Will the FixMeStick Help? Not Enough.

I had the opportunity to check out the FixMeStick for free recently, and  I can happily and honestly say that it won't be putting me out of a job any time soon.

A client phoned me a few weeks ago to get me to come visit to check out two computers. One was her husband's laptop which he used for business, while the other was the lady's personal machine.

Both machines were obviously infected and she had tried to use the FixMeStick twice on her own machine, but it did not fix it.  I ended up being there for about four hours fixing up the two machines.

I have had a few people ask me over the last couple of years about this so-called "FixMeStick" and chuckle as they jokingly suggested it might one day put me out of business. I would laugh it off but secretly I wondered just how sophisticated this device might be.

My client, Sheila, had purchased the stick last month with the hope it might solve her issues without having to call a real computer guy like myself. When it arrived she plugged it into her own personal machine first, updated it as per instructions, and then ran the scan. The scan took nearly 3 hours to complete.  Afterward she logged onto her machine and to her surprise she was still getting pop-ups and her browser was hijacked, and the machine was very slow. So she ran the scan again, taking another three hours.  To her sad disappointment she discovered afterward that the machine was still not fixed, and that's when she called me.

When I got there she told me the story of what happened and said she was very unhappy with the stick and asked if I, as a computer tech, could check it out and let her know what I thought of it. I agreed to try, and when I left her place I took the stick and the box with me and waited the opportunity to try it out for myself for the first time.

I downloaded MalwareBytes AntiMalware and installed it onto Sheila's machine and then updated it and ran a full system scan. It took quite a while to complete but when it was done it found 2379 threats, which I promptly quarantined, and then waited for the program to pop up a message for me to reboot the machine. After the reboot the machine worked a lot better. There were still some things that needed to be changed before I could give it a clean bill of health, and one of them was changing the default homepage in the browsers. (I usually change it to https://startpage.com because they don't spy on you.)  Often when a machine is infected with malware, one of the things that gets changed is the default homepage so that your browser is redirected to some sort of marketing page to phish information from you.  These are called browser hijackers.

A few days later I had the chance to try out the FixMeStick on an infected machine.  After scanning the machine I noticed that there was no way to remove the threats it found. That is to say, there were no buttons or links to delete what had been moved into the FixMeQuarantine folder. After completing the process of scanning with the FixMeStick I rebooted and after the machine was up and running again I ran a scan with MalwareBytes and it found a bunch more threats that the FixMeStick did not find.

In conclusion I would not recommend the FixMeStick. While there is a chance it might clean your machine, it's scope of repair is rather limited to scanning and quarantining potentially dangerous files. But it cannot change your homepage that was changed by a browser hijacker, and it cannot uninstall bad programs or disable crappy toolbars.  My advice is not to bother as you'll likely be disappointed.

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.