Computer Tips -Tech Info

Microsoft had a mammoth patch Tuesday this month with 28 bug fixes (23 critical). (Computerworld article linked above. This is one of the largest update releases in five years (!) Those fixes were wrapped up in 8 updates for Internet Exporer, Office, Sharepoint, Windows media player and visual studio and Visual basic. (Oh and it […]

It’s been a while since I’ve had an “on-topic” post here, but as you might imagine quite a bit has been going on. I had this peculiar problem reported to me in the last week about print spool issues with certain models of printers following the official windows update day.    Send article as PDF […]

I’ve run into a few problems with a windows xp repair install in the last few days that I wanted to detail the problems and what the resolution was. First, it was someone elses laptop needing a hard drive replacement. The drive was imaged, but windows still would not boot, so I broke out the […]

There could be a record number of vulnerabilities addressed next week when Microsoft releases an expected dozen updates for its Windows and Office products. (According to Brian Krebs at the Security Fix.) Tuesday February 13th is the date scheduled for the release of updates. One critical udpate will affect Microsoft’s security software (onecare/defender/etc.) 3 patches […]

The first thing I should mention is that this months update from Microsoft is the last for XP SP1 users should plan a migration path to SP2 to keep getting updates to XP. Multiple vulnerabilities this month have been patched in Office There are 4 advisories, but a total of 15 issues covered by those […]

This morning I was doing a fresh install of Windows XP SP2 into a Virtual Machine. So far, things are fine I went through windowsupdate and found 3 updates the first time, then rebooted and hit windowsupdate again to see 55 updates available. A lot of times when I set up a new pc for […]

Microsoft says they need to do a better job about disclosing this, but the Genuine Advantage tool contacts Microsoft daily. It doesn’t do this to track your browsing or downloading habits, but to check and see if it’s ok that it’s still running. According to this article, they have some concern that it might not […]

I got a first look at Windows Desktop Search today (bundled with MSN Search Toolbar?) I was told that it was new on the system and had not been used. The systems owner didn’t know when it was installed and thought it must have been installed when he did a windows update. It looks like […]

Okay – so after the last article you’ve inventoried what software you use on a PC and you know what services (server’s) the pc runs that you’ve told it to. You even know what passes as “normal” startup programs. Now it’s time to put that to use. It’s time to keep up with updates for […]

According to The Sans handlers diary, a worm exploiting one of the security vulnerabilities disclosed last week by Microsoft, is in the wild and spreading. The worm tagged as zotob.a exploits the ms05-039 vulnerability. (Sans reminds us that ms02-039 was the vuln. targetted by the slammer worm. Interesting coincidence.) They are still at infocon yellow. […]