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Category: Windows

Dell sees the light regarding Vista

The two biggest PC companies, Hewlett Packard and Dell, have continued to offer new PCs preloaded with Windows XP, but only to their corporate and small business customers. All new consumer PCs have been offered only with Windows Vista, which is just the way Microsoft wants it.

In February, Dell rolled out a new Web site called IdeaStorm, which gave customers an opportunity to provide feedback and make suggestions regarding Dell products. The day after the site launched, the following message was posted by a user named javaprog07:

“I would like to see both Home and Business computers, especially notebooks, have an XP Home and Pro option on top of Vista until it has at least been out for a year.”

It was the first of many requests. On April 19, Dell responded.

“We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings,” began the message.

Dell has announced that they will now offer Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional on a handful of models — on two Dimension desktops, the E520 and E521, and four Inspiron laptops, the 1405, 1705, 1505 and 1501.

In case you’re still fearless, consider this message I received from a client yesterday.

Heard a horror story from my brother tonight…He just bought a brand new laptop with Vista on it. Said it took him 3 hours on the phone just to get the DSL operating as they are not equipped to work with Vista – no software or whatever. Then when he hooked up his printer, which is only 1 year old – he went online to get the software updated, and they didn’t have anything that would work with Vista. He ended up going out to get a new printer, and then he still had trouble. He was ready to chuck the whole thing. He finally got everything hooked up but he spent a whole lot of time getting it together. Was he mad. He said that the software for all of the hardware is not up to date with Vista. One more reason not to get Vista.

I have heard similar stories from many sources. Hardware manufacturers are notoriously slow to develop drivers for new operating systems. We went through the same thing with XP.

Give it a year.

.ANI patch can break audio applications

Reports are coming in that some users are experiencing a problem with the Windows .ani vulnerability patch I informed you about previously.

The patch is reported to break certain audio applications, specifically the Realtek HD Audio Control Panel, and CDtag, which is used for ripping music CDs.

If you are affected, you will see an “Illegal System DLL Relocation” error when you start your computer. Microsoft has issued a hotfix for the problem, which you can find here.

Microsoft regards this as an isolated incident and does not plan to issue the hotfix as part of its automatic updates.

The hotfix should be installed only if you are experiencing the problem described.

Patch available for animated cursor exploit

Microsoft today issued a security patch for a recently discovered vulnerability that can affect users of Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and Outlook 2002 (also called Outlook XP) on Windows XP.

By embedding a hacked animated cursor (.ani) file in an HTML e-mail message or Web page, a malicious individual can potentially take control of your PC. All you have to do is view the infected e-mail message or Web site. This security advisory from Microsoft has all the details.

This is not a widespread problem, but Microsoft considers the exploit potential to be serious enough that it issued a patch outside of its normal security update cycle.

Make sure you have this patch installed. Even if you have automatic updates enabled, there can be a delay before the patch is downloaded. I suggest you run Windows Update (or Microsoft Update, if installed) from your Start menu at your earliest convenience. Select the “Express” option to install critical updates. You will have to reboot your system after the patch is installed.

While we’re on the subject, there’s also a nasty virus being distributed via e-mail messages with a subject line of “Internet Explorer 7 Downloads.” Details are here. As always, common sense applies. If you don’t recognize the sender, don’t open the message.