Hi Moose,
I know nothing of Malwarebytes, but, in my transition from an 8-yr old
machine running XP to a new one running Windows 7, I was my own worst
enemy. I wanted to use the same tools for photo work that I had used in
the past, and set out to download this software. I tried to get current
versions of Neat Image, FocusMagic, and a BW converter that I had found
useful. In this process, I stumbled into downloads of "bundles", not
individual programs, and got a lot of invasive, unwanted software. It
took me several weeks to clean up the mess. Now, the only one I see is
a popup ad each time I start the machine, which I immediately close. I
looked into deleting it, and found that people had to resort to a lot of
specific registry edits, which I refuse to do.
We need to be careful what we seek on the web! :-(
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
On 6/9/2014 4:39 PM, Moose wrote:
Association does not causality make.
But I do find it interesting that the two listees who report the most
computer troubles are also the most vocal about distrusting newer
software/OSs, the internet, and so on, and proud to use
technologically ancient equipment.
In my years of using PCs, from the first XP, I don't think I've has as
many woes in total as Brian and Chris T report in a year or two.
As to Malwarebytes, Brian, Chuck's ideas for checking the equipment
sound useful. But I'm not sure you understand what it does and it
appears you may be using it incorrectly.
In order to cause any trouble, stuff on your HD must get into memory
and start being executed by the CPU. Thus, MWB, like other
virus/malware scanners, defaults to checking only executable files and
some kinds of macros, in the places where they are usually found.
Running it on a drive and/or directories with only image and data
files is simply a waste of time. Even if something malicious hides
stuff in one, if the baddie is eliminated, there is still no danger.
I run MWB on the old laptop Carol uses, running XP, and have had no
trouble with it.
IMO, 7, and I presume 8, are much more secure than XP.
Your concerns about what you see as unwarranted HD activity strikes me
as excessive. There are many programs that do legitimate things to
accomplish the purposes for which they are installed in down time for
other apps.
A simple example is the indexing function of Windoze Explorer.
Directories may be set so that they have an index, so that searches
are very fast. The indexing is done when there is nothing else using
machine cycles and the HD, so that it won't impact other uses. By
default, the Documents, perhaps Downloads and other directories are
indexed. This may be turned on and off, both globally and by
directory. Personally, I have it turned on for some other directories.
There are other programs that work similarly, including some
antivirus/malware apps, scanning in background. The idea that you can
know everything going on and judge when HD use is not right seems to
me naive in the Windoze world.
Clean Moose
On 6/7/2014 2:01 PM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
Check to see if your drive is a "SMART" drive.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Self-tests> A SMART drive
is capable of running self-tests to analyze its own performance. But
its self-testing should not be so intrusive as to interfere with real
work.
The run times you report seem excessive for the amount of data
involved. It's possible your hard drive is undergoing soft
failures... getting read errors which are ultimately recoverable
after one or more retries. That's the sort of thing that SMART
should be able to detect.
However, if any of these drives are not internal but are connected
via USB 2.0 that may explain your speed problem. USB 2.0 is truly slow.
Chuck Norcutt
On 6/7/2014 2:56 PM, bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Just a cautionary note.
I have been suspicious for a while of hard drive activity that I
could see no call for, so in addition to having Avast antivirus
running I installed Malwarebytes to check for the sort of malware
they specialise in.
It took more than a day to check my C drive ( which is small) and
THREE AND A HALF days to check my main data disk which has less than
200,000 files and has just 168 gb used.
Just now it started up again despite me (thinking had deferred the
next scan for about a month) trying to avoid those excesses. In
doing so it greatly paralysed the machine.
I have just uninstalled it !! I can reinstall it if I see a need.
Brian
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