Replies

Cool, thanks!

Hmm… just to make sure I understand: there was no newsletter, but Susan’s column was published online?

Susan just gave the go-ahead to install KB 3088195…

http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//172496-Wrapping-up-a-relatively-mild-month-of-updates

I just looked there, and there’s no mention of 3088195. Was it removed?

What’s the current status of this Update? The November updates are coming next week already and I still don’t have word on what to do with this one.

UPDATE: I see, it’s mentioned in Susan’s column though not the thread itself. For some reason I never received that week’s Windows Secrets newsletter (I did get this week’s) and so did not see the Patch Watch for that issue. :confused:

I’ve been trying out HitmanPro.Alert and Heimdal Pro on some of my systems, although not on XP. In my Web research, I haven’t come across any indications that they don’t work on XP, so if I were looking to fortify an XP system, I’d start with those two. They seem to complement each other rather than conflict or overlap.

Jorge, from what I remember elsewhere – the gadgets themselves pose no problems; it’s that gadget operations include having a portal to the outside world [well, some gadgets but not all gadgets!], that portal could be exploited. I use gadgets at home. Shofar, so good!

Yeah, that jibes with how I view it. If you’re using a gadget that merely displays info that it reads off your own PC, it’s not clear how that could be a problem.

I find that CPU/RAM gadget especially useful because it shows me visually if there’s an unusual amount of capacity being used. Then I can go into Task Manager and try to figure out what’s going on.

I have a CPU/RAM usage gadget installed from Microsoft’s own repository back when they still offered Windows Gadgets. How could this represent a security threat?

I second DrWho’s recommendation to use Spybot S&D 1.6.2.46 instead of version 2. (If the customer really wants to use Spybot, that is.)

I still use SS&D for the Hosts file protection, although admittedly the Spybot folks don’t stay as current with that anymore for version 1.6 ever since version 2 came out. I may eventually replace it with SuperAntiSpyware or Malwarebytes.

P.S. When I saw the asterisk in DrWho’s post, I thought it might be a link to his instructions for the proper setup of Spybot. Where can we get a copy?

My wife is very neurotic. Even though the router is wired (no wireless capability), she turns it off every night as she thinks that the waves emanating from it actually prevent her from getting to sleep.

No joke!

I applied the KB3013455 update based on the instructions endorsed by Woody Leonhard in this article.

But it was not possible to follow the instructions as given. Once I installed KB3013455 and downloaded KB3037639, I could not install the latter — I keep getting the following error dialog claiming that the update doesn’t apply to my system:

39537-Cant-install-KB3037639

I’m on Vista Home Premium SP2, x64.

Now my Notepad text is severely degraded and the font in my Web search results looks fuzzy and crude, like this:

39539-After-installing-KB3013455

I tried rebooting, but that didn’t help matters.

How do I get this follow-up update installed on my system?

Have a new laptop and would like to install Win 7 on a separate partition but bios (I assume) won’t let me. Have gone into boot options and tried uefi-secure boot off and legacy-secure boot off and still cannot boot from usb stick.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rich

If you’re trying to boot from a USB stick, you may need to change the boot order in the BIOS/UEFI so that it looks for the USB stick before the hard drive.

Another thing to keep in mind when trying to set up a multiboot machine is that Windows only recognizes/allows up to 4 “primary” partitions. I ran into this limitation last week when attempting to install the Windows 10 Technical Preview on a laptop. Turned out that the manufacturer (Lenovo) had used up the whole allotment of primary partitions (200MB for the MBR, then Windows 7, then the recovery partition, and finally a mysterious empty 20GB “OEM drive”). I was only able to install Win10TP when I read that you could change the Windows 7 and recovery partitions from “primary” to “logical.” (I also had to change from UEFI boot to BIOS, although then I could change that back to UEFI once Win10 was installed.) You will have to do this using either a Linux live CD or a specialized disk partitioning CD (I used Partition Wizard), as you can’t do it from within Windows.

I can (probably) still track down the reference for changing the partitions from primary to logical.

EDIT: Here’s the link to the discussion about partitioning a hard disk in preparation for the installation of a second OS. Read the whole thread carefully, but pages 1, 3, and 5 will be especially useful. In my case, I had recently installed a bigger hard disk but hadn’t gotten around to doing anything with the extra space at the end. I had to convert both my Win7 and recovery drives to Logical, and then I was able to create a new Primary partition at the eend of the disk for Win10.

For security purposes, I prefer to take my e-mails off the server as soon as possible, but if for any reason I can’t get this transition to work as desired, then I may go for IMAP as a temporary alternative while I sort things out — so, thanks for the suggestion!

That sounds like it’ll work. With e-mails not deleted from the server (till I’m good and ready), then if both PCs are on and connected to the Internet, one PC would receive new e-mail, and then the new PC would receive the same e-mail when its turn comes.

This is one case where I’ll be happy to be wrong :), as it would considerably ease the transition to the new PC.

My plan is to get the existing PST file over on the new PC. The concern was ending up in a situation during the transition where one computer has some new e-mails and the other computer has other new e-mails.

Thanks very much.

The Windows Update history in my Vista PC was lost several weeks ago, when I installed EMET (Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit) to protect Internet Explorer 8 after Microsoft recommended use of that tool pending the release of an IE security patch.

I can still view my installed updates, but there’s no way to recover that history, is there?

I would guess if you have time to investigate you would probably find a way to use the iso generated along with the Service Pack 2 file (linked further down the page) to actually create a slipstreamed image with Service Pack 2 included. That would presumably allow you to do that in-place upgrade or reinstall per Fred’s suggestion. Good luck and let us all know how it goes!

Stumpy842,

Yup, that’s the key! I will look into this. It may take a few days, but I’ll definitely report back.

Pretty exciting, if we can get it to work as Fred described.

EDIT: In his article, Fred suggests that, for people trying his procedure on a version of Windows 7 that includes Service Pack 1, but who are using a DVD that lacks SP1, they can uninstall the SP1.

The system will churn for a while, but when it’s done, SP1 will be gone — and you’ll be able to use an original Win7 setup DVD to repair your system.

Then you would download all the updates for the new install, including SP1.

So… could the same procedure apply to Vista? In Vista’s case, the available ISO contains SP1 but not SP2. We could remove SP2 from our current Vista, then use Fred’s method to install the Vista ISO, and then re-install SP2.

Not that I’m dying to try it! Anybody think that this oughta work?

Hi,

Sorry I took so long to reply — just got back into the office today!

@pcmechanic:
Thanks a bunch for the tips and info; that non-destructive reversion to the original state that you describe would sure be better than having to start totally from scratch. Fortunately I do have disks for my most important applications, so I’d be OK in that regard. (Man, you don’t miss having those CDs/DVDs around till you think you’ll actually need ’em.)

Almost by luck, I came across this thread on the HP Forum that links to a Dell (!) page from where you can then download a Vista WIM and get instructions to make an ISO. The drawback is that it’s SP1, although the writer also gives a link for the SP2 update file — I’d have to look into how to put these two together into a single working ISO that would enable me to perform Fred Langa’s trick.

@Stumpy842:
You’re right, there doesn’t seem to be such an animal as a Vista x64 Home Premium OS installation disk from HP. I called Customer Support, and they insisted that the “recovery disks” are installation disks. Well, yes and no.

In addition to my Pavilion, I have an HP/Compaq dx7500 that did come with actual, HP-labeled Vista OS installation disks. Trouble is, they’re for Vista x86 Business (dang!). I guess I’m OK if I ever need to do a non-destructive reinstall on that machine, but the Pavilion is my main one. I doubt that that x86 Business disk would include the necessary files for x64 Home Premium.

Not surprised to hear that your HP laptop ran better after you did a fresh install with a retail (not crapware-filled) disk! I’ll still keep an eye out on eBay for retail Vista disks, while I investigate the ISO route described above.