Verizonwireless Down

Appears that verizonwireless.com is down. Probably just temporary.
***UPDATE***
Probably due to this problem documented in the Internet Storm Center's post here. It is back up as of this morning.

MSN.com MSNBC.com Spreading Infections

Seeing some installations of fake anti-virus coming from both MSN.com and MSNBC.com this morning. I would avoid these sites at this time.

VMWare Workstation - XP Guest, Fails to find Hard Drive

I had got a new laptop and I was about to go to a class and had to get my laptop set up for the before leaving town. When I went to install my XP guest, I get this message. Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. After some digging, I finally found a site that had a great video to give me exactly what to do. If you have this same problem, here is the link for you.

Click here for the answer you've been looking for.

Adobe Updates

Time to update again. Adobe has a patch available now for Flash Player and Adobe Reader/Acrobat will have an update sometime tomorrow. It is critical that you patch these as attackers are using exploits against Adobe applications to install their malicious software.

Firewall Disabled?

I work on plenty of Windows XP machines that have got malware installed on them. Sometimes after removing the malware, you have to go into services to enable to firewall to be turned back on. How do you do this? Go to START>RUN, then type in services.msc, then scroll down to Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing. If you right mouse click you should be able to start the service back up.

Malwarebytes Rocks!

You may have had malicious software installed on your PC and you have done searching and found references to Malwarebytes Anti-malware tool. Everything you read about it is true. I recommend it to all my friends. If you don't already, click here to download it and install it. There is a free version but if you are finding that you browse to somewhat risky places on the Internet, then maybe you should purchase the paid for version which gives you better protection.

Below I've listed instructions on how to use the tool.

• After installing, double click on the Malwarebytes Anti-malware tool and you are
  presented with the Malwarebytes dashboard.
• Click on the Update tab (the third tab over). Click on the "Check for Updates" button to get the new signatures for MBAM. You need to do this step every time prior to running the tool.
• After the update is complete, then click on the Scanner tab (this tab is the first you will see when opening MBAM). Select the default scanning option (Perform quick scan) and then click on the Scan button. MBAM will now start scanning your computer for malware. This process can take quite a while, so I suggest you go and do something else and periodically check on the status of the scan. When MBAM is done scanning it will present you with a message box with an OK button. It will either tell you no malicious files found, or if it finds any malicious files, it will then allow you to view the results. Click the OK button.
• If infected files are found, you will now be back at the main Scanner screen. At this point you should click on the Show Results button. A screen displaying all the malware that the program found will be displayed.
• You should now click on the Remove Selected button to remove all the listed malware. MBAM will now delete all of the infected files and registry keys. When removing the
  files, MBAM may require a reboot in order to remove some of them. If it displays a message stating that it needs to reboot, please allow it to do so. If the Quick Scan
  option actually found any malicious software, I always recommend that after you have removed and rebooted if needed, then repeat these steps but select the Perform full scan option. For sure this process will take longer because you are scanning your entire PC.

Let me know if you have any questions.

CCleaner Documentation

I enjoy using a tool called CCleaner. It is a great free utility that I may have suggested to you. If so, here is a link to documentation on how to use the tool CCleaner. If I haven't talked to you about it and are interested, click here to download it from CNet. Enjoy!

Click here for the documentation.