Computer Trouble?

Reality Catches Up With Symantec

2012-01-27T09:04:00.002-06:00

It has happened! I will not lie to you, some part of me is chuckling gleefully. Symantec, the maker of the (in-)famous Norton products recommends to their customers:

“Symantec recommends disabling the product until Symantec releases a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks,”

This is original text from an online statement released by Symantec about their computers having been hacked back in 2006! Emphasis added by me.

A few things are of interest to me:

They must have known about this for 6 (SIX!) years and kept it a secret.
They write "currently known ... risks".
They knew about the risks all along but did not care to fix them!
They ask customers that have paid dearly for the purchase and are paying dearly for updating the software to stop using it altogether with no offer of any compensation at all.
Pretty arrogant and overbearing if you ask me.

The short of it: I feel very relieved to now have it from the horse's mouth:

Stay far way from everything with a "Norton" label.

And applying my experiences with any other of the big name security suites (read about three examples) I now feel emboldened to say "Stay away from any of them".

And if you want some more detail go to this FoxNews.com article.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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The Computer is NOT a Toy

2012-01-26T08:42:00.001-06:00

Yourcomputer is not a toy, even if your children or grandchildren disagree. Use it responsibly and enjoy it.

Antivirus software can helpyou prevent certain types of malicious software and viruses. But any antivirus is not the ultimate solution.

If your system is slow orsluggish it does not necessarily have to be virus infected. Mostly some programis causing the slow down, very often big "security suites" are the culprit (see here). Or over time too many programs think they always have to run inthe background or simply by now your hardware is outdated.

“Outdated hardware?” you ask? Oh yes; Windows and most importantprograms get updated all the time. That means they are being made more secureand/or get new functionality. This is possible only by growing larger; theycontain much more code than they did originally. Your hardware is still whatwas sufficient in 2004, 2005 or 2006 but this not sufficient any longer.

We may not like to be told directlyand honestly but most security problems with Windows computers are causedby.... the user. Keep your common sense hat firmly on at all times and think before you act.

Remember:" With greatpower comes great responsibility!" As a responsible user, you can enjoythe web without “pay through the nose” bloated and expensive security suitesand without having to battle viruses or rogue programs.

Everything you need is available free of charge if you do yourhomework before going to thatdownload site only because “there was a link”. Example at hand: Many well known and widely distributed computer publications (ZDNet, PC World are only examples!) will give you download links to Download.com. This site will always download and install a totally superfluous "Downloader" program that from then on will always run in the background on your computer.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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Computer 101 - The 2012 Edition

2012-01-25T05:58:00.000-06:00

Disclosure:
Recently I found this article on a blog called The Consumerist. I liked the contents of this article very much but it clearly was written by a computer nerd for other computer nerds.

I took the liberty to re-write most of the article in a form and language that I hope is better suited for my customers. Here it is:

Keep all your data backed up.

Put your data on an external HDD, upload it to a safe storage website, copy it to another computer or even on a CD or a DVD (most cumbersome!), somewhere, anywhere but please back up your data files!

I am perfectly aware that many of my customers will have issues in setting everything up correctly but as usual I can help.

Having your data on your computer only is NO GOOD, having data files in two places is a MUST. If one of these sets of data files fails you need to create another second storage location! This will save you $$$ and a lot of aggravation.

Manufacturer warranties do not cover your data files; you need to protect them yourself. Back up your documents, pictures, emails, email addresses (or contacts), bookmarks (or favorites), tax files, music, videos and ANY business information you may have.

The only exception to my rule "free software for everything" covers data backup. You need a sufficiently large external disk drive and a piece of software costing $30 per computer.

If set up correctly all your data files always are automatically kept up to date additionally on the external disk drive.
Have a current recovery disc for each computer you have.

This is your licensed copy of your OS. You no longer get operating system disks with a new computer; it’s all stored on the disk drive. It is specific to your computer's internals like processor, mother board, sound and graphics. It has the device drivers your computer needs to do its most basic tasks. Burn a recovery disk on to DVDs right away when you get your computer and put the DVD somewhere safe. It may easily take up to 3 hours to do.

If you lose the recovery disk then you can order a new one from your manufacturer for between 15 and 50 dollars, depending on the brand. HP is usually cheaper, Sony is wickedly expensive. They take about 2 or 3 weeks to arrive; that is a looong wait if you need them NOW to replace a hard drive or to fix Windows.

There is a significant difference between recovery disks and a repair disk that you need to be aware of. You can read about that here. You have to be aware of that significant difference. And you have to be aware of the fact that if you have to use these recovery disks your computer will be thrown back to exactly the state it was in at the very moment when the recovery disks where created!

If for whatever reason you can neither buy recovery disks from the manufacturer nor create your own disks then, as a last resort, you can purchase a full copy of Windows 7 for about $100.
One antivirus at a time, please.

Two antivirus programs running concurrently is like pushing two fat pigs together through a dog door, neither can get through the door correctly and they block each other from functioning properly.

Two antivirus or security programs can tear nasty holes in your operating system depending on which ones you are trying to combine (I have seen it!) or at least they will SLOW DOWN YOUR COMPUTER TO A CRAWL because two systems are trying to scan your every move as well as each others moves.

More than one antivirus or security program running concurrently is usually LESS protection than one good one.

Your new computer most likely came with a trial of some sort of “security” software pre-installed. All these pre-installed antivirus or security programs will cost money, every year! Remove this stuff because you don’t need to pay for a good antivirus program!

Remove the “old” antivirus program before installing a new one; even if they are expired they will get in each other‘s way! And some of them don’t even uninstall correctly. I have uninstalled Norton and McAfee programs and upon detailed inspection found some left over parts of these systems still sitting in and actually running on the computer. This inspection is not trivial at all; it takes very special programs and a lot of detailed know how to do it correctly.

Install the free program Microsoft Security Essentials; you can read here how to do that correctly.
Do not install any tool bars.
Did you hear me? Please DO NOT INSTALL ANY TOOL BARS!

ALL toolbars are bloatware, they will slow down your internet connection and eventually even crash your web browser.

You don't need any of them, no matter how well known the company is that wants to force the tool bar on your computer!

Tool bars take up screen space and they will end up affecting performance and sometimes even security.
Please DO NOT INSTALL ANY TOOL BARS!
"Free" stuff can be expensive:

Web sites that offer free games, movies, music (torrent sites!), pornography and even free social networking sites are riddled with viruses. Virus removal can be time and thus $$$ consuming.

Viruses are a software issue and are considered private data, they are not covered by any warranty.

Be safe and smart on the internet, use common sense and be vigilant.

Keep your important software up to date; read more details about updating here.
Despite everything said in paragraph #5 above: Excellent free software is available for almost any functionality you can imagine and I can point you in the correct direction, I can show you where to find it.
Computers don’t like liquids.

This includes water, coke, beer, soup, bodily fluids and excessive and/or aggressive cleaners.

Don't spray screen cleaners directly on your screen, spray it on your lint free cleaning cloth and then wipe the screen. Even a mist of any liquid can cause damage.

Computers also don’t like gravity or being punched. This will probably cause a lot more damage and not fix any issue, be it speed or erratic behavior.
No computer is immortal.

Computer technology changes at an extremely fast rate. Average computer life spans are mere 2-3 years for laptops or closer to 4-5 years for desktop computers. This makes sense, because laptops undergo more stress from movement, impact and temperature changes. Many laptops are prone to overheating if you have them sitting “just” on your lap, on a table cloth(!) or on a pillow.

Your computer uses electricity that in turn circulates through lots of electronic circuitry that then gets hot. Many portable computers eventually burn out. And if you have your data backed up, you'll be up and running on a new computer in no time.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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No Dell Or HP/Compaq Please - If You Ask Me

2012-01-22T20:30:00.000-06:00

In the shortest way I can come up with here the reasons why I currently recommend to stay away from Dell and HP/Compaq computers.

At the time of writing about 5 or 6 months ago Hewlett Packard (HP) announced publicly that they want to sell their complete PC computer business. The price tag was quoted as US $ 11.2 Billion.

Not only their back then CEO lost his job over this publicity blunder, no, 6 or 8 weeks later, after a new CEO got hired, HP declared "No, we changed our mind, we want to keep our PC computer business".

In November/December 2004 IBM announced that they were selling their PC computer business to an until then almost unknown company in China named Lenovo. I remember very well the confusion that ensued. It took years until all was sorted out and we slowly learned to trust the new brand Lenovo.

I would accept a personal wager that HP is still talking about selling their PC business, but now behind closed doors. With the IBM/Lenovo story in mind I can not recommend to buy from HP, a manufacturer that may not be around anymore in maybe less than one year.

Dell is a slightly different story. Please read this article on my blog and follow the link I have there to the New York Times article about a class action lawsuit against Dell. After reading this you will understand why in good conscience I can not recommend to buy a computer from Dell, a company with a proven history of lying to their customers and of shirting well-grounded warranty claims as company policy.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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Danger! Most Wireless Routers Can Be Hacked

2012-01-08T07:44:00.000-06:00

If you have a wireless router in your house then you should read on; if you don't (yet) have a wireless router in your home then you might want to read on anyway to be better prepared for the day when you will get one.

The Technology Reseller Channel CRN published a US-CERT warning concerning most wireless routers that I want to translate into hopefully easier to understand language.

By far most of the wireless routers sold in the last two to four years contain a feature called WPS. WPS is meant to make it easy to connect wireless devices to the router by using the WPS button on the router. Basically the router transmits the encryption code (often erroneously called wireless password) wirelessly to the device you want to connect.

The WPS protocol used for this process has a design flaw. This flaw allows a knowledgeable attacker to break into your wireless network.

Millions of wireless routers sold over the last few years have WPS capabilities built in and thus are opening your wireless network to potentially being hacked into. Generally WPS is by default turned ON.

What can you do about it? There is only one way to stay safe from this risk:

Turn WPS off!

The way to do this is different for every router model out there. You will have to delve into the documentation for your router and find out how to do it in your specific piece of hardware.

If you are not comfortable with doing this kind of technical setting then you can let me know, I will be happy too help.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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I Do Not Sell Any Hardware

2011-12-23T12:00:00.001-06:00

All too often I receive emails from customers with a stement similar to the following:

"I just purchased an XYZ computer from you....".

To keep the record straight I have to correct such a statement because it gives the incorrect impression that I sold the computer which is not the case.

I advised you to buy this computer and you bought it in your own name and with your credit card from ..... (fill in your store name).

Because your computer was according to your own words not working at all or possibly virus infected or too slow we physically may have used my computer for the purchasing process.

I have to insist on this clarification for reasons buried deeply in the tax codes of the United States and of the State of Wisconsin and the implications it would have for me if I would actually sell any hardware.

I do not sell computers or any (other) hardware.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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Email Client vs. Web Interface

2011-12-23T11:45:00.000-06:00

If you use a regular email client program (I recommend and support Mozilla Thunderbird only) it helps to be aware of a few simple things about email.

Email client programs download the mails to the computer they run on and you maintain the emails and your filing system yourself. Once the emails are on your computer they should be gone from your ISP's server; IMHO this is an important security and privacy aspect.

I usually talk to my customers about the differences between an email client and an Internet based Web Interface and some of the consequences. "Normally" you should maintain your emails on your home computer, IMHO at least.

If you leave the emails on the ISP's server and access them only through a Web Interface you have no control whatsoever about who and what the ISP allows to scan and analyze your emails. Okay, I do not trust big companies' privacy promises, not at all; in the past there have been way too many bad surprises.

If you travel and want to see what new emails have arrived (and if the email client on the home computer is inactive) you typically go through a Web Interface, that is an Internet based way of accessing the emails that have not yet been downloaded to the computer at home. The three most common large Internet Service Providers in our area and the URL to access their Web Interfaces are:

Charter: https://web.charter.net/login/email_login.php
Time-Warner (Roadrunner): https://webmail.wi.rr.com/
ATT U-verse and DSL: https://login.yahoo.com/config/login_verify2

Many people do not want to deal with the "complexity" I described above. For these people I recommend an account with Google Mail at gmail.com.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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Worst Crapware Offenders - IMHO

2011-12-07T22:22:00.001-06:00

If you are a customer of mine and if I have set-up your computer then you have an age old article about the gunk software on new PCs available; this article was first published in summer 2006. So far this old article was my only third party justification for offering my Set-Up job; finally here is more third party justification.

I really try hard not to rely on other people's writings for my blog posts. But sometimes I happen across something that comes right from my own heart. This is the case with Ed Bott's article on the ZDNet blog The Ed Bott Report. His articles On consumer PCs, crapware is still a performance-sapping nuisance and 12 ways hardware makers screw up a perfectly good Windows PC tell the sad truth.

Let's face it, there are many more than 12 ways how PC manufacturers mess up perfectly good computers! But alone the fact that someone of Ed Bott's stature and influence begins to write about this issue is not only new but almost sensational.

Another recent example of writing about the current "crapware" epidemic is in Michael Kassner's article Five Tips For Getting Rid Of Crapware on the TechRepublic web site. As interesting as this article is I do have to comment on his five tips because they are NOT AT ALL suitable for the non-technical home user. The author recommends in this sequence:

Buy a computer free of crapware
Well said but too late when you unpack the new machine, you have it already.
Autoruns from Sysinternals
IMHO a typical "tip" from a journalist lacking technical detail. Autoruns is an excellent utility in the hands of a knowledgeable technician to eliminate unwanted start-up programs but it is NOT a tool to remove, that is uninstall unwanted programs at all!
CCleaner
An excellent tool, I use it almost daily. BUT you still need to know what to make of the long list of installed programs you are presented with. Not a tool for the average non-technical home user at all!
PC De-Crapifier
This program costs money! It presents you with a list of third party (that is non Microsoft) programs and you have to make the decision if you want to remove it or not. Not a tool for the average non-technical home user at all!
Win-Patrol
Certainly a good program but just a tiny bit of googling gives the same and often even more information. And still the final yes/no decision is with the poor non-technical home user who generally just does not have the know-how needed to make these choices correctly.

Yes, we do have a problem with all the crappy software that comes pre-installed on brand new, brand name computers.

A significant part of what I do every week is cleaning crapware from new computers as part of my Set-Up Job. From the experience with this I venture to give my own, very individual and clearly opinionated version of a list of the IMHO worst crapware offenders; the worst being right up front.

Samsung
Sony
Toshiba
HP / Compaq
Asus
Dell
Lenovo
Acer / Gateway / eMachines

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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About Libre Office

2011-12-07T06:50:00.002-06:00

When I help any customer order a new computer I always have this or a shorter version of this conversation with them:

If the customer owns a paid retail versions of MS Office then this gets installed and the conversation is over.If they do not own MS Office Then I will explain to them that on the new computer will be a trial version of Microsoft Office installed.

That usually means MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint are available. This trial version will fully work only for 30 or 60 days depending on the computer manufacturer and the MS Office version.

After this initial one or two month(s) the customer will have to buy a license to obtain a product key; with that product key they can activate MS Office for full functionality. This license costs an additional $100 to $150.-

There is an alternative office suite named Libre Office available (formerly called Open Office). This software suite does about 95% of what MS Office does and it is free, free as in no money ever. It is widely used in Europe and many third world countries.

Do you want me to leave MS Office on the machine or do you want me to install Libre Office (formerly Open Office) instead?

More than nine out of ten of my customers decide to go with Libre Office.

If I do the set up of Libre Office correctly it will open, read and write MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint files. Generally I do not install the Libre Office drawing and database modules which are of no interest to my typical home users.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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Buying Computers at Best Buy

2011-11-30T22:07:00.000-06:00

Many customers of mine ask me for advice what computer to buy. Often I have to send them to a Best Buy store simply because BB sometimes has rock bottom priced offers that can't be beat anywhere.

Best Buy has perfected several techniques of power selling. As every big company does they see to their own bottom line first and customers are an unavoidable means to that end.

Here is some advice derived from my own years of experience at Best Buy stores and from stories customers told me. The following is not said to blackmail Best Buy, it is an attempt to help you to protect yourself.

Their sales people are excellently trained to push additional "stuff" on you that you don't need.

They use FUD to confuse you, especially when they realize that you don't know much about computers and/or are insecure.

Go there well prepared, best with a printout of the first page of the description of the computer from their own web site. Say "I want to buy THIS computer and nothing else, absolutely nothing else!".

Do NOT accept any additional "offers".

You do NOT need any of the anti virus or security programs they offer.
You do NOT need a worthless extended warranty.
You do NOT want ANY extras.
Be stubborn, buy the computer ONLY.
If the sales person gets too obnoxious ask them what part of NO they don't understand.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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Slow Computer? Boot Your bleeping Security Suite!

2011-11-30T20:36:00.002-06:00

In the last three days I had three customers who were complaining about their slow computers. Customer number one had an older but fairly well equipped Windows XP machine with paid AVG, number two a Vista computer with Kaspersky Security Suite (paid) and number three was running Windows Vista Basic on a computer with limited main memory and Trend Micro Security Suite (paid).

In all three cases the machines were between four and six years old, that is just on the border where I begin to evaluate the worth of investing money into an aging computer versus buying a new computer.

In all three cases the customers choose to have me try removing the installed "security suites" and replace them with Microsoft Security Essentials before they made they choice between fix old or buy new.

Number one was a no brainer; original words of the customer: "Wow; that box NEVER before worked that fast!". He still is using Windows XP and he is a happy camper.

Number two was trickier because his machine had over time caught about 340 pieces of malicious software, among others two very nasty Rootkit viruses, a couple of Trojan horse programs and it was missing half a ton of updates. The clean up and updating took some time, I removed Kaspersky and installed Microsoft Security Essentials and guess what, the customer said he'd happily pay me, give the computer to his daughter in college and asked me to advise him what to replace his computer with!

Number three is so happy they gave me an excellent tip in the form of home made dill pickles, yummy! Thank you Fred and Judy! They will keep using their computer until they can afford a new one. And I got an additional job from them, thanks for that too.

Why do I tell these stories? Because that's the reality out in the field of home computing, not what I witnessed last (Black) Friday in a local Best Buy store where almost every customer who talked to the Best Buy sales people about a computer got pestered to buy one of Kaspersky's security suites.

All these by now massively complex programs in my opinion are not worth the money compared to Microsoft Security Essentials.

MSE "speaks" only understandable English,
MSE is absolutely unobtrusive,
MSE does not slow down your computer,
MSE does not block your computer while it is scanning,
MSE updates in the background when the computer is otherwise idle and on top of all
MSE is free, free as in no money!

Sounds like a no brainer to me.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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Webroot Proven To Be Inadequate

2011-10-05T20:26:00.003-05:00

Finally it has happened! Webroot Antivirus and Webroot Spysweeper software is gone. How did that happen?

Webroot, the manufacturer himself says it is not good enough for you!

They, Webroot, launched a new system based on completely new, unproven technology. You can read details on the TechWorld blog. And it costs money, naturally.

If your computer still has Webroot's Antivirus and/or Spysweeper installed then quickly uninstall it and replace it with Microsoft Security Essentials. You can read here how to do that correctly.

MSE is free.
MSE speaks simple English language that everybody can understand.
MSE allows you to work on your computer while it scans, even on weak older computers.
MSE employs massively proven techniques.

Many people are not aware that Microsoft has many years of experience with combating malicious software. Okay, they had a rocky start but we are so long past these initial problems.

With first beginnings in 1997 many of MS's server customers have relied on Microsoft Forefront and these experiences have finally led to Microsoft Security Essentials.

As far as I know no other antivirus system ever had all of these advantages on it's side.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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Browser Toolbars - More Than a Nuisance

2011-10-05T19:43:00.008-05:00

The following applies generally to ALL tool bars, no matter how well known the name of the company is where the toolbar originates from. I chose the Yahoo! toolbar only because it is so pervasive and comes in many disguises.

Over and over again I find the nasty (at least!) Yahoo! Toolbar on customer's computers. When I ask the rhetorical question "Who installed that?" mostly I get sort of a blank stare and the reply "I have no idea".

And I trust that the customer really has no idea. But then, how did it happen? Two possibilities:

1st possibility:

You installed a new program or an update to a program you have been using for quite some time. These install processes usually ask a lot of tedious questions and we have gotten used to "clicking through", that is to quickly click on the button for the positive, confirming choice. We want to get done with this, don't we?

This "clicking though" is the culprit. Right in the middle of all these windows is one window that may look similar to this example:

As you can see the example is from an installation of PDF-Creator. And it asks us for permission to install the "pdfforge Toolbar". Only the text by the second preselected check box gives us a hint as to what toolbar this really is. "Set Yahoo! as my ..." gives it away, it's my friend the Yahoo! toolbar in one of it's many disguises!

Do you know a rat when you smell a rat?

This is a typical example of how we get tricked everywhere and all the time to do the wrong thing. We have "trained" ourselves to click through and the people out there know it and use it to our detriment - if we let them.

Take the time to really read and understand what these little windows say and act accordingly. The correct action here would be to uncheck the two check boxes by "I agree..." and "Set Yahoo!...". Simple enough one would think...

2nd possibility:

Just a few minutes ago I did some researching for a specific issue in the Thunderbird email program that many of my customers and I myself use. In a legitimate related article in the Thunderbird support materials was a link to Yahoo! Help. I followed that link and ended up with this (partial) window:

Do you really understand what Yahoo! offers here? We have to sort of translate the words "...Firefox for Yahoo!". Yahoo! does not have any real updates to Firefox; we get those only from Mozilla.

Yahoo! has a slightly modified version of Firefox that locks you into some Yahoo! services, especially their search engine. Once you have the Yahoo! version installed there is no way to get rid of the "Yahoo! Toolbar" and their "search enhancements" besides re-installing Firefox from a clean installer.

Do you know a rat when you smell a rat?

Here Yahoo! takes advantage of the fact that most people don't know enough about their computer and seemingly are afraid to ask before they click on stuff like this.

Why is all this important you ask?

Here you have it directly from the horses mouth:

Yahoo! Toolbar "Causes excessive CPU usage"

Ask.com Toolbar "May cause redirected searches, failed keyword searches and/or the "File not found" error..."

If you want it more technical see Mozilla's own list of problematic extensions for more similar goodies.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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What To Update?

2011-09-18T22:08:00.003-05:00

Revised September 18th 2011 and October 3rd.

All to often I hear from customers remarks like “There are always these reminders to update this or that but I am afraid to do something wrong so I always say NO”. I do understand the basic impulse behind this reaction; I always ask “Why didn’t you ask me?”. And that is where we usually have to leave it because I am at their home to do a job.

There is an easy answer to the title question: “Every program you use”. But I realize that this answer raises for most of my customers even more questions; it appears that is not a correct answer.

Here is an updated attempt to put together a list of programs that IMHO should always be kept up-to-date. Please respond with as many suggestions, critical remarks and questions as possible right here in the blog by using the Comment feature. I hope this list will grow and become a good point of reference for the ubiquitous question “What should I Update?”. The bolded words are a list of what you should keep up to date.

Windows itself and all other programs from Microsoft need to be kept up-to-date all the time. My experience shows over and over that the standard Windows feature called “Automatic Update” is not really dependable. On computers I have set up you will find a desktop icon for Windows Update or Microsoft Update. Although the background color will be different on your computer they look like this:

Windows XP Vista/7

When Automatic Updates has worked it may show you a small icon in the tray area (bottom right corner of the screen).

Windows XP Vista/7

When you rest your mouse cursor on one of these icons Windows will tell you for example that “Updates are ready for your computer. Click here to install them” or “Updates have been installed. Click here to restart”. Well, please do that; Windows is telling you that important security relevant changes have been made and you need to allow Windows to complete this process!

Any and all security programs like anti virus, adware- and spyware scanners and the like have to be kept up-to-date.

Your web browser, hopefully Firefox, has to be kept up-to-date. It should check for updates automatically but this sometimes just does not work. Firefox for example allows you in the Help menu in About Firefox to check for an eventual update like this:

Another important thing are Firefox add-ons (also called extensions), little programs that add functionality to the web browser like weather status, blocking of advertisements and color coding of dangerous web sites in Google search results. Currently I install three extensions: Adblock Plus (block advertisements from known commercial advertisement servers), Forecastfox (weather info) and Web Of Trust (warns of unreliable web sites in search results). Firefox may ask you to check for Updates for installed add-ons.

After you have done the check you may be told that there are updates available; allow these updates to be installed!

If it tells you that “No updates were found” just close the window.

Another slightly more detailed representation of Firefox Add-ons on my blog is here.

Java is a computer system independent programming language widely used on the Internet. It is almost as widely distributed as Adobe Reader.

All too often I find computers with terribly outdated Java installations; this is like playing Russian Roulette with a revolver that has five of six chambers loaded. Java mainly gets updated to fix security risks and there are many Java viruses out there that just wait for a computer with an older version of Java.

The newer versions of Java have an Auto-Updater that should check at least once every month for updates.You find the most current version Java on Filehippo.com.

If you get a Java update you are NOT done yet, sorry. Newer versions of Java since about one or two years will normally remove older versions but they can do that only in a limited fashion. You have to check manually that there are no older versions left on your computer!

In Control Panel click on Programs and Features (in XP click on Add/Remove Programs). In the resulting list look for any Java entry with a version number lower than the highest, that is the most recent one. If you find older Java entries highlight them and click on Uninstall (or Remove). Here is what is current per Sept. 19, 2011, example from Windows 7:

Naturally this will change with future updates or releases.

Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash and Adobe Shockwave are ubiquitous on the Internet and important to be kept up-to-date. Here is how you can check for updates yourself:

Adobe Reader: Help menu, Check for Updates will tell you...
The About Adobe Flash Player page has to be visited with every web browser that you use regularly.
Adobe Shockwave Player; when you see a version number in the graphics box then you have the most current version. If not then please update immediately!

Please see below the paragraph beginning with "For the technically inclined reader…".

If you use the Thunderbird email program it too needs to be kept up-to-date. In Thunderbird you can check for an eventual update in Help, About Thunderbird. You will see something like this:

For the technically inclined reader I recommend Secunia PSI, a free program that will tell you when ANY program you have installed needs to be updated.

Here is the list of the most important things that have to be kept up to date:

Windows (better: all Microsoft software)
Security programs
‏Firefox web browser
Firefox add-ons
Java
Adobe Reader
Adobe Flash
Adobe Shockwave
Thunderbird email client
Thunderbird add-ons

Please help to improve this list by making suggestions in comments.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Danger - Wild Parsnip

2011-09-13T16:11:00.001-05:00

Through a chain of emails from one concerned nurse to many others and so on finally to my wife I got a warning about Wild Parsnip, a non-native, invasive and poisonous plant that is appearing alarmingly fast and widespread now. I have seen lots of wild Parsnip along the roads here in the wider Hartford, WI area.

I want to pass this warning on to as many people as I possibly can. The original email read (some emphasis added and typos corrected):

I wanted to take a moment to write to you to tell you our county is now completely covered with wild parsnip plants and these plants are very dangerous. Unfortunately very few people know about them. I feel it is urgent that you be aware of these plants so that you may effectively treat your patients and also educate your community too.

Wild Parsnip causes phytophotodermatitis to the skin. When plant juices come in contact with the skin nothing happens but when this same skin is exposed to sunlight a rash with significant blistering can occur. The skin discoloration and sun sensitivity from this plant can last months, even years.

Please familiarize yourself with this plant as it truly has taken over our county and the accompanying burns will most likely be something you will be seeing more and more of in your practice.

In the beginning paragraph I have linked to Wild Parsnip on Wikipedia. Please read the paragraph titled Dangers.

And here are examples of what Wild Parsnip looks like:

"Harmless" little plant...

... with nice leaves and ...

... many of these plants by the roadside can actually look quite nice!

But the rash and the blisters show the plant's ugly side!

I hope many of you see this and take action when you see the plant! Thank you.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Dangerous Downloads - Even From Well-Known Sites

2011-09-09T07:37:00.000-05:00

Why didn't I have the idea to write about that earlier?

For the longest time I don't use cnet's Download.com web site anymore. Why? Because they force-feed a "download manager" program to your computer whose sole purpose seems to be to offer additional gunk like toolbars, search helpers and so on. Okay, I understand that cnet needs to make money but that is just too much, for me at least.

If you follow this blog you have seen me referring to TechSupportAlert before; this web site is for me the source for finding information about free software and that's the reason that I am subscribed to their newsletter. This newsletter in turn lead me to a very interesting blog I had not heard of before. The currently newest post there is titled "Dangerous Downloads on Legitimate Websites & Search Engines".

Using cnet's download.com web site in his example the author describes in great detail how easily unsuspecting and uncritical users can be mislead to install an unwanted download manager and then to download exactly the wrong program.

The example is quite extensive but IMHO it's more than worth to really read the details.

What is described in "Dangerous Downloads on Legitimate Websites & Search Engines" is generally but in slightly different form more or less applicable to many, many so called "download" web sites out there. Common sense and diligence in reading, really reading these web pages is called for. We are never too old to learn, aren't we?

Or be consequent and heed all warnings from WOT (Web Of Trust); you did install WOT in the meantime, didn't you? If not please read the article on Siteadvisor being incompatible with Firefox 5 and up on this blog.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

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Virus Check Any File

2011-09-01T20:42:00.001-05:00

Today a customer told me that she actually reads this blog and that she would like to see something about virus-checking any given file. Thank you Rose K. for reading this blog and for the suggestion.

I can think of many scenarios where you have a file, any kind of file, that you feel you better check for viruses before you "work" with it. And you may want something like a "majority vote" because just the other day you read in the newspaper that scary article saying that one anti virus program may not be enough to know "the truth".

As with increasingly many things around computers the Internet can help with a service that will allow you to upload any file up to a size of 20MB; this service then will submit your file to currently 40 (forty!) different anti-virus programs and give you the results.

This free service is called VirusTotal. Here is a partial screenshot of an example output:

When you click on the Show All button the list gets much, much longer.

In the Result column on the far right you see what every anti-virus program says about the file. No entry here means that the AV program does not qualify the file as containing a virus.

Yes, above mentioned newspaper article is technically correct, one vote is not enough to really matter. But when only 5 of 40 results mark the file as virus infected you can with some degree of reliability assume that these five positive results may be so called "false positives".

A word of warning: I can imagine that only a few AV programs mark a file as infected while the majority does not and the file actually contains a brand new virus that the majority of AV programs can not yet detect! Depending on the circumstances you may react super carefully rather than too trusting.

Again another good example that computer safety benefits from an open mind, common sense, a good measure of caution and careful consideration of all aspects of the given situation.

The only problem with common sense seems to be that it ain't that common..

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Atlantis Resort - A Five Star Disappointment!

2011-08-13T08:06:00.000-05:00

You find my experiences with the Atlantis Resort here.

Sorry for the additional click but this grew step by step; it is done now.

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Siteadvisor Incompatible With Firefox 5

2011-07-07T18:09:00.007-05:00

Currently I get many questions about McAfee Siteadvisor not working in Firefox.

If you have updated to Firefox 5.0 nobody can help you but McAfee; their Siteadvisor is not compatible with the new version of Firefox anymore.

An excellent example how a big company, here McAfee, ruins an originally outstanding utility and makes it unusable.

An IMHO decent replacement would be Web Of Trust, WOT for short. You can check out WOT here. Please read the descriptions first!

If you want to install WOT please uninstall/remove Siteadvisor first. Here is how:

Open the Control Panel
In XP open Add/Remove Programs, in Vista or Win 7 open Programs and Features
Find and highlight McAfee Siteadisor
In XP click Remove, in Vista or Win 7 click Uninstall

Then you can install WOT from within Firefox.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

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Wireless Disconnecting - Windows 7 64-bit mostly

2011-06-18T17:29:00.001-05:00

Several Windows 7 64-bit systems (laptop computers mainly) seem to loose their wireless network connection at varying and not specified times under varying circumstances.

Searching in Google and in Microsoft's support forum I found three different methods documented that seem to have done the trick for various people. I post these methods here in an attempt to give at least some help.

Method 1: Disable IEEE 802.1X authentication
To disable IEEE 802.1X authentication, follow these steps:

Click Start, type ncpa.cpl, and then hit Enter.
Right-click your wireless network connection and click Properties.
Click the Wireless Networks tab.
In Preferred networks, click your wireless network and click Properties.
Click the Authentication tab, click to clear the Enable IEEE 802.1X authentication for this network check box, and then click OK two times.

Method 2: Remove and re-create the wireless network connection
To remove and re-create the wireless network connection, follow these steps:

Click Start, type ncpa.cpl, and then hit Enter.
Right-click your wireless network connection and click Properties.
Click the Wireless Networks tab.
Under Preferred networks, click your wireless network and click Remove.
Click View Wireless Networks.
Under Network Tasks, click Refresh Network List.
Under Choose a wireless network, click the wireless network to which you want to connect and click Connect.

Method 3 requires to work within your router.
If you are not used to do that - frankly, you better call me.

But for those of you that are not faint of heart: Here it is, written for a D-Link 655 router. If you have a different router the same things may be called VERY differently; be cautious!

Un-check WMM (Wireless Multi Media)
Un-check Short GI (Guard Interval) and
Un-check Extra Wireless Protection.

Warning: These are methods that have helped other people with this problem to varying degrees. If you have a D-Link router I might actually try method #3 first.

Either way you apply any of these methods exclusively at your own risk. I did not have this problem and thus can not test any of the above.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Set-Up Job

2011-06-18T11:31:00.001-05:00

Every brand name computer you buy in a store or on the internet brings with it three areas of concern: Gunk software, missing updates and costly and questionable "security" software. I'll address these three concerns separately and then offer my suggestion to deal with these concerns before they become a problem.

1. Gunk software: Brand name computers come with some and sometimes a lot of "gunk" software pre-installed. You'll find anything from trial versions of programs that will cost additional money to outright spyware and even back door programs.

It goes without saying that this gunk should be removed before you even connect the computer for the first time to the internet.

I even consider programs like Microsoft's Internet Explorer and MS's email programs and Microsoft Office trial versions to be "gunk". By virtue of the very technology used TO WRITE them (called ActiveX) they will enable a large percentage of malicious software to be executed on your computer. Just by using alternative programs that were built without ActiveX technology you avoid all this malicious ActiveX software automatically.

Microsoft's Office is by now almost always a trial version; it will cost you additionally about $100 to $150 depending on where you buy the product key that you will need to use MS Office for more than 60 days.

There is a commercial program being offered to do this removing of gunk software but the computer manufacturers regularly modify what they pre-install and the names of what they install. Thus a program attempting the clean-up will almost always be outdated and work only incompletely. Or it will offer you a list of installed non-Microsoft programs and ask for your decision on what to remove; and you bought the program because you don't know that in the first place!

2. Missing Updates: The brand name computer you buy was designed and originally configured months ago, sometimes many months ago. For good reasons software companies like Microsoft, Adobe and others regularly release security relevant updates. Microsoft does that on a monthly schedule, others do it when required.

All these mandatory updates from when your computer model was designed until when you bought it are missing. That mostly is a lot to download and install. These downloads should be done in a safe environment to protect the machine from eventual hack attacks before all required updates are installed.

3. "Security" Software: All of the commonly pre-installed anti virus programs or "security systems" will in the future cost additional money. Some are considerable, clearly perceivable heavy workloads making your computer slow; see this article for real life experiences with security suites slowing down perfectly well working computers.

Some others are not always working correctly and/or proving their questionable quality by not un-installing correctly or quietly stopping to work altogether.

After seemingly error-free uninstalling of some security suites I have found that they left sometimes parts of their software still running. Due to the nature of what these programs have to do these left-over drivers and orphaned processes can wreak havoc.

This clearly calls for a knowledgeable human doing the uninstallation and the checking for left-overs.

My Solution: I offer a set-up job for new brand-name computers; I even offer a fixed price if I can do it my house because I can overlap some of the time with answering my emails and other activities.
This set-up job includes:

De-gunking the computer (manually and completely removing unwanted, potentially risky and trial software)
Updating the operating system and all other software in a safe environment
Installing and updating security software (currently Microsoft Security Essentials)
Installing Mozilla's Firefox web browser, currently my choice as alternate web browser
Installing Mozilla's Thunderbird email client if so desired.
Installing Libre Office (Microsoft file compatible office software)
Installing Google Earth
Installing Picasa (photo management and editing program)
Installing a virtual PDF printer (creates PDF files from anything you can print! You don't want to email a job application as a Word document that anybody could modify!)
Installing an easy to use screen shot program (so you can send me the pesky error message that is bugging you)
Installing a remote control program that enables me to give you remote support

All above mentioned software is of excellent quality, officially FREE for home use and guaranteed to be free of advertisements and spyware.

Should you be interested please send a personal email to ejheinze_at_gmail_dot_com; thank you.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

LibreOffice - What Is It - Installed Correctly

2011-06-07T22:42:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time there was an office software suite called OpenOffice, worldwide free (as in no money!) and used in many European and third world countries. OpenOffice was an OSS system. The technical infrastructure (server computers, storage space a.s.o.) for this sizeable project was mainly supported by Sun Microsystems, a now defunct computer manufacturer. Then the software behemoth Oracle Corp. bought Sun and got OpenOffice as an Easter egg with the whole basket. They, Oracle, imposed some fees and apparently a whole lot of red tape and typical "big company" overhead which did not sit well with many of the major developers, that is the programmers who mostly as volunteers wrote the code and did all the nitty-gritty detail work.

Quote from another blog:

"Oracle's imposition of fees for some OpenOffice capabilities caused some of the venerable open source office suite's creators to head out on their own and create LibreOffice as a truly free OSS tool."

So the developers of OpenOffice spoke, parted from Oracle's realm and alas, we had LibreOffice.

Basically LibreOffice is almost exactly the same as OpenOffice, only better. Better because it can read files from Microsoft Works and Word Perfect and handle SVG graphics files.

There are two major differences:

OpenOffice came with an always outdated Java version and LibreOffice requires a Java environment already installed on the computer. If I have set up your computer that is covered. If I did not set up your computer you need to install the most current version of Java and remove all older versions.
OpenOffice came with Help files integrated in one huge download, LibreOffice comes in two files; you need both.

There are a few things you ought to know if you want to install LibreOffice.

Install or update to the latest version of Java (as of July 2011 version 6 update 26 is current).
Remove (un-install) all eventually still existing older versions of Java.
Remove (un-install) OpenOffice - if it was on your computer at all.
Download LibreOffice from this web page. As of end of July 2011 the current stable version id 3.4.2. You need two files:
1. LibO_3.4.2_Win_x86_install_multi.exe, the LibreOffice installer program.
  Caution: This is a 214MB download!
2. LibO_3.42_Win_x86_helppack_en-US.exe, the installer for the Help package.
3. Above version numbers will be different for future versions!

Some important installation instructions (not meant to be comprehensive!):

Install LibreOffice itself by running the installer in file LibO_x.x.x_Win_x86_install_multi.exe.

For everything here not explicitly mentioned you can accept the default values/selections.

When you are being asked to select the type of installation please select Custom:

You will have to de-select the following features:
In Optional Components the Python-UNO Bridge:

In LibreOffice Program Modules de-select Draw, Base and Math; it should look like this:

Then select all three Microsoft Office modules:

Install the Help package by running the installer in file LibO_x.x.x_Win_x86_helppack_en-US.exe.

With these hints you should be able to install LibreOffice with the ability to open and write Microsoft Office Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. If you prefer to have me do the installation then please download both files that I mentioned above, I can do the rest remotely.

After the installation you will find two folders named "LibreOffice 3.x (random) Installation Files" and "LibreOffice 3.3 Help Pack (English) (random) Installation Files" on your desktop. Please delete these two folders.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Windows 7 - Everything Else Is FREE

2011-05-30T18:38:00.001-05:00

I read a two part article series on the WindowsSecrets blog written buy Woody Leonhard. If you follow my blog you have read about WindowsSecrets before. I like the skinny of these two articles so much that I "stole" their text from the second part of the article to post it here, with some textual changes and additions to enhance the readability and understanding by non-geeks, IMHO at least.

Most if not all of the software that stores will try to sell you when you buy a new computer does not need to cost any additional money. But since stores and dealers live from selling you something they will try - and sometimes really hard. The most often applied method to up-sell an unsuspecting not-too-PC-literate customer is good old FUD, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. The sales guys in some stores can scare the daylights out of you just to get you to buy some additional software.

The kicker is that if you steadfastly refuse these software add-ons they sometimes even will throw it in the bag anyway "because it's free"; stuff they five minutes ago wanted to charge you for! If my customers got any antivirus program in this manner I always tell them to give it as a gift to their best enemy.

If you buy a new PC with Windows7 Home Premium pre-installed then there is hardly anything else you need to pay money for besides your fast Internet connection.

Let me go into a few more details for the most commonly offered add-on packages. This first part is from the WindowsSecrets blog with some textual additions.

Antivirus: Microsoft Security Essentials is free and works for the average PC-user just as good as commercial products and often even better.

It runs totally unobtrusive in the background and it's work load balancing is so good that even on weaker older computers you hardly ever will recognize that it is running.

Even while it is scanning your machine you can still work with your computer; I don't know any other antivirus program that does that in such a graceful way.

And if it has to "talk" to you it speaks in clear, simple English; you don't need a college degree to understand what it's telling you.

Backup programs: Windows 7 backup isn't particularly neat or fancy, but it covers the bases automatically and (almost always) works well.

I strongly recommend to invest a little bit of time to learn the ins and outs; it's all right there in the Windows 7 Help and Support displays.

And I strongly recommend to buy an external disk drive to keep the backups outside of the computer. A backup on the C: drive is no backup at all, at best it's a fig leaf.

Defragmenters: Windows 7 defragments your drives automatically (once a week by default), and you don't need to lift a finger or spend a penny. But you can set it to your liking, like have it defragment daily at a certain time - or only manually started. The latter then very soon gets forgotten anyway.

Disk Partitioning: Windows 7 does all you'll need!
No, Windows 7 doesn't have a full-fledged disk-partition manager. But it does everything with partitions that most people need (if you need it at all!) -- and it gets the job done without messing up your hard drive. Which is more than I can say for some third-party disk-partition managers.

Where is Windows 7's partition manager you ask? In an administrator account, click Start and in the Search box type "Administrative Tools", without the quotes naturally. In the resulting window double-click Computer Management. In the left panel, under Storage, click Disk Management.

You will see all your disk drives and the partitions on the disk drives.

Again, I strongly recommend to invest a little bit of time to learn the ins and outs; it's all right there in the Windows 7 Help and Support displays.

Registry Cleaners: Some do more harm than good.

I have never seen a real-world example of a Windows 7 machine that improved in any perceivable way after running a registry cleaner. Registry cleaners and Defragmenters may have been useful for Windows XP (before SP 2) and certainly were a good thing for Windows 98 and ME as long as these programs worked correctly - what sometimes they did not. With Windows 7 I think they're useless, if not worse than useless.

In my experience, working with hundreds of Windows 7 machines, I have never found a single Registry cleaner that caused any perceivable change in performance. The Registry is an enormous database, and all this cleaning really doesn't amount to much. It is like sweeping out one parking space in a parking lot the size of Texas.

Even Microsoft has abandoned its Registry cleaners. E.g. Windows Live OneCare (precursor to Microsoft Security Essentials) once included an online scanner and Registry cleaner.
(Disclaimer: I can not confirm this claim but usually Woody Leonhard is a dependable source of such information.)

Windows 7's Firewall works only one way, that is inbound.

Like its predecessors, the Windows 7 firewall only keeps outside threats from getting in — it is an inbound firewall. Outbound firewalls alert you when an unauthorized program attempts to send data out of your computer. At least that's the theory. In practice, many outbound firewalls bother you mercilessly with inscrutable warnings saying that obscure processes are trying to send out data.

If you simply click through and let the program phone home, you're defeating the purpose of the outbound firewall. On the other hand, if you take the time to track down every single outbound event warning, you might spend half your life chasing firewall snipes.

Some people think an inbound-only firewall is woefully inadequate. I think it's good enough for almost everybody. It certainly is big time good enough for the computers in my household.

It's surprising how much old advice isn't valid any more!

So much for the part that was inspired by and partly copied from WindowsSecrets. Let me add a few categories that are not part of MS Windows.

Office software: Almost all new brand name computers I have seen over the last 6 or 7 years came with some Microsoft Office package pre-installed.

When you just start to use these programs they will work for 30 or even 60 days. After that point in time you will have to buy a license from Microsoft or your favorite computer store. Depending on the version of MS Office the sales clerk talks you into that is anything between $100 and $300. Ka-ching says the cash register and sales guys in the store smile.

You don't need to pay for this! There are at least three packages with office programs around that will not cost you a single penny! They can read and write files in the commonly used Microsoft formats, at least for texts, spreadsheets and presentations.

Currently I favor LibreOffice; it covers 99% to 100% of what the average home user ever uses or needs; only in very "tricky" formatted text or spreadsheet files you will find some features that maybe are not 100% compatible; in this case the Help forum mostly has a workaround.

A category by itself: Google Earth just because it is such a great toy. Whether you want to check out a new vacation location before you book or just see the Kremlin or Tiananmen Square from the birds eye view, it is worth trying it. Even on average decent basic computers like I recommend to my customers it works very well; the speed of the Internet connection is much more important.

Photo Management and Editing: For the average home user Google's program Picasa IMHO is unbeatable. just watch it finding and removing the red rabbit eyes from the photos of your loved ones. And that for FREE! You can build albums with it, publish photos to the internet so the family members on the other side of the planet can see them and, and, and…

Web browser: If you are my customer or listen to me on WTKM then you know that I strongly favor Mozilla's Firefox web browser. Although quality and security wise Google's Chrome browser is a very serious contender as well.

Email Client: If you are my customer or listen to me on WTKM then you know that I strongly favor Mozilla's Thunderbird email client. I don't even know whether there is another alternative still around.

Should you require any other software and don't know where to begin to look for it, I will gladly help. For much if not most of what you may want to do on your computer there likely is a free solution available.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Help Requests - Correct, Complete And Courteous Please

2011-05-28T22:14:00.004-05:00

Just about a week ago an email conversation with an acquaintance and customer of mine went totally, horribly wrong. On first impulse I wanted to completely post the email exchange with my background thoughts added but all names except mine and all locations neutralized. My dear wife convinced me not to do that but rather try to explain why I asked the questions I asked. All this appears to be sufficiently important (to me at least!) to put it in a generalized form and to publish it here.

I need to write something that truthfully and forcefully makes it clear beyond excuses, cop-outs and exceptions why I do request certain information. I have to get this across in a way that “hits home” with the vast majority of my customers; if I can't get this done I am going to burn out.

Here we go:

I receive many, many emails from customers with questions about technical issues and so far I believe not a single email has remained unanswered, either by an email reply or a phone call. And please consider that my email advice is a free service!

Please remember, I do not retain any personal information about my customers! No phone numbers, no address information and no information about their computer configuration. Why you ask? Simply because I need to avoid any risk of eventually being accused of “leaking” any of that to someone who is not entitled to this info and may misuse it.

From my side I see these emails with support questions as business communications, not personal ones. What I would expect in business communications is at least proper identification and contact info, that is the sender's full name, phone number and eventually address info. An example: A sending email address like risibisibear@isp.com signed with John is NOT correct identification. “risibisibear” does not resemble any name I know and I know at least twenty gentlemen named John.

And I ask to please include that information in every email you send to me or I have to go on a wild goose chase, either scrolling and scrolling through a long thread or even read through potentially many old emails from that customer to find that info. Frankly, I don't have the time to chase this sort of wild geese. If this info is missing most likely you will get a standard reply asking for the missing info.
In this context I point you to one of the IMHO better web sites about Netiquette (etiquette on the Internet), especially the pages about email etiquette.

Every week I see many customers and I get many support questions via email. If I were to remember all technical and environmental details of all the many installations I have seen there wouldn’t be space left for anything else in my scatterbrain. And if I had to hunt down contact information every time I get a request from a customer there wouldn't be any time left to do actual customer visits.

Please include technical info on what you are asking about; that includes all technical details, like what operating system you use, what program you are asking about, the version number and so on. Simply give as much detail as humanly possible if you want fast and good answers. These details can be (but are by no means limited to)

     - a screen shot instead of re-typing lengthy messages
     - tell me what program you are using
     - what you were attempting to do or achieve
     - please spell names correctly
     - please use the reply button; this leaves the context in a longer conversation so I don't need to go on a wild goose chase to establish the context again
     - if your question is about emails please tell me whether you “do” emails in a web browser and which one it is or in an email client like Thunderbird or Outlook.

Did you see my request to please send a screen shot? If that seems too difficult please read this article on my blog for more details; thank you.

Should you send your email from another than your own email account then please tell me so. I don't care for your reasons to do so but I do care about correctly addressing my reply!

PLEASE remember above explanations and understand that I need to insist on everybody's cooperation. I do not want to get forced into a situation where I would have to charge for this service; that really is the last thing I want to do!

Lastly I want to quote two snippets of text from this article on the NetManners blog:

"Simply because one is the “customer” certainly doesn’t give them permission to e-mail without any details, courtesy or proper e-mail etiquette."
"… when you e-mail with courtesy, details and clarity, you can bet the other side will value your business and go out of their way … to promptly answer your requests with the same! "

Am I asking too much? Frankly, I don’t think so.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Backup - My Final (?) Words

2011-05-13T22:03:00.001-05:00

Here a quickie, I've got to run.

Okay, the skinny is that at least for Windows 7 and to some extent for Windows Vista users there is no longer any excuse not to have a backup and a Repair Disk if something serious happens.

Please read this article on the Windows Secrets web site. Most of it is applicable to Vista as well.

And if you are still on Windows XP. all I can say is PLEASE, your system is at least about 5 years old.

You should upgrade to a Windows 7 computer rather now than later!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Password Too Simple - What to Do About It

2011-04-30T21:28:00.001-05:00

Very recently a customer of mine asked me for help because a lot of obvious spam emails were sent from his Yahoo email account.

First we ensured that his computer was clean, that is that there was no virus software or the like running. We found and removed a few remnants of apparently earlier removed malware but nothing showed up currently running. I wanted to know more about where the emails truly came from and with help from a tech forum we established Guam as the geographical source.

And with help from the forum I realized that I had failed to give my customer the most obvious advice, that is to change his Yahoo password. LK, I apologize again for this dumb failure. Once the customer had changed the password the emails stopped immediately.

This proved beyond a doubt that his password had been guessed. This in turn reminded me of questions about passwords that I permanently discuss with my customers.

Tonight I stumbled over an article titled "The Usability of Passwords" that discusses password usability and security in depth but in understandable form and language. The latter truly is a positive exception.

In the future I will base recommendations about passwords on this article; it is the first time that I found anything written about passwords with respect of usability and security. Many other discussions in this area focus on technical aspects of security only and all too often ignore that a really secure password like 5rF#2kLn7@ simply is impossible to fully remember and type correctly.

Passwords are meant to secure and/or guarantee the privacy of our communications and data; correct? In this context I have to admit that the mentioning of Yahoo and/or Hotmail together with "privacy" always makes me cringe; "cringe" because I don't want to laugh deridingly about a customer who uses Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, Earthlink, Gmail or any other email service that leaves the mails on the ISP's servers. Why do I cringe? Read this article about data mining on Yahoo and this one about privacy on Hotmail as examples.

If all the articles I linked to here are too much reading that's fine. But please read and heed at least the article titled "The Usability of Passwords".

Thank you.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Words on Printing

2011-04-26T08:23:00.001-05:00

Considering the enormous troubles and cost of printing associated with commonly offered ink-jet printers here in condensed form my take on the average bunch of low cost ink-jet printers.

A few things to keep in mind:

Printer manufacturers don't make money on the printer, they make oodles of money in the ink. Printer ink is said to be the most expensive liquid in the world with up to $35,000.- for a gallon.
Most pictures printed on ink-jet printers will fade after only a few years.
Printing pictures on ink-jet printers is extremely expensive because it uses lots of the expensive ink to have good coverage.
Many ink-jet printers can print pictures only in one format, 4x6 for example.
Printing pictures on ink-jet printers is mostly very slow.
Dried out ink cartridges or clogged nozzles are a major problem for many ink-jet printers that are not being used regularly on a daily basis.

My recommendations for "normal" household usage is twofold:

Photos:
Edit the photo to be what you want it to look like (cropping, color correction and so on).
Copy the file to a USB drive (at the time of writing $6.- and up at Walmart).
Take the USB drive to Walmart, Walgreens, Sam's Club or the like and print your pictures on the machines there.
Better quality and all in all much less money - but admittedly not quite as "convenient".
Text:
Drop the dream of color and print your text in black on white.
Excellent quality b/w laser printers can be had at the time of writing from $60.- and up.

IMHO the biggest advantage of laser printers: They can not dry out! And on top of that the cost per printed page is a fraction of what it is with ink-jet printers.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

ComboFix Or Not To ComboFix

2011-04-21T20:43:00.001-05:00

Once more a question from a customer gives me a hopefully good idea for an article. This is what the customer wrote:

We had a family get together last weekend, and during a computer conversation, our one son-in-law said he has this great anti virus software on his computer. This week he sent me the name, with instructions for downloading.

The name is ComboFix, on Bleeping Computer.com website.

I have Microsoft Security Essentials on my computer. Isn't this ComboFix just another piece of anti virus software? Why would I want two like programs running?

I have done nothing, and won't until I hear from you.

Here is my reply: (Begin quote)

[Customer's name],
Good question, Thank you and congratulations on the wise choice to ask first!

Yes, no doubt, Combofix is a good and VERY powerful program. In this power lie the pits waiting for a normal user to fall into.

Just read the first few paragraphs of the instructions "How to use ComboFix" on Bleepingcomputer.com (this is the only legitimate web site to download this program from).
I have added red color to the important parts that your son-in-law IMHO might not fully understand in all consequences.

ComboFix is a program, created by sUBs, that scans your computer for known malware, and when found, attempts to clean these infections automatically. In addition to being able to remove a large amount of the most common and current malware, ComboFix also displays a report that can be used by trained helpers to remove malware that is not automatically removed by the program. . . .You should not run ComboFix unless you are specifically asked to by a helper. Also, due to the power of this tool it is strongly advised that you do not attempt to act upon any of the information displayed by ComboFix without supervision from someone who has been properly trained. If you do so, it may lead to problems with the normal functionality of your computer.
. . . .
Please note that this guide is the only authorized guide for the use of ComboFix . . . . It is also understood that the use of ComboFix is done at your own risk.

Let me summarize:

It can detect but sometimes NOT automatically remove some malicious software.
You run it at your own risk if you use it on your own.
The information it displays is for trained people, NOT for the casual home user!
If you run into problems there is NOBODY who might be able and willing to help you!

If your son-in-law is a trained helper than he does well; if he is a "normal" self-taught user he will create problems for himself down the road.

Since you asked here my advice to you:

Don't touch it!

Again, thanks for asking this question. This is so intriguing that I might make an article for my blog out of this.

(End quote)

And now a few additional remarks:

Some things I did not mention in my reply:

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a full fledged anti virus program that is always running and continuously monitoring ALL file operations (and much more) during normal operations of the computer.

ComboFix is an on-demand scanner that DOES NOT RUN continuously scanning file operations.

Just having ComboFix sitting on the computer and occasionally running it can IN NO WAY be compared let alone equaled to the workings of a "real" anti virus program. It is beyond my understanding how someone can assume that to be sufficient protection.

ComboFix gets updated fairly often; it has NO provisions at all to dynamically download new virus definitions or the like when it is being run. You would have to download it every time you want to run it just to have the latest and greatest version. That is a far cry from a dependably self-updating program like MSE.

The people that maintain BleepingComputer.com know what they are doing; I depend since many years on their evaluations and advice. To ignore the clear warnings and instructions in the short quotes above IMHO is blatantly foolish and ignorant. Dear unknown son-in-law, I apologize for eventually hurting your feelings but that's how I see it.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Phishing Revealed In Detail

2011-04-19T22:41:00.001-05:00

Here is an outstanding article on how to spot a phishing email. Although taken from real life this example naturally does not cover exactly what you may encounter. But the principal method to spot phishing emails is always the same, simply be observant and use common sense.

Yes, I know, the problem with common sense is that it is not all that common . . .

I suggest you stop reading when you reach the header line "The Attachment" unless you want to learn the geeky stuff. This has several reasons:

When you already suspect an email to be phony than still downloading an attachment would be outright dumb and suicidal. Pardon my French.
I REALLY don't want you to even try to download a suspect attachment! Way too many virus infections happen this way.
After the discussion of the attachment it gets very quickly very technical.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

How A Rogue Program Gets On Your Computer

2011-04-07T06:40:00.001-05:00

Folks, this is really important because rather sooner than later your computer will get nailed! if you don't know what to look out for, here is an excellent example to learn from.

I am a (paying!) subscriber of the Windows Secrets newsletter. The latest issue begins with an article on LizaMoon, the newest mass threat from the internet. The article begins with these words:

A nasty piece of malware known as LizaMoon has hijacked links on millions of websites in the past weeks, including some normally safe iTunes and Google links.

The author describes in detail what happened and that he had to deliberately co-operate four times(!) for the real infection with that rogue program to take hold on his computer.

I highly recommend the article to all who read this!

If you want to know how to avoid LizaMoon (or other rogue programs) if it shows up on your computer reading this above mentioned article is a must!

Now that you know how to spot this sort of thing you want to know how to combat it? Firstly, know how to close these kind of program windows without giving them a chance to interpret your action as an invitation. This kind of infection needs your cooperation and at least one click on the "wrong" link or button. Please read this article here in this blog for more information. One of several methods to "kill" these attacks is detailed after the heading "How do I stop the attack that just started?" towards the end of the article.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Recovery Disks vs. Repair Disk

2011-02-25T02:06:00.007-06:00

Recently I got this question from a customer:

I got a message saying you need to create System Recovery Discs. Is this necessary with all the changes you did to our new computer?

Please be aware of the difference between a Repair Disk and System Recovery (or System Restore) Disks. Some programs that can write System Recovery Disks can also write System Repair Disks.

Repair Disks are operating system specific and can help to repair an operating system that does not boot anymore. They got introduced with Windows Vista.

Vista and Windows 7 can create Repair Disks natively, that is without additional software.

Recovery Disks (or Restore Disks) can restore a computer system completely to the exact state it was in when the Recovery Disks were created. On Windows 7 no special software is needed to create Recovery Disks. Many manufacturers now supply such software under various names pre-installed with their systems.

But BEWARE: Many manufacturer programs will give you "Recovery Disks" that will recover the computer to the original, factory installed state. And trust me, you don't want to go back there and as a consequence loose all updates, additionally installed programs and personalized settings. And with one wrong selection you could loose ALL your data files as well!

In their own documentation Microsoft does not always clearly distinguish between system Repair and system Recovery (or Restore). Beware of the ensuing confusion.

There is a fairly good explanation of the term "Recovery Disk" on Wikipedia. Only the sentence "OEM supplied recovery media is commonly shipped with most computers" is not correct any longer. Since the introduction of Windows Vista in late 2006 I see on new Vista and Win7 computers only software installed to create such disks; generally there are no disks being supplied any more. And any manufacturer supplied recovery disk will very likely restore your computer to it's original state; see the paragraph above that begins with "But Beware".

After an eventual catastrophic event System Recovery Disks allow you to completely recover the system to exactly the state it was in at the moment the Recovery Disks were made, including all your programs and data. You need several DVDs for one set of Recovery Disks so you should buy at least 5 or 10 recordable DVDs, NOT CDs! Naturally your computer needs to be equipped with a DVD writer to be able to create the recovery disks.

IMHO it is always advised to make System Recovery Disks, not even only once after a new computer has been set up but after every major change or update.

And it is advised as well to create a System Repair disk; this needs to be done only once. If you did not do it or if this function got left out by the manufacturer of your system then I can help; I have a complete set of Repair Disks for Vista and Windows 7 in their 32-bit and 64-bit variants.

After you have made the first set of Recovery Disks the reminder message mentioned in my customer's email will not come up anymore but the software should still be on your computer in the All Programs menu.

In the past I have seen that some manufacturer in their eternal wisdom choose to remove the software after the first set of disks was created. Should that happen on your machine don't despair, there is other free software available that can write Recovery disks. Repair disks can be downloaded from Microsoft.

If you got confused by the above please don't despair. The Windows Secrets blog has a completely different way to describe the same theme while talking about all these options quite differently.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Firefox Does Not Show Adobe PDF Files

2011-02-22T20:45:00.003-06:00

Recently I get many calls because PDF files don't show correctly in Firefox.

This is a known incompatibility between late versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader and Firefox. Here is what to do about it:

First you have to make sure you have Adobe Reader version X running. By the way, the X stands for the Roman numeral 10. As of this writing Adobe Reader's most current version is 10.0.1. You find the version number by opening Adobe Reader, clicking Help, About Adobe Reader. The version number is in the bottom left corner of the About window.

If you are on anything older than Acrobat Reader version 10 you should first download the latest version from a safe and fast download location for Adobe Reader like this one here. After the download you have to run the downloaded installer (or setup) program.

After the installation is done you have to do a simple setting in Firefox to avoid problems. In Firefox:

Click Tools, Options, Applications.
In the Options window:
-   Find all entries for "Adobe Acrobat..." with a PDF icon (below marked red).
For every entry:
-   on the right side click on the entry and then on the drop down arrow (below marked blue)
-   and select "Use Adobe Reader (default)", below marked pink.
Click OK and all should be fine.

The Options window should look like this:

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Manual Upgrade for Microsoft Security Essentials

2011-01-26T13:35:00.001-06:00

Recently some customers had problems upgrading Microsoft Security Essentials to the new version 2.

If your firewall is turned ON you can do that yourself:

Go to this Microsoft web page.
Click Download and choose the version of MSE that is correct for your OS.
Open Control Panel.
In Vista/7 open Programs and Features,
in XP open Add/Remove Programs.
Uninstall (or Remove) Microsoft Security Essentials.
Restart the computer.
Run the installer program you downloaded in step #2 and follow the prompts.

Everything should be okay again.

You will loose the desktop icon for MSE; the new version does not have it anymore.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

To Save or Not to Save – an Older Notebook

2011-01-13T21:54:00.001-06:00

An acquaintance sent me the following email that touches on the important issue whether it is feasible or sensible to fix and update an older computer. After I had written my reply I thought this might be of interest to more people and I got the gentleman’s permission to use his email and my response publicly. Here are his email and my response as he got it, only names were removed and minor editing for readability was done, no changes were made to the content:

Hi Eike,

I was recently working on a laptop (which I received with XP Service Pack 1).
After updating everything, I noticed that the hard drive was partitioned to a C and D drive. The D drive (recovery partition) was at about 38GB (of which less than 2GB was being used) and the C drive had about 13GB (about half of which was being used). Is there any free utility that you could recommend that would reallocate some of the D drive and put it into the C drive? Is this a difficult or dangerous thing to do?

I would appreciate any comments you might have.

Loved the new blogs today.

[Signed]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dear [friend],
Thanks for reading my blog.

To your questions: Yes, no and YES!

The recovery partition is established by the manufacturer and usually replaces the OS installation CD that we got with computers a very long time ago. I would get the answers to some questions first.

What is in the used space on the D drive?

What manufacturer and model is the laptop in question?

When was it bought?

What is the size of the disk drive in Disk Manager (Administrative Tools)?

How much memory (RAM) is in the machine?

How fast (or slow?) is the CPU?

Yes, the free utility for that purpose is EASUS Partition Master Home Edition.
No, it is not at all difficult to do; I did learn it...

YES, it can be potentially very dangerous. If D: is a restore partition any change could "kill" the restore feature. But my guess is that D: contains My Documents or some other data; that can be relocated to C:

On another note: Who would want to keep a restore partition around that would restore to a WAAAY outdated state of XP? Not me.

Here is what I recommend:

When the system is clean (NO malware of any kind!) backup eventual data from D:

Download HD-Tune version 2.55 from here.

Install and run HD-Tune.

Does the disk drive in the Health tab show yellow or red line(s)?

If Yes to #4 toss the whole thing on the big pile and get a Starbucks; it's not worth the pain!

Create Restore CD #1, not a recovery CD; just in case as a fallback option.
Here is one recipe how to do that.

Install Easus Partition Master.

Wipe D:

Enlarge C: to occupy the whole drive.

Create Restore CD #2; just in case as a fallback option.
#1 from step 6 gets tossed!

Upgrade to SP3!!!!
If Windows Update does not want to do it, I have the CDs.

Download and install all updates until it tells you "No more updates available".

Create Restore CD #3; this is the "good one" you want to keep!
#2 from step 13 gets tossed!

Ready to go.

Depending on what kind of disk drive is in there (speed and cache size), how fast the CPU is, how much memory (!!!) the box has and how fast the Internet connection is I roughly estimate the whole procedure to be anything between eight and twelve hours!

Is it worth it? Maybe as a learning experience if there is nothing else to do; I would rather have a play day with my grandchildren. In the end you still will have an older, relatively lame notebook.

I hope this helps. Do you mind to please keep me posted? Thanks.

BTW, I just thought that this would be a good "Case From Real Life" for my blog. May I please use the text from your email and this reply for that purpose? Naturally it will all be anonymous!

Oops, I just realized that you said "... after updating everything ..."; if that includes SP3 and Windows update please ignore #14 and #15; sorry.

Please don't blame me for the long reply, you asked for my suggestions...
Regards
Eike

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cleaning up, upgrading and updating an older computer can require substantial time – which for my customers translates directly to money.

I always attempt to explain that as of a certain point it might just not be prudent to spend money for fixing an older computer. As you can see my guesstimate for what he wants to do gets us to a (minimal) price of around $450.

For $450 you can buy really decent basic brand new notebook computers with MUCH more memory, much more disk and computing capacity than the older machine AND Windows 7 pre-installed.

That’s why I would not even attempt to do this job!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

RAM – Neither Truck Nor Animal

2011-01-12T07:13:00.001-06:00

On Windows Guides I found a fairly easy to understand article about RAM (Random Access Memory), the work space in our computers.

If you are interested in more you find this article here.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Back Up – Foster Child of Home Computing

2011-01-12T07:06:00.004-06:00

Please be honest, do you have a back up of your data? See, I thought so.
But finally you have bought the external disk drive for back-ups that “your” Geek always talked about. The next questions regularly asked are
- “What do I need to back up?” and
- ”What program should I use to make my back up?”
Here is my attempt at an answer. For simplicity’s sake I restrict myself to examples for Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Why that latter restriction? Vista was released over about three months at the end of 2006 and beginning of 2007. That in turn means if you are still using Windows XP your computer is at least four years old but very likely five years or older. After five years you should be thinking seriously about a new machine anyway.
Here is my answer to the question what to backup.

Documents: You should backup your entire Documents folder every time you backup.

The path is “C:\Users\<username>\My Documents”.
The path is “C:\Users\<username>\App Data”.
Actually this should be a no-brainer.

Music: If you’ve paid money for music or spent countless hours downloading music you probably don’t want to lose these files.
If you use iTunes make sure to backup your iTunes folder; usually it’s inside the Music folder – but better check it, I have seen wildly different locations.

The path is “C:\Users\<username>\My Music”.

Desktop Email: If you’re using Thunderbird you will backup everything as part of the Application Settings; see the next paragraph. Should you (against my advice) be using Outlook Express (outdated!), Outlook or Windows Live Mail, make absolutely certain that you back up their files! Here’s how to find the files of these applications. Please don’t ask me by email about backing up email other than Thunderbird, I do not support using anything but Thunderbird.
If you have serious reasons to stick with any MS email programs I will naturally be happy to help you on site to set up the back up of these important files.

Application Settings: Within every User’s folders is a normally hidden folder AppData. It’s sub folders contain the settings for each and every (well behaved!) application you have installed. These settings can be restored from a backup.

The path is “C:\Users\<username>\App Data”.

Bookmarks: If you follow my strong recommendation and use Mozilla Firefox you have done what is needed by backing up Application Settings; you can ignore this. If you insist on using Internet Explorer your Favorites are in
“C:\Users\<username>\Fovorites”.

For other browsers I will naturally be happy to help you on site to set up the back up of your bookmarks.

Here is my answer to the question what program to use.

I am very wary of ANY back up program that comes in a bundle from the manufacturer of your external disk drive. Too many of these programs back up in formats specific to these programs, they may compress your data in a proprietary format or even encrypt your data. All these techniques have their proponents but I prefer to simply copy your data. This way the files are accessible with normal means and on any system that can read your external disk drive. You should never require any special software to access your files in a backup.

Likewise I am wary of using Windows Vista and Windows 7 built-in backup programs. I don’t fully trust Microsoft to keep in all future a program around that can read the back up we create today with a Vista or 7 specific program! Having said that I have to admit that especially since Windows 7 the built-in backup features seem to do their job dependably; they are fairly easy to set up and definitely better than no backup at all.

Currently I recommend Cobian Backup, a free backup program that runs on any Windows system since XP and newer and can just copy your files in nicely named and time stamped folders. Cobian’s documentation is a good primer on the ins ad outs of backup.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Malicious Software - Definitions

2011-01-10T08:59:00.000-06:00

Personally I do not assign a lot of importance to differentiate the many kinds of malicious software I encounter almost every day. I take the general approach “It is malicious and we don’t want it on your computer; remove it.”

But sometimes customers ask if it was a virus or a worm and I find it hard to explain the difference in terms accessible to a lay person.

I my web travels I found Squidoo and on Squidoo I found some hopefully useful definitions; I felt I had to mostly copy the definitions and use them as boilerplate for my own text because the same site recommends commercial anti virus and security software that I tell my customers NOT to use.

Rogue Security Software
Currently this class of malware is an outright epidemic. Rogue software is a form of malware that manipulates and scares people into buying a so called “full version” of fake applications, mostly supposed virus removal software. Rogue software displays bogus scan reports and alerts to trick the user into paying good money to the crook who got the rogue program on your computer. In the process of paying you give your credit card information directly to the crook as well! These rogue programs can take over the whole computer system to prevent their removal and in most cases block other applications including legitimate anti-malware programs from running. Some rogue programs are relatively easy to remove but some use stealth techniques that make removal very difficult and time consuming.

Browser Hijacking
Hijacking is a form of malicious software behavior. Browser and network settings on the user's computer are changed; user activity is redirected to web sites of choice of the Hijack’s creator. Usually you will be redirected to start pages and search pages for paid advertising and/or web pages that attempt to install other malicious software.

Rootkits
A Rootkit is the sum of software and techniques that allow itself and some other, mostly malicious piece of software to be hidden from detection with regular means of the operating system. The hidden malicious components of rootkits often are Key Loggers or Trojans that allow backdoor access to the computer. Rootkits are among the most difficult to remove pieces of malware. Some rootkits are so well hidden and protected from ANY access that re-building the operating system from scratch is the only viable solution.

Key Loggers
Key Loggers are programs created to monitor user keystrokes; the information is logged and reported to the person or organization who installed the key Logger. They may be used by organizations to monitor employees activities. Key Loggers are also used as spyware to steal confidential information and commit identity theft. The logging of keystrokes takes place long before “classic” security measures like encryption can be employed.

Computer Viruses
A computer virus is infectious and sometimes destructive software that can replicate itself and go on to infect other computers. A computer virus is usually executable software. Computer viruses can be contacted through downloads and various modes of email and instant messaging attachments. The virus then attaches itself to existing programs on the target computer. The main aim is to corrupt the computer system.

Worms
Similar to a computer virus, worms are infectious and self-replicating; they replicate on computer networks and via email. The worm utilizes a computer network or email to send replicas of itself to connected computes on that network or to email addresses.

Trojan horse
A Trojan horse program (or Trojan for short) is a form of computer malware that gets installed on a computer system through deceptive means. Trojans often are presented to the user as a form of free software or an add-on. However, once installed, the Trojan gives it’s creator access to the computer; then the hacker can carry out their mostly criminal operations using the infected computer without any knowledge of the computer’s user.

Spyware
Spyware is a form of malware that collects and sends information about computer usage and other confidential and personal data to it’s creator. It generally gets installed secretively through deception such as free online scanning, a browser add-on or plugin, dubious websites and/or infected images or PDF files. Even search results have been “poisoned” and abused to install spyware.

Adware
Adware is short for Advertisement-supported software. These programs are designed to display advertisements on a computer system. Most adware programs are secretly collecting information on what you do and look at on the Internet so they can show you “relevant” ads; therefore they can also be classified as spyware.

Please stay tuned as I intend to publish an updated article on how to avoid the all too common obstacles and dangers posed by malicious software.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Fake MS Security Essentials – User Beware!

2010-11-06T05:24:00.001-05:00

Microsoft’s Windows Security Blog reports in great detail about a fake rogue program posturing to be Microsoft Security Essentials. Here is a short excerpt from MS’s Security Blog:

This imposter is known in the technical world of antimalware combat as “Win32/FakePAV”. FakePAV is a rogue that displays messages that imitate Microsoft Security Essentials threat reports in order to entice the user into downloading and paying for a rogue security scanner. The rogue persistently terminates numerous processes such as Windows Registry Editor, Internet Explorer, Windows Restore and other utilities and applications.

This fake software is distributed by a tactic commonly described as a “drive-by download” and shows up as a hotfix.exe or as an mstsc.exe file. Additionally, after the fake Microsoft Security Essentials software reports it cannot clean the claimed malware infection, it offers to install additional antimalware rogues (with names such as AntiSpySafeguard, Major Defense Kit, Peak Protection, Pest Detector and Red Cross). Lastly, this fake program will try to scare you into purchasing a product.

The skinny of it is this: Don’t be fooled! Microsoft Security Essentials is free and will never ask you to download additional programs. It updates itself automatically or you update it by using Windows Update.

If something asks for money in direct or indirect connection with Security Essentials it is fake!

For me personally the “good side” of it all is that this happens to be one of the rogue infections that are relatively easy to remove, it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Stay safe.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

On Java

2010-10-19T13:32:00.001-05:00

I am writing this while on vacation because it is so important that I want it to be out as soon as possible. Again it underlines the requirement to proactively check for updates regularly; that means not when you happen to remember, once a month or anything like that. Do it at least once every week if you want to stay safe. Those updates have to be done for security reasons, not to just have the newest gadget!

In the following I will quote from an Australian computer technicians blog and add my comments right after a quote.

This past year something has been brewing in the underbelly of the Internet that has only recently come to light, causing security experts to sit up and taking notice.

Exploits on Java have multiplied tremendously in number and they are proving to be incredibly effective.

Many of you may have heard of rogue programs; some of you may even have had to battle one or call me for assistance. Much of that is due to Java.

Three recent vulnerabilities in Java have paved the way for malware exploitation and all three have had patches available for some time.

So why in all the world don’t people keep the software in their computers up to date? Actually, this is a rhetorical question; mostly because people never have been told, some don’t do it because of complacency and all don’t do it because Microsoft did not design a “standardized” method to do it.

… notable is that two of the [Java] vulnerabilities went from hundreds of thousands of attacks per quarter [year] to millions.
Now that we know what is going on, what can we do to avoid malware drama?

Make sure to update Java frequently; in fact, a very important update for Java was just released today [Oct. 18 2010] with fixes for 15 highly severe vulnerabilities.

I have updated the Java paragraph of my article on What To Update to reflect this renewed importance of keeping Java up to date.

As of October 18, 2010 the most current version of Java is 6.0.22. In Add/Remove Programs on Win XP or in Programs and features in Vista and Win7 the entry looks like this:
I recommend to remove (or uninstall) all other Java versions. Future updates or releases will have higher version or update numbers. All eventually left behind older versions need to be removed manually, that is from within Add/Remove Programs or Programs and Features respectively.

Make sure you check for Java Updates regularly!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Cyber Security Awareness Month

2010-10-01T20:45:00.001-05:00

What a monster of an expression! Such stuff normally turns me off almost immediately.

But thanks to my daily work I know how hugely important it is to educate the public about the very real dangers and risks on the and from the Internet. The lack of even most basic understanding and some reluctance to learn that I encounter are again and again baffling me.

One of the best ways to stay safe on the Internet to be informed; the following seems to be an excellent opportunity to catch up on know how.

There is an organization called the Internet Storm Center out there; it “provides a free analysis and warning service . . . and is actively working . . . to fight back against the most malicious attackers.”

Every single day during the month of October they will post materials to an astounding wide variety of computer and Internet security related issues in understandable terms; in their words: “It's a non-technical, people friendly line-up . . .”.

You can get an easy overview about what they offer here.

The first entry titled Securing the Family PC is here.

Keep reading!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Email Passwords – BIG Annoyance

2010-09-06T15:46:00.001-05:00

One of the most annoying questions I get all too often is something like:

I installed the new version of xyz (any email program here) and the program asks me for an email password. Can you help?

NO, I do not know your email password! I should not know it, it is your password! And actually I do not want to know your email password!

The other annoying statement in this context is:

“I never had to type a password for my email; I don’t have one and never had one!?”

In my admittedly limited knowledge EVERY email account worldwide has a password. If you don’t know the password it is comparable to not knowing your home address or your birthday!

If I have set up your email account (the account, not the email program!) you may be lucky if you find a file name similar to “_Email Settings.txt” in your Documents folder; look there.

If you use Thunderbird as your email program you may be lucky if you look in Tools, Options, Passwords, Saved Passwords, Show Passwords. This is for Thunderbird version 3.*!

Oh, and the part with “and never had one” is plainly wrong. Again, in my admittedly limited knowledge EVERY email account worldwide has a password.

This whole issue demonstrates excellently how much we have come to rely on our artificial memories, the computers. You definitely have typed your email password at least once and then set the email program to remember it. So you never got asked again and you forgot that you even have an email password.

I am truly sorry, but I can’t help if you “forgot” your email password.

If you are seriously stuck you will have to call your ISP and ask for an email password reset. Write this new password down, precisely, including upper- and lower case! If you have trouble getting that into your email program I am glad to help. We can do that remotely!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Resetting a High-Speed Internet Connection

2010-09-05T16:53:00.001-05:00

If you have DSL or cable service your computer may loose it’s Internet connection. You get "server not found" messages or the like.

You may have one or two of these three types of connecting equipment:

A Modem; it converts the high speed signal from either the phone line or the TV cable into something a computer can understand.
The modem has one cable that connects either to your computer or to a router.
A Router typically has one input from a modem, four output connectors for computers or network printers and eventually a wireless antenna.
A Gateway is a combination of a modem and a router in one physical box.

These three boxes usually have a small “Reset” button on the back. Do NOT push the reset button! If you do it anyway the unit will forget the connection specific settings that have been stored in there and the parameters have to be set again. Do you know how to do that? If yes please feel free!

Here are the first and most important steps to do before you call your Internet Service Provider (ISP). They would have you do the exact same things anyway.

Please do the following in exactly this sequence:

Turn everything OFF.
That means to shut down (turn off!) all computers and
shut down (turn off) the router and modem or gateway by removing the power cables from the modem and the router or gateway.
Then wait one minute; this is important!
Turn the modem (or gateway) back on (re-connect the power cable).
Then wait one minute; this is important!
If you have a router turn it back on (re-connect the power cable).
Then wait one minute; this is important!
Turn your computer(s) back on.

The connection should be working now.

If it’s not working more detailed hands-on troubleshooting is required. Please call your ISP’s technical support before you call me. When you talk to tech support do NOT allow them to install their mostly crappy and expensive “security” software. If I did set up your computer it is protected!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Hoaxes, Scams and Urban Legends

2010-08-05T20:32:00.001-05:00

Here is a good and comprehensive list of reliable sources to check out the next email that asks you to “Send this to everybody you know” and/or tries to scare you into forwarding it.

PLEASE use these free services instead of just hitting Forward.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Remarks on Security Suites

2010-08-05T07:30:00.001-05:00

In the paid version of the Windows Secrets blog I read an article; among others it talks about an anti virus suite causing horribly long boot times. Due to the rules and organization of this blog I can not link directly to this part of the article. So I quote the relevant pieces here.

To set the stage: Generally I recommend to remove all those big, cumbersome and expensive security suites like McAfee, Norton, Trend Micro and so on. When I try to get the customer’s permission for this the most common question I encounter all too often is “Why?”. Here are some of the many more relevant answers, as I said above quoted from an article in the paid version of the Windows Secrets blog.

Feature duplication:

For example, Trend Micro lists 13 major features and subsystems in its security suite, McAfee lists 14, and Symantec lists 33!

Many of these features duplicate abilities already built into Windows and the major browsers. For example, Internet Explorer and Firefox have built-in link-checkers, pop-up-blockers, parental controls, and more.

Windows itself (especially Win7) has a capable firewall built in.

Overhead:

So the large security suites are including features you probably already have, and all of these redundant features consume memory and CPU time.

Solution:

… my current favorite security tool, Microsoft's free Security Essentials (site), lists just two major functions: antivirus and anti-malware protection.

When used with Windows' built-in firewalls and a fully current browser (say, IE8 or Firefox 3.6.x), you end up with essentially the same capabilities provided by the huge commercial security suites.

Price:

What's even better, it's all free!

I hope this is enough to convince even those people that say “But I paid for it”.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

On Rogue programs

2010-07-30T22:24:00.003-05:00

I found an intriguing article on TechPaul’s blog. It is so good that I venture to quote the IMHO relevant parts almost literally. Additions or edited text within the quote appear in dark blue. Paul, I hope you can forgive me.

* * * * * * begin quote

Currently there is an epidemic of fake anti-malware software on the Internet – which is collectively called “rogue anti-malware” or “scareware”. These fake programs are ‘marketed’ under hundreds of different names, such as “Internet Security 2010″, “Online Scanner”, and “Antivirus XP 2009″.
At our current state of Internet insecurity, you will see one of these scans pop open sooner or later - if you haven’t already seen it.
This ‘rogue’ software scares people by giving false “a virus has been detected!” notifications, and then tries to deceive them into using a credit card and paying for removal of non-existing “infections”.
Worst part is, many are designed to appear to be legitimate products, professionally packaged/presented including customer testimonials etc.
The user is tricked or better scared into providing their credit card information to clean infections that weren’t there before they clicked and aren’t really there now.
The ‘false positives’ are not “cleaned”, but more adware and spyware is installed.
These clever programs use the latest techniques to combat removal, and it can be quite tough and sometimes next to impossible to truly remove them.
In case I wasn’t clear:
The alerts are fake.
The scans are fake.
The results are fake.
Don’t fall for it.
When you see these “scans” it is to late, your machine has been successfully attacked and you should start a virus removal process immediately - and/or get help.
Epidemic? You bet!
Thousands of websites get poisoned each week and cybercriminals create bogus websites at the rate of thousands a day.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot. A new ‘variant’ of the better rogues is released on the Internet roughly twice a week.

* * * * * * end of quote

If you choose to call me, shut down your computer and do not, I repeat, do not try anything else. The more you fiddle yourself the worse it will likely get and thus the longer I will need to remove the junk. And as you well know ‘time is money’, your money in this case.

So what can you do?

Use and heed WOT (Web Of Trust)
(Changed 2011 after many months of problems with McAfee's Siteadvisor)
Always use Firefox or Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer to browse the web – and see that all family members and their visitors (Kid’s friends!) adhere to this policy as well, no exceptions.
In Firefox:
Use Adblock Plus with the Easylist (USA) filter list and WOT and heed it..
In Chrome use Adblock (by gundlach).
Be prepared, maybe having read and understood this article.
Don’t panic, use common sense!
Oh, did I mention it already? Be prepared!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Routers Can Get Hacked – Act Immediately

2010-07-23T17:40:00.001-05:00

A newsletter for computer technicians writes about a pretty nasty attack that could open your computer to the (hacker-) world. This article goes into quite some technical detail; if you prefer to avoid this type of geek speak here is the skinny of it:

Many, many home routers can be hacked! Here is a link to a table with model numbers and information whether the specific router is vulnerable. I you have a router there is a good chance that your model is in that list.

What you can do about it? This literal quote from the newsletter says it best:

The best way to protect against this attack is to change the password on the home router and change the default IP address along with keeping firmware up to date.

A few remarks to the table with the results of the tests:

In the last column you see either Yes or No; yes means this router has been hacked successfully. If your router model is not in this list your system more likely than not is a potential candidate for being hacked this way. To be safe I would treat it as a Yes.

Sadly but understandably 2Wire routers and gateways are missing. They are fairly ubiquitous since they get often installed with ATT DSL or U-Verse service. I recommend to treat them as a Yes.

If you have one of the models with a Yes I suggest you act immediately, BEFORE hackers take advantage of this opportunity.
If you have one of the models with a No you can at least sleep in peace.
I suggest that as a precaution you change at least the router’s password; it would be ideal to update the router’s firmware as well if applicable.

If you are technically inclined and still have your router documentation you certainly can do the password change yourself.

If you feel uncomfortable about changing the default IP address and/or updating the firmware then you know who to call, do you?

Now, if you call to make an appointment for this then PLEASE have your router’s manufacturer, the precise model number and version information available; thank you in advance (look on the underside or back of the router for this information). If you don’t find that information, no big problem, I can establish that on site.

I found it interesting that
   -   all of the five tested D-Link routers are safe,
   -   all of the two tested Netgear routers are safe,
   -   four out of five tested Belkin routers are safe and
   -   only two out of eight tested Linksys routers are safe.
These four manufacturers likely sell the bulk of routers in our neck of the woods – but they sell many more different models not tested here.

July 6, 2008 I wrote about Wireless Router Setup. I just now have updated this article from 2008 to reflect above new information.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Windows Live = NO Privacy At All

2010-07-22T06:32:00.001-05:00

One of the more technically oriented newsletters I receive regularly arrived with this article: Windows Live shares your Messenger contacts.

Already in April 2010 I wrote about Microsoft and Privacy. Now on top of all that comes above mentioned article from the Windows Secrets newsletter. Again, in my opinion the author is a reputable man and a very experienced computer journalist; I trust his words.

You may want to wade waist deep through the original article; if you prefer to save yourself some time here are selected literal quotes:

With the new Live format, Microsoft pays a great deal of lip service to maintaining your privacy; but my tests show you can't trust what you see on the screen.

Now, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the so-called new and improved, privacy-conscious version of Windows Live — the social-networking sphere containing Messenger and Hotmail — continues to share my personal information, even when I explicitly tell it to keep my info and communications private.

Windows Live's most pernicious form of privacy invasion is what I call third-party tattling. Here's how it works: You and Mr. A have a conversation via Live Messenger. Days, weeks, or even months later, you and Mr. B also have a conversation. In Windows Live parlance, you are now friends with both Mr. A and Mr. B.
Tattling comes into play when Mr. A signs on to Messenger or Hotmail or Windows Live and sees that "[You] and Mr. B are now friends."

I'm sure you can think up many different scenarios where that kind of sharing could be quite embarrassing (even lethal) — an informational gold mine for business rivals, political opponents, love triangles, wanted nuclear scientists; you get the picture. To put it succinctly, it's none of Mr. A's freakin' business who else I've contacted with Messenger.

Microsoft tattles — dishes up lists of my new-found Friends every time they log on to Messenger, Hotmail, or the main Windows Live page.

Microsoft has taken Hotmail and Messenger accounts and turned them into Windows Live Spaces accounts. What's more worrisome, MS has also taken the liberty of converting your Messenger contacts into Friends. It then shares information about these new Friends with each other. To try to prevent this sharing (and, based on my tests, you can't), you have to navigate a mind-boggling labyrinth of privacy settings.

It has a bad odor to it. When I use Facebook, I fully expect that other people will be able to see what I'm doing. No problem — I would never use Facebook for sensitive business communications. But when I use Messenger, I expect it to be as private as a phone call.

I hope this is enough to keep you from using ANY of Microsoft’s Live services, be it Messenger, Hotmail, cloud storage or whatever other service under the umbrella of a Windows Live ID.

Please distinguish between services and some useful programs Microsoft freely offers as part of what currently is called Windows Live Essentials.

For example I write this blog with Windows Live Writer; it is a God-sent for me. Other Windows Live Essentials programs that some of my customers use – but I don’t have any experience with:

Windows Live Movie Maker to edit family videos,
Windows Live Photo Gallery for photo organizing and basic editing,
Windows Live Family Safety to protect kids from Internet smut.

The big risk is that these programs are offered together with Live Messenger and Live Mail and every time you update one of them you again and again will get inundated with requests to set your home page to MSN, make Live Search (and/or Bing) your main search provider and to get a Windows Live ID. User beware!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

End Of An Era: Goodbye Windows 2000, XP SP2 and Vista

2010-07-19T07:04:00.001-05:00

An era has ended it appears. An era in the Microsoft centered world of computers at least. Don’t get me wrong here, it’s not that I am bemoaning this fact, not at all!

With the end of update support for above mentioned Windows versions Microsoft applies pressure on the holdout community that IMHO not only lives in dangerous surroundings but thus potentially endangers everybody else. How so? These technically obsolete systems will most likely become hosts to malicious software that from this almost safe heaven will attempt to get into other machines as well.

I have been asked why someone would still want to run something like Windows 2000? The answer in most cases is surprisingly simple: Old application software!

Companies can fall into this trap if at the managerial level they either don’t see the need to keep the IT infrastructure up-to-date or can not update due to financial constraints. The former reason seems to me to be more of a philosophical (and/or educational?) problem, the latter being due to insufficient budgeting and planning. Over my four and a half decades in IT I have seen this scenario all too often.

Small home office and normal home users IMHO fall into this trap mostly because they got used to using some old piece of software and/or were unwilling to upgrade earlier when they were reminded.

The world of computers is likely the fastest changing field of technology ever. It appears that we are not yet adapted to thinking in update and maintenance cycles. So here is my $0.02 worth on updating from my side of the fence:

Computers should be updated, that is exchanged for a new one, about every five years. Depending on technical circumstances like what hardware is in a machine or what new operating system has just been released (Windows 7!) even only three years may be reasonable.
The operating system always and continually has to be kept up-to-date. If you are still running Windows 2000 then the time to buy a new computer is now, no matter what!
Critical application software has to be kept up-to-date as well. If this requires a new operating system and/or a new computer then so be it, period.

If you can’t keep up in Chicago rush hour traffic on the interstate with your nice old Ford Model T then you are endangering yourself and others! Either get off the road or get a car that can keep up in these conditions, sorry!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

What Malware Can Do

2010-07-18T21:13:00.001-05:00

I just read an IMHO great article about the Conficker worm. Yes, I know, Conficker is a story from November/December 2008 but this article in The Atlantic magazine is not only factually correct, it is great reading.

You may not want to read through the many, many partially good and partially quite silly comments so here is the link to a website that gives you a simple optical indication if your computer is infected with Conficker or not. Note: This may not work on computers in certain types of mostly corporate networks.

Should your computer be infected, you know who to call, don’t you?

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

McAfee Siteadvisor Setup

2010-07-18T17:22:00.001-05:00

McAfee seems to feel the heat, maybe generated by Microsoft Security Essentials?

McAfee’s IMHO very valuable Siteadisor service is increasingly being used to run with settings that help only McAfee and not the unsuspecting end user.

Here is a short tutorial on how I would set Siteadvisor’s options. This is based on the currently latest version of Siteadisor.

Click on the little vertical arrow to the right of the green (or grey) McAfee icon in the right bottom corner of the Firefox window.

Then click on Options and in the General tab set “Add color-coded highlighting…” to Yes.

In the Secure Search tab Un-check the check box by “Add Secure Search to…”.

I strongly suggest NOT to set Yahoo as the browser’s home page and NOT to use McAfee’s so called Secure Search as your browser’s default search engine.

Update July 18, 2010:

Just this moment I had to do remote support to help a customer who did not see the McAfee icon in the right bottom corner of the Firefox screen.

1. The status bar was turned off. Naturally you can’t see something that is being displayed there if the status bar is turned off. You turn it on here:

2. Almost every add-on in Firefox can be independently disabled or enabled. In this customer’s Firefox the McAfee Siteadvisor add-on was disabled. You can check and/or change that by clicking Tools, Add-ons. You get a window like this:
Highlight Extensions and find McAfee Siteadvisor. If the marked button reads Enable then it is disabled; click on Enable to do just that. You have to restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

End of Update July 18, 2010

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Safe Computing in 2010

2010-07-04T09:11:00.001-05:00

The world of computers run by Microsoft Windows operating systems has changed so much since I began this blog in 2008! The posts from May and June 2008 drew heavily on papers that I used with and for my customers some time earlier, mainly in 2005 through 2008.

In politically correct terms, the threat landscape has undergone major changes.

It is about time that I give an updated “digest version” of what I recommend now to keep a computer as safe as possible. Here it is.

Use Open DNS.
Use Firefox with AdBlock Plus and McAfee Siteadvisor add-ons. In Siteadvisor you have to turn “Highlight search results” on and turn the Safe Search function OFF; if Safe Search is on then do not use it!
Use Thunderbird instead if any Microsoft email program! In Thunderbird version 3.x I recommend to use “CompactHeader” and “Extra Folder Columns” add-ons.
Never open any email attachment unless you are sure of the source and always virus scan the attachment first.
Firewall:
Please ask yourself the following two questions:
A: Are you capable of and do you wish to learn about network ports and ow to configure firewall rules?
B: Are you able to answer correctly lots of alerts and questions about the things in question A?

If you say NO to either or both of above questions stick with the standard Windows firewall, period!

If You answer Yes to both questions you may consider Outpost Free.
If you do the latter be aware that you will be subject to “upgrade” offers to the for-pay version. User beware!
If you are a self proclaimed “computer illiterate” home user then use Microsoft Security Essentials as your anti virus, anti malware and anti malvertisement (malicious advertisement) solution.

More info from me on MSE: Go to the table of contents of this blog, find and click label “MSE” and read the articles that come up.
Always ensure that your operating system and security software is updated with the latest signatures and patches. Try to use an automated function for this where one exists but don’t totally rely on any automatic update function. Check manually and regularly for updates!

You want to know what to update? Read this article on my blog.
In Google search results: Never enter a site rated "Red" or “Yellow” by Siteadvisor. There will be 100s of other safe alternatives to choose from.
Only download programs from trusted sources and still virus scan the downloaded file first before you actually use it! The IMHO most comprehensive scanning is done by VirusTotal and Jotti.
Never run software from borrowed removable media without first virus scanning the content.
If you lend your removable media to someone else virus check it when it comes back!
If anything on or from the Internet looks like the offer of a lifetime then your online life is likely to end or at least massively change abruptly!
Cracked software is only for cracked heads or people dumb enough to think differently.

I know, some of the above are harsh words, please forgive me. But they are the truth nevertheless.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Dell Publicly Uncovered – Finally

2010-06-28T19:57:00.001-05:00

Please read this NY Times article about a lawsuit against Dell.

Finally I have at least some independent third party support when the next customer wants to buy a Dell computer and has a hard time concealing his doubts about my competence when I advise against it.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Thunderbird 3.1.* Finally Usable!

2010-06-26T07:24:00.001-05:00

It has happened – finally! Yesterday Thunderbird (TB) version 3.1 was released and my two major gripes with the 3.0.* versions have been alleviated.

Upon the first start of TB after installing version 3.1 it asked if I wanted to install the CompactHeader add-on and the ExtraColumns add-on. I said yes to both and now TB version 3 has important functionality that I did not want to miss – and many customers had confirmed that choice.

Don’t despair if you miss above windows and questions or if you already have TB 3.* running without these add-ons. You can find and install the add-ons from this web page. Search for “Compact Header” and “Extra Folder Columns”, go to their description and download them. Don’t forget to install them after the download!

Happy emailing.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

10 Myths of Safe Web Browsing

2010-06-25T20:47:00.007-05:00

I found an interesting article written by a Sophos product manager. The man is generally correct but I was amazed at the amount of what I perceive as spin. To save you the trouble of downloading the PDF file I quote the 10 myths here verbatim and will give you my opinion right after each paragraph – if applicable nad indented for readability.

Sophos is one of the better anti-virus and computer security companies geared squarely at the business market; just their ant-virus solution for a single computer is priced at $186.25 and thus of little interest to the vast majority of my customers.

Myth #1: The web is safe because I’ve never been infected by malware
You may not even know you’re infected. Many web malware attacks are designed to steal personal information and passwords or use your machine for distributing spam, malware or inappropriate content without your knowledge. For example, one Sophos customer recently installed a Web Appliance at its network gateway and immediately flagged more than 50 machines on its network for suspicious behaviour—calling home to a malware network for further instructions.

Myth #2: My users aren’t wasting time surfing inappropriate content
Without any kind of web filtering, you really have no idea what users are doing with their internet connection. The fact is that more than 40% of corporate internet use is inappropriate and going unchecked—an average of 1 to 2 hours per day per user. To make matters worse, the potential for employees being exposed to inappropriate content can have serious legal ramifications to any organization. The internet is full of studies related to internet use in the work place, from gambling and pornography to less nefarious activity such as social networking and travel planning. Furthermore, incidents of internet addiction disorder are increasing, with current estimates suggesting up to 5% to 10% of internet surfers have some form of web dependency.

The author speaks of “users” meaning employees in a company. But do you really know what family members and friends do when they use your computer?

Myth #3: We control web usage and our users can’t get around our policy
Anonymizing proxies make it easy for employees to circumvent your web filtering policy and visit any site they like. Anonymizing proxies are readily available and regularly exploited by school kids and employees alike. Hundreds of new anonymizing proxies are published daily to keep ahead of web security companies and resourceful users have even been known to setup their own private proxy at home to enable them to surf the web freely and unchecked. If you don’t think this is an issue, you can simply Google “bypass web filter” to see there are over 1.8 million ways to do this.

And even middle school kids often already know how to do this!

Myth #4: Only porn, gambling, and other “dodgy” sites are dangerous
Hijacked trusted sites represent more than 83% of malware hosting sites. That’s correct. The majority of infected sites are websites that you trust and visit daily—they’ve just been hacked to distribute malware. Why? Because these sites are popular, high-traffic venues that silently distribute malware to unsuspecting visitors. Download the infected sites list to see just a small sampling of these kinds of sites.

Yes, 83% are trusted sites; it's gotten that bad. But don't go and try to find “the infected sites list”; I believe it does not exist. Should you find it please let me know!

Myth #5: Only naive users get infected with malware and viruses
Malware from drive-by downloads happens automatically without any user action, other than visiting the site. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what level of computer expertise you have. The fact is, if you are visiting sites on the internet, you are at risk. The infected sites list provides just a small sampling of recently infected sites that distribute malware. If you visit sites like these, you are at risk.

FUD! (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). I can forgive him, he is a marketing manager.

Myth #6: You can only get infected if you download files.
Most malware infections now occur through a “drive-by” download. Hackers inject the malicious code into the actual web page content, then it downloads and executes automatically within the browser as a by-product of simply viewing the web page. The malware is typically part of a professional exploit kit marketed and sold to hackers that leverages known exploits in the browser, operating system or plug-ins to infect the computer and download more malware. Again, it does all of this without a user having to do anything other than visit a hijacked web site. This graph shows the most popular exploit kits used in drive-by download attacks. Source: http://www.blade-defender.org/eval-lab/

Yes, he is basically correct.
But the graphics he links to are full of what I call spin; I strongly object to this.
If you are my customer or ever have listened to me on WTKM Radio you'll know how strongly I advocate to update, update and then update. To even test Internet Explorer 6 and 7 is in my opinion outright dishonest. Microsoft's main reasoning for creating new versions is improved security! Stay with an old version at your own risk.
And on top of it all we are not told what versions of Firefox 3 were used!

Myth #7: Firefox is more secure than Internet Explorer
All browsers are equally at risk because all browsers are essentially an execution environment for JavaScript, which is the programming language of the web and therefore used by all malware authors to initiate an attack. In addition, many exploits leverage plug-ins such as Adobe Acrobat reader software, which runs across all browsers. Although the more popular browsers may get more publicity about un-patched exploits, it’s the unpublicized exploits you should be most concerned about. The fact is, there is no safe browser; when security research firm Secunia tabulated the number of browser exploits reported in 2008, Firefox was actually the least secure by a large margin:Source: http://secunia.com/gfx/Secunia2008Report.pdf

The gentleman IMHO is a true master of marketing spin. All this based on data from 2008; in the super fast world of computers that is age old! Please see the end of this article for more background on Firefox vs. IE relating to the source quoted here.

Myth #8: When the lock icon appears in the browser, it’s secure.

The lock icon indicates there is an SSL encrypted connection between the browser and the server to protect the interception of personal sensitive information. It does not provide any security from malware. In fact, it’s the opposite because most web security products are completely blind to encrypted connections: it’s the perfect vehicle for malware to infiltrate a machine. Furthermore, some malware can exploit vulnerabilities to spoof SSL certificates to make users feel more secure or enable devious connections to fake banking sites. There are numerous recent examples of hackers creating elaborate phishing schemes that emulate bank, credit card, or PayPal sites complete with spoofed SSL certificates that are extremely difficult for the average user to identify as fraudulent. This is becoming an increasingly important security risk.

True; the lock icon only says that data transferred via the Internet is encrypted; this means your password and other data can not be understood by some crook passively listening to the Internet traffic with help of a sniffer or packet analyzer.

Myth #9: Web security requires a trade-off between security and freedom
While the internet has become a mission critical tool for many job functions, whether it’s Facebook for HR or Twitter for PR, it’s completely unnecessary to create a trade-off between access and security. A suitable web security solution provides the freedom to grant access to sites that your users need while keeping your organization secure. Policy settings for groups or individuals don’t need to be complex—a few quick steps through a wizard are all a user needs to secure and enable your organization.
When evaluating a web security solution, be sure to focus on the administration tasks you will use most often, such as establishing special policies for users or groups. How easy are these tasks? How much time do they take? How many steps are involved? Is documentation required to navigate through the process? Ask these questions and more.

Good marketing, isn't it?

Myth #10: Endpoint security solutions can’t protect against web threats
Typically, this has been the case because the web browser is essentially its own execution environment: It downloads content, renders it, and executes scripts all without any visibility outside the browser to endpoint security products. However, this is changing. As a result, it’s opening up a whole new approach to web security, particularly for mobile workers who are operating beyond the traditional boundaries of the corporate network. Be sure to check out the new Sophos Live Protection Web Filtering, which is part of our new Endpoint 9.5 security solution. Live Protection enables real-time malicious site filtering at the endpoint to protect mobile or remote workers who may be operating off the corporate network.
Now that we’ve busted several common myth’s and exposed the truth about web security risks, you’re probably thinking “Ok, how do I protect my organization and users?”. Good question. Fortunately, there’s a simple answer: Visit Sophos.com for more tips, tricks and more expert advice.

Now my comments.
So much for the scary world of myths. If you are still with me THANK YOU and congratulations for your determination.

Following myth #7 I promised to come back to the Firefox (FF) vs. Internet Explorer (IE) issue. For this purpose I have to insert a screen shot of the relevant part of the Secunia article the author quotes as his source.

Yes, in 2008 there were more reported vulnerabilities in Firefox than in IE. What they don't say is that the FF vulnerabilities were fixed very timely compared to Microsoft all too often taking weeks and months to fix IE – if at all. It seems worth noting here that my Secunia PSI still claims that IE8 has a non-fixable vulnerability!

And look at the number of ActiveX vulnerabilities; almost 4 times as many as all the others TOGETHER! And as my customers know, ActiveX needs IE to be able to run!
This makes it pretty clear to me that I seem to be on to something when I always say “Firefox is less insecure than IE”; even these old numbers show it!

To conclude this already way too long article here are three short quotes from this article:

The probability of a user getting infected from a malvertisement [malicious advertisement] is twice as likely on a weekend and the average lifetime of a malvertisement is 7.3 days.
97% of Fortune 500 web sites are at a high risk of getting infected with malware due to external partners (such as JavaScript widget providers, ad networks, and/or packaged software providers).
Fortune 500 web sites have such a high risk because 69% of them use external Javascript to render portions of their sites and 64% of them are running outdated web applications

Especially the very last sentence makes me cringe. These Fortune 500 companies run outdated software, thus putting the safety of our computers, our data and in the end effect our money at risk.
And the publishers of this, here ZDNet as an example for all the others, are not giving us the names of the companies in question; IMHO a clear (but maybe unconscious) case of collusion.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Letter To The Greeks (not Computer Related)

2010-06-18T05:45:00.002-05:00

The following “Open Letter To The Greeks” was published in the German magazine “Der Stern”, best described as Life, Time Magazine, venerable (Saturday Evening?) Post and US News and World Report rolled into one. I received this text via email on a long and twisted path.

What strikes me most about it is the thought that one day some Chinese might write an astonishingly similar letter to the Americans.

This is an unauthorized free translation; please don't bust me.

Dear Greeks!
Do you know in your country the kind of money-aunt that for all childhood and youth has been feeding your piggy bank? The first bike, the first radio, your first vacation, she always added a few bills. And she expected nothing more than a friendly “Thank you” every once in a while.

Dear friends, this is a letter from your money-aunt. Don't worry, you're not even expected to say thank you.

The thing we are hoping for: Put yourself in our situation. Since 1981, over 29 years, we belong to the same family, the EU. In this time no other member of the family has paid as much money into the common budget as we did, a net of 200 billion Euro. And per capita nobody has received vaguely as much as you, altogether almost 100 billion net. About half of what we have poured into the EU pot, you have skimmed off with a big ladle.

In other words: Statistically over the years we Germans have given all you Greeks, from infant to the elderly, a gift of more than 9,000 Euro. Wasn't that nice, right? Probably there has never been a people voluntarily and generously supporting another people over such a long period of time. You truly are our dearest friends.

You have never asked how we fared in all those years . I suspect that even today you don't really want to hear anything about our worries But I'll tell you anyway:

Our roads are full of holes like old buildings because we lack the money for maintenance. Libraries and swimming pools have to be closed. At night some cities have to turn off every other street light because otherwise they can't pay the electricity bill.

Since the introduction of the Euro unlike your wage increases our wages have had virtually no increase at all. And now we are expected to save you Greeks. That concern is just what we have been missing.

You did fairly earn our distrust: Every summer you set ablaze this beautiful land that God has given you and then you call for our fire department because you can't extinguish it yourself.

All of you want to work in public service, but no one wants to pay taxes. If only a part of the reports that we read in the last few weeks are true, then you are only willing to work after you receive a bribe. Especially your doctors and hospital staff seem to ask for big bribes. You are cheating yourselves whenever you can get away with it.

That does not matter to us. But you also deceive us. For many years. About that we do care. You collected EU subsidies for more olive trees than fit in all your country.

Obviously, you know something about accounting; to meet the stability criteria for the Euro you have systematically cooked and falsified your books; for years you've done that so well that [the EU government in] Brussels has not noticed anything.

In truth you have never deserved the Euro. Despite your fake data, since the introduction of the Euro Greece has never been able to meet the stability criteria. In 2006 you came up with a neat sleight of hand to enlarge your GDP: You just added the proceeds from money laundering, drug trafficking and smuggling in the annual economic output of your proud nation.

It just will not work out over decades to continually spend more money than you earn, to continually live out of other people's pockets, to continually deceive and trick – it never works out okay. Eventually the house of cards will collapse. Eventually is now. Strictly spoken you are bankrupt, bust.

Have no illusions. If [German chancellor] Angela Merkel promises "Greece will not be left alone" she is more concerned about us Germans than you Greeks. Our only concern is for our own future The trouble is: We are chained to you. If you drown, you draw us under water as well.

For example by the 300 billion debt, which you piled up over the years. About 30 billion of which belong to savers in German banks, given to you in the form of government bonds. Will you ever repay that?

Because of you the Euro is in free fall. We are facing inflation. This means that German savings accounts and life insurances for the future will always be worth less and less. And that is because of you.

Of course you are strangers to such thoughts, for saving or investing is not your thing. You prefer to just spend your funds. In the EU, Greeks are the people that squander by far most of their money for consumption.

The EU leaders have indeed decided that you should not receive any direct financial aid. For now. But you need help. And in the EU help in the end means more money; more precisely, our money.

Slowly it becomes clear to Germans: First, we had to rescue banks, now we need to save the Greeks and eventually all PIIG countries with rotten economies; the PIIGS are Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain.

A national bankruptcy of any one of these countries, experts exceptionally agree, would be a tragedy; the banking crisis would appear to be a comedy compared to this. Wise German constitutional lawyers have warned before the introduction of the Euro, warned that an Economic Union will not work without a political union.

They were right. Now we see the dramatic democratic deficit. We Germans depend on decisions of the Government of Greece. But we can not elect it. Only you Greeks can elect it, but you have completely different interests. We want your Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou to runs his austerity program. At least that. It would even be better if he accelerated the reforms.

But obviously you don't want that. You do what you always do: Your go on strike. Last week the public sector, next week all of you in a general strike.

Dear Greeks, if you go on strike next week, if you demonstrate, then you do not you protest against your government but against us. The Zorro, who has always saved you and whom you expect to do even more saving, that guy you kick right between his knees.

Dear Greek IRS officers, please do not go on strike next week, but finally get the taxes due from your millionaires by whom you have been royally paid for looking the other direction.

Dear Greek doctors, please do not go on strike next week but treat your patients; from now on without first asking for a money envelope. And then just pay the taxes on your income. Yes you have to order the next Porsche a year later. You will survive.

Dear retired Greeks, when in our country someone worked all his life he gets not even 40% of his average income as a pension. We are on the fourth place from last among the OECD countries.

And who is number one? Correct: You. Over 95% of your average income you allow yourselves as a pension. To get this done you again get deep into the bag of tricks:
You simply determine the amount of pension benefits not on the whole life, but only on the last three to five years of employment. Usually your employer pays you considerably more towards the end and again this increases your pensions. From the money that we have sponsored you with for almost 30 years, you have allowed yourselves a more comfortable retirement than we can afford. Does that seem fair to you?

So, dear pensioners in Greece: You are the generation that has caused this misery. Now is the time to keep the feet still, do not go to demonstrate and let the government pull through their savings plans.

And, dear citizens of Greece, do not excuse yourselves by saying that solely your politicians are to blame for the disaster. You did invent democracy and you should know that you, the people, govern and therefore are responsible. No one is forcing you to evade taxes, to accept bribes, to strike against any sound policy and to elect corrupt politicians.

Politicians are populists. They do exactly what you want. Surely some of you will now argue: You Germans, you are not better off at all. Right. A pension scheme in which nobody has any trust anymore. Pensions for civil servants that no one knows how to pay for in the future. A tax system that looks as invented by experienced tax evaders. Above all a mountain of debt on a slippery slope that eventually will bury everything – we too have exactly these problems. And on this path of vice you're not as far ahead of us as many believe.

Long ago you Greeks have led the way, you have given democracy to the world, philosophy and first understanding of national economics.

Now you show us the way again.

Only this time it is the wrong path.

Where you are is a dead end road.

Sincerely,
[signed] Walter Wüllenweber [editor at Der Stern magazine]

Malware Infection – Witnessed In Real-Time

2010-05-09T07:44:00.005-05:00

I follow another repair technician’s blog. The lady owns and runs a computer repair business in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area. In this blog entry she describes in striking detail what she observed when her computer got “infected”. All she “did” was doing normal things in Hotmail. She did not mention though what web browser she was using; I have asked her but naturally not gotten an answer yet (it’s Sunday morning, even in Wisconsin). Update May 10th: Lisa has replied right away, thanks for that. And guess what, she was using Internet Explorer version 8!

To all of my customers reading this: You know better, don’t you?

The infection that her computer got seems to have been a version of currently fairly common “rogue” programs. Only a few of these are caught by commonly available anti virus programs. The behavior of the “rogues” appears not to trigger most virus protection programs, go figure.

It may be besides the point here but for years I recommend NOT to use Hotmail and/or Yahoo accounts, especially not from within Internet Explorer! Update May 10th: It may not prove anything but I sure feel reassured in my constant preaching to shun IE.

On March 4th 2010 I wrote this article titled “Sudden Virus Alert?”. Right after posting this here I will augment the post from March 4th with a bit more detail about the browser issue.

Browse safely and stay warm (we had a frosty night).

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Vista and Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts

2010-04-28T22:23:00.003-05:00

Windows 7 and Vista both come with a plethora of keyboard shortcuts for those of us who want to be super efficient or who are just mouse weary.

Here is a small, arbitrary and incomplete selection of some keyboard shortcuts that I find useful, at least sometimes.

Alt + P (in explorer)	Activates preview of the currently selected file
Win + Up	Maximizes the active window
Win + Down	Minimizes the active window
Win + Shift + Up	Stretches the active window to max. screen height but leaves the width unchanged
Win + Shift + Down	Active window: - reduce maximized window to normal - minimize normal window
Win + +	Turns the magnifier on
Win + Esc	Turns the magnifier off
Win + Left/Right	Repeated use on active window will - fill exactly left/right half of screen - flips window to other side of screen - reduce window to original size and location
Win + Home	Minimizes all open windows except active window; repeating restores all previously minimized windows
Win + T	Cycles through preview thumbnails of all open programs (almost identical to Alt + Tab)
Win + E	Opens Explorer on “Computer”
Win + (number)	Launches programs pinned to taskbar (first, second a.s.o.)
Win + Space	Aero mode only: Make all windows transparent (toggle switch)

I hope you too will find some of these useful.

There are many, many more. Click on Start, Help and Support, search for Keyboard Shortcuts and click the Keyboard Shortcuts entry in the list of results.

Lots to read, bring some spare time to the party ;-)

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Facebook and Twitter - Beware

2010-04-28T21:38:00.004-05:00

This is a serious warming, guaranteed no jokes in here!

If you or any family member use any of Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, hi5, MySpace or Twitteryour computer is at acute risk.

The Koobface virus is on the loose!

In the meantime there are several variants of this nasty critter around and some of these are outright difficult to remove. If you want to do your part to keep your computer clean then please be extremely wary of or avoid altogether:

Links sent from friends you don’t communicate often with
Broken/bad English in the messages
Outright grammar and/or spelling errors
Exciting messages (see this hilarious video!)
Email hackers and password thieves (change your Facebook password to be different from your email password)
Short web link instead of a fully spelled out link
Wall posts from others that don’t seem normal or appear strange in any way
New Friends requests from people you don’t know in person
“Gifts” of Farmville money or the like
If you ask “What is Farmville” I say “Good for you that you don’t know; don’t even think about going there!”
And new, developing tricks and lies to come. . .

This list is by no means complete, it is solely meant to give you ideas on what to be wary of.

If you want to read more about risks and dangers on Facebook please take the time to read this article from Cnet (opens a new window or tab, depending on your browser settings).

Naturally the best precaution is as always to stay completely away from social networking sites. Did you know that pickpockets operate in crowds, but hardly ever where there are only a few people?

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Microsoft and Privacy – Urgent!

2010-04-27T23:00:00.003-05:00

If you either have and use an email account with Hotmail. MSN or Windows Live or if you use Microsoft Messenger to chat with coworkers, friends or relatives you should read this article on the Windows Secrets blog. The author is a reputable man and a very experienced computer journalist; I trust his words!

All I can say:

Big brother is watching you!

I will de-activate my Hotmail account, you can bet on that.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Firefox Add-Ons

2010-04-27T07:25:00.007-05:00

Firefox as a web browser tries to stay close to the web standards. Many of us like to have added functionality in the browser. This is achieved by adding little programs to the browser that supply these functions integrated into the browser. Such a little program is called an Add-On (or Extension).

Usually I install on all my customer’s machines three extensions:

Forecastfox shows the current weather conditions in the menu bar of the browser window.
I instal this to discourage my customers from playing with WeatherBug and similar stuff because the latter are ad-ware or worse.
Even a PC World article that was trying to absolve WB said literally "I'm not oblivious to WeatherBug's shortcomings. Previous versions have been resource hogs, and the freeware edition has a nasty habit of introducing unexpected pop-ups".
Adblock Plus suppresses all advertisements from known commercial advertisement servers.
Ad blocking has become very important because way too many advertisements are carriers of malicious software.
WOT Web Of Trust marks Google and Yahoo search results with green, yellow and red circles to warn from visiting known dubious (yellow) or malicious (red) web sites.

You can easily check what Add-On is installed by clicking Tools, Add-ons, Extensions.

The Add-ons manager has a drop-down menu by the gear symbol; here you could manually check for updates. I usually just keep the check mark by "Update Add-ons Automatically".

These Add-ons need to be kept up-to-date just as the browser itself.

After you install an update to Firefox or just because Firefox thinks “it’s about time to check again” you may see (when you start Firefox) a square window that is listing some add-ons and asking you whether to "Check now for updates" or "Cancel" the process. Please allow the checking for updates.

In this context a warning is required: Although generally extensions supply added useful functionality they can interfere with Firefox, sometimes even seriously interfere! If you want to experiment with extensions please at least refer to Mozilla's page about blocked add-ons and the page about slow performing add-ons.

Here is another article with much more detail about what else to update.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Out Of My Support

2010-04-09T18:38:00.003-05:00

As of this writing it has been almost eight months that I don't use or recommend

Avast
AVG (since a looong time already!)
Ad-Aware
Spybot Search & Destroy and
Spywareblaster

any more.

This is not because they are any "bad" but because there is something better or at least as good out there, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). IMHO it is for my customers the better solution and it is MUCH easier to use.

I have talked about this fact since at least October 2009 every time I was on WTKM radio (first Monday of every month at 10:00AM on 104.9 FM).

Since January 15th 2010 I have a long and detailed article about the change on my blog. This article describes detailed step by step instructions for switching to MSE.

In the blog's table of contents you can easily find all my other articles about MSE.

The short of all this is that I can not answer questions about the five programs mentioned above any longer. I simply don't use these programs any more and thus don't know the answers to questions concerning the most current versions.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Printing On The Wrong Printer

2010-04-07T06:07:00.005-05:00

It happens sometimes that Print commands go to the “wrong” printer. This can be changed easily.

The following examples show Windows 7 and cover Vista as well, a short description for Windows XP follows further down.

Click on Start, Devices and Printers

and you will see all printers.

Find the printer that you want to be your default printer, right click on it and click “Set as default printer”. It will look like this (your printer’s name will naturally be different):

Windows XP: Go to Control Panel, Printers and set the correct printer to be your default printer.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

End of Support for some versions of Windows

2010-03-24T06:45:00.005-05:00

Again and again I encounter computers with Windows XP Service Pack 1 or Windows Vista Service Pack 1 or even Vista without any Service Pack installed.

Although this can have multiple reasons the ones I most commonly encounter are

Automatic Update is not set to automatically download and install updates and the user ignores the warnings telling her/him that updates have to be downloaded and or installed;
Some obnoxious software thinks they can do a better job of alerting the user of updates, turns Automatic Update off and then gets deactivated or un-installed and does not turn Automatic Updates back on;
Some malicious software disabled Automatic Update altogether.

Here is a literal quote from Microsoft’s Exploring Windows newsletter March 23, 2010:

Support is ending for some versions of Windows
Support for Windows Vista without any service packs will end on April 13, 2010.

Support for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) will end on July 13, 2010.
If you're running one of these versions after support ends, you will NOT get any security updates for Windows.

If your computer is still running Windows XP, Windows XP Service Pack 1 or Windows Vista with no Service Pack then you are in deep trouble; call or email me (see below).

Above mentioned newsletter then has a link to the article Which version and service pack am I running? This article is invalid for Windows XP users, great advice, Microsoft!

Easier and better information can be had by

Windows XP: Right click My Computer, left click on Properties;
Windows Vista/7: Right click Computer, left click on Properties.

Currently

Windows XP ought to be on Service Pack 3,
Windows Vista ought to be on Service Pack 2.

I don’t mean to scare you but if your system is not yet at it’s respective service pack level something is seriously wrong and you better call me or email me at ejheinze*at*gmail*dot*com.

By the way, not knowing what operating system and what Service Pack your computer is running is somewhat like not knowing whether your car needs gasoline or diesel fuel. Please be informed!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Sudden Virus Alert?

2010-03-04T22:51:00.003-06:00

You receive a sudden alert that your computer is infected with any number of virus programs including a list with file names that supposedly are viruses. All this looks quite serious but you are being pressured into buying and/or downloading a “clean-up” program.

Be clever, be observant and VERY suspicious!

Do NOT click on anything in such a window; this kind of links likely takes you to a malicious web site that will immediately attempt to download the really nasty stuff.
When you search on Google for information about the program that is bugging you then please be very careful before you click on any results; there are way too many malicious web sites that might come up with such a search.
If I have set up your computer you should have McAfee SiteAdvisor installed and you can at least distinguish known nasty web sites from the likely harmless ones.
Sometimes you may observe some sort of “scan” starting after you went to a website. Do NOT click on anything in such a web page; it most likely is a malicious web site and any click will do more harm.
Do you have an account on social networking web sites like LinkedIn, MySpace or Facebook? If yes you may want to change all email passwords! Make them unique and hard to guess!
Because nowadays so many email accounts are being hacked you have to be extra careful when you receive an email with nothing but a link in the mail. Again, be extra suspicious if the email contains “just a link”, danger is lurking!

How do I stop the attack that just started?

Start Task Manager. How? Press Control, Alt, Delete simultaneously.
Activate the Applications tab.
Find all instances of running web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox a.s.o.); one by one highlight them and click End Process (or End Task in Vista/Win 7).
BTW: If you have been using Internet Explorer and are my customer then you disregarded my warnings about IE, didn’t you?
Find all instances of running “security” programs with names you have not heard yet; one by one highlight them and click End Process (or End Task in Vista/Win 7).
Hopefully you will notice the scan windows disappear.
Update your anti virus software and do a full system scan.

After all that your computer may still be infected. If the original or similar windows come back and/or your computer seems to be running slower than before then likely there is some nasty, malicious program still running. You have these options:

Call 414-719-2977, I can fix this sort of thing. If this is too expensive
Try to fix it yourself, you may even be successful. Congratulations.
Call your 14 year old grandson or nephew or the kid nest door.
According to many of my customers’ experience that mostly was not the best idea.
Ignore it and let it get worse, much worse, guaranteed. Then see #1 above.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

About Adobe Reader

2010-02-12T07:33:00.026-06:00

I am getting too many emails with the same questions about Adobe Reader and/or PDF files.

Since December 2008 I have written several times about issues surrounding Adobe Reader. Here are all three articles referenced chronologically:

First article December 2008: What PDF Reader?

2nd. article June 2009: PDF Files on the Web

Recently I added a rant about Adobe’s incredibly brazen attempts to disown you and me of our computers:

3rd. article January 2010: Adobe, again it’s Adobe - Shun Their Reader!

If all the above is not sufficient to help you accept the workaround I outlined in the 2nd. article then I really don't know how to help. Go the “easy route” and re-install Adobe Reader again. I will gladly come back to clean up your computer when it is in a mess again.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Resetting a High-Speed Internet Connection

2010-02-04T15:34:00.002-06:00

If you have DSL or cable service your computer may loose it’s Internet connection. You get "server not found" messages or the like.

You may have one or two of these three types of connecting equipment:

A Modem; it converts the high speed signal from either the phone line or the TV cable into something a computer can understand.
The modem has one cable that connects either to your computer or to a router.
A Router typically has one input from a modem, four output connectors for computers or network printers and eventually a wireless antenna.
A Gateway is a combination of a modem and a router in one physical box.

Turn everything OFF.
That means to shut down (turn off!) the computer and
removing the power cables from the modem and the router or gateway.
Then wait one minute; this is important!
Turn the modem (or gateway) back on (re-connect the power cable).
Then wait one minute; this is important!
If you have a router turn it back on (re-connect the power cable).
Then wait one minute; this is important!
Turn your computer back on.

Thunderbird Version 3.x – DO NOT Install or Upgrade!

2010-01-30T05:49:00.003-06:00

For the time being I recommend NOT to upgrade to Thunderbird 3.x.

There are so many people reporting various problems with version 3.x on the TB support forum that I cringe.

There are some functional changes that seem to me to be a clear loss of functionality.

And here comes the absolute whopper: Thunderbird can not import from Windows Live Mail! WLM is the default email program on Windows computers since the advent of Windows Vista in Jan. 2007. The Thunderbird developers seem to completely ignore this simple fact!

Personally I am desolate that I can no longer offer to my customers a much safer alternative email program.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Adobe Shockwave – Manual Update Required!

2010-01-25T06:25:00.004-06:00

As you can read in this article at The Register Adobe again proves to be a company that seems not to know what they want. One part of their organization wants to take the user “out of the picture” and fully automate updating as I reported here, another department goes back to the stone age and requires us to manually un-install a dangerously flawed version of the Shockwave Player before we can install the most current version.

If you think “I never used such a thing as a ‘Shockwave Player’” and maybe ask yourself if just un-installing it would do the trick then you would be badly wrong.

Adobe’s Shockwave Player is required for a vast number of web sites. Many animations and things that seem to be videos on the Internet actually require Adobe’s Shockwave Player.

What is so annoying is the fact that Adobe requires us to go the archaic route to manually un-install before we can download and install the current version.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Firefox Version 3.6 – Okay to Install

2010-01-22T06:10:00.003-06:00

Firefox has begun telling us that Version 3.6 is available and asking us to update. This now is safe as far as extensions are concerned that I have installed. If you have installed other than the extensions listed below it is mandatory that you make sure that these extensions are compatible with this new version of Firefox. If you installed extensions on your own you will know how to do that.

If you can not ascertain compatibility then DO NOT install Firefox 3.6.

If I installed Firefox on your machine you are using three extensions or add-ons that I always install. Rarely I have to install a fourth extension.

The extensions that I install are:

AdblockPlus, IMHO the best advertisement blocker.
Forecastfox, a nice weather bar directly in Firefox.
McAfee Siteadvisor, Highlighting dangerous web sites in search results.
Eventually Downthemall, my preferred download manager for Firefox.

For these four extensions versions compatible with Firefox 3.6 are available.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

How to Install and Use Microsoft Security Essentials

2010-01-15T04:26:00.007-06:00

This article assumes that you have my “classic” computer setup with Avast, Ad-Aware, Spybot and SpywareBlaster. These instructions can easily be modifies to apply to any other combination of security programs.

If you run Windows XP you can skip the next paragraph because your Windows XP is definitely a 32-bit system.

If you run Windows Vista or Windows 7 it is from now on imperative that you know what type of the Operating System (OS) you are using; since Vista there are two types of OS, 32-bit and 64-bit. You can find out what type yours is by right clicking Computer and left clicking Properties. You’ll see something like this:

In System type it will say either 32- or 64-bit OS.

The sequence of steps I will describe may by some people be considered overkill; I have in mind the majority of my customers who refer to themselves as being “computer illiterate”; I want to give them something as foolproof and simple as possible.

I recommend to print this text so you have it available during the process. At the end of this article is a "Print this post" link.

Download Microsoft Security Essentials from here. As usual you need to know the name of the file being downloaded and where the download will be stored, mostly either on your desktop or on XP in the My Documents\Downloads folder and on Vista/7 in the \<username>\Downloads folder.
Physically disconnect your computer from the Internet, that is disconnect the networking cable that comes from your router or modem from the computer.
Un-install all security programs one by one, beginning with your anti virus program. Restart the system when prompted.
And for those that don’t seem to know what “all” means: Yes, that includes Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Spywareblaster! I apologize for being a bit facetious but I have gotten this question too many times.
Check that the Windows Firewall is turned on; Control Panel, Windows Firewall. If it is not on then turn it on!

Some so called security software does not turn the Windows firewall back on or outright clobbers it!

If you get an error message your computer either was messed up by a virus or you have used a “security” program other than Avast! and you have ended up in the deep end. If you can fix it yourself, congratulations; otherwise you should call your computer helper immediately. Do NOT go back online without the firewall working!
If the Windows firewall is turned On then it is time to re-connect the networking cable, the one you un-plugged in step #2.
Restart the computer!
Check that you can get any web page other than your home page; try http://www.netmanners.com/.

Serious problems? You have ended up in the deep end. If you can fix it yourself, congratulations; otherwise you should call your computer helper.
Find the file that you downloaded in step #1 and run it, that is double click it. Follow the instructions and prompts.

MSE is running? Congratulations!

All you have to do with Microsoft Security Essentials is check if it's tray icon (bottom right corner of the screen) looks like this:

Important is the color green. If this icon changes to yellow or red you need to give it immediate attention. Click on this icon and MSE will come up with the program window telling you exactly what needs to be done and a big yellow or red button to do it.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Adobe, again it’s Adobe - Shun Their Reader!

2010-01-14T06:09:00.005-06:00

Now this is worth reading I think; take some time, get a cup of Java and read on.
Regularly I receive a MS-Windows specific newsletter that usually has pertinent and correct information. Here is a literal quote that I think is worth reading (emphasis added):

Beginning April 13, Adobe plans to release automatic, silent updates for its Adobe Reader PDF-viewing software.

In an interview with InfoSecurity.com, Brad Arkin, Adobe director of product security and privacy, said Acrobat Refresh Manager was quietly installed on millions of machines worldwide as part of the October 2009 quarterly patch released by the company.

The new, silent updater is currently disabled. Now, as before, Adobe Reader prompts users when an update is available and lets them decide whether to install it. Adobe wants to change this because users often postpone an update until they're confident the patch won't cause problems of its own. This delay opens what Arkin calls a "window of vulnerability."

Acrobat Refresh Manager is designed to take the user out of the equation; the updates will install when Adobe wants them to. This week's scheduled Adobe Reader update will begin test-activating the new updater with "selected users."

Depending on the results of this testing, Adobe Reader's automatic, silent updater may be operational across the millions of Reader installations starting in April. The company currently has announced no plans to launch an automatic-update feature for its Flash Player or any other Adobe products.

IMHO that is a typical example of a big company taking over my computer without either informing me nor asking my consent! What Adobe’s director of privacy and security sys there means:

Adobe does on my computer what they want when they want it and however they want to do it. They treat my computer as if it were theirs!
I am being “silenced” – and I don’t like that, believe me!
Adobe decides to use my computer and me as their guinea pig whether I like it or not, whether I am willing to cooperate or not!

What are these idiots at Adobe thinking? That is worse than Microsoft eventually labeling new functionality that only helps them as a “security update”. I have written about Adobe’s more than questionable policies and related problems here and here.

For me the consequences are clear: Adobe Reader gets removed from all my computers! I will replace it with PDF X-Change Viewer; how to get PDF X-Change Viewer is described here.

Commonly recommended alternatives like CutePDF, Foxit Reader and eventually others will attempt to install gunk-garbage like the Ask-Toolbar and make other not desirable changes. User beware!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Installing OpenOffice

2010-01-10T06:59:00.004-06:00

Many of my customers use OpenOffice (OO) instead of Microsoft’s Office software. The simple reason for that is that OO is free.
For everybody who wants to attempt to install or update OO themselves here a couple of related tips. You may want to print this post before you start on this endeavor; you find a link “Print This Post” at the end of the post.
OO is a very sizeable download of currently over 135MB. The organization behind OO is a non-profit with limited resources; their computers have limited capabilities, thus they have to throttle the download speed for all their visitors. I recommend to download from Filehippo.com, a specialized download web site that offers much more speed. Download OO from here.
1. Caution: The top part of the download page on Filehippo looks like this:

Please note that currently the entry is for Release Candidate 1, it is a Beta version meant for testing by geeks only. You want the latest stable version; I have marked it green. Click on that and above you will read “Download This Version” and THIS is where you click to start the download.
When the download starts take note of the file name and know where the download will be stored!

This location is different on different versions of Windows and can be set differently within Firefox.
As usual in Windows what you download is not the program you actually want; rather it is an Installer (or Setup) program that when run will install the actual program on your computer.
When the download has finished find the downloaded installer (I hope you did take a note of the file name) and run the installer. The installation process will first create a folder containing all the files required for installation; this folder has a lengthy name and usually ends up on the desktop. For the time being leave it alone! The installer will ask you a bunch of typical questions.
2. Caution: When asked do a Custom install; the Complete option would install much more than you need to replace MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Custom will let you choose which module gets installed. Here is what it looks like when I do a Custom install of OO:

To select or deselect a feature you click on the little down arrow by the feature to get to the actual selection. Most of my customers will neither need Draw nor Base nor Math.
This Custom Setup window offers more choices under Optional Components. Set them like this (the part scrolled off this little screen is okay as suggested):

These settings assume that your installation of Java is up to date.
That’s it for the physical installation but there is more; thank you for following me this far.
You should have a new icon on your desktop that looks like this:
We have to do a few one-time settings before we can use OpenOffice. Double click the OO icon to get too OO’s start window.
Upon the first start you will be ask for your name; give it your full name, this will not be transferred anywhere; do NOT register, this would only lead to more emails.
When the “Welcome to Open Office” window is open click Tools, Options, open Load/Save and highlight General.
For Text documents select “Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP”,

for “Spreadsheet” select “Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP” and
for “Presentation” select “Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP”.
Then highlight Microsoft Office and put check marks in all six boxes:

Click OK and close the Welcome window.
That’s it for the initial settings. Thank you for following me through this.
OpenOffice should be working now. If it does then the very last thing to do is to delete the installation folder.
If you use these instructions PLEASE let me know any comments or suggestions you may have in this context. Just write a comment here in the blog; please DO NOT give your full name or clear text email in the comment; this is a public forum, there is no privacy here. I will reply in another comment. Added 2010-01-11: Somebody did just that. Again, this is a public forum.
As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.
Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Happy New Year To Y’all

2010-01-01T22:40:00.006-06:00

And again I have squandered a wonderful year and am facing a new one. It has never been my thing to make big “New Years Resolutions” or the like. I have seen it too many times that such resolutions hardly survive a few weeks and much less a full year.

Today I ran across two sets of New Years Resolutions that have to do with our computers; not only was I intrigued by that association but when reading them I realized how much they are applicable to me – and to others.

With all due respect towards my customers I know that the first set of resolutions applies to the majority of computer users. I truly wish that more people would abide by these oh-so-simple and oh-so-basic rules of politeness, respect and decent manners.

This first set of resolutions comes from the Netmanners.com web site; this is a place I can highly recommend! Judith Kallos, the owner of Netmanners.com, IMHO deserves to be as proverbially known as Miss Manners, Emily Post.

The second set of resolutions comes from DownloadSquad.com and definitely is geared much more at technically experienced computer users.

Despite a few misgivings about some of the statements in these resolutions, the general gist IMHO is quite acceptable. As far as some of my customers are concerned please be warned, quite a bit of this is fairly technical.

If you have worked your way through to this point you deserve a reward. Allow your pensive, thoughtful, imaginative, spiritual, funny, inspirational and, and, and… side to be captivated by Monina Velarde’s newest achievement and visit her New Year’s Resolution Generator. Just click the “Gimme More” button and be surprised. I bet you will find something to like.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.

Upgrade to Windows 7? Not the HP Way!

2009-12-20T00:30:00.003-06:00

Want to upgrade your HP computer to Windows 7? Read on; all others only if you want a chuckle and need to shake your head.

During the install of Windows 7 the installer programs asks if we want to do an “Upgrade” or a “Custom” install. “Upgrade” in this context is an in-place replacement of Windows Vista; “Custom” is a completely new install that wipes everything from the disk drive. On XP computers we have to do a Custom install!

This week I attempted an upgrade on a brand new, de-gunked and clean, malware free HP notebook. HP gave the customer an extra CD with HP software urging to run this CD first. I did that but to my big surprise after ca. 17.5 hours, yes, seventeen hours, the machine rebooted – back into Vista!

I can not say what the precise reason for that was; my suspicion goes towards the HP software. I have done several upgrades on other manufacturer’s computers and have never seen anything like that.

The actual Windows 7 DVD that HP sent looks totally different than any Win 7 DVD I have ever seen but it finally did the job; custom install in 45 minutes and the notebook is running great.

The lesson from all this? With Windows 7 Microsoft finally got something right but HP easily scraps it!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

Scared Again

2009-11-08T20:56:00.002-06:00

And again I received a well meaning “warning”. It went like this:

New Virus (NO JOKE)
This is legitimate. Please pass this along to your friends.
The newest virus circulating is the UPS/FedEx/DHL Delivery Failure.
You will receive an email from UPS/Fed Ex Service along with a packet number.
It will say that they were unable to deliver a package sent to you on such-and-such a date.
It then asks you to print out the invoice copy attached.
DON'T TRY TO PRINT THIS… IT LAUNCHES THE VIRUS!
Pass this warning on to all your PC operators at work and home.
Snopes confirms that it is real.
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/ups.asp

True, that IS a known scam to distribute a virus program. BUT:

If nobody in the household ordered anything that we expect through UPS/FedEx/DHL it can only be a scam, right?
And again, if we are observant of what we are doing we will see that the link in the email does NOT go to a legitimate UPS/FedEx/DHL web site.
AND: Even children should know that these three carriers will NEVER notify any recipient via email. If they can not deliver a package they always leave a paper notification.
And NO, but absolutely no recipient of a package can ever print an invoice through the freight carrier’s service. Only the buyer of the merchandise can do that on the merchant’s web site, right?

So really, only when we are un-observant we would fall for a dumb social engineering trick like this in the first place. I don't think anybody I know is in that category.

Everybody out there, PLEASE do not forward such tracts to me.

And still, there is a lesson to be learned here:

This curiosity impulse that makes a person click “to see what is in the package” (?) is all the hacker wants from us. This one click will lead to a maliciously programmed web site that may attempt to coax us into revealing personal information, that may immediately download malicious programs into our computer and so on – unless we actually use our common sense before we click – or forward a message like this.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

What To Do After A BSOD

2009-11-08T13:42:00.002-06:00

The dreaded Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) can have way too many reasons for specific advice. But there are some reasons that are more prevalent than others like these three examples:

A BSOD can be an indication of a corrupted or incorrect device driver (software that controls some piece of hardware like a printer).
A BSOD can be caused by a faulty memory chip.
Yes, they worked yesterday; but sometimes they get weak over time and then, all of a sudden, they throw a BSOD.
Some other hardware failure on the motherboard; mostly very bad...

The remedy for number 1 can be time consuming but generally it is possible to correct these errors.

Number 2 can be tested for in relatively little time, usually less than half an hour. Whether I happen to have a suitable replacement memory chip along is dictated by the luck of the draw.

Number 3 can be very tricky to trace, especially if it occurs randomly. I am neither qualified nor equipped to do that and would in such a case refer to a local hardware repair store; luckily I know a good technician who has a store in the area – and on top of being good he is honest; that is a rare combination in this field. As always with computers you should carefully consider all options. If the computer in question is more than three years old I usually advise to at least consider a new machine versus the vagaries of a motherboard repair or replacement.

You can help a great deal if you please would collect some information from the BSOD before you send me an email asking for advice. Here is an example of a BSOD.

Please look for the marked portions of this example and write down what appears in these locations when you see it. If you call me please have this information available when we talk. Or please send an email with this info once you have three or four occurrences documented. Caution: Some of this info may or may not be present; please note if it is not present; it may be in different places and/or sequence as well. In above example we have in this sequence:

The name of the file that caused the problem,
a textual error code,
a so-called stop-error code and
again the file name of the driver that caused the error.

The stop error code and if available the file name are most important to trace errors in a BSOD and to get at the root cause! The stop error code always begins with “0x” and should be in every BSOD.

I know, recording these details is tedious but I hardly can stay at your house and wait for the next BSOD to happen.

Let's cooperate to get at the root of this and "Thank You" in advance!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Windows 7 First Impressions - Updated

2009-10-22T23:34:00.003-05:00

Tonight I installed Windows 7 Home Premium on my notebook, previously running XP. This machine is slightly over two years old and the graphics chip does not support the Aero Glass feature – which I would have turned off anyway. The installation was pain free and clearly faster than XP and Vista installations were.

And believe it or not: Subjectively the little notebook with Windows 7 feels faster than with Windows XP! That indeed is a welcome surprise.

For the transfer of my data files and settings from the XP environment into Win7 I used Microsoft’s program Windows Easy Transfer. I had to transfer three user accounts with all their files and settings. The worst part was that writing the migration file took 1.5 hours, certainly because I had about 11.5 GB of data in my account alone. The migration file had a total size of over 14 GB. Restoring all this took a little less than one hour.

My opinion about Widows 7? I love it!

I know Microsoft products since long before the first PC was released – and that was in fall 1981! This is the first time I see a major Microsoft product being released that is useable from the day of the release on. Congratulations, Microsoft.

I will report back after I have done the first in place update from Vista to Win 7.

October 30 2009: That has happened in the meantime. Here is a brief summary.

If you have to transfer any of the following

many files
Firefox settings, bookmarks, extensions and so on
Thunderbird email settings, mail and address book
and/or more than 1 user account

plan for several hours and use Microsoft’s utility Windows Easy Transfer. This little gem of a program is still quite minimal but it does the job AND it allows you to select additionally to it’s standard selections any folders of your choice, for example Thunderbird, Mozilla (Firefox settings) and others according to your needs. Be aware that programs can NOT be transferred to Windows 7, they always need to be re-installed. And naturally you need a sufficiently large external storage device; I recommend to finally buy that external disk drive you always wanted. You get good Seagate FreeAgent drives for well under $100 and finally have no more excuse not to have a usable backup as well.

If you have to transfer only one user account AND if your system is well maintained, that is temporary files deleted, virus free, completely up-to-date AND if it is a relatively recent Vista system, maybe less than 6 months old, you can try an in-place upgrade. Caution: The very last phase of the process takes quite some time; go have a Starbucks or jog around the park. I have done already two of those and they were pain free.

Personally I prefer a clean complete new install (Microsoft calls it Custom) for any system that has had some use already; for XP systems it is a must anyway. Beware, this install completely wipes all old content from your hard disk. Do you have a recent or current backup of your files OUTside of your computer? If not you got to do some homework before you can install Windows 7.

And another experience: If your computer is more than 6 months old download and run Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. Heed it’s warnings and do your homework BEFORE you attempt the upgrade to Windows 7.

You may ask “My XP system runs ok, why all that trouble”? If your computer meets the requirements for Windows 7 you will love the result. IMHO Windows 7 is faster and MUCH safer than XP; it is MUCH faster, somewhat safer and MUCH less annoying than Vista! Again, applause to Microsoft.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

32-bit or 64-bit System?

2009-10-21T20:33:00.000-05:00

For home users with Windows XP there is no question, they have a 32-bit operating system. With Windows Vista or Windows 7 you need to know what version your computer is running. How do you find out what it is? Right click on Computer and click on Properties. Under the heading “System” you find the answer. Here is an example from my computer:

Recent hands-on experience shows that on identical hardware 64-bit systems are often faster than 32-bit systems.

If you found yourself thinking “Will this 32-bit software run on my 64-bit operating system?” or “Will this 64-bit software run on my computer?” or "Should I buy that 64-bit system?" or if you just would like to know more about the difference then read on.

I will try to answer these questions and help you understand the 64-bit and 32-bit concepts of hardware, operating system and applications.

32-bit systems have been part of consumer computing for more than a decade since the time of the Intel Pentium, also known as 80386 architecture or sometimes x86 for short. Most software and operating system code written during this time is 32-bit compatible.

32-bit systems can address up to 4 GB of memory. Some modern applications require more memory to complete their tasks. Progress in chip fabrication technology and demands of high power applications led to the development of 64-bit processors for mainstream computing.

Here is the problem: Most of the software available today is still 32-bit code, but processors have migrated to 64-bit and operating systems are catching up quickly. Eventually even the applications will catch up. Thus we have to cope with many possible combinations of 32 and 64-bits hardware, operating system and applications.

Consider these three factors to be three layers with the processor as the lowest layer and the application as the highest layer:

To run a 64-bit application, you need support from all lower levels (64-bit OS and 64-bit processor).

To run a 64-bit OS, you need support from its lower level 64-bit processor; it will NOT run on a 32-bit processor.
A 32-bit OS will run on a 32 or 64-bit processor without any problems because 64-bit processors can emulate a 32-bit processor.
32-bit applications will run on any supported combination of OS and processor. In a 64-bit OS this is possible due to software emulation, a feature of 64-bit operating systems.
Device drivers run parallel to the operating system. Emulation happens only at the operating system level; it is available to the higher layer only, that is the applications. Thus it is not possible to install 32-bit device drivers on a 64-bit machine.

Answers to common questions:

Will a 64-bit CPU run a standard 32-bit program on a 64-bit version of an OS?
Yes it will. 64-bit systems are backward compatible with the 32-bit counterparts (see the warning below).

Will a 64-bit OS run a standard 32-bit application on a 64-bit processor?
Yes it will because of backward compatibility. Please see the warning below.

Can I run Win2K and WinXP on an 64-bit CPU and use old software?
Yes, a 32-bit OS like Win-2K and Win-XP will run on 64-bit processors. You can run "old software" on these 32-bit OS and 64-bit processors (see the warning below).

Will my devices (printer, scanner and so on) work when I buy this fancy new 64-bit machine with 64-bit OS?
Here you have to do your homework! Before you buy the fancy new 64-bit computer with 64-bit OS you have to verify that 64-bit drivers are available for all devices you plan on to keep using!

A warning: Many times 64-bit programs may contain bits of 32-bit code; old 32-bit programs can contain 16-bit code. Be aware that 16-bit code will NOT run on a 64-bit OS.
This is one reason why some old 32-bit programs will not work on a 64-bit OS.

Update 2-22-2010:

Personal recommendation when buying a new computer:

For quite a few peripherals that you may have like printers, scanners and so on you may NOT find 64-bit drivers. Do your home work before you buy the fancy-shmanzy new 64-bit system!

Should you not quite know how to do this sort of home work then send me an email to ejheinze_at_gmail_dot_com (or my “normal” email address) with a detailed list of exactly what peripherals you have and a request to find out for you if there are 64-bit drivers available. There will be a small charge for this service because it may be time consuming.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

Microsoft Security Essentials Officially Released

2009-10-04T15:11:00.004-05:00

Without any fanfare Microsoft released their new security offering Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) earlier last week.

I read about the release in an informational third-party newsletter I receive, not a single word about it in Microsoft's own publication about new downloads. Hardly believing I went to microsoft.com, searched for "microsoft security essentials" and got to this MSE home page with a working download link. What a change to former MS tactics of having a lot of fanfare and sometimes flaky or questionable stuff in the end.

First time I wrote about MSE July 22nd 2009. A follow-up was published August 22nd 2009. In the meantime I have taken to install MSE on my customers computers; it replaces 4 (FOUR!) other security related programs that the customer had to run manually about once very week.

On one machine MSE found and removed a clear leftover from some malicious stuff that the other programs had overlooked and on yet another machine MSE removed a Trojan horse virus that had so far escaped any detection. I know this is not representative and only anecdotal but nevertheless it again points in a very positive direction.

If you use MSE all you have to do is have any eye on it's little icon in the system tray.As long as this tray icon is green all is well.

If it ever turns yellow or orange double click it and the program window will tell you clearly what to do and have a big fat yellow button right there for you to click.

If the icon ever turns red you better give it immediate attention; double click it and the program window will tell you clearly what to do and have a big fat red button right there for you to click.

I am expecting "official" comparisons between MSE and other security suites to be available in a few weeks time. Here is a first example from The Washington Post.

If future results are anything only close to that good I will definitely keep using MSE and recommend to my previous customers to switch over. The ease of use IMHO is unsurpassed.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

How Do Viruses Get On My Computer?

2009-10-01T22:30:00.002-05:00

One of the most asked questions I get when I work at a customer's computer is "I am very careful when I am on the Internet. How do these viruses then get on my computer?".

Today I found a pretty good article that answers this question in quite some depth. Before I give you the link to this article let me mention that no matter how careful you are your computer will eventually get "nailed" by some malicious software; it's unavoidable.

Last year a significant number of web servers have been cracked by hackers and infected with very tricky software that will attempt to infect EVERY visitor of any of the web sites stored on the web server. This infection is really deeply rooted; "disinfecting" the computer would disable the server and thus all web sites stored on this computer for several days. So it gets done only very slowly - if at all.

With this background in mind you may want to read this article if you want an answer to the title question.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

On Incomplete Emails the 2nd

2009-09-25T08:18:00.002-05:00

Once more I got an email that kind of “pushed my button”. Here is the full text minus the individual’s name of course.

Subject: Re: McAfee Sight Adviser

Eike,
The McAfee sight adviser shows up grey in the lower tool bar. The sight adviser also does not work when using the search engine.
Is there an easy fix?
Signed with name

“What to do with an email like this” I thought for the longest time.
Finally I chose this reply:

Xyz,
With the information you provide there is no fix because
- you don't give any detailed info on what program you are using,
- what version this program is,
- what you are doing and
- why you draw the conclusions that you draw.
You stir up questions hat I need answered before I even can address the matter at hand.
- How do you tell that it does not work?
- What search engine are you using?
- Have you checked if you have the latest version?
- Have you turned on "Highlight search results" in it's General Settings?
And by the way, it's called McAfee Siteadvisor.
Regards
Eike

Now, what are the lessons to be learned here?

Simply give as much detail as humanly possible if you want answers.
Send me a screen shot instead of re-typing lengthy messages.
Spell names correctly.
And let me know that you appreciate the free email advice that I offer.

Am I asking too much? Frankly, I don’t think so.

I get many request every week. If I were to remember all technical and environmental details of all the many installations I see every week there wouldn’t be space left for anything else in my scatterbrain. And if I had to hunt down contact information every time I get a request from a customer there wouldn't be any time left to do actual customer visits.

As a reminder: If you read down to here you may want to read my first rant about incomplete emails as well; thank you.

Please comment with your thoughts right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

MUCH More Important Than Computers

2009-09-22T20:08:00.002-05:00

If you have grandchildren, small children, any children, if you care about another person's or maybe only your own health, you NEED to take 45 minutes out of your busy schedules and listen to these four videos, each about ten minutes long.

If the link does not work for you go to Dr. Mercola's web site at http://www.mercola.com/. There you search for "swine flu shot"; you get this or a similar result. Search for and click the link that I marked in this picture red.

We are being lied to in the most primitive way and with one of the most primitive motivations, corporate greed.

I wonder if President Obama's daughters will have to take this so called "flu shot".

And here is a nice poster with top 10 swine flu facts:

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Please note that for this post comments with inappropriate language and personal attacks will be deleted.

Thank you in advance.

How to Make a Link in Thunderbird

2009-08-23T13:55:00.005-05:00

You are reading a very interesting web page and think "Aunt Mary would certainly like to read this too" or something along this line. As a faithful customer of mine you are using Thunderbird as your email program and you have no idea how to do that. Here is the recipe:

First you highlight the URL (the web page address) in the address bar of the web browser and Copy (Ctrl+C) the URL. For example:

Then you switch to Thunderbird and begin to write your email to Aunt Mary. You highlight the word(s) that you want to become a link in the text of your message. Open the drop-down of the little Insert… button and select Link.

What comes up is the actual link window (below partially shown) into which you'd have to paste (Ctrl+V) the URL of the web page you want to link to:

Then you click OK and presto, you created a professional looking link in your email. Just send it off...

That is how you create a link in Thunderbird.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

First steps with Microsoft Security Essentials

2009-08-22T17:26:00.002-05:00

Here are my first impressions of MSE.

Currently I have MSE installed on

my XP notebook, an important computer for me; I use it at customer service calls;
one Win7 RC test system that I currently use to write this blog entry;
one Vista notebook destined to be a birthday gift and
three brand new Vista notebooks owned by customers who had agreed to “guinea pig” status.
Thanks Toby, Fred and Todd.

“My” current individual take on MSE:

It really seems to be install and forget, on Vista and Win7 at least.
On my “production” XP notebook I manually ran Microsoft Update today and I was offered two definition updates for MSE.
That indicates that MSE’s own update feature seems not to be fully automatic yet, on XP at least. For a limited time I could live with having to check for MSE updates manually.
I am still waiting for first reports from independent test institutes on MSE’s effectiveness.

All of the following is an update August 24th, 2009:

Today I installed MSE on another customer's really old computer (ca. year 2000) on Win XP and it runs like a charm; it immediately updated automatically the program and the definitions. It is getting better.

I found a comparison from July of this year where someone had compared MSE's detection results against 25 other established anti virus programs.
MSE finished second best! This certainly is only a hint of where it's heading and not a thorough test; but only Sophos AV was better and Sophos is one of the most expensive anti virus solutions out there; it is something like the Rolls Royce of AV programs.

If Microsoft's MSE keeps its quality promise and manages to slowly either push Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro and others out of business or force them to substantially improve and get cheaper at the same time than Microsoft would have done the public a huge favor. I never believed I would say that!

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

News: Microsoft and Anti Virus

2009-07-22T08:28:00.008-05:00

Okay, I am dating myself now but then, my age is no secret at all. I "know" MS Windows since versions 3.1 and 3.11; before 3.1 I much preferred DOS for my purposes.

For all that Windows past as I remember it we needed a third party anti virus program like a fish needs water; before August 2004 when XP Service Pack 2 was released we needed additionally a dependable firewall program. Working without a firewall was playing Russian Roulette with a revolver that had 5 chambers loaded.

Recently Microsoft has released a public beta test of a new free security product "Microsoft Security Essentials" or MSE for short. You can read a fairly comprehensive article about it on ED Bott's ZDNet blog.

What makes me write about it here are two things:

Comment number 68 by Diane Wilson to Ed Bott's blog because it reflects my philosophy to computer security; quote follows.
Implications on future decisions about security software especially on Windows 7 systems.

Here is the quote from Diane Wilson's comment with some commenting by me in italics:

1. Stay behind a router. NAS is a great filter for many attacks.
NAS seems to be a typo. I am sure she means NAT, the major security feature of any decent router.

2. Use a firewall. Windows firewall works well enough.
YEAH, YEAH, YEAH; that's what I have been preaching since early 2005!

3. Keep your OS up to date, not just in updates, but in versions. I'm already running Win 7 RC as my primary system at home, and I'll be on Win 7 for good as soon as it goes RTM. Remember (or learn) that security must be pro-active, and that Vista and Win7 took huge steps in this direction. Address space randomization. Array and string range-checking to limit buffer overruns. And more.
I totally agree.

4. UAC. Live with it. It's your friend.
In Vista it's a drag, in Win7 it is okay! What do they say? Win7 is Vista done right.

5. 64-bit. Required driver signing is your friend.
But beware the potential pitfalls if you have "older" printers, scanners and so on.
And be aware that the vast majority of applications still is 32-bit software; you get some serious translations permanently going on just for the communication from 32-bit application to the 64-bit OS and vice versa. On some systems that will cause a performance hit!

6. IE protected mode.
Or use Firefox in the first place. MUCH less worry.

7. Data Execution Protection, turned on for everything. No exceptions.

8. Windows Defender.
Likely as of release of MSE a non-issue; MSE seems to be really good.

9. Oh, one more thing. Anti-virus software.
Only time can tell if Microsoft gets it right with MSE. The early signs are promising though and then adios Norton and the likes of it.

Already now I am running a Windows 7 RC machine; on this machine I will install MSE to replace "my" mix of security programs.

Let's see how I fare.

Added August 30th 2009:

Here are two more links if you are interested:
PCWorld's article First Look: Microsoft Security Essentials and from
PCWorld's BizFeed OPINION: Pigs Fly! Microsoft Leads in Security.

The latter is an article with a more general view on Microsoft and security that I found especially interesting. I see the results clearly in MSE and Windows 7.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

Renewing the avast! license key

2009-07-21T22:34:00.012-05:00

Every time they turn on the computer many of my customers are getting now a small alarmingly red window from avast! anti virus in the right bottom corner of the screen. It looks like this:

avast! Home Edition Free has a license key that is valid for one year; 'your' year will be over soon. The problem that some people have is with the screen they get after clicking on "Click here to remedy that situation.

I call the resulting screen The Big Scare; it is nothing but unabashed marketing, sort of understandable that Alwil (the manufacturer of avast!) wants to make another buck. This is the scare screen:

Some people got so scared that they overlooked the tiny link in the bottom right corner that reads "No thanks, just register the free product".

When you click on this link your web browser comes up with the registration page for avast! which has recently changed. You will find the text "My registration key has expired, I need a new one".

Click on "My registration key has expired, I need a new one." You will get to the Registration form. Please fill in all fields correctly and click "Register for free license".

You will receive an email with a new license key; sometimes it takes quite some time until this mail arrives.

Open the registration email, highlight the new license key (ONLY the key please!) and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C).

Double click the avast! AntiVirus icon on your desktop. You will see the avast! splash screen:

Click on "Registration" and you should see:

Place your cursor in the field labeled "Enter your license key" and paste (Ctrl+V) the license key into the field. It should look something like this:

Click OK and avast! will tell you that all is well again (for another 12 months).

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

My "old" Screen Setup

2009-07-09T23:00:00.011-05:00

The upper right hand corner of your desktop looks like this after I have cleaned up your computer. Naturally the lines and numbering are not on your desktop, they help in explaining what the icons are meant for. See the explanations below.
1a The PDF file named "Preventive PC Hygiene"; it describes step by step and click by click what needs to be done to keep your PC "clean and mean".

1b A folder with various background information in PDF files and a link to my blog.

1c Firefox is the web browser you should be using for all things Internet. Read here about why.

2 If you use web mail (Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail) please skip to #3.
Thunderbird is the program you should be using to read and write emails unless you prefer web based email. The only drawback in Thunderbird is its Help system; that's why you have the next three icons.

2a Thunderbird help page explaining the basic elements of the main Thunderbird screen.

2b Thunderbird help page explaining attachments and the address book.

2c Thunderbird help page explaining the mechanism to filter Junk mail; this is a MUST READ! Don't look for the windows in Thunderbird itself; you only need to understand the simple and effective mechanisms used.

3 CopilotHost is a program you would use to establish a connection to me for remote support. This is only possible on connections that are faster than dial-up.

4 The seven (for Vista six) steps that comprise the weekly clean-up chores. The icons correspond positionally to the numbered paragraphs in my paper Preventive PC Hygiene; see there for detailed instructions. The top-down sequence of these icons denotes decreasing importance.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

Preventive PC Hygiene

2009-07-09T22:45:00.001-05:00

Attention: On Windows 2000, XP and Vista systems all of the following has to be done by a user with administrator privilege. This is mandatory!

Remember: Use Firefox and Thunderbird instead of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express; this is HUGE insurance against most malicious software!

With a working Internet connection do steps 1 trough 6 of this “computer hygiene” routine once every week; do step 7 once every month.

Please keep in mind that despite “Automatic Updates” in Windows the computer will miss an update. My experience shows again and again that especially on dial-up connections this happens way too often.

It is absolutely necessary to download and install all these updates, even if you only have a slow dial-up connection!

1   Run Microsoft Update. Click the Microsoft Update icon. In XP select the Express button, in Vista only install “important updates”; follow the prompts. Important: Do this repeatedly until it says “no more updates available” or “Windows is up to date”.

2   avast! Antivirus does not need to be manually updated, If you want to do it anyway: Right click on the small “a” in a blue circle in the tray area (right bottom), then click on “Program Update” to update the program and the virus definitions (iAVS).

3   Scan your computer for advertisement software with Ad-Aware.
Ad-Aware may run 5 to 30 minutes depending on the speed of your computer and the number of files. Long run times are common, especially on computers with several user accounts and thousands of pictures or other files.

    a First click on Web Update; allow all updates to download and install.

    b Click on Scan System, check Smart Scan and click on Scan Now.

    c If after the scan there are any objects listed click Perform Actions
       Now. The program knows what to delete and what to quarantine.

    d Close the program.

4   Scan your computer for spyware with SpyBot Search & Destroy. SpyBot S&D may run quite some time depending on the speed of your computer and number of files.

    a First click on “Search for Updates”. If you are asked for a download
      place choose any location in the USA. Place checkmarks in all empty
       check boxes and click Download. When downloading is done click Exit.
       In rare cases you may have to restart the program manually.

    b After updating it is good practice to “Immunize”. In the menu column
       on the left click on Immunize. If “Unprotected Items” is greater zero
      (counter in top right of the Immunize screen) click on button
       "+ Immunize".

    c Click on “Search & Destroy” and “Check for problems” to start scan.

    d If after the scan there are any items listed click on “Fix selected
      problems” and confirm the removal of the listed malicious items.

    e Close the program.

5   Run Spyware Blaster from the shortcut on your desktop.

    a First click on “Download latest protection updates” (bottom-most line
      in the screen), then click on Check for Updates. If there are updates
      they will download and install automatically.

    b Click on “Protection Status” (left, top menu entry in the window).

    c Click on “Enable All Protection” (third line from bottom of the screen).

    d When the progress bar is turned off close the program.

6   Run ATF-Cleaner. Click Select All and Empty Selected. When ATF-Cleaner is done confirm OK and click Exit.

7   For Windows XP: If you have lots of time and a stable 110V power supply run AusLogics Disk Defrag. Click Next and let the program finish! Ignore the sales pitch on the right side of the “… finished” screen.

     For Windows Vista/7: Schedule Disk Defragmenter for your C: drive to run at a time your computer is most likely turned on.

Re. “stable power supply”: For computers which store critical data I highly recommend an Uninterruptible Power Supply [UPS] and an external disk drive for backups.
For all other home computers a good surge suppressor is a MUST HAVE. “Normal” power strips are NOT sufficient!

Please remember: Loss of power while the computer is running is almost always disastrous!

With “good surge suppressor” I mean a unit with a connected equipment warranty of at least $30,000.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.