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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elsewhere who wrote (39157)	2/2/2004 10:50:30 AM
From: Jerry in Omaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110626

Jochen, Thanks so much for all the information in your reply. Most helpful. You wrote: <<Before you install Linux on the hard disk I would first try a distribution like Knoppix.>> Funny you should say that. As I was reading your post my friend Gary dropped by with a CD of Knoppix 3.3 for me. He said about the same thing as you did in your reply. He also mentioned that the Linux compression got about 1G of data on a 700MB disc. <neat> We also chatted for a bit about the progress of his recent "experiment in immunity." His hypothesis is simple: It's virtually impossible to be infected by malware if you're logged on only and exclusively as a limited user. It's never absolutely necessary to go online as an Administrator. To confirm his hypothesis he is using a spare computer and running a clean install XP Pro without upgrades or patches on a high speed connection. He has no anti-virus or other such programs installed. He goes online logged on as a limited user to sites that are notorious "Typhoid Mary"s to try to catch a virus or any other malware. Results so far after about 4 hours trolling for trouble, zip...nada. Not even MSBlast has infected him. The Beast won't bite. The few other people he's mentioned this to, one a computer security specialist, can't seem to get past the crazy idea of a guy deliberately going out and trying to get infected. As a result, Gary can't get them to address the central question: Is it possible to get infected when one is online as a limited user? What do you think, Jochen? I'll update Gary's experiment as more info comes to me. Jerry in Omaha

To: Elsewhere who wrote (39157)	2/13/2004 1:35:26 PM
From: Doug Soon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110626

Hi Jochen, Thanks for the tip. I downloaded and burned a Knoppix bootable CD. The idea was to troubleshoot a laptop hard drive that seems to have died that runs Windows XP with NTFS. It won't do a Windows XP repair and I don't want to re-partition and format as there are valuable files on this hard drive. I can't add a second hard drive and a laptop hard drive can't be added to my desktop IDE cable. So, the Linux CD seems like a good recovery tool. I tried it out on my desktop first, using a USB memory key to test by recovering files from the hard drive and writing to the memory key. I can see all the hard drive files and the memory key as well. However, I cannot "copy" and "paste" them to the memory key on a perfectly running desktop also running Windows XP and having NTFS partitions. Do you know if I need special drivers for this purpose? TIA