Service Pack 1 and Polite Phishing. OddJob & Meow.

Service Pack Released. Holdouts can migrate to Windows 7 now.

Last night my Win7 machine told me that there were Updates available. So, like I always do, I clicked to view the details. I noticed that one of the “Important” updates was not checked. So I looked closer and saw that it was indeed the awaited first Service Pack, which rumors had said was coming soon.
I placed a check in the checkbox, and clicked “Install”. Because Service Packs are good things. And I have been testing IE 9, so I let that upgrade to the new “Release Candidate” as well.

After a twice rebooting install, which went smoothly, my upgrades were in, and my Windows 7 machine was now 72 times faster and three times shinier. Yay!

Okay. You know I’m kidding.. right? “Service Packs” sometimes do bring new features to the operating system, but generally are simply a collection (a “pack”) of security patches and bug fixes. There is an old saying in the Geek world – Do Not Buy Until The First Service Pack Is Released.

That’s good advice. Generally speaking, you do not want Version 1.0 of anything. You want the next version.. the one where most of the bugs have been found and fixed. I have been telling people that Windows 7 is an exception to that Rule – being already remarkably stable and bug free. However, if you have been waiting, SP1 is now here.

So what is in the first Windows 7 Service Pack (aka SP1)? I quote, “Win 7 SP1 sports a little nip here and a roll-up tuck there — but there’s not a single significant enhancement to Win7.”
Woody Leonhard wrote a great piece for Windows Secrets that sums things up in a nutshell: What you need to know about Windows 7 SP1

* For those who have trouble with this Update (or.. Updates in general), see Microsoft notes Windows Update “inconsistencies,” provides fix

Cybercriminals try the polite approach:

I ask non-regular readers to note the attachment ‘paperclip’, and to trust me when I say that it is a clear signal that you do NOT want to do anything with this email except delete it — opening the email will put you on the Global Sucker List. And opening the attachment…. probably worse.
And I believe that regular readers will know that “Please confirm your identity” translates to “Please hand me your identity”.

Related?

“A new banking trojan targeting U.S. customers has the ability to keep online account sessions open after customers believe they have logged off, enabling criminals to surreptitiously steal money, according to researchers at web security firm Trusteer.

Eastern European cybercrooks are using the trojan, dubbed “OddJob” by researchers, to attack banking customers in the United States, Poland and Denmark…“

Learn more here, Trojan steals session IDs, bypasses logout requests

Too kewel not to post:
A reader shared with me a photo. I am not a “cat person”, but one look at this fellow…

King of his hill

and I had to smile. One ‘cool cat’ there.

Have a great day everyone!

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Video Tutorial – 7 Best Windows 7 tips in 7 minutes

This video “demo” describes, and shows “in action”, some of the improvements found in Windows 7.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

See the new Taskbar (“pinned” and “jump lists”), aero feature (“shake” and “snap”), “federated” Search (with preview), network configuration, UAC, and device management.

(“Shake” was a new one to me… )

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** A Chance To Win A Valuable Prize! **

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Oops!Backup is a ‘time machine’ backup for Windows program that creates “backup revision copies” of the files on your computer.

To enter my license giveaway drawing, please see: Software Giveaway Drawing(s) – Oops!Backup

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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45 Windows Tricks, Free Wallpaper, More!

Today is Saturday and I have decided I am going to let others do the heavy lifting for me. Below are some collections of tweaks, tricks, tips, and fun customizations for your computer.

First up: Essential Windows Tricks
“Whether you run Windows 7, Vista, or XP, these 25 tricks will make your PC faster, safer, and even more fun to work with.”

* The verdict is in: Windows 7 is Microsoft’s best operating system yet. For those of you who have a Win7 machine: 20 Windows 7 quick tips and tricks for IT admins
“Make working in Windows 7 even easier with these easy-to-miss tricks.”

(It’s okay you’re not an “IT admin”, just skip over tips #17, 18, and 19.)

* And spruce up your PC’s appearance with wallpaper: FREE High Resolution Wallpapers
“Today, I want to tell you about a wallpaper site that I use that is not only safe, but provides a great collection of high resolution wallpapers.”

* Is a Web mail (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!) your primary e-mail? Want to fix your “mailto:”? Default to Web Mail
“Patrick wants a Web-based mail service to be his default email.”

So have some fun with your computer. Read these, and then try some “tweaks” and customizations yourself. Make your PC (Personal Computer) more “personal”.

Have a great weekend, folks!

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Using Task Manager – Windows 7 Style

An Overview and Tutorial on the Windows Task Manager

There are several ways that you can access the Task Manager in Windows, and that’s still true in Windows 7. One method is to right-click on a blank section of the Taskbar, and select Task Manager from the context menu. Or you can press Ctrl+Shift+Esc. Or you can click the Start button, type “taskmgr” (no quotes) into the Search box, and press Enter. Or you can press Ctrl+Alt+Delete, (the good old “three-fingered salute”) you’ll see a full screen menu and can click Start Task Manager.

The “tabs”: the 6 tabs in Task Manager are Applications, Processes, Services, Performance, Networking, and Users.

Applications tab operates exactly the same as it does in XP and Vista. It allows you to determine the status of a task (you might see a program “not responding”) as well as end, switch, or create a new task. The former is the use for Task Manager that most people are familiar with: when you have a “frozen” (aka “not responding”) program, you click on it in, and then click the End Task button, which hopefully closes it down. (If it doesn’t, reboot.) But there is more to Task Manager than just this use! And these are found on the other tabs.

Processes tab provides you with very detailed information about the programs and Services (aka “processes”) currently running on your system, which is useful to experienced users (and techs) for troubleshooting.
* The “Image Name” column identifies the executable file. (Note: this is not always a “user friendly” name, and when you see these weird-looking spellings, Google is your friend. Do not assume that if you don’t understand it, it must be bad: wuauclt.exe is your friend, for one example, even if it is weird-looking [it’s Windows Update].)
* The “Description” column identifies each process in a more “user friendly” way. Don’t panic if a process’s description is blank; some basic Windows Services and “background” functions are generic and/or not described.
* The “CPU” and “Memory” columns tell you how much resources a process is using. A really high CPU number, or staying at 100%, can be an indicator of a problem.

Now for the fun: right – click.

Useful information about a process can be accessed by right-clicking on it and selecting the “Open File Location” or “Properties” options – when you select the Open File Location, Windows Explorer opens the folder containing the file; and selecting Properties, opens the file’s standard Properties dialog box.

The “Set Affinity ability is useful for getting old programs to run properly on the new multi-core PC’s. See Multicore Computers and Old Programs* for more on that topic.

Services tab provides you with a convenient way to quickly view the Services that are running while you’re troubleshooting. Right-clicking allows you to Stop the Service.

Performance tab (my fave) If you’re coming to Win7 from XP, this is where you’ll find the biggest changes to Task Manager. This window shows you actual system load, and ‘plots’ it over time. But I want a more detailed look, usually, so I go straight to the Resource Monitor button (Resource Monitor is a whole ‘nother article..).

Networking tab is essentially the same as in Windows XP. On the Networking tab you can view network status and see how your network is functioning.

Users tab is also essentially the same as in Windows XP. You can see who is logged on to the system, and Users can be disconnected or logged off.

In review; with Windows Task Manager is the “troubleshooting” tool for identifying and examining what is running on your computer; looking for ‘problem’ applications (and if necessary, force them to close with “End Task”) and Services; monitor how your processor and RAM is being used; and access system-level process settings.

Please allow me to remind you of my general advice for beginners: If you do not KNOW, do not touch… or, I should say, “don’t touch until you’ve researched it thoroughly.” You can really mess up your computer (as in “render useless”) by changing settings you don’t fully understand. Remember, too, there’s no shame in seeking the council of a professional… such as myself!

Entries must be received before midnight (Pacific) tonight (Thurs. May 27th) so act now!

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** A Chance To Win A Valuable Prize! **

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The folks at Genie-soft have generously donated five licenses for Genie Timeline Professional 2.0 to me, to award to my readers. So I am going to do a random drawing contest from folks who “enter”.Genie Timeline is a program that creates “backup copies” of the files and settings on your computer. With Timeline, you do not have to be “computer savvy”, and you can set-it-and-forget-it. Timeline constantly monitors your file system, automatically, for you.To enter the drawing, please see: Software License Giveaway: Genie Timeline Professional

Entries must be received before midnight (Pacific) tonight (Thurs. May 27th) so act now!

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Is It Time To Say Goodbye To Windows XP?

“I am often asked by clients using XP if they should “upgrade” their machines to a newer OS.“

Microsoft’s Windows XP was their most successful operating system to date and more than half the computers in the world are still using Windows XP. There are several reasons for that. (One big one is software “pirates” and “warez”. Another is businesses, gov’ts, and org’s don’t have the cushion in their budgets to upgrade.)

XP was released in 2001. It was the first consumer-oriented operating system produced by Microsoft to be built on the “business grade” Windows NT kernel — which was far less prone to random Blue Screens Of Death (BSOD’s) than the Windows 9x architecture was.

Windows XP has many loyal fans. I used (and liked) Windows XP right up to 2007, when I was able to get advanced copies of a new operating system, “codename Longhorn” — which became “Vista”. I still have a couple XP machines I occasionally use for testing purposes, but the keyword there is “occasionally”.

Windows XP was, after Service Pack 2, stable, rather fast, and most of the software (aka “programs”) ever written would run on it. It had/has the “modern” abilities we needed to really allow the Internet to blossom and grow. The point of my article today is not to “dis”, “knock”, or “put down” Windows XP in any way. It is/was a “complete OS”; versatile; capable; and, the world of computing (and the Internet) would not be what it is today without it. It was an important part of our tech evolution.

But that is my key point – evolution. (In tech.)

2001 may not seem like all that long ago to you. But in the arena of technology and computers (as stated by Moore’s Law), 2001 is either 4 1/2 “generations” ago, or 6 generations.. depending how you count. Let’s be conservative, and call it 4. In terms of hardware/software, Windows XP is a Great-grandpa. (Or.. a Great, great, great grandpa. Depending how you count.) In terms of Microsoft OSes; it has been ‘succeeded’ by Vista, Vista + SP1, Vista + SP2, and now Windows 7 (with SP1 for Win7 not long off).

Fact: Microsoft is ending support for Windows XP.
Phasing it out.
“Retiring” it.
Their most successful product.
(“.. turn out the lights .. the party’s over ..)

Support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 will be retired on July 13, 2010. Microsoft stopped general licensing of Windows XP to manufacturers and terminated retail sales of the operating system on June 30, 2008.

On April 14, 2009, Windows XP and its family of operating systems were moved from Mainstream Support to the Extended Support phase. During the Extended Support Phase, Microsoft will continue to provide security updates every month for Windows XP.

On April 8, 2014, all Windows XP support, including security updates and security-related hotfixes, will be terminated.

Is it time to say goodbye To Windows XP?
I am often asked by clients using XP if they should “upgrade” their machines to a newer OS, or buy a new computer altogether. What answer I give depends on several factors, but basically my decision boils down to the “generation” of their hardware, and whether or not they have any ‘mission-critical’ programs that are XP-only (i.e., DOS-based).

* Is your Hard Drive an IDE? When you plug in a USB device, do you get a message saying “This device can perform faster” and something about USB 2.0? Is your CPU (aka “processor”) a “single-core” (Pentium 4/Athlon 64 or older)? Do you have 1 GB (or less) of PC400 – PC800 RAM?
(You can see most of these things by looking at your System Properties. Right-click on “My Computer”, and selecting “Properties”. Then look at your HD’s Properties in Device Manager.)

If you answered “yes” to the above, my answer is to forget about upgrading to Vista or Win 7, and instead save your money for a new machine. Keep your machine XP until you can retire it. But be aware, XP is aged and vulnerable to cybercriminals: make sure you have proper defenses in place. Please see, Top 10 things you should do to your computer for the tools and How To’s for that.

However, if you answered mostly “no” to that checklist (in other words, you have a dual-core, more than 1.5 GB’s of RAM [and it’s DDR2]. and your USB busses are 2.0, and your HD is a SATA, well, then, you might want to consider upgrading to Windows 7. (Or at least, creating a “dual boot” setup. See, Video Tutorial — How To Dual Boot Win7.)
But it is very important that you download and run Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor first. It will scan your machine and tell you if you have any incompatibilities, and save you a ton of headaches.

The critical reviews of Windows 7 are in, and they are over-whelmingly positive. A long time ago, I wrote A Tech’s First Impression of Windows 7 RC; my enthusiasm for Win 7 has not faded in the time since. I will repeat my “general opinion” of Win 7 –> it is the Windows that Bill Gates has promised us since way back when Windows 95 was released.

But! Short version, seriously consider a new machine over an upgrade. A new machine will be 64-bit, and have the current generation of hardware, and it will come with Windows 7 already set up and configured. A new machine will last you more years to come; while XP’s days are running out.

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*** A Chance To Win A Valuable Prize! ***

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The folks at SYNCING.NET have generously donated six Professional Edition licenses to me, to award to my readers. SYNCING.NET is a Business Class program which enables users to sync their Microsoft Outlook data on multiple computers.
To enter the drawing, please see: Software License Giveaway: SYNCING.NET
Enter my current giveaway and (possibly) win a license!

Today’s recommended reading:
* Google Admits Tracking WiFi Payloads
* Canada’s Super Spies “Discover” Cybercrime is a Threat

Today’s free download: Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. Find out if your PC can run Windows 7.
To see if your PC is ready for Windows 7, download the free Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. It scans your PC for potential issues with your hardware, devices, and installed programs, and recommends what to do before you upgrade.

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Windows 7 64-bit Adventures

In keeping with the times, I decided to Go 64 (bit) with my new Windows 7 install (aka “upgrade”). 64-bit computing is officially here for us Average Folk, and it has many advantages. One of the nicest is the ability to “access” more RAM memory.
(I wrote previously about 64-bit and Windows 7. See, A Tech’s First Impression of Windows 7 64-bit)

64-bit operating systems can have lots of RAM, and since the machine I installed Windows 7 on only had a mere 3 Gigabytes of RAM.. and since my motherboard could accept up to 8… and.. Windows 7 64-bit can “see” 8.. well.. I decided to go and buy 8 GB’s of RAM modules and stick them in. (I am a capital “G” geek, after all..)

First, I visited the SystemScanner memory upgrade advisor tool at Crucial.com (a memory chip manufacturer) and downloaded it, and ran it. It told me exactly what type of RAM to buy.

In my case, the “best” my machine can accept turned out to be PC2 6400 (800 MHz DDR2), non-ECC, non-buffered. It isn’t important that you know what those things are, but it is important that the chips (aka “modules”) match the specifications. Also, good to know is, DDR2 is “dual channel”, so you want to install your modules in pairs. (The newer DDR3 is “tri-channel”, and should be installed in multiples of three.)

So that is what I asked for at the store.

It turned out that the best deal at that particular store, on that particular day, of 2 GB DIMMs of PC2 6400, was Crucial “Ballistix” memory.. a more “high end” type of performance memory favored by gamers. Installation went smoothly, and Windows 7 handled the hardware change with alacrity and ease.

(And.. I picked up an Intel® Core™2 Quad processor, which I will tell you about tomorrow.)

So for a relatively minor investment, I brought my older HP Pavilion a1763c into the new era of 64-bit high performance computing with Windows 7. I like the improvement. Yes I do!
But I have to confess, so far, I have not been able to come even close to having enough going on that that much RAM is being utilized… maybe I need to encode some videos, or something, to see all 8 being used. But I think I would have been fine with 6 GB’s…

A note if you are considering this yourself: DDR2 memory prices are actually on the way up now, and DDR3 prices are dropping, so if your machine uses DDR2, you may not want to put off an upgrade too much longer.

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Windows 7 Onboard

Yesterday my Windows 7 upgrade disc finally arrived from Amazon. (I’m not complaining. I had opted for the slow shipping method because I’m “frugal”.) 20 minutes later, I was running Windows 7 Home Premium on my HP Pavilion dual-core desktop.

I wrote in my earlier articles on the Win 7 betas that the install process was the fastest and easiest Windows installs I had ever experienced, so I was not surprised that the “official release” retained this wonderful ability.

Once I had my Desktop, the first thing I did was visited Windows Update, even though Win7 goes out and looks for updates during the install process. There were 7 regular updates and 7 “optional” updates available for me.
These updates are important, and the sooner you get them onboard the better, so I recommend that everyone click Start > Windows Update as one of your first moves.

Doing so had the side-effect of launching IE 8 for the first time, and so it wanted to be “configured”. I almost clicked on the “quick configure” (as I had on the beta versions) but at the last moment I noticed that the “Default search provider” has been changed to Bing.
No thanks.

Next up was to get an antivirus onboard. Since I installed a 64-bit version, and since Windows 7 is so new, I though maybe my number of choices might not be too many.. but I clicked on the “Action Center” flag and saw I had two “notices”, one of which was “no antivirus detected”. So I clicked that, and then I clicked on “Help me find a solution“.
Pretty simple.

A page opened which showed the various vendors who had products compatible for my system. I was glad to see that pretty much all (all?) the reputable vendors were listed. As I plan to test several anti-Spywares in the near future, I simply installed Microsoft Security Essentials for now.
64-bit Windows 7 is inherently already quite secure. (And you may want it for that reason alone.)

So far (and I haven’t been running long.. mere hours) I haven’t seen any difference between this “official version” and the RC 64-bit. Which I have already described in prior articles. You can be assured will write more in the future.

Related links: to see my reviews of Windows 7, and other Win7-related writings, click here.

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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