MadHatter - 28-11-2009 at 20:12
As many of you have noticed, the FTP is down for the moment. The drive is being defragged
on another computer. I do this every 6 months to maintain efficiency. This is a painfully slow task, so I ask for your patience in this matter.
Thank You !
Eclectic - 29-11-2009 at 09:04
Might be faster to do a HD to HD backup which would defrag at the same time....
How big is the entire FTP? Any possibility of getting a full DVD or HD backup of the entire thing?
JohnWW - 29-11-2009 at 14:40
Yes, you should DEFINITELY have the hard drive or drives of the FTP duplicated and then the duplicates updated periodically, and preferably a
triplicate stored off-site in a secret location to guard against lost by fire or theft or the activities of the Copyright Gestapo.
Defragging Complete
MadHatter - 30-11-2009 at 07:55
This took over 24 hours because the drive itself is 1 TB in size and the FTP on it is nearly 500 GB.
I'll need another 1 TB drive for backups as the other drives are too small to accommodate the FTP.
Thanks for your patience !
New Accounts Created
MadHatter - 22-12-2009 at 05:30
I was sent home from work this morning due to being diagnosed with bronchitis(hospital) so
I had the opportunity to create new FTP accounts. Sorry for the delay.
Virus
MadHatter - 22-1-2010 at 16:50
The computer was infected with the "AntiVirus Live" extortionware when I got home about an
hour ago. I don't know how much this interfered with FileZilla server but I clobbered the evil beast and restarted the server. Fucking wankers never
stop trying ! My apologies for the inconvenience.
Yet Another Virus
MadHatter - 26-1-2010 at 13:29
The virus attacks continued though this morning. The latest virus "Internet Security 2010" was
finally removed after 2 hours of work. Another, even more sophisticated piece of extortionware.
I'm trying to figure out how these things are getting through the firewall.
Polverone - 26-1-2010 at 13:45
Firewalls protect against self-propagating software. They generally don't protect against software exploits that require the victim to visit a web
page or open a document. Web pages, PDF files, Flash videos -- there are many vectors for malware to enter your system. Maybe you want to set up
VirtualBox with a virtualized Windows copy in it.
If the attacks are coming through the web, doing all your browsing in the virtualized system will contain their effects. Some malware even refuses to
run inside a VM because it thinks it's being dissected by security researchers. For the stuff that does run, you can easily restore your VM to a
pristine snapshot and be rid of the crap in two minutes.
Finally, there's another disturbing possibility: if you are seeing malware with no obvious infection vector, you may be infected with something nasty,
stealthy, and hard-to-remove that keeps installing more obvious malware in the background.
NVGTS.SYS
MadHatter - 8-2-2010 at 15:04
The computer hosting the FTP crashed hard Friday night. Instead of booting it tells me
that the NVGTS.SYS file is corrupted or missing. I had gone through several virus removals.
A check on the net reveals that this driver file controls SATA drives If I'm reading it
correctly. No system backup disk came with the computer and attempts at recovery
always ask for a CD/DVD. There was a D:\RECOVERY folder on the computer but I have
no way of getting to it. Any suggestions ?
Polverone - 8-2-2010 at 15:18
Do you have a second computer or an external hard drive that you can copy the data to? I presume you at least have a second computer since you're able
to post. You should be able to download a Linux recovery image, burn it to CD, and boot the ailing machine from that. You can then get at least read
access to the stored files and copy them somewhere safe, either to an external hard drive or over the network. Don't try to fix anything on the disk
until you've recovered the files or determined that they are beyond recovery. If you try to fix it first you may end up permanently losing files that
were salvageable. You may be facing a failing hard drive instead of malicious software, and in that case it's important to get the data transferred
soon.
I'll let others give advice on how the Windows installation itself may be recovered, since I am less knowledgeable about that.
Linux
MadHatter - 8-2-2010 at 15:26
Polverone, I do have a second, but considerably older computer. It's actually much
faster. I don't know anything about Linux. If I could get to DOS it might be easier for me
considering the FTP(at 1 terabyte) has more than enough room on it to accomodate the
files on the main drive. I'll keep you posted. Any suggestion is warmly welcomed.
blazter - 8-2-2010 at 15:42
Depending on the stats of the older computer, you may be able to put a newer linux distro on it that will be able to do most things graphically,
probably easier than windows. Look into the stats required for an ubuntu install or if that won't work try xubuntu. User accounts will probably be
hosed, depending on how your current ftpd stores them.
Polverone - 8-2-2010 at 18:12
Is there any important data saved on the main drive, or is it all on the FTP drive? If there are no documents that you need to recover from the main
drive I would just get a Windows CD and try to repair/reinstall as necessary from it rather than following my cautious earlier advice.
Many computers are shipped from manufacturers without recovery disks nowadays. They instead keep recovery data on a separate partition and you're
expected to burn a DVD from that partition yourself for emergencies. Or, in some cases, you'll have the option to boot off the secondary partition
from e.g. the Vista bootloader. It sounds like you don't have that secondary-boot option though, otherwise you would have tried it already.
I gladly use Linux almost exclusively but I will humbly contradict blazter's suggestion. Replacing the Windows installation with Linux will just swap
one problem for another if you are not accustomed to the environment.
Back To Old Computer
MadHatter - 9-2-2010 at 13:47
Polverone, there is nothing important on the other computer. I had some porn
but that's about all. The FTP is reconnected to the older computer for the time being.
The problem is that I cannot extract the userid/password file at the moment. I booted up
the newer machine from a floppy and all it recognizes is the recovery partition. Some
members who requested access will have to do it again. The FTP drive was never in question.
It's a 1 terabyte external drive and wasn't affected. I got the newer computer to boot up
in DOS but it only recognizes the recovervy drive. It's pissing me off to be sure.
To all FTP members, please be patient until I can straighten out this mess.
Ephoton - 20-2-2010 at 11:33
porn you lost the porn nooooooo 
sorry lefty it was your turn tonight 
truly though its great to be a guy 
computers suck realy thanx hatter.
Trouble re-establishing FTP
MadHatter - 17-3-2010 at 13:44
The FTP is back on the newer computer. I reloaded the entire operating system because
it refused to repair the SATA drivers and I got nowhere. I'm on a computer at work and can't
access the server. This despite the firewall being off and no router tied to the machine.
It'll take time to figure what the hell is going on. Please be patient.
03/18 Follow-up: NVIDIA struck again ! I had to retrieve drivers from their website
for some of the devices in the computer(not SATA). It also dropped in Apache Server
which I found in the task manager. A little research on the net revealed that Apache
can conflict with FileZilla. I bounced it off the hard drive. I stopped in work and hit
the FTP without a hitch. Problem solved !
[Edited on 2010/3/18 by MadHatter]