I have recently observed many PCs that have been infected by the trojan known as “Personal Antivirus.” Let me tell you, this seems like a nasty bug at first, but with the right tools and a cool head it’s rather simple to remove.

You will know if you have this trojan from a few simple key obervations. The first and most obvious is that the program will appear in your Start Menu as well as the Add/Remove Programs list. The second is that it will take over your Internet Explorer windows, and keep directing you to “about:blank.” The last is that you will notice a new popup near the clock on your machine that will continually warn you of viruses and spyware that are trying to download your passwords, or trying to control your machine.

The good news is that this evil little bug can be removed competely with two free programs. I recommend Spybot Search and Destroy as the first program to use. Simply install it, run the updates on it, and scan your machine. Spybot will remove a large amount of junk that is just sitting there. The second program recommend is called Malewarebytes. After you install this program, run the updates, and then do a full system scan. This application will get a few small files that spybot may have missed the first time around.

After you’ve completed these steps, all you need to do is restart your computer and you are back in business!

Chuck Lindblom

Email is one of the most utilized and yet most misunderstood tools in the workplace today. We type something, hopefully check it for correct spelling and grammar, hit “send,” and almost as if by magic it appears in someone else’s mailbox. This simple transaction happens hundreds of times a day for me, so when it occasionally doesn’t work I get frustrated and want it fixed. The technicians have helped me compile a checklist of things I can check before escalating to them, and I will share them with you:

1. Make sure you can get to the Internet. Try browsing to common websites like Google and MSN to make sure your email issue isn’t an Internet service provider issue.

2. Know your full email address, username, and password. If Fandotech hosts your email, we use a standard format for your email address, but we don’t keep your password for security reasons. If you’ve lost it, let us know and we can help reset it for you. If we don’t host your email, unfortunately, there is little we can do.

3. Ensure that no one sent you any new email. We’ve had people call us and exclaim, “I’m not getting any email!” when it was, in fact, because no one had sent them any email. If you can confirm someone sent you email, then we can start from there.

4. Please include any error messages you receive. Try to include the entire bounce back email you receive since our technicians need the whole thing in order to determine the root cause of the issue. You can email it to support@fandotech.com, include it in the service request you create, or print the email and fax it to us.

5. Ask yourself if you’re checking email in more than one place. When you use your desktop, Blackberry, and laptop to check your email throughout the day you are using 3 different devices. Depending on your hosting setup, this could cause various symptoms.

6. Tell us what you’re using for an operating system and email program. Most people are using Windows XP or Vista, and knowing whether it is a Home or Pro edition makes a difference. There can be issues working within the same email program with a different year, like Outlook 2000, 2003 and 2007.

We at Fandotech are here to help get your business email back up and running. Preparing your service call or entering your ticket with answers to the items above will help us get you back to work. And if you’re not satisfied with your current email hosting solution, ask us how we can help improve your experience.

Sarah Marino

If you get what seems like an infinitely large number of emails like I do, you might be looking to managing them more efficiently. An inbox that gets flooded can be difficult to navigate.  If you’re having a stressful day, why add to it? Take a few minutes to set up some folders and rules in Outlook to make your life a little easier.

You can right-click your Inbox on the left-hand side of Outlook to create a new folder. This will create a new folder within the Inbox, and this can be quite useful for categorizing your emails. For instance, you can have one for meetings, one for email from the finance department, and one for personal email. You can have one for people working out of different locations, or perhaps all the email that comes from a specific company.

Now, once these are set up, the email will continue to land in your Inbox, meaning you must manually sort and drag them to the appropriate, newly created folders. This can be time consuming, which is why there are rules.

You can access the rules by selecting “Tools” from the menu bar in Outlook, and selecting the option “Rules and Alerts”.  From here you have a large array of options. You can take any emails from a specific person and have them automatically go to a certain folder when they arrive. You can set this up so you receive and alert.  You can apply a different rule that will look for key words in the subject line and move them to a different folder based on that. As an example, I have a rule that takes any email from a certain address, forwards it to another address, and deletes it.  So I never even see it-it just goes straight to the forwarding address.

Take a few minutes and play with some of the options. You’ll find them quite useful.

Corey Slack

Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Three choices today, if you’ll permit me to generalize, and four choices tomorrow. This Official Google Blog article discusses Google’s upcoming entry into the desktop operating system market with Google Chrome OS. Sigh.

I like Google’s tools, including their search engine, web browser, Earth viewer, and more. Google has recently announced another upcoming service called Wave that is supposedly a reinvention of email (and this new tool does actually sound exciting). But the news of a Google OS failed to excite me. I thought, just what the world needs, another operating system.

Choice, they say, drives innovation. And competition (primarily with Microsoft Windows, in this instance), benefits the consumer. The Google Chrome OS is Google’s “attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” since today’s operating systems, “were designed in an era where there was no web.” The new open source and “lightweight” OS will be —at least initially—targeted at netbooks.

Chrome OS, as it actually turns out, will be yet another member of the ever-confusing family of Linux variants, another group of open source operating systems I have little use for. Linux, in my opinion, should be relegated to servers. However, the primary advantage of Linux (and the future Chrome OS?) is the cost, which is cheap or free, and that works for the inexpensive group of netbooks now on the market. Come to think of it, Mac OS X is also a variant of Linux.

I guess in the end, it comes down to just Windows or Linux. So, who cares about the new Google flavor of the month? I say, fill it with innovation, knock my socks off, show me something I’ve never seen before, and, whatever you do, make my IT life easier. Otherwise, don’t bother me. We’ll see what the future holds for Google Chrome OS.

What do you think?

Craig Samson

OK, so I may be a little late on the whole spring cleaning thing, but better late than never as I like to say. On this blog my fellow tech geeks and I have covered many topics, from how to track down a rogue network host, to a review on a new cell phone, but there is one topic we have all overlooked. The physical care of your computer. I am not talking about how much memory you have, or how big the hard drive is, I mean the real nitty gritty care for your computer.

Heat
Heat is the enemy all computer technicians must face. I consider it one of the silent killers in the computer world. I have seen far too many computers fall victim to this common issue, because not enough care was taken to save the computer. Now, I will admit that heat is not normally one of the first things people think of when they get a new computer or laptop, but it’s this thought that could save you a lot of money. Processors, memory, hard drives, PCI devices—all of this can be destroyed by an overheating computer. There are a few ways to help protect yourself though:

• The first is to make sure you don’t have the computer in some kind of non-vented cabinet. If so, you may want to consider moving it. The heat has nowhere to go except back into the computer to be recycled as more hot air.
• Laptop users make sure you do not surround your laptop with piles of paper and other items; this is basically just insulating the laptop and not allowing it to vent properly.
• If you do not plan to use the computer for a while, try either turning it off, or putting it into a power save mode. This will allow the computer to take a break and cool off for a while.
• Try to avoid having a computer placed right next to a floor heater of any kind as this will just increase the amount of external heat being taken in by the computer.

With these few simple steps you are on your way to having a cooler safer computer, but there are other issues to look out for, leading me into my next topic.

Dust and Dirt
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anyone has a dirty house, but it’s a fact that dust is everywhere. There is no real way to avoid it. I don’t know what it is, but I swear computers live to suck in dirt and dust and just let it sit there. I tend to clean my computer twice a year because I can barely see through the vent fans anymore. Try some of these tips to help out:

• Use a vacuum with a bristle head to lightly clean the vent fans and the computer case. This also works for laptops. The bristles are a good way to remove loads of dirt and dust and to make sure your computer can vent properly.
• Canned Air is a must for any computer technician, I know we have loads of it at work. You can buy it at any store, really, from Staples to Stop & Shop. Take the computer outside and give it a few good blasts to loosen any dust that is caked on. Just remember to spray away from you, I always forget that part.
• Pet owners beware! Your pet’s fur may be shedding and finding a new home inside your computer. Pet fur is superb insulation, and can badly damage your machine. I don’t know how many fur coats I could have made with pet fur I’ve pulled from personal computers. I recommend cleaning every 3 to 4 months or so if you have an animal that sheds.

Static Electricity
Static electricty is a major problem for most electronics. Unfortunately for us humans, we can carry a powerful static charge with us wherever we go. Not many people may know this, but the motherboards on most computers do not sit directly on the side of the case. They are rasied up just a little bit to help in case a static charge runs through the case. Have you ever noticed that new computer parts come in those metallic looking static-free bags? I have two suggestions for this one:

• If you often work with the insides of computers, you may want to invest in a static charge stopper. This is a small band that connects to your wrist, and has a wire that clips onto the computer case. In theory, it grounds you to the computer case to stop any wild static discharges.
• My other suggestion is to make sure you either touch the side of the computer case, or a close friend to make sure you are not carrying a static charge. Not only will this save you a headache later, you get to give someone a little static shock!

If you take all of these tips and put them into practice, I can honestly say you’re likely to save money by increasing the lifespan of your computer. A computer is just like anything else from a car to the human body. The more you take care of it, the better it will work and the longer it will last.

Chuck Lindblom