AskWoody

So I opened up an HP and where’s the hard drive?

We just got two new workstations and opened one of them up and went… uh… where’s the hard drive?

I had to call the vendor I bought them from and ask… okay I see that that’s probably the hard drive but how does one change it should it die (SSDs do die, plan on it)

“It is a chip that comes out. That is a NVME SSD. Those are super-fast compared to the older SSD drives.  There is one screw holding it in. Take the screw out the chip then comes out”  (The screw location is circled in red above)

The view of the entire motherboard is here.

Who knew.

I do know that one can’t image a “normal” SSD and restore it to this drive style.

What Linux is and why it has persisted

LINUX

By Sandra Henry-Stocker

When all your friends are using Windows and the desktops at work are all running Windows, Linux might be one of the last things you’d even think about.

Anyone who has never taken a dive into Linux may wonder why anyone would bother using what might appear to be a nonstandard, aberrant, fragmented operating system with hundreds of different builds. There are, however, many reasons why Linux has become a successful OS, why hundreds of Linux distributions have come into being, and why Linux enthusiasts are so enamored with it.

Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.2.0 (2021-01-18).

Find the cable modem that’s just right for your ISP

PUBLIC DEFENDER

By Brian Livingston

It’s hard as hell to find out the best device you can obtain to connect to an ISP. This can save you hundreds of dollars that you’d ordinarily pay over time for “renting” one.

In last week’s column, I gave you Steps 1, 2, and 3 that determine the bandwidth you need — e.g., 25Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps — and whether your own modem or gateway can replace the generic one your cable company provides. (Cable is now the way most Americans get broadband Internet access.)

Today, we’ll go through the remaining steps to identify the exact piece of hardware that’s compatible with
the service level you’ve chosen and with your ISP’s standards.

Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.2.0 (2021-01-18).

Four GB of RAM vanishes … but then reappears

LANGALIST

By Fred Langa

A long-stable Win10 PC with 12GB of RAM suddenly crashes after losing track of a full third of its memory — only to have the missing RAM later reappear and work fine!

The other symptoms seem to rule out simple RAM-chip failures or software-caused glitches. What the heck is going on here?

Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.2.0 (2021-01-18).

Wow! Even more Office updates!

PATCH WATCH

By Susan Bradley

• Office 2010 receives more updates this month
• Windows Defender had a zero day that silently was patched
• Security update for Secure Boot DBX can be skipped (KB 4535680)
• I’m giving the all-clear for Windows 10 2004

Well … once again, we thought we’d seen the last of Office 2010. And here we are AGAIN with more updates!

Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.2.0 (2021-01-18).

Giving you the choice

I’m trying a test to see if I can get a better feel for bots and spammers on the site and where they come from.  When you come to the site you’ll notice a new box at the bottom about google analytics.  Note that you can click on that box to opt out.  Also know that if you log in to the site the tracking is disabled as well.

Let me know if this impacts any anti tracking plug ins you use?

Tasks for the weekend – January 16, 2021

YouTube video here

Included in January’s updates was a fix to Microsoft Defender.  If you use a third party antivirus are you at risk? In a word?  NO.

As per CVE-2021-1647 – Security Update Guide – Microsoft – Microsoft Defender Remote Code Execution Vulnerability,  systems that have disabled Microsoft Defender are not in an exploitable state.

Do you need to take any action if you have a third party antivirus?  No.  Do you need to take any action if you use Defender?  No because it’s been automatically fixed.

To check click on Start, then Settings, then Update and security, Windows Security, Open windows security, Look for the gear, About.  For affected software, verify that the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine version is 1.1.17700.4 or later.

Zero day Windows 10 bug

Topic: A Zero-day Windows 10 bug corrupts your hard drive on seeing this file’s icon @ AskWoody

This is one of those … okay let’s be careful out there…. bugs.

Alex points to a Windows 10 bug that is triggered by merely extract the zip file or look at a folder that contains the malicious shortcut.

Remember whenever you get something via email that you didn’t expect, don’t open it.  If you are really curious, check out the file or link on www.virustotal.com or www.reverse.it

Security researcher Jonas L first warned about the bug earlier this week, describing it as a “nasty vulnerability.” Attackers can hide a specially crafted line inside a ZIP file, folder, or even a simple Windows shortcut. All a Windows 10 user needs to do is extract the ZIP file or simply look at a folder that contains a malicious shortcut and it will automatically trigger hard drive corruption.

Edit:  I spotted on Windows 10 NTFS $i30 File Corruption | AttackerKB

Attackers can remotely exploit this vulnerability to make Windows think a drive is corrupted even though it is not. Successfully resolving this issue will require users to reboot Windows and run a disk check on the corrupted drive, after which Windows will be convinced that the drive is no longer corrupted.

It’s not really corrupted after all.