Re: Activate Windows
From: Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\) (user_at_#notme.com)
Date: 05/19/04
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Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 13:33:45 -0700
It's hard to say what's going on.
But, if you are getting popups, you need to shut them down. First, make
sure your antivirus software is up to date and run a scan on your system.
Second, make sure your system is clear of malware, download, install and run
Ad Aware:
www.lavasoftusa.com.
If your system is clear, you need to have a firewall application. A
firewall should shutdown most all popups as these are coming from the
outside, accessing your system through open ports. You need a firewall to
close the ports.
XP has its own firewall and is very good at blocking incoming intrusions
such as those that might cause the popups. While this should be good
enough, it doesn't block outgoing messages that might be triggered by a
Trojan or some other application on your system and it gives you no notice
of such activity. To start the XP firewall, open Network Connections in
Control Panel, right click your online connection, select Properties, go to
the Advanced tab, enable the XP firewall.
There are other free firewalls that can block both incoming and outgoing
and will alert you to both:
www.agnitum.com
www.zonelabs.com
www.sygate.com
http://www.tinysoftware.com/home/tiny2?la=EN
http://www.kerio.com/kerio.html
As to the activation issue, assuming this was real and not some scam, while
it's usually triggered by having enough hardware changes to cross the
activation threshold, if you format and reinstall XP, that will trigger it
as well because the system needs to re-recognize the hardware and formatting
removes the previous hardware information. That said, there are instances
where the system for one reason or another may lose that information, the
file in which it is contained may become corrupt or for some reason have
been deleted perhaps through a crash or some disk cleanup routine.
Given what have posted with regard to popups and "bulk mail" (I assume you
are referring to spam), the information may have been lost or corrupted
because of some malware on the system or as a result of some monkey business
caused by one of those popups.
-- Michael Solomon MS-MVP Windows Shell/User Backup is a PC User's Best Friend DTS-L.Org: http://www.dts-l.org/ "spyware destroyer" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:8F13F3C8-63B0-4925-BE84-0B9F51738E2E@microsoft.com... >i got a message to activate windows.(Idid follow instructions and re >activated it) Why would that come up when I have had this computer for 4 >years and the software > for 1 1/2 years. Pop ups are less frequent, and spam is less frequent. > Bulk mail totals 120 + daily. I just dump it. > Computer is not slow, but I do get messages that there is memory leakage. > Who sends this message? is it a trick? >
- Next message: Steve Nielsen: "Re: Installing Windows XP... invalid Product Key"
- Previous message: Danny Mingledorff: "Re: Microsoft Outlook problem"
- In reply to: spyware destroyer: "Activate Windows"
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