Tag: scanner

Good Free Virus Scanners and Antiviruses?

Posted onAuthorTruXterLeave a comment

If you say you want “good and free” as you ask me for advice on a virus scanner or antivirus, don’t get mad at me if I tell you to remove your Avast, Kaspersky or AVG. I have zero faith in either one of those. ZERO. Simply because I have done my tests and the results were what I suspected. Garbage.
Microsoft Security essentials and Microsoft windows defender are the only antiviruses (virus protection) I recommend. Even though virus scanner and antivirus are two different things. One scans, the other monitors with a scan option.
If you want a good virus scanner then you must understand the maker of the program made it to scan and focused on scanning manually only. This is a good thing. Doesn’t bloat down your computer running scans when if it was a good virus protection, there’d be nothing to scan to begin with.
From a previous post here about virus scanners and antiviruses.
RogueKiller.exe  This will hunt down the deepest of virus.
ATF-Cleaner.exe helps clear up what’s on your computer in folders that you got locked out of in the attack. empties trash and cache and a bunch of stuff all at the same time
Spybot – weak these days but doesn’t kill you to give it a scan and let it clean a few things up too.
[Microsoft Essentials Windows 7] | [Windows Defender Windows 8]..Not a bad free Virus Scanner. Works pretty good. Works best if installed before you get the virus. Protects better than any other virus scanner. Free or otherwise.
unhide.exe will get your icons back if you lost them and your files back if they disappeared when the virus hit you.
Malwarebytes– free and good strong software
Super Anti-Spyware – Stupid name, great product. oh and it has a free version.
Emergency Kit Scanner – I use this one anytime a friend calls me for help
MVP’s Hosts – block your computer from accessing known virus site. Stops advertisements too. Not a virus scanner or antivirus in teh sense of realtime protection, but still a good addition.

The basic rule of internet safety is watching out for the b.y.c.a.k. virus. b.y.c.a.k. = between your chair and keyboard.
this means, don’t open weird emails. Don’t go to weird websites. Don’t click impulse click bait links on Facebook or twitter or the like.

Remember these and you have a better chance than 75% of the people on the internet.

Still no matter how safe you are, you can still get a virus from legitimate uses of your computer on the internet. If this happens, then be wise and either  wipe and reinstall windows, or take the time to run every  program in the link above (this is so much more fun and feels very accomplished in the end). Don’t forget to update the programs and do it again all week long, just to be sure.

How to fight CRYPTOLOCKER

Posted onAuthorTruXterLeave a comment

The way to beat Cryptolocker is pretty much like all ransomware. With one exception.
Hopefully you have a great back up process and can separate all computers from the infected computer on your network.
Start with these old school free tools of the trade.
Run them all if you want to make sure you get everything.
RogueKiller.exe  This will hunt down the deepest of virus.
ATF-Cleaner.exe helps clear up what’s on your computer in folders that you got locked out of in the attack. empties trash and cache and a bunch of stuff all at the same time
Spybot – weak these days but doesn’t kill you to give it a scan and let it clean a few things up too.
[Microsoft Essentials Windows 7] | [Windows Defender Windows 8]..Not a bad free Virus Scanner. Works pretty good. Works best if installed before you get the virus. Protects better than any other virus scanner. Free or otherwise.
unhide.exe will get your icons back if you lost them and your files back if they disappeared when the virus hit you.
Malwarebytes– free and good strong software
Super Anti-Spyware – Stupid name, great product. oh and it has a free version.
Emergency Kit Scanner – I use this one anytime a friend calls me for help

So… What is Cryptolocker? Cryptolocker is like all ransom-ware of the past. In fact it looks just like antivirus 2012 except. Cryptolocker comes right out and says “hey we locked down your file, pay us and we will unlock your file, if you do not pay us, we will delete the password that we have on file for you file and you pretty well screwed forever”. This is straight up extortion.  no matter what they call it, it is what it’s function is. To brutally force you to pay the virus maker’s fee to get your files back.

Protip.. Install MSE (Microsoft security essentials) before you get any virus.. It doesn’t cost anything and uses very little resources. Plus MSE is made by the people who made your operating system, it knows when unauthorized activity has occurred.. and well, it should be their responsibility to secure and protect your computer.

Cryptowall 3.0 Is the same but more developed to protect it’s self. Here’s Trend Micro explaining how Encryptowall 3.0 functions and looks.

and please quit opening attachments without verifying their validity.

Fake System Restore is a Virus

Posted onAuthorTips Of Tech9 Comments

Fake computer repair/Restore software infects your computer with a bad virus that is hard to remove, hides your desktop icons and all of the items in the start menu and makes all of your folders hidden and read only. The Virus Also kills Task Manager.
On Windows XP windows 7 and windows vista.
The program has been called pc repair, system restore, pc restore, and probably a few more names I haven’t expected yet.


The pop up tells you that your hard drive can’t be read and your video card is overheating and that this semi-legit looking (except for the buy now button) can fix the issue.
This Virus is a bad one. Killed my computer at work. First Got a pop up that looks like System restore (kind of. never really looked at it) Except in the corner it says “buy Now” and across from it is the cancel button. Now me being a vet of these pop ups I assumed that by clicking the red X in the corner I have better odds than if I click either of the offered buttons.
Boom. all of my icons Vanished and my start menu became emptied, completely. Start menu was completely void of all options. Everything I had in my quick launch deleted off also.Not cool.
I tried the ol 1-2, and rebooted. Nope. Blue screen of Death. Safe mode, nope blue screen of death. Put another hard drive in and use it as the primary hard drive and scan the first hard drive with it’s virus scanner. Which was Windows Essentials. Found the ROOT KIT right away. After the delete and another reboot, blue screen of death.
But after about 6 hours of freaking out hoping the boss does not see. I get my computer restored
Here’s what I used.



RogueKiller.exe
ATF-Cleaner.exe helps clear up what’s on your computer in folders that you got locked out of in the attack.
Spybot
Believe it or not I used ESET Online Virus Scanner  to clear out the Viruses that this System restore thing gave me (worked great on Xp computer, did just okay on windows 7)
Microsoft Essentials Not a bad free Virus Scanner. Works pretty good. Makes the computer a bit slow though. I uninstalled it after I used it. This one finds the trojans left behind from the System Repair virus on Windows 7, and finds some for the system restore virus on xp. and windows 7
unhide.exe will get your icons back and your files back that disappeared when the virus hit you.

 

Then to get my icons back in order on my desktop, killed Explorer and restarted Explorer. To get the Explorer to run, I hit Windows button and the letter “D”, until I could right click on my desktop. You might have to do this three times or so. once you can right click, select “New” and select “Shortcut” Then it will ask you what you want to name it and where you want to point it. point to “C:\Windows\System32\taskmgr.exe” and save. Now double click that shortcut, and kill all instances of Explorer.exe. Then while still in taskmanager on the applications tab, look at the bottom, click the “new task” button. when it opens, type Explorer.exe.

Your folders are not gone, they are hidden and put into “read only” mode. You have to navigate to drive c: find and empty space (no icons in the way) Right click and select “properties” find the view tab. Scroll down and make it makes hidden folders visible folders. Click apply . Now you have to go to each folder one by one, or you can just use that program I posted up there called “unhide.exe” Does all of the unhiding of the folders again. Not sure which one but one brings back all of your uninstalls and fills your start menu again. It’s not a perfect science but it gets you closer with a mess ton of less work. One of those files looks like you have to register, don’t fill anything in just hit ok, it will work in trial mode.. you’re just going to use it once anyway. I did it backward and manually started doing all of this while my friend looked up what to get, by then I was about 30% into it, so some stuff the programs were to do, I already did it and some stuff I did, I bet the programs don’t do. but run all of those before you get to far into it that way you can see for yourself what they fix. Should make a lot of stuff much easier once you use the virus scanners and empty all of that stuff out.
Eset, I never liked them until this. They did quite a bit, and Microsoft essentials found the root kit.

That’s what did it for me.
Hope this works for you.

If this works for you, please share the link or comment below, let me know I am helping. If you need any ideas or tips or better understanding of anything, post below. I will do my best.

In the comments section of another post, someone made a connection between this virus and the software I noted . Netsession_win.exe

PS… If you are here because of Reddit. Hook me up with some Karma. !

Android Apps 2011 – our top choice

Posted onAuthorTech Review Man

Our top 5 Android apps for your Android based phones.

ixMAT Barcode Scanner
a href=”https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ixellence.ixmat.android.communityamp;feature=search_result”Barcode scanner/a for your Android phone. This one scans a large choice of barcodes.

Dungeon Defender
object width=”560″ height=”345″ classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” /param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” /param name=”src” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BeyQ-PC_cwc?version=3amp;hl=en_USamp;rel=0″ /param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /embed width=”560″ height=”345″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BeyQ-PC_cwc?version=3amp;hl=en_USamp;rel=0″ allowFullScreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” //object
Online Role playing game, for your android device.

a href=”http://truxtertech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/d-game.png”img class=”size-full wp-image-1380″ title=”d-game” src=”http://truxtertech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/d-game.png” alt=”barcode to game” width=”158″ height=”158″ //a

Dungeon Defender barcode

Wifi Toggle Switch
a quick a href=”https://market.android.com/details?id=com.curvefish.widgets.wifionofffeature=search_result”switch/a you can place on your main screen to toggle wireless signal connection on and off. So you don’t have to flip through the main menu and then the settings

Rev3Remote
let’s you get quick access to a href=”https://market.android.com/details?id=com.awc.revremote.freefeature=search_result”Revision 3/a content and videos. Works better than the revision 3 certified ap.

Hey tell. Hey tell is a way to send your friends short messages, voice messages, via your internet service. Cuts down on minute usage. If you have wifi, its free to use.

WordPress
For those of you with an android phone who also run a website that uses a href=”https://market.android.com/details?id=org.wordpress.androidfeature=search_result”wordpress/a, then this ap is probably the best find you will get for your android phone. EVER!

Zinga barcode scanner 4.0.0

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Wow. That is the first thought you get once you understand how to work the latest verson of zinga barcode scanner.
You can upload images of products, post prices (most people are type stupid fake low prices). Do reviews of products, read other reviews of products before you spend $$$ on it.
This android barcode scanner is dead on super fast. While other barcode scanners repeatedly try to read barcodes, this one reads them ultra fast.
You get to see in real time, current scans,updates and data entry. Their data base because of this latest update, has got to be the highest informed data base ever of all barcode scanners.
This is a must have android application for anyone who is shopping. Especially for those who are uncertain about a product they have to buy.

Seems a lot of people are scanning lotion…..
Uses very little battery.
Posted via Android. Dont mind the typos. I’ll fix them later.

Online Malware Scans

Posted onAuthorTips Of Tech

If you are like me and do not like bloating your computer with virus scanners and anti virus programs that run the whole time your computer is on. Then you at least need to scan every now and again to make sure you do not have a computer virus or some sort of spy ware. Most people just call it malware.So for you , the better bet is to use an online scanner to help locate and remove the virus or spyware you may obtain in a regular day’s computer use.
See I have a funny little phrase that describes the usage of a search engine. It’s like playing mine sweeper, Some times you get a nice good run, sometimes you get nailed left and right. BOOM. ” You may be infected” I hate that dang fake virus scanner. So it’s all about CTRL ALT DELETE and pray your web browser does not re-open the same dang page again.
So in my years of computer repair and internet fun I have found a few sites that do not charge you to use their online virus scanner. and they are not a trap or have any special usage clause. Also sometimes your installed virus scanner gets a virus that attaches it’s self to the virus scanner, so now you can’t remove the virus because the virus scanner is not self destructive. (would help if they had a self back up and repaired such issues on reboot).
I now share these with the readers of the TruXtertech.Com Site.
Here is a list of Online Virus scanners that work. For Free
A-Squared online Scanner a very good scanner that seems to be the strongest I know of . I also use the Emergency kit, I keep that malware scanner on a thumb drive.

BitDefender The longest running online malware scanner I know of. This malware scanner has removed a virus from every single computer I have ever used/repaired. Bitdefender also sells a copy of their virus scanner from their site. But it runs like all antivirus programs. Constantly.

Eset Online Virus Scanner. Menu to select the type of scan and actions you would like it to take.

Panda– online scanner

CA– Formerly InnoculateIT formerly Etrust now just CA. I love their virus scanner and performance tools. but again they are constant so I use the online scanner and that’s plenty for me. Their virus scanner is worth a buy though. So if you know someone who needs protection and they aren’t as OCD as me when it comes to keeping the pc fast, do it, get them CA for their birthday or Christmas or just for the heck of it.

Single file Virus Scanners. For scanning something you just downloaded to make sure it doesn’t have a Trojan in it or any other type of malware.

Virus Chief – Uses a few other online single file virus scanners, so you get a large number of virus scanners at one time.
Virus Total – same as above, mostly the same virus scanners.

Jotti– this one is the one that has been around the longest. The guy used to list the “latest in the wild” which would show what cooties have recently been caught, It was fun to watch that page. I guess he got sick of the wasted bandwidth because of people refreshing the page constantly.

Virscan.org – online single file virus scanner. Scans with like 30 virus scanners at once like the others. Takes a bit longer but it gets confirmed by 30 scanners that you do or do not have a virus in your hands.

Try the list, go through it and scan for a virus see what you get. you may, you may not have malware.

I did a virus scanner comparison using a well known virus and all of these scanners listed. come see how they scored. My test was just to see what virus scanners couldn’t detect it. From that point on, I consider those virus scanners that did not detect the virus, garbage and useless.

A-Squared Free Is Gone

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Many of us knew of Asquared free. The software that got Emsisoft noticed in Google. It was the best malware scanner out there. Well Emsi found it in their best interest to remove their malware scanner and merge it’s code with their virus scanner. I have no idea how long the virus scanner will be free. I do know the virus scanner / Anti virus was trial for as long as I can remember the company site.

There is another way to still get A-squared free, is by downloading the “emergency kit“. and just run it as a stand alone. The Emergency kit was created for usb use. That I.T. guys can float around the office without having to download and install the software on every single infested computer. Also prevent a virus (during the active infection) from directly attaching it’s self to the malware scanner and crippling it.
I was downloading asquared updates yesterday july 26th 2010 during the day at work. When I got home, it was off the site. I tried to update my home pc but was prompted with a notice of the change and would have to uninstall and that a-squared would no longer scan for me.

By now you understand I got an infection while at work and got spooked by it by the time I got home right? Well I am running the emergency kit. So far found 4 viruses that Norton didn’t find, malware bytes didn’t find and that S&D didn’t find. In fact they all showed I was clean. Even though I got the fake virus scanner prompt on this antiquated operating system (XP).

ZXing Barcode Scanner for Android

Posted onAuthorTruXter

The Zxing barcode Scanner for Android system telephones

The data they have on their website about the ap.

ZXing (pronounced “zebra crossing”) is an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library implemented in Java. Our focus is on using the built-in camera on mobile phones to photograph and decode barcodes on the device, without communicating with a server. We currently have production-quality support for:

This library is divided into several components; some are actively supported:

  1. core: The core image decoding library, and test code
  2. javase: J2SE-specific client code
  3. android: Android client, called Barcode Scanner
  4. androidtest: Android test app
  5. android-integration: Supports integration with our Barcode Scanner app via Intent
  6. zxingorg: The source behind zxing.org/w
  7. zxing.appspot.com: The source behind our web-based barcode generator

Some modules are contributed and/or intermittently maintained:

  1. javame: JavaME client
  2. csharp: Partial C# port
  3. cpp: Partial C++ port
  4. rim: RIM/Blackberry-specific client build
  5. iphone: iPhone client + port to Objective C / C++ (QR code only)
  6. bug: Client for BugLabs’s BUG

Works great if you are scanning stuff to find where to get that item online or what the best online price is, but beyond that, meh.. nothing special..

Does not tell you where to get it cheaper locally.

It still is great reassurance when you use it and find that online is about the same price. if you consider shipping and handling and the amount of time shipping takes and all that junk. Shop Savvy seems to do the same thing but it shows local. You get similar results with the two of online deals. but I still keep both because there some times seems to be differences.

I suggest you do the same, use both, you can’t really go wrong.

***Update***

There have been plenty of really good updates to zxing barcode scanner.

Dang thing is really cool. You just kind of have to drop the understanding you have of the other  bacode scanners.

Zxing is now one of my “must have” aps

Android, Shop Savvy Barcode scanner

Posted onAuthorTruXter5 Comments

The Shop Savvy Barcode Scanner for androids

The application gives some sense of security. Knowing that you can scan an item and check local prices that might be better than what you are about to pay for the item at the establishment you are at currently. There is a downside though.  It seems the application only finds Target Stores, I mean the store with the big circle looking like a dartboard target.

On some occasions it does  show Walgereens. Really it should show  more than one  vendor location. instead what ever vendor  they choose, they show all locations of that vendor. It is supposed to show you the cheapest place to purchase the item. See  I think that might be a bit of bs. I have a feeling it’s a sponsored  programs, like just an advertisement market. it does no search other than your location, and how to find their sponsor who carries said product. See I bought a coffee bean  Grinder from Kroger for 9.99 (I am not paying $100+ for a grinder, I’m just not. While standing in Kroger I scanned it, the results I got said  Target for $12.99. i looked down at the price on  the shelf, 9.99 ..

The model I got was  proctor Silex fresh Grind  model number E160B. Barcode 0 22333 91600 1 . Here it is at Target  for 12.99 . Sorry Kroger does not have it on their site but

Reciept picture

Reciept picture

LOL that should do. Don’t bother scanning car parts, because clearly they have no car parts sponsors.