Windows Tips and Tricks

Backing up important data and files is something that everybody knows they should do but somehow a lot of people never get around to it. One reason may be that it is not a very interesting way to spend your time but then neither is brushing your teeth.

Another reason backups do not get done is that a lot of average PC users are not quite sure how to do them or they find the procedure to involve too many options. There are many software programs available for this chore but they often have more features than the average PC user wants to deal with. My experience with teaching has made it clear that a lot of people simply refuse to do anything on a computer that involves more than a few simple steps.

Backing up is very important and I have written a program (for Windows XP) that reduces the task to as few steps as possible. Click on the folder to back up, click on where to back up, click to make the backup. The program is free and can be downloaded here. Unzip the little file to any convenient place and click it to start a backup. If you do not have a backup folder, it will make one for you. It copies only new files or those that have changed so once you have made an initial backup, the procedure is quite fast. It is a VBScript so you will get the standard script warning from your anti-virus software but it is perfectly safe. It does nothing to the system and if you do not like it, just delete the file.

Now you have no excuse not to keep your data backed up.

Well, it seems that a sure way to get people to click on your malware package is to promise lots of sex. Greed is another way but sex is still the number one sucker bait. ZDNet describes the latest outbreak, the “Kama Sutra” worm.

A reader, Steve Hobberstad, has sent me a contribution describing his problems with a Microsoft Office XP component Ctfmon.exe. According to Microsoft

Ctfmon.exe is the file that is responsible for controlling the Alternative User Input technologies. It starts the Language Bar component (in the Systray) and remains running in the background even after you quit an Office XP program. It also starts each time Windows is started and remains in the background, regardless of whether an Office XP program is started.

In other words, this component runs all the time and according to Steve

Be that as it may, “ctfmon” REALLY screwed up my system! After disabling it not only did the random lost-focus anomaly stop but my system now runs about 150% faster than it has since I rebuilt it last December. It was like getting a new system all over again!

You can read his complete description of his problem and its solution on this page. I have Office XP on my own system but when I installed it, I used a custom install as I always do, and I never installed this component. See the Microsoft FAQ on this component for more information. There are other complaints on the Web about this file so if you have Office XP, you should check into it.

Finally, it should be noted that there are reports on the Web that there is a Trojan that masquerades as this file. The legitimate file will be located in the Windows\System32 folder. If you find it somewhere else other than backup folders, it could be malware.

I often write about Internet Explorer and Firefox but there are other browsers, too. About 95% of sytems use either IE or Firefox but there are other browsers worth considering, Internet Week has an article Browsers: Beyond IE And Firefox. Here’s an excerpt

We looked at a few of the less-known–or, in the case of Netscape, less-well-used–offerings out there: Opera 8.51, Netscape 8.0.4, Flock 0.4.10, and Safari 2.0.2. Each brings a unique flavor to its Web display. We tested them on either Windows XP Professional or Mac OS X 10.4 or both. Opera and Flock are available for both Windows and OS X, as well as Linux, but Netscape is available only for Windows (as of version 8 ) and Safari is available only for Mac OS X. If you want to browse the Web your way, you might want to look into one of these options.

I have always been very leery of what Google, Yahoo, etc. were going to do with the enormous amount of information that they collect on all of us. I have tried to give as little information as possible when I use the Web. For example, I will not use the Google Desktop search and I will not use the settings in the GoogleBar that let them track where I go. In spite of anything that we do, however, there is a very large amount of information about all of us out there on the Web. Between that and the credit rating agencies, there isn’t much privacy left. I applaud Google’s effort to resist the government’s attempt to get all their information but I am afraid nothing will stop the continuing erosion of privacy. Internet Week comments on the search engines and the government’s data gathering.

One annoying feature of the various video clips on the Web is that they are not all in the same format. Although most can be played with Windows Media Player, some require RealPlayer or yet another piece of software, QuickTime. I mentioned earlier that RealPlayer had a lot of annoying practices and suggested an alternative. Now it appears that Apple wants to peddle iTunes in an aggressive way and that they are adopting some unfortunate practices. It seems that there is a security update that is needed for QuickTime but getting it without paying is a hassle. Ed Bott gives some details.

As discussed in the previous entry, one thing that I think makes Firefox safer is that security holes are patched much faster than they are for Internet Explorer. Another factor that adds to safety in Firefox is that it is easily configured with extensions to provide additional safeguards. Many extensions exist and are easy to install. One extension worth considering controls JavaScript.

One of the most common ways that malware can get onto your computer is through some JavaScript function. Many annoying ads also use JavaScript. It is safer and often faster to surf without JavaScript and all major browsers give you a way to disable JavaScript. However, completely disabling JavaScript is not the answer. Many necessary and useful functions also use JavaScript. Many legitimate sites will be partially or wholly unusable without JavaScript. The solution is to be able to easily turn JavaScript on and off so that it is off for general surfing but can be enabled for viewing sites that use JavaScript for valid reasons. There is a free extension for Firefox that does just that and I have been using it for a while now. I really like it; the only real problem that I have encountered is that I sometimes forget that I have disabled JavaScript and wonder why I can’t get sites to work. The extension is called NoScript and is available here.

The program allows you to either permanently or temporarily enable JavaScript for a particular site. That way all your favorite sites can have JavaScript enabled while the Internet as a whole remains without JavaScript. As you surf you may find some site that looks peculiar or has broken functions. If you believe the site is a legitimate one, you can turn on JavaScript. Firefox does not support ActiveX scripting, so there may be some sites that do not work in Firefox with or without JavaScript.

“Internet Explorer Sucks.” The foregoing is a quote from the latest Crypto-Gram Newsletter by the well-known security expert Bruce Schneier. In it, he points out a study done last August by researchers at a security firm in Belgium called Scanit. Unlike the phony “test” done by George Ou (discussed here earlier) that got so much notice at ZDNet, this study has some actual significance. Schneier describes the test

The researchers tracked three browsers (MSIE, Firefox, Opera) in 2004 and counted which days they were “known unsafe.” Their definition of “known unsafe”: a remotely exploitable security vulnerability had been publicly announced and no patch was yet available.

By this definition Internet Explorer was 98% unsafe. There were only 7 days in 2004 without an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole. In contrast, the figures for Windows Firefox were that it was 7% unsafe, corresponding to 26 days with an unpatched but publicly disclosed security hole. Opera was unsafe for 65 days or 17%.

While the percentages quoted for this test do not really define safety quantitatively (such a metric is probably impossible) it is a lot better than the numerology of some previous tests. It answers some of the questions that I raised on another page. The results for IE vs. Firefox and Opera are so disparate that they clearly indicate a real difference in practical safety.

If ZDNet wants to be fair, they should report on this study. It would only be right after their ballyhoo on the Ou non-test.

If you have a computer that is a few years old. you may have the old slow version of USB (USB1). You can check if you have the much faster USB2 by looking in the Windows Device Manager. Details for the procedure in Windows XP are given at this site. If you still have Windows 98 or Me, you can also use Device Manager but the path is a little different Right-click on My Computer, open “Properties”, and click the tab “Device Manager”.

Certain programs are on my list of the most annoying. RealPlayer has been on the list for a long time. It puts stuff all over your computer and makes it hard to get rid of things like its entry in the Notification area (or System Tray, as it used to be called). Nonetheless, I have had RealPlayer on my system because some types of files could be viewed no other way. For example, Windows Media Player cannot play RealMedia files. However, these days there is a free alternative and it is available at PC World downloads.