My computer has been performing poorly. So this morning I ran my virus scanner with its toughest settings for piece of mind. Instead I found a virus:
Guess it is time to do a security sweep of the home network. I bet the kids computers are overrun.
Never a good sign:
This is a friend’s machine being cleaned for tonight.
About every 5th character I type, regardless of application (be it Twhirl, Firefox, MS Word, CFStudio..) the window I’m in loses focus. This means I have to click back into the window that I’m trying to type. Terribly annoying but I can deal with it because I have to be on my code today instead of on troubleshooting. I’ll run some antispyware checkers in the background while I work. This is terribly frustrating.
Update: This computer has an ethernet card and a wireless networking card. I’m using the ethernet so the wireless is unnecessary but the wireless connection manager kept polling for available networks and that was stealing the focus from the other applications. Disabling the wireless networking connection did the trick.
Maybe.. Windows security popped up to explain that I’ve got the Trojan-Keylogger.WIN32.Fung. Now, I’m typing fast and thinking slow. I may have just fallen prey to a popup ad because Windows security could only "enable protection" which when clicked took me to a … oh, this is pseudo phishing scam. That had to be a popup ad well designed to look like the windows security popup. It took me to an affiliate site for a free download or the ability to buy some software. I can’t believe I nibbled at that! None-the-less, I’m going to do a few scans and ensure the integrity of this machine. Back to work.
Have you ever unexpectedly been unable to move, delete or rename a file because of a "file sharing violation?" Perhaps you have been frustrated by one of these messages:
Cannot delete file: Access is denied
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.
Cedrick ‘Nitch’ Collomb has written a fantastic program to deal with these annoying situations without even having to reboot the computer! It is called Unlocker 1.8.5 and I highly recommend adding this to your toolkit! I also encourage giving Cedrick Collomb a paypal donation. It’s worth it!