We’ve been busy here lately, but we caught something while recycling a machine for one of our clients. It seems that a “competitor”, who has since changed his business name, was shaving the OEM stickers off machines so that he could re-use the license to charge the client more money while spending none of his own. The client had XP, the machine says “Vista” but the sticker says “XP” as well – typically not a problem, until you read which type of license he used.

What to watch out for... Arrows show the differences in sticker vs actual Manufacturer. Circles show damage from "shaving" the sticker.

If you have a machine custom built, or ordered through a local company, always inspect the stickers. This machine was a ACER and it had an eMachine’s XP sticker on it. I’ve attached a picture so you can see what I’m talking about. The circles point to the sticker damage from this individual removing the sticker. If you see something like this, don’t buy the machine – period. Microsoft has every right to disable Windows, and does so. For Windows Vista and 7, this becomes more of an issue because they both check in with Microsoft every 6 months to ensure that your license hasn’t been copied/installed somewhere else.

Note: A Vista/Windows 7 machine sticker looks like paper, with a hole, that has a security thread through it.

I take great pride in knowing that we provide some of the highest customer service scores in the area (Angie’s List Honor Roll, plus all our other reviews). I cannot stand it when individuals like this take advantage of customers to save a buck here and there. There are other ways to save money, and we do it all the time with customers. If it eats into our profit margin, so be it – the customer is happy and that’s what matters.
Justin

Many of you may see Java pop up and ask to be updated. Click the icon, run through the update procedure (make sure to uncheck the Bing toolbar) and let it do it’s thing.

It seems there was a serious flaw in the Java software that allowed things to be executed within the program. It was so serious that Java released an “out of band” update today for it. This means they thought it was bad enough to release an update outside their normal update time line. It’s a big deal for a lot of companies to do this.

For more information, click here.
Justin

I read a lot of technology web sites during my downtime at home, to stay up on technology, problems and odds and ends.

I noticed a nice little story of a professional technology author having problems installing Windows. He replaced every-single-component of his computer, including the CASE, during his testing. In the end, he narrowed down his problems to one single component: the processor. While I mean no offense to the author, this is something a professional technician would have caught pretty quickly.

In the industry, we call this “Shotgun” method of support. Basically, you can’t figure out what’s wrong, so you try multiple things at once to see if it works. This can happen with lack of experience or out of pure frustration. It’s a mindset that technicians have to train themselves to get away from. Someone with experience in computer repair would have narrowed the problem down pretty quickly between the memory and processor, due to the specific problems he was having.

For those of us that have been in the industry long enough, we can see this happening and tell someone to step back and think about the problem in another manner. Working in several call centers, I’ve had my fair share of “shotgun” support days, but now they’re a waste of time, and money. In this specific case, if the computer is having problems “thinking”, then you need to look at the “brain”…

Case in point: If the fans are ticking on a system (hit the power button, fans start/stop and nothing else), the first thought might be a blown power supply. So you test the power supply and it tests good. GREAT – now what!? Well, it could still be the power supply due to various reasons. It could also be the motherboard.

I actually have a hands-on motherboard in the shop for people to touch and play with where this happened. It’s got a chip half-missing, it’s burnt to a crisp and discolored on the back of the board in specific spots. Heat problems anyone?

For those that troubleshoot their own computer problems, don’t go down the “shotgun” path of support. Think the problems through…
Justin

It was coming, but now is official.

Windows XP has not been supported by Microsoft for a bit, but they have released updates for general purposes, and should continue to release a few updates here and there for security – but nothing major.

Well, it’s been decided that Internet Explorer 9 (IE 9) will not support Windows XP. Folks, as soon as the newest browsers out there stop supporting Operating Systems, it’s time to move on to better things. Don’t get me wrong, Windows XP is a great OS – I still use it virtually to test viruses and other things, but once IE9 is released, that’s the end of the line for XP. Windows 7 is a great new Operating System that should support a lot of various hardware. If in doubt, try the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. It’s a free tool that you can download to see if your computer will run Windows 7.

With IE9 supporting HTML5, which can do some pretty amazing stuff (think of Flash type content, without actually using Flash), IE9 will be adopted very quickly, along with other browsers supporting HTML5. While Firefox, Chrome, and others, may support XP beyond this point of time, it’s really time to start thinking about upgrades.

On that note, I’m working with a partner company to provide some wickedly cool technology to businesses in the near future. Keep on the lookout.
Justin

This week, while hundreds of people throughout Beaverton, Portland and elsewhere restarted their computers and got a Blue Screen of Death, Microsoft quickly back peddled on the update they released. They started researching the issue, yanked the update, and now have stated that malware crashed thousands of computers across the world.

Microsoft stated that removing the offending malware caused the computer to be able to boot. This means that if your computer rebooted, blue screened then rebooted again (rinse and repeat), you had a malware infection you didn’t know about.

Read more about this issue on PCWorld.

The affected file is the atapi.sys file, which a lot of computer repair places have seen infected and causing problems recently, but a lot of people just didn’t notice. If you’re still having problems with this isuse, give Protocol16 a call and we’ll be more than happy to help out.
Justin

If you haven’t done so, this is a second reminder that Microsoft released an “out of band” update for Internet Explorer. Yesterday, it appeared that it was for Internet Explorer 6 only, but it turned into an update for Internet Explorer 6 through 8 by yesterday evening.

If you are receiving a notification to update Windows this morning, do so to plug a nasty little security hole.

Out of band updates are done when security holes are so “large”, but Microsoft feels that an update needs to be release ASAP, instead of their normal Tuesday release cycle.

Microsoft is releasing an out of band update today to patch security holes in Internet Explorer. After the recent Google China incident, Microsoft discovered that sneaky code inside office documents could attack IE and cause problems.

This out of band update should be released around 10am PST “or as close to it as possible”, according to Microsoft.

While home users should get update alerts tomorrow morning, businesses will want to patch their systems as soon as possible, after testing the update, of course.
Justin

I’ve discussed how I talk with a bunch of industry experts all the time and we can catch things here and there. One of the repair companies in New Zealand ran across a unique situation that reminded me of how much consultants can save you money.

In his situation, a company requested a quote on a new server for their office as well as requested internet access be installed at another physical building on the same property. The consultant quickly put together a very nice bid and all was well, until someone on the company’s controlling board decided to speak up: They were in the computer business as well and could beat the prices on the bid. This sounds fine, as some companies purchase their own hardware and have consultants install it, but something else happened. The second consultant overshot the original bid by a heck of a lot of money, thousands, in fact.

When the two consultants talked, an issue came up with the amount of servers that were required. The second consultant, we’ll call him “Mr. X” to avoid confusion, assumed that the first had made a mistake on the bid since they wanted Exchange and another type of major service that controlled logins and such (called Active Directory). This typically can’t be done (and shouldn’t, for good reason). Mr. X confronted the first consultant and tried to get an explanation for the mistake. The first consultant said there wasn’t a mistake, he had saved money by going with a Small Business Server (SBS) instead, which allows multiple things to be installed at once – making things cheaper. SBS is specifically setup for smaller environments and everything is integrated together.

Mr. X also mentioned that he had figured that there was another mistake on the networking portion since it would take a decent amount of money to run fiber to the other building. There wasn’t a mistake, the first consultant figured on using a wireless N based network with special antenna’s to make sure that things communicate better. The speed requirements for the second location didn’t require the speeds that Fiber would provide – it was just too expensive to run  to that location for a few computers to surf the internet and check email.

In the end, the first consultant saved this company several thousands of dollars, and that was over someone else that was in the industry…

I’ve personally run into situations like this as well. Awhile ago, a situation presented itself with a computer savy business owner in Tigard. They had used a local company to work on a virus issue with a Dell workstation. The other company ended up charging a decent amount of money to remove the virus then said that Windows was so messed up that they needed to reinstall it for an additional fee. After hearing they needed to spend that much money, they just paid the original fee and got the computer back. While on-site, the computer showed up and they asked me about it and how much to reload Windows. Knowing the owner was decently computer savy, I asked if they had the restore CD. As a matter of fact, they DID. I told them that this computer could be re-setup, like new, within minutes just by popping that CD in. They did it while I was working on another computer and I answered a few questions for them as well. They ultimately ended up saving a lot of money since I had merely recommended using the Restore CD and I ended up multi-tasking to help out. This saved them time on Protocol16′s hourly fee as well.

Any business considering a project, new hardware, or even the standard computer user having problems should always consider a professional as this can save you money in the long run. For servers, networks, and such, consutants and computer companies can usually pay for themselves when your project is done as someone familiar with the hardware, software, and networks will usually purchase just the right mix of things you need instead of overdoing it. They’ll also setup the hardware or software correctly for you. If you have a larger project that needs to be implemented over the course of months, if done right, it can actually come in under budget.
Justin

There has been talk about the “Black Screen of Death”(CNN is also covering it) affecting various installs of Windows 7 (note: this can also happen on all other Operating Systems). Typically, this screen causes minor issues, but can cause other major issues as well. Perhaps one of the things you need to make sure to have is a backup.

I’ve mentioned that you should always have a backup. My personal computers all backup automatically inside the house, the Server at the new office backs locally and remotely in case something happens locally. I’ve also got a smaller home server to handle odds and ends at home since I test products at home as well. That home server backs up to the work server. My backup solution is sort of like the Family Circus when you lay it out on paper, but after 20 years, I have yet to lose ANY data.

Symptoms of the Black Screen Of Death are that there is no desktop after logging in, task bar, system tray or sidebar. Instead you are left with a totally black screen and a single My Computer Explorer window or two.

Fixing it can be a bit of a pain though. Some installs can be fixed quickly, other installs will be much harder to figure out since there are several different scenerios that can cause this type of a problem. If you should fall victim to this type of situation, it’s best to either restore from a backup or schedule a drop off with us.

As always, a best offense is a good defense: backups.
Justin

Hello everyone in Portland. I spend a lot of time talking with folks in the industry to stay on top of things (hardware, software, patterns, etc) and we’re all seeing a rash of errors from Windows saying “You may be a victim of counterfeiting”.

This error generally means that the computer talked back to Microsoft and found that there is duplicate key in their database. The activation keys used for computers are a unique identifier and can be stolen and installed on other computers. If you have a licensed copy of Windows, as a great book says: Don’t Panic!

In these cases, all the computers seen had spyware and viruses on them and needed to be cleaned. The fix is simple and should take less than an hour to fix, depending on what type of computer you have. By the end up the support call, you will most likely have a fully valid version of Windows again, without needing to purchase another copy, unless the original copy you have installed was bad.

As always, if you have any questions, please let us know.
Justin