Windows Tips and Tricks

Ed Foster writes a regular feature at InfoWorld called the GripeLog, where readers can relate their troubles with various technology-related products. He has recently taken a poll to see who gets voted the worst vendor of 2006. And the winner is Symantec, who very narrowly edged out Microsoft. A regular reader of this blog will not be surprised.

Want to look up some facts about a particular country? Like to know the annual cotton production for Argentina? Or the median age of the population of Bulgaria? If used properly, standard seach engines like Google or Yahoo are pretty good for finding that kind of information but there are some sources that specialize in world facts. An old standby is the World FactBook from the CIA (yes, that CIA). Now there is an additional source for world information called NationMaster. The site gives this decription:

Welcome to NationMaster, a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations. NationMaster is a vast compilation of data from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, UN, and OECD. Using the form above, you can generate maps and graphs on all kinds of statistics with ease.

The same company has a site for information about the various states of the US called StateMaster. It is described:

Welcome to StateMaster, a unique statistical database which allows you to research and compare a multitude of different data on US states. We have compiled information from various primary sources such as the US Census Bureau, the FBI, and the National Center for Educational Statistics. More than just a mere collection of various data, StateMaster goes beyond the numbers to provide you with visualization technology like pie charts, maps, graphs and scatterplots. We also have thousands of map and flag images, state profiles, and correlations.

As bad as the spam problem was, its volume has taken another leap. According to an article at InformationWeek, spam was 94% of all email in December. I don’t know how accurate that number may be but I can attest to the fact that there’s a lot more spam being sent out. I have seen a big increase in junk in my personal mail and in the spam comments sent to this blog. So far, in January around 2000 spam messages have been caught by the spam filter on this blog. That’s twice the total for all of 2006. The increase seems to come from more and more botnets. As the article says:

Legitimate e-mail now constitutes a rounding error when compared with spam, thanks to a standing army of more than a million zombie PCs waging war on in-boxes worldwide on any given day.

The age-old story of the “tragedy of the commons” is happening again. This plus the blindness of so many computer users to the dangers of unsecured systems is hurting us all.

The consumer launch of Vista is at midnight tonight and the Internet is awash with Vista postings. I feel I have been hearing about Vista for an eternity. I actually wrote almost a year ago that I was tired of hearing about Vista. Now I am tired of writing about Vista as well and I suspect some of you may also have had enough of the subject for a while. So I am going to give the topic of Vista a rest in this blog until more people actually experience it although I may be writing articles elsewhere. However, on this eve of its release to the general public I do have some personal observations to make about Vista.

• In many ways Vista is not a finished project; Microsoft was working on it in a frenzy right up to the release to manufacturing. Microsoft, other software companies, and hardware manufacturers have much work left to do.
• Until Vista has been in use for a while by the general public, questions remain about how the new security measures like User Account Control and the Content Protection Policy are going to work in real day-to-day practice.
• Windows XP SP2 isn’t perfect but it is established, works well, and continues to receive Microsoft support and updates.
• Most reviews that I have seen find no compelling reason to make a hurried switch to Vista.

Considering my own personal experience with Vista RC1 and from all that I have read, I conclude that most home PC users should not attempt to upgrade an existing XP system to Vista. When the time comes that you need a new computer, that will be soon enough to consider a Vista system or maybe even a Mac. Let the dust settle from the initial release, see what develops, and probably wait until Service Pack 1 before switching to Vista.

More advanced PC users who have the hardware and the money for a full edition of Vista might try a dual-boot with XP and Vista on the same machine. Or perhaps virtualization may be the way to go. I suspect that is what I may end up doing. I used a dual-boot while making the transition to Windows XP and I was glad that I did.

A “Google bomb” (also written “Googlebomb”) results when a group of people use the way Google ranking algorithms work to cause a search for some name or phrase to turn up a derogatory or humorous result. A famous one was when political opponents got the search entry “George W. Bush” to show “miserable failure”. Another example is that for several years the search “more evil than satan himself” would bring Microsoft’s homepage to the top of the results page. There have been numerous other incidences, including one that cast aspersions on French military prowess. After some years of apparently doing little or nothing to keep this type of thing from happening, Google has announced:

By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead.

Let’s see how long it takes before the hackers figure out another way to jigger Google searches.

This is a continuation of two previous posts on different approaches to computer security. In the first I discussed configuring Internet Explorer for greater security against ActiveX exploits. In the second the use of “sandbox” software to isolate the browser or other parts of the system to keep malware from spreading was reviewed.

Today I will look at the technique of running with reduced privileges. By doing most Web surfing with less than full access to all system files and settings, any malware that is encountered is limited in what it can do. Windows XP provides user accounts with reduced rights and, as I have posted before, running in this type of account can greatly reduce exposure to malware. However, the functionality of these accounts is so restricted that many, or maybe most, PC users find them to be too inconvenient and continue to use accounts with full administrative rights. It didn’t help that many applications are improperly written and won’t run in limited accounts.

Microsoft has refined the limited rights approach in Vista to make it more compatible with everyday use and has made it a mainstay of the effort to make Windows Vista more secure. This new feature, called User Account Control (UAC), has met with very mixed reviews and it remains to be seen how it works out in practice. When I tried out the RC1 release of Vista my experience was that UAC could be annoying but that I could live with it. As I keep saying, better security inevitably means less convenience.

In the meantime, those who are running Windows XP can try some little-known software from Microsoft called “DropMyRights“. The software allows you to reduce the rights of a program so that it has less access to the inner workings of the system. The obvious candidate for this approach is the Internet browser, where the effects of any malware encountered while on the Internet can be minimized. The software is a version of something that is used in Vista but is applicable to XP. It’s a little geeky but worth a try. Here’s a description of how it works:

DropMyRights is a very simple application to help users who must run as an administrator run applications in a much-safer context—that of a non-administrator. It does this by taking the current user’s token, removing various privileges and SIDs from the token, and then using that token to start another process, such as Internet Explorer or Outlook. This tool works just as well with Mozilla’s Firefox, Eudora, or Lotus Notes e-mail.

In a previous post I mentioned Sysinternals and all the great free system software that Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell had provided over the years. I noted the sale to Microsoft and wondered what would happen to all the good stuff that used to be freely available. Well, Microsoft has given them a new site at Microsoft Technet and the good stuff from Sysinternals is all there. Here’s the site description:

The Sysinternals web site was created in 1996 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell to host their advanced system utilities and technical information. Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July, 2006. Whether you’re an IT Pro or a developer, you’ll find Sysinternals utilities to help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications. If you have a question about a tool or how to use them, please visit the Sysinternals Forum for answers and help from other users and our moderators.

Writing at CNET, Robert Vamosi is lukewarm about Vista. He concludes:

The bottom line: Windows Vista is essentially warmed-over Windows XP. If you’re currently happy with Windows XP SP2, we see no compelling reason to upgrade. On the other hand, if you need a new computer right now, Windows Vista is stable enough for everyday use.

One of the headaches that is going to come with the changeover to Vista is the driver problem. If the Windows 98/Me transition to Windows XP is any guide, it will be some months before all the hardware manufacturers get around to writing updated drivers for existing peripherals and other hardware. In some cases, it may be never. I previously mentioned some sites for getting driver update information. However, the Microsoft site given there no longer works. Here is a newer Microsoft link for driver information.

The best place for updated driver information is likely to be on the manufacturer’s own Website. For example. HP has a site about its products and Vista at this link.

If your present computer has the necessary horsepower and you want to upgrade to Vista from XP, here’s some facts about upgrade routes. Microsoft has a rather convoluted set of rules about what version of XP can be upgraded to what version of Vista. Since an upgrade version of Vista costs less than a full version, the rules determine how much you have to spend. Sometimes it seems to be a policy at Microsoft to make upgrading as confusing as possible. One complication is that there are two possible upgrade methods. There is what we are used to calling an upgrade- installing the new operating system on top of the old one and retaining (if we are lucky) most of our old settings and programs. Microsoft distinguishes this “in-place” upgrade from one where you zap your old system entirely and make a fresh Vista installation. A table below shows the upgrade routes that are possible “in-place”.

So if you have Windows XP Professional, does that mean that you can’t upgrade to Vista Home Premium? Not in-place, apparently. But you are still eligible to buy the upgrade version of Vista Home Premium and do a fresh install (saying goodbye to all your old settings, etc). In fact, owning any full version of Windows XP entitles you to the upgrade price for any version of Vista but you may be limited to a fresh install. Even owning a full copy of Windows 2000 entitles you to the upgrade price. Windows 98 and Me are not eligible.

Things get murkier if you do not own a full version of XP. A lot of home PC owners have OEM versions of XP and these may or may not be eligible for upgrades to Vista. You’ll have to ask your original vendor (and hope you’ll get an answer). Another possible catch is systems that have already been upgraded once. If you upgraded from Windows 98 to XP, then you probably can’t do it again. However, any hardware on a system that came with 98 probably wouldn’t run Vista anyway.

Added later in the day: By “fresh” install I mean an installation that wipes out the old system, not installation to a blank disk. Some posts on the Internet indicate that there must be a valid Windows 2000 or XP system actually installed on the system to be upgraded. The old system gets wiped out but it has to be there to start with.