WingTips

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

You can tell Mercury is retrograde. The past two weeks we’ve had so many identical problems on totally different machines. And those that aren’t the same as another are completely and utterly obscure. Like the ACER laptop who’s mouse and keyboard won’t work when the battery is plugged in. Most of the hardware issues that aren’t user caused are borked hard drives which all show the same symptoms - PC/laptop in a reboot loop. Partitions become corrupt, data cannot be retrieved because the paritions are corrupt.

The only other problem we’ve had in is viruses. WinAntiVirus Pro 200x usually.

Why do people still think that giving details and money away to a random company that installed it’s own software on their PC is a good idea?

What would you do if someone came up to your house, smashed a window, knocked a door and went “’scuse me love, your window’s broken. Give me $937 dollars and I’ll replace it for you.”? You certainly wouldn’t hand over your wallet.

We had a customer who thought he was paying $50 dollars to this company to remove their bogus virus software..he ended up losing over $120 dollars and can’t trace the company it went to. Silly, silly man.

If you want more info on fake antivirus software and how to spot it, try somewhere like Scambusters. And use your head.

The best things in life are free. At least as far as antivirus go. I use a free one, AVG. Before that, I used another free one - Avast. Sure, they have commercial software too, with bells and whistles on, but the standard free software works really well. If in doubt, google a software’s name, if it’s a bogus one, believe me, there’ll be plenty of complaints about it. Or if all else fails, ask me. I see enough of them in work.

On another, less ranty note, but only slightly, I’m going to be hosting service manuals here for download. Various times I’ve needed access to one at work for a laptop/printer, and had to spend hours trawling the web for one teensy bit of information. I absolutely abhor these sites that sell service manuals and drivers that are often available for free, and have to sift my way through enough when looking for one manual. To sell information when it can be given away? Against the spirit of the internet imho.

<mumble> besides, I begrudge paying $25+ dollars for a manual from which I only need one piece of information for a laptop that doesn’t even belong to me and I may never use again. Grr.

So keep an eye out for my downloads page soon.

I have access to a huge amount of drivers too, so if you’re missing something, leave a comment.

An old post from my DA journal.

As some of you know, I’m one of the not so common, lesser-boobied technicians. And due to utter boredom, the boss throwing a sickie and work being incredibly quiet, I’m scribbling a quick PC Health..anti virus.. antispyware..what not to do..sort of guide.

The most common, and sometimes expensive problem we seem to get in the shop is virus infected PCs. Often, the viruses themselves have been downloaded accidently by an overly eager user, who, having heard about the latest virus/spyware on the news, has decided to take things into his own hands. The problem is, for virus/spyware creators, these people are easy targets. They create software that sneaks into the system, installs itself, throws up a notice claiming that the system is infected (which, of course it is, but not in the way you’d guess) with a nasty virus, and if you send them money, they’ll remove it. The most common, and hated of these is Winfixer. This program will throw up notice after notice, interrupting your browsing, slowing your PC to a crawl, until you a) Pay to remove it, b) Fix it yourself or c) Reinstall Windows. Another common program that works like this is Virus Burster, which not only tells you that you have a virus, but springs up porn popups for authenticity.
Virus removal currently starts at £35 in the shop that I work at, and goes from there. A format and reinstall is £45, and sometimes it’s not worth fixing. It’s an expensive lesson to learn, that some programs are bad, and do not do what they say on the tin, but the complete opposite. I generally suggest that customers research software on google or the like, before installing anything.

This is what I use to keep machines healthy, it’s all free, and I advise you do the same.

Step 1
Download CleanUp. This program is a nifty little utility which deletes temporary files, including things like cookies created during surfing. In deleting these files, it also removes ‘tracking cookies’, which are generally used to spy on you. It also saves a massive amount of diskspace, keeping your system running relatively smoothly.

Step 2
Download and install a free, legit. antivirus program. We like to use:

a) AVG, available at AVG, by Grisoft.
b) Avast, available at Avast, by Alwil software. Do not be put off by their mention of purchasing software. They DO provide a free version for home users, and this does require you to sign up and register.
c) AntiVir, available at Antivir, by Avira.

Download only one of these programs. Having more than one AntiVirus software installed can cause nasty conflicts and scary errors

Step 3

Download and install AdAware. I’ll be honest, I don’t trust other seemingly legit programs, e.g. Spybot. I haven’t needed to use them, AdAware has always dealt with my spyware issues with no problems. It’s easy to set up, configure and use, and most importantly, free.
Download Adaware here. Run this every two or three weeks to keep your system clean.

Step 4

Every system gets a little untidy as files are constantly written to the hard drive. Defragging your drive can speed it up a lot. Windows has a built in defragger, which you can access by:

Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools.

Some people suggest using Diskeeper, available at Diskeeper.com, but I haven’t any personal experience with it, so I can’t tell you if it works as well as the Windows Defragmenter, or if it’s free. The Windows defragger has always been enough for me.

It’s also advisable to run a checkdisk every few months, to fix any gremlins that have got into your drive. This is easy enough to do, although can take a while for larger drives.
Open My Computer. Right click on your hard drive, and click Properties. Click the Tools tab, and under Error Checking, select Check Now. I suggest ticking both boxes, and waiting through the possible reboot. Like defragmenting, this may take a while.

It’s as easy as that really. Clean up, run antivirus, antispyware and defrag and checkdisk regularly. And it’s great because it’s all free.

Just be wary of what antivirus and antispyware programs you install, research everything thoroughly before installing it. Better to spend a little extra time reading up on it, than forty odd quid having it all fixed because you didn’t.