Out With The Old...

Tossed!

I replaced my Zipcar mouse pad.

There was nothing wrong with it, it was just time.  I've been using this one for several years and needed a change.  I had a similar one but a bit larger and red, brand new with the name and logo of the company I work for, stored in my office desk, so I'm now using it.

Blue Screen of Death

Computer issues - blue screen of death, fatal errors, system crashes.  Doesn't matter what they call it, they're generally not a good thing...

Fortunately for me a simple reboot, of both machines, and I was back on the air.  For now anyway. 

Hard-Disk Drive Failure, UGH!

Hi Folks, I'm back!

Back on December 10 our home computer crashed with a Hard-disk drive failure! 

There was no saving it, nor the data.  I had a backup from February but all data and pic afterwards are sadly gone.  I was offline as I waited for a new hard-drive to arrive, then the time to install and get the OS back up and running.

Good news is I'm back!

Blue Screen of Death

When was the last time you saw one of there Microsoft "problems", the "blue screen of death"?!

Well, that's my work computer after a reboot, UGH.

Fortunately, after a power off and a bit of rest, it came back up with no problems.  However, clearly there's something going on here and if Murphy has anything to do with it, the next time I won't be so lucky.

I'm "One of The Best..."

 

We have a Gateway laptop that no longer boots.  It appears that the machine is not getting power.  So, I reached out to Gateway technical support via their website and fired up a chat session with a support technician named Prabhu.  For the sake of this blog posting I will be referring to Prabhu as "Peggy".

 

Clearly "Peggy" was responding using a script and although very professional and courteous, it was nauseating just the same.  Don't get me wrong I love courteous, and in my opinion courtesy in every day interactions is hard to find any more, but "Peggy" was a little over the top.

 

After describing the laptop issue "Peggy" had me try several troubleshooting tasks and in the end he believes the issue is with the power adapter unit (the cords that plug from the wall outlet to the computer).

 

He provided me with information on where to purchase replacement parts for our Gateway and even apologized if he ever disappointed me, WOW.  So I'll look into it further.

 

In closing, and I think we can all agree that this was NOT being regurgitated via a script, he said, "You have been one of the best customers I have come across...".

 

I have that effect on people!  After all, I'm a people person...hahaha

Beware of Nasty Spyware!

So, went to use our home computer the other night only to find it infected with a Spyware product called "System Check". Of course at the time I didn't know that and things didn't look good at all.

There were numerous pop-up messages about file corruption, RAM memory failure, damaged hard drive clusters, etc. This spyware also produced this official looking System Check utility that displayed the "PC Performance & Stability analysis report", which was dire at best.

I couldn't do much of anything - I was unable to launch the Task Manager, open Explorer, the registry editor, etc. When I was finally able to get Explorer opened most of the files and folders were gone or so it appeared. Although, I do a pretty good job of backing up our important data and pictures, I've not done it in a couple months, so we were concerned and upset at what looked like a complete loss!

Like a special ops person my training in this area allowed me to overcome these obstacles and triumphantly rid our computer of this nasty spyware - WINNING!

This nasty program modified the computers registry in numerous places. For example, it flagged all files and folders as hidden (which is why they appeared to be gone), it hide Task Manager and the desktop and added "CyisMyTSAH.exe" to the Run section of the registry. Any and all items listed in the Run section get executed each and every time the computer is rebooted - very sneaky and very nasty.

The premise behind this attack is to get the infected users to purchased the full version of this fake utility, which they claim will "fix" all the problems. BEWARE, this is a scam! All they want is your money!