Someone is screwing with me. Malware?

Someone is screwing with me.

1) The first t hing I noticed is that in Forte Agent, the default
properties, What to Purge, changed from messages over 32767 days to
messages over 30 days. Except for those marked kept, I lost almost all
of the articles I'd been saving for years. In the first group, I
downloaded all headers 20,000 or so, marked them all for retrieval and
got them all, but it didn't show which I had read and which I left
marked unread. They were all markeded unread. And now I see it has
changed to 30 again. And again I only have 1000 articles instead of
maybe 20,000. Plus each day some get too old and get deleted from the
server. None of this has happened to this ng for some reason/

2) Then today, something muted my .wav sounds Took a couple hours to
notice and fix it.

3) Then just now I noticed that something changed the setting in
Firefox, when opening the program, From: Bring up windows and tabs from
last time. TO Home Page. I don't know when this happened.

4) And the file I dl'd successfully a couple hours ago, which crashes
during installation, I've tried to dl again, and the FF Downloads page
says it completed but it's not in the downloads folder, even though that
is still where FF says it puts it. So where did it go?

2 and 3 could be the result of a virus, but would a virus really do #1.
And 4 is downright confusing.

Help?

On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:06:32 -0400, micky
wrote:

Someone is screwing with me.

1) The first t hing I noticed is that in Forte Agent, the default
properties, What to Purge, changed from messages over 32767 days to
messages over 30 days. Except for those marked kept, I lost almost all
of the articles I'd been saving for years. In the first group, I
downloaded all headers 20,000 or so, marked them all for retrieval and
got them all, but it didn't show which I had read and which I left
marked unread. They were all markeded unread. And now I see it has
changed to 30 again. And again I only have 1000 articles instead of

The first time was a week or two ago. I changed the value to 32767,
their max, but today it was back to 30 again, the default?

Restore Points? But item 3 has been the same since FFox first came
out. Don't they announce it in a way you can't miss when they switch
you back to a restore point?


maybe 20,000. Plus each day some get too old and get deleted from the
server. None of this has happened to this ng for some reason/

2) Then today, something muted my .wav sounds Took a couple hours to
notice and fix it.

3) Then just now I noticed that something changed the setting in
Firefox, when opening the program, From: Bring up windows and tabs from
last time. TO Home Page. I don't know when this happened.

4) And the file I dl'd successfully a couple hours ago, which crashes
during installation, I've tried to dl again, and the FF Downloads page
says it completed but it's not in the downloads folder, even though that
is still where FF says it puts it. So where did it go?

2 and 3 could be the result of a virus, but would a virus really do #1.
And 4 is downright confusing.

Help?

On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:06:32 -0400, micky
wrote:

Someone is screwing with me.

1) The first t hing I noticed is that in Forte Agent, the default
properties, What to Purge, changed from messages over 32767 days to
messages over 30 days. Except for those marked kept, I lost almost all
of the articles I'd been saving for years. In the first group, I
downloaded all headers 20,000 or so, marked them all for retrieval and
got them all, but it didn't show which I had read and which I left
marked unread. They were all markeded unread. And now I see it has
changed to 30 again. And again I only have 1000 articles instead of
maybe 20,000. Plus each day some get too old and get deleted from the
server. None of this has happened to this ng for some reason/

2) Then today, something muted my .wav sounds Took a couple hours to
notice and fix it.

3) Then just now I noticed that something changed the setting in
Firefox, when opening the program, From: Bring up windows and tabs from
last time. TO Home Page. I don't know when this happened.

Well, I figured out this one. Firefox had a good system for Options but
they changed it to look like webpages, and they changed my option here.

4) And the file I dl'd successfully a couple hours ago, which crashes
during installation, I've tried to dl again, and the FF Downloads page
says it completed but it's not in the downloads folder, even though that
is still where FF says it puts it. So where did it go?

Same thing here. Though it still said Downloads,
it meant My Documents / Downloads, not C:\Downloads. So they had
changed it -- shame on them -- to this location they don't even describe
well -- double shame.

2 and 3 could be the result of a virus, but would a virus really do #1.
And 4 is downright confusing.

Help?


That still leaves 1 (which has happened twice) and 2.

On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:22:52 -0400, micky
wrote:

On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:06:32 -0400, micky
wrote:

Someone is screwing with me.

1) The first t hing I noticed is that in Forte Agent, the default
properties, What to Purge, changed from messages over 32767 days to
messages over 30 days. Except for those marked kept, I lost almost all
of the articles I'd been saving for years. In the first group, I
downloaded all headers 20,000 or so, marked them all for retrieval and
got them all, but it didn't show which I had read and which I left
marked unread. They were all markeded unread. And now I see it has
changed to 30 again. And again I only have 1000 articles instead of
maybe 20,000. Plus each day some get too old and get deleted from the
server. None of this has happened to this ng for some reason/

2) Then today, something muted my .wav sounds Took a couple hours to
notice and fix it.

3) Then just now I noticed that something changed the setting in
Firefox, when opening the program, From: Bring up windows and tabs from
last time. TO Home Page. I don't know when this happened.

Well, I figured out this one. Firefox had a good system for Options but
they changed it to look like webpages, and they changed my option here.

4) And the file I dl'd successfully a couple hours ago, which crashes
during installation, I've tried to dl again, and the FF Downloads page
says it completed but it's not in the downloads folder, even though that
is still where FF says it puts it. So where did it go?

Same thing here. Though it still said Downloads,
it meant My Documents / Downloads, not C:\Downloads. So they had
changed it -- shame on them -- to this location they don't even describe
well -- double shame.

Well, it's possible something else happened. I have FF open, and I
clicked on a start-up icon for it, and the Profile manager opens up, and
all there is is the default. I used to have 3 profiles, none or one of
which was named default. All my stuff was in the other profiles.

I looked in Documents and Settings and it looks like I remember it, to
the best of my memory. I had been looking at it yesterday and earlier
today, but I don't think I could have deleted anything accidentally.

2 and 3 could be the result of a virus, but would a virus really do #1.
And 4 is downright confusing.

Help?


That still leaves 1 (which has happened twice) and 2.

micky wrote:
On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:22:52 -0400, micky
wrote:

On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:06:32 -0400, micky
wrote:

Someone is screwing with me.

1) The first t hing I noticed is that in Forte Agent, the default
properties, What to Purge, changed from messages over 32767 days to
messages over 30 days. Except for those marked kept, I lost almost all
of the articles I'd been saving for years. In the first group, I
downloaded all headers 20,000 or so, marked them all for retrieval and
got them all, but it didn't show which I had read and which I left
marked unread. They were all markeded unread. And now I see it has
changed to 30 again. And again I only have 1000 articles instead of
maybe 20,000. Plus each day some get too old and get deleted from the
server. None of this has happened to this ng for some reason/

2) Then today, something muted my .wav sounds Took a couple hours to
notice and fix it.

3) Then just now I noticed that something changed the setting in
Firefox, when opening the program, From: Bring up windows and tabs from
last time. TO Home Page. I don't know when this happened.
Well, I figured out this one. Firefox had a good system for Options but
they changed it to look like webpages, and they changed my option here.

4) And the file I dl'd successfully a couple hours ago, which crashes
during installation, I've tried to dl again, and the FF Downloads page
says it completed but it's not in the downloads folder, even though that
is still where FF says it puts it. So where did it go?
Same thing here. Though it still said Downloads,
it meant My Documents / Downloads, not C:\Downloads. So they had
changed it -- shame on them -- to this location they don't even describe
well -- double shame.

Well, it's possible something else happened. I have FF open, and I
clicked on a start-up icon for it, and the Profile manager opens up, and
all there is is the default. I used to have 3 profiles, none or one of
which was named default. All my stuff was in the other profiles.

I looked in Documents and Settings and it looks like I remember it, to
the best of my memory. I had been looking at it yesterday and earlier
today, but I don't think I could have deleted anything accidentally.
2 and 3 could be the result of a virus, but would a virus really do #1.
And 4 is downright confusing.

Help?

That still leaves 1 (which has happened twice) and 2.


Is this profile damage, and your user account is using a different
folder than before ?

Paul

On Sat, 30 May 2015 20:34:10 -0400, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:
On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:22:52 -0400, micky
wrote:

On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:06:32 -0400, micky
wrote:

Someone is screwing with me.
,,,,
3) Then just now I noticed that something changed the setting in
Firefox, when opening the program, From: Bring up windows and tabs from
last time. TO Home Page. I don't know when this happened.
Well, I figured out this one. Firefox had a good system for Options but
they changed it to look like webpages, and they changed my option here.

4) And the file I dl'd successfully a couple hours ago, which crashes
during installation, I've tried to dl again, and the FF Downloads page
says it completed but it's not in the downloads folder, even though that
is still where FF says it puts it. So where did it go?
Same thing here. Though it still said Downloads,
it meant My Documents / Downloads, not C:\Downloads. So they had
changed it -- shame on them -- to this location they don't even describe
well -- double shame.

Well, it's possible something else happened. I have FF open, and I
clicked on a start-up icon for it, and the Profile manager opens up, and
all there is is the default. I used to have 3 profiles, none or one of
which was named default. All my stuff was in the other profiles.

I looked in Documents and Settings and it looks like I remember it, to
the best of my memory. I had been looking at it yesterday and earlier
today, but I don't think I could have deleted anything accidentally.
2 and 3 could be the result of a virus, but would a virus really do #1.
And 4 is downright confusing.

Help?

That still leaves 1 (which has happened twice) and 2.


Is this profile damage, and your user account is using a different
folder than before ?

Paul

I don't know. The file structure looks like I remember it, but what I
guess I have to do is look on the copy of the partition to see if it
looks the same there. What a pain.

OT but related: I was searching for what I thought I had named one
profile , testsess, and I'm watching the directories fly by in the XP
search screen, and I have a root level directory called WINME where I
saved my entire HDD from a winme laptop. It's not that that's so
important but it seems to be an easy set of letters to notice as they
fly by, and they flew by at least 5 times with other directories in
between. I had assumed that search and backup routines might look
first at Documents and Settings, or whatever they think is important,
but after they look at the important stuff, I thought all those routines
would just"crawl" down one diretory after another, and since WINME was
nothing special, once it left that directory it would never come back

Yet it was there 5 times before I stopped the search.

What lesson should I take from that? .

micky wrote:
On Sat, 30 May 2015 20:34:10 -0400, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:
On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:22:52 -0400, micky
wrote:

On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:06:32 -0400, micky
wrote:

Someone is screwing with me.
,,,,
3) Then just now I noticed that something changed the setting in
Firefox, when opening the program, From: Bring up windows and tabs from
last time. TO Home Page. I don't know when this happened.
Well, I figured out this one. Firefox had a good system for Options but
they changed it to look like webpages, and they changed my option here.

4) And the file I dl'd successfully a couple hours ago, which crashes
during installation, I've tried to dl again, and the FF Downloads page
says it completed but it's not in the downloads folder, even though that
is still where FF says it puts it. So where did it go?
Same thing here. Though it still said Downloads,
it meant My Documents / Downloads, not C:\Downloads. So they had
changed it -- shame on them -- to this location they don't even describe
well -- double shame.
Well, it's possible something else happened. I have FF open, and I
clicked on a start-up icon for it, and the Profile manager opens up, and
all there is is the default. I used to have 3 profiles, none or one of
which was named default. All my stuff was in the other profiles.

I looked in Documents and Settings and it looks like I remember it, to
the best of my memory. I had been looking at it yesterday and earlier
today, but I don't think I could have deleted anything accidentally.
2 and 3 could be the result of a virus, but would a virus really do #1.
And 4 is downright confusing.

Help?
That still leaves 1 (which has happened twice) and 2.
Is this profile damage, and your user account is using a different
folder than before ?

Paul

I don't know. The file structure looks like I remember it, but what I
guess I have to do is look on the copy of the partition to see if it
looks the same there. What a pain.

OT but related: I was searching for what I thought I had named one
profile , testsess, and I'm watching the directories fly by in the XP
search screen, and I have a root level directory called WINME where I
saved my entire HDD from a winme laptop. It's not that that's so
important but it seems to be an easy set of letters to notice as they
fly by, and they flew by at least 5 times with other directories in
between. I had assumed that search and backup routines might look
first at Documents and Settings, or whatever they think is important,
but after they look at the important stuff, I thought all those routines
would just"crawl" down one diretory after another, and since WINME was
nothing special, once it left that directory it would never come back

Yet it was there 5 times before I stopped the search.

What lesson should I take from that? .

There are a couple ways you could deal with the file system.

A command like this, the output seems to be in alphabetical order

dir /B /S C:\ output.txt

You can use this to learn more about the various options to DIR.

dir /?

The other way to list things, is by file number.

nfi.exe C: output.txt

The file number might cause several visits to a directory
(nominally), because the files are being evaluated as such,
rather than "crawling" down directory paths. "NFI.exe"
is a utility available from Microsoft, as a separate
download from around the year 2000. It only works for
NTFS partitions.

So either way is possible.

And Windows searching can be very fast, if a developer
puts their mind to it. It's possible to read the $MFT
or the FAT in a couple of seconds, and work directly
on it. Whereas I don't think Windows itself does things
that way - likely in the interest of "respecting file
security settings". But that hasn't stopped third party
tool developers from doing a better job on search.
If your account belongs to the admin group, many
things are possible.

Paul

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
The other way to list things, is by file number.

nfi.exe C: output.txt

The file number might cause several visits to a directory
(nominally), because the files are being evaluated as such,
rather than "crawling" down directory paths. "NFI.exe"
is a utility available from Microsoft, as a separate
download from around the year 2000. It only works for
NTFS partitions.
[]
I can't think _why_ I'd want it, but it sounds useful: care to give any
pointer? These days I find going to the Microsoft website a depressing
experience ... (-:
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in he this is the war room!" (Dr. Strangelove)

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul writes:
[]
The other way to list things, is by file number.

nfi.exe C: output.txt

The file number might cause several visits to a directory
(nominally), because the files are being evaluated as such,
rather than "crawling" down directory paths. "NFI.exe"
is a utility available from Microsoft, as a separate
download from around the year 2000. It only works for
NTFS partitions.
[]
I can't think _why_ I'd want it, but it sounds useful: care to give any
pointer? These days I find going to the Microsoft website a depressing
experience ... (-:

The download link is on this page. OEM3 package.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/253066

You can navigate with 7ZIP and find the nfi.exe
in there and just extract it. Rather than installing
the whole thing or whatever.

It's a surprise when a link like that is still good.
Normally Microsoft would trash the page and "tell you
to buy Windows 8" or something :-)

Paul

On Sat, 30 May 2015 23:15:46 -0400, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:
On Sat, 30 May 2015 20:34:10 -0400, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:
On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:22:52 -0400, micky
wrote:

On Sat, 30 May 2015 18:06:32 -0400, micky
wrote:

Someone is screwing with me.
,,,,
3) Then just now I noticed that something changed the setting in
Firefox, when opening the program, From: Bring up windows and tabs from
last time. TO Home Page. I don't know when this happened.
Well, I figured out this one. Firefox had a good system for Options but
they changed it to look like webpages, and they changed my option here.

4) And the file I dl'd successfully a couple hours ago, which crashes
during installation, I've tried to dl again, and the FF Downloads page
says it completed but it's not in the downloads folder, even though that
is still where FF says it puts it. So where did it go?
Same thing here. Though it still said Downloads,
it meant My Documents / Downloads, not C:\Downloads. So they had
changed it -- shame on them -- to this location they don't even describe
well -- double shame.
Well, it's possible something else happened. I have FF open, and I
clicked on a start-up icon for it, and the Profile manager opens up, and
all there is is the default. I used to have 3 profiles, none or one of
which was named default. All my stuff was in the other profiles.

I looked in Documents and Settings and it looks like I remember it, to
the best of my memory. I had been looking at it yesterday and earlier
today, but I don't think I could have deleted anything accidentally.
2 and 3 could be the result of a virus, but would a virus really do #1.
And 4 is downright confusing.

Help?
That still leaves 1 (which has happened twice) and 2.
Is this profile damage, and your user account is using a different
folder than before ?

Paul

I don't know. The file structure looks like I remember it, but what I
guess I have to do is look on the copy of the partition to see if it
looks the same there. What a pain.

OT but related: I was searching for what I thought I had named one
profile , testsess, and I'm watching the directories fly by in the XP
search screen, and I have a root level directory called WINME where I
saved my entire HDD from a winme laptop. It's not that that's so
important but it seems to be an easy set of letters to notice as they
fly by, and they flew by at least 5 times with other directories in
between. I had assumed that search and backup routines might look
first at Documents and Settings, or whatever they think is important,
but after they look at the important stuff, I thought all those routines
would just"crawl" down one diretory after another, and since WINME was
nothing special, once it left that directory it would never come back

Yet it was there 5 times before I stopped the search.

What lesson should I take from that? .

There are a couple ways you could deal with the file system.

A command like this, the output seems to be in alphabetical order

dir /B /S C:\ output.txt

My understanding of DOS is that every way of running the DIR command
puts the files in some unnnatural order, like alphabetical. Even
without using the /o parameter.

When I got Norton DOS, 4DOS, and now TCC LE (all versions of the same
product) they have a subparameter u, which means unsorted, so dir /o:u
will give a list of files as they appear in the FAT (I think it is
called) or the equivalent in NTFS.

At first I thought this meant they were displayed in the order in which
they were saved until I thought about empty spaces in the middle which
could be filled by more recently saved files and/or their table entries.
Still, at least it displays in table order, I assume it is.

You can use this to learn more about the various options to DIR.

dir /?

The other way to list things, is by file number.

nfi.exe C: output.txt

I know about dir, as you can see, but didn't know about nfi.

The file number might cause several visits to a directory
(nominally), because the files are being evaluated as such,
rather than "crawling" down directory paths. "NFI.exe"
is a utility available from Microsoft, as a separate
download from around the year 2000. It only works for
NTFS partitions.

So either way is possible.

I should have said that the partition I was searching is FAT32. Created
when I was still using win98.

And Windows searching can be very fast, if a developer
puts their mind to it. It's possible to read the $MFT
or the FAT in a couple of seconds, and work directly
on it. Whereas I don't think Windows itself does things
that way - likely in the interest of "respecting file
security settings". But that hasn't stopped third party
tool developers from doing a better job on search.
If your account belongs to the admin group, many
things are possible.

Paul

I still don't see what system could allow going back to C:\winme 5 times
during the same search. Could it be going in physical order through
all the FAT32 fats?

micky wrote:


I still don't see what system could allow going back to C:\winme 5 times
during the same search. Could it be going in physical order through
all the FAT32 fats?

Sure.

If a developer was using recursive descent, then the "winme" part
would stay there during the descent. To have it break contact
with the winme path and come back, that's going to require
processing something in a non-natural order, like the order
the things were allocated in perhaps.

But if that were the case, surely you would see more than
five "winme" flash by. You'd see a ton of them.

I would point you at ProcMon, if I thought generating
a trace would shine any light on the process. But it cannot
tell us about the logic a program or process uses. It can
document the order of visits to clusters perhaps, but that's
not all that helpful for explaining the problem at hand
(identifying the algorithm used).

There is also more than one form of recursion. Something
a CS graduate would be well versed in, but I'm not. I know
there is "tail recursion" for example. Recursion is either
"lazy" or "elegant" depending on your point of view. It
can make a program simple, but at the expensive of the
execution time or resource usage, being worse than it
needs to be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursi...mputer_science)

*******

For a demonstration of making fast file lists, try this page.

http://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/file_lists/

Everything.exe -create-filelist output.txt C:\

I think the one test I tried, it might have taken two seconds.
It's about as fast as using the Ridgecrop FAT32formatter
to write a new FAT to a partition. As fast as that.

HTH,
Paul

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
There is also more than one form of recursion. Something
a CS graduate would be well versed in, but I'm not. I know
there is "tail recursion" for example. Recursion is either
"lazy" or "elegant" depending on your point of view. It
can make a program simple, but at the expensive of the
execution time or resource usage, being worse than it
needs to be.
[]
My favourite line of all time on the subject was in the glossary of
terms in a textbook on HP BASIC for their computers (before PCs - IIRR
the 9800 series, or something like that). The entry was:

recursion; see recursion

(or it might have been recursive).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Parkinson: "What caused your conversion to women - was it the love of a good
one?" George Melly: "No the love of several bad ones" (Lizbuff in UMRA
'01-4-25)

In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul writes:
[]
The other way to list things, is by file number.

nfi.exe C: output.txt
[]
I can't think _why_ I'd want it, but it sounds useful: care to give
any pointer? These days I find going to the Microsoft website a
depressing experience ... (-:

The download link is on this page. OEM3 package.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/253066

You can navigate with 7ZIP and find the nfi.exe
in there and just extract it. Rather than installing
the whole thing or whatever.

Thanks.

It's a surprise when a link like that is still good.
Normally Microsoft would trash the page and "tell you
to buy Windows 8" or something :-)

Paul

Yes, that one seems even to predate XP.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Parkinson: "What caused your conversion to women - was it the love of a good
one?" George Melly: "No the love of several bad ones" (Lizbuff in UMRA
'01-4-25)

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" writes:

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
There is also more than one form of recursion. Something
a CS graduate would be well versed in, but I'm not. I know
there is "tail recursion" for example. Recursion is either
"lazy" or "elegant" depending on your point of view. It
can make a program simple, but at the expensive of the
execution time or resource usage, being worse than it
needs to be.

It isn't really that there's more than one form of recursion, it's that
there are circumstances that allow for some optimization.

Tail recursion, to take your example, isn't really a different form of
recursion, it's just the special case where the recursive call is the
very last thing the function does before its return instruction. A tail
recursive call can be optimized (given a sufficiently smart compiler) by
not creating a new stack frame at all -- basically, translating it to a
while loop.

[]
My favourite line of all time on the subject was in the glossary of
terms in a textbook on HP BASIC for their computers (before PCs - IIRR
the 9800 series, or something like that). The entry was:

recursion; see recursion

(or it might have been recursive).

I had a textbook 'way back when that had

....
daisy chain: see recursion
....
recursion: see recursive function
....
recursive procedu see daisy chain
....

hidden away in the index. I don't remember which one it was now...