Windows Security Update (Critical)

This update is labelled Critical by Microsoft.

Conficker (or Win32/Conficker.B, also known as Downadup) can take over your system with Administrator rights, lock you out or bypass your passwords.

Security patch download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0D5F9B6E-9265-44B9-A376-2067B73D6A03&displaylang=en

Further reading:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Entry.aspx?Name=Worm:Win32/Conficker.B

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7832652.stm

Windows 7 Beta

So I finally succumbed to The Beta version of the new Windows 7 operating system. I delayed because I thought my spare computer was not up to running this software, but on further checking it seemed to be (roughly) OK.

The Windows 7 Beta download is s....l....o....w. The file is large (2.43 GB) and the download site wasn't speedy. Even so, I started downloading at around 7.00 pm local time. At 9.15 pm I checked progress, only to find I had another 4 hours to go. Definitely an overnight job.

The .iso file was then burned to CD, a partition created on the spare machine and Windows 7 installed so I could dual boot between it and XP. If you found any of that incomprehensible then I would advise you not to try it for yourself - it's a fairly easy process but you do really need to know what you are doing when presented with the various options. And certainly when you eventually discover the first download was corrupted and you need to go through it all again ...

First impressions? Nice, and awful.

Nice - It looks good, it's very different to XP (probably similar to Vista but I wouldn't know from experience), it's fast (although I have no startup programs yet) and some things are made really easy using Wizards and suchlike.

Awful - Everything's in a different place, some things are not in the place I would logically expect them to be, there's no email client included (use Thunderbird) and the standard 3-fingered salute (Ctrl + Alt + Del) brings up a menu allowing Task Manager to be started rather than starting it automatically.

But most important at the moment, I can't get my Network Interface Card to work. It's installed in Device Manager but I just can't get it to talk to my main system (XP). Hence I have no broadband connection under Windows 7. I spent so much time on this problem I haven't really explored much else.

I'll post an update when I actually get something useful done.