So I get this phone call this afternoon about her data. She went to college about a week ago, and today had trouble booting it up again. She called me and I asked about the clicking noise and she said there was none. It would boot all the way into windows and then puke with a blue screen. I told her we would have to boot into safe mode and try and repair it. She said she would call me back once she had it in safe mode. About an hour went by and that’s when she called back. Apparently she didn’t want to bother me so she called dell support. The first thing they asked her to do is take the repair option. That didn’t work. So the next step they asked her to do a full system recovery. She asked if they could back up her data, that’s when dell told her that it they couldn’t backup her information. It was lost, and there was nothing they could do about it. Honestly what gives dell the right to tell their customers that there data is lost. I’m really disappointed in what they have done.

About a month ago same scenario a new customer calls me and asks where to buy an external hard drive. Her computer wouldn’t boot so she called dell support. She inquired about backing up her data. The dell representative told her to go buy a USB hard drive to back everything up. He told her that they could do it remotely through the internet with no problem even told her what size hard drive to get. I inquired about where the machine was stopping on bootup. Apparently the machine would blue screen and reboot constantly. How in the hell were they going to back up their data? They weren’t. going to. I went to visit them the night she was to call dell back. I sat in on the phone call to protect the Gigs of personal pictures and home movies.

We call dell and get right through he has us find her restore cds. We inquired again about backing up the data. He said oh yes go ahead and plug in your external hard drive. So I plugged in the drive I brought along. He said please hold while I connect. He put us on hold for about 10 minutes and came on to say that everything was backed up on the USB hard drive. No activity light on the drive and the computer rebooted at least 3 times while he has us on hold. What is this bullshit, really bait the user into thinking you would backup their data and then lie to them. I called him right there on the spot. I asked to speak to his supervisor and was promptly disconnected. What a bunch of Shit. I want some answers along with this post I am emailing support today. I will post the responses I get to my inquiries.

As for Dell, I used to recommend them, but for now I think I won’t.

If anyone has been backed into this same position please comment below or use the contact form on this site.  I am willing to help anyone that they’re trying this with.

Okay so the last post dealt with clearing your interent history, if you havent read it go there now. So now you know where to clear your browsers history and temp files. But what about when you went to google and searched for something that you dont want seen. Like searching for a loved ones birthday ideas or that suprise vacation you want to take your family on. If you dont clear your auto complete form data someone can see what you searched for.

Here’s the kicker with autocomplete, if you enter your credit card into a computer with auto complete turned on you can actually pull it up again without needing your credit card. That may be a big shock but try it, go to a site you have ordered something from and see if you start typing your credit card number if the rest shows up. Did I get your attention now, this is why you need to clean up after yourself.

Now lets just say you were at an interent cafe, or a library with computers and internet access. You just ordered something from the web. If autocomplete was turned on guess what, your credit card could be used again. I actually ran into this a couple of months ago. I was browsing the web at my parents house when waiting for a spyware scan to complete. I found a really great book online and went to order it. My parents bank at the same credit union as we do so when it came to entering my credit card number i was shocked that as i typed the first 8 numbers where the same. I finished my purchase and asked my mom to see her debit card for her account. The first 8 numbers where the same. I called my uncle and asked him, he banks at the same location, guess what his were the same too. Now if you live in a small town like ours it would be pretty easy at the library to get multiple credit card numbers.

With that hackers or others can actually steal a part of your identitiy to use your credit card or debit card at will.

So how do we clean this up:

Internet Explorer

1. Go to the tools menu and select options
2. Click the content tab
3. Click AutoComplete
Click Clear Forms

If you decide that you no longer wish for Internet Explorer to use its autocomplete functionality you can stop this by unticking any of the checkboxes in this window. Should you change your mind you can turn this functionality back on by simply reticking the checkbox(es).

For Firefox Users

1. In firefox go to tools and select options
2. Click Privacy tab
3. under private data click settings
4. Make sure Saved form and search history is checked
5. Then hit clear now(If you dont see this refer to this post)

For Safari Users

1. Go to the “Safari” menu and select “Preferences.”
2. From the menus that pop up, select “Autofill.”
3. Go to “Other forms” line and select the “Edit” button.
4. From the list of sites for which AutoFill is currently being applied, select what concerns you
5. Click Remove

If any one has the opera How-to please let me know and I will post it here.

The other night I was at a computer job. The computer was infested with spyware and viruses. I went through the machine and cleaned it all up. Then the big question, “How can we keep my son from getting on porn sites.” I know everyone has done that one search that leads to a porn site but really kids at the age of 6 aren’t out looking for porn are they? My first order of business was finding out how the kid actually found the porn site his mom caught him on. It was pretty simple, clicking the down arrow in Internet Explorer yielded a wealth of porn sites. The kid really had quite a few to choose from. That’s when the husband and wife admitted to actually browsing porn.(Big Shock)

I find this is the case in at least 35% of the homes I travel too. People surf the porn sites on the same computer their kids do there homework or play games on. How can this be avoided? Pretty simple if you ask me, there is at least 1 full proof method. Don’t surf on that machine, but they’re others too. You can enable content filtering with a password, which again is pretty easy to do. Then if you want to surf to those sites all you have to do is disable content filtering. Another way would be to have supervised internet time with the kid. That’s a big shocker, spending time showing your kids, the internet is a wealth of information, can be very rewarding. I know, I know, some kids aren’t keen on you watching over there shoulder while they IM their friends and browse MySpace. This calls for another method.

There are numerous content filters or internet filters on the market, but your biggest defense is keeping your machine clear of tempting links. Back to that computer job, the husband and wife had no clue it was that simple for their son to find the sites they were visiting. A simple cleanup would have spared them the embarrassment. You really want to see some embarrassed people. A 28 year old tech finds the couples secret in less than 20 minutes. Update I also added Opera and Safari

Okay so how do we clean our history and temporary internet files?

1. In internet explorer go to the tools menu and click internet options
2. On the General Tab look for the Browsing history Section
3. Click Delete
4. Click Delete files on the next screen.
5. Click Delete History from the next screen.

For Mozilla Firefox

1. Goto the tools menu and click options
2. Click the privacy tab
3. Click clear now
4. Make sure Browsing history and cache is checked
5. Click Clear Private Data Now

(Side note – you can have mozilla auto clear this every time you exit firefox.)

1. On the privacy tab check: Always clear my private data when I close firefox.(That way when you exit quickly it all goes away :-).

For Opera

1. Form the File menu select preferences.
2. From Preferences click history and cache.
3. To clear typed in addresses and history click clear.
4. To clear Disk Cache click Empty now.

For Safari

1. From the Safari menu, click Empty Cache.
2. When asked are you sure click Empty.

That could save you a lot of embarrassment when your kids find what porn site you’re visiting. Can you really scold your kids for being their. Probably not because you left the door cracked and all they did was walk in. So next time your surfing the porn sites remember to cover your tracks or your kid could follow them to where you don’t want them to be.

1.  Download app for Iphone
2.  Download app for computer
3.  Get playing.

Oh did i mention you can stream to up to 30 of your friends this is cool as shit.

Lifehacker Article

1.  Powerdown and unplug all unused Equipment.
2.  Verify that the devices needed to be left on are plugged into a surge suppressor.
3.  Unplug your phone line from your DSL modem or PC.  (I have witnessed them blowing to pieces).
4.  Unplug your modem from the rest of your network if you have cable.

Thats it, it’s pretty simple just don’t forget to check the weather if you plan to be away for an extended period of time.  With these quick checks you could save yourself big hassles.

Tags: PC, Thunderstorm, Checklist,, Can, I, use, my, PC, in, a, thunderstorm,, Lightning, struck, my, computer,

Wonder why there are so many hiccups in that new project you just launched.  Survey says IT didn’t know about it.  On most occasions IT will find out through the grape vine first, or when it’s an absolute necessity to include us.  If you would have given us adequate notice, there could have been a level of planning involved to minimize the problems.

So how does this relate to abusing your IT department your wondering?  Okay from my point of view we receive all the frustrated calls from users that when having problems with something new.  We get bashed because what we have done, is sub par from what we could have gotten done with adequate knowledge of the project.  I know most people don’t care about this, we deal with all users alike, but this could be avoided at a very easy price like including them in the project planning discussions versus the project launch.

We get abused on more levels than one.  Being in IT you magically know whats wrong with everyone’s home machines too.  They come to you and ask, ” Now how do I setup that wireless router again.”  If your good you could come up with a small business just supporting your users at home too.  What happens to me on a fairly frequent basis one of the owners brings a PC in and sits it on my desk with a small list of items that need resolved.  You fix it, it disappears for a while then its back at your desk or one of the owners calls your cell phone over the weekend panicked that something is wrong with a server at work because they cant get there email.  Then to find out they are having a problem at home with their internet connection.  You feverishly jump on your laptop checking the status of everything and low and behold its actually working just fine, but the brief bit of panic sets in.

Here are a couple of things to remember when dealing with the IT department.

1.  Keep us in the know, and we will be much happier.

2.  When a problem arises give clear concise details, not just “Its broke.”

3.  If you give us some positive comments every once in a while you might just get better work out of us.

4.  Don’t expect us to know every single detail of every new device out on the market.  If you want us to research all the new products out don’t complain we are on the internet to much.

If you keep us happy everything will run smooth.  If were mad the “IT GODS” will reign fire.