Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

MERRY CHRISTMAS! & a HAPPY NEW YEAR! to ALL.

Here's a little Christmas Cheer for you all to enjoy!




I hope you all enjoy a Great Holiday Season & have a Joyous & Wonderful New Year !

Kenbo

How I'm Gonna Go

I took this quiz and somehow got this result. How did this quiz know it should overlap into "Heart Attack during Sex" when telling me I would Die from "Alcohol/Drug Accident"? - Spooky

You'll die from a Drug or Alcohol accident.

Let's face it - when you get drunk/high you lose all control and do stupid stuff. Unfortunately in your case those propaganda anti-escapism commercials prove true.

'How will you die?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Broken MS Patch update MS06-015 (908531).

Well, This morning I find out that Microsoft has issued an advisory stating that some users will have problems with the last "Critical" patch for Windows Explorer they pushed out last week. This problem affects everyone who has software installed that supports HP Cameras, Printers & Scanners (that's me! I use an HP scanner every day). This "fix" also affects people using the Kerio Personal Firewall software. Users will experience problems opening special folders such as "My Documents" & getting folders to expand in the Windows Explorer "tree" view. There are also problems with Internet Explorer when typing an address into the Address Bar.

Microsoft has issued instructions on how to edit the registry to resolve this problem. Wonderful - editing the Registry manually is something I don't like to do. It is simply TOO easy to completely hose your system doing that. If things go badly & the registry file becomes corrupted, then not even System Restore will help if you can't boot your PC. So if you are having trouble & decide to try this, make a complete back-up of your hard drive (which you should be doing periodically anyway!).

Links for more Info:
Microsoft Support Article - HERE

ZDNet Article - HERE (Easier to read than MS's article)

If you are experiencing trouble, as always, you can contact me for help.

Update:
The Registry Edit the MS has recommended, seems to work. BUT the Support Article is a little confusing. When naming the DWORD value, MS has too much in the shaded box it presents as what they want you to name the DWORD. When copying , stop after the second closing bracket ( } ). DO NOT include the " 0x401" that is also included in the shaded area. This will break the fix. If you were not familiar with editing the Registry manually, it would appear that they wanted the whole string included.

Windows Patch Day - Yippee!!!!/GRRR!!!

Well, Windows Patch Day has come & gone and yet again I am dealing with a patch that broke my system. I'm talking about Windows 2000 Security Update KB908531. After Windows Automatic Updates installed the latest patches, I suddenly found that when I opened Windows Explorer to look for some files I was working with, I could not expand folders in the Folder Tree sidebar to find the sub-directory I was looking for. It would just hang.
At that point I didn't yet know which patch did the deed - so, I had to uninstall all the patches that I could identify as being installed in this cycle. Then I reinstalled the patches 1 at a time untill the bug reappeared. Just to be sure I went through the whole process again. Finally I installed all the other patches except the Offender & verified that the bug had not reappeared - yup! everythings fine.
So, here I am with a machine I can't patch because the patch breaks a function that I use MANY times every day. I should not be in too much danger since I have read up on what is involved in exploiting this fault, but still I'm upset that I am vulnerable at all. I could care less if this was a patch for Internet Explorer, since I avoid using it unless absolutely FORCED to, but Windows Explorer I need! I guess its time to start looking for a new file browser as well. I'll let you know what I find.
If you want to know more about the Vulnerability & the Patch the Microsoft Bulletin can be found Here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms06-015.mspx
Have a great Easter everybody!

Time for a Change!

Hi Everybody,
Well, what are you waiting for? It's time to switch to FireFox(click the button in the right Sidebar) - if you haven't already. Microsoft's Internet Explorer has yet another exploitable flaw exposed that has been upgraded to "Extemely Critical" status. This level means there is NO user activity required for the flaw to be exploited - all that has to happen is for the user to visit a website with the malicious code. Since the flaw was discovered (more than a week ago!), exploit code has been published and distributed & malicious websites have been popping up at an alarming rate. To make things worse, MS will not release a patch outside of their scheduled patch cycle - meanwhile, malicious spammers are furiously trying to lure users to their websites by embedding clips from BBC news stories & linking back to their website. Once a surfer visits their website, the code on the site exploits the IE flaw & loads a keylogger on their machine. This then logs your activity looking for logins from financial sites etc.. & sends the info back to the hackers. Thank You ActiveX & ActiveScripting!
I'm not saying the FireFox is perfect by any means - there have been plenty of potential flaws that have been documented, but as far as active exploits goes - FireFox has only a microscopic amount compared to IE. I'm sure this has much to do with Market Share (FF still has only in the range of 10%) and as this shifts, FF will become a more attractive target. Bottom Line - MS responds to Market Pressure. If you start moving to alternative Browsers(or OSs), MS will have to react. Windows Vista has been pushed back yet again, so if you were hoping for a new computer with Vista & IE7 (and the supposed security enhancements) for Christmas - It's not going to happen. Maybe for Easter(2007).

Windows & Memory

I was reading in an Industry publication recently & another reader had written in and asked why Windows didn't report all 4GB of memory (RAM) that he knew he had installed in his machine. This is a problem relating to Windows itself. The current versions of Windows XP are 32-bit Operating Systems. In theory, this means that they can address a maximum of 4GB of memory-space. BUT, in this memory-space, Windows has to allocate address space to Hardware resources (BIOS, I/O APIC, IDE (disk) controllers, USB, On-Board Audio, etc...) - this all comes out of the 4GB of memory-space. So, after Windows allocates these resources, it can only allocate what is left to Physical memory (RAM). Therefore, if you are a Hard-Core Gamer & have that hotrod machine with a pair of NVidia PCI-E Video cards in SLI mode and 4GB of expensive High-performance RAM, you are going to lose all that memory-space to the memory on those cards & PCI-E Configuration & Memory Mapping, and so on. This could add up to 1.25 - 2 GB of your RAM that Windows can't address!
How do I remedy this, you ask? Well, at this point, you could try the 64-bit version of Windows XP. It is available, but you should check to make sure that 64-bit drivers are available for all your hardware components (they are still a little sparse) - OR you can wait for the release of Windows Vista. Supposedly, when this is released near the end of 2006, 64-bit & 32-bit versions will be released side-by-side & driver support should be better.
Any questions? drop me a line.

It's Idol Time again!

Well, it's that time of the year again - Football is over, Racing is just getting started & American Idol is just getting interesting. I never watched the first 3 seasons, but I got sucked in last season (Bo Bice should have won!). This season the girls just aren't very interesting. Sure some of them can sing, but other than that they are pretty generic. Here are my two favorites this year so far:





Two words - Rock & Soul! Maybe it's because I'm old rocker at heart - I can't stand generic Pop/R&B etc...You don't have to have the most technically perfect voice to give a masterful performance.