|
Stanley Pain posted:I see someone here who doesn't actually work for a "big company". I received a document the other day in Word 2003 format. 2003? Really? WTF are you doing with Office 2003? This is the same type of company that would be paying Microsoft maintenance for the last 11 years, too.
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2014 22:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 13:52 |
|
|
I'm wondering when the XP OS will finally go out of vogue. The amount of businesses still relying on it is very impressive. We're coming up on thirteen years since it was RTM (8/24/01) and it still has a significant presence (convenience and economics being the two primary reasons in my experience).
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 00:56
|
|
|
At work we've got a $30,000 piece of equipment that depends on a 16 bit windows program to run. I'll bet we're still running XP in 10 years.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 01:24
|
|
|
Ynglaur posted:I received a document the other day in Word 2003 format. 2003? Really? WTF are you doing with Office 2003? This is the same type of company that would be paying Microsoft maintenance for the last 11 years, too. I've converted a lot of offices to OpenOffice/LibreOffice and they'll often fall back to Office 2003 format since it's the 'safest' cross-compatible format, since OO still does funky things with 2013 word docs/spreadsheets.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 02:20
|
|
|
Ynglaur posted:I received a document the other day in Word 2003 format. 2003? Really? WTF are you doing with Office 2003? This is the same type of company that would be paying Microsoft maintenance for the last 11 years, too. Uh yeah dude a lot of stuff uses normal 97-2003 DOC because it's readable in much more things than DOCX.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 02:27
|
|
|
Ynglaur posted:I received a document the other day in Word 2003 format. 2003? Really? WTF are you doing with Office 2003? This is the same type of company that would be paying Microsoft maintenance for the last 11 years, too. Large corporations tend to have very large "things" running very large and important processes. Where I work one of our major billing systems still runs on a mainframe, coded in COBOL. So yeah, unless you've actually worked for a very large corporation, it might seem strange that old programs are being used.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 13:05
|
|
|
Old programs don't faze me. I've replaced systems which themselves had replaced punchcard systems 30 years ago. What surprises me are companies who don't take relatively easy productivity and security upgrades. People who save and old format for compatibility reasons makes sense; people who can't use newer formats because they're stuck in 2002 make me sad. Edit: VVV Two good counter-points below. Ynglaur fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Aug 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 14:24
|
|
|
"Relatively easy productivity and security upgrades" often don't get used much for the first part, and in most cases don't supply the latter (unless it's out of support). Docx compatibility was patched into every version of word after '97 - so, 200x and XP, so format compatibility is not really an issue. Ultimately the logic is backwards, large companies are only going to upgrade after the new version has a track record of reliability and compatibility, because "it just working" is their number one priority, and the people holding the money are usually pretty immune to nebulous claims of "increased workflow and progressively streamlines e-business customer interactions, allows the incorporation of professionally built goal-oriented process improvements into your employees output". This also ignores that upgrade costs are near-linear after a point, so large businesses are no more immune to a per-workstation upgrade cost than small ones.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 17:28
|
|
|
Khablam posted:"Relatively easy productivity and security upgrades" often don't get used much for the first part, and in most cases don't supply the latter (unless it's out of support). Docx compatibility was patched into every version of word after '97 - so, 200x and XP, so format compatibility is not really an issue.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 17:36
|
|
|
Wiggly Wayne DDS posted:Format compatibility is an issue as not everyone uses Microsoft Word. I feel sorry for the scrubs stuck with WordPerfect 6, but every modern office suite can open docx.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 21:11
|
|
|
Wiggly Wayne DDS posted:Format compatibility is an issue as not everyone uses Microsoft Word. Unless you dig around KDE distro lists for some unheard of editor, they all support Word files. Really the only one that never did, was MS Works, as bundled with every crappy beige tower in the early '00s. All but certainly deliberately, so that you had a reason to upgrade to Word. Back-tracking to the original statement though, not upgrading from XP is just a liability by now, and one everyone should be fixing. You can virtualize the one program you need that doesn't work in Win 7 - assuming it's one that actually doesn't work, and isn't simply solved by installing outside of program files like most 'incompatible' programs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 23:54
|
|
|
Crossbar posted:At work we've got a $30,000 piece of equipment that depends on a 16 bit windows program to run. I'll bet we're still running XP in 10 years. Lemme guess, It's some sort of CNC that involves lasers and metal isn't it?
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2014 08:05
|
|
|
Well? Don't leave us hanging.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2014 01:32
|
|
|
internet jerk posted:Well? Don't leave us hanging. While I don't know what he's running I work for a city/school system and one of the schools has a sign that you can program messages on. It runs on Windows 95 with a hardware key. The company no longest exists and we don't have install media. I'm petrified of this thing dying every time there is a ticket about it. Thankfully I'm normally not someone going out to the schools and instead removing viruses from Police Cruiser computers, or Dispatch. Search Conduit seems to be making rounds again at the PD, it seemed to have died for a few months anyone else see an increase suddenly?
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2014 01:41
|
|
|
pixaal posted:Search Conduit seems to be making rounds again at the PD, it seemed to have died for a few months anyone else see an increase suddenly? I'm seeing it fairly often on Macs lately. It seems easy enough to get rid of, at least, which is good because I don't know much about malware removal on Macs.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2014 04:22
|
|
|
pixaal posted:Search Conduit seems to be making rounds again at the PD, it seemed to have died for a few months anyone else see an increase suddenly? They suckered a lot of freeware publishers into bundling it with their programs. And the way they hide the opt-out is pretty disgusting.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2014 09:56
|
|
|
bucketmouse posted:Lemme guess, It's some sort of CNC that involves lasers and metal isn't it?
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2014 12:13
|
|
|
pixaal posted:Thankfully I'm normally not someone going out to the schools and instead removing viruses from Police Cruiser computers, or Dispatch. "Jenna18? Negative #1172 she is only 1mile from here" "Jenna18? No this is.. "#2511 also reporting hot Russian singles in my area" "This is dispatch to all units, possible trafficking ring in ... wait, this isn't right, the FBI have just siezed my computer and need bitcoins" "Janet, patch me through to FBI, Washington" "I can't, I don't see that option on my Ask toolbar"
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2014 12:19
|
|
|
pixaal posted:While I don't know what he's running I work for a city/school system and one of the schools has a sign that you can program messages on. It runs on Windows 95 with a hardware key. The company no longest exists and we don't have install media. If it weren't for the DMCA I see some real value here in being a business that just goes in and pops copy protection off of this kind of thing so that people can continue to use it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2014 15:28
|
|
|
I've just had a rather panicked phone call from my mum saying she's received one of those "your order" email viruses and stupidly opened the attachment in it - then realised and closed it immediately. For now I've just said turn the laptop off and I'll take a look over the weekend. I've no idea what the attachment is (PDF/ZIP/Word etc) - but once I take a look what's the best way to identify what virus it's likely to be - and should I just assume it's infected her laptop? It's a Windows 7 laptop running good old store provided McAfee I believe. Also what are the best tools to use to scan these days - it's been a while since I had to do this sort of tech support!
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2014 20:36
|
|
|
JingleBells posted:I've just had a rather panicked phone call from my mum saying she's received one of those "your order" email viruses and stupidly opened the attachment in it - then realised and closed it immediately. For now I've just said turn the laptop off and I'll take a look over the weekend. For a scare like that I'd use Malwarebytes. If she "closed it" it was likely an zip or word file. Either would have likely not infected anything, a zip requiring you to run the EXE inside and the word file requiring you to enable macros or something so it can download the payload. Or it opened a scary black command prompt and was doing something. To see if you have anything to worry about go into downloads and sort by date the newest file is what you probably want upload the file to VirusTotal This will tell you what you are dealing with, and probably give you a good idea of something to directly target it. I would upload the file using another computer and NOT let the laptop online since it most likely will attempt to download more junk and make your job harder. I'm sure people will have other opinions on this, but since it was powered off shortly after infection its better to contain it to deal with it quickly. Doing the upload from the same machine is fine and likely not going to cause too much more of a headache, but I usually have a linux box to contain anything nasty, though there isn't much that can infect you by the file simply existing outside of clever locations and fun exploits. Tip for quickly locating the file if she hit open instead of save, Cntrl+J opens the download history in IE, Firefox, and Chrome. Right click go to folder to quickly get the file in question. Knowing what you are dealing with will help you know you got rid of it, or if a scan come sup clean on the machine know what to google for to see if it delivered the payload (You'll want to check known file and folder names, should be a nice description on a site eventually about manual removal).
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2014 00:22
|
|
|
JingleBells posted:I've just had a rather panicked phone call from my mum saying she's received one of those "your order" email viruses and stupidly opened the attachment in it - then realised and closed it immediately. For now I've just said turn the laptop off and I'll take a look over the weekend. Haus of Tech Support has a sticky, and there are "toolkit" posts ITT every few pages - not too hard to skim back for them. If I were to go off the top of my head, then MalwareBytes has an Anti-Rootkit package to start with, then AdwCleaner is a solid post-infection antimalware tool. Other rootkit tools would be Rootkit Revealer and TDSSkiller. If you're stopped from running scanners, you want rkill. MalwareBytes Anti-Malware is another general-purpose thing. HijackThis! is a tool for enumerating running processes, and https://www.hijackthis.de is a crowdsourced log parser that will rate your items. Combofix is the nuclear option. It will go in and forcibly excise malware and reset Windows settings. It could be your panacea, or it could chop out something important and wreck your Windows installation. It's a tool of last resort before you reinstall.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2014 00:46
|
|
|
my SOP is rkill, TDSS scans, combofix, ADWcleaner, hijackthis, uninstall suspicious programs. combofix is nuclear, but it's also effective and time saving. I've only had it brick a computer once in 5-7 years. fixed maybe 500-800 computers in that time.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2014 07:58
|
|
|
Outside of what's on the OP, what's the recommendation for preventative measures for people who don't follow normal security practices? A few members of my family always end up with some malware each time I'm at their place, and I'm looking for best practices on how to lock down their Windows 7 boxes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 05:16
|
|
|
Drunk Badger posted:Outside of what's on the OP, what's the recommendation for preventative measures for people who don't follow normal security practices? A few members of my family always end up with some malware each time I'm at their place, and I'm looking for best practices on how to lock down their Windows 7 boxes. Don't let them run as administrator and/or teach them to not install poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 07:01
|
|
|
Drunk Badger posted:Outside of what's on the OP, what's the recommendation for preventative measures for people who don't follow normal security practices? A few members of my family always end up with some malware each time I'm at their place, and I'm looking for best practices on how to lock down their Windows 7 boxes. Don't run as admin. Run NoScript + AdBlock Plus in a modern internet browser that has automatic updates. Run forced Java updates + whatever. Run MalwareBytes Premium + a decent AV client (either some form of ESET or Kasperskpy)
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 08:03
|
|
|
What do knowledgable goons consider to be good AV software for individuals? I know my company prefers McAfee because it's easier to manage centrally, but central administration is not a big concern for a small family.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 08:31
|
|
|
has anyone seen a widespread 'hey my PDFs are suddenly appearing in windows explorer with a firefox icon, and opening using the firefox PDF previewer plugin' issue? I swear I'm not crazy, but it's happened on my personal computer, and 3 client sites thusfar. Is this something adobe is doing? it sucks balls whatever it is.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 08:32
|
|
|
Ynglaur posted:What do knowledgable goons consider to be good AV software for individuals? I know my company prefers McAfee because it's easier to manage centrally, but central administration is not a big concern for a small family. Either some flavor of kaspersky or Eset/Nod32 antivirus, plus Malwarebytes anti-malware.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 09:25
|
|
|
What's the deal with the malwarebytes anti 0 day upgrade? It's basically double the price for some non-tangible security?
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 11:16
|
|
|
mindphlux posted:has anyone seen a widespread 'hey my PDFs are suddenly appearing in windows explorer with a firefox icon, and opening using the firefox PDF previewer plugin' issue? Mozilla hosed up with Firefox 31. Firefox 31 was supposed to scoop up the association if there was no PDF reader installed, but instead they just forced the association. You might also see it having stolen the .ogg association, though it didn't do that for me. It probably doesn't do it when you use the auto-update, but it does if you use the installer.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 12:48
|
|
|
Paul MaudDib posted:
From personal experience: NoScript will end up in "Allow Scripts Globally" mode in about a week. Do they really need to run Windows? If it's just webbrowsing, is Linux an option?
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 15:34
|
|
|
Drunk Badger posted:Outside of what's on the OP, what's the recommendation for preventative measures for people who don't follow normal security practices? A few members of my family always end up with some malware each time I'm at their place, and I'm looking for best practices on how to lock down their Windows 7 boxes. If changing their habits is truly hopeless, make them buy Sandboxie Pro and set all their browsers to auto run in sandboxes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 16:42
|
|
|
My wife's boss is an endless supply of secondary income for me. Constantly getting all kinds of malware. Last incident he admitted that he purposely disabled Norton IS to install something that Norton flagged as bad! Then he hands the laptop to my wife to bring home to me to fix. When I fixed it up and gave it back he asked me "But can't I just have this ONE thing? I really like it". And I told him to do what he wants but don't ask me to fix it again. He hasn't installed whatever it is since. It was a bit of pain the rear end too. Can't remember the name of it, but it completely took over proxy settings and set it to loopback, so there was no internet access, and there was no normal way to set the proxy back to normal settings. At least it was an easy $100.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 17:31
|
|
|
sfwarlock posted:From personal experience: NoScript will end up in "Allow Scripts Globally"  NoScript is awesome, use it if you don't want to acclimate to a new OS but also don't want to open yourself up to the easiest kinds of drive-by attacks. Enabling scripts on pages you trust is on you, sure, but it takes all of like 0.6 seconds to allow scripts that a website you do trust needs to work correctly.If it's being set up for someone else, it does take more than "here ya go, enjoy!" or they'll be back to old, bad habits. Drive-by attacks work because people don't understand why they should care about this stuff, y'know? If it's just for you, of course go ahead and use whatever OS and habits you prefer, but tons of people use NoScript.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
Drunk Badger posted:Outside of what's on the OP, what's the recommendation for preventative measures for people who don't follow normal security practices? A few members of my family always end up with some malware each time I'm at their place, and I'm looking for best practices on how to lock down their Windows 7 boxes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 17:47
|
|
|
Crossbar posted:At work we've got a $30,000 piece of equipment that depends on a 16 bit windows program to run. I'll bet we're still running XP in 10 years. Much like most banks ATMs in production. We're currently getting ours updated but its like pulling teeth with vendors.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 18:36
|
|
|
Zogo posted:I'm wondering when the XP OS will finally go out of vogue. The amount of businesses still relying on it is very impressive. It's mostly "going out of vogue" already in places where that's possible. Smart users and admins have moved to one of the newer OS's that still have active updates and stuff. According to W3schools, XP is down to 6.5% market share, versus 54.2% for Win7 and 18.1% for Win8. Now in terms of when you'll stop encountering lone installations in the wild - pretty much never. You will be finding it on Grandma's ancient desktop, industrial installations, and powering unique/unsupported software/hardware for decades to come. As an example, drum scanners usually come as a package with an archaic 68k/PPC Mac that has the drivers and software installed. It's just not economical to support a decades-old piece of hardware - nobody's going to pay thousands of dollars for an updated driver, even assuming that the manufacturer hasn't gone out of business in the meantime. Even something as simple as "getting a working SCSI card" is a challenge nowadays, after some digging I finally managed to find one Adaptec card that has Vista-compatible 64-bit drivers. Microsoft actually decided to remove the drivers for this card in Win7, but you can still install the Vista drivers manually. There's a few companies who service niche stuff like this if you really have the bucks - for example there's a company who makes an LGA1155 motherboard with ISA slots on it, price on request. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Sep 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2014 22:42
|
|
Paul MaudDib posted:According to W3schools, I've never seen their stats stuff but this might be the riskiest 3-word phrase in the english language
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2014 08:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 13:52 |
|
|
Yeah, W3Schools has always had weird usage rates compared to other sources. If I remember right, they had IE going below 50% several years ahead of when the majority of other stat sources did, which kinda indicates to me they might have an unrepresentative sample.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2014 16:03
|
|