KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) Theory Applied to Technology

When having what seems to be a complex computer or printer problem, sometimes the best method to tackle the issue may be to take a step back and try the simple stuff first.  A cable might simply be disconnected, the paper tray may be empty, or perhaps your internet just needs a reboot.  Complex issues often begin from simple issues not being discovered and this leads to the malfunctioning of equipment.  Remember, your devices are pretty smart for the most part and may fix themselves if it something small like an internet connection is lost (or if your printer needs something like a different type of paper or a cleaning).  As technicians, we look for this type of stuff to start with so we have a solid basis to diagnose a problem efficiently.  This method is also used to rule out the smaller things, saving the customer time and money.  If you are having any computer or printer problems, I'd suggest giving the device a once-over, starting from the wall it’s plugged into, to the modem or router it’s connecting to for internet or network access.

Dennis Foote - Systems Engineer

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Call the pros!

This week’s blog is more of a plea: before you get in too deep, call a professional. This week I have dealt with some problems that have been made worse by people doing things they thought would help, but didn't.

We are honest guys and girls; we genuinely want to get your problems fixed for you. If I don’t think the printer or computer is worth fixing, I will not accept the job or charge you to tell you so. I know that some problems look like they can be solved after five minutes on Google, and some can, but this is not true for the majority.  Following random online instructions may actually lead to more harm!

If you are not very familiar with a Registry, do not edit it! If you are not sure how to take a printer to pieces, please don’t try it!

Have a great weekend!

Kristen Hewes - Hardware Technician

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

The Intel 4004: The Original Microprocessor

The Intel 4004 was the first CPU on a single chip as well as the first available to the commercial market. This week it celebrated it’s 40th birthday! We would like to say thank you to the microprocessor that grandfathered the CPUs we have today. A CPU is the brain of a computer. Known as the central processing unit, every piece of information in or out of a computer goes though the CPU. Just imagine what the Intel 4004, a tiny yet powerful CPU, did for the computing world in 1971. CPUs have come a considerable ways since then, but they continue to be a huge part of our everyday lives.

The Intel 4004 was originally created for a calculator, but it quickly led to technological leaps in computing. Many common products would not exist if it weren’t for the powerful CPUs born from the Intel 4004. These products include laptops, streetlights, and cell phones. The Intel 4004 quite literally grandfathered many modern technologies. Check out this article showing the evolution of technology thanks to the CPU.

We can’t say happy birthday to the Intel 4004 without mentioning the engineers responsible for its development. Federico Faggin led the planning and development of the Intel 4004 with Ted Hoff, and Stan Mazor. In this ever-changing world of technology we can lose sight of its humble origins. The Intel 4004 was no small player in this.

So take the time to appreciate the little microprocessor that grandfathered the technological world of today.

Terminal IT Support

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Setting up Remote Desktop on a Router

The first thing needed to set up Remote Desktop is to find your default gateway to access the routers GUI or interface. To do this, you will need to find the Run tool that is part of Microsoft Windows. For Windows XP, go to your Start menu and look on the bottom right side of the menu.  You should see the Run tool there. For Windows Vista and Windows 7, you can open the Windows menu and type Run in the search and it should come up to click on.

Once you have Run open, type CMD in the blank field and hit enter.

A black box called the command prompt should open with something like C:/Users/(name of your computer) Please type ipconfig  and you should see something like below. You should write down the Default Gateway and IPv4 Address, which is in BOLD below.

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

 IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

Now that you have your default gateway and IPv4 address, it’s time to close the command prompt and proceed with opening ports on your router to allow remote connections.

To do this, open an internet browser and in the address field type the Default Gateway (in my case, 192.168.1.1). This should prompt you for a user name and password. These can be found through manufactures' websites or with a bit of googling.  Cisco, a common router typically by default, has admin for a user name and admin as a password.

Once in the router you are going to look for port forwarding this is going to allow you to open ports and allow Remote Desktop through your router.  Once you find Port Forwarding, you will need to fill in some information. You should see a couple of boxes that say Port blank to Port blank. You will type 3389 in both boxes.  At the end of this string it will ask you what IP address you would like to open this port up to. Please enter the IP address that you wrote down earlier as the IPv4 address while looking up your ipconfig.  Click save and you’re done with the router part of the setup. 

Now all that’s left to do is to turn on Remote Desktop on your PC.  For this you will need to go to your computer's advanced settings. This can be found in Windows XP by right-clicking on My Computer and going to properties. Windows Vista and Windows 7 users will need to right click on Computer and go to properties and click on the Advanced System Settings.

Once in Properties, open the remote tab. You will have 3 choices to allow remote connections please choose that one that suites you best. Click Apply and OK. That should be it. You are now ready to remote into your computer. If you are away from home, you will need your public IP address.  While at home, this can be found by going to www.whatsmyip.com or www.ipchicken.com.  You will need this to get into your machine from off the network. If you are home, simply type in your IP address or the name of the computer from any other PC on your network. 

Some last few things: You will need to let Remote Desktop through your Windows firewall and or Anti-Virus. You can find these instructions with a little googling.  

Dennis Foote- System Engineer

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Locating Drivers

I do not usually endorse products, but when I come across one that is good and works well, I feel I should share the wealth.

The product is called Driver Genius, and that’s what it is! It is a driver locator software that I seem to use more and more.  I get a lot of reinstalls for computers and laptops.  Some of them come with good driver support and some do not.  Even the good ones get old. Windows 7 is good at finding a lot of drivers, but for the specific system board drivers or the hard-to-find drivers, it does not always find what you need.

Once you install Driver Genius and update the database, you just set it to scan and it will find everything you need.  I have used it on a bunch of machines at this point and it has not let me down, so check it out!

Kristen Hewes - Hardware Technician

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Don't Throw Disks Away!

This week, I want to talk about recovery disks. New computers usually come with recovery disks.  These are the disks that have a preloaded version of Windows on them.  (It is the version that came with the system when you bought it.)

I am guilty of this myself; I have been known to throw them out, thinking that I will not need them.  Please put them away somewhere - it does not matter as long as you can find them again.  I have often been asked by a customer to save their data from a failing hard drive only to find out that they do not have the recovery disks. This is a problem in 2 ways:

1. It slows down the repair of the computer. Unless you have a copy of Windows lying around, those disks are needed to get your new hard drive up and running again.
2. It will cost you more money. If your laptop is out of warranty, the manufacturer will charge you for recovery disks or you will have to buy another copy of Windows.

These disks usually have a bunch of bloatware on them and you do not have to install it all, but they also come with a full set of drivers for the machine.  This can cut down on the time needed to search for them, making the whole process just that much smoother.

Have a great weekend!

Kristen Hewes - Hardware Technician

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

The Infinite Loop

This week, I came across a Windows problem that I have never seen before: the infinite loop bug. It started when a customer brought in a laptop stating that it would not boot up. I tried booting it myself and when the laptop I turned it on, it went straight into startup repair.

I let it run until it finished, at which point it informed me that it could not repair the problem and shut itself off.

Upon rebooting the laptop, it made it to the Windows splash screen, then blue screened. Hitting F8 got the laptop into repair mode and I set it to not restart on error, so I could see the code, and this is what I got:

STOP: C0000135 the program can't start because %hs is missing. Try to reinstall the program. 

So, using the internet, I did some research, and found lots of results and reasons that this could happen. The first explanation had to do with AVG, but was from 2010 and had already been resolved so it was no good.

The second explanation had to do with an error Windows 7 service pack 1 installation.  This was also no good, as the customer had Windows 7 installed weeks ago.

The third explanation was it happened while plugging in an external drive.  This was a possibility, but I really had no way of knowing.  Armed with this information, I started working through the fixes.

I checked the ram and the hard drive integrity, no problems there!  I moved on to a chkdsk, which came back clean. I tried /fixmbr and /fixboot, but they did not work either.  I tried a new boot.ini as well, but to no avail.  In the end all I could do was grab the data and reinstall Windows.  Sometimes there is just not a good fix.

If any of you have any ideas or fixes,please feel free to comment and give me some help for next time!

Have a great weekend.

Kristen Hewes - Hardware Technician

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Green Tech Announcements at CEATEC

Many people are concerned with “being green” these days. Whether it’s to avoid the impact technology has on the environment or to save money, many companies are following suit and looking into green tech and ways to save energy. When looking to conserve energy, one of the first things a company or individual must know is, what is consuming the most energy?

At the CEATEC conference this month in Japan, Toshiba and Intel announced some of their upcoming plans to more easily allow companies to keep track of their energy usage. In this “Green Age,” it’s no surprise to see major players in the technology world coming forward with big developments that allow more regulation and monitoring of the amount of energy being used. Below are a few of the ecologically-forward changes and additions these two companies announced they will be implementing in 2012.

Intel

PC users will be able to monitor the energy consumption of their PC with the application Intel has developed. With an easy to read dashboard where the data is organized and displayed in graphs, charts, and statistics, you will be able to much more easily see how your computer is using energy.

Toshiba

Toshiba is combining their recently acquired Landish Gyr smart-meter tech with some of their own developments to bring a “smart home” offering to the table. The “smart home” gives people awareness of the energy consumption within their homes. Toshiba is also developing a variety of cloud technologies for energy monitoring that will be available to many different types of industries including healthcare and city infrastructure.

While these two companies have big plans for energy monitoring in 2012, it seems as though a lot of companies in the US are moving away from it, namely, Microsoft and Google. In June, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Hohm, their energy-monitoring service launched in 2009. Google also seems to be changing its green game by shutting down Google Powermeter, which they also launch in 2009.

We can see that though companies in the US are moving away from energy monitoring, companies in Japan are focused on it. What will the future be for the green technology world? It’s hard to say, but if you have any ideas or speculations about this, we would love to hear them!

Terminal IT Support

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Is it worth upgrading your computer's warranty?

This week, I just wanted to touch upon something that I get asked about all the time: warranties.

We service a lot of computers, but the majority are laptops.  All laptops come with a warranty, which usually lasts 1 year.  The question that gets posed to me is often "Is it worth upgrading the warranty for my machine?"

The answer tends to vary by machine (and manufacturer).  Your basic warranty usually covers hardware failures, such as a screen going bad or a hard drive failing.  First of all, you can extend that warrany (at a cost) to 2, 3, or 4 years.  The cost is not usually too high and if you intend  to keep the laptop for a while without adding upgrades, then in my opinion it is worth the price. 

You can also upgrade the type of warranty, such as adding onsite repair.  If something goes wrong with your hardware, a technician will come to your site after a quick call!  Some people like this, but I do not know if it makes much of a difference.

The last type I will talk about is accidental damage. Now, for me, this is one I always consider a good investment.  Most of the time it cover spills, which as someone who fixes computers, I can tell you is the number one accidental killer of laptops.  If you have this coverage and you spill coffee, soda, or beer into your laptop, it will be repaired at no charge.  When I have to tell someone that his or her 2 month old laptop is not covered and the system board is $900 to replace, they do not like it and nor do I.

Just something to think about.

Have a great weekend.

Kristen Hewes - Hardware Technician

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Tipping over the edge.

This week, I'm following up with some more tips and shortcuts.  These are random and can speed things up nicely!

1. Adding Internet Prefixes and Suffixes

You can quickly add the www. and the .com to anything typed in the address bar by pressing Ctrl-Enter! I use this all the time and cuts down on the typing.

2.  The Windows key.

Here are a list of things that the windows key can do!

Win                       Press windows key to open start menu

Win+R                  Apply to open Run dialog box                            

Win+M                  Apply to minimize all opened windows                                

Win+Shift+M         Apply to maximize all opened windows                                 

Win+L                   Press keys to lock keyboard in windows XP                                 

Win+E                   Press keys to open My Computer                                

Win+F                   Apply to open search options                                 

Win+U                  Apply keys to open Utility Manager                                   

Win+D                  To view desktop/minimize all windows                                   

Win+F1                 To view the detail windows help page                                          

Win+Pause            To view the System Properties dialog box                               

Win+Tab               Move through taskbar programs                             

Win+F+Ctrl           Apply to open search for computers

And last but not least:

3.  Browsing Your Computer via the Address Toolbar?

You can open any web page without opening the browser.  Windows will open your browser and open your web page.  You can do this if you put an Address Bar on your Taskbar:

Right click on your system taskbar > go to Toolbars and then click the Address option.  Here you will see a mark on Address option.  After this Address Bar will appear on your system taskbar, you can open any web page by typing the URL name here and press Enter.

You can also browse files and folders on your computer by using the Address Bar. Simply type drive letter like C:\ , D:\ in Address Bar and press Enter.

Have a great weekend.

Kristen Hewes - Hardware Technician

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!