So if you are looking into what to do during your vacation then here is a tip for you, you should buy and read; Zero Day by Mark Russinovich
Yes you may recognize the name from Sysinternals 🙂 he’s one of those clever guys from the good old sysinternals days. I have not read it yet, but as it come with high praises I have ordered my copy – it should be a VERY chilling factual Techno Thriller very well suited for people that like the details to be accurate.
Can be bought via Amazon.
http://www.zerodaythebook.com/I suddenly had the need to have a user send me some detailed info about his Windows 7 PC, and vaguely I recalled some utility that could make this as an export file you could send via email.
And sure enough this still exist under Windows 7 🙂
it’s called;
msinfo32.exe (yes its the same name for x64)
(just hit <left windows button> + <R> on the keyboard and launch <msinfo32.exe>).
You can export the data to a text file (do this instead of the binary file it can export – I have experinced that the binary file somehow get ‘damaged’ during email transfer).
For more info look here;
http://www.winvistaclub.com/f7.html
Microsoft has released a no-nonsense simple to use, free and downloadable tool – Microsoft Security Scanner – to check and cleanup virus infections (or suspected infections).
This tool is not intended as an antivirus, it is intended as a cleanup utility for infected computers or as a tool you can download and do a double-check to confirm you are not infected (say your installed antivirus is unable to detect a certain virus/malware, then you can double check using Microsoft Security Scanner).
You can download it free from here (note the download only works for 10 days, then you have to re-download an updated version, this is to ensure the virus detection patterns are always fully up to date);
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx
A good thing to also do is to run Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool from time to time – this is done automatically as part of Windows Update, however this is only the ‘fast/quick’ scan – by starting the MRT.EXE manually you can do a FULL scan. The Malicious Software Removal Tool is installed on all windows machines and updated/maintained via Windows Updates.
to run it;
Btw; McAfee has a similar yet not so comprehensive utility called Stinger (also free download);
http://www.mcafee.com/us/downloads/free-tools/stinger.aspx