Martijn Beijk » software

Remove XP Antivirus 2008 virus for real

martijn — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:22:33 +0000

OK. This is another one of those problem solving posts. The last time I had a virus on my computer is over 5 years ago. I’m always very cautious about what to click and install and what’s inside those torrents. I always either ran Kaspersky AV or AVG Free.

Now I needed to solve a little problem with my girlfriends computer. Her laptop was infected by the so called XP Antivirus 2008 malware/virus and it was a real pain in the ass to remove!

It also was a real pain to find a proper solution to remove the virus and hijacking software, almost every solution I found online seemed not to be working and after every reboot her antivirus software found new threats.

The Antivirus 2008 XP Virus works as follows;

it replaces your desktop background with an image that your computer is infected
it replaces your screensaver
it disables the possibilities to change your background/screensaver etc.
it gives you popups / warnings that your computer is infected and that you can buy the software to clean your computer
you need to enter your creditcard information and credentials to continue, and of course, this is where you get scammed.
Also, her browser was hijacked, it only affected IE/Chrome and not Mozilla Firefox, although a lot of webpages (hotmail f.e. ) were crippled.

I was able to remove the virus and all side effects using AVG Free and Spybot Search & Destroy.

Still the browser hijack remained! and in the background there were some processes running, the browser was still hijacked and search engine results were redirected to really ugly and non useful affiliate websites.

I tried everything from safeboot, manually removing strange files, while looking at network traffic using the commandline command ‘netstat -B’ to determine which programs were issuing internet requests.Â Even SmitFraudFix, which was set to solve this problem, wasn’t able to fix it!

A better Google search led me to this Yahoo Answers thread where the same question was raised and it provided the ONLY workable solution using the Malware Bytes Anti-Malware software. This software package really solved the problem and I can recommend it to all of you being infected by this hijacking and malware software XP Antivirus 2008.

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Must have wordpress plugins

martijn — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:18:02 +0000

Must have wordpress plugins, or at least, the ones I use on various blogs/websites.

First of all; Plugin Central. Install this plugin and from that point on you are able to install any plugin with using your FTP client. Works like a charm.
From there on I install many of the following, depending on the type of blog/website.

Akismet (default)
Blog Metrics
Breadcrumb Navigation XT
Comment Redirect
Crawl Rate Tracker
Enhanced WP-ContactForm
FeedBurner FeedSmith
FlickrRSS
Get Recent Comments
Google Analytics for WordPress
Google XML Sitemaps
HeadSpace2
Lightbox2
Lightbox gallery
Limit Posts
Lighter Menus
My Page Order
Redirection
Robots Meta
RSS Footer
Search Excerpt
Search Reloaded
Search Suggest
SEO friendly images
Simple Tags
Sociable
Subscribe to Comments
Theme Test Drive
Upcoming
What Would Seth Godin Do
WordPress Automatic Upgrade
WP-SphinnIt

descriptions will follow later;)

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My top list of Firefox extensions

martijn — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:38:00 +0000

As seen on anywhere on the web. I would like to tell you which Firefox Extension i’m using. Not only do I want to tell you, I’m also posting here in case I forget, hehe.

Firebug with Yslow
Greasemonkey (nofollow display, tracking code display, wordpress version display)
PicLens
PDF Download
View Source Chart
CSSViewer
Delicious
Live HTTPheaders
Link Diagnosis
Mahalo Share
Remember Mismatched domains (in case you have problem with server certificates and are tired of clicking the dialog windows. )
Seolinkanalysis
Session manager
SearchStatus
Customize Google
ColorZilla colorpicker

Toolbars:
Stumbleupon
Google Toolbar
Web Developer Toolbar addon (toolbar disabled, using context menu)

If you are in search of more tools, especially also those for SEO, you might want to check out this website where you can find some free tools.

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Yahoo! onePlace Possible Killer App?

martijn — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:02:16 +0000

Yahoo! announced yet another new mobile application called onePlace. This might be the killer app we are waiting for. Yahoo has been making a burst lately with releasing new mobile applications for the web. This one kinda came out of the blue. I wasn’t aware of any information about this product so far. Since it will be available in Spain, I will try and have a look at it at the end of Q2, when it’s set to launch.

This should be the year of mobile! , errr, wasn’t this the story from last year as well? Because mobile use of the web isn’t very popular, perhaps until now? Is this the killer application we were all waiting for?
Yahoo onePlace will make sure that a user’s web interests are finally available in onePlace (hence the name), including their mail, RSS, stock quotes, contacts, Flickr photos and other important stuff we deal with on the web . It dynamically updates all the necessary information in a single location, where it’s accessible via the mobile web. It’s fully personalized and contextual.

Yahoo! also announced that at the end of the 2nd quarter, European users can use Yahoo! Mobile Widgets to access localized information through Yahoo! partners, which include Eurosport Football, Myspace, Xing and Dopplr.

Yahoo!’s mobile arsenal currently includes:

Yahoo! onePlace (just released!)
Yahoo! oneConnect (their mobile IM tool aka communications aggregator for sms/mail/im, released at WMC 2008)
Yahoo! Go 3.0 (their all-in-one mobile application)
Yahoo! Mobile Widgets
Yahoo! oneSearch (web and mobile search, also localized search in 19 countries!)
Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform
Yahoo! Mobile Advertising

Yahoo! states that their services that are available for mobile include:
Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! Maps, Flickr, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo! Address Book and Yahoo! Music. Just in case you are using all of them

If you are interested in some snapshots, click here. In the meanwhile, feel free to discuss, is this really going to be a killer app?

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Microsoft gives away free software

martijn — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:19:29 +0000

…but not just to anyone. It goes by the name of Microsoft Dreamspark. Bill Gates announced this today and it should be globally available to any (high school or university) student. Dreamspark is to include a set of development and graphic tools, including the XNA Game Studio 2.0 and Windows Server 2003 (standard edition). At the moment just a few countries are available. I tried it out myself. Surprised even, that the Netherlands, as one of the leaders in technology is not even listed. Say bye bye, Microsoft Park of Dreams. Or is it spark of dreams? Hmm, whatever. I do wonder when it will be available though, estimate: May 2008.
The initiative is part of the companies effort to increase (their contracts) working with academies, communities and governments. They’re telling people that it should increase their ‘quality of life’. Probably one of the other most important reasons is that they are still trying to compete with open-source technologies and free solutions, like linux, that are freely available. Go ahead and read more!
You might need to obtain an ISIC card or use a specific portal to gain access. So much for usability
Apparently this is the full list of the freely available software.

Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
XNA Game Studio 2.0
12-month free membership in the XNA Creators Club
Expression Studio, which includes Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Media
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition
Sql Server Developer Edition
Virtual PC 2007
Visual Basic 2005
Visual C++ 2005
Visual C# 2005
Visual J# 2005
Visual Web Developer 2005

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Microsoft Live Labs Volta

martijn — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:36:42 +0000

Komt deze afbeelding jullie
ook niet enigszins bekend voor?

Microsoft Live Labs heeft vandaag weer wat nieuws opgeleverd. Ze noemen het Volta. Het zou menig webdeveloper moeten laten druipen van gemak. Zelf gebruiken ze de slogan ‘Web Development Using Only the Materials in the Room‘. Waarschijnlijk was de enige aanwezige browser op dat moment dan ook die van de buren. Waar zouden ze anders het idee voor hun logo vandaan hebben gehaald?

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Update – mobile en semantic

martijn — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:13:59 +0000

Allereerst heb ik de nieuwe wordpress versie er maar eens tegen aangeknald met wat extra plugins. Zo las ik op de blog van mijn collega Joost, dat wphone hem goed was bevallen. Vanaf dat moment heb ik dus ook de mogelijkheid om mobiel te kunnen bloggen middels een handige interface. Wie mobiel zijn blog onderhoudt wil ook dat deze mobiel beschikbaar is, dus ook dat even direct geregeld.Nu ik de laatste tijd druk bezig ben met allerlei vraagstukken rondom mijn stage bij TNO en daarbij het een en andere aan leuke features tegenkwam op mijn zoektochten, besloot ik om een aantal hiervan ook maar eens op mijn eigen site in werking te stellen.
Ik ben ben de laatste tijd nogal bezig met ‘the web of data’ ook wel semantic web genoemd. Lekker stoeien met RDF en N3-triples.
Hieruit komen enkele technologien voort die al zijn toepassing gevonden hebben middels wordpress plugins. Zo heb ik nu een FoaF file toegevoegd en ook de SIOC plugin is toegevoegd, al moet ik er nog even achter komen hoe die in al zijn glorie werkt.

Ondertussen ga ik weer gauw bezig met het in elkaar stampen en hangen van een aantal RDFizers als onderdeel van mijn stage project. Misschien dat deze later ook nog van pas komen.

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