Linux on a USB stick

For the last couple of months I have been playing with a variety of Linux distros, but, they are running on a USB memory stick.  I found a nice program UNETBOOTIN that allows me to download and then install on the memory stick a number of Linux distros. You have the option of having the progam download the ISO itself or you can point it to the ISO image on your machine.  The program does everything else for you and at the end you have a bootable Linux.

I find this tool to be extremely useful as I can quickly test out a new distro and not waste CDs if the distro does not meet my needs.  I have two sticks right now with Linux.  The first stick for now is SABAYON and the 2nd will be for a security and recovery distro.  I need the second stick as friends and neighbors have problems with viruses, trojans and spyware getting on their machines and I figure a secure Linux distro that can help me clean this up will be very useful.

Looking to dual boot the laptop

I am still checking out the various Linux distributions for making my laptop into a dual boot machine.  I am running Windows 7 (64 bit) and I am wanting a Linux distro that is also 64 bit so it will take advantage of all of my memory.  I had PCLinux on the machine before, but, it is a 32 bit version and was limited to 2 gigs of memory (I have 4).  I want dual boot as I still have software (taxes) that is Windows only.

I have tried a lot of distros and a few of them either won't boot (kernel panic or graphic lookup) and they are automatically out of the running.  I want something that works right out of the box without me having to manually edit config files.  Part of the distros also now support my wireless network card and that is a huge bonus.  The only thing I cannot see on the 'install' options are how do you set up the partition so that the current windows is still there, but, I can carve a portion out for Linux.  If anyone has a good and simple instruction for this it would be appreciated.  I really want Linux back on my machine so I can get back to using my machine rather than borrow my wife's machine for mail and photo editing.  Once that get stable I will then convert my daughter's machine to dual boot so that we all have Linux up and running.

Windows and a royal pain removing a trojan

I had to remove 'System Security' trojan from Jane's friend again.  We are not totally sure how it keeps getting back on after I remove it.  This is a royal pain of a program to remove as it seems to keep getting back on when they visit some site somewhere.  The first two times it was fairly easy to remove, but, this one mutated and rather than a series of numbers for the directory name and/or program name its a random series of characters for the directory and program name.  I found it by using a program that showed me what was starting up and when I saw that strange directory and program I knew it was the problem.

After removing the program and directory I set up two user profiles without admin rights and rebooted the machine.  The machine rebooted without a problem and we didn't have that crapware running on the machine.

You can read more at the wiki site about this program and how to remove it.

A few observations if you run windows:

1. Keep your virus software and trojan scanners up-to-date.
2. Keep you machine fully patched.
3. Don't blindly download and install programs.  Do your homework and check it out before installing.
4. Do not use the 'ADMIN' account.  Create a normal user with no rights to add/change/delete programs.
5. Keep a good set of backups and backup on a regular basis.

I now have an USB stick with a number of tools that helps me look for the crap or just do cleanups and check for program updates.

1. Sypbot Search & destory
2. Malwarebytes anti-malware
3. CCleaner
4. Secunia PSI

There are probably other good ones, but, I like these as they work for me.