Hitting the Panic Button September 22, 2006
Posted by Dale in : Gadgets, Humour, Last Job, Psychic Troubleshooting, WinXP , Comments
“Bong! Bong! Bong!” goes Windows Messenger.
“Ring! Ring! Ring!” goes the phone.
Yes, my boss has hit the PANIC BUTTON.
Seems we have a customer having some Windows XP SP1 network problems.
Why did I catch the call? Well I’m problem-solving guru. Not that I actually work with day to day desktop problems anymore., but I’m good never-the-less
Now diagnosing the cause of the problem is like that Japanese play Rashômon, every one has a different opinion of the cause.
And it’s about as much fun as herding cats.
The actual cause of the network problem:
- we replaced a faulty server with a brand new shiny one.
- we upgraded the software to Windows 2003 R2
- the customer is still running Windows XP SP1, even though it’s out of support in less than a month.
My solution? Upgrade desktops to XP SP2, or throw a shed load of patches onto the current XP SP1 installation.
My boss might be getting an actual PANIC button for Christmas.
MS06-049 for Windows 2000 SP4 causes data lost. September 17, 2006
Posted by Dale in : It's A Bug, Security, Windows , CommentsFrom Slashbot:
“It looks like there is a problem with the recently released MS06-049 / KB920958 patch. If you have compression activated on any folder, then the compressed data is at risk from corruption. New files that are close to a multiple of 4K in size will have their last 4,000 bytes or so overwritten with 0xDF. Although this problem has been reported to Microsoft, as yet there appears to have been no official announcement. ”
It’s true, Microsoft have told me the same thing.