Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 April 29

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April 29

Name for particular type of spam/phishing

Does anyone know what the type of spam is when you receive an email that uses the FIRST half of a familiar address? For example, if my friend's email address is ted at hi.com, and I receive a spam/phishing email from ted at hello.com. What is that called? I'm looking for what it's called so I can find out how they managed to get hold of that info! Thank you! 213.106.130.210 (talk) 12:58, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't think there is a specific name for that. Your friend Ted's computer has probably been infected, and you were in his contact list. If you use, for example, Microsoft Outlook to send and receive emails and there is malware on your computer, then it is possible that the malware steals the list of contacts, and tries to spread itself by sending them messages that look like they come from someone the recipient knows. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 14:28, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Okay, so it's probably his computer being infected rather than mine? Thank you for your answer! 213.106.130.210 (talk) 14:44, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Thousands (perhaps millions) of personal computers are infected with some sort of software that sends out spam. It is so pervasive and profitable that the spammers can now advertise on TV, telling people to voluntarily download their spamming software to "speed up your PC" or "check your PC for malware". Therefore, the assumption that Ted's computer has some sort of spamming malware on it is a safe assumption. 209.149.115.199 (talk) 16:44, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I had a similar instance a few months ago where a friend actually at (we'll say) "friend_9876@yahoo.co.uk" apparently emailed me from "friend_9876@somethingelse.ca" – the conclusion by a professional IT friend of us both who looks after friend's PC was that some months before, the spammer had (as The Quixotic Potato suggests above) obtained friend's password and copied friend's email address book. Friend had then changed his password, and at the time I was spammed friend's PC was clean. I believe the technical term for this is "a bloody nuisance." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 19:49, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Proper Boot Order for Gateway running Windows 7 Home Premium

I have had some crashes with my laptop requiring that I reinstall from the rescue disks. I noticed that the boot order in setup had changed, and I was getting weird messages and failed restarts.

I went to the setup menu, and under boot I clicked on restore default order which is now:

1. IDE0 TOSHIBA MK5055GSX
2. IDE2:
3. IDE1:HL-DT-STDVDRAM GT30N
4. USB FDD
5. NETWORK BOOT: MBAV 11.4.1 SLOT 0500
6. USB HDD
7. USB CDROM

The computer will now boot, but after the "starting windows" red yellow green and blue appear it takes about 5-10 minutes for the desktop to appear, there is an error message and it still takes a few minutes before I can run any programs.

Can anyone give me the right boot order, simply giving the number sequence (eg. 7123654) for the above items should suffice. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 21:00, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't think that the boot order is related to the problem. When you see that horrible red yellow green blue thing appear then your PC is already past the boot order stage. The Toshiba MK5055GSX hard drive is your first boot device, and the computer only goes to #2 in the boot order if the hard drive is not working. I think it never reaches #2 because your harddrive is working. Maybe it is a good idea to check which programs start when you start your pc, it is not unlikely that those cause the delay. Another, less likely, option is that there is a problem with Fast Startup. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 21:14, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

What they said. If your boot order was "wrong", the computer would just not boot. If you don't recognize the device names: IDE0 is your hard drive, IDE1 is your DVD drive, the USB entries will boot from drives connected to the computer via USB, and the network boot entry will, unsurprisingly, do a network boot. It sounds like a hardware problem. Could be your hard drive is failing. If you can get into Windows, check the error logs (do a Web search for "windows error log" if you don't know how). Also if you have anything you care about on the drive that isn't backed up, do that now. --71.110.8.102 (talk) 21:22, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Running Chkdsk may also be a good idea. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 21:26, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I think chkdsk is probably a waste of time at best, and at worst it could accelerate the failure of the drive (if it is failing). In its default mode, it just looks for inconsistencies in data structures, which isn't the problem here (it wouldn't cause super-slow boot times). With the /R option, it scans for one indication of hardware failure (bad sectors), but diagnostic software from the drive manufacturer is normally much better at finding hardware problems. That said, I can't find any such software for Toshiba drives. I see some people suggesting that you can use Hitachi's WinDFT. -- BenRG (talk) 01:03, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

First you need to back up, if you do not have backups. After that you can try chkdsk. Most Windows users only use chkdsk when they are forced to. Accelerating drive failure isn't a bad thing in this context. And no-one knows if the hard drive is to blame. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 01:33, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, you should back up first. I still think that chkdsk is a poor substitute for vendor disk diagnostic tools. It's important to run it on non-journaled filesystems like FAT32, and on ancient (decades old) drives that don't have built-in bad block management, but it's largely useless otherwise. -- BenRG (talk) 06:29, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand the above advice, I'll see if I can apply it. μηδείς (talk) 21:52, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

It's not true that if your boot order is wrong, your computer will not boot. Your computer will try each of those options sequentially until it finds one that works, so your computer will boot as long as one of those entries works. However I do agree it could be a sign of a failing hard drive 2001:630:12:2428:8496:EA4:8A18:51D3 (talk) 22:44, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

This problem is caused by software on the hard disk drive. It is nothing to do with this correct boot order. What kind of crash happend? If You dropped the laptop, the delay might be caused from a crashed hard disk drive. If it is true, backup all files and settings to an reliable external media and reinstall Windows on a new replaced hard drive in the laptop, restore Your data for backup. If it is caused by software, reinstall on the same drive or try to troubleshoot if possible. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 19:19, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

• I ended up simply reinstalling the system clean from the restore disks, erasing all files. This seems to have worked fine, and the the computer is booting in a very reasonable amount of time. Prior to that everything was fine if I let the computer sleep, but did not turn it off. It would awake immediately, but only reboot from being turned on very slowly, and the last time I attempted this I was unable to get any program to run once I got to the desktop. So the issue is moot at this point. I am going to create a system image, so I don't have to go through 300 updates if this happens again. Thanks for the above help. μηδείς (talk) 00:36, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

@Medeis: Remember to backup your backups, and store those in a different location. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 11:44, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, this laptop is actually my backup laptop (I have two running windows 7 and a Mac) and everything really important is on an external hard drive or the other laptop. I also ran check disk on this one last month, it did find a few corrupted sectors. The only important file I lost was the most recent word version of my resume, but I have a plaintext version and I think I also emailed it to myself as an attachment, I just haven't gone looking for it. That and the last 10 episodes of Better Call Saul, but I won't watch them again until the next season. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 18:11, 1 May 2016 (UTC)