"Steve Thackery" wrote:


......there is an option to check a box marked 'Enable memory protection to
help mitigate online attacks.' This is greyed out & I can't check to enable
it, even though I've right clicked to 'Run as Admin.'


Hey, that's fascinating. I've never noticed it before, and it is greyed out
on my machine, too. The Help for it is useless, so I don't know whether
this is another "button" for switching DEP on and off, or something else.

The second location where there are two options, I can change. However,
when I made the change to 'Turn on DEP for all or all programs & services
except those I select,' I get an Error Msg that server can't be found when
using IE or Firefox regardless how many refresh attempts.

That's strange, because both work fine on my machine, with DEP switched on
for everything. I wonder if you've got any plug-ins for the browsers. They
can definitely cause this kind of problem. If you can isolate it to a
plug-in, I'd disable it and inform the author.

It occurs to me that you could, for now, simply add IE and Firefox to the
"Except..." list.

Sorry I can't be of more help. Perhaps someone who knows more about it
might join in....

SteveT

Thanks for your thoughts, Steve. Can you tell the dummy how to find & determine if browser plug-in is the problem? Secondly, would you address the security issue of no DEP enabled in IE? and only enabled for Windows programs?
Leaktest results show all 1000+ ports are stealthed, and Win Defender is
supposed to stop all incoming crap, backed up with BOClean.

Secondly, would you address the security issue of no DEP enabled in IE?


In order to "un-grey" the memory protection box in IE, you have to right
click on the IE icon in the start menu (or on the desktop) and select "Run
as Administrator". I'm not sure why that didn't work for you, but I suggest
you try it again. You should see the UAC prompt, and then when IE starts go
to Tools | Internet Options | Advanced. I'm sure it will work.

A quick look around the web suggests memory protection is disabled by
default in IE7 because Microsoft knows many add-ons get caught by DEP.

I don't think you are taking a big risk by leaving it disabled, to be
honest, although I'm no expert. Having said that, I personally would
probably find and disable the add-on that caused DEP problems, unless it was
something very important to me. A program which tries to execute from its
data space is badly written, and it suggests it may be of questionable
quality. I'm probably being a bit anal about it. :-)

When homing in on the culprit, don't do the usual thing of
enabling/disabling add-ons one at a time. It takes ages. Instead, do what
is called a "binary chop". Enable half of the add-ons, and disable the
other half. By checking for DEP errors you immediately know which half of
the add-ons has the problematic one. Split the half with the dodgy add-on
into half again, and so forth. You will home in on the faulty add-on very
quickly.

If, after this process, you still find DEP errors, it simply means more than
one add-on is faulty. Simply repeat the process to find the next culprit.

To enable and disable add-ons in IE7, use the menu option Tools | Manage
Add-ons.

To enable and disable add-ons in Firefox, use the menu option Tools |
Add-ons.

Or, as I reckon you're already pretty secure anyway, you could forget about
it! At least for now.

SteveT