I have previously written about “Eusing Free Registry Cleaner” and “Registry Cleaner Speeds Up Windows Vista“; Mark from ThisIsUseful has commented about the free CCleaner which he recommends.

I have tried it and have all praise for it. My Windows Vista and Windows XP computers are running like the first time they were bought. CCleaner reported there were over 1.5 GB of files that needs to be cleaned and over 50 registry errors. These statistics were after I ran Eusing.

I am very happy after running CCleaner and I hope you are too.

CCleaner website is found here.

Microsoft is offering a $250,000 bounty for anyone that could provide information for the capture of the author/s of the conficker worm that affected Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7, Windows XP SP3.

Microsoft sees the conficker worm as a criminal attack — “Microsoft has deemed the Conficker worm as nothing short of a criminal attack, and considers the reward a stem to this scenario. The company indicated that residents of any country worldwide are eligible for getting the $250,000, as long as they lead international law enforcement agencies to the author of Conficker. In the past, the software giant revealed that the worm was designed not to infect computers with the Ukrainian keyboard layout, which could be an indication that its creator was Ukrainian.”

The company has already teamed up with various organizations to fight the worm which includes: ICANN, NeuStar, VeriSign, CNNIC, Afilias, Public Internet Registry, Global Domains International Inc., M1D Global, AOL, Symantec, F-Secure, ISC, researchers from Georgia Tech, the Shadowserver Foundation, Arbor Networks and Support Intelligence.

Source: Softpedia

As I have reported last week (story here), Microsoft has now released their most recent critical patch. As described on their site:

Executive Summary

This security update resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities and one publicly disclosed vulnerability in Microsoft Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution on affected systems. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Firewall best practices and standard default firewall configurations can help protect networks from attacks that originate outside the enterprise perimeter. Best practices recommend that systems that are connected to the Internet have a minimal number of ports exposed.

This security update is rated Critical for all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003, and Moderate for all supported editions of Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.

The security update addresses the vulnerabilities by validating the fields inside the SMB packets. For more information about the vulnerabilities, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) subsection for the specific vulnerability entry under the next section, Vulnerability Information.

The security bulletin is here.

Vishal is at it again. He has quickly released a theme that would allow your Windows XP box to look like Windows 7. As described on his site:

Finally the wait is over. The impossible is possible now.

• You asked for full Start ORB.
• You asked for Superbar in XP.
• You asked for Big and iconized taskbar buttons in XP.

And now with the help of this new theme "SevenVG Refresh" everything is possible in XP.

This theme will make your Windows XP look-a-like Windows 7. It’ll provide superbar, full start ORB, big iconized taskbar buttons in Windows XP. The problem of first letter being displayed in iconized taskbar buttons has also been fixed in this update.

This theme contains 4 sub-styles:

• Aero32 (for 32x icon size)
• Aero48 (for 48x icon size)
• Bottom32 (for 32x icon size)
• Bottom48 (for 48x icon size)

You can download the theme here. Likewise, you would be able to find the instructions on that page as well. Happy theming!

Above is a video which teaches how to install MAC cursors in Vista/XP. Embedding is disabled, but the page is here.

Windows XP has entered the final phase of its existence with its Windows XP Service Pack 3. Various tests show that Windows XP holds some performance lead over Windows Vista like restarting 15-20 seconds faster, file copy being faster by 10-15 seconds,

In other tests like file memory, physical meory and others, XP performed better than Vista.

XP may perform better in these things, but I’m sure the second or probably third service pack if ever, would surpass XP.

Video on getting XP to look like Vista.

More information on Windows Vista.

Microsoft has extended its support for Windows XP and with it comes the latest Service Pack 3 candidate release.

Microsoft already released RC1 which is closest to production release. The package is about 340 MB and updates 32-Bit version of all editions of Windows XP. The release candidate comes in English, German and Japanese versions. A RC1 release site offers a script that can update your registry to have Windows Automatic update watch out of for the service pack.

Read more

Is Microsoft’s problem Apple? How about Linux? Naaah, it doesn’t even come close with their powerful 1% (or a little more?) enterprise market share. The biggest competitor of Microsoft in pushing Windows Vista is Microsoft itself, specifically Windows XP.

Forrester surveyed 600 US and European companies with more than 1,000 employees and the results indicate that their Windows XP adoption has increased by 17% from 67% last year to 84% this year.

Read more

Microsoft has extended the availability of Windows XP SKUs from January 31, 2008 to June 30, 2008.

Likewise, Windows XP Starter Edition will be available until June 30, 2010. OEMs on the other hand will remain available until January 31, 2009.

Support for Windows XP has been extended until April, 2014.

This is good news to all those people still wanting for Windows XP; and for people who have long retired Windows XP for Windows Vista, this doesn’t mean anything.