Gavin's networking
Rick Murray (539) 13850 posts |
[in Aldershot]
Firefox and XP. Not an unheard of combination. Okay then.
That’ll do for starters. ;-) |
GavinWraith (26) 1563 posts |
Thanks Rick. Happy New Year. |
Chris Evans (457) 1614 posts |
I’d try using a static IP address. |
GavinWraith (26) 1563 posts |
Yes, my wife’s Toshiba Satellite. It is not on at the moment but its connection is reliable. A propos Firefox on the Advent flunking “google.com”, NetSurf on the Raspberry Pi brings it up in a flash (diverted to google.co.uk). I am very puzzled at the difference. The Toshiba appears not to suffer the Advent’s problems (it is faster, of course). I have compared the internet settings of the two, and they are identical. Do you suppose some anti-google malware/adware has crept in? I have been scouring Firefox’s about:config but have not seen anything relevant. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
Cough! The phrase to use is “use a manually assigned address” – as opposed to a DHCP assigned address which could be either dynamic or static. Static being the version where the DHCP server has a reservation for that particular MAC address and therefore the client is always assigned the same IP. i.e DHCP assigned can be static or dynamic, manually assigned can only be static. The point being that static does not mean it is manually assigned.
Check the content of the hosts file (should be almost non-existent, and the lmhosts similarly). |
Rick Murray (539) 13850 posts |
Let’s – for the moment – assume that the problem is a failing connection and not malware1. Do you have a spare LAN cable? If so, turn off WiFi and plug the ethernet socket directly into your router. Does everything work now or not? 1 For malware, take a peek at http://www.2-viruses.com/how-to-fix-google-results-hijacker-google-redirect-virus-problem – it might be worth reviewing your Firefox add-ons and such. |
GavinWraith (26) 1563 posts |
Following the advice there, I had a look at C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts . It was about 335K in size! There must have been near a million lines of the form If I enter http://lexicity.com in NetSurf the page opens immediately. If I do it with Firefox I get the endless “Connecting…” message and nothing more happens. So I do not think it is anything to do with Google. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
What is the proxy setting in firefox? |
GavinWraith (26) 1563 posts |
No proxy. I made the mistake of installing Spyhunter. I could only do this by downloading it with NetSurf, firing up Virtual Acorn on the Advent and transferring the installer using Access. It told me that I had 35 nasties in the registry, inside: |
David Feugey (2125) 2709 posts |
1/ Remove any optimisation or antimalware tool Or reinstall all the PC :) |
Rick Murray (539) 13850 posts |
That’s normal, sadly. Quite a number of products will tell you what needs to be done, and demand payment prior to doing anything.
Depends upon the adware. And whatever else you may have on your system.
First question – how did the stuff get there in the first place? I run an XP system. I tend to stay in Admin mode. I’ve been doing that for years now. Never had AdWare. Why? I tightly restrict what I allow to run on my system, and stuff I’m not sure about I’ll throw to https://www.virustotal.com/ for forty-odd second opinions. The last thing, a firm hand is necessary with children. “Yes, you can use the computer, but you install anything and you lose computer privilege. Forever.”. And stick to it. If the kid needs something, the parent can evaluate it and install it. You don’t want to know the messes I’ve had to deal with thanks to children installing everything they could download. Of course, it’s a bit late now. But for next time. ;-)
It would not be terribly hard to hide something in a piece of RISC OS software that could install itself into the system, record all of your keypresses, and periodically send the data to my server for recording. A little more effort, and I could find a way to get this to start up with the computer. A little more effort and I could get it to cache its data until there is network activity like you fetching a web page (so there won’t be any network activity when you aren’t doing anything on the internet). Hiding a program inside other programs is medium/difficult (depending upon level). Hiding a running piece of code from the user is actually quite simple. Can you remove it from RISC OS? Yes, fairly easily, that’s one of the benefits of the system. But one of the downsides is being able to see that it is there in the first place. Now consider malware. Malware is, essentially, a non-replicating virus. It has no real intention to infect your programs, once it is in your computer that’s all it wants. Some malware is fairly easy to spot. Some malware (the likes of tdss) is extremely difficult to spot. Some malware is impossible to spot directly. It will intercept Windows API calls and provide fake information to hide its presence. The best way to scan a Windows system for malware and such is to download a scanning package based upon a bootable Linux and use that to scan. With Windows live and the filesystem mounted, you can never be sure you aren’t being lied to by the very thing you are trying to find. |
GavinWraith (26) 1563 posts |
Thanks for the advice. I use CCleaner regularly. I also ran Malwarebyte after uninstalling Spyhunter but it reported no adware. Of course it is possible that Spyhunter’s 35 items were just fictions. But I did have Webfuii at one point, and I thought that I had got rid of all traces. The difficulty with reinstalling is that the Advent has no CD drives, or disk drives of any sort. I do not think I was supplied with any backup copy of XP Home Edition on any sort of medium when I bought it from PC World. Only my Iyonix has a CD drive, and that cannot cope with anything but very ancient CDs. There seems to be technology lag; who has CD drives these days? Would Microsoft supply me with a new copy of XP on a memory stick? Downloading is out of the question, as broadband in my village struggles to reach 50Mbits/sec. |
Rick Murray (539) 13850 posts |
It’s possible, yes.
Sounds about normal. :-/ Do you have a recovery partition? Some computers set aside a part of the harddisc (as a hidden partition) to contain a way to reinstall. Often this is accessed through some magic keypress when the machine is booting. You know, like F10 goes into SetUp.
Everybody. You can get USB DVD readers and writers quite cheap (I have three of them I picked up from boot sales) which mean potentially any USB enabled device can read DVDs and CDs. A fair few of them can boot from a USB drive as well. (depends upon your BIOS capabilities – and there might be peculiarities like it needs the drive plugged into a specific USB port).
Is there such a thing as a “new” version of XP these days?
Hohoho… Yes. Because 50Mbit is lethargic, right? Downloading is not out of the question. Because my rescue-PC has a SATA drive and my legit copies of XP don’t support SATA, I sourced a version that does. Download? It took about an hour and a half. At 2 (TWO) megabit! |
Dave Higton (1515) 3534 posts |
XP has been out of support – even extended support – for a long time now, so you’ll get no help from Microsoft. You could upgrade to Linux for free. If you have to stay on Windows, you’ll probably have to get at least 8.1 nowadays. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
We pushed out a set of updates for XP to a couple of thousand installs just before Christmas. Even the general public can pick up on critical updates by accessing the POS revision stuff. |
Peter Duncan (1657) 23 posts |
I tried AdwCleaner 4.106 in addition to Malwarebytes to rid my old XP computer of commercial spyware and it seemed to do the trick. Review can be read at: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml. It’s free. |
David Feugey (2125) 2709 posts |
Most of the time, I use both of them. AdwCleaner for fast cleaning + CCleaner to remove files, then Malwarebyte in complete mode (all options on – very long scan) to remove all unwanted software. |