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Windows Search 4 was released last month as an upgrade to Windows Search 3.01 (Windows XP) and the built-in search capability in Windows Vista. It is an important upgrade for every Windows user; it will be pushed through the Windows Update system soon. Here’s more information about Windows Search 4.

For the first time, Windows Search 4 can be installed on servers running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Home Server. This gives businesses an important new tool for finding information but there is one new trick to learn.

Many offices with Small Business Server have almost all important business files in a shared folder on the server, which is mapped to a drive letter and is universally referred to by its letter – “The file is stored on the N: drive.” Normal people in small businesses don’t have to be aware that the file is really in something like \sbsserverCompany. […] continued

[Originally posted October 30, 2007]

I wish we could count on the software and hardware vendors to play fair and treat us well, but it’s not happening. We have to take responsibility for our computers.

When Windows XP and Vista are installed on freshly formatted hard drives, they are secure, rock-solid, and fast. Both operating systems are loaded with features. Vista has a mail program, an address book, a calendar, voice recognition, rich support for multimedia, built-in CD/DVD burning, several backup options (including automatic retention of previous versions of files), and much more.

Mac OS 10.5 offers a virtually identical list of features and a similar secure, stable, fast environment. […] continued

Let me give you a simplified overview of printer terms, then offer a tip that might save a few seconds someday. (This is basic stuff. If you can tell where I’m leaving things out, then this isn’t for you.)

LOCAL PRINTER 

A local printer is connected to your computer with a USB cable.

• Installation: almost always, the software for a local USB printer is installed before the USB cable is attached to the computer – insert the CD or download and run the installation software for the printer before hooking it up.

NETWORK PRINTER 

This term has become ambiguous.

[…] continued

Quicktime has been an annoying bit of software for ten years now. My experience tonight was the final straw. I’ve spent the better part of an hour cleaning it off my system and I don’t intend to let it back. What is it with Apple? Every time I feel like giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, swayed by all the hype, I have an experience where I’m reminded that Apple writes crappy, invasive software.

Quicktime has been around forever, a bit of free software that will play online videos in certain formats. In the last few years YouTube and the other big video sites began using Flash for movies, so Apple shifted its focus to new high definition video formats. […] continued

I bet you don’t know how to turn off your computer.

Lots of people ask me why their computer doesn’t turn off when they hit the power button on the front of the case after the system crashes or freezes. Hold the button down for 4-10 seconds. The computer will turn off even if it is otherwise completely unresponsive.

Let’s go through a little history to help you understand why that’s actually a feature.

Back in the old days, the power button on the case was directly wired to the computer’s power supply. Hit the button and bang! the computer went dark and cold. […] continued

Microsoft has done a terrible job of branding things in the last few years. “Microsoft Network” morphed into “MSN,” which has at various times been a software package, a collection of TV-like programming, a brand for web services like Hotmail and Messenger, a dialup Internet provider, and a web portal.

Many MSN services were included in a reorganization under the new brand name “Windows Live” in 2006, and Microsoft began creating more and more services with the Windows Live name, including some that have no obvious relationship to each other. The Wikipedia list of Live-branded services is pretty daunting!

Some of the services will be dying quietly soon – Microsoft just announced that it will be closing down Windows Live Expo, intended to be a competitor to Craigslist, joining recently deceased Live Search Books and Live Search Academic. […] continued

Microsoft released Windows Search 4.0 today in final form. It is a free upgrade to the search features built into Windows Vista. It adds indexed searching to Windows XP; this release is an upgrade to the prior version of Windows Desktop Search that many of you are already using on Windows XP.

Programs for indexing and searching Outlook and document folders have literally revolutionized the business flow in small offices. Windows Desktop Search is the single most important and most successful new technology that I’ve introduced to my clients in the last three years. Businesses drowning in e-mail and files have new confidence that information can be retrieved instead of lost. […] continued

I’m starting to get annoyed when I sit down at a Windows XP computer because it’s missing so many things that I take for granted in Vista. I just reformatted a hard drive and installed Windows XP from scratch for a client and it required far more work than it would have been to do a fresh install of Vista on newer hardware.

Dell and the other manufacturers will stop selling Windows XP on new computers at the end of June (with some weird exceptions), and I don’t think I’m going to miss it much.

• Vista’s integrated Start menu search is invaluable.

[…] continued

A number of people have had the same problems after installing Windows XP Service Pack 3:

• Device Manager is empty
• System Restore is empty
• the Network Connections screen is empty
• other USB devices are not working
• in some cases, My Computer will not open up or starts slowly

Almost all of those people had a Norton product installed – Norton Antivirus, Norton 360, or one of the others.

On close examination, people dealing with these problems have found that the registry turns out to have thousands of unnecessary entries added during the service pack installation. Although some people have laboriously removed those entries one by one, the procedure that is successful for many people is:

1. Go to Control Panel / Add-Remove Programs and uninstall anything remotely related to Norton or Symantec products.

[…] continued

The best security software will not protect you if you click “OK” and install something from a web site.

Adware/spyware was at epidemic levels until a couple of years ago when Microsoft released Windows Defender and the antivirus vendors reluctantly stepped up with their own products, and bitter experience taught us to surf with a high degree of paranoia. Security programs now monitor constantly to prevent adware/spyware from installing in the background and Internet Explorer has been hardened against stealth attacks.

Vista brings even more security – Windows Defender is included with the OS and Internet Explorer operates with very low privileges, which stops bad programs in their tracks. […] continued