Computer Tips and Tricks

I have a friend who uses Weatherbug on his pc, but the reality is that takes up system resources on his system all the time and actually sends back his tracking cookies to the site, which can be misused.

I think it would be better to use Google for your Weather forecasts you need it.

Just go to Google and type in weather and your zip code to get the above.

Instead of visiting other weather search sites, you can display weather reports for the U.S. and selected cities around the world directly in Google. Google displays the current temperature, conditions, humidity, wind speed and direction, and a four-day forecast with graphics.

Next to the weather report is a link allowing you to add the forecast to your iGoogle page. Plus, underneath U.S. weather reports you will find links to external sites such as AccuWeather, The Weather Channel, and Weather Underground, offering more detailed weather forecasts and radars if desired.

The cool thing is that less memory is used on the system, increasing performance.

In the past, I have recommended AVG Antivirus (The Free version) for most users that I run into in the community. Add the combination of Malware bytes malware removal tool, and you’ve got a fairly decent arsenal to protect yourself against bad files. But recently, with the dramatic increase of malware and virus behavior on the Interwebs, you might need a second opinion from time to time. I recently ran an online scan from NOD32 to look at a machine that I just did a thorough cleaning on. After this scan, I found 2 more viruses that I missed with AVG and Malware bytes.

I know that it is common to have one tool not find a threat whereas another tool will. But what makes this so appealing is that the NOD32 program does cost $39.99 per year, but you can use the online scan for free. The scanner does download some software to your machine, and if it does find a virus, it will quarantine it and “Hold” it basically. If you do decide to remove that software, then the virus will be released back into your system.

NOD 32 onlinescan

Toptenreviews gave NOD 32 a #4 out of 20 antivirus products recently.

Another worthy review is from Terry’s Computer Tips on NOD 32

Check out this review from Antivirusware also

I guess what I like about the product is that it is much easier on my system than the hog that AVG has become. Give it a try.

This video is about dishonesty in computer repair. I would not charge anything for this problem.

Be wary of Geek Squad, or chain store technicians. Give us a call at 336-407-1782 or visit http://www.mypcnetwork.com

Fake anti-virus (AV) software is spreading at such a pace that it could grow past all other types of malicious software. It seems to be everywhere right now. Sophos Software is now seeing 15 fake AV sites a day now up from 5 a day last year. Panda is saying that Fake Antivirus will account for over 30 milion pc infections a month.

Technically, rogue AV is often hard to detect because the software is essentially a confidence trick. The rogue program convinces the user that they are infected with malware when they are not, and the user agrees to install the software to remove the non-existent threat. The user willingly hands over anywhere between $29 and $79, without the bogus software having to do anything that would cause an anti-virus program to intervene. If you do give them money, they still do not do anything about it, which doesn’t even qualify for extortion.

The bad thing is that the programs look legit often using that same interface and basic code that the real programs use. So, if you all of sudden see a hard drive scan that finds you have 139 viruses on your machine, just kill the program anyway you can. If you have questions, just contact me.

Got a laptop in today that had such an odd problem. The customer said that they rushed the shutdown process and went ahead and hit the power button to shutdown the laptop. When they went back in and powered it on, the touchpad did not work.This was a Compaq (or HP) laptop model cq50-139wm (one of the deals at Walmart).

I installed the latest drivers over at synaptics.com but that did not work. I went to hp.com and got the latest drivers for that machine but that did not work. The device manager didn’t eben show the touch pad at all. The mouse setup under control panel did not even have a listing for the synaptics touch pad driver.

Thinking that it was malware related, I installed atf cleaner, pcfixer, malwarebytes, ccleaner and there was a lot of crap to remove but did not take care of the touchpad.

A lot of sites on this issue were saying to do fn-f7 or some key combination to make sure the touchpad was not turned off. In this case, there is a small push button above the touchpad, that is amber if it is turned off, blue or white if it is turned on. In my case, it was on, but the touchpad still did not work.

Did a system restore back several days but the touchpad still no worky.

I finally came across a site where it mentioned powering the laptop off, popping the battery out and letting it stay disconnected for more than a minute. This did the trick. Special thanks goes to http://forums.techguy.org for that info.

Technorati Tags: compaq cq50, laptop, synaptics, touchpad

Check out this video over at woodywood245 on youtube

http://mozy.com/free?ref=451c76aa

You can use the Mozy backup utility to backup to 2GB for free and beyond that for a small fee. Check it out.

This Valentine’s Day you may want to think twice about opening any e-greeting cards adorned with cute puppies and vibrant red hearts or e-mail messages promoting hot new gifts for your sweetie.

There are good chances this precious e-greeting card may not be from the love of your life or secret admirer, but from a computer hacker, intent on stealing your identity, rather than your heart.

I found this article over here at Computerworld

Be careful out there.

You may have seen this on your laptop and it refers to a small port on the side generally that you can connect some high speed devices to such as a video camera or a hard disk. This is a firewire connection. Here is an explanation from Yahoo Answers from Nayiaf A:

FireWire, originally created by Apple and later standardized as IEEE-1394, actually preceded USB and had similar goals. The difference is that IEEE-1394 was originally intended for devices working with lots more data — things like camcorders, DVD players and digital audio equipment. IEEE-1394 and USB share a number of characteristics and differ in some important ways. Here’s a summary:
* Like USB, IEEE-1394 is a serial bus that uses twisted-pair wiring to move data around.
* However, while USB is limited to 12 megabits per second, IEEE-1394 currently handles up to 400 megabits per second.
* USB can handle 127 devices per bus, while IEEE-1394 handles 63.
* Both USB and IEEE-1394 support the concept of a isochronous device — a device that needs a certain amount of bandwidth for streaming data. This mode is perfect for streaming audio and video data.
* Both USB and IEEE-1394 allow you to plug and unplug devices at any time.

The designers of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) had several particular goals in mind when they created the USB standard:
* Low implementation cost, so that USB could be used in cheap peripherals like mice and game controllers
* Low cabling cost
* Lots of devices on the bus
* Good speed characteristics for things like printers
The idea was to create a system that would replace all of the different ports on computers (parallel ports, serial ports, special mouse and keyboard ports, etc.) with a single standard. USB achieved all of these goals very effectively, and there will come a day in the not-too-distant future when computers will have nothing but a set of USB connectors on the back.
Most digital video cameras have an IEEE-1394 plug. When you attach a camcorder to a computer using IEEE-1394, the connection is amazing. With the right software the computer and the camera communicate, and the computer can download all of the scenes on the tape automatically and with perfect digital clarity. As prices fall, home video production will become trivial!

Run MsConfig by going to Start > Run > type msconfig
Then selected startup and uncheck just about all the programs you can stand. If there is a program that is running and you are not sure what it is, you can google it by typing in “process “. Sometime it is obvious what the program is. Most folks don’t need to run MSN Messenger or Quicktime detector or all those programs resident in memory. You can always start them up manually and save your memory. Remember, you can always check the program back on if you need to. Just about the only programs you need to run is your antivirus or anti-spyware programs.

Technorati Tags: msconfig, slow computer, slow pc, slowdown, Startup