In a surprise move, Microsoft has announced it will offer a free anti-virus and security solution from the second half of next year.

It will stop selling OneCare, its all-in-one security and PC management service, from the end of June 2009.

The new software, code-named Morro, will be a no-frills program suited to smaller and less powerful computers.

The software will be free to download and will support Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

The move comes as sales of the OneCare subscription service are flagging - reportedly because the anti-virus marketplace is already flooded with big-name players such as Symantec and McAfee.

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Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo, is to stand down as the internet portal’s chief executive officer.

His departure follows lengthy criticism of his stewardship of the company, which has seen its share price collapse to about $10.

Earlier in the year he fought off a hostile takeover bid from Microsoft which offered $33 a share.

Mr Yang also told the workforce that he would be participating in the search for his successor.

“I will always do what is right for this great company,” Mr Yang wrote in an e-mail to employees.

The BBC was told that Mr Yang made the decision to leave as chief executive officer last month. No names were given as to who will succeed him.

The company, based in Sunnyvale, California, said it is interviewing candidates inside and outside Yahoo in a search led by chairman Roy Bostock.

“Jerry and the board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level,” said Mr Bostock.

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I was getting this error [Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem] every time i reinstalled windows and it kept coming up and then stopped after few days. I never knew what was the reason for it and this time i decided to go after it.

It is very annoying and comes only when I am online and whenever it pops up it taken down the internet and I have to restart my computer again. The error details show the problem with svchost.exe and netapi32.dll

Well the reason the error goes away after a few days is that I have windows update on and it downloads the updates and patches the errors in xp sp2. This time I turned it off and thats why I still get this error.

I order to get rid of this error and other variants of it do the following.

1. You receive a “Generic Host Process” error message after you start the computer, or DBCS attachment file names are not displayed in Rich Text e-mail messages.

RESOLUTION

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894391

loadTOCNode(1, ‘resolution’);

Hotfix information

loadTOCNode (2, ‘resolution’);A supported hotfix is now available from Microsoft. For Windows XP SP2, the Generic Host Process error can potentially occur on any system at any time. Although you receive the error message shortly after system startup, the actual error occurred during the previous system shutdown. Because of the broad nature of this issue, this hotfix was made available through Windows Update and distributed to users who have Automatic Updates enabled to eliminate this problem on Windows XP SP2 systems. For Windows XP SP2, you may experience one last Generic Host Process error upon restart after you install this hotfix. This is from the previous system shutdown before the new version installation was completed.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894391

2. Generic Host Process Error Message and a Flashlight Icon Appear

RESOLUTION

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821690

loadTOCNode(1, ‘resolution’); To resolve this problem, follow these steps:

Contact HP to obtain compatible drivers for the printer or scanner. For information about how to contact HP, click the appropriate article number in the following list to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821690

3.Error messages when you start a Windows XP-based computer and then try to download Windows Updates

RESOLUTION

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931852

loadTOCNode(1, ‘resolution’);To resolve this problem, follow these steps:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931852

Yahoo

Yahoo said the “For Sale” sign is still on its front lawn and that Microsoft should buy the company.

The internet portal’s co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang made the comment despite the fact Yahoo rejected a $33 (£21) a share offer from Microsoft back in May.

Mr Yang’s suggestion also came hours after Google pulled out of an internet advertising partnership with Yahoo.

“To this day the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo,” said Mr Yang.

“I don’t think that is a bad idea at all, at the right price whatever that price is. We’re willing to sell the company,” he told a packed ballroom at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.

During the on stage conversation in front of a standing-room only crowd, Mr Yang was asked why the company did not take the $33 a share offered back in the summer. The company’s share price closed Wednesday below $14 (£8.80) a share.

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Microsoft promises its Windows 7 operating system will be an improvement on the much-maligned Windows Vista.

Microsoft has unveiled the latest version of its Windows operating system.

It promised that it will deliver a better experience for users when it arrives sometime late next year.

Windows 7 follows Vista, which Microsoft claims has been a success, but which has been subject to fierce criticism from a number of users.

The system was demonstrated at the company’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

Senior vice-president Steven Sinofsky described it as an “exciting new version of Windows” and claimed it would deliver a more personalised experience.

Feedback

When Vista launched in January 2007, many users complained that it ran slowly and failed to work at all with some programs and devices.

Corporate customers have been slow to switch from Windows XP to Vista, although Microsoft said that the operating system had an unfair press, and has enjoyed record sales.

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Microsoft has unveiled a cloud computing service

Microsoft has unveiled a cloud computing service, in which data and applications will not be stored on individuals’ computers.

The new platform, dubbed Windows Azure, was announced at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

The platform was described by Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie as “Windows for the cloud”.

The framework will be offered alongside the next Windows release, Windows 7.

The move sees Microsoft taking on established players like Google and Amazon in the rapidly growing business of online software.

The aim is to allow developers to build new applications which will live on the internet, rather than on their own computers.

Microsoft believes consumers will also want to store far more of their data - from letters to photos to videos - on the servers in its “cloud” of giant data centres around the world, so that it can be accessed anywhere, from any device.

The move, which Microsoft sees as a major shift in its corporate strategy, was unveiled in front of 6,000 software developers from around the world.

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The Pakistan Telecommunication Ltd (PTCL) has increased its reliance on modern technology by introducing new IT software to facilitate customers with quick information/connectivity providing efficient services.

Walid Irshad, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PTCL stated this here on Wednesday while addressing the signing ceremony of Enterprise Agreement for Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure Optimisation between PTCL, Ufone and Microsoft. He termed the agreement a “milestone” and said that this strong technological partnership will allow PTCL and Ufone to benefit from the Microsoft’s innovative products.

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Those wishing to skip Windows Vista now know how long they have to sweat it out with XP. Microsoft today confirmed rumours it would ship an alpha version Vista’s successor, dubbed Windows 7, to developers in October.

The final release date is set for January 2010 – though the scuttlebutt is that it may be moved forward into next year as Google gains traction with its Google Apps and Chrome, pitched as a rival OS for the web.

Windows 7’s signature features will include new touchscreen technology, giving users of compatible PCs an iPhone-like ability to slide around photos and files with their fingers.

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Your Web browser is probably the most important program on your computer, and it’s now getting the competition it deserves.
Mozilla Firefox, the most successful challenger to Microsoft’s incumbent Internet Explorer, is an outstanding piece of work and more than deserving of the raves it has won since its debut four years ago. (I made it my default browser in Windows even before its 1.0 version arrived.) But its developers don’t have a monopoly on all the bright ideas in browsing; people looking for better ways to the Web have two new options.

One comes from Microsoft, which two weeks ago shipped an impressive, but unfinished, release of IE’s next version. The other comes from Google, which last week offered a preview of its own browser.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 ( http://microsoft.com/ie) and Google Chrome ( http://google.com/chrome) each show thoughtful attention to the ways busy people who don’t read manuals try to read the Web.

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So Microsoft is also jumping into the online video investment space, and has done an undisclosed amount of strategic investment in already-heavily backed online HD video tech provider Move Networks. This is technically part of its third round, which it earlier closed in at $46 million from investors such as Benchmark Capital, as well as Cisco, ComcastInteractive Media, and Televisa. Prior to Microsoft coming in, the American Fork, UT-based company had raised $67.3 million in funding.

The company touts a higher level of quality than other video providers, including HD, and it claims to be able to eliminate buffering. Among its customers are ABC and ESPN, both Disney properties (hence it also has backing from Steamboat, a Disney VC fund)…it recently announced it was going to adapt its HD media player for mobile Internet devices (or MIDs) using Intel processors and Linux software. Move is already in crazy-money-raised territory, and this one adds to it.

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The days when Web pages were static collections of text and graphics are long past. But as the Web matures, there’s a fierce competition over which technology will propel it into a medium for rich, interactive applications.

On one side of the battle lines is the original Web page description technology called HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language. Over the years, its abilities were augmented first with JavaScript, a basic programming language, and later a JavaScript-on-steroids technology called Ajax.

On the other side is Adobe Systems’ Flash, which got its start as a method for graphic animations. It’s grown into a much more powerful programming foundation over the years and has been joined more recently by a competitor: Microsoft’s Silverlight.

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If Linux is going to make bigger inroads on the desktop, developers need to stop cloning Microsoft Windows and instead produce more unique user interface designs, according to Bob Sutor, IBM’s VP of open source and standards.

Sutor made these remarks today at the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, a day after IBM issued the latest in an eight-year series of Linux announcements, joining at LinuxWorld with Linux distributors Red Hat, Novell, and Canonical in an initiative to build “Microsoft-free PCs for business.”
The VP delivered his recommendations around more creative Linux user interfaces as part of a series of predictions about the future of Linux in the next decade. If developers are building applications for the traditional PC desktop, they are better off copying Apple Macintosh concepts about design and usability, Sutor maintained.

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