Occasionally your printer may stop printing and refuse to print anything else. This is often because a print job has gotten stuck in the printer queue. There is a way to clear a stuck print job in Windows, but sometimes it requires a reboot which is silly if you just want to clear a print job.

There is, however, a free utility program called Stalled Printer Repair that will fix this problem for you. Just download it; run it; and click “Purge Print Jobs” and you’re done!

Here’s the link:

http://www.fantasticfreeware.com/applications/stalled-printer-repair/

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We’ve said many times how important it is to keep an eye on your security software to make sure it’s working properly. But did you know that it’s normal for some security software to turn itself off briefly from time to time? It’s true!

Your security software downloads updates every day. There are two types of updates. Definitions and program updates. Definition updates usually get downloaded at least once a day, sometimes more often. Program updates are much less frequent, but do happen fairly regularly. Program updates are more complicated to install because your security software is running. A program that is running cannot be updated while it is running. Security software companies usually handle this in one of two ways.

The most common way to handle it is to make you reboot your computer. As the computer is booting back up, it installs the program updates before the security software starts running. This method is good because your computer isn’t running unprotected for any amount of time. The drawback is that your computer use is interrupted by the reboot.

The other way to handle program updates is to stop the security software from running, update it, and then start the security software back up. This is nice in that you don’t have to reboot your computer. The drawback is that during the time it’s updating, your computer is not fully protected. During that time, you should not access websites or read email. Usually, the period of time that the security software is shut down while it’s updating is a very short period of time. But sometimes major updates take longer.

Earlier this week, there was a program update to Vipre that took longer than normal to apply. Several of you noticed Vipre was not running and contacted us about it. Another small problem with this week’s update was that on some systems, Vipre’s active protection did not come back on after the update. This is easily fixed by opening Vipre and turning active protection back on. This illustrates, however, how important it is for you to keep an eye on your security software. We applaud those of you who noticed this.

The lesson is that anytime you notice your security software is not working, Try to turn it back on. If it won’t, wait 10-20 minutes. During this wait time, don’t access websites or read your email. This will give your security software time to finish updating itself, if that is what caused it to be turned off.

If after waiting 10-20 minutes your security software isn’t working, try to turn it back on again. If that doesn’t work, reboot. After rebooting, if it’s still not working, then you have 3 options. You can try to uninstall and reinstall your security software (make sure you know your license key before doing this), call the manufacturer’s technical support line, or give us a call.

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PC’s are great for music!

We’ve already covered in a previous article about playing music off of the internet. But what about music that is actually on your computer?

There are several ways music can get onto your computer. If you have CD’s, you can rip your CD’s. Ripping a CD is the process of taking the music from the CD, converting it into a digital format, and storing it on your computer.

Another popular method of getting music onto your computer is to purchase it from an online store like iTunes, Amazon.com, Walmart, Best Buy, and so on. Selection and price vary. What also varies is what format the music will be in once it’s downloaded to your computer and whether or not that music will have any sort of copy protection on it. Most online stores are steering away from copy protection. If you make sure to download your files in mp3 format, there’s no copy protection because mp3 format does not provide copy protection functionality.

The other popular way that music gets on computers is to download them using peer-to-peer software like Utorrent or LimeWire. In most cases, doing this constitutes a copy infringement. We aren’t condemning or condoning this practice. We are simply saying that a lot of people get music on their computer using this method.

Once you have music on your computer, you’ll want to organize it. There are lots of ways to organize your music. You might want to organize them by genre (Rock, Country, Christian, Rap, Hip Hop, etc), artist, or time period (70’s, 80’s, etc.). Or you might want to organize it by mood (love songs, fast songs, mellow songs, party songs, etc.). However you organize them, we recommend that you do organize them. Don’t just throw them all into one folder. Create sub-folders to organize them.

The other thing that is good to do is to fix the tags. Tags are information about the song. The title of the song, the artist, the album, etc. It’s a good idea to have these tags be correct so you know what you are listening to. Editing the tags can be achieved with most any music player, but not easily. If you want to do mass editing of your music tags, then  you will want a tag editor. The best free one I have found is mp3tag. Check it out at www.mp3tag.de/en

Now you have your music on your computer. You’ve organized it and have the tags all correct. Now you’ll want to play your music. You can play it on the computer where the music is stored. You can share it with the other computers on your network so they can play the same music without having to load that music on them. You can copy the music to your phone or mp3 player so you can listen to it on the go. Sharing music and getting music on your mp3 player or phone are big topics that will be covered on their own in future articles.

In terms of what software to use to play the music on your computer,  you have lots of options. Windows comes with Windows Media Player which can play most kinds of music. It’s a pretty good player. Some versions of Windows also come with Windows Media Center (note that is different than Windows Media Player). Windows Media Center not only plays music, it can play video, TV, radio, and more. Between Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center, I would use Windows Media Player if I am just playing music.

The most popular alternatives to Windows Media Player are iTunes and WINAMP. My favorite is WINAMP. There is a paid version, but there is also a free version. For the vast majority of people, the free version of WINAMP has everything you need.

There are lots of things I like about WINAMP. When you click stop to stop a song in the middle, it doesn’t just stop. It quickly fades out. That may sound like a stupid feature, but I don’t like it when music abruptly stops, so it’s a feature I like. I also like the fact that I can crossfade music. As the music plays, instead of one song ending and then another starting, the ending song will fade out as the new song fades in; just like you would hear on a radio station or at a dance. But what I like most about WINAMP is how configurable it is. There are loads of skins available for download. You can specify what information is displayed and how. There are a lot of cool plug-ins  you can download for it, but you really need the paid version for that. If you are interested in WINAMP, check out www.winamp.com.

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Dell Latitude D600 Laptop For Sale

This refurbished laptop is in very good condition.

Computer Troubleshooters has fixed this laptop and fully tested it.

This laptop is equipped with the following:

• Intel Pentium M 1.6GHz processor

• 14.1″ display

• 512mb of memory

• 80gb hard drive

• Wireless

• DVD ROM/CD Burner

• Windows XP

• 90 day warranty

$299

Includes personal delivery in our service area. Outside service area we can either charge a trip charge (amount depends on location) or we can ship it to you if you pay for shipping.

We can upgrade it to 1GB of memory for an additional $50 (bringing the total cost to $349) or we can upgrade it to 2GB of memory for an additional $100 (bringing the total cost to $399).

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What do you usually do with your old computer? There are lots of options. You can give it to a friend. Donate it to a charity, school, or church. You can toss it in the trash. You can take it to Goodwill. Before you do anything with your old computer, stop and think about what information is stored on your computer. Most computers have at least your name, address, email address, passwords, websites visited, pictures, documents, and things like that. Email and documents in particular can contain additional identifying information like date of birth, social security number, account numbers, and so forth.

You may have seen a story in the news lately about copiers having hard drives in them. People can get these hard drives and see most, if not all, of the documents that were copied. Many of them contain sensitive information. It’s the same with computers. There are many stores of people getting sensitive information from people’s old computers.

Before you rid yourself of your old computer, we recommend that you do one of two things. Either take the hard drive out and keep it, or have us wipe the hard drive. Simply deleting files or formatting the hard drive isn’t enough. The files can still be access if you know what you are doing. Reinstalling Windows won’t help either. The hard drive needs to be wiped with a special utility that will make it nearly impossible for anyone to recover the files. Once that has been done, you can install Windows or just get rid of the computer and let the next person worry about installing Windows.

Notice I said nearly impossible. The only way to 100% guarantee that nobody can access your information is to shred the hard drive. But hard drive shredders are not very common and they are expensive. And for most situations, shredding a hard drive is not necessary. A Department of Defense (DOD) compliant wipe is all that is needed.

By the way, if you have given us an old computer to recycle, rest assured your data is safe. We either still have the drive, or we wiped it clean and sent it to Goodwill.

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There were a whole slew of Windows updates this week. It doesn’t happen very often, but Windows updates can render a system unbootable. That happened earlier this year to one of our customers, and it happened again this week to a different customer. In both cases, we were able to repair it and apply all of the updates and get their systems working again. But whenever this happens, we always get the same question.

Is there any way to turn off Windows Updates so this doesn’t happen again?

The answer is yes, but we don’t recommend it. The chances of a windows update slamming your system like that are pretty remote. Yes, it does happen, but not very often. The updates you get for Windows are mostly security updates. If you turned off Windows updates, you would eliminate the slight chance of an update messing up your computer, but you would dramatically increase the chances of your computer becoming infected.

The bottom line is, would you rather have a slight chance that an update to Windows will mess up your system, or a very good chance that your system will become infected? I choose the slight chance and I recommend you do the same.

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Users of Microsoft Money should be aware that Microsoft has discontinued Microsoft Money. As a final farewell, Microsoft released the Sunset Edition of Microsoft Money. This final release of Microsoft Money does not include any of the online features that Microsoft Money had in the past. People with older versions of Money will still be able to get online updates through January 31st, 2011. After that, everyone should upgrade to the Sunset edition. If you don’t use the online updates, you can upgrade to the Sunset edition now.

If you wish to download the Sunset Edition, please use the big hairy link below. Copy and paste recommended.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=60302e1e-207e-4710-ac80-d19c22e47488&displaylang=en

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You may have seen a story in the news about how the Internet is running out of IP addresses. Don’t panic. Here’s what you need to know about it.

Every device on the internet must have a unique numerical address. This address is known as an IP address.  IP stands for Internet Protocol, in case you were wondering. If your computer is connected to the internet, your computer has an IP address. . You may not see it, but it’s there. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be able to access anything on the Internet. For most computers, their IP address is dynamic meaning it may change from time to time.

An IP address is four numbers separated by periods. Each number can be as big as 255. It looks something like this: 208.69.36.230. With its current design, the IP address allows for about 4 billion unique IP addresses. Back in the 70’s when they designed it, that sounded like much more than ever would be needed. But they failed to realize what the future would bring.

In the 1980’s, they began to realize the limitation of the IP Address. In the 1990’s, they knew something had to be done. So they began working on a new scheme for IP addresses. Estimates for how long it will be before we run out of IP addresses vary widely because there are a lot of factors that I won’t bore you with. Some say we will run out by September 2011 while other say it will be longer.

What happens if we run out? It doesn’t mean the Internet will crash and not work. It just means that there may be times when some computers can’t get an IP address assigned and, therefore, can’t get on the internet.  New computers that have static IP addresses (not dynamic) will not be able to get new static IP addresses because none are available.

This is a major problem, but there is a solution available. The original scheme for IP addresses is now called IP version 4, or IPv4 for short. The new scheme that was created is called IPv6. Whereas IPv4 was four numbers (each number can be a value from 0 to 255) separated by periods, IPv6 is eight numbers separated by colons and each number is a 4 digit hexadecimal number. It looks something like this: 2001:0db8:98a3:0000:0000:45e2:0370:7334.

You might say, “No big deal. Let’s just start using IPv6.” Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. IPv6 is already in use, but only on a small scale. In order for usage of IPv6 to increase there are a lot of upgrades that have to happen, both software and hardware. Those upgrades cost money. Because of that, the move to IPv6 has been slow.

So now you are wondering how this affects you. Here’s what you should know. IPv4 and IPv6 can both operate simultaneously on the internet. Most of the initial work to switch to IPv6 has to be done by the Internet Service Providers. Until they have done the work they need to do, there’s not much you can do about it.

At some point, home users will have to get new Modems (Cable, DSL, etc.) and Routers and make sure IPv6 is enabled on their computers. Businesses will need to upgrade that same equipment, but in addition, they may also need to upgrade switches, access points, servers, and certain software that communicates over the internet. But it will be at least a year or two. And it will start with the biggest companies and with the government. It will slowly trickle down to medium sized companies, small companies, and home users. This will be a transition that will take years.

The bottom line for small businesses and home users is that you really won’t have to worry about this for at least a couple of years, probably longer.

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We know we sound like a broken record every time we tell you to make sure to keep your software up to date for security reasons. Software like Windows, Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat, Java, and so on. Now we would like to tell you about a FREE program that makes keeping your vulnerable software up to date easy.

Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) is a program that is free for personal use, so this only applies to your home computer, not your business computers. If you want this type of functionality for your business computers, then you will want to check out Secunia CSI. However, I’m sure you guessed that CSI is not free like PSI is.

We recommend that everyone download and install PSI on all of their computers. When you do, it will scan your system and find all of the programs that are a security risk and need updating. Actually, it won’t find ALL of them. But it will find all of the most popular ones. It will even give you a place to click to automatically download and update the software to the latest version.

Once installed, PSI will continue to run in the background monitoring your software. When it detects one of these programs is out of date, it will let you know so you can secure your system. Here’s a link where you can download and install PSI.

http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/

Note that it is very important when installing any of the updates that you read each screen carefully and deselect any additional software it wants to install. If you don’t, you will end up with a bunch of software and toolbars you don’t want or need. Those programs will just take up space and slow down your computer.

By the way, once you have PSI on your system, you may get a notification that there is a newer version of PSI. When you update PSI, it will uninstall the old one and install the new one. If PSI is running, it will tell you it can’t proceed until you exit PSI. To exit it, just right-click on the PSI icon that is down near where the time is displayed and choose Exit from the pop-up menu. Then the installation can finish.

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This week, another one of our clients spilled a beverage on their computer. When drinking a beverage while using your computer, remember to set your beverage at least 3 feet from your computer and keyboard. Nobody expects to spill a beverage on their computer, but it happens quite often. Especially with laptops because people use them in many different places including kitchen tables.

I personally learned this lesson the hard way. When it does happen, what damage is done depends on several different factors. We sincerely hope this never happens to you, but if it does, here are some things to keep in mind.

If your computer was turned on at the time and is still running, immediately unplug it. If the beverage was water, you should be able to completely dry it inside and out. Once dry, there is a good chance it will turn on and be fine. If your beverage was something other than water, then it will probably be sticky when it dries out.  In that case, any moving parts that the beverage touched may not function or could be shorted out. We recommend you call us in this case, especially for a laptop.

If your computer was on at the time of the spill and it popped, smoked, or turned off on its own, then some damage has been done. How much is hard to predict. If the spill was on the keyboard, the fix can be as easy as replacing the keyboard. However, it can be as bad as frying the motherboard in addition to other components.

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