstalling the AV is another idea. That's an idea - but I'm working on time saving measures here, so imaging might add too much time to what I'm doing. Imaging is a very good policy. I don't do it for all my customers, but I have been seriously considering starting. I had a duh! moment earlier when I read your message about USB being slow and eSATA being an option. Part of the reason we don't image is due to the relative slowness of USB. May as well toss an eSATA port in the machine, we have plenty of USB enclosures that support eSATA. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112 Allows quick plug and unplug of both 3.5 and 2.5 inch drives. If using both drives on the eSATA port your eSATA on your computer needs to support port multiplication. Safemode comes to mind though it disables so much I am not sure it's a viable solution. I do some scanning in safe mode, but I find it's bloody slow. BTW, on a seperate topic, what do the guys on the list who charge for disinfecting computers charge these days to disinfect a machine, and about how long is taking you? I'm charging $47 and it takes about 24 hours. We service businesses only and charge keyboard time for any cleanups. generally $170 for a cleanup for business customers. We have prior relationships for them. Actual employee time for the cleanup is about 2 hours, but due to the nature of the cleanups we try to finish within 24 hours as well. At $47 you better be getting a lot of volume... Might want to try to value add to that. bump the price to $75 and you install a free antivirus and zonealarm free, Foxit, 7zip, vlc media player, etc. Always always give them a quote on upgrading their memory if they need memory, as we all know it is the cheapest upgrade you can do for an immediate speed increase. Christopher Fisk
[H] Catalyst 10.5 released today..
Grab em while their hot.. -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Re: [H] AV disabling question
All great services suggestions, should create customer loyalty. Ha! Meanwhile it seems generally customer's will shell out $100's to GS to not even fix a problem but tend to hesitate when given the honest offer of truly needed options upgrades to prevent problems from returning or keeping a machine running properly even at a cheaper price. The human animal is a paradox! Though once they take the chance to trust you deliver, that's a customer for life from my experience. Good AV that doesn't FORCE paying a fee each year is a rarity that stops me from recommending AV solutions in an age when most can get a mediocre one from the ISP for free. AVG free had my vote until I figured out how much it affects HDD throughput. SAVCE 10.x in the right flavor never enforced the 1yr thing which meant staying protected. That outweighs the annual cost to comply with EULA when choosing a product since users are notorious for letting subscriptions expire thinking they are still protected but are willing to pay up at some point. OMG, the 512MB or less to 1GB upgrade is so night day it's not funny! My sales pitch is always is the HDD light on constantly? Bet you a free service call that's low RAM! and I never had to give a free on yet. XP leaves 100MB free on a 512MB system and swaps near constantly. Do you remember when 24MB was the sweet spot for 9x back in the day when systems commonly shipped with 8MB or less? =) On 5/26/2010 11:22 AM, Christopher Fisk wrote: One of the most important things I try to do (and this is kinda on the sales side) is whenever I point out something I recommend they upgrade I also point out something that I think is ok with the system. If they only have 512MB of memory, I'll recommend that they upgrade the system memory to whatever, but at the same time I will say It looks like your hard drive is only 50% full (Or whatever) so there is no need to upgrade that. By telling them both what they need and what they don't need people will be more inclined to believe you, whereas if you just tell them what they should upgrade they are more cynical, thinking you're trying to make them spend more money and they're more likely to decline. Yes, you're trying to get them to spend more, but only because they really should get what you're recommending. Point out the options for free AV, etc and they'll see the value you're giving them.
Re: [H] SSE Firefox?
Bigger question is will it help with the crushing load of Flash? hehe...
Re: [H] Most annoying Office bug ever (track changes)
XP was the last not to bloated version IMO. Assume you do not have the issue with new blank document? Found this with Google: That will happen as long as the document contains tracked changes. It's basically there to protect you--to prevent you from thinking you can send the document to someone without their being able to see the tracked changes. The current behavior is based on an earlier Word version (pre-Word 2003, I think) in which the on/off display of tracked changes was remembered per document, and people were sending clients changes (sometimes containing embarrassing comments) without being aware. So... to keep them from reappearing each time, you'll need to accept or reject the changes, then turn tracking off. Herb Tyson MS MVP Author of the Word 2007 Bible Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com Web: http://www.herbtyson.com; On 5/26/2010 2:56 PM, FORC5 wrote: do u right click and run as administrator ? Maybe ? Just a thought. hate word 07 wonder if 10 is any better fp At 11:32 AM 5/26/2010, Brian Weeden Poked the stick with: Not that I know of. When I open a document and it does this, if I go into the Word Options, Trust Center, and Privacy Settings, the box for make hidden markup visible when opening or saving is checked. So somehow Word is ignoring its own options. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundationhttp://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Christopher Fiskchr...@mhonline.netwrote: On Wed, 26 May 2010, Brian Weeden wrote: This is driving me nuts. At some point in the last few weeks, my copy of Word 2007 has decided that every time I open a Word document, it will turn on track changes and set the view to final. This is incredibly annoying, since it means I have to go in and change those settings so I can actually tell if people made changes or comments in a document. I've tried deleting my normal word template and completly uninstalling/reinstalling Office to no avail. Googling seems to turn out a lot of stuff about track changes but nothing with regard to this issue. Any suggestions on how I can fix this before I tear my hair out? Do you have a roaming profile that could be overwriting the changes you're making to the normal.dot? Christopher Fisk __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5148 (20100526) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com
Re: [H] Catalyst 10.5 released today..
Wish they would either restore the disable VPU recover option or at least allow some configuration over how it's watchdog senses issues. STALKER:CoP is so flaky and never survives a VPU recover. Thanks for the heads up, downloading to review... 5/26/2010 7:49 PM, Scoobydo wrote: Grab em while their hot..
Re: [H] Catalyst 10.5 released today..
Hope it solves your problem. Stable for me so far.. On Wed, 26 May 2010 22:15:14 -0500, maccrawj maccr...@gmail.com wrote: Wish they would either restore the disable VPU recover option or at least allow some configuration over how it's watchdog senses issues. STALKER:CoP is so flaky and never survives a VPU recover. Thanks for the heads up, downloading to review... 5/26/2010 7:49 PM, Scoobydo wrote: Grab em while their hot.. -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
