Computer HELP!!!!!!
Hi!, My name is Mike and I am the webmaster for this website. I will also be doing the computer seminar at the Samboree. This page will offer some limited information and a review of what was brought up at past Samboree's and link's to topics covered. I hope that the below info helps and if you have any ideas for topics that you would like to see covered at a future Samboree, use the 'contact' or 'webmaster' links on the home page to drop me a note.
Louisiana Good Sam uses 1&1 for our website, storage, email and domain registration. 1&1 offers a complete and affordable web hosting service, domain registration, Email, website builder software, affiliate program and other web related software and services. I have looked around for a long time and you just cannot beat their prices. Click on the below graphic or click here and we will get a referral bonus if you decide to sign up. If you need a website that is free from advertising, simple website building tools and affordable, check them out.
Ever wonder just what speed your internet connection is running at? Follow this link and get it tested, for free! http://www.speedtest.net/
Want a simple, no frills computer? One that can surf the web, do Email, keep the checkbook up to date, compose a letter; you know, just the basics!! Check out this article from PC Magazine: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1880361,00.asp it may be a little dated, but the premise is sound!
Got a new computer, or your first computer? Want to bypass the children and grandkids for advice and instructions? I use a website called Refdesk as my homepage. It has a handy page called, aptly, "The Beginners Page". It has a super size bunch of links to websites that offer help on different aspects of computer operation. If your new to computing or just want to see what the pro's suggest, click here.
Another great source of info is the Kim Komando radio show and website. Click on the above graphic and sign up for her newsletters!
PCWorld magazine has an extensive inventory of information as do most of the computer related magazines. If you have a problem check them all out!
Web-O-Pedia at http://www.webopedia.com is an info site that is WWW related. They have a web related encyclopedia and a free newsletter that you can get that sends you one computer term daily and tells you what it means. Want to show off at your next gathering? Learn some of these terms and stump the know-it-all!
For a free (and very good) anti-virus program, go to free.grisoft.com for the AVG antivirus prgm. Yes, it is free and a very good anti-virus utility. A number of Spring Samboree attendees use it as well as I do.
I can't count the number of times that folks ask me a question and don't know what version of Windows or other OS (operating system) they have that runs their computer. They are unaware of how much memory they have on their machine, how big their hard drive is and don't really know what programs they have installed. Here is a link to Belarc Adviser, a little FREE program that will give you the most complete report that I have ever seen of what is inside the box. http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html . While at their website, take a look at their products. Always good to thank them also.
Email spam is really turning into a mess. The government is thinking about getting involved (please be careful whishing for this. No scarier statement is "I am from the government, and I am here to help you!). Your ISP (internet service provider) probably has some sort of spam filtering program that you can use to try to beat spam. While they work pretty good, they are not infallible and sometimes block legitimate email as being spam. If you don't check your 'trash' box often, you may have an email from the IRS identified as spam and you may next hear a knock at the door because you failed to reply. I have tried them and am not sold on the idea yet. I want more control of what is spam and what is not. I use a FREE trial of a program called Mail Washer to preview what is in my inbox and I make the decision on what to do with it. They have a neat feature that allows you to bounce an email back to the sender which gives them the idea that your address is really not a good address. It looks just like a bounce message that I am sure you have gotten at one time or another telling you that your message could not be delivered for one reason or another. Here is the link to give it a try http://www.firetrust.com/products/pro/free.php .
Check out this website for a very good explanation of how spam gets to you! It also offers the 'SPAM PLAN' to reduce and/pr eliminate your inbox clutter.
Ever wonder how your information gets passed around the world without your permission? Little programs called SpyWare are inadvertently installed on your machine and when you are online, they report back to their boss what you are doing, where you are going and all sorts of other nasty things. While it is extremely tough to stop them from being installed, you can do a periodic check to see if there are any spying on you and remove them. A FREE program called SpyBot Search and Destroy will do this for you. Here is the link to the program http://www.zone-x.com/spybot.php .
Want to look for some more miscreant programs lurking inside the box? The following is straight from the Ad-aware website about a FREE product that I use to keep my computer free of spam; Here is the link to the program http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/ .
What is Ad-aware?
Ad-aware is THE award winning, multi-trackware detection and removal utility
(designed for Windows 98 / 98SE / ME / NT40 / 2000 / XP Home / XP Pro) that will
comprehensively scan your memory, registry, hard, removable and optical drives
for known Data mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, Keyloggers,
selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking
components.
Would you be interested if a program had been installed on your computer and you didn't want it? Here is a little program that looks for new installations and asks you if you want it to be allowed or not! It is not a fool proof little detective, but it does ferret out some devious programs trying to get into your machine. Scotty the watch dog will monitor your system and notify you that a program is trying to install on your computer and asks if if want to allow this action. http://www.winpatrol.com .
Pest Patrol is another of the spy/ad program detectors and does a real good job of looking for suspicious programs and activity http://www.pestpatrol.com .
Zone Alarm at http://www.zonelabs.com Is a great firewall program that unlike the MS SP2 firewall, monitors outbound problems as well as inbound. They have a free version and a high end program that is not that expensive. Don't know why MS didn't include outbound protection in theirs, but that is Microsoft.
Spam in your mailbox? Spammers use email 'harvester' programs to search through websites and 'harvest' email address's that are displayed. They do this by not actually looking at the displayed webpage, but at the underlying html code that generates the display. One way to fool the harvester programs is to encode the email address in the webpage code so that it doesn't look like an email address! All email address on this website are encoded, I have been using a small prgm that encodes each character in the ASCII code for each character. There are a number of free encoders out there To see how one method works, go to this website and follow the instructions. http://www.codehouse.com/webmaster_tools/email_obfuscator/ You can't hurt anything and it will not harm your computer. People who build website use prgm's such as this to generate the code and then copy/paste it into the code on their website. Now, it will only work if whoever is displaying your email address uses the encoding technique. So while you may not be able to demand this type of protection from someone who wants to display your email address on their website, you can certainly refuse to let them do it unless they encode it. If you have a personal website through your ISP, you, yourself can do the encoding. It requires some html patching, but don't let that scare you! It will be a good learning experience for you to actually see how WebPages are made and work. For some more encoders and an explanation of their use, you can read this article from the Kim Komando website http://www.komando.com/tips_show.asp?showID=9125
Another cool way to hide your address from harvester's is to
display it as an image (picture). Harvester's can't read an image file! To try
this out, go to
http://services.nexodyne.com/email/ . Here is what it looks like:
. The logo's
following your header are limited, but seem to have all of the heavy hitters as
choices. As displayed, this is not a clickable link that will allow someone to
directly send you email from clicking on the image. They will have to manually
type into a message. I feel sure though that the file can have a link embedded
in it and will try to do that some other time. If anyone does give it a shot,
let me know how it works out.
Lost your computers password? Don't panic, download this free program, follow the directions and it should get you back in business. I always believe in preparedness so you may want to download it and set up a bootable disk in case catastrophe strikes. Otherwise, you will have to use another computer to download and make the disk. Which may be a mute point as you won't be able to read this either. Tell you what, make the disk NOW!!
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/
Past Samboree Seminar topics:
A variety of discussions are held and it is great info shared by all.
My comp is taking longer to start up! It may be to too many process's and programs being loaded in the background. Click here to try out the Autoruns utility. It is a great prgm that shows you the guts of your system and what is going on. There are some more super utilities on the website, take a look.
We also talked about how fast your comp was actually running. The CPU may say it is 3 Mhz, but just how fast is it running right now? Check out this page for a list CPU meters that will show you in real time just how fast you are going.
A discussion was held about thumb drives or memory sticks, you know, those little things about 3" long by 1/2" wide that hold information. The uses for these things are staggering, but it is a great way to transport important files while on the road without compromising security. Radio Shack, WalMart, Circuit City and even Dollar Stores has them. Get one, they are cheap, and see what you can do with one!
We talked about Defragging your hard drive, what it meant and how to do it. Defragging your hard drive will help it run faster as it grabs all of the scattered program or file data on your hard drive and puts it all next to each other. This keeps the drive from searching all over the drive for bits and pieces on data to fulfill your request. Older machines with small hard drives will benefit more from defragging than larger drives in that most folks won't ever crowd up an 80 gig hard drive (that's a lot of room). It was also discussed about the length of time that it takes defrag to finish the job and the point was made that even with larger drives, the more often you defrag, the less time it takes. We also discussed that programs running in the background will make defrag and scan disk work slower. One great suggestion was to boot up in Safe Mode and run disk scan and defrag from there. Reason is that Safe Mode runs windows but without all of the other drivers and background programs. Almost all versions of Windows will go into Safe Mode by pressing the F8 key on your keyboard as the first Windows screen appears when you turn on the computer. If you are not sure where Scan Disk and Defrag are located on your computer or how they work, check your computers Help files. Remember that you must run Scan Disk first before trying to defrag.
A question was asked about how to find out what computer was the best to buy. It all depends on what you want to do with it when you get it! Be a good consumer and do your own homework. I suggest that you check out sites like PC World magazine. They do a monthly Top 10 of just about every computer product. After you decide on a brand or model, go to the manufacturer's website and use their 'customize' or 'build your own' functions to build the computer that you need. Great pro's and con's were discussed as to going to your local computer store and having them custom build one for you. I would suggest that you at least go down and talk to them and see what they offer. As technology and your needs may change, make sure that your system is expandable and upgradeable. Always check with your local Better Business Bureau before purchasing one from anyone.
BEFORE you install some new software, or hardware for that matter, it is a good idea to establish a system restore point on your computer. This will allow you to revert back to a pre-install condition if the software goes whacko or mess's up something else. Yep, it happens!! It was also suggested to establish one after you do one of the above. This would also allow you to fix a mis-step in setting up your program that would require a complete reinstallation. System restore is probably the most under looked computer problem fixer that we have. It can correct all kinds of problems. You just need to keep in mind that any system or document changes that you have made will be lost, restore means restore, not selectively fix.
The problem of computer slowdowns came up and most where related to the recent installation of one of the security suites that are available on the market. Most of these are memory and CPU hogs! But if you want to be able to use the internet safely and are not that computer or internet savvy, then you may have to endure the cyber lag or move up to high speed internet or in the case of DSL, a higher DSL speed..
Need a tip on Internet Explorer security? Click here for a great article from the Kim Komando website. Kim has a very good Saturday morning show and has some very informative newsletters that you can sign up for on her website. She has a very strict privacy policy as to your email address.
Do you or have you changed your ISP Internet Service Provider and had to send out email address changes and sure enough, someone on your list didn't update their address book with your new address? An easy, and FREE, way to get around this is to establish a free email account at Yahoo!, GMail and a host of other free email account providers. What you do is only give out this address to your close friends and relatives. You know, people that you correspond with regularly and you don't want them to loose contact with you. Your new ISP email address can be used for everyone or everything else in that it would not be a great catastrophe if they lost your email address. Might cut down on some unwanted ad-mail from Joe's Crafts that you bought a ball of yarn from 3 years ago and they still send you email. When you change ISP's next time, it won't be necessary to notify almost anyone, as your free email account is the one that they will still use and, well, life goes on uninterrupted!! A neat feature of at least Yahoo! is that they have what they call disposable address's that you can set up that are related to your main email address but are disposable. In other words, set one up to only be used for one time use of ordering online. When that address starts to get abused or inundated with spam, simply delete (dispose of) it and set up a new one! I rarely check my ISP email address as there is no one using it that I want to hear from and I have given my ISP my Yahoo! address to use for correspondence with them.
RV'ers tend to use unsecured wireless and public Wi-Fi points that are unsecured (safe). A hacker could very easily slip into your computer and steal some private information without your even being aware that anyone was peeping inside your comp! So, what do do to protect yourself? Use a thumb drive!! These things go by many names, but they are those little oblong things that you can plug into your comps USB port that can hold immense amounts of information. I use my thumb drive to hold ALL of my personal and important information. There is almost nothing in my laptops My Documents folder except some pictures and other non-important documents. When I need an important document or info on the road, I simply plug the thumb drive in, do my business and then remove it. You carry these things in your purse or pocket and are real handy when you go over to someone's house and they 'really' want to see those 2,000 photos that you took on your last trip. :<( All of these devices have some sort of encryption program on them which allows you to encrypt you information and it is password protected. So even if you loose your drive at a hackers convention, your info is still secure, all they have is a nice sinker for their fishing pole! These things also make cheap backup devices to keep your important pictures and other junk on and store the drive in a safety deposit box or at your son's house. The uses for these neat little things are endless and worth looking into.
Backup, backup, backup and, yes again, backup! Almost a week doesn't go by that I don't get a call that someone has lost all of their information due to either a misdirected click on the keyboard or a hard drive failure. There are ways to recover this information, and all are expensive and not guaranteed. There are a number of ways to protect yourself and some are costly and some are very inexpensive. Let's take a look at some of the ways;
Buy a thumb drive, explained about above, and store you entire My Documents folder on it. Then store it out in your shop or some other off site location.
Make CD backups of your information and again store them off site. This can be expensive in that it will probably take a number of CD's to backup all of your pics and documents and once used, you must do the time consuming task of making new copies.
Watch the sale papers and buy an External Hard Drive. These things work through a USB port just like a thumb drive but hold immense amounts of data! Use a daily backup prgm to automatically backup all of your info on a daily basis. A good FREE one is SyncToy by Microsoft. You can set this thing up to compare the files on your computer with the files on the external drive. It will then add, change or delete your info automatically. It is also a good place to store a system backup with something like Norton Ghost. Just make sure you get one that is at least 3 times as big as your current hard drive. These things also work real well when your internal hard drive is full and you need extra space but don't want to go through the hassle of replacing your hard drive. Again, protect your backups, when we go on extended trips I disconnect mine and put it out in the shop.
Pictures take up an inordinate amount of disk space and are real important! Use one of the picture services on the web like Fikr, Shutterbug or even WalMart.com to store your photo's. There are caveats to this as they are in the business of making prints for you and any extended inactivity of spending money with them will result in their suspending your account. They also have some restrictions on the amount of storage you can have. But it is a real good way to store your photos offline and even provide access to your photos with family and friends. Let them decide which ones they want and let them pay for the prints!!
If you have the money, you can subscribe to an online storage service that will store anything you want on their servers. The only limit to the amount of megabytes you can store with them is how deep your pockets are. They have their nitch in cyberspace and it may be worth looking into depending on your needs.
I am sure that I am missing some other ways to protect your information and if you have another idea, let me know. What is soundly important to take away from this issue is that you must be pre-active in your own defense and set up a backup schedule and adhere to it religiously.
Any material shown above bylined by Kim Komando reserves the following:
Copyright 2005 WestStar TalkRadio Network. Reprinted with permission. No further
republication or redistribution is permitted without the written
consent of WestStar TalkRadio Network. Visit Kim Komando and sign up for her
free e-mail newsletters at: www.komando.com