The Computer Mechanic: On-Site Computer & Laptop Sales, Repairs, Tuition, Traning & Networking Solutions in Adelaide, South Australia

The Computer Mechanic is a mobile computing company focusing on on-site computer repairs in Adelaide and throughout South Australia - delivering unparalleled service in PC and laptop sales, networking solutions, onsite repairs and tuition. We pride ourselves on being honest and upfront with our customers. There are no closed doors with us. We will come to your place of residence or business at a time when it is convenient to you, 24hrs 7 days a week. There is no longer any reason to haul your computer or laptop around for upgrades or repairs. We also deliver new systems to your door and set them up for you...all this saves you the fuss and run around.

ZDNet Tags: Microsoft Office, Mobile/wireless, Microsoft Windows, XML, Microsoft Microsoft has pledged to make its new Office 2007 file formats accessible within the company's other products, but the timeline for that support varies widely. Although the company already has converters available for older PC versions of Office, the Mac translation tools are still in development. Microsoft now doesn't expect to have the tools available until late March or April, the company said Tuesday.

"We realize this will be an inconvenience for some of you," Microsoft acknowledged in its Macmojo blog. Folks in the Mac software unit at Microsoft say they have experienced the pain firsthand, now that a good percentage of Microsoft employees are using Office 2007. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Windows Mobile unit said in an e-mail on Tuesday that its PocketPC and Smartphone devices won't be able to read and edit the new formats until the middle of next year.

Microsoft on Dec. 5 warned that an unpatched vulnerability in its Word software program is being used in targeted, zero-day attacks. A security advisory from the Redmond, Wash., company said the flaw can be exploited if a user simply opens a rigged Word document. Affected software versions include Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Word Viewer 2003, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac and Microsoft Word 2004 v. X for Mac. The Microsoft Works 2004, 2005 and 2006 suites are also affected because they include Microsoft Word.

There are no pre-patch workarounds available. Microsoft suggests that users "not open or save Word files," even from trusted sources. "As a best practice, users should always exercise extreme caution when opening unsolicited attachments from both known and unknown sources," the company said.

Microsoft will end support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 and SP1a on Tuesday, leaving people no option but to upgrade to Service Pack 2 if they wish to continue to receive crucial components, including security software. The move to drop support for SP1 is in line with Microsoft's stated strategy for support. According to its guidelines, Microsoft guarantees to provide "mainstream support" for a full product for five years, but will only guarantee to support a service pack for 12 months after the launch of the next version of that pack. SP1 shipped in September 2002. SP2 was released in September 2004.

There's little reason for anyone to still be running SP1; SP2 contained a range of improvements to XP's security. People can check which version they are running by right-clicking on the My Computer desktop icon and then selecting properties. The ending of support for SP1 will help Microsoft to clear the decks for the arrival of Vista, which is expected to be released to business customers next month and to consumers in January.

Microsoft plans to release a pre-patch advisory with workarounds for a "highly critical" vulnerability that could put millions of Internet Explorer users at the mercy of malicious hackers. The advisory, which will be posted here, acknowledges a code execution hole that was discovered and publicly reported by Secunia Research of Copenhagen, Denmark. Secunia said in an alert that the vulnerability is due to an error in the processing of the "createTextRange()" method call applied on a radio button control.

"This can be exploited by a malicious Web site to corrupt memory in a way that allows the program flow to be redirected to the heap," Secunia said in the alert, warning that successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code whenever the target visits the rigged Web site.

A new outbreak of Sober may be coming, security experts have warned, even as e-mail systems worldwide work to get rid of the last infestation of the mass-mailing worm. The next attack is hard-coded in the version of Sober that hit the Net on Nov. 22, iDefense, part of VeriSign, said in a statement Wednesday. Infected machines are set to download instructions and potentially mail out a new wave of Sober e-mails on Jan. 5, the security company said.

That leaves Internet users with less than a month to shore up their defenses against Sober, which was the most prolific worm in 2005, security experts at iDefense said. "The attack could have a significant detrimental effect on Internet traffic, as e-mail servers are flooded," iDefense said.

Various Issues After Installing Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-051 on Systems That Have Non-default File Permissions. Microsoft is aware of reports of isolated issues after deployment with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-051. We are working with a limited number of affected customers to help resolve these issues.

Systems that do not have the default Access Control List (ACL) settings in the %Windir%\Registration folder may experience various problems after installing MS05-051. The update helps protect against attacks seeking to exploit MS05-051, however this isolated set of issues might impact systems after installation of the update.

A Microsoft patch meant to fix critical security flaws in Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is causing trouble for some users, the company said Friday. The patch was released Tuesday to fix four Windows flaws, including one that experts predict will be exploited by a worm in the coming days. The flaw, tagged "critical" by Microsoft, lies in a Windows component for transaction processing called the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator, or MSDTC.

Installing the patch can cause serious problems, Microsoft said in an advisory posted to its Web site Friday. The patch could lock users out of their PC, prevent the Windows Firewall from starting, block certain applications from running or installing, and empty the network connections folder, among other things, the software maker said.

A Trojan horse has been spammed out to millions of email addresses around the world in an attempt to disable anti-virus and other security software. Experts at SophosLabs said that the spammed out email messages, which have no subject line, typically carry the message text "new price" and an attached file which can have one of several names, including "09_price.zip", "price_new.zip", and "price2.zip".

The attached ZIP files all contain the malicious BagleDl-U Trojan horse. If launched, the Trojan horse makes changes to the registry, and attempts to turn off anti-virus and security-related software on the infected computer, opening the door for attack by remote hackers.

Opera is an Internet browser with a pop-up blocker, multiple-window navigation, mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, an e-mail client with a spam filter, and integrated search for user security and speed. The cross-platform browser includes a multitude of other functions, such as IRC-compatible chat, support for RSS newsfeeds, a password manager, and one-click customization and privacy-protection settings. Mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts allow for accelerated Web navigation while the Fast Forward and Rewind buttons ease browsing. Users can run multiple windows as well as personalize the user interface with one-click skins.

Opera removed their integrated ad banners and made their software freeware! This change came out under version number 8.50 and is able to run on Vista too. Opera also left the Java out of the package. Opera will now use the default runtime from your pc.

Microsoft has decided on an official name for Longhorn: Windows Vista. That's according to sources close to the company who requested anonymity. They said that Microsoft unveiled the name in Atlanta on Thursday at the company's internal sales event, known as the Microsoft Global Sales Briefing, or MGB.

Word of Longhorn's new name began leaking to the Web on Thursday evening. One Windows site discovered that Microsoft registered the WindowsVista.US domain name. Microsoft is expected to make the official announcement of the new name on Friday morning.

Vulnerability in Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Could Lead to Denial of Service. Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a vulnerability in Remote Desktop Services. We have not been made aware of attacks that try to use the reported vulnerability or of customer impact at this time, but we are aggressively investigating the public reports.

Our initial investigation has revealed that a denial of service vulnerability exists that could allow an attacker to send a specially crafted Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) request to an affected system. Our investigation has determined that this is limited to a denial of service, and therefore an attacker could not use this vulnerability to take complete control of a system. Services that utilize the Remote Desktop Protocol are not enabled by default, however if a service were enabled, an attacker could cause this system to restart. Note: Remote Desktop is enabled by default on Windows XP Media Center Edition.

This month's security updates affect Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft ISA Server. Home users should follow the steps on this page to update their Windows software. IT professionals and systems administrators should

Anti-virus maker F-Secure warned mobile phone users about a slippery new trojan disguising itself as an antivirus application. Although the worm, dubbed Skulls.L, is similar to the Skulls.C trojan, writers have added a new wrinkle that differentiates it from previous variants: It's advertised with a name used for F-Secure's Mobile Anti-Virus installation package.

"The trojan obviously does not contain pirate copied version of anti-virus, it breaks the system applications on the phone, so that none of the smartphone functions of the phone are (sic) as long as the phone is infected," Jarno Niemela, a virus researcher, wrote on the company's weblog.

A flaw in several of Adobe Systems' popular graphics design applications could expose users to hacker attacks, the software maker has warned. A security vulnerability in the Adobe License Management Service, a component used for product activation, "can lead to an unauthorized person gaining access to the user's computer," Adobe said in a security advisory posted to its Web site late last week.

The affected products are the Windows versions of Adobe Photoshop CS, Adobe Creative Suite 1.0 and Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5, Adobe said. The San Jose, Calif.-based company said it is not aware of any malicious code that exploits the vulnerability.

The latest upgrade to Nvidia's popular GeForce 6800 line of GPUs (graphics processing units) for PCs should be out by July, according to Taiwanese motherboard and graphics card makers at the Computex exhibition in Tapei. The new Nvidia GPUs will be the PC version of the technology that's going into PlayStation 3 game consoles, which drew rave reviews at the recent E3 gamers conference in Los Angeles.

The mid-winter launch of the much anticipated chips could also play spoiler to dual graphics card technology from the company's main rival, ATI Technologies, which will be on the market at about the same time.

Those folders on your Windows desktop will still be yours -- but in the future you'll need to figure that out on your own. Ending a longstanding tradition, Microsoft Corp. plans to stop using the word "my" as the default prefix for such folders as "My Documents," "My Music," "My Pictures" and others along those lines. Starting in the next Windows version, due out next year, folders will be known simply as "Documents," "Music," and so on.

With any other product, such a minor change probably wouldn't even be noticed. But the Microsoft operating system runs on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers, and its persistent use of the word has been one of its most conspicuous characteristics -- helping to fuel widespread use of the "my" prefix in the technology industry.

Microsoft's original plans for Windows Media Player (WMP) 11, formerly code-named Aurora, were fairly low-key, with just a few minor new features. That's all changed: Microsoft has canceled Aurora, and the company is moving the Longhorn media player to XP. Now code-named Polaris, WMP 11 will be a major release. There's just one problem: Instead of shipping in November, as per the original plan, WMP 11 will now ship in a public beta during that month, coinciding with Longhorn Beta 2. The final release is roughly scheduled for early 2006.

The worldwide computer server market grew 5.3 percent to $12.1 billion in the first quarter, with revenue for servers running the Microsoft Corp Windows operating system equalling that of Unix servers for the first time, market research firm IDC said on Friday. Revenue for Windows servers grew 12.3 percent to $4.2 billion in the quarter while unit shipments grew 10.7 percent. Unix servers saw 2.8 percent revenue growth to $4.2 billion while unit shipments increased 5 percent.

"The equal level of spending in both segments this quarter showed that Windows servers are gaining traction in the enterprise server space with a combination of deeper investment and richer configurations," said Jean Bozman, vice president of Enterprise Computing.

Microsoft has alerted consumers that Netscape's latest browser appears to break the XML rendering capabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Dave Massy, a senior program manager for IE, warned users in a blog posting that after installing Netscape 8, IE will render XML files as a blank page, including XML files that have an XSLT transformation.

Microsoft did not make clear what versions of IE were affected, but a user of the DeveloperDex forum said he experienced the problem on version 6 of IE, which had been patched with Windows Service Pack 2. Microsoft said it is investigating the problem and will work with Netscape to resolve it. It advised a "workaround" of uninstalling Netscape 8 and editing the registry settings.

It's just a small download, promoted as a free antivirus program. But the software is really designed to sit silently on consumers' computers, watch everything they do online, and send the critical data back to the program’s creator. The program has swept the Internet in the last year, with millions of people downloading it.

The newest spyware? Nope. Welcome to the Internet's newest marketing tool, "researchware."

Consider it spyware's above-board, distant relative. Unlike spyware, researchware makes its purpose clear when downloaded by consumers. Its intent is not to trick people into receiving annoying pop-up advertisements, but rather, to gather legitimate market research data. And it's easy to uninstall, unlike spyware, which is as hard to shake as a bad cold in winter.

Microsoft has refused to comment over allegations that computers running its Windows operating system are affected by a serious vulnerability in one of the Internet's underlying technologies. The UK's National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) published details of this denial-of-service vulnerability earlier this week that affects some routers, firewalls and voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones.

The vulnerability is in the way ICMP error messages are handled would allow hackers to reset connections between computers and stop activity, such as VoIP conversations, from working. Cisco, Juniper and IBM have admitted that the vulnerabilities exist in their equipment, but the security researcher who claimed to have found the flaws has now claimed that Microsoft is also affected.

Three months after promising to update its flagship Windows Media Player software to block a well-known spyware infection vector, Microsoft has still not provided security for the majority of its users. The software giant's inability to ship a timely update for users of its Windows Media 9 Series has triggered new questions about Microsoft Corp.'s handling of a legitimate security threat to consumers.

Back in January, when security researchers discovered that malicious hackers were distributing rigged ".wmv" files to trick users into downloading malicious software programs, Microsoft originally brushed aside the warnings and insisted the attack vector did not exploit a vulnerability in the software.

Personal web blogs are being used to distribute malicious code and key-logging software, users have been warned. Websense, a provider of employee internet management solutions, said it has discovered hundreds of instances of blogs involved in the storage and delivery of harmful code.

The company said cyber-criminals are now taking advantage of blog sites that allow users to easily publish their own web pages at no cost. Blogs can be attractive vehicles for hackers for several reasons, it said. For instance, blogs offer large amounts of free storage and do not require any identity authentication to post information. In addition, most blog hosting sites do not provide anti-virus protection for posted files.

Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) provides new proactive security technologies for Windows XP to better defend against viruses, worms, and hackers. In addition to a more robust security infrastructure, SP2 improves the security configuration options of Windows XP and provides better security information to help users faced with security decisions.