Computer Tips -Tech Info

Category: Windows Software

  • Windows Vista Beta notes…

    What follows are some notes that I’ve taken on the Vista beta that I installed into a VM. I’ve got a lot of toying around yet to do with it (and at least one Internet Explorer bug I want to mention.) But… I’ll go ahead and post this. [warning – rambling and long text…]

    A few days back I undertook an effort of self torture. After finally getting the Vista Beta 2 downloaded and having Vmware server up and running I thought I’d give a go at installing and see what things looked like. I did NO pre-googling for tips and so this is a pure “discover as you go” process.

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  • Another wolf among us… and more spyware news

    Yes, it’s another wolf in sheeps clothing. This time around Sunbelt is reporting on “Trust cleaner”. Keep your eyes out for this one, among other things it plants an altered version of the Google page complete with links to dating, gambling, ringtones, pharmacy, home loans and spyware removers…….. (the fake site is at mswindowssearch.com – trustcleaner.com trustinbar.com are download sites for the pest….) If you’re in a position to block addresses…. read more for the list….

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  • Adobe Acrobat security update for Mac, Windows

    Adobe has released updates to Acrobat Reader for Windows and Mac systems. I don’t see any mention of linux in the advisories, but I do see that the linux version available for download is now 7.0.8 as well (which is the same as the Mac/Windows versions.) *(Apparently they’re pushing more Yahoo! integration in this release as well.)

  • Vista torrent pulled

    Several days ago I mentioned vistatorrent.com that had copied the Windows Vista download into a bittorrent tracker and allowed bittorrent downloads of the DVD iso. Well, they’ve received a cease and desist order as thanks for their efforts. Some are saying the fact that the download servers are slammed to the point MS is recommending that people order the DVD for a shipping charge is proof that Windows Vista is eagerly anticipated and that the response trumps any open source release. Well, ok – I’ve got to say I was interested to see it for all the press it’s been getting (and I’m sure WILL get), and in 12 months I’ll likely be trying to support it, so I wanted to dip the toes in now. I don’t plan on running it on a desktop myself. In fact the last 24 hours I’ve been on a quest to install it in a virtual machine and I’ll pass along details of that in another post.

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  • VMware Server

    OK – just fresh off solving the reason I couldn’t get vmplayer to start on my 1Ghz AMD 64 1GB of memory machine…. I started looking at vmserver. (RC1). Now, vmplayer is a free download (so is vmware server). I’m really liking what I see from vmware server and am pretty sure I’m going to stick with it over the player. There are quite a few interesting features and I’ll try to give a skim over them. For starters, there is a management console that gives you the ability to connect to a vmware server on a different host (with credentials as a user on that system), or the localhost. On the localmachine it shows what virtual machines you have configured and gives you the chance to create another one, open an existing one not in the list, or tweak host settings.

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  • Big Windows June update day

    Updates for Windows for the month of June are out today and it looks like some list! 12 updates covering 20 or more vulnerabilities. MANY of these are tagged as critical. (Critical vulnerabilities are considered remotely exploited or with little (or no) user interaction.) Sans has a good listing of the advisories. This month it is a bit much to track in one big whallop… but I’ll try to give a summary here.

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  • Windows Vista Beta 2 download torrent

    After spending about 5 days using wget to resume the download of the vista beta 2 .iso file (which is a bit over 3 GB). I finally gave up seeing as how that 5 days had netted me about 2-3 MB of data. As I started looking around online, I found that Chris Pirillo had got a site up vistatorrent.com where he is hosting a tracker for a bittorrent download of the vista iso. Of course, Microsoft recommends that you order the dvd and wait, but Chris has provided md5sum information so you can check your download. I’m up to 25% done now *(I discovered the torrent about 24 hours ago, although last night I didn’t download.) I let it download part of the afternoon and then remembered to restart this morning. So, it’s making pretty quick progress.

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  • VMPlayer on Mandriva 2006 finally…

    As you might recall some time back I talked about the release of vmplayer which is a free virtual machine “player” from vmware. Mostly, I wrote about the problems I had running it on my main desktop which was running Mandrake 10.1 at the time. The error was basically a signal 11 in the log file, which MOST everyone says is a hardware problem (or kernel…) Well, I tested the memory, everything seemed fine. Finally, I was having other issues and an itch for an upgrade, so I upgraded to an AMD64 3000 based system with 1GB of memory and did the upgrade to Mandriva 2006 as well (first with the original kernel, now with the updated kernel.) Vmplayer still refused to run.

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  • More Vista talk coming in

    While, I’m still waiting to get the Vista Beta download anyway… I’ve seen the first of what I expect will be many posts out and about complaining about the upcoming OS from Microsoft. Admittedly it’s a beta and after seeing a lot of beta-release candidate – final cycles from open source software, I’m sure much will change. However…. some good points are raised.

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  • Another wolf in sheeps clothing to watch for

    Wolves in sheeps clothing are the label I give to those rogue antispyware, or antivirus programs that bring pests instead of protect against them, or are otherwise questionable in their tactics. Titan Shield seems to be a new threat on the block in this area, I haven’t seen it first hand yet, but it looks like it is one you’ll want to avoid *(You may want to block antispywarebox(dot)com and titanshield(dot)com if you’re in a position to do such things in your network.)

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