Re: Acer puts Active X hole on laptops

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novaflare
The Dragon Was Here
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join:2002-01-24
Barberton, OH

reply to jansson_mark

said by jansson_mark:

said by Name Game:

My advice to anyone who buys a new PC or laptop especially some of those Dell's

would be to wipe it clean, reformat the whole drive and then have a tech reinstall the OS..

Unfortunally some manufactorers/resellers do NOT provide you with clean install XP cdroms, but rather their OWN restore cdroms...or in some cases simply some bizarre "recovery feature" (like hidden image stored in unpartitioned hdd space) that can only be activated with some bizarre programX inside the computer. This sucks. Really.

All what I want from manufactorer is XP:s install cdrom and possibly the drivers disk (or simply mentions about what drivers are needed). Thats all I need.

Know what you mean. The restore info isnt so much on unpartioned space its on a hidden (only from windows) partion. Its visable on most through good old fdisk if not fdisk its visable from a linux boot or live cd. Been a while sense i used fdisk but i beleive it has a option in there some where to create a hidden partion. Or maybe you simply leave them as a inactive partion.

The so called restore cds are more often than not the program x you mention and all the restore data or at least most is on the partion.

The single biggest problem with such partions is even though windows do not see them some truely nasty little viris and trojans do and because these are almost never more than fat 32 partions no security rules effect the partion. Non admins have full read right delete access to said partion.

So basically you execute viri x as non admin limited user and nothing happens then one day you decide youve got to much crap on your comp and restore to factory default. Now this viri x gets installed during restore and your screwed.

Lucky for all of us these little nasties are few and far between. Ive seen 3 examples of them in something like 8 years of cleaning up infections.

As for the whole not including a xp/os disk that just pisses me off. Personally i dont care one way or the other. I can get xp pro full retail version for 150. The guy who i buy from will be selling the vista ultimate edition just as relitivly cheap when its released same for all other versions. When i bought my xp pro i paid 199 instead of 299 so i fully expect vista ultimate to be about 200 cheaper from him than any where else.

Want cheap and 100% legal copies of windows oses shop the mom and pop shops. Forget online sales forget big retailers go mom and pop shops. The way such shops see it if they can cut you a great deal on a computer or hardware or software youll bring them all your buissness. Then they can make more of your hard earned money even when something might be a little more expensive.
--
Evil does exist and it has a face to often that face is one that should look on their child with love in their eyes.

Instead only hate exists in those eyes.

to forum · permalink · 2007-01-09 18:00:25 ·

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Re: Acer puts Active X hole on laptops