Category Archives: Utilities

Utilities

Office Application Keeps Trying To Install

This is annoying: Sometimes an installation goes haywire and whenever you reboot your computer or run a particular application you get the Microsoft Office installation message asking you to insert a CD. Even after running Cleanup and clearing out the Windows cache you still get the install message.

One way to clean this up is the Installation Cleanup Utility. You can find it here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

This program works great on Office installs and just about any other installation.

Free Avast Instead Of Not-So-Free AVG

After many years of using and recommending the great free AVG antivirus software, Grisoft has finally decided not to make it free anymore. *sob* It’s still a great antivirus program — much better than Norton or McAfee, the one time leaders in the antivirus market.

Smaller, faster programs have emerged such as AVG, Nod32, Kaspersky. If you’re willing to spend a few dollars on antivirus software, those are all excellent choices.

As far as the free antivirus market goes, Avast now seems to be the last holdout. I’ve started using it a few months ago and it seems pretty good, although the interface is a little less than intuitive. For example, it wasn’t obvious to me how to scan a whole drive. (Right-click on the Avast icon to get all the goodies.)

Despite the slightly quirky interface, Avast antivirus is an excellent — and perhaps only — free choice.

Try it here: http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

Update: AVG appears to be free again! http://www.free.grisoft.com

While you’re at it, you can also download their free anti-spyware as well. Works as a full version for 30 days before downgrading itself to a minimal — albeit free — version.

How To Remove Notifyalert.exe Dell Support

I decided to remove the Notifyalert.exe program from a Dell PC which appeared to be slowing it down. The program is part of the Dell Support program that you can normally remove under Add / Remove Programs. Apparently this only works for version 3. If you have version 2 of Dell Support then the Add / Remove programs function can fail.

If you have version 2 of the Dell Support program, you need to reinstall the program and then remove it. Go to http://support.dell.com/ and do a search on “uninstall dell support” which will give you a link to the uninstall program.

Removing yyy65.html

For yyy65.html and other yyy-type popups, you can use the l2mfix program found at these locations:

http://www.downloads.subratam.org/l2mfix.exe
http://www.atribune.org/downloads/l2mfix.exe

Download the zip file and unzip it to your desktop. This will create an l2mfix folder.

From within the folder run the l2mfix.bat file.

Select option #1 for Run Find Log.

Select option #2 for Run Fix. It will reboot your computer and then run the fix on reboot. On some systems the scanning passes may take a while so be patient.

After it is done it will open up notepad with a trace log.

I usually run ewido and a virus checker like AVG after that, just for good measure.

Removing Nail and Aurora Spyware

Got another case of Nail.exe and Aurora popups.

This time I used a combination of 3 tools to remove it.

1) Run Nailfix.

You can find this program all over the net. Here’s one place to find it: nailfix for XP at
http://users/pandora.be/bluepatchy/nailfix.zip and nailfix for Win2K at
http://users/pandora.be/bluepatchy/nailfix2k.zip

2) Unregister aurorahandler.dll and DrPMon.dll. You can do this with the following command: regsvr32 /u dllname

More information here: http://www.spyware-removal-guideline.com/aurora-removal

3) After the unregister I was able to rename the nail.exe file and later delete it.

4) Run ewido. http://www.ewido.net

Ewido was able to catch all the other random-named files that would reinstall Nail.exe.