Do you know what Internet Security Deluxe is?

DESCRIPTION

Internet Security Deluxe, believe it or not, is a fake anti-spyware program. Even though the name may be misleading, it is still classified as a rogue program that we find to be useless at removing spyware or adding security features for your computer. Internet Security Deluxe does neither, all that it is good for is taking your money in return for a worthless program.

Internet Security Deluxe or sometimes called InternetSecurityDeluxe typically comes from a Trojan infection which can be obtained through a fake video codec download. The Trojans that we have narrowed Internet Security Deluxe coming from are the Zlob and Vundo Trojan. Some computer users have reported getting Internet Security Deluxe directly from the InternetSecurityDeluxe.com website. Internet Security Deluxe can be installed by these Trojans without your permission. Sometimes the only way that you know you have Internet Security Deluxe installed is after you start to get fake popups and alert messages.

In non-techie terms: Internet Security Deluxe is not much different from other rogue anti-spyware programs. It performs malicious actions to get you to purchase a full version of the Internet Security Deluxe program. Remember to never visit InternetSecurityDeluxe.com to download, install or purchase the Internet Security Deluxe program, you will only be wasting your time and money.

Aliases: Internet Security Deluxe, InternetSecurityDeluxe, InternetSecurityDeluxe.com.

Internet Security Deluxe Automatic Removal Instructions

This automatic removal method is for non-techie computer users. If you’re too lazy to learn about spyware removal or how to access sensitive files in your computer, then this is the method for you.
Before you start: Print or bookmark these instructions because you’ll have to reboot into Safe Mode. Also back up your computer in case you make a mistake.

1. Download and save SmitFraudFix to your desktop.
2. Restart your computer in Safe Mode (how to do safe mode). Once the
   desktop appears, double click on the SmitfraudFix.exe on your desktop.
3. After the credits screen, you’ll see a menu. Select the option number 2, which is ‘Clean (safe mode recommended)’, and then
   press Enter to delete infect files.
4. SmitFraudFix will begin cleaning your computer and take a series of cleanup processes. When the process is over, it will automatically begin the Disk Cleanup program.
5. Once the Disk Cleanup program is complete, you will be prompted with the message ‘Registry cleaning - Do you want to clean the registry’. Answer Y (Yes) and hit Enter. Reboot your computer.
6. SmitFraudFix will now check if wininet.dll is infected. SmitFraudFix will ask you whether to replace the infected file (if there’s any) ‘Replace infected
   file?’ Answer by typing Y (Yes) and hit Enter.
7. Reboot your computer to complete the cleaning process.
8. After reboot, a Notepad screen may appear containing a log of all the files
   removed from your computer. If it doesn’t appear, a file will be created called
   rapport.txt in the root of your drive, (Local Disk C:).
9. Restart your computer in Safe Mode (how to do safe mode).
10. Go to C:\Windows\Temp, click Edit, click Select All, press DELETE, and then
    click Yes to confirm that you want all the items to go to the Recycle Bin.
11. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\[LISTED USER]\Local Settings\Temp, click Edit, click Select All, press DELETE, and then click Yes to confirm that
    you want all the items to go to the Recycle Bin.
12. Reboot your computer back to normal mode. Go to Windows Update and download all critical updates.

Internet Security Deluxe Manual Removal Instructions

This manual removal method is for techie computer users. Internet Security Deluxe manual removal may be difficult and time consuming to remove. There’s no guarantee that Internet Security Deluxe will be removed completely. So read the Internet Security Deluxe removal steps carefully and good luck.
Before you start: Close all programs and Internet browsers. Also back up your computer in case you make a mistake and your computer stops working.

1. Uninstall Internet Security Deluxe Program
   Click on Start > Settings > Control Panel > Double-click on Add/Remove Programs. Search for and uninstall Internet Security Deluxe if found.
2. To stop Internet Security Deluxe processes (view process removal steps)
   Go to Start > Run > type taskmgr. The click the Processes tab and you’ll see a list of running processes.
   Search and stop these Internet Security Deluxe processes:
   saveid.exe
   ui.exe
   Popuper.exe
   InternetSecurityDeluxe.exe
   SystemService.exe
   For each unwanted process, right-click on it and then select “End task”.
3. To Unregister Internet Security Deluxe DLLs (view DLL removal steps)
   Search and unregister these Internet Security Deluxe DLLs:
   controls.dll
   ScanEngine.dll
   ServiceInterface.dll

   To locate the Internet Security Deluxe DLL path, go to Start > Search > All Files or Folders. Type Internet Security Deluxe and in the Look in: select either My Computer or Local Hard Drives. Click the Search button.
   Once you have the Internet Security Deluxe DLL path, go to Start and then click on Run. In the Run command box, type cmd, and then click on OK.
   To locate the exact DLL path, type cd in order to change the current directory. To display the contents of the directory, use the dir command. To remove the DLL file type regsvr32 /u FILENAME.dll (FILENAME is the name of the file that you want to unregister).

4. If your homepage has been changed, go to Start > Control Panel > Internet Options > click on the General > click Use Default under Home Page. Add the your desired default homepage, then click Apply > click OK. Open a new web browser to check that you have your desired default homepage.
5. Remove Internet Security Deluxe Directories.
   To find Internet Security Deluxe directories, go to Start > My Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Program Files > Show the contents of this folder.
   Search and delete the following Internet Security Deluxe directories:
   %PROGRAM_FILES%\\InternetSecurityDeluxe\
   C:\ProgramFiles\InternetSecurityDeluxe
   C:\ProgramFiles\Internet Security Deluxe

   Right-click on the Internet Security Deluxe folder and select Delete.
   A message will appear saying ‘Are you sure you want to remove the folder Internet Security Deluxe and move all its contents to the Recycle Bin?’, click Yes.
   Another message will appear saying ‘Renaming, moving or deleting Internet Security Deluxe could make some programs not work. Are you sure you want to do this?’, click Yes.

6. To remove Internet Security Deluxe icons on your Desktop, drag and drop them to the Recycle Bin.

You’ve completed the Internet Security Deluxe manual removal instructions!
I hope this article has helped you solve your Internet Security Deluxe problems. If you want to contribute to this article, post your comment below.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes. By using this information you agree to be bound by the disclaimer. There’s no guarantee that Internet Security Deluxe will be completely removed from your computer. Seek professional help if your computer continues to experience problems.

Hidden in the bowels of Windows is a super-secret Administrator account. Here’s how to unlock it, in case you ever need to use it.

Deep inside Windows, there’s a secret Administrator account, and it’s different from the normal administrator account you most likely have set up on your PC. Oddly enough, this Administrator account is not part of the Administrator group. (Note the differentiation between the secret Administrator account, and the administrator account you’ve set up. In describing this hack, we’ll always use the capital “A” for the secret account, and a lowercase “a” for an administrator account you’ve set up.)

What’s the difference between the secret Administrator account and a normal administrator account? On Vista, the difference is more than the name: the Administrator account is not subject to User Account Control. So the Administrator can make any changes to the system and will see no UAC prompts.

For this reason, you may want to unlock the Administrator account, and use it only for those times when you want to make a series of system changes and don’t want to be bothered by UAC. True, you could instead simply disable UAC on your system, but it’s a pain to do this, and you may forget to turn it back on.

Turning on the Administrator account is pretty straightforward. On Vista, open an elevated command prompt by typing cmd.exe into the Search box on the Start menu and pressing Ctrl-Shift-Enter. Next, enter this command:

Net user administrator /active:yes

On XP Professional, fire up TweakUI, go to the Logon section, and choose “Show Administrator on Welcome Screen”.

On Windows XP Home, the Administrator account is only available when you boot into safe mode.

From now on, the Administrator account will appear on the Welcome screen. Use it like any other account. Be aware that it won’t have a password, so it’s a good idea to set a password for it by going to Control Panel -> User Accounts and Family Safety (Vista) or Control Panel -> User Accounts (XP). If you want to disable the account and hide it, enter this command at an elevated command prompt:

Net user administrator /active:no


Use WHOAMI To See Account Information - Windows Vista has a cool new command line tool called Whoami that shows plenty of information about the currently logged on user, including the account name, a list of group memberships, and much more as well. At any command line, type whoami, and you’ll be shown the name of the loggedon user. Type whoami /all to see a wide variety of information, including a list of groups to which the account is a member, user privileges, and much more. For a list of all parameters, type whoami /?.

If you will notice in desktops, the feature that allows you to upgrade storage in the form of hard disks and optical media players bolsters the need of addressing storage issues. Unlike in laptops where hard disk changing may not always be present, the use of various hard drives such as SATA or SCSI has made all the difference in addressing the storage issue.

Storage for some desktop users would depend on what files they are pointing. Normally, it is not plainly about documents and spreadsheets. With technology offering a lot of things for the modern computer geek, audio, pictures and videos have likewise entered the fray. With that in mind, you can just imagine the space that these files would occupy and normally it can negate the usual gigabyte capacity of hard drives as well.

Laptops are not made for storage of large files. Some of these mobile computers have been equipped with higher capacity drives these days but you will notice the timing. They only offer larger storage after some time. At this age, we are already exposed to larger capacity drives, perhaps double than what laptops can carry. Why? For one thing, laptops are not designed to be storage space. They are made for assisting mobile users and not the hardcore programmer or designers.

So the next time you are wondering why desktops differ from laptops, just look beyond what they have to offer. The specifications are there but you need to look further. Storage is only one part of the entire picture for their variance.

When a removable drive (USB flash drive, flash card reader, portable hard drive) is attached for the first time, Windows mounts it to the first available ‘local’ drive letter. If there is a network share on this letter, Windows XP will use it anyway for the new USB drive because since XP network shares are specific to the current user and not visible in the context of the system where the letter is assigned. The USB drive then appears to be invisible.

You can change the letter assignments in the Windows Disk Management Console (right click My Computer -> Manage -> Disk management), but you have to do it again for every new device.

And, for USB devices that have no serial number (in violation of the USB standards) you have to do it too when you attach it to a different USB port.

So change the network drive’s letter to a higher one to get the lower ones available for external drives. Or let USB drive letter manager change the letters of USB drives for you.


Microsoft is aware of this and calls it a problem. Meanwhile a hotfix is available (KB297694) and the XP Service Pack 3 fixes the problem too.

But the problem persists when an external drive is attached before the user logs on. The mapping of the network drives fails when their drive letter is in use. USBDLM fixes this when configured appropriate.

Read more and download USB Drive Letter Manager (USBDLM) here

The Windows Live Calendar Team have been rolling out an update to the Windows Live Calendar Beta today and have recently blogged about what users will find within the update. I am a very heavy Windows Live Calendar user currently so this is a very exciting release for me.  I figured I'd go down their list of changes / improvements / new features with a little context of my own based on my own experiences. Here we go!

Birthday Calendars: Any Windows Live Contacts that have their birthday entered in their Windows Live Profile (you can make sure you have your birthday added to your profile by going here) will have their birthday appear in a new calendar for you called "Birthday Calendar". This allows you to keep track of all your friend's birthdays. Never forget a birthday again!

iCal Subscriptions: You can now subscribe to public calendars (*.ics calendars) in Windows Live Calendar. A great resource for public calendars is http://www.icalshare.com/ (although at the time of writing this post I was having some issues with their website). I am a Space buff so I went and grabbed the calendar for astronomical events and subscribed to it.

Once you subscribe to these calendars - as long as the publisher continues to update them they will automatically update in Windows Live Calendar. If anyone has any other useful iCal resources on the web for free calendars to subscribe to, let me know!

UPDATE: Some calendars available on www.icalshare.com have URLs that direct to a different location. Windows Live Calendar Beta does not yet support following redirects. However if you are able to determine where the URL redirects to - you can always subscribe to its "final destination".

Holiday Calendar: A new calendar will show up (depending on which part of the world you're from) that will display holidays for your country. I find this incredibly useful. Currently users in the following countries will see a Holiday Calendar:

• China
• Taiwan
• Hong Kong
• Thailand
• Singapore
• Malaysia
• Korea
• Indonesia
• Philippines
• India
• Russia
• France
• United States
• Spain
• German
• United Kingdom

UI Changes: Notably - users can now right-click on a specific calendar in their calendar list and change its color and also its order in that list.

Print Views: You are now able to print from the day, week, and month views. I prefer printing from the Month view myself. You can also print your Agenda as well. I am noticing I am using the Agenda tab quite often these days.

A few more notable changes to Windows Live Calendar Beta with this release are accessibility functionality which includes better tabbing (and F6 key support). And users can now go directly to Windows Live Calendar via the calendar tab in Windows Live Hotmail.

Want to test out subscribing to a calendar? I've shared out my Windows Experience Blog calendar to anyone interested in subscribing:

webcal://windowsexperience.calendar.live.com/calendar/The+Windows+Experience+Calendar/calendar.ics

Not a whole bunch of events there just yet. You'll find I've added today's Windows Live Calendar Beta update as an event and in October you should see events for the PDC2008 Pre-Conference and PDC2008 as well. I definitely plan on updating it. If you have any suggestions for events that would be of interest to the Windows community - leave a comment!

If you're attending PDC2008 you can also subscribe to their calendar they publish as well to add a separate PDC2008 calendar to Windows Live Calendar:

http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Microsoft-PDC08.ics

REMEMBER: You can also subscribe your calendars in Windows Calendar in Windows Vista as well!