It’s official, Microsoft has dropped support for Windows 7 Home and Professional They have made it clear that they will not be extending support for either operating system, no dragging it out for an extra six months to give people a chance to make changes. Sorry this is long, but it’s extremely important. Please read to the end. Some of you may have seen a large pop-up message on a blue background telling you that Windows 7 is no…
Alrighty – Everyone who owns a laptop. There is something you need to STOP doing right now. This is seriously important stuff. If you have an external mouse or use a thumb drive often, or any USB device that hangs from one of your USB slots, no matter how small that device is, take it OUT of the USB port BEFORE you put the laptop back in your case or backpack. If a USB wifi sender for a mouse,…
We always look to the new year to bring promise and change. However, with technology, those changes can be a long way off, or never come at all. I’ve been waiting for years to see changes to the Windows Update process, to address the constant flow of of problems and performance impacts, but as of January 2019, we’re all still in the same boat. Last year, Windows Update issues accounted for nearly 25% of the problems and service requests…
You may have seen information about the latest email scam on the news this week. It’s been spreading quickly and has prompted some questions from friends and clients alike. This one is a little different since it is intended to scare people into paying by threatening physical harm to the recipient, so I am passing along the following info for anyone interested in learning more. The email looks like a typical scam, with horrible grammar and misspelled words spread throughout…
Some of you may have seen information on the news about the latest threat to hit the Internet. The latest Ransomware strain, named Bad Rabbit by its creator, has already caused enough damage that a European news agency was completely disabled and had to send out news updates on Facebook alone. Ransomware, notoriously nasty for its clinically effective method of separating you from your money, has been around for years but, as always, the bad guys have nothing to…
I was recently asked if cloud storage products like Dropbox or Google Drive would keep your data safe. The answer is NO. Cloud storage by Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and others are great tools. I highly recommend them and use them myself. However, you cannot view them as a safe haven for your data. They are intended to help you share files, they are not backup tools. All three create a folder on your computer which syncs with the…
If you watched or read yesterday’s news you probably saw a story about some guy who found a simple way to stop the spread of the new ransomware virus. This was an extremely misleading story and made it sound like the threat had been stopped. This is not true. The fix put in place was extremely easy to bypass by the virus’s creators and only worked for a short time. The ransomware virus has already been fixed and released again,…
This is extremely important information for both your home and your work computers. Please take the time to read all of it and make sure you understand it. Contact me if you need more info or have a question. And by the way – Macs are NOT immune. FYI – If you are not backing up your files you are playing Russian Roulette with your data every single time you open an email. I highly recommend that you assess your current…
Now, I want you to trust me for a minute. I need you to sit up straight, pay attention, and repeat after me. Ready… “MY COMPUTER WILL NEVER ASK ME TO CALL A PHONE NUMBER” Got that? Let’s do it one more time anyway. Ready, set, GO… “MY COMPUTER WILL NEVER ASK ME TO CALL A PHONE NUMBER” It won’t, trust me. If a message pops up on your screen telling you Microsoft or Apple has detected viruses, or…
The recent focus on “Fake News” is almost comical. Fake news is as old as the Internet itself; if it wasn’t born on the internet it certainly blossomed there. The early versions of fake Internet news were those spam (before we really knew what spam was) messages that said AOL and Bill Gates will give you $2175 for forwarding this message to 9 people”. I always loved those, why – AOL and Bill Gates and not AOL and Microsoft? These are…
It’s official, Microsoft has dropped support for Windows 7…
