Critical Computer

In my many, many… many years of work, I have built a rich (and often colorful) history of phone calls from clients, coworkers and customers describing a computer problem they need me to help with. I’m better than average about listening closely to the description of what’s going on and then asking the right questions to narrow the focus of possible answers.

But sometimes, no amount of question-and-answer will get us closer to a solution. And I know it can be very frustrating to try to describe a problem when you’re not fluent with tech-speak. Computer troubleshooting is not unique in this respect; how often have we described “some weird grinding kind-of clunking noises from wheel” rather than “I hear the rotor rubbing on the frame of the brake shoe” to our vehicle mechanic? Often it is just easier for me (or the mechanic) to see the problem is first hand.

However, thanks to the connectivity of the internet, I can now look at software and operating system problems on your computer without having to bring it in or for us to have to come and see it.

On the main page you’ll see a new section called Remote Support. Clicking here takes you to a page where you can download a program to your computer. Once installed, you can use it to call our computers and then we can see your computer screen together.

Now, I am the most security conscious person I know when it comes to my computers. I don’t like the fact that someone would put a program on my computer that would let them get into my computer without my control. So why would you? Let me share some facts about this very special remote process.

Q: Can you get into my computer without my permission?
A: No. Unlike other programs, you have to enable the connection. So when the program is not running, nobody can get into your computer.

Q: Do I have to uninstall the program when I’m done?
A: No.

Q: Can I see what you’re doing?
A: Absolutely. We see the same screen at the same time. You can say ‘watch this’ and show us what happens. Likewise, we can say ‘here’s what we’ll look at first’ and you can watch and ask questions all you want.

Q: Do I need to change the firewalls of my computer or my company so you can get in?
A: No. We want all these security measures in place at all times. Because this software calls us, you can leave everything on and enabled.

Q: Can you get access to other computers on my network?
A: Only if you can access them with the computer running the program. The moment you terminate it, we can’t access anything. The program is for the computer only and does not connect us to servers or other workstations not running the program.

Q: Do I need the computer to be able to access the internet?
A: Yes. If the problem you’re having is that you cannot connect to the internet, this program won’t be able to help us. That said, even if you cannot access email or the browser, your computer may still be on the internet and able to use this program.

Q: Can other people access my computer with this program?
A: No, only Critical Computer.

Q: Can I connect to your systems and then tell co-workers that my computer is haunted?
A: Yes, we’ll play along with that. It is very Hollywood-SciFi-Special Effects-ish to watch your mouse moving and keys typing like your computer has a spirit all its own.

Q: Will this work for Apple and PC?
A: Yes.

We hope that the addition of this new service helps us help you more efficiently than ever. That said, we would still like to see you once and a while… how about for coffee?

admin Uncategorized remote connectivity, remote diagnostics, remote support, screen sharing, vnc

Labor Day, that special day where we pay tribute to our working men and women, is upon us. It has been celebrated as a national holiday in the United States and Canada since 1894. It usually means:

• A day off of work and a three day weekend
• The end of summer and the beginning of serious BBQ time
• The Last day of the Great Minnesota State Fair
• You’re going back to school
• Labor Day Sales
• More Labor Day Sales

There have been some truly awesome folks that I’ve had the pleasure to work with in my years in the computer industry (and some not so awesome ones, and you know who you are). So in this quiet, joy-filled moment of reflection, it seems appropriate that I join in the tribute and do something… generous, and arguably crazy.

And here it is: All labor of Critical Computer done in the month of September in the year of 2009 will be invoiced at half our regular rate. Half off. 50% less. Same 110% CritCom value. First come, first served. This is a limited offer. Call now! Operators are standing by (well, voice mail anyway). Excludes parts and internet fees (which are fixed costs, sorry).

Disclaimers: Your mileage may vary. Above terms subject to change without notice. Always drive on roads, not on people. Batteries not included. Call before you dig. Consult your physician before use. Do not bend, fold, mutilate, or spindle. Do not use if seal is broken. Driver does not carry cash. Exclusions may apply. For great justice, take off every zig. Handle with care. If you cannot read these instructions, please notify a flight attendant. Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times. Made from 100% recycled electrons and magnetic particles. May contain material some readers may find objectionable; parental guidance is advised. Misuse may cause injury or death. No other warranty expressed or implied. Not available with other offers. Not responsible if you’ve fallen and can’t get up. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Price does not include taxes. Rebroadcast is prohibited without the express written consent of the National Football League. Seek shelter and cover head. Shin pads cannot protect any part of the body they do not cover. Shipping & handling extra. Some humor and satire included. The truth is out there. This is not an offer to sell securities. The views expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect those of our sponsors. Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T. Void where prohibited except where not prohibited. This supersedes any previous disclaimer.

Happy Labor MONTH!

admin Uncategorized computer repair, computer service, half off labor sale, labor day, programming, promotion, software installation

I am a very conservative person. I don’t encourage anyone be on the leading edge of a high-tech trend because it costs more time, money and energy to make things work; the return on investment is poor, and the value returned per dollar spent is usually even poorer. I also don’t encourage anyone to get a new computer when the old one works just fine, which makes me about the worst salesperson in the world for a computer company. So it may come as a surprise that with this posting I’m letting you know that if your computer is more than three years old, you’re going to need a new computer. You should start your budgeting now.

What’s changed? What irresistible force of nature has Brian speaking so?

Windows 7.

I’ve been running the release candidate (an unofficial version designed to get feedback by its users) for 6-12 hours a day for about 4 weeks. Every time I use it, I am increasingly impressed with its reliability and stability. Originally I split my computer to be able to run XP and Windows 7. The reality is, I think I have booted XP once since. Everything I ran on XP runs on Windows 7 – and often better. There is no need to go back to XP.

Windows 7 needs more hardware resources than XP does to its thing. PCs that are older than 3 years are going to struggle a bit with 7. Will they run it? Quite possibly, but they won’t perform well. Most computers in business today are, on the average, 4 years old.

When Vista came out, those of you buying new computers found out that the hardware companies got together with Microsoft and determined that you should not be buying new computers with XP anymore – even though that’s exactly what you wanted. The ensuing backlash from business was so great that hardware vendors had to change their tune and start offering ‘exceptions’ rather than see sales drop drastically. Even today, getting a new computer with XP is a real pain.  Expect this to happen again, but this time you won’t be forced into an operating system… you’ll want Windows 7.

7 is what Vista should have been to begin with, but history tells us that’s just what Microsoft does – release a product too early, then fix its bugs, name it something else and sell it again. Windows 3.1 begat Windows 3.11 for workgroups. Windows 95 begat Windows 98. When they crossed the power of Windows NT with the clunker known as Windows ME, we got Windows XP. Vista… begat 7.

For those of you who have invested heavily into business-specific applications that you’re told will ONLY run on XP, Vista has a virtual machine for XP. You can run real XP (not a window) inside Windows 7 at the same time. And? It works. Now, the visionary in me will read your future and tell you I see… programmers, software companies… who wrote that XP application… will tell you that you need a new version so that it will run natively in Windows 7. With the virtual machine, now that choice is up to you.

admin Uncategorized fixed vista, forecasted computing climate, new computer, windows 7

One of the most common questions I am asked as I finish a repair is ‘How Did That Happen?’  It makes sense that this question is on the mind of the person who is asking; sometimes they are the office manager, who has to write me a check.  Sometimes it is the user, who needs to have the ability to exclaim to their manager that ‘they didn’t do it!’

And sometimes, it is just curiosity.

However, fixing the ‘what’ is one thing – knowing the ‘how or why’ is another… and the latter, while almost always wanted, requires a greater time investment.  While I know the customer wants a good value for the work I did, they don’t want to pay for a forensic-level analysis.

Let’s just take one recent call I had.  The company computer (which was their only computer) wasn’t working right.  The customer was convinced that they had the Conflicker virus (which had recently gained mass media attention – virus du jour) and was afraid to do anything.  The computer had all their accounting, email lists, work orders and their 2008 personal taxes in a near state of complete upon it.

“Do you have a current backup of your irreplaceable files?” I asked.

“No.  We tried, but the computer is running so slow now, it just gets stuck.”

Side note #1.  Do not wait until you have problems to backup.

Normally at this point, I ask for the computer to be brought in (or I go onsite) and do a full backup from another computer of the data.  In this case, however, this wasn’t possible because they weren’t local.  Remote access wasn’t an option either.  Ultimately, they chose to just go forward with the diagnoses and hope they didn’t lose too much.

I knew that one of the behaviors of Conflicker is to block access to some antivirus websites, so I had them go to what is known as an ‘eyechart‘: a website which shows the logos from these blocked sites.  The logic is that if you don’t see the logo, something – perhaps Conflicker – is blocking it.

They could see some, but not all.

“Do you have anti virus installed?” I asked.

“Yes.”  They had a popular brand which is notorious for making everything slower.

Side note #2: Big name anti virus programs that are the most expensive are not always better.

“Is it updated with the latest definitions?”

“Ummm… how do I tell?”

I walked them through how to open the control panel and check.  The answer? Nope! There was a bit of red text that reminded them to subscribe to the service.  “Oh, that message kept popping up, and we did something to make it stop,”  I was told.  I sighed.

Side note #3a: Anti virus programs need to be updated with the definitions of new viruses in order for them to be detected.  If your software is not current, it is not going to work.

Side note #3b: If the year is part of the software name (like 2005), it is probably out of date no matter what and you need new antivirus software.

So, I had them remove the now just-good-for-slowing-down-the-computer antivirus and install a new one.  The old program did not go easily, arguing all the way, employing all the principles of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) to get them to keep it.

Installing the new antivirus program was a bit of a trick, as we couldn’t use the author’s site as the source (remember? Conflicker blocks access so you can’t remove it).  So, I put the installation program on my company website, and they downloaded it from there.   Updated it, ran it… and about 15 minutes later, the multiple infections had been detected, disabled and removed.  Interestingly enough, it wasn’t Conflicker after all, but another malware program which was consuming all their computing power.

Then the question hits: HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

Wellll…

1) You went to a website and clicked on something you shouldn’t have or opened an email that you shouldn’t have.  This is a hard one for customers to hear.  “Which site?  Which email?”  Sometimes I can tell by looking at the browser or email history.

You have to realize that the folks putting out these things to infect and control your computer for their own nefarious purposes are using every trick in the book to mislead you into clicking or opening.  They’ll use names of friends you know.  They’ll use false information to make you think you have money in some account due to you.  It is a scam, a con.  That you fell victim is embarrasing, yes, but it happens.

“Shouldn’t the antivirus program stopped it?”

Wellll…

2) The old antivirus program was not updated to detect and block it.  Viri, malware and trojans appear at a rate of 40-50 a day (in varying degrees of threat).  If you don’t update the program to know what to look for, it can’t work.

“Why doesn’t (in this case, Microsoft) fix their software so that this can’t happen?”

Wellll…

3) In fact, they do. For this customer, however, the computer was not running the program to update their operating system software (called WindowsUpdate).  Had they been, Conflicker would not have even been possible to infect them.  However, even current software can not prevent the user from clicking something that installs a program that they approved.

“So what was the site or email or whatever? I really need to know.”

Mail history was clean, so I looked at cookies.  Mostly work/company related, except a few that looked suspicious.  A bit of Googling and tada!  A visit to a website with a NCAA Final Four bracket team picking software program which contained a trojan program.

She wasn’t thrilled.  I’m glad I’m not her husband and co-owner.

Side Note #4: Don’t do your NCAA brackets with ‘free’ software from the internet on your company computer.

The message I want to communicate to you (in addition to the italicized ones) is simply this: take the time to protect your computer adequately, and you won’t need to ask me “How did that happen.”  If you’re not comfortable with that, hire a professional like yours truly to get your system(s) up to date and running smoothly.

I promise I won’t ask how you did in the NCAA pool.

admin Uncategorized backups, forensic analysis, repair, virus

I really don’t like backing up my computers.   See if you agree with my reasoning:

1. Doing a backup is a big user of my time.  I have many better things to do.  Work is piling up.  Backups are slow.
2. If I break down and do a backup, I end up with stacks of discs that go in a box and I will likely never see again.  That seems wasteful somehow.  Those discs aren’t that cheap, and a penny saved is a penny earned.
3. There is just not that much important data on some of my computers.  I have CDs that came with the computer so I should be covered.
4. I can’t remember the last time I had a problem with my computers.  I start them, they run – just like my car.

Oh! I also don’t like car insurance.

You pay this enormous sum of money year after year, and day after day you drive to and from your home safely and avoid accidents and that money is just gone.  Talk about waste!  That is…

Until you have an accident; probably wasn’t even your fault.

It may be one of those ‘life lessons’ we all have to go through, because until you have that accident, you don’t realize what you had… and how long it will take and how much it will cost to get back there… if you even can.  It will never be ‘exactly the same’.

In our digital age, business computer users have more communication electronically than we do on good ol’ paper.  Your computer is full of unique emails, documents, data, numbers, contracts, agreements, manuals.  Not to mention the applications you have that have, most of which have surely been patched, upgraded with electronic downloads, reconfigured, customized.  Top that all off with device drivers for printers, networks, USB devices and displays that were automatically updated and aren’t on some disk somewhere.

A daily full backup should take about 15 minutes and cost about $4.00 in discs.  If you just backup the changes since the last time you did a back up (called an incremental backup), less than 7 min and about $1.00.

Reinstallation of Windows XP, with drivers and all the security and application patches from Microsoft will take 345 minutes – assuming you have a very fast internet connection.  That’s just XP!  Add in the time to load your applications.  Oh, and your data is STILL gone.  One-of-a-kind pictures, email addresses, correspondence… the list of what you lost is huge.

Sure, there are data recovery companies out there.  Costs to recover data from a crashed hard drive starts at $1,000 and usually ends up $4,000-$5,000.  None of them will guarantee you’ll get all your data back.  Sometimes it is just gone.  What value do you place on irreplaceable data/images/documents stored on your computer?

I haven’t even touched on the cost of down time while you’re rebuilding your computer.  All that time you thought you were saving just came back with interest due.

So, while I hate doing backups, I hate even more having to spend more time and even more money rebuilding them to some partial state of functionality again.  Diligently, regularly, I do my backups – knowing that if something does happen, I’ll be prepared.

If you’d like to revise or improve your own backup plans, I hope you’ll call me at 612-710-2617 or email me at bhayes@criticalcomputer dot com.

P.S. I also pay my car insurance, though I wish it was only $1.00 a day.

admin Uncategorized safety, save restoration costs, why do backups