Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

Microsoft has opened up the second beta for Internet Explorer 8

Some new features are :
- Accelerators : Select some text and a new Icon pops up, allowing you to search it with Google, mail it, ...
- Search bar improvements : Sizable, and it can show the first result for seaches on eg. wikipedia
- Web Slices
- Stability : Crash recovery and each tab has its own thread, so crashes should close only one tab.
- Tab groups : When opening a link from a tab, both tabs will get a color, indicating at a glance which tabs belong together.
- Inprivate Browsing (a.k.a. the porno modus) : When activated IE will not remember any cookies, or leave traces from the sites you have visited.
- And more (click here for the tour)

I installed it on vista, and it seemed a little faster (maybe my perception). Tabs groups seems very nice and useful. The first look is very nice, better than IE7, but I guess it will not yet replace my Opera :)

You can download the beta :
Here for XP
Here for Server 2003
Here for 64 bit XP/Server 2003
Here for 32 bit Vista/Server 2008
Here for 64 bit Vista/Server 2008

Enjoy :)

Clipboard problems

Today I when I copied some text,
I couldn't paste it anywhere.

Usually I just use the shortcut keys,
but to test it now, I used the contextmenus.
Copy (or cut) appeared just fine, but when I wanted to paste,
the item was grayed out in the menu.

Looking for the clipboard viewer,
I located it in c:\windows\system32 folder, named clipbrd.exe.

As I started it, it gave me the following error :

The ClipBook service is unavailable or is not started.
Contact your system administrator to have this service started.

All fine and well, but what a weird error, looking at the clipbook service description I found :

Enables ClipBook Viewer to store information and share it with remote computers.

Not exactly what I needed, as remote computers or the clipbook viewer were not my target.

So I just clicked OK,
and tested the viewer,
and 'lo and behold my clipboard functions were working again and I could copy and paste as I wanted.

And one more

The release candidate for Windows XP service pack 3 is now also available for download here

It is not a final release, that one will follow sometime next year,
but this RC packs total of 1073 fixes.
Also includes four new features are included : 

• a new activation scheme,
• Network Access Protection Module
• Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module
• Black Hole Router detection algorithm.
  

DirectX 10 for XP is not included, and probably won't in the final either.
For those running XP, download away!

Missing CD/DVD rom drives in Windows?

Trying to write a cd,
I noticed my DVD writer was missing,

Looking in device manager i got the following error message :

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

very strange, as this device has always worked perfectly before.

After some googleing I tried things to update the drivers, deleting the device from device manager etc.

Finally i found the answer :

Open regedit
Go to key :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Find the "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" (and "UpperFilters.bak" "LowerFilters.bak", if they exist) values and delete them.


After that reboot or delete the devices one more time from device manager and voila they were back!

WARNING : some CD / DVD writer programs may have to be reinstalled!!! but that's a small price to pay i find :)

Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 Beta 1

Kaspersky has released a new beta version of their antivirus & internet security suite.

I have just updated the virusscanner on my Vista x64 machine and my XP SP2 machine,
and it is working great!

New things are  (this list is for the KIS suite):
what's new from v6:
1. Application GUI has been enhanced.
2. New heuristic analyzer detecting unknown threats has been added.
3. An opportunity for quick application setup with default settings has been added.
4. A new protection component (Parental control) has been added for supervision of user access to Internet resources.
5. Privacy control (Anti-Spy) has been supplemented with a module protecting confidential data and guarding against unauthorized access and transfer of such data.
6. Security wizard has been added for quick correction of problems in the application settings and operation.
7. Delivery of news from Kaspersky Lab via a new component (News Agent) has been implemented.
8. Proactive defense has been enhanced with a mechanism for detection of the newest keyloggers.
9. Protection against new types of leaktests has been added.
10. Extended search for the new generation rootkits has been added.
11. Firewall kernel has been improved and optimized for performance.

You can find the information to the beta FTP server in this forum thread : 
http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?showtopic=11188


Be aware that this is an early beta and may contain bugs !

Hidden network connections and other usefull shortcuts

Can't find the network connections in the new Vista? They are somewhere hidden in the new start menu,  the fastest way is to type in the search field in the start menu and type ncpa.cpl and you are there!

Some other things you can reach faster :

Ncpa.cpl : network connections

Eventvwr : Event viewer

Diskmgmt.msc : disk management.

Regedit : registry editor

inetmgr : iis manager

services.msc : services panel

…

If you know others, just let me know
By the way they should also work on XP (and maybe earlier)

Automatic updates bugging you to restart?

Getting tired of having to click away the restart later button every 10 minutes when there is an update? 
I was,  and after some searching I found a solution on the internet,
you can't turn it off, but you can make it appear only once a day 

(that way you can shut down at the end of the day and the next day the reboot is done, 
when you boot the computer)

press Start, run
type in gpedit.msc
at the left side of the screen,  under the Local Computer Policy, choose Administrative Templates,   Windows Components, Windows Update

at the right side of the screen, doubleclick  Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations

You can disable it (Thanks to Charles : disabled means the default 10 minutes.),
or put a value in the enable field, I put it at the maximum value : 1440, so it will only bug me once per day.

Unfortunatly, this is only active when windows restarts, so you may still have the annoying screen for the moment.

To get rid of that temporarily :
press start, run, services.msc

then right click the Automatic Updates service en choose 'stop', it will now stop bugging you :)
(it is best to leave it at automatic, so it will restart when you reboot your pc, and the other 'fix' is active)

I could only test this on a Windows XP Professional with SP2, 
I don't think the home version has the gpedit.msc tool. If I find something for that I will post it.

Edit: This also works in Vista Ultimate (I tested it on the X64 Ultimate edition), but Vista lets you select to notify only every 4 hours