Schonhose

It has been a hectic week. The user ‘solar-flare’ over at the Pixelpost forum informed us that an exploit has been found for Pixelpost. Further investigation by the development team confirmed this exploit and the fact it has been around since at least version 1.5.

We have released an immediate security update in the form of version 1.7.1 at the Pixelpost homepage. Everybody running an older version is strongly advised to upgrade since the exploit actively tries to get both the admin username and the password (the latter still being in the encrypted format). We also strongly suggest changing the password or the username (or both) after upgrading just to make sure since we don’t know how many blogs have been targeted with this exploit.

The second part of the title, ‘system restore’ is more lighthearted. Normally I would disable system restore right after a new install. Two years ago, the date of my last clean install I did this for all the drives except the C:\ drive which hosts Windows XP. A decision I was quite happy with today. I finally setup my computer to use Activesync and connected my HTC Touch.

Windows detects a new device and starts making registry changes all of a sudden. This makes Kaspersky very nervous and several pop-ups come up asking me to confirm the change. They just kept on coming and then I clicked ‘Deny change’ instead of the wanted ‘Allow change’. So needless to say the mobile device wasn’t installed properly so I decided it was time for a reboot.

Once rebooted my system didn’t display the taskbar anymore and came to a grinding stop, pretty much showing only the wallpapers. So, wanting to remove the new Activesync I loaded up the safe mode and guess what? I could do a system restore.

After going back one day and another reboot, the system was back up again. I never thought I might say this but today Microsoft has saved my ass.

Christmas 2007 has past and it is time to at least try to get back in the normal rhythm. So today is the day I try to figure out how my new phone works. I upgraded my SPV C600 (Orange-branded) to a brand new HTC Touch. First impression of the Touch were absolutely fabulous. Slick design, light-weight and with a stylish black color.

However, there was this matter of importing my contacts from the old phone to the new one. The last time I had to manually re-enter all the contacts into my smartphone. I still have vivid memories of that gruesome day. I figured this time, moving from one smartphone to another, things should be easier. A quick Google search confirmed this and led me to the XDA-Developers forum were the user dotfred made a post about the PIM Backup v2.7 program.

Now transferring the contacts was just a matter of a few clicks: backup on storage card, transfer storage card to new phone, import and be happy. It even managed to import appointments, old text-messages and caller history.

The XDA-Developers forum has tons of nice software for the HTC Touch so hopefully I can find more useful gems there. If you own a windows mobile based smartphone it is worth a visit.

For those of you who want to know what the fuss is about, check out this youtube video.