Peter Vatistas

Here is a quick and easy fix for an issue I have been running into with my newly upgraded Firefox 3. I noticed that every time I visited www.msn.com my Firefox 3 browser crashed. After some basic troubleshooting I realized that upgrading to the latest version of Microsoft’s Silverlight fixed the issue.

Click here to download the latest version of Microsoft Silverlight.

I hope that helps! Let me know if Firefox 3 still crashes on www.msn.com after installing the lastest version of Silverlight.

Well it is official, Microsoft has released the Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) either via the Windows Update or Microsoft’s Download Center (website).

I’ve compiled a few quality links about the Windows XP SP3 as well as download information below. As with all my posts please feel free to post your comments (good or bad), I’m interested to hear what your opinions on the new service pack!

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Resources

• Windows XP Service Pack 3: What is new and how to deploy
  This white paper summarizes what is new in Windows XP SP3, and how to deploy the service pack.
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Notes
• Installing Windows XP Service Pack 3
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 Forum
• Windows XP Solution Center

Get Windows XP Service Pack 3

TechNet Subscribers:

• Windows XP Service Pack 3 stand-alone version
  Top Subscriber Downloads section
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 Integrated Builds now available
  Arabic, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional (Hong Kong), Chinese Traditional (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English,Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Non-TechNet Subscribers:

Windows XP SP3 is now available to non-subscribers:

• Windows Update
  We recommend customers use Windows Update to install the service pack, as it will provide the best experience.
• Microsoft Download Center
• SMS Template Files for Windows XP Service Pack 3 Deployment
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 stand-alone version
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 Checked Build Network Installation Package
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 MUI Pack Update
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 CD Image

Good luck and of course backup your important files before making any OS upgrade - I cannot tell you how easy it is to lose everything in a split second.

I just upgraded my servers from FreeBSD 6.2 to 6.3 (even though FreeBSD 7.0 will be here any day). Here are the steps to upgrade, make sure to backup!

# fetch http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

Downloading and verifying the digital signature for the tarball (signed by the FreeBSD Security Officer’s PGP key) is highly recommended.# fetch http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz.asc

# gpg –verify freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz.asc freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

The new freebsd-update(8) can then be extracted and run as follows:# tar -xf freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -r 6.3-RELEASE upgrade

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.# shutdown -r now

Finally, freebsd-update.sh needs to be run one more time to install the new userland components, and the system needs to be rebooted one last time:# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf install

# shutdown -r now

For more information, see:http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2007-11-10-freebsd-minor-version-upgrade.html