Lightning and your Computer
San Angelo has recently been the victim of some pretty good lightning storms. Inevitably, customers are calling to report connection problems. So far, I've only had to replace a couple of NIC cards. Lightning damage can also manifest itself in just about any other computer component going bad, such as power supplies and motherboards. Read the rest of this entry »
Erin Andrews Video Clip May Infect Your PC
Thinking about searching for the video clip of ESPN's Erin Andrews undressing? Not so fast!
The recently-leaked video clip of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews undressing, filmed through a hotel room peephole, may be a cloaked attempt to infect your computer with a virus. Just a word of warning. Read the rest of this entry »
ZoneAlarm Validation Errors (Missing Root Certificate)
Yesterday, I was working remotely on my sister's machine. She complained that she was receiving constant "validation errors" with ZoneAlarm. More specifically, errors relating to zclient.exe, vsinit.dll and vsdata.dll., because of a missing or damaged root security certificate. Read the rest of this entry »
Scam Email: “An Emergency Please”
I received an email, yesterday, appearing to be from one of my customers, using a Yahoo! email account. The subject was "An Emergency Please". Here is the exact text of the email, spelling and grammar mistakes included: Read the rest of this entry »
How To Remove Ascentive PC SpeedScan Pro
This is just a quick update to a post I had originally published, just a few weeks back. This post is for people who need to know how to remove Ascentive PC SpeedScan Pro and all the garbage that comes with it. Read the rest of this entry »
ASU Website Lists Students’ Names And Email Addresses
Back in January of last year, I contacted Angelo State University (ASU) to alert them to a potential problem, regarding the privacy of their students. Their website's student directory had listed every student, by name, including their "ASU" email address. I was a little astonished to see that they would care so little, not only about the privacy of their students, but that they would offer-up this large list of email addresses to any spammer that wanted them. Read the rest of this entry »
OpenOffice.org: A Free Alternative To Microsoft Office
Many more people know about the free "office" suite from OpenOffice.org than are actually taking advantage of it. OpenOffice offers a word processor (similar to Word), a spreadsheet program (compatible with Excel files), a presentation creator (similar to PowerPoint) and more. All at the amazingly-low price of $0.00! Read the rest of this entry »
Export Outlook Email Messages to your Gmail Account
If you've already read the post about changing your email to Gmail, you may be interested to know that I've discovered a little tool that will upload your existing Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird email messages into your Gmail account. Great, right!? There's one catch... Read the rest of this entry »
Screensavers, Smileys and Toolbars, Oh My!
When you touch a hot stove and pull your hand away, do you need to be told not to touch it again? My guess is no. Then why is it so hard for people to resist installing smileys, toolbars and screensavers, even after they've been told how bad they are? Read the rest of this entry »
Having Trouble Viewing YouTube Videos? Try This Fix
A few of my customers, lately, are complaining that they can't watch videos at YouTube.com. They see a message stating that the latest version of the Flash player isn't installed or that they may be experiencing issues with the current version or configuration of the Java software.
I've seen references to this problem, elsewhere, but no real solutions.
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