East Bay / Tri-Valley PC Repair

Looking for Great Deals on Tech? (and a chance to win a copy of Adobe CS5)

Dave Bonds — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:59:22 +0000

If you’re in the market for some new tech gear, you should definitely visit techbargains.com.

The site always has the latest deals and coupon codes to get the latest bargains on the gear you want.

How about a Samsung 2494LW 24in Widescreen LCD Monitor (1920×1080, HDMI) for only $169.99 with Free Shipping (Hurry.. exp. 5/01)

or maybe a blazing fast OCZ Solid2 OCZSSD2-2SLD30G 30GB 2.5in Internal Solid State Drive (TRIM) for only $89 after rebate

Check out techbargains.com today to see the latest deals. Or do like I did and subscribe to the RSS feed, to get over 100 of the hottest deals delivered to you daily.

Sidenote: Get a chance at winning a copy of Adobe CS5 – see site for details.

October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
August 30, 2009 -- Lock Windows With Your USB Flash Drive
August 20, 2009 -- 24 Killer Portable Apps For Your USB Flash Drive

We’re a Favorite Place on Google!

Dave Bonds — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:16:12 +0000

Google recently began sending out window decals to local businesses to promote the usage and adoption of QR codes, as well as to promote Google Maps, and they’re calling these businesses Favorite Places. QR codes can be decoded with most smart phones (iPhone, Android phones and Blackberry’s) and will provide a link to the business listing on Google Maps.

The good news: We’ve been selected as one of the few businesses to receive these promotional window decals!

However, because we don’t have an actual office (I work out of my home), I thought I would go ahead and post pictures of the letter Google sent, along with the QR code window decal.

September 30, 2009 -- PC’s Infected with Malware Up 15 Percent In September
August 19, 2009 -- Thanks for visiting our new website
October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix

Get Rid of those Fake Antivirus programs with Remove Fake Antivirus

Dave Bonds — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:54:47 +0000

If you work on computers, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a rogue anti-virus program. These programs disguise themselves as real antivirus programs, trick the user into installing them, and claim the user has viruses all over their system. Often times, the only virus is the rogue antivirus program itself. These programs can be trojans, viruses, or just an attempt to get the user to pay money by claiming it will get rid of the (non-existent) viruses on your system.. and doing nothing.

The problem is, these Fake antivirus programs can be a real pain to get rid of completely. That’s where Remove Fake Antivirus comes in.

Remove Fake Antivirus 1.32 is used to remove:

1. Cyber Security

2. Alpha Antivirus

3. Braviax

4. Windows Police Pro

5. Antivirus Pro 2010

6. PC Antispyware 2010

7. FraudTool.MalwareProtector.d

8. Winshield2009.com

9. Green AV

10. Windows Protection Suite

11. Total Security 2009

12. Windows System Suite

13. Antivirus BEST

14. System Security

15. Personal Antivirus

16. System Security 2009

17. Malware Doctor

18. Antivirus System Pro

19. WinPC Defender

20. Anti-Virus-1

21. Spyware Guard 2008

22. System Guard 2009

23. Antivirus 2009

24. Antivirus 2010

25. Antivirus Pro 2009

26. Antivirus 360 and

27. MS Antispyware 2009

The program seems to be updated fairly regularly by the software developer, which is good because new rogue antivirus programs are released all the time, and hopefully will be added to future versions.

It is available for download from the developer’s site, where you’ll also find other useful utilities to protect your system.

[via ghacks]

October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
September 15, 2009 -- Re-Enable Fixes Windows Features That Have Been Disabled by a Virus
August 30, 2009 -- Lock Windows With Your USB Flash Drive

Microsoft’s Security Essentials : 1.5 Million Installs in One Week. Is it the End for Norton?

Dave Bonds — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:11:25 +0000

How many of you knew that Microsoft released a free anti-virus and anti-malware program this week? I’m guessing not too many.

A friend of mine, Luy, with IT Support Guys, wrote an excellent blog post on how Microsoft has failed to promote their new security app, even on their own search engine Bing.

Well, it’s called Microsoft Security Essentials and it’s available for download from Microsoft. I’ve installed it on several customer computers and have been rather happy with it. I just got around to installing it on a machine of mine, however, because I keep my system from getting infected in the first place, my machine is not really a good testing environment. But I digress…

The stats coming from Lee Matthews at Download Squad:

The Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog has posted some interesting numbers. After its first week, Security Essentials has already been installed more than 1.5 million times. From the approximately 535,000 machines reporting statistics, MSE has logged over 4 million detections.

44% of MSE users are already running Windows 7 with XP following at 33% and the remaining 23% on Vista. The number of detections per OS is also interesting. 52% of the 4 million reported were found on Windows XP systems compared to only 32% on Vista.

Windows 7 users fared even better. Though they represent the largest group of MSE users, only 16% of detections came from systems running Microsoft’s latest OS. The post also reports 1/3 of these machines are using the 64-bit version, which “is even more resistant to malware than 32-bit due to PatchGuard,” states Microsoft’s Joe Faulhaber.

Surprising that over half of the detections come from only 33% of users? Not really.

Go download and try out Microsoft Security Essentials yourself, and let me know in the comments how you like it? Is it better than the paid apps (like Norton or McAfee), or existing free anti-virus (like AVG or Avira)?

October 19, 2009 -- Get Rid of those Fake Antivirus programs with Remove Fake Antivirus
October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
September 15, 2009 -- Re-Enable Fixes Windows Features That Have Been Disabled by a Virus

Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix

Dave Bonds — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:11:30 +0000

I can’t tell you how many times this little application has saved me: Winsock XP Fix

I keep it on my thumb drive so I always have it when I need it. And although the name says XP Fix, it works in other versions of Windows as well.

The Winsockfix Utility will:

Detect your current Operating System

Release the IP address, taking you “Offline”

Reset the TCP stack using Netsh.exe (Windows XP only)

Delete the current Registry TCP and Winsock Values

Import new “Working” Registry Values

Backup any Current “Hosts” file

Replace the “Hosts” file with a default one

Reboot the Computer

Often times, as a computer repair guy, you’ll encounter someone who can’t connect to the internet, and when the problem doesn’t seem to be related to any network hardware, it’s probably related to the TCP/IP stack, the HOSTS file or some registry settings. This mostly happens when adware, malware or viruses change these settings or modify the files needed to connect to the internet. When you get rid of the problem source, the files it modified are still jacked up.

That’s where this program comes to the rescue. Make it the first thing you try, before spending countless hours troubleshooting other things or reinstalling programs, and you’ll have super fast resolution times and can move on to your next customer.

Download Winsock XP Fix

September 15, 2009 -- Re-Enable Fixes Windows Features That Have Been Disabled by a Virus
August 30, 2009 -- Lock Windows With Your USB Flash Drive
August 27, 2009 -- Make a bootable USB installer for Windows XP, Vista, 7 with WinToFlash

PC’s Infected with Malware Up 15 Percent In September

Dave Bonds — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:23:47 +0000

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.

Credit: Panda Security

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.

Credit: Panda Security

via CNET News via Panda Security

December 14, 2009 -- We’re a Favorite Place on Google!
August 30, 2009 -- MalwareBytes Anti-Malware Won’t Run? Here’s How To Fix It
October 19, 2009 -- Get Rid of those Fake Antivirus programs with Remove Fake Antivirus

What is Refresh Bay Area?

Dave Bonds — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:45:04 +0000

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

No Related Post

What Is Digsby?

Dave Bonds — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:32:55 +0000

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.

October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
September 9, 2009 -- Completely Ditch IE with Firefox Add-on Coral IE Tab
August 30, 2009 -- Lock Windows With Your USB Flash Drive

7 Steps to Make a Bootable USB Thumb Drive to Install Windows 7 on a Netbook

Dave Bonds — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:46:23 +0000

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.

Since you can’t download the Release Candidate anymore that eliminates the first step.
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.
The third step is to extract the files from the ISO you downloaded (hopefully before Microsoft stopped offering it for download in August).
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.
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
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…
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

October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
August 30, 2009 -- MalwareBytes Anti-Malware Won’t Run? Here’s How To Fix It
August 30, 2009 -- Lock Windows With Your USB Flash Drive

Re-Enable Fixes Windows Features That Have Been Disabled by a Virus

Dave Bonds — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:05:41 +0000

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.

October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
October 19, 2009 -- Get Rid of those Fake Antivirus programs with Remove Fake Antivirus
August 27, 2009 -- Make a bootable USB installer for Windows XP, Vista, 7 with WinToFlash