Warning Telephone Scam

Hi People

The title says it all really.

About a month ago, a lady rang me saying that she had had a telephone call from 'Microsoft' saying that they ('Microsoft') had noticed that her computer was suffering from corrupt files and spyware.  She put them off and called me.  I told her that it was a scam and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  I thought nothing more of it,until a couple of days ago, another lady rang me saying the exact same thing, only this time she followed their instructions

First of all, she asked them why she should believe them, so they asked her to go to a website to 'prove' they were genuine and mentioned again that they were 'Microsoft Partners' (I believe they may have ripped off someone's site and presented it with a new domain name (the www address ).
Being convinced that they were who they said they were, she allowed them to access her computer remotely.

Needless to say, they must have put something on the computer as directly they had finished, they told her that her PC was indeed infected and that for XX sum of money, per 3 months she could have her computer kept clean. 

She twigged at this point (but the damage had already been done), and told them that she had not agreed to pay any money.  

To which they said well if you dont have it done your computer will close down in six hours.

*  NOTE Microsoft DO NOT ring you unless you have contacted them first to arrange a support call *

Do not take phone calls from Microsoft Partners.

This was the point at which I was called in to remedy the situation



We now have a FREE SPYWARE REPORT available, yours to keep and share if you wish. Fill in your details below and get yours now

eMail address:
First Name:

'For Exceptional Service on Computer Repair visit Green Dragon Solutions'

Why would someone want my computer?

Hi People

Whilst seeing a number of clients recently, a very similar question was asked, by several of them. The question was a one of why.  

Why would someone want my computer, I don't store anything on it? Or why do they do it (electronically vandalise computers)?

Whilst, if you think that derranged electronic nerds may be after your bank account, or credit card details, there are other reason why they would want to access your computer.  Consider the following:

1. Your system is a fully functioning PC with a link to the internet.
2. You have details which are personal, and these a probably stored on your PC, and I am not talking about bank, credit card or passwords.  Here the point is your email address book and other contacts, photos and letters etc.
3. Business quotes, and supplier details

Right let's have a look at these one by one (and I sure I have missed some other reasons).

1) Having a fully functioning PC connected to the internet, means it can be controlled remotely by a third party (with the right software present - legitimate or illegitimate).   It could then become part of a large network of computers all controlled by this one piece of software (read one person or perhaps a group of people). 

Now these people may want to extort money from a company or individual (read target), by getting all the remotely controlled computers, to send a request of some sort (or even an email) to the target and with such a lot of requests the servers may not cope and they go offline.  Which means the target cannot do business online. 

Your PC could well be part of this and you wouldn't know it.  These are called botnets

2) Email addresses, a possible source of infection for your friends, colleagues, associates, and business suppliers.

If there are letters of a personal nature, and or pictures then the third party can start a personal identity theft file on you.

3) Businesses losing out to competitors, time and time again, (industrial espionage) could possibly be a trojan or other piece of malware  sending back information on your business activities, or indeed on the whole business structure.

Think about it, your PC is worth a bundle to 'them' out there on the internet.

Get some internet security, but wait don't just rely on that, get at least two good antispyware packages (free ones, for personal use), update often them and use them regularly and OFTEN (not just once a month or two weeks).  Go to www.gds888.com and find a link to two good antispyware products in the free software section.

Go on Do IT Now before you forget.

See you next time

Prometheus1618

We now have a FREE SPYWARE REPORT available, yours to keep and share if you wish. Fill in your details below and get yours now

eMail address:
First Name:

'For Exceptional Service on Computer Repair visit Green Dragon Solutions'

USB drives, RAM disks and memory cards

Don't Rely on USB drives (pen drives, memory sticks, USB sticks or whatever you want to call them), RAM disks (DVD RAM), OR memory cards (SD, MMC, xD etc.) for data.

Yes I mean it, do not rely on them for 'permanent storage' i.e backing up, or worse still the only copy of your data.  Use them for temporary storage only, and what I mean by that is, if you are using any of the above for data storage make sure you have other copies stored on DVDs (not DVD RAM), or an external hard drive.

Let me tell you of my experiences with these storage products.

DVD RAM:

I used to use this for my website amongst, so I could update on any of my systems, this turned out to be a mistake that cost me.  The disk was new and after a few dozen read/write cycles, I noticed something really weird, certain folders were losing the data and one of the folders was the site content!  The disk appeared to have lost the contents of the level two / three folders but not the folders themselves.  The level one folders (those in the root of the disk) were OK, very strange.  So, now I will not entrust permanent storage tasks to DVD-RAM (unless I have several other copies elsewhere- and yes I know I should be backing up regularly and that I had, so I got the latest backup and used what I wanted from that - it was a hard drive backup by the way).

USB pen drive

This was a near total disaster for my other half, she has been using a pen drive to store a growing amount of knowledge on a favourite subject of hers.  It was being accumulated on a daily basis, at her place of work and at home, hence the use of something small (not too small to go unnoticed) and portable, that could be used on virtually any current system (by the way when Microsoft Office was not available, then OpenOffice.org was - set to read and write MS Office documents and spreadsheets).  One evening, after work (she had used the pen drive at the office), she plugged the pen drive into her laptop, with no response at all from the drive.  The follow days were fill with methodical attempts to recover the data, to no avail (a situation I found was a common situation, on internet forums).  So whilst it was an unfortunate situation, the sources of all the work were still available and she went to work rebuilding her notes - on a hard drive in one place only).

SD card

Now I am making assumptions here, that memory card storage in general has the same characteristics, whilst the method of accessing will vary hence the various types of card, e.g. xD, SD, MMC,  Duo, etc.  Also the type of storage gate may differ (currently I am not sure whether SD memory uses a NAND gate for storage or not)

This situation was very similar to the one with the DVD-RAM, in that data was stored and frequently used on an SD card.  On accessing the card recently the card showed very similar characteristics to the DVD-RAM situation above, in that some of the deeper folders (level 2 and 3) had lost their data, but not the folders i.e. the folders were empty!.  Fortunately the data in level one folders was available and ok.   Again a backup provided what I needed.  Phew! I am thankful for backups.

A further point to note here was the weather at the time of the failures was hot and humid. Now this may be a coincidence, but it makes me wonder.

Any way, that's it for this post

See you people
Prometheus1618


We now have a FREE SPYWARE REPORT available, yours to keep and share if you wish. Fill in your details below and get yours now

eMail address:
First Name:

'For Exceptional Service on Computer Repair visit Green Dragon Solutions'

A Lesson to be learned

Hi People

How are you doing?

Possibly better than several recent clients of mine.

They received large bills for repairs. What sort of repairs, you might ask. You must realise that this is a computer oriented blog, so it has to be for computers.

It wasn't for hardware, but for the software/operating system side of things.

You see, they had the misfortune to pick up some bits of malware and in some cases they hadn't updated their operating system with the latest patches. Although an anti-virus (in some cases internet security packages were present, they were out of license or insufficiently prepared for the nasties) and anti-spyware packages were present, it appears (because they were free) that the software wasn't updated and used to scan the system regularly.

What happened? The first pieces of malware arrive unnoticed and these installed and brought down other pieces of malware. Eventually some nasty rogue anti-malware program were installed and that's when we were called in. Now the seriousness of this situation, is compounded by the fact that several people had conducted financial transactions on these systems, leaving them open to account and card abuse.

On receiving the systems, firstly (on client instructions) we recovered their data (essential as malware can cripple the system) Then, we attempted to remove the nasties using several techniques, which were partially successful (we got the system up and running), but the malware had corrupted the registry, causing the operating system to boot and then put a notice that the services.exe had encountered an error and the system would close after 1 minute.

Solution, repair the operating system, not a word of it. The system disk bypassed the repair option and proceeded to the installation option. Secondary option was to put another copy of the operating system on the hard drive alongside the damaged one, then add all the drivers, programs and re-link the documents, emails etc., this was the approach we made in the end.  Advantages are that the operating system is fresh (no infection and please make sure you have an internet security package installed in the new install, together with at least two antispyware packages - free if necessary- fully updated), data can be copied across to the new installation, and (if possible) the original installation, may be available if something has been overlooked - this is not advisable as system reinfection can occur.  All in all, a process which can take 4-5 hours work, with the engineer present most of the time (hence the large bills).

Some people considered a replacement machine, but whilst this reduced the amount owed, it was still a substantial sum. Now there are several ways to prepare for something like this.

Firstly, backup your data REGULARLY.  Secondly once your system is up and running satisfactorily and you are sure there are no viruses, malware or other faults present, then create an image of your hard drive to another hard drive, dvds, or blue-ray discs (if you are fortunate enough to have a blue-ray recorder).
Thirdly make sure you have the installation files/cds/dvds for all the programs you wish to use with your system (some may be acquired freely on line, but others are not available without paying for them).

Well, I hope you do not suffer the situations that these unfortunate people went through, but you have been warned.

See you next time, people

Regards
Prometheus1618

We now have a FREE SPYWARE REPORT available, yours to keep and share if you wish. Fill in your details below and get yours now

eMail address:
First Name:

'For Exceptional Service on Computer Repair visit Green Dragon Solutions'

Hi

Here's a handy hint today

Have you got a game, or other software that requires the CD to be left in the drive.

Well with the aid of a couple of free pieces of software, you could be running the software from your hard drive.

To do this you will need to first of a create an ISO file of your CD. A good program for this is Imgburn.

Download the file and install it. Pop the CD into the drive and select 'Create image file from disc' option. Follow the on screen info and place the .iso file where you can get at it easily (I suggest in a folder in off your c: drive root).

Once you have completed the task, then you are ready for stage two, installing the software.

Download a copy of Magic Disk

Download the file and install it. Note here it will manage more than one image so you could have multiple 'CD's available and in general at no more than a click of an icon.

Once it has installed, you will be asked to reboot your computer.

In the system tray (bottom right hand side of your screen), you will see a small cd icon (if it is not visible you can see by left clicking on the '<' just to the left of the system tray). Now right click on the icon, this will bring up a menu.



Select 'Virtual CD/DVD ROM' then select the drive letter: No media (e.g. F:No Media). From the menu pick the 'Mount' option. This allows you to search for the ISO file you created with ImgBurn earlier. Click 'Open' then follow the installation procedure for the game.


When the installation is complete, find the program launch on the 'All Programs' menu and run
Have fun

Further notes here:

This could apply to DVD games/software as well

Have all your favourite programs available from desktop icons

The CDs / DVDs can be put safely aside as 'backups'

See you next time

Prometheus1618

We now have a FREE SPYWARE REPORT available, yours to keep and share if you wish. Fill in your details below and get yours now

eMail address:
First Name:

'For Exceptional Service on Computer Repair visit Green Dragon Solutions'

How to avoid Fry Ups (PC types)

Hi People

Have any of you experience PC damage by lightning or power surge?

It can be quite a shock (no pun intended here).

I have witnessed, first and second hand excess power damage to computers.

In one situation, lightning struck the local power supply to the houses and one unfortunate person had their motherboard, memory, powersupply and dvd recorder fried. How did we know, well the cooked and cracked chips on the various boards gave it away, visually, but the smell was also a dead (pun intended) giveaway.

Another situation arose when a CRT monitor (tv tube type) blew up for no reason, due possibly to an internal fault or faulty component (this had been left on over a lunch break unattended, fortunately no fire ensued)

So how can we prevent most of these situations arising?

If you are going away for a time, then unplug your computer, monitor, printer and ROUTER (telephone and cable modems are subject to lightning strikes also)

While at home, or in the office, use either an anti-surge power bar/strip or even better get hold of an UPS (uninterrutible power supply), this has an added advantage, of preventing the computer locking itself up or cutting the power to the computer during 'brownouts' (low power outages) or short term 'blackouts' of less than a couple of minutes. If you happen to be using your computer (desktop / tower) at the time of a blackout that has a lengthy duration, then it allows you sufficient time to save your work and close down the system normally.

One word of advice, do not connect non essential peripherals to the UPS as they have a finite power supply in the event of a blackout, so have a printer or scanner draw power from the unit will only serve to shorten the length of time you have to close down the computer normally.

Use only the system unit (case containing the processor/motherboard/memory and internal harddrive), monitor and possibly an external hard drive if absolutely necessary for external backup - watch the power requirements here, on a UPS unit and put the remaining power using perpherals on an antisurge bar for safe keeping.


That's it until next time people










We now have a FREE SPYWARE REPORT available, yours to keep and share if you wish. Fill in your details below and get yours now

eMail address:
First Name:

'For Exceptional Service on Computer Repair visit Green Dragon Solutions'

Gmail accounts - are they safe?

Hi People

This is a bit concerning, when many people have a Gmail or Googlemail email account (me included). So watch carefully on how to avoid the same fate.




I guess the person concerned was a little unlucky, but make sure you either do not use the secondary email option or as the presenter suggests, make sure it is current.

What most people don't realise is, that if they do not use an email account (webmail - e.g. free hotmail, yahoo mail etc) then after a set period of time, the account is 'tombstoned' or marked for deletion and a while after that it is deleted. Once it is 'tombstoned' it is as good as lost anyway (non recoverable), so check your webmail once a month at least, just to be on the safe side. There is also a set period of time before the email address becomes available again.
So people, either use it or lose it.

Secret questions, yes the presenter has a point here, so rather than put in some random letters and numbers, choose something, personal to you and replace a couple of the characters with numbers.
i.e. Foxtrot could become F0xtr0t or Neddy could become N3ddy.

Now those are only suggestions, but you get the point.

Another thing to point out, is that many passwords now require a minimum of 8 characters, so fill out the remaining characters with your favourite number or even (if the password program allows a special character such as '*' or '!' or even '€') To get the '€' symbol use the 'AltGr' button - held down and the number 4 on the top row of the keyboard on a UK keyboard, set to UK use.

That's all for now
See you next time




We now have a FREE SPYWARE REPORT available, yours to keep and share if you wish. Fill in your details below and get yours now

eMail address:
First Name:

'For Exceptional Service on Computer Repair visit Green Dragon Solutions'