Comments for Advantage Micro Corporation in Tucson

Comment on Business Protect clients are ignoring URL site blockings when deployed by the SBC. by J.R. Guthrie

J.R. Guthrie — Wed, 01 May 2013 21:39:58 +0000

For the current version of this console, avast! Small Office Administrator (SOA), edit group settings, Site blocking, enable site blocking (check box), under “URLs to block”, *facebook*, and “add”.

Comment on HP’s expiring ink cartridges EXPOSED by Innah | Epson Workforce 545 Ink

Innah | Epson Workforce 545 Ink — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:01:35 +0000

It seems that HP is playing tricks on consumers! Ink cartridges with expiration? That makes the effort of some HP users to save on ink useless because they may end up with filled cartridges that they can no longer use. This isn’t fair.

Comment on HP’s expiring ink cartridges EXPOSED by Glenn Kelly

Glenn Kelly — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 15:49:42 +0000

I have a HP OfficeJet Pro K8600 printer. Pro apparently means that I have been welcomed to the broad club of HP Cartridge Rip-Offs, It entitles them to force the owner (personal in this case) to either continually override the warning message or spend a great deal on money replacing cartridges that are still nearly full.

I also have another older OfficeJet 9600 that never has a problem with ink cartridges being old but still filled with ink.

This is the biggest rip-off, and YES, I agree that it is prime time for a CLASS ACTION SUIT against HP!

Comment on How to clean an Infected Computer using “SCRAPE” by J.R. Guthrie

J.R. Guthrie — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:38:35 +0000

This is not an exact science, and these steps are usually modified, after the infection type is determined, and researched.

If you don’t change what your doing, then the results are always the same!

Comment on HP’s expiring ink cartridges EXPOSED by Douglas

Douglas — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 12:34:20 +0000

I’m sick and tired of HP and other printer firm’s forced cartridge renewal programmes.

If I’m this frustrated, there must be a huge demand for a simple B&W printer capable of using generic handicrafts-shop bottled ink, and invite startups to give it a go

Most important:
o like emergency calls on your phone, you should ALWAYS be able to print B&W
o no ink expiry.
o no cartridge replacement, just ink refill

Comment on avast! AutoSandbox 7.3 and the Polymorphic Infection by J.R. Guthrie

J.R. Guthrie — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:45:32 +0000

Besides what P.K. said, there’s one more innovation with respect to those Dyna detections. We call it snxsql and it basically allows us to use the full richness of SQL queries to detect viruses in the sandbox. That is, the whole execution trace from the sandbox is stuffed to an in-memory SQL database and we consequently make queries to that DB (including some pretty complex/rich ones). This allows the detections to be fairly sophisticated, while minimizing the FP rates.

While the actual creation of these dyna detections / sql queries is now still a manual process (done by our virus analysts), we are close to actually implementing an automated generator for this – technically, this would be sort of “Evo-gen” for dyna detections.

Pretty fascinating stuff, especially if you see the results.

So, please, stay tuned, more stuff is coming.

Thanks
Vlk

Comment on avast! AutoSandbox 7.3 and the Polymorphic Infection by J.R. Guthrie

J.R. Guthrie — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 22:10:04 +0000

Autosandbox improvements in v8:
User interface wasn’t changed (in fact I didn’t have idea how to improve it), only detection rates. As you know, autosandbox executes a suspicious process in the sandbox and logs every filesystem/registry operations, attempts to inject to different processes, modify system components, install hooks, network connections, etc etc. Avast has over 1500 generic signatures in VPS up to this day (their prefixes are Dyna:, as you can see in VPS release history). One signature usually identifies various malwares, so one malware is also usually detected by several signatures (e.g. for disabling windows update/firewall, injection, etc). Autosandbox reports 50 000 Dyna infections every day. Our viruslab analyses ~40k unique malwares every day in autosandbox and collect the logs, running on 180 virtual machines in ramdisk for 24hrs a day. In A7, malware attempts to inject itself into different processes were blocked. In A8, we duplicate & sandbox target’s process on different desktop and allow injections, so malware isn’t stopped early and we continue monitoring activity from the injection payload. Since we started to analyze a lot of malwares in our viruslab, every machine crash is reported to me & fixed. Autosandbox/sandbox should be therefore quite stable in avast! Ver. 8.

Peter Kurtin (P.K.)

Comment on avast! AutoSandbox 7.3 and the Polymorphic Infection by J.R. Guthrie

J.R. Guthrie — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 22:08:29 +0000

Complete analysis of the autosandboxed application is done on user’s computer. Autosandbox executes a suspicious process in the sandbox and logs every filesystem/registry operations, attempts to inject to different processes/modify system components/install hooks/create a network connections, etc etc. Avast has over 1500+ generic signatures in VPS up to this day (their prefixes are Dyna:, as you can see in VPS release history). One signature usually identifies various malwares, so one malware is also usually detected by several signatures (e.g. for disabling windows update/firewall, injection, etc). We receive only some statistics to see false positives, # of autosandboxed processes, etc. Binary file is never uploaded to avast! servers.

Peter Kurtin (P.K.)

Comment on HP’s expiring ink cartridges EXPOSED by LuckyCountry

LuckyCountry — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 08:18:49 +0000

I have done the same. Last HP product I will ever purchase was the one I just binned. After years of loyal HP purchasing, printers, laptops etc I will never buy one or recommend one again. Now the best idea is to pick a printer with the features you want at the best price you can get, use it until the toner or cartridges run out, then bin the printer & get a new one. It’s actually cheaper than toner or ink cartridges & you always have the latest printer & it’s under warranty.
All this stuff is now just “Techno Junk” anyway.

Comment on avast 7 downgrade to avast 6 issues and solutions by Mario

Mario — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 00:52:51 +0000

I have used Avast free edition since long ago.
Every time there is an update I wait a rather long time before I update the program, as a safety measure.

About 10 days ago I updated to version 7 and thought it was working properly on my Win XP (32 bit) laptop, but 2 days ago executed a Visual Basic calculator which I programmed myself and when I closed the program my laptop hanged (blue screen of death).

I repeated the action about 10 times and the same happened.
I ran another VB program again developed by me and got equal result. I can assure my files are not infected.
I uninstalled Avast (with problems) and obviously executed a few of my programs and nothing happened.
I reinstalled Avast and made some tests. My computer only hanged once but today Avast suddenly started to detect about 20 infections, the majority of which were found within de Avast folder created during the installation.
Nevertheless, I cleaned those files with Avast.
I rebooted the machine and again virus detection in the same files.

I Googled for information about version 7 and found your page.
Therefore I have uninstalled the program and I wil now install version 6.

I realize that going back to an older version is not the best thing you can do but, frankly, I think version 7 has some kind of bug.

Finally I have to say that I feel grateful to Avast as well as to everyone who tries to help, you included.

Regards.

Comment on Microsoft Windows 8 Compatibility Check tool is missing incompliant CPUs by Wolfgang

Wolfgang — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:21:17 +0000

I have a Pentium4 Prescott 3.2GHz in my computer, but the bios does not offer the option to enable nx feature. Mainboard manufacturer DELL will not provide a bios update anymore. That’s annoying – I switched back to Vista

Comment on HP’s expiring ink cartridges EXPOSED by pennine

pennine — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:04:55 +0000

Huh-i bought an HP printer last year (Deskjet 1050,J410) and thought i was getting a fantastic deal, as printer/scanner/copier all in one for £24.00. Now i find i cannot use it most of the time as i can’t afford the ink cartridges which seem way too expensive for the small amount of work they do.
O how i long for the days when i could just take my cartridges to a local print shop and they just refilled them for me for a mite sum(in contrast to buying another new cartridge & todays prices) or i could buy the bottle of ink & kit and refill them myself. It’s absolutely disgraceful (& in my opinion ought to be against some trade & standards law)that the printers manufacturers now make refilling the cartridges yourself impossible, so that we forced into paying exhorbitant prices for new cartridges all the time which seem higher prices for less ink. If some enterprising company came along and made printers catering for the refillable cartridges again, i’d ditch this money making machine of HP tomorrow and buy theirs (and i reckon so too would many other people p*ssed off at the current daylight robbery) then once one company manufactures such an economical printer, hopefully it would serve as precedent for other companies to do the same.Perhaps it’s time we exercised more people power, in that if folk didn’t buy the printers because of the catridge costs(just said we can’t afford to print anymore)then prices would have to fall(otherwise the firms would go out of business)Its like i say re the BBC licence fee, stop watching tv and paying this fee, then the tv corporation would have to do something. Drop their fee or take aboard advertising to survive. People should stick together more to get things done, Unity is Strength. & by the heck all the companies stick together in arranging prices so that it’s hard for us to find the cheaper deal,and yet competition ought be good for the consumers.But it isn’t. Well that’s my ten penneth for the day.
Kindest from pennine ( north-east England)

Comment on Windows 8; The Good The Bad and The Ugly by J.R. Guthrie

J.R. Guthrie — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 13:54:16 +0000

Microsoft blasts PC makers: “It’s YOUR fault Windows 8 crash landed!” Badge of honour: Vista revisited

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/24/windows_8_blame_game/

Comment on Microsoft Windows 8 Compatibility Check tool is missing incompliant CPUs by Kent C.

Kent C. — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:37:19 +0000

I have also tried such, I got the 14.99 promotion for the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant. It did pass the actual test, I have an Intel Northwood in an HP Pavilion a350n. It ran the inital boot to installation of Windows 8, then at the dual boot screen, after I loaded it. It gave the error above. Then I tried to use Windows 7 and it said it reset my installation. It also said Windows Setup on the boot order. Both removed after the failed installation of the 32bit. I tried to run Windows 8 Consumer Review on the same machine. It wouldn’t find the hard drive

I guess I’ll have to play with that machine and just get used to having Windows 7 which it shouldn’t be running technically. All the drivers for XP run on Windows 7 for that unit. I’ll tweak the consumer review and add it to the dual boot somehow for that legacy machine. I want Windows 8 on there!!

Comment on HP’s expiring ink cartridges EXPOSED by Ruurd de Wind

Ruurd de Wind — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:24:59 +0000

I am also the ‘victim’ of these ink levels wich HP found necassary to ‘protect’ your own ivestment. Unfortunately they offer no real or possible solution to this problem. Oh wait, yeah! Just buy genuine cartridges and all you’re problems will be solved. Well mister HP this is the last time I have bought such a crappy product!

Oh yeah, I own and use a Photosmart D6160. The ink signal keeps blinking no matter what I do. After reading the story above I came to the conclusion this isn’t any hardware failure only the dailure of HP itself.