May 2008

• Organizing the Start button Spring cleaning for the Windows XP Start button. May 10, 2008.
• A Linux ThinkPad Some thoughts on a new Lenovo ThinkPad with SUSE Linux pre-installed. May 9, 2008.
• Beware the innocent web site Many innocent websites get hacked - there is no such thing as a safe neighborhood on the web May 8, 2008.
• The Foxit PDF Reader - fast, free, portable and new There is a portable version of the Foxit PDF reader. It's my favorite version. May 6, 2008.
• Can you trust the Wall Street Journal's domains? In a word, no. But they are no different than any other company. A lesson in domain names. May 3, 2008.
• Beware of a bug in Excel when doing addition An example of adding a handful of numbers, each with two decimal places and getting the wrong answer in Excel. May 3, 2008.
• Defragging and sizing the Windows page file Thoughts on how big to make the paging file and Page Defrag, a great program for defragging Windows system files. May 1, 2008.
• When it comes to software, the latest is not the greatest Software needs time to mature and work out bugs, design flaws and incompatibilities. May 1, 2008.

April 2008

• Is Windows XP good enough? An excellent article by Paul Thurrott. April 25, 2008.
• Don't install Windows XP Service Pack 3, yet Wait a few months before installing XP SP3 to minimize application incompatibility. April 25, 2008.
• Dell: We'll install XP for you, even after the deadline Dell has broken rank and will sell new computers with Windows XP pre-installed even after the Microsoft mandated deadline of June 30, 2008. April 24, 2008.
  Cross posted at Crave and at the News blog.
• Who's selling Windows XP in July? Despite what you may have heard, it will still be possible to buy a new computer with Windows XP pre-installed after the June 30th sort-of deadline. April 23, 2008.
• About Microsoft An article in ComputerWorld tells a damning story about Microsoft. April 21, 2008.
• The pillars of Defensive Computing Taking a step back from the trees, to see the whole forest. A cheat sheet to Defensive Computing. April 20, 2008.
• The Truth About IT Consultants If you deal with IT consultants, read an excellent article by Robert X. Cringely. April 18, 2008.
• Comcast ISP problems - Part 1, a ruined VPN The Comcast cable guy ruined my VPN when installing new Internet service. April 18, 2008.
• Portable Firefox and the Flash Player What you need to know to update the Flash Player when using a portable version of Firefox. April 14, 2008.
• Tracking down Firefox plugins Find out where Firefox loaded a particular plugin from. This comes in handy, for example, if it doesn't pick up a new version of the Flash Player. April 12, 2008.
  Cross posted at the News blog.
• Time to update the Flash player. Here's how. What you need to know to install version 9.0.124.0 of the Adobe Flash Player. April 10, 2008.
• A heads-up on HP business desktop PCs Ed Foster, of the Gripe Line, writes about the problems of a small business with HP computers. April 8, 2008.
• Don't get burned by Windows Update When installing IE7 and the .NET framework, Windows Update will install software with know bugs, and not tell you. April 7, 2008.
  Cross posted in the News Blog
• Symantec's revenge Even after removing all Symantec software, it still causes a problem. April 3, 2008.
• Barack Obama's website was not hacked A lesson in skepticism, which you should always bring with you online. April 2, 2008.

March 2008

• Wrestling with a Canon printer driver March 27, 2008.
• Windows XP vs. Vista vs. Linux March 25, 2008.
• Postal Service site lets anyone hold your mail March 21, 2008.
• An introduction to vishing Voice phishing is a scam perpetrated over the phone. March 20, 2008.
• Web sites acting up? Try repairing Internet Explorer How to repair/re-install IE6 and IE7 on Windows XP. March 18, 2008.
• USB flash drives need a condom The Autoplay feature in Windows can be dangerous. Here I explain why and describe how to disable it system-wide in Windows XP. Shout out to Leo Notenboom. March 15, 2008.
  Cross posted at the Daily Download
• A VPN debate: WiTopia and HotSpotVPN Comments from the head of each company about their services. March 15, 2008.
• More about VPNs: Price and Trust A follow-up to earlier postings about VPNs. Why is Witopia cheaper than HotSpotVPN? Each company responds. March 14, 2008.
• Defending your router, and your identity, with a password change Changing the password on your router is very important. This posting explains how. March 8, 2008.
• Defending the C disk with SteadyState from Microsoft SteadyState is a free program for Windows XP (and soon for Vista too) that returns the C disk to the same state day after day after day. It's a huge step up from System Restore. March 5, 2008.
• Lenovo Experts (not so) Live Lenovo offers paid technical support, but their claims about 24x7 availability are questionable. March 1, 2008.

February 2008

• Lenovo doesn't support Windows Normally a computer manufacturer provides support for Windows. Not at Lenovo. February 29, 2008.
• Defensively installing Microsoft Office Service Pack 3 Service packs for Office can't be rolled back, so be careful when installing them. February 28, 2008.
  Cross posted at the News blog.
• A few points to consider about off-site backups Don't make these mistakes when making off-site backups. February 26, 2008.
  Cross posted at the News blog.
• Updating the Adobe Acrobat Reader It may not update to the latest version. February 25, 2008.
• Debugging Windows crashes with minidumps? Not at Lenovo Lenovo technical support will not accept dump files or log files from customers to assist in debugging Windows crashes. February 21, 2008.
  Cross posted at the News blog.
• Electronic voting and partial audits - guest blog by Rebecca Mercuri I didn't write this posting, which is a rebuttal of another blog posting at CNET, one in which a researcher claimed that "electronic voting machines could be good for the electorate--with some modifications." February 21, 2008.
  Cross posted at the News blog.
• Defending against insecure hotel networks with a VPN In a hotel room, a wired ethernet Internet connection is not safe and a Virtual Private Network is the best way to make it safe. February 18, 2008.
  Cross posted at the News blog.
• New computer, old software The software pre-installed on a new computer is so old as to be dangerous. February 17, 2008.
• Don't get screwed by Microsoft Office Live Small Business Be careful with ownership of your domain, it's more inportant than the website. February 14, 2008.
  Cross posted at the News blog
• Bug fixes! Patches! Updates! Come and get it Every popular piece of software has had recent updates to fix critical bugs. February 12, 2008.
• Process Explorer Part 2 More about using Process Explorer. February 10, 2008.
  Cross posted at The Daily Download
• Using Process Explorer to tame svchost.exe - Advanced topics Introducing my favorite program, Process Explorer. February 9, 2008.
• Sun's Java sloppiness Which version of Java should you be running? Opinions differ. February 8, 2008.
• How popular is Vista? Website usage stats show there are 8 Windows XP users for each Vista user. February 2, 2008.

January 2008

• Reviews of antivirus programs and security suites January 29, 2008.
• A heads-up on the Adobe Flash player Every has and uses the free Flash web browser add-on. There are some things you need to know about it. January 26, 2008.
• Danger Will Robinson - don't watch that video Beware of videos that require you to install sosftware to view them. January 23, 2008.
• Cranky Geeks on tech journalism Ever wonder why tech journalism is so poor? January 21, 2008.
• A defensive look at the MacBook Air battery Some of the not-so-obvious drawbacks to a laptop computer that has to be mailed back to the vendor to have the battery replaced. January 20, 2008.
• Ethernet connections in a hotel room are not secure A wired Ethernet connection can be just as dangerous, security-wise, as Wi-Fi. January 19, 2008.
• UPS lost my computer A new Lenovo computer gets delivered. But where? January 17, 2008.
• Got a new laptop? Get out your screwdriver Don't get screwed by stubborn screws. January 14, 2008.
  Cross posted at Crave and the News blog.
• Scamming non-profit organizations leads to Google gripe A new scam has some interesting wrinkles and I wonder why Google hasn't removed some obviously malicious web pages from its index. January 13, 2008.
• Vote for the worst computer vendor of 2007 A poll by Ed Foster of the Gripe Line column in InfoWorld. January 9, 2008.
  Cross posted at Crave.
• How to fire a webmaster and not let them know it's happening so they can't abuse the website. January 9, 2008.
• Spyware Doctor Starter Edition - a second look Debating about Spyware Doctor with, perhaps, a marketing person from PC Tools. January 7, 2008.
• Black eyes for Adobe In a few instances, Adobe shows themselves to be sub-optimal. January 6, 2008.
  Cross posted in the News blog.
• First Look: NOD32 antivirus version 3 Is the new release of NOD32 antivirus ready for prime time? January 3, 2008.

December 2007

• Get Spyware Doctor for free - a first look at the Starter Edition In addition to the free trial, there is also a Starter Edition of Spyware Doctor which, unlike the trial, actually removes malware. December 30, 2007.
  Cross posted in the News blog.
• Defensive Computing Cheat Sheet A summary of the postings on this blog. December 29, 2007.
• No restore point for you The System Restore feature in Windows XP needs to be watched to insure it is doing its job. December 28, 2007.
• Windows Vista gripes from Lenovo About two Lenovo employees dealing with Vista. December 23, 2007.
• IE6 crashes in Windows XP: fixing the fix The Decmeber 11th batch of patches to Windows broke Internet Explorer for some users Here's the fix. December 23, 2007.
• Problems updating the Flash player in Firefox? Here's Help.. What should have been easy turned into a nightmare. If you can't get Firefox to use the latest version of Flash, read this. It took a while, but I figured out the problem. December 22, 2007.
  Cross posted in the News blog.
• Update your copy of the Flash player now. And do it right. There are multiple critical bug fixes that need to be applied to the Flash Player on Windows, Mac and Linux machines. The update needs to be applied separately to IE and Firefox and be sure to remove the older version first. December 21, 2007.
  Cross posted in the News blog.
• More about OpenDNS, including adult site filtering. A feature overview including speed, reliability, phishing protection, typo correction, website blocking and more. December 19, 2007.
  Cross posted in the News blog.
• OpenDNS provides added safety for free The DNS resolution service from OpenDNS can protect you from phishing scams and offers many other benefits too. December 15, 2007.
  Cross posted in the News blog.
• IBM Recommends Windows XP If you shop online for a new Windows computer, every manufacturer recommends Vista on their web site. Except IBM, which recommends Windows XP. I try to guess why. December 14, 2007.
• Parsing disk-partitioning advice Once again, Walter Mossberg has offered incomplete and potentially dangerous computer advice in The Wall Street Journal. This time it was about combining two hard disk partitions. This is what I recommend. December 13, 2007.
  Cross posted at the Daily download and News blog.
• Am I the real John Hodgman? Defensive Computing humor. I wrote the book before he did. :-) December 12, 2007.
  Cross posted at the News blog.
• Antimalware software suites Avoid anti-malware software suites and make individual choices for firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware software. December 8, 2007.
  Cross posted at the News blog.
• Sweet spot in monitors Spending your money wisely. December 7, 2007.
• Be careful when shopping for a replacement laptop battery Avoid the temptation to save money and buy a battery from anyone other than the laptop manufacturer. December 6, 2007.
  Cross-posted in Crave and the News blog.
• Transferring big files with DropSend and TransferBigFiles My third posting on free services for sending very large files. December 3, 2007.
  Cross-posted in WebWare.

November 2007

• Transferring big files with EatLime, SendThisFile, and FTP. My experiences sending files too big for email, 178MB and 650MB. November 29, 2007.
• 60 Minutes on TJX computer security Leslie Stahl did a piece on 60 Minutes about the theft of credit card and other personal information from TJX. I commented on it. November 25, 2007.
• New Software New software is buggy and will inevitably suffer some design flaws. It's best to lay back a bit. November 24, 2007.
• Sending big files with SendThisFile When files are too big to email SendThisFile has a great free service. November 19, 2007.
• More FUD for Windows Vista A Microsoft PR stunt tries to make XP look bad. November 15, 2007.
• Dealing with software crashes, Part 2 Driver verifier, dumps, event logs and Check Disk. November 14, 2007.
• Is that e-mail message legit? How a computer nerd analyzes it Using both common sense and techie stuff I try to figure out if a message from Register.com asking for credit card information is legit. November 11, 2007.
• Dealing with software crashes - Part 1 Stop programs from running at startup. Portable applications. Turn off error reporting. November 9, 2007.
• Restricting insecure applications A follow-up on DropMyRights that looks at two lists of the most insecure software. November 6, 2007.
• Improving on Walter Mossberg's PC-buying advice. What to do with an old computer. How long can it be useful? Replace it? Upgrade it? November 5, 2007.

October 2007

• Test your email program. I will send you a test email message to see how safe your email program is. October 28, 2007.
• Defending against a phishing email message. Disecting a scam email message. October 27, 2007.
• Why Java can't do addition correctly. Expanding on one of the gripes in the previous posting, I get techie to explain how and why Java will add two positive numbers, return a negative result and not consider it an error. October 26, 2007.
• Disgracefully unreliable software. Windows, Linux and Java fail basic integrity tests. October 21, 2007.
• Debunking Walter Mossberg - better PC buying advice. Some advice on buying a new computer. October 20, 2007.
• One Web site, many names: an introduction to domain forwarding . October 18, 2007.
• IE7 is missing and a sad tale of tech support A new Dell computer running Windows XP only wants to use IE version 6. October 13, 2007.
• Is Linux right for your mother? If maintaining a Windows system is proving too difficult, perhaps Linux is a simpler option. October 6, 2007.
• Defensively shopping at amazon.com Ed Foster got confirmation from Amazon about what I had experienced, you can buy stuff at Amazon without entering a userid/password. Be sure to log off Amazon's web site. October 2, 2007.
• Putting Windows Vista on trial Even without criticizing Vista, you can still make a case that XP is the better choice. October 1, 2007.

September 2007

• Amazon's MP3 Download store--a book report Amazon's just started selling normal, ordinary, plain vanilla MP3 songs, so I tried it out and found what you might consider a security design flaw. September 29, 2007.
• When to convert from Windows XP to Vista, Part 2 As more and more people resist using Windows Vista, Microsoft recently started letting computer manufacturers ship Windows XP Recovery discs to allow downgrades of Vista to XP. September 25, 2007
• A new approach to securing USB flash drives USB Flash drives are great. Securing them, however, is not so great. They are easily lost and the more you use one, the more likely it will contain files you consider sensitive. Corsair recently came out with a product that takes an entirely new approach to securing flash drives. September 18, 2007.
• Why Apple isn't selling more Macs An interesting article in the New York Times argues that Apple should be selling many more Macintosh computers than it is. I agree completely. September 16, 2007.
• Defending yourself against Microsoft How to turn off automatic updates so Microsoft can't update your computer whenever they feel like it. September 14, 2007.
• Windows is Spyware Microsoft can and will update your copy of Windows whenever they feel like it, regardless of your wishes. And, they feel no obligation to tell you what they've done. Your computer is just a zombie to them. September 13, 2007.
• Create a second Windows userid for backup. Many, if not most, Windows computers are used by a single person with a single userid. Defensively speaking, this is not good. Anything can break, including a Windows userid. September 13, 2007.
• What makes a good surge protector -- Part 1. Many, if not most, Windows computers are used by a single person with a single userid. Defensively speaking, this is not good. Anything can break, including a Windows userid. September 10, 2007.
• Three cheers for portable Thunderbird Thunderbird is the best e-mail program for Windows users, and the portable version is the best version of Thunderbird. September 3, 2007.
• I pity the fool (Windows XP good, Vista bad) It saddens me to think of all the ill advised people buying new computers running Windows Vista, when they could have chosen XP. As Mr. T was fond of saying back in the 1980s, I pity the fool. Let me be clear, my point is only about the choice between XP and Vista and has nothing to do with Macs or Linux. I'm also not here to defend Windows XP. My point is simply that if you are buying a new computer to run Windows applications, XP is the right choice; Vista is the wrong choice. September 2, 2007
• Wall Street Journal Readers - check this out On Thursday August 30th Walter Mossberg repeated his prior recommendation of the Mozy online backup service. While Mozy can fit the needs of some people, there are two sides to every coin and there is a downside to Mozy too. For the rest of the story, see my recent postings. September 1, 2007.

August 2007

• There is only one email program - Thunderbird There is only one email program for Windows users. No, I haven't lost my mind, and yes Windows users can chose from many client side email programs. But this is a Defensive Computing blog and speaking defensively, that is, with the hope of avoiding problems in the future, there is only one choice when it comes to email programs - Thunderbird. August 31, 2007
• Backing up e-mail E-mail, for many of us, is very important and accumulates forever, making it a large mess when it comes to backing it up. This is what I do. August 31, 2007
• Can you trust that file? Web sites that scan suspect files with multiple antivirus programs. August 26, 2007.
• A new e-mail scam The title says it all. August 21, 2007
• Be careful when downloading software Some web sites that host software for you to download assign them the highest five star rating, no matter what. In a test done by a software developer, a program that does nothing at all, doesn't even run, got some great reviews. You've got to read this posting. August 20, 2007.
• Trend Micro's Transaction Guard sloppiness Transaction Guard is an online Java applet that Trend seems to have abandoned. August 18, 2007.
• DropMyRights Trilogy
  • Every Windows XP user should drop their rights. An introduction to the DropMyRights program. The problems it solves. August 7, 2007.
  • DropMyRights part 2: Installing and configuring. August 12, 2007
  • DropMyRights part 3: Living with it What you can expect after having installed DropMyRights. August 16, 2007.
• What is Network Solutions afraid of? August 5, 2007.
• Task Manager - useful enough to run all the time In Windows XP, Task Manager is like the dashboard of a car. I show you how to configure things so that Task Manager runs at system startup. August 3, 2007.

July 2007

• Everybody likes Mozy--except me Part 2 The title says it all. July 30, 2007.
• Everybody likes Mozy--except me Part 1 The title says it all. Mozy gets great reviews in the press - I go into more detail than most. July 30, 2007.
• Got computer questions? Ask Leo Leo Notenboom answers computer questions for free. And he knows his stuff. July 27, 2007.
• Four Tips to Using System Restore on Windows XP Even if Safe Mode won't work System Restore may be able to help get Windows working again. Also, how to check that System Restore is functioning correctly. July 26, 2007.
• The pros and cons of LEDs for backlighting LCD screens Laptops that are very small and very expensive are starting to feature LED backlights. July 22, 2007.
• Buying a laptop hard disk at Best Buy A non-techie is sold the wrong thing by salespeople with no clue. July 19, 2007.
• NOD32 antivirus won't shut down I like NOD32, but in one case, I couldn't turn it off. The vendor offers an explanation. July 15, 2007.
• Following up on RAID Level Zero More about the dangers of RAID Level Zero. July 13, 2007.
• The blinking lights on a router are talking to you Can't get on the Internet? Can't print to network printer? It's bound to happen sooner or later. Take these steps to be prepared for networking failures in the future. July 11, 2007.
• Mistakes in Wall Street Journal editorial An editorial in the newspaper contains technical mistakes. July 10, 2007.
• Don't get burned by RAID Zero Whether you are buying a desktop computer or an external hard disk, you need to know what RAID Zero is because it's very dangerous. Two of my clients suffered major outages because of it. July 6, 2007.
• Introducing the defensive computing blog What this blog will be about. July 5, 2007.