Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

And a side trip to Daylight Savings Time

Yahoo just had a story highlighting Symantec’s list of Worst Computer Viruses Of All Time. The story includes a short description of each virus, including some cost figures of damage done.

Many of these viruses were as damaging as they were only because computer users, probably bored at their jobs, exhibited poor judgment and in many cases even violated corporate policy.

I have just updated the Internet Security Software page on my website so you can see how my clients prevent serious problems.

I also have a page about user behavior that is quite pertinent also.

But since the above mentioned Yahoo article talks about cost, has anyone calculated the cost to corporate America to deal with the cost-increasing, not cost-decreasing debacle of Daylight Savings Time, in particular, the costs associated with George W’s 3 week adjustment made in 2007?

I guarantee you that number is STAGGERING; yet it was only political posturing. I saw fallout from that this year on new servers installed and updated in January 2008 that did not automatically get the proper patch from Microsoft.

It’s one thing to suffer at the hands of ne’er do wells, usually in some foreign land who hate American’s anyway, but the Daylight Savings Time debacle was brought upon us by those sworn to look after our well being. And the Daylight Savings Time issue has research going back to 1976 showing that is doesn’t save energy or our environment the way it was alleged to.

I have been a long time supporter of BOClean antimalware software. Recently, however, BOClean’s orignator - NSClean - sold out to Comodo.com and Comodo started giving the product away. Great! I thought, but then the problems began.

How about the BOClean Database is Corrupted message (that won’t go away)?

Then 2 false positives on Windows system files.

I’m afraid I have to pull the plug and uninstall from my client’s PC’s. The Database corrupted message isn’t that hard to fix, but my Users just don’t want to learn it despite this video I created:

BOClean Database Corrupt How To Fix Video

So, for now at least, so long old friend.

With this mornings update (3/5/08), C:\Windows\System32\WUAUCLT.exe (windows update agent) is being stopped by Comodo BOClean as DRP-AGENT.SCK malware.

Is this another false positive like the USERINIT.Exe fiasco of a few weeks ago or is this real?

I posted to Comodo’s BOClean forum and someone else promptly indicated the same thing happened to them. I have had quite a few clients receive this prompt, with at least one selecting “Yes” to BOClean’s offer to delete the file.

As of 24 hours later, Comodo has not chimed in; although my laptop, the first to experience the problem, updated the definition file again around 4pm and then no longer reported the problem.

This is frustrating. Yes, Comodo gives away BOClean for free, but I have a number of clients who paid for it just a year or two ago.

Compound this with the ongoing “file corrupt” message that only goes away if you know the trick (I have a video), and the UserInit.exe false alarm just a short time ago that rendered many PC’s unable to login (and me glad I typically install Windows Recovery Console on PC’s), and I’m about to pull my support of the formerly fantastic product and uninstall from all of my client computers.

Very sad. As another poster commented: “This never happened when Kevin (owner of NSClean who created it) was running the show”.