Last night I was watching a little TV when I thought I’d jump on the computer for awhile, and what did my little eyes see? A nice big BSOD… great. Now, I’m running Vista Ultimate 32-bit, and I love it… but it’s so new it’s kinda hard to get good documentation on why I have a big STOP message on my screen. The message I got was basically:
STOP: 0×000000F4 (0×00000003, 0x????????, 0x????????, 0x????????)
After doing some research online I narrowed it down to RAM, my HDD being set as slave, or heat. Well, I was feeling a little warm… was the heater on? I turned around and looked at my aquarium… hmmmm…. running 4 degrees warmer than it should. Uh-oh! I turned off my system and then ran to turn off the heat (which was set pretty high for some reason). A few hours later and like magic, everything is back working again.
So, what does this mean to you? If you get this BSOD in Vista, first thing I would do is blow out any dust from your PC and check the temp in your room… it seems this error is a good indication of overheating!
While I was imaging a laptop in the office today I noticed a connection named “Free Public Wifi” on the Windows Wireless Network Connection screen. I found this quite odd for a few reasons…
- It was a PC to PC connection
- My office building is by an airport in the middle of nowhere
- We have only two wireless connections in our building
Being the nosy person that I am, I thought I’d google to see if this is something others have seen. Imagine my (lack of) surprise… it’s a scam! It seems people are sitting around at airports and using this “free” wifi connection to get into your system… nice.
A quick snippet from the article:
The next time you’re at an airport looking for a wireless hot spot, and you see one called “Free Wi-Fi” or a similar name, beware — you may end up being victimized by the latest hot-spot scam hitting airports across the country.
You could end up being the target of a “man in the middle” attack, in which a hacker is able to steal the information you send over the Internet, including usernames and passwords. And you could also have your files and identity stolen, end up with a spyware-infested PC and have your PC turned into a spam-spewing zombie. The attack could even leave your laptop open to hackers every time you turn it on, by allowing anyone to connect to it without your knowledge.
If you’re a Windows Vista user, you’re especially susceptible to this attack because of the difficulty in identifying it when using Vista. In this article, you’ll learn how the attack works and how to keep yourself safe from it if you use Windows XP or Vista.
You can read the article here: Don’t fall victim to the ‘Free Wi-Fi’ scam @Computerworld
Today is our kitten Mishka’s birthday! Today she turns one year old (which is 24 in human years… oddly enough that’s how old I am!) and Jess plans on giving her tuna and sweet stuff for her present. The cat loves sweet things, melon, strawberries, non-dairy frosting, etc… you have it, she wants it. You can tell me a hundred times that cats don’t taste sweet, but she lives with me, and she will always prove you wrong. Here’s an older picture of her… will update with a new one later:
Besides that, nothing too new. Jess quit her job and has a bunch of interviews, so I wish her well. Also, the fish tank had an issue and I spent part of saturday fighting with a lobster and digging through gravel to fix it. Ugh. Also, I gave myself a nasty little burn when accidentally touching the aquarium heater. Grrr.Also in the last week I finally fixed my computer! It seems that the rear 120mm case fan was causing all my issues. Every BSOD, all the heat issues, etc. The fan would spin, quite fast, but it seems it was actually generating heat, instead of removing it. When I touched it, it actually burnt my finger! Very odd. Well, $10.00 later I have a new fan, and a nice cool running system (it runs about 43 degrees now, instead of the 60+ it was running before). While we’re on the “PC talk”, I got Vista installed and running on my system. While I get plenty of BSODs and the like, it’s not a bad OS, and I really like when Microsoft is going with it!
Let’s see, what else? I’ve been working on a lot of new things for Neowin on my spare time, although no one will see it for awhile. What is it? Not tellin’! Shhhh! It’s a secret! All I can say is, you’ll be happy when you see it.
Okay, that’s it for now… enjoy the rest of your Monday!
