Q And A
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday August 18, 2008
Q I have a problem I hope you can help me with. My son downloaded a program and allowed a Trojan, Vundo, to get into our laptop. You know what it does: slows the computer to a halt, lots of pop-ups. We have Norton Anti Virus and Spyware Doctor, which we run to clear it. However, Vundo keeps returning. I suspect it is embedded in a program on the computer, perhaps the one my son downloaded. Do you know of a way to remove it altogether?
A Once it gets its hooks into your system, Vundo is one of the harder nasties to remove. All of it has to be removed at the same time or else it will be able to reproduce the Trojan. A removal tool will probably be your best bet. Some products offer free detection and you need to pay for the removal, while others, such as VundoFix (vundofix.atribune.org), are simply a free removal tool. Symantec also has a removal tool for Vundo (securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.vundo.html) and McAfee has a detailed overview with manual removal instructions if all else fails.Q Can you please help with a good way to take screenshots of websites? Is there a better way than using the Print Screen button and cutting and pasting into Paint? Can I get the full web page into a single image, rather than just the window?A There's a free little add-on for Firefox called Fireshot that is well worth trying. It allows for the capture of a full web page as well as the area visible in a window. It also allows for the captured screen to be edited with drawing and notation tools (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648).Q My DVD drive has stopped working on my ageing Windows XP machine and disappeared from Explorer. Is there a way to get it back?A Assuming that the device is not faulty, you may be able to restore a missing CD or DVD drive with a simple registry tweak. The essential Kelly's Korner (www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp-tweaks.htm) has one at line 399 "Restore CD/DVD in Explorer" (on the right-hand side). Sometimes these drives go AWOL after software is uninstalled, writes Alex Nichol at the Windows Support Center. He outlines some strategies to resolve this in the page "Burning CDs in Windows XP" (aumha.org/win5/a/xpcd.htm). Look at section 8, Problems, for "My CD drives have vanished".www.smh.com.au/techtips
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