OK Chris. Perhaps a little elaboration is worthwhile. Chris may have a
better technical explanation than I, but here's a practical story.
Spent part of the afternoon yesterday with a fairly computer illiterate
friend whose Windows XP box with Internet Explorer set as the browser was
afflicted with a home page hijacker and a virus or two that the software
could not quarratine or delete.
It slowly brought back memories of my predicament early last year. I was
about ready to toss the whole works and migrate to MAC (excpet Russ would
gloat) or a Linux platform, becuase the lost time each day significanty
outweighed the investment that would be lost in Windows hardware and software
PLUS the additional investment in new stuff AND the huge investment in
learing new systems.
Everything I read said do three things. FIRST either wipe out your hard
drive(s) and install clean, new stuff (irretrievably losing any data not
backed up... and we all back up every day or at least every week, right?) or
tediously identify each villain and download and run appropriate removal
tools. (I did the latter). SECOND, once the system is clean install
anti-virus software AND ant-spy/adware software, keep both updated and run
both automatically every day. AND install Firewall software or in XP enable
native Firewalls. THIRD (maybe first) disable Microsoft's Internet Explorer
and use something else (e.g. Firefox or Netscape) AND turn off or disable
pop-up windows.
Back in the pre-Internet days we had a box on our desktop and it did not talk
to anybody (although we often talked to it). Then the genius geeks invented
the internet. And them some other geeks invented internet BROWSERS so we
mere mortals could communicate over the internet without having to learn
arcane computer code. One of the first commercial ones was Netscape. MS
quickly figured out it could bundle it's BROWSER, name Internet Explorer
(IE), with Windows and then nobody would pay extra for Netscape. (Well
practically nobody). So then there were gazillions and gazillions of systems
using IE. And on the 7th day Bill Gates rested. And while he rested the
computer hackers and virus authors (frustrated or deranged genius geeks)
discovered ways to corrpupt IE and make gazillions and gazillions of lives
miserable. That's the psychic payoff you see. No fun going after the few
nobody's that still paid for Netscape.
Thence came Mozilla (some nice bunch of benevolent genius geeks wanting to
make a mark before hopefully making gazillions like Google... not to mention
poking MS in the ribs) which begat Firefox, a new, free BROWSER. Among other
things Firefox does not have something called Active-X controls, which IE
does have and which the evil virii exploit to bedevil, dominate and posess
us. They do not exist in the Firefox architecture and so cannot be exploited
no matter how talented and diligent the hacker.
You cannot actually remove or delete IE from your system because it is
actually part of Windows. But you can disable and ignore it.
The moral of the story is that once I followed steps 1-3 my computer life has
been virtually trouble free. Hence my having to scratch my head and recover
my recollection of my friend's problem with her computer. I have had only
one experience when I could not process an on-line re-order of business cards
from a printer because their software would not work with Firefox or my
computer settings. And they processed it the old-fashioned way.... customer
service and I e-mailed each other!
So I second Chris's recommendation of Firefox. Search on Firefox or Mozilla.
A note. The original Mozilla Foundation (a dot org) seems to have spawned
a Mozilla.com anf Firefox may be at the latter.
SC
----- Original Message -----
From: UKTC List Admin
To: UK Tree Care
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 3:58 AM
Subject: UKTC in a Firefox search bar
Happy New Year UKTCers!!
Those of you who have had the good sense to switch to Firefox for your
browsing can now add the UKTC archive to that handy little quick search
box in the top right of the Firefox window. Just visit
<http://uk.tree-care.info/howto/searchbar.php> and click the link!
If you're still using Internet Explorer then it won't work. Just one
more reason to migrate to Firefox :) <http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/>
--
Chris Hastie
Administrator
The UK Tree Care Mailing List
http://uk.tree-care.info/
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