[ale] OT: Win98 + Infections

[Preston Boyington]

Christopher Fowler wrote:
> Everytime I come to my parents house I have to clean crap off their
> win98 machine.  All of it is adware. I'm using a D-Link firewall and
> I do not think a firewall will solve this problem since most of
> this mess comes through port 80.  Is there a way?
> 
> One solution is to have 2 machines.  One for Win98 for their windows
> stuff that is not connected to the internet.  The other running Linux
> for browsing and such.  Or dual-boot may work?
> 
> 

For 9x machines I would suggest this:

partition the drive into two sections.  use "C" as normal and use "D" as your data.  place your bookmarks/My Documents/My Downloads/other user data here.

use 98Lite and reinstall Windows with the 95(b) shell (using "sleek" it will give you a more stable shell and allows you to uninstall otherwise nonremovable "features"on top of taking away the webified desktop features).  not to mention that with a less bloated shell the machine will be faster.

install ProTab to remove IE and redirect the My Documents/address book/etc to look into "D"

once Windows is running make a ghost of this and place it into "D" (I make a folder called HDDImage)

install basic software such as Analog X's Maxmem, the Proximotron, Kerio Personal Firewall, TweakUI, Powertoys, AVG AntiVirus, Abouttime (no msie) and make another image.

after that you install the OpenOffice.org project and of course Mozilla FireFox.  for email I would probably use Mozilla Thunderbird or Foxmail.

burn a bootable cdrom with the two ghost images and the restoration software and place this inside the case so it doesn't get lost.

if you ever experience trouble or just want to clean up the machine (every 6 months) re-ghost from your images.  if you were careful all your user data will still be there since it was on a different partition.

also running an online scan is helpful and will save you time:
http://www.spywareguide.com/txt_onlinescan.html

dunno if that helps, but maybe it will give you some ideas.

preston