Monday, February 27, 2012


Bang Crash Help!

Last week I heard a twitter friend in distress, She had lost all her screen icons and the Start Menu Programs were missing. I immediately recognised this as a familiar sign of a virus attack on her computer, We tried a few things over the next few hours to get her system back, (not being helped by the fact I was working through twitter) but there comes a time when you need to say enough is enough and move on to another plan, such as a system repair, reinstall or reimage. An Image is a complete copy of your system with all the programs and data contained that you have made at a previous date. 


Of course if there was valuable data involved that had not been backed up you would keep on persevering until all hope was lost, luckily this person kept regular backups of her data. It took a good 24hrs before the system was back up and running, and all the programs and applications are still being gathered together and reloaded.


I think the most annoying part is that this person was using a very "big" brand antivirus, and it failed her completely. 
This next piece of advice is purely my own opinion, but I have only paid for antivirus once, and I had grief with it. There are some very good free antivirus products out there and used in conjunction with a free malware product,is a very successful combination. 


If you are running Windows 7,or Windows Vista, Microsoft has its own very good antivirus called Microsoft Security Essentials, if you do a search on that name you will find it quite easily. Microsoft also puts out a Malicious Software Removal tool every month with the latest updates, this is downloaded with your usual updates, but needs to be run manually. To run the Malicious Removal Tool, type:  mrt.exe  into the "run box" (the white box in the lower left corner of your screen, when you click on the start button) this will find the program for you and then just click on it to run it. 
There are plenty of other free good products, with a few of the popular ones being "Avast", "Avira", and "Avg". I run one of these in conjunction with a program called "Malwarebytes", it is a very respected program in the IT world and is also free. Malwarebytes needs to be run manually to do a scan, another good option is that, you can right click on any file and scan it with Malwarebytes before opening it up. I try and run a full system scan with it once a week, and it will always tell you when an update is available for download.


The rest is up to your own online behaviour and browsing habits, but I have been using the above mentioned combination for years with out issues, the antivirus product should always warn you if you happen to land on a dangerous web page. 


The last advice I will give is to go to your "backup and restore" in the control panel, then choose the option of creating a rescue disc, once you have done that, choose "create a system image", make sure you save to a hard drive separate to the one you are using for your computers system. This is for Windows Vista and 7, if you need help with any other systems, just drop me a line and I will help you out.

Monday, February 20, 2012


Bits and Pieces



I have a bit of a tip for the last blog post about Dropbox, if you happened to delete a file by accident from your Dropbox folder and you need it back, What you can do is, before you log on to one of your other devices linked to your Dropbox account, disconnect it from the internet. Once you log on, retrieve the file you need then save it to an alternate location than your Dropbox folder because once you connect online again Dropbox will sync and delete it from the Dropbox file on that device.


A couple of problems I have encountered, helping people with the issue of a slow computer is a build up of deleted data.  "Newbie" users, who are using Outlook express or Outlook to read their Emails (Windows XP is Outlook Express and Windows Vista or Windows 7 will be Outlook, both are similar programs) delete an email, however this email is not deleted completely, it is put into a deleted items folder and remains in there. 
I have found some deleted items folders with over 300 deleted emails sitting in there. You can either go into your deleted items folder and manually delete the items or you can set  Outlook Express to empty the deleted messages when you exit the program. 
To set up this process. When you are on your mail page, choose Tools, Options. On the Maintenance tab, select Empty Messages From The 'Deleted Items' Folder On Exit. 
You may also get a message from time to time saying that windows would like to compact your files to save on disc space, it is a good idea to do this.


A similar situation exists with your deleted items recycle bin. Your deleted items will sit in your bin until it is emptied. You can empty the bin by right clicking on your recycle bin icon and choose  "empty your recycle bin". 
There are methods that allow you to delete items without sending them to the recycle bin, but I would not recommend this, as it makes these files very hard to retrieve if needed.


I will explain next time why all this excess data becomes an issue, and how to keep your computer hard drive clean and running smooth.

Thursday, February 2, 2012


DropBox

Hi Everyone
I hope your start to the year has been a good one!, no doubt over your holiday period you would have taken a heap of pics that you want to share with your friends and family. There are places like Facebook and Photobucket where you can do this, but what if you want a your own private place where you can not only share photos, but files, documents, movies and songs, and you don't even have to log onto a website!.


I am talking about a product called Dropbox, basically it is just like a folder on your computer and when you put anything in it, the same item you put in there appears in a folder on any computer that is linked to the same Dropbox account. You do not have to bother with and transfers, uploads, or downloads, it just appears in there next time you open the folder on that computer (providing both computers have had an internet connection, since you put the item in the folder). Dropbox is also available as an app for your smartphone.


So here's how you do it - Go to www.Dropbox.com and download Dropbox to your computer, create an account and that's it!. It looks like any other folder on your computer, you click on it and it has sub-folders already in there, as well as you can create your own. When you put an item in a folder, it automatically syncs to a mirrored folder in the cloud. On any other computer you like, you can download Dropbox and link it to your existing account, when you open Dropbox on that computer you will see the item you put in there sitting waiting for you!. As you put an item in a folder, or create a folder you will see a little blue circle beside its icon, when that circle turns green with a tick in it, that means the folder has automatically synced with its matching folder in the cloud.


This is also very useful if you want to access files or folders from your computer at work, just put them in your Dropbox folder at work, and when you get home open up your Dropbox folder at home and it will sync and be there. You can make changes to that item and those changes will be synced back to the folder at work. It is very important to be aware though, if you delete that item from your folder at home, it will also be deleted from the folder at work!. Another thing you need to be aware of, is that as items are synced back and forth with the cloud, they do use uploads and downloads of you internet account.


As far as I am aware you are only able to link one account to your Dropbox, so if you want to have one Dropbox folder for work and one for friends, you only need to have another user account on your computer, and you are able to have Dropbox with a different account. If need be, just create a user called Dropbox or Family Share. 


There is also a folder that comes already installed called "Public", any file you put in this folder has a link attached to it, just right click on the file, select "copy link" and send that link to anyone you want to share it with!.


I would like to state that I am in no way linked to DropBox, or receive any benefits of them, I believe and have seen that it is an easy to use great product. Hope you enjoy it.