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The OS Quest Trail Log # 53: Attack of the SATA Ports Edition

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The latest Trail Log brings news of two problems resolved. The first was that one drive in my Windows Home Server wasn’t reporting SMART info, although seemed to be working fine otherwise. The second was a problem with a PC I was building - when it was powered on it would freeze when looking for the hard drives. Turning it off and immediately back on would resolve the problem after which it would run just fine. I also rant on the Apple iPhone hype and the Apple Microsoft revenue/market cap comparisons. Read the rest »

Microsoft Marketing Powerhouse to Marketing Has-Been

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Microsoft announced that they’re cutting Seinfeld out of their ads. Planned it all along. I didn’t say anything about the ads at the time but I thought they were unfairly disparaged at first. I kind of liked them, I chuckled a bit, and figured they were recreating Seinfeld’s sitcom about nothing in an attempt to try to make people feel good about Microsoft. I didn’t expect Seinfeld to pitch Vista directly, but rather promote the Microsoft brand to consumers. Now they say they always planned to dump Seinfeld after two [...] Read the rest »

Microsoft Security Updates for July 2008

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Microsoft has released four security bulletins for July 2008, two of which are for desktops. MS08-038 addresses a vulnerability in Windows Explorer and is for Windows Vista and carries an “important” rating. The update includes the original Vista, Vista SP1 and Vista x64. MS08-037 addresses a vulnerability in DNS and is for Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP2 & SP3, and Windows XP x64 original release & SP2. it’s rated as “important”. [Updated: This patch is part of a coordinated, multi-vendor DNS patch.] These patches, and the others, also affect [...] Read the rest »

Microsoft Security Bulletins for April 2008

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Another "Super Tuesday" patched this week but I just got around to firing up my Windows VM’s today (actually it’s been about 12 days since I’ve been in Windows). There were ten updates waiting for me on Windows Vista and eight on Windows XP Home, although not all were security related. This month’s updates included: KB945553 (MS08-020) – Vulnerability in DNS client could allow spoofing. This is rated as "Important" for all supported desktop OS’s except Windows Vista SP1, which doesn’t need the update. KB948590 (MS08-021) – Vulnerability in GDI [...] Read the rest »

Microsoft Live Search Not So Good When Looking for Microsoft Content

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All the talk may be that Microsoft needs to buy Yahoo in order to bulk up enough compete with Google. Let’s hope they also work on basic search. When I updated my Windows Home Server I wanted to find the bulletin so I’d know what it did. I had the bulletin number from the log so I fired up IE and typed the number in the top right search box. I got four results, none a Microsoft site. The first two results must have referenced the bulletin in the past. [...] Read the rest »

Microsoft Security Bulletins for March 2008

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Microsoft has released 4 security bulletins for March. All are for Office products and all are rated critical for one or more of the affected products. There weren’t any OS or IE updates this month. Since I don’t run any Office products I didn’t install any Microsoft updates this month, but these were the updates: MS08-014 is a security update that patches several vulnerabilities in Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Excel 2003 Service Pack 3 and Microsoft Excel 2007 Service Pack 1 are not affected but other versions of Excel are vulnerable. [...] Read the rest »

The OS Quest trail Log #26: Microsoft Edition

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There wasn’t much forward movement on the Quest this week as my day job tended to take up all my time. I did add some disk to my Windows Home Server and began ripping some DVDs and moving other files to it. The only software update was a very minor update to iPhoto. On the Windows side of things I’ve completed a migration from my Windows XP Home virtual machine under Parallels to a HP Vista Ultimate virtual machine under VMware on my iMac. This wasn’t much of a migration. [...] Read the rest »

Microsoft Security Bulletins for February 2008

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Microsoft released 11 security bulletins for February 2008, six are rated critical and five are important.  My Windows XP Pro SP2 installation received the following updates through Windows Update: MS08-010 – Cumulative Update for Internet Explorer (critical) MS08-007 – Vulnerability in WebDAV Mini-Redirector Could Allow Remote Code Execution (critical) MS08-008 -  Vulnerability in OLE Automation Could Allow Remote Code Execution (critical) A reboot was required. I’m running the Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate so I didn’t get any updates on that machine. I don’t run MS Office apps so I [...] Read the rest »

Security Quest #17: Microsoft Edition

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Another second Tuesday of the month and another set of Microsoft patches. I realize it’s important to patch vulnerabilities as soon as possible and this monthly release schedule tends to go against that, but I like the consistency and ability to plan. Anyway, this week brought two patches. The first is MS08-001 titled “Vulnerabilities in Windows TCP/IP Could Allow Remote Code Execution”. This affects all supported desktop OS’s. It’s rated as Important for Windows 2000 and Critical for all flavors of Windows XP and Windows Vista. I didn’t have any [...] Read the rest »