This scam has been around for some time now but recently two of our customers contacted us to let us know they had been on the recieving end of this..
It's a phone scam currently operating in the UK, the caller identifies themselves as an official from Microsoft and will tell you that your computer is infected, they will try to get you to install a program called Teamviewer. Do not follow there instructions as this will allow them access to your computer and all it's contents. Hang up the phone Immediately!. More can be read here... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/18/phone-scam-india-call-centres
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vista sp1 bootmgr missing
Recently had this issue with an Advent laptop where by it would not boot into windows, the message "BOOTMGR is missing" - press Ctrl+Alt Delete to continue was displayed. This occured imediately after installing SP1 for Windows Vista Home Premium. After some serious head scratching and then finally checking the BIOS I find that the boot order has changed from IDE Hdd to USB CD Rom. On changing this back to IDE Hdd it managed to start properly. If you have this problem and need to get into the bios, you'll usually see which key to press listed as soon as the power button is pressed. failing that try some of the default buttons - F1, F2, Del, Esc or F12. It will depend on which motherboard/manufacturer your pc or laptop is to which button you have to press. Once in the bios settings look for "Boot Order" and adjust accordingly. Be very careful not to change anything else in here as it can be very bad if the wrong setting gets changed. If you live in Milton Keynes or the surrounding area and have a problem similar to this I'm sure we'll be able to help you - just goto our Computer Repairs page or Laptop Repairs and you'll be able to arrange for an engineer to visit and repair.
PC on a go slow?
Think very carefully before being pursuaded to part with money on some web sites that promise to ‘speed up your pc’ in exchange for a £15/£20 payment. Typically, these type of services (a) don’t work (b) can actually slow down your PC and (3) can be a nightmare to uninstall when you want to get rid of them. If your PC is running a bit slowly, the most likely answer to your problem (assuming it hasn’t ground to a halt) is that you need an upgrade probally more RAM. If you think you need more RAM / Memory or a good tune up then contact us now to arrange a visit by one of our qualified experts.
Five ways to speed up your PC or Laptop
Gradually over time your computer or laptop will become slower as it becomes clogged up with files and programs you probally no longer use or need. Here's some techinques / programs which should help you get back up to speed..
Disk Defragmenter - This is used to speed up access to your data and is normally found in the same place as the disk cleanup, Disk Defragmenter can be used to tidy all your files and programs and this will allow the machine to find files & programs much quicker - it's a bit like tidying your desk at the end of the day, it's much quicker to find things the following day if it's some sort of order.
Check Disk - Used to check the integrity of files stored on your hard disk. This can be found by opening "My Computer" or "Computer" on Windows 7 and Vista machines and then right clicking the C:\ drive and then opening "properties" from the menu that appears. In the properties dialog box select the "Tools" tab and then click the "Check Now" button. Make sure the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" tick box is selected and click start. (Only select "Automatically fix file system errors" if you believe the disk contains bad sectors.)
Windows Updates - Ensure you have all of the Windows updates, without them you leave your machine open to all sorts of nasties, these will hamper your computer's performance and will lead to all sorts problems.
There are alot more tools we would normally use to cleanup a computer but these should at least make some improvement. Please don't hestitate to contact us for further advice or even to book a FREE Health Check.
Disk Cleanup - This can be used to free up disk space and can be found by going to Start\Programs\Accessories\System Tools and once run it will check your machine for any temporary windows & Internet files that are no longer required and anything else that is no longer being used. It's safe to select all the files it suggests to remove and then select "Clean up system files".
Disk Defragmenter - This is used to speed up access to your data and is normally found in the same place as the disk cleanup, Disk Defragmenter can be used to tidy all your files and programs and this will allow the machine to find files & programs much quicker - it's a bit like tidying your desk at the end of the day, it's much quicker to find things the following day if it's some sort of order.
Check Disk - Used to check the integrity of files stored on your hard disk. This can be found by opening "My Computer" or "Computer" on Windows 7 and Vista machines and then right clicking the C:\ drive and then opening "properties" from the menu that appears. In the properties dialog box select the "Tools" tab and then click the "Check Now" button. Make sure the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" tick box is selected and click start. (Only select "Automatically fix file system errors" if you believe the disk contains bad sectors.)
Windows Updates - Ensure you have all of the Windows updates, without them you leave your machine open to all sorts of nasties, these will hamper your computer's performance and will lead to all sorts problems.
There are alot more tools we would normally use to cleanup a computer but these should at least make some improvement. Please don't hestitate to contact us for further advice or even to book a FREE Health Check.
Online Data Backup – Dropbox
Just thought I’d write a few words about this software as we’ve been using it here for some time now and thought that others should know what a great program it is. It’s easy to install and use and the best thing about it – it’s free ! . Well the basic package is which gives you 2GB of storage space free and then there’s the paid for version which gives up to 100GB.
It’s file sharing made simple, you start off with 2Gb of free space and for everyone you recommend and they start using it you get another 250mb of free space. It’s available on the internet on any machine and also mobile devices. Allows you to share any type of file between family, friends etc and also allows you to control the level of access everyone has to those files.
Give it a try here dropbox.com and let us know what you think below..
McAffee vs Nod32 Smart Security
Once again McAffee anti virus fails to protect one of our customers machines, we end up removing and installing a proper anti virus package – Eset Nod32.
This detected the virus (Fake Security Suite) and removed it within seconds.
We swear by this product and have used for some time now, not only does it allow us to quickly and efficiently remove viruses from customers machines, it also gives the customers machine a new lease of life as the memory it uses to run is less than half the amount than say Norton, McAffe, Kasperky etc. If you think you may have a virus and need expert help, don't hesitate to contact us here
This detected the virus (Fake Security Suite) and removed it within seconds.
We swear by this product and have used for some time now, not only does it allow us to quickly and efficiently remove viruses from customers machines, it also gives the customers machine a new lease of life as the memory it uses to run is less than half the amount than say Norton, McAffe, Kasperky etc. If you think you may have a virus and need expert help, don't hesitate to contact us here
VideoLan VLC Media Player
We’ve been using this software for a number of years now and swear by it for playing movie / video files – it has the ability to play just about any video file format you throw at it and has the added benefit of being very lightweight in it’s memory usage allowing the quality to be very good. Best of all it’s open source, which means it’s free..
Here’s the link to download…
VLC Media Player
And if you use this software or like it please leave a comment below..
Here’s the link to download…
VLC Media Player
And if you use this software or like it please leave a comment below..
Trojan.Fakealert virus removal …
Ok – we’ve seen several machines lately with this virus and so thought we would try and help others remove it
First the Symptoms :-
- Very slow on startup and increasingly gets slower
- Constant pop-ups warning of virus infections
- Desktop is changed to display the image opposite
- Internet explorer will not open any web pages
- Boot PC or laptop into “Safe Mode with networking” normally by pressing F8 key as soon as machine is powered on
- Download & Install latest version of Malware Bytes from here
- With network cable plugged ensure Malware Bytes is up to date with latest updates. (Choose “Updates” tab and click “Update”
- Run a full scan using Malwarebytes
- Once it is finished click “select all” to select all nasties that it has found and go ahead and remove them.
- Restart the machine normally
- Goto Internet explorer and then run the Eset Online scanner from here
- Suggest also downloading SuperAntiSpyware free version and get the update and then again run a full scan and remove anything it finds.
- Remove whatever Anti Virus package your using as it’s obviously not doing the job it is meant for and buy yourself a copy of Eset Smart Security from here
