I recently posted how Windows 7 in Europe was going to come without a browser. Apparently now it is looking like instead of having no browsers you will be asked to select a browser when you install Windows 7 and it will then install your chosen web browser. No word yet on which browsers will be offered. Personally I think nearly everyone will select to install Internet Explorer anyways as there are still a lot of sites (such as banks) that demand you use IE.
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Apparently when Windows 7 is released the European version will not have Internet Explorer included. The Windows 7 E moniker is just to indicate it is the European version and might be dropped before official release. This is apparently in response to the antitrust suit Opera filed against Microsoft for bundling IE as part of Windows. Personally I think that’s just Opera crying because they have an extremely pitiful share of the browser market. So manufacturers are now expected to add a web browser to Windows 7 when they preinstall it on the machines. Funny how all this happens just as Mozilla have added the ability for companies to brand Firefox.
Personally I can’t see many manufacturers not including Internet Explorer since it’s what most people are used to and there are still a few sites, such as some banks etc, that stil wont let you log in with anything but IE or, for some god forsaken reason, Netscape.
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I recently decided to try / review a new anti virus program I had heard about called Rising Antivirus. Now my first issue with this anti virus is the fact that the installer is over 60MB and the download was slow as hell. Took me around 30 minutes to download and I’m on a 20Mb connection. Once installed it takes over 200MB of hard drive space. First thing I did was run an update and it seemed to me that every component had an update and given I had only just downloaded the program this seems excessive. Next I ran a scan of the local drives. After twenty minutes I stopped it as it had only done about 5% and was saying it had over an hour left to go. Given this was my laptop with little on it this was far from acceptible.
Now we get to the main reason I swiftly uninstalled it. I downloaded the Eicar test file which is a standard file that all antivirus programs recognise as a test file so you can test if your antivirus is working or not. So I put the eicar.com file on my desktop and ran it. Rising Antivirus did absolutely nothing. I can accept it not detecting it during the download because my favourite free antivirus, AntiVir, only scans files when they are opened or read. To not detect the test file when run makes me wonder what else it doesn’t detect. I told it to scan the eicar.com file and it alerted me that it was a virus (well a test file which is what it should report it as) but not even a beep from Rising Antivirus when I run the file. In fact I had to turn Rising’s detection level up to high to get it to report it as a virus when I opened it. Even then I could see the command window in the background that eicar.com opens so I’m not even sure that if it had been a virus Rising Antivirus would of stopped it doing anything.
So my advice is avoid this anti virus like the plague. The best free anti virus, in my opinion, is AntiVir and the next best free one is Avast. I can no longer even recommend AVG as third place because all reports say as of version 8 AVG has become a resource hog that slows your computer down.
OK having recently installed Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and had problems with it I was determined to find what was causing the problems and how to fix it.
Before trying any of the below first try resetting IE8 to it’s defaults. Open your Control Panel (you will find it in your start menu) and then open Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab and you will see the Reset button at the bottom.
Also it might be worth trying IE8 without add ons to see if it’s not something you have installed that is causing the problem. Just right click on the Internet Explorer shortcut (not the one in the quick start) and selct Browse Without Add-ons.
Problem:
IE8 takes around 10 – 20 seconds to start up and load first page!
Solution:
I found that this is due to the passive anti spyware method used by programs such as SpyBot S&D and SpywareBlaster (mostly SpyBot to be honest).
To fix it open SpyBot and click Immunize. Untick/deselect the hosts file entry and then click Undo at the top of the window. This should remove all immunization except the hosts file immunization. You can leave the hosts file immunization in place as this is used by the system to block bad domains and not IE8.
For SpywareBlaster I clicked Protection Status then Internet Explorer and unticked/deselected Cookie Protection. I left the Active X protection in place.
Problem:
When I open a link in a new tab the page gets stuck on loading!
Windows Explorer has started opening folders in new windows!
Solution:
After some Googling I found that both of these problems are down to a dll not being registered properly when IE8 was installed. The site I read tried to blame anti virus software for blocking it but I had mine disabled.
Anyway to fix it depends on if you are on XP or Vista as Vista requires the command prompt to be run as admin. I will first explain how to open the command prompt window for each Windows and then the instructions are the same for both.
XP: Open the start menu and click Run (or press Windows key and R). In the window that opens type cmd and press the enter key (or click OK).
Vista: Open start menu then click All Programs. Next click on Accessories. Now right click on Command Prompt and then click on Run as administrator. Click Continue in the window that pops up.
Now we have the command prompt open just type in regsvr32 actxprxy.dll and then press the Enter key on your keyboard. That should fix both problems. Now type exit and press Enter to close the command prompt window.
To be honest you might want to just ditch Internet Explorer. Given the amount of people that have had nothing but problems with IE8 it might be worth your while looking at other web browsers such as Flock, Firefox, Opera, Chrome or even Safari.
For years now I have used the Spamihilator email spam filter program for checking the POP mail I use. In my experience it’s about 99% accurate. Anyway I decided to write a review of it and you can find my review here.
Freeware Genius is a site that reviews freeware programs and is where I have first found out about a couple of the programs I now use myself.
Just found out that Microsoft has finally released Internet Explorer 8 for public consumption. Now whilst IE 8 is a step in the right direction it is far from perfect. A good example of a typical Microsoft cock up can be seen here. So do you update? The decision is yours but just remember there are many alternatives these days such as Firefox, Flock, Opera, Chrome, Safari and many more.
OK thanks to Google’s Chrome and Apple now making Safari a serious browser for Windows the browser war is getting ridiculous. They all seem obsessed with how fast their Javascript engines run with Google now saying the V8 engine in Chrome 2 is 25% faster than in Chrome 1. Who cares? The speed of the Javascript engines is now so fast few people if any would be able to notice a difference in everyday use. The only people who are are Geeks who think the extra milliseconds make all the difference.
I’m not interested in how fast their Javascript engines run I just want a browser that is configurable and doesn’t eat up resources. I’m sticking with Firefox at present as it lets me configure cookies exactly how I want and has some sweet extensions. I am impressed with the WebKit engine as used in Chrome and Safari. To me Opera fell to the wayside with version 7. So at some point I may switch from Firefox to Safari or Chrome but can’t see it anytime soon. Safari 4 beta looks good but is all eye candy and eats memory. Chrome is to basic with very limited options and no black/white list for cookies. Safari also has neither a whitelist nor blacklist.
Ok I was woke up this morning by my better half saying that the computer was taking ages to log in and when it did it was popping up error messages. The main error message/problem was:
Failed to connect to a windows service
Windows could not connect to the System Event Notification Service service. This problem prevents limited users from logging on to the system. As an administrative user, you can review the System Event Log for details about why the service didn’t respond.”
So I booted up the laptop and began Googling for fixes. Searching for “failed to connect to a windows service” returns a ridiculous amount of results. I found multiple fixes (changing Remote Registry setting, manually setting network IP addres etc), none of which sorted my problem out 
Anyway I finally found a solution that worked (for me anyway).
Firstly we need to run the Command prompt with administrator privledges if on Vista/Windows 7 or be logged in as an Administrator on XP.
or
Once the command prompt window opens type ‘NETSH WINSOCK RESET CATALOG‘ and press the Enter/Return key.
It then says you have to reboot and after that my computer was working fine 
no more “failed to connect to a windows service”
Now I’m not saying this will work for you but it definitely fixed my problem.
<update> A friend of mine has written a small program that should do the fix for you. You can download it here.
Today I found out that AOL has stopped working on it’s Active Virus Shield anti virus program. It was a brilliant program and was powered by the Kaspersky engine. Now they offer a new anti virus program that is powered by McAfee but requires you to have an AOL screen name to download. Nice of them to inform their users about this. I mean you need to supply an email address to get the serial for the program to work so I know they have my address to inform me. Anyway so now I am using the free version of AntiVir from www.free-av.com. It doesn’t scan email or web streams but scans all files as they are read or written to so will catch anything that comes from these sources.
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