Search Donkey is a Potentially Unwanted Program for Windows developed by Western Web Applications, LLC. This program may inject ads into your browsing sessions, giving you false search results and advertisements.
As described by Western Web Applications: “Search Donkey is entirely free to use. To keep Search Donkey free, we’ve partnered with high-quality ad providers and you may see additional ads when Search Donkey is installed.
While installed, Search Donkey will keep track of your web search queries, allowing it to let you know what pages you already visited, however, this data is also used to better target personal unwanted ads.
Search Donkey has been flagged as a Potentially Unwanted Program (PUP) by several anti-virus scanners, and their website is blacklisted by Google, giving warning to whoever visits it, and due to the nature of this application, it is not recommended to keep on your computer.
Exactly what is Adware? If you have ever owned a computer, then you’ve probably heard the word numerous times, but it is still beneficial to define it. The term “adware” is actually a short form of advertising-supported software and it includes programs that are solely designed to display ads on a computer. A kind of malware, it will come bundled right in with the software package that a user either installs or accesses. Shareware or freeware programs are often times packaged with adware. If adware penetrates your system without you knowing and sends information about you or your PC to 3rd parties, then it is spyware. Quite often, adware changes your web browser settings to open pop-up adverts or modifies browser homepage and default internet search engine to some unwanted website.
Adware is a common problem that affects a large number of PCs around the globe. If your computer doesn’t have any anti-malware software then it’s very likely it could get infected with adware as well as other malware.
Adware could generate and display plenty of ads of all sorts which in turn disrupt the functions of your personal computer while browsing the net. Pop-ups might also show up on your computer’s desktop even when you’re not online. Adware results in a reduction of available memory and processing power, or resources. It also causes a slow net connection because adware consumes bandwidth whenever it retrieves adverts from the internet. Adware was originally created to support companies to generate income when they offer the software away free of charge. However, adware nowadays displays hundreds of adverts which will cause your PC to slow down and even crash.
As we discussed, adware could potentially be harmful to your computer, generally not by itself, but by bringing other problems to you. A top-quality antivirus program has the capability of permanently removing adware. We recommend Safebytes Anti-Malware, one of the top-rated anti-malware programs by world-renowned industry experts. It will act either as a preventative tool stopping websites or software installations that contain adware or as a removal tool for an already infected computer.
To prevent adware, download software from websites that you trust. Never download from websites that you have never been aware of or tried before; Always study the end-user license agreement (EULA) of any application you want to install; You need to avoid freeware and shareware where possible; Lastly, watch out for ActiveX, since many adware and spyware companies make use of the technology to install their wares onto your computer system
All malware is bad and the consequences of the damage will vary based on the specific type of malware. Some malware variants alter browser settings by adding a proxy server or modify the PC’s DNS settings. In these instances, you will be unable to visit some or all internet sites, and thus not able to download or install the required security software to eliminate the malware. So what to do when malicious software prevents you from downloading or installing Anti-Malware? There are a few options you could try to get around with this problem.
In Safe Mode, you can actually change Windows settings, un-install or install some program, and eliminate hard-to-delete viruses and malware. If the malware is blocking access to the internet and affecting the computer, launching it in Safe Mode will let you download antivirus and run a diagnostic scan while limiting possible damage. To enter into Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Networking, press the F8 key while the PC is starting up or run MSConfig and look for the “Safe Boot” options under the “Boot” tab. Once you’re in safe mode, you can attempt to install your anti-malware program without the hindrance of the malicious software. At this point, you could run the anti-malware scan to eliminate viruses and malware without hindrance from another application.
Some malware only targets certain browsers. If this sounds like your case, use another web browser as it could circumvent the malware. If you suspect that your Internet Explorer has been hijacked by malware or otherwise compromised by hackers, the ideal approach is to switch over to a different internet browser like Firefox, Chrome, or Safari to download your chosen computer security software – Safebytes Anti-Malware.
Another solution is to make a portable antivirus program on your USB flash drive. Adopt these measures to run the anti-malware on the affected computer system.
1) Download the anti-malware program on a virus-free PC.
2) Connect the flash drive to a USB slot on the clean computer.
3) Run the setup program by double-clicking the executable file of the downloaded software, which has a .exe file format.
4) Select the flash drive as the destination for saving the software file. Follow the directions to complete the installation process.
5) Transfer the pen drive from the clean computer to the infected computer.
6) Double-click the Safebytes Anti-malware icon on the thumb drive to run the software.
7) Hit the “Scan Now” button to start the virus scan.
Today an anti-malware tool can protect the computer from different types of online threats. But wait, how to decide on the best one amongst countless malware protection application that’s available out there? As you might be aware, there are many anti-malware companies and products for you to consider. A few are well worth your money, but many aren’t. You need to choose one that is reliable, practical, and has a strong reputation for its malware source protection. Amongst few good applications, SafeBytes Anti-Malware is the strongly recommended software for the security-conscious individual.
SafeBytes anti-malware is a trustworthy tool that not only secures your PC permanently but is also very easy to use for people of all ability levels. With its outstanding protection system, this tool will easily detect and remove most of the security threats, including adware, viruses, browser hijackers, ransomware, trojans, worms, and PUPs.
Real-time Threat Response: SafeBytes provides 100 % hands-free real-time protection and is set to check, block, and eliminate all threats at its very first encounter. They’re very effective in screening and getting rid of different threats because they’re constantly revised with new updates and safety measures.
Robust, Anti-malware Protection: With its enhanced and sophisticated algorithm, this malware removal tool can identify and get rid of the malware threats hiding in the PC effectively.
Internet Security: SafeBytes gives an instant safety rating about the pages you’re about to visit, automatically blocking harmful sites and ensure that you’re certain of your safety while browsing the world wide web.
“Fast Scan” Abilities: SafeBytes’s virus scan engine is one of the fastest and most efficient within the industry. It's targeted scanning seriously increases the catch rate for viruses which is embedded in various computer files.
Low CPU and Memory Usage: This program is not “heavy” on your computer’s resources, so you’ll not see any overall performance issues when SafeBytes is working in the background.
24/7 Customer Support: You can obtain totally free 24/7 technical support from their computer experts on any product queries or computer security concerns.
Overall, SafeBytes Anti-Malware is a solid program as it has lots of features and could identify and remove any potential threats. Malware problems will become a thing of the past once you put this software to use. So if you’re searching for the best malware removal application out there, and if you don’t mind paying out some money for it, opt for SafeBytes Anti-Malware.
If you don’t want to use malware removal software and prefer to get rid of Search Donkey manually, you could do so by going to the Windows Add/Remove Programs menu in the control panel and deleting the offending program; in cases of web browser plug-ins, you may remove it by visiting the browsers Add-on/Extension manager. You’ll probably also want to reset your internet browser.
To ensure the complete removal, manually examine your hard disk and registry for all of the following and remove or reset the values accordingly. But bear in mind, editing the Windows registry can be a complicated job that only experienced users and professionals should attempt to fix it. Furthermore, some malware keeps replicating which makes it tough to eliminate. It is advised that you do the removal procedure in Windows Safe Mode.
Files:
% Program Files% \Search Donkey.exe
%UserProfile%\Desktop\ Search Donkey.lnk
%UserProfile%\Start Menu \ Search Donkey
C:\Users\%CurrentUserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\nst2A8A.tmp\nsDialogs.dll (21 bytes)
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Firefox\chrome\content\overlay.xul (391 bytes)
C:\Users\%CurrentUserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\nst2A8A.tmp\System.dll (23 bytes)
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\IE\common.dll (11359 bytes)
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Chrome\common.crx (5843 bytes)
C:\Users\%CurrentUserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\nst2A8A.tmp\modern-wizard.bmp (4232 bytes)
C:\Users\%CurrentUserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\nst2A8A.tmp\util_ex.dll (21609 bytes)
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Firefox\chrome\content\main.js (17 bytes)
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\app.dat (172455 bytes)
C:\Users\%CurrentUserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\nst2A8A.tmp\Helper.dll (27542 bytes)
C:\Users\%CurrentUserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\nst2A8A.tmp\version.dll (14 bytes)
C:\Users\%CurrentUserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\nst2A8A.tmp\Processes.dll (1772 bytes)
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Firefox\chrome.manifest (196 bytes)
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Uninstall.exe (12729 bytes)
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Firefox\install.rdf (955 bytes)
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\SearchDonkey.ico
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Chrome\common.crx
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Firefox\chrome.manifest
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Firefox\chrome\content\main.js
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Firefox\chrome\content\overlay.xul
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Firefox\install.rdf
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\IE\common.dll
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\SearchDonkey.ico
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\Uninstall.exe
C:\ProgramData\SearchDonkey\app.dat
Registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\SearchDonkey \DisplayIcon %AppData%\%RANDOM CHARACTERS%\%RANDOM CHARACTERS%.exe,0
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\SearchDonkey
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\SearchDonkey\UninstallString %AppData%%RANDOMCHARACTERS%\%RANDOM CHARACTERS%.exe
“Windows Media Player cannot burn some of the files. To investigate the problem, click the icon next to the files in the burn list.”As you know, the Windows Media Player helps you burn songs or audio files to CD or disk but it does not always end up successfully as you could encounter some setbacks such as this particular error. Usually, this kind of issue occurs if an audio file does not comply with some restrictions so the Windows Media Player pops up this error instead. You can encounter this error message if:
Stable Diffusion is a machine learning model developed by Stability AI to generate digital images from natural language descriptions. The model can be used for different tasks like generating image-to-image translations guided by text prompts and upscaling images.
Unlike competing models like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion is open source and does not artificially limit the images it produces. Stable diffusion was trained on a subset of the LAION-Aesthetics V2 data set. It can run on most consumer hardware equipped with a modest GPU and was hailed by PC World as "the next killer app for your PC".
Since Stable Diffusion is run locally and not in the cloud, as mentioned there is no limit to the number of images that you can produce but in order to use it you will have to get down a little dirty with setting your PC environment for it since it is not really an application, it is a command line text based descriptor that will use python to generate your images, so there is no install nor GUI.
In this guide, we will show you how to both install and run Stable Diffusion on your local PC so you can start producing some cool images all by yourself.
Make no mistake, Stable Diffusion will not run on a potato PC, in order to harvest the power of AI-generated imagery this is what you will need:
For this tutorial, we are covering the installation and running of Stable Diffusion on Windows PC. The steps presented here are presented in a way that installation can be performed on any operating system but precise instructions will be for Windows OS.
The first thing to do is to install GIT. It is a tool that will let you easily maintain and install repos from the internet. to install it go to: https://git-scm.com/ and click on download. Follow the instructions for your version of the operating system. If you are a developer you are familiar with GIT and if you already have it installed you can skip this step.
One thing that is important when installing GIT locally is to select to use it via the command line (the second option that says "Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software").
Now when we have GIT installed, next thing is to use Miniconda3 to install python and all required libraries that are needed. Get the installer at: https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html
Miniconda3 is basically an easy installer so you do not have to install tons of stuff manually from different websites and sources, it is nicely packaged in the installer that will take care of everything.
After the previous two steps, we are ready now to actually install Stable Diffusion. Go to https://huggingface.co/CompVis/stable-diffusion#model-access and install the latest library (as of the writing of this article currently it is stable-diffusion-v1-4-original, the last one on the right), the library is almost 5GB in size so be prepared for big download.
After installing stable diffusion's latest library it is time to update it to the newest version. You can download ZIP from GIT HUB https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion
Once downloaded click on the Windows start button and type in Miniconda3 and click on open. Create a folder and name it how you want on a drive of your choice. For this example, we will install it all in disk C under folder AI_art, follow the instructions below but use your own names and destination instead. Do not close Minicoda3 after typing commands!!!
cd c:/
mkdir AI_art
cd AI_art
Extract GitHub files that you have downloaded into your new folder and get back to Minicoda3 and type the next commands:
cd C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main
conda env create -f environment.yaml
conda activate ldm
mkdir models\ldm\stable-diffusion-v1
Let the whole process finish, some files are large and it might take a while. After the whole process is finished and completed, copy the checkpoint file that you have downloaded into: C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main\models\ldm\stable-diffusion-v1
After the file is copied rename it to model.ckpt and you are finished.
The created environment is needed in order to actually use Stable Diffusion to create images. Each time you want to use it you will have to run it, so go into Miniconda3, and inside it type:
conda activate ldm
cd C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main
after we are inside the folder call the script with the parameters:
python scripts/txt2img.py --prompt "TXT DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE THAT YOU WANT TO CREATE" --plms --n_iter 5 --n_samples 1
and that's it, your image is created and it is located in C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main\outputs\txt2img-samples\samples
100sOfRecepies is a Browser Extension developed by MindSpark Inc. that provides users with hundreds of recopies for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. This extension may appear very handy at the start, however, it may monitor your browser activity, and send it back to the developer to better serve ads. This extension injects itself into the System Registry allowing it to run each time your computer is restarted.
While browsing the internet with this extension installed you may see additional ads, sponsored links, and pop-up ads displayed in your browser. Many anti-virus scanners have detected this extension as a Browser Hijacker and are therefore not recommended to keep on your computer.
When Windows evolved into Windows 10, the program known as Windows Security Essentials is no longer. It is now the program known as Windows Defender. When a computer is upgraded from a previous version of Windows up to Windows 10, the Windows Defender takes over and will replace the Security Essentials. In a small percentage of Windows 10 upgrades, something will go wrong and the new program will fail to replace Security Essentials. The result will be that the operating system has both of the programs installed. In this case, Windows Defender will not offer any protection and Security Essentials will not be able to defend either. This error code will also present itself when the Windows Mail App in Windows 10 fail to retrieve and sync email from the user's account.
Common symptoms include:
Error code 0x80070426 will present itself when a PC user has upgraded their OS from a previous version of Windows to the new Windows 10 version. When this happens, a small portion of users will experience the disconnect between older versions of specific programs, namely the virus protection. When the previous version of the program under a different name is not completely removed and the new virus protection program is installed, the programs will cancel each other out and collectively offer no protection.
This error code may also be found when Windows 10 tries to sync the user's email with the Windows Mail App.
Hold down the Windows Key and press R. Type in taskmgr into the run dialogue. You should locate the Windows Defender Service (this may show up as Windefend). Right-click on it and then choose Stop.
This will stop the program, but the program will start back up automatically when the computer restarts. While this program is stopped, uninstall Essentials.
To do this: go to Control Panel, Programs, and Features, Uninstall a Program. Alternately, you may hold down the Windows Key and press R, type in appwiz.cpl, click OK, and then locate Microsoft Essentials. Uninstall it, and then restart your computer.
After this is done, go to Settings, Update, and Security. Choose Windows Defender and ensure that Real-time protection is on. Refer back to the Task Manager, Services. Make sure that Defender service is on and running.
When error code 0x80070426 presents itself in the form of an error with the Mail app, it may be necessary to run an SFC scan.
Right-click on the Start menu or Windows icon, and select Command prompt. The command prompt may be navigated by using shortcut keys Win and X and then select it.
Run the command prompt and then type in sfc /scannow and then press enter. The SFC scan will be run, and be careful not to abort the process before it has finished. This will scan for any files that are lost or corrupt on the PC.
If the scan has found any corrupt files, type in this code and then hit Enter: findstr /c:”[SR]” %windir%LogsCBSCBS.log >”%userprofile%Desktopsfcdetails.txt.
To skip the repair of corrupt or missing files, type in: Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth. The details of the scan can be found on the sfcdetails.txt file that will be on the desktop.