If you have a Microsoft Hotmail email account (or possibly any other related Microsoft online services) you best go check your account.  Just yesterday my Hotmail account was hacked and used to spam everyone in my address book.  So far I don’t see any reports on the web about it, but if my account was hit, others could easily be as well.

And no, it was not a hack or virus on my machine.  I’ve thoroughly checked for any traces and have nothing on my side.  I also use Internet Explorer for one thing and one thing only, to access that one Hotmail email account.  So it was not possible for the account information to have been pulled from Internet Explorer by a malicious webpage browsed to on IE.

This means that the only realistic culprit left is Microsoft’s own servers.

So, again, if you have a Hotmail account, be warned.  Someone broke through Microsoft’s Hotmail security and did bad things.

Also, to everyone, if you receive an email from anyone with a Hotmail email address, please double-check the validity of that email before clicking on any links that may be contained in it.

In spite of all sorts of massive blunders by McAfee, people still use them for antivirus and such.  Goodness only knows why.  But in the spirit of past holiday celebrations, McAfee is making things fun all over again for Earth Day this year.  Perhaps it’s a brilliant plot to save the planet by reducing our use of electricity.  Or maybe they just didn’t test their virus definition update before pushing it out to the world at large.  They have been known to do that.

Whatever the reason, if you use McAfee VirusScan Enterprise, and you were unfortunate to “update” to DAT 5958, chances are you’re no longer a McAfee customer.  Why?  Because this particular virus definition update includes a false positive for a common Microsoft Windows component, svchost.  One which McAfee VirusScan Enterprise will happily quarantine the much-needed and eminently safe file and then shut down the machine to protect you from those nasty viruses.  Of course when you go to start the machine again, that really really rather necessary Windows component svchost.exe now happens to be missing … meaning and endless and fruitless reboot cycle.

Yes, once again, McAfee has bricked your PC.

You’d think they’d have learned to test their updates before releasing them by now, wouldn’t you?

Guess not.

Maybe when you’re such a big name like McAfee, you just don’t have to do those little things like basic testing before release.

Happy Earth Day, from McAfee!

Okay, so the warning is a little late, but still may save someone.  Microsoft’s latest Patch Tuesday included update MS10-015, which since has rendered some Win XP boxes BSODed into a never-ending reboot loop.  Even booting up into Safe Mode doesn’t seem to fix it because it’s a kernel bug.

If you’re infected with Microsoft’s latest security vulnerability fix and your Windows XP box is now a  brick, your only hope is to have backed up before the patch was thrust upon you.  Though it is possible that some Windows CD/DVD recovery trickery may be able to help uninstall the Patch Tuesday updates.

So you’ve got yourself a Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) that was meant for testing, and you’re laughing at your friends who actually payed for a retail version of Windows 7.  Well, your laughter may not last for much longer.  Microsoft is on to you.

Yes, that’s right.  Microsoft will start using its wiles to make your free Win7 RC a lot less user friendly.  Starting February 15th you RC users will be annoyed with constant pop-up notifications that you’re not using a legitimate copy and that you should upgrade to the real deal.  As if that’s not bad enough, then starting on March 1st your Win7 RC PC will begin shutting itself down every two hours if you still haven’t upgraded yourself a legitimate copy of Windows 7.  And then on June 1st, if you still haven’t gotten the message, your wallpaper will be removed so that, “This copy of Windows is not genuine,” can be displayed in the lower-right corner, just above the taskbar.  Whilst simultaneously any and all updates or downloads to the RC that require Windows Validation will be blocked.

Yes, that’s right Windows 7 RC users, there is to be no more free lunch.  Your test version of Windows 7 is not going to last forever.  But then, you knew that from the beginning.

And all that you have to do in order to legitimize your Windows 7 experience is upgrade.  That’s right.  You don’t even need to buy the full version.  The cheaper upgrade version is all that you should need to make your Windows 7 experience valid and stop the Microsoft harassment.

Well here’s a shocker (or is that a scorcher?) for you, yet again batteries are being recalled for being flammable.  This time it’s Fujitsu recalling some 2007-2009 AMILO notebooks (Pa2510, Pi2512 and Pi2515 models) with bad batts.

One wonders how after so much time these lithium-ion rechargeables still pose so many problems to manufacture correctly.  It’s no wonder hybrid and plug-in automotive manufacturers are so reluctant to touch them!

So Merry Christmas Fujitsu notebook owners!  Let’s hope what lights up your Christmas tree isn’t a spot of laptop-induced spontaneous combustion!