thefeedyard.com malware removed with stubware

A big thanks to the folk at Stubware.
I have visited a customer complaining of web pages being misdirected.
To say this was a surprise is an understatement. We only rebuilt the machine from new last week end. We installed Panda AV at build time and we copied users' data from the old disk (probably the source of the infection).
We ran Malwarebytes Antimalware which we have found to be pretty good at removing most things not found in normal AV programs. 17 infected items found but problem not solved.
After further inspection of the problem we found that all links in webpages were being hijacked by something called thefeedyard.com. A quick Google of this gave hints to use Malwarebytes so we ran it again and found a few infections ( probably reinfected since the last scan ).
We also found this reference to Stubware. With some concern that this might be software the likes of many registry cleaners we gave it a go. Downloaded, installed and ran it.
True it listed many items which are captured most of which are legitimate, however a click of a button showed only those that were suspect. 4 items in total. Deleted these and rebooted. Problem cleaned up.
So once again many thanks

Many thanks Nerdy Dork, we recovered MySQL files OK

That title will mean little to most of you but let me explain.
Earlier this year we built a web based program for a customer. We installed it on one of their Windows machines and they are into the swing of using it. Then disaster! The machine fails. Luckily for us the disk was intact and no data was lost which means that the MqSQL database we set up in our program should be intact. The only problem in being how do I get it across onto the rebuilt machine intact.
A quick search on google revealed this link http://www.nerdydork.com/restoring-mysql-innodb-files-on-windows.html which gave us the advice we needed.
Just to short cut we copied the data folder with the .frm files. We also then copied the complete configuration file - we did not worry about editing parts of it.
Database restored. Day saved. Heart rhythm can return to normal. Stress ball out of the window.
Once again a big thanks to Nerdy Dork and all those out there that give freely of their advice.

Where were Microsoft's Quality Assurance Team?

Where were QA when they allowed Vista to exist? Why am I stroppy about this?
Dead simple. I run Vista Business workstation on a 2003 domain. I have IE7 installed.
Today I want to access a site to check for client that their site is accessible remotely. Following what the supplier told us to do yesterday to allow Active X controls to install I got nowhere. Whatever I tried, whatever settings in IE I used, I could not get the Active X to install despite being offered the UAC control to specify the administrator and password credentials. This surely should be enough.
However I thought maybe I should log on as the administrator. So I logged off. 20 minutes later I am still waiting for the machine to offer me the log on screen. This includes having done a cold restart. 30 minutes later and after my second cold restart I have got my system back.
Surely logging off as one user and logging on as another is not difficult. Surely it should not require a reboot of the system? Surely we deserve better from the world's leading software developer.
Let hope QA have been awake during the long overdue release of Win7.

Adobe Photoshop Starter Edition Unlock Codes

My turn to attack Adobe. I hope our company never gets so big that we forget that the customer is important.
A client has some photos in Photoshop Starter Edition V3.2 and they cannot get to them. The program asks for a registration detail which the user has filled in and submitted several times to Adobe without getting and response. The program needs an unlock code to continue.
We spent some time on the phone waiting for it to be answered - something regular readers of this blog might recognise gets my goat quicker than anything.
A customer support agent eventually was able to give us a code - it did not work.
Later we tried again to get a code - half an hour without response except from the automated phone system rubbish. In this time we googled the issue. A complete forum seems to be devoted to helping people who cannot get an unlock code from Adobe.
Adobe has now ceased support for this product. One forum indicated that support ceased on 30th June and no more registrations were going to be accepted after 31st July. That is appalling.
A product that is only 6 years old may well go out of development but there will be a very large installed base which needs support. A company with a product which gives rise to so much aggravation with registration and unlock problems needs extra support not reduced support.
This sort of issue makes sure that I do not recommend products from this source.
I appreciate that software developers need to protect their investment. I appreciate that this means they might engage in the sort of authentication / registration regimes we see all too frequently but it does not mean that developers should ignore their customer base.
It gives the developer a bad name. It gives the industry a bad name. It is just poor customer relations. It is just bad. All too often it come when companies get too big and remote from their customer base that they cease caring.
As a footnote I would like to say this. If a support organisation cannot field phone calls within a reasonable amount of time - say 30 - 60 seconds - then this smacks of two things. One: they need to take on more staff to make sure customers are not left sitting in automated phone queues. Two: they should improve their products so that they need less support.

Norton removal tools expires

Why do Symantec create a Norton removal tool to remove their incredibly poor software from your machine and then have so that is expires before you can use it.
We have previously added blogs to this page castigating Norton for poor product quality. The last time was to complain that a product that you might use to prevent problems such as Denial of Service (DOS) attacks behaves to deny you your service when the product expires.
So we had a machine in recently that had an old version of Norton on it. We could not remove this using Add/remove programs.
So went to download the removal tool. We had a copy on our server but this failed to run because it reported it had expired. So now the Norton website lists a number of removal tools depending on what was initially installed. Now I don't know what was installed because I cannot run it to find out. Second I am not interested in finding out what was installed I simply want to get rid of it.
I downloaded what looked like the most suitable version but when I ran it it reported that it had expired. I am not going to download the other 9 or 10 variants on NRT just in the off chance one might work.
This is the only product I know where the developer has had to write a special removal tool and even that does not work.
In the end I went through Registry Editor to remove keys that related to Symanec and Norton (well not all because you do have to be a bit careful), then I deleted all the files of the relavant "c:\program files" and "c:\program files\common files" to get rid of the product.
This too is an exercise in how not to do something. The dirt that is left in registry everytime Norton does a live update beggars belief.
What has happened to the company who once had what was arguably the best AV product who now produces what is arguably one of the worst?