Matt Ingenthron's Stream of Consciousness

Thursday September 02, 2004

Sun providing Windows Support to our Families/Friends

I've seen some other blogs on this site along similar lines. It's amazing how often we Sun employees end up providing Windows support...

For instance, you go to a party or a family gathering. Before long, someone finds out you work with "computers" (what they really mean by that is personal computers) and then the questions start coming out. Things like "why do I get these popup ads" or "why does my computer just shut down?".

Then you ask "does it say something about an RPC error?" or "are you using Internet Explorer?"

Of course, the answer is always yes. It almost makes me want to carry around copies of Sun Java Desktop System, or some other variant on an OS designed with security. Actually, now that I think about it, that'd likely be a productivity saver-- in a couple such cases (and I'm not complaining, I'm happy to help) I've spent many hours or days trying to fix up a hosed machine.

Anyway, on the latest such expedition, I've encountered the ugly underbelly of IE/Windows's "flexibility". Before this last weekend, I didn't realize that many pieces of adware/spyware are actually loadable modules (DLLs in Windows speak), often to IE, and they're loaded before you even log in by entries in the registry. How insidious!

While trying to fix a friend's machine, another friend turned me on to Ad Aware which has turned out to be a top-notch piece of software, especially considering the price. :)

I don't know who to blame in this whole process. From a MSFT perspective, the end user has some responsibility for operating their PC, but from the end user perspective, there's NOTHING you could have done about the aforementioned RPC error. You also couldn't stay online long enough to download the patch if you're a dialup user. I do think some kind of open way for signing software is a good idea (gee, kinda like in Java) and engineering out most of the ways to spread such stuff is also a good idea (gee, kinda like Java, again). The end user still has some responsibility, and the developers do have to live with coding to an environment with security built in, but in the end the productivity gains for all of us are worth it.

Back to that PC problem, I still have two things that aren't working. One is that Norton Antivirus doesn't seem to "AutoProtect" (turning it on fails), and it identifies something it calls "Adware.Gator", that Ad Aware, unfortunately, does not find. Norton can't remove the darned thing either. So I guess a few more safe-mode reboots and registry edits later maybe I'll have things fixed up. I hope....

Oh, by the way, I patched JDS recently too. And for the first time. And I'd not been infected by anything before doing it.... :)