I have a laptop that hadn’t been booted for months.

A while back I downloaded and installed Windows Defender which didn’t crash anything. In fact I don’t know if it actually does anything at all. Its supposed to be a spyware scanner but I don’t remember it popping up and telling me that it had trapped anything.

Since installing Defender I have also downloaded and installed numerous other Windows updates. Remember I haven’t powered on this sucker in months. Well I finally did the other day just to see what would happen.

It booted ok but displayed a message stating that an application had switched off the Defender service and suggested that I restart the pc, presumably so that the service would be automatically started again. Before rebooting I checked the services and the Defender status was Disabled and I couldn’t re-enable it or start it. Hmmm…

Then I rebooted. Checked the Defender service and again it was Disabled as before. And no I couldn’t re-enable it or start it.

The only way to get the darn thing working again was to reinstall Windows Defender from the original downloaded setup file. That worked ok and once started the status of the Defender service was correctly ‘Started’. Problem solved though what a hacky way to sort it out.

Also, what the heck application disabled it to start with. I have downloaded numerous Windows Updates since I installed Defender and last booted……….. Don’t tell me Microsoft’s own updates messed up Defender (“why not, it messes everything else up” Ed).

Quote of the day

‘It’s better to be a pirate than join the Navy’ Steve Jobs (1955-)

Well it restarted ok and everything seemed to work after the 51 system upgrades.

I re-installed MS Defender and nothing crashed. Need to web about a bit to see if Defender is ok though. Downloaded Windows Live Writer which works with WordPress blogs. Give it the URL, username and password and it gets your header at least and you can then add posts using it rather than WordPress. Full circle. Back to editing pages on the client rather than the server.

Shutting down the personal confuser this morning resulted in a charming little blue screen. Ain’t life grand. Wonder if this has anything to do with the 51 upgrades. Betcha it has.

Windows appears to be the most vulnerable operating system to virus’s and spyware. If Microsoft ever manages to trap all of these security issues then surely it will be the safest operating system and the virus writers will head for Linux and Apple. How easy is it gong to be for them to break Linux or even Apple. If they really wanted to mangle Linux I’ve got a feeling it won’t be very hard at all and could cause a bit of mayhem.

Quote of the day

‘The trouble with having an open mind is that people will insist on trying to put things in it’ Terry Pratchett

Seems that MS Defender only ‘works’ correctly when running on a genuine version of XP. I was having trouble with it whilst my XP was considered to be not genuine. Now I am legal it should work.

When I logged off the pc this morning 51 system upgrades or installations started. I assume these are auto updates from Microsoft that have been downloaded since last Thursday when I got legal with XP. Heaven knows what mess I’ll find when I get home tonight.

Quote of the day

‘I’m as pure as the driven slush’ Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)