[dba-Tech] Security measures

John Colby jcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed Aug 27 19:51:45 CDT 2003


Well, as I've stated before, anyone doing the XP thing....

I have been using 2K for many years and nary a problem.  And yes, I run
updates virtually weekly.  Probably close to a hundred by now.  I recently
rebuilt one computer when I swapped my main disk, and ran updates for
literally a full day (at cable modem speeds) getting them all installed.  As
for software, I am a developer.  I have the .net thing going, Office
97/2k/XP, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Roxio, Streets & Trips, Adobe Photoshop, a
slew of camera and digital video apps, several dot matrix printers, SQL
Server, IIS, Yahoo / MSN / AOL chats, Chess.net for Windows, NAV and who
knows what else.

I am not exactly your typical clueless user using his komputr to surf the
web.

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Francisco H
Tapia
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 7:13 PM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Security measures



You my friend should fly to Vegas... you're lucky beyond your own
limits!  buy some lotto tickets... gamble on the big game... go down to
the track.. do it now while you're still HOT! HOT! HOT!!!!

all joking aside, you may either
1) not be running updates as often as you think.
2) not setting the pc's to auto-update.
3) not running that much software as to find the problems from each
patch and hotfix.

back when I still had my win98 machine (AMD K6-3D) I used to religiously
update my system via the windows update, then they updated the program
so that you could update w/o sending any info to Microsoft.  This was
the beginning for me... I downloaded security patch after security patch
to find that my system eventually couldn't open IE w/o crashing... then
I had to use a 2ndary browser like netscape 4 just to get back on the web.

A co-worker of mine mentioned that he was on the windowsupdate bandwagon
that was until PRE SP4 was loaded on his machine and he began to get
wierd errors and eventually it affected his user profile.  now he's not
run a windows update since.. he loaded through SP2 for win2k, and all
the required hotfixes to keep his system secure but nothing runs through
the windowsupdate.  Even so much as recently there have been reports of
patches not working right like in winXP sp1 and it causing either
slowdowns or lockouts... etc.  you dont' have to take my word for it
just read the problems that creep  up continously on TechTV.com or
Woodyswatch.com or other web-zines...




--
-Francisco

John Colby wrote:

> It's strange that so many people report problems with Windows updates.  I
> have 4 computers - an OLD dual Pentium II 233, a "newer" Toshiba laptop
PII
> 233, and two ~2 year old "modern" computers (1.4g AMD Athlon -
"homebuilt").
> I run windows update religiously and have never had a problem on any of
> them.  Win2K Pro, Office 97/2k/XP, NAV, etc.
>
> Further I was the Sys Admin for the screw company and regularly updated
> their ~12 computers - Gateway / Dell.  Always just applied all SPs,
updates.
> Always worked.
>
> John W. Colby
> www.colbyconsulting.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Francisco H
> Tapia
> Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 5:17 PM
> To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Security measures
>
>
> Steven W. Erbach wrote:
> <snip>
>
>>VERY good advice. I use Norton Ghost on a regular basis though I have
>
> never
>
>>needed to make the Ghosted drive the main drive due to a failure of the
>>primary. I assume that all that needs to be done is for the master/slave
>>jumpers to be moved around and you're back in business, right?
>
>
> I create images not ghost to a mirror drive... the diffrence is you can
> (depending on the amount of data on your main hdd) have 2-3 or more
> images on one hdd... I've got an old 300mb Original image for win2k w/
> nothing loaded except the SP2 patch and Office 2000.  It's quite a bit
> easier this way cuz you can just take your corrupted OS dump the image
> on it placing you back before the patch was installed.  Windows Update
> unfortunately loads a whole lotta stuff that more often than not breaks
> your stable OS.
>
>
>>>>Mozilla Thunderbird <<
>>
>>
>>You're one of quite a number of people that have said that OE and Outlook
>>are to be avoided. Thanks for the input.
>
>
> I was a DIE hard OE user until very recently... I have never liked
> Outlook because it causes system instability and that's when it's
> working right!... The main reason that I always stuck w/OE was because I
> liked the integration between it and Hotmail, but have recently been
> introduced w/ a little program called Hotmail Popper (www.boolean.ca)
> it's very neat... you can now use ANY email program to access your
> hotmail account, and it's free.. and works.. so far so good at least..
> I've been using ThunderMail full time now for almost a week and find
> that all the features I liked in OE are better in Tbird.  PLUS now I use
> mailwasher less because Tbird has built in Junk Mail detection... so far
> no false positives.
> --
> -Francisco


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