Update Frenzy

The last two columns have been about Spring Cleaning. It looks like there’s been some spring cleaning going on at Mozilla and Microsoft, too, with both companies in an update frenzy.

Firefox Update - Mozilla released a major update to the Firefox browser this week. The current release is 1.5.0.3. You can find out what version of Firefox you are running by opening Firefox, then clicking on Help, then on About Mozilla Firefox. You’ll see the version number in the resulting window, just under the Firefox logo.

A good thing about the newer versions is that they automatically check for updates and notify you when they find them. But, if you’re still running an older version, or if you just feel like checking on your own, you can do that from the Help menu too, by clicking Help, then clicking Check for updates.

If you want to try Firefox for the first time, you can download it here.

And speaking of Firefox, there is a useful extension called Customize Google. This extension "…enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam)." It’s great, and the little movie that explains how you use it is worth watching, even if you do not intend to use the extension! Get it here.

Windows Update - Quite a few people had a Grand Adventure with Windows Update in April. First, Microsoft released security update KB908531 (security bulletin MS06-015), which caused problems for people with some HP Printers, scanners, cameras, and certain HP software, and some older NVIDIA graphics cards. Then, they released a fix to fix that fix. If you had a problem, it should be resolved now that the second update is available. If you are still having a problem, Microsoft has published this document which might help.

Other people are reporting problems with another update, KB900485, also installed from Windows Update in April. More information on that can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=404280BF-B240-4A34-AE0E-798CDED8CBAF&displaylang=en, but frankly I didn’t find it informative at all. And neither was this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kbEN-USQ900485

For almost a year now I’ve had my Windows Update set to download and install automatically, but in light of all the recent problems, I’ve decided to take back a little more control of the process. I’ve set Windows Update to seek the updates, but instead of just installing them and telling me about it later, Windows Update will inform me there are files waiting for download and installation. I can have a look at those files, decide which ones to install, and if something goes wrong, at least I’ll have a good idea of where to start looking for the cause of the problem. You can change your Windows Update settings like this:

Start Control Panel Security Center Manage settings for: ... Automatic Updates Notify me but don’t automatically download or install them. OK

Defender Update - And by the way, if you are running Windows Defender (Beta 2) http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx), be aware that it now gets its updated definitions with Windows Update instead of being able to go get them on its own as previous versions did. If you plan to install Defender, the new version of Microsoft anti-spyware, and you happen to have downloaded music on your computer, you will want to proceed with caution. A “feature” of Defender can allow it to delete that music if you let it delete the Peer-to-Peer program you used to download it. Whoops! More here: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/about/releasenotes.mspx

See you next week!

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.