Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator V6.1 Basic vs NTI CD & DVD Maker Gold V6

Benefits

Benefits

Benefits

Benefits

Benefits

Benefits

Benefits

The ASI Tech Support and Production departments have been long time users of Ultra-X Professional PC Diagnostic Tools. QuickTech is the software of choice for many computer shops due to it's thorough diagnostics and it's ease of use.QuickTech is available in Professional and Personal editions as well as various hardware specific applications.

The procedure for using QuickTech Pro in Burn-In mode is outlined below.

First, check all the connections on the board, like hard drive cable, floppy cable, CD-ROM cable and all of the power cables to make sure that they are securely fastened to the motherboard. Insert the QuickTech disk in the floppy drive and boot from the disk.
 

	At the main menu screen (Fig. 1) you may be shown any errors already detected on the system that you are testing. In this case, the notebook that we were running this test on was reporting a voltage error.  From the Menu Screen, go to the MIS (Miscellaneous) (Fig. 2), then BURN IN mode , Options Tab (>Enter).  Select Tests, (Fig. 3) (> Enter) then you will see an arrow pointing to the first line item. If you want to this item then (>Enter) and it will change it from NO to YES.  If you don't want to test an item then press ESC key or the arrow down key and it will skip to the next one on the item line.
(Fig. 1)		(Fig. 2)

Once you have select all the options you want the software to test it will go to the next options tab. Set Loop Count (Fig. 5) enter and it will have two options, one is LOOPS, the other one HOURS. On Loops Counts you may select from 1-255 counts and on the Hours it will goes from 1-255 hours. After you have selected either the Loops or the Hours you may go to the Toggle Reset / Beeps (> Enter).  This option will let you to enable the reset and beeps, so if the test finds an error it will beep. The test can also reset after a specific amount of time, or number of loops to find errors that may occur during bootup or reset cycles.

(Fig. 3)

After setting all of you hardware options and testing choices, you can run the software to begin testing the hardware. You can save the selected test script and then run it automatically on boot.  Once the script is saved then you can use this disk to test other systems.  If any errors are detected during the testing procedure, the software will stop the test on that error and it will beep one time to alert you to the problem.

(Fig. 4)

During the setup process, you can also manually select hardware to be tested individually and not test components that are known good on your system. For example you can run tests on the hard drives, or the video without also testing the CPU, RAM, COM ports, etc.

More screenshots:

QuickTech Products can be purchased online through the Ultra-X website located at http://www.uxd.com.

CL50: 20488 (14"), 22406 (15")

CL51: 23060 (14"), 23061 (15")

Let's take a look at the enemy that we have faced in the past few weeks:

Blaster!

Virus: W32.Blaster.Worm (a.k.a. Lovsan.Worm) Threat Category 4 - This worm was discovered on August 11th, 2003 and is currently still in the wild. Although most anti-virus programs have been updated to eliminate the threat, many machines around the country still remain unprotected and serve as breeding grounds for this type of worm.

Who it affects: Windows 2000 and Windows XP Users

Effects: Causes systems to crash randomly; Performs DOS attacks on windowsupdate.com; opens security hole in PC allowing an attacker to issue remote commands to the infected system.

Removal: Symantec has made available a free removal tool for this Worm. The tool can be found here: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.removal.tool.html

Prevention: Anti-Virus Software which is updated regularly, Microsoft Windows updates done regularly.

Sobig!

Virus: W32.Sobig.F@mm (a.k.a. So Big) Threat Category 4 - This Worm was discovered on August 18th, 2003 and is still currently in the wild. This worm de-activates on September 10th, 2003 and the last day the worm will spread is September 9th, 2003. The Anti-Virus companies are speculating that this indicates that a new worm of the same type will be introduced into the wild on September 10th or 11th, 2003. The de-activation only applies to the mass-mailing portion of this worm. Infected computers will still be subject to infection by the remaining active sections.

Who it affects: Windows XP, 2000, NT, Me, 98, 95 users.

Effects: Sends E-mails to addresses collected from files with the following extensions: .wab, .dbx, .htm, .html, .eml, .txt; May release confidential information such as passwords and system information

Removal: Symantec has made available a free removal tool for this worm. The tool can be found here: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.sobig.f@mm.removal.tool.html

Prevention: Anti-Virus Software which is updated regularly, Microsoft Windows updates done regularly.

As you can see, the best way to prevent infection from Virus programs is to make sure to keep your Anti-Virus software running and updated at all times. The operating system on your PC also needs to be maintained and can be easily updated by going to www.windowsupdate.com. Windows XP features automatic updates which will flash an icon in your system tray when an update has been downloaded and is ready to install. This is a great feature in case you become distracted and forget to download the updates on your own. We highly recommend leaving this feature enabled as it comes from Microsoft.

More information on current Virus and Security issues: http://www.cert.org/