How to get rid of the crap that sticks to your computer

Techrepublic's George Ou wrote a great article on how to de-gunkify your PC of most of the junk we get whether we just bought a new PC, installed a ton of programs which run on startup so now the computer boots up slow, uninstalled most of those programs, etc. Basically whenever your computer is either running slow and/or you need more hard drive space this is one of the first things you should do.

He suggests two great little programs: Autoruns and CCleaner and does pretty good job of explaining how to use them and why you are running them.

How Microsoft made my sister's laptop freeze then fixed it

Microsoft for just under two years has had this free "service" called Patch Tuesday where every second Tuesday of the month they make updates available via Microsoft/Windows update and automatically through a program called, you'll never guess, automatic updates! Prior to Patch Tuesday, Microsoft's would release patches and updates at any time they saw fit - which was not so considerate for their customers, but when your roiling in dough and don't have customers complaining too much then your fine. Back on track, depending on your configuration of automatic updates it can either be set to: download all the "critical updates" and automatically install them; or download them and an annoying but loving prompt will guide the user through the updates and then install them, and let's not forget to reboot; or disable automatic updates completely and manually download and install the updates. All these options, except the last, make the astronomical assumption that once you install the updates your computer will run, at least, about the same as it always before you installed the update. Microsoft is famous for being quite the contrarian on this point. Mind you, other companies have this problem also.

Now understand that I am not saying automatic updates is a bad program, I am just saying that you need to be aware of what your installing and that Microsoft is not immune from this good advice. The case in point involves update KB916089 (the "KB" stands for Knowledge Base) which was released on Nov. 14, 2006. I don't know if my sister's laptop was experiencing symptoms before just about two weeks ago, but she told my Dad that her computer was taking a long time to load anything. We feared that this was the same overheating problem she had experienced in late January early February which resulted in her laptop getting a new motherboard.

However, as I looked at the programs running in the background (called processes) I noticed that one of the instances of a process called svchost.exe was going crazy a using between 98-100% of the CPU time. By the way, you can see this information one of two ways - either press and hold down Ctrl + Alt + Delete to bring up the Windows Task Manager then click on the "Processes" tab, or download and run an even more useful program by Mark Russinovish called Process Explorer. I knew this process was indeed legitimate, but I also knew it wasn't supposed to take up so much attention from the CPU. Therefore, I hit the "End Process" button and proceeded to surf the web.

Within two minutes svchost.exe would start back up and I would end the process again. I knew something was wrong so I looked on the net and there were pages that would basically suggest that my sister had a virus and here's how you fix it, but that did not solve my particular problem, so I called Dell. The technician explained the proceeding about the Microsoft update gone awry and had me boot into safe mode then download and apply KB927891. The problem was both caused and fixed by Microsoft.

If you read the Security Advisory for KB927891 and read the "More Information" for KB916089 what you find out is that a scan that Automatic Updates performs was going bonkers. I hope this will save someone a lot of trouble if they are experiencing the conditions I describe.

Reason for being

The first order of this blog is to state it's purpose. My chief reason is to create a catalog of my different thoughts and ideas. This blog is primarily created for selfish reasons. I am becoming more and more aware over time that I'm forgetting things that I learn or hear about that I think are useful and so rather than lose this information to the great abyss of my mind I would rather try to collect it in a place where I will have easy access to it and where it might be of some use to others.

Given the above, what type of content will I write about? From the outset at least, I plan to write about my continuing studies with routers, switches, anything related to wireless networking and whatever else I'm learning about dealing with computer networks. For example, one topic I'll probably frequently write about is how easy it's to crack WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). However, I've still got quite a lot to learn, so I won't know everything. The format will probably be questions followed by answers, which will most likely include links, to various Windows/Cisco problems I'm involved with in class and at home at any given time.

My interests do not just lie in computers I am also a Christian and therefore I will most certainly write about whatever I'm reading, listening to, or thinking about from that perspective. I also have a brother, a sister, and a father who have different callings in life and so attempt to keep up with whatever those different real or at this point theoretical vocations are. Needless to say God provides me with quite a bit of writing material!

A lot of what I'll be doing is referencing articles or books, because I read more frequently than I type. Another habit that influences the preceding sentence is that I enjoy thoroughly understanding an issue then I proceed to tell others what I found. As a result, when I do type it tends to be a bit longer than I thought when I started and probably can come across as overkill. With this understanding in mind I’ll end my first post.