I recently set up Windows Live Mail to read my Google Mail account, and I was periodically getting the "new mail" sound without getting any new mail. I discovered that Windows Live Mail was syncing the Spam folder and notifying me every time there was new spam. Oops.

I wanted the full download for Windows Live Essentials so I could deploy them to other computers without re-downloading, so I searched for a deployment or network administrator download and couldn't find it. So I went back to my canceled download window after having given up and decided to do the network install, and the "try again" button downloads the full installer! So I couldn't find it, but I accidentally stumbled upon it. If you want the whole install package for redeployment, cancel the first download and hit the "try again" button.

A client was getting blue screen errors with STOP 0x0000007E. This indicates drivers or hardware, and given that the machines were fine until upgrading to WinXP SP2 I decided it must be a driver. Through trial and error I found that Logitech Mouseware 9.76 was installed on the PCs and was causing sporadic blue screens when a USB mouse was connected. Just uninstall Mouseware, let Windows XP install the native driver and all is well. UPDATE: It has come to my attention that this problem may be related to DeviceLock USB security program installed on my client's computers. It's possible that Mouseware and SP2 alone won't cause the blue screen crashes but that Mouseware and DeviceLock are conflicting.

A somewhat unrelated note on floppies and flash drives. I say this due to recent and ongoing flabbergasting experiences at work. If you have important documents, you should have them backed up somewhere. This does *not* mean keep your only copy on a floppy, CD-RW or flash drive. If you need a working copy on portable media, fine, but *frequently* copy it to a backup location. If your office, say, has a server that the local admin backs up daily to tape, freakin use it! If you have a USB hard drive for backup, that would be a good place. Floppies: I can't believe people still use these for important documents, but I swear somebody asked me for help with a floppy drive last week. And in the past 5 years I've had 4 instances of people coming to me in a panic that their only copy of a critical document is on this floppy and quit working. (They had been updating the file on the floppy for years.) Floppies *will* physically wear out, especially if you're updating an Excel or Word file and re-saving it frequently.