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[dua]

V annoyed. I appear to have acquired a cold in time for exams. Which is exactly what happened last time! My immune system is obviously aware of exam stuff. (And it's nothing to do with stress or lack of sleep compromising my immune system, mmkay?!) Still, I picked up some co-codamols for my back on Saturday, so they're just getting used to fend of

Comments

[_cheiron_]

Noooo!

You don't need Linux *spits* ;)

Nah..LSASS is a winbloze security authentication process and loads up normally. There was a buffer overrun vulnerability that the sasser worm exploited which makes it go boom and crash; the result of which is that ftp.exe is loaded up and the sasser is uploaded to your machine and starts doing the same to others. When lsass crashes winblose authentication prompts you for a shutdown in 60 seconds. You can goto "run" and type "shutdown -a" to stop that happening and patch your system against it.

Since it targets specific ports (I don't remmeber which); if you have a firewall that's letting things through one way and not the other you may wanna change a few settings. It's not much of a "fix" but it should stop most infections from occuring.

Maybe the reboot was something else?

[PS: give Knoppix 3.4 a try!]

[dua]

Well, given that I worked out that 99% of what I do at the moment, I can do it on Linux, it kind of seems like it's pointless running Windoze. I might experiment with FreeBSD or something as well though :-)

Anyway, I eventually figured out that lsass was indeed a proper Windoze program, given that I wasn't infected and it was running :-) What d'you mean about the firewall letting things through one way and not the other? The only ports I've got open on my linux box are http, https, ftp, ssh & edonkey ones...

I was partly so miffed when I thought I had it because I figured that if I *had* managed to get a virus like that even with the set up I've got, there wasn't a lot more I could do to protect myself...

And last summer I ended up using Knoppix for quite a while as my BIOS had a fit and lost one of my hard disks (which had My Documents on it). Windows doesn't do its own fsck so didn't find My Documents and wouldn't boot, whereas knoppix merrily worked as soon as I put the CD in, pretty much :-)

[_cheiron_]

Heh; I figure you can use any OS for most tasks anyway; but some of them just let you get on with the tasks at hand and others leave you wasting time messing about with the innards (they call it "administering", heh.) When you've finally got things running well enough you corrupt your apt database thingy and nothing installs the way it used to anymore; or you install from source and find that you have mismatching library versions; or the rsync server goes poo; etc, etc. A bit of hair-pulling later you've still not worked things out even when you RTFM'ed so you ask a more condascending knowledgable person for advice. He explains that its one of "those things" and solves it easy enough with a solution that simply doesn't make sense but works; or sometimes tells you to reinstall the OS because getting the database working again is more difficult :) And so you go abut your merry ways until the next time it happens; when your printer refuses to co-operate for some unusual reason or your mouse buttons decide to swap over or something

[dua]

I know what you mean. But I just don't trust Windows. Which is possibly irrational, but there you go :-) It's partly that Windows is so frequently targetted that it seems somewhat foolish to open myself up to it. And anyway, installing Linux gives me something to do over the bits of the holidays when I'm not doing other stuff

[_cheiron_]

Heh...is this geek bf anyone I know?

And you've always shown me that you're far removed from being clueless at any time ^_^ its what I like & respect about you the most..you're one of the most clueful peeps around!

[dua]

Oooh, you say the sweetest things *beams*

Geek bf is the lovely dooferlad, who is, quite frankly, wonderful. (Sorry, sickeningly smitten person!) *And* he helps me work out what's wrong with my boxes. Multipurpose! *giggles*

[dua]

*grins* I am actually thinking about trying FreeBSD as well ;-)

I'm a bit humph about it really... I only had a system upgrade under a year ago, so I think I'm in denial about my shiny machine being crap! And I've had so many issues with windows just randomly dying on me before that I'd rather try out a different OS or two and check. Cos it's easier to do that than try and work out which bit's broken!

[dua]

Will have a look at the memory thing later... my BIOS isn't set up to check it at boot at the moment, so it's possible it might be a problem. Cooling and PSU should be fine though... I've got an extremely spangly fan on my CPU and several adjustable fans in my case and the PSU was got to go with this CPU, so should be OK :-)

Still, messy buckets for the tips! I had thought about cooling anyway, as the response was not dissimilar to when I experimented with overclocking my old CPU and I just had to see what made my box fall over... But the memory thing hadn't occurred to me as an obvious candidate.

[dua]

*grins* That could work too :-) But will try the memtest thing for now, given I should probably be reserving *some* time for revising ;-)

[dooferlad]

I am sure knowing how to test memory will be useful in your exams!

I am sorry if I gave you bad RAM. You can always try taking it out, rubbing the contacts with an eraser and putting it back in. My work machine randomly turns itself off - I know your pain. John had the same problem and ended up doing a rebuild. Didn't need any new parts, but it did stop crashing. Probably a shoddy contact somewhere. Your PSU is fine BTW.

[dua]

Noooo! *Bad* Doofy!

Anyway, I do seem to have issues with RAM, don't I? Hmmm. I did start running the test, and it found a chunk of nastiness, but I cancelled it cos I thought I'd better get on with work. But yes, does seem like it might be RAM, but I will have to experiment to work out which bit is dodgy if indeed any *is* dodgy.

And see comment above re PSU. I figured you wouldn't have been silly enough to get a dodgy PSU. Thankfully the box has only been turning itself off since I finished my report, which fills me with great joy... (I'm wondering whether it might be anything to be with the dodgy mouse drivers, given that it started doing it around then...)