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[THIS IS A GOOD OLE' FASHIONED VANITY] OK, so my son calls me from Auburn ... Right after downloading and installing the latest updates from our friends in Redmond, the OS crashes into a memory dump/ BSOD. Vista Home Premium 64 bit on an HP notebook duo core 2 quad etc etc. It'll boot and run in safe mode, but something Microsoft sent out conflicts BIG time. I called Geek Squad to set up an appt for him, and the gentleman at Geek Squad said they had been getting a LOT of calls about laptops crashing after a Windows update....

If you have worked in an office in the Western world in the past 25 years, you will probably have sat through a PowerPoint presentation. But there's a problem. They're often boring, writes presentation expert Max Atkinson. In the past 25 years, I've asked hundreds of people how many PowerPoint presentations they've seen that came across as really inspiring and enthusiastic. Most struggle to come up with a single example, and the most optimistic answer I've heard was "two". So what are the main problems?

Now, I am not a lawyer. But, I've been reporting on IP (intellectual property) law issues for years now, so I know something about how these issues are resolved, and when I see that one attorney thinks there's an "easy technical work-around" for Microsoft's patent violation in Word, my alarm bells go off. There is no easy fix here, and, short of waving the white-flag, Microsoft may very well have to stop selling Word, and thus Microsoft Office, this fall. Here's why the "easy" solutions really don't work. First, there's the suggestion from the attorney that "All Microsoft has to...

A tipster just pointed me to the CA support forums where there’s a lot of chatter about CA Anti-Virus misidentifying key Windows system files as malware.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said Monday it would offer a free, Web-based version of its Office tools, the company's most significant acknowledgment that it needs to alter a decades-old model of selling boxed software as it battles competitors like Google Inc. (GOOG). The announcement is the latest milestone in an 18-month-old strategy by the world's largest software firm to offer more of its core products via the Web. The Office suite of products includes the Word word processing application and Excel spreadsheet. In offering Office over the Web, the Redmond, Wash.-based company is trying to grab a larger slice of a...

A critical ActiveX vulnerability used by hackers to exploit Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser is a prime candidate for another Conficker-scale attack, security experts said. On July 6, just hours after security companies reported that thousands of compromised sites were serving up exploits, Microsoft acknowledged the flaw in the ActiveX control that can be accessed using IE. The bug has been used by hackers since at least June 9. Microsoft said it will issue a patch for the flaw on July 14.The vulnerability "exposes the whole world and can be exploited through the firewall," said Roger Thompson, chief research officer...

I have a rootkit trace that refuses to go away. Macafee can't delete it. Malwarebytes Antimalware claims to delete it but it's right there as soon as it closes. I find hundreds of references to it via Google but nobody says how to get rid of it and nobody even discusses what it does besides annoy you. My cd burning programs have been disabled so I can't make an alternative OS like BartPE. I can boot off the Windows CD and get into the Recovery console. I use DOS commands to delete the files but they come right back again....

The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service were forced to shut down parts of their computer networks after a mystery virus struck the law-enforcement agencies Thursday, according to an Associated Press report. A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed that it had disconnected from Justice Department computers as a precaution after being hit with the virus, while an FBI spokesperson would only say that it was experiencing similar issues, according to the report. "We too are evaluating a network issue on our external, unclassified network that's affecting several government agencies," FBI spokesman Mike Kortan told the AP. The virus'...

Improving performance is one of Microsoft's design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers (including ours) have said that the new OS seems peppier than Vista. But tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users. We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and then ran our WorldBench 6 suite. Afterward we compared the results with the WorldBench 6 numbers from the same three systems running...

Several months ago, my computer crashed on me. Wouldn't even get to the beginning stages of boot up. Lights flickered if you hit the button, but beyond that, nothing. So, I took it to Best Buy where I bought it and where it was still under warrantee. They determined it was a fried motherboard. Consistent with the warrantee, the Geek Squad replaced it. Ever since that time, it takes about 2-3 minutes to boot up. Everything else seems to run fine, but boot up is excruciatingly slow. Any ideas why what normally took 30 seconds or so now takes 5...

Microsoft wants laid off employees to return part of their severance pay. I guess over $50 billion is not enough money for Bill Gates. Microsoft recently laid off 1400 workers ,mostly in the US. They have now decided their severance package was too big. They have sent the a letter (see picture) to them asking for the money back. Perhaps some of those mosquitoes Bill Gates recently released at a tech conference have infected him with an insanity virus.

Remember when Vista was announced, and Microsoft decided to release six different versions of the operating system, much to the confusion, disappointment, and ridicule of potential buyers? Well guess what? Microsoft is back with the Windows 7 strategy. What has it learned in the last three years? Pretty much nothing. While Microsoft is touting the "two primary editions" of Windows 7 -- a Home Premium edition and a Professional (intended for business) edition -- the fact is it's sticking with the same six different versions (or SKUs, stock-keeping units) that it had for Vista. The real difference is that Windows...

I give up. Windows is proof that people are too stupid to use computers. And too stupid or dishonest to report Microsoft Windows as the defective disaster that it is. If it were any other type of product it would have banned from every country in the world long ago. The BBC reports the latest Windows Conficker worm outbreak in typical "oh no big deal" fashion, does not identify this as a Windows worm until several paragraphs into the article, quotes industry security vendors as though they were actually worth listening to and not useless weasels, and then blames...

It’s enough to make you rub your eyes, blink and squint to make sure you’re not hallucinating. But it’s true. Microsoft plans to open its own chain of retail stores. On Thursday the Redmond company announced it had hired former Wal-Mart executive David Porter to make it happen. Microsoft seems to think it can duplicate Apple’s retail success, using a chain of stores to improve the “Microsoft retail purchase experience” and to combat the stereotypes – artfully reinforced by Apple’s “I’m a Mac” TV ads – that owning a Windows PC is fraught with difficulties. I hardly know where to...

French fighter planes grounded by computer virus French fighter planes were unable to take off after military computers were infected by a computer virus, an intelligence magazine claims. by Kim Willsher in Paris Last Updated: 11:43AM GMT 07 Feb 2009 The aircraft were unable to download their flight plans after databases were infected by a Microsoft virus they had already been warned about several months beforehand. At one point French naval staff were also instructed not to even open their computers. Microsoft had warned that the "Conficker" virus, transmitted through Windows, was attacking computer systems in October last year, but...

TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk'd. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd. Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates's, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn't feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. "Not only poor people should experience this," Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience, according to Facebook manager Dave Morin. (eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter CEO Ev Williams confirm the...

Steven Sinofsky this week reaffirmed that Windows 7 would only have a single public beta release—build 7000, still available for download for a few more days. The current expectation is that there will be a single Release Candidate in April, with RTM around July, and Windows 7 hitting stores a few months later. This plan marks a significant departure from Microsoft's historic Windows release strategy. Previous editions have had at least two betas and two Release Candidates; even Windows XP, a minor update to Windows 2000, received this treatment. Windows Vista went even further during its extended development period. In...

SAN FRANCISCO – A nasty worm has wriggled into millions of computers and continues to spread, leaving security experts wondering whether the attack is a harbinger of evil deeds to come. US software protection firm F-Secure says a computer worm known as "Conficker" or "Downadup" had infected more than nine million computers by Tuesday and was spreading at a rate of one million machines daily. The malicious software had yet to do any noticeable damage, prompting debate as to whether it is impotent, waiting to detonate, or a test run by cybercriminals intent on profiting from the weakness in the...

The Conficker virus has opened a new can of worms for security experts. Drives such as USB sticks infected with the virus trick users into installing the worm, according to researchers. The "Autoplay" function in Vista and early versions of Windows 7 automatically searches for programs on removable drives.

A worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates is posing a growing threat to users. The malicious program, known as Conficker, Downadup, or Kido was first discovered in October 2008. Although Microsoft released a patch, it has gone on to infect 3.5m machines. Experts warn this figure could be far higher and say users should have up-to-date anti-virus software and install Microsoft's MS08-067 patch.