BillW50 said:
For example on this machine, there is one called SkyTel.exe. And it
lives in the Windows folder. That still doesn't tell me anything.
AnVir although tells me it is Realtek's Voice Manager. Oh ok, I
understand that and it is part of my audio chip. Msconfig is totally
useless here.
And if the filename isn't in AnVir's database? Or it is a generic name
that many programs use (but in different paths)? For example, many
add-ons that work inside of Outlook use the Redemption.dll to get around
the old security patch for Outlook. Each add-on has to use its own
modified redemption.dll file. So you see, say, half a dozen instances
of redemption.dll on your host but unless you know what it is for then
you also won't know it was used by those half dozen add-ons you
installed that use it. While redemption.dll might be in AnVir's
database, I used that just as an example. The same filename could be
used by multiple programs but each with a different purpose, so what
good is it to see a couple dozen possibilities from a database? You
still end up having to do the research. For the listings that I
typically see in "what's that process" type of databases or lists, they
often too vague or I have to use them as hints to do further research.
And, of course, malware could call itself anything, like svchost.exe or
rundll32.exe, so what the database lists isn't what the file really is.
Yes, having a database is some help in figuring out what a file might be
for; however, the results of such are probably not much better than what
you find at the dozens of web sites that also list these same filenames
trying to give hints as to what the file might be for. I don't know how
complete is AnVir's database but I can see having a local lookup (or
even a lookup that connects to their online database) would provide a
measure of convenience. Yet I've never relied on just one source to
tell me what a file might be for.
Msconfig already has a list of disabled startups. So it keeps track of
some of the startups already. It doesn't take much code to keep track
of the rest.
You can always find a utility that does something more than the one you
are using. Should every utility then cease development until someone
comes up with every possible feature and then the others resume
development to copy that utility? I bet I can find features in freeware
that AnVir doesn't have. Does that obviate the usefulness of AnVir?
You must be talking about AnVir Task Manager Pro for 50 bucks. Sure,
but they have AnVir Task Manager Free too that doesn't cost anything.
And it has most of everything the Pro version has. There is also
AnVir Task Manager which has more than the free one, but less than
the Pro for 30 bucks.
http://www.anvir.com/task-manager-windows-startup.htm
Going down the list to see what the free AnVir will or will not do:
Well, using the free AnVir version obviates my above discussion about it
showing you want a file might be for. That database lookup isn't
included in the free version, so I'd still be doing the online research
on sites that attempt to identify a program by its filename and path.
The free AnVir version will *NOT* "permanently block undesired
processes". I don't actually need additional software to do that.
Windows already includes SRPs (software restriction policies) that will
let me block a program from loading. I can identify the program by its
filename or path or use a hash code so it gets blocked no matter were it
gets moved.
Both free AnVir and free WinPatrol will warn if new startup items
appear.
Free WinPatrol alerts me if filetype associations are changed, something
that malware or app installs sometimes do. That's not a feature listed
for the free AnVir version.
Free Winpatrol will alert when IE helpers (BHOs, add-ons) get installed.
These aren't startup items but obviously alter the behavior of that web
browser. Not a listed feature in the free AnVir version.
It can also monitor changes to the 'hosts' file, something that malware
might do to redirect you to their own malicious site or block you from
getting to Symantec, McAfee, Avast, Avira, or other security web sites.
Not a listed feature in the free AnVir version.
Free AnVir can delay the load of startup items. Free WinPatrol does
that, too. Both of them can restore the delayed startup item back to
its original startup location.
Free AnVir alerts on the discovery of new startup items. So does free
WinPatrol.
Free AnVir can throttle CPU usage for a process. This might be
sufficient to help some users recover some responsiveness of their host
to get around a CPU-intensive process. After looking at what settings
are available, I feel Process Lasso (payware) and Bill2's Process
Manager (freeware) are better choices. Process Lasso has a free version
that has more configurability and features than AnVir's CPU throttling
method but the free version of Process Lasso is nagware (shown only when
it loads so if you leave your host powered on 24x7 then you won't see
it). I don't like any nagware and why I won't use the free version of
Sandboxie. Crippling the product (Process Lasso, Sandboxie, etal)
should be the only lure used to get their users to buy the full product.
I happened to get Process Lasso Pro (payware) for free because I helped
debug a problem; otherwise, I'd be using Bill2's Process Manager.
There's also Process Tamer for free. The others have further
advantages, like priority assignment, CPU affinity, exclusion lists,
exclude foreground processes (so the program you are actually using
isn't the one that gets throttled to make it unresponsive), and even
have a portable version to eliminate having to install the program or
letting you use it elsewhere. AnVir has the advantage that
configuration of its basic CPU throttling is built into its all-in-one
GUI but the other process managers have the advantages of more control,
configurability, and features. This is typical of bundleware in that it
offers lots of different features but they aren't as robust as solutions
that are more focused on a specific function.
Free AnVir can suspend/resume processes (i.e., halt and restart them).
Better process managers do that, too.
Free AnVir includes a tweaker. There are tons of those; however, those
that need a GUI to do registry editing are often the ones that shouldn't
be doing the tweaking. I'm not saying that having a GUI frontend to do
registry edits is a bad thing *if* the user understands what the tweak
does. I remember having a tweaker (X-Setup when it was free; later it
went commercial and now it's dead) tell me that FIPS was more secure
than AES but switching to FIPS meant that I could no longer connect to
SSL-secured (HTTPS) web sites. Belarc Advisor will tell you tons of
tweaks to increase security of your host to the point that your Windows
and apps won't behave and a Windows session becomes exasperating to
experience. Having a tweaker function is, to me, just a fluff feature
since there are far more robust (hence more dangerous) tweakers out
there.
Free AnVir will show a colored bar to represent free space on a drive.
Well, yeah, that might be pretty but I don't see how that is more
functional than being told the number of free bytes by right-clicking on
a drive to look at its properties. Personally I feel something like
TreeSize Free is more useful since users are often more interested in
what is consuming the most drive space. Finding out the free space on a
drive is trivial.
With free AnVir, you can click on an app's window title to: hide a
window to the system tray, make the window semi-transparent, pin a
window so it is "always on top", change window size to 640x780 and other
sizes, and change priority of the process that owns that window. I
guess some of these are of interest to some users. I have previously
looked at free window managers that can minimize to a tray icon but I
just didn't need them (but others might like this feature). I don't if
the window size change feature actually shrinks/expands a window to the
selected size or if the window simply gets resized (but everything
within it is still at the screen resolution). Bill can answer that. A
for changing priority, I don't see the advantage of clicking on a window
to use a context-menu to change priority versus using Task Manager to
change the priority of the process but, I suppose, newbies might not
know which process owns a window (but if they don't know that then how
do they know which process they are changing priority when they click on
a window that doesn't identify the program for that window?). As for
priority management, that's something I prefer to do in a process
manager. You can have the process manager change priority based on
thresholds of CPU usage or by a list of process whose priority will get
changed no matter how they got loaded (so it's automatic instead of you
doing it manually).
So there's a lot of duplication between AnVir (free) and other freeware
solutions. There are a lot of handy little features rolled into AnVir,
even in the free version, but often users see the glitter but don't end
up using them. Yet free AnVir does roll up a bunch of features into one
product so it's bundleware worth looking at.
I don't understand defending msconfig when it has so many
shortcomings?
I still used Returnil to provide virtualized disk I/O despite that it
can generate a BSOD when I exit its protected mode. The BSOD occurs at
the end of shutdown and causes no corruption. Since exiting protected
mode requires a reboot, I'm going to be rebooting anyway even if the
BSOD happens. I might find a cure for that, like changing the install
order of Returnil and Avast (so Returnil is first), it's a defect, but
it doesn't stop me from using Returnil.
There are times when I want to use a text-only web browser. I've used
Lynx but settled on the SamSpade product which has been long abandoned.
Despite that it has some quirks, it is still usable so it still get
used.
If I didn't already have MS Office or the host and install CD got lost
or stolen, I'd move to OpenOffice despite that some of the workarounds
in OpenOffice to perform the same function in MS Word are rather obtuse
and non-intuitive.
I use Dropbox for sharing program code with a buddy despite the freebie
account is limited to just 2GB. I get up to 50GB in a free aDrive
account with 4GB the max file size for large files and can share them
from there by supplying just a URL to a recipient and continue to use it
despite their upload speed is throttle for free users.
I use Hotmail accounts despite they provide no IMAP support, only POP,
unless I use Deltasync which is only in their e-mail client that I don't
want to use. So I'm stuck using POP to use Hotmail but I still use it.
I haven't retested this but in the past SpywareBlaster would leave
behind orphaned entries in the Restricted Sites list. When you got a
new update that removed some sites, they would stick around under
Restricted Sites when you updated SpywareBlaster. They only added or
removed the sites in their current list. If sites were removed from the
current list, they wouldn't get removed from Restricted Sites on your
host. You had to delete all the Restricted Sites using SpywareBlaster
before you updated SpywareBlaster, update SpywareBlaster, and then add
the new list of Restricted Sites. Then you wouldn't get any leftovers
from their old list you had added before. Still I use SpywareBlaster.
MalwareBytes will make recommendations to change some Windows settings
only because malware might have made the changes. However, those are
the same tweaks that users can make using the normal GUI config dialogs
available in Windows. So MalwareBytes might undo your tweaks. Still I
use MalwareBytes (free version).
I use FormatFactory to convert video files to different filetypes. I
also use it to merge video files; however, if I list more than 10 files
to merge then some ffd<something> process will likely crash and I lose
the entire job. So I merge 10 files at a time, do another 10, and
continue and then follow by merging the merged files 10 at a time and so
on until they're all merged. Yep, it has a bug but it's still usable.
I still use Windows XP despite all its faults.
