My daughter’s Dell computer is constantly getting infected with crap. I just cleaned that thing up on New Year’s and a month later, she’s got problems again. She downloaded a free calendar maker program and along with it came a fake anti-virus scanner called PC Performer.

PC Performer Malware

PC Performer is NOT real anti-virus software. There is no uninstall program. You won’t find it on the Programs menu, nor in the Add/Remove programs. It gets hooked into your computer’s startup routine and “performs a scan” when you boot up. It always finds “infections” and it wants you to pay for the “anti-virus software” to remove the infections. 

Computer Buzzing

After several weeks of ignoring the fake infection messages, the computer started making a buzzing noise. So she brought it over, I cracked open the cover and blew out all the dust with a can of air. It sounded like the CPU fan. As soon as the juice was turned on, it started buzzing, but the fan was freely spinning. Finally, I stuck my ear inside the case and discovered that is wasn’t the fan making noise, it was the hard drive.

I did eventually find PC Performer in the list of starup programs using msconfig and I was able to turn it off, but the computer was still making noise.

Before my daughter brought the computer over, I had her run a malware removal tool, but it didn’t remove PC Performer, even though I read some place that it would. However, she’s computer illiterate so who knows if she actually clicked the remove button or canceled the operation.

So I downloaded a free scanner that detects these fake programs. Every 1/2 hour or so I’d go check on the scan and noticed that the hard drive buzzing was getting quiter. As it started isolating the problems, the buzzing completely stopped. I proceeded with the removal, rebooted the computer and now all’s good with the world once again.

SpyHunter Removes Fake Anti-Spyware

SpyHunter has the ability to detect and remove rootkits, which are used to stealth install rogue anti-spyware programs and other trojans. One major reason why some spyware tools may not completely remove your infection is because you may be infected with a mutating malware infection such as a trojan or rootkit. A mutating malware infection is extremely difficult to remove automatically because it changes into an unidentifiable form inside your system. Therefore, SpyHunter offers a feature called Spyware HelpDesk that will allow them to identify the mutation and create a custom fix for your infected system. SpyHunter’s Spyware HelpDesk feature will let you generate a diagnostic report (Support Log) that takes a snapshot of the configuration of your system and allows the technicians to quickly and efficiently assist you with malware removal issues. 

Click here to download the FREE SpyHunter scanner to see if your computer is infected. (no credit card required)

1. I unplugged the Roku for a couple of minutes to allow it to reset.
2. Powered it back up and let it do its startup.
3. It found my router ok, but wouldn’t connect to it.
4. Poked the little discovery button on the router, ran out to the Roku and tried it again.
5. BAMM!  Bob’s your uncle.  Connected successfully.

Today I see that Intel bought McAfee for $7.68 billion.  Not that it matters anymore because it’s too fucking late, but I hope to God that the Intel engineers are better with software usability than McAfee is.  I’d start by firing every fucking one of McAfee’s programmers.

UPDATE:  Not long after this, they upgraded the software to include instant infection notifications.  Too late.

The absolute last straw was when I tried to remove it from my computer this morning.  Went to the control panel to Add/Remove programs.  I get a warning that it will uninstall it and I’ll have no virus protection.  I click Remove and the buttons disappear and nothing happens.  It just sits there like rock.  I couldn’t even delete the folders off the computer because files were in use.  It’s like trying to get rid of an ex-wife when you had kids together.  I’m tired of my computers being held prisoner by their bloatware. 

After a little research, I did find away to get it off.  Long story short, go Google “mcafee removal tool”.  I downloaded it, ran it, and FINALLY it’s off my system.

I installed the free version of Avast instead.  We’ll see what happens.  It sure as fuck can’t be any worse because even though real-time scanning was on, every week when I ran a full scan, it always found viruses.  Beats me wtf they were because I also couldn’t figure out how to find that out, either.

Already that computer is running faster.  However, now I see the free version is only good for 30 days.  Fuckers.  Time to go back to AVG where free really means free.

McAfee did a redesign in the Spring of 2010.  In the previous version, it was impossible to find what I was looking for because none of the menu entries made logical sense.  Do these guys ever bother to do user feasability studies?  That’s one of the biggest must dos in designing a website or chunk of software.  If people can’t find what they’re looking for they’ll leave or won’t use it.

I had high hopes the new version was going to be better, but it totally hosed my computer.  I spent a solid weekend and then some recovering from a fucked up install.  I couldn’t get the computer to boot up.  Thank goodness I was able to restore it to the last working setup.  Luckily I have another computer in my home office to even get on the internet to research it.  Then right after I got everything working again, I got hit with some really nasty viruses, malware, spyware, you name it.  It took SuperAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes to get rid of it all.

Once McAfee was correctly setup, it was once again impossible to navigate the new navigation system.  Again, nothing makes sense, but what really frosts my ass is that you can drill down into the navigation, but you can’t back out.  Instead, you have to start all the way over and drill down again and hopefully you don’t go past where you want to be or you have to do it all over again.

And boy, does it ever leak memory!  If my computer sits idle for any length of time, McAfee takes over and starts sucking up resources.  It takes forever to wake up the screen.  I sit there wiggling that mouse like a little adolescent boy jerking off in the bathroom.  Yesterday I looked at the System Processes that were running and McAfee was over a million K.  I had to stop the process and then restart it to get it to release the memory. 

It’s always turned on yet it detects nothing in real-time, but when I run my weekly virus scan, it finds 2 to 4 viruses.  Oh, and forget about finding out what they were because I can figure out how to do it in that fucked up navigation.  The big question is, why isn’t it catching them in real-time?  Who the fuck knows what kind of damage is being done all week long while those things are on my computer.

So now I’m running Stinger and it found exploit-cve-2010-2568 trojan in the damn Recycle Bin of all places.  WTF???

And this really pisses me off, too.  My McAfee subscription is on auto-renew, but instead of sending out an email like a week ahead of time to warn me about it SO I CAN FUCKING CANCEL IT, it just automatically gets charged to my credit card and I’m stuck with the bitch for another year.  At least this version tells me when it’s going to expire…provided I can find that again in the navigation.  Get the shovel.

Several problems have arisen and short of uninstalling them, which I am THIS close to doing, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fix them.

1)  Boot-up:  Gone are the days when I turn on my computer and it goes straight to my desktop.  My own personal bootup routine is a well oiled machine.  I get out of bed, hit the head, turn on my computer, start the coffee, and when I get back into my office my computer is all booted up and ready to rock.  That’s no longer the case after the latest batch of updates.  Instead of logging me in (No password is set on my account.  Yea, I know, I’m an easy target.) and going to straight to my desktop, it goes to the user account selection screen and displays the admin and my user icons.  I have to click my icon to get to my shit.  I have no fucking clue how to make it go away.

2)  Video driver:  Ok, this wasn’t part of the original 15 updates.  This one came a few days later.  I noticed there was an update for my video driver NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE.  I thought WTF, I’d engage it because I haven’t had one in a long time.  BZZZT!!!  Wrong choice, bozo.  After the update I noticed a miraculous difference in resolution.  The edges on everything were smoother.  But now whenever I boot up, I get a little balloon message in the system tray that says the optimal screen resolution is 1680 x 1050 and “click here to change it”, or some shit like that.  However, it’s already at that resolution…sort of.  The display settings says it’s at that resolution, but visually I don’t have that same smooth look I got right after it installed.  It’s like something went AWOL.  What the fuck, Chuck?  Every damn morning I get that damn message balloon.

3)  Printing:  I have 5 printers.  I know, I’m a whore.  Suddenly I can’t access two of them.  My network sees that they are shared and ready, but I can’t print to them.  Shit gets stuck in the queue and I have to delete the jobs because they never come out.  It really pisses me off because two of my other printers this past week decided to go tits up on toner.  Empty, empty, empty.  There’s no printing anything when a cartridge is empty.  I also have a new wireless/wired Brother MFC-490CW.  Sweet little all-in-one machine.  I tested it when I set it up a couple of months ago.  Worked great when printing wirelessly from my laptop AND worked great when printing wired from my PC.  So I switched the setting on the printer to go from wireless to wired and nothing.  My PC sees it’s ready, it even teases me by showing me the fucking toner levels in the bitch, but again, shit gets stuck in the print queue and never comes out.  However, it still works wirelessly from my laptop.  That tells me my PC is fucked up.

4)  Looping Windows:  Twice now since this update, I clicked on something and it got stuck and kept opening the same thing over and over.  Let me explain.  I don’t remember what the first incident was, but the last one was a YouTube video.  I was watching an embedded one on a site.  I paused it and when I clicked on it again to resume playing, I accidentally clicked twice and it went to YouTube over and opened the video over and over and over and over and over…you still with me on that?  By the time it had about 30 new instances opened, I had to manually hit the power button to turn it off.  WTF is up with that?  I checked to make sure nothing was pressing on the keyboard.  (I’ve don’t that before.)

If ANYONE out there can give me some help, post a comment.  Oh, and I have KeywordLuv enabled so be sure and post a URL so I can leak some of my lowly link juice to you.  Spammers, your shit will be deleted like always.

A few years ago I had web hosting with them for about 1/2 hour.  After cruising the control panel I said no way.  Plus, all that proprietary crap they hang on it was too much.  I cringe when people tell me they have web hosting with goDaddy .  Why do they do it?  Because they think Danica Patrick is hot?  Because they see goDaddy ’s ads on TV?  Marketing bullshit.

Their unlimited web hosting plan for 3 years is $12.74 a month.  JHC!!!!  Get out the jar of vaseline.  What an ass raping.  I get a 3-year unlimited hosting plan at WebHostingPad for $1.30 a month.  FUCK, man, I URGE you to transfer right now.  

Back in the day I thought goDaddy was “the place” for registering domain names.  Yes, it was and still is considerably cheaper than NetworkSolutions or Register.com, but that’s where it ends.  NameCheap is way cheaper, especially with their monthly coupon code.  Plus, NameCheap gives away FREE privacy protection with all domain registrations and transfers with dirt cheap yearly renewals ($2.88).  DomainsByProxy privacy at goDaddy is another ass raping.

I just had some domains renew at NameCheap.  Renewal was $9.96 and renewal on the WhoIs Guard privacy protection was $2.88.  All of that would have cost me $19.18 at goDaddy, $6.61 more.  Believe me, it adds up when you have a lot of domains.

Their site navigation is horrible.  They make excessive use of opening new pages for just about every link you click on.  By the time you’re finished with your business, you’ve got at least 5 new browser sessions going.

Oh, and they constantly sneak things into your shopping cart.  DOUBLE-CHECK YOUR CART BEFORE YOU CLICK THAT BUY BUTTON! 

They deliberately design their ordering pages to be filled with shit you DO NOT NEED.  Even after the order is complete, STOP CLICKING BUTTONS because they’re going to try and upsell you with more shit.

Get the shovel.  goDaddy is getting deep 6′d.

I find it a little creepy that he rifled through my account.  Don’t tell me what I have.  I know what I have.  That’s like solicitation calls from credit card companies wanting me to transfer balances and they proceed to recite the balances I have…with other credit card companies.  Eeeew.  Fuckers.

However, since I had him on the line, I felt it was my duty to tell him what I was REALLY up to. 

• I said I was transferring the keepers over to NameCheap /" target="_blank"> NameCheap because I can get a .com name with free WhoIs Guard for only $8.81.  I said goDaddy can’t compete with that.
• I told him that NameCheap doesn’t sneak things into the shopping cart during checkout process like goDaddy does.  Wow.  Dead air on the other end after I said that.
• I told him that NameCheap doesn’t have an affiliate program and doesn’t have to pad its prices to cover all of those commissions.

I should also have mentioned that NameCheap doesn’t have to pay Danica Patrick to show her ass and tits on TV.

Unfortunately, there are some domains I cannot transfer because of the downtime involved during the transfer process.  Like the sites that are actually making me money or those tied to my main email accounts. 

Transferring a domain can take anywhere from a couple of hours to several days.  I find the best time to be on Sundays, provided all the necessary prep work has been done first like unlocking the domain and making sure Registrant email is is correct.  (Not the email on the account, but the one on the domain name.  I learned that the hard way.)  Anyhoo, I’m getting off topic.

But all in all, it felt GOOD to let it out.  He said he would tell his marketing department.

I like using Google’s Chrome browser for check stats on my affiliate and advertising accounts.  I advertise almost exclusively on Google’s AdWords, but yesterday I decided to unpause a campaign I had in my Microsoft AdCenter account to see if I could replicate a very successful AdWords campaign over on AdCenter.

Imagine the shock I got when I went to AdCenter to check my account using Chrome.

The page loaded ok, but when I entered my username and password, nothing.  I was in awe.  Not the cute little baby aaaaaw, but disbelief awe.  It just sat there.  Shock and awe.  What a bunch of pissy little bitches.