Saturday, September 13, 2008

Catch 00010110

Next-door have a new computer. I couldn't persuade them to stump up for a Mac, so it's running Vista. Joy.

Anyway, I got it set up a couple of weeks ago and everything seemed fine. Then, a panicked text message - 'teh interwebs is broken'. Okay. So, I'm just back from my (thankfully brief) mission of mercy.

The box uses their wireless LAN to connect (a nice Victorian house - so no flood wiring) and I had it set up to use the manufacturer's (Netgear) connection wizard rather than the M$ standard one. The security software they had purchased and installed treated the Netgear Smart Wizard as a default-deny (not 'default-ask') application and shut it down as soon as it tried to start up. But, and here comes the irritating bit, to change the settings for the security application(s), they had to be registered / authenticated / whatever, and that required (as was explicit in the instructions) an internet connection. Which was not available because the connection wizard was default-deny. You see the problem.

So, having taken the security application round the back of the bike-sheds and given it a damn good kicking, they are finally back on the net. Why, why, do we (i.e. the security community) make this so difficult for people?

Eugene Kaspersky - you know who you are!

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