Media Watch

I can't wait for October!: Ames Haunted Forest

Microsoft's operating systems allow people to send you pop-up network messages, exploiting a little known network administrator's tool called Windows Messenger Service (which is not related to MSN's instant messaging) -- if you are exposed to the Internet directly. If you're behind a firewall or on a local subnet, such as in the case of the gateway/router, you're probably safe from these annoying little popups. CIAC (Computer Incident Advisory Capability) writes: Sites that have a firewall that blocks the Windows networking ports (135, 137-139, and 445) are already protected from this spam. This particular spam engine starts with a connection to port 135 rather than the NetBIOS ports (137-139 and 445) and then connects to a port above 1024 but future spam engines could use the NetBIOS ports as well. The Messenger service generally should not be disabled or shut down because different programs use it to pass messages to a user. System managers also use it to wa

Judy writes: "Having problems ghost with a Dell GX270s desktop PC. I have downloaded the most current drivers for the nic card and I created a new ghost boot disk with those drives. I boot up the PC with the boot disk and it finds the NIC card and then it says loading ..... and the screen never comes up were it will say Ghost ... Click 'OK'. Do you have any recommendations that would solve this problem?" Our own Jeff Hansen, Clear Channel IT Dept., weighs in: Sounds like the machine cannot find ghost.exe and pretty much stops at that point. Reasons would be numerous. Check to make sure your network layer is really ready to go. Using tcp/ip? Does the machine have an IP address? If not, why? DHCP issues? Static address entered improperly? How about the network share you are trying to get logged into. Is it mapped and ready to go? Are permissions set properly on the share? Maybe you don't have rights. Etc Etc Etc