Practical Technology

for practical people.

December 2, 2009
by sjvn01
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Black Screens of Whoops!

Windows does get black screens of death, but it doesn’t get them from the November Windows and Office updates that UK security company Prevx blamed recently.

Prevx claimed that the security patches caused a new rash of black screens of death. Microsoft denied that these updates had caused this problem. And, indeed, Microsoft said that, as far as they could tell, there were no new flood of black screen of death problems period.

Guess what? It turns out Microsoft was right. Prevx has publicly apologized to Microsoft and put the blame for the problem on malware. The company also claims that their free repair program will still fix some malware-created black screen of death problems.

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December 1, 2009
by sjvn01
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Dell releases unofficial Chrome OS Linux desktop

Of all the big computer companies only Dell really supports desktop Linux and, in particular Dell offers a nice selection of PCs running Ubuntu Linux. What Dell hasn’t done though is come out and announce that they were working on Google’s beta Chrome OS. Other vendors, such as Acer, HP and Lenovo are on board with Chrome. Regardless of that, Dell is actually the first big-time vendor to have released a version of Chrome OS designed to work with one of their netbooks.

This isn’t an official beta though. No, this is a skunkworks project. In a Dell blog posting Dell technology strategist Doug Anson revealed that he and some of his work friends decided to try to get Chrome OS running on a Dell Mini 10v netbook. They were successful. Sort of.

You can see for yourself. Anson wrote, “I have released an USB key image file to: http://linux.dell.com/files/cto. The file name is: “ChromiumOS_Mini10v_Nov25.img.” It contains a functioning image of my USB key loaded with ChromiumOS. In addition, I have made a best effort attempt to get the Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter working in this image. It’s definitely not perfect (read: highly experimental, untested, unstable, yada yada…) but it does appear to function.”

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November 30, 2009
by sjvn01
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Fixing Windows’ Black Screen of Death

Microsoft’s colors of choice now appear to be black and blue. There’s always been the Blue Screen of Death, but lately people have been seeing the Black Screen of Death. Here’s what to do if your Windows computer is getting a black eye.

First, though, I should point out that not all Black Screens of Death are caused by this newest set of problems. People have been turning on their computers and facing a blank screen since before there were PCs. If you’ve been running into a black screen on your Windows PC for some time, check out Microsoft support on the more common problems that causes black screens to happen with Windows XP.

But, if you just started seeing a Black Screen of Death after installing Microsoft’s November 10th set of patches for Windows and Microsoft Office, you may need this fix. Is it right for you? Here’s how to tell.

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November 30, 2009
by sjvn01
4 Comments

Windows 7 networking guide

I’ve been looking a lot lately into high-end Windows 7 networking features like URL Quality of Service (QoS)-based traffic management and Secure Remote Connect. There is a lot to like here, and yes I am a Linux guy saying that, but I’ve also noticed that many of Windows 7’s best networking features are only available if you use Windows 7 Enterprise Edition. Furthermore, to get most of these high-end business features to show their stuff you’ll also need Windows Server 2008 R2 on the server end.

I find this more than a little annoying. Microsoft’s business has always been about locking users in to buying the latest versions of their products and making sure that you’ll have trouble staying with older products or switching to another company’s operating systems. The combination of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 underlines this point in red. For example, even if you just ‘upgraded’ to Vista and Server 2008 last year, you won’t be able to use even such low-end networking features as Windows 7 HomeGroups, Windows 7’s answer to XP and Vista’s MSHome/WorkGroup simple file and printer-sharing.

The simple truth is that with Linux or Macs, all the versions come with all the network features. That hasn’t been true of Windows since XP came along, and you had to pay an extra $100 to upgrade to XP Pro before you could use your Windows computer in a business network. That, at least, was straightforward. With Windows 7, it’s hard to know what feature is supported in what version so I thought I’d give you a helping hand in what’s what with Windows 7.

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November 27, 2009
by sjvn01
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Fixing the Internet Explorer Blues

Earlier this week Microsoft announced yet another IE (Internet Explorer) bug. This one, Microsoft Security Advisory 977981, is one of the really bad ones that can allow attackers to take your Windows PC over. Yuck!

Microsoft is working on a fix, but there still isn’t one, and worse still, there are already several attacks out there that can exploit this IE security hole.

The new hole exploits how Internet Explorer uses certain CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) objects, which is commonly used to determine how a Web page is displayed. It’s put into play when you go to a page with contaminated JavaScript. Sound familiar? It probably does, deliberated corrupted JavaScript has been used to compromise browsers for over a decade, and it’s still doing it today.

This particular problem hits IE 6 and 7. If you have Internet Explorer 8, which is what comes on Windows 7, you’re safe from this one.

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November 26, 2009
by sjvn01
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Making wise Black Friday PC buys

I don’t need a new PC, but I want one anyway. All those Black Friday deals are mighty tempting. But, if you’re going to give in to temptation here are some hints to keep in mind.

First, those deals that are too good to be true? Many of them are too good to be true. If you are the first person in line at 4 AM you may get the one ultra-low price laptop that a store will have in stock. But, if you’re a ‘late’ riser, who doesn’t make it to the store until 4:05, you can forget about the miracle-priced computer.

Other computers may also be on sale at insane prices, but take a careful look at exactly what it is that you’re buying. I’ve seen several netbooks deals that sound great… until I looked closer and saw that they require pricey, two-year mobile phone contracts on top of the up-front price.

I’m not saying you can’t get a good deal. You can. Just don’t get too worked up about sub-$100 priced computers, or you may end up disappointed or with a PC that costs you far more in the long-run.
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