Furor over PayPal shutting out Wikileaks

Some people online are expressing outrage that PayPal has banned Wikileaks from receiving donations through the service.   I say BFD.  F wikileaks.  They're putting people's lives at risk, and damaging diplomatic relations around the world.

Julian Assange is being praised as some sort of hero.  He's not.

AVG Update causes Reboot Loop

I had a client call me and describe a situation in which AVG said it needed to reboot in order to install an update. He allowed it, and it continued to request a reboot. Endlessly. I walked him through system restore, and it seemed to work - then happened again about 20 minutes later. I told him I'd have to come out and look at it.

So I was about to go to sleep, and I hopped to my main computer to synchronize my Outlook with MobileMe one last time for the day. I wiggle the mouse and login, and the first thing I saw was an AVG prompt requesting a restart. I allowed it, and sat there waiting for the system to start up again.

Instead of my desktop, I was greeted with a "Startup Repair" window. :( I tried to use System Restore, and for whatever reason, IT CRASHED. This was not good.

I went over to one of my other machines, and discovered that other people have experienced the same issue. After some digging, I found this method to repair the problem:

1. Using Startup Repair, invoke a Command Prompt.
2. Navigate to "C:\Program Files (X86)\AVG\AVG10"
3. Type "rename *.exe *.bak" and hit ENTER
4. Type exit
5. Exit Startup Repair
6. Windows will begin rebooting, and eventually present a screen offering two choices - "Startup Repair" or "Start Normally". Choose START NORMALLY.
7. Windows *should* boot normally, with one important difference. AVG isn't running.
8. Go to the control panel and uninstall AVG.
9. Once AVG is uninstalled, the system will need to reboot again.
10. As Windows starts up, AVG will launch a browser window requesting a short survey as to why you uninstalled it. Let them know what happened.
11. You can either reinstall AVG Free (it looks like the offending update has been pulled) or use another program, such as Microsoft Security Essentials.
12. I'm going to reinstall AVG free, as it's been a fine program for years. Every Anti-Virus program has had occasional problems with false positives, etc. I'll give them another chance. I ended up going with Microsoft Security Essentials, which to date has been great.

NO RESPONSIBILITY CAN BE ASSUMED IF THE ABOVE METHOD DOES NOT WORK FOR YOU, IF IT BORKS YOUR COMPUTER, OR IF YOU SUDDENLY HAVE OTHER PROBLEMS. GOOD LUCK