Any Computer Savvy People That Can Answer A Question?

[Siz]

To derail this thread (hoping that the original question has been answered satisfactorily), I wondered if any of you can help me decide what to do with my dying PC.

I have a 7 yr old Dell in which the HD is crumbling. I'm getting BSOD most days. I'm pretty sure it's hardware, not software as I've reinstalled windows (XP3) and most other applications. Faults and corrupt files pop up anywhere and everywhere. It's such a chore to reinstall all of my software and settings and it'd take me several days to do. What I'd really like to do is clone the HD onto a new unit and replace the old.

How do I go about this? Any other thoughts or comments?

[The Magic Pudding]

There is a free version of Acronis (was last time I looked) for those with either a Seagate/Maxtor or Western Digital drive.  It should work if you have two drives and only one is the qualifying brand.  They were available from the Seagate or Western Digital sites.  Seagate call theirs Disc Wizard.

Hard drives have doubled in price since flooding in Asia a couple of months ago.
Avoid green drives unless using for external storage.
Hitachi had been the best value 7200 RPM drives for a while, people have their biases though, I haven't bought any since the market went crazy.

[xSilverPhinx]

This one's about internet security, and it happened a few days ago, though just on one site, YouTube.

https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95617&topic=14666&ctx=topic

The red padlock icon appeared with the crossed out https on my YouTube channel page. (Just now it's gone, though, just after I started looking these things up).

alert icon red https    The site uses SSL, but Google Chrome has detected either high-risk insecure content on the page or problems with the site's certificate. Don't enter sensitive information on this page. Invalid certificate or other serious https issues could indicate that someone is attempting to tamper with your connection to the site.

So...what is the malicious malware doing? I don't type in sensitive information, no personal details, credit card info etc. I'm changing passwords. Does it just collect info or something more sinister? I have legitimate concerns over this, because I've been targeted by criminals before.

Any help would be appreciated.

There is no direct indication of malware (the type that can be downloaded to your computer).  However, this message does indicate that either the SSL Security Certificate missing/outdated/compromised, or it indicates there is something not quite right about the SSL protocol being used to communicate with the website, or...there is something about the SSL page coding itself that suggests that it may have been tampered with in order to produce a malicious result.  In any case, don't enter sensitive information on this page until the problem is resolved (i.e., the SSL Session is established without warning).  However, I can't see that there would be any harm in just visiting the page - just don't enter any information.

Hope this helps.

It does, thanks for all the answers so far

I just find it odd that it's YouTube - not exactly a place that anybody with half a brain would type sensitive information such as credit card number or other personal details into. ??? Another thing that's odd is after continuously displaying that indicative padlock icon, just as I was looking up info on what to do and how to solve it, it disappeared and went back to normal. It hasn't come back since, so either it's gone or they've disguised it. ???

I may be sounding paraoid, but like I said, I've been targetted by criminals before...

[Stevil]

It does, thanks for all the answers so far

I just find it odd that it's YouTube - not exactly a place that anybody with half a brain would type sensitive information such as credit card number or other personal details into. ??? Another thing that's odd is after continuously displaying that indicative padlock icon, just as I was looking up info on what to do and how to solve it, it disappeared and went back to normal. It hasn't come back since, so either it's gone or they've disguised it. ???

I may be sounding paraoid, but like I said, I've been targetted by criminals before...

The purpose of the SSL certificate is so that your communications with the server is encrypted. This means a person sniffing the traffic between your computer and the server cannot read it. Generally sites only go into https when passwords, credit cards or other personal information is present.
If you are not worried about someone reading your transmitted data while communicating with a particular site then you have no problems.
SSL is about data in transit, it has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the actual site. Viruses and trojans/malware are quite happy to be transmitted over an SSL secured connection.

People that offer SSL (https) pages generally get their SSL certificates authorised by a widely accepted Certificate authority e.b. Verisign (most browsers trust Verisign as a Certificate Authority). This costs money and the certificate is authorised for a limited time. When time is up the certificate is no longer authorised, it is possible people don't recertify on time.
Another common issue is that an HTTPS page may include an HTTP page so your browser may complain that the page contains unsecured information.

[xSilverPhinx]

It does, thanks for all the answers so far

I just find it odd that it's YouTube - not exactly a place that anybody with half a brain would type sensitive information such as credit card number or other personal details into. ??? Another thing that's odd is after continuously displaying that indicative padlock icon, just as I was looking up info on what to do and how to solve it, it disappeared and went back to normal. It hasn't come back since, so either it's gone or they've disguised it. ???

I may be sounding paraoid, but like I said, I've been targetted by criminals before...

The purpose of the SSL certificate is so that your communications with the server is encrypted. This means a person sniffing the traffic between your computer and the server cannot read it. Generally sites only go into https when passwords, credit cards or other personal information is present.
If you are not worried about someone reading your transmitted data while communicating with a particular site then you have no problems.
SSL is about data in transit, it has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the actual site. Viruses and trojans/malware are quite happy to be transmitted over an SSL secured connection.

People that offer SSL (https) pages generally get their SSL certificates authorised by a widely accepted Certificate authority e.b. Verisign (most browsers trust Verisign as a Certificate Authority). This costs money and the certificate is authorised for a limited time. When time is up the certificate is no longer authorised, it is possible people don't recertify on time.
Another common issue is that an HTTPS page may include an HTTP page so your browser may complain that the page contains unsecured information.

I was probably blowing things out of proportion, I guess I can rest easy.

[Happy_Is_Good]

I haven't tried Google Chrome in a long while, but since someone mentioned it on this thread I decided to download Google Chrome 15 and give it a try.  Wow...what an impressive browser!  I am surprised Google created a browser faster than I've ever seen...but they did.  Also, it was a snap to migrate all my settings from Fire Fox 8.  This is a very polished product!

However, there is a cost for all this speed - RAM Memory.  Seems like Google Chrome likes about 200 MBytes of RAM more than Fire Fox!

[xSilverPhinx]

I switched to Chrome after FireFox kept crashing on me. I haven't regretted that decision. 

[Happy_Is_Good]

I switched to Chrome after FireFox kept crashing on me. I haven't regretted that decision. 

Yeah...it does seem to be loads more stable than Fire Fox.  I mean, Chrome rarely hangs - and Fire Fox often hangs (sometimes so bad you've got to kill the process via Task Manager).