Dennis Faas

There is a nasty worm (virus) making its way through the Kazaa file sharing network . On Friday, a friend called me up and told me that his "C drive" was full and that he couldn't do anything with his computer. So, I hopped in my car, drove over to ... his place, and cleaned up some temporary files on his system. I freed up about 400 meg or so on his C drive. Satisfied with the results, I went home. The next day, he called me back with the same problem. Oddly enough, he said the computer was left untouched since I left his house the previous night. So what happened to all the space I ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Lou G. write s: " Dear Dennis, Last week I was flooded with Klez virus containing emails which didn't effect my PC as I avoided opening them until I had tested the sources by replying. One source which constrained an obvious virus ... attachment was sent by someone who has denied knowing anything about the virus. It has become obvious from my communication with this person that another web site where both of us are listed was the source of information that the hacker used. The hacker used this source to gain both a "From: and a "To:" for their dirty trick(s ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Darren B. writes: " Dear Dennis, I was just reading your latest newsletter regarding computer internet security. I would be interested to know what you think of using the Windows hosts file as an ad-tracking blocking method. A ... pre-compiled hosts file of this type can be found at smartin-designs.com . To me, this is a much better method of blocking tracking than having ad blocking software using additional resources. You may also wish to make your readers aware of myiebrowser . It uses the IE engine, so it is a small download, and includes tabbed browsing, a pop-up ... (view more)

Well, it finally looks like infopackets.com has completed its journey over to its new web server. The entire process (from start to finish, including changing registrars ) took about 60 days to complete. Most importantly, my own personal computer is ... finally connecting to the new web server. The hard lesson learned: while most web service providers are eager to say that a change like this "should only take 72 hours to complete", just remember -- anything that could go wrong probably will, and expect the worse case scenario. OK, I expected that. But I think I got hit with worse than ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Robert W. write s: " Dear Dennis, I read your article in the Lockergnome newsletter about McAfee Virus Scan. I have had problems in the past with both McAfee and Norton virus programs and abandoned them a while back in favor of a ... better and FREE antivirus program. It is AVG AntiVirus and can be found at grisoft.com . I work as a computer technician and have heard of many complaints for both McAfee and Norton products not finding viruses even when you have the latest update. I have also seen this first hand in servicing computers with viruses on them. I highly recommend ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader "Jeff" write s: " Dear Dennis, I read your eZine with great interest. One thing I would like to see addressed is how does the average person without a great deal of technical knowledge, handle Windows updates. Six weeks ago, for ... example, I purchased a new PC with Windows XP. Every day I am told that there are updates waiting! My conundrum is that the PC works fairly well at this time. Should I update and risk having something go wrong? Should I just update blindly downloading and installing everything? I have tried to read the technical notes for each ... (view more)

Ron Smith wrote in and had a few comments to make about a past issue of the Infopackets Gazette, concerning whether or not Windows is transferable onto another machine using the same hard drive. While I still feel that installing Windows freshly on ... a new machine is a better choice, you may want to try Ron's suggestion if you're willing to get your hands dirty. Here's what he had to say: " Dear Dennis, With deep respect, I feel that your answer was incomplete when you advised that Annette couldn't take over her hard drive to the new computer. Last week, I did exactly that, and it was ... (view more)

Last week the last issue of the Infopackets Gazette was sent out. At the same time, a configuration change was made to the web server which hosts infopackets.com. What happened? It's a long story, but I'll try to reiterate in simple mumbo-jumbo ... without too much techy-talk. As you may already know, infopackets.com has experienced a major growth spurt in the last few months and has outgrown its current web server configuration. Therefore, it was decided that infopackets.com should be moved to a dedicated web server which offers unlimited bandwidth to fit the needs of its users. A purchase was ... (view more)

With regards to the last issue of the Infopackets Gazette which informed our users of a Data Recovery program called Drive Rescue , I wrote a comment: " If you accidentally delete a file, don't write anything else to your hard drive -- even if you ... are attempting to install Data Recovery software in the first place! Otherwise, the drive may overwrite the area of the data you're attempting to retrieve, making the rescue operation impossible. " Denise R. wrote in with a response to the above comment: " I have Drive Rescue on a floppy for use in recovering files on the C: drive; ... (view more)

I'm sure you've at least heard of Napster, and the more popular Napster-like spin-offs, such as Kazaa, Morpheus Music City, WinMX, and Bearshare. Each program has the ability to swap files with other users around the world. Although Napster is now a ... subscription-based music trading service, it was the first of its kind to offer users free access to thousands of music files at the click of a button. In comparison to Napster, Kazaa goes a step farther by allowing users within its file sharing community to trade not only music files, but movies, programs, and anything else under the sun. Kazaa ... (view more)