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General Meeting Minutes
2 December, 2005
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Quote of the day:
The meeting opened at 10:00 AM with 34 members in attendance. John Barker told a cute joke about a doctor and an invisible patient and showed a movie of Xmas lights. He asked for a volunteer to make a list of candidates for the 2006 Executive Committee. This is an easy task. During the next meeting, nominations are called for the position of President, VP, Treasurer, Recording Secretary, Membership Secretary, etc. As each person is nominated and seconded, their name is added to the list by position desired. When the list is complete, each nominee is asked if they accept the nomination. If declined, their name is removed from the list. Then, at the first meeting in January, the elections are held based on the revised list, the votes counted and the results read. No one volunteered at this time, but if interested please Email us at elliotlakecc@canada.com before December 16th. He then opened the floor to questions:
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11:00 AM: Virtual Coffee Break
Re-convened at 11:15AM.
John Sturges did a presentation on ZA, Rootkit Revealer and using a Security folder to simplify the security testing process. See the tutorial at the end of these minutes.
Questions Continued:
Name |
Q&A |
Details |
OS |
| M.I.G.S. | Q | You recommend that we don't use Outlook express. My Internet Service Provider (ISP) is Sympatico. What should we use instead? | All |
| John Sturges | A | Go directly to your I.S.P.'s home page and look for a link to their Web Mail. Log in using the user name and password they gave you. Then you should be able to access your mail directly on their mail server. | |
| Terry | Q | Are their alternatives to using your ISP's Web Mail? | A |
| John Sturges | A | Yahoo, Gmail and MSN are examples of free web based Email providers. You don't need Outlook Express or any other Email client to use them. And if you change your ISP your Email address stays the same. For example:
Click the Mail Icon and you should see this:
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| Al | Q | If my PC is infected with malware and I copy a file to floppy will the floppy be infected too? | All |
| John Sturges | A | If the file you copied to floppy was infected before you copied it, yes. If you scan the file with AVG before you copy it to floppy, it should be OK. To scan any single file with AVG, right-click on file and choose “Scan with AVG...”. Then copy the clean file to floppy. |
Have you ever received an Email attachment you couldn't open? It may be because Windows has lost it's file association information. This means that Windows doesn't recognize the letters to the right of the dot and doesn't know what program to use to open the file.
For example, for a filename such as send2deb.bak, the “.bak” part is called the file extension.
How to Change File Associations:
If you get this error, choose select... and click OK. You should see a list like this > |
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Right-click on the file to see this too. |
Try each of the programs listed. If this doesn't work, go to www.fileextensions.com and look up the extension for more information. If all else fails, ask the Email sender to save the file in a standard format (rtf, txt, jpg, gif, pdf, etc.) and resend it to you. Most word processors can do this if they choose File > Save as... There is one exception, Open Office can save documents as PDF files, but MS-Word can't unless Word users install a tool such as Cute PDF.
“Best XP Freeware” is now available and lists descriptions and links to most of the software we use. Go to www.elliotlakecomputerclub.com and click on the “We Recommend” button and look for the last entry on the page.
11:59AM: Meeting adjourned.
Zone Alarm Tips & Tricks
Zone Alarm Security Alert Screen |
Open Zone Alarm and click on Program Control, then click on the Programs Tab. |
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To remove any entry allowed in error. |
To bring all of the previous Security Tutorials together: Create a new folder on your desktop called “Security”. Drag and Drop each Desktop Security Icon into the Security folder and rename as shown: |
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| Then open the folder and choose item 1 and choose the Custom Button.Download, |
| When finished, do 2 to remove unnecessary files. |
| When finished, do 3 and Check for Updates then Scan.(never install more then one Anti-virus program on your PC) |
| When finished, 4, 5 and 6 can be run at the same time. |
| Check for Updates then Scan for each. |
| When finished, click on Immunize in Spybot and click on the green [+]. |
| When finished, open 7 and Check for Updates then Enable all protection. |
| I recommend that you run all of the above tests at least twice a week. |
| install and run item 8 at least once a week. Root kits are a new malware threat and are very difficult to remove. |
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(If you find a root kit, go to google to identify and learn how to remove it.) Tip: Keep all your security programs in the “LatestPrograms” folder and check for newer versions once a month. You may also want to save all of my tutorials in the “ReadMe” folder for future reference. Note: All tutorials are available from the Archives at the ELCC website. They are included in the August through November, 2005 minutes. Tip: To change the Security folder to a padlock, right-click on it and choose Properties. Click on the Customize Tab, then click on the Change Icon Button and look for the padlock or choose your favourite from the list. If you follow these steps faithfully, your system should remain Malware free. For more information: |
John Sturges is pleased to announce that the Little Red Schoolhouse is open. Courses Offered
Call (705) 461-9009 for more information, schedule, and pricing or jnsturges@yahoo.ca. Free Software and Tutorial Included.
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