Replies

Please send email to woody at ask woody dot com and tell me which questions have gone unanswered.

My workload will ease up in a few weeks. For now it’s the usual book crunch time: 16-hour days and 7-day weeks.

I’m completely swamped with Windows 7 All-In-One For Dummies. Email me with a pointer or two and I’ll try to answer your comments, but it’s going to be a couple of days. Sorry.

Joe –

You’re right. I’ll go in and make the changes.

Thanks!

Click Help, About.

If there is not Help on the menu, you have IE 8. In that case, click the question mark, then About.

That’s just incredible. I wonder what they were thinking?

Bob –

I have no idea, but you really should be using Firefox!

Go to the Firefox site and install a superior, free, safer browser.

Dave –

It sounds like you may be hitting the same problem people had when updating AVG 7.5 to 8. If so, it’s easy to solve:

Rename C:Program FilesAVGAVG8updatecomps.cfg to, oh, updatecomps.cfg.old

Run the updater again, and reboot.

Does that get rid of the problem? If so, the update configuration file was corrupt.

If it doesn’t get rid of the problem, you can uninstall AVG 8 and then install a fresh copy of AVG 8.5.

And if THAT doesn’t work, you can always switch to Avast. Seth would appreciate that piece of advice….

Yep, I disagree. Susan and I often do.

We address different audiences. Susan is more oriented toward businesses, I’m more concerned about home and home office users.

At some point you’ll need to update Internet Explorer. But for now, as long as you’re using Firefox, I don’t see much exposure at all. SANS Internet Storm Center reports that exploit code is publicly available, but I haven’t heard of any working exploits if you’re using Firefox. MS09-014 says, “The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer or if a user connects to an attacker’s server by way of the HTTP protocol.”

The other patch, KB 959246, is for a hole that’s been around a long time – the Safari carpet bomb attack. CVE says, “Apple Safari on Mac OS X, and before 3.1.2 on Windows, does not prompt the user before downloading an object that has an unrecognized content type, which allows remote attackers to place malware into the (1) Desktop directory on Windows or (2) Downloads directory on Mac OS X”

While business users may still be running Internet Explorer – and some brave souls run older versions of Safari – I would be very surprised if any of the readers here fell into either group.

Fascinating! You can’t do that ASUS trick in Thailand.

Yep, Microsoft charges extra for multiple languages – in fact, it’s one of the very few good reasons for buying Vista Ultimate.

RK –

No problem at all. It’s a jungle out there.

Most people don’t realize that typing KB followed by the number will take you straight to the Knowledge Base article.

‘Course, you may have a bit of trouble understanding the article. I frequently do…

EP –

There are people who swear at AVG (Seth is one of them). Avast! is a great program, too.

I just finished writing about installing AVG 8.5 in Windows 7. There are a couple of tricks, like disabling SafeSearch. But it seems to go in pretty well. And I’ve upgraded all of my XP and Vista machines to 8.5 without a hitch.

Of course, your mileage may (nay, will!) vary.

Dave –

You need to re-start Windows. If it still won’t install, tell me what error message you get and I’ll Google it.

RK –

The KB articles you see are secondary articles for the patches.

KB 923561 is for MS09-010

KB 952004 is for MS09-012

KB 956572 is another Knowledge Base article for MS09-012.

I could try to list all of the KB articles for all of the patches, but you’d see hundreds of numbers. Instead, I’ve listed the KB articles that most people see.

If you’re ever curious about a Knowledge Base article, start Firefox and in the address bar type KB followed by the number, then press Enter. You don’t need to type in an URL. Simply typing, say,

KB 956572

will list the KB article as the first result.

As a side-note… there are already LOTS of identified problems with this month’s patches.

If the updates aren’t offered to you, and you’re running a “Genuine” copy of Windows XP, you don’t need to worry about them. There are many, many reasons why you may not need specific patches.

Todd –

The first two are alternate KB numbers for MS09-012. I suggest you hold off on them.

The last one is an update for Windows Mail. (!) I have no idea why it was offered to you, unless you suddenly started using Windows Mail. If you did, you should switch over to Windows Live Mail, http://download.live.com/wlmail , which is supported. Windows Mail has been orphaned, pretty much.