Date   : Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:32:27 +0200
From   : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: bbcdocs website problem

On 27/07/2010 07:52, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

> If he is, his box is 0wned.  No question.

And if a rootkit like tdss, many virus scanners won't find it.


> Bob, putting an unpatched Win box on the internet (even behind a NAT
 > router) these days isn't just asking for trouble, it's guaranteed.

I set up a test server to try something with Rob, ages ago. You don't 
want to know how many access attempts the thing, the unlisted 
unpublished, transient server received from random IP addresses, in a 
single half hour!
Thank God my Livebox filters out all this junk (but... if you are paying 
for a data slice, like xGb/month, does all this crap count to your 
allocation?).


> Vi$ta was terrible, but I could be persuaded to go to 7.

Ah-ah, I said NO "vista was horrible, 7 is better". If that's your 
logic, you're probably best off sticking with XP.


> Thing is, you can't upgrade from XP, you have to do a fresh install

Sometimes that's better, even if painful (esp. finding ages old CDs). 
For a start, you know at once if there are going to be driver issues, 
and also it helps clear some of the cack that Windows seems to 
accumulate in \Windows\System32.

If I was going Windows7, I'd probably get a new harddisc, slave my old 
one, and transfer that way - build up the Win7 system and then copy 
across my data.
Slightly trickier on an eeePC; perhaps impossible - my 4Gb C: SSD has 
200Mb free thanks to XP's gradual accumulation of nonsense; I tidy it 
every so often, but there's only so far that'll work. I'd like to move 
"Documents and Settings" over to D:, but I'm not certain you can do that 
on a live system - ie the user part of the registry files lives in there!


 > and I have everything just how I like it on XP.

:-)


> The cost also puts me off;

Yeah, way to encourage piracy.

Actually, the autocertification puts me off (the thing that WGA has 
evolved into). It can now flag your version of Windows as "errant" and 
nobble it at ANY time. Do I trust Microsoft never to get this wrong?


> if I got 7, I'd want the Pro version which isn't available on the
> student discount scheme.

I see half a dozen versions - Basic, Home, Home Basic... WTF?!? Can't we 
have a "home" and a "business" and leave it at that?


> This box I'm typing on now has been upgraded from DOS6.22/Win3.1 thru
> 95, 98, (skipped Me and NT4) 2000, and now XP.  I only recently blew
> away the c:\dos directory :-)

What spec?

My two XP machines claim to have been built for 98, but they run XP okay:
   Aiko:    450MHz P2, 128M RAM, 80Gb HD + DVD-W + DVD-W
   Ayleigh: 1.1GHz AMD, 1Gb RAM, 80+40+320Gb HD + DVD-W

[DVD-W means DVD writer]


Best wishes,

Rick.

-- 
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...