What The Hell Is Wrong With MS?

[Baron Munchausen]

Norton and McAfee have apparently become bloatware in the last few years. Kaspersky is supposed to be the 'best' for detection of threats. AVG is ok, but not as good as many of the larger operations products. MS's own anti-spyware program Windows Defender is actually pretty good for detecting many threats. (Bought of course, not developed in house, but that's normal for MS...)

And you do need to keep your OS up to date on security patches. It's not just odd corners of the net that now host malware. Cybercrime has become organized and directed in a big way over the last few years. It's not just pranksters and lone scammers anymore. Major organized crime is finding ways to get keyloggers and form watchers and other financial spy software into many legit websites by way of third-party sources.

Google is now estimating that one in ten websites is already infested with some sort of malware. (Oddly enough Google's own ad service is one of the vectors for that infestation... crime organizations buy advertising from Google using front corporations and then build the trojan into their ads!) So you can be infected now just by surfing major sites like Yahoo.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05...e_malware_map/

http://www.techspot.com/news/25262-g...are-laced.html

[Fyron]

Norton has been bloatware since at least '99. Its not a recent phenomenon.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

In my experience, not having AV is a good way to pick up viruses.

[capnq]

My AV monitor (ClamWin) doesn't noticeably slow down the system, but my anti-spyware monitor (Spyware Doctor) was such a resource hog that now I just do manual scans after I've visited sites I don't trust.

[Azselendor]

If I remember right, didn't Norton beat out microsoft on bloat ware of the year recently? I've solved a lot of computer problems by just uninstalling norton (namely people complaining about slow computers, blocked internet access, and such).

[Baron Munchausen]

Atrocities said:
Aaarrrrrgggg! WTH Microsoft! What the HELL?

My computer runs fine, no problems to speak of until Windows updates. Following the restart I discover I can no long access the internet. After hours and hours of trouble shooting I finally decided that the best course of action would be to do a system restore. Well that worked. I must have restarted by computer half a dozen times before the restore trying to get my network card working again. Hell I couldn't even access the DSL Modem/Router, until after I performed the restore.

What the hell is wrong with Microsoft that when updating the update kills your network card? When I called them they wanted me to pay to fix the problem, a problem that THEY caused. HP was a bit more helpful, they recommended the restore and that worked. I had to lie to them to get the help though, but alls fair in the land of Software and hardware.

I do wish that there was a way to get microsofts attention and FORCE those SOB's to be responsible for what their UPDATES do to peoples computers.

Hell my system clock is still messing up and they haven't even addressed that issue yet. WTH?

Well, now it's my turn to fight with the MS Update from Hell. I tried uninstalling the Cumulative Security Patch for Internet Explorer but even that didn't work. I had to resort to System Restore also.

At least this is a new install and I am in the process of setting things up the way I like. Not much was lost and it's easily re-installed. I'll be much more wary of MS 'fixes' in the future. Unfortunately, you often do need them. I'll just let others download them first and wait for the field testing report... Since I plan to install IE 7 I wonder if that will also have a 'Cumulative Security Update'?

[Baron Munchausen]

Uh oh... now there is a June "Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer"...

Has anyone installed it yet? Did it cut you off?

[Atrocities]

If they charged for these updates I would venture a bet that they would be worth something then.

[Baron Munchausen]

It seems that reports of the same problem are stating to appear for this patch...

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/200....aspx#comments