Comp-U-Train

We had a customer who called us complaining that their new Acer laptop would show the “Acer Empowering Technology” toolbar on the desktop every time they booted their computer. They didn’t like the way the toolbar cluttered up their desktop and were not happy that Acer had not asked for permission nor offered a way to easily disable the toolbar.

They had tried disabling the various features on the toolbar hoping it would stop the toolbar from reappearing.

For reasons only known to Acer, they didn’t offer an easy method to disable the desktop toolbar.

Upon arriving at the customer’s home who was just about ready to pull his hair out, we firstly looked in the “Startup” folder which you can view by going start > Programs > Startup. Looking inside the folder we saw the culprit. Simply right click the “Acer Empowering Technology” entry. Finally, select “delete” followed by the Ok button.

According to Microsoft, a SP (Service Pack) is a “Windows update, often combining previously released updates, that helps make Windows more reliable. Service packs, can include security and performance improvements and support for new types of hardware”. Microsoft finishes by advising “Make sure you install the latest service pack to help keep Windows up to date.”

This is very good advice indeed but please be advised that some SPs can be quite large and can easily consume the vast majority of your monthly data allowance. If you feel that installing the latest SP is over your head or you don’t have enough data available to do the job, then Comp-U-Train offers a Tune-Up service at a very reasonable cost. Microsoft release Windows Service Packs from time to time and it is important that you computer be updated to the latest SP. I say “updated” rather than “upgraded” because that would mean upgrading the computer’s OS (Operating System) completely from say Windows Vista to Windows 7 which is not what we are doing in this exercise.

At the time of writing this Blog in May 2013, the latest SP available for Microsoft XP is SP 3. For Microsoft Vista it is SP 2 and for Windows 7, it is SP 1. You can easily find out whether you have the latest SP by right clicking on “My Computer” or “Computer” and selecting the last entry on the pop up menu which is “Properties”. Under the “Windows Edition” or “System” at the top of the pop up menu window that opens, you will see the version of the Windows OS installed on your computer together with the SP number if it has been installed. It is imporant to note that you should always upgrade the computer’s SP in numerical order. For instance, for Microsoft Vista, you must install SP 1 first before you can install SP 2.

Recently, we had a client who complained that when he typed a friend’s name into the “To” field of a new email, he saw entries for his friend’s old email address appear as well as the current correct email address. Even though he had deleted the obsolete address information from the contact list the deleted entries still automatically appeared. This is a quirk with Windows Mail and for some reason Microsoft haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet.

This is a feature called “Autofill” and can be quite useful if you don’t want to have to fill out the whole email address, or be forced to press the “To” button to open your contact list in order to search for your friend’s email address. Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t provide a simple way to delete any unwanted autofilled addresses.

There is a feature under the General tab of the Internet properties, that lets you delete all “Form data” information from your browsing history, but to me this is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Afterall, you may require information to be filled out in other web forms that you have used and this deleting this form information would necessitate you having to refill the form information again. There is also an option in the “Send” tab of the Mail options to stop the Autofill function altogether, but I think that it is a useful tool when composing email messages. 

The way to solve this issue, is firstly to use the up & down arrow keys on your keyboard to highlight each incorrect entry and then press your “delete” key for each incorrect entry. After all of the old entries have been deleted and this is important, you must send this email to someone. I recommend that you send it to yourself by also adding your email addrsess in the “To” field. It is important to do this stop as the entries will not be removed.

Now compose a new email to your friend and you will see that the unwanted autofilled entries have gone!

Which terminology is correct: Hard “Disk” Drive (HDD) or Hard “Disc” Drive? Is it a compact “disk” or “disc”?

We have had a couple of cases with not being able to use the Windows Offline CD disc and observe the following error when booting up the computer from the CD:

Your PC needs to restart….
Error Code: 0x0000005D
Parameters:
0x030F0209
0x756E6547
0x49656E69
0x6C65746E

This error is due to older computer CPU (Computer Processing Unit aka the brain) either not having enough RAM (Random Access Memory) or not supporting a feature called “NX”. If you see this error then another excellent alternative is the Dr.Web Live CD which you can obtain at this website:

http://www.freedrweb.com/livecd/?lng=en

This CD will download as a “iso” image file which you must then burn to a CD. To do this, you can use one of the many free image burning programmes such as Imgburn which you can obtain here:

http://www.imgburn.com/

Windows 7 comes with its own image burning software so you will only need a third party image burning programme if your computer’s OS is XP or Vista.

An interesting caveat to the Malware detection process, was that half way through the Malware scan, the keyboard and mouse stopped working. We deduced that it was because the keyboard and mouse used the old PS/2 connection rather than USB and the drivers which tells the computer how to interact with the hardware had been unloaded for some reason. As PS/2 devices are not “hot swappable” we couldn’t do an “unplug replug” to try to fix the problem. To rectify this situation, we plugged a wired USB mouse into the computer and we were able to complete the Malware removal process.

A customer called us recently concerned that he was getting low disk space error messages.
When he bought his computer a few years ago, a friend had partitioned the hard drive into two partitions namely C: and D: at a ratio of 50/50. The C: Primary active drive contained the OS (Operating System) and the D: drive was for his data.

He wanted to know if he could increase the size of the C: partition to 70/30 and how to go about doing it if it was possible. The important thing to check is the amount of unused space left on the D: drive which will tell you how much you can donate to the C: drive.

Upon receiving the computer in our shop we set about resizing the partitions. Firstly and I can’t stress this enough, make sure you back up any important files that are on the hard disk in case something happens during the resizing process. If a partition is corrupted during the resizing then you could lose all of your valuable data!

If you want to do the resizing yourself, then I recommend the free for personal use partition tool called “Easeus Partiton Master” which you can download from here

After you have installed this partitioning tool and run it, the trick is that you firstly need to choose the D: drive by clicking on the D: partition at the top of the programme window. Next, drag the handle on the left hand side to the right which will free up space at the beginning of the D: drive. You can then click on the C: drive and drag the handle on the right hand side all the way to the end which will then use the space which has been vacated from the D: drive.

My husband and I decided to buy a new LED backlit television for Christmas to replace our aging CRT TV. Unfortunately the sound quality of our new 32″ panel was poor in comparison to our old TV. In order to try to improve the sound quality, we did research on the new “Soundbars” that have come into the market. Unfortunately, most of them were quite expensive and out of our price range.

I told my husband that I had an idea about how to improve your tv sound which was to buy a 2.1 (Left + Right + Subwoofer) Logitech computer speaker system. This simply plugged into the televison’s 3.5mm headphone jack. Because we are using the headphone jack, the sound volume is still controlled by our TV remote control. The sound quality is now much better and we spent significantly less for this speaker system vis-a-vis a Soundbar!

Following Samsung South Africa’s announcement on Wednesday 13th March 2013, AlwaysOn is delighted to confirm its partnership with Samsung. AlwaysOn will be offering owners of Samsung Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices 1GB free Wi-Fi data monthly, for a 12 month period. All Samsung Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices purchased in South Africa after 1 April 2010 will be eligible.

http://www.alwayson.co.za/samsung.asp

We received an urgent call from a client who had been sent an image from a friend but they were not able to view the photograph. The customer told us that the image file was a white icon with a name and when they double clicked it an error message appeared asking what programme should be used to open the file.

After travelling to the customer’s home we saw that the image was missing a crucial piece of information that tells the computer what type of file it is. This information is what is shown to the right of the dot at the end of the file name and this is known as a “file extension”. The client then asked us “what is a file extension”? We answered by telling him that it is a three letter computer file abbreviation that tells the computer what the file is and therefore what programme that is registered by the computer that is required to open the file so that it can be worked on. For example, a “.doc” tells the computer that the file is a Microsoft Word document. There are numerous file extentions such as “.xls; .pdf; .ppt; .gif; .bmp; .tiff; .mp3″ etc.

To resolve the probem with this particular case,  because the customer knew that the file was an image, we guessed that it was a “.jpg” image and after appending the “.jpg” to the end of the image’s file name by using the Windows “rename” tool, the customer was then able to view the photograph.

Sometimes, you may be sent a file by someone that cannot be opened because the programme required to open the file is not installed on your computer. In this case, you need to ask the sender of the file for the name of the programme that was used to create the file, so that you can then install this programme on your computer in order to open it successfully.

For more information please look at this Hubpage article:

http://girlygirl09.hubpages.com/hub/Trouble-Opening-Files-from-E-Mail-or-Disc-Check-Out-These-Tips#img_url_1093901

I have often been asked the question “what is a computer driver”?

Computer hardware companies sell physical hardware for your computer which needs to be talked to by your computer’s OS (Operating System). The computer OS could be Windows XP; Vista or Windows 7.

Together with your new hardware, the company will release a piece of software (computer programme) which you need to install on your computer. By “hardware” I mean anything from a graphics or sound card to a printer or modem or even a USB device.

This software is called a “driver” and enables the computer instructions between your new hardware and your computer’s OS. The driver allows the OS and hardware to talk to each other.

Occasionally the hardware company will release an “updated driver”. This could be to allow the hardware to work with a new OS such as Windows 8 or fixes a problem in the driver. Updating the driver therefore allows your hardware to work at peak performance and efficiency.

For more information please look at this Hubpage article:

http://tamarawilhite.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Keep-Device-Drivers-Updated#img_url_6937054

Sadly, some Malware cannot be removed conventionally by anti-malware aka anti-virus software. Luckily, Microsoft has come to the rescue by allowing you to create a boot up CD disc that will remove this malware. This CD has its own anti-Malware operating system included and will allow you to fix any problems before they have had a chance to take hold.

The procedure is to download the Windows Defender Offline software and then create a boot up disc. Please make sure that you download the correct version of the software. You can obtain the necessary software from this website:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline

After you have created the boot up CD disc, you insert this disc into your computer’s CD drive and boot up your computer. The computer will read from the CD before the OS (Operating System) is loaded and clean the Malware automatically. It can do this because the operating system has not been loaded yet and therefore the Malware files have not had a chance to hide themselves since they need the operating system to run. An analogy is that you need to change your socks whilst wearing shoes but you are not allowed to remove your shoes.

If your computer boots directly to Windows as usual instead of the CD disc, you will need to set your computer to boot from the CD drive first. (This could be the “del”; “ctrl+del” keys or even the F2; F10 or F12 key). You change this ooot bsetting in your computer’s BIOS (Basic Input Output System) menu and you can access it by pressing a certain key combination when you first turn on your computer. After you access the BIOS menu, look for the “Boot” tab. Here you will find the necessary option. If you are still not able to access your computer’s BIOS menu, then please consult your user manual.

It is important that you download the latest Windows Defender software prior to repairing your computer, as it will ensure that the anti-Malware software has the latest virus and spyware definitions.

We visited a customer who wanted to use their printer over their home Wi-Fi network. Previously they had connected the printer using a USB connection but had discovered that the printer was Wi-Fi capable.

The problem was that they could not get the printer working when connected by Wi-Fi even though they had used the printer’s front display controls to join their Wi-Fi network successfully.

The issue is that the computer must be loaded with the correct driver so that it can interact with the printer wirelessly.

The way to resolve the problem is to connect the printer back up to the computer using the USB cable and then run the installation CD that came with the printer. At the beginning of the printer softare installation process you will see an option to connect the printer by cable or wirelessly. The trick is to this time choose the Wi-Fi option  and allow the printer’s Wi-Fi drivers to be installed.

The installation process will first guide you through helping the printer rejoin the Wi-Fi network and then set up the computer to see the printer over the network.

Have you ever wondered why turning on your computer has coined the phrase “Boot Up” or what does boot up your computer mean?

The explanation goes back to the days when folks wore boots as their normal foot attire and people remarked  to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

Bootstraps were the loops at the back of each boot that you used to pull the boot onto your foot and the phrase  “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” simply meant to get yourself out of a situation without any help.

The parallel with a computer is that it is going through the various stages by itself which are required to present you with the familar desktop that we all know and love.

In the last few days, we have received two emails at Comp-U-Train purporting to be from ABSA bank.

This email rang our alarm bells immediately as firstly we don’t bank with ABSA and secondly we recognised it as a typical “Phishing” email

This email is a typical Phishing hoax and is a way to try to get you to reveal your banking username & password. Once the criminals have this information they can log onto your banking account and part you with your hard earned money.

The email message can arrive in many guises including worrying messages that your account has been suspended or your “money transfer” has been completed. As you can see from the email received by us which is shown at the bottom of this Blog, the perpetrator threatens to suspend our account if we don’t follow their instructions!

If you click on a link in any email message or webpage, be wary if the Internet address shown in the website address window at the top of web browser doesn’t show the correct “domain”. Also, watch out for if the “http” doesn’t have a “s” at the end (which shows the webpage being viewed is encypted). There should also be a little padlock at the end of the window. Another common trait is poor grammar or spelling mistakes as most of these emails come from non-English speaking countries. 

Finally and I can’t stress this enough,  your bank will never email you asking you for your account information. If you have any concerns then either contact your bank directly, or dial in the bank’s email address yourself rather than using an embedded link to drive you there as it maybe driving you over the financial cliff to ruin instead!

Below is one of the phishing emails so that you can see what they look like:

—–Original Message—–

“From: ABSA Check Account [

Sent: 21 January 2013 11:23 AM

Subject: Service Protection

Dear Customer,

We are doing all our best to protect you from the high rate of internet and other related form of banking scams. It has come to our notice that our ATM service is the subject of a new hacking device, hence we are upgrading all forms of banking services from Absa,which includes Internet Banking, Telephone Banking and ATM Banking. You are required to verify your login details so that your account can be upgraded and we can secure you to a safe banking.

Absa Protects your online banking, to Upgrade to our new SSL security servers, log in below:)

Upgrade to Hyper-V Security server here (URL removed to protect the our innocent Blog readers!)

Note: If you choose to ignore our request, we will have no choice but to suspend or permanently deactivate your account.

Kind Regards

Absa Digital Banking Services”

For more information please look at this Hubpage article:

http://rachellewilliams.hubpages.com/hub/Computers-101-What-is-Phishing

We just had a customer who was missing programs from add/remove programs. The customer had wanted to remove a particular anti-virus programme but couldn’t find the programme listed under the “Add or Remove programmes” tool in Control Panel. For some reason the entry had been removed.

There was also no uninstaller for the Programme listed under the Programme’s entry in the Start/Programs list, or in the Programme’s folder in Windows Explorer.

This was an interesting situation as the programme was running on the computer and even displayed the programme’s icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. This part of the screen which lists programme icons is called the “System Tray”.

The way we managed to fix the issue was to firstly re-install the software and this action then re-added the Programme back in the “Add or Remove programmes” list.

“Backup, backup, backup!” is a mantra that I preach often as now, more often than not, precious computer files such as photographs or documents are stored on a computer hard drive and not perodically “backed up”.

Backing up is a fancy term that simply means to make a copy of a file in case the original is lost. In fact you should make two copies: one to keep in your home and the other to store “off-site”. Modern times has dictated that we now often archive photographs only on our computers rather than keeping them in albums or negatives which can be stored safely away.

Sadly, because computers and hard drives have a finite life and it is not a matter of if they will fail, but when, it is important to do frequent backups. I recommend that you do a backup every week. There is a saying in the computer world that “you are only as good as your last backup”.  This means that if you have put a file on your computer after your last backup was done and the hard drive fails, then you would have lost this new file.

I recommend that you go out  and purchase an external hard drive to store your backups. Hard drives made my Seagate and Verbatim come with special “backup software” such as from Memeo, that automatically senses if you have created or updated a file and copies this new file to your backup drive if it plugged in.  This takes the issue of manually having to backup your files out of your hands. The backup programme is clever enough to sense when you install the drive and then automatically copies only the newly created or changed files.

You may see another hard drive letter on your computer but do not be fooled as most times that simply means that your drive has been “partioned” or split into mutliple pieces but it is still the same physical hard drive.

I recommend using a backup hard drive rather than computer discs or thumb/USB drives, because non hard drives have a shorter lifespan. You can see that I am alluding to the fact that you should ideally have a backup for the backup by making two copies of your files!

For more information please look at this Hubpage article:

http://lauradutoit.hubpages.com/question/23452/what-backup-system-is-the-best-for-use-on-a-home-computer#answer46495

We recently had an interesting problem that had us scratching our heads. A customer of ours has not been able to watch any streaming videos shown on the BBC.co.uk website on their Windows XP computer using Internet Explorer version 8. When they click on a video link they are presented with a black screen. There is also no audio and it seems that the Adobe “Flash” player has stalled.

We initially suspected a corrupt installation of the Flash programme which is what the BBC uses to show the video stream. This is a ubiquitous programme as it is also used by YouTube and Facebook.

Upon visiting the customer’s home, we quickly eliminated the Flash programme as being the culprit because all YouTube videos we clicked on played properly. We also confirmed that there was no “hosts file” or firewall restrictions that had been placed against the BBC site’s Internet address on the customer’s computer. The version of the Flash programme on the customer’s computer was also the latest and greatest.  We noticed that with the latest Flash player, the option to ‘Allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer” was not available which takes a common issue out of hte mix.

We tried clearing the “Temporary Internet files” from the computer and after revisiting the BBC website we were then able to view the streaming video!

We concluded that the temporary storage space (cache) that stores the Internet pages visited by the customer’s was full and thus causing the BBC stream to stall. This didn’t cause a problem for YouTube funnily enough; only for the BBC!

If you are also experiencing this problem and are using Windows XP and IE8 then please follow our path to success:

To clear the cache, please follow these steps after closing your Internet Explorer browser:

1. Go start > Programs > Settings > Control Panel
2. Double-click the “Internet Options” icon
3. Under the “General” tab, go to “Browsing History”
4. Click the “Delete” button
5. Click the “Temporary Internet Files” choice
6. Press the “Delete” button
7. Press the “Ok” button
8. Revisit the BBC website and click on the video of your choice such as http://www.bbc.com/culture