When I ran a scan of a Windows System with
Spybot Search & Destroy 1.62, it reported it found a
Windows
registry key associated with GhostMail - it identified
GhostMail as adware. To check the registry key, I typed regedit in
the "Type here to search" field at the bottom of the screen and then selected
the "Registry Editor" app when it appeared in the list of returned results
(you can also open the application by typing regedit and hitting
enter at a command prompt. I then
navigated to the relevant key. I wanted to determine when the registry was
created or at least when it was last modified. You can't see that information
in the Windows
Registry Editor, but you can create a text file that will
contain that information by right-clicking on a key and choosing "Export" to
generate a text file - select "Text Files (*.txt)" in the "Save as type" field,
not the default value of "Registration Files (*.reg)."
The
text file will contain the key as well as
the time it was last written to:
In this case, the date on the key was months ago, so didn't explain recent
problems on the user's PC and since Spybot - Search & Destroy didn't
locate anything else, the registry key may have been a remnant of something
removed many months ago.
I downloaded SUPERAntiSpyware
Free Edition version version 8.0.1048, an antivirus program,
from the developers website on January 27, 2020. When I attempted to install it
by right-clicking on the file and choosing "Run as administrator, a
Windows Defender
window popped up with the message below:
Windows protected your PC
Windows Defender SmartScreen prevented an
unrecognized app from
starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk. More info
When I clicked on the "X" at the top-right, hand corner of the window,
the message went away, but the installation did not start.
A user reported her Windows 10 system was running slowly. When I connected to
the system remotely to check it after the user had left for the day and closed
all the applications she had running, I found that the memory utilization was
78%. I knew the system was a Dell PC, but I didn't remember the model number.
I was able to determine it was an Inspiron 570 by right-clicking on the Windows
Start button and choosing System. Under "Device specifications," I
saw "Inspiron 570". I also saw that the system had only 3 GB of memory
installed.
When I tried to install Minecraft on a Microsoft Windows system using the
Windows
Installer file I had downloaded, I saw the error message "These libraries
failed to download. Try again. org.ow2.asm:asm-all:5.2."
I then clicked on the link for "Installer" rather than "Windows Installer on the
website from which I had downloaded the installation file, which resulted in a
.jar file being downloaded. I right-clicked on the .jar file,
forge-1.12.2-14.23.5.2768-installer.jar, and chose "Open with" then "Java(TM)
Platform SE binary". I was then able to install the Minecraft client. When the
client was successfully installed, I saw the message "Successfully installed
client profile forger for version forge 1.12.2-14.23.5.2768 into launcher and
grabbed 1 required libraries."
Note: These are notes from an October 12, 2019 installation that I hadn't
posted, but I am posting now in case I encounter a similar error again.
I needed to compare two Excel workbooks produced with Microsoft Excel for
Mac (version 16.29) on my
MacBook
Pro laptop. Unfortunately, the MAC version of Excel doesn't include a
capability to directly compare two workbooks. Since both workbooks only had one
worksheet in them, I created a new workbook and then copied the
contents of the worksheet in the first workbook to Sheet1 in the
new workbook and the contents of the worksheet in the second workbook
to Sheet2 in the new workbook. I copied the contents of the
worksheets by selecting Edit and then Select All
in a worksheet and then pasting the contents into a sheet in the
new workbook. I then created a third worksheet, Sheet3 in the new
workbook. In cell A1 in that workbook, I put the formula
=IF(Sheet1!A1 <> Sheet2!A1, "Sheet1:"&Sheet1!A1&" vs
Sheet2:"&Sheet2!A1, ""). I clicked in that cell and then
clicked on Edit and then Copy. Since the columns
in both of the worksheets I wanted to compare extended to AE with
804 rows, I then selected all of the columns from A to AE and all
rows from 1 to 804 and then clicked on Edit and then
Paste Special with All selected. I then clicked
on OK to copy the formula throughout the new worksheet.
Excel automatically updates the references so that B2, for instance,
gets the formula =IF(Sheet1!B2 <> Sheet2!B2,
"Sheet1:"&Sheet1!B2&" vs Sheet2:"&Sheet2!B2, "").
Excel then showed the differences between Sheet1 and Sheet2 in Sheet3
where I had used a formula to compare cells in the two other sheets.
If the contents of a cell differed, Excel showed the differences.
E.g. for cell A71, I saw Sheet1:I13-0003 vs Sheet2:I97-0033, since
Sheet1 had I13-0003 in that cell whereas Sheet2 had I97-0033
. If the cells matched, the corresponding cell in Sheet3 was empty.
So, even though the Mac version of Excel doesn't include the workbook
comparison feature found in Windows versions of the program described at
How to compare two Excel files for differences, you still may be able
to compare sheets in two Excel files by copying relevant sheets into a new
sheet where you can see the differences displayed. In the exmple above, the
contents of E71 in Sheet3 showed the values for the other sheets as numeric
values, though there were dates in the corresponding cells in Sheet1 and
Sheet2.
I needed to determine the amount of memory currently in a PC running the
Windows 10 operating system and how much more memory could be added to
the system in order to improve its performance. To determine how much memory
could be added, since it was a custom-built PC, I needed to determine the
motherboard in the system. I didn't want to disconnect every device attached
to it and open it up, so an option is to use Windows Management Instrumentation
Command-line (WMIC) commands to determine the motherboard manufacturer and
model number. You can also use WMIC commands to obtain details about the memory
already in a system.
On Tuesday, July 23, 2019, I received a call from someone pretending to
be a representative of Publishers Clearing House (PCH) who identified
himself as Tony WIsh and told me I had won 5 1/2 million dollars, a
Mercedes Benz, and free petrol for a year for the vehicle - obviously
he was not someone who grew up in the U.S. to use "petrol" rather than
"gas." He asked me what color car I wanted and whether I wanted the
money all at once or in monthly payments and then requested personal
information from me to ostensibly fill out a tax form. I asked him for a
call back number as an assurance that he wasn't a scammer and he gave me
the number 805-399-4139. I asked him where he was located and he told me
was at the PCH headquarters in Washington, D.C., though when I immediately
looked up the number, I saw it was a California number. When I pointed
that out to him, he said that all PCH representatives get 8 numbers,
claiming it was so the people they contacted would not have long distance
charges, though the number he gave was not a local one for me. When I
asked several times what street the headquarters was on in Washington,
D.C., he repeated "you are breaking up." I hung up at that point.
For anyone who might receive such a call and think it could be legitimate,
Publishers Clearing House states on their
Fraud Protection page
that "Our major winners are notified by mail or in person (at our option) and
we never phone ahead to disclose that someone has won a major prize."
I received a call from 210-361-8678 on my cellphone today. The call was
obviously from a scammer as the message included some statement about my
social security number (SSN) and legal action that would be taken against me
if I didn't call the number from which I was called - I didn't note the
exact message, but I found someone at the
Whycall.me site
at Phone: 210-361-8678
reporting a message that seemed similar if not the same as what I had
heard. The other person reported he or she received the message below on
July 16, 2018:
Security number is used for some fraudulent activities and due to
that we have in order to suspend your social security number right
away from the Law and enforcement Department and also to freeze
your bank accounts before we go ahead and do that. If you need any
further information about it kindly call back at 210-361-8678. Once
again that's 210-361-8678. Thank you.
There were numerous other people reporting similar calls where someone
was referencing a problem with the person's SSN and advising the person
to call 210-361-8678. The call is obviously an attempt to defraud those
called. I went to the
FCC Consumer Complaint webpage and filed a complaint.
I received an email response to the form I submitted with a ticket number.
The email response from the FCC stated "The FCC is committed to doing what
we can to protect you from these unwelcome interruptions to your day.
Unwanted calls, including illegal and spoofed robocalls, are the largest
category of complaints the FCC receives." It is troubling, though, that
some fraudster has been engaged in this activity using the 210-361-8678
number for a year with no action taken against him. The first report I
saw on the Whycall.me site was
on July 16, 2018, but I saw others reporting the same issue on that webpage
from that date through July 15, 2019. The
Whycall.me site allows one to search
for reports filed by other people on calls from telemarkers and
scammers. The site describes itself thusly:
Whycall.me is a consumer complaints board used to report telemarketers,
robocallers, scammers, and debt collectors that violate the law.
We receive more than 6,000 complaints each month, which helps
potential victims identify and avoid answering calls from problematic
phone numbers. Our global phone book of numbers is powered by
crowdsourcing and online data sources.
The site's homepage advises users of the site to also report the calls
to relevant government agencies, which it lists.
For the number that called me, the site listed the following information:
San Benito, Texas
Its exchange 361 is managed by SOUTHWESTERN BELL - TX
The number is currently on switch number SNBNTXSBDS0 (switch is a
technical specification, provided here for phone hobbyists)
Around 20% of people reported it as "Recorded Message"
You are the 2nd person to search for it here.
There has been a total of 30 comments left about the number.
Latest people reported the number as that of "SCAM, "Social Security'"
I registed an account at the site and posted a note about the call
I received today.
You can use the PyMuPDF module with
Python to extract images from a
PDF
file. You can install PyMuPDF using the
pip package
manager with the command pip install PyMuPDF . You can determine
if it is already installed with the command pip list | grep PyMuPDF
or pip freeze | grep PyMuPDF.
# pip list | grep PyMuPDF
DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 will reach the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. Ple
ase upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 won't be maintained after that date. A fut
ure version of pip will drop support for Python 2.7.PyMuPDF 1.14.13
# pip freeze | grep PyMuPDF
DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 will reach the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. Ple
ase upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 won't be maintained after that date. A fut
ure version of pip will drop support for Python 2.7.PyMuPDF==1.14.13
#
When I attempted to copy an Outlook .ost file to an external
USB flash drive, I saw the message below:
An unexpected error is keeping you from copying the file. If you continue
to receive this error, you can use the error code to search for help with this
problem.
Error 0x80070021: The process cannot access the file because another
process has locked a portion of the file.
I didn't have Outlook open and didn't know what other process was using
the file. One way to find out which process has a lock on a file is to
use the
Process Explorer utility provided by Microsoft. The program is free and
you don't need administrator rights on a system to use it. To determine
a process that is using the file, you can hit the Ctrl and F
keys simultaneously, which will bring up a search box where you can type
the name of the relevant file. When you click on the Search button,
you should be able to see the name of the process that has a lock on the file
as well as the process ID (PID) for that process. E.g., in this case
I could see that lync.exe was using the file.
