This post is part 5 of a series about using a limited (standard) account in Windows for everyday activities rather than logging in as a computer administrator all the time. (You may want to read parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 before continuing ( Read more... )

This post is part 4 of a series about using a limited (standard) account in Windows for everyday activities rather than logging in as a computer administrator all the time. (You may want to read parts 1, 2, and 3 before continuing ( Read more... )

This post is part 3 of a series about using a limited (standard) account in Windows for everyday activities rather than logging in as a computer administrator all the time. (You may want to read part 1 and part 2 before continuing ( Read more... )

In part 1 of this series, I explained why it's a good idea to have separate accounts on your computer: a standard account for day to day stuff (e.g. reading email), and an administrator account for making system changes (e.g. installing new software ( Read more... )

The German government have advised people to stop using Internet Explorer and switch to an alternate browser, as reported at the BBC and Mashable. Microsoft have published a security advisory about the problem, and they've discussed it on their Security Research & Defense blog. Personally, I'm using IE8 (Protected Mode) on Windows Vista with DEP ( Read more... )

Last August, I did a beta exam for Microsoft. I didn't pay for it, but I didn't get a score either; the idea was just to test out their new software for doing simulations in the exam (rather than multiple choice questions). As a "thank you", Microsoft then sent me three vouchers, each one corresponding to a free exam. These expire at the end of ( Read more... )

This is another of my random techie posts: it probably won't interest any of my friends, but it may be useful for people who stumble across it via a web-search.

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Back in October 2007, I bought a Scaleo EVI2535. In Feb 2008, I mentioned that I was having a lot of trouble with it. In the last year, I haven't used it much; several months ago, I tried to install some upgrades from Windows Update but it got stuck half-way through, so I tried to reboot it, and it hasn't worked since. The current status is that it ( Read more... )

As I mentioned in my previous post, one of the fans in my computer has been playing up recently, so I went off to the computer fair at Tottenham Court Road to find a replacement. This had mixed results...

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My computer has been making strange noises for a while, but I've been ignoring it. That's partly because it's awkward to get it out from the desk and look inside, and partly because I wanted to delay buying new bits for it ( Read more... )