Category: How To

I think we’d all agree that whatever we can to save energy is not only good the environment but also for our pockets. Many of us will their power settings so that the monitor switches off after so long. Of course, you don’t want this to happen just because you’re having a good think about something you’ve been typing, so it likely to be after 10 minutes or more. And that’s not handy if you’re going off for a few minutes to make a cup of tea.

At work, they demand we lock our PCs when we leave (ctrl/alt/delete and then “lock computer”). However, if you set up a screensaver (to go blank, for example) you can set it sign you off – essentially locking the computer.

So, wouldn’t it be much easier to have a big button you can press everytime you leave your desk that would not only lock the computer but turn the monitor off too?

A-ha, and I’m sure you could sense this coming, there is an answer…

(more…)

When Microsoft Update thinks I’m using a Mac. Yes, last night I went to get some updates from Microsoft Update and I got the message…

Thank you for your interest in obtaining updates from our site.

This website is designed to work with Microsoft Windows operating systems only.
To find updates for Microsoft products that are designed for Macintosh operating
systems, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/mac/.

Nice. I was using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP MCE SP3.

It knows which system I’m using from the “user agent” but one of many websites which displays your current user agent information, showed that I was happily using Windows. Weird.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) ; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; WTClient2)

Weirder still was that if I used IE Tab in Firefox, the page would appear without a problem. As IE Tab simply uses Internet Explorer but in Firefox, it shouldn’t have been any different. Again, I checked the user agent and that was the same as running it under IE normally.

Double weird.

Anyway, after a reboot even IE Tab stopped working.

Googling the issue found that most people seemed to have Spyware or Virus’. In panic, I did a check but found nothing. However, I also came across a Microsoft blog on how to reset all of IE 7’s settings – I tried that and Microsoft Update is now working again.