Weird... my post never... posted... Sorry Margot, I did reply to you... it just went away... Oh... derp... because I was quoting from the other it went there. As Angedras said... this feature has some fairly widespread issues after update. You may be able to change dictionaries... not sure. The google spellcheck integration to IE is a plugin from Google Documents... and updating that seemed to be at root of the issues I have seen. Angedras seems more familiar than I with it. Again... I would remove it and install ieSpell.
Update to the Google spell check issue... Although I am not sure what the original problem was that caused the issue (apparently worldwide), sometime within the past three hours it has been resolved. Earlier today, a couple friends in Italy were still experiencing the issue, but it is now resolved for them as well.
The power of the cloud. It has it's limitations, as clearly seen here. I only imagine this is going to get better over time and eventually, issues like this will become a thing of the past.
Problem similar to webby's: Because I run a distributed computing application, I keep my compputers running 24/7. However, once in a while someone shuts down one of my computers and if it's been off a few days, I get a blue screen on start-up. The last time this happened, I booted into DOS, did a <DIR> and noticed that the date on a system program (I forgot which one) was something along the line of January 15, 30,994. WTF? I forgot exactly how, but I managed to replace the out of sync program with one with a real date and had no problems booting. Any suggestions what may have caused the corruption of the date?
Typically virus/malware. Date exploitation provides some system access. Generally if your date goes ape (*)(*)(*)(*) (wrong in any direction) should immediately scan for badness.
Interesting. AVG is scheduled to scan my computer at 3:00am every day. Does that mean AVG missed the virus/malware? I just checked my system folder and found this: VBRUN300.DLL with a date of 1/30/2058. Another virus/malware AVG missed?
I find AVG to be the worst of the bunch. What I would do in your circumstance is use kaspersky's online scanner. If things are found dump AVG and if you do not want to pay for AV, use avira free antivirus. kaspersky: http://www.kaspersky.com/antivirus-removal-tool-register You can make up an email. (This is NOT a substitute for a resident active scanner) avira: http://personal.avira-update.com/package/webloader/win32/pecl/avira_free_antivirus.exe That is the 32bit issue. They make getting their free one difficult, and keep trying to give you their "trial" for free for their paid product. So if you are 64 bit, go to avira.com and ignore the big button on the front page, and go to "downloads" up top. * I would also throw SAS at it for good measure. It is certainly possible that this was not produced by malicious code, but IME it almost always is. http://www.superantispyware.com/downloadfile.html?productid=SUPERANTISPYWAREFREE What I do with SAS is remove it from startup. The free edition provides no more protection actively, and eats a lot of resources. The paid edition doesn't do enough to justify it either. So I prevent it from starting up, and just load it when I want it, and immediately update.
BTW all that means is that it was either created or modified while the date was wrong. I would not expect that capitalization though... so... rather than guess, let the scanners do their jobs... Oh and make sure you select full scans... not quick scans. You will want to search archives etc.
I ran kaspersky virus tool; first on the system folder and then on the C: and E: hard drives. Result: No virus found. Another bit I forgot to mention: if I just re-booted the computer, I had no problems. But if the computer was shut down for a few days, then blue screen appeared at boot up. BTW, I don't know why I capitalized Vrun300.dll; it is not capitalized.
Well that is good news! It is possible that it was infected at some point and AVG caught it... but the important part is that it is clean now. I would run SAS, even if you remove it afterward. Virus cleaners are really good at finding a virus mutex... but there are lots of kinds of malware, and SAS is better at finding non-viral malwares than AV. It will find a bunch of tracking cookies etc... you can clean/ignore those... but see if anything else evil pops up. Chances are it will be clean... but well worth the 20 minutes or so it takes to do a complete scan.
And then quit using Microsoft. Why would anyone pay those exorbitant prices and be so highly at risk from malware? You're practically paying to have future trouble, for crying out loud.
Reminds me... I am seeing the FBI Moneypak/reveton a lot. It is particularly annoying. This is known as: Ransomware = Malicious code that hijacks processes and offers an account to pay money to resolve the problem. FBI moneypak pretend to be the FBI which suggests that the porn you are looking at is illegal... and overtakes the interface, or some just loop an audio file from agent Smith having the Chris Hansen speech with you. Another variant is Note the video cam. Anyway... it is a very nasty piece of business... which is also fairly adept at defeating AV. I figured I would go over some basic stuff now if for no other reason that I can refer back to it later... and explain the best way to get rid of it manually, with terms people should know. Boot Loader = Bootstrap loader... a small bit of programming that lives in read-only ROM, that accesses media with a small instruction set, looking for a special area with boot information in it. Every derivative of the word "boot" in computers is derived from the bootstrap process... from "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". Meaning, there must be some native bit of code somewhere that tells itself how to load itself. BIOS = Basic Input/Output System. This is the firmware interface which does a Power On Self Test (POST), unless told not to, fires up the firmware and runs the boot loader. Normally when someone refers to the BIOS, however, they are referring to the BIOS interface (example below), not the actual BIOS itself. This is referred to in POST screens often as "Setup". (See POST Screen image) (Note* these vary from board to board. The better the board, the more options or control you have) POST Screen: These are the screens that display as the BIOS performs its functions. (Note* these also vary from board to board, manufacturer to manufacturer) Bootsplash = The Operating System's "loading" screen. Boot Menu = A screen which exists to provide boot options. In some operating systems it is visible on boot, in Windows, it is accessed after the POST screen, but before the Bootsplash, by pressing the f8 key. Usually best to hit it several times. Safe Mode = A mode to load an operating system with the bare minimum drivers, on the lowest possible settings, with the minimal number of processes started to sustain itself. Typically when addressing broken things, you will want to be in this mode. Safe mode with networking turns on the stuff needed for networking as you might imagine. Sometimes you do not want infected machines to have the ability to phone home. Windows Registry = A really really terrible idea, that is unfortunately a pillar of the Windows operating systems. You can think of it sort of as the central nervous system of windows. Every program, every setting, every driver is cataloged in the registry. Pretty much every thing you do affects or is affected by the registry in one way or another. It tells programs where to find modules, what color to set your desktop... really everything you do. The primary problem with the registry is that while everything makes an imprint on it... very little cleans itself up. For instance if you have ever removed a program... chances are you can find at least 15 references to it in the registry. Sometimes hundreds... for something that doesn't even exist. So it gets big. It gets really really big. And the more operations and queries that occur for normal operation... the more and more values it must prune through to get the information you want. This is why when you first install windows it is fast as (*)(*)(*)(*)... and after two years takes forever to do anything and just feels like it needs a general douching. Unfortunately pruning the registry is laborious, and dangerous. Delete the wrong key, of which there are millions, and your OS is broken. So one should take care screwing around in there... and I find registry cleaners to be largely more dangerous than helpful, and do not recommend them. So... the fake FBI ransomware... first thing we want to do is boot into safe mode. Then we need to edit the registry. For XPish systems in "run" type regedit. For 7ish systems in the search bar of the start menu, type run... it will open a command dialog... type regedit. This will open the registry editor. You will see that it is a hierarchical folder menu, just like an old windows file manager. We now want to remove the offending keys. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PersonalSS.DocHostUIHandler HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Download “RunInvalidSignatures” = “1? HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Green is a key. Blue are key folders. They may contain many things... they are not supposed to be there... delete the entire folder. Now open Computer (the start menu item... what I want here is the folder browser, there are a lot of ways to get to it.) In options... or maybe tools... from the top menu, choose Folder Options (also accessible by way of Control Panel). We are going to have to make some things visible... so choose the View tab, and under Advanced settings, click Show hidden files and folders, unclick Hide protected operating system files, and hit OK. So you should be back to viewing "Computer". XPish works different than 7ish (by XPish I mean Windows older than Vista... 7ish is vista and beyond). We want to navigate to, and remove the folders: XP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\-random-\ 7: C:\Users\All Users\-random\ C:\Users\All Users\app data\-random-\ The -random- folder will look similar to 18EfdIAO-9834FW3e-p1ER2ssG etc... Then we ALSO want to look for the same random folders under the actual user names (in place of All Users). I would then update your antivirus, and SAS or anti-malware bytes... and scan everything while still in safe mode. This often comes in via a JAVA drive by download trojan, which installs more than just this. On reboot, your fake FBI agent will be gone... and you should update and run your virus scans WITH ROOT PERMISSION again. And again... as always... these are not problems on Linux
One of my computers just developed another problem: Different computer: I plug in USB drive; it shows up in windows explorer but when I click on it a "Disk is not formatted" window appears asking me if I want to format it. So far I've attached 3 USB drives (2 sandisks and 1 unknown manufacturer) to several different ports but I get the same message. I just copied some files to one of the drive this morning from another computer at another location and it was working fine. Also, files are accessible if I plug the USB drives into my wife's Mac. USB printer works fine. I've thought of deleting the USB controller in Device manger and re-booting, but I thought I'd get some professional advice first. One other bit of information, we've been using the USB port to charge our cell phones but did not "safely remove" the cell phones from the port. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I am assuming you rebooted the PC. A couple of possibilities. 1 Removing USB DRIVES (not phones) without unloading first can create a circumstance in which windows won't mount it because it is viewed as unclean (dirty bit is set). Open a terminal and chkdsk {drive letter}: /R /X so if your usb drive letter were f, chkdsk f: /R /X 2 Some sort of infection.
Yes, rebooted several times. I've never removed drives without unloading; only phones. Would deleting USB controller in device manager and rebooting be an option?
I do not see how that could have an effect... won't hurt anything though. USB appears to be doing its job. Otherwise you would not have a drive letter. It simply is not able to mount the thing... though it can read it, and see files on it. Open ctrl panel/administrative tools/storage manager see if you can crush and rebuild one... clearly pull the files off if they are important on the mac first. The other one I would throw malware/virus scanners at it.
I'll take a drive to work tomorrow and copy all the files to a work computer and then come home tomorrow and do what you suggest. Thanks for your help. I'll let you know what happens.
i was browsing around the "computer management" section in CP when I noticed this under 'storage/disk management'; Volume: (F Layout; partition Type:basic status: healthy capacity: 968MB Free space: 968MB It looks like windows is not seeing any of the files but the the terminal (DOS ??) is ?
I left the drive I copied at work so I can't crush and rebuild it. However, last night I had a thought. If DOS sees the files, I thought I'd use the copy command and see if I could copy files to the hard drive with DOS. But when I did a <dir>, I get "The volume does not contain a recognized file system." But when I run the <chkdsk>, I get "The type of the file system is FAT." I'm sooo confused!!?? Interesting! I have a second hard drive, E:, on the computer. If I try to access that I get the same "would you like to format" message as I do for the USB drives. C; drive and d: (CD) are accessible. If E: is fried, could that prevent access to other drives with higher letter designations?
I'm looking to buy a new windows laptop. This macbook has served me faithfully and still has some years in it, but I just need something more powerful (and that, you know, can actually run software). Can anyone recommend me something? I haven't quite worked out my price range (it's variable but I'm both poor and cheap), but there are some requirements... – Should have a dedicated graphics card – Should be able to run Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 and DirectX 10 – Shouldn't be totally incapable of gaming; I'm not asking for a rig that can run Crysis 3 at full power but I don't want it to chug on Super Meat Boy ("At the moment, you will need a Graphics Card with Pixel Shader 3.0 or higher, and a CPU that supports SSE2. At least 2GB of RAM is recommended, and older Integrated Graphics Cards will not run well." says the requirements of the game I'm playing at the moment) – Cheaper is better Any recommendations would be very much appreciated! (Sorry if this is the wrong place for this, but I figure if anyone can point me in the right direction, it's you guys)
Any thoughts about a color Lexmark inkjet printer that refuses to print from the black cartridge? Have tried the usual suggested maintenance tasks (cleaning, aligning, changing cartridges) but no joy. Gave up and bought a new printer, will recycle the Lexmark this weekend. Seems a shame though, since it's only a couple of years old. If there's a way to make it useful again, I might replace my partner's old and unreliable Epson with it.
Does it print without black on paper, or does it not print at all (meaning the mechanism does not move or advance the paper)? Does this happen running b&w only or color too? I would assume the jet itself is clogged. You will probably need to completely dismantle the printer head and soak the jet in some sort of solution. I would not try and ream it out with a needle, because affecting the size of the jet would be disastrous.
