computer shutting itself down

You don't have to convince me, Utopian. I've been ranting and raving to my boss all day about how I would be wasting 4 hours of my morning updating all of our computers so we don't get the virus, if we had macs. I think i have convinced him actually. it's just a matter of getting the money together, which may take a while. but i think i'll eventually be working on a mac at work and home! hooray! we talked about getting a new imac for the main work machine, then an ibook for each of us. hooray again.

but yeah, with all the time i've spent updating these machines, and downtime that i wasn't working, it would have paid for the difference in price between the pc and mac already. and that is just one day!

And while you're at it block ports 135-139 and port 145, it'll stop the spreading of the virus while you're patching up. Annnnd:

According to Symantec, a worm called the W32.Blaster.Worm, also known as W32/Lovsan.worm was discovered on 8/11/03. It will cause systems running Windows 2000 or Windows XP to crash, prevent Internet access and compromise the security settings by opening a hidden remote cmd.exe shell. This worm will attempt to download and run a file named "Msblast.exe." It will then block access to TCP port 4444 at the firewall level, and then block the following ports, if they do not use TCP Port 135, "DCOM RPC" or UDP Port 69, "TFTP." The worm will also attempt to perform a Denial of Service (DoS) on windowsupdate.com. This is an attempt to prevent you from applying a patch on your computer against the DCOM RPC vulnerability.

... if you were wondering why windows update is slow.

I've been on this install of windows for about 6 months... it's time to reformat anyway. everything is slow as ass... having lots of trouble system-wide. dvd player is skipping, random error messages popping up. It's time. I've already backed up most of my stuff tonight, so i'll be reformatting soon.

I installed this virus scanner called Avast! that found some stuff. and then it caught a couple of copies of that MSBlaster worm trying to get in too, this afternoon. So at least it protected me from that. Assuming that's not what i already had. Avast! is funny though. It makes me think of pirates of the caribbean, which makes me laugh.

One trick to not install viruses on your pc: dont always use as root. When you run a *nix machine you dont run as root, you either su to root or sudo as root. You can do the same thing in windows, but nobody but admins ever really do. If you create a user that has no priveleges to write or install to the system drive (c, you can right click something and change user and run as administrator. That way when you install a virus, by clicking on an attachment or "accidently" opening one, it wouldnt have permission to write to the system drive.