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DriverGuide 'Blogs
Categories: Ask DriverGuide, DriverGuide News, Technology Blog |
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Technology Blog: WGA Anti-Piracy Hack, part II
by quincy, posted 6 August 2005, 3:12 am |
While the first JavaScript method barely seemed worth mentioning as it would no doubt be easily fixed, this mechanism for bypassing the WGA piracy check might be more difficult for them to stop. Microsoft makes available and allows you to run a program called GenuineCheck.exe as an alternative to the ActiveX-based approach. If you set the GenuineCheck.exe program to run in Windows 2000 compatibility mode it will return a non-pirated code regardless of the actual legitimacy of your copy.
Another way past Windows antipiracy found
Quincy |
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Technology Blog: Microsoft Reissuing Win 2K SP4 Rollup to Fix Problems
by quincy, posted 5 August 2005, 5:44 pm |
For those of you still using Win 2K (and there are a lot of you) you have probably installed or at least been alerted to Microsoft's release in late June of SP4. Despite Microsoft's officially ending non-paid support at the end of June numerous complaints about SP4 have apparently encouraged them to release a new version of it, which will hopefully resolve problems "ranging from incompatibility with third-party security applications to network-printing issues."
So, if you've got Win 2K and haven't installed SP4, you're advised to wait until it's rereleased. And if you have, you probably will want to reinstall with the new one. For more check out eWeek's coverage of the issue and watch WindowsUpdate.com.
Quincy |
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Technology Blog: Thinking of Upgrading to x64?
by quincy, posted 5 August 2005, 1:39 pm |
If you've got a 64 bit PC or are thinking about buying one, and are considering installing any of the versions of Windows for x64 then you should probably read this article (though if you've been thinking seriously about it you probably know most of what it says).
For those of you who haven't looked into it, one major problem area for x64 users will be driver support. You can't use 32 bit drivers on a 64 bit system. And, since x64 is relatively new, driver support is weak. As with any version of Windows there is built-in support for many of the most popular legacy devices, but as you probably also remember if you upgraded from 98 to XP, many of those peripherals we depend on just won't be supported, not now, and maybe not ever. And with many software packages increasingly using software drivers as part of their design (anti-virus, monitoring, utilities, etc.), you'll similarly be seeing some of the software you rely upon not working, despite x64s WOW (Windows on Windows) 32 bit subsystem (I'm not 100% sure about this statement, pretty sure, but I could be wrong). If you're thinking about it just make sure that the peripherals and software upon which you depend are supported before upgrading.
Quincy |
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Technology Blog: First Vista Virus? Not really.
by quincy, posted 5 August 2005, 3:54 am |
Ok, this will be a bit more editorial than other posts, if you're a geek you'll understand. Sometimes some tech issues just get so badly misreported it's hard not to get irritated.
On Thursday it was reported on most of the major news sites that the first Vista virus was developed/disclosed. The original source appears to be an F-Secure blog entry which reports about 5 viruses described/included in Austrian virus writing magazine. You can read a bit more about each of the five also on F-Secure's site. The "virus" is simply a shell script which runs from the Vista equivalent of DOS. The script is written for MSH (Microsoft Scripting Shell) aka Monad. MSH is nothing more than a shell, like DOS with a bigger command set and a better interface (it's more like any modern UNIX/Linux shell). So, just like you can write a shell script to create a directory, rename a file, launch a program or do practically any other thing (which is the main reason shell scripting exists), surprise, surprise you can write a shell script to spread itself! That's old news, it's been done, is being done, will be done. You give someone a shell and they'll write a shell script which can do bad things. There is no story here. This "virus" doesn't exploit any weakness in MSH, doesn't exploit any weakness in Vista. It's not that you could mail someone a script in an attachment and your e-mail client would let you click on the attachment and poof you're hosed. It's not that you will browse a webpage and trigger an MSH script to run. Now maybe vulnerabilities will be discovered that will allow MSH scripts to run in situations like I just mentioned (the years of Outlook Expresses worms are testament to that). And if that happens again, it's serious, and that needs to be addressed and is worth a news story. But this, this is just stupid! It's as stupid as running a story about how someone has disclosed that under Vista just by doing 2 mouse click and typing 10 keystrokes your hard drive can be formatted! All you have to do is press "Start", then choose "Run..." then type "format c:". Oh the humanity! And Microsoft is doing nothing to stop this set of clicks and keystrokes from wiping out all your data??? (Ok, for you real geeks you know the above wouldn't work, but you know what I'm saying, volume is mounted/in use, blah blah, and I'm not going to try it now just to check :) ). Anyway, I'm getting off the soap box.
If you're interested you can read more in the related Google headlines.
Quincy |
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Technology Blog: Intel Shifting Production Towards Centrino, Away from Desktop and Low-End
by quincy, posted 4 August 2005, 12:15 pm |
Later this year you might find it harder to come by lower priced Intel-based PCs. Intel is phasing out production of three of their low-end desktop chipsets in favor of producing more higher-end Centrino chipsets. The change will occur late August, and the shortages could be felt soon after in the form of delays and lack of availability of chipsets for the PCs currently in production. The chipsets being phased out are the 910GL, 915GL, and 915PL. These chipsets are used by the Pentium 4 and Celeron D CPUs. Competing chipset makes SiS and Via are expected to pick up some of the slack, and some market share on the low-end is expected to shift to AMD.
For more, read Intel Shuns Three Low-End Chipsets.
Quincy |
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