There's a great little feature in WinXP SP2 to make sure that security fixes are installed and active as soon as possible. It decides for you that it's going to reboot your machine to finish off the installation.

Now I'm all for making sure a user is as protected as they can be. But the final control should always rest with the user. Sadly the WinXP SP2 dialogue undermines that... rather than fail safe it puts up a count-down timer and if you don't say "no" it reboots anyway.

It happened to me the other day, and it's not very smart. No realising you have open documents you've been working on that need to be saved (Okay, I know Word auto-saves every 10 mins, and Outlook puts things into the draft folder... but the text editor I was using to hack some late night, fairly urgent, fixes to a site isn't that clever). I took a call from a client to discuss some last minute changes and, as I'm prone to, I got up and wandered outside with the phone (how did I ever think in a world rules by wired phones!). 30 minutes later I sat down at my..... blank.... desktop. All the windows had shut. I was logged out of Messenger. And Skype. And the web pages I had open meaning to add to del.icio.us or stumble-upon were gone. My download of a large CSV that had to get burnt to CD-Rom and shipped out that afternoon.... needed restarting.

At first I assumed a crash, or a power glitch (not likely with a laptop of course) but looking at one of the other machines in the office to see the insidious count-down dialoge made me realise what had happened. And I wasn't happy.

So I did a bit of digging. While the obvious approach is simply to turn off automatic updates I'm pretty lazy and I know I won't remember to check regularly enough and something will slip through. There has to be a better way. Turns out there is

A simple registry edit (or in this case adding a new key) stops the automatic reboot in the even of there being an active/logged on user on the machine: 

In [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU] Create a new DWORD value under this key called "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers" and set it to the number one.

Sadly it takes one more reboot to enable it... but it's worth it to avoid pain later on! 

Turns our that there's another really great key that lives in the same are of the registry. Sometimes after an update Windows wants to reboot. And it keeps popping up that really annoying nag window every ten minutes. Well, you can adjust the frequency or even turn it off totally. Add a DWORD called "RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled" and set it to zero to disable it or set the value to 1 and create an entry called "RebootRelaunchTimeout", where the value is the time between reminders in minutes (maximum of 1440)

Note: As with any other registry edit you can really screw with your machine. If you don't know what you're doing, don't take backups and double-check  before hitting enter.... you could end up in a lot of trouble - maybe not today.... but you will!

WindowsXP Pro, Server and Vista users can take advantage of the Group Policy editor to achive these things as well - see here. 

Check this out at HubPages as well. 

There's a great little feature in WinXP SP2 to make sure that security fixes are installed and active as soon as possible. It decides for you that it's going to reboot your machine to finish off the installation.

Now I'm all for making sure a user is as protected as they can be. But the final control should always rest with the user. Sadly the WinXP SP2 dialogue undermines that... rather than fail safe it puts up a count-down timer and if you don't say "no" it reboots anyway.

It happened to me the other day, and it's not very smart. No realising you have open documents you've been working on that need to be saved (Okay, I know Word auto-saves every 10 mins, and Outlook puts things into the draft folder... but the text editor I was using to hack some late night, fairly urgent, fixes to a site isn't that clever). I took a call from a client to discuss some last minute changes and, as I'm prone to, I got up and wandered outside with the phone (how did I ever think in a world rules by wired phones!). 30 minutes later I sat down at my..... blank.... desktop. All the windows had shut. I was logged out of Messenger. And Skype. And the web pages I had open meaning to add to del.icio.us or stumble-upon were gone. My download of a large CSV that had to get burnt to CD-Rom and shipped out that afternoon.... needed restarting.

At first I assumed a crash, or a power glitch (not likely with a laptop of course) but looking at one of the other machines in the office to see the insidious count-down dialoge made me realise what had happened. And I wasn't happy.

So I did a bit of digging. While the obvious approach is simply to turn off automatic updates I'm pretty lazy and I know I won't remember to check regularly enough and something will slip through. There has to be a better way. Turns out there is

A simple registry edit (or in this case adding a new key) stops the automatic reboot in the even of there being an active/logged on user on the machine: 

In [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU] Create a new DWORD value under this key called "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers" and set it to the number one.

Sadly it takes one more reboot to enable it... but it's worth it to avoid pain later on! 

Turns our that there's another really great key that lives in the same are of the registry. Sometimes after an update Windows wants to reboot. And it keeps popping up that really annoying nag window every ten minutes. Well, you can adjust the frequency or even turn it off totally. Add a DWORD called "RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled" and set it to zero to disable it or set the value to 1 and create an entry called "RebootRelaunchTimeout", where the value is the time between reminders in minutes (maximum of 1440)

Note: As with any other registry edit you can really screw with your machine. If you don't know what you're doing, don't take backups and double-check  before hitting enter.... you could end up in a lot of trouble - maybe not today.... but you will!

WindowsXP Pro, Server and Vista users can take advantage of the Group Policy editor to achive these things as well - see here. 

Check this out at HubPages as well. 

There is nothing more annoying that waiting while Windows tries to tidy up when you need to reboot a server or a machine with roaming profiles or switched users (well, the need for a reboot is usually more annoying, but given that sometimes you can't avoid it, it would be nice if the process was quick, slick and painless).

Luckily Microsoft have recently released a small service that takes a more active role in monitoring what applications are active for a user, and when they are existed make sure they tidy up properly behind them - so the shutdown/reboot process doesn't have to sit around kicking it's heels while the housekeeping and double-checking is carried out. This new goodie goes by the mouthful of the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (where was it when the good names got handed round!)

There is nothing more annoying that waiting while Windows tries to tidy up when you need to reboot a server or a machine with roaming profiles or switched users (well, the need for a reboot is usually more annoying, but given that sometimes you can't avoid it, it would be nice if the process was quick, slick and painless).

Luckily Microsoft have recently released a small service that takes a more active role in monitoring what applications are active for a user, and when they are existed make sure they tidy up properly behind them - so the shutdown/reboot process doesn't have to sit around kicking it's heels while the housekeeping and double-checking is carried out. This new goodie goes by the mouthful of the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (where was it when the good names got handed round!)

In the early 1990s I worked for a company which empitomised the start-up "family" culture. We went through some very tought times. And we had some pretty amazing times. But the tough times came first. Those of us who made it through the hard start-up period before we really found our feet felt a certain bond - which has left friendships to this day. That bond was really epitomised for me by a simple pen that we got after surving a really tough period and coming out on top. It was a Mont Blanc Meisterstück Le Grand with the company logo printed on it
.

Time has passed and the logo is so worn away it's more a trick of the mind than a trick of the light that lets me see it, but that pen still holds a huge significance for me (I've not signed a significant document without it). Every time I pick it up and feel the weight I'm reminded of how much fun we had there.

But all things must change, and while the Mont Blanc will never be displaced in my mind it's been joined by a new stable mate. This time from Caran d'Arche - a Ecridor Retro Rhodium. This one is a gift from a client who over the last few years has become a very good friend (no-one in their right mind would keep going back to this project - it's insane! But more fun the working in a chocolate factory!)

In the same way that I find it incredibly hard now to choose between my Mont Blanc and Rado watches it's going to be hard to seperate these two pens emotionally as well as practically. As writing instruments thay are both amazing. As objects they both display a simplicity and beauty that reflect the subtle understatement I think is so much more important than pretentious displays of wealth or fashion..

I don't write much as I use the computer too much (I'm not sure if that's cause or effect - my hand-writing is terrible - even my daughter is a critic!) but when I have to set pen to paper if I can't reach for one of these I may well just have to hold off making my mark....

And no matter which I reach for they've already got great memories attached. 

In the early 1990s I worked for a company which empitomised the start-up "family" culture. We went through some very tought times. And we had some pretty amazing times. But the tough times came first. Those of us who made it through the hard start-up period before we really found our feet felt a certain bond - which has left friendships to this day. That bond was really epitomised for me by a simple pen that we got after surving a really tough period and coming out on top. It was a Mont Blanc Meisterstück Le Grand with the company logo printed on it
.

Time has passed and the logo is so worn away it's more a trick of the mind than a trick of the light that lets me see it, but that pen still holds a huge significance for me (I've not signed a significant document without it). Every time I pick it up and feel the weight I'm reminded of how much fun we had there.

But all things must change, and while the Mont Blanc will never be displaced in my mind it's been joined by a new stable mate. This time from Caran d'Arche - a Ecridor Retro Rhodium. This one is a gift from a client who over the last few years has become a very good friend (no-one in their right mind would keep going back to this project - it's insane! But more fun the working in a chocolate factory!)

In the same way that I find it incredibly hard now to choose between my Mont Blanc and Rado watches it's going to be hard to seperate these two pens emotionally as well as practically. As writing instruments thay are both amazing. As objects they both display a simplicity and beauty that reflect the subtle understatement I think is so much more important than pretentious displays of wealth or fashion..

I don't write much as I use the computer too much (I'm not sure if that's cause or effect - my hand-writing is terrible - even my daughter is a critic!) but when I have to set pen to paper if I can't reach for one of these I may well just have to hold off making my mark....

And no matter which I reach for they've already got great memories attached. 

I've been a long time fan of VirtualPC.

On the Mac it's let me work on projects than needed Windows (have you ever tried to get SQL Server running on OSX? It's the only way!)

On Windows it's let me goof around and try out various configurations and scenarios (and open really dangerous attachments) without worrying that I'd be saying goodbye to my main machine (For instance I ran Office2007 Beta in a VirtualPC for a couple of weeks before upgrading it to my main environment)

So, what could make VirtualPC better? Well... if it could miraculously take up less space I'd be very happy. But failing that it's always performance (especially on the PowerBook which was limited in raw cycles and RAM). And for Mac users support for the new Intel based hardware would be great (althouth the folks at Parallels seem to have got that market sewn up now!)

On the PC side of things... well, there's one thing better than a good value product... it's a free product. And VirtualPC 2004 is now a free product. And unlike so many "special offers" on the web it's actually the latest version that's free. And there's a promise that the next release will also be free.

So there's no excuse not to have a safe, secure, isolated test environment for trying out those things that might just bust your machine! 

I've been a long time fan of VirtualPC.

On the Mac it's let me work on projects than needed Windows (have you ever tried to get SQL Server running on OSX? It's the only way!)

On Windows it's let me goof around and try out various configurations and scenarios (and open really dangerous attachments) without worrying that I'd be saying goodbye to my main machine (For instance I ran Office2007 Beta in a VirtualPC for a couple of weeks before upgrading it to my main environment)

So, what could make VirtualPC better? Well... if it could miraculously take up less space I'd be very happy. But failing that it's always performance (especially on the PowerBook which was limited in raw cycles and RAM). And for Mac users support for the new Intel based hardware would be great (althouth the folks at Parallels seem to have got that market sewn up now!)

On the PC side of things... well, there's one thing better than a good value product... it's a free product. And VirtualPC 2004 is now a free product. And unlike so many "special offers" on the web it's actually the latest version that's free. And there's a promise that the next release will also be free.

So there's no excuse not to have a safe, secure, isolated test environment for trying out those things that might just bust your machine! 

Hosted by ZooomrWhen I first discovered Flickr I thought it was kinda cool

But then I got bored of limitations - like forcing people to sign-up to view images you wanted only them to see.

So when I discovered that Zooomr where giving away free 'Pro' accounts to Bloggers I thought I'd check it out. And it does seem very good. I've not had a chance to play much with it yet, but so far it's a bit slicker than Flickr - it doesn't try so hard to be cute.

I'm going to delve in and compare features over the coming days and decide if Zooomer will be the go, or if the photo galleries here in CommunityServer are the answer. In CS2.1 it certainly seems better, but image placement is still done with manual class over-rides so it's equally painful with any of the three solutions...

Hosted by ZooomrWhen I first discovered Flickr I thought it was kinda cool

But then I got bored of limitations - like forcing people to sign-up to view images you wanted only them to see.

So when I discovered that Zooomr where giving away free 'Pro' accounts to Bloggers I thought I'd check it out. And it does seem very good. I've not had a chance to play much with it yet, but so far it's a bit slicker than Flickr - it doesn't try so hard to be cute.

I'm going to delve in and compare features over the coming days and decide if Zooomer will be the go, or if the photo galleries here in CommunityServer are the answer. In CS2.1 it certainly seems better, but image placement is still done with manual class over-rides so it's equally painful with any of the three solutions...