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Question for pc service techs out there..


Mikep7779

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I now work at circuit city as a PC tech. Im looking to build of good library of tools (software) that are good to have.

I now have

Bart PE

UBCD

Dial-A-Fix

Pest Patrol

Crap Cleaner

SAV

Winsock Fix

Double Driver

CWShredder, SpywareBlaster, Microsoft Anti-Spyware, Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, ewido Security Suite, CCleaner, HijackThis, Ad-Aware, ewido & Spybot updates/definition files

Looking for some recommendations. Thanks

Edited by Mikep7779
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SAV is very good imo, and what version of the norton removal tool? the one i have seems to cause issues, such as only partially removing norton.

And i forgot to add the line for the spyware part, im using the spyware pack from lunarsoft.net ;D

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Hey that's awesome! If About:Buster is in the pack, remove it. It has a bad bug where it can delete the entire System32 folder.

Symantec/Norton products are absolutely terrible. They slow down systems more than they help. Old article or the Updated article and see how bad Norton is.

Avast is the top product I recommend to people for anti-virus. It's very fast, lightweight on resources and easy to use.

I always use the latest Norton Removal Tool (Formerly SymNRT). I've seen it where Norton/Symantec will break BITS, SSL and more.

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mcafee stinger is also good at removing viruses and is free and updated frequently.

Stinger is a stand-alone utility used to detect and remove specific viruses.

Edited by RJM
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Since you included BartPE and UBCD in your list, may I also recommend downloading a copy of a Linux Live CD. (I use Knoppix: Knoppix).

Not quite as many disk tools as you'll find on UBCD, but it loads fast, the interface is pretty user friendly, and I have definately managed to access hard drives using Knoppix that we unreadable using BartPE and/or UBCD.

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SAV is very good imo

Sorry, but I have to side with Tarun on that one. We've tried SAV recently, and it's been nothing but trouble. A bit less resource hungry than NAV (still too much though), but it's by FAR the crashiest and most unstable AV app I've EVER seen hands down! Processes would crash all the time on most PCs (clean windows install on generic hardware - doscan.exe being the main culprit, crashing on ~50% of PCs), problems with MS office, etc. There's KB articles (and patches/stupid workarounds) that came out to fix most of these issues, only they didn't always work. Those that say MS releases beta products and that we pay to test them have obviously never tried SAV - it's like pre-alpha testing. I remember seeing articles about these crashes on some websites too (slashdot, etc)

It sucks so bad I'd almost consider using *gasp* NAV before that (and don't even wish that to my worst ennemy). Yes, your PC will slow down to a crawl and will let viruses in if you're ever exposed, but that won't be any different, except it won't crash anymore.

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If you've got any programming or debugging experience (or want some), I strongly recommend the Debugging tools for Windows

That's not very useful for most people. You don't expect the average A+ guy analyzing stack traces of crash dumps, trace kernel mode drivers or something, do you? (Time for a reality check - really!) To be useful, you have to have relevant programming experience (which is very uncommon in plain "admin" folks) And it's not the type of tool that's used much for the type of jobs he'll be doing (like removing spyware). A lot of people can't even understand half of what's on the BSOD screens already... Highly recommended to programmers (with enough understanding of the system), but admin guys? Not really.

BTW, you may want to keep a bunch of other utilities handy. Things like the Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder (to find their keys so you can reinstall stuff), apps to backup their XP's activation files, etc. Perhaps some free partitioning tools like gparted/qtparted and others. Something to reset the local admin password (there's various ways/apps/methods). Some disk cloning/imaging app sure couldn't hurt. Bootvis can come in handy. System testing/monitoring apps perhaps. A good pack of drivers (and perhaps an app to backup those from an existing system in case you don't have the drivers for those handy and if they also happen to be hard to find) - and some quick app that will tell you what hardware's in the box quickly (so you know what drivers you need). Most updates handy - like SPs/IE/DirectX, and fixes (e.g. latest MDAC). Something to backup their user profiles & data if needed (main thing is having somewhere to dump it to really). Scripts and batchfiles and reg tweaks pre-made for common tasks. Something like TiddlyWiki or such to keep notes. There's all kinds of free apps that can come in handy for a reason or another (from cd burning apps, to text editors, to 7zip, to whatever)... Perhaps a nice USB memory stick to hold most of this.

And of course, lots of the good stuff's already been mentionned (various WinPE/BartPE based discs, LiveCDs like systemrescue cd or distros like DSL, sysinternal apps, etc)

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You don't expect the average A+ guy analyzing stack traces of crash dumps, trace kernel mode drivers or something, do you?
Not necessarily, but expanding your horizons perhaps gets you a better job down the line, and learning on the job (if one's employer will allow) is the best place to do so. And no, it's not that hard - most C and C++ code is in understandable English, and it's not hard to learn (how many bad programmers are out there? :))
To be useful, you have to have relevant programming experience (which is very uncommon in plain "admin" folks) And it's not the type of tool that's used much for the type of jobs he'll be doing (like removing spyware).

A good administrator IS at least a decent programmer - and since he'll be dealing mostly with problems being exhibited with Internet Explorer or caused by something done in IE, I can say that IE problems caused by 3rd party software are ALWAYS debuggable (although debugging IE bugs themselves are a PITA). You may be right - most of his problems will be spyware or virus-related, but what about that one time it's not? I suppose he could always waste an hour or two formatting and reinstalling (if the client will allow), but there are times in an admin's life when a problem just doesn't make sense and all the obvious things have been tried - debugging pulls back the veil and tells you exactly what is going on "under the hood", either doing a live debug or analyzing a process or system memory dump file. It removes guesswork when that's all that is left without the debugger.

A lot of people can't even understand half of what's on the BSOD screens already... Highly recommended to programmers (with enough understanding of the system), but admin guys? Not really.

Again, I'll reiterate that a good admin is also at least a decent programmer, even if that knowledge is relegated to vbscripting, or perl, etc. I would also contend that not knowing how to troubleshoot BSOD's means a person is not a good Windows administrator (although that's just my opinion).

I was just trying to expose something that's not hard to learn, and if he's got a job as a PC tech, he's probably at least mildly interested in learning more about the OS and how it works under the hood. It's not for everyone, but it is accessible by most with a very low learning curve to do the more menial debugging, which is likely going to be most of the cases one would debug as a first-line tech. I personally believe that it would stand to reason that learning some debugging skills on those types of cases is the best place to start, but the parent has every opportunity to simply ignore my post if he thinks that it would not be of assistance to him. I'm hoping curiosity gets the cat :), but it's not for everyone.

Edited by cluberti
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