This site began as a private resource; an online collection of notes and fixes that I use constantly as part of my newsgroup work. As software and operating systems evolve, so do the answer to problems, so I have decided to use hyperlinks to my FAQs for newsgroup work, thereby keeping advice as up-to-date as possible.
When I first started providing support to newsgroup users back in 1999 I spent all of my time helping with system crashes caused by video drivers and other instabilities. Microsoft software is far more stable than 5 years ago. Sadly, though, other problems have appeared to take their place.
The newsgroups are full of people asking for help with home page hijackings, search engine hijackings, unwanted pop-up windows, viruses, trojans, hackers and other nasties. As corporations have become more security conscious, and have started taking more care to protect their networks from hacks, attacks and illicit usage the much hated spammer, who used to concentrate their energies on hijacking company servers to send spam (known as mail relaying) are now targeting the home user with broadband. Trojans have been released that can, and have been, used by spammers to take over home computers and use them to send spam. Other trojans have been used take over computers and use them for DOS (denial of service) attacks against big name web sites. Script kiddies use unprotected home computers as their own personal file servers, stealing bandwidth and hard drive space. You will find advice specific to such problems at my "Bugs, Glitches & Stuff-Ups" page.
HOW TO WRITE A GOOD NEWSGROUP QUESTION
Microsoft's advice for newsgroup users:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2001/Mar01/Mar27pmvp.asp
Advice put together by DTS-L MVPS:
http://www.dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/support/newsgroups.asp
Last updated Sunday, January 25, 2009