Is this website for real?

Is this website for real? A message popped up on my screen telling me to go here, but I’m suspicious.
http://www.winupdate.net/

Obviously not.

[quote=“whois”]Registrant:
Eric Cohen (WINUPDATE-NET-DOM)
1911 22nd St
1911 22nd St
San Francisco, US 94107
US
+1 40881769531
+1 40881769531
eric_cohen2001@yahoo.com

Domain Name: WINUPDATE.NET

Administrative Contact:
Cohen Eric eric_cohen2001@yahoo.com
1911 22nd St
1911 22nd St
San Francisco, US 94107
US
+1 40881769531
Fax- +1 40881769531

Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Eric Cohen eric_cohen2001@yahoo.com
1911 22nd St
1911 22nd St
San Francisco, US 94107
US
+1 40881769531
Fax- +1 40881769531

Record last updated on 21-Apr-2004.
Record expires on 21-Apr-2005.
Record created on 21-Apr-2004.
[/quote]Doesn’t look like an offical microsoft site… Neither did the name in the first place

What sort of message ? A popup from a dodgy website ? A message displayed by a non-browser program ? A little voice in your head ? A windows messenger (not to be confused something else called windows messenger or msn) spam message coz you didn’t update ?

Yep it’s the old, pay us for a patch to stop people like us spamming you.
You can get it for free from here: microsoft.com/technet/securi … 3-043.mspx

Big Fluffy Matthew,

That’s amazing. How did you get all of that information? Teach me, please.

I kept getting that pop-up message, too.

[quote=“jwar”]Big Fluffy Matthew,

That’s amazing. How did you get all of that information? Teach me, please. [/quote]I know everything :notworthy: Except what women really mean of course :idunno:

[quote]I kept getting that pop-up message, too.[/quote]Try installing the patch I gave the link to (the offical microsoft one), see if that helps.

Download and run these two programs and you should get much fewer popups. Also, consider getting the Google bar for IE to block popups.

Ad-Aware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot - http://www.safer-networking.org/
Googlebar - http://toolbar.google.com/

[quote=“answerer”]Also, consider getting the Google bar for IE to block popups.[/quote]The Opera and Firefox browsers’s default settings block popups, although I think there is an option to allow them if you really want them.

I use Firefox as my main browser, but I wouldn’t recommend it for most users. Setting some stuff up is difficult and it has problems with some plugins.

[quote=“answerer”]I use Firefox as my main browser, but I wouldn’t recommend it for most users. Setting some stuff up is difficult and it has problems with some plugins.[/quote]Works fine for me, and I haven’t done any tinkering with it apart from adding the dictionary.com thing to the search bar.

Maybe the problems you had with it will be sorted out by the next version: version 1.0, which will actually be the first officially ‘stable’ one despite the fact that v0.8 is already working fine for me and apparently lots of other people.

Then why don’t you switch it off?

As far as I can see, the pop-ups we are talking about here do not come through IE, but rather through the OS. While switching to a better browser is a nice move, it will not help in this case. Deactivate the service, you wouldn’t need it anyway.