Archive: Windows

Windows users know chkdsk, linux users know fsck... users of each MIGHT have heard of SMART. These are different ways of TESTING hard drives. Well, there's also a utility called TestDisk that looks p…

I've had a fun time this week dealing with a STRANGE Vista problem on an HP computer (I doubt it's HP specific, but don't know for certain.) The error goes like this... "A problem has been detected a…

I like the PDF file format for so many reasons - free writer under linux is one of them, usually it's just configured out of the box - openoffice does a nice export to PDF too. Of course, PDF is acce…

For years I've been using smartmontools on my linux-based machines. What I've absolutely LOVED about it is the advance notice I've had of hard drive failures. Two consecutive Decembers I received an …

You had to know it would be a matter of time. Not long after I wrote about the limitations of Vista's upgrade version I found this. First let me reset. Previous versions of Windows upgrade versions w…

Microsoft Vista is now out, the next version of Windows, successor to XP. While Windows XP will continue to receive updates into 2014 there are many that might be eager to upgrade and move to the lat…

I want to make a note of this here... Microsoft has announced that XP Home and Media center editions will get extended support on par with that of XP Pro. Essentially this means security updates for …

Haven't had the chance to try this one firsthand yet, although I've been watching for this. You may be familiar with ies4linux which is a script that uses wine to download/install multiple versions o…

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 thi…

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.)…

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 vmwar…

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 ar…

I just came across this article about wine-doors which sounds VERY promising. Of course, let me set the stage. Wine is a windows compatibility api for linux. The goal of wine is to allow windows appl…

While I was testing out the "single cut and paste" linux vnc remote desktop sharing script and x11vnc binary.... I spent a fair amount of time booting up livecd's n qemu to test various distributions…

I've tried to ask myself if I'd trust someone enough to let them run a remote session on my own desktop to solve a problem. I think the answer is "it depends". If you think about it, I do tech suppor…

Well, I've got a nice way of doing "easy" one click (or one cut and paste) light desktop support for windows or linux, one uses ultravnc sc, the other uses x11vnc with a special wrapper script. So, w…

I've got to say, one of the things I really like about linux are the myriad of options for remotely administering a system. SSH is the one I use the most, but for the graphical you have x (especially…

As I said in the earlier posts, I was essentially looking for a "Single click" solution for linux VNC remote desktop support. A solution that doesn't require the remote support client to change firew…

So, the idea is that I wanted something "like" the Ultranvnc Single Click download, only for linux. The main idea being is that if someone is looking for a bit of desktop tech support on linux, we do…

I don't know, it seems excessively wine-y to gripe about an operating system that isn't released yet, but I've seen people do that about linux quite a bit.... (why doesn't xyz work in beta 1 of _____…

The Mozilla Firefox 1.0.x series will no longer be supported with security updates. IF you use Firefox as your web browser, make sure you're using the current version in the 1.5 series (currently 1.5…

While we wait for Microsoft to release a patch for the MOST recent Internet Explorer vulnerability..... it looks as though MS is "planning" to release a patch on their routine patch day of April 11th…

If you use Internet Explorer to browse the web, I'd suggest finding the instructions to disable active scripting, or drop it and use something else in light of the recent exploit floating around. It …

I should mention a fairly big Windows vulnerability (which involves active scripting). Apparently there are proof-of-concept exploits circulating that do innocent things like open up the calculator. …

I've been playing around a bit with podcast clients the last couple of days. I've been finding online news feeds for the onlineradiotv.com site and for many of those I have bash scripts to handle dow…

Brian Krebs at the Security Fix has done an interesting study related to how long it takes Microsoft to release a security fix for a problem, starting from the time they are notified of the security …

Brian Krebs at the SecurityFix has the story. Symantec, has fixed a problem with their SystemWorks and SystemWorks premier software that could allow malicious software to hide in the Norton Protected…

There's a security fix available for a vulnerability in Clamantivirus. Version 0.88 fixes the vulnerability which could allow a remote attacker to control a machine running clamantivirus. The Securit…

This is something you should consider if you are looking to abandoned a pre-Winxp operating system in favor of a flavor of XP. The product life cycle. In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft has differen…

Microsoft has posted a security advisory (912920) on the previously reported "awakening" of the Sober worm, expected January 6th. Systems that are infected with Win32/Sober.Z@mm may download and run …

So, I've spent a bit of time talking about flightgear. Here are a couple extra resources that I want to "bookmark" here. There is a Good unofficial how-to here. (Mostly linux flightgear oriented. Als…

Ok - I was thinking I might have been a bit too dismissive of flightgear. So, I took a second look (and a third and fourth.) In fact, I found a source rpm of the 0.99 version and rebuilt it for Mandr…

I remember back when I was running Windows as my primary OS, one of my favorite diversions was Microsoft Flight Simulator (2000?) In fact, I clearly remember circumnavigating the globe in a Cessna in…

There's a joke that many people bring out when new Windows viruses hit big.... it goes along the lines of, "download a fix here" and the link points to a knoppix linux livecd download, or a Mandriva …

We know that for Windows systems especially antivirus is a must. Up to date antivirus is the MOST important though. So how do the different vendors do in responsiveness and quick antivirus definition…

I just happened across The Qemu site and found that qemu v. 0.8.0 has been released *(yesterday). I haven't had a chance to download and try myself, but it looks like the open source virtualization s…

The first maintenance release for Openoffice.org 2 has been released sometime today according to Betanews.com. It's mainly a bugfix release. I didn't see an official announcement on their main site, …

A few things to catch up on this afternoon, but first up is a Serious vulnerability in Symantec Antivirus. (It's always serious when security software has a vulnerability.) The securityfix is reporti…

The news is that Nero has announced NeroLinux a version of their cd burning software that will run under the linux operating system. The software is available in either rpm or deb binary (for either …

In what will undoubtedly make Vista a more stable release of Windows... Microsoft will be moving display drivers outside the main kernel and run them in "userland". Display adapter/driver problems ha…

Beta news is reporting that Internet Explorer 7 will use the same Icon for RSS feeds that Firefox currently uses. What's more they say they'll continue to work with Mozilla on consistency between the…

I saw this earlier today, but had thought it was an issue already covered (just before Thanksgiving there was an opera security update I think.) Anyway... Secunia has an advisory on a security vulner…

Sans has the tip that information on the critical Windows updates expected tomorrow from Microsoft has started to be released. MS 05-54: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer This will hop…

Lookes like VMWare has officially released the first version of their VMPlayer. The previous was a pre-release preview/beta. It looks like it's now officially a 1.0.0-final. VMPlayer of course, is a …

Now, it can be useful to run several versions of the same program at the same time (especially if it's a web browser.) I've accomplished this under linux with internet explorer, but didn't realize th…

I put vulnerability in quotes because it's looking less like a problem. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Here's the situation. Both Sans and Mozilla have failed to duplicate the crash although have duplica…

December's rendition of Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday will feature two critical security fixes. The malicious software removal tool will also be updated... Additionally, Microsoft will issue two …

Migrating Outlook Express data from one machine to another. Addresses are easy to export... file export Address Book gives a good option to CSV (comma seperated value) output. Which is a nice common …

Incidents.org has reported on the first announced vulnerability with Mozilla Firefox 1.5 since it's release. The vulnerability is along these lines. History of visited sites is kept in a file called …

One of the changes Internet explorer 7.0 will see is a tightening of restrictions on the zone settings. Currently, there are four security zones for web sites: Internet, Intranet, Trusted Sites and R…

Microsoft has been fined $32 million by South Korea's fair trade commision. They are calling for Microsoft to either remove the Media Player and Instant Messenger from Windows, or include competing s…

There's a good writeup on what OpenOffice.org could learn from firefox. It raises some interesting points. One of which is that software can be designed to meet the needs of say, 60% of the market, t…

Microsoft will be releasing an update to Internet Explorer that changes the way embedded ActiveX controls are loaded. The method of loading embedded controls was at the heart of a lawsuit against Mic…

PCMag has an article on a number of little puzzling "how do I"'s in Microsoft Office. It looks like a great listing and worth adding to anyone's battery of MS Office tips.

OS Dir has the story that Mozilla Firefox 1.5 has already been downloaded more than 2 million times. It was released publicly on the 29th of this month (Tuesday afternoon) and today is Friday... not …

I saw this earlier this afternoon at betanews.com there seems to be a flaw in the way Internet Explorer deals with css that could put your data at risk. According to this article it is a risk combine…

Okay - here we go.... Microsoft is talking about a new feature of Vista that allows you to ... update parts of the operating system or applications without having to reboot the entire machine. Anothe…

Kerio Personal firewall will be acquired by Sunbelt according to the sunbeltblog. It looks as though the acquisition will be complete within a month. They hope to offer downloads "within weeks". Ther…

This is part II, click here for part one of the saga... Okay, so I revisit to install Microsoft Office 2003 SP2 and hope that solves it. Somewhere along this time, I had also found a suggestion of re…

This will likely be a multi-part story because it turns out the solution was one of the more obscure things I think I've run into AND I thought it was worth "dumping" everything I found out in the pr…

I sometimes forget that VLC is cross-platform. Given that linux is my primary platform I've used it quite a bit in playing around with streaming a video from one machine to another. Engadget has a gr…

According to Planet Mozilla it looks like we should expect the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 at around 3PM EST (12 noon PST). There are no promises, but that's what I'm seeing, no exact time mind yo…

DesktopLinux has the news of a new release of Inkscape, an open source SVG editor for Linux, Max, Windows and Unix. The program boasts capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, and Xa…

On the back of new server sales numbers, cooltechzone has been declaring the demise of linux. I remember looking at the stats and numbers when they came out and didn't see anything terribly surprisin…

George Ou at ZDnet is mystified (as many of us are) at why Microsoft can't patch ALL their security vulnerabilities. Most of the unpatched vulnerabilities are considered minor (as was the 6 month old…

How many times have I seen this, a dual-boot system with a sideways Master Boot Record (MBR). This is one of those ways that Windows systems sometimes don't "play well with others". This tip at linux…

Word has it that Mozilla Firefox 1.5 will be released Tuesday, November 29th, 2005. It's gone through three release candidates and a number of betas. I think there are some good improvements from wha…

One of the other things I had hoped to do this weekend was play around with the new VMWare player. VMware is a company that makes virtual machine software, the entry level pricing usually starting at…

It's too bad that Symantec will be killing off a free personal firewall. I guess they didn't like supporting competition for their (large) Internet Security with included firewall... About three mont…

Among other things... Sans has lowered the infocon to green, NOT that the threat is diminished, but there have been no new developments with regards to the announcement yesterday of a major Internet …

Well.... buckle your seatbelts it's going to be a bumpy start to the week. the securityfix as well as incidents.org are reporting on exploit code that has been released that takes advantage of an unp…

Recently I did a post on the release of version 5 of Crossover Office which is a commercially supported variation of the wine project. In fact, it's very similar, the only exceptions I know of are th…

News is coming out that Mozilla Firefox 1.5 RC3 is now available. There's coverage at mozillazine.org. From the comments there may be a few bugs to work out still, although I've just skimmed. I'm not…

I've got to say, I'm impressed that this is happening. From the IEblog... The core of my team’s job is to make IE7 and Windows Vista so compelling so that people choose our products. The people who…

Temporary Quick download link for tightvnc-1.2.9 installer for windows. Use the first link to download the copy I've mirrored for the moment, or try downloading from www.tightvnc.com if there are any…

I was surprised to do a search and find that I haven't mentioned tightvnc before (or even merely VNC as a useful tool.) Ok - here's the scenario, you need a way to get remote pc access, or remotely v…

I've run across this a couple of times and to save me a few more Google searches.... Under Netscape 7.1, trying to download a file, there is a long message (with a temporary file address), and the fo…

For those of you that can't be dropped into an application and "wing it" learning by doing, newsforge has announced some openoffice.org training videos that are now available for free download. So, i…

We're inching yet closer to a new official release of the Mozilla Firefox browser. Yesterday was the 1st anniversary of the 1.0 release and today see's the release of the second Release Candidate for…

According to spreadfirefox.com, a year ago today was the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Firefox was released prior to November 9th, 2004 in preview releases and early betas, but the official 1.0 came…

In an effort to educate more people on the value of open source software, there is the Looplist. The Looplist was highlighted in desktoplinux.com today. It's essentially a user-collaborated WIKI list…

Here's a quick fix for Windows 2000 and XP when using cleanmgr to clean out temporary files. I've run across many systems that it just freezes (or takes way too long) calculating space saved by compr…

That most wonderful day of the month has come when we get an idea of what vulnerabilities we may see exploited.... Seriously, if you run Windows, go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com or ensure you have …

I'm going to have get used to that new name. Frankly I liked winex - simple and to the point, it was like DirectX, only WineX.... then they went and changed the name to cedega and I can never remembe…

Well, it looks like Transgaming has released 5.0 of Cedaga Cedega (Winex) on the schedule they announced. And to quote from the release notes here are some of the new features.... Cedega 5.0 is our f…

I'm putting this under software for Windows and Linux, because this is something I've been asked about several times. What kind of clipart comes with OpenOffice.org or with Koffice. There are some sa…

It looks as though we can expect one critical update to Windows this week on the monthly patch cycle from Microsoft. Critical updates are for security vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to contro…

Well it shouldn't come as a big surprise, but Microsoft is expected to bundle their anti-spyware product (which will be renamed windows defender) with Vista when the next version of the OS ships. It'…

This should have made it into the last update, but.... it didn't. According to onestat.com and reported at desktoplinux.com the firefox browser is continuing to make market share gains. Now it stands…

For those of us that have adsense on our sites and use firefox... the adsense notifier extension has been updated to handle the new login system for google adsense, and it should notify the user of t…

I've just made it back over to the Transgaming site to check in on the release date for cedage 5.0 (formerly transgaming winex). It looks as though Tuesday November 8th at 2am (eastern Time zone (utc…

I know there's been at least one and probably a couple of Mozilla Firefox vulnerabilities announced in the last month or so. There are currently (according to Secunia) 3 unpatched Firefox vulnerabili…

Of course, I alluded to it in my Mandriva 2006 article, OpenOffice.Org 2.0 has officially escaped (been released). Bringing a nice shiny new gui for a database (BASE) a bit quicker load times, lot's …

Well, one of the big items in the last span in linux news has been related to WINE... (Wine Is Not an Emulator). WINE of course in the context of linux is a layer of compatibility to allow Windows ap…

Say it ain't so.... yet another security vulnerability was discovered in Internet Explorer. Users are advised to use alternative browsers (firefox, opera, netscape.) At this point it doesn't look to …

Incidents.org has an update on yesterdays story of very long registry entries not being visible in most registry tools (regedit among others.) They have an updated list of what does and does not read…

Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2 will be supporting both Linux and Solaris as guest operating systems in the coming release. The coming release of Virtual Server 2005 R2 will also include 64-bit su…

There's another great article at newsforge this evening. I remember seeing some time back a camera which took panoramic pictures. The photographer would hold it steady over his head and the camera wo…

Newsforge has a comparison up of three open source word processors. Abiword, Kword and the beta release of the write component of OpenOffice.org 2 are compared in this review. Abiword and OpenOffice.…

This is unusual, but it sounds like there is a bug in regedit (and regedit32) which prevents the displaying of unusually long registry keys. Now, that sounds innocent enough, it also prevents the vie…