Dancing Cactus Mexico Message Board

[Sandy Beach in Toronto]

The saga continues with horror & glee, laughter & tragedy, new machine & travels to places NEVER contemplated by author!!!

The original machine which received the repairs posted in !ST post:
http://www.dancingcactusimports.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2214

has behaved just like and out of warranty car! & died again after about 30 days (warranty expiry period) with a fatal blow to the Motherboard.

Hence I bought newly refurbished HP w/ 160 SATA HD & 2 Gigs RAM & created slipstream OS disk for.

Got it up & running & in fact as posting with it now!

HERE are the WARNINGS for those brave enough or foolish enough OR
(like myself Aries Ram) stubborn enough to cross back across the great devide created by MS & it's corporate quislings & profiteers to their exclusive benefit!

As ALL know, I've warned long & hard about never visiting sites ending in
.ru (Russia) & .cn (China) as being simply TOO dangerous to be worth whatever is being offered! MS & ALL the main A/V makers forced me there under extreme duress!!

After 30 hours of searching the net I finally found 1 place I could finally find & download full SP1/SP1a.....In that stalwart bastion of free thought & information: (wait for it...) RUSSIA!!!!

Next BIG Problem was to obtain a FREE Antivirus WITH
'real time protection" to prevent infection rather than try to remove it after the fact. IF YOU'RE Win 95/98/SE/ME/99/2000/XP pre-SP2, THIS part is for YOU!!

After 40 hours scouring the sites of the top 20 A/V makers whose sites say "supports XP", NOT 1 offically did. I even downloaded & saved & tried to install several from those who traditionally have kept "legacy" versions and spent even more hours on their help forums trying to get a successful install to NO avail!! . I couldn't even get AVIRA (preferred) to install (despite both myself & Erika having had it work on our SP1s previously)! Install would proceede as far as after registering & then just Hang or crash soon thereafter causing instant reboot!!

Even COMODO at install would give a pop-up saying "for SP2 & Vista Only...install cannot continue. OK exits install!!!

Finally...last night, I got one I don't know, don't trust, but at least NOT a ROGUE A/V as far as I can tell, which would install and included all one might wish for real time protection such as settings lockdown, script blocking, home page protection, manual or scheduled updating, heuristic behaviour monitoring etc. called "Rising A/V" from....(wait for it) Bejing, CHINA!!!!

Of course I scanned it w/ MBAM & SAS & even obsolete Spybot 1.4 which I installed w/ defs from 2007 which I had saved. Command from Computer Deities: "Save in my docs any & all original installer .EXEs & last manual update files for any legacy programs you have used" for posterity!!

Anyway, it's 6A.M. local & I need a snack & some sleep BUT IF....

You see some of my next posts appear in an apparently Asian language,
you can reasonably assume that MS & Avira fed me to a Chinese Botnet!!!! S

[MizTortuga]

You are one determined and stubborn fella! Too funny about the only sites having the programs you need being the "EVIL doers".

Actually, I'm not that surprised. I have a family friend in one of the former Soviet republics and he often asks me to translate things for him from/into English for his amateur radio operations. He works with equipment years older and constantly looks for ways to improve and slowly upgrade what he has. The average person in China and Russia are quite poor and they are very adept at reconstructing and patching together things that we would consider outdated. I would suspect all those older computers that we ship to China to scrap and junk do not all end up in recycling. Good for them, and good for you!

[Sandy Beach in Toronto]

on the Avira forums that " 1/2 the world couldn't afford the latest Monster systems to handle the later Monster OS's & programs"!!

I must say that sooo far, This "Rising A/V" has done exactly what you would expect from a good primary protector!! It seems to update defs every day or two.

I purposely unleashed & tried to install "Trojan Simulator" from Misec Security (listed in the FPL) to test the Rising & Prevx heuristic & my old Spybot 1.4.
BOTH Spybot & Rising A/V immediately stopped it from reaching the registry & installing.

The Prevx. failed to utter a murmur when I actually pointed it at the folder & further failed to even notice when I activated the Install for it!!! The T.S.
program has been available for free for at least 5 years and ANY protector should scream bloody murder when it moves!! It can be flagged for any one of 10+ actions it takes giving itself away as a trojan (no payload).

Prevx, despite a "leading edge protector" reputation, won't be making the FPL list! Plus it's not really free (pay version to remove scam).
Sandy

[MizTortuga]

Very interesting about the "Rising A/V" - have you heard anything about it anywhere on your various security chatboards?

Be sure to let us know when/if you do the next major editing on your free programs sticky post. I still refer to it as needed.

[Sandy Beach in Toronto]

or good either...seems below the radar in this hemisphere better known in Asia.

It claims some awards from VB100 list & from West Coast Labs (both pretty good testers) but the ones the site shows are 1 yr. or more old. That the basic system did do well for both Viruses & Trojans including heuristic behavior scans w/ no false positives means some there knew what they were doing (hoping that someone is still there!).

Will post when I do update of F.P.L. but I'm afraid that the list is going to shrink more than just a little between programs dropping quality/increased FPs & those becoming obsolete or off the market. Guess authors getting older
is reducing their enthusiasm for making free products. S