Up Early Saturday Morning With Computer Woes And The Wind Finally Calm

You can not tell by looking out my window, but I can tell you the wind has finally stopped blowing.

This morning I found out the smoky air is being brought to us from massive wildfires to the north along the Red River.

It is a bit chilly this morning at only 45 degrees. The swimming pool will be way warmer than the air this morning.

I had myself some computer woe fun starting last night. I was looking for an image, clicked on one I wanted and instantly something called XP Security Update took over my computer.

It disabled the Microsoft Security Essentials, which I've now learned is essentially worthless. The XP Security Update tried to make me think I had some dire things on my computer that I could fix if I got out my credit card. This scam is actually quite clever in its sinister nefariousness.

I gave up on fixing this problem last night. This morning I was able to figure out the .exe program that was causing this from the Windows Task Manager "processes" list. I saw two entries that should not have been there in the MSCONFIG startup tab. Unchecked them. Then searched the registry for uaq.exe and removed all entries. This fixed the woe.

Now, the extreme irony of this latest computer problem is yesterday morning Microsoft sent out one of its security updates. This time it was at least a dozen XP updates due to threats being discovered that would allow an attacker to take over my computer.

So, the updates updated and then within a few hours an attacker took over my computer, turning off the Microsoft anti-virus program and disabling the Malwarbyte's Anti-Malware program, which is now running and has found 4 infected objects.

The Queen of Wink just called. She is in Roanoke to do some obstacle course thing.

I must go swimming now to relieve my stress.