If you ever wonder how fast your Internet connection is, Cnet offers a good test. They also have a desktop widget to monitor your bandwidth.

Slow Internet connection speeds means that there is a lot of traffic going on in your network. If you’re experiencing slower-than-normal speeds, here are some things you should check.

1. Check any file-sharing programs. Some can be big bandwidth hogs without you knowing it. There is usually a setting in “Preferences” that you can set the upload and download limits. If you have no limits set, especially for uploading, then you have a problem. In some cases, you cannot change the settings (Opera’s built in torrent program) and will have to stop transfers.
2. Check for streaming music or video being played on your network. The more music and videos that are being streamed to computers on your network, the less bandwidth you will have, making for a slower connection.
3. How many programs are you running? This doesn’t directly affect bandwidth, but too many programs running- or even open- can cause your computer to operate at a seemingly slow pace.
4. Have you done a check for viruses or other malware? Some malicious programs are written to utilize your computer and network resources without you knowing. This can definitely have an affect on your Internet connection speeds. And, it’s always good to surf the Internet virus-free.

Note: This information requires you to edit your registry settings. Please take caution when doing this. Proceed at your own risk.

I spent the better part of my day fixing my sister’s computer problems. First it was a virus that disguised itself as an anti-virus solution with constant warnings of the laptop being at critical risk. Then, after successfully completing her installation of Norton Antivirus- which always came up at log in to remind her to finish it, but she didn’t- the Internet connection was killed. (Norton did it.) After disabling Norton, the Internet roads were open again.

From there, I was able to download Avira Antivir, PC Tools Spyware Doctor, and Ad-Aware to begin cleaning. Antivir did most of the cleaning, but after restarting the machine as instructed by the anti-virus program, the laptop would not let me log in. I logged in, and it would log me off. I tried again, and got the same result. Repeat a few more times and you get the picture. Microsoft has documented the problem, here.

Using another computer I searched for the problem and the solution was to get a live CD, preferably BartPE. After downloading an image and burning it to a CD, I was able to boot from the CD and go into the registry settings using ‘regedit’. Here are the instructions I used: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/peboot.htm

The link says to only change one key, but check to make sure that these two keys are correct. This will save you time if you have the annoying “Can’t find logon.exe” error message that pops up after you disinfect your computer. Navigate to the following keys and make sure that their values are as indicated below.

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell
Value: Explorer.exe

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\UserInit
Value: C:\Windows\System32\Userinit.exe

Restart your computer and log in as normal.

While researching this problem, I found a large number of forum threads and posts about it. The best post that contained the problem and solution was here. It provides an additional solution.

After that, I still had some cleaning to do. (First, I uninstalled Norton. I’ve had bad experiences with Norton.) In my experience, one anti-virus program doesn’t always find everything. The second anti-virus program I used was the Spyware Doctor. It was able to pick up some of the overlooked crumbs. To be on the safe side, I’ve installed Ad-Aware and will be running it now. When that’s done, we should be back to normal.

Or for me, on to the next computer-related problem. All of this started when I woke up this morning and was greeted outside my bedroom door with my sister saying, “Can you fix my iPhone? All my contacts are deleted. I tried hooking it up to my computer but my computer doesn’t recognize it…”

It’s never just one problem in the world of IT.

Step 1

Disable USB Autorun in Windows XP

This will disable CD autorun, as well, but adding an additional one or two clicks is a small price to pay for protecting your computer from viruses. Every university computer lab or Internet cafe should do this. If the link above does not work, then follow the word-for-word steps below (minus the picture).

1. Click the Start button, then Run and enter “gpedit.msc” without the quotes
2. Go to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System
3. Scroll down to “Turn off Autoplay” and double click on it
4. Click on the “Enabled” radio button, then for “Turn off Autoplay on” select “All drives”

Step 2

Automatically conduct a malware scan of USB hard drives upon being plugged in.

‘Still searching for a solid solution. This may not be ideal for everyone, or in every case. For example, what if you have a 200GB external hard drive? That’s going to take a long time to scan, assuming that you do not use the USB drive until the scan is finished. Not to say that you can’t use it while it is simultaneously being scanned, but that sort of defeats the purpose of an auto-scan. This is going to be a tough cookie to crack. Unless, you only scan thumbdrives, or drives in which you specify a size limit because even thumbdrives are getting higher and higher capacity. What would that limit be? 1GB? 2GB? 4GB? 16GB?