Microsoft Critical Security Update (XP/Vista)

Microsoft has released a critical security update to XP and Vista on October 23, 2008.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx


Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution

Disable rtvscan.exe on Windows?

If you have symantec anti-virus installed on your windows box, invariably the "rtvscan.exe" process will be running all the time. You may see that your applications run slower and this rtvscan process is hogging a lot of the memory.

I want to disable rtvscan.exe, how do I do it?
Unfortunately, the answer lies in uninstalling Symantec and (maybe) get another anti-virus software. But do not despair. You can disable it temporarily and repeat the process often.

To disable this service, do this disable rtvscan.exe. This will allow you to perform your normal operations on your windows box, when resources become difficult.

Now that you have learnt to disable the process that takes a lot of resources on your windows laptop, I do suggest reading Top ten security menaces of 2008.

If you have wmplayer.exe in your task manager, then do check this.

Local DNS Modifications on Windows

Original Location: http://blog.kowalczyk.info/kb/local-dns-modifications-on-windows---etc-hosts-equivalent-.html

On Unix, /etc/hosts file contains mappings between an IP address and a name of the host. It overrides mappings from DNS. Windows has an equivalent of this file: c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (at least that's the name on Windows XP).

Here's the simplest mapping from 127.0.0.1 to localhost and a.test.cc names:

127.0.0.1 localhost a.test.cc