Your Computer Consultants, Inc. dba Your Computer Guy

09/22/2021

Avoid Windows 11 !!! Microsoft has screwed up the Start menu again.

Remember what happened when MS released Vista with a big change to the Start menu. Sales faltered and they brought out a major patch and then Window 7 as quick as they could.

Remember what happened when MS released Windows 8 with a big change to the Start menu. Sales faltered and they brought out a major patch and then Windows 10 as quick as they could.

The moral of the story: Avoid Windows 11 until they fix their mistakes with the Start menu.

05/03/2021

Well, yes, it's been a weird year. Duh!

So, I've usually been working at home in the mornings, and then go to my office or visit clients in the afternoon. Needless to say, the office building at the Executech Suites has been a bit of ghost town.

Nevertheless, I've been plenty busy. Clients still have work that needs to be done, and I can do most of it remotely. I've been keeping Windows 10 systems up to date and secure. And I upgraded yet another Windows 7 laptop to Windows 10.

How have you all been doing?

07/31/2020

Hmm... very interesting... I hadn't logged into FB for nearly a month (it's been heavenly) and today I received an email that someone had requested a password reset. I rejected it so no harm, but there definitely was a foul.

05/13/2020

Email scammers crack me up sometimes. First time I've seen one like this. Check out the sender's address.

09/30/2019

Thank you for the support !! Hillsboro Tribune Best 2019.

07/29/2019

Hackers keep on working new attacks.
Now they are sending phony invitations that look like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
Be suspicious. If you don't know the name, delete it.
If you know the name, hover your mouse over links to see where the links go. If it's a short or weird looking URL, delete the invitation.

07/23/2019

It happened again.

Never, ever click a link, or call a phone number that pops up on your computer with a message that your computer is infected and they can fix it.

Yes, he called them, and let them get on his computer, and gave them his credit card info, and they took over. Fortunately, his card has a low limit, so the charge was denied. Then he found me. I got the mess cleaned up, but he had to have his card replaced, and he needs to change all of his passwords.

Tell everyone you know to never, ever call a phone number that pops up on your computer. These things pop up from email or infected links in web page advertising, and they block your browser. So just do a normal system shutdown and reboot. If the browser is still blocked, call me. If my remote management and monitoring software is installed, I can connect and clear things up. Hackers are the scourge of the internet.

06/12/2019

Yesterday's 2 hour power outage in Hillsboro that hit my office (in the Executech Suites not far from the Hillsboro Chamber, Interstate All Batteries, David D'Angelo Auto Sales and Costco) sent me this great message.

Do you have an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) for your PC?

Someone in the building did not. The hard drive in his PC was hit by a power surge and came up with an "Imminent Failure" message. And he didn't have a recent backup.

I could have tried to clone the drive, but it was Windows 7, which is losing support in January so cloning an old system would have been a wasted effort.

So he bought a new PC. I connected the old drive to the new PC and was able to copy data from the dying drive to the new system.

Disaster averted. Whew!

Do you have a UPS? How about backups?

Yes, I have 3 UPSes in my office. The problem is that the batteries were too old in all 3 to be any good. That would be a 3 UPS OOPS. Thank goodness for Interstate All Batteries !!

06/08/2019

I almost called myself for help this morning. Working along, all of a sudden the browser says, "No internet". What? I looked over at the little network switch and the LEDs were blinking in order. That switch was probably 10 years old, and I knew I had a spare. Plugged it in, moved the cables from the old to the new and voila!

What do you do when you see, "No internet"?

05/27/2019

I made a disparaging comment about Microsoft's Windows 10 updates at the Hillsboro Chamber Wake Up Hillsboro on Friday. Believe me, Microsoft has earned every disparaging comment.

Tom Brandt asked me about updates on his PC.

Windows 10 version 1803 was built in March 2018 and released in April, withdrawn because it was crashing the Microsoft Surface Pro (yeah, go figure), released again, withdrawn (who is testing this stuff), released again (ah, it's you and me that are doing the testing), and then after a few monthly updates became fairly stable.

Version 1809 was released in October, and went thru the cycle of being withdrawn because it was wiping out people’s data, released, withdrawn, released almost ad nauseum, and finally became stable in March 2019.

Version 1903 was released as a limited release in April, but it still isn’t sufficiently stable to be used by non-nerds. By that I mean that the update crashes leaving a non-nerd with a brick. So I would suggest that most people stick with 1809 for now. The problem is that MS thinks that 1903 is stable and has hidden 1809 so that it is not easy for a non-nerd to find and install. Which means that at this point if your PC is running version 1803, it would be good to stick with that. In that case, you will continue to see updates for 1803.

Version 1903 should stabilize for non-nerds to install in a couple more months, so plan ahead to get frequent full hard drive image backups in case MS jams 1903 onto your PC when you’re not looking. *IF* 1903 installs successfully, then keep it, but if it crashes, you will want to have a recent full image backup.

Also plan ahead to be sure to get 1903 before Septober or Octember 2019 when 1909 is built and released.

Cheers!

09/20/2018

If you get a scammy phishing email (not) from PayPal, they have an easy way to report it to them. Just forward the whole email as is to [email protected] . More info here:
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/security/report-problem

Cheers!

Learn how to report a suspicious email to PayPal.