Heads up to Vista and Win7 users - Gadget Vulnerabilities Discovered - Take Action

[Pierre!]

Greetings to all,

Next week is the hackers convention(s) in Las Vegas NV - No, I don't get to go this year (Dang It!)

What is important - Vulnerabilities in the Gadgets and Sidebar systems will be revealed to thousands of hackers...

If you use Gadgets you need to read this:
http://seeberconsultblog.com/4683/windows-gadgets-soon-to-be-extinct/

If you are uncertain about how safe your Window Vista and Windows 7 systems are then here is another article that might help
http://seeberconsultblog.com/3457/windows-7-uac-have-you-checked-your-settings/

Hope that helps y'all out...

I am off to finish whackin the Gadgets off MY systems now!

Hasta Lueago Amigos!
Patrick

[Bob Ross]

I've never even heard of gadgets before.

Hey Patrick, I just bought a toshiba external hard drive and backed everything up. I feel so secure now! What's the chances of these things going bad though?

Also, I have an old desktop computer with tons of images I want off it but something is wrong with it. I had a virus come up on the antivirus and I chose to remove it but now the computer refuses to work correctly.

Everything looks kind of pixellated similar to "safe mode", and I cannot use the mouse at all. The mouse does however work perfectly fine when the computer is loading, but soon as windows loads the mouse refuses to respond. I can use sticky keys to move it around but not a mouse.

Any easy way to get my stuff on there moved over to the external hard drive?

[Pierre!]

Hello Jake!

Yes, there are 2 ways to tackle the photo move (there are more, but we won't go there until you're really stuck)

For external drives, I recommend a Hard Drive Caddy - They will hold a standard 3.5" drive or a 2.5" notebook drive - and this means you can Re-Use some of the old drive you have laying around.

Before you get too exited, they need to be SATA interface drives...(You usually can pickup SATA on the labels of the drives - those are the ones you keep)

With the External drive you now have OR when using the Hard Drive Docks (Caddys) you can move them from one computer to the next to do backups, move pictures... as needed provided they are USB or eSATA connected.

Point is - You should be able to use your Toshiba External drive - connect it to the old computer, copy files to it, then connect it to your newest computer - and once you connect it to your newest computer, immediately scan it with AntiVirus/AntiMalware - Don't wanna bring that junk over to the newer system!!!

The mouse is probably being impaired by some portion of the virus. Sounds like you may have been Hijacked - so make sure you only use it when off the network - remove the cable it gets internet from and it might speed up enough to let you copy your files.

Try that, reply with questions if needed, and I'll check back after making up some Margaritas! :-)

[Bob Ross]

OK well I turned this thing on again (has been probably 2 years) and it refused to load windows. Just kept restarting and saying it couldn't load correctly. I hit a bunch of buttons and it came up system recovery, and asked me for the recovery disk. I found it and put it in now it's loading whatever is on that disk so hopefully this should help me out?

[Pierre!]

It may actually repair the system and get it functional enough to pull the data off it, so let it run a while!

When it wants to restart, use the <F8> key to get it into safe mode... and see how the mouse behaves.

If you get good mouse control, attach the Toshiba Ext Drive (if it's USB) and copy that stuff!

You use the <F8> key on startup to reduce the chance of the Virus/Malware from loading... Might just work out okay!

Keep me posted...

Patrick

[Bob Ross]

I'm so happy, as there are pictures of our daughter on here from when she was a baby that we haven't seen in a few years.

It kept coming up a screen saying that windows didn't load properly and gave me an option to start in safe mode, safe mode with networking, command prompt, last known good configuration, and start normally.

All of these options did not work, it would just restart and go back to that screen. When smashing buttons during the startup I got the "bios" screen to come up which I have no clue about, and then finally got the system recovery screen to come up by luck.

I put in the disk, selecting "restore with backup copy" and now it had me restart and it's showing me progress of installing things like ".net framework" and drivers and stuff.

I will be so happy if I get these images back. Thanks for inspiring me to do this today Patrick, I definitely owe you.

[Bob Ross]

lol I guess I should have pressed f8 when it told me to restart after restoring but I had done it before reading this.

[Pierre!]

No worries... I am happy to share - You took good care of me, it's a pleasure to return the favor! 8-)

Patrick