Blue Wallpaper with You Have Spyware Message

Super Spyware
Originally uploaded by eshm

I ran into this spyware the other day on a computer. It changed the wallpaper to blue and had a message on the wallpaper saying "You Have Spyware"! It also removed the tabs from the Display Properties screen so that I could not adjust the wallpaper. Here is what fixed it:

1. Installed AVG Free Antivirus, then scanned and removed spyware/viruses

2. Downloaded and ran SmitFraudFix

3. Downloaded HijackThis and removed suspicious entries (if you are not sure what suspicious entries are then go to www.iamnotageek.com and it can analyze the HiJackThis log for you)

4. Downloaded & ran LSPFix

Best Backup Solution for Small & Large Businesses

Tape Drive
Originally uploaded by danakin

Long gone are the days of people backing up to tape, THANKFULLY!!! If you are still on tape backups I strongly recommend you get away from them. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to pull my hair out attempting to get data to restore from these things.

I have been using the Sonicwall CDP units for about 2 years now and I LOVE LOVE LOVE these backup devices. They backup every computer on your network in real time. They store multiple revisions of each file and make restoring files a breeze. I finally have all of my clients off of tapes and a lot of them running the CDP device. If you are thinking of purchasing one of these I say go for it. I haven't had one fail me yet.

Notesmith 2008 Data Lost...Almost

Frustrated
Originally uploaded by Fallout75

I have a client running Notesmith 2008 and their computer locked up and they had to hard shutdown. When they booted up they found that their data was no longer accessible. Notesmith 2008 would open, but you couldn't see any of the client list. More bad news, their backup had been modified by an employee and no longer included Notesmith data. So, here is what we found out. Notesmith automatically backs up every five days. It creates a backup zip file in the folder c:\princeton\notesmith 200x\data\backup\zip. The way to get the data back is below:

1. Open Notesmith 2008

2. Click File, Utilities

3. Select the restore button

4. Change the drive letter from A to C (until you do this you will not be able to proceed)

5. Click zip file and then click restore

It will automatically bring up your backups and then you can select the backup file you want to restore. Hope this saves someone some frustration. This is the first time in 8 years I've set someone up on a backup system and then the settings were change and data was ALMOST lost. Fortunately, the story has a good ending. The data was recovered and of course we setup a new backup system so this doesn't happen again!

Auburn Computer Magic Website Redesign

A few days ago we redesigned the Auburn Computer Magic website. We like the new look and feel. It sticks with some of our main website design principles:

1. Create a site that loads fast
2. Create a site that is visually appealing, yet simple
3. Create a site where it's easy for a user to find information
4. Create a site that works on mobile devices

Outlook Won't Open EML Attachments or Forwards

I ran into a strange problem just the other day. Outlook all of a sudden stopped opening *.eml attachments, which included a lot of these "cute" forwards people often send. The message just showed up blank. After going through a million different things including checking file associations, I found that the problem was the Google Desktop add-inn for Outlook. Once I removed Google Desktop all worked fine. Another option for this is just to disable the add-inn in Outlook. In Outlook 2007 you can find the Add-inns by following these steps.

1. Open Outlook

2. Click Tools

3. Click Trust Center

4. Click the Add-inn you want to disable, in this case the Google Desktop add-inn

5. At the bottom under manage, click Disable Item

6. Click OK, then close and reopen Outlook