More Non-Genuine Operating Systems

Seems like we've come across a number of non-genuine versions of Microsoft XP in the last couple of weeks. What all of the PCs had in common is that they went into small repair shops for repair with Windows XP Home Edition on them and came out with XP Professional installed. Most of the customers didn't notice the difference between the two while one customer who did, was told by the repair shop that they "upgraded" Windows while it was in for repair.

The reason that most non-genuine versions of XP encountered are the Professional version is because of the existence of Volume License versions of XP Pro for use by businesses. A Volume License is a special version of a Windows OS, most commonly XP Pro, that is sold to big businesses, governments and educational bodies for installation on hundreds or thousands of PCs. Because it is not practical for such large numbers of PCs to go through the Windows activation procedure post-installation for each PC, a Volume License installation does not require activation. All Windows XP installations do require a product key, the 25-digit alpha-numeric code that must be entered from the certificate of authenticity during the installation process. However, if a product key corresponding to a volume license (a so-called Volume License Key or VLK) is entered then the installation does not require product activation.

What has happened in the past, and no doubt continues to happen, is that Volume License Keys are passed on from IT staff to individuals and they get into general circulation for use by less than scrupulous individuals. When Microsoft becomes aware of these they are blocked and marked as non-genuine in their database. Beginning April 25, 2007, Microsoft began distributing Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications as "critical update" KB905474 to Windows users. If you downloaded this update and have a blocked VLK installed on your PC you will get the nag screen that you have a non-genuine copy of Windows installed ever more. We expect to see more of these in the weeks to come.

Less than perfect OOTBE

Most computer manufacturers work hard to give you a good Out-Of-The-Box-Experience (or OOTBE), which is what happens when you turn on your brand new computer for the first time. A good OOTBE should see you having to take very few actions to get you to your operating system's desktop - perhaps accept a license agreement and input your name for your user account. Once at the desktop a good OOTBE continues with your computer behaving in a predictable fashion and it is in this regard that we were disappointed with a new Dell Inspiron Laptop that we set up for a customer during the week.

All went well until we got to the desktop and Vista's messaging announced that a problem had occurred with the sidebar which would now shut down. Hmmm, not what you expect when you turn on your PC for the first time and not a great OOTBE. Vista's messaging went on to inform us that the problem was caused by Google Desktop and that the vendor may have a more up-to-date version available on their website that might address this issue. And maybe they did, but we didn't wait to find out. Instead we uninstalled Google's application and the sidebar problem was resolved.

What we can't figure is why Dell bundles Google's Desktop application with their PCs when the version they bundle causes a feature of Vista to crash. You begin to wonder what level of testing Dell performs on the configurations they sell. Or, do they know about these issues before they ship them but leave it to their customers to resolve them. Take your pick.

Dell's Vista Upgrade Fiasco

In order to continue to shift PCs in the latter months of 2006 and early 2007, in advance of the launch of Microsoft Vista, Dell introduced the Vista Express Upgrade scheme (my italics). The commitment made by Dell was that if you bought a PC during this period with Windows XP, Dell would send you a free Vista upgrade kit (but charge €16 for shipping/handling) as soon as Vista launched. Now in case you may have missed it, Vista was launched in Europe on January 30th of this year, so how has Dell done in getting out those Express upgrades? Well, it hasn't. Initially Dell posted on their website that they would be shipping by the end of February, then mid-March. It now claims to have begun the shipping process (I don't know anyone who has received the upgrade yet - let me know if you do) and hopes to have completed all shipments by the end of May!

Now PC Medic purchased a new Dell in November in the hope that we would have a Vista PC in the workshop from early February. However, had we just waited until February and purchased a Dell with Vista pre-installed we would have had our hands on Vista a lot earlier. (In the end we installed an OEM license on an existing box as we saw a screw-up like this as a possibility with Dell.) With Dell's recent turnaround decision to continue to sell PCs with XP installed instead of Vista, one wonders if there are ongoing compatibility issues with Dell and third-party hardware that could see the Express upgrade further delayed. Frankly, it has been a major embarrassment for Dell and, like their policy of off-shoreing customer support, suggests that despite producing good, value-for-money PCs they have lost focus on their customers. With Michael Dell back at the helm one can only hope that this will change.

Vista - second impressions

We've been using Vista for a couple of months now and in general like what Microsoft have done. However, a few issues have come to light, particularly with hardware. It seems that a number of hardware manufacturers are slow in releasing Vista drivers to allow their products to work with the new OS.

A point in case came to light last week when a customer asked us to install his newly-purchased Hewlett-Packard 1018 Laserjet printer. When we got it hooked up and inserted the driver disk it came to light that there were no Vista drivers supplied. OK, we thought, they probably have them posted on the HP website. After a bit of a rummage about we found a listing of Vista-supported printers and the 1018 was not on it. Further rummaging found a listing of soon to be supported printers and the 1018 was on that list. In the absence of a Vista driver you can try the XP driver which might work, the website declared, So we did, and it didn't.

The customer's only solution was to return the printer and exchange it for a Samsung 2010 printer which had downloadable Vista drivers. So, the message is, before you run out and buy a Vista PC, check whether your existing peripherals (printer, scanner, webcam, mp3 player, etc.) will be supported, otherwise you may have to budget for replacement peripherals as well.

Really Nice PC For Sale

We have just finished refurbishing a Compaq Presario PC and it's a great buy for someone looking for a second PC for practically everything except serious gaming. We've upgraded the memory, reinstalled Windows XP Home with all Microsoft service packs and updates, and installed a range of software that more than meets the needs of a home PC. Details are as follows:

Hardware:
Pentium P4 1.8GHz CPU
512MB RAM
60GB HDD
DVD ROM Drive
CD-R Drive
Floppy Drive
6 x USB 1.0
Firewire Port
10/100 ethernet port
modem

Software:
Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2, fully patched
AVG Free 7.5 anti-virus
Windows Defender anti-spyware
Internet Explorer 7.0
Firefox 2.0 (alternative internet browser to IE 7.0)
Thunderbird 1.5 (alternative e-mail client to Outlook Express)
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Works
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0 (photo management)
Compaq WinDVD (DVD player)
Skype 3.0
Windows Media Player 11
Paragon Drive Backup 8.0 (backup software)

Hardware comes with a 90-day no quibble warranty (if it breaks, we fix it, replace it or fully refund you, no problem).

This is a great package that has a very attractive price of only €220. Add a keyboard, mouse and monitor (or ask us to quote you for them) and you have a very nice home PC that will take on any home PC task.

Interested? Let us know at info@pcmedic.ie

Vista - First Impressions

We've been getting ourselves familiar with Microsoft's new operating system here in our workshop and I thought that I'd give you our first impressions. And, so far, it's all good.

First up, the installation process is much smoother than before with almost all of the user input being front loaded so that you can leave the installation process to run unattended - a pleasant change from XP where user input is required at multiple separate times during the install. All told, it took approximately 45 minutes to complete the basic install.

Next there was the issue of drivers. We were doing the install into a PC Medic-built box with a 3.2GHz P4 and 1Gb of RAM. The motherboard was fitted with a nVidia 6600GT video card, a Hauppauge WinTV PVR card and a Ralink-based wireless lan card. After the install, the TV and Wireless lan cards were not recognized, but Windows Update commenced dowloading drivers for these. After a reboot, all hardware was up and running without the need for a single driver to be installed by us, pretty impressive.

Putting aside the eye-candy provided by the Aero interface, which is pretty but hardly essential, one of the features that we were most impressed with initially was the enhanced security that encourages you to set up standard accounts for all users, rather than administrator accounts. There is also a new system called User Account Control, which alerts you anytime you are making a change that has any system-wide or security implications. Some may find this a bit of a pain on a day-to-day basis, but we see it as an added layer of control from stopping the user making a bad decision.

A lot of parents will be happy to see a built-in Parental Control system that is not only effective, but also extremely easy to use, something we can't say about many commercial software pakages that try to do the same thing. Parental Controls can only be applied to Standard Accounts, and this will hopefully encourage parents to set up their young children with such accounts. Parental Control can be set to allow user accounts to access the internet at only certain times and days each week. It can restrict the type of websites that can be visited e.g. no nudity, no violence, no drugs, etc., or certain websites can be blacklisted (Bebo, anyone?). You can also determine whether games can be played or not and, if so, the age rating of the games that can be played. Finally, you can restrict which programs on the computer the account can use, so you could restrict the use of messaging programs such as MSN Messenger if you so desired. On top of all this, the administrator can view activity logs for each standard account that has Parental Controls applied to, so you can track the websites they visited, as well as the ones that were blocked. When you consider that some companies charge $40 or more per year for less well implemented versions, this is a high-value inclusion in Vista.

Outlook Express has been replaced/upgraded to Windows Mail and the big news on this e-mail client is the inclusion of a spam control system and it appears very good at its job. We downloaded 183 mails and Windows Mail's spam filter correctly identifed 146 pieces of spam. A total of 7 pieces of spam got through to the Inbox, while no false positives were detected (i.e. no genuine emails were sent to the spam folder). This is quite an impressive result and, as with Parental Controls, we guess that a lot of makers of anti-spam software will be wondering how these new features are going to hit their sales.

There are some other interesting features in Vista that we'll come back to in future posts, but for now you can take it that we like what we see.

More on Spam - Cloudmark

In my previous post I advocated changing to Mozilla's Thunderbird as your e-mail client in order to better manage spam. If you use Microsoft's Outlook as your e-mail client you may also be using its Calendar, To Do and Contacts features, which are not available in Thunderbird, and therefore don't want to change your e-mail client. This is the situation one of our customers was in last week, but still wanted to be able to manage the spam that they were receiving.

We looked at a number of plug-in solutions for Outlook and the one we opted for was Cloudmark Desktop which costs $39.99 for a 12-month subscription. Installation is simple after downloading the software from their downloads site. Once installed, Cloudmark integrates a simple toolbar into Outlook as shown in the picture and creates a Spam mail folder. As mail comes in from the mail server, Cloudmark evaluates it and moves it to the spam folder if it is known spam. If junk mail arrives in your inbox then you can mark it as spam by clicking on the Block Spam button in the toolbar. When a specific number of people report a particular e-mail as spam it is added to the Cloudmark database and will henceforth be treated as spam.

The attraction of Cloudmark Desktop is its simplicity, requiring a minimum of user interaction, and its success rate in detecting spam straight out of the box. A recommended addition if you want to use Microsoft Outlook and successfully manage spam. Note that a version is also available for Outlook Express.

Managing Spam

One of the most frequent questions we get asked is how do we stop spam arriving in our inbox. The bad news is that it's almost impossible to stop. You start receiving spam once your e-mail address gets out into the public domain. You don't necessarily have to engage in on-line commerce for this to happen. You may only send e-mails to two or three friends and believe that it's impossible for your e-mail to get into the public domain. Not so. All it takes is for your friend's PC to become infected with a virus that harvests e-mail addresses and, voilà, your e-mail address is up for sale to the spammers.

You can manage spam in one of two ways - sign up for a server-based service, such as Eircom's Email Protector, or use a local solution. A server-based solution screens all e-mail as it passes through a computer known as a mail server and checks the email's content and/or point of origin and thereby decides whether it is spam or not. If it is deemed to be spam it is not forwarded on to your inbox and will never arrive on your PC. These services are rarely 100 percent effective and we have found with Eircom's service, for which there is a monthly charge, that it eliminates approximately 70% of the spam destined for our Eircom e-mail account.

To deal with the remainder that slips through the server-based solution will require a local solution installed on your PC. There are a wide variety available, both commercial and freeware, and a quick google of "spam solutions" will provide you with a number of options.

Here at PC Medic our way of dealing with spam is to use Thunderbird, available for free from http://www.mozilla.org/ , as our e-mail client. Thunderbird has a built-in spam filter which, after a week or so of training, achieves almost a 100% hit on spam. It is simple to install, will import all your existing Outlook Express folders and mail settings, and does a great job of managing the spam that does get through. Check it out. For more on spam check out this link.

HDTV Lust

While visiting a customer recently, and after the work on his PC was completed, he insisted I had a look at the custom home theatre that he had installed in his newly-built home. And very nice it was too. The centre piece of his set-up was a wall-mounted 50" Pioneer plasma high-definition TV supplemented by a Bose surround-sound speaker system and hard disk media server, all with hidden wiring leading to a very clean appearance that even the most fussy of spouses would find it difficult to complain about.

I was sat down and treated to a visual and aural treat as he fired up his Sky HD box and switched on Discovery HD. The subject of the documentary that was playing was fighter jets, and the footage of the view from the cockpit of one of the jets as it engaged in a mock dogfight with two others was breathtaking. The difference between HDTV and regular colour TV is almost as big as the difference between black and white and colour TV, it really is jaw-droppingly good. I was thoroughly impressed and experienced a bout of HDTV lust on the spot.

When I returned home I looked at my 12 year-old 26" TV with contempt and started to plan its imminent trip to the Ballyogan recycling centre. But before I got carried away I decided to think about what I would watch on my spanking new HDTV when I had it installed. And this is where the wheels started to come off the wagon.

The majority of our viewing consists of Channel 4, BBC1 and BBC2 with a bit of the RTEs thrown in for good measure (we're not a SKY household because Sports programs are low on our agenda). And here's the rub, these channels are not currently broadcast in HD and, from what I can gather, they won't be broadcast in HD for some time yet. I could migrate to Sky HD for a selection of HD channels (Sky One, Discovery, National Geographic) but would I actually watch these channels and, if so, would it be just for the sake of HD rather than content and interest?

Another issue is the DVD library that we've built up of our favourite movies and television series. These were produced pre-HD, and when displayed on a HD TV will look no different from on a regular TV. If we want to enjoy these in glorious HD we will have to fork out on a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player and re-purchase our DVDs in HD formatted discs - an expense that can't be justified for the benefit that it may bring.

So, when it's all added up and HD-ready flat screen TVs now abound, it transpires that we ourselves are not HD-ready just yet and our trusty12 year-old CRT TV is not going to be taking a trip to Ballyogan just yet. Maybe next Christmas....

An Inconvenient Truth

I don't know where you stand in relation to global warming - whether you are concerned about it, whether you believe it's an issue or whether you are even aware of it as a phenomenon. My own position was very middle-of-the-road until recently when I happened to see the film An Inconvenient Truth which is a documentary presented by the "former next president of the United States" Al Gore.

When I say that it is a documentary your eyes may glaze over and you want to file it away under David Attenborough-type documentaries. But you shouldn't, for two reasons. Firstly, Al Gore does, in my opinion, a tremendous job communicating the science of global warming in a way that is easily understood and stays with you beyond the closing titles. Secondly, the issues portrayed in the documentary just might be the most important that mankind has ever faced, relegating famines, wars, and localized natural disasters to the inconsequential.

Avoiding a climate crisis and the consequences that that entails is fundamentally not a technological challenge - we already have the technological means to prevent it - but a political and moral question. There would appear to be many big businesses with a vested interest in us believing that the scientists are merely scaremongering. However, does anyone remember the tobacco companies producing reports in the sixties rubbishing the idea of smoking being linked to cancer?

You should make up your own mind on this important issue, but viewing An Inconvenient Truth should be an essential part of that process. If you missed the film in the cinemas, you can get it now on DVD. Watch it and decide where you stand.

Vista Flavours

Microsoft has revealed the various different versions of Windows Vista that will be available in the near future here in Europe (business versions are already available since the end of November for corporate customers). The line up consists of:

Business
Enterprise
Home Pemium
Home Basic
Ultimate

This line-up contrasts with Windows XP which came in just three flavours XP Home, XP Professional and XP Media Center Edition.

The version that most people will probably finish up running is the Home Premium edition which sports the new Aero interface (provided you have the hardware to run it - thought to be a minimum of 1 GB of RAM plus a 256 MB graphics card). If you want to upgrade your Windows XP to Vista Home Premium the suggested retail price in the US is $159, so expect to pay around €120 here in Europe. If you buy a new Dell between now and the end of March, you can sign up for a Vista upgrade pack, which will be sent to you as soon as Vista home editions are launched here in Europe.

More details on Vista can be found on Microsoft's Vista Pages.

Managing Passwords

Everyone who uses a PC complains about the same problem - "How do I manage all my on-line passwords?". It's no longer a trivial matter managing usernames and passwords for all your on-line accounts, whether its for e-mail e.g. Hotmail, GMail, or other webmail of choice, e-commerce sites e.g. Amazon.com, Allofmp3.com or Victoria's Secret, your VOIP site e.g. Skype and VoipStunt or any of the myriad other on-line accounts one can create.

What some people do is to use a single password for as many of their online accounts as possible. While this can simplify matters somewhat it's not a recommended practice. I certainly wouldn't use the same password for my on-line banking or PayPal account as I do for a discussion forum on home improvements. Some of the smaller sites that require a username and password for registration may not have adequate security on their servers and I always assume that they don't - therefore I try to keep separate passwords for anything that involves financial transactions.

Of course the problem with this is that it becomes difficult to track all the different usernames and passwords. This is where RoboForm comes in. This program has been around for a while now but I've only just started using it. In a nutshell the program allows you to create a single master password for RoboForm which runs from a toolbar after it is installed. Then, when you go to a site that requires a username and password RoboForm creates a Passcard for that site, remembering the login details the next time you login to the site. After a single visit to each site requiring a username and password you no longer need to remember the login details for the site - RoboForm does it for you. The program is extremely secure using a number of encryption options and offers a useful feature for filling out on-line forms, a boring task most of us would rather avoid.

If password management has become a problem then give RoboForm a try. A limited Passcard version is available for free while the full version costs just $29.95.

Protect Your Photos

When a customer tells us that their machine has crashed and they need to recover their data, the first category of data that they refer to is normally their photos. With the proliferation of digital cameras it is now a relatively easy matter for a click-happy camera owner to generate many gigabytes of data, what with holidays, birthdays, stag parties, christenings, new baby, etc. etc. What isn't so easy is having the discipline to back up these photos on a regular basis to CD, DVD or external hard drive.

There are a number of reasons why people don't back up their data as regularly as they should. Data backup is boring, it's tedious sitting at a screen selecting folders and files for saving to a backup medium. It's somewhat technical, not everyone has been shown how to back up their data and some of the software available is less than intuitive. There is a lack of awareness that data loss, for either software or hardware failure reasons, is not uncommon. The sheer amount of data to be backed up nowadays can lead to inertia as one has to decide what has been backed up and what hasn't. Finally, many people are just lazy about it - Mañana, Mañana!

Now there are ways to automate your data backup so that it happens with little or no intervention on your part - but this requires investment in an external harddrive or network drive and appropriate software and is best left to the more technical-minded. Which brings me to the subject of this blog - a neat service from www.protectmyphotos.com that allows you to back up your precious photos (and other files) without even thinking about it. So how does it work? Actually it's a very simple process.







First you go to their website and sign up for an account. You can get a free account with certain limitations, namely that your photos will be in low resolution and only jpeg files can be saved. Alternatively, you can pay $39.99 for a yearly account that allows unlimited storage of your pictures at full resolution and also allows you to save your music files e.g. mp3 and wma as well as documents e.g. xls and doc.

Next you download a small ProtectMyPhotos utility from the download page on their site. Once dowloaded you simply double-click on the file to install the utility. Opening the utility (which will now normally reside in your system tray) presents you with two simple options: Set Up Photos For Protection and Restore My Photos.

Selecting the first option presents you with two further options: Automatic Discovery and Custom Folder Options. The former option will scan your entire computer and back up every file that corresponds to a photo format. If you're not sure where your photos are stored on your PC then this is the option to choose. However, be aware that it will back up gif and jpeg images associated with other programs, such as games, that are not necessarily photos. If you know exactly where your photos are stored e.g. My Pictures then you should select the Custom Folder Options.

Once you have made your selection, that's it, you never have to do anything further to ensure your photos are backed up, even when you add new pictures to your PC. What happens next is that the ProtectMyPhotos utility works in the background uploading your pictures to their secure servers for safe-keeping. The program was designed to run in the background, requires very few system resources and backs up photos only when your Internet connection is idle. When you're busy using your computer and Internet connection, ProtectMyPhotos throttles down its use of your connection. Once a photo is backed up to the servers, the software won't need to upload it again.

Needless to say you will need a broadband connection to use this service, uploading 20 GB of photos is not something you want to try on a dial-up connection! Bear in mind that your photos are not uploaded in an instance, it took 3 days for all of 5 GB of test photos to be uploaded from our system. However, the PC that the pictures were uploaded from was turned off overnight and had moderate internet usage during the day - your own experience may be faster or slower. Currently we are in the process of uploading over 20 GB of music from a music server and this looks like it will take over a week to complete. To argue that the backups are slow and take a long time is to miss the point of this service, the beauty of it is that it is completely unattended backup. As I add more pictures or music to my PC it is automatically backed up, and much more quickly than the original file transfer because the incremental quantity of data is much smaller.

Restoring all your photos to your PC is a one-click operation from the ProtectMyPhoto utility, if the day comes that you need to do it. You can, of course restore your pictures to any PC, not just the one that you uploaded them from.

What I can't say is whether ProtectMyPhotos is a sufficiently robust company to still be there in 5 years' time when I may need to restore all my saved data. However, I hope that they are as they have a good product that deserves to be around for a long time. Check it out.

Leaking Capacitors

We had a machine in the workshop last week that was exhibiting a series of symptoms that were hard to pin down to any specific cause - blue screens, boot hangs, extremely slow disc access, etc. After doing the standard diagnostics, including switching out the hard drive and optical drives, the problem seemed to be associated with the motherboard.

A close physical examination of the motherboard revealed that many of the capacitors were leaking their contents, either through the top of the capacitor, or at the base plug. I took a few pictures of these capacitors to show what this leaking looks like. The first picture shows a couple of capacitors that have leaked through the base plug and their contents have spilled onto the motherboard. As the motherboard is in a vertical orientation in the PC case the contents of the capacitor in the left of the picture ran downwards and the track of dried-out material can be clearly seen. A bulge in the top of the two leaking capacitors, due to pressure build-up, can also be seen - a tell-tale sign of a potential leaker.

The second picture shows three capacitors that have leaked through the top where the contents have burst through the cap. The rear-most capacitor in this shot is a different brand of capacitor and is not a leaker. In total, ten capacitors on the motherboard were found to be leaking and all were from the same manufacturer and the same capacitance value.

As capacitors are used to regulate voltage in various sections of the motherboard, failure of capacitors can cause many problems that could be interpreted as power supply, memory or hard drive issues.

This was only the second time in the past twelve months that we came across this problem. The cause of the problem has an interesting background, involving a case of industrial espionage that went wrong. Essentially, the faulty capacitors have an incorrect electrolyte formulation, which leads to hydrogen gas being produced. The build-up of gas causes the pressure increase which eventually ruptures the capacitor.

See further pictures at PCStats and more info at Geeks.com.

Pre-n Wireless Networks

Wireless networks have undergone a few changes in recent years with a least three existing standards now available, these being 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g. Unless you are operating in a business environment you are unlikely to come across 802.11a, which operates at a frequency of 5.0GHz and has a maximum data transmission rate of 11.0 mbps (megabits per second). If you are using a wireless network in your home it is likely to be either the 802.11b standard (2.4GHz frequency and 11.0 mbps transmission rate) or 802.11g if you've purchased it in the last 2-3 years (2.4GHz frequency and 54 mbps transmission rate). While a "g" standard network in the home serves most needs, it has difficulty streaming high-quality video, a multimedia application that is likely to become standard within the next five years. To address this (and for many other reasons) a new standard, 802.11n, is being formulated that will allow data streaming at up to 270 mbps, or 5-times the current "g" standard.

This new standard is currently at draft 2.0 and a vote on the draft is expected in January 2007. However, it is widely believed that a third draft will appear later in 2007 and that the standard will not be ratified until early 2008. However, in the meantime, a number of wireless network equipment manufacturers have released what are known as "Pre-n" devices - both routers and adapters - that conform to the current standard draft, but which will most probably not conform to the final ratified standard. While the manufacturers may make claims that these will give you greater performance to existing ratified standards, you should purchase such units with caution. It is possible that these units will not conform with the final standard (though most manufacturers claim they will release firmware updates to address this, there are no guarantees that they will) and that they will most probably not be compatible with equipment from other manufacturers (only Wi-Fi Alliance certified equipment is guaranteed to work with other certified equipment from other manufacturers). A recent review of pre-n equipment by PC World magazine found that many of the pre-n routers and network cards did not offer the benefits of the marketing hype and they suggested that you should look to MIMO-based "g" standard units for best performance and leave the pre-n kit until the standard is ratified.

Cybercrime Update

From USA Today

Criminals covet your identity data like never before. What's more, they've perfected more ways to access your bank accounts, grab your Social Security number and manipulate your identity than you can imagine.

Want proof? Just visit any of a dozen or so thriving cybercrime forums, websites that mirror the services of Amazon.com and the efficiencies of eBay. Criminal buyers and sellers convene at these virtual emporiums to wheel and deal in all things related to cyberattacks — and in the fruit of cyberintrusions: pilfered credit and debit card numbers, hijacked bank accounts and stolen personal data.

The cybercrime forums gird a criminal economy that robs U.S. businesses of $67.2 billion a year, according to an FBI projection. Over the past two years, U.S. consumers lost more than $8 billion to viruses, spyware and online fraud schemes, Consumer Reports says.

In 2004, a crackdown by the FBI and U.S. Secret Service briefly disrupted growth of the forums. But they soon regrouped, more robust than ever. Today, they are maturing — and consolidating — just like any other fast-rising business sector, security experts and law enforcement officials say. In fact, this summer a prominent forum leader who calls himself Iceman staged a hostile takeover of four top-tier rivals, creating a megaforum.

Security firms CardCops, of Malibu, Calif., and RSA Security, a division of Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC, and volunteer watchdog group Shadowserver observed the forced mergers, as well, and compiled dozens of takeover-related screen shots. "It's like he created the Wal-Mart of the underground," says Dan Clements, CEO of CardCops, an identity-theft-prevention company. "Anything you need to commit your crimes, you can get in his forum."

The Secret Service and FBI declined to comment on Iceman or the takeovers. Even so, the activities of this mystery figure illustrate the rising threat that cybercrime's relentless expansion — enabled in large part by the existence of forums — poses for us all. In the spy vs. spy world of cybercrime, where trust is ephemeral and credibility hard won, CardersMarket's expansion represents the latest advance of a criminal business segment that began to take shape with the formation of the pioneering Shadowcrew forum.

Shadowcrew, which peaked at about 4,000 members in 2004, arose in 2002. It established the standard for cybercrime forums — set up on well-designed, interactive Web pages and run much like a well-organized co-op. Communication took place methodically, via the exchange of messages posted in topic areas. Members could also exchange private messages. Shadowcrew gave hackers and online scammers a place to congregate, collaborate and build their reputations, says Scott Christie, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in New Jersey who helped prosecute some of its members.

In the October 2004 dragnet, called Operation Firewall, federal agents arrested 22 forum members in several states, including co-founder Andrew Mantovani, 24, aka ThnkYouPleaseDie. At the time, Mantovani was a community college student in Scottsdale, Ariz. In August, he began serving a 32-month federal sentence for credit card fraud and identification theft.

CYBERCRIME BY THE NUMBERS
$67.2 billion: FBI estimate of what U.S. businesses lose annually because of computer-related crimes.
$8 billion: Consumer Reports estimate of what U.S. consumers lost the past two years because of viruses, spyware and Internet scams.
93.8 million: Privacy Rights Clearinghouse's count of personal records reported lost or stolen since February 2005.
26,150: The Anti-Phishing Working Group's count of unique variations of phishing scams reported in August 2006.

Typical costs of goods and services in cybercrime forums:
$1,000 to $5,000: Trojan program that can transfer funds between online accounts.
$500: Credit card number with PIN.
$80 to $300: Change of billing data, including account number, billing address, Social Security number, home address and birth date.
$150: Driver's license.
$150: Birth certificate.
$100: Social Security card.
$7 to $25: Credit card number with security code and expiration date.
$7: PayPal account log-on and password.
4% to 8% of the deal price: Fee to have an escrow agent close a complex transaction.
Free: Access to a service that gives details of the issuing bank for any credit card number.

Bundling Blues

Why oh why do Dell insist in bundling trial software with their new PCs? The problem with this practice is that it can cause downright confusion for many inexperienced (and some experienced!) computer users when they begin their out-of-box-experience. The out-of-box-experience, or OOBE, is what manufacturers refer to the user's first moments with a new product after it is first turned on. This is meant to be a good experience for the user, where he/she feels in control and understands what is happening.

Unfortunately, bundled software can often throw a spanner in the works of the OOBE, particularly with a new Dell. On a recent set-up of a customer's PC we were confronted by trial versions of Dell Network Assistant, McAfee Security Centre, Norton Ghost, and Adobe Paint Shop and Photo Album. While Network Assistant may have some utility for managing a Network, when the screen pops up for the first time the average user is left scratching their head as to what this software does (after all, the customer didn't order it and therefore doesn't expect it to be on his/her new machine). And while Norton Ghost is a good disk imaging program in its own right, most customers have no inkling of what the program does when they encounter a splash screen inviting them to complete the install of it during their first 10 minutes using their new PC.

If Dell are going to continue bundling trial software with their PCs they should take the time to communicate this fact to their customers at time of purchase, explain to them what the bundled software does, how it might benefit them (if at all) and offer them the option of not having it bundled on their new PC if they so choose. Remember, this software is not bundled for the benefit of you, the customer, though Dell may represent it in that manner. No folks, the ugly truth of the matter is that software is bundled because of deals between companies like Norton and McAfee with Dell in order to make more money for all the parties involved - simple as that.

By the way, Dell are not the only offenders in this regard. Most PC manufacturers bundle trial software and in many cases that software has much less utility than that bundled by Dell.

External Hard Drive

More and more of our customers are getting external hard drives for backing up their data. With the ongoing fall in hard disc prices, an external hard drive is now the best way to ensure that all those precious family pictures are safe for years to come.

We have quite a few external hard disc drives here at PC Medic but the model we currently feel is one of the best comes from hard disc manufacturer Seagate. Available in capacities of 80, 120, 160, 250 and 320GB, what we particularly like about this USB 2.0 external hard drive is the broad base which prevents the unit from toppling over, the quiet operation and the passive ventilation which ensures that the drives run particularly cool. With Windows XP these units are plug and play - no installation or drivers required. We have the 250GB model in stock at €155, but can supply all sizes at competitive prices. Don't wait for your hard drive to crash before you get your back ups organized. Contact details at www.pcmedic.ie.

A Little Knowledge ...

...Can be a Dangerous Thing, as one of our customers found out recently. The customer in question had a 14-month old Compaq PC that they bought as a display model and, unfortunately, it was not supplied to the customer with a Recovery CD/DVD, as it should have been. When the PC became infected with viruses recently she took up the offer of her sister's boyfriend, who was known as pretty handy around computers, to fix it.

What the boyfriend did was to take a Windows XP OS disc he had lying about and reformat the harddrive and reinstall Windows. Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack an egg? The customer's daughter was upset to find out that she had lost all her digital photos which were stored only on the PC and had not been backed up before the re-install. The computer was returned to the customer who paid the sister's boyfriend "€30 and a couple of packs of smokes for his trouble".

A few days later we received a call from the customer complaining that they weren't able to connect to the internet since they got their "repaired" PC back. I called around and it didn't take long to see what she got for her €30. The reason she wasn't able to connect to the internet was that there were no drivers installed for the modem. Neither were there any drivers installed for the video card, sound card or network card - practically all the hardware on the PC was non-functional. As there was no way to download the drivers from the customer's house, we had to bring the system box in to the workshop, install a wireless USB network card and download the drivers from the HP site. It was while doing this that the Windows XP Activation reminder popped up informing me that the OS could be used for just 27 more days before it would self-destruct. At this point I got the feeling that things were worse than I initially thought. We brought Windows XP through the activation process, entering the OEM licence key on the side of the system box and, as I suspected, it wouldn't activate.

Compaqs are not designed to have their Windows OS reinstalled from a generic OS disc - they must be reinstalled either from the supplied recovery disc (missing in this case) or from the Recovery Partition that is found on the hard drive. To bring a Compaq PC back to its original factory settings, it is simply a matter of pressing the F10 key during startup and this will bring up the Recovery Options. From there, it's just a matter of selecting the required options and you have a factory-fresh PC in about 30-60 minutes. Unfortunately, when F10 was pressed on the customer's PC, nothing happened. This is most likely due to the reinstallation of Windows, using the generic OS disc, overwriting the Master Boot Record on the hard disc, thus making the Recovery Partition inaccessible. Solution? The customer had to order a set of Recovery Discs from HP at a cost of €38.50 and, when these arrive, she has booked us to perform the system recovery. I have suggested that she passes on our bill to her sister's boyfriend. She agrees.

Winfixer Woes

We've had two customers in the last couple of weeks who have fallen prey to a particularly aggressive piece of bogus software known as Winfixer. WinFixer - is a bogus antispyware and spam blocking application that attempts to market itself by surreptitiously installing adware on the user's PC. This adware aggressively and incessantly displays popup notifications in an attempt to convince the user that something (other than its own existence) may be amiss with the computer. The problem is typically initiated via a popup ad displayed during a visit to a distributing web site. Reports suggest that this initial popup is constructed such that any attempt to dismiss it (including clicking the 'X' in the upper right-hand corner) actually causes the adware to be installed on the workstation. From this point on, WinFixer popups are launched from the PC itself. Because of the intricate way in which the adware insinuates itself into its host (including making dozens of registry edits), successful removal is a tedious, manual process. When running, it can be found in Windows Task Manager and stopped, but before long it will start up again.

Ultimately what this piece of malware is trying to do is to tempt you into registering the software for $49.99 in order to "fix" the problems your PC is experiencing (which are caused by Winfixer). Needless to say, after registering the product, nothing much changes - you've just been conned out of $49.99. Indeed it may not end there. There are unconfirmed reports that the credit card that you used to purchase the subscription may be compromised and may be subject to unauthorized use and that the operation works out of the Ukraine, though neither of my customers reported this happening to them.

If you come across Winfixer on your PC, DO NOT buy the subscription - get a reputable anti-spyware program and let it try to deal with it, but be warned that many anti-spyware programs have difficulty completely removing it and pop-ups may still occur. If in doubt, contact us here at PC Medic.