E-Virus (Part II): Maybe your PC is infected by an e-virus... how to verify its presence?

Depending upon the operation level of the PC you can work in various ways:

A) You can start the PC and enter your username and password.

In this case you can use some tools:

1) Using the free tool GMER you can both see if a rootkit is present, and disable or remove the indicted service / process (E-virus) from the memory and from the next boot starting process. To recognize the services / processes infected by E-viruses might be useful to look for files with very odd names (eg: rytrewxz.dll). GMER usually marks them in red and / or specifies the (*** hidden ***) attribute which means "file hidden to the user." In case that the message: "WARNING! GMER has found system modification, Which Might Have Been Caused by ROOTKIT activity. Do you want to fully scan your system? " appears, it is evident that GMER has identified a rootkit in the system and ask to start the full scan of your PC.

2) If you simultaneously press the keys CTRL + ALT + DEL and access to the Windows Task Manager you can see all the processes active in the PC memory and identify those that have random names such as those cited in case (1), possibly you can kill ("terminate") them, by temporarily removing them  from the memory.

3) Using the free tool McAfee Stinger you can identify and remove the most common e-VIRUSES. This is an automatic procedure since the tool detects both infections in place (memory files), and infected tracks and files in the analyzed hard drive. The tool shows which kind of many "problems" it could identify and provides eith their eradication.

4) Using the free tool Prevx you can identify both a rootkit either that kind of insidious virus that is installed in the MBR (Master Boot Record) of the hard disk. The free version detects and lists all the E-viruses present in the system but it does not eliminate them. However, it may be useful to detect the name of E-virus that infected your PC or the kind of epidemic in progress.

5) The free service OpenDNS for malware detection is totally automatic. When it detects a suspicious activity, the message  "Malware / Botnet Activity Detected" appears on the control panel of OpenDNS. 

6) Using the free software "Bitdefender 60-Second Virus Scanner" that precisely in 60 seconds performs a scan of your PC to check for viruses in memory or in "sensitive" areas of the Operating System. It uses cloud technology so you need an internet connection. 


B) If it is NOT possible to boot the system. 
In this case we can use some of the tools described in the following study; 
E-Virus (Part III): I have a PC infected! Now as I clean it?


Insights: 
E-Virus (part I) How to recognize the symptoms of a E-FLU or if your PC has got an E-VIRUS?

FreeNAS - How to create a network drive free

FreeNAS is a free Linux distribution (specifically is FreeBSD) with which you can transform an old PC into a network drive. For the numerous security features available to you this is more properly a Network Attached Storage (NAS) so it can be used in business.

http://freenas.org/

FreeNAS supports the following file systems NTFS (using NTFS-3G), Ext2, Ext3, ZFS, FAT16, FAT32, UFS and UFS2. Are possible installations with iSCSI and RAID.
The advantage you have with this distribution (in addition to giving a second life to older PCs) is the ease of expansion of hardware features. For example, you can easily increase the capacity of the disks (by adding new hard disk on your PC) or speed of access to the LAN (replacing the 100 Mbit network card with a 1000-Mbit or more), or simply the ease of maintenance (if something fails it is easy to replace it, as they are all standard components and cheap).
Currently the version 8 is coming out. That promises further improvements! As soon as possible I will try to test it!

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: 

For years I use different PCs with different configurations transformed into FreeNAS, never having encountered any particular problems (in versions 6 and 7). In some cases they are "virtualized" or are virtual PCs (VMware FreeNAS).

See also: NAS4Free: the heir of FreeNAS 0.7, an Open Source Network Disk

STICKIES: notes and colors on desktop

Stickies is a free utility with which you can write reminders on your desktop (the equivalent of colored slip of paper and sticky going to attack anywhere).

Among the notable features the ability to point out: 

1) use different colors for each "package". 

2) use different fonts, sizes, font styles. 

3) store, discard, retrieve, export the package. 

4) include an alarm reminder to show only when appropriate.

5) insert images. 

6) customize the "themes" or "skin" of the leaflets. 

But the feature I like best is the ability to send reminders to other users connected to the same LAN. From the book of STIKIES you can choose to which and to how many users send reminders (with confirmation of receipt).Also you can update in real time the shared address book for all users stickies on the internal network. This enables some scenarios in companies with very large offices or arranged on different floors. For example: "I remember a meeting with my colleague in an office which is 3 floors below me and that is currently busy on the phone? Well then I send him a reminder using stickies!" 

Another feature allows you to send reminders by email. 

Update: 17-10-2014: Stickies version 8.0b add these new features:

• Images can be inserted into text stickies
• Stacks for desktop stickies
• Friendly name hyperlinks
• Periodic automatic full backups
• Properties dialog added for all stickies in all categories
• Screen grab directly to an image sticky
• Skin browser dialog
• Stored sticky category icons
• Image undo levels can be configured
• Restore from backup
• 'Solo' a sticky to work with just that one
• Option to offset screen position of new stickies to prevent overlap
• New image editing operations: rotate, greyscale, invert, flip, mirror, border, blur, jitter, flood fill, border
• Configurable tab stops
• Feature to move data file location
• Save image stickies as JPG
• Show recurring parent
• Default note content files for text and image notes

[LINK] Stickies

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:

I use this software since version 5 (now we are at 7.1a), I'm excited and I think it useful to write reminders for myself and for other office users.

In one company than I knowm it is used "heavy" side by side with the utility "sticky server" that manages the shared address book for all users on the LAN.