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Goodbye Acronis True Image

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I’m switching to Macrium Reflect Free and Clonezilla (free too).
Ditching Acronis has been coming for a while. Over the last couple of years I have increasingly heard from users where Acronis True Image has failed them. Over the last year I’ve encountered issues on numerous occasions. The only thing saving me is I have dozens of full backups. Problems have included freezing during restore and multiple USB device issues.
*note – I only backup and restore offline using bootable media, old habits…
Although I will be using both Macrium Reflect Free and Clonezilla I will be recommending Macrium Reflect Free to the masses. Macrium Reflect Free is fast and easy to use. It provides a way to easily make a Windows PE based bootable CD or USB drive customized to your machine. It contains everything the majority of users could want.
Clonezilla is slower than Macrium but will image any and everything. Having no GUI, non-Geeks my be intimidated. Having said that, if you just follow the on screen instructions you should be fine.
Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition is available. As of this writing I know the linked page says “coming soon” but you end up downloading v7.0.2199.

CCleaner Compromised

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“For a period of time, the legitimate signed version of CCleaner 5.33 being distributed by Avast also contained a multi-stage malware payload that rode on top of the installation of CCleaner… During the installation of CCleaner 5.33, the 32-bit CCleaner binary that was included also contained a malicious payload that featured a Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) as well as hardcoded Command and Control (C2) functionality. We confirmed that this malicious version of CCleaner was being hosted directly on CCleaner’s download server as recently as September 11, 2017.”
[Read more…] about CCleaner Compromised

Software I Use

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A while back someone asked me to do a freeware guide for Windows 10 like I have for other Windows operating systems. My heart just hasn’t been in it. While there is excellent free software out there in many cases you get what you pay for. I’m tired of talking about second best software I don’t use. So below is a list of the software I have installed across the 8 PC’s I have scattered across my house.
[Read more…] about Software I Use

Friday Random Stuff

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It’s hot!

Not much going on out there. Unless you are a tech reporter that thinks anyone else cares what the next major Windows 10 edition is called.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4.3 Released.
Bunch of new tweaks. Click the [Read more…] link at the bottom of this post for full changelog.
Download

Other Updated Software
– Acronis Disk Director 12 build 3297. Release notes (log into account to download)
– paint.net 4.0.17

[Read more…] about Friday Random Stuff

A Few Cool Tools Updated

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Sysinternals Tools Updated
Among the ones updated are TweakHound favs:
Autoruns v13.71
This update to Autoruns, a comprehensive autostart execution point manager, adds Microsoft HTML Application Host (mshta.exe) as hosting image so it displays the hosted image details, and now doesn’t apply filters to hosting images.
Process Monitor v3.33
Procmon v3.33 includes bug fixes for destructive event filtering and is signed with certificate installed in the Win7 trusted roots store.
Process Explorer v16.21
This Process Explorer release includes a fix for an intermittent bug in the Virus Total scanning logic, and is signed with Win7 RTM-compatible certificate.

CCleaner 5.30
v5.30.6063 (16 May 2017)
– Improved Edge Cookie cleaning
– Updated Internet Explorer 10 and 11 History cleaning
– Updated Thunderbird 52 History cleaning
– Updated Windows Explorer MRU Cache cleaning
– Improved SSD detection algorithm
– Optimized Update Checking process
– Minor GUI improvements
– Minor bug fixes