Microsoft

Microsoft Antigen for exchange

I downloaded Microsoft’s Antigen for Exchange last night and installed it on a server to remove some old virus’s that were stuck in the mail store (there is no scheduled scan of the mailstore as realtime desktop and smtp scanning is now used for virus protection). Although the product did the job of deleting the mail, the whole admin interface is awful to use and the support on the Microsoft website is non existant – there are NO documents in the technet database on Antigen version 9. With the various quirks in the admin interface and no support, this software really should be released as a beta. I’d only say beta due to the fact that it did remove the virus’s otherwise I’d recommend alpha status.
The extended entry contains my 22 points that I would provide as bug reports if it was in beta status.

Microsoft USB disk doesn’t turn up :-(

I got an email on Friday from Microsoft with the following – “Thank you for your interest in the Mystery Solved Windows® licensing promotion. We’ve received your request for more information to help clarify Microsoft® Windows Desktop Licensing pre-loaded on the USB drive. Unfortunately, this Mystery Solved promotion was available in the U.S. only and while supplies last. Supply is depleted at this time, so we encourage you to please utilize the online alternative today.
Simply download* the Windows Desktop Licensing reference files directly at:www.microsoft.com/mysterysolved/corp. Oh well 🙁

latest MS patch and hp = not (very) good news.

How to fix ie freezing when you use the drop down box and the answer (at least official) isn’t to use firefox. This is due to a known issue with HP hardware and the MS06-015 / KB908531 patch.
On a related note I was wondering what readers policys on implementing patches are. We tend to wait a week or so to see if there are known issues (like above) but if everyone waited a week to see if there were no issues then this policy isn’t very practical. Also testing the patches on machines isn’t often very practical either – with a vast array of software on users desktops – most of which I would not use, just how do you test the effect of patches? Even getting hold of a spare box in most companies is unlikely as they are all in use. I’ve also found that the details in the patch documentation is getting sparser so it is also difficult to tell just what the patch does or what it affects.

And as to firefox – I’m not that impressed with the autoupdate facility for 1.5.0.2 – now most of my extensions don’t work and on my home computer they seem to have been ALL wiped out – not sure if that is because it’s loaded a new profile or not. I’ll look at that later, but having all the extensions disappear is very annoying. The other strange thing is that I wasn’t aware of there being any major patches or bugs in firefox – they’ve kept them pretty quiet unlike the latest MS patches – is there a mozilla security zine like the MS security posts that I should be subscribed to?

Group policy problems with printing.

I’m having a problem where ctrl-p doesn’t work in a kiosk mode machine with group policy restrictions and wonder if anyone has a clue? I’ve posted this to google groups.

I have a group policy enabled for a particular user for a locked down, kiosk user interface in a public area. Currently in *some* web pages the ctrl-P shortcut key will work, but on other web pages nothing happens when ctrl-p is pressed. Other shortcut keys such as ctrl-h, ctrl-r, ctrl-w activate properly (in the case of ctrl-w this option complains that the user does not have access to close the window).
We are running internet explorer as the shell in kiosk mode, but removing the kiosk mode doesn’t make any difference. Likewise, we have disabled the toolbar, but adding the toolbar back and enabling the print button also does not make any difference – the print dialog box never appears on certain web sites.

www.msn.com, http://travel.msn.com/default.aspx both work but http://travel.msn.com/New_York_City_New_York_State_list_entitylist_attractions_23164_2.aspx or http://www.helsby.net or https://absoblogginlutely.net doesn’t. There are a lot more sites that do/don’t work but these are just a couple of examples.

Anyone come across this problem before?
I’ve uploaded the resultant set of policies wizard output to https://absoblogginlutely.net/test/lock.htm – the only thing I’ve done is change the domain name for security reasons.

Motherboard change=new pc.

Did you know that if you change the motherboard in your pc then MS will see this as a new pc and you therefore need a new licence of xp? Apparently you can replace a motherboard under warrenty (but I assume this needs to be the exact same model) but how likely is it that someone could obtain the exact same motherboard 9-12 months after their original purchase?
I read about this on the partner website (I think) which implied that this was a new licence change, but the system builder chat in Feb2005 mentions this too – so it’s not actually that new.