Torrent site with some good games

[wastecase]

http://puretna.com/

You'll have to register, and keep your ratios up (seed) - but there's a lot of good games to be found there. Many English translated games and a few games that can be hard to find. Some nice 3d/animated movie clips as well. Use the site's filtering features to find games (or whatever) quickly.

[iamystic]

Link wont work

[wastecase]

Odd - seems to work for me. Maybe the site was down temporarily or something.

Found a better site anyway! This one does seem to have a history of crashing now and then, but hopefully the link will work ok:
http://hshare.net/

It's a Hentai site with rapidshare-style download links

There is an alternate at http://www2.hshare.net/ but that was down at the time of this posting. Might be good if the main ever goes down though.

Doh!
Just saw that bluewinsor posted a link to hshare yesterday, so maybe this one is old news for some. Did a forum search but didn't find any reference to it before I posted. Oh well - maybe someone will find this information useful.

[scifi*fish]

I signed up for the Puretna site yesterday and still have not recieved the confirm email that allows you into the site. How long did take for you?

[wastecase]

Received it immediately via email, no problems at all.

[scifi*fish]

I got in. The site suggested that my email was blocking them and to setup a gmail account. Once I did that, it was instant. I can't play any of the games though.

[Slipstone]

....don't know if it was a coincidence, but after visiting hshare my computer developed all sorts of problems. McAfee has removed 23 malware items including a trojan and now my computer can't locate .exe files at all, meaning it can't run any programs. This includes 'system restore' !!! Neither will it run .bat files which means that the recovery cd will not run.


HELP!

[coder]

Can't you boot from the recovery cd?

[Ifrit]

huh so that's what did it...
i was trying to download something from hshare the other day, since when i spent last night and a chunk of today performing system restore on my computer, there were a lot of error messages about system files stopping working before i wiped it all, maybe hshare is one to avoid mithout really really good anti-virus

[wastecase]

The only thing I've noticed is that they have a lot of pop-ups. Firefox is blocking most of them for me when I view the site.

They report almost 32k registered members so it doesn't seem like they would intentionally infect visitors computers - probably a good idea to avoid them or have some ad-blocks and a good av running from the sounds of it.

[Trucla]

R164ARD wrote : ....don't know if it was a coincidence, but after visiting hshare my computer developed all sorts of problems. McAfee has removed 23 malware items including a trojan and now my computer can't locate .exe files at all, meaning it can't run any programs. This includes 'system restore' !!! Neither will it run .bat files which means that the recovery cd will not run.


HELP!

Not for this particular case, as the damage was already done. But for the future I would advise:

1.- If you can live without M$oft garbage, install Linux (Mandriva or Red Hat are the friendlier in my opinion).

2.- Otherwise, install Windows in a clean hard drive, disable the rubbish "system restore" from Windows, and get yourself the following tools:
a)- xp antispy (it's free)
b)- a good anti-virus/firewall application. I would advise Kaspersky Internet Security for the effect.
c)- Acronis True Image, for making regular backups, disabling the rubbish system restore from Windows.

This is not a miracle but can protect you from situations like this one in the years to come.

Cheers!

[coder]

The best protection is still your own common sense. A site can't cause this, you would need to install something to do the damage for you.

I've used windows (98-2000) for about 10 years without a virus scanner and I only once had a virus, more a trojan horse actually. And that was only because I did something stupid. I clicked on a file which was too small to be a crack for the program I looked for, but I started it out of curiosity.

It started to download all kind of other programs, put itself in my registry to start automatically, did not allow me to use regedit anymore and started using my e-mail to send out spam. That took a few days to clean up.

I would like to add some advice to Trucia's. Avoid msn, outlook and internet explorer as much as you can. Why? Because they are integrated deeper into the system and therefor propose a bigger threat. Use firefox or opera, thunderbird and amsn,pidgin or trillian instead.

Though I like linux a lot. It was the first time an OS made me smile instead of curse. I would not advise it just like that. Some things are done better, some are worse. It's easy enough to download and try from a cd (which is slow) or a usb stick. Download unetbootin, start it, put a usb-stick in, choose the linux version of your choice and wait for it to download and install on the stick, now boot from usb and you always have a way to access your files if your system's messed up.

Some other tips to make your system safer. Check blackviper's guide and turn off unnecessary services, some of which are a potential threat (like telnet and remote desktop)
There's a short list, telling you which ones you can turn off safely and a long list, explaining in details what each one is for.

Alternatives for kaspersky would be avg and antivir on the antivirus side, both free and good too, and zonealarm as firewall. The one from microsoft has some holes in it.

[Slipstone]

Further news - System restore had been wiped. The only way I could access it was by starting in safe mode. No point - it wqas empty! We have an excellent IT technician at work and he had never seen a computer with so many problems. It had lost all its associations. Even the Word icon on the desktop wouldn't open - just gave me a list of programs - including Word - to select a program to use to open it... It even wanted an association for DOS commands... ... ...

Finally found the way to boot from recovery disc (turn on with 'c' depressed - how obscure - and 5 hours later all is well but still some time to go to reinstall the rest of the software.

Whether or not it was that site, I shall avoid it now...

[himself]

hshare is a fantastik page with alot of great games. I have gotten alot of games from there and never had any problems with them.

[Trucla]

@coder: Thanks for completing the bouquet! As a matter of fact I comply with most of it but for me it is so obvious that now I don't think about it anymore. Besides that thanks for the links to unetbootin and blackviper. About the last one xp-antispy already does part of it but not all. Thanks again!

@himself: Maybe it's not hshare but some of the advertisers they chose. Anyway don't abuse your luck!

@R164ARD: Glad you sorted out your problem!

Cheers!