There are many of them; Microsoft's Virtual PC software has a plethora of uses in software testing, and for working around those irritating bits of software that I need to use very occasionally that don't play well with Vista x64.

However, one of my favourite features is the 'Undo Disk' functionality. I can boot the virtual machine up, and any changes I make are only temporary. When I shut the virtual machine down, I can either choose to keep those changes, or wipe the slate clean as if the virtual PC had never been booted up.

This evening, I found this most useful in installing a neighbour's broadband connection. A lot of ISPs (especially in the UK) are adamant that you must install the software from their CD in order to setup your ADSL. Normally this is bullshit, and you can simply log on to the modem directly and fill everything in.

( Not so with the BT Home Hub. )

Warning for any system administrators thinking of deploying the newly released Adobe Reader 9.0, or it's big brother Adobe Acrobat 9.0: if your users have Group Policy applied that uses Group Policy Folder Redirection to move their Application Data directory to a network share (with or without Roaming Profiles), it will cause Adobe Reader/Acrobat to crash almost immediately after launching. I have had this confirmed by Adobe UK Support as a known issue, and there is currently no ETA for a fix.

The issue has been reported by a handful of users on the Adobe Forums and some of my users ran into it after I began a test roll-out of Acrobat on our site yesterday.

( Lengthy technical diagnosis within )

Unfortunately, Adobe were only made aware of the issue very recently, and there is currently no ETA for a fix. I later got a follow-up email from Andrew which stated the following:

"Unfortunately because of the new-ness of the software we are unable to provide you with a direct solution to this issue as all solutions are experimental at this time."

Translation: we're still testing the patch for this. I was told I will be contacted again when a fix is available, but for the meantime, I would strongly advise you do not deploy Adobe Reader 9.0 or Adobe Acrobat 9.0 if your users' have their Application Data directory stored on a network share.

Not content with irritating me by sending me spam, today I've had over a hundred bounce messages from other people because some donkey-molesting spammer is spoofing my email address to send spam to other people. Fantastic.

This isn't a new revelation; I'd already been tipped off by various friends in the industry about how piss-poor this device is. However, today was my first personal experience with the thing, and it did little to ingratiate itself to me. It's also unnaturally large given how light (and how obviously empty) the box is.

My cousin and her husband were unfortunate enough to have one foisted upon them by BT, and had not been able to get the wireless working since it arrived - which was hardly surprising since the integrated wireless was not only not broadcasting its SSID, but appeared to be disabled entirely, despite several admin pages on the box claiming the contrary. After a few cursory searches of various forums, I quickly learned that this is not an entirely unusual problem.

If you are unfortunate enough to have to deal with this retrograde piece of rubbish, may I recommend the following resources:

• Lock your Home Hub into firmware version 6.2.2.6 from Jarvisers Workshop BT Home Hub,
• the BT Home Hub firmware recovery tool,
• and finally, somewhere to get some decent kit and a ISP that won't sell you such shite in the first place.

It did eventually acquiesce and start broadcasting - incredibly, the device does even support WPA2 in the latest firmware, though since BT routinely send firmware upgrades to it remotely, I won't be surprised if it stops working again at some point. Not a system I'll be recommending any time soon.

I had an epiphany this evening while fixing yet another screwed up QuickTime/iTunes install.

• FACT: Apple consistently spread FUD about how Windows is so much less stable and reliable than OS X.
• FACT: A large proportion of the PC problems I deal with are to do with Apple software being installed on it and breaking horribly.

The way I see it, there are only two logical reasons for this:

• REASON A: Apple are deliberately writing broken software for the PC in order to support their flawed argument that Windows is unreliable.
• REASON B: Apple are in fact completely fucking incapable of writing software that works.

Right now I'm leaning heavily towards the former, but I hereby invite all Apple supporters to pick either one of these reasons and explain why that reason should convince me to 'make the switch'.

UPDATE 00.21: More than 2 hours later and I'm still trying to figure out how to get this bloody iTunes install to work again. Anyone thinking of taking up my above invitation best be warned: I am not in the best of mindsets for hearing how fabulous Apple is right now.

I was taking a look at prices for a new PC today (I'm thinking abut starting saving to replace my ageing desktop) and I noticed this blunder on the Dell website:



So... I've chosen Vista Business, and you think I should 'upgrade' to the previous version?

I'm sure all the Vista-haters will cynically cry, "Hah, XP is an upgrade, n00b, because Vista is teh suck", to which I reply, "Eat my ass, you cynical, whingeing, amateurs." I've been running Vista since July, and I wouldn't go back to XP. Fact.

We recently ran into a problem at with a few kids at school who had 'accidentally' activated High Contrast Mode in Vista by accidentally pressing Shift+Alt+PrtScrn, and couldn't turn it off again. I say 'accidentally' because we've recently seen kids doing this to each other deliberately as this month's Favourite Game of the Month™ (previous winners of Favourite Game of the Month™ include using a hotkey to rotate the screen so it is upside down, and vandalising Wikipedia).

High Contrast Mode is an accessibility feature in Windows that causes the desktop theme to switch off of Aero (or whatever is currently set) onto an almost completely black scheme with white text. It also disables the desktop wallpaper and changes the background colours of applications like Word to black, so it appears the user is typing white text onto black paper.

Despite repeated use of the Shift+Alt+PrtScrn shortcut, High Contrast Mode refused to turn off. Their desktop wallpaper did return, indicating that it was trying to switch out of High Contrast Mode, but not fully succeeding. Our students tend to have much of the Control Panel locked down (as I outlined above, the little bastards cherubs like to fiddle and break things), so the Control Panel applet to turn this off was not available to them, but even making it available and using the applet did not work.

I couldn't find any mention of this via Google, and so it took me a little while to work out what was going on. I eventually traced this problem to an incorrect setting in the Registry. ( Here's what it was, and how to fix it )

Well, that explains why the drive was reporting no space despite Windows Explorer telling me it was only half full...

Seasoned readers may remember my brief love affair with the Virgin Digital music download service, a love affair that ended when any semblence of working service disappeared for 3 weeks, then shortly after returning the entire system was 'redesigned' and stopped working entirely, then the bitch changed all the locks on the house and stepped on my blue suede shoes (OK, I made those last 2 bits up). Later in the year Virgin merged with serial fraudsters ntl, and I made resolute my decision to never give Virgin another penny.

With that in mind, imagine my glee when I got ( this email today )

I remain convinced that music subscriptions are the way to go, all that has to happen is someone needs to sell it properly and have a system that works. It's purely perception; many people baulk at the suggestion of not 'owning' their music (when in reality they don't own it at all), yet they won't bat an eyelid at paying £20 a month to rent television shows in the form of a cable or satellite subscription. The failure of any of the music subscription services to hit the mainstream is partly technical, as we've seen with Virgin, but it's also a massive failure of marketing. As much as I hate to say it, I think if there is one company with the marketing muscle to pull it off, it's Apple. If iTunes started such a service, it would be a success. I'm continually baffled as to what it is they think they have to lose by not doing so.

Massive thunderstorm over Reading between 18.50 and 19.30 today, with accompanying downpour. Despite having a UPS and surge protection in the house, I decided it would be for the best to power down our computer equipment until it was over.

45 minutes later, we went to Tesco and found that they had not done the same. Every display of their overhead advertisement system throughout the store was now displaying a failed POST screen declaring that 'System Boot Failed' and asking for a valid boot disk to be inserted. All of the TVs in the electrical department were off too, except for a single solitary screen showing rolling static.