E-Musings Mon Immorata

Sasser Sussed Out While Microsoft offers rewards for virus developer scalps, learn what's hot with Thunderbird 0.6 and Opera 7.5 Preview 6 (Build 3768) Hah! It seems that money caused the Sasser Trojan creator to be ratted out. Seems you can no longer trust your friends any more. Microsoft has been offering a considerable bounty on virus developers. The German teen arrested appears to be one of the first victims of Microsoft's largesse. Actually, the original virus contained bad code that caused it to go into a loop then crash 'n burn. Unfortunately, a revised version fixed this flaw. I personally wasn't affected by Sasser as I immediately downloaded and installed Microsoft's patches. Infrequent restarts are painful enough so imagine continuous ones. I've also embarked on a quest to find sites detailing how to fix problematic Windows installations. And to learn which file does what. Among the best is Windows Annoyances which has troubleshooting tips and performance-enhance tweaks for Windows 95 all the way to XP. Windows Server 2003 is slotted into Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The site also features a section dedicated to the Windows Registry, as well as specialized sections on customizing, networking, reducing clutter and an FAQ. There's also a excellent, frequently updated member forum with separate threads for each Windows version. You need to register to post a message but search and browsing messages is free. Windows Startup Online is an Web-based database listing all Windows start-up programs numbering over 3,900! The database can be downloaded and run from the desktop or you can query it online using a Web browser. You can search dynamically for file information, or you can view files sorted alphabetically. Each detailed listing also includes a link to more information available in Google. Individual file lists include user-submitted comments but you need to belong to the site's Forum to view such posts. The download version's database comes from Pacs Portal: another site with an excellent list of other Windows fix solutions. Opera 7.5 Preview 6 (Crash Test Dummy edition) was released over the weekend. This is essentially a serious of patches to the previously Beta 1 release. And the most significant change is to the installer. This no longer forces installation into a single folder and users can now choose their own. The Chat client interface and list of chat servers has been updated as well to include non-Opera hosts. However, on account of code updates, Opera suggests uninstalling previous versions first. The full changelog can be viewed here. I've also been giving the recently released Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 a fair shake. This is now available on Windows, Linux and Macintosh and has been considerably enhanced and improved over previous builds. The application icon too has been changed (again). And the main interface features an animation displaying if mail is being downloaded or sent. Thunderbird includes a spell checker (opens in a new window), and can support plain text, HTML or mixed mode mail. The new 0.6 version also features improved Windows resource management, and better Junk Media detection and deletion controls. So you no longer need to leap through multiple circles to can spam. Thunderbird is an excellent Outlook Express replacement since the Preview blocks rogue HTML scripts from running. But unless you are very familiar with Netscape's mail and news client, the approach where each mail account has an individual folder can be a bit odd. Plus for some strange reason by default there's a single mail sending server. However, a bit of digging and re-jigging will allow you to specific an SMTP server for each account. I rather like the Outlook' family approach where you can choose which account to send mail from regardless of which account received it. The free-for-non-commercial use IrfanView has been updated to v3.91 which includes multiple-monitor support, command-line options to convert TIF files to JPEG and to import palette files, as well as several bug patches. Alternatively, do check out XNView; another free for non-commercial use image viewer and editor I've used in the past. But what put me off (then) was this utility's incredibly cluttered user interface that hasn't improved very much since. The application defaults to a file explorer-style view but is incredibly powerful. However, a lack of keyboard-based shortcuts means you need to use the mouse a lot. Also, unlike IrfanView, you need to download and install the separate NConvert utility to batch process format conversions; a feature native top IrfanView. That's it for this week. Stay Safe! Click Here to Email Me