Adios Windows 2000 and XP (SP2), It Was Fun While It Lasted

Today marks the end of support for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and Windows 2000 (all versions), which means if you’re running one of these editions of Windows, be sure to update to a later version.

New Version of Microsoft Security Essentials Now Available

You may have woken up this morning to find that your current version of Microsoft Security Essentials was updated, or at least requires an update update. If so, don’t be alarmed.

End of Support for Windows 2000, XP SP2, and Vista RTM

Microsoft is ending support for some of its operating systems this year. Microsoft already ended support for Vista RTM on April 13, 2010. For those still using Windows Vista without SP1 or later will not be able to get further updates on their computer. To continue getting updates via Windows Update, users should simply download Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista.

Microsoft Security Updates: April 2010

Every month I’d like to publish a post in which describes the security bulletins, to some degree, that Microsoft has released for that specific month. It’s funny, though, that this month, the first month I start, Microsoft issues several security bulletins…11 to be exact. If you want to read more about them, feel free to check out the official site for the security bulletins. Click on the Executive Summary to see a brief overview of each bulletin.

 

 

First, you may notice that if you’re using Windows 7 as your operating system, only 2 out of the 11 security bulletins are actually critical while one other is considered to be moderate. This just shows that keeping an up-to-date system, you should be able to avoid certain security vulnerabilities, in this case eight vulnerabilities. (By the way, if you’re still on ole trusty XP, you’ll have to deal with 10 out of 11 updates, in which four are critical, three are important and one is moderate.)

 

Here’s a quick overview of the exploits:

 

Bulletin	Title	Severity Rating
MS10-019	Vulnerabilities in Windows Could Allow Remote Code Execution (98210)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-020	Vulnerabilities in SMB Client Could Allow Remote Code Execution (980232)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-025	Vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Media Services Could Allow Remote Code Execution (980858)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-026	Vulnerability in Microsoft MPEG Layer-3 Codecs Could Allow Remote Code Execution (977816)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-027	Vulnerability in Windows Media Player Could Allow Remote Code Execution (979402)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-021	Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (979683)	Important Elevation of Privilege
MS10-022	Vulnerability in VBScript Could Allow Remote Code Execution (981169)	Important Remote Code Execution
MS10-023	Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Publisher Could Allow Remote Code Execution (981160)	Important Remote Code Execution
MS10-024	Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange and Windows SMTP Service Could Allow Denial of Service (981832)	Important Denial of Service
MS10-028	Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Visio Could Allow Remote Code Execution (980094)	Important Remote Code Execution
MS10-029	Vulnerabilities in Windows ISATAP Component Could Allow Spoofing (978338)	Moderate Spoofing

 

As always, you should make sure to have automatic updates enabled for Windows. Once again, I’d like to point out that although this month looks bad, if you have a recent version of Windows, such as Windows 7, you will not be as affected as an older version, such as Windows XP. Hence, one of the reasons to upgrade to Windows 7.

 

If anyone has any comments or suggestions feel free to send them to me at tinkeringwithwindows at live dot com.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft Windows,Windows 7,Windows XP,Windows Update,Security Bulletins,Security,Office,Maintenance,Update

Windows Phone Dev Tools Not Compatable With Final Release of Visual Studio 2010 – but they will be soon

Mary Jo Foley offers an interesting tidbit of information for those who eagerly downloaded the final bits of Visual Studio 2010 yesterday (as I did), they’re not compatible yet with the preview version of the Windows Phone Development Tools.

If you’re using the preview version of the recently announced Windows Phone Developer Tools and are chomping at the bit to get the final Visual Studio 2010 bits, you might want to hold off for a few more weeks.

It turns out the final VS 2010 product is incompatible with the Windows Phone Developer Tools Community Technology Preview (CTP), as Microsoft officials acknowledged in a blog posting on April 12.

However, if you’re still using the RC of Visual Studio 2010, you should have no problem using the Windows Phone Development Tools. Apparently Microsoft will have a fix for this in a couple of weeks according to the report.

 

My take on this? Either stick with the RC or leave Visual Studio 2008 on your computer until the problem is fixed. I’m currently just leaving the RC on my computer, as I am diligently working with these tools and trying to learn as much as I can about the Windows Phone Development before it actually releases. You can also sign up to have Microsoft notify you when there is a patch/update for this.

 

Thanks goes out to Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet for this tip. You can read her All About Microsoft Blog here, which offers very interesting news and information regarding Microsoft and its competitors. Very interesting stuff.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Visual Studio 2010,Mary Jo Foley,ZDNet,Windows Phone Development Tools,Tinkering with Windows,All About Microsoft,Windows,Microsoft

Customize Windows 7 with Best of Bing 2

Back before Windows 7 even RTM’ed, Microsoft launched the Windows 7 version of its Personalization Gallery, in which users could download and install additional themepacks for their Windows 7 computers. This site is still alive going along very well, and lately they added a new theme, the Best of Bing 2. This new theme is a compilation of Bing.com’s background images that appear on the website every day. The theme comes with 21 pictures from Bing. It is also a continuation of Bing’s Best that Microsoft released a while back, and if you download both you can have a total of 40 different lively backgrounds. The only downside to these themes is you do have a Bing logo in the lower right corner of the screen, not too big of a deal, I think.

 

View Full Album

 

There are over 60 themes at the Microsoft Personalization Gallery that you can choose from. I’ve downloaded several of them and haven’t been unimpressed yet. Once you download the file you can simply double-click on it to open, it should automatically install itself. Additionally, you can only use themepacks with Windows 7, however, you can always extract the images from the themepack file by using a ZIP extraction utility, such as WinRAR or WinZIP, which then the images themselves can be used on any computer.

 

del.icio.us Tags: windows,bing,update,best of bing,windows 7,themes,background images,free,downloads

A Little Info on the Bing Spring Update

As catchy as this title sounds the update to Bing may even be catchier. As part of the development process for Bing, Microsoft is now rolling out their spring update. Albeit, very slowly at first.

Today marks the first day of this update, which will allow 5% of the market to see new benefits of the Bing ecosystem. (This number will slowly increase to 100% within the next few weeks). Microsoft currently does not know if this update will make it outside of the US, i.e. international segments. So, if you currently live outside of the US, you may not be able to get this update, sorry.

What does it entail?

Once again, this update is designed to further enhance the user’s search experience. Microsoft said in their official statement that they had found 42% of users still had to refine their search after the first time searching a particular topic. This update will hopefully reduce that percentage. Given some of the changes that Bing has done, it may just fix part of the problem.

Quick Tabs Bar. Nothing really new here, except Microsoft will be doing a couple of UI changes. Most notably, this will entail moving from its current position (upper-left corner of the screen) to just below the search bar. This will hopefully enable users to locate and use the bar more often.

More Real Time Results. Bing introduced real-time results using Twitter, and will further implement this feature with this update. Here’s a little information about this feature and what’s to come:

Last October, we shared our www.bing.com/twitter experience, and this week, we will test new experiences for real-time results. For example, when you search for a publication such as the New York Times, Bing not only gives you quick access to specific sections of the destination website, but also provides the most popular shared links from that publication.

Foursquare Everywhere. Alright, so not my favorite new feature, but for those who need to know where everyone is at all times, this will be a great feature (stalkers anyone?). Anyways, Foursquare will be a work-upon of Bing’s Map App, allowing users to view local information about the area and people. Here’s a little more of what’s to come:

The foursquare map app is a powerful combination of the spatial canvas that Bing Maps provides, combined with foursquare’s user reputation service ability to see who has unlocked specific badges, where and who has been crowned mayor of certain locations making it easier to explore any city in the world as if you were a local.

That’s about it for now. Look out in the coming weeks for this update to start appearing. The best way to do so is to set your home page to MSN or Bing.com. Of course, I’m not trying to sell you Bing, so you could just leave it as Google, or whatever you currently use. You can also read more information about the Bing Refresh to see what else is coming.

As always, you can contact me via Twitter @jctierney, or leave a comment below. Questions, comments, information, etc. are all welcome.

del.icio.us Tags: bing,refresh,spring,microsoft,search,decision