Wow! I didn't mean to go down THIS road!

I had an experience recently that I decided was worth blogging about.

I use Acronis True Image home software to do my backups. Once a week, on Sunday morning at 3:00AM it backs up my system disk, data disk and music disk, all onto a 500GB Seagate Free Agent USB external hard drive.

The fact that it does this automatically every week is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because sometimes on Saturday night I don’t have to think about backups. I go to bed and my backup gets done.

It’s a curse because, to put it politely, excrement occurs.

Yesterday, Monday I went to my Free Agent drive to look and make sure I’d gotten a good backup.  Uh, nope. My data hard drive had developed a couple of bad blocks and it stopped my backup, in its tracks, about halfway through.

So I did a disk check, fixed the problem and immediately did a full backup.

But what if I hadn’t checked? I have a customer who I set up with the same system I use. Her  USB hard drive got unplugged accidentally, and when I last visited, I noticed that she hadn’t had a backup in about nine months. That can be deadly. Sometimes I think hard drives lie in wait for the most inopportune time to fail.

So here’s what I recommend: If you do once-a-week backups check your backup the day after it was to be done. Look at the size of the backup and when it was taken. And once a month restore ONE file from your backup to prove that you can.

Don't let a thief into your computer.

Here are the top five things that point to a phishing attack instead of a legitimate e-mail:

5. The format of the e-mail visually seems wrong. This one is the most nebulous of all. Many of the companies that you do business with will send e-mails to you in a consistent visual format. When you see a format that is different, perhaps even strange, then is the time to begin to wonder if they are coming from the actual company.

4. Misspells. You have to understand that a lot of the people who write phishing attacks are not from around here. And they’re spelling skills may not be very good.

3. Grammar errors. This is for the same reason as number 4. Colloquial American English is not easily taught.

2. Hover over the link where they are trying to send you without clicking and you should be able to see where they are really sending you as opposed to where the link says it is sending you. That can be very informative.

1. If you don’t do business with the company that is being portrayed, even if they say that you owe them money or that your account is locked, it’s a lie. They send out a lot of these in hopes that a certain segment will be doing business with the company portrayed and they can then scam them.

Most of all, recognize that things are not always what they seem and official looking logos can be official looking fakes.

How can you protect yourself? Don’t open any attachments unless you are absolutely certain that you know who sent them. Many e-mails will look official and safe when they are neither. Logos and other official symbols can be faked. Don’t give out usernames, passwords or credit card details to anyone who asks for them via e-mail or directs you to a website where you can enter them. Your bank or credit card issuer will not ask for private information by e-mail. Be alert! Bad people are out there and they are trying to find a way to get past your defenses.

In a previous article I discussed how you can download audiobooks from your local library first to your computer, then to your Iphone or Android phone using the Overdrive Media Console. Here’s the catch: When you download the audiobook to your computer you are borrowing the book for a limited time. The Overdrive Media Console on your computer enforces the time limitation by deleting the audiobook from your computer when the time has expired. But when you transfer the book  to your Iphone or Android phone from your computer, the time limitation is removed. The book will stay on your phone until you remove it by synchronizing the book section of your Iphone or removing it from your Android phone.  What this suggests is that if you borrow an audiobook from your local  library, it would be wise to immediately transfer it to your phone. And yes, that can take up some storage space on your phone. But having books to listen to on your phone  is a wonderful thing.

There is also an Overdrive app for both the Iphone and Android. But I discovered that used directly on an Iphone, the expiration date applies. I am guessing the same is true of an Android phone. So you have a choice. You can download it to your computer and then transfer it to your smartphone. Doing it that way, you have no time limitation on listening to a book. That’s especially handy if it happens to be a long book that you are listening to. Or you can put it directly on your smartphone. But the time limitation applies and that can be a problem.

If it is undamaged I can remove the hard drive from the computer, convert it into a USB drive and attach it to another computer. Then your data, but not programs, can be recovered from the hard drive.

If the hard drive is sort of broken, there are programs, including the one that I use, that will test every sector on the hard drive and recover files, whether the hard disk’s directory is damaged or not. This can be a lengthy process. I had one hard drive connected to my test computer and chugging through its recovery program for four and a half days before it finished.

If the hard drive is broken, meaning it cannot be attached to a computer by normal means, then the only recourse is a data recovery firm such as Data Tech Labs. But be aware that you are then looking at considerable expense.

The tricky part here is in determining how damaged the hard drive is. Many times  attaching the drive to a second computer  will result in the message: “The drive is unformatted. Do you wish to format it?”  Don’t do that!! If you don’t have the software tools to recover the files from the hard drive yourself,  bring it to someone who does, like me for instance.

1. Set up Internet connectivity on the new computer, either wired or wireless, and make sure the router is secured.

2. Install Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader.

3. Transfer from the current computer to the new the contents of My Documents, favorites, desktop, music, pictures and Outlook personal folders, if necessary. Plus look to see if there are any other folders on the C drive that need to be transferred.

4. Find out what the user uses for E-mail. If possible gather the E-mail settings from the current computer to apply to the new. Set up E-mail on the new and make sure that the user can send and receive and has all their previous e-mails, contacts and appointment information.

5. Make sure to get Quickbooks and Quicken Files. Sometimes they get stored in the Quickbooks or Quicken Folder along with the program.

6. Uninstall the trial Mcafee or Norton and install the free offerings from Comcast and CenturyLink.

7. Install all applications including Microsoft Office, Quickbooks, and any others that the user specifies.

In addition, I sometimes create icons for frequently used programs and do other custom configuration work to get the user ready to use the new computer productively.

If you need help with any of these tasks, I would be glad to help.

We agree

My stock in trade is computer support for the ordinary guy. I am a Geek-to-English translator. And that’s just what small business owners need. Most small business owners are not expert with their computers. They know enough to perform ordinary business functions. But when something out of the ordinary happens they are left in a quandary.  Most small businesses are too small to have a computer support person on staff. Yet they have regular needs that they can’t fulfill themselves. That’s where I come in. I like to establish a relationship with a small business owner.  Once this happens and trust is established, the risks involved in dealing with unexpected problems disappear. I am a phone call away for advice, diagnosis and upgrade information.

My business is highly technical in nature. But the reason I love doing small business computer support is because it’s about me developing a trusting relationship and helping people.

A depiction of a small business network

Small Business network setup can vary depending on how small a business you are talking about. For this post I will be talking about really small businesses, ones with five computers or less.

The first thing that has to happen is that a company has to be contacted that will bring Internet connectivity to your building.  There are a bunch of these including the two biggies, Comcast and Century Link. They will provide a piece of equipment called a modem. A modem is a gadget that brings a telephone or cable signal into your building and has one ethernet connection coming out of it. Now, if all you have is one computer, you connect it to your modem and you are done. Your computer will have Internet connectivity. But that really isn’t a small business network setup. A network implies more than one computer. With a modem you only have one Internet connection. What we need here is a gadget that turns one Internet connection into many Internet connections, connects all of the computers to each other, oh and by the way, it would be nice if this gadget also created a wireless network.

That gadget is called a router. It connects to your modem and hands out Internet addresses to all the computers that are attached to it. Most routers will have four ports and if you need more there is another piece of equipment called a switch that can provide more Ethernet ports. In addition, as noted above, the router creates a wireless network that will allow computers near it to connect.

Having a router provides several benefits. You can share printers and folders across several computers and all computers get access to the Internet.

If you need help networking a small business, Plain & Simple Computing would be glad to help.

Revo Pro Uninstaller first uses the application’s own uninstaller, then deletes files, folders and registry entries exclusively for the program it has been told to uninstall. In the case of the failed Microsoft Office 2010 installation, after running Revo and rebooting the system, the Office 2010 installation ran to completion successfully.

Here comes the caution: The Revo Uninstaller is a powerful program. This program is deleting stuff and that can be dangerous. It will do what you tell it to.  Just be absolutely sure you are telling it the right things.

You will not be able to access your Intuit QuickBooks account without Intuit Security Tool
(IST™) after 31th of October, 2011.
You can download Intuit Security Tool here
After a successful download please run the setup for an automatic installation, then login
to Intuit Quickbooks online to check that it is working properly.

But the link shows the following if you hover over it:

http://ateaspoonofcolur.com.au/8nbzgn/index.html

Now this is interesting. We know that this isn’t coming from Intuit or the Quickbooks people who work for Intuit. Who is it coming from? That’s what we don’t know. I suspect it’s either a phishing attack or a malware attack. Acting with an abundance of caution, I declined to click on the link and deleted the message. I recommend you do the same.