It didn’t stay stock for long, and slowly turned into a pretty capable off-road beast. Clearly not capable of making it through Lake Christy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGBaVXKwutQ), but handled everything else that we tried to tackle.

The rig was sold to a friend, so I know that it’s in capable hands and hoping for the best of it. Maybe one day I’ll build something else. I’ve always loved a built XJ, but I’m still feeling a truck somewhere in my future too.

The majority of the viruses infected machines I see coming into the shop are fake anti-virus infections… That includes a XP Security Tool, Vista Security 2011, Windows 7 Security Center, and so on… Popups and stuff saying “you’re infected”, “drive failure”, and “out of memory” pop up on startup, while running IE, etc… Annoying mostly, but not super malicious. Clean up is pretty easy with the right tools.

The one that has pushed my buttons the most though is one that I’ve only seen hit XP machines, called “Windows XP Restore”. This not only includes popups, but it also HIDES all of your files on the system drive… Clean up is pretty easy, until you realize that one the virus is gone and you’ve unhid your files… everything in the Start menu is missing! What?!

If you’ve been in this situation… You realize what a pain in the butt this is going to turn out to be… The 1,687 applications that you had installed are all now missing from the Start menu and you’ve got to recreate shortcuts.

But…… This may save you some time! The virus moves your Start menu and Quick Launch icons into 2 hidden folder locations. You may want to save/recover these files BEFORE virus cleanup, as I’ve had 2 cleanups in which the files were removed during cleanup.

Start Menu – C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\temp\smtmp\1
Quick Launch – C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\temp\smtmp\2

Anyways… Hope that helps, and good luck cleaning up!

I fix computers that come into a small computer shop in Millersburg. We work with a bunch of businesses too, but the majority of my time is spent building new rigs for people or repairing stuff that comes in broken or virus infected… I’ve only had ONE virus get the best of me… After 8 hours of cleanup in attempt to save a re-load, I gave in and started over.

Anyways – new posts to come shortly.

Pictures from the trip are in the Gallery here.

Pics of everything, including some install and then post-install shots are in the Gallery here.

I’ve gone through several different “logo designs” in the last 7 years, but nothing that has ever stuck… I have a feeling this is going to stick around.

Anyone looking for custom renderings, logo design, or whatever, please check out Brian’s website and check with him on your needs. And please let him know that Simon sent you.

If you’re looking to get a drawing done, check in with Brian… And let him know you found him from my site.

The water measured 4 feet where I stopped moving. In addition to the wet interior, I also flooded the center console which had my Nikon D80 SLR, Nikon CoolPix 5200 point and shoot camera, JVC CD player, CB, and BlackBerry Storm…

After being saved from the middle of the lake, we pulled the plugs and cranked til the water was gone… It fired up and idled a little rough, but was able to make it back through the lake (this time staying to the side!) and back up the hill to make it back on the trails. It made it 20~ miles back home without a problem. Fluids changed (which came out looking similar to a McDonalds milkshake) and it seems to be running pretty well. Now hopefully the smell will be able to come out of the seats too.