First Do No Harm [Archive]

xxmikexx

01-18-2008, 06:26 AM

Bernt Stolle had his system clobbered by a registry maintenance utility. I had a drive defragmentation utility make my system squirrely at boot time. On an older machine I had a defragmentation utility literally cause a drive to overheat and crash.

And so on. One of the things we need to know is, regardless of their usefulness (we'll be talking about this) and their effectiveness (always a matter of opinion), which are the system utilities that a) are believed to cause no harm to the systems they’re used on, and that b) have no apparent functionality bugs of consequence.

Below is my personal list. I’m sure there are many other benign utilities, it’s just that if a particular utility is not on my list then either a) I personally have no experience with it, or b) I have used it and found it to be either harmful are buggy. In no particular order, my personal list is ...

Registry Repair 4.0 from StompSoft ---------- payware
Perfect Disk 8.0 from Raxco Software -------- payware
O&O Defrag 8.6 from O-O Software ---------- payware
Free AVG from Grisoft -------------------------------- freeware version (auto-updates code, manual update of data)
Acronis True Image Home 11.0 from Acronis -- payware
SpyBot from Safer Networking ------------------------ freeware (updates code and data upon request)
Spotmau PowerSuite utilities from Spotmau --- payware
SystemBooster XP2 from DiskTrix ------------- payware
Regedit from Microsoft ------------------------------- bundled into OS
PageDefrag from Microsoft/SysInternals --------------- freeware
NetAlyzer from PepMK -------------------------------- freeware

There are many other harmless, effective and showstopper-free utilities that I use, but they are not system utilities, so I’m not going to discuss them in this particular thread.

Let’s now hear from the rest of you. There is no real point in discussing system utilities that will hurt the system and/or be buggy. However, if person A says that <whatever> is a candidate but person B says “<whatever> hurt my system”, then <whatever> probably should not go on the final list. Once that list has constructed will then discuss effectiveness.

As with the “FS Payware Picks” threads in the fsOC forum, I really don’t want product reviews here, just honorable mentions.

angels355

01-18-2008, 02:29 PM

Ad-Aware: eliminates bad cookies, browser hijacking registry entries, adware, even trojans, and has a threat rating for each threat. Once had an item of malware with a rating of 8 out of 10, it got rid of it and never saw it again.

Some people say that it interacts or conflicts w/ Spybot, in that there is maybe some overlapping protection and adaware might see some of spybot's stored spyware or something like that. However I've never had the slightest problem, and Ad-Aware gets items that Spybot misses running in the basic level. Spybot can become extremely complicated with advanced and very advanced features. You have to be careful of what you're doing w/ Spybot in the very advanced mode (Advanced Mode plus adding on specific search features in the options), as if you don't know what you're doing it can be risky and Spybot warns you of that.

Ad-Aware SE the previous version which still works w/ 98/se/me and 2000/xp (etc?) no longer auto-updates, you have to download the update definition file from a site such as www.download.com , then unzip it, and copy and paste it into the Ad-aware SE program, at least that is the way I do it.

Ad-Aware 2007 does not work on 98/se/me, but does auto-update. It has some confusing screens when you're installing or first starting it up, which encourages you to purchase the pro version. If you want the free version, just say no, when the options come up, these options and prompts can be confusing even "pushy" but just say no and it will lead you to the freeware version if that is what you want, or say yes to get the pro version.

The reason I like Ad-aware is that it is really good at finding stuff, it once found a trojan that AVG Free missed, Spybot missed it also, also it routinely cleans out bad cookies. You can do that with Spybot but it is very complex when you get into the advanced option settings. If you're on the internet, afterwards Ad-aware will nearly always find something to get rid of such as bad cookies at the least.

You could simply empty all cookies out of your browser program, but then for example you have to sign in again at flightsim.com 's forums, etc.

I still use Ad-aware SE and manually install the definition updates because I still use 98/se/me, I like 98/se/me just fine, and I exercise my pride in honesty by having a separate license for each computer, even though 98/se/me are no longer supported. 98/se/me or rather by my preference, 98se/me are very nice operating systems, and make a big difference in frame rates on old weak hardware, and is good for fs8 and back, fs9 works fine as long as you use panels that don't have advanced gauges that only work w/ xp/vista (and win 2000?). W/ fs9 you just have to go slowly step by step installing addons so that if/when an addon component doesn't work on 98se/me you can back out of that and not ruin fs9's functionality. So far freeware scenery I've used works fine in 98se also. 98se can be a royal pain in the neck whoever, as some sound cards refuse to work even with the supposedly correct driver, I'm not sure if this is due to running the .net framework v2.0 (?) or some other advanced windows feature or security update that the manufacturer didn't get to accounting for in their drivers (for example last drivers from 2000 or 2002 at the very latest, and security updates up to 2006). And even more annoying as I still use dialup, pci dialup modems that with the same OS and same driver will work on one computer and will refuse to work on another for no apparent reason.

Any way, to make a long story "War and Peace Deux", I like Ad-Aware, it always finds stuff that needs to be gotten rid of, and has never caused any problem whatsoever with my computers, just the opposite, as was the case with finding that trojan which every other program missed. It's too bad that they don't offer auto-updates with the previous SE version. It is only appropriate to upgrade to xp on faster hardware, on my older weaker hardware 98se/me works just fine and is appropriate. Duh, have to figure out how to install the modem driver for an internet computer running Ubuntu, other Linux distros, or maybe it might be included in the 3.9 gb update which has to be gotten w/ a broadband connection,that might be the answer, maybe it's in there. Much better to use Ubuntu or other distro to surf the internet.

BTW, I NEVER take my flight sim computers on the internet, there are too many threats and don't want to throw away long hours of work by taking such a risk. I use a cheap internet computer to surf the web. This one I'm using, I overpaid for the mobo, $7, the case was literally sitting in a pile of computer garbage, the hdd set me back $2.50, the bigger slave drive was an erased throwaway that was free also. I let that computer experience the many wonders of malware from the internet, and only visit safe websites, nothing kinky, although this PC Software and Data Maintenance forum is very racey!! Heeheeee! BTW, for surfing the web and "Do no harm", I highly recommend using Linux instead of Windows, on an internet dedicated computer. According to zdnet.com windows has 236,000 malware threats on the internet, Linux has 700, and Apple's OSX 10.4 has 7 (that's SEVEN total, and OSX 10.5 is out). To further illustrate how great Apple's OSX 10.4 is (and 10.5 also), a friend of mine works professionally on the internet, that's where he earns his living, he has been using an Apple Mac Pro with OSX 10.4 for I think four years he said, and has NEVER INSTALLED AN ANTIVIRUS PROGRAM!!! And he has never had one single virus!! One time my 98se last six months before it came down with some sort of rootkit.

It was the gnarliest of times, it was the most "non-triumphant" of times...