In case you aren’t familiar with Windows Live OneCare, it’s Microsoft’s version of a security program that is supposed to protect your computer from viruses, spyware, and other infections. The problem is that Windows Live OneCare just isn’t very good. As a result, Microsoft will be discontinuing it in June of this year.

So if you are out shopping for security software and see Windows Live OneCare on sale, don’t buy it. It’s not very good protection and it’s being discontinued.

If you have windows Live OneCare on your computer now, I recommend getting better protection as soon as possible. If you prefer, you can wait until your subscription runs out and then move to another security application, but I wouldn’t recommend renewing it.

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We see infected computers every day. We get a lot of questions and hear a lot of comments from customers about infected computers. A lot of people seem to have some misconceptions about what should be done about an infected computer. Here are some common questions/comments we get along with the answer.

1.     In order to clean infections off my computer, the computer will have to be wiped clean and Windows will have to be loaded from scratch and I’ll loose all of my data.

I have had several customers tell me that they took their comptuer to another computer service company to have infections cleaned off and when they got their computer back, all of their data was gone. The computer service company had wiped it clean and installed Windows. All of the programs and data they had were gone. Some companies even charge you for a backup of your data, but they don’t load it back on your computer for you. They just give you a set of CD’s with your data on it.

This won’t happen with Computer Troubleshooters. The first thing we do is  make a full backup of your computer. It’s rare that a computer is so infected that we have to reload Windows, but it does happen. When it does, we put all of your data back on for you. And we don’t charge extra for that.

1. It’s cheaper and easier to just get a new computer than it is to try and fix a new computer.

   It’s certainly not cheaper. Our flat rate service which is called “Deep Cleaning and Optimization Service” is $149.99. We not only remove the infections, but we also tuen up your computer to run as well as it can.

   Getting a new computer might be easier if you don’t have to transfer any data or install a lot of programs on the new computer. But if you have to have a computer service company transfer the data for you, then it’s not cheaper.

   In general, it just seems wasteful to get a new computer just because your current computer is infected. Now, if you just want a newer, faster computer, that’s different. But don’t get a new computer just because your current one is infected. For $150, you can have it cleaned.

2. How did those infections get on there.

   Most of the time there is no way to know how an infection got on a computer. It would be possible to have Windows log every little thing that happens on the computer. Then that log could be analyzed to find out how it got on there. However, that level of logging would slow Windows down. And analyzing a log that big to find out where the infections came from would take a lot of time. I don’t think most customers would want to pay extra just so they know how their computer became infected.

   There are a large number of ways that an infection can make it’s way onto a computer, but by far the most common ways are from the web, security holes in Windows, and spam e-mail.

3. I have an security software. How did an infection get on my computer?

   To understand this, you have to understand how Anti-virus and Anti-spyware security programs work. In a nutshell, someone has to find and identify an infection. Then the infection is analyzed to find it’s unique signature. That unique signature is then loaded into the virus definition updates that your security software is always updating itself with. Your security software uses these definitions to identify and remove these known infections.

   So what about infections that nobody knows about? Security software tries to protect you from those by looking for suspicious behavior. When it sees suspicious behavior, your security software may pop-up and ask you what you want to do. Most people don’t know, so they just allow it. As a consequence, this type of protection doesn’t help much.

   That’s why security software can’t totally protect your computer. For a lot more information on how you can better protect your computer, click here to check out this article on our website that gives pointers on how to help avoid getting an infection on your computer.

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All of us have received an e-mail that was forwarded to us by a friend. All of us have probably also forwarded an e-mail to a list of our friends as well.

Here are some important guidelines to follow when forwarding e-mail to a list of your friends.

1. When you forward an e-mail, delete out all of the old header information and other noise in the e-mail so that when your friends open the e-mail, they see the content you wanted them to see. They shouldn’t have to scroll down past lines and lines of e-mail headers.

2. If the content you want to forward to your friends is in an attachment, that’s OK. But sometimes there’s an attachement within an attachment within an attachment and so forth. Do do that to your friends. Drill down to the deepest e-mail that has the real attachment. Right-click on the real attachment and choose copy. Now close all the attached e-mails. Start your own e-mail and right-click and choose paste to paste the attachment to your e-mail.

3. When you address an e-mail to a bunch of friends, don’t put them in the “To” field. Put them in the “BCC” field. BCC is blind copy. Most e-mail clients will let you leave the “To” field blank, but if yours won’t, just put your own e-mail address there. Put all of your friends e-mail addresses in the BCC field. That way, when your friends get it, they won’t be able to see all of the e-mail addresses of everyone you sent it to. This protects their identities and keeps the e-mail cleaner so it is easier to read.

4. Don’t forward too much e-mail. I can’t tell you how many people have told me about some friend of theirs that forwards 5 e-mails a day to them and how much they hate that. Think about how much e-mail you are forwarding and be considerate of those you are forwarding to. Try not to forward more than one a day.

The BCC field is turned off by default in some e-mail clients. If you can’t find BCC or cant’ figure out how to use BCC, then click here for some instructions. If you still need help, call us.

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You may know that you can have multipe users set up in Windows. For example, if there are 4 people in your family and you all share one computer, you may each have your own windows user so that each person can customize Windows the way they want, and also to keep their data seperate. When you have more than one user, you typically get the Welcome Screen which shows you a list of users. You can then click on yours to login to Windows. Some versions of Windows require you to press Control-Alt-Delete and then enter the name you want to login to.

Many computers only have only one Windows user with no password. In that case, you never see the Welcome screen. It will just automatically login as that user and go right to the desktop.

For those who have multiple Windows users, I wanted to alert you to something. When a windows user is done, don’t switch users. Instead, log off. The reason is that when you switch users, it leaves the user  you are switching from logged in and taking up resources. This slows the computer down. I’ve seen computers where they had four Windows users and every one of them was logged in.

I recommend turning off fast user switching. This will prevent people from switching users. User will then logoff and it will go back to the welcome screen. Then the next user can login. To turn off fast user switching in XP, click on Start and then click on Contorol Panel. In the Control Panel, double-click on “User Accounts”. Now click on “Change the way users log on or off” Click on the box next to “Use Fast User Switching” to remove the checkmark and turn off fast user switching.

In Vista, for some strange reason, Microsoft made it difficult to disable fast user switching. Because of that, I don’t think it’s something that the average user should attempt, so I’m not going to include instructions for disabling it here. But never fear. Click here. Save this file to your hard drive. Then find the file, right-click on it, choose rename. Now change the word “download” in the filename to “reg”. The file should now be named “Remove_All_Switch_user.reg” Now right-click on the file and choose merge.

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The Windows Desktop is what Windows calls the screen where all of your icons are. You have a lot of options for organizing the icons on your desktop. You should only have icons on your desktop for things you use frequently. For things you don’t use frequently, I recommend removing them from your desktop. Removing an icon from your desktop does not uninstall software from your computer. You can still access that software from the start menu.

When I organize the icons on my desktop, I like to group similar things together. For example, anything that has to do with media (music and video), I would group together. I might group games together and so forth.

You can have Windows auto-arrange your icons if you want to, but I hate this option. Not only do I dislike it because it doesn’t group icons and won’t allow you to group icons, but any time a new icon is added or one is removed, icons move. So they are never in the same place. The whole idea of having icons on your desktop is for faster access. If my icons move around, it slows me down because I have to find the icon on the desktop. If that icon is always in the same place, I can go right to it.

If you have auto-arrange turned on and want to turn it off. Or if you want to turn it on, here’s how. In Windows XP, find an area of the desktop where there are no icons and right-click there. You’ll get a pop-up menu. Hold your mouse pointer over the top menu option “Arrange Icons By” and  you will get a sub-menu. In this sub-menu are several options. One of these options is auto-arrange. If there is a checkmark next to Auto-Arrange, then it’s turned on. If not, it’s off. Click on it to add or remove the checkmark. While you are in this sub-menu, make sure “Align to Grid” has a checkmark next to it. This keeps your icons evenly spaced. If you turn on auto-arrange, then you can also select here how it will arrange them. It can arrange them by name, size, and more.

In Vista, right-click on a blank area of the desktop and choose View. After that, it’s pretty much the same as XP.

When auto-arrange is on, you can’t put the icons where you want them. So once you have it turned off, you can move the icons around and arrange them how you like them. To move an icon, simplay click on it and drag it to the place where you want it. To delete an icon, right-click on it and choose delete from the pop-up menu. To rename an icon, right-click on it and choose rename”

After you have your icons all arranged the way you want them, there are, unfortunetly, some things that can mess them up. For example, some games will mess up your icons. Changing your screen resolution can mess up your icons as well. There are some other actions that can mess up your icons as well. It would be nice if you could somehow save your icon locations and restore them if they get messed up. Windows doesn’t provide this functionality, but there are third party programs that do. And the best part is that they are free. Here are 2 of them.

IconRestorer 

IconSort

These don’t work on the 64 bit version of Windows. If you have a 64 bit version of Windows, then click here.

Another powerful way to organize your desktop is by using a dock. These applicaiton launchers are very configurable and very useful. Limited versions of these are available for free. The two best are Object Dock and RocketDock.

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You know you can purchase music on the internet from many places like Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Itunes.com, and many more. Once you purchase them, you can download them to your computer. At that point you can listen to them on your computer, or you can put them on your portable music player (mp3 player, ipod, smart phone, etc), or you can burn them to CD, or whatever.

But did you know you can listen to music for free on the Internet? So if you mostly listen to music on your computer, you can listen to all the music you want for free. You can’t put the music on your portable music player and you can’t burn them to CD, but you can listen to them on your computer.

There are many places you can do this, but my two favorite websites for listening to music are pandora.com and playlist.com. Both let you listen to music over the internet. But there is a big difference between the two.

Pandora asks you to enter the name of a song or artist. What it does then is to use that information to play songs or artists like the one you entered. If it plays a song or artist you don’t like, you can tell it to skip it and it learns from that so that in the future it won’t play songs or artists like the one you skip. This is a really good way to get exposed to other artists and songs you may not have heard before. I also find it interesting to type in the name of a song or artist and see what it starts playing. Pandor also has what it calls genre stations. You can specify a genre and it will play songs from that genre.

Are you in the mood for a certain type of song? Type in a song that fits that mood, and Pandora will play a lot of songs that fit that mood.

Playlist.com, on the other hand, gives you the ability to create a playlist. You have to specify all of the songs you want to hear. You create a playlist, and playlist.com plays it for you. Simple. Of course, you can save your playlists and play them whenever you want, from any internet connected computer you want. You can build a playlist for different moods or different types of music, or whatever you want.

Something else that playlist.com is good for is to play a specific song for a friend. Let’s say you ask a friend if they heard a new song called “Computer Talk” They say they are not sure. All you have to do is go to playlist.com and type in “Computer Talk” and then play them the song. Then they can hear the song and figure out if they have heard it or not.

So if you want to hear specific songs or songs from a specific artist and you don’t mind building a playlist, then playlilst.com is the website to use. But if you just want to listen to a certain type of music and would like to hear some artists or songs you’ve never heard before, then Pandora is the way to go.

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You’ve heard us say it over and over. The internet is a dangerous place. One of the most popular things to do on the internet these days is to access media content. By media content, I am referring to things video and music. Because this is a popular thing to do on the internet, it is a big target for infections like viruses and spyware.

To help our customers with this problem, Computer Troubleshooters has created ctonline.tv.

The purpose of this website is to give you a place to go to find legitimate places to access media on the internet. Keep in mind that just because it isn’t on ctonline.tv doesn’t mean it’s not legitimate. But if you stick to the sites listed, you will greatly reduce the chances of your computer becoming infected from a media website.

Check out ctonline.tv

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No matter what your favorite cookie is, I am sure it’s not a tracking cookie.

In the world of computers, a cookie is a small file that a website can use to store information on your computer. Cookies are a nice feature that allow websites to serve us better. But like any good thing, they can be abused.

Please know, however, that a cookie cannot harm your computer or the data stored on it. You probably know that advertisments shown on websites come from services that collect a bunch of advertisments from clients and then create a network of websites where their advertisments are shown. An advertising network will create a tracking cookie on your computer when you visit one of the websites in their advertising network. This cookie will only have meaning when you visit websites in their advertising network. The advertisment service can then track which of the websites in their advertising networks you have been to, which of their advertisements you have been shown, and which ones you clicked on. 

That’s pretty much all there is to tracking cookies. Many security programs will clean out tracking cookies for  you. It’s not critical that you do so, but it’s a good idea.

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If you have young children and they want an e-mail address, consider zoobah.com. You can go there and easily set up an e-mail address for your child. The best part about it is that it’s safe and gives you the control. Kids can only get e-mail from or send e-mail to e-mail addresses on the approved list that you create. You can change this setting if you want, but by leaving it that way, it means they won’t get any spam and people you don’t know can contact them in e-mail. Check it out at www.zoobah.com.

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You may have heard that you can do a defrag on your computer’s hard drive. Or maybe you have actually defragged your hard drive.

When something is fragmented, it means it’s broken into pieces and disorganized. For example, let’s say you are cooking in the kitchen and you need to use the hand mixer to beat some egg whites. Let’s say that the main unit is stored in the garage, one of the beaters is stored in the laundry room and the second beater is stored in the attic. It would take you a long time to gather the pieces so that you could use that hand mixer. In this example, the hand mixer is fragmented. If the mixer and the 2 beaters were stored together, it would be a much more efficient use of your time to get the mixer, put the beaters on, and use it.

The same can be said about a file stored on a computer’s hard drive. If the pieces of the file are stored on different areas of the hard drive, that file is fragmented and it will take longer for the hard drive to get all of the pieces than if they were all stored in one spot in the right order.

Performing a defrag on your computer will take that file, pull all of its pieces together, put them in the right order, and store them on one spot on the hard drive so that when you go to access it, it’s much faster. It’s important to note that a file on a hard drive can be anything. Sure, it can be a picture, a document, or a song, but there are lots of other things stored in files on your hard drive like programs. Windows is stored on your hard drive. Windows will run slower if the files and programs it needs are all fragmented on the hard drive.

So we see how a file can be fragmented, but in the world of computers there are other kinds of fragmentation. Even if every file on your hard drive is not fragmented, your hard drive can be considered fragmented. Why? If some files are stored in one part of the hard drive while other files are stored in another area of the hard drive, your hard drive is considered fragmented. Why is this important? If your computer accesses a file on the hard drive, the hard drive moves to that area of the hard drive. Then after that, it accesses another file on the hard drive, it has to move to a different area of the hard drive to access the second file. It’s all about minimizing the amount of movement and work the hard drive has to do.

Yet another kind of fragmentation is inside a data file. A lot of data on computers is stored in databases. These are kind of like mini hard drives themselves. The data inside them can be fragmented. There can also be wasted space within a file. Defragmenting the internal workings of a data file must be done by a utility program that understands the structure of that particular data file. So the defag built-in to Windows doesn’t do this kind of fragmentation. The reason I mention it is because there is a file, or set of files, in Windows known as the registry. The Windows Registry is a set of files where Windows stores a lot of settings. Windows doesn’t do anything without first accessing the registry. If the Windows Registry becomes damaged or corrupted, your computer will not function. Because the Windows Registry is often large and is accessed so frequently by Windows, it is important to not only back it up, but to defrag the contents of the registry to keep your computer running as well as it can.

Windows does not include a utility for defragging the Windows Registry. There are a few programs that will do it, but they aren’t cheap. For your average computer user, it’s probably not worth it to purchase one of these programs. When Computer Troubleshooters performs a Deep Cleaning & Optimization service on your computer, we back up your registry and defrag it.

To run a defrag in Windows XP or in Windows Vista, click on Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Deframentor. In Windows XP you can click the analyze button to see how fragmented your hard drive is, or you can just go ahead and defrag it. You might as well just go ahead and defrag it. It will still show you a graphical representation of the fragmentation on your hard drive. The picture to the left shows to colorful bars. The top bar is before and the bottom bar is after. The red are the fragmented files. This fragmentation is still in process, so the bottom picture doesn’t represent the final result. The final result will show no red and all of the blue will be together in one area.

Vista allows you to set a schedule for automatic defrags and to select which drives will be defragmented, if you have more than one hard drive. You can also tell it to defrag now. But unlike XP, it doesn’t show you a graphical representation of the fragmentation of your hard drive and there is no option to just analyze.

It’s important to note that depending on the size of  your hard drive, the amount of data stored on it, the amount of free space on the drive, and the number of fragmented files, a defrag can take anywhere from half an hour to several hours.

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