A lot of times when I am doing a computer cleaning, I mention that they need to buy more memory (RAM) for their computer to give it a little more speed. A lot of times, the memory recommendations we offer, can make the computer 4x faster! That’s more than a just a little! This is why it’s one of my favorite things in speeding up a computer. Why is this happening? Well, it’s becoming common to see computers that were purchased in 2003 still alive and kicking. They just need a bit more power to make them work with the applications we all love now. More hardware memory equals a better computing experience overall. Even though our cleanings help immensely, more memory sometimes can help with what we can’t take care of.

You maybe asking yourself would I need more memory? For starters,  you may have an older computer (5 years old) and it’s been running fine but it’s getting slow. Our cleaning service can get it faster and after our cleanings, our clients are very happy, but how about getting that old computer zipping very fast? The cause of the slowdown is that many times, these computers only have the bare minimum that came factory installed. If you have XP, to run with the big dog programs such as Office 2010, you should try to get your computer to at least 1gig of RAM or 2gig if you want your computer really fast. For the older computers, the RAM is usually very inexpensive and recommended if the computer seems stable. A lot of times, our clients are amazed at the price and didn’t expect it to be that cheap.

Windows Vista is another culprit of low memory. Most factory computers shipped with just 1gig of memory/RAM and that is way under-powered to run Vista. As the complaints are high with Vista, you can help it by just adding in the max memory your computer can take.

If you need help with purchasing or installing, feel free to give us a call!

If you need our help or want a computer cleaning, go to our website:

www.cananet.com

Technorati Tags: memory cleanings

Got another laptop from a customer with a Fake Antivirus that they inadvertently clicked on to startup that looks like they have 1300 infections and malware wanting them to click to a site for more help, or more importantly to at some point steal their personal info.

This one even had popups down in the lower right corner that is showing that the hard disk has bad sectors and needs to be replaced and that the graphics chip temperature is too hot and the motherboard needs to be replaced as well. Ofcouse this was fake, because I loaded HDTune and the drive tested fine and then loaded Speccy and the temp of the graphics was normal. All the person’s files were hidden so it looked like all the files are gone. Enough to make anyone stress out to the max.

First thing was to run ATF cleaner to get rid of all temporary files so I don’t have to wade through those. Could not install Super Anti Spyware locally in normal mode. Had to boot into safe mode with networking, then install SAS. Ran a fast scan first and removed all the malware. After reboot, ran deep scan with SAS in normal mode and removed some more trojans.

Next, I ran unhide.exe from bleepingcomputer.com or from technibble.com to get personal files to show up again. Now I cant see all the original items in the start menu still such as control panel or the “run” menu item. If you right click on start, then properties, > Customize > Advanced Tab > then in the Start menu Items: I click on the “Display as a link” on all the items that I want to show back up such as Control panel, Run, Printers, etc.

To further work on this cleanup, I install updates for Super Anti-spyware, Installed security essentials because the current security essentials is not even visible in the menus anymore even though it’s on the machine!  I got to ninite.com and install all the pertinent updates for flashes, java, vlc, teamviewer, hulu, reader, firefox, cutepdf, dropbox, everything search and Glary Utilities.

Installed My web of trust on firefox and ie and also did WSUS offline updates to get the latest Microsoft updates to a decent point. Did further updates via the Microsoft website.

Looking at device drivers, I also noticed that the ethernet card was disabled, so went into sysdm.cpl > device manager > right click on card > then enable. Now back in business.

The hard drive looked like swiss cheese and since it’s XP, ran jkdefrag on it till it looked good.

One of my favorite performance boosters is to speed up the start menu bar by editing the registry and tweak the menu show delay. I change it to 90Ms. Set it by regedit > HKey_current_user > Control Panel > Desktop > then modify MenuShowDelay to 90 instead of 400. It really has the effect of speeding up the Start menu clicks especially on XP.

There you have have, another satisfied customer.

Technorati Tags: unhide malware virus

I may have posted this already but I keep showing these computer tricks to users and get those Lightbulb like or “AHA” moments from folks on some of these.

Did you know you can virtually undo just about anything if you make a mistake with the Control-Z key sequence. It works with most any Windows program like Word or Excel, or just about any program in Windows, and even Windows itself. It’s a universal key sequence that’s built into just about everything. If you are on a MAC – use the key sequence Command – Z to get the same result. The command key has the Apple on it with the four loops. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an UNDO button in real life.

Another trick to use is when you are web surfing and you want to go to a new website. Just click in the Address bar or sometimes called the URL bar, but it’s the bar located at the top of your favorite browser like shown below.

If you just click once, it places your cursor where you click. If you double click, it will usually highlight a whole word, but if you triple click, it will highlight the whole line of text.

Once that text is highlighted, you can just start typing. And here is my next trick;

Say you want to go to MSN, just simply type msn and then “Control” – Enter at the same time. That’s hold down the control key and then the enter key, and it will add in the “www” and the “.com” on the front and back of the item. Cool huh?

That’s one of those tricks that can help you speed up your browsing. Now that works with Internet Explorer and Firefox but on Opera, it has a bunch more shortcuts you can use which is why I like Opera for a browser, but anyway try those out.

If you need more computer help, check us out over at www.cananet.com

Technorati Tags: keyboard shortcuts

If you ever wanted to copy the full path of any file or folder to the clipboard but without installing any third-party utilities or making any changes to your Windows registry, here’s a tip for you.

Copy the File’s Location to the Clipboard

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the file or folder whose path you want to copy to the clipboard. Once you are there, hold the “Shift” key and right click that file or folder’s icon.

Because the Shift key is down, the contextual menu will have a new item that says “Copy as Path” – select that and the full location of the file or the folder will get saved to your clipboard from where you can paste it anywhere including the DOS window.

You can use this tip to copy a file’s location from all places including those appearing in the desktop search results.

This trick works in Windows Vista and Windows 7 but not XP. It was originally published in Ed Bott’s book - Windows 7 Inside Out

Technorati Tags: file path, windows7

Be on the lookout for this and check out the report from CNN….

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/08/09/anonymous.facebook/index.html

Also check out there threat video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SWQTS8zqYXU

Technorati Tags: browser, facebook, Hacks

Every now and then you run across some tools or software or whatever that helps you out in you life and it just works. This is the case with the Stellar Phoenix Photo recovery program. I went looking for a program like this when my wife accidentally wiped our flash card with my son’s graduation photos among a bunch of others. We thought there was like 200 pictures on the card. Man, what a crisis!

Well, I can tell you this program rocks, and was actually able to restore about 790 pictures from that "wiped" card. It will recover all files even if there is holes in the data and holes in the picture. If your precious memories is only contained on that card, whatever you get back is appreciated. But in most cases, you get all back and then some. If you are local to me, and you are in this predicament, as I was, let me know and I would be glad to do a restore for you. Let me know.

Here is a link to the site to get your own copy.

Send me a question about it on cananet.com

Hello, students! I’ve got a couple of ways to make your academic life less painful. They’re not all free, but they’re all good.

Microsoft offers deep discounts for students
If you’re headed back to school (or if you’re already there), you’ve realized that you’re actually going to need to write some papers at some point during the school year. Even if your cunning plan is to wait until the very last minute, you’re still going to need some software to get that done.
There are plenty of alternatives to Microsoft Office, but if you qualify, you can get the full Microsoft Office Professional Academic 2010 suite for roughly  $79 US. Check this site for more information.

You’ll need to send an email to Microsoft, get some information back, purchase online, and then download (and install) the software.

Evernote lets you access your notes just about anywhere
Microsoft Office Academic comes with a program called OneNote, which is a decent note taking program. But in my opinion Evernote has OneNote beat. Take notes, take a picture, capture a web page or portion thereof with Evernote on your Windows computer, your iMac, your iPhone, your Android phone, your iPad, or your Linux computer, and you can access that information from any of those devices. You can secure your information, or share it.

Evernote is unbelievably useful. Their slogan is “Remember everything.” but I think Evernote is great because I don’t have to remember anything! I just have to go to Evernote to retrieve it. The free version is adequate for many, but if you need additional storage, you can purchase it. Grab it here. It will change your life.

Thanks to Cate at http://www.computercarekelowna.com for her great articles

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.

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. They look similar to the above image. 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. If you do get caught in one of these scams, the sooner you get help, the better off you will be.

Well it’s a new year and 2010 is upon us. Do you have a New Year’s Resolution?

Well I don’t know about computer maintenance being a resolution, and I think that most people would think that’s a bore. One thing to think about though, If you use AVG Free Anti virus version 8.5, it is no longer supported. In fact, it was probably not supported at the end of November. AVG version 9 is here and you need to go download it and install it to keep current. If you don’t upgrade, you are vulnerable to viruses on the web and increasingly so as time goes by.

Bad things happen when your Anti-virus programs expire!

Nowadays, you also need to install a Spyware or Malware program to compliment your anti virus program. Malware is short for Malicious software. I always like to install Malwarebytes and Super Anti Spyware and I encourage others to use those.

Make sure that daily scans are running and that Real-time protection is turned on. Also, please, oh please, start using Firefox for your web browser instead of Internet Explorer. You don’t have to use Internet Explorer and I encourage others to make Firefox the default. It’s definitely a safer browser and you can also now count on using added software (called extensions) to help increase your trust of certain sites. The added extension is called Web of Trust, and will actually show you what sites are good and what sites are bad.

This helps you make sure you know what you are Clicking.

Check out the image below; it show that when you search Google, you will find either a green, red, or yellow circle after each entry.

Green is good in this case, yellow, means to use caution and that the site has a weak reputation, and red is not a good site to be entering. Even if you do click on the site that is not trusted, you will get a popup from that site that gives you a warning. If that is not enough, and you still want to go there, well you are on your on.

Some sites in the web of trust are unknown, which means that it has not made it in the database of listed sites yet. In my case, you can trust my sites listed below…

Links:

http://www.mypcnetwork.com    My PC repair Website, If you need help, give us a call

http://download.cnet.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html?part=dl-10044820&subj=dl&tag=button&cdlPid=11014801    Download AVG Version 9 here

http://www.malwarebytes.org   Download MalwareBytes

http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html   Download Super Anti Spyware

http://www.getfirefox.com   Mozilla Firefox web browser

http://www.mywot.com    Web of Trust Download