Paul Freeman-Powell

MsMpEng.exe Windows Vista and XP 100% processor CPU usage live one care

A little tip for those running Windows Vista (and some on Windows XP) who experience a very slowed down system, and notice almost continual 100% use of the CPU...

Chances are you're running OneCare as your antivirus, right? I found this to be caused by MsMpEng.exe which was clogging up a huge amount of resources.

This is an issue that Microsoft are aware of and have apparently "taken strides" to resolve. It's caused by OneCare's realtime virus scanning, and doesn't happen on all systems, only in certain cases. *Don't* just end the process, as this will put your system at risk. Likewise, don't turn OneCare off altogether, as this will have a similarly negative impact on your security.

This is what I did without compromising my system too much, and I got my CPU usage right down to minimal levels again and my system is now usable again.

Double click the (hopefully green!) "1" icon in the taskbar to open up OneCare. Click on the "Change Settings" link on the left hand navigation bar from the main window. Then click on the "Viruses and Spyware" tab. Simpy uncheck "Also look for virus-like behaviour." LEAVE VIRUS MONITORING ON!

I can't guarantee that this work-around will work for all systems, but it did the trick for me, and I still have adequate protection against viruses. The most effective protection is of course a brain, so still make sure you don't click on "Pamela_Anderson_hot_and_nude.jpg.vbs" like a first-rate gooon ;)

So there you are, hopefully in future releases this problem will be even rarer or even non-existent in OneCare!

Windows XP SP3 standalone installer now available

For those of us who still work with Windows XP every now and again, here is the link to download the SP3 standalone .exe from Microsoft...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5B33B5A8-5E76-401F-BE08-1E1555D4F3D4&displaylang=en

There's also this one which is for an ISO but to be honest I'm not yet sure what it's an ISO of! Am currently downloading and will know for sure once that's done! http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/e/9/ee9d0116-c9fe-4fc2-b59c-406cbfb6d515/xpsp3_5512.080413-2113_usa_x86fre_spcd.iso

It's 544MB so presumably it's more than just a SP3 installer, but seems a bit small for a full install disc as my iso for xp pro is 628MB... and the "x86fre" implies it might be French... hmmm... the things you stumble across when Googling!

RTM release of SP1 Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista

Have a trip on down to http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/02/04/announcing-the-rtm-of-windows-vista-sp1.aspx and you'll see that Microsoft have RTM'd SP1 for Vista....

I was running the RC for a while before Christmas, it seemed OK but I didn't bother reinstalling it after I had to do a clean install. I didn't have a chance to actually properly test it out (damn final year uni work...) but I didn't notice it being superbly amazing. Hopefully the RAM upgrade which is in the post will help in that department though ;-)

I'm missing my MSDN subscription which has now run out (thanks though James, that was great!) so I haven't been able to download SP1 yet as it doesn't seem to be on the 'public' bits of the MS site yet, and they have quite a slow rollout planned for a variety of probably quite sensible reasons.

Areas I hope are improved:

Media Center faster to load and more reliable. It seems to break every few months and require a full reinstall of Vista. Not good.
Better battery life when using it on my laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400). Apparently this is somewhere they've worked a lot on, so I look forward to properly seeing how it is in the RTM version. First thing I noticed when I switched to Vista back in December 2006 was the shorter battery life, and I was living in Marseille with my laptop as my only computer...
TBH general performance has always been very good for me on both computers that I use Vista on - I know they've been working a lot on this for SP1 so I can only hope that SP1 will make it even better. Although doubling my RAM to 2GB is sure to help as well. As I write this 86% is used up with WLM,IE7,2 folders,Word,iTunes and Outlook open.
Hibernate/sleep issues hopefully resolved, as they promise they are. Hibernate on my Desktop PC is a nightmare - *every* time (even with reinstalling) you resume, when you come to the logon screen the keyboard/mouse inputs are frozen so you have to reboot, losing your saved session, so I've not used hibernate. Also sometimes sleep and hibernate modes have been dodgy on my laptop, but reinstalling fix them. But we shouldn't have to reinstall Windows so much!!!
Yeah, and although I know they haven't done this, once they've stopped faffing around making Windows more secure (which they do need to do, to be fair...) I'd like them to make an Operating system which breaks/gets clogged up less easily. I'm very careful with my system, what I install etc. etc. but still have to format every now and again to get the most out of my hardware.

That's about all I can think of off the top of my head that I'm hoping for from SP1. I did run the RC for a while and sent a few bits and bobs of my experiences to MS, so I feel I can say I did my bit to contribute :)

Coming soon to my blog: a full review of my shiny new Nokia N82... absolutely brilliant... er, phone....? computer...? PDA...? I'll decide what to call it ;)

Windows Media Center playing up...

Oh dear, it's great when things work, but less great when they suddenly stop working.

I got hooked on Fifa '08 this afternoon after eating my lunch, instead of working (*slaps hand*)... and whilst Neighbours was on I happily played away on my Wii knowing that Media Center would be recording so I could watch it when I got bored of failing miserably to control the ball...

Except when I came upstairs, for some reason it had failed to record. And what's more, when I try to set it to record tonight's, I get this error:

APPLICATION FAILURE
A critical Windows Media Center process has failed. Please restart the computer and try again. If the problem persists, contact your hardware manufacturer for assistance.

I thought it might be to do with the October 2007 Cumulative Update for Media Center for Windows Vista (KB941229) which I installed from Windows Update a few days ago back on 17th November (bit late for an Oct update...) so I uninstalled that & rebooted ... still get the error... reinstall update and reboot.... still get the error

Some Googling around suggested that maybe this file C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\mediacenterdatastore.db might be corrupt so I renamed that (to cripple it but not irreversibly), rebooted and tried again to schedule a TV recording for a few hours' time....

... still I got the error.

The only thing I've installed recently was the new version of OneCare which I installed this morning... I doubt it would be that but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try. Or I could just system restore to a few days back and see if that does the trick, without bodging up my OneCare subscriptions (I wouldn't be surprised if it then thought this PC is a differnet one to the first PC added to the subscription, etc. etc. etc.)

I'll keep the blog updated with any news so that other Googlers the world over can learn from my tribulations.... until then... :)

Update: system restore had no effect... will try updating hardware for pci tv card, although i'm doubtful that will make much difference...
Another Update: that made no difference, but a full format did the trick :)

Blast from the past...!

woah, not blogged on here for a while by the look of it! I'm currently ill and have taken day off work, so decided to tidy up my room and found a quote for a computer system I bought back in 2001...

ATX Tower System Unit & PSU	23.50
System Board with Sound & Graphics	82.25
Pentium III 800 Mhz CPU	135.07
20GB Hard Disk Drive	64.57
128MB RAM	20.00
32MB Video	37.60
Floppy Drive	8.94
50X CD-ROM Drive	24.62
15" Digital CRT Monitor	99.00
Keyboard	9.70
Mouse	9.70
Speaker Set	10.23
56k Internal Modem	20.63
Total:	£545.81

OK so that's not the exact computer system that I went for in the end (for a start, as a pre-gcse schoolboy I economised by switching to Duron 800) but it's interesting to see what you got back in 2001... And that was considered a pretty decent system as well, just before XP was released. I remember 1GHz chips had only recently come out so 800MHz was pretty modern...!

Amazing to see how things change over the years, what little you got for so much money back then. Anyway, back to tidying the room.... :-)

WARNING: Never, ever use CityLink for anything!!!

This is a letter detailing how CityLink treat their customers - TERRIBLY. Every time I have used this company they have been awful, and this saga absolutely takes the mick. I posted this letter to them on 14th July, and it's now 1st August - even with the floods and Royal Mail strikes, they should have at least emailed me to respond by now.

So, I'm reproducing this letter (as I told CityLink I would do, if they didn't reply) as a warning to others.... NEVER USE CITYLINK!

Head Office
City Link Ltd
Riverbank
Meadows Business Park
Blackwater
Surrey
GU17 9AB

Re: Consignment YAM36984

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to complain about the absolutely awful service which I have received from your company this week. On Monday, 2^nd July I was due to receive a package containing 8 items from Ebuyer, which was being delivered by your company. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control I was unable to be in to sign for the package(s) so I left instructions with a third party to sign for the delivery. Unfortunately these instructions were not followed by my third party so I phoned up that afternoon to arrange re-delivery for Tuesday 3^rd July.

According to your web site, at 11:27 that morning (3^rd July) the goods were loaded onto a van, so I sat at home and awaited delivery. When 17:30 arrived, and the goods had still not turned up, I phoned up to try and chase the delivery, and was cut off when a representative put me through to the Liverpool depot. Fortunately, she had given me the direct local number as well, which I tried several times but it just rang out.

On Wednesday morning I phoned up and spoke to someone at the Liverpool depot who told me that “the driver did not attempt delivery” on the Tuesday because he “ran out of time” and then guaranteed that my goods would be delivered later that day (Wednesday). However, at midday I noticed that nothing had changed on the delivery tracking section of your web site, so I phoned up again and was told that they were never going to be delivered on the Wednesday in the first place, and “they should have told you that this morning” – I was told that they would be delivered “tomorrow” (Thursday). I said that that was completely unacceptable and that I would prefer to make the trip to Widnes to collect the parcel myself. So the woman on the phone made arrangements for me to be able to come and collect the item from the warehouse.

Later that day, I drove for 40 minutes to the Widnes depot only to be told that despite a note being written on my account that I would be coming to collect the items, some clown had failed to read the simple notice and once again put my items out for delivery. The clerk at the front desk told me that despite the fact that my parcel was in the building, there were 4,500 others and it would be impractical for him to try and find mine. Is there no system?

At midday on Thursday I again gave up, having seen no progress on the Delivery Tracking page. I phoned up and was told – surprise, surprise – that it had in fact NOT been put out for delivery on the Thursday. Yet again, someone had either lied to me to get rid of me, or someone somewhere had decided not to bother doing their job... again. I was then assured that my goods would be delivered by 5.30pm. At about 5.25pm I phoned up to see what was going on, to be told that at 16.57 someone had called round and found I wasn’t in, and had left a card posted through a “brown front door”. This was false. I had been waiting in the living room directly above the front door with the window open and no music on so that I would definitely hear the delivery men if they ever did turn up. There was no card through my door, and my front door is black! Either someone is in the habit of lying to customers, or your staff can’t use an A to Z.

I was told that the “best” you could offer was to deliver the goods on Friday! By this time I had lost all faith in the company and wouldn’t believe any promises at all so I asked to speak to a manager, who told me that there was no way I could get the goods even on the Thursday. I protested that I wasn’t going to be in Liverpool on the Friday, and since the goods should have been delivered on the Tuesday why would I have ever thought twice about making arrangements to be away on the Friday? After much argument I managed to persuade them to send someone out who would be there by 8pm at the “absolute latest”. When, at 8.30pm, the goods FINALLY turned up, the delivery man was rude and argumentative; he had a huge go at me for checking the delivery was actually complete before I signed anything. Under the circumstances, I feel that was perfectly reasonable.

I do not hold you responsible for the Monday delivery failing or for the fact that I then had to wait around on the Tuesday as a result of this. However, I find it absolutely unacceptable that the company acted with a complete disregard for my schedule when it not only failed to deliver my parcel on the Tuesday but then does not make any effort to contact me to explain and /or apologise. If the driver runs out of time then either a smaller number of jobs should be loaded onto that particular van, or the driver should complete the work and just get home to his tea a bit later! Why should I suffer just because a driver wants to clock off on time rather than finish his work? Throughout the whole saga, was there ever any intention of delivering my goods?!

Then, it is left up to me to phone an 0870 number during peak hours to find out what is going on, and either I am blatantly lied to or one arm doesn’t know what the other’s doing. To be “guaranteed” that my parcel is coming later “today” and then later told that could never have been the case does not fill me with much confidence in the running of your company. It is expensive and frustrating enough having to take one extra day off work and sit around my house all day being afraid to leave whilst waiting for an elusive delivery, but then to be lied to, told to drive for 1hr20mins only to messed around again, and be told to wait for a SECOND and THIRD day as a result of sheer incompetence in your company.

It is plain to see that these two extra days I have had to take off work, along with the wasted petrol for a trip to Widnes, are completely the fault of CityLink who seem to act with a complete disregard for the fact that their customers cannot just take day after day off work, staying in the house doing nothing, on the off chance that a driver might get round to doing his job. I have better things to do than waste my time chasing up a package that any reputable company would have delivered on the Tuesday morning and had done with it.

As a result of the terrible way in which I have been treated, I would like to request not only a refund for the delivery cost which I paid via Ebuyer, but also compensation for the phone calls and 16.2 miles I had to drive in vein and the two extra days I had to take off work due to failings in your company. I usually earn at least £70 per day, so you now owe me £140 in lost earnings please.

This is by no means an isolated incident. Every single time I have used CityLink in the Liverpool area I have been messed around and disappointed by the service I received. I do not understand how it makes business sense to run a company in such a way. Would it not be a good idea to look after your customers and treat them properly? Or is it because many of your customers are in fact customers of companies like Ebuyer so they have no choice but to be at the mercy of CityLink?

I do hope that this matter can be sorted out fairly for both parties, that you can provide me with compensation for the considerable expenses which you have caused me, and that you can provide me with assurances that measures will be introduced to prevent things like this from happening to your valued customers in the future. If all of these conditions cannot be met, I feel it would be my duty to report CityLink to the Office of Fair Trading and BBC Watchdog as well as post this letter on my blog in order to warn off other potential customers from becoming tied up in a similar terrible mess.

I look forward very much to hearing from you and to seeing a satisfactory resolution to this matter.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Freeman-Powell

Vista / Media Center master volume control not working

Interesting one this... I was trying to figure out why it wasnt working when I was changing the volume on my shiny new Media Center remote... I was having to get out of bed (oh my word :P) and get up to manually turn the volume up/down on my speakers!

I then discovered that it was the entire Windows system master volume that was AWOL - if I moved either that or MC (which just uses master vol) up or down, or muted, I got nothing.... but other applications in Vista's volume mixer could be turned up and down.

Now to the untrained eye, my sound drivers were all installed and device manager on searching wouldn't find any better match. But ignore that if this happens to you, get along to your manufacturer's web site and get the official drivers, and that will sort the probby out.

Note: for mine, the drivers were the 2000/XP ones, but they work fine in Vista so long as you run them with Admin privileges, otherwise it can't access the audio stack and claims that "you cannot avail yourself of our services as you don't have the device installed." - avail... hehe what a brill translation eh? :)

Now I just need to figure out how to get my shiny new Samsung ML-2571N to work as an independent network printer and I'll be laughing :D Will blog back with an idiots guide once i've figured it out.....

English is English and it's spoken in England!

It's good to see that Microsoft are trying to represent original, authentic English in Office 2007, along side that "English (United States)" rubbish which they and so many other software companies inflict on us. However, the first line of their page on the subject annoyed me:

"To celebrate the launch of the 2007 Office system and the richness of the British language..."

ERRRR - it's the ENGLISH LANGUAGE!! Are they somehow trying to imply by that the English that is spoken in England (and the rest of the United Kingdom) is not English? "English", on its own with no qualifer to give any more information, will always refer to the English which is spoken in England, because English originated in England! Standard, original English is the British variety... but you can't call the language "British"!

Okay, okay, so maybe I'm going on about this a bit too much and getting too annoyed, but especially having taught English in Madrid, Spain (that's where the speak Spanish Spanish, by the way...) I've had to defend the authenticity of English quite a bit, mostly to Americans. Now obviously I have no problem with other countries speaking our language, like the USA and Australia, but as long as England is recognised as being the language's home and origin. When students ask me the difference between two words, and I tell them one is American so it's better to use the British word, they chuckle... but I'm like "no, seriously. if you're learning English then I'll teach you English, not American English!"

When I was living in France, I saw a restaurant with a French menu outside, and noticed that they had the options of menus in other languages such as Spanish and German, each with the respective flags. When I saw the stars and stripes next to the word "English", I refused to eat at the restaurant!

Forgotten where I was going with the rest of that... but yeah, I don't like it when people try and imply that English from outside the UK is somehow the default standard, or is 'correct'. There is no such thing, really, as 'correct' in language as it's all relative, but if there were such a thing, the Queen's English, not Yankie English, would be 'correct'. :-)

Safari for Windows! (Windows XP, Apple Mac, Windows Vista, Mac OS X, Internet Explorer, Firefox)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6742439.stm

I've just read that Apple are releasing a version of Safari for Windows! :-) For those of you who don't know, Safari is Apple's equivilant of Internet Explorer, the main web browser on Apple Macs and OS X. (Alongside Firefox, that is...)

I've said for a long time that it would be good to have a version for windows, to avoid the need to have a separate Apple Mac running all the time to check compatibility across platforms.

I'm off to download the Beta... I just hope it renders in EXACTLY the same way as on the Mac...!

edit: I predict this may spur Microsoft on to re-commence development of IE for the Mac, which they shut down quite a while ago... ooh, let's see ;)

Christian Aid Week - social experiment

"The Christian Aid Week advert is now on You Tube and we’d like your help with a little social networking experiment. Right now!

If you blog, bookmark, or belong to a social network (My Space, Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn etc) -- OR if you know someone who does – then we’d really like you to link to and talk about the Christian Aid Week video on your space.

We’ll then take a look at the number of YouTube hits tomorrow afternoon and see how many people we’ve been able to get to look at the Christian Aid Week ad over the 24 hour period and prior to any other marketing activity.

The link to use is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzMzjjVwi8k

Please get blogging / linking / commenting as soon as you can.

Cheers!"

Reinstalling Dualboot Windows Vista + Windows XP (etc.) with Vista as primary OS

Just a little note to anyone who has formatted Vista having previously set up a dual boot with Windows Vista (primary) + another OS, following my blog post in March which talked about Vista's new boot configuration called Boot Configuration Data.

Obviously, pre-Vista operating systems need a boot.ini file to reside on the system's primary bootable partition (usually C:\) in order to boot. Vista doesn't, so it doesn't install one as it wouldn't use it. Therefore, if you format your Vista partition and reinstall Vista, you'll end up with no boot.ini file and therefore be unable to boot a pre-Vista operating system (even if you configure BCD to direct the boot sequence in its direction, it will fail.)

So before formatting Vista, remember to back up your boot.ini file, or you'll have to create one yourself to pop in the C:\ root directory, otherwise reinstall the other OS.

In case anyone's in this situation and doesn't want to have to format the other OS, here's an example, my boot.ini file which you can edit according to your system.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Standard" /noexecute=optout /fastdetect

Notice how there's no mention of Vista here, because by the time the boot sequence has gotten round to making use of this file, you've already chosen - in Vista's BCD - which Operating System you wish to boot up to.

PHP 5.2.2 Released... still no joy with IIS7 ISAPI on Vista though :(

Ever since I formatted and reinstalled Windows on Monday, I've been struggling to get PHP back up and running as an ISAPI module in IIS7. Or as a CGI for that matter. Handler mappings set up, ISAPI filters set up, restrictions set up, allowed to execute, permissions on php folder with the DLL's in... but still the ISAPI won't work and is just spewing out the PHP code to the browser....

So - for a short time - I was very happy to see that PHP 5.2.2 has now been RTM'd so I thought maybe they'll have FINALLY updated the .msi installer to work with IIS7 and Vista, so I gave it a go.... well it unpacked the files and put them in a PHP folder inside Program Files but hey, dude, don't strain yourself too much! It fails to make any modification whatsoever to IIS7, as far as I can see...

So I tried running the .msi as an admin, via the command prompt (right click and select "Run as Administrator") and since it was already installed it would only let me Repair... so I had a go and still nothing. Add/Remove programs and try again as an Admin.... still nothing. So this is what I do:

Make sure IUSR user has permissions for C:\WINDOWS\php.ini file
Open IIS Manager and set up an ISAPI filter for C:\Program Files\PHP\php5isapi.dll
Add an [allowed!] ISAPI/CGI restriction for C:\Program Files\PHP\php5isapi.dll and select "Allow path to execute" (dont forget to make sure you right click the restriction afterwards and select to allow unspecified modules)
Set up handler mapping for C:\Program Files\PHP\php5isapi.dll on *.php files and say "yes" to allow the ISAPI extension. Make sure the handler permissions allow execution of scripts.
Repeat those steps for "Default Web Site" also.
Test this by going to http://localhost/

And what happens? Still exactly the same... the PHP file is served, but all the PHP code remains and is spewed out to the browser. The php5isapi.dll must be doing something because if I deliberately *** up that path in IIS, then I get one of its lovely errors and nothing loads at all.... but why oh why am I still getting PHP code not executed?

I don't want to have to format again less than a week later... but it's looking increasingly like my only option to get this sorted. I find it hard to believe that the PHP dev guys can't create an installer for Vista that will do this for me.... it's been out since ~ 8th November last year, it really annoys me how the technology world just can't be arsed to prepare for new systems. Delaying writing drivers, Apple conveniently waiting to release a new iTunes etc. O2 PCMCIA datacards won't have Vista drivers until Summer 2007 apparently.... now that's just shocking, it's been out for ages and sales of Vista have been higher than expected, so why are companies still screwing the customers over? (OK I know PHP is free, but still...)

Rant over... but if anyone could shed any light on my PHP problem and if I'm doing anything wrong, that'd be great! I can't see what though... I'm doing it exactly the same as before....

EDIT - further to the above, I formatted and did a clean install of Vista, followed these instructions exactly and still get exactly the same problem. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

COOL TOOL: PHP Function Search Gadget for Windows Vista Sidebar

This is a handy little gadget that lets you access the PHP.net function database right from your desktop.

http://www.gozipline.com/phpfunctionfinder

Shame it defaults to the "us3" subdomain but it's useful nonetheless.... just a shame that since formatting on Monday I can't get PHP to work with IIS7 again. It's so annoying... sometimes it'll work, sometimes it won't. And I've set up everything as it should be and as it was before the format [as far as I can see] and yet PHP code in *.php files still fails to execute, instead just serving the PHP code to the browser. GRRRR!!! ;)

SPAM: Technical Services of the Halifax Bank - banking email phishing scams!

I thought email scammers were getting more "sophisticated"?

If the couple of phishing emails I've received over the last couple of days are anything to go by, they've got half a brain between them and even then, it's the brain of a severely mentally challenged person.

Take a look:

1. email from ".co.uk.com" - obviously made up. And it would hardly have been hard to make that look authentic!
2. Dear "client"... spot it a mile off if they don't know you name.
3. over use of the word "the" - obviously not written by a native english speaker
4. "customers" should be "customers'" because it's a plural and possessive
5. "fallow" whoopsie, another typo there suckers!
6. "Customers Support Service" - why the plural?
7. The link you have to click on is also spoofed, dead easy to do but even easier to notice that the site you've ended up at is rather different and VERY suss looking! (It goes without saying, you shouldn't click this...)

Oh... and one other thing - I don't bank with Halifax! So even though the spammers can be quite convincing sometimes (not here though!) - becareful, NEVER click the links and NEVER EVER EVER allow your email programme to show the displayed images. Doing so will send a message back to the spammers that your email address is active, so the spam will add up!

Luckily this was received to an address which I never use - one set up specifically for the Campaign against the UCU's boycott of assessments so they can spam it all I want for all I care! ;-)

Joost Invites

Just a quick note to say that I now have some Joost invites up for grabs. Email me at www.paulfp.net/contact.php and pursuade me that I should give one to you and no-one else... feel free to sweeten me up in any way you see fit (within reason!)

If you don't know what Joost is then where have you been? It's a programme which is almost finished being developed by the same people that made Kazaa and Skype - it's for watching TV for free over the t'interweb. Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost or joost.com

Since I've been using the Beta version my experience has been OK... not wonderful though as the video kept stalling and pausing. I presume this is a mixture of my slow spanish ADSL connection and the fact that as only Beta testers are using it at the moment, the P2P aspect isn't as good as it'll be when thousands of people are online...

Paul Freeman-Powell

MsMpEng.exe Windows Vista and XP 100% processor CPU usage live one care

Windows XP SP3 standalone installer now available

RTM release of SP1 Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista

Windows Media Center playing up...

Blast from the past...!

WARNING: Never, ever use CityLink for **anything**!!!

Vista / Media Center master volume control not working

English is English and it's spoken in England!

Safari for Windows! (Windows XP, Apple Mac, Windows Vista, Mac OS X, Internet Explorer, Firefox)

Christian Aid Week - social experiment

Reinstalling Dualboot Windows Vista + Windows XP (etc.) with Vista as primary OS

PHP 5.2.2 Released... still no joy with IIS7 ISAPI on Vista though :(

COOL TOOL: PHP Function Search Gadget for Windows Vista Sidebar

SPAM: Technical Services of the Halifax Bank - banking email phishing scams!

Joost Invites

WARNING: Never, ever use CityLink for anything!!!