I installed Windows XP SP3 on my desktop yesterday without event. It took 23 minutes on a fast machine. However, I don’t have any of the components that have been reported to cause trouble and I have a pretty clean system. Your experience may vary. This service pack is mostly a rollup of previous patches so don’t expect much change in performance.
The previous post was about possible problems with the service pack for Vista. There is also a new service pack for XP and, you guessed it, there are problems with some systems. For some precautions and advice go to Minimizing XP SP3 woes.
Service pack 1 for Windows Vista has now been available for general download for a while. As always happens with service packs, some systems have problems. In case any readers are among the unfortunate, here is a link to Windows Vista SP1 Disaster Recovery Guide.
Here’s an example of the useful articles Fred Langa used to write (see previous post). This one was at InformationWeek and is described thus:
Fred Langa shows you how to completely rebuild, repair, or refresh an existing XP installation without losing data, and without having to reinstall user software, reformat, or otherwise destructively alter the setup.
The method requires a Windows XP installation disk and if all you have is a “restore” disk you’re out of luck.
I previously mentioned the free program Revo as being a better way to uninstall things from Windows. The How-To Geek has put up a detailed explanation of how to use Revo. The program isn’t hard to use and you could have figured it out yourself but it’s helpful to be able to see how a program works before you actually try it.
The wide-spread infection of Web sites continues. Information Week reports:
On Friday, U.S. CERT issued a warning about SQL injection attacks that have compromised a large number of legitimate Web sites. Affected Web sites contain injected JavaScript that attempts to exploit several known vulnerabilities. U.S. CERT recommends disabling JavaScript and ActiveX.
Because otherwise legitimate Web sites deliver this attack, SAN Internet Storm Center handler Donald Smith observes that the concept of a “trusted” or “legitimate” site is no longer meaningful. The attack has reportedly affected the Web sites of the United Nations and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to name a few.
On Thursday, computer security firm F-Secure said that it had found the offending JavaScript code on over half a million Web pages. The company said that IT administrators should immediately block nmidahena.com, aspder.com, and nihaorr1.com, three domains associated with the injection attack.
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) may have taken some action to remove some of the affected pages from its index. A Google search for a text string associated with the malicious JavaScipt now yields only 56,700 results. A screenshot of what is presumably a similar Google search — the exact string is blurred — performed by F-Secure last week shows 510,000 results.
A search using the same text string on Microsoft’s Live Search returns 268,000 results. Yahoo Search returns 560,000 results for the text string in question.
If disabling JavaScript seems too drastic, at least watch out for Web sites that use pages created by Microsoft servers. They have the extension ASP or ASPX. This particular infection is presumably not in pages with ordinary HTML or with PHP extensions.
Although June 30 is the deadline for OEM offerings of Windows XP, Dell says that it will use the Vista downgrade loophole to keep selling selected laptop systems with XP as the operating system. Gregg Keizer reports:
Dell will continue to install Windows XP on new PCs after Microsoft’s June 30 retirement date by taking advantage of a little-known clause in the downgrade rights that come with Vista Ultimate and Vista Business.
Dell has taken things one step further by shipping notebooks with XP, a policy that will continue beyond Microsoft’s imposed deadline. Dell will be offering the service on Latitude, OptiPlex, Precision, and some XPS and Vostro systems.
Update: HP and Lenovo are also going to offer XP options.
At Windows Secrets, Scott Dunn has gone through various lists of highly rated freeware and come up with nine that appear most frequently. Among them are the anti-virus program Avira AntiVir, the firewall from Comodo, and the system cleaner CCleaner.
PC Magazine has published a collection of 529 computing tips. Many of them are not all that useful but, if you look through the collection, you may find some that are worthwhile. The collection begins at this page.
If you can’t wait for Microsoft to push out Windows XP Service Pack 3 by the usual channels, Major Geeks has a download link.