A friend of mine, Luy, with IT Support Guys, wrote an excellent blog post on how Microsoft has failed to promote their new security app, even on their own search engine Bing.

Well, it’s called Microsoft Security Essentials and it’s available for download from Microsoft. I’ve installed it on several customer computers and have been rather happy with it. I just got around to installing it on a machine of mine, however, because I keep my system from getting infected in the first place, my machine is not really a good testing environment. But I digress…

The stats coming from Lee Matthews at Download Squad:

The Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog has posted some interesting numbers. After its first week, Security Essentials has already been installed more than 1.5 million times. From the approximately 535,000 machines reporting statistics, MSE has logged over 4 million detections.

44% of MSE users are already running Windows 7 with XP following at 33% and the remaining 23% on Vista. The number of detections per OS is also interesting. 52% of the 4 million reported were found on Windows XP systems compared to only 32% on Vista.

Windows 7 users fared even better. Though they represent the largest group of MSE users, only 16% of detections came from systems running Microsoft’s latest OS. The post also reports 1/3 of these machines are using the 64-bit version, which “is even more resistant to malware than 32-bit due to PatchGuard,” states Microsoft’s Joe Faulhaber.

Surprising that over half of the detections come from only 33% of users? Not really.

Go download and try out Microsoft Security Essentials yourself, and let me know in the comments how you like it? Is it better than the paid apps (like Norton or McAfee), or existing free anti-virus (like AVG or Avira)?

• October 19, 2009 -- Get Rid of those Fake Antivirus programs with Remove Fake Antivirus
• October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
• September 15, 2009 -- Re-Enable Fixes Windows Features That Have Been Disabled by a Virus

I keep it on my thumb drive so I always have it when I need it. And although the name says XP Fix, it works in other versions of Windows as well.

The Winsockfix Utility will:

• Detect your current Operating System
• Release the IP address, taking you “Offline”
• Reset the TCP stack using Netsh.exe (Windows XP only)
• Delete the current Registry TCP and Winsock Values
• Import new “Working” Registry Values
• Backup any Current “Hosts” file
• Replace the “Hosts” file with a default one
• Reboot the Computer

Often times, as a computer repair guy, you’ll encounter someone who can’t connect to the internet, and when the problem doesn’t seem to be related to any network hardware, it’s probably related to the TCP/IP stack, the HOSTS file or some registry settings. This mostly happens when adware, malware or viruses change these settings or modify the files needed to connect to the internet. When you get rid of the problem source, the files it modified are still jacked up.

That’s where this program comes to the rescue. Make it the first thing you try, before spending countless hours troubleshooting other things or reinstalling programs, and you’ll have super fast resolution times and can move on to your next customer.

Download Winsock XP Fix

• September 15, 2009 -- Re-Enable Fixes Windows Features That Have Been Disabled by a Virus
• August 30, 2009 -- Lock Windows With Your USB Flash Drive
• August 27, 2009 -- Make a bootable USB installer for Windows XP, Vista, 7 with WinToFlash

Developed by Tangomouse the program has the ability to restore functionality to these Windows features:

• Windows Registry
• Command Line Tool
• Windows Task Manager
• System Restore Config
• Folder Options
• Run command

The ghacks article explains that:

The program will display all support functions in its interface. All are checked by default and a click on the Enable button will enable these again. Nothing will happen if they are already enabled. Users who only want to enable a specific function can uncheck the other options in the interface easily.

The file can be downloaded from Softpedia, it works with XP, Vista and Windows 7, and the best thing about it: It’s portable. So you can add it to your thumb drive and have it handy whenever you encounter a Windows installation that has been crippled by a virus.

• October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
• October 19, 2009 -- Get Rid of those Fake Antivirus programs with Remove Fake Antivirus
• August 27, 2009 -- Make a bootable USB installer for Windows XP, Vista, 7 with WinToFlash

Often times these programs disguise themselves as anti-virus programs, I’ve had numerous calls about exactly this type of problem just in the last several weeks. Some of the names of these “Rogue” Anti-virus programs are: Antivirus 2009, Personal Antivirus and many more are listed on Wikipedia: Rogue security software

Usually, I’ve found that I can simply run MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (MBAM), UPDATE! then run a scan, and it will detect the problem and is able to remove them. However this latest one, Personal Antivirus 2009 (PAV09), was quite a headache and took a while before I could even do anything to remove it. The program would not allow me to install MBAM, so I rebooted to safe mode, however, this program had installed some hook into the OS that prevented me from installing even in safe mode. Stuck.

So, after some Google searching, I found this on BleepingComputer, it suggested to change the name of the .exe to something completely unrelated. It worked. Awesome. Of course, the .exe of the program itself needed to be changed as well. So I changed it to a random string of letters.exe. And it STILL wouldn’t work!

Apparently, this malware is detecting a certain runtime or signature of the executable and immediately killing it, regardless of the name. After a few minutes of thinking, I decided to try an experiment, right click on the exe file (now renamed), and click the “Compatibility” tab, and under compatibility mode (this was Windows XP, but should work in XP or newer) select to “Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows 2000″. And…

It worked!

So, I guess I outsmarted the malware by tricking MBAM into thinking it was running under Windows 2000, making it undetectable by the malware program. And so, all said and done, MBAM was finally able to remove it, and the PC is working great. Hope this will help some other PC techs out there, when you don’t have the option to just wipe the drive and start fresh!

• October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
• October 19, 2009 -- Get Rid of those Fake Antivirus programs with Remove Fake Antivirus
• October 18, 2009 -- Microsoft’s Security Essentials : 1.5 Million Installs in One Week. Is it the End for Norton?