Archive for May, 2008

Svchost.exe CPU spike due to Windows Update

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Noticing a constant CPU spike in svchost.exe?

Well you might have run into a common problem with Windows Update.

  1. Stop the Automatic Updates service
  2. Delete (or rename) the %Windows%\SoftwareDistribution directory.
  3. Restart (either the service or Windows altogether).

With any bit of luck your problems will be gone.

Suck a brick Yahoo! home page…

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

So…yeah. Yahoo! joins the ranks of Web sites which like to block certain Web browsers simply because they’re too lazy to implement the real solution: doing nothing at all.

The letter I sent to Yahoo!:

I can’t view the Yahoo! home page because it detects that I’m not using one of the “major” Web browsers: “To see all the new Yahoo! home page has to offer, please upgrade to a more recent browser.”

You should not block browsers simply because they’re not tested. Epiphany, the browser I’m currently using, is based off of Gecko, the same layout engine used in Firefox, which -is- supported on this site. Plenty of other, very usable browsers, are also blocked.

Please reconsider this. The Web is meant to be open, not needlessly neutered.

[Signature Truncated]

We’ll see what they have to say, if anything.