Welcome to A Tech's Life. The purpose of this blog is to provide insight to some of the simple and more complicated chores that I encounter during my day as a Computer Technician.

My website is InfoTechNow

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Windows 7 on a Dell Dimension 8300

My wifes cousin's came into town from the lower mainland this week for a visit and through discusions I discovered that it was one of thier childrens birthdays. So we decided to revieve on of my old Pentium 4 ht PC and throw Windows 7 on it for him so he could be the coolest kid in town.

He plays some old school Star Wars games so it should be a good fit for him.

Here are the spec's

  • Pentium 4 3.0 processor
  • Nvidia 6800 GT video card (agp)
  • 80 gb IDE 5400 HDD
  • Sound Blaster 5.1 sound card
  • 17 inch Acer LCD Monitor
  • 2 gb ddr 400 ram

Nice little gift for the young man.

Installing Windows 7 was not all that bad. It went quick with no hiccups.

Once installed the only 2 issues were the old fax modem, which i quickly pulled and tossed in the recycle bin, and the sound card. It took me a few minutes to track down a Vista driver for it and bingo it was up and running. It got a windows rating (whatever that means) 5.2 which is not bad considering my dell laptop (Intel DualCore2 2.4) only gets 4.9.

It actually seems to be a lot quicker then even XP Pro was. It does not like to mullti task too much, more then 3 or 4 programs at once and it start to lag a bit. But for a 5 year old PC it is working very nicely.

Windows 7 seems to be a very nice piece of work.

--KC

Friday, August 21, 2009

Virus Heaven

Just had a computer brought in that was inundated with virus's. After installing Vipre, and removing countless virus's the computer just reboot. Upon reload the computer told me that it could not connect remotely and had to reboot. It would not let me into Windows or Windows safe mode.

It left me no other options other then to remove hard drive from the computer and hook it up to my tech bench computer.

Immediately after telling Vipre to scan the hard drive the virus count took off like a shot, the counter moving like a stop watch. After an 11 min scan, 3901 virus's were deleted.

42 minutes to remove the virus's.

Then I ran SuperAntiSpyware. It is good to run it in conjunction with Vipre as it tends to clean the remnants that is left.

Super Anti Spyware removed 700+ cookies and numerous adware.xxx files.

Popped in the Hard Drive into the PC, rebooted, and it locked up on Windows Splash.

Ran the second repair option from the Windows XP disc and rebooted.

Paradise, the computer is Up and Running. Ran Vipre and SAS on the actual system and everything is happy. Another successful Virus removal.

--KC

iPhone Restore

Today we got an iPhone in that was frozen. The owner did not care about saving any data, so we had to do a restore.

It was the first time that I have ever even played with it so it was definately a new experience for me.

Here is what I did.

Turn off your iPhone by holding the "Sleep/Wake" button for about five seconds.

Once it's turned off, press and hold the "Home" button and plug the iPhone into your Mac or PC. Keep holding the "Home" button until you see a dock cable pointing to the iTunes icon. Make sure iTunes is open on your computer.

iTunes will tell you it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode.

Click "OK" and you will be taken to the iPhone pane.

Click restore

It may ask you to confirm this blah, blah, lost data, blah, blah, just click ok, you already know that you will lose all of your data.

Now it will download the needed software and install it.

Blammy you're done, it's just that easy!

The phone worked and all is well, one more happy camper.

--KC

OpenOffice on a G4 Mac

We had a Mac in today that the customer wanted OpenOffice installed on. After downloading OpenOffice for PPC and not Intel, I went to install it and found out that I needed X11 for Mac installed and that I would need the Operating System Disks.

That was a lie. I googled X11 for Mac download and found it right away from the Mac website. After that was installed it was smooth Sailings.

--KC

PersonalAntivirus - Hey thats not my antivirus software!!

In the last 6 months, the most common software issue that I have come across is defiantly PersonalAntivirus. It goes by many names. AV 360, Security Center, AntiVirus Pro 2008, AntiVirus Pro 2009 and so on. So what is it?

Personal Antivirus, or PersonalAntivirus, is a virus that was developed by a company called Innovagest 2000.

Personal Antivirus is installed by a Trojan called Zlob. Zlob will appear in a very convincing pop up window that give false information about virus, Trojan, worm and Spyware injections. Zlob then tries to convince you that it is a legitimate program that can remove all of the alleged infections it claims you have. It tells you to fix, repair or scan your system. What this action does not do any of these actions, it downloads and eventually installs itself. This Personal Antivirus message is used to persuade you into purchasing, downloading and installing their program to remove the imaginary spyware. Unfortunately it does not remove any of these imaginary virus's at all. You have just paid for nothing. This virus can do any and all of the following: turn off you network card stopping Internet access, block safe mode, block task manager, block run command, delete data, freeze the computer, cause annoying pop ups and the list goes on and on.

PersonalAntivirus or PAV attaches itself to "links" on websites. If you get the pop up the best course of action is to power down the computer. When you reboot, it should be gone. But if you have it, that is where the fun begins.

Up until last week (Middle of August 2009) in 99.9% of the time we had to format the Hard Drive, and reload Windows. Which was always a pain, and costly to the customer. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Enter stage left, "Vipre"

VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware is high-performance security software that doesn't slow down your PC like older, traditional antivirus products. VIPRE is the end of antivirus software as you know it. The press loves it. VIPRE got 5 STARS on download.com. Protect your PC from 'being owned' by bad guys with our free 30-day trial! (with registration)
**http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/home-home-office/vipre/

Vipre has actually blocked PAV from installing, which was a huge victory in this battle. But if you already have it, this is how I remove PAV.

1. Download, Install and Update Vipre.
If you can not download it because PAV has blocked Internet access you will have to download it from another computer and put it on a usb stick. If this is the case also download SuperAntiSpyware at the same time we will need this later.

2. Once it has rebooted the computer finish installing Vipre.

3. Hit the Windows Key and R on the keyboard and type msconfig in the run bar.

4. Navigate to the StartUp tab and click disable all (except Vipre if it is there).

5. Right Click on My Computer and select Properties. Then Select System Restore and check mark the Turn off System Restore. This will make the scan much faster and remove all old restore points, removing the risk of the virus being there.

6. Open Vipre and do a Deep System Scan. This should take a few minutes to a long time depending on your Hard Drive size.

7. This should find the PersonalAntiVirus and probable quite a few more. Make sure you remove all, not just quarantine.

8. Now install SuperAntiSpyware now. and Update it as well.

8. Under the Scan Your Computer select Preform a Complete Scan.

9. Vipre installed the main portion of PAV, but SuperAntiSpyware removes the remnants of it.

10. Again be sure to delete all, not just quarantine.

11. Reboot your computer.

12. Navigate to msconfig again and be sure to enable all. (if netfilter.exe is there uncheck that one.

13. Now re-enable System Restore.

14. We need to create a System Restore Point.

15. Navigate to System Restore VIA All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore and create a New System Restore Point.

16. Reboot, and your done.

This has worked more then a dozen times for me now except one occasion. On this occasion PAV started up before Windows loaded. In this case I hooked up the hard drive to our system at work and removed it from that computer by scanning it with Vipre.

Hope this helps.

--KC