I’ve been blown away by the performance improvements that SSDs make, even in older computers. The desktops that I sold for years was the minitower version of the Dell Optiplex 745, 755, 760 and 780. Since the hard drive bracket in those models is made for a 3.5 inch hard drive, SSDs don’t fit. I tried a few of the popular 3.5 to 2.5 inch adapters, but they didn’t work (as shown in this good blog post).

I finally found an adapter that does the job, not perfectly, but it’s not bad. It is a Mushkin 2.5″ to 3.5″ SSD adapter (Amazon link).

Install it in the adapter this like this and it pops into the Dell hard drive caddy (it only fits with two of the four holes, but it is relatively secure), then stick it in the case and you are ready to fly!

I just cleaned a computer that had Internet Explorer 8 hijacked and redirecting when you would click on a Google result. The file was called QFFAKLK.DLL (probably random) and was in c:\users\username\appdata\local\updater21804\coupon companion plugin folder. In the Details tab of the file, it shows version 12.0.6550.5000 of OMSMAIN.DLL, file description is “Microsoft Outlook Mobile Service.”

It was the registry about five times in various Run locations and was hooked into about 14 processes.

The computer is protected by Symantec Endpoint Protection and I double-checked with MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware, HitmanPro and even VirusTotal. NONE of them saw any problem with the file. (VirusTotal actually saw the file as OMSMAIN.DLL and not QFFAKLK.DLL.)

I removed all references in the registry to the file, restarted and was able to delete the folder and file. There was no more redirect problems. Thankfully it didn’t have very good counter measures.