Someone has asked me to see if I can get Selenium working in anger over the next week, a good challenge.

I think they use it on Windows but I’ve read that it is a plug-in for Firefox and therefore I assumed only works on Firefox. No doubt that will become clear soon. I downloaded Selenium RC and installed it. Got its java server working, well it fired up a couple of things and is sitting there waiting for something to happen. I’m supposed to be using Perl but as I’ve found some idiot notes on checking whether the Selenium stands up using Python, then that’s what I tried. Downloaded Python and installed it. Copied some python code into a file, changed the path to include the Selenium python client, started the python gui, opened my test .py file and ran the critter. Of course I get an error message that it’s expecting an indented block. Does it really mean that it wants indented code. I can indent some code but that probably isn’t the problem and I’ll probably end up messing with this for too long and I’m supposed to be using Perl so I’ll stop playing with python.

Tried to download Active Perl to my XP PC but that failed to download by timing out so tried it on Vista and that failed as well. Eventually got it via a torrent.

I got a horrible virus on XP and even Microsoft’s Onecare didn’t trap it. The virus was delivered via an unequested pdf file. It displayed a message that I had some security problems and wanted me to use their virus checker, which popped up from nowhere. I tried using Task Manager to stop it running, but I got a message about a corrupted file. Tried running a few other things and they all reported corrupt files. Also lost my internet connection. Nothing worked. Don’t panic (Why not? Sounds like a good strategy to me. Ed). Rebooted into safe mode and restored back a day and everything was OK.

Some people that don’t know how to deal with these issues probably do panic and probably mindlessly thrash about for several days trying to sort it out and talk to all sorts of experts who give them all kinds of conflicting advice and eventually they give up, bin the PC and buy a new one. There must be money to be made fixing these problems.

Got my result for my ISEB Intermediate exam and I passed it with only two incorrect answers (Who’d you pay to get that result? Ed).

I have a laptop I use for ‘experimenting’ with. As I have no essential data on there I can web about to my hearts content. And I mean some dodgy content here.

Thought I’d see if I could get some serial numbers and activation codes, ahem, from some dodgy sites. In the past I have had some success with these trawls. Not the other night though. Hell. Tried loads of them and none of them worked, though AVG anti virus did trap about 10 virus’s which I was grateful for, but some spyware – Spy Sheriff – did manage to get itself loaded. I’m not that bothered by these horrid little things as I have a recovery disk so that within 10 minutes I can be back to where I was before any kind of infection.

The AVG anti virus trapped something called secure32.dll so I consigned that to a bin somewhere but that file was used by the Spy Sheriff spyware that did get loaded. Heaven knows what it would have done. When I next started Internet Explorer 7 I got an error message that the secure32.dll file was missing and then IE just stalls. Proof that the Spy Sheriff was trying to run.

I unloaded IE and restarted it and it started OK displaying my 4 home pages.  Tried to uninstall Spy Sheriff via ‘Add or Remove Programs’ and Windows couldn’t even see it. Ran Ad-Aware and that found a few bits and pieces in the 5 minute run, but not the Sheriff. Ran the free version of Spybot Search and Destroy which thrashed about for an hour and found 62 of the little critters. Let S&D remove them, and lord knows what else.

Rebooted and the laptop ran seriously slow. Ran SFC and that ran slow and took about 2 hours. When I run SFC on my desktop PC almost immediately I need to insert the XP disk so it can repair any damaged and missing files. When I run SFC on the laptop, twice now, it doesn’t ask for the XP disk to be inserted in the drive. That’s either because XP is in perfect condition, unlikely, or more likely there’s a hidden partition on the drive containing recovery files where SFC is getting them from.

Anyway SFC finally completed and I rebooted. Oh no I didn’t. It sat there ‘saving settings’ for an hour or so. Too many settings to save or what. Switched off. Enough. Wonder if it’ll start tonight. Its great having a machine you can do this stuff with and not have to worry.

Quote of the day

‘People want economy and they will pay any price to get it’ Lee Iacocca (1924-)

Phew. Finally got rid of the darn virus, I think.

Yesterday, with the dodgy version of XP Pro installed, everything was running like tickety-boo, till I ran PC Tools AntiVirus which found the beloved thing hiding somewhere, but still didn’t know how to get rid of it. I clicked on some control for more information and was displayed the path to it. Tried to delete it but I was told it was in use by an application.

It seems that just by displaying its path it was enough for the virus to invoke itself as almost immedialely the PC slowed to a crawl and there was a hell of a lot of hard disc activity going on, and I wasn’t actually doing anything. Started to reboot, which took at least 5 minutes, and when back up ran a couple of virus checkers and left it to chugg.

When I got back home later that day, there it was in all its glory the bluescreen of death. Ho-bloody-hum. Ran the PC’s recovery option, F10 at boot, which promised to restore without losing data, which was good. When it had finally finished and rebooted, XP wouldn’t start, but instead displayed an error message that it was upset by the license or serial number. Probably because the number it was recovering from, as originally on the PC, was different to the hooky XP Pro number. Re-ran XP Pro which installed ok and started up ok. This time I saw all the desktop icons that I remember from when I originally bought the machine, obviously set up from the recovery session.

The virus was still there but not running. Started in Safe Mode to try and delete the virus but a whole lot of folders were not viewable including those with the virus. How convenient. Re started PC in Safe Mode Command prompt. This time, though the same folders were not viewable from the prompt was I able to change directory to them and eventually see the virus and delete it. Job done.

Well it will be if I haven’t been blue-screened in the next week.

Quote of the day:

‘If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt’ Dean Martin (1917-1995)