Thanks for your useful blog post about the Conficker worm. To make it easier for people to block the DNS zones at the server level rather than deploying HOSTS files, I created the following batch files.
I’ve tested this on a Windows 2003 Server. It takes about 30 minutes to create all the zones. The DNS Console works, but takes longer to enumerate all the zones (10-15 seconds).
Feel free to post/use/distribute as you’d like.
Matthew Evans
Thanks, Matthew! Everyone feel free to use the information on Matthew’s website or you can download the block and unblock batch files here.
Everyone is in full Chicken Little mode these days with April 1 just around the corner and the Conflicker virus poised to bring down civilization. Not since Y2K have I seen so much panic about a computer related issue. So, to help everyone out, I thought that I would let you know how you can protect yourself from Conflicker.
Install the Microsoft patch - There has been a patch available for this issue out since October ‘08. Make sure the patch is installed on your system.
Update your antivirus software - make sure that you have the latest version of your antivirus software and that the latest virus signatures are installed. If you do not have antivirus on your computer, may I suggest Avast?
Remove the worm from your system - F-Secure has a free tool that will remove it from your computer to make sure you are not a part of the robot army! Or you can use the Microsoft version of the tool.
Block the worm - I have created a HOSTS file update that can be added to the end of your HOSTS file to block the majority of the websites that the worm is attempting to connect to. (Thanks to F-secure for the original file that I modified). This can also be done from your DNS server if your are running a corporate network.
More Information
You can get more information about this worm at the following websites:
I am working on a project and I am storing large amount of data in Access. I needed a quick an easy way to remove duplicate records based on a specific field in one of my tables. I thought, “This shouldn’t be too hard since there is a query wizard to determine duplicate records.”
Man, was I wrong!
After about a day of trying, I figured out the following little trick:
Make a copy of your original data table but just copy the table structure, not the data.
Edit the new table and change the field with the duplicates’s index to No Duplicates Allowed.
Save the new table.
Create an append query that will append all of the data from the original table to the new table.
Run the append query. You will see a number of warnings/errors. Simply accept them to complete the process.
Rename the original table.
Rename the new table with the same name as the original table.
You should now have all the duplicate records gone!
Matthew sent me this e-mail:
Everyone is in full 
According to 
I am working on a project and I am storing large amount of data in Access. I needed a quick an easy way to remove duplicate records based on a specific field in one of my tables. I thought, “This shouldn’t be too hard since there is a query wizard to determine duplicate records.” 