Day: June 19, 2007

Ad-Aware is one of the very best adware and spyware eliminators! And now, the new version is out, and it is free! They obviously want to sell you the “Pro” version, but the free one is very good… and the price is right!

Ad-Aware 2007 Free Edition

“Ad-Aware 2007 Free remains the most popular anti-spyware product for computer users around the world, with nearly one million downloads every week. Our free anti-spyware version provides you with advanced protection against spyware that secretly attaches and takes control of your computer, resulting in aggressive advertising pop-ups, sluggish computer activity, even identity theft through stolen bank details, passwords, and credit card account numbers. If you want real-time scanning capabilities, consider upgrading to Ad-Aware 2007 Plus for real-time protection against spyware, all the time!”

Mandriva Linux has put out a statement against the Microsoft protection scheme:

“Novell, Xandros and Linspire have signed well publicized agreements with Microsoft. Rumors on the Web have hinted that we might be next on the list. So we would like to clarify our position. At Mandriva, we believe working in heterogeneous environments is essential to our customers. So, interoperability between the Windows and Linux world is important and must be dealt with, and anything that helps this interoperability is a good thing. We also believe the best way to deal with interoperability is open standards, such as ODF which we support strongly and we are ready to cooperate with everyone on these topics. As far as IP is concerned, we are, to say the least, not great fans of software patents and of the current patent system, which we consider as counter productive for the industry as a whole. We also believe what we see, and up to now, there has been absolutely no hard evidence from any of the FUD propagators that Linux and open source applications are in breach of any patents. So we think that, as in any democracy, people are innocent unless proven guilty and we can continue working in good faith. So we don’t believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft to do our job or to pay protection money to anyone. We plan to keep developing and distributing innovative and exciting products and making them available to the largest number in the true spirit of open source.”

So, you have your system set to do Windows Updates (WU), that’s good from a security point of view. BUT… now you get those nasty pop-up dialogs that bug you until you reboot. You will reboot when you want do, dang it! So, how can you disable them?

Use the Group Policy editor! You can run it by typing: gpedit.msc into the “Start -> Run” box.

Once you are in the Group Policy Editor, go to:
*Computer Configuration -> Administrative Template -> Windows Components -> Windows Update
* Double click on No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations
* In the settings window Choose Enabled and click OK
* Double click on Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations
* In the settings window Choose Disabled and click OK
* Close Group Policy Editor

And, viola! You have eliminated the problem. Now you can get on with that game… or, OK, the report you were working on! (Yeah!)

Another day without the podcast… somehow I will get it done… you wouldn’t believe how “slammed” I am at the moment… new job during the day, and church meetings at night (Vacation Bible School). It is keeping me hopping!