Posted on 11/24/2005 8:24:54 AM PST by johniegrad
I have somehow picked up a program called "Spyaxe3.0" on my HP laptop running Windows XP. It claims to be an antispyware program. Since it appears to have installed itself, I have removed it several times with "Add/Remove Programs". I have also done a search and deleted all files related to it that I can find. It causes me to obtain "security alerts" on the toolbar at the bottom of my screen that lead to the Spyaxe website when clicked. Despite my attempts to remove it, it will often reappear when I reboot or start the computer.
I have scanned the system with AVGFree and with NortonAntivirus and have eliminated some other stuff I found which may or may not have been related to the problem.
I am not particularly computer literate so I hope I'm not posting something here that shows off my stupidity. I suspect that there is some obvious fix to this problem that I am just not seeing.
Thanks.
Got Unix?
Buy a Mac and you will never have these problems
because you never run as Root as most Widoze users do.
Origins of rootkits (wikipedia). "The term "rootkit" (also written as "root kit") originally referred to a set of recompiled Unix tools such as "ps", "netstat", "w" and "passwd" that would carefully hide any trace of the intruder that those commands would normally display, thus allowing the intruders to maintain "root" on the system without the system administrator even seeing them.
"Generally now the term is not restricted to Unix based operating systems, as tools that perform a similar set of tasks now exist for non-Unix operating systems such as Microsoft Windows (even though such operating systems may not have a "root" account)."
Mac's just don't have the utility that PC's do for my purpose. (I know there is a big debate here.) Plus, it would be infeasible to replace 100,000+ computers in some big businesses.
IMO, This is on the same order of personal invasion as Turbotax's spyware it bundled with its software a couple years ago. Or worse.
Safe mode loads a stripped, diagnostic, version of Windows. Which makes it easier to eliminate tenacious bugs, viruses, pests, adware, spy ware. You don't need to use it every day. Just when you are plagued by a deep rooted pest or one of the above
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm
On Gatesware , if you run as administrator you are running as "root".
This is the default
This through the holes in IE give access to root from the web.
thanks for the info!
Go to Microsoft web site. Spend some time reading what safe mode is. You may as well get it from the source. It really is no big deal to do.
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