Ask Leo! #507 - Preventing Account Hacks, Booting from CD, Losing Digital Information Over Time and more... - Confident Computing

Featured

How do I boot from CD/DVD/USB in Windows 8?

I burned DBAN to a CD and then rebooted my Windows 8 machine with the CD inserted in the drive. To my surprise, it just booted right back into Windows. What gives? How do I get the computer to boot up from the CD?

This is actually a pretty common problem that has recently become more complex.

Your computer's BIOS needs to be instructed to check for a bootable CD or DVD before it tries to load whatever is on the hard drive. Right now, your computer is configured to either ignore the CD/DVD at boot time or check the hard disk first.

Oh, you don't have a BIOS? You have a newer machine running UEFI?

Well then things get more complex.

Continue Reading: How do I boot from CD/DVD/USB in Windows 8?
http://askleo.com/?p=5356

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How do I boot from CD/DVD?

I burned DBAN to a CD and then rebooted the machine with the CD inserted in the drive. To my surprise, it just booted right back into Windows. What gives? How do I get the computer to boot up from the CD?

This is actually a pretty common problem with a relatively simple solution.

And because there's something bootable on the hard disk ' namely Windows ' that's what it boots into.

As I said, a simple solution conceptually.

The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Continue Reading: How do I boot from CD/DVD?
http://askleo.com/?p=15468

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10 steps to keep from getting your account hacked

My account has been hacked into several times. If I'm able to recover it, it just gets hacked again. Sometimes I can't recover it, and I have to start all over with a new account. What can I do to stop this all from happening?

I don't get this question a lot. But I really, really wish I did. (What I get over and over and over again is the related "I've been hacked, please recover my account/password for me!" (Which, for the record I cannot do, no matter how often, or how nicely I'm asked.)

The only salvation is in prevention, and this applies to email, social media, and pretty much any password-protected account you might have.

So what can you do to make sure your account doesn't get hacked into in the first place?

Continue Reading: 10 steps to keep from getting your account hacked
http://askleo.com/?p=2641

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How do I recover my hacked Facebook account?

My Facebook account has been hacked! How do I get it back?

Unfortunately with the popularity of Facebook comes the popularity and frequency of Facebook accounts getting hacked or stolen.

I need to be clear from the start: I can't guarantee you'll get it back. Much depends on whether or not you set up recovery options before you lost it, and whether or not you kept those options up-to-date.

Let's walk through the process.

Continue Reading: How do I recover my hacked Facebook account?
http://askleo.com/?p=15495

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Glossary Term

scareware

Scareware is a form of malware that is designed to scare you into taking some action that further damages or infects your computer or costs you money.

Most common forms of scareware display a list of infections supposedly on your computer and inform you that you need to purchase the "full version" to remove them. In fact, the infections are completely fake and are listed only to intimidate you into handing over money. Whether or not the software that you purchase actually does anything at all is debatable, but it's not uncommon for this program to then contain even more malware.

Glossary Terms are featured selections from The Ask Leo! Glossary.
Have a term you'd like defined? Submit it here.

Featured Comments

Why Do You Regularly Reinstall Your System?

william campbell writes:

Thanks for all your useful hints and comments. I use my laptop for business and out of self-defense have had to learn to perform a reasonable degree of IT work including cleaner routines to keep things going. I have done two re-installs in the last six years with the same laptop and came out okay. I now have a program called Revo Uninstall Pro. I do download trial programs from time to time and use this Revo Pro to un-install because it has a scan feature that finds all the registry traces and such and displays them so you can see what's left behind and remove them along with the uninstalled program. I think this Revo works pretty well because a few times after I used it, I went into the registry myself searching for remnants and all traces of the uninstalled program were gone. BC

Ed Price writes:

There seems to be several paths to uninstalling applications. In Win 7, you can use the old Control Panel route, while some applications offer you an Uninstall option from their startup menu. Having used both of these paths, I often found empty or near-empty folders with some remnants of the target application, and these traces need to be deleted manually. I currently use Advanced Systemcare Pro (not touting it, just an example), and I find that it finds and deletes these vestigial remnants a lot better than the first two methods. Leo, could you comment on these three Uninstall methods and give us your thoughts?

Leo writes:

If there's a start menu item to uninstall it should be equivalent to the control panel path. Those run the "official" uninstaller for whatever it is you're getting rid of, and yes, they often leave things behind.

Tools such as you mention (I use Revo, myself) take an extra step to clear out the things that it can infer or assume are related to the application being uninstalled that would otherwise be left over. I don't use them regularly, only when there's a problem. My assumption is that the official uninstaller leaves things for a reason, and I'm reluctant to second guess it, unless I have some other more important reason.

Windows 8 Backup: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Ron MVP writes:

Hey Leo.

The information you presented is dismaying. I too prefer image copy backups, both full and incremental. It is beyond disappointing that MS is messing up such fundamental backup concepts.

One thing you did not touch on in your comment/rant was the new Win 8 backup features called Refresh / Reset and RecImage.exe, as well as the optional but required 3rd party tools to manage the recimage "image copy" backups used by Refresh.

When I first read about Refresh I was very annoyed and disappointed because it apparently "nuked" / "lost" non-Metro applications like Office. The after some more research I learned that the RecImage tool can be used to generate new "images" that include installed desktop applications like Office. I simply find it amazing that MS does not do more to publicize this part of the Refresh environment. They seem to be going out of their way to shoot themselves in the foot.

Keep up the good work.

Leo's Blog

Are we at risk of losing our digital information over time?

Today, lots of information is being stored electronically. Years ago, it was on books that lasted 100′s of years, if you wanted. Try reading a 1984 3.1/2 floppy disk or worst, a 5.1/2. The 8 inchers are before my computing time (I saw them on Wargames). The ones with the reels that stopped and started are really unreadable. I also used a tape drive on a commodore Vic 20. If I did not hoard this stuff, it would be all unreadable, as I have not used this stuff in 34 years. So are humans in danger of losing knowledge on this? Magnetic media degrades faster than paper books or doesn't it?

I think you raise a very good point.

While I still feel that digital information is vastly superior to analog counterparts like paper in most respects, that doesn't mean that there aren't drawbacks – often serious drawbacks – with storing information digitally.

And one of those drawbacks is progress.

Continue Reading: Are we at risk of losing our digital information over time?
http://askleo.com/?p=15475

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