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Vol. 8, No. 16
4-29-08
1 XP SP3 is coming soon
2 Dear Microsoft
3 8-30 is the day the music dies, Vista SP1, Net Neutrality Redux, more malware attacks
4 Make your own animations
5 Activation
As I mentioned Thursday, starting on April 29th Windows XP Service Pack 3 will start showing up as a critical update for your PCs and, considering the nightmare that was SP2, I thought it best was to test it thoroughly before D-Day to make sure it wouldn’t break computers nation-wide.
Unfortunately, in my haste to get started with testing, I downloaded a release candidate from March rather than the final (oops!) and promptly crashed my testbed. Fortunately, it was easy to fix but required booting from a live CD and moving some files, which might be a bit much for an average user to go through. You shouldn’t have to be a repair technician to use a PC.
After a format and another fresh load of Windows XP Pro w/SP2, reloading all the drivers, critical updates (almost a hundred since SP2 rolled out), standard software etc., I began again with the correct file.
Installation itself was simple. The process was identical to SP2 and actually went a lot quicker. On the test unit (AMD Athlon XP 2800+, 1 GB PC2700 RAM, Radeon 7000 video w/64 MB RAM, Western Digital 80 GB 7200 RPM hard drive w/8MB Cache), it took about 40 minutes. Microsoft advises to allow for up to two hours.
Once installation completed, came the expected prompt to reboot and after the restart the machine came up normally. After a quick check for more Windows updates (always a good idea after an update, in case there are patches for the first one), I began to check for damage to the third party programs.
Before installing the Service Pack, I loaded several standard programs, basically Panda AV, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Spyware Blaster, Adobe Reader and Open Office.
Each one opened fine. I created a text document and a spreadsheet with Open Office, performed full scans with the security programs and opened a .pdf file with Adobe Reader.
I also installed Adobe Flash Player and MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware after the update and both loaded normally.
I didn’t do any benchmarking since I was pressed for time, but many groups have done so and SP3 seems to provide about a 10% speed boost over SP2. Both, of course, test about twice as fast as Vista (http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/windows-xp-sp3-yields-performance-gains.html). I did do a speed test at www.speedtest.net both before and after, and I’m certainly glad I did.
Before the upgrade my download speed was 5,637 on a 6 Mb connection. After, it had dropped to 3,480. Something in the update apparently wiped out the tweaks I’d done to the Registry to speed things up.
If this happens to you, get the free TCP/IP Optimizer from http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php. Just start the program, tick the Optimal Settings option at the bottom and hit Apply Changes. You’ll get a list of the changes suggested with an option at the top to Backup your current settings. Make sure that’s checked and click OK, then reboot and test again.
That got my speed back up to 5,255 so I still have some manual tweaking to do but it’s close enough.
All in all, the new Service Pack is nowhere near as damaging as the last one, any negative changes it makes are easy to reverse and you get a little system speed boost. The full version is over 500 MB but likely an inline install will be a lot smaller. Microsoft got this one right :)
Come tomorrow you don’t have much to worry about…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
In a move that's sure to draw
fire from opponents of digital rights
management technologies and anger customers, Microsoft said it would
disable consumers' ability to play songs purchased and downloaded from
its defunct MSN Music service on new devices after Aug. 30. Can you
feel the love?
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/music/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207401595
Windows Vista customers can now receive the
first service pack for the
operating system via the Microsoft Automatic Update service, Microsoft
said Wednesday. With all those rave reviews and customer praise
you'd think they would leave a good thing alone:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145030/vista_sp1_released_to_automatic_update.html
The US Senate is once again talking about net
neutrality. With all
the tech expertise up on Capitol Hill (I'm talking to you, Senator
Stevens) what could go wrong?
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9925517-7.html?tag=nefd.lede
The United Nations and United Kingdom government
Web sites have fallen
victim to a widespread malware attacks that have infected hundreds of
thousands of legitimate sites worldwide. Hmmmm....what other nation's
name starts with "United"? Yikes:
http://www.crn.com/security/207401671
Copy us on the good stuff
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
Flash animation is great for
applications like YouTube, but it can be annoying when overly used at websites
like www.bucks.co.uk.
Before there was Flash, there
was the animated GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) file--a simple multi-frame
graphics file you still see widely used as online avatars and in small animated
advertisements. Why? File size. Compared to Flash, for short animations GIF
files are positively puny. Unfortunately, while many people would love to have
their avatar doing the Hula Hoop, few have the know-how or the proper tool to
make it do so. Beneton Movie GIF is that proper tool. With it you can edit,
compose, and apply effects to static images or sequences of images to create a
GIF animation. You can even import short AVI files and convert them to animated
GIFs. It's free here:
http://software.benetonfilms.com/Beneton_Movie_GIF/.
If you scroll down the page,
there are two very useful tutorials to help you get started.
*IMPORTANT: Don’t be “click happy”…at the end of the
installation uncheck the box for the Crawler Toolbar.
Art Maley
Email Question of the Week
Q: I got this message the other day: Since Windows was first activated on this computer, the hardware on the computer has changed significantly. Due to the changes, Windows must be reactivated within 3 days. Do you want to reactivate Windows now.
What should I do? I have an icon on my task bar that says that
This copy of Windows is not activated.
A: Believe it or not, that's not at all unusual. Windows XP will sometimes hiccup and suddenly decide it needs to be reactivated. I would imagine it results from the Registry entry or file that contains the original activation hash code getting munged but who knows?
Anyway, just go ahead and reactivate. If it's a national brand you'll probably need to type in your product key (on a sticker on the PC somewhere). Worse case you'll have to follow the instructions to call in but it's not a painful procedure at all.
Hope that helps and keep us posted...
Kevin Mefford
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