On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 13:27, Josef Lowder wrote:
> While I received a couple of helpful responses,
> I also felt somewhat chastised by others for even asking this question:
----
I hope that I wasn't one of the one's who you felt chastised you.
----
> > One wrote, in part: "... what you are seeking is something that defies
> > what anyone could suggest as a recommended practice ... the only
> > safe thing to do is to back up the data, reformat, reinstall, bring the
> > system up to current including anti-virus and then bring the data back ...
> > There aren't any shortcuts to good practices."
----
that was me
----
> Seems to me that chasing this problem on a M$ OS system is a never-
> ending problem and a bottomless pit.
----
there are some who will agree with you and some who don't. I have never
had a virus/trojan/worm problem on any of my Windows machines. That
said, the last 4 or 5 years, I have been using Linux primarily. My
Windows machine does have AVG anti-virus (free), Ad Aware (free),
Mozilla (pop-up blocking), OpenOffice.org (free) installed.
----
> My objective was/is _not_ to facilitate and encourage ongoing use
> of any retarded M$ system, but rather to demonstrate yet another
> dimension of Linux's ability too provide a remedy without having to
> waste time and money on yet more anti-virus software and the endless
> updating that is required of everyone who goes down that road.
>
> I want to keep the focus on the greater stability and security that
> she has when she boots to her Linux partition each time her M$
> system gets messed up again.
>
> We ended up copying important data files from the winxp partition to
> the linux partition and reformatting and reinstalling the winxp partition,
> but what a waste of time. Seems to me that it would have been a whole
> lot easier and less time consuming to just find and delete the file(s) that
> infected the winxp partition and let it continue to limp along in its usual
> unstable, vulnerable, half-baked condition.
----
I suppose that if enough people shared your desires, there would be some
type of packaging developed in that regard. I wonder if there is really
that much desire to develop a system to carry water buckets for
Microsoft. That seems to me to be wasted energy.
There are some basic good practices that cross operating system
boundaries which would include having a proper firewall, keeping a
system up to date and not using the computer day to day as a privileged
user. Then of course, when you do have a system that is compromised by a
worm/virus/trojan etc. your only safe bet is to back up the data,
reformat, reinstall and protect the system. This isn't a Windows
problem...it's a computer problem.
The problems peculiar to Windows is that too many people are using them
without keeping up to date with the available protections including OS,
virus, etc.
The endless updating requirement is unfortunately, not a problem
peculiar to Windows.
Craig
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