All quiet on the western front …

Am I tempting fate by saying the current volume of ’standard’ PC problems is rather low at the moment?  By ’standard’, I mean the usual suspects – hardware failures, viruses and Windows corruptions.

You think that would worry a computer service company – think again!  We’re loving the more interesting side of our business … talking to customers about whether a server is the right move for them or not (see www.ctaspley.com.au/news.htm), establishing system health monitoring and preventative maintenance, and adding new technology components that really have an impact in a business (spam filter for a start!).

None of which make for an interesting blog post, I suppose, but now you know we do more than just fix things

 

-SCuffy

Australian shops in spam subject

Recently my hotmail account junk e-mail filter has been catching some rather ‘Australian-targeted’ spam.

Often with a sender of ‘Thanks for participating!’, ’Much Thanks!’, the subject lines claim to have a voucher pending for me from an Australian store like Myer, Wollworths or JB-Hi Fi (though I’ve also seen an iPhone one too).  The company is MyGiftRewards, and they ask me to click on a very suspicious link to confirm my email address and claim my $500 voucher.

As my favourite Microsoft security guy says “If you don’t think it would happen in real life, why would you believe it in an email?”  Unless you have specifically entered a promotion/competition, do you think Woolworths would knock on your door and give you a $500 gift voucher? I don’t think so.

Leave these in the junk mail where they belong .. and don’t go clicking on anything!

P.S. Want to know one of the most obvious signs that these are fake?  None of them come from email addresses owned by the Australian companies, or even @mygiftrewards.com/.com.au

When AVG goes bad

Intermittant but far too frequent STOP blue screen messages seen on Windows XP with AVG 8.0 Internet Security (the one with the firewall component).  Strange thing is, the blue screen often mentions things like IRQL errors, so it may lead you down a faulty hardware path.

Turns out the AVG 8.0 firewall can be the culprit.  An easy way to determine this (apart from disabling the software) is to remove the network connection.  No network=no firewall activity=no blue screen.

Official word from AVG support is to do this (which has worked on all instances we’ve seen so far):

“Please find the attached file ‘delete_ndis.re_’ and save it to your hard drive.
Then please rename it to ‘delete_ndis.reg’ and run the file. When prompted, please
confirm adding of the information to registry.

Please do not restart your computer at this point, and perform the repair AVG
installation by running the AVG installation on your desktop.

Then restart the computer.”

Contents of ‘delete_ndis.reg’ (copy this into notepad and save it with that filename):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\AVG\Avg8\FwSetup]
“fwdinf1″=-
“fwdinf2″=-

I haven’t actually found this issue on the AVG support site, so hopefully this helps someone.  Contact AVG support is this doesnt work and they will send you a diagnostic program to generate log files and return to them for further eval.

-SCuffy

Technology moves

Well, the whole office moved really, this weekend.  And in a rare moment of quite, surrounded by not quite as many boxes, I thought it was about time I added a new blog post.  Can you tell things around here have been a little busy?

So, a couple of tips for moving your technology (which I really should write up as a free report, but with content slightly better than just off the top of my head):

A) Backup, backup, backup:  Always ensure you have a current, valid, tested backup before you move critical equipment like laptops and servers! That includes a system state backup for Windows Servers.  Might take you a bit of time, but if anything gets upset about being moved, you’ll thank me for this one.

B) Voice Over IP: Apart from the wonderful cost savings (if you can get the quality right with decent VoIPgear AND a decent internet connection, preferably with ‘Quality of Service’), VoIP is so wonderful when you are moving premises.  No longer are you at the mercy of the phone company to disconnect/reconnect or allocate a new number, but as soon as your internet connection is live, just plug in your VoIP and phones and away you go!

C) Cable guy: If your new office needs any cabling, get yourself a quality, approved cable guy.  Our network takes one internet feed and splits into two networks – one for customer PCs and one for our server and office domain.  Looks fairly straightforward on paper yet my husband can create it from scratch without a drawing.  Invaluable.  Minimal downtime.

D) Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3:  Test that EVERYTHING works .. phones, email, printer etc etc.  Dont take for granted that just because you can browse the internet, you can send/receive email.  Technology can be fussy like that.

With our entire business dependant on our internet connection (website, email, phones, downloads etc) this was the first priority of the move.  If we had to put up with boxes or sit on the floor on Monday morning, at least we would be operational if our connectivity was sorted.  Kind of the IT equivalent of setting up the bed first when you move into a new house! 

If your future contains any plans for moving, good luck!

-SCuff

 

MYOB & Vista & Forms …

Today’s MYOB/Vista trick – logged onto my lapatop with a new user account that is NOT a domain administrator (trying to be all security conscious and the like).  Then MYOB v17 refused to see my custom forms (incidentally, the business fie is on a shared drive).

Log on as the old, domain admin user – no problem.

Turned out to be file security (surprise).  By default, the local Users group (which contains the Domain Users group) does not give full control or modify access to the Forms directory and files.  Change this to allow full control to the forms, and hey presto, my non-domain admin user is now accessing branded invoices in MYOB once again!

-SCuff 

Credit card fraud – happens to the best of us

I’ve always been very vigilant about watching the transactions that appear on my credit card, which is even easier to do when you can view them online via internet banking before they disappear off to your paper statement copy.  Fortunately the fraud department at my business bank is just as vigilant, stopping a transaction from Cebu Air and notifying me about it.  We played safe and cancelled the card, which saw me issued with a new number.  And wouldn’t you know it, a week later the second card (different number, same linked account) of my husband’s also was subjected to a declined Cebu Air transaction.  Yup – cancelled and reordered his too.

If this has ever happened to you, you may have also gone into a spin about where you have used your card and how someone else has obtained your details.  I’ve been purchasing online safely for the last 10 years, and this is my first attack.  I’ve always preached that you should only buy from sites you know and trust, that have secure SSL encypted payment pages (which changes the site address to https:// and gives you a little locked padlock in your browser).  So you’d think I’d be pretty careful when it came to that sort of thing.  And I am.  Very.  However, I’m still in a spin about how someone else has obtained my details!  And not only mine, but my husband’s too.

Our card numbers are not recorded on any of our inhouse computer systems (which I’m pretty sure are secure but how sure can you be)?

I did feel somewhat better when the bank advised that the credit card company has issued an ‘all points bulletin’ for a range of card numbers that had been ‘compromised’ – ours included.  Did this mean that I had not foolishly and willingly handed over my details to someone dodgy, but was the victim of a systems failure or a syndicate of cyber-criminals far more geeky than myself?

Hmm.  OK.  Don’t feel better anymore … how the heck did they get my details???

All credit (pun intended) to the bank and their fraud dept for providing a fantastic service to protect my accounts.  If the transactgions had gone through and I had disputed them, I still would not have been liable, with the bank wearing the cost and refunding my card.  Consumer protection is an awesome thing, completely underrated under you happen to need it.

Oh, and if you pay us by credit card, never fear – we enter your details directly into our bank processing terminal then destroy the piece of paper on which they were written.  By shredding .. or fire .. or by eating them a la Maxwell Smart .. or by numerous other ways which we cannot divulge

-SCuff

Not-quite-Internet Banking

As a business owner, I rely on internet banking to work every day (and every night).  It sure beats the way that many businesses used to work – collecting daily statements from the bank each morning.

So, when internet banking goes bad (and only on your computer .. not one of those lovely ’service is not available’ messages from the bank), where do you turn? Assuming your problem is not that you have the Pop-Up Blocker turned on and your banking site wants to pop up the login window.

Start by disabling any ‘anti-bad guy’ software on your PC (anti-virus software, windows defender, dare I say it ‘Nortons’ etc) just to eliminate them from throwing a spanner in the works.

Now my personal first guess is always SSL.  SSL is an encryption method used to disguide traffic between your PC and the bank, so wehn you type in your password and hit send, the little packet of data that goes whizzing across the internet doesnt look like it has your password word in it, it looks scrambled.  SSL is used by banks and shold be used by any internet site that requires you to log on to access sensitive information or requires payment (esp by credit card).  It changes the site address to start with https:// at the start and will also show a little padlock icon in Internet Explorer.  If your banking sites arent working but Google etc is, SSL is the first place to look.

And the first trick to try for SSL is the following Microsoft article, in particular re-registering the files (DLLs) that help make SSL run:  http://support.microsoft.com/KB/813444

The next suspect is Java, another technology that is added to your web browser to make things display nicely and perform all sorts of functions.  Visit www.java.com and test/verify/uninstall/reinstall Java.

You can also try starting IE ‘clean’, without any other program add-ons loaded, to see if something that has it’s hooks into IE has got itself upset:  Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Internet Explorer (No Add-Ons)

If you are still having no luck (especially if your browser has some other strange things like the search window in IE7 not working, or a lot of options under Tools are greyed out), your internet browser may be damaged.  Many techs will yell out ‘install Firefox’ or ‘install Mozilla’, and while these can help to determine if it’s just a browser or a whole PC problem, I’m not a fan of installing more software if I don’t have to.  If you are running IE7, follow this procedure to uninstall it http://www.ie-vista.com/kbase2.html and try IE6.  If it works with IE6, then try a clean install of IE7 following these instructions http://www.ie-vista.com/known_issues.html#pre-install.

If it doesnt work with IE6 … it’s time to call in the experts!

 

-SCuff

 

 

Tracking sales opportunities

If you’ve ever heard the term ‘CRM’ thrown around, be warned … Customer Relationship Management is about a whole lot more than just installing some software.

On a small business scale where you are both ‘cook and bottle washer’, or you may have one staff member who is focussed on sales, Microsoft’s Business Contact Manager may be an easy way to get started.

Integrated into Outlook, it let’s you load contacts and opportunities, assign which stage of the sales process they are at, and link any email communication to their BCM record.  Then you can see some nice little graphs re how many opportunites (and what dollar value) you have in your sales funnel at each stage.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/contactmanager/HA101656361033.aspx

Just remember to ensure that your BCM database is being backed up!

-SCuff

Managed Services Contract Signup Incentive

In talking to customers about managed services, we’re finding they are sometimes procrastinating in making a decision – we’re not getting a no but we’re not getting a yes yet either.  Proactive support and maintenance doesn’t seem to have enough urgency on it for people to make a decision quickly.  So, we thought we’d put our thinking caps on to see what kind of incentives we could offer for people to sign up, as a promotion we could then market.

Owning a small business is very stressful, and work/life balance seems to go out the window.  A recent study shows that workplace stress can be alleviated by up to 70% if a pet is introduced to the working environment.  To take advantage of this angle, we are looking to offer a free goldfish to anyone that signs up with a managed service plan in April.  These will be ‘Computer Troubleshooters orange’ only coloured goldfish, to reinforce our brand.

We are looking for a nationwide pet store chain that we could do a deal with so we could receive a discount on purchasing the goldfish.  In conjunction with the RSPCA, we are also investigating any humane ways to dye the scales so we can brand the logo on each side of the fish.

 -SCuffy

Windows Live Messenger & AVG 8

Another tale from the trenches .. that being my own personal experience on my PC!  Windows Live Messenger refusing to sign in, giving an 8100030d error.  Most suggestions include regsrv32 commands to reregister dll files, resetting modems etc, nothing which worked on Vista for me.  Until I remembered that Tony had recently upgraded my software to AVG Anti-Malware SBS Edition version 8.0.87.  So, diabled the Resident Shield – no go.  Went into the Web Shield and unticked the Instant Messaging, MSN Protection – still no go.  Disabled the Web Shield entirely and what do you know …. hello, messenger, you have returned!  Yuck – I’m now off to report this to AVG.

-SCuffy