East Bay / Tri-Valley PC Repair

September 30, 2009 – 7:23 am | by Dave Bonds

From a report released by Panda Security, makers of Panda Antivirus, the number of PC’s infected with Malware grew 15 percent in the month of September. The numbers are just staggering, showing why you need an up-to-date antivirus AND an anti-malware program installed.

As you can see from the line graph, the US is just 9th on the list of most infected, with nearly 59 percent of all PC’s infected with malware.

And the following pie chart shows a breakdown of the number and types of those malware infections.

via CNET News via Panda Security

Tags: infographics, information, internet, malware, news, PC Repair, reports, viruses

September 24, 2009 – 10:45 am | by Dave Bonds

Refresh Bay Area is a local community group of web designers and developers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m the founder and lead organizer of the group, so I’d like to introduce you to what it’s all about.

From the reBA About page:

Refresh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of New Media endeavors in their areas. Promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.

The Refresh Manifesto

• Let’s Gather Great Minds
• Let’s Share All Of Our Knowledge
• Let’s All Grow And Learn
• Let’s Promote Local Talent
• Let’s Be More Than We Think Can Be
• Let’s Make Our Cities Better

If you live in the Bay Area and are passionate about web design and development come join us for a meetup sometime. For more details and info about reBA, visit the site at refreshbayarea.com

September 20, 2009 – 11:32 am | by Dave Bonds

Digsby, for those unfamiliar with it, is a chat program. But it’s much, much more than that.

Yes it will allow you to be logged in to all the popular IM networks: AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Jabber, and more.

It also supports Facebook chat, with status updates and news feeds from your Facebook friends.
Also has Twitter integration, even though I prefer a dedicated Twitter app, like TweetDeck.

Probably the best feature, the one I find indispensable and can no longer live without, is the ability to check numerous email accounts. You get audio and visual notifications of new emails, previews of the email, and even has the ability to ‘Mark as Read’, ‘Archive’, ‘Delete’ or ‘Report Spam’ on new emails.

Because I have 16 email addresses that I use, all for various reasons, this is my favorite feature of Digsby. I’m able to keep my inboxes at zero, because of the instant notifications on every one.

The chat features are great too, showing which of your friends are available, no matter what chat program they use. And its fully skinnable, meaning you can make it look just the way you want.

Check out the new introduction video from the guys at Digsby:

The only drawback: Digsby will try to install a bunch of extra crap when you install it, so don’t just click ‘Next, Next, Next’ when installing. Pay attention to the install screens and make sure you uncheck the authorization to install some of the unnecessary add-ons.

Tags: chat, Downloads, email, free, IM, internet, Tips and Tricks, Utilities, Video

September 15, 2009 – 11:46 pm | by Dave Bonds

I recently bought a Netbook, a lovely Acer Aspire One, however it came with Windows XP and since falling in love with Windows 7, I couldn’t bear to use XP anymore.

So I went searching for the steps to make a bootable USB thumb drive with the Windows 7 install files on it, and got lucky when I found an excellent 7 step guide on CrunchGear. I’d recommend going to view that if you need the steps explained all along the way. But I’ll put them here, short and sweet.

1. Since you can’t download the Release Candidate anymore that eliminates the first step.
2. The second step is to download WinRAR, I use and recommend 7-Zip for all your unzipping needs, and it does the same job we need it to do in step 3.
3. The third step is to extract the files from the ISO you downloaded (hopefully before Microsoft stopped offering it for download in August).
4. Next step is to format your thumb drive to NTFS, and you need at least a 4GB thumb drive for the Windows 7 install files.
5. That was pretty easy right? Now the hard part. Basically copy the bootsect.exe file from the /boot subfolder in the Windows 7 directory you created in step 3 to your C: drive
6. Open the command prompt and go to the C: drive (or wherever you copied the bootsect.exe file), and type in this command:

   “bootsect /nt60 f:”

   (without the quotes and replace ‘f’ with the letter of your thumb drive)

   That should copy the Windows 7 boot files to the thumb drive, then…

7. Copy the Windows 7 files to the thumb drive

That’s it. It worked beautifully for me and I’m now enjoying Windows 7 on my new Acer netbook. Everything works great and I can’t wait for the final version of Windows 7 to come out on October 22nd.

Mark your calendars. Mine is already marked.

Read the original 7 step guide at CrunchGear

Tags: flash drive, guide, information, microsoft, tips, usb, Windows, Windows 7

September 15, 2009 – 1:05 am | by Dave Bonds

I discovered this program from the incredibly useful site ghacks.net a few days ago. Often times, viruses or malware will disable Windows features, and even after removing the virus these Windows utilities will remain disabled. This is where the program Re-Enable comes in handy.

Developed by Tangomouse the program has the ability to restore functionality to these Windows features:

• Windows Registry
• Command Line Tool
• Windows Task Manager
• System Restore Config
• Folder Options
• Run command

The ghacks article explains that:

The program will display all support functions in its interface. All are checked by default and a click on the Enable button will enable these again. Nothing will happen if they are already enabled. Users who only want to enable a specific function can uncheck the other options in the interface easily.

The file can be downloaded from Softpedia, it works with XP, Vista and Windows 7, and the best thing about it: It’s portable. So you can add it to your thumb drive and have it handy whenever you encounter a Windows installation that has been crippled by a virus.

Tags: Downloads, flash drive, free, PC Repair, Portable Apps, Utilities, Windows, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP