East Bay / Tri-Valley PC Repair » tips

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

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

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

5 Incredibly Simple Things You Can Do to Increase Traffic to Your Website or Blog

Dave Bonds — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:31:26 +0000

I was asked by the folks at Life In Sherman Oaks to write a guest blog post about how to increase traffic to your website. Take a look at the article on their site titled “5 Incredibly Simple Things You Can Do to Increase Traffic to Your Website or Blog”

You can also follow Life In Sherman Oaks on Twitter at @shermanoakslife

August 30, 2009 -- MalwareBytes Anti-Malware Won’t Run? Here’s How To Fix It
October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
September 15, 2009 -- 7 Steps to Make a Bootable USB Thumb Drive to Install Windows 7 on a Netbook

MalwareBytes Anti-Malware Won’t Run? Here’s How To Fix It

Dave Bonds — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:28:49 +0000

I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep your anti-virus software up to date, and also use an anti-malware program such as MalwareBytes Anti-Malware. These two programs work together in tandem simply because your anti-virus program won’t detect some “malware” programs, as they are not technically viruses, just malicious software.

Often times these programs disguise themselves as anti-virus programs, I’ve had numerous calls about exactly this type of problem just in the last several weeks. Some of the names of these “Rogue” Anti-virus programs are: Antivirus 2009, Personal Antivirus and many more are listed on Wikipedia: Rogue security software

Usually, I’ve found that I can simply run MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (MBAM), UPDATE! then run a scan, and it will detect the problem and is able to remove them. However this latest one, Personal Antivirus 2009 (PAV09), was quite a headache and took a while before I could even do anything to remove it. The program would not allow me to install MBAM, so I rebooted to safe mode, however, this program had installed some hook into the OS that prevented me from installing even in safe mode. Stuck.

So, after some Google searching, I found this on BleepingComputer, it suggested to change the name of the .exe to something completely unrelated. It worked. Awesome. Of course, the .exe of the program itself needed to be changed as well. So I changed it to a random string of letters.exe. And it STILL wouldn’t work!

Apparently, this malware is detecting a certain runtime or signature of the executable and immediately killing it, regardless of the name. After a few minutes of thinking, I decided to try an experiment, right click on the exe file (now renamed), and click the “Compatibility” tab, and under compatibility mode (this was Windows XP, but should work in XP or newer) select to “Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows 2000″. And…

It worked!

So, I guess I outsmarted the malware by tricking MBAM into thinking it was running under Windows 2000, making it undetectable by the malware program. And so, all said and done, MBAM was finally able to remove it, and the PC is working great. Hope this will help some other PC techs out there, when you don’t have the option to just wipe the drive and start fresh!

October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
October 19, 2009 -- Get Rid of those Fake Antivirus programs with Remove Fake Antivirus
October 18, 2009 -- Microsoft’s Security Essentials : 1.5 Million Installs in One Week. Is it the End for Norton?

Lock Windows With Your USB Flash Drive

Dave Bonds — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:20:00 +0000

Discovered this from the boys at ghacks.net…

Using a nifty utility installed on your USB flash drive called Predator you can:

A Windows session would be locked by simply removing the connected USB drive from the computer system. Connecting the USB flash drive again would unlock the system.

The user needs to specify a backup password as well. This backup password can be used to unlock a session if the USB flash drive is damaged or not available at all.

The screen will go black whenever the user removes the USB drive from the computer system.

Predator will write events to a log file that can be used to analyze attempts to access the computer system. The software will also change the keys on the USB drives frequently to prevent that a copied keyfile can be used to access the system.

October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix
August 27, 2009 -- Make a bootable USB installer for Windows XP, Vista, 7 with WinToFlash
August 20, 2009 -- 24 Killer Portable Apps For Your USB Flash Drive

Use The Same Gmail Account for Multiple Online Accounts

Dave Bonds — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:47:26 +0000

Lifehacker once again presents us with a great Gmail tip to make your internets better.

Because Gmail ignores periods in your email address, you can sign up for multiple accounts on websites that only allow you to register an email address once. Just insert a period anywhere in your Gmail address.

Link to the article:
Use The Same Gmail Account for Multiple Online Accounts – Gmail – Lifehacker.

April 28, 2010 -- Looking for Great Deals on Tech? (and a chance to win a copy of Adobe CS5)
December 14, 2009 -- We’re a Favorite Place on Google!
October 15, 2009 -- Internet Connection Hosed? Try Winsock XP Fix