Computer Slow or Dying?

A computer repair person is often called on to "speed up" a slow machine.  Typically the problem is software related where there is a virus, trojan, malware, or spyware which is slowing things down.  Other problems could include something called a "rootkit" which is a tiny program that runs before Windows gets up and running, and it has a certain amount of control of things that can allow any or all of the above problems come into the machine.

a dusty computer will lead to failure of components on the motherboard

Sometimes however, the problem could be hardware related.  RAM, for example, is susceptible to static electricity.  Actually, all the hardware in a computer is susceptible to static.  But besides static electricity, HEAT is also an enemy of computers.  Cleaning the dust from the motherboard, CPU and power supply often can extend the life of the unit.  Dust build-up can hold heat in and around the electronic components, causing them to overheat.  There are usually large capacitors around the CPU which will appear "popped" on the top where it would normally be flat.  This indicates the capacitor has overheated and means the motherboard will most likely need to be replaced eventually, and more likely to be sooner than later.

 So if a person’s machine is slow, take the side cover off the desktop machine and see if there's lots of dust in there.  If there is, blow it out with an air compressor.  If there is no available air compressor, one could perhaps be borrowed from a friend or neighbour.  One may also purchase a can of air from a computer store like BestBuy or FutureShop.  A good can of compressed air will probably cost about $10 - $12.  A trip to Costco could yield a six pack of compressed air for $20, it is too cheap and probably not the best stuff. 

Ways to Make Money With Your Computer

 

There are plenty of ways to spend money online.  What may surprise you sometimes is that there seems no end to the Get-Rich-Quick schemes one can find either.  But even if you don't want to get rich "quick" there are still lots of ways to just "make money" online.

 

If you do a StartPage search of "ways to make money online" you'll discover a whole host of ways and means to make money with promises of everything from making a decent second income to allusions of possible 6 or 7 figure yearly incomes. 

I'm going to go over just a few of them here today, along with my personal comments.

Perhaps like many of you I have tried a few schemes in my life to make money besides the traditional working-for-someone-else plan that many do today.

Now that we have entered the "Information Age" it is so easy to find ways to make money online in ways you probably never dreamed of.  And all you need is a recent vintage of computer, an internet connection, and some imagination and some effort, and you can make a lot of money.

 

In no particular order, here are three ways I have personally seen people make money from the Internet...

 

Send-Out-Cards - I personally know a lady in the town where I live (Nanaimo, BC) who has affirmed she and her husband make well over $100,000 per year sending out greeting cards.  She has been doing it since 2004 and has paid off her mortgage, her car, and pays for most things with cash.  I'm not sure what her initial start-up cost was, but I know it wasn't much compared to what she earns today.  Greeting cards are always nice to get; they usually bring a smile to my face before I even open them, no matter who they are from.  This lady loves the way she earns a living, and it shows.

 

Banners Broker - This company was introduced to me in April 2012, and I have since met several people who are making money with it online.  It involves purchasing and selling internet advertising traffic.  Google Ads is a similar business.  But those who are into it see it as like a slow-moving internet game of making money where you are actually playing with real money.  I personally know two people who signed up for BannersBroker.com in 2012 and are now withdrawing over $2500 per week into their pockets.

 

Article writing is a great way to get started making money online.  There are no startup costs other than a computer and internet connection, and you can be up and running in mere minutes.  There is a bit of a learning about things like Search Engine Optimization, aka "SEO" and keywords, and you will need to be patient. In time, this can be a pretty good source of passive income.  Here's a list of ideas you can blog about.

 

There are lots of ways to make money online and these mentioned here barely scratch the surface.  Do some research, and - if you are diligent - I'm certain you can find something that you can do if you are willing.

 

I'll write more on making money on line at a later date.  Until then...

 

Happy Computing!

 

Big Mike Nanaimo

http://bigmikecomputerservices.ca

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Antivirus Enough Security?

Original story: Tim McGrath

The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal all suffered significant security breaches during 2012.  All were running anti-virus software that failed.
It is reported by an anonymous IT worker: “They had the ability to get around to different servers and hide their tracks. They seemed to have the ability to do anything they wanted on the network.”
CNN Money reports: “During a four-month long cyberattack by Chinese hackers on the New York Times,  the company’s antivirus software missed 44 of the 45 pieces of malware installed by attackers on the network.”

If this happens to large world renowned newspapers, what is a Small Medium Business (SMB) suppose to do?

Experts say that antivirus software is still a good, basic thing to have. Owning an antivirus solution is like putting the Club in your car — it’s not going to stop a determined thief, but it’s going to make stealing your stuff more difficult.   The amazing thing is I have heard the manager of a 65 store chain insist that their 5 year old router and anti-virus software is ‘all the protection we need’ !!
When reading a report on Email based Malware in July 2012 “… focus on most this report is the atrociously low detection rate for these spammed malware samples. On average, antivirus software detected these threats about 22 percent of the time on the first day they were sent and scanned at virustotal.com. If we take the median score, the detection rate falls to just 17 percent. That’s actually down from last months’s average and median detection rates, 24.47 percent and 19 percent, respectively.”

“That’s a stunning wake-up call to people and businesses who think they are fully protected by their antivirus software. “
“Even the most modern version of antivirus software doesn’t give consumers or enterprises what they need to compete in the hacker world,” said Dave Aitel, CEO of security consultancy Immunity . “It’s just not as effective as it needs to be.”

Solution:
First thing to do, get a preliminary security assessment! The security auditor will check a lot more than just if you have anti-virus.

Story by Tim McGrath  http://its-secure.ca/blog/anti-virus-software-that-failed

For more information locally regarding your security, call Big Mike Computer Services in the north end of Nanaimo today:

240-740-1812

http://www.bigmikecomputerservices.ca

Happy Computing!

Can't Boot? Try Unplugging All USB Devices.

Today I was called to check out a computer that would not boot.

As it turned out, the problem was that he had a USB printer attached that was powered. It happened to be a Canon Pixma printer that was plugged into the wall for power and p...lugged into the laptop via USB.

Here's the deal. USB ports are powered. Not only that, but many of today's printers have card readers, which show up as drive letters on your machine. So what happened in this case was that the laptop was looking to be booted from a USB device such as a USB stick or cd-rom, OR another media drive like Compaq Flash or SD chip, etc. See how that works?

Nowadays USB sticks have all but replaced external DVD-RW as the primary or secondary bootable device. From the factory these little ACER ONEs are set to look to boot from a USB device, and if nothing is there to boot from it usually next tries to boot off the hard drive. Sometimes the next boot device might be to boot off the LAN or network.

In my case today, it hung looking to boot from a USB drive letter that had nothing to give back. As soon as we unplugged the USB printer and rebooted the machine, it booted up just fine as normal.

Check out my website: http://www.bigmikecomputerservices.ca/

Happy Computing!
Big Mike

Where Did 2012 Go?

Hard to believe it's 2013 already. I was so busy in 2012 I didn't get much chance to blog.  Happy New Year (x2), Happy Valentines Day (x2), Merry Christmas (x1) and Happy Easter (x2), etc.!

Now it's Spring, and with it comes a time of cleansing.  Bring your dusty PC to Big Mike Computer Services in Nanaimo and have the dust blown out for free.  Call 250-740-1812 to book your appointment.  While you're there, have Big Mike put your machine on the bench for a quick check up.

Big Mike Computer Services is located at 6132 Mystic Way, Nanaimo, BC.

We do hardware upgrades, virus removal, malware removal, RAM upgrades, tweaks, troubleshoots and transfers.  Need your data backed up or recovered?  Call Big Mike today.

250-740-1812

A Bogus Call From "Windows" Reveals Scam

Be wary of anyone claiming to be from "Windows"

A few weeks ago my friend Monique called me and reported that someone from "Windows" called her and said that her computer had been sending out private information about her and the person wanted her to download and install something.  She told the guy that she didn't really know much about the computer and asked if he could call back in half an hour when her husband would be in.

That's when she called me.  The big red flag for me was the fact that the guy said he was calling from "Windows."  I asked Monique if she was sure he said "windows" and not Microsoft.  She was sure.  So I came over and we waited for the phone to ring.  I was not disappointed.

When I got on the phone I asked the guy where he was calling from and he said England.  He had a bit of a non-British accent but I'm not sure what it was; possibly Indian, I'm not certain.  He confirmed he was calling from Windows and I asked him if he meant Microsoft and he repeated that he was calling from Windows, from the technical division. He said that a technician would help me solve the "problem" and it may cost money if the problem was really severe.

I pretended to play along to see what he was up to.  He wanted me to download a file from a website which would allow him to "inspect" the computer.  I was familiar with the program because it is a legitimate program similar to VLC used to log onto people's computers, usually used by technicians and engineers to take over a PC.  I deliberately frustrated him by pretending I just couldn't log onto the site, claiming it must be the virus that is interferring.  And he did get frustrated much to my pleasure.  He kept trying to get me to log onto a different website which was a redirector to the legitimate site.

If I had been a bit more keen I would have asked for his name, number and company name.  Instead, however, I just thanked him for the information and said I would reload my machine from scratch which would thereby destroy the virus.

In conclusion, let me tell you that this was indeed a scam which I looked up after the phonecall.  Here's more info from Microsoft's site.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-security/phone-call-scam-received-call-from-a-technician/6ed2b99c-20ff-468b-a69b-aec78b93f287

I'm glad Monique called me because I have not had to deal with that scam before or since then and it was good to have that experience.

That's it for now.
Happy computing!

Big Mike

A Little Tap'll Do Ya

Recently I was asked to try to save the data on a failed hard drive.  This was a fairly new 2 terabyte Western Digital "green" drive.  I was told the drive just "up and stopped" one day and the drive letter disappeared.  I've had the opportunity to retreive data on lots of drives before, and this, I thought, would be no different than the hundreds of others I had managed to get data from.

I hooked the drive up to my test machine and hit the power button.  The machine took a long time to initialize the drives, and then gave me a failure message from the one I had hooked up.  I felt the top and bottom of the hard drive and it didn't feel warm, nor did it feel like it was spinning the platters inside.

My first thought was that it was indeed 'hooped" and beyond my level of repair.  So I called my client and told him what I had discovered.  He said he was between backups on that drive and that there was some stuff on there that was very important.  I told him there were some data recovery companies in BC and we could ship his drive over to one of them but it was not a cheap process.  He wanted to know how much and I said it was at least several hundred dollars for sure.  I told him I could do some research for him and come up with some sort of plan.

I called around and talked to a few recovery companies on the mainland, and came up with the best deal I could find and that was about $750, and if no data could be recovered, then no charge.  But I also had to send a second drive for the data to be copied to and provide a list of the most important folders on the drive so they would at least have something to search for while the drive was running in some capacity.

After working out a deal and confirming with my customer how to proceed, I was getting ready to send in the two hard drives via Purolator.  But during a quick meeting with my engineer friend, I had an idea I would try.  He said it was possible that the platters were just "stuck" because they were in the middle of a read/write when something happened.  He suggested I try holding the drive parallel to the floor and quickly spin the drive back and forth with my hand.  The idea, of course, was to make the case spin faster than the platters, thereby breaking them free.  I tried that a few time but it didn't work.

Then I had another idea.  I was thinking of times when I have had worn brushes on a car starter and had to tap tap tap on the side of the starter to make it move just enough to move past the flat spot so I could start the car.  I took a little hammer and tap tap tapped on the edge of the hard drive in the same manner.  Then I hooked the drive up again to my test machine, and VOILA!  It spun up.

I was so excited.  I allowed my test machine to boot up and I was able to read the drive.  It needed to run a CHKDSK to correct a few small errors, but after that it was able to operate normally.  I called my client and told him the good news.  He was all smiles.  I told him of my new plan to copy his data to a spare drive I had and then to run a thorough diagnostic on his drive.  He agreed.

Well, it took awhile to do all that but overall the result was good.  My customer paid me for my time and expertise.  And it was lest costly than 'Plan A,' so he was pretty happy.  Me too.

So the next time a drive doesn't spin up for an unknown reason, you have something you can try before you send or throw it away.

Happy Computing!

Big Mike