Trouble:

We have observed this problem at may places that you need some data on your pen drive but the USB drive or pen drive does not work. Windows gives a notification

“Found new hardware, USB Mass Storage Device, please install drivers for it.”

Windows will now show a New Hardware Wizard to install the drivers. Lets see in details how we can fix this problem.

Fix:

There are more than one ways in which the USB drives are disabled by Administrators at offices or colleges or schools. These methods are:

1. By Disabling USB Ports from Device Manager.

2. By Tweaking Registry values for USB Mass Storage Devices.

3. By Un-installing the USB Mass Storage Drivers.

We will see how to fix all these situations one by one. But before you begin, you must have administrator rights on that computer to fix the issue. If you don’t have the rights, see this post on getting admin rights on windows computer.

Lets go one by one for the solution now.

continue reading "Pen drive blocked-disabled at office or college computer - Unblock it"

Trouble:

One of our readers Kapil reported that his computer has been infected with chost trojan. Because of this trojan certain web-sites are not opening. This kind of problem can also be caused by trojan.vundo .

Although this is a old known trojan, so your anti-virus software should have virus-definitions to take care of this trojan. But even if the anti-virus software has cleaned the trojan, the chances exist that you will still face problem in opening web-sites.

This is so because this trojan modifies your windows “hosts file” and makes certain web-sites point to a local host. Such web-sites will not load until this host files is corrected.

Let us see how take care of the trojan and fix the hosts file.

continue reading "Chost trojan - Websites not opening"

Trouble:

One of our readers Senthil wrote

“When I switch on the computer the following error will displayed : <windowsroot>\system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupt please reinstall the copy of above file”

What is hal.dll ?

Short for Hardware Abstraction Layer, HAL is an operating system programming layer that enables the operating system to operate with a hardware device. hal.dll is the dynamic link library file that implements the functionality of HAL.

When “hal.dll missing or corrupt” message appears, it can be because of damaged or missing hal.dll file. It can also be because of some wrong entries in boot.ini file in case you are using two operating systems on your computer. Also it can be because of improper BIOS entries of the disk drives etc.

Lets have a look on how this can be fixed.

continue reading "How to fix - hal.dll is missing or corrupt in windows"

Trouble:

We have received the mails from lots of readers whose computer systems got infected by this W32.USBWorm which blocks sites like Youtube, Orkut on their system.

For those who have Firefox installed when they try to launch it prevents Firefox from running and displays the dialog box with the message “I DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE” in Internet explorer when user tries to open Orkut it says “ORKUT IS BANNED, Orkut is banned you fool“, “The administrators didn’t write this program guess who did??“

While trying to open youtube via Internet Explorer it displays “youtube IS BANNED,youtube is banned you fool” and “The administrators didn’t write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30“

What does this W32.USBWorm do ?

• Runs a process svchost.exe in the background under your username from which you are logged in.
• It automatically copies itself into USB drives and other portable devices.
• Transfers itself from USB portable devices to any computer.
• It also disables the “Show Hidden Folders” option in folder options, we have already posted on how to enable to show hidden files and folders.

Lets see from where this worm comes and how to remove it.

continue reading "Remove W32.USBWorm - It blocks Orkut and Youtube and displays "I DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE" while using Firefox"

Trouble:

Majority of the virus problem which we receive from the readers are those cases which infect the system through pen drives. According to our records about 40 percent of the total computer systems got virus or trojan infection through pen drives and USB portable devices like iPOd, Mp3 players etc.

Yesterday, I found a cool utility called Thumbscrew : USB Write Blocker , you can use this utility to disable writing to your USB drive. You can read full review about the utility here

Let’s see how can you use this utility to protect your drive from viruses

continue reading "Disable data writing on your USB drive to protect it from viruses"