Windows XP system restore glitch with External Drives

As many folks in San Diego still rely on Windows XP, here's a little snag you may find helpful. Windows XP's system restore feature is a little particular about how it reacts to removable hard drives, like USB ones. If there's a change in if the drive was connected or disconnected at the time of a restore point being created, the restore operation will fail. Also, a drive does not get acknowledged as connected unless it was plugged in at the time of start up. I can theorize you could manually restart the system restore service to work around a restart. Our advice would be to go into the system restore settings and specifically turn system restore OFF for secondary drives that only store data and NOT programs or settings.

Kurt Rein Mobile Computer Wizard Computer Repair San Diego 619 255-1215 Office

Archive of Windows Stop Messages: BSOD

I stumbled upon a great database of all of those nasty 8-digit hexadecimal Blue Screen codes. Many users search for the word minidump which often accompanies these Stop Message errors. The fact that a memory minidump occurred tells you nothing except what you already know — that there was an error. It is the name of the error condition and its 8-digit number that help you determine the actual error condition.

Using this listing should help us expedite the troubleshooting process for our San Diego clients.

http://aumha.org/a/stop.php 

Gmail conversation threaded view for message viewing

A common complaint I get in switching folks in San Diego to Gmail or Google Mail is that they aren't used to the threaded view of gmail messages. Outlook, Live Mail and Outlook Express show email messages in a different format. See the screen image for a simple checkbox to select in the settings for gmail after you are logged into your account! Happy computing!

Kurt Rein www.MobileComputerWizard.com 619 255-1215 Office

iPhone iPad reminders in Outlook calendar.

iCloud is pretty neat for the most part. But time and time again around San Diego I'm asked to fix our clients Outlook calendar reminders. I've researched it and it just come down to Outlook only supports reminders for the primary calendar. I've even tried to work around it and make the iCloud calendar primary, but that makes Outlook crash upon launch. Now were having fun! I suppose you can go to great lengths to have rules that make appointments copy to your primary calendar, but I haven't resorted to that yet. What a mess! Thanks Apple!

Kurt Rein Mobile Computer Wizard 619 255-1215 Office Computer Repair San Diego

Windows Reliability Monitor

Windows Reliability Monitor is essentially a visual readout of the contents of your Event Viewer. I'm not sure how I haven't stumbled on this before, but it certainly makes identifying error trends easier. To access it, go to Start, and type "View Reliability history". This should help expedite the diagnostic aspect of our computer repair in San Diego.

-- Brett Kline Mobile Computer Wizard 619 255-1215 Office

Free app to see if your Mac is infected with the Flashback virus...

Still not sure whether you’re infected with that Flashback malware that’s been making headlines? A new free app from a Mac programmer can you help you verify whether your Mac’s caught the bug.

Download it here: https://github.com/downloads/jils/FlashbackChecker/FlashbackChecker.1.0.zip

Last week, Macworld outlined everything you need to know about the Flashback trojan horse, but the most important thing you need to know is whether your Mac has fallen victim to it. You could muck about in Terminal to get the answer, or you could grab Flashback Checker, a small utility from programmer Juan Leon.

Flashback Checker https://github.com/downloads/jils/FlashbackChecker/FlashbackChecker.1.0.zip

First reported by Ars Technica, Leon’s program handles the task of combing through your Mac’s contents to find any traces of the Flashback malware.

Leon, a Mac programmer for a software maker by day, told Macworld via email that he’s always tinkering on his own time, creating utilities and plugins or contributing to open source projects. Indeed, Flashback Checker is one of those projects Leon worked on during his off-hours.

“I saw on Twitter that [Mac IT professional and frequent Macworld contributor John C. Welch] had created some scripts to help folks out, and figured I could write a native application that checked for all the known variants in a single run,” Leon said in his email. “He suggested that I make the source available to earn more goodwill. I researched the problem and came up with the checker in a couple of hours.”

Leon says his side projects are usually inspired by finding a tedious task and making it easier to perform. “That was the case with the Flashback Checker,” he said. “People were struggling the the command line.”

Here’s how Flashback Checker works: When you launch the app, click its one button—Check for Flashback Infection. If the results display includes the message “No Signs of infection were found,” you can breathe easy. If you’re infected, the utility alerts you. Leon’s code doesn’t remove the malware; instead, it points you in the right direction to go about cleaning up your system, which includes running some very specific Terminal commands.

Leon said he toyed with the idea of also removing the malware with his program, “but I thought people would be unwilling to supply thier admin password to an unknown app.”

The latest variant of the Flashback trojan horse is capable of installing without requiring your password, even if all you did was visit a maliciously-crafted webpage. The malware exploits a Java vulnerability first patched by Oracle back in February; Apple only released an update to patch those flaws late last week, after the Flashback malware had already infected more than half a million Macs.

Windows Vista will exit Mainstream Support and enter Extended Support Tomorrow: April 10, 2012

Microsoft officially releases the new End of Support report for their flagship operating systems Windows XP and Windows Vista. Windows XP was widely popular and Microsoft has decided that all support for the now ten year-old Operating system will end in April of 2014. It has been in Extended Support for the last three years. Windows Vista is already beginning to show its unpopularity and will be entering Extended Support April 10, 2012; tomorrow as of this posting.

What does this mean for our San Diego Windows customers? When a new version of Windows is released, customer can utilize support tools such as: No-charge incident reporting, warranty claims, design change feature requests, and non-security hotfix support. This is part of their Mainstream Support Phase. Windows versions that are five years-old or two years after its successor has been released enter the Extended Support Phase which only includes paid technical support, security update support, and access to the web-based Microsoft Knowledge Base for that product.

What this boils down to is this: Windows XP will be shelved in 2014 which has been a long time coming. This date has been extended multiple times and Microsoft recognizes that it cannot continue to use man hours maintaining software that does not fully support current computer hardware. Windows XP users cannot properly enjoy the benefits of solid state hard drives, multi-core processors, more than 4GB of RAM , nor graphics cards with Direct X 10 or 11 support. Microsoft hasn't updated the Windows XP hardware compatibility since 2008!

Windows Vista is on schedule to leave Extended Support by 2017, so customers will still be able to get limited support until then. This is a good thing! There is no word as of yet when the Windows 7 Service Pack 2 will be released. Developers from older versions of Windows will be used to begin working on improving the already stellar Windows 7 or focus on new projects entirely.

 -- -Greg Mobile Computer Wizard  Office: 619-255-1215

Folder Size TreeSize type directory actions for Mac

Ahhh, the great mystery of how big a folder is on a mac or a PC. On either computer platform it's important to know the size of what you are needing to backup. Treesize works great on a PC by the way. Sometimes with this info you can arrange a low cost solution like a free Mozy account.

This trick in newer OS X platforms really helps!

http://osxdaily.com/2011/04/05/show-folder-sizes-in-mac-os-x-list-view/

This should probably be enabled by default, but the standard Mac OS X list view setting is to not display the size of folders and their contents. No big deal, this is easily changed:

- First, make sure to select list view from a Finder window - Now open “View Options” from the View menu (or hit Command+J) - Select the checkbox next to “Calculate all sizes”

Now when you open any directory in list view, you’ll see the size of directories and their respective contents. This also works with Cover Flow view, but must be set separately through View Options.

 

Kurt Rein

Mobile Computer Wizard

619 255-1215 Office

San Diego Computer and Laptop Repair

Remote Support Toolbox

Customers in San Diego and all over the United States can be helped with our remote software. The toolbox feature allows us to have a few shared 'tools' that we can use. I dropped a few of these into the My Docs folder as these are ones that I use frequently to do PC and Mac computer repairs. Though I admit, the Mac tools won't be cross platform!

Kurt Rein Mobile Computer Wizard Computer Repair San Diego 619 255-1215 Office

Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting...

Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

By Jacqui Cheng | Published April 4, 2012 5:08 PM

Variations of the Flashback trojan have reportedly infected more than half a million Macs around the globe, according to Russian antivirus company Dr. Web. The company made an announcement on Wednesday—first in Russian and later in English—about the growing Mac botnet, first claiming 550,000 infected Macs. Later in the day, however, Dr. Web malware analyst Sorokin Ivan posted to Twitter that the count had gone up to 600,000, with 274 bots even checking in from Cupertino, CA, where Apple's headquarters are located.

We have been covering the Mac Flashback trojan since 2011, but the most recent variant from earlier this week targeted an unpatched Java vulnerability within Mac OS X. That is, it was unpatched (at the time) by Apple—Oracle had released a fix for the vulnerability in February of this year, but Apple didn't send out a fix until earlier this week, after news began to spread about the latest Flashback variant.

According to Dr. Web, the 57 percent of the infected Macs are located in the US and 20 percent are in Canada. Like older versions of the malware, the latest Flashback variant searches an infected Mac for a number of antivirus applications before generating a list of botnet control servers and beginning the process of checking in with them. Now that the fix for the Java vulnerability is out, however, there's no excuse not to update—the malware installs itself after you visit a compromised or malicious webpage, so if you're on the Internet, you're potentially at risk.

Call us if your Mac is infected or need help making sure you're secure against future attacks.

Test Comparison: Which Browser Will Make Your Laptop’s Battery Last Longer?

Test Comparison: Which Browser Will Make Your Laptop’s Battery Last Longer? By Ciprian Adrian Rusen<http://www.7tutorials.com/users/ciprian-adrian-rusen>on Mon, 04/02/2012 - 16:07

Do you have a laptop or netbook with average or poor battery lifetime? If that’s the case, you might want to use an Internet browser that’s able to take advantage of the power saving features included with Windows 7 or Windows 8. We tested all the major browsers and had some very surprising results. Read on to learn which browser is best at squeezing more time out of your laptop’s battery. Is it Google Chrome? Is it Internet Explorer? Or is it Firefox? The Testing Procedure

For this comparison, I tested all the major browsers: Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer 10 beta (included in Windows 8 Consumer Preview), Google Chrome 18, Mozilla Firefox 11 and Opera 11.62. No addons were installed.

[image: Internet Explorer vs Firefox vs Chrome vs Opera]

I used my two and a half years old laptop - an HP Pavillion dv7 2185dx<http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3979540>with the following hardware configuration: Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q9000 @ 2.00 GHz, 6 GB of RAM DDR2, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650. This model is marketed as a desktop replacement and battery time was never its strength, and it is even less of a strength now that a few years have passed. I can barely squeeze two hours of battery time when using it. Therefore, understanding which browser to use, so that my battery lasts as long as possible, was important to me.

The tests were made on a clean Windows 7 installation, with all Windows Updates installed and no other software than the browsers being tested. I used the *Power saver* Power plan<http://www.7tutorials.com/understanding-power-plans-how-switch-between-them>. I had to modify its settings so that it did not turn off the hard disk and put the computer to sleep only when the battery reached its critical level.

Since Internet Explorer 10 beta is available only in Windows 8, I used a clean installation of Windows 8 Consumer Preview on the same laptop. The same power plan was used, using the same modifications to its default values as in Windows 7.

The benchmark used was the Peacekeeper battery test<http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/>, which tests your browser until your battery runs down and Windows puts your computer to sleep. I ran this test at least three times for each browser and recorded the results. Some of the test runs were unsuccessful due to various reasons: the Internet connection stopped working for a short while during some tests, Peacekeeper was not able to record the results of some tests while in other runs I encountered browser crashes.

For each browser I recorded the results of three successful test runs and made the necessary averages to make the comparison between results. Observations: Google Chrome - Very Unstable & Internet Explorer 10 beta - Constant Results

Out of all browsers, Google Chrome stood out as the most troublesome. Most of the tests I made with this browser did not finish successfully. First, I had issues with the browser crashing in the middle of testing. I reinstalled Chrome and the problem was fixed. Then, many tests simply did not end well and Peacekeeper was not able to record the results, for unknown reasons. Also, during most tests, the screen of my laptop was becoming active at random intervals, as if mouse or keyboard movements were detected. I found this strange, as my laptop was simply sitting on a table, not bothered by anyone. This lowered the battery lifetime when testing Google Chrome, as the screen consumed more energy than in the tests made with other browsers. Again, the cause for this behavior is unknown and it was encountered only when testing Google Chrome.

I noticed that Internet Explorer 10 beta had the most constant results. The variations between tests were extremely small, both in terms of the average performance score and how long the battery lasted. For example, the difference between the best and the worst result was only of 4 minutes. The least constant browser was Mozilla Firefox. The difference between the worst and the best test result was 21 minutes.

All browsers, except Google Chrome, ran the tests without any major issues and were very stable in their behavior. Test Results: Internet Explorer Delivers the Most Battery Lifetime

Below you can see the averages of the results I obtained during my tests.

[image: Internet Explorer vs Firefox vs Chrome vs Opera]

*If you want to choose the browser that gives you the maximum battery lifetime then your best bet is Internet Explorer 9 or 10*, depending on the operating system you are using (Windows 7 or Windows 8). Both browsers had very similar results, delivering an average battery lifetime of 108 minutes and 104 minutes respectively.

If you look at the average performance score, the winner is Google Chrome, by a huge margin (126% better) when compared to Internet Explorer 10. However, you get the worst possible battery lifetime out of all browsers (21% lower). It seems that Google Chrome doesn’t take advantage of the power saving features included with Windows 7 and maxes out all the resource available.

However, *if you want a mix between browsing performance and battery lifetime, your best choice is Opera.* Opera was always close to Internet Explorer 10 and 9 in terms of battery lifetime (only 7% lower) while delivering browsing performance that’s 78% better. Conclusion

If I were to pick the winners, they would be Internet Explorer and Opera. Depending on what matters most to you, they are your best choice while browsing the web in battery mode. Before you close this article, please share your experience with using different browsers while running on battery. Are the results above similar to what you have experienced?

http://www.7tutorials.com/test-comparison-which-browser-will-make-your-laptop-battery-last-longer

Best Regards,

Kyle B. Hanson Mobile Computer Wizard

619-796-4629 Mobile 858-345-0382 Office kyle@mobilecomputerwizard.com www.mobilecomputerwizard.com

The Best Online Backup App for OS X

Here's a great article about CrashPlan that's worth reposting...

http://lifehacker.com/5898366/the-best-online-backup-app-for-os-x

You should back up your hard drive. You've heard it a million times, but most people don't do it. So we're going to make it easy: CrashPlan is the best backup tool. It's what you should use to back up your data, both on-site and off-site.

Online backup services all share mostly the same feature set. They normally provide an capped plans for relatively low monthly costs, or unlimited plans for a little more; they offer strong encryption for keeping your data safe when it leaves your hard drive. Here are the basics:

Automatic, set-it-and-forget-it backup. You set your backup schedule (nightly, weekly, by-the-minute) and CrashPlan takes care of the rest—you don't have to remember to back up once you've set it up.

Back up locally. You can back up to any computer on your network, or any connected external drive. Assuming your house didn't burn down, the local backup is the one you'll go to first. (Just keep in mind that the off-site backup needs to be there in the event of a more catastrophic loss, like fire or theft.

Unlimited file size.

Incremental backup means CrashPlan only backs up the bits of data that have changed in a file—which means it doesn't have to back up the entire file every time something changes. This makes a big difference when you've got limited upload bandwidth.

CrashPlan keeps your files forever. Even if you delete a file locally, if it's been backed up to CrashPlan, you can restore it at any time unless you'd prefer they don't.

You can restore a file at any time from the CrashPlan client or via their web app.

CrashPlan shares most of the features above with most popular online backup services. Here's what sets CrashPlan apart:

Free on-site and off-site backup. That is, you can back up locally to any folder or hard drive connected to your computer (free on-site) or you can back up to a folder on a friend's computer (free off-site). If you really don't want to pay for backup but you want on-site and off-site redundancy (frankly, if you're backing up, off-site is a must), then CrashPlan let's you do so for free. That's pretty cool.

When you are ready to pay for your backup, CrashPlan has the most bang for your buck, featuring cheap unlimited online backup with a premium CrashPlan+ account. Unlimited online backup for a single computer is as little as $3/month. An unlimited family plan (2-10 computers) starts as low as $6/month.

CrashPlan is packed with useful features, and it's easily the most cost-effective backup option, but it's not as simple to set up as some of its alternatives. We've walked through how to set up an automated, bulletproof file back up solution with CrashPlan to walk you through the process. It's not too difficult, but you do need to set aside a few minutes to understand how it works.

For online storage, Backblaze is probably the most compelling alternative to CrashPlan. It's roughly $4/month per computer for unlimited storage (meaning if you're backing up more than one computer, it's going to add up a lot faster than CrashPlan's 2-10 computer family plan). Backblaze is a little more user friendly than CrashPlan, and it has a very cool Locate My Computer feature that helps you track a lost or stolen device. (Sort of like Prey, a free tool we've walked through how to set up.)

Mozy used to be our favorite online backup service, until they dropped their unlimited backups and introduced per-GB plans that made the service considerably more expensive than any of the competition.

For some, file-syncing service Dropbox is all they backup they need. It could not be simpler: Put a file in your Dropbox folder, it's backed up to all your Dropbox-connected computers and to Dropbox's servers. Dropbox isn't intended to be a backup service, though, and for large backups, it's not particularly well suited to the task. Depending on your backup needs, however, it could be a good option.

Last, there's the non-off-site option that's built into your Mac: Time Machine. Time Machine is still the only backup tool that made backup sexy, and if you're not compelled to perform off-site backups, Time Machine is a great tool, and assuming you've got an external drive to back up to, it's free. Just remember: If tragedy strikes in the form of a fire, for example, or theft, then your on-site backup is useless. If you care about your data enough to back it up, you should be using an online backup service in addition to your local backups.

Kyle Hanson Mobile Computer Wizard San Diego's Friendliest Computer Support Team 619-796-4629 http://MobileComputerWizard.com

Amped Wireless R10000 router review

Amped Wireless makes a solid router. I can say that now after using one for a few months. The signal is strong, the reliability is great, and for a geek like me, it has plenty of tweaks. Time Warner Cable is who I have as an internet provider as living in north San Diego County dictates. The 25 Mbps connection works nicely throughout most of the house. Cable internet, broadcasted wirelessly to 4 PC's and Macs and it's computer harmony!

Call us below in San Diego to have one of the wizards set you up!

Kurt Rein Mobile Computer Wizard in San Diego 619 255-1215 Office

Word or Excel 2003 continually asking for sku011.cab when opening...

Recently, a San Marcos client brought an old PC out of retirement to use in their conference room as a presentation machine, attached to a projector. Whenever they fired up Word 2003 or Excel 2003 documents, a prompt asking for sku011.cab would continually appear, along with a request to insert their Office 2003 CD for the file. They didn't have the CD any longer, and other than the annoying prompt, the programs appeared to work fine. Here's a workaround that does the trick:

Regedit (start menu -> run -> type regedit) Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Office -> 11.0 -> Delivery There should be only 1 directory under Delivery, which is your DownloadCode (mine was 90000409-6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9). Select that directory. On the right side of the screen, right-click on CDCache. Change the value to 0.

Easy peasy!

Best Regards,

Kyle B. Hanson
Mobile Computer Wizard
619-796-4629 Mobile
858-345-0382 Office
www.mobilecomputerwizard.com