Replies

Joe: I’ve been doing some reading on the Insider Preview program and I have a question. As an Insider, what’s the level of code you’re receiving? Is it GA code that you get to see before everyone else or release-candidate code in its final testing stages?

Rob

Susan: Thanks for passing this on. I did a clean install of Windows 10 and I’ve had all sorts of weird file/registry permission problems, most of them documented on various web sites (so I know I’m not alone). I’ll give this tool a try to see if it can fix some of them.

Rob

There are no unbiased news sources any more (maybe it’s impossible in the ratings-driven instant-information age) and if you’re true to yourself you’ll admit that when you think a news source is biased, they’re usually not telling you what you want to hear.

Having said that, I haven’t quite decided where Breitbart fits into that notion.

Years ago I worked for someone who was woefully unaware of the days’ events. One day I asked him why he never watched the news or read a newspaper. His reply: “Why would I do that? It just depresses me”. I thought it was an odd response back then but not any more.

Trying to help out a friend who could not access USB attached devices and other odd problems. He was running both Webroot and Malwarebytes Pro. He took it to a local “professional” who advised him he had a virus (unnamed) which was preventing access. Interesting that he was running 2 packages and neither detected the problem.

That’s odd. I think if you use just a bit of common sense and don’t go traipsing in bad places, a decent AV product will protect you. To stack the deck in my favor, I also use the WOT add-in on Chrome and Firefox and I use Norton’s Connect Safe DNS servers. There are also quite a few free boot-time scanning products you can download if you suspect something is awry that your AV product is missing.

Rob

I don’t use anything.

You’re computing “commando”?!?!?

Brave man!

I gave up using Avast Free in March when a new version was released. From the number of complaints in the support forum at the time I got the impression Avast developers and support forum staff were a bit overwhelmed by the number of problems reported. I’m now using Defender and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium for my Windows 10 devices.

I have to agree, Rick. I’ve run the commercial version of avast Internet Security for a few years now but it’s becoming unglued with all of the silly gizmos they’re bolting on to it. Now that Defender is a “serious” AV solution I really don’t see a reason to run a commercial product. I bought my copy of MBAM back in the days when they offered lifetime licenses so I’ll keep that running. I also use Norton’s Connect Safe DNS servers which add a bit more protection by screening out vicious web sites.

I use Defender and the free version of Malwarebytes with an occasional scan using a rotation of one of the free online scanners from TrendMicro, ESET, Bit Defender, McAfee, or Kaspersky.

Joe: I like that idea.

I have an older PC that I use just for video editing. It’s still happily running Windows XP which runs smooth as silk. My main computer, on the other hand is running Windows 10 Pro with all sorts of little niggling problems.

Bill: Check Event Viewer when this happens. My system was clean-installed and I’ve had nothing but bizarre permission problems with DCOM that I’ve had to manually fix thanks to tips I’ve found on Microsoft’s and other sites. From time to time, I’ll get an error that a particular CLSID & APPID isn’t permitted to my user-ID to start an application…but it starts anyway…after a delay. I’d love to know what’s causing this.

Thank you Rick.
In the instructions it says to:

Under the Server Name or Address, enter the IP address you got from the VPN service provider. You cannot set up the VPN connection in Windows 10 without the URL or IP address of VPN server.

Not sure how to do this.
Say I am sitting in StarBucks have a cup of coffee and want to connect to their free WiFi.
How would I accomplish this using a VPN to improve my safe surfing.

Thanks,

You need to connect to a VPN provider to do what you want to do and that’s usually a subscription service. If you don’t have a VPN provider, there’s not much you can do with the built-in VPN client.

Have you run Task Manager to try to catch what might be taking over your system?

Joe: Once this happens, I have to wait until the system responds to keystrokes and mouse-clicks so I can’t even get into Task Manager while this is happening. I do have Sysinternals Process Explorer running all the time and it doesn’t show any spike in CPU activity. About all I can do while the machine is “thinking” is move the mouse around, but it doesn’t respond to clicks and the keyboard is unresponsive. The Event Viewer shows nothing. It’s quite frustrating.

These issues aren’t restricted to Avast – any security or other 3rd party software that uses drivers/filters close to the Windows kernel can also be affected by an update and any resulting changes to the different security tech. built into W10.

Expect further issues after the AU.

Perhaps best results will be: keep all MS software and W10’s defaults, or trim Windows to the bone and use it as a platform for 3rd party software. Getting into mix and match or duplication territory is more likely to lead to further bugs, glitches and frustration somewhere down the line.

Oh…understood. The thing is my Windows 10 system has been somewhat flaky from the get-go. I did a clean install of Windows 10 and it’s always had an intermittent problem of clicking on an icon and nothing happens for about 2 minutes or so…then the system comes back to life. I previously ran Windows 7SP1 on this machine and it ran like a top; no issues whatsoever. Some Avast users are mentioning instability under Windows 10 so I may try uninstalling it for a while and just use Windows Defender and Malwarebytes to see if these problems go away. Other people I’ve talked to are not having these issues so it’s something specific to my setup.

Joe & Satrow: Thank you for your posts, and Joe, thanks so much for letting me know about WhoCrashed. I ran it this morning and it pointed to a kernel driver for avast! anti-virus. Arrrgh. Us avast customers just went through a very bad weekend; avast pushed out a bad update that made their product appear to be non-functioning. They finally fixed the problem but now I’m wondering if they have a new one. Avast just came out with a new release of their product, renamed Nitro and it seems to be having some issue. Maybe nitro glycerin would have been a better name.

Dogberry: Thanks for posting those links; now I really feel old. My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. I thought I died and went to heaven.

Joe: Thanks! I’ll check that out.

Rob