Microsoft has published a list of programs that will not work or will suffer from reduced functionality after the installation of Vista SP1.

The list of programs is composed mostly of security applications, such as Trend Micro Internet Security 2008. However, programs such as the New York Times reader also feature on the list. Users are advised to install updates from the application vendor to fix the problem.

“Windows Vista Service Pack 1 contains many security, reliability and feature updates for Windows Vista. A program may experience a loss of functionality after you install Windows Vista SP1. However, most programs will continue to work as expected after you install Windows Vista SP1,” the company said.

Source: ZDNet

Keeping your computer up to date and secure is just as important as the regular servicing of your car or motorbike. Like any machine, your computer needs constant care and a regular tune up. If you fail to carry out this important task your PC will gradually become slower and start to develop problems.

To keep a computer in good shape you must keep it free of malicious software, viruses and dust. You should also ensure that your PC’s hard drive is well maintained to reduce any problems that might arise in the future.

A lot of freely available software can keep your PC perfectly well tuned. Its just a question of knowing what to download and how to make the best use of it.

How To Tune Up a Windows based PC

A comprehensive tune up procedure has been developed by QBS PC Help and is used whenever we tune up a clients PC. The detailed steps we take are as follows:

• Physically clean the PC by removing the cover and using a pressurised air duster. Make sure all the dust is removed and make sure all the cooling fans are working. For a thorough clean see the article cleaning your computer, computer components and peripherals.
• Check that Virus definition downloads are set to auto and that the latest definitions are installed. If there is no anti virus software installed and the PC is not heavily used by the client, install the free copy of AVG Anti virus.
• If not present, install a good firewall like Zone Alarm.
• Perform a full system wide virus scan.
• If the Windows Operating System is present install Microsoft Windows Defender for real time spyware/adware removal and protection. Windows Defender is pre-installed in Windows Vista and Windows 7.
• Uninstall any known adware or spyware using AdAware Anniversary Edition and SpyBot Search & Destroy. These programs will find most of the rubbish that resides on a PC’s hard drive.
• Clean your Windows Registry. A highly rated software tool for cleaning Windows files and the Registry is CCleaner. This free program scans your PC for many types of Windows files and extensions and also the Registry for unwanted, corrupt paths and gives you the option to make a backup before cleaning begins. Another tool for an experienced Windows user is CWShredder. If used carefully this can find even more adware and spyware problems and can also clean the Windows Registry.
• Remove any programs that start up automatically but have no right or reason to. Use msconfig to check these.
• With the users permission uninstall any unwanted programs.
• Check the hard drive for errors using chkdsk.
• Defragment the hard drive to realign the files for better performance.

The Final Results of a Thorough Tune Up

You may be surprised at how fast your computer runs after being properly tuned up and as you see from this post you can do most of this yourself, using a few software programs that are free to download.

To keep you PC running well use AdAware Anniversary Edition and SpyBot Search & Destroy at least weekly. And also clean your Windows Registry and files regularly using CCleaner.

We also recommend that you do a full tune up by following our tune up procedure every six months or so. This will keep your PC running smoothly and help to prevent any future problems.

Of course, nothing lasts forever so a major component like a Power Unit or Hard Drive might fail at some point. For more information about hardware problems see our series of PC Help Guides.

A Canadian company behind a search engine called Groovle.com has won a case filed against it by online search giant Google.

Google said the domain name used by the small business, 207 Media, was too similar to its own, but mediators the National Arbitration Forum disagreed.

In the complaint, Google asked for the judges to rule that 207 Media transfer the domain name over to it.

But three judges appointed by the forum refused the request. They said the name was not similar enough to confuse people and the word ‘groovle’ was more closely linked to “groovy” or “groove” rather than Google.

Source: BBC Technology

The Vista ‘User Profile Service’ fails to logon problem seems to occur when there are two or more user Profiles set up and one of these User Profiles becomes corrupted. But there are a small number of single users who also report the same problem. It does not seem to matter whether the users are ‘administrators’ or ‘standard’ users.

As the affected users Profile has somehow been damaged Vista has changed the Profile’s extension to .bak – a backup file. This makes the user Profile unavailable and so produces the message:

The User Profile Service service failed the logon.

User Profile cannot be loaded.

At QBS PC Help we had to find an answer to this problem as we had a Dell Laptop, running Vista, to repair. This PC exhibited the same ‘User Profile Service’ problem. Thankfully the Laptop had two user accounts set up, one administrator and one standard user. It was the standard users account that had frozen.

A few searches in Google led us to the Vista Update forum which had a post on this topic.

Of course if you are the only user of your PC you’ve probably got only one user profile set up and you are no doubt the administrator. So if this account is frozen your only option is to try and repair Windows Vista.

Turn on your computer, and press and hold F8. You will see on the screen that appears the option to ” Repair Your Computer”. Select this and hit Enter. (use your own administrator user name and password).

On the next screen you will see the first Category “Startup Repair” and the second “System Restore”. Click on Startup Repair. When this finishes restart your computer.

If the Startup Repair doesn’t work try the second option – System Restore. Again when its done, restart your computer.

Hopefully, your user account is now working again.

The Suggested Fix for two or more User Accounts

If you have two or more user accounts set up then the following solution definately works . We fixed the Dell Laptop by taking these steps.

First, you need to log on with an administrators account.

Now go to Start and in the Search Box type regedit. Get past the nagging security box and wait till regedit opens.

Now go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\

Go through the listed Profiles to find the damaged Profile. The key to the damaged profile should have a .bak appended to it.

There should also be another identical key except for the .bak extension. Rename this other key to something else (e.g. one number above the highest number).

Also rename your damaged Profile by removing the .bak extension. Now change the State property of this Profile (listed in the right hand window) from 1 to 0.

Restart your PC and try logging on with your repaired Profile. It should now work.

Around the Internet there seems to be a big problem with CD/DVD drives disappearing from Device Manager, not showing up in the MyComputer overview folder and even being absent from the BIOS. Very strange!

This is all a bit of a mystery and although some of the solutions listed below seem to work for some people there are still many others who are stuck with a non working CD/DVD unit.

As PC repairers QBS PC Help have come across this problem with a clients Acer Aspire 5315 laptop. Despite trying everything posted on line, this laptop is still without a working CD/DVD.

Here are some of the many things we found and tried in an effort to solve this problem.

We know that some of these suggestions have worked for a few people but the Acer 5315 laptop we have seems completely unfixable at the moment.

Here’s a good fix for some situations

There is a fix that’s been around for some time for Windows XP which seems to have worked for some individuals who own Windows Vista laptops. It involves deleting the Upper and Lower Filters from the following registry key:

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

Always back up the Registry before you change anything. When you open regedit click on the File menu and choose Export. Once you have backed up the Registry these are the steps you need to take:

Click on Vista’s start menu and type regedit into the search box.

Maximize the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE root key and then browse until you reach this particular key:

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

In the right hand panel you should see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter”. Click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.

Now restart your PC for the change to take effect.

If you have deleted both the upper and lower filters and you still are unable to read CD’s or DVD’s, this may indicate that your drive or your motherboard is suspect. But before you rush out and buy new ones, try all the potential ‘fixes’ below.

Try deleting entries in Device Manager

First go to Device Manager (type Device Manager in the Windows Vista search box and click on the result). Once you are in Device Manager check to see if a DVD/CD-ROM Drives heading is listed and click on the + sign to expand the view so you can see the device that should be listed there. If it shows a CD Rom Device right click it and select uninstall. You can then reinstall the device by clicking on the above ‘Action’ menu and selecting ‘Scan for hardware changes’.

Make sure you reboot your PC to see if this fix works.

Another possibility is to do all the above, stay in Device Manager, and then go into the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller and look at each IDE channel. Uninstall any channel which has nothing under the advanced settings. Windows Vista will then re-detect the channels (on reboot) and reconfigure any connected devices.

Once Vista reboots it should detect the CD Rom Drive and the correct Windows driver and install them.

A big problem with many online posts is that a lot of people seem to have no CD Device listed in Device manager !

One post reported this rather unusual idea -

“For the past few days my dvd drive has been showing up and I’ve been using it and everything seems so perfect. What did I do? I unscrewed the drive from the bottom of the notebook. When I slid the drive out of its slot there was a little metal bracket that holds the drive in place. It has some very tiny screws in it. Remove that bracket from the drive and reinstall the drive without screwing it in at all. Yes, there is a risk of it sliding out if you’re not careful, but this worked for me. When I booted, the drive showed up. My guess is that the bracket causes it to not make a FULL connection. Don’t get me wrong, with the bracket installed, the light comes on as if the dvd drive is loading, it even responds to me pushing the button and opens up, but didn’t show up in My Computer. But now it does.”

A few more fixes that people have tried

Some people have replaced the CD/DVD Drive with a new one and still end up with the same problem!

Even hard drives have been replaced and although this might fix the problem for a short while it usually returns!

We hope that at least one of these potential fixes works for your missing CD/DVD Drive.

One of our website’s, www.inputyouth.co.uk, had to be moved from one host to another. The move was to accomplish three main objectives.

These were:

• To lower the yearly cost by at least £30.
• To swap from a Windows to a Linux server.
• And to find 1st class customer and technical support by reading independent reviews.

After much deliberation we finally decided to try one of the hosts recommended by PC Pro in their Reliability & Service Awards of 2009 – Fast2host.com.

Fast2Host is a British company focused on providing web hosting with top support. And it shows in its results, with 95.8% of its customers happy to recommend Fast2Host to friends and colleagues.

The Input Youth account with Fast2Host was set up on Friday 2 October 2009. We selected the Linux Enterprise package which has 100 sub domains, 50 email accounts and a LAMP configuration (Linux, Apache,MySql and PHP). The whole set up can be managed using CPanel V11.

Changing the TAG

The TAG change from the old host to Fast2Host was complete on Saturday evening and the whole site was uploaded and working on Sunday 4th October. A pretty stella performance. There were no hitches along the way even though the Input Youth site has a WordPress blog and several film shows to slightly complicate matters.

Our Final Thoughts

This superb hosting company have been trading since 1999 and seem to go over and above what other hosting companies typically do for their clients. Their service and support are exceptional, which is borne out by the many positive reviews that litter the Internet.

So far we are extremely happy with Fast2Host. The Input Youth website has experienced no downtime and even loads a bit faster than it used to.

Fast2host are a superb web hosting company who offer loads of useful features as standard. Other hosting companies may well charge extra for these goodies.
So, if you are looking for a good quality hosting solution providing the latest technology at the best possible price, look no further than Fast2hosts.

Yesterday, I tried to upgrade from WordPress 2.84 to 2.9.

Before I even twitched I did full backups of the posts by using the Export function and downloaded the SQL file from the MySQL database where WordPress resides.

Confident that if there was a problem I could rely on these backups I clicked the prompt at the top of the dashboard screen ‘WordPress 2.9 is available! Please update now’.

The update proceeded but halted when the time came to update the MySQL database. It stopped and reported that MySQL version 4.1.2 or higher was needed. My hosts are still using MySQL version 4.0 so the update could not continue. Without downloading 2.9 and checking the readme file or checking the WordPress download area, there’s no indication in the admin section of the Blog that this version of MYSQL was needed. These MySQL (and PHP) requirements should be added to the dashboard panel notification message to avoid this sort of problem.

I could still see all the blog posts but every time I wanted to log in to Site Admin I just got the report that MySQL version 4.1.2 or higher was needed. So WordPress 2.9 was not usable.

No problem, I could just go back to using WordPress 2.84 and upload all the backups to get the blog up and running.

This is when I discovered that the backups had only captured posts for 2007 and nearly all of 2008 – they had not saved any of the posts for the the last quarter of 2008 or the whole of 2009, nor any of the draft posts that I was working on. I then checked all my weekly backups to see if I could replace perhaps some of these lost posts. But each and every xml file and sql file exhibited the same problem. The only saving grace was all the images that had been uploaded from 2007 through to 2009 were saved out of the wp-content/upload folders.

This now means that a whole lot of Blog posts have been lost.

To cut to the chase, the only way around this was to install WordPress 2.84 from scratch and then use our current blog style and saved plugins to get back to some sort of order. Although the blog now looks right we had 246 posts on 22/12/2009 but today there are only 105! So 141 posts are missing and unrecoverable.

The last post that was uploaded on 22/12/2009 – How to upgrade your computers memory – has been re-posted but the gap between this and the last saved post is now close to 17 months.

I sincerely hope that you avoid this upgrade problem, so check all your backups and make sure your hosts are running MySQL version 4.1.2 or higher before you upgrade to WordPress 2.9.

A new video gives a first glimpse at Mozilla’s radical plans for the mobile version of Firefox.

Like Apple’s mobile version of Safari, Firefox Mobile concentrates on full web browsing. However, the manner in which users navigate the web is entirely different.

Firefox Mobile works on touch controls, with users scrolling around by dragging their finger across the screen, in a similar fashion to the iPhone browser.

However, none of the normal browser controls – back, forward, reload etc – are visible within the browser window. To locate these controls the user has to drag the page to the left, where the buttons are found in the margin to the side of the web page, and the URL bar fades into view. “By using horizontal panning to access the controls, we avoid the iPhone’s problem of needing to go to the very top of the page to enter

URLs,” says Aza Raskin, the son of interface expert Jef Raskin, who was recently hired by Mozilla to work on the project.

Take a look at Raskin’s video demonstration of the Firefox Mobile concept. www.vimeo.com

Source: PC Pro

Adding more memory to your computer is often the most cost-effective upgrade you can make to speed up your PC, especially if it feels a bit sluggish after a few years of use.

Here is a brief overview of how to add more memory to your desktop, laptop, or netbook computer.

PC memory comes in many flavours, such as DDR2 and DDR3. Newer technologies always offer faster performance, but most motherboards accept only one type of memory so you need to check your PC’s manual to find out what type of memory modules you need and how you should install them.

Companies such as Crucial and Kingston offer handy online tools that identify the appropriate memory for many different computers and motherboards.

To take advantage of more than 4GB of memory your PC needs to run a 64-bit operating system either using Windows Vista or Windows 7. 64-bit systems offer direct access to more virtual and physical memory than 32-bit systems and therefore process a lot more data per clock cycle. This makes your PC run faster and perform everyday tasks that much quicker. Bearing in mind this speed improvement, we thoroughly recommend that you use a 64-bit operating system.

Before you carry out any work on your computer make sure you protect your PC’s delicate circuits from static electric charges on your body by properly grounding yourself. If you don’t have a grounding strap at least ground your body by touching the metal part on the outside of your PC’s case before touching the inside of your PC or any component, including the motherboard.

To begin, open your computers’s case and look for the memory slots.

With a desktop PC the memory modules can usually be seen when you open up your computers case. With some set ups they may be difficult to access because of bad cable management or just a location that is difficult to reach. However, many PC’s are easy to upgrade because of their good internal layout.

To remove the existing memory from your desktop computer, release the clips at each end of the module so that it pops loose. With the slots clear, gently but firmly remove the old memory module and insert the new one. If you are just adding new memory and have a spare slot and are sure that you have a compatible memory module, just insert it untill the clips snap to hold it securely in place. It’s often best to seat one corner of the module first and then press the other end into place.

Most laptops and netbooks come with one or two memory sockets which may leave you with no space for an upgrade. In this case you will have to remove at least one module before any upgrade can take place. The RAM module on most laptops and netbooks sit behind a removable panel on the underneath of your pc or under the keyboard. Once the panel is open lift up the existing memory module, using its outer edge, untill it can be safely removed. To do this, carefully lift the memory module until it is at an angle of about 45 degeees. You will then be able to carefully remove it. To install memory place it in the slot and then press down until the clips snap tightly around the ends.

Crucial (The memory provider) have a great tutorial on installing laptop memory at www.crucial.com/uk/install/sodimm.aspx#tools?click=true

Crucial will also tell you the type of RAM module your laptop needs -http://www.crucial.com/uk/

Vodafone has confirmed that it will launch the iPhone to businesses and consumers on 14 January 2010, but has done little to generate competition in the market with its pricing plans.

The company has detailed a raft of tariffs for businesses ranging from £30 to £55 a month on a 24-month contract, excluding VAT.

All tariffs offer unlimited Wi-Fi and calls to landlines and 250 text messages per month. The only key difference is the number of minutes offered, which ranges from 600 on the £30 tariff to 2,000 on the £55 tariff.

The business and consumer contracts come with a 1GB data download limit on BT’s Openzone network, underlining the growing importance users place on mobile data.

Jeni Mundy, chief technology officer at Vodafone, explained that the company is not trying to offer the cheapest iPhone but is more concerned with making sure that it offers the best service.

Firefox was the application that had the most reported vulnerabilities this year, while holes in Adobe software more than tripled from a year ago, according to statistics compiled by Qualys, a vulnerability management provider.

Qualys tallied 102 vulnerabilities that were found in Firefox this year, up from 90 last year. The numbers are based on running totals in the National Vulnerability Database.

However, the high number of Firefox vulnerabilities does not necessarily mean the Web browser actually has the most bugs; it just means it has the most reported holes. Because the software is open source, all holes are publicly disclosed, whereas proprietary software makers, like Adobe and Microsoft, typically only publicly disclose holes that were found by researchers outside the company, and not ones discovered internally, Qualys Chief Technology Officer Wolfgang Kandek said late on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Adobe took the second-place spot from Microsoft this year. The number of vulnerabilities in Adobe programs rose from 14 last year to 45 this year, while those in Microsoft software dropped from 44 to 41, according to Qualys. Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and Microsoft Office together had 30 vulnerabilities.

The banking, telecoms and software sectors will be the key areas for IT employment in 2010, according to new research from technology recruitment organisation The IT Job Board.

Nearly half of the IT professionals questioned for the survey said that the banking sector would be the hottest recruiter next year, despite a widespread meltdown of the financial services sector in 2009. This was followed by the software and IT services sectors with 42 per cent of respondents and telecoms with 41 per cent.

Around a third said that project management roles would be most in demand next year, and the same figure chose business analyst jobs.

“I believe that next year the finance sector will really pick up. Banking was the first to be hit during the recession, but it will also be the first to recover, and it will offer a lot of opportunity in terms of IT recruitment,” said IT Job Board sales director Peter Healey.

SAP, .Net and Java skills will be among the most highly sought after in these industries next year, the report found, while 58 per cent of respondents said that contract jobs would be in greater demand during 2010, compared to permanent positions.

A bug, which cropped up on Friday (11/12), meant that users of Office 2003 were unable to access files protected using Microsoft’s rights management service (RMS) technology.

“The issue of the inability to open Office 2003 documents protected with RMS has now been resolved with a hotfix,” Microsoft said in a short statement on its Office sustained engineering blog.

Microsoft has said that the problem was due to an Office 2003 certificate that expired. “This resulted in Office 2003 customers not being able to open Office 2003 documents protected with the Active Directory Rights Management Service (AD RMS) or Rights Management Services (RMS),” a representative said, adding that Microsoft first learned of the issue on Thursday night and had the fix up by Mid-day Saturday.

“The original intent was to refresh and strengthen these certificates over time to keep up with newer technology,” the representative said. “We have not done a thorough post-mortem on this incident since we were very focused on fixing the problem. Looking ahead, we are exploring long-term solutions that will prevent something like this from happening again in the future.”

Mozilla Messaging has finally released the latest version of Thunderbird 3. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Thunderbird 3 introduces several hefty new features and some long-needed improvements, including an overhauled search and message indexing, tab support, and a revamped setup wizard that’s designed to make new account setup quick and easy.

One feature that isn’t included is the calendaring add-on, Lightning. Originally, Mozilla had planned to include the extension into Thunderbird 3, but decided back in February 2009 to change course and leave it up to users to download. Although Thunderbird natively comes with Microsoft Exchange support, there’s no calendar and therefore no meeting support in the default installation. Along with Lightning, there’s an essential Google Calendar add-on for Lightning that gives Google users calendar support in Lightning.

Even without Lightning, Thunderbird makes for an excellent desktop-based e-mail client. Beyond Outlook replacement, it also makes a savvy offline or local-storage tool for the various Web mail providers. Gmail integration has existed in Thunderbird for a while, but improvements in version 3 include better recognition and integration of Gmail’s special folders. These include Sent and Trash, and the non-English versions of Gmail. The All Mail option in Gmail defaults in Thunderbird to the Archives folder.

Undeniably, the killer feature in Thunderbird 3 is the search tool. The most obvious competitor, Microsoft Outlook, doesn’t offer anything that comes close to the level of granular control that Mozilla has given to Thunderbird users. The new search bar is dominant at the top of the interface, and you can change the default Search All Messages to focus on a particular part of the e-mail, filtering down to the Subject, From, Recipient, To, CC, or message body fields, or to a combination of all of them.

Thunderbird 3 rates as a top-notch e-mail client, and it’s definitely the best freeware one around. It will require some fidgeting to get it to be usable in a corporate environment, but it’s far more scalable to user needs than anything else currently available.

To find out a lot more about this major release see the Mozilla Messaging site – en-gb.www.mozillamessaging.com/en-GB/