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HAVE I HELPED?
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RAISING THE WINDOW ON YOUR PC
You must run Windowsupdate periodically to keep Windows patches current. This will vary depending on whether you are running Win98, WinNT4, Win2K, XP. Win2K and WinXP have an automatic checking feature which you should subscribe to which will automatically check for updates, and then notify you. You must enable this service to have any hope at all of keeping up. These updates happen on the average of once a week. In order to run the windows update service, you must actually enable ActiveX on IE. The best way to do this is to put http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com in the "trusted sites" in your IE browser. And in case you didn't know it, Windowsupdate will only run from within the IE browser. So there you have it, Microsoft has pretty much killed off Netscape. You HAVE to run IE if you want to keep your Windows PC up to date! So you better keep it around if you have made the transition to Opera or Mozilla. Hopefully the automatic settings will negate the necessity of having to have IE around.
Typically these updates correct problems in IE or OE or Internet enabled applications, because this is where the vulnerabilities can become most apparent. Whenever you buy a new PC with a new copy of Windows, the very first thing you need to do, other than making sure the virus software is installed and functioning, is to go to windowsupdate immediately and download the latest updates. The auto updater in XP and Win2K will eventually catch up to this, depending on your settings. There is an entry in the start bar for windowsupdate, but you can also go to it directly via http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
Here is a terrific resource on windows update information.
NEWS FLASH APRIL 2004: In the spring of 2004, Microsoft has finally provided a "security update CD," which contains all the Windows update products up to March 2004. This is a great solution if you are on dialup, and you don't want to suffer the download delays, or you have multiple PCs that you want to update. Go here to order your free CD (shipping included!). Please remember you will still have to go to Windowsupdate, because there are still updates after the "rollup CD!"
FALL 2004: XP SP2 contains some great security precautions. It will pester you to death about enabling your Windows update, unless you know how to turn it off. But you should not - you need to turn it on.
Redhat Linux has the equivalent service, called up2date. Unfortunately Redhat charges for more than 1 PC which may be running RedHat. So it is not as nice a facility as Windowsupdate, but if you are running Redhat Linux PCs, you should definitely subscribe to this service. Redhat Fedora is maintaining this service through "yum." Check out my Linux pages starting here....