PC Medic

LizaMoon - anatomy of a PC infection

2011-04-07T09:56:00.000+01:00

The following article from Windows Secrets gives a good account of how your machine can become infected with a rogue security program via a piece of malware known as LizaMoon.

LizaMoon infection: a blow-by-blow account
By Fred Langa

A nasty piece of malware known as LizaMoon has hijacked links on millions of websites in the past weeks, including some normally safe iTunes and Google links.

Fortunately, LizaMoon is easy to avoid if you know what to look for.

Using rogue-AV scare tactics, LizaMoon tries to trick you into running bogus security-scan and virus-cleanup tools on your PC — but it's pure malware.

If allowed onto your PC, this particular ploy is especially troublesome because it can partially disable the Windows Security Center and change the Registry so that the full WSC can't be restarted. It also interferes with Microsoft Security Essentials, if MSE is running. (You'll find lots more LizaMoon news coverage via Google.)

My encounter with LizaMoon started unexpectedly one evening when a suspicious warning popped up on my screen. As discussed in a previous Top Story, I use Microsoft Security Essentials and the Windows 7 firewall to protect all of my PCs. In over a year of constant use, I'd never had any malware trouble. But that abruptly changed.

That evening, I was searching for something through Google — I don't recall what. When I clicked a link, a blank page overlaid with the dialog in Figure 1 popped up instead of the site I was expecting.

Figure 1. A real LizaMoon initial dialog, captured in the wild.

My mental alarm bells immediately started ringing — the dialog was identified as a Message from webpage. But why was a random, external webpage displaying what looked like a local security message?

Also, how could a random webpage know what was installed on my system (suspicious programs or not)? The warning made no sense.

There was plenty more to suggest that the dialog was bogus. For example, the third sentence is in fractured English — Microsoft dialogs aren't like that. And the kicker: I keep my system very clean, so the odds that it would suddenly contain "a variety of suspicious programs" are virtually nil.

Then it struck me. I'd encountered a for-real LizaMoon page hijack, in the wild!

Typically, when you encounter any suspicious webpage dialog, the correct procedure is to immediately dismiss it via the red-X close box in the upper-right corner of the dialog box or to simply close the browser. (If needed, you also can use Windows' Task Manager to kill offending software or its processes.)

Next, if you think you might have a security problem, you should manually launch known-good security tools directly from reliable sources. In no case should you ever launch unknown software triggered by visits to random websites.

In my case, however, this was exactly the kind of malware I'd been looking for to test. In the past few months, readers reported encountering new malware that masquerades as a security tool — malware that disables or bypasses Microsoft Security Essentials. I'd been trying to track it down for weeks. And suddenly, there it was.

Living dangerously: taking the malware's bait
Given this unexpected opportunity, I took a deep breath and clicked OK, knowing full well that I was voluntarily giving the webpage permission to interact with my PC.

A new webpage opened, showed a flurry of fake "scanning" activity (most likely, just an animated .gif), and then reported a huge number of discovered viruses and security problems.

I knew my system was clean, so this report of widespread infection was clearly fake. But because the page layout and icons closely mimic those of familiar Windows tools, it could easily fool casual users into thinking that the alert was real.

After a minute of fake scanning activity, a new dialog opened — offering to "Remove all" the threats (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Clicking "Remove all" on this fake security dialog starts the malware download. Find a way to close the dialog, as discussed in the text.

The new dialog set off more of my internal alarm bells. Windows normally identifies the software or subsystem involved in security alerts — such as the Action Center, the Security Center, Security Essentials, or whatnot. A dialog simply labeled "Windows Security Alert" is suspiciously generic.

And what's this about "Windows Defender"? That's Microsoft's standalone anti-malware tool that ships with Vista and Win7 and is available as a free download (page) for XP. The forerunner of the more complete Microsoft Security Essentials, it's deactivated when you install MSE. Since I have MSE active on my system, I shouldn't be hearing from Windows Defender.

At that point, you'd normally try to dismiss the warning by clicking on the red X. To see what would happen next, I clicked "Remove all," knowing I was inviting trouble.

(If you're keeping count — and I did — you'll know this was my second entirely voluntary action leading to infection.)

A real and quite legitimate Windows file-download security warning opened, as shown in Figure 3. But while the previous dialog discussed "Windows Defender," this dialog box asked permission to download an installer for "Internet Defender." What's more, the dialog clearly showed that the file was from a site calledupdate65.saceck.co.cc — not Microsoft!

Clearly, the LizaMoon authors are confident that people do not pay attention to these details.

Figure 3. This dialog box has several naming inconsistencies: the previous dialog mentioned Windows Defender, but this one offers something called Internet Defender. It also isn't coming from a known address, such as Microsoft.com.

Ignoring yet another opportunity to bail out before being infected, I clicked the Save button and entering the location where the file should be saved (the third voluntary action on the path to infection).

My hard-drive light flickered briefly and I swallowed hard, knowing that a malicious payload had just been delivered to my personal PC. (Yes, my system was fully backed up and my sensitive data encrypted.)

Ready or not, the malicious payload arrives
I intended to disconnect my PC from the network before the malware ran, assuming that going offline would keep any system damage local and no personal data could be exported.

But there must have been a script running somewhere, because the malware installer immediately attempted to self-start. Fortunately, Windows reported an NSIS error (see Figure 4). NSIS is SourceForge's Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, and the error means that an installation script failed an integrity check.

Figure 4. The first sign of trouble after downloading the malware

Following the link given with the NSIS Error opens a sourceforge.net page advising you to "Update your anti-virus software" and to "Scan for, and remove malware and viruses on your system."

Microsoft.com's "NSIS Error" page states that, among other possible causes, "Your PC is infected with a virus." It adds, "Thoroughly scan your PC for possible virus or spyware infections." The page even provides a direct link to Microsoft's free online safety scanner (site) and to a discussion of how to remove viruses and malware.

I took none of that advice but did disconnect from the network. Taking yet another deep breath (and my fourth voluntary action), I clicked OK, which let the malware installer run to completion.

The malware goes active and disables my security
Immediately after I clicked OK, my system went haywire.

First, the Windows Security Center was compromised (see Figure 5), and I could not manually relaunch it — proof that my system was infected.

Figure 5. The infection immediately disabled the Windows Security Center.

Next, the downloaded malware opened a new, fake, scanning window. Calling itself "System Defender," it claimed to have discovered numerous malware apps. Trying to learn what I could about the bogus software, I opened its Help/About menu, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Superficially, this dialog looks quite legit. But it fails closer inspection — it can't even keep its name straight!

In previous dialog boxes, the malware identified itself as "Windows Security" and "Windows Defender." Now it's simultaneously "System Defender" and "Internet Defender." No valid software product goes by four separate names in the same instance.

Of course, the point of all this smoke-and-mirrors chicanery is confusion — to extort you into paying to activate the software and "remove" the supposed infections. But the only real infection is LizaMoon itself.

I was certain that clicking the malware's Remove All button would bring me to a payment site. But because I didn't want to reconnect to the Net while the malware was still active on my machine, I left the above dialog alone and waited to see what would happen.

Every few minutes, the malware would pop up other warnings, such as the one in Figure 7. There were many others.

Figure 7. The fake virus warning got more urgent — and more illogical and ungrammatical. This nonsensical message states that a firewall has somehow detected keylogging in a social network.

Throughout this time, Microsoft Security Essentials was silent — a major disappointment. However, every few minutes the Windows Security Center would wave the flag (via a dialog box) and urge me to "Turn on Windows Security Center service (Important)."

LizaMoon blocked attempts to restart the Security Center service and hid itself from MSE.

Microsoft Security Essentials: first failure
I have to say I'm disappointed that Microsoft Security Essentials didn't detect or prevent this infection. It should have, and I hope Microsoft patches MSE pronto.

On the other hand, deliberate choices and actions by a user can defeat any software. LizaMoon required my active, voluntary involvement four different times before the infection took hold.

LizaMoon wasn't even subtle: I had plenty of warnings and opportunities to abort the process, the malware itself provided abundant clues to its own bogus nature (such as an inability to keep its aliases straight).

The lesson? Using security tools is no substitute for common sense. Malware like this is actually very easy to avoid, if you pay attention to what's going up on your screen.

Thoroughly read all dialogs — especially unexpected ones and ones pertaining to installing new software. Ask yourself if the warning really make sense. If you have any suspicions at all, dismiss such dialogs via the red-X close box or, if that fails, by using the aforementioned built-in Task Manager (more info).

Immediately run your favorite suite of security tools, such as the ones mentioned above.

Remember: You won't get infected with LizaMoon (and similar malware) unless you allow it!

Beware the Scammers

2011-03-24T10:00:00.000Z

A good article courtesy of WindowsSecrets.com

As disasters spread, so do online scammers

WindowsSecrets.com

As disasters spread, so do online scammers. The outpouring of generosity from people all over the world following the earthquake in Japan has been accompanied by a profusion of donation scams.

The Great HDMI Cable Rip-Off

2011-02-04T09:35:00.000Z

A friend rang me from PC world last weekend asking me what kind of HDMI cable he needed to connect an X-Box to his HDTV. My answer was "The cheapest 1m cable you can find". I have four HDMI cables connected to my TV (XBox, PS3, BD player and HDTV receiver and none of them cost more than €7 (two cost me €4.99) and they all work perfectly. When I met my friend later in the day he told me that the cheapest cable he could find was a Belkin 1m cable that was priced at €44 - but when he got it to the checkout at PC World the price was showing at €56! To my mind it is nothing short of a rip-off to sell a 1m HDMI cable for more than €10. Some manufacturers make inflated claims or dress up their product descriptions with marketing voodoo such as triple-layered shielding, high-purity copper conductors, and nitrogen gas-injected dielectric. The bottom line is that as long as the cable is HDMI 1.3 compliant it will do the job. For more details read CNET's article.

Phone Problems

2010-12-20T17:09:00.000Z

We've had a few problems with our phone recently since we moved over to UPC and customers will sometimes experience our office phone (2980762) ringing out without giving them the opportunity to leave a message on our voicemail. We have notified the problem to UPC but the best suggestion they can make is for us to reboot our modem once per week. If you experience difficulty contacting us on 2980762 then try 086-8178678 instead.

Rogue Security Software

2010-11-22T10:08:00.002Z

We continue to see a high incidence of PCs infected with Rogue Security programs so we thought it might be useful to provide some detail about this form of malware for our readers (inforation courtesy of WikiPedia).

Rogue security software is a form of computer malware that deceives or misleads users into paying for the fake or simulated removal of malware, or that installs other malware. Rogue security software, in recent years (2008-2010), has become a growing and serious security threat in desktop computing.

Rogue security software mainly relies on social engineering (fraud) in order to defeat the security built into modern operating system and browser software and install itself onto victims' computers.A website may for example display a fictitious warning dialog stating that someone's machine is infected, and encouraging them through social engineering to install or purchase scareware.

Propagation

Most have a Trojan horse component, which users are misled into installing. The Trojan may be disguised as:

A browser plug-in or extension (typically toolbar)
An image, screensaver or archive file attached to an e-mail message
Multimedia codec required to play a certain video clip
Software shared on peer-to-peer networks
A free online malware scanning service

Some rogue security software, however, propagate onto users computers as drive-by downloads which exploit security vulnerabilities in web browsers, pdf viewers, or e-mail clients to install themselves without any manual interaction.^[3]^[5]

More recently, malware distributors have been utilizing SEO poisoning techniques by pushing infected URLs to the top of search engine results about recent news events. People looking for articles on such events on a search engine may encounter results that, upon being clicked, are instead redirected through a series of sites before arriving at a landing page that says that their machine is infected and pushes a download to a "trial" of the rogue program. A 2010 study by Google found 11,000 domains hosting fake anti-virus software, accounting for 50% of all malware deliverd via internet advertising.

Operation

Alerting the user with the fake or simulated detection of malware or pornography.Once installed, the rogue security software may then attempt to entice the user into purchasing a service or additional software by:

Displaying an animation simulating a system crash and reboot.
Selectively disabling parts of the system to prevent the user from uninstalling them. Some may also prevent anti-malware programs from running, disable automatic system software updates and block access to websites of anti-malware vendors.
Installing actual malware onto the computer, then alerting the user after "detecting" them. This method is less common as the malware is likely to be detected by legitimate anti-malware programs.
Altering system registries and security settings, then "alerting" the user.

Developers of rogue security software may also entice people into purchasing their product by claiming to give a portion of their sales to a charitable cause. The rogue Green antivirus, for example, claims to donate $2 to an environmental care program for each sale made.

Some rogue security software overlaps in function with scareware by also:

Presenting offers to fix urgent performance problems or perform essential housekeeping on the computer.
Scaring the user by presenting authentic-looking pop-up warnings and security alerts, which may mimic actual system notices. These are intended to leverage the trust of the user in vendors of legitimate security software.

Sanction by the FTC and the increasing effectiveness of anti-malware tools since 2006 have made it difficult for spyware and adware distribution networks—already complex to begin with—to operate profitably. Malware vendors have turned instead to the simpler, more profitable business model of rogue security software, which is targeted directly at users of desktop computers.

Rogue security software is often distributed through highly-lucrative affiliate networks, in which affiliates supplied with Trojan kits for the software are paid a fee for every successful installation, and a commission from any resulting purchases. The affiliates then become responsible for setting up infection vectors and distribution infrastructure for the software. An investigation by security researchers into the Antivirus XP 2008 rogue security software found just such an affiliate network, in which members were grossing commissions upwards of $USD150,000 from tens of thousands of successful installations per month.

A problematic Dell

2010-11-19T18:10:00.000Z

Once in a while we get a machine into the workshop for repair that turns out to be a real head scratcher. One such unit was collected from a customer last week and it has taken a while to get to the bottom of it. It was a Dell Inspiron 530 that failed to post when powered up. The fans would spin and the power light would remain steady amber indicating a problem with either the power supply unit or motherboard.

We first swapped out the PSU for a known good one, but the symptoms remained the same. Since the PC was 2 1/2 years old the customer and the customer did not want to spend much on the repair we figured that a replacement motherboard would be outside the customer's spend. Just to be on the safe side we checked the warranty status with Dell by entering the unit's service tag number in their support site and we were pleasantly surprised (as was the customer) to find that there were 155 days remaining of a three year warranty. So we called in Dell to do the repair.

A Dell contract technician arrived with a replacement motherboard, swapped the old one for the new one and, voila, the same symptoms persisted. The technician contacted Dell again and it was deemed that the problem was a faulty input/output panel switch which was duly ordered. The next day the technician reappeared with the part, fitted it and, again no change in the symptoms. At this stage he started to suspect the power supply but I told him that we had already checked with a known good PSU. He asked if I had a good PSU we could try so we hooked one up and, lo and behold, the unit posted. So the technician concluded that both the original PSU and motherboard had failed simultaneously - a reasonable conclusion under the circumstances.

To update service tag number associated with the new motherboard the technician needed to reboot the unit and enter the BIOS. Unfortunately, as soon as he rebooted the original symptoms returned. A this point he surmised that the PSUs were blowing due to a possible short in the motherboard/case. However, I brought the PSU that was connected and the original PSU still in the case and mounted them in a Dell Dimension on the work bench - in both cases the unit booted without problems, ruling out the PSU as a problem.

At this point there was, understandably, much head scratching going on and DELL HQ was again contacted by the technician. The conclusion was that another new motherboard and a new PSU would be dispatched in an attempt to resolve the problem. And they duly arrived this morning along with Tony the technician who replaced the parts and, much to his dismay, the same problem arose. The only thing that hasn't been changed at this point is the processor. So Tony (we're on first name terms now) called in again to Dell and the next step is they are taking it in to their repair facility next Monday for a 6-8 day stay. I'll take the hard drive out before they collect it to make sure the customer's data stays intact. Will keep you posted on progress.

Speaking of Harvey Norman...

2010-11-18T10:12:00.000Z

We have a regular customer who recently needed a new all-in-one printer with fax and went to Harvey Norman in Nutgrove where they came away with a HP model that cost in the region of €250. They got PC Medic to install it which only took half an hour and all seemed fine. A few days later they called us to say that the printer was mysteriously going offline at random times. After much digging about we found that this was a documented problem with this model of printer and that while a few different solutions were proposed, none of them worked in our case.

So the printer was packed up and brought back to Harvey Norman and the manager there had no hesitation in replacing it for a slightly dearer Brother model at no extra cost. It was great to see a retailer taking their responsibilities to consumers seriously when a problem arises with goods. Needless to say we now point our customers to Harvey Norman's for printers and such like when the opportunity arises. Go Harvey Norman Go!

Great value printer

2010-11-17T10:06:00.001Z

We came across Brother's DCP-195C all-in-one printer in Harvey Norman's in The Park, Carrickmines a few days back and bought one fo a customer who needed a new low cost printer. For €75.00 this was a real bargain. Easy to install, quiet and includes scan and copy functions, PictBridge to allow printing directly from a camera and memory card slots - this is a bargain. Not the fastest printer in the world but good quality output and a small footprint. We like it.

Dropbox - Simple Data Backup and Synchronisation

2010-11-16T12:33:00.003Z

If there is one thing that customers tend to put on the long finger it's data backup. Time and again we've come across cases of lost data through crashed hard drives where the user has an external hard drive for six months that they just never got around to setting up. Now we've spoken before of how we like to use Cobian Backup with our external hard drives to automate our backup. But if your backup requirements are simple consider Dropbox.

Dropbox is an internet file back up/sharing system that gives you 2.0GB of backup storage for free - over that amount and you have to pay for it at a reasonable price. The mechanics of using it are simple.

1. Create a Dropbox account
2. Download and install the Dropbox installer
3. Copy the files you want to back up to the Dropbox folder created by the installer.

And that's it. Files copied to your Dropbox folder are uploaded automatically to Dropbox's servers for safe storage. But there's more. If you have a second desktop or laptop you can synchronise the files between your two PCs. Simply run the Dropbox installer on your second PC, login to your drop box account and the files in your first PC will appear in the Dropbox folder on your second PC. Thereafter, files added to either Dropbox folder will automatically replicate to the other, keeping your files synchronised between the two PCs.

Not recommended for backing up your 30GB music or photo collection, but if you want to keep those important Word and Excel files safe you'll be hard pressed to find a simpler solution.

Bogus Telephone Support

2010-08-03T10:00:00.004+01:00

Three of our customers have recently reported to us that they have received phone calls purporting to be from a company called Online PC Care, which appear to have originated in an Indian call centre. The caller will try to persuade you that your computer is either suffering from a series of errors (they will ask you to open the Windows EventViewer to show you that such errors exist) or they will try to convince you that your PC is overloaded with junk files. They may try to persuade you to allow them to take remote control of your PC to address the issues they have highlighted. They will proceed to try to get you to sign up for a service contract. While there may be a legitimate company called Online PC Care, the callers our customers spoke to would appear to be operating a scam to collect money and/or credit card details from customers who fall for the scam. One customer reported that the caller became abusive when she refused to sign up for a subscription and the caller repeatedly called back every half hour for an afternoon. The caller reported the number to Eircom but was told that, although there were other reports of complaints against the number there was nothing Eircom could do as the calls originated outside Eircom's jurisdiction.

If you receive a call similar to the one described above we would recommend that you terminate the call at the earliest opportunity - the longer you engage them the harder they will try to persuade you. Under no circumstances should you allow them to take control of your PC remotely, nor should you give them credit card details.

Update: A customer has today notified us that a company calling itself Virtual PC Doctor contacted them and that their modus operandi was identical to that described above for Online PC Care. Be aware that they may operate under a number of different guises.

O2 Mobile Broadband Solutions

2010-05-13T17:03:00.006+01:00

PC Medic is currently in the process of trialling mobile telecoms provider O2's range of mobile broadband solutions and so far the results of our trials are very promising. So much so in fact that we are in the process of signing up as resellers for O2's range of mobile broadband devices and we hope to be in a position to offer these products to our customers in the next week or so.

To date we have been trialling three different 3G-based mobile broadband devices: the Huawei 1752; the Sierra Wireless 302; and the Qualcomm GlobeSurfer III. Both the Huawei and Sierra Wireless modems are USB dongle devices that are both easy to set up and use. Like all hardware devices that are to be used with a computer both a software driver and interface utility must be installed before the device will work. This is where installation of the dongles is an absolute breeze. When you plug the dongle into a USB port on your computer (either Windows or Apple) the installation procedure begins automatically. This makes it so easy for even the most reticent computer user to get up and running. Within 80 seconds of plugging the device into a USB port you're all set to access broadband.

So how do these 3G-based dongles compare to fixed copper (Eircom) or fibre-based (UPC/NTL) lines. Well, like most things in life, that depends. And what it depends upon is (mainly) your proximity to a mobile telephone mast. This is because this system of mobile broadband is based on the same technology used for mobile voice telephony. So what kind of broadband speeds can you expect? Well, where we are located is just "OK" for mobile phone reception. Nonetheless, we have been able to achieve download speeds of 3.72 MBit/S for the Sierra model and 3.28 MBit/S for the Huawei model. While the theoretical maximum download speed is 7.2 MBit/S it is highly unlikely that you will achieve this unless you have an O2 mast on your chimney and are in a low contention area. However, if you currently have a 3 MBit/S service from, for example, Eircom, you will probably be lucky to get 2.5 MBit/S on average. So in this regard the dongle can perform as well as fixed line broadband.

I say "can" because depending on you exact geographic location, and the prevailing weather conditions, your speed may drop off considerably. In fact the dongles allow a number of different data transmission protocols to be used for communication and will automatically select the best available at any point in time. These are, in order of best to worst, HSDPA, UMTS and EDGE. If your signal only allows use of the EDGE protocol you are down to maximum download speeds of 384 KBit/S. At these download speeds it feels more like dial-up than broadband, but you are still able to get on-line.

The product that we really like is the GlobeSurfer III. This is a 3G mobile wireless modem router that can be plugged in anywhere that there is a power socket and multiple PCs or laptops can simultaneously access the internet. In addition, the unit has two ethernet ports for wired connections to PCs or games consoles, a USB port for shared printers or external storage device, and has voice telephony and SMS options that we haven't yet got around to exploring. Potentially this device could replace your fixed-line (copper or fibre) service, providing you are in a good reception area. You can unplug the unit from the wall in your home, throw it in your weekend bag and bring it with you to your hotel/B&B/holiday home and have wireless internet access as soon as you plug it into the power at your destination (subject to signal reception).

Because you don't know whether you are in a good reception area or not you might be reluctant to sign up for a fixed term contract for one of these devices, and that's understandable. Because O2 has generously provided PC Medic with a number of trial devices of each unit described above, we are in a position where we can provide all our existing customers with these units to try at their leisure for a week or two before deciding if they provide a solution for them. All our customers will receive an e-mail in the coming weeks giving more details of this program.

Disc Slow Down for XP Users

2010-03-25T11:00:00.002Z

Tactics used to make new hard drives more efficient could cause problems for Windows XP users. It may mean any new drive bought after next year could be noticeably slower to use on the operating system.
The issue involves the way hard drives are broken down into individual sectors. Until now, it has always been standard for hard drive sectors to be 512 bytes in size. However, not all of each sector is used for storing data. Instead, there is a marker to denote the start of the sector: a space used for codes which are used to check if there is any error with the sector and its contents, and a space between each sector. (Source: arstechnica.com)
The larger the drive, the more sectors there are, and thus the more space unavailable for data storage. While this wasn't a problem in the past, with today's larger drives it has become a significant issue.

512 Byte Sector Limit Scrapped Next Year
The International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA), the global body for drive manufacturers, has now agreed that all drives produced after January next year will use sectors which are 4 kilobytes, which is 8 times larger in size than the standard 512 bytes.
The 4 kilobyte sectors have two beneficial effects: first, it cuts down the amount of disk space used simply for spaces between sectors by seven-eighths (87.5%). Second, it allows more space in each sector to be used for error correction codes. This should drastically increase the reliability of drives.

XP Users Could See 10% Dip in Performance
The problem comes from the fact that while Vista and Windows 7 were both designed with 4K sectors in mind, XP was created long before the industry had decided it would eventually be a standard successor to 512 bytes.
XP can work with a 4K sector based drive, but will simply treat it as if it used 512 byte sectors. This will be fine for reading information, but will introduce an adjustment step when writing to make sure the data fits the sectors correctly. Though this will only take an additional 5 milliseconds, that works out as a decrease in speed of up to 10%, which is likely to be a noticeable deterioration, especially with many files stored on the drive.

Later Systems Unaffected
In addition to Vista and Windows 7, all versions of Apple's OS X system from Tiger (released in 2005) onwards will work fine with the new drives. Most modern Linux based systems should be OK and, being open source, it's much easier to upgrade those which aren't. (Source: bbc.co.uk)
For XP users, it may be a judgment call as to whether the problem is disruptive enough to justify updating to a later operating system at the same time as getting a new drive.

New Dell Vostro Laptops

2010-03-23T11:35:00.005Z

We have been a big fan of the Dell Vostro 1520 since it's release a couple of years ago and any of our customers that we supplied with it have been happy campers. So we were sorry to hear that the 1520 (and the 17" screened 1720) are being discontinued in favor of the newly released Vostro 3000 series. The 3500 will be the replacement for the old 1520, with the 3300 and 3700 replacing the 1320 and 1720 variants.

The 3500, which interests us the most, comes with Intel Core i3 and Core i5 options. The Intel Core i3-330M is a lower-middle class dual core CPU for laptops and clocks with 2.16 GHz. The difference to the Core i5-430M is the lacking Turbo Boost overclocking and the slower core speed. Each core is based on the Nehalem (Westemere) micro-architecture. Hyperthreading enables the Dual Core CPU to handle 4 threads at once (for a better usage of the pipeline).

The Intel Core i5-430M is a fast middle class dual core CPU for laptops and clocks (due to the Turbo Mode) from 2.26 to 2.53 GHz. Each core is based on the Nehalem (Westemere) micro-architecture. Hyperthreading enables the Dual Core CPU to handle 4 threads at once (for a better usage of the pipeline). Compared to the faster Core i7-620M, the 430M only has 3 MB Level 3 Cache, missing VT-d, Trusted Execution, and AES features and a lower clock speed.

The new 3300 models seem to tick all the boxes, with built in webcam, 802.11n wireless, Windows 7 in 32 and 64 bit flavours, 3-4 GB Ram as standard, good sized hard discs and good looks (see the picture above). We have ordered our first 3500 with an Intel Core i5-430M processor, 3GB RAM and Windows 7 Home Premium 32-Bit and will post a review when we have it in the workshop.

Cobian Backup

2010-03-22T17:14:00.002Z

Need a good backup solution? Then you should try out the open source Cobian Backup that we have been using for over a year now. One of the issues that we have had with most proprietary backup programs, such as Genie Pro, Acronis, and Norton 360 is that they save the backup files in a compressed proprietary format. While this may save you some time and space it means that if your file becomes corrupt during encoding you won’t be able to recover it. We have had this exact problem in the past and because of this we insist that all backups are now in the native un-encoded file format.

Cobian allows us to do either full, incremental or differential backups using the native file format and can be set up to run as a service, allowing fully automatic backups to be performed. It is flexible, simple to use and, in our experience, very reliable. Oh, and did I mention that it’s free? Check it out.

Blacklisting

2010-03-10T12:01:00.005Z

We had a problem sending e-mail from an Outlook account on one of our laptops last week and discovered that the problem was due to our IP address being blacklisted by one of the Blacklist services used by our ISP UPC. The problem was due to a customer's PC that was in the workshop which was infected by spamming software and which we connected to our network. Once you are blacklisted you have to make a delisting request directly to the Blacklist service provider, not to your ISP (UPC in our case). This can take up to 24 hours before it happens, leaving one without outgoing e-mail on SMTP-based mail clients e.g. Outlook for that period (Gmail and other web-based mail is not affected).

This is the second time that this has happened since we moved to UPC - it never happened us during the 12 years we were with Eircom - perhaps Eircom don't utilize Blacklist services.

Anyway, all is well again and to prevent a recurrence we have blocked port 25 on our router for all IP addresses except the one assigned to our PC using Outlook. Any customer's computer that is infected with spamming malware will now be blocked from sending via SMTP on the blocked port.

Here is the description of blacklists from www.blacklist.ie where you can check your own blacklisting status.

Blacklists are created and managed by anti-spam organisations and are seen as an effective way of punishing known spammers.
Some of the most widely checked blacklists are Spamcop, MAPS blacklist, and SPAMHaus - blacklist.ie checks against these and many more. These organisations publish blacklists of IP addresses that are known spammers. Blacklists are used by thousands of ISPs as part of their defense against spam. A legitimate email system can also end up being blacklisted, resulting in mail delivery problems and subsequent costs for business.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) subscribe to blacklists in order to filter out spam sent across their network or to their subscribers. If you are listed and an ISP checks against the list, your message will not be delivered.

What a Bargain!

2010-02-22T17:26:00.006Z

Clearance sale of second-hand PC from our workshop. This Dell 4700 has been freshly reinstalled with Windows XP SP3 and all updates. It comes with OpenOffice , Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome and Avast Anti Virus. The unit has 512MB RAM, 2.8GHz Pentium IV CPU, 8 USB ports, Ethernet socket, 80GB Hard Disc, Integrated Video and CD/DVD RW. Comes with 6 months hardware warranty. A lovely quiet machine ideal for all home duties (not suitable for playing games - apart from games included with Windows XP). Price without monitor is €205. Price with 17" monitor is €295. Free delivery to Dublin's Southside. Call 086-8178678 and mention blog deal. Mouse mat not included in the price but available from here!

SlingBox Solo

2010-02-17T15:20:00.010Z

The SlingBox is a gizmo that allows you to access TV media from your own TV hardware across the internet. And why might you want to do that I hear you ask. Well, consider someone who has a second house in Spain and wants to watch Fair City live and not miss an episode of the Late Late Show while they are away. Or, indeed, if you are going on holidays to Italy for two weeks but can't bear not cheering your team on in the Sunday Game live then a SlingBox might be for you.

I was aware of the SlingBox from reading reviews of it in the past but had never been up close and personal to one until a customer recently asked if we could set one up with his Sky system. Yesterday I dropped over to the customer and picked up his SlingBox and brought it home to familiarize myself with it's setup.

We have a UPC HD cable box at home that has a SCART socket with composite video-out. I connected the supplied SCART to RCA adapter to the UPC box and connected this to the SlingBox with the supplied Composite A/V cable. Next step was to connect the supplied remote control IR cable to the SlingBox and position the LED to shine on the UPC box IR receiver. Before powering up the box all that remained was to connect the SlingBox to my Netgear router via the supplied ethernet cable. So, everything we needed to make the physical connections is supplied in the box.

Once the hardware is installed it is a case of logging onto Slingmedia's dowload site to download the most up to date version of their SlingPlayer software - this is the application that allows you to watch your TV remotely - I downloaded it onto a Dell netbook running XP on an Atom processor.

When the software is installed it's time to create a SlingBox account and configure your SlingBox to talk to your cable box and your router. This is handled through a step-by-step wizard and I had no problem finding my cable box and router in the configuration options. The only slightly technical step is setting port forwarding on the appropriate port on the router, but the step-by-step wizard holds your hand for this.

Once completed I was able to receive all my TV channels on the laptop and had access to a virtual remote control that mimicked the real one, even down to volume, on/off and programme guide. I tested the picture quality when streaming within my local network and via the internet and there was a significant difference in picture quality between the two, with internet streaming being significantly poorer. This may in part be due to the fact that my upload bit rate is max 256 kbit/s - a higher upload bit rate may provide a better picture. If the picture was viewed in a small window, as opposed to full screen a sharper smoother picture resulted.

During setup I had a couple of issues that held me up. Firstly, positioning the remote control LED was problematic and I finished up using both supplied control LEDs instead of a single one in order to get the virtual remote working properly. Secondly, the UPC cable box we use is connected to our tv with a HDMI cable and, for reasons I don't fully understand, you cannot have HDMI and SCART output simultaneously. This necessitated disconnecting the TV from the cable box while I was using the SlingBox - not SlingBox's fault but less than ideal nonetheless.

The SlingBox is currently available from Amazon.co.uk for £105 and does what it says on the box. However, I feel that this is version 1.0 of this type of media extender and that in a few years we will probably have the type of features offered by the Slingbox built into our TVs and or routers. Until then, Coronation Street on the Costas anyone?

End of a Classic?

2010-02-13T22:51:00.002Z

Word on the forums is that the Logitech Squeezebox Classic is being discontinued to be replaced by the Squeezebox Touch. As a Classic user I will be very sorry to see this very stable incarnation of the Squeezebox discontinued and might just pick up another while they are still available on Amazon.co.uk

Do You Really Need Office?

2010-02-09T13:05:00.004Z

A lot of our customers who purchase a new PC want to get Microsoft Office at the same time and normally pay in the region of €90 for MS Office 2007 Home and Student Edition. In many case MS Works 9.0 is already bundled with the PC but customers feel that they must have Word for their word processing and Excel for their spreadsheets (most home users don't use Powerpoint).

What you should be aware of is that MS Works 9.0 now allows you to open Word and Excel .doc and .xls files and also allows you to save documents and spreadsheets in those formats. So why do you need to spend an extra €90 when you have all the software you need bundled with your PC? The answer, in most cases, is you don't unless you need advanced features like macros and pivot tables.

So before you rush out to buy Office give Works a run around the block. It may be all that you need. And if you do need more horsepower in your office productivity software, there is always OpenOffice.

Music on the Move

2010-02-08T16:46:00.001Z

Here's a shot of the X-mini speaker attached to an ipod mini. Music systems don't come more portable than this!

ReadyNAS Duo

2010-02-08T14:06:00.005Z

We recently deployed a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo (NAS = Network Atttached Storage) in our workshop for general data backup duties. The unit is equipped with 2 x 500GB SATA drives set up in a redundant X-RAID configuration (more information on X-RAID here). The reason we have configured the unit in X-RAID rather than RAID 5 is that we also use the unit for media streaming, which X-RAID is particularly efficient at doing.

Data backup is handled by the open source Cobian Backup 9 program running on the various network computers. We like Cobian because it is free, flexible and allows backups in native file formats with or without compression.

The ReadyNAS Duo is particularly adept at media streaming as it incorporates Logitech's (formerly Slimdevices's) Squeezecenter music streaming software, as well as iTunes Server software. Note that this NAS is really a stripped down computer with 256MB of RAM running Sparc Linux. Access to Squeezcenter is via a web browser on any attached network computer. The only downside is that the web browser is relatively unresponsive, but this does not impact on streaming performance. The NAS is serving music to two Squeezeboxes and a Squeezebox radio and response time via the Squeezebox interfaces is only marginally slower than a PC-based Squeezeserver. The ReadyNAS Duo can happily serve different music to each Squeezebox or synchronize the music on any two or all three units.

We're big Squeezebox fans so more on that anon.

For Sound on the Move

2010-02-07T20:18:00.004Z

Santa was good enough to bring me a very cool device to allow me to hear my music on the move and good goods do come in small packages. The item in question is the X-mini mark II. This is a speaker smaller than a pool ball that screws apart to reveal, believe it or not, a bass unit. Suffice to say that it is the best mobile speaker unit that I have found to date, and at a great price. Details here. If you are in Ireland you can get it from pressieport.ie.

Back on the Blog Trail

2010-02-07T19:56:00.003Z

For various reasons it has been difficult to keep up this blog over the past months and you can see that there has been a significant gap since my last blog. I hope to rectify that and, as they say in the TV industry, "normal service has been resumed". I look forward to sharing with you some of the cool things that we have come across over the past while as well as our usual commentary on what's happening in the world of home computing. Keep in touch.

Beware the €449 Notebook

2008-05-07T09:11:00.004+01:00

A lot of our customers are excited by advertisements that they see for Inspiron notebooks priced at €449 from Dell and similar priced offers from PC World and Harvey Norman. The good news is that, yes, you can buy a new notebook PC for less than €500. The bad news is that you'll probably regret it almost straight away as the performance of such a notebook will be very disappointing.

Question: How do you get a notebook down to €449? Answer: By cutting back on the hardware. The following are things you should note when assessing a potential purchase.

The Processor:
Most bargain basement notebooks use an Intel Celeron or AMD Semperon processor which come from their manufacturer's "value range" of processors. This means that they are cheaper but significantly slower than full-priced processors such as the Pentium and Athlon/Turion processors. Also, you will find that these are generally single-core processors rather than the now standard dual-core processors offered in higher priced models. Dual core processors beat single core processors every time when it comes to speed.

Memory:
We see bargain basement notebooks fitted with 1 GB RAM trying to run Vista Home Premium Edition. Yes, it will run, but like a snail. You cannot get a meaningful experience running Vista Premium on machines with less than 2GB of RAM and for Vista Basic you need 1 GB RAM. Saving money on memory is just mean in our book as memory was never as cheap as it is currently.

Hard Disc:
Budget machines will have budget hard discs, typically 80GB discs running at 5400rpm. In this day and age 80 GB will fill up fast if you have a digital camera or are interested in music and you won't get the performance form a 5400 rpm disc that you would from a 7200 rpm one.

Software:
Many customers who purchased a PC 5 or 6 years ago are horrified to discover that Microsoft Office is no longer bundled "for free" with current models and baulk at the fact that they have to pay extra for it (about €120 for the Home and Student edition which cannot be used in a commercial environment). But pay you must if you want Office.

When you include a faster dual core processor and add extra RAM and a bigger, faster hard disk, Microsoft Office, plus include some of the other options that aren't standard on the budget-priced model, such as built-in webcam, or coloured lid cover then you are looking at closer to €800 to €1000. However, spending this amount gets you a notebook that you will be happy with for some years, rather than a lemon that will leave a sour taste in your mouth.

Windows 7

2008-04-08T09:25:00.003+01:00

While Vista may appear to be a new product to many people upgrading their 2+ year-old PC or notebook, it could already be in the golden years of its product life cycle. Word has it that Microsoft may bring the shipment of Windows 7, codenamed Vienna, forward from 2010 to next year. While Vista hasn't exactly bombed, there is a broad consensus that it has failed to deliver the goods when compared to XP. Bloatware is a term frequently used when discussing Vista and the fact that it requires a more powerful PC to run more slowly than XP bears out its lumbering code. Less than 10% of businesses have converted to Vista and its sales success is down to new PC sales to the home and SoHo market. Rumor has it that one key objective for the Windows 7 development team is to slim down the kernel to make it a leaner, faster operating system. Whether this will be achieved remains to be seen, but it would certaily be a welcomed accomplishment.

Vista gets Media Center right

2008-01-29T10:16:00.000Z

We are not big fans of Vista here at PC Medic, at least not in its current incarnation, and do not recommend it to our customers at this point in time. That may change when Service Pack 1 is released, but for now we have seen problems with networking, hibernation/sleep mode, and miscellaneous program crashing issues.

However, having recently had a Dell Inspiron PC in the workshop fitted with a TV Tuner card and Vista Premium, we can report that one of the things that works superbly in Vista is the Media Center in general and TV in particular. Media Center first entered the world of Windows in 2005 with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Having had first hand experience of this version I can report that it was flaky and poorly supported.

The current version of Media Center, by contrast is stable, easy to configure and feature rich. Within 10 minutes we had tuned in all our cable TV stations, downloaded the electronic program guide (EPG) and were able to watch, pause and rewind live TV as well as recording programs. The system is as easy to use as a Sky+ box and has the same functionality e.g. from within the EPG you can record single episodes or complete series of your favourite programs with a click of the supplied remote controller.

Of course the Media Center not only handles TV superbly, but also allows you to manage music and photos with equal ease. The Vista Media Center is possibly the best piece of software Microsoft has ever written.

Now if we could just get our hands on Service Pack 1!

Eircom Wireless Security

2007-10-09T18:24:00.001+01:00

If you are an Eircom customer you are no doubt now aware of a security flaw in relation to their Netopia wireless routers. The security risk arises as a result of a combination of factors.

When a customer receives a Netopia wireless router, WEP encryption is enabled. WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) is a system of encryption that requires a user to enter a code (a 26-digit code in the case of Eircom of the form 879411b4f741e806a275565e16, which is a hexadecimal (base 16) number) before their computer can connect wirelessly to the router. When an Eircom customer receives a Netopia router, the specific 26-digit code will be provided to them, and known only to them, which allows them to connect to the wireless router. All good stuff to keep the bad guys out and your network private. So far so good.

In addition to a pre-assigned WEP encryption key, the customer's Netopia wireless router also has another pre-assigned parameter programmed into it called an SSID (Service Set IDentifier). The SSID is, in effect, the broadcast name of the wireless network which appears in the View Available Networks window. This can be anything you want but Eircom Netopia routers have an SSID of the format eircomxxxx xxxx e.g. eircom1242 9777. The problem arises due to the fact that the default WEP key and the part of the SSID after the eircom part are derived using the same algorithm. This has allowed some clever people to analyze the relationship between the WEP key and the SSID and come up with a small program called a key generator. Since the SSID is broadcast by default on the Netopia wireless router anyone can see the SSID of a router within range. All one needs to do to connect to that router is enter the 8-digits after the eircom part of the SSID into the key generator program and, voilà, the 26-digit WEP code is presented. Enter this code when required and you are connected to the network. PC Medic has seen this program in action and can confirm that it takes less than 1 minute to connect to a "secure" network.

What to do? It's actually quite simple to totally eliminate this security risk by either (a) changing your SSID or (b) changing your WEP code. Unfortunately, many customers don't feel comfortable connecting to their Netopia router to do this (Eircom should have contacted you if you have an "at risk" Netopia unit, and provided you with instructions to remedy the situation). If you're concerned and don't want to undertake this procedure on your own, contact PC Medic and we'll help you out.

Blast from the Past

2007-10-05T09:26:00.000+01:00

Earlier this week we picked up an old Dell Dimension from its owner who purchased the computer in January 2001 with Windows 98 installed. Up until the failure of his hard disc he hadn't a day's trouble with the PC (probably mainly due to the fact that it wasn't on-line). We installed a new hard disc and reinstalled Windows 98 from the Dell recovery CD (he had all his original Dell-supplied CDs after 6 1/2 years - how many people lose them after 6 1/2 months?!). What surpised me and prompted me to post this blog was just how fast Windows 98 can run. Start up time was 40 seconds from button push to full systray. Shutdown time was an incredible 3, yes 3 seconds! All applications opened in a flash and this is on a P3 box with 128MB of RAM.

When I see how long it takes for Vista to boot and shutdown on our Dual Core box with 2GB of RAM you start to wonder are we going in the wrong direction. Time is the one thing we have less of as the years go by, so do we really want to spend that time looking at an hourglass? Perhaps we should be pushing for stripped down operating systems and streamlined applications (hands up all those who actually understand pivot tables, VBA macros and VLOOKUP in Excel, let alone use them). The term "Less is More" comes to mind.

Nice PC

2007-09-19T09:44:00.000+01:00

Dell are offering a new range of PCs called the Vostro range which we have installed quite a few of. These come in a range of configurations and offer extremely good value for non-power home users and small businesses. For example, we've just purchased a system with a 1.8GHz Dual Core processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard disc and 19" wide screen for €495, including VAT and delivery! One of the key issues about the Vostro range is that, as they are aimed at the business community, you can still order them with Windows XP instead of Vista (all Dell's home PCs now come with Vista). You'll find them under the small business section at www.dell.ie. Recommended.

Badder Malware

2007-09-17T21:26:00.000+01:00

IBM has reported an increase in malware volume and sophistication as part of its security statistics report for the first half of the year.

So far this year, its X-Force research and development team has identified and analyzed more than 210,000 new malware samples, which is more than the total number of malware samples observed over the entirety of last year.

According to IBM, the "exploits as a service" industry continues to thrive, with the new practice of "exploit leasing" added to the repertoire of criminals. By leasing an exploit, attackers can now test exploitation techniques with a smaller initial investment, making this underground market an even more attractive option for malicious perpetrators.

According to the report, Trojans (seemingly legitimate files that are actually malware) are the most common form of malware this year, accounting for 28 percent of all malware. Last year, by contrast, Downloaders was the most common category -- a low-profile piece of malware that installs itself so that it can later download and install a more sophisticated malware agent.

"The X-Force security statistics report for 2006 predicted a continued rise in the sophistication of targeted, profit-motivated cyber attacks," said Kris Lamb, director of X-Force. "This directly correlates to the rise in popularity of Trojans that we are witnessing this year, as Trojans are often used by attackers to launch sustained, targeted attacks."

But running counter to historical trends, X-Force reports a slight decrease in the overall number of vulnerabilities uncovered in the first half of 2007 versus the first half of 2006. A total of 3,273 vulnerabilities were identified in the first half of this year, down 3.3 percent year-on-year. However, the percentage of high impact vulnerabilities has gone up since 2006 from 16 percent to 21 percent for the first half of 2007.

A similarly unexpected trend in the report is the decrease in spam message size. IBM said the fall corresponded with a decrease in image-based spam.

"The decrease in spam message size and image-based spam is a result of spammers adopting and experimenting with newer techniques, such as PDF- and Excel-based spam, as a means to more successfully evade detection by anti-spam technologies," said Lamb.

Getting what you pay for?

2007-08-02T17:47:00.000+01:00

From a recent ITPro posting - it relates to UK ISPs, so we can't say whether the same applies to Irish ISPs. What do you think?

Following a study that revealed many customers weren't getting even close to the advertised speeds of their broadband service, the consumer fairness group is asking Ofcom and Trading Standards to step in.

Which? has called on communications watchdog Ofcom and Trading Standards, asking them to step in and investigate the gulf between advertised broadband speed and the connectivity speeds users get in reality.

The consumer fairness group called for the action following research that tested more than 300 customers and discovered that, while they were promised up to 8Mbps or more, they were actually getting 2.7Mbps on average. The lowest speed unveiled during the testing was just 0.09Mbps.
"It's shocking that internet service providers can advertise ever-increasing speeds that seem to bear little resemblance to what most people can achieve in reality. If it's unlikely you'll reach the advertised speed it should be made clear up front, so that you know with some certainty what you're buying," said Which? online editor Malcolm Coles.

"Do your research to check what speed you're likely to get before upgrading, and if you think what you're getting differs vastly from what you've paid for, speak to your provider - or if they won't help, report them to Ofcom."

Broadband comparison service Broadband Choices echoed Which?'s calls for greater transparency in actual, achievable speeds so that users can make informed decisions. "We carried out over 100,000 of our own speed tests last month, and found that the average customer only got 39 per cent of their promised speed," said Michael Phillips, product director at Broadband Choices. "Factors like distance from the exchange and poor quality wiring degrade the broadband connection and reduce the customer's speed but many people are unaware of this and go for the top packages thinking they will get broadband at 8Mb. However, broadband providers can check this information to see the realistic speed each individual customer should receive. We need transparency from providers on the kind of speeds customers can actually expect to get, rather than flashy advertising and ever increasing 'top speeds'."

CD Recovery

2007-07-13T09:02:00.000+01:00

We had a customer last week who was recently back from a gap year travelling the world and had received a CD from a travelling companion which contained photos of their travels in Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately she couldn't access the files. We tried the disc in a number of CD drives and we had the same problem. Even our recovery software couldn't access the files. Examination of the CD showed the surface to be covered in a myriad of tiny scratches - obviously this CD had had a rough life. Time for a radical approach.

We had read on a tech forum some time previously that a remedy for scratched CDs was - wait for it - toothpaste! With nothing to loose we squeezed a small amount of toothpaste (with whitener and added fluoride!) on to a cotton bud, added a little water and proceeded to rub the paste onto the CD in a radial fashion. After about 5 minutes the whole surface of the disc had been treated and the CD was rinsed under cold running water to remove all traces of the toothpaste. Examining the surface of the disc after the treatment showed all the scratches still to be present, so it was with little expectation that we popped the CD into a CD drive. But, suprise, suprise, the CD was immediately recognized and all files were present and correct. Now we only recommend this treatment when all else has failed, but when you have nothing to lose...

Vista Upgrade Part 2

2007-07-04T10:18:00.000+01:00

We've been very busy over the past few months so I've had to put the blogging on hold for a while. But now that we're back from vacation I decided to deploy the Dell Vista Upgrade Kit that arrived the second week in June - 7 months after we ordered the Dell machine.

The "Kit" comprise four items: a Vista Upgrade Assistant DVD, a Vista Operating System DVD, a Vista Certificate of Authenticity and an Instruction Pamphlet. First off you insert the Vista Upgrade Assistant DVD whose function is to check the comaptibility of the existing hardware and software on your PC and remove or upgrade what isn't compatible with Vista. When we inserted this disc and clicked Next to perform the check we were told that "The item listed below is not compatible with Vista" and that the upgrade could not proceed. The item in question was the operating system which was showing as NA. So at the very first hurdle we fell down.

Contact was made with Dell support who initially told us that the Upgrade Assistant DVD was not needed for upgrading the OS and to just proceed with the Vista Operating System CD. When I pointed out that this was exactly the opposite of what the Instruction Pamphlet recommended and that the Upgrade Assistant DVD updated the Bios as well as software with known compatibility issues the Dell support person changed tack and offered that the DVD was probably defective and he would send out another one. Now we just happened to have a second upgrade kit in the workshop which was ordered for a customer and we had tried with the Upgrade Assistant DVD from that kit, to no avail. When I put his to the support person he said that he would have to talk to his supervisor and get back to me.

Four hours later he called back with the recommendation that I expected from him - reinstall your original OS and then try the upgrade process. In other words, they didn't know exactly what the problem was but hoped that a clean install of XP would make it go away. And it did. Now remember, our PC was only 7 months old and had a minimum of additional software installed on it. In fact, most of the installed software was either Dell-supplied or Windows updates. So it wasn't that big a deal for us to do a clean reinstall. However, the upgrade was originally sold on the basis that you could happily use your PC until the upgrade was available, install it and, presto, you now had all your old software working on a Vista platform. Imagine if you had installed a serious amount of software such as Microsoft Office, payroll and accounting packages, utilities, photo management, music management, video editing etc. etc. I would be seriously bummed if Dell support could only offer the "reinstall the original OS" solution, leaving me with the task of rebuilding the PC post-Vista.

Moving along, we did the clean reinstall after which the Upgrade Assistant DVD seemed to be working fine. It proposed updating the Bios and a number of Dell-installed pieces of software. It also removed Roxio and other software which was incompatible with the upgrade process, promising to reinstall them when Vista was in place. After about 30 minutes and a number of reboots it was ready for the Vista OS upgrade disc. Vista took about 70 minutes to install and after rebooting we were back to the Vista Upgrade Assistant, which was good to its promise and began reinstalling the software it had previously removed.

After about two hours we had a Vista Business Edition OS in place and we were ready to install a wireless network card to get Windows updates. Apart from the inital problem with the Upgrade Assistant DVD the upgrade process was reasonably smooth, if somewhat tedious. If at any point in the future we need to reinstall Vista we are faced with reinstalling XP and repeating the upgrade process all over again. If we knew this at the time of ordering the PC we would have waited until the PCs were shipping with Vista. We would have had Vista 4 months sooner and no upgrade hassles. Not one of Dell's better ideas.

More Non-Genuine Operating Systems

2007-05-09T09:05:00.000+01:00

Seems like we've come across a number of non-genuine versions of Microsoft XP in the last couple of weeks. What all of the PCs had in common is that they went into small repair shops for repair with Windows XP Home Edition on them and came out with XP Professional installed. Most of the customers didn't notice the difference between the two while one customer who did, was told by the repair shop that they "upgraded" Windows while it was in for repair.

The reason that most non-genuine versions of XP encountered are the Professional version is because of the existence of Volume License versions of XP Pro for use by businesses. A Volume License is a special version of a Windows OS, most commonly XP Pro, that is sold to big businesses, governments and educational bodies for installation on hundreds or thousands of PCs. Because it is not practical for such large numbers of PCs to go through the Windows activation procedure post-installation for each PC, a Volume License installation does not require activation. All Windows XP installations do require a product key, the 25-digit alpha-numeric code that must be entered from the certificate of authenticity during the installation process. However, if a product key corresponding to a volume license (a so-called Volume License Key or VLK) is entered then the installation does not require product activation.

What has happened in the past, and no doubt continues to happen, is that Volume License Keys are passed on from IT staff to individuals and they get into general circulation for use by less than scrupulous individuals. When Microsoft becomes aware of these they are blocked and marked as non-genuine in their database. Beginning April 25, 2007, Microsoft began distributing Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications as "critical update" KB905474 to Windows users. If you downloaded this update and have a blocked VLK installed on your PC you will get the nag screen that you have a non-genuine copy of Windows installed ever more. We expect to see more of these in the weeks to come.

Less than perfect OOTBE

2007-05-04T08:58:00.000+01:00

Most computer manufacturers work hard to give you a good Out-Of-The-Box-Experience (or OOTBE), which is what happens when you turn on your brand new computer for the first time. A good OOTBE should see you having to take very few actions to get you to your operating system's desktop - perhaps accept a license agreement and input your name for your user account. Once at the desktop a good OOTBE continues with your computer behaving in a predictable fashion and it is in this regard that we were disappointed with a new Dell Inspiron Laptop that we set up for a customer during the week.

All went well until we got to the desktop and Vista's messaging announced that a problem had occurred with the sidebar which would now shut down. Hmmm, not what you expect when you turn on your PC for the first time and not a great OOTBE. Vista's messaging went on to inform us that the problem was caused by Google Desktop and that the vendor may have a more up-to-date version available on their website that might address this issue. And maybe they did, but we didn't wait to find out. Instead we uninstalled Google's application and the sidebar problem was resolved.

What we can't figure is why Dell bundles Google's Desktop application with their PCs when the version they bundle causes a feature of Vista to crash. You begin to wonder what level of testing Dell performs on the configurations they sell. Or, do they know about these issues before they ship them but leave it to their customers to resolve them. Take your pick.

Dell's Vista Upgrade Fiasco

2007-04-24T10:35:00.000+01:00

In order to continue to shift PCs in the latter months of 2006 and early 2007, in advance of the launch of Microsoft Vista, Dell introduced the Vista Express Upgrade scheme (my italics). The commitment made by Dell was that if you bought a PC during this period with Windows XP, Dell would send you a free Vista upgrade kit (but charge €16 for shipping/handling) as soon as Vista launched. Now in case you may have missed it, Vista was launched in Europe on January 30th of this year, so how has Dell done in getting out those Express upgrades? Well, it hasn't. Initially Dell posted on their website that they would be shipping by the end of February, then mid-March. It now claims to have begun the shipping process (I don't know anyone who has received the upgrade yet - let me know if you do) and hopes to have completed all shipments by the end of May!

Now PC Medic purchased a new Dell in November in the hope that we would have a Vista PC in the workshop from early February. However, had we just waited until February and purchased a Dell with Vista pre-installed we would have had our hands on Vista a lot earlier. (In the end we installed an OEM license on an existing box as we saw a screw-up like this as a possibility with Dell.) With Dell's recent turnaround decision to continue to sell PCs with XP installed instead of Vista, one wonders if there are ongoing compatibility issues with Dell and third-party hardware that could see the Express upgrade further delayed. Frankly, it has been a major embarrassment for Dell and, like their policy of off-shoreing customer support, suggests that despite producing good, value-for-money PCs they have lost focus on their customers. With Michael Dell back at the helm one can only hope that this will change.

Vista - second impressions

2007-04-16T08:56:00.000+01:00

We've been using Vista for a couple of months now and in general like what Microsoft have done. However, a few issues have come to light, particularly with hardware. It seems that a number of hardware manufacturers are slow in releasing Vista drivers to allow their products to work with the new OS.

A point in case came to light last week when a customer asked us to install his newly-purchased Hewlett-Packard 1018 Laserjet printer. When we got it hooked up and inserted the driver disk it came to light that there were no Vista drivers supplied. OK, we thought, they probably have them posted on the HP website. After a bit of a rummage about we found a listing of Vista-supported printers and the 1018 was not on it. Further rummaging found a listing of soon to be supported printers and the 1018 was on that list. In the absence of a Vista driver you can try the XP driver which might work, the website declared, So we did, and it didn't.

The customer's only solution was to return the printer and exchange it for a Samsung 2010 printer which had downloadable Vista drivers. So, the message is, before you run out and buy a Vista PC, check whether your existing peripherals (printer, scanner, webcam, mp3 player, etc.) will be supported, otherwise you may have to budget for replacement peripherals as well.

Really Nice PC For Sale

2007-03-11T19:17:00.000Z

We have just finished refurbishing a Compaq Presario PC and it's a great buy for someone looking for a second PC for practically everything except serious gaming. We've upgraded the memory, reinstalled Windows XP Home with all Microsoft service packs and updates, and installed a range of software that more than meets the needs of a home PC. Details are as follows:

Hardware:
Pentium P4 1.8GHz CPU
512MB RAM
60GB HDD
DVD ROM Drive
CD-R Drive
Floppy Drive
6 x USB 1.0
Firewire Port
10/100 ethernet port
modem

Software:
Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2, fully patched
AVG Free 7.5 anti-virus
Windows Defender anti-spyware
Internet Explorer 7.0
Firefox 2.0 (alternative internet browser to IE 7.0)
Thunderbird 1.5 (alternative e-mail client to Outlook Express)
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Works
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0 (photo management)
Compaq WinDVD (DVD player)
Skype 3.0
Windows Media Player 11
Paragon Drive Backup 8.0 (backup software)

Hardware comes with a 90-day no quibble warranty (if it breaks, we fix it, replace it or fully refund you, no problem).

This is a great package that has a very attractive price of only €220. Add a keyboard, mouse and monitor (or ask us to quote you for them) and you have a very nice home PC that will take on any home PC task.

Interested? Let us know at info@pcmedic.ie

Vista - First Impressions

2007-02-14T12:09:00.000Z

We've been getting ourselves familiar with Microsoft's new operating system here in our workshop and I thought that I'd give you our first impressions. And, so far, it's all good.

First up, the installation process is much smoother than before with almost all of the user input being front loaded so that you can leave the installation process to run unattended - a pleasant change from XP where user input is required at multiple separate times during the install. All told, it took approximately 45 minutes to complete the basic install.

Next there was the issue of drivers. We were doing the install into a PC Medic-built box with a 3.2GHz P4 and 1Gb of RAM. The motherboard was fitted with a nVidia 6600GT video card, a Hauppauge WinTV PVR card and a Ralink-based wireless lan card. After the install, the TV and Wireless lan cards were not recognized, but Windows Update commenced dowloading drivers for these. After a reboot, all hardware was up and running without the need for a single driver to be installed by us, pretty impressive.

Putting aside the eye-candy provided by the Aero interface, which is pretty but hardly essential, one of the features that we were most impressed with initially was the enhanced security that encourages you to set up standard accounts for all users, rather than administrator accounts. There is also a new system called User Account Control, which alerts you anytime you are making a change that has any system-wide or security implications. Some may find this a bit of a pain on a day-to-day basis, but we see it as an added layer of control from stopping the user making a bad decision.

A lot of parents will be happy to see a built-in Parental Control system that is not only effective, but also extremely easy to use, something we can't say about many commercial software pakages that try to do the same thing. Parental Controls can only be applied to Standard Accounts, and this will hopefully encourage parents to set up their young children with such accounts. Parental Control can be set to allow user accounts to access the internet at only certain times and days each week. It can restrict the type of websites that can be visited e.g. no nudity, no violence, no drugs, etc., or certain websites can be blacklisted (Bebo, anyone?). You can also determine whether games can be played or not and, if so, the age rating of the games that can be played. Finally, you can restrict which programs on the computer the account can use, so you could restrict the use of messaging programs such as MSN Messenger if you so desired. On top of all this, the administrator can view activity logs for each standard account that has Parental Controls applied to, so you can track the websites they visited, as well as the ones that were blocked. When you consider that some companies charge $40 or more per year for less well implemented versions, this is a high-value inclusion in Vista.

Outlook Express has been replaced/upgraded to Windows Mail and the big news on this e-mail client is the inclusion of a spam control system and it appears very good at its job. We downloaded 183 mails and Windows Mail's spam filter correctly identifed 146 pieces of spam. A total of 7 pieces of spam got through to the Inbox, while no false positives were detected (i.e. no genuine emails were sent to the spam folder). This is quite an impressive result and, as with Parental Controls, we guess that a lot of makers of anti-spam software will be wondering how these new features are going to hit their sales.

There are some other interesting features in Vista that we'll come back to in future posts, but for now you can take it that we like what we see.

More on Spam - Cloudmark

2007-02-05T09:30:00.000Z

In my previous post I advocated changing to Mozilla's Thunderbird as your e-mail client in order to better manage spam. If you use Microsoft's Outlook as your e-mail client you may also be using its Calendar, To Do and Contacts features, which are not available in Thunderbird, and therefore don't want to change your e-mail client. This is the situation one of our customers was in last week, but still wanted to be able to manage the spam that they were receiving.

We looked at a number of plug-in solutions for Outlook and the one we opted for was Cloudmark Desktop which costs $39.99 for a 12-month subscription. Installation is simple after downloading the software from their downloads site. Once installed, Cloudmark integrates a simple toolbar into Outlook as shown in the picture and creates a Spam mail folder. As mail comes in from the mail server, Cloudmark evaluates it and moves it to the spam folder if it is known spam. If junk mail arrives in your inbox then you can mark it as spam by clicking on the Block Spam button in the toolbar. When a specific number of people report a particular e-mail as spam it is added to the Cloudmark database and will henceforth be treated as spam.

The attraction of Cloudmark Desktop is its simplicity, requiring a minimum of user interaction, and its success rate in detecting spam straight out of the box. A recommended addition if you want to use Microsoft Outlook and successfully manage spam. Note that a version is also available for Outlook Express.

Managing Spam

2007-01-21T12:22:00.000Z

One of the most frequent questions we get asked is how do we stop spam arriving in our inbox. The bad news is that it's almost impossible to stop. You start receiving spam once your e-mail address gets out into the public domain. You don't necessarily have to engage in on-line commerce for this to happen. You may only send e-mails to two or three friends and believe that it's impossible for your e-mail to get into the public domain. Not so. All it takes is for your friend's PC to become infected with a virus that harvests e-mail addresses and, voilà, your e-mail address is up for sale to the spammers.

You can manage spam in one of two ways - sign up for a server-based service, such as Eircom's Email Protector, or use a local solution. A server-based solution screens all e-mail as it passes through a computer known as a mail server and checks the email's content and/or point of origin and thereby decides whether it is spam or not. If it is deemed to be spam it is not forwarded on to your inbox and will never arrive on your PC. These services are rarely 100 percent effective and we have found with Eircom's service, for which there is a monthly charge, that it eliminates approximately 70% of the spam destined for our Eircom e-mail account.

To deal with the remainder that slips through the server-based solution will require a local solution installed on your PC. There are a wide variety available, both commercial and freeware, and a quick google of "spam solutions" will provide you with a number of options.

Here at PC Medic our way of dealing with spam is to use Thunderbird, available for free from http://www.mozilla.org/ , as our e-mail client. Thunderbird has a built-in spam filter which, after a week or so of training, achieves almost a 100% hit on spam. It is simple to install, will import all your existing Outlook Express folders and mail settings, and does a great job of managing the spam that does get through. Check it out. For more on spam check out this link.

HDTV Lust

2006-12-24T10:42:00.000Z

While visiting a customer recently, and after the work on his PC was completed, he insisted I had a look at the custom home theatre that he had installed in his newly-built home. And very nice it was too. The centre piece of his set-up was a wall-mounted 50" Pioneer plasma high-definition TV supplemented by a Bose surround-sound speaker system and hard disk media server, all with hidden wiring leading to a very clean appearance that even the most fussy of spouses would find it difficult to complain about.

I was sat down and treated to a visual and aural treat as he fired up his Sky HD box and switched on Discovery HD. The subject of the documentary that was playing was fighter jets, and the footage of the view from the cockpit of one of the jets as it engaged in a mock dogfight with two others was breathtaking. The difference between HDTV and regular colour TV is almost as big as the difference between black and white and colour TV, it really is jaw-droppingly good. I was thoroughly impressed and experienced a bout of HDTV lust on the spot.

When I returned home I looked at my 12 year-old 26" TV with contempt and started to plan its imminent trip to the Ballyogan recycling centre. But before I got carried away I decided to think about what I would watch on my spanking new HDTV when I had it installed. And this is where the wheels started to come off the wagon.

The majority of our viewing consists of Channel 4, BBC1 and BBC2 with a bit of the RTEs thrown in for good measure (we're not a SKY household because Sports programs are low on our agenda). And here's the rub, these channels are not currently broadcast in HD and, from what I can gather, they won't be broadcast in HD for some time yet. I could migrate to Sky HD for a selection of HD channels (Sky One, Discovery, National Geographic) but would I actually watch these channels and, if so, would it be just for the sake of HD rather than content and interest?

Another issue is the DVD library that we've built up of our favourite movies and television series. These were produced pre-HD, and when displayed on a HD TV will look no different from on a regular TV. If we want to enjoy these in glorious HD we will have to fork out on a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player and re-purchase our DVDs in HD formatted discs - an expense that can't be justified for the benefit that it may bring.

So, when it's all added up and HD-ready flat screen TVs now abound, it transpires that we ourselves are not HD-ready just yet and our trusty12 year-old CRT TV is not going to be taking a trip to Ballyogan just yet. Maybe next Christmas....

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-12-18T10:53:00.000Z

I don't know where you stand in relation to global warming - whether you are concerned about it, whether you believe it's an issue or whether you are even aware of it as a phenomenon. My own position was very middle-of-the-road until recently when I happened to see the film An Inconvenient Truth which is a documentary presented by the "former next president of the United States" Al Gore.

When I say that it is a documentary your eyes may glaze over and you want to file it away under David Attenborough-type documentaries. But you shouldn't, for two reasons. Firstly, Al Gore does, in my opinion, a tremendous job communicating the science of global warming in a way that is easily understood and stays with you beyond the closing titles. Secondly, the issues portrayed in the documentary just might be the most important that mankind has ever faced, relegating famines, wars, and localized natural disasters to the inconsequential.

Avoiding a climate crisis and the consequences that that entails is fundamentally not a technological challenge - we already have the technological means to prevent it - but a political and moral question. There would appear to be many big businesses with a vested interest in us believing that the scientists are merely scaremongering. However, does anyone remember the tobacco companies producing reports in the sixties rubbishing the idea of smoking being linked to cancer?

You should make up your own mind on this important issue, but viewing An Inconvenient Truth should be an essential part of that process. If you missed the film in the cinemas, you can get it now on DVD. Watch it and decide where you stand.

Vista Flavours

2006-12-14T15:16:00.000Z

Microsoft has revealed the various different versions of Windows Vista that will be available in the near future here in Europe (business versions are already available since the end of November for corporate customers). The line up consists of:

Business
Enterprise
Home Pemium
Home Basic
Ultimate

This line-up contrasts with Windows XP which came in just three flavours XP Home, XP Professional and XP Media Center Edition.

The version that most people will probably finish up running is the Home Premium edition which sports the new Aero interface (provided you have the hardware to run it - thought to be a minimum of 1 GB of RAM plus a 256 MB graphics card). If you want to upgrade your Windows XP to Vista Home Premium the suggested retail price in the US is $159, so expect to pay around €120 here in Europe. If you buy a new Dell between now and the end of March, you can sign up for a Vista upgrade pack, which will be sent to you as soon as Vista home editions are launched here in Europe.

More details on Vista can be found on Microsoft's Vista Pages.

Managing Passwords

2006-11-13T10:11:00.000Z

Everyone who uses a PC complains about the same problem - "How do I manage all my on-line passwords?". It's no longer a trivial matter managing usernames and passwords for all your on-line accounts, whether its for e-mail e.g. Hotmail, GMail, or other webmail of choice, e-commerce sites e.g. Amazon.com, Allofmp3.com or Victoria's Secret, your VOIP site e.g. Skype and VoipStunt or any of the myriad other on-line accounts one can create.

What some people do is to use a single password for as many of their online accounts as possible. While this can simplify matters somewhat it's not a recommended practice. I certainly wouldn't use the same password for my on-line banking or PayPal account as I do for a discussion forum on home improvements. Some of the smaller sites that require a username and password for registration may not have adequate security on their servers and I always assume that they don't - therefore I try to keep separate passwords for anything that involves financial transactions.

Of course the problem with this is that it becomes difficult to track all the different usernames and passwords. This is where RoboForm comes in. This program has been around for a while now but I've only just started using it. In a nutshell the program allows you to create a single master password for RoboForm which runs from a toolbar after it is installed. Then, when you go to a site that requires a username and password RoboForm creates a Passcard for that site, remembering the login details the next time you login to the site. After a single visit to each site requiring a username and password you no longer need to remember the login details for the site - RoboForm does it for you. The program is extremely secure using a number of encryption options and offers a useful feature for filling out on-line forms, a boring task most of us would rather avoid.

If password management has become a problem then give RoboForm a try. A limited Passcard version is available for free while the full version costs just $29.95.

Protect Your Photos

2006-11-02T09:25:00.000Z

When a customer tells us that their machine has crashed and they need to recover their data, the first category of data that they refer to is normally their photos. With the proliferation of digital cameras it is now a relatively easy matter for a click-happy camera owner to generate many gigabytes of data, what with holidays, birthdays, stag parties, christenings, new baby, etc. etc. What isn't so easy is having the discipline to back up these photos on a regular basis to CD, DVD or external hard drive.

There are a number of reasons why people don't back up their data as regularly as they should. Data backup is boring, it's tedious sitting at a screen selecting folders and files for saving to a backup medium. It's somewhat technical, not everyone has been shown how to back up their data and some of the software available is less than intuitive. There is a lack of awareness that data loss, for either software or hardware failure reasons, is not uncommon. The sheer amount of data to be backed up nowadays can lead to inertia as one has to decide what has been backed up and what hasn't. Finally, many people are just lazy about it - Mañana, Mañana!

Now there are ways to automate your data backup so that it happens with little or no intervention on your part - but this requires investment in an external harddrive or network drive and appropriate software and is best left to the more technical-minded. Which brings me to the subject of this blog - a neat service from www.protectmyphotos.com that allows you to back up your precious photos (and other files) without even thinking about it. So how does it work? Actually it's a very simple process.

First you go to their website and sign up for an account. You can get a free account with certain limitations, namely that your photos will be in low resolution and only jpeg files can be saved. Alternatively, you can pay $39.99 for a yearly account that allows unlimited storage of your pictures at full resolution and also allows you to save your music files e.g. mp3 and wma as well as documents e.g. xls and doc.

Next you download a small ProtectMyPhotos utility from the download page on their site. Once dowloaded you simply double-click on the file to install the utility. Opening the utility (which will now normally reside in your system tray) presents you with two simple options: Set Up Photos For Protection and Restore My Photos.

Selecting the first option presents you with two further options: Automatic Discovery and Custom Folder Options. The former option will scan your entire computer and back up every file that corresponds to a photo format. If you're not sure where your photos are stored on your PC then this is the option to choose. However, be aware that it will back up gif and jpeg images associated with other programs, such as games, that are not necessarily photos. If you know exactly where your photos are stored e.g. My Pictures then you should select the Custom Folder Options.

Once you have made your selection, that's it, you never have to do anything further to ensure your photos are backed up, even when you add new pictures to your PC. What happens next is that the ProtectMyPhotos utility works in the background uploading your pictures to their secure servers for safe-keeping. The program was designed to run in the background, requires very few system resources and backs up photos only when your Internet connection is idle. When you're busy using your computer and Internet connection, ProtectMyPhotos throttles down its use of your connection. Once a photo is backed up to the servers, the software won't need to upload it again.

Needless to say you will need a broadband connection to use this service, uploading 20 GB of photos is not something you want to try on a dial-up connection! Bear in mind that your photos are not uploaded in an instance, it took 3 days for all of 5 GB of test photos to be uploaded from our system. However, the PC that the pictures were uploaded from was turned off overnight and had moderate internet usage during the day - your own experience may be faster or slower. Currently we are in the process of uploading over 20 GB of music from a music server and this looks like it will take over a week to complete. To argue that the backups are slow and take a long time is to miss the point of this service, the beauty of it is that it is completely unattended backup. As I add more pictures or music to my PC it is automatically backed up, and much more quickly than the original file transfer because the incremental quantity of data is much smaller.

Restoring all your photos to your PC is a one-click operation from the ProtectMyPhoto utility, if the day comes that you need to do it. You can, of course restore your pictures to any PC, not just the one that you uploaded them from.

What I can't say is whether ProtectMyPhotos is a sufficiently robust company to still be there in 5 years' time when I may need to restore all my saved data. However, I hope that they are as they have a good product that deserves to be around for a long time. Check it out.

Leaking Capacitors

2006-10-31T09:04:00.000Z

We had a machine in the workshop last week that was exhibiting a series of symptoms that were hard to pin down to any specific cause - blue screens, boot hangs, extremely slow disc access, etc. After doing the standard diagnostics, including switching out the hard drive and optical drives, the problem seemed to be associated with the motherboard.

A close physical examination of the motherboard revealed that many of the capacitors were leaking their contents, either through the top of the capacitor, or at the base plug. I took a few pictures of these capacitors to show what this leaking looks like. The first picture shows a couple of capacitors that have leaked through the base plug and their contents have spilled onto the motherboard. As the motherboard is in a vertical orientation in the PC case the contents of the capacitor in the left of the picture ran downwards and the track of dried-out material can be clearly seen. A bulge in the top of the two leaking capacitors, due to pressure build-up, can also be seen - a tell-tale sign of a potential leaker.

The second picture shows three capacitors that have leaked through the top where the contents have burst through the cap. The rear-most capacitor in this shot is a different brand of capacitor and is not a leaker. In total, ten capacitors on the motherboard were found to be leaking and all were from the same manufacturer and the same capacitance value.

As capacitors are used to regulate voltage in various sections of the motherboard, failure of capacitors can cause many problems that could be interpreted as power supply, memory or hard drive issues.

This was only the second time in the past twelve months that we came across this problem. The cause of the problem has an interesting background, involving a case of industrial espionage that went wrong. Essentially, the faulty capacitors have an incorrect electrolyte formulation, which leads to hydrogen gas being produced. The build-up of gas causes the pressure increase which eventually ruptures the capacitor.

See further pictures at PCStats and more info at Geeks.com.

Pre-n Wireless Networks

2006-10-23T14:56:00.000+01:00

Wireless networks have undergone a few changes in recent years with a least three existing standards now available, these being 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g. Unless you are operating in a business environment you are unlikely to come across 802.11a, which operates at a frequency of 5.0GHz and has a maximum data transmission rate of 11.0 mbps (megabits per second). If you are using a wireless network in your home it is likely to be either the 802.11b standard (2.4GHz frequency and 11.0 mbps transmission rate) or 802.11g if you've purchased it in the last 2-3 years (2.4GHz frequency and 54 mbps transmission rate). While a "g" standard network in the home serves most needs, it has difficulty streaming high-quality video, a multimedia application that is likely to become standard within the next five years. To address this (and for many other reasons) a new standard, 802.11n, is being formulated that will allow data streaming at up to 270 mbps, or 5-times the current "g" standard.

This new standard is currently at draft 2.0 and a vote on the draft is expected in January 2007. However, it is widely believed that a third draft will appear later in 2007 and that the standard will not be ratified until early 2008. However, in the meantime, a number of wireless network equipment manufacturers have released what are known as "Pre-n" devices - both routers and adapters - that conform to the current standard draft, but which will most probably not conform to the final ratified standard. While the manufacturers may make claims that these will give you greater performance to existing ratified standards, you should purchase such units with caution. It is possible that these units will not conform with the final standard (though most manufacturers claim they will release firmware updates to address this, there are no guarantees that they will) and that they will most probably not be compatible with equipment from other manufacturers (only Wi-Fi Alliance certified equipment is guaranteed to work with other certified equipment from other manufacturers). A recent review of pre-n equipment by PC World magazine found that many of the pre-n routers and network cards did not offer the benefits of the marketing hype and they suggested that you should look to MIMO-based "g" standard units for best performance and leave the pre-n kit until the standard is ratified.

Cybercrime Update

2006-10-22T18:23:00.000+01:00

From USA Today

Criminals covet your identity data like never before. What's more, they've perfected more ways to access your bank accounts, grab your Social Security number and manipulate your identity than you can imagine.

Want proof? Just visit any of a dozen or so thriving cybercrime forums, websites that mirror the services of Amazon.com and the efficiencies of eBay. Criminal buyers and sellers convene at these virtual emporiums to wheel and deal in all things related to cyberattacks — and in the fruit of cyberintrusions: pilfered credit and debit card numbers, hijacked bank accounts and stolen personal data.

The cybercrime forums gird a criminal economy that robs U.S. businesses of $67.2 billion a year, according to an FBI projection. Over the past two years, U.S. consumers lost more than $8 billion to viruses, spyware and online fraud schemes, Consumer Reports says.

In 2004, a crackdown by the FBI and U.S. Secret Service briefly disrupted growth of the forums. But they soon regrouped, more robust than ever. Today, they are maturing — and consolidating — just like any other fast-rising business sector, security experts and law enforcement officials say. In fact, this summer a prominent forum leader who calls himself Iceman staged a hostile takeover of four top-tier rivals, creating a megaforum.

Security firms CardCops, of Malibu, Calif., and RSA Security, a division of Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC, and volunteer watchdog group Shadowserver observed the forced mergers, as well, and compiled dozens of takeover-related screen shots. "It's like he created the Wal-Mart of the underground," says Dan Clements, CEO of CardCops, an identity-theft-prevention company. "Anything you need to commit your crimes, you can get in his forum."

The Secret Service and FBI declined to comment on Iceman or the takeovers. Even so, the activities of this mystery figure illustrate the rising threat that cybercrime's relentless expansion — enabled in large part by the existence of forums — poses for us all. In the spy vs. spy world of cybercrime, where trust is ephemeral and credibility hard won, CardersMarket's expansion represents the latest advance of a criminal business segment that began to take shape with the formation of the pioneering Shadowcrew forum.

Shadowcrew, which peaked at about 4,000 members in 2004, arose in 2002. It established the standard for cybercrime forums — set up on well-designed, interactive Web pages and run much like a well-organized co-op. Communication took place methodically, via the exchange of messages posted in topic areas. Members could also exchange private messages. Shadowcrew gave hackers and online scammers a place to congregate, collaborate and build their reputations, says Scott Christie, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in New Jersey who helped prosecute some of its members.

In the October 2004 dragnet, called Operation Firewall, federal agents arrested 22 forum members in several states, including co-founder Andrew Mantovani, 24, aka ThnkYouPleaseDie. At the time, Mantovani was a community college student in Scottsdale, Ariz. In August, he began serving a 32-month federal sentence for credit card fraud and identification theft.

CYBERCRIME BY THE NUMBERS
$67.2 billion: FBI estimate of what U.S. businesses lose annually because of computer-related crimes.
$8 billion: Consumer Reports estimate of what U.S. consumers lost the past two years because of viruses, spyware and Internet scams.
93.8 million: Privacy Rights Clearinghouse's count of personal records reported lost or stolen since February 2005.
26,150: The Anti-Phishing Working Group's count of unique variations of phishing scams reported in August 2006.

Typical costs of goods and services in cybercrime forums:
$1,000 to $5,000: Trojan program that can transfer funds between online accounts.
$500: Credit card number with PIN.
$80 to $300: Change of billing data, including account number, billing address, Social Security number, home address and birth date.
$150: Driver's license.
$150: Birth certificate.
$100: Social Security card.
$7 to $25: Credit card number with security code and expiration date.
$7: PayPal account log-on and password.
4% to 8% of the deal price: Fee to have an escrow agent close a complex transaction.
Free: Access to a service that gives details of the issuing bank for any credit card number.

Bundling Blues

2006-10-02T10:03:00.000+01:00

Why oh why do Dell insist in bundling trial software with their new PCs? The problem with this practice is that it can cause downright confusion for many inexperienced (and some experienced!) computer users when they begin their out-of-box-experience. The out-of-box-experience, or OOBE, is what manufacturers refer to the user's first moments with a new product after it is first turned on. This is meant to be a good experience for the user, where he/she feels in control and understands what is happening.

Unfortunately, bundled software can often throw a spanner in the works of the OOBE, particularly with a new Dell. On a recent set-up of a customer's PC we were confronted by trial versions of Dell Network Assistant, McAfee Security Centre, Norton Ghost, and Adobe Paint Shop and Photo Album. While Network Assistant may have some utility for managing a Network, when the screen pops up for the first time the average user is left scratching their head as to what this software does (after all, the customer didn't order it and therefore doesn't expect it to be on his/her new machine). And while Norton Ghost is a good disk imaging program in its own right, most customers have no inkling of what the program does when they encounter a splash screen inviting them to complete the install of it during their first 10 minutes using their new PC.

If Dell are going to continue bundling trial software with their PCs they should take the time to communicate this fact to their customers at time of purchase, explain to them what the bundled software does, how it might benefit them (if at all) and offer them the option of not having it bundled on their new PC if they so choose. Remember, this software is not bundled for the benefit of you, the customer, though Dell may represent it in that manner. No folks, the ugly truth of the matter is that software is bundled because of deals between companies like Norton and McAfee with Dell in order to make more money for all the parties involved - simple as that.

By the way, Dell are not the only offenders in this regard. Most PC manufacturers bundle trial software and in many cases that software has much less utility than that bundled by Dell.

External Hard Drive

2006-09-27T09:04:00.000+01:00

More and more of our customers are getting external hard drives for backing up their data. With the ongoing fall in hard disc prices, an external hard drive is now the best way to ensure that all those precious family pictures are safe for years to come.

We have quite a few external hard disc drives here at PC Medic but the model we currently feel is one of the best comes from hard disc manufacturer Seagate. Available in capacities of 80, 120, 160, 250 and 320GB, what we particularly like about this USB 2.0 external hard drive is the broad base which prevents the unit from toppling over, the quiet operation and the passive ventilation which ensures that the drives run particularly cool. With Windows XP these units are plug and play - no installation or drivers required. We have the 250GB model in stock at €155, but can supply all sizes at competitive prices. Don't wait for your hard drive to crash before you get your back ups organized. Contact details at www.pcmedic.ie.

A Little Knowledge ...

2006-09-14T17:47:00.000+01:00

...Can be a Dangerous Thing, as one of our customers found out recently. The customer in question had a 14-month old Compaq PC that they bought as a display model and, unfortunately, it was not supplied to the customer with a Recovery CD/DVD, as it should have been. When the PC became infected with viruses recently she took up the offer of her sister's boyfriend, who was known as pretty handy around computers, to fix it.

What the boyfriend did was to take a Windows XP OS disc he had lying about and reformat the harddrive and reinstall Windows. Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack an egg? The customer's daughter was upset to find out that she had lost all her digital photos which were stored only on the PC and had not been backed up before the re-install. The computer was returned to the customer who paid the sister's boyfriend "€30 and a couple of packs of smokes for his trouble".

A few days later we received a call from the customer complaining that they weren't able to connect to the internet since they got their "repaired" PC back. I called around and it didn't take long to see what she got for her €30. The reason she wasn't able to connect to the internet was that there were no drivers installed for the modem. Neither were there any drivers installed for the video card, sound card or network card - practically all the hardware on the PC was non-functional. As there was no way to download the drivers from the customer's house, we had to bring the system box in to the workshop, install a wireless USB network card and download the drivers from the HP site. It was while doing this that the Windows XP Activation reminder popped up informing me that the OS could be used for just 27 more days before it would self-destruct. At this point I got the feeling that things were worse than I initially thought. We brought Windows XP through the activation process, entering the OEM licence key on the side of the system box and, as I suspected, it wouldn't activate.

Compaqs are not designed to have their Windows OS reinstalled from a generic OS disc - they must be reinstalled either from the supplied recovery disc (missing in this case) or from the Recovery Partition that is found on the hard drive. To bring a Compaq PC back to its original factory settings, it is simply a matter of pressing the F10 key during startup and this will bring up the Recovery Options. From there, it's just a matter of selecting the required options and you have a factory-fresh PC in about 30-60 minutes. Unfortunately, when F10 was pressed on the customer's PC, nothing happened. This is most likely due to the reinstallation of Windows, using the generic OS disc, overwriting the Master Boot Record on the hard disc, thus making the Recovery Partition inaccessible. Solution? The customer had to order a set of Recovery Discs from HP at a cost of €38.50 and, when these arrive, she has booked us to perform the system recovery. I have suggested that she passes on our bill to her sister's boyfriend. She agrees.

Winfixer Woes

2006-09-08T11:30:00.000+01:00

We've had two customers in the last couple of weeks who have fallen prey to a particularly aggressive piece of bogus software known as Winfixer. WinFixer - is a bogus antispyware and spam blocking application that attempts to market itself by surreptitiously installing adware on the user's PC. This adware aggressively and incessantly displays popup notifications in an attempt to convince the user that something (other than its own existence) may be amiss with the computer. The problem is typically initiated via a popup ad displayed during a visit to a distributing web site. Reports suggest that this initial popup is constructed such that any attempt to dismiss it (including clicking the 'X' in the upper right-hand corner) actually causes the adware to be installed on the workstation. From this point on, WinFixer popups are launched from the PC itself. Because of the intricate way in which the adware insinuates itself into its host (including making dozens of registry edits), successful removal is a tedious, manual process. When running, it can be found in Windows Task Manager and stopped, but before long it will start up again.

Ultimately what this piece of malware is trying to do is to tempt you into registering the software for $49.99 in order to "fix" the problems your PC is experiencing (which are caused by Winfixer). Needless to say, after registering the product, nothing much changes - you've just been conned out of $49.99. Indeed it may not end there. There are unconfirmed reports that the credit card that you used to purchase the subscription may be compromised and may be subject to unauthorized use and that the operation works out of the Ukraine, though neither of my customers reported this happening to them.

If you come across Winfixer on your PC, DO NOT buy the subscription - get a reputable anti-spyware program and let it try to deal with it, but be warned that many anti-spyware programs have difficulty completely removing it and pop-ups may still occur. If in doubt, contact us here at PC Medic.

Musical Interlude

2006-08-21T23:04:00.000+01:00

Pink Floyd (minus Roger Waters) has recently released their Pulse double DVD. Directed by veteran music video and concert director David Mallet, and shot on video during Pink Floyd's two-week stint at London's Earls Court Exhibition Centre in October 1994, this 145-minute performance (from Floyd's Division Bell tour) is a sonic marvel to behold. Under a massive arch festooned with then-state-of-the-art laser, lighting, and projection systems, the 1987 incarnation of Pink Floyd (David Gilmour on lead guitar, keyboardist Richard Wright, and drummer Nick Mason) and their stellar supporting band kicks off with "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" (a loving tribute to Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett), followed by four tracks from The Division Bell, two from 1987's A Momentary Lapse of Reason, "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" from 1979's magnum opus The Wall, and leading into intermission with an absolutely stunning performance of "One of These Days," the timeless opening track from 1971's Meddle.

The focus of Disc 2 is a near-perfect performance of 1974's Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety--reason enough to make this a must-have DVD for even the most casual Floyd admirers. And while no one will ever re-create the sheer magnificence of Clare Torry's original tour de force vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky," it's safe to say that backup singers Sam Brown, Claudia Fontaine, and Durga McBroom deliver the next best thing, in addition to seamless contributions throughout the concert. After the closing heartbeat of "Eclipse," the concert ends with encore performances of "Wish You Were Here," "Comfortably Numb," and a no-holds-barred, pyrotechnically explosive rendition of The Wall's "Run Like Hell," all showcasing Gilmour's guitar mastery with frequent close-ups of his picking and fret-work as seen throughout the concert. (Like Gilmour, Mason and Wright were never dynamic onstage, and that's true here as well, but their technical precision is fully evident, and while guitarist Tim Renwick and saxophonist Dick Parry are each given moments to shine, bassist Guy Pratt (Wright's son-in-law) is a worthy substitution for Waters, especially when vocally sparring with Gilmour on "Run Like Hell.")

This is a DVD that requires a number of viewings/auditions to appreciate the quality of the performances contained within it. To some extent, the performance encapsulated within Pulse is a dying breed. Few super groups today put on the stadium extravaganza that was Pink Floyd ( U2 is one of the few that come to mind). If, like me, you were never fortunate enough to see the Floyd live, Pulse is the nearest you're going to get. Put it on your wish list, if only for Gilmour's god-like guitar playing.

Expanding your Network

2006-08-17T10:21:00.000+01:00

If you have a wireless network at home and your house is a standard contemporary 3-4 bed detached or semi-detached building then you should receive a good wireless signal throughout the house, and probably in the garden as well. However, if your house is of earlier construction with solid brick or stone walls, instead of stud partitions, or if your house extends over three floors, or is larger than average, then you may have some cold spots in your house where the Wi-Fi signal doesn't reach.

If so, there are a few things you can try to improve the range of your network. First off, consider the location of your wireless router. In many cases the router is located on the ground floor near to where the phone is. If you have a three story house (or your attic converted) and are having difficulty receiving a wireless signal on the top floor, then consider relocating the router to the first floor - equidistant between the ground floor and the top floor. Remember that the signal coming from your wireless router can be considered to be spherical, so try to locate all your house inside that sphere by locating the router in a central location within the house.

Try to locate your router away from solid brick or stone interior walls as these will absorb much of the signal and reduce the network's range. Also, move the router away from metal objects such as filing cabinets or PC cases. We recently had a customer who was getting a very poor signal in a bedroom across the hall from the study where the wireless router was. We found the router sitting on top of the PC system case - simply moving it to the desk above the PC provided a dramatic improvement to the reception in the bedroom.

Try a different type of wireless adapter. Not all wireless adapters are equal. We have found that the USB types are not always as good as PCI types with separate aerials. While it's difficult to give hard and fast recommendations on this, changing your adapter may help matters.

Install a range extender, such as the Linksys WRE54G shown in the picture. This is what Linksys says about it:

"Unlike adding a traditional access point to your network to expand wireless coverage, the Wireless-G Range Expander does not need to be connected to the network by a data cable. Just put it within range of your main access point or wireless router, and it "bounces" the signals out to remote wireless devices.

This "relay station" or "repeater" approach saves wiring costs and helps to build wireless infrastructure by driving signals into even those distant, reflective corners and hard-to-reach areas where wireless coverage is spotty and cabling is impractical. The Range Expander is perfect to help cover large areas in multi-story homes, warehouse environments, public spaces, and wireless "Hot Spots" -- anywhere you need extra coverage for your wireless network. "

PC Medic has been using one for the past couple of months and it does exactly what it says on the tin. A little messy to set up, but once set up it provides a nice boost to your wireless network.

Happy Birthday

2006-08-13T20:54:00.000+01:00

OFFICE workers across the globe yesterday celebrated, or perhaps cursed, the 25th anniversary of a device that changed the world: the mass- market personal computer, or PC. On August 30th, 1981 — the year Ronald Reagan entered the White House — IBM launched the 5150, a machine boasting a 4.77Mhz processor (about 650 times slower than today’s PCs), up to 256kb of memory (about 8,000 times less than today’s PCs) and an optional floppy drive with 160kb of capacity (barely enough for a Word document).

The PC was priced at $1,565, about £2,500 in today’s money, and made its debut to a sceptical public. And the 5150 was a huge success. It featured an enhanced version of Microsoft’s BASIC programing language, developed by a certain William Gates, and an 83-key adjustable keyboard. Unlike many other computers then, the keyboard and monitor were not built-in but attached — an industry standard that Apple has tried to counteract with its wireless Bluetooth iMacs.

The IBM PC was not the first personal computer: the Apple II came out in 1977 and the Atari 800 in 1979, but both used proprietary components and failed to develop sales into the mass market. In contrast, IBM used an Intel processor and Microsoft software, essentially allowing rival companies to clone its product. This move was a result of IBM simply being in a hurry, rather than any grand strategy.

But not everyone loves the PC — which, before the launch of the 5150, was known simply as the microprocessor. The 5150 began the era of Moore’s Law — or rapid obsolescence — along with repetitive strain injury, internet porn, timewasting viruses and countless other forms of PC frustration. Even making PCs has also become a commodity business. In 2004 IBM sold its PC business to the Chinese — a fitting end, some believed, to a world-changing product that had largely been an accident. As The New York Times noted back in 1981: “The speed and extent to which IBM has been successful has surprised many people, including IBM itself.” As the revolution rolls on, the one billionth computer was sold in 2002. The two billionth will be sold some time next year.

Dodgy Deals

2006-07-26T18:54:00.000+01:00

If you buy a PC from one of the large multiples, like PC World or Curry's, or direct from Dell, you can be sure that the operating system software on the PC is the genuine Microsoft product and your PC will have a Microsoft certificate of authenticity (COA) attached to it, similar to one of the ones shown in the pictures. If you buy a non-branded PC built by a local neighbourhood PC shop, then you need to check at time of purchase that you have both the software discs and the COA, or you could find yourself in trouble at a later date.

This was brought home today when a customer brought in a no-brand machine that was purchased in 2004 from a local neighbourhood PC shop. The first thing I found surprising was that the PC was running Windows 2000 Professional, an operating system aimed squarely at the business community and not the home user. As Windows XP, the first choice operating system for home users, had been around since 2001, it seemed strange that our customer's machine had been loaded with 2000 Professional. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that 2000 Professional does not require product activation and can, therefore, be installed on multiple PCs - a tempting financial proposition for a less than scrupulous dealer! The absence of a Microsoft COA on the system box and the fact that the customer was not supplied with any OS installation discs was possibly just an oversight on the shop's part, or maybe not. As it happens, the customer also purchased Microsoft Office with the PC and again, no COA or product key was supplied nor any installation discs.

So what happens when such a customers PC requires a full reinstall due to either a hard disc failure or operating system corruption. Well, they need to buy a new operating system licence and a new copy of Microsoft Office as without the product keys supplied with the COAs for these products they cannot be reinstalled. And this could be quite an expensive proposition - several hundred euros when you include Microsoft Office.

So, if you are offered a PC for sale, make sure that there is Microsoft COA stuck on the system box, it is a requirement of Microsoft's licence agreement that this be done. Also, you should be supplied with original Microsoft discs for all Microsoft software that is supplied with your PC. If they refuse to supply you with COAs or discs, then take your custom elsewhere.

If you have already bought a PC and you did not get a COA or original discs, e.g. for Microsoft Office, then you should return to the vendor and point out that you are entitled by law to these and ask that they be supplied. If the vendor refuses to supply them to you then you should bring your complaint to Microsoft as the vendor is in breach of Microsoft's licence agreement. More information on the COA and what to do if you don't receive one can be found here on the Microsoft website.

Buying from Dell

2006-07-12T14:36:00.000+01:00

We had a customer recently complain to us that they ordered a new PC from Dell and when they set it up they discovered that Microsoft Word wasn't installed. What the customer did not realize is that Dell do not supply Microsoft Word or, indeed, any components of Microsoft Office, as standard and if you require them you must pay extra for them. All PCs normally come with Microsoft Works, which includes a word processor but this word processor is not Microsoft Word.

If you need either Word or one of the other Microsoft Office components be sure to specify what you need at the time of purchase from Dell as to buy the software separately from the PC is much more expensive. For example, Microsoft Office Small Business Edition, which includes Word, Outlook, Powerpoint and Excel costs €314 when purchased with a new Dell PC but will cost you €550 (ouch!) if you wander over to PC World to buy it. If you only want Word, then you should order Works Suite, which is an extra €47 - buying Word from a retailer will cost you in the region of €299!

The Cost of Ink

2006-07-05T09:19:00.000+01:00

Anyone using an inkjet printer these days can't help but notice how their price has fallen in recent times. As we speak, you can purchase an inkjet printer from PC World for €49.99 and a photo inkjet printer for €89.99. A few years ago these would have cost up to €200 or more so they appear pretty good value. That is until you start replacing the ink.

For example, one of the printers that we use here at PC Medic is an Epson R200 photo inkjet printer, which cost about €180 a couple of years ago. This printer has 6 separate ink cartridges (magenta, light magenta, cyan, light cyan, yellow and black) and produces superb colour prints on photo glossy paper. However, the recommended replacement ink cartridges cost in the region of €18.00 each when purchased locally. That's €108 for a complete set of cartridges, or 58% of the cost of the printer. Put another way, two sets of cartridges costs more than a new printer. We will use between 4 and 5 sets of cartridges per year i.e. we could spend up to €500 per year on ink - and we don't consider ourselves heavy users of the printer!

I say we could spend up to €500 per year, but we don't anymore. The reason for this is that we have switched from using branded Epson cartridges at €108 per set to generic cartridges supplied by Inkjet.ie at a cost of €35.00 per set, a massive saving of €73.00 per set. There are ongoing debates whether using generic ink cartridges leads to poorer quality prints, prints that fade quicker, or even to damage to your printer. At this point in time we can only confirm that we notice no significant difference in print quality when printing photo quality prints. Perhaps the pictures will fade in 20 years rather than in twenty five years, but I probably won't care that much by then. As for the generic cartridges damaging the printer, the savings to be gained are so great that I can afford to buy a new printer from the money saved after using just three sets of generic cartridges. As we have only switched to generic ink cartridges 6 months ago we can't give a long term assessment of the damage it might do to the printer, but we'll keep you posted in the future of any problems we encounter.

Note that the above experience relates only to the Epson R200 printer. Your own experience may be different depending on the make and model of printer that you use. For now, PC Medic is sticking with generic ink cartridges.

GPS - an Alternative to the Roadmap

2006-06-26T11:07:00.000+01:00

In my earlier post I gave you details of two websites that can assist you in planning your route when undertaking a journey. A more high-tech solution is provided by GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite navigation (or SatNav, for short) devices, which have been falling in price dramatically over the past couple of years. These devices are designed to be mounted in your car and they provide a real-time map of your position, together with verbal instructions preparing you for junctions and turns in advance.

The majority of these devices come with software that you install on your PC and a set of maps covering certain global regions. Depending on the model you purchase you may receive either UK and Ireland maps with your device or maps for all of Europe (including UK and Ireland). You can generally purchase maps for other regions, such as the US and Australia.

PC Medic has been using a Navman GPS unit for about two years now and the experience has been very positive overall. The unit that we use is essentially a PDA, running Pocket PC Windows, with a built-in GPS receiver. The software that came with this unit is Navman SmartST and maps of all European countries are included. It has to be said that mapping support for Ireland, outside of the principal cities, is very poor. So, while you get excellent coverage of Dublin, and its environs, you cannot plot a route from, say, Ashbourne to Trim.

You will generally use the device to help you find the route between your current location and a destination. As the unit always knows your current location, from the satellites it uses for positioning, it is simply a matter of inputting your destination (town and street) in the appropriate data entry window and selecting Go. The unit will then calculate the most appropriate route (giving consideration for one-way streets, etc). The route is displayed as a moving map on the device's screen and the road you should be following is highlighted in red. As you come to turns and junctions that you must negotiate, these are displayed as light green arrows, clearly showing the direction you must follow.

At the bottom of the screen the current street or road name is displayed. At the bottom right of the screen the remaining distance that you must travel until the next action you must take is displayed. At the top of the screen the next action that you must take and the name of the road or street that you will turn onto is displayed. The top left corner of the map displays a graphical image of the next turn you will have to take (a left turn in the screenshot opposite).

In addition to the map and on-screen directions, you can choose to have all the directions clearly spoken to you by either a male or female voice. These directions take the form of "In 200 metres, at the roundabout, take the third exit". When you are actually on the roundabout, it will announce "Exit now" as you approach the third exit. This is a particularly useful feature and we have found that you can, in most cases, navigate complex routes by following the spoken directions and not looking at the display at all.

Perhaps one of the best features is that if you miss a turn, the system will recalculate a new route for you in 10-15 seconds to get you back on track - so it is practically impossible to get lost. We use the system almost daily for navigating the Dublin suburbs and have used it in France, Spain and the southwest US and it has not let us down yet.

However, there are some limitations. First off, the maps are out of date as soon as you buy the unit and they are not updated regularly. For example, the maps on our unit have the M50 ending at Ballinteer and all the new housing estates that have been built in the past two years are not included. This may or may not be a problem for you - it has rarely been an issue in our own experience.

As I mentioned earlier, Ireland is poorly mapped outside of the main population centres, so it is of limited use in Ireland outside of the main cities. Note, however, that rural areas in other European countries seem to be well mapped.

You should not follow the directions on the unit blindly as there may be traffic restrictions introduced since the mapping software was issued. For example, travelling from Stillorgan to Rathfarnham the unit will instruct me to take a right turn at the bottom of Upper Kilmacud Road onto Main St., Dundrum. There is, however, no right turn permitted at this junction!

Finally, as the GPS system requires line-of-sight to the satellites for it to get a fix, it doesn't work well in cities with high-rise buildings all around, such as Manhattan. Also, when you enter long tunnels, it may take the unit a minute or two to re-establish a satellite fix when you emerge from the tunnel.

Notwithstanding these limitations, a SatNav system certainly does contribute to stress-free travel when on unfamilar roads. I notice that there are more and more taxis in Dublin using SatNav these days and it can only be a few years from the day that SatNav will be included as standard on all new cars (it is available as an option on a number of prestige brands). In the meantime, you can fit a SatNav system for under €300 from one of the main manufacturers such as Navman, TomTom or Garmin, or visit a Halfords branch or Global Positioning Systems for a selection.

On the right Road?

2006-06-21T09:39:00.000+01:00

It's that time of the year again when your thoughts turn to packing up the car and heading off on holiday for a week or so for a bit of a break and, hopefully, some sunshine. Before you head off, it's normally a good idea to get out the maps and plan your route in advance, particularly if you are heading to a country whose roads are not known to you. This is where route planning software can really help out. There are a number of commercial offerings out there to help you on your way, but I want to point you to a couple of free ones.

The first is provided courtesy of the AA's website and allows you to get detailed directions of a journey between any two points in Ireland, the UK or Europe. It also allows you to route via a particular waypoint that you want to visit and to avoid motorways and toll routes if you so choose. What it doesn't provide you with is a detailed map for your journey.

This is where Microsoft's Live Local website steals a march on the AA. As well as detailed instructions of the turns and twists that you need to take on the way, the Live Local site shows you zoomable maps with each turning point indicated and these maps can be printed out along with your route instructions. Live Local is not just limited to Europe, but provides more or less global coverage and, with a nod to Google Earth, allows you to overlay satellite images on your chosen route.

Between these two free websites you should be able to get your holiday off to a good start knowing you're on the right road.

DRM Blues

2006-06-19T12:25:00.000+01:00

Nearly two years ago I signed up to the Eircom.net Music Club, which allows you to purchase music online - either complete albums or individual tracks. While their prices are not especially good if you buy individual tracks at €1.29 each, whole albums are better priced at €12.49, particularly if you buy a double album with up to 40 tracks on it.

So I happily bought quite a few albums over the months without paying too much attention to the small print of their licence agreement. Since then I have learned a bit about DRM, or Digital Rights Management, and why you should try to avoid it if at all possible. Basically DRM, in the context of purchased music downloads, is software that is intertwined with the music track you download. This software ensures that you can only play the music download, which you have paid for, within the terms of the licence issued with that download.

As it turns out, the music I purchased from Eircom.net's Music Club allows me to play the music on the PC that I originally downloaded it to. If I transfer that music to my laptop to bring with me when I travel, I have to download a new licence. Once I activate that licence the other licence becomes inactive. In total I can only re-activate the licence 3 times, thereafter the music will not play. If this wasn't enough of a restriction, the licence for this DRM-enabled (or should that be crippled?) music does not permit streaming of music via a streaming device, such as the Squeezeboxes we use at home. So, instead of getting a bargain I've got headaches and now go out of my way to avoid the purchase of any music with DRM attached to it, including all music on the Apple iTunes store. At least if you buy a CD you can (legitimately) rip the CD and use the ripped music in MP3 format on any machine you personally own, any MP3 player or any streaming device. I am fully against the illegal copying of music for distribution to others via P2P systems or other means. However, if I buy busic for my own personal use I do not want to be limited to how, where and when I can listen to that music. Avoid DRM and vote with your feet.

End is nigh for Windows 98 and Me

2006-06-17T11:51:00.000+01:00

If you are running Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition or Windows Me as the operating system on your PC you should be aware that all Microsoft support for these products, including updated security patches, ends on July 11th.

Without new security patches, these systems are exposed to new security threats, and will remain vulnerable to attacks. Possibly a good time to consider upgrading your PC, or at least the operating system.

Bring out your Dead!

2006-06-16T11:01:00.000+01:00

You have an old computer and you want to get rid of it - what do you do? I've been offered a number of old PCs recently by their owners with the expectant question "What will you give me for it?". Unfortunately, what their owners fail to realize is that a PC that is more than 4-5 years old has practically zero resale value. This is partly due to how quickly PCs become obsolete as a result of the introduction of new technologies with higher specifications and also to the fall in the price of new PCs.

Why would anyone pay you for a 7-year old PC with a 400MHz single core processor, 64MB of RAM and a 20GB hard disc drive when they can buy a 2.8GHz Dual processor, 1024MB of RAM and a 160GB hard disc drive for just under €700 (including a 17" flat screen monitor!)?

If you have an old PC that you want to get rid of you could try one of your local schools and see if they will take it. Provided it is in full working order they may. More likely they will find it too old and difficult to maintain, particularly if it is running an older OS, like Windows 98.

Your other option is to bring it along to your local recycling unit, a list for Dublin can be found here. You'll be glad to hear that these centres do not have any charge for the disposal of computers or other waste electrical items.

Keep Those Discs Safe

2006-06-10T17:52:00.000+01:00

On a number of occasions over the past few months we have come across PCs that required a full reinstall of the operating system but the customer could not locate the discs that came with the PC. Depending on the brand of PC that you have, the absence of the manufacturers discs can be a problem. If your operating system becomes corrupt there are basically three ways that a manufacturer can allow you to restore it to normal.

The first is the way that Dell used to do it up until the last number of months. That is they supply you with a Windows XP installation disc and this can be used to reinstall the operating system. To do a full reinstall this way involves reformatting the hard disc drive, which wipes all your data and programs from the disc. So, once the operating system is reinstalled from the installation disc you then need to install device drivers for the hardware (chipset, graphics card, video card, modem, network adapter etc.). These drivers come on a second Dell CD usually labelled the Resource CD. If your PC is a Dell and it came with these discs then you should keep the discs in a safe place. However, if you cannot find them it isn't the end of the world. The operating system disc is generic so you can use the disc that came with another Dell PC, perhaps a friend has one. The Resource CD is not generic but is specific to your Dell model. However, even if you have lost this CD, you can download the drivers for your specific model from the Dell website by entering the service tag number for your PC on their Online Technical Support Page.

The second way that a manufacturer can allow you to recover your operating system is the way that current Dells, Packard Bells, IBMs and others do it. These PCs have a separate partition on the hard disc, which may be hidden, which contains an image of your system as it was supplied to you by the manufacturer. An image is like a digital snapshot of your system at a point in time and it will contain both the operating system, system drivers and any application software supplied by the manufacturer. To restore the PC to its as-new status a restore routine is invoked. This can be, depending on the manufacturer, by pressing a button such as F11 at startup or by using a System Restore disc that you boot the PC from. The advantage of this system of restoring your PC is that it restores not only the operating system, but also the drivers and supplied application software. The disadvantage is that if your hard disc becomes damaged, or you inadvertently deleted the recovery partition, you will have to go back to the manufacturer and see if they will supply a recovery DVD. If they will, they will charge you for it and it may take some time before you get it.

The third method of recovering your PC is using a recovery DVD. This is similar in principle to the second method, but the disk image is on one or more DVDs instead of a recovery partition on your hard disc. Compaq and Hewlett Packard PCs come with recovery DVDs and you do not want to lose these discs as they are specific to your machine and you cannot recover your machine without them. If you lose them, it is possible to get replacements but it may take you some time to get them and there will be a charge.

PC For Sale - Sold

2006-06-08T14:02:00.000+01:00

The PC described below has now been sold - thanks for all the interest in it.

It's not often that PC Medic has a PC for sale, but right now we have a real bargain on offer which would make the ideal upgrade unit. It's a rebuilt system box with a brand new PC Medic-installed Gigabyte motherboard and Intel 3.0 GHz processor. There is a 160Gb hard disk drive divided into two main partitions - one for the operating system and programs and one for data. Also included is a recovery partition that will restore your PC to "as-new" condition, should you run into problems down the line. The motherboard is fitted with 1Gb of DDR RAM and has integrated graphics and sound. There is a free AGP slot, if you want to fit a high-powered graphics card for game playing and three free PCI slots, so plenty of expansion options exist. The box has a single optical drive in the form of a DVD rewriter.

Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2 is installed and all Microsoft Windows Updates have also been installed.

Pre-installed software includes the full OpenOffice productivity suite (see the blog below on OpenOffice for details), Anti-Virus software, Anti-Spyware software, iTunes, Adobe Reader, PowerDVD (to play DVD movies) and DeepBurner (for burning CDs/DVDs).

This high-spec PC is being offered as a system box only, so you will need to add a mouse, keyboard and monitor to have a complete system. Price is only €480.00. (if you need a monitor mouse or keyboard let us know and we'll give you a price for a full system). This unit is backed-up with the unparalleled support of PC Medic.

Contact me at brendan@pcmedic.ie if you are interested or want more details.

Note that we can add extras such as a wireless network card (it already has a built-in ethernet network card) or high-performance graphics card if required - contact me for a quote.

Windows OneCare Rivals

2006-06-02T09:37:00.000+01:00

Hot on the heels of Microsoft launching their OneCare internet security solution (see New Internet Security Option post on May 31st) both Symantec and McAfee have announced rival solutions. Symantec's product is to be called Norton 360 while McAfee's product is currently using the codename Falcon. Norton 360 will be available before March 2007, possibly later this year while McAfee will be launching a beta version of Falcon in the coming weeks.

How these products will measure up to OneCare remains to be seen. What they all need to work on is simplifying the user experience. The current generation of internet security products still do not take into account that the average home user does not know how a firewall should be configured, what ports need to be open to use an attached webcam, or what IP address and subnet mask should be set to communicate with another PC on a home network and, I would argue, a home user should not need to know this. The ideal internet security product for home users should perform an analysis of the user's PC and then set the appropriate level of security based on the results of that analysis. Thereafter it should remain silent except to notify the user of important information. How many of us have experienced pop-up windows from internet security packages like Norton or McAfee that present cryptic message that are alsmost impossible for the average user to understand? Internet security software needs to get smarter and simpler at the same time. Let's hope that the products that will arrive in the next few months can achieve that.

Microsoft Office Alternative

2006-06-01T09:14:00.000+01:00

If you are in need of office productivity software (i.e a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics or database) but don't currently have any installed on your PC then you have a few options that you can take. The current industry standard for office productivity software is Microsoft Office, which many of you will be familiar with from your working environment where you will have encountered Word, Excel or Powerpoint. Unfortunately, Microsoft Office doesn't come cheap - about €520 if you want to install the standard version of Microsoft Office 2003 on your PC. While most people would balk at the thought of paying so much money for software, it is in fact pretty good value for money, but it's still a lot of money.

An alternative that many people have yet to discover is the free, yes free, OpenOffice which can be downloaded from OpenOffice.org. This software is what is termed Open Source software and the following, taken from the OpenOffice.org website gives a bit of background to the software.

Historical background
StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software, was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems during the summer of 1999 and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000. Future versions of StarOffice software, beginning with 6.0, have been built using the OpenOffice.org source, APIs, file formats, and reference implementation. Sun continues to sponsor development on OpenOffice.org and is the primary contributor of code to OpenOffice.org. CollabNet hosts the website infrastructure for development of the product and helps manage the project.

Product Description
OpenOffice.org released the long-awaited version 2.0 of its free office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux on 20 October 2005 adding a new database module, support for the OpenDocument file format, a fresh user interface, and plenty of improvements and bug fixes.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the first open source office suite to offer thorough support for the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) OASIS Standard. OpenDocument is an XML file format that was developed by OASIS, the international body for the development and ratification of e-Business standards. The OpenDocument format can be used by any office application without fear of vendor specific lock-in or onerous licensing terms and fees, with the confidence that documents can be viewed, edited and printed for generations to come.

The suite now also offers a database module, Base, to complement the word processor (Writer), spreadsheet manager (Calc), presentation manager (Impress) and drawing tool (Draw) modules. These give all users the tools they need to be productive in the modern world. Free for all, OpenOffice.org offers everyone the enduring freedoms to use, study, improve and share the software. Users can download it for free from the Project's Web page.

With a new user interface, OpenOffice.org 2.0 is easy to learn and use by the most inexperienced user, and is significantly more compatible with Microsoft Office files than prior versions. Supported by dozens of professional companies, OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be available in more than 60 languages. Able to run on Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Sun Solaris and other platforms, OpenOffice.org is increasingly the choice of businesses and governments throughout the world, and earlier versions have been downloaded over 49 million times since the project's inception.

So OpenOffice is a non-commercial version of the Sun Microsystem's commercially available StarOffice. The key difference between OpenOffice and StarOffice is that the former is supplied free of charge and with no support from Sun Microsystems. However, although not supported by Sun Microsystems, there is a vast range of support for OpenOffice through online user sites, forums, and blogs.

From the perspective of an average home user, OpenOffice can do everything that you would want to do, or could do with Microsoft Office. It even feels like Microsoft Office in terms of menus and commands that you might be used to. And, probably most importantly of all, it is compatible with Microsoft Office. So, if you are sent an Excel spreadsheet you can open it in the OpenOffice equivalent program which is Calc. If you create a document in the OpenOffice word processor, Writer, you can save the document as a .doc file that can be opened by Microsoft's Word.

The Windows download is 91MB, a few minutes if you have broadband, and versions are available for Linux and Mac users. Try it and let PC Medic know what you think.

New Internet Security Option

2006-05-31T10:01:00.000+01:00

For those of you who have depended on Norton or McAfee to provide you with protection from viruses and other internet nasties you now have a new option. You probably will have heard of the company that has entered into competition with the market leaders in internet security - it's Microsoft.

Microsoft has just launched their Windows OneCare service which offers anti-virus, anti-spyware, two-way firewall, back-up and restore and system tune ups for $49.99 per year for up to 3 PCs. PC Medic signed up for their 90-day free trial earlier today and I can confirm that the sign-up, download and installation is a painless process that took about 15 minutes. Once installed the system will assign you a colour-coded status depending on what it finds on your PC.

A green icon means your status is Good. Protection Plus features like antivirus and firewall are up to date, your computer is not due for a tune-up or a backup, and there are no actions to take requiring your attention. Windows Live OneCare is running in the background, monitoring your system to prevent threats like viruses or spyware.

A yellow icon means your status is Fair. Usually this means you have an action to take, such as scheduling or running a tune-up or backup, or downloading a non-critical update. A yellow icon means there is no immediate threat to your system, but you should take care of the action as soon as you can to return your system to green.

A red icon means that your computer is At Risk. This can happen if, for example, Windows Live OneCare is unable to update Protection Plus with the latest virus definitions because of a lost Internet connection, or if the Windows Live OneCare Firewall is turned off.

The new firewall allows better control over outgoing traffic, as well as incoming traffic, and retains the simplicity and design of the firewall introduced in Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Full details from Microsoft's OneCare site.

Microsoft seems to have put a lot of effort into keeping the user interface as simple as possible, something other internet security vendors could learn from. Time will tell how effective the product is at keeping the nasties at bay. For now, its the only protection I have on my laptop and will report back in due course on my experiences with it. As the product has only just been released (though its been in public beta for some months) we can't recommend that you dump your Norton or McAfee products and install OneCare. However, PC Medic will report our experience with the product over the coming weeks and let you know what we think.

Router Reboot

2006-05-30T08:42:00.000+01:00

One of the most common access problems you can have with broadband is when you open Internet Explorer and you get the dreaded Page Cannot be Displayed message. This can happen for a number of reasons, but the most common cause is that your router needs rebooting. The router is normally supplied by your broadband service provider - Netopia routers with Eircom and Zyxel routers with ESAT/BT - and these are, in effect, simple computers. Like all computers (unfortunately) they sometimes hang and if they do they will not allow internet access until they are rebooted.

Rebooting simply involves turning the power switch at the back of these units off for about 15 seconds. The power can then be turned back on again and the router will start its boot sequence, which can last for up to a minute. Once it has rebooted you may find that your internet access is magically restored.

In the case of wireless routers I have come across the situation where PCs connected to the router by ethernet cable can access the internet but wirelessly connected PCs cannot. Again, while there are a number of reasons why this might occur, a quick reboot of the router often resolves the issue in less than a minute.

One word of caution, you want to reboot your router, not reset it. At the back of your router you will find a recessed reset button that can only be pressed using a pen tip or paper-clip. You should never press this button unless instructed to do so by your internet service provider (or you know how to reconfigure a router manually!) as you will clear all the configuration settings needed to connect to your broadband service.

Rogue Spyware Removal Programs

2006-05-28T21:16:00.000+01:00

On more than one occasion a customer has told me how they got messages that their PC was infected by spyware and that they should download a named program, for $39.99, and all their problems would be resolved. However, after downloading said program their problems got even worse. What had happened here was that the customer's machine had become infected with spyware and they were duped into buying a rogue anti-spyware program - a program that did nothing for the money they paid for it.

Currently the number of rogue anti-spyware programs outnumber legitimate ones by a factor of nearly 10 to 1, so its important to know what's what. The Spyware Warrior website carries a comprehensive list of those programs that are known to be, or strongly suspected of being rogue software. If you are thinking of buying anti-spyware software (or if you bought a package and are concerned over its credentials) I suggest paying a visit to this site. PC Medic recommends Counterspy, from Sunbelt Software, as an effective first line defense against spyware.

Vista on the Horizon

2006-05-23T09:02:00.000+01:00

Microsoft has recently announced that the next generation of their Windows operating system, called Vista, will not now be available to the home user market until January 2007. Despite the hype that will surround the launch of Vista, it will be an evolutionary rather than revolutionary product. The home user will notice the slick new Aero interface as the biggest change, followed by a new Windows Explorer and the provision of virtual folders. Much of the rest of the improvements relate to networking and security and may not be apparent to a casual home user, but are improvements that will hopefully make Vista a more secure operating system than its predecessors.

Microsoft has recently launched a GetReady site for Vista where you can find details on the minimum specification needed to run the new OS (for now, I suggest that you should take these minimum specs with a grain of salt as Microsoft has tended to understate these in the past - 128MB of RAM for XP Home? Yes it runs, but like a lame dog). What we can say from what they have published is that a lot of PCs out there will require a lot more RAM and more powerful graphics cards if Vista is to display the features of the new Aero interface. We'll save the debate about whether you should upgrade to Vista until after we have had the opportunity to try Vista for ourselves.

You may be interested to note that Windows XP, at the time of the launch of Vista, will be Microsoft's longest running Windows operating system, while Windows Me was the shortest surviving (no surprises there then).

File Sharing Risks

2006-05-21T12:24:00.000+01:00

If you're a regular to this blog you have, no doubt, heard me expound upon the risks of file-sharing. This is using programs like Limewire, Kazaa, BitTorrent, Bearshare, Morpheus and others to obtain free music or films via the internet. I came across this article recently and anyone who has a PC connected to the internet should take the time to read it as it provides a succinct summary of the risks of using such software.

Some other links that provide details of file sharing risks are here, here, here and here.

New Generation Optical Storage

2006-05-18T09:09:00.000+01:00

One storage option that you can skip for now is the recently introduced Blu-ray drive from Samsung, the eloquently named SH-B022 BD Writer, pictured below, among the first of a new generation of drives that can write up to 50GB (more than 10 DVDs) onto a single disc. This is done using a blue laser (hence the Blu-ray moniker) rather than the red lasers found in current CD and DVD writers. This is analogous to using a finer-tipped pen for writing, thus allowing more words to be written to a page.

The main driver for such high capacity storage discs is High Definition TV (Or HDTV as it has become known). With the advent of HDTV, which will be available in Ireland from SKY later this year, current DVD discs do not have sufficient storage capacity for a two-hour movie. So a new format needed to be found for storing HD movies. Unfortunately two solutions were found: Blu-ray, which was developed by a consortium comprised of Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Warner Brothers and Walt Disney, among others - all heavy hitters in the electronics/entertainment industries; and HD-DVD or High Definition Digital Versatile Disc, which was developed by Toshiba and supported by NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, Intel, Paramount Pictures and Universal studios.

Many of you may remember a similar situation back in the early eighties when two formats of video recorder were introduced simultaneously: Betamax by Sony and VHS by JVC. In that battle the technically superior Betamax format lost out to VHS after a number of years of bitter competition. The lesson that should have been learned from that debacle is that only one format will win the battle if the two are non-compatible - as was the case with Betamax and VHS and as is the case with Blu-ray and HD-DVD (the latter discs only store 15GB of data as opposed to Blu-ray's 50GB).

Like all new technologies the early adopter pays a premium for the privilege of being among the first to use it. Samsung's new Blu-ray writer will set you back €850, and you'll have to pay €46 for each blank 50GB disc - not for the faint-hearted. However, expect prices to drop significantly in the future for whichever format wins the war. Back in August 2001, less than 5 years ago, a Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD writer for your PC would have cost you €960 ex-VAT! For now, look elsewhere for a backup solution.

Change of Image

2006-05-14T22:25:00.000+01:00

We're in the process of re-designing the PC Medic blog, so you may see a few changes in appearance over the next few weeks. Let us know via the comments whether you like/dislike the new designs.

Online Storage

2006-05-13T18:30:00.000+01:00

When it comes to backing up your data it's generally a case of "I'll get around to it tomorrow". I'd be the first to admit that data backup is not the most interesting thing that you can do on your PC, but it has to be done if you want to ensure that you don't finish up losing some important files at some point in the future.

One of the reasons we don't back up our data more frequently than we should is that we don't always have a convenient and suitable place to copy the data to. Floppy disks are unreliable and hold very little data (1.44MB). CD's and DVDs are reliable and hold between 650MB and 4.7GB but aren't always to hand when you want to backup your data. A second hard disc drive, preferably an external one is the ideal solution, but not many users have an external hard disc drive.

If you have a broadband internet connection there is another option open to you and, depending on how much data you want to back up, it need not cost you a penny. The possible solution to your backup problems is online storage. There are now a wide range of companies that will offer online storage, which involves uploading your precious data to the data storage company's servers. Once the data has been uploaded you can retrieve it at any time, so if your computer suffers a catastrophic failure at some point in the future, resulting in total data loss, you can be sure that your data is OK and you can download it to your PC again once it has been repaired. An added benefit of storing your data online is that no matter where you are in the world, once you have access to a PC with an internet connection, you can retrieve your stored data.

So, who are the main players providing this service? Well there are quite a few, each offering slightly different products, so you need to shop around for the one that suits you. Three players that you might want to check out are Xdrive, Box and Streamload. The last of these, Streamload, offers 25 GB of storage for free, though there are restrictions on how much you can download per month (100MB). If you want to download more than 100MB per month from your online data repository then you will need to sign up for one of their subscriptions - $4.95 per month increases your download allowance to 2GB per month and you get unlimited storage, as opposed to 25GB with the free service. Other subscription rates allow greater monthly download allowances.

Box also offers free storage, though only 1MB, and 5GB will cost you $4.99 per month, which is still pretty good value for the safekeeping of your data. XDrive doesn't offer free storage and comes in at $10 per month for 5GB of storage, but offers extra security for the premium price.

One service that we haven't checked ot, but which looks pretty interesting is Carbonite, check it out for yourself.

The bottom line is you need to back up your data - not necessarily all your data, but at least the data that you consider important and irreplaceable. How you do it is up to you - but with the advent of online data storage you now have a convenient and always accessible option. Check out the services that I have highlighted and Google online storage to see other potential solutions. Look carefully at the various options before selecting one that suits you.

Update: IBackup has contacted PC Medic to inform us of their service. Check out their comment below.

Footnote on Internet Filtering

2006-05-09T07:50:00.000+01:00

I should have mentioned in my earlier post that those of you who use Eircom as your Internet Service Provider can avail of their Broadband Guardian service free of charge. We have had a look at this service and, considering it's free, it's not half bad. It allows you to set up an account for each user of the internet and each account can be regulated in terms of how much time the account owner can spend on the internet per day, what times they can use it at, whether they can see mature content or not, who they can e-mail and who they can chat to using instant messaging programs.

The only downside of this service is that the Netopia ADSL Modem/Routers that Eircom issue do not support Broadband Guardian without a firmware update (note that the service is only compatible with Eircom-supplied Netopia Modem/Routers). There is a firmware update wizard that we tried which didn't work - speaking to Eircom support they told us that they didn't know anyone who got the wizard to work! We had to update the firmware manually, not difficult but you need to follow the directions carefully or your router becomes a paperweight. The average computer user should never be asked to update firmware - it's like asking the average car owner to change the oil in their engine - they could probably do it with guidance, but it's not an enjoyable experience. Then again, would we expect anything different from Eircom?

Something for the Weekend

2006-05-05T18:13:00.000+01:00

Hope you enjoy this short movie as much as I did.

Internet Filtering Software

2006-05-02T12:38:00.000+01:00

A customer recently asked us if we could recommend a suitable software package to ensure that his young children could use the internet without the risk of being exposed to unsuitable sites. This was something that we hadn't looked at in detail so we decided to round up a number of packages, load them up and compare how good a job they did. The packages we reviewed were:

ContentProtect
CyberSitter
NetNanny
CyberPatrol

These packages were rated the top four internet filtering options by TopTenReviews, so we reckoned they were all worth looking at.

ContentProtect came out the #1 choice of TopTenReviews, but we ran into problems with the product refusing to save the setup configurations we chose. Because of this we couldn't give it our recommendation.

CyberSitter is a good package if the children are the only ones to use the computer. Since this program doesn't allow individual user accounts to be set up, e.g. different internet access levels for Mum/Dad, a teenage child and a pre-teen child, we can't recommend it where the PC is used by the whole household.

NetNanny is a program that you may have heard about as it was one of the first internet filtering packages available for the PC. The current version is pretty easy to set up and allows access to be configured for different types of user, a feature missing in CyberSitter. Our main gripe with this product was that it made searching the internet extremely slow - unacceptably so in our opinion.

Then there was CyberPatrol. This program ticked all the right boxes for us. It allowed each user of the PC have their own account, so that Mum/Dad can look at content that may not be appropriate for 10-year old Johnny, it did not slow down internet searches or browsing, and it was intelligent in what it filtered. For example, in a user account that was set up for a pre-teen, if the user tried to Google the word sex then Cyber Patrol would return a screen saying that the search was not allowed. However, if the same user account Googled the words sex education, then the search results would be displayed.

One point to note is that whatever package you use, none of them are infallible. Some will block what you might consider appropriate material and some will let through what you might consider inappropriate material. They are not a substitute for keeping a close eye on what your younger children are trying to see on the Internet.

Back to Basics - Summing Up

2006-04-26T16:41:00.000+01:00

To end our back to basics series I want to bring you on a photo tour of the inside of a PC, pointing out some of the items we discussed during the course of this series. Remember, to see any picture in more detail just click on it.

First up and overall view of the PC we will be looking at with its side panel removed. For those who weren't paying attention, the rear of the PC is on the left!

Moving in in more detail, the next picture shows the heatsink fitted to the CPU. The actual CPU can't be seen in the picture because the heatsink is mounted on top of it. The heatsink used on this PC is a low-noise type made of copper and aluminium made into a series of radial blades that present a large surface area for heat transfer. The large, low-speed fan in the centre of the heatsink only comes on when the CPU exceeds a certain temperature. Because this particular heatsink is very efficient at dispersing heat on its own, the fan remains off most of the time, leading to a quieter PC.

The next picture shows the memory modules mounted in the motherboard memory slots. This motherboard has four memory slots (2 x purple and 2 x orange) and two of the slots are occupied with 512MB of DDR2 RAM in each, for a total of 1GB of RAM.

Now we're looking at the PCI slots on the motherboard, of which there are five. The slot above the first PCI slot is the AGP slot and contains an AGP graphics card. Moving downwards, the first PCI slot is unoccupied. The next one down contains a TV tuner card. The third slot is unoccupied while the fourth slot contains a wireless network card. The final slot is empty. Just because there are five PCI slots on a motherboard, it does not always mean that you can use all five of them. For example, because of the large heatsink on the graphics card in the AGP slot, there is little room for fitting a card into the first PCI slot.

The hard disc shown in this picture is a relatively recent type referred to as a parallel type, as opposed to the older and more common serial type. The principal difference between them is the connectors. Rather than using the wide ribbon data cables I discussed in the section on hard disc drives, the unit shown in the picture uses a smaller and more easily fitted parallel cable (red in the picture). The other difference is the power connector which isn't the typical Molex type but a slimmer design. Otherwise the hard disc drive types are indistinguishable and the disc is mounted in its usual position at the bottom front of the system case.

This PC is fitted with a single optical drive, a CD-RW unit, located at the top front of the system case. In the picture you can see the multi-strand ribbon cable attached to the drive (this is a special type of ribbon cable rolled into yellow tubing to take up less space in the system case) as well as the 12V Molex power connector.

The power supply unit, or PSU) is fitted to the top rear of the system case and in the picture you can see part of the wiring loom that comes out of this unit. The following picture shows where the ATX power connector fits onto the corresponding socket on the motherboard.

Finally, a picture of the back of the case that shows, from the top down, the rear of the PSU (in brown), the on-board connectors that are built in to the motherboard (these are the mouse and keyboard PS/2 connectors, 2 x serial port and 1 x parallel port connectors, 4 x USB ports, an ethernet port and 3 audio sockets for loudspeakers and microphone). Click on the picture to see a larger version. Note that I didn't deal with the parallel and serial ports in my earlier articles as these are used less and less (if you have an old printer you may still be using the parallel port - sometimes called the printer port).

To the right of the on-board connectors is one of the system case fans, which exhausts warm air from the case.

The bottom section is where the connectors from the AGP graphics card and PCI cards emerge into the world.

So, there you have it. Hopefully, if you have been following our Back to Basics series from the beginning, you now have a better understanding of the different components that come together to make your PC work.

Back to Basics - The Power Supply Unit

2006-04-24T14:16:00.000+01:00

The power supply unit, or PSU, is what provides power at various different voltages to the motherboard and other components inside the system case. The size and type of connections attached to the wiring loom comply with the ATX standard so that, physically at least, any PSU can be mounted in any ATX system case. The PSU is always mounted at the top rear of the system case and will normally have at least one fan that serves two functions: it vents warm air from the system case that arises from the CPU heatsink; it cools the PSU itself, which can generate quite a bit of heat when a full load is being pulled on it.

When the PSU is mounted in the system case the back panel of the PSU protrudes to reveal the standard mains kettle lead connector and, on some models, an on-off switch. There is usually also a voltage selector switch which should always be set at 230V for the Irish supply. Mounting and dismounting the PSU in the system case is via four screws on the back panel.

There are two connectors that connect directly to the motherboard - these are the ATX power connector and the 12V power connector (see pictures). Both these connectors are keyed, which means that they cannot be inserted incorrectly into the motherboard sockets. The PSU provides power at a number of different voltages: +12V, -12V, +5V, -5V and +3.3V each of which is supplied to the motherboard via the ATX connector. The accompanying pin-out diagram displays the voltages associated with each pin of the ATX connector.

In addition to the ATX connector and 12V power connector, both of which are plugged directly into the motherboard, the PSU has two other types of connector (well it actually has more, but the others are outside the scope of this article) and these are the 12V Molex connector, which is used to bring power to the optical drives and hard disc drives, and the 12V floppy disc connector, both of which can be seen in the accompanying photo.

The output of a PSU is measured in Watts and PC manufacturers have had a tendency to put in PSUs with low-ish power ratings (150-200W). That's not a problem until you start adding extra components to your PC, which increases the overall power consumption. This can happen if you add an extra hard disc drive, or install a more up to date graphics card. If you exceed the overall power rating of your PSU you may find that the PC randomly crashes or reboots. The problem can be readily rectified by upgrading the PSU to say 250-300W. You should be aware that you can now buy PSUs rated at up to 700W - but bigger is not always better. It's been estimated that even the most heavily loaded PC running full bore will not exceed 300W, so going for a PSU that delivers over twice that amount of power may just result in extra heat being generated, requiring extra fans for cooling, resulting in a noisier PC.

To finish up this series I'll bring you on a tour of the innards of one of PC Medic's PCs that will show all of the items mentioned in our Back to Basics articles in situ in a real PC.

Back to Basics - Optical Drives

2006-04-21T09:04:00.000+01:00

The term "optical drives" is a fancy collective term for CD-ROM , CD-RW, DVD-ROM and DVD-RW units which can be found in practically all PCs these days. Let's just clarify the definitions: CD-ROM will allow you to read CDs only but not write to them; CD-RW, will allow you to read and write to CDs; DVD-ROM will allow you to read both CDs and DVDs; DVD-RW will allow you to read and write both CDs and DVDs. If you are unsure what type of device, or devices, you have on your PC you can check by going into the Device Manager, expanding the entry for DVD/CD ROM drives and looking at the properties for each entry.

The CD and DVD units that fit into your PC are a standardised size to fit in the 5.25" bays found at the top of the system case. The picture shows how it looks before mounting in the system case. There are three connections on the back end of the unit: a ribbon cable that connects to the motherboard, identical to the one that connects the hard disc drive; a 12V Molex power connector that comes from the power supply unit which powers the motor that spins the discs; an audio lead that connects to the sound card or sound module on the motherboard (without this you will hear system sounds and sounds in games, but not music from CDs).

Just a couple of points in relation to CD and DVD units.

1. If you want to record music CDs that you will play on other CD players, such as in a car or home CD player, don't use CD-RW (rewritable) discs. While these will normally replay fine on the CD drive that they were recorded on, they don't always play on other units. Stick to CD-R (recordable) discs.

2. To be able to play DVDs on your PC you need to have a video codec (compressor/decompressor) installed, which is a piece of software produced by companies like nVidia or Intervideo. Chances are that such a codec was installed on your PC when you purchased it. However, if you ever have to reinstall your operating system don't be surprised if you can't play DVDs. Windows XP does not natively support DVD playback and you will have to install a third party codec - either one that came on the discs supplied by your PC manufacturer, or you will have to purchase a third party codec.

3. Don't be cheap when buying CD and DVD recordable media. From my own experience I can tell you that if you buy no-brand, "50 for €10.99" discs you should be prepared to end up with a lot of coasters. Cheap media often do not play back well on any unit but the one that they were recorded on - stick with a good brand like Verbatim, Imation or Traxdata.

While it isn't an optical drive, I want to say a few brief words about floppy disc drives in this section as they don't warrant a section to themselves. The floppy disc drive, if you have one, and you probably do, is attached to the FDD connector on the motherboard by a ribbon cable and it has its own power connector that comes from the power supply unit (see the pictures).

In the 21st Century, nobody should still be depending on floppy discs for backing up their data. Modern day floppy discs are notoriously unreliable as they are being manufactured too cheaply to assure quality. PC Medic has found that up to 30% of discs bought at retail level cannot be written to and many of those that can be written to cannot be read at a later date. Do not put your trust in floppy discs - use more reliable methods such as CD or USB memory sticks. You have been warned.

Next ... the PSU.

Back to Basics - Plug-In Cards

2006-04-20T21:15:00.000+01:00

We mentioned in our earlier article on motherboards that modern motherboards can have most of the functionality needed integrated into the on-board electronics, such as modems, networks cards, graphics cards, etc. While this is certainly true, many PCs use motherboards that do not have this functionality integrated. So what happens if you decide to use your PC on a home network but find that there is no network interface built into the PC? The answer is that you fit a network interface card to one of the empty PCI slots on your motherboard (refer back to the motherboard article to see what these slots look like). The PCI slots in motherboards allow plug-in cards to be inserted and these can then communicate with the rest of the PC. In order for this to happen device drivers must be installed, but we'll come back to them in a moment.

The picture on the left shows a variety of different plug-in cards that can be added to the motherboard to enhance the functionality of the PC. From the top down we have a modem card, a graphics card, a sound card and a 10/100 network interface card. With the exception of the graphics card, these all can be fitted to any free PCI slot on the motherboard (most motherboards have between 3 and 5 PCI slots). The graphics card is plugged into a special dedicated graphics slot called the AGP (advanced graphics port) slot, of which there is ever only one on a motherboard. Other PCI slot plug-in cards that could be fitted include TV tuner cards, USB connector cards, wireless network cards and Firewire cards. As there are a limited number of PCI slots on your motherboard, and some of them may already be occupied, you may not be able to fit all of the options just listed.

If you bought your PC in the last 12 months you may have a new type of PCI slot called a PCI Express slot in addition to, or instead of, standard PCI slots. These new slots use a different architecture which allows data to transfer at significantly higher rates than the older PCI slots and will eventually replace the older slots on all new motherboards. The PCI and PCI Express slots are a different physical design and cards designed for one slot type cannot be used on the other.

Just inserting a plug-in card in a slot is not enough to allow the card to start operating with the rest of the hardware and the operating system. In order to get the card talking to the other hardware and the OS it is usually necessary to install what are known as device drivers. A device driver is a software program written for a specific piece of hardware that allows it to communicate with the rest of the system. Drivers can sometimes become corrupted and when that happens the hardware that the driver was written for can malfunction. This can normally be remedied by the removal of the corrupted driver followed by a reinstall of the driver. Often manufacturers of plug-in cards release their products to market before their drivers have been fully debugged and problems can arise when using the hardware under certain situations. Because of this it is not uncommon for the manufacturers to release updated drivers that address known issues as they come to light. Windows XP makes it easy to update drivers as new versions are released.

Of all the various types of plug-in cards that are available, adding or upgrading a graphics card is probably the commonest, particularly if a PC is being used for playing games. When it comes to adding a new graphics card, the sky is the limit in terms of how much you can spend. The card on the left is a recently released XFX GeForce 7900GTX graphics card for playing the latest and next generation of games. This will set you back a cool €650 - more than you might pay for a new PC system from Dell. For the dedicated gamer only!

Next up, optical drives.

Back to Basics - The Hard Disc Drive

2006-04-19T10:46:00.000+01:00

Whereas RAM can be said to be the equivalent to short-term memory, the hard disc drive (or HDD) can be thought of as the long term memory of the computer. Every PC has a least one HDD and its becoming increasingly common for home PCs to have a second one. Hard disc drives come in two form factors - 3.5" drives and 2.5" drives. The larger drives are used almost exclusively in desktop PCs of the type found in homes and offices, while the smaller 2.5" drives are found in laptop computers. The pictures above show a 3.5" HDD (left) alongside the smaller and thinner 2.5" HDD. In a desktop PC the HDD is normally mounted in an enclosure at the bottom of the system case and will be connected to the motherboard by means of a ribbon cable similar to the one in the diagram. Also connected to the HDD will be a 12V Molex power connector from the system power supply unit. A closer look inside the HDD case will reveal why a 12V power supply is needed.

Inside the case, which you should never attempt to open, is a stack of circular platters. These are made either of aluminium alloy or a mixture of glass and ceramic. To allow data storage, both sides of each platter are coated with a magnetic medium - formerly magnetic oxide, but now, almost exclusively, a layer of metal called a thin-film medium. This stores data in magnetic patterns, with each platter capable of storing a billion or so bits of data per square inch (bpsi) of platter surface. Typically two or three or more platters are stacked on top of each other with a common spindle that turns the whole assembly at several thousand revolutions per minute. There's a gap between the platters, making room for magnetic read/write heads, mounted on the end of an actuator arm. The designation 3.5" and 2.5" refers to the diameter of the platters. The 12V power supply is needed to turn the spindle at speeds up to 10,000 rpm, but more commonly 7,200 rpm.

Because the HDD has platters rotating at such high speeds and a read-write head zooming around just above the surface of the platters, it is easy to damage a HDD if the PC is moved or jolted suddenly while the platters are spinning.

As we said at the beginning, the HDD is the long term memory of the PC where programs, data and indeed the operating system itself are stored as magnetically-oriented metal particles on the surface of the platters. This data is persistent and, unlike the data in RAM, does not disappear when power to the PC is turned off. The amount of data that can be stored on a single HDD has grown dramatically over the past few years. Five years ago a 40GB hard disc drive was considered large. Today, the largest capacity HDDs are in the region of 500GB and most new PCs will have 160GB-250GB HDDs as standard - an awesome amount of storage capacity for a domestic PC.

Tomorrow, plug-in cards.

Back to Basics - RAM

2006-04-18T10:31:00.000+01:00

RAM, or random access memory, is your computers short term memory. It should not be confused with the hard disc, which provides long term storage space for programs and data. When you turn on your computer the information needed by your operating system (Windows) to get the computer up and running is loaded into RAM. When you decide to launch a program, such as a word processor, that program is loaded into RAM and it remains there for as long as the program is being used. If you want to open further programs, these too will occupy a part of the available RAM. As the amount of RAM on any computer is finite, if you open too many programs you will find that you will start to run out of memory, everything will start to slow down and your computer will start to feel unresponsive.

You should remember that RAM only stores information when your computer is turned on - as soon as you switch off your machine all information in RAM is lost.

So what does RAM look like. The most common type of RAM in most home PCs is DDR DIMM RAM - quite a collection of acronyms that stands for double data rate, dual in-line memory module, random access memory. This type of RAM comes on modules like the one in the picture.

RAM modules come in different sizes and the capacity of a module is measured in bytes (a byte allows eight bits (or individual binary numbers) to be stored. Typical modules allow between 64MB (megabytes, or million bytes) and 1GB (gigabytes, or 1000 million bytes). These modules plug directly into the motherboard and most motherboards have slots for between two and four RAM modules. In general, most modern PCs can be fitted with between 512MB and 4GB of RAM. Unfortunately, in order to keep their retail price low, many computer manufacturers used to skimp on the amount of memory that they fitted to their PCs. This is particularly true for PCs that are more than 2-3 years old.

So, how much memory do you need. Quick answer? As much as you can afford! Adding memory to a memory deficient machine is probably the most cost effective upgrade that you can make. If you are running Windows XP then, in our opinion, you should have at least 512MB of RAM. Yes, you can run XP with just 128MB, but as soon as you open more than one application things will start to slow down. With 256MB things improve somewhat, but you will still have slow downs if you are using more than three or four applications or if you have many memory-resident applications running in your system tray (icons in the bottom left of your screen). Depending on the particular PC that you have, 512MB of RAM can be added for between €80-€100 and this can transform a sluggish 3-4 year old machine into a perky one that will meet needs for another few years.

If memory fails it can manifest itself in a number of ways, but random reboots is one of the most common. If your machine tends to reboot for no particular reason while you are using it then faulty RAM is a prime suspect (though there are other possible causes). Another fault that is seen with RAM is module creep, where the module gradually creeps out of the connector. This arises due to the heat/cold cycling of the module and can result in a completely dead machine that refuses to boot. So check for looses RAM modules if your machine shows this behaviour.

Next up, the hard disc, hard drive, disk drive, take your pick.

Back to Basics - The CPU

2006-04-17T10:12:00.000+01:00

The CPU, or central processing unit, is the heart of the computer. If your computer has a little Intel Inside sticker on the system case then the CPU is the bit made by Intel, though not all CPUs are made by Intel. It is the CPU that executes or runs programs (such as a word processor or a web browser) through the means of digital logic circuits within the CPU chip.

The CPU consists of a single microchip mounted on a supporting structure of connector pins. It is these pins that mate up with the CPU socket on the motherboard and through these pins that the CPU can communicate with the other electronic components either integrated into the motherboard or connected to the motherboard. The pictures on the left show an actual Intel Pentium 4 CPU. The picture furthest left is of the underside of the chip and shows the array of pins around the processor that will plug into the motherboard CPU socket. The picture near left shows the top of the CPU as it would appear when inserted in the motherboard.

In addition to Intel, there is really only one other player when it comes to CPUs for PCs and that is AMD. AMD has been the arch rival of Intel for many years and has steadily increased its market share. AMD CPUs are generally cheaper than Intel equivalents and this has led to their acceptance by value-based manufacturers such as Dell and Packard Bell.

Irrespective of whether your PC has Intel or AMD inside (and both are equivalent in terms of what they can do and reliability) what determines how fast the CPU runs is the clock speed. Every computer contains an internal clock that regulates the rate at which instructions are executed and synchronizes all the various computer components. The CPU requires a fixed number of clock ticks (or clock cycles) to execute each instruction. The faster the clock, the more instructions the CPU can execute per second. Clock speeds are expressed in megahertz (MHz) or more commonly gigahertz (GHz). If you have purchased your PC in the last two years it will probably have CPU that runs at a clock speed of between 2.0 and 3.4 GHz. If your PC is 6-7 years old then its CPU may be running at 400-800 MHz. The higher the clock speed of your CPU the faster your PC is capable of running (though other factors can affect the actual performance of your PC).

It's difficult to talk about CPUs and not talk about heatsinks as the two are practically inseparable. Modern CPUs generate a lot of heat, particularly as the clock speeds have increased. In fact they now generate so much heat during normal operation that they would burn out in a few seconds if that heat was not efficiently removed. And that is the role of the heatsink. If you open up any modern PC and look for the CPU you will not be able to see it - the reason for this is that a heatsink is firmly bolted to the top of the CPU chip to draw away the heat it generates. Heat sinks come in many different shapes and sizes, but they all work on the same principle. A heatsink consists of a large piece of heat conducting metal (normally aluminium or copper, both of which are efficient conductors of heat). The piece of metal will have one side milled to a mirror-smooth surface and this is placed in contact with the top of the CPU. Between the two there will normally be a thin layer of a heat conducting paste. The top of our block of metal will normally be shaped to present a large surface area which dissipates the heat to the air and a fan is generally fitted to assist with the dissipation of heat. Here are some pictures of heatsinks.

The CPU is generally the singularly most expensive component in the PC, even though it is arguably the smallest physical component, and can represent over 50% of the cost of your computer. A replacement 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 CPU is currently listed at €420. Failure of CPUs is uncommon, but can happen, often as a result of overheating due to impaired ventilation.

Tomorrow we'll talk about RAM (memory, not male sheep).

Back to Basics - The Motherboard

2006-04-15T15:22:00.000+01:00

Now the fun really begins as we start looking at the bits of the PC that you normally never see, and we'll begin with the system motherboard. The motherboard, also called the mainboard, is the large printed circuit board which is the elecronic hub of your PC. Not only does this circuit board host the Central Processing Unit, or CPU, which is the brains of the computer, it also either hosts additional plug in process cards or has features that can come on plug-in cards actually built into the motherboard itself. More on this in a minute.

Let's start by having a look at a typical motherboard. This one is for an Intel Pentium 4 CPU and the CPU chip will plug into the Socket 478 Connector at the top center of the board (more on CPU chips again). Next we would have the memory chips or RAM (random access memory)plugged into the vertical blue and black slots in the upper right section of the board (labelled DDR DIMM Memory Slots - DDR DIMM stands for double data rate dual in-line memory modules, we love our acronyms in the PC business!).

Many of the features we find on a modern PC, such as an Ethernet port to connect to a local area network, a modem to dial into a network, sound capability to allow music and sounds to be heard, graphics capability to permit us to see our system on a monitor, used to require separate expansion cards which were plugged into expansion slots on the motherboard. So, if you wanted to dial into the Internet you would have had to physically install a modem in one of the five white horizontal PC slots you can see in the bottom left of the board. With the advances in motherboard design in recent years you can now find motherboards with all the extras built in, leaving the PC slots more or less redundant for many users. A function that used to require a separate expansion card in the past has been minaturized to just one more chip integrated into the motherboard. However, not all functions have yet been integrated into the motherboard so, for example, if you want a PC that can display TV on your monitor, you will need to add a TV tuner card to one of your PCI slots, like one of the ones in the picture. Also, some of the funtionality integrated into motherboards is often quite basic, a good example being the graphics processing capability built into many motherboards. The onboard graphics chip will display your screen perfectly adequately for 2-D applications, such as your word processor or web browser. However, these are generally completely inadequate for playing 3-D games of the type that are common today. While some of these games may run, they will run very slowly or jerkily and the experience will be frustratingly poor. Because of this a whole market has arisen in add-in graphics cards and these are plugged into the brown horizontal slot, above the PCI slots, labelled AGP 8X Slot (AGP = accelerated graphics port).

The optical drives (CD or DVD) in the front of your PC are connected to the blue and black IDE connectors on the right side of the board by flat ribbon cables, normally grey in colour. The floppy disc drive, if you have one, is connected by a similar cable to the FDD Connector, again on the right side of this board.

Power is brought to the board by means of two connectors that extend from the power supply unit (PSU). These are plugged into the ATX Power Connector (beside the FDD Connector) and the 12V ATX Power Connector at the top left of the board.

The Back Panel Connector (top left edge of board) contains the only part of the motherboard that you are likely to see from time to time. This is the collection of sockets that you connect your mouse, keyboard, monitor, printer, and various USB devices to and this protrudes through a slot at the rear of your system case, like in the picture. You should note that while the motherboard in your PC will have all of the elements that I have highlighted they may be in a completely different location than in the example above. There are thousands of different motherboard designs and each manufacturer will lay out the components on the board differently.

Back to Basics - The System Case

2006-04-14T09:12:00.000+01:00

The system case, at its most basic, is a box made of steel or aluminium, the former often covered with plastic, that houses all the electronics that comprise your computer. It will have a power on switch and may also have a reset switch. Probably it will have a couple of lights on the front panel, one indicating the power on status and the other displaying hard disk activity. Normally there will be a vent at the front for air to pass into the case and another vent at the rear for air to pass out. At the front there will be positions for mounting optical drives (CDs/DVDs), floppy drives (getting less common) and card readers (getting more common).

There are a number of distinct physical formats that cases come in, but the most commonly encountered format in the home is the midi-tower which stands vertically. Though less common, you may have a desktop case which sits horizontally on the desk. Also starting to appear in the market are small format cases such as the Shuttle series.

The purpose of the case is threefold. First it provides a structural framework in which all other components can be mounted. Secondly it provides protection to the sensitive components that make up your PC from electrostatic discharge and from physical damage (imagine the damage your cat might do if he got access to the computers innards!). Finally it provides correct ventilation for the removal of the often considerable heat that modern PCs generate. Without this heat removal the PC would overheat and fail.

To get inside a typical midi-tower case normally involves removing a couple of screws at the rear of the case that hold the side panel in place. Once these are removed the side panel generally just slides off.
The picture at left shows an empty midi-tower case with the side panel removed and before any of the electronic components have been fitted. While a lot of midi-tower system cases may look different on the outside, they all conform to a standard, known as the ATX standard, on the inside. This standard ensures that all power supplies that conform to the ATX standard will fit the case, and that the mounting points for the system motherboard are all in specified positions. There is a standard location in the system case for most of the electronic components that make up your PC. With reference to the picture on the left, the power supply unit will be located in the top left corner of the case, the optical drives in the top right, the hard drive(s) in the bottom right and the system motherboard (more on this later) in the main open area.

The rear of the system case is where the sockets on the motherboard emerge, as well as the sockets on any PCI expansion cards or AGP/PCI Express video cards that may be fitted - we'll be covering more on those in future Back to Basics episodes. For now I'll leave you with a picture of the rear of a typical midi-tower system case that has yet to have any internal components fitted.

Next up, the innards.

Back to Basics - Mice and Keyboards

2006-04-13T09:00:00.000+01:00

While the monitor allows you to see what your input to the computer is and what the computer's response, or output, is to that input, it is the mouse and keyboard that allow you to get your inputs into the computer in the first place.

There are three basic ways in which the mouse and keyboard can connect with your computer. The first and oldest way is via PS/2 connectors which were introduced by IBM in their first personal computers and were widely adopted by other manufacturers. These are 3/8" round 6-pin connectors that plug into corresponding sockets at the rear of the system case. Over the years a semi-informal colour coding of the connector and socket has been introduced with the mouse being colored green and the keyboard coloured violet (note that this is not universally adopted by all manufacturers and orange can be found used commonly for the keyboard). The connectors and sockets are keyed, which means that the connector will only go into the socket in one particular orientation. Trying to force the connector into the socket in the wrong orientation can lead to damaged pins, a not uncommon problem. While all older PCs and most newer ones will have PS/2 sockets fitted, some newer PCs designated as "legacy-free" do not have them. This is rarely a problem as most newer PCs can use mice and keyboards based on USB connectors. One point to note is that although PS/2 connectors for the keyboard and mouse are physically the same, if you plug them into the wrong socket at the back of your computer the machine will generally stop booting and present a "keyboard error" on the screen.

The second way of connecting mice and keyboards to PCs is using USB connectors and sockets, which are present on all PCs manufactured in the last 10 years. These will be familiar to most PC users and as soon as you plug in either a keyboard or mouse it should be recognized by Windows as a "HID-compliant device" - HID standing for Human Interface Device, a grandiose way of describing a keyboard or mouse.

The final way of connecting your mouse and keyboard to your PC is wirelessly. Well, it's not truly wirelessly, as you must plug in a small wireless receiver to your PS/2 or USB port (both PS/2 and USB versions are available) and place this receiver on the desk that you are working on. Once this is done you need to pair the mouse and keyboard with the transmitter, normally by pressing synchronisation buttons on both units at the same time. As the mouse and keyboard are not connected directly to the computer they need a power supply to run their small wireless transmitters and this is supplied by batteries, either disposable or rechargeable. I favour rechargeable ones as you don't have the environmental issues associated with disposing of spent alkaline batteries.

Keyboards can now be purchased with all sorts of extra "multimedia" buttons on them that do everything from launching Google to adjusting the volume of your loudspeakers. Personally, I'm not a big fan of these, but if you find the additional features useful and you're willing to pay for them, then go for it.

When it comes to mice there are a multitude of different flavours of the same principle, all of which basically do the same job of moving the cursor around your screen. However, there is only one solid piece of advice that I would give you in relation mice. And it is this. If you still use a mouse with a ball in its base, place it in your bin, put your bin out for collection and buy an optical mouse. Optical mice have no moving parts and consequently do not jam up with fluff and detritus from your desk, resulting in jerky, stop-start movement. Get an optical mouse for around €10 and you'll never look back.

Coming next, the system case.

Back to Basics - Monitors

2006-04-12T16:05:00.000+01:00

A number of customers have recently referred to their system case as their hard drive or their monitor as their computer or their hard drive as their RAM, so I thought it might be a good idea to have a quick run through of the various different components that make up your average computer so that we can all have a clear understanding of what's what.

The PC that you have at home will generally have a minimum of four components - these are the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse and the system case. Today we're going to briefly visit monitors and we'll cover the other components in the coming days.

The monitor is the part of the computer that you spend most of your time interacting with so make sure that the one you have is easy on your eyes and correctly set up. Up to 2 years ago the commonest type of monitor was cathode ray tube (CRT)-based - using similar technology to standard TV sets. These monitors can give very good pictures but suffer from being bulky, especially those with a screen size over 17", and they consume quite a bit of power. CRTs are being phased out and now it is almost impossible to buy one, except very expensive high-end units used for critical colour work. They have been replaced by LCD flat screen monitors that take up much less desk space and use a lot less power. Typically these are 17" or 19" diagonally across from top-left to bottom-right and prices have fallen dramatically over the past 12 months - you can now but a 17" model for just over €200.

As well as a power cable your monitor will have a cable with one of two types of connector at the end. CRT monitors and cheaper LCD will have a 15-pin D-Sub connector (although there will probably only be 14 pins present) and this is connected to a corresponding female socket, which is almost always coloured blue) on the back of your system case. More expensive LCD monitors will have a cable with a beige DVI (digital video interface) connector that mates with a beige female connector on the back of your system case. The DVI connector keeps the picture in the digital realm as it passes from the computers graphics processor to the monitor. On the otherhand, the D-Sub connector handles a signal that has been converted from digital to analog. In theory the DVI cable (and the graphics processor that it is connected to) should give a better picture, however, we have both digital and analog monitors here at PC Medic as well as one dual input monitor, and we can't honestly say that there is a big difference in picture quality, at least for what we use our monitors for.

What we commonly see in home PCs are monitors that are poorly set up, particularly CRTs. There are three important things to consider with CRT monitors - the screen refresh rate, the picture geometry and the screen resolution. Screen refresh rate is how many times a second the image is redrawn on a CRT. If this is too low, say 60 Hz, you may find that the screen appears to flicker and this will lead to eye strain after some time. Your screen should be set to the highest refresh rate supported by your monitor, in line with the manufacturer's guidelines (see handbook that came with monitor). Screen geometry is how the picture is aligned on the screen and this can normally be changed by using a combination of buttons on the front of the monitor together with an on-screen display (OSD.). Using the OSD you should be able to adjust the horizontal and vertical size of the display (commonly badly set up by users leading to an under utilized screen with a dark edge around one or more sides of the screen) as well as picture position and correct for barrel and pin-cushion distortion. Screen resolution dictates how many pixels, or dots that compose the image, are present on the screen. A low resolution, say 600x800, on a 19" monitor will mean a very chunky display that requires much scrolling to see the full image. Conversely, a resolution of 1200x1600 on a 15" screen (if supported) will lead to a highly detailed screen but with the characters and icons too small to be easily readable. My own preference is for resolutions of 1024x768 for a 15" screen, and 1200x1600 for a 17"-19" screen.

Refresh rate and geometry settings are not relevant for LCDs but screen resolution is, so find the optimum level for your screen.

Next up, of mice and keyboards.

Improve Your Memory

2006-04-08T13:53:00.000+01:00

One observation that many computer owners make to me is that their PC seems to be running much more slowly than it did when they bought it. In some of these cases the reason is due to the machine being infected by spyware. But in many cases the machine is clean but is still running slower than it was originally. Usually it's easy to figure out why this is the case.

In order to cut costs, many PC manufacturers skimped on the amount of memory they fitted to PCs. This was particularly true 3-4 years ago, but still happens to some extent today, particularly with laptops. According to Microsoft, Windows XP will run on a machine with only 64MB of RAM and, to some extent, it will, but you will not have a PC that is usable. By and large, 128MB is the practical minimum that you need to run Windows XP. However, open more than two or three programs at the same time and again your machine will start to run extremely slowly. 256MB of ran is better but, to my mind, 512MB should now be considered the minimum amount of RAM to be fitted to a PC running Windows XP (note that Windows 98 and Me have a much more modest RAM requirement and can happily work with 64-128MB of RAM).

If a machine is running slower today than it was when purchased, it is probably down to the fact that there are more demands being made on the memory as a result of more programs loading into memory on startup. You can get an idea of how many programs are running by looking at your System Tray at the bottom right corner of your screen. The picture above shows the system tray of my laptop, which is pretty busy, indicating that I have quite a few programs running at the same time - many of these are running in the background and do not appear as active windows on the desktop. To check how much memory you have on your system and how much is being used at any point in time you want to open the Task Manager. You can do this by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del which opens the Task Manager, which has a number of tabs. The tab you want to select is the Performance one, shown in the picture on the left. The section headed Physical Memory lists the amount of physical RAM on your machine under the Total heading - 523184 in my case, which corresponds to 512MB. The amount free at the time that I took the screenshot was ~73MB, which is just about 14%, not a lot. This is echoed by the fairly high PF (Page File) Usage figure of over 500MB. The Page File is an area on your hard disk that the system uses as virtual memory if the actual amount of physical RAM installed on the computer is becoming full. Because data is transferred much more slowly between the CPU and the hard drive than between the CPU and RAM, high PF Usage can lead to sluggish behaviour of the PC, and my laptop is not exactly flying at he moment. Time for either a clean out of un-needed programs or the addition of another 512MB of memory I think.

The bottom line is that upgrading your physical RAM to 512MB, or better still 1GB, is without doubt the most cost-effective way of improving the overall performance of your machine.

Why PCs Die - Part III

2006-04-05T20:46:00.000+01:00

Upgrading your PC is relatively easy to do yourself, as long as you inform yourself about the task in advance and have an average amount of manual dexterity. Unfortunately sometimes owners will decide to perform an upgrade without having a clear understanding of the pitfalls that can arise in the course of performing it.

So what kind of things can go wrong during an upgrade that can leave you with a dead PC? Number 1 on the pitfalls list is ESD, or electrostatic discharge. This occurs when static electricity builds up on your body and you then touch a component in the computer. As the computer is generally at a lower potential to your body static electricity will jump from your body to the computer and this discharge is sufficient to fry many of the sensitive semiconductors on your motherboard and plug-in cards. While you can feel electrostatic discharges of 3,000 volts, smaller charges are below the threshold of human sensation. Unfortunately, smaller charges can and do damage semiconductor devices. Many of the CMOS technology components used in PCs can be damaged by charges of less than 1,000 volts. Some of the more sophisticated components can be damaged by charges as low as 10 volts. Some common activities that generate static electricity on your body include:

Walking across a carpet, 1,500 to 35,000 volts
Walking over untreated vinyl floor, 250 to 12,000 volts
Worker at a bench, 700 to 6,000 volts
Vinyl envelope used for work instructions, 600 to 7,000 volts
Picking up a common plastic bag from a bench, 1,200 to 20,000 volts.

I had one computer in recently where the owner had decided to upgrade the video card with a newer model. When he changed cards the PC wouldn't POST so he thought that he had a dud video card. He then put back the old card only to find that the PC still wouldn't POST. The problem was that he had no knowledge of the risk of ESD or how to eliminate it which had resulted in him frying his motherboard - an expensive mistake.

An upgrade that many people consider is adding extra memory and, in theory, this is one of the easiest upgrades to perform. However, what many people are suprised to find is that inserting modern memory modules e.g. DDR2 type, requires a heck of a force to get the module into the slot, up to 30 kgs in fact. Many first time upgraders struggle when they come up against the level of force required and can in fact apply too much force in a desperate attempt to get the module seated. The problem with applying excessive force is that the underlying motherboard can flex and, if luck is against you, break a conducting track, resulting in a dead board and a dead PC.

The next upgrade that can go wrong is one that I've had personal experience of and goes to show that even when you (think) you know what you're doing, things can go wrong. This one involves adding a new hard disk to your PC, either replacing an existing one or adding a second. The hard disk is connected to the motherboard with an IDE cable (newer SATA drives use a different cable and what I am about to describe doesn't apply to them) that plugs into a 40-pin connector on the hard disk (see picture). Now the thing about the 40-pin plug on the end of the IDE cable quite often has a solid block of plastic where it mates with the the absent pin 20 in the hard disk connector. If the plug is inserted into the connector wrong way round (pin 1 lined up with pin 40 and pin 39 lined up with pin 2) then the solid block of plastic on the plug crushes pin 19 and you have a dead disk and a PC that cannot boot. Believe me, this is easier to do than it should be and can happen because the connector and plug are not adequately keyed to prevent misalignment and the pins are made of a very soft metal that bends too easily. On the one and only occasion that this happened to me I was able to straighten the crushed pin 19 with some long-nosed pliers and rectify the situation.

One for the Apple Fans

2006-04-03T19:32:00.000+01:00

Latest Spyware Threats

2006-04-01T12:11:00.000+01:00

The top 10 spyware threats for the first quarter of 2006 were as follows:
- 180 Search Assistant
- Apropos
- Virtumonde
- SpywareStrike
- EliteBar
- ISTBar
- CoolWebSearch (CWS)
- PSGuard
- SurfSideKick
- DirectRevenue - ABetterinternet

Wireless Network Problems

2006-03-31T10:47:00.000+01:00

Wireless networks are a great boon for allowing access to the internet from throughout your household without the inconvenience of wires. However, certain items found in the home, such as cordless (not mobile) phones, microwave ovens and fluorescent lights, can interfere with the signal and cause connectivity to be lost. Other issues, such as the quality of the incoming phone line and the presence or absence of DSL filters on all phone equipment can also contribute to whether you have intermittent connection problems.

PC Medic has put together a troubleshooting guide for home wireless networks that is available free to all our customers. Just e-mail me at brendan@pcmedic.ie for your copy.

Be(bo) Aware

2006-03-30T09:12:00.000+01:00

Hands up all those who know about Bebo, the latest craze to be sweeping through the youth of Ireland. Mmmm.. not that many hands raised. While it is estimated that there are in the region of 500,000 young people in Ireland with Bebo accounts, it is also estimated that only a fraction of the parents of those 500,000 youngsters are aware of what their offspring's accounts contain. But first, what is Bebo? This is taken from their help page.

Bebo also allows you to share Photos, Blogs, draw on your own and other members' White Boards, and, oh, a lot of other stuff too.
If you are a student you can join your school or college to hang out with other students in your own school or college. Or you can join your old school or college as an Alumni to catch up with past students.

So, there you have it, good clean fun. And in most cases that's what it is, kids being kids. In many of the blogs I've seen the main subject for discussion is the amount of alcohol they can consume, their musical tastes and their interest in the opposite sex. In a lot of cases the most appaling thing on the sites is the massacre of the English language with poor spelling, optional grammar and a propensity for text-speak - U no wht I mn? So is there anything to worry about? Maybe.

First off, while you can set up your account so that only friends can see the content (what's the fun in that?) many young people are making their accounts public for (literally) all the world to see. They are also not following Bebo's (good) advice to not use their own names nor to reveal any personal details. Many of the sites I reviewed for this article are littered with personal (and sometimes revealing/embarassing) details and photos of the site's owner and their friends, together with the friends' names and often personal details about them. Given that Bebo allows kids as young as 13 to have accounts (and they have no way of preventing younger kids from getting accounts), you don't need to be a genius to work out that the wrong kind of audience might be attracted to the site.

Another thing that the kids posting details about themselves tend to forget about is the persistence of the web. Something that you may want to brag about today may be all too easy for a potential employer to find when they Google your name in five years time - something that some employers are already doing today.

So, if you do use Bebo, follow the site's good guidelines and stay anonymous. And if you're a parent, why not ask your kids about their accounts, I'm sure they'll be happy that you are expressing an interest and delighted to show them to you. Sure, why wouldn't they?

Linksys ADSL Wireless Gateway

2006-03-26T16:12:00.000+01:00

PC Medic has started using Linksys WAG354G ADSL wireless gateways, which have replaced the older WAG54G model (small picture). The most obvious difference between the new and old units is that Linksys has put the newer model in a more contemporary slimline silver package and the external antenna has been replaced with an internal unit, resulting in cleaner lines and an overall less "techy" appearance. I was concerned that the internal antenna might have resulted in reduced range but initial results with customer installations seem to indicate that this is not a concern. We have recently installed a unit in an attic conversion in an average suburban semi-D and the customer reports excellent reception throughout the ground and first floor rooms.

The user interface is pretty standard Linksys fare and it's an interface that we like. Features such as wireless security, MAC-address filtering and port-forwarding are all easy to access. We haven't been using these units long enough yet to establish if they need occasional re-setting (as do many domestic-grade units), but we'll update you on that in due course.

So what does one of these units actually do? Firstly, it has a built-in ADSL modem, which means that it allows you to connect to a broadband service-provider e.g. Eircom, BT, Imagine, UTV etc. (not NTL, which requires a cable modem). Secondly it provides a 4-port ethernet switch which allows up to four PCs to be connected via ethernet cables into a home network. Thirdly, it provides a wireless access point for up to 32 PCs or laptops to connect wirelessly with the unit. And, finally, it has a built-in router that allows PCs connected to the unit, either wirelessly or via ethernet cable, to connect to the internet and share a single broadband connection. In other words it's a single one-box solution for setting up a wireless home network that can share a broadband internet connection. With a hardware firewall thrown in, it's hard to beat. While there is a wide range of manufacturers of home networking products out there, Linksys, which is part of networking giant Cisco, remains a firm favourite of ours and the only brand that we install.

Timed Shutdown

2006-03-22T10:10:00.000Z

Would you like to be able to have your PC automatically shut itself down at a set time at night, so that you don't have to worry about going to bed and forgetting to turn it off? Or do you ever find yourself with a program running as you are about to leave the house and would like the PC to turn itself off after the program has finished? Or perhaps you have two or more PCs in your home network and you would like to be able to turn all PCs off from the PC you are working at? Well you can do all of these things, and much more, with a free utility called Poweroff that comes free courtesy of Belgian Jorgan Bosman.

You can dowload this utility from here and simply unzip the contents of the download to your desktop. You'll then find the Poweroff icon (above) on your desktop. Clicking on this brings up the user interface which, again, is pretty straightforward. There are basically four different sections in the interface that you have to make decisions about. The first is what computer you want to take an action on - this is either the local computer i.e. the one you are currently working on, or one of your network (remote) computers. The next decision is what action you want to take. You can see from the screenshot that there are quite a few actions but, in most cases, the one that will be of most interest is to Poweroff your computer. There is a set of options that can be selected, if required, such as to allow a machine to be controlled remotely or to display a message before an action is taken. Finally, there is the section to specify when the action is to be taken. This can either be immediately, after a process (program) has finished running, or according to a schedule that can be easily set up (time, date, day of week, etc).
PC Medic uses Poweroff to shut down the PC in the workshop every night at 11.00 pm and to turn off our multimedia PC after late night television programs have been recorded. Use it for a while and you'll wonder how you managed without it. Well worth the download.

Lured to Wrong Address

2006-03-21T10:29:00.000Z

I had a call from a customer yesterday to say that they were trying to look at content on the www.myhome.ie website and they were getting repeated messages that their system had critical errors. In fact they were getting so many pop-up windows with this message that their machine ground to a halt and they had to reboot. Sounded like spyware to me and and I happened to know that this particular machine had no antispyware installed as it was an oldish PC running Windows Me.

When I got around to the customer's house I found that the problem was reproducible when the bookmarked www.myhome.ie website was visited (see screenshot) but not when I visited any other website?!? If a PC is infected with spyware it normally doesn't care what website you are visiting - as soon as you go online the pop-ups begin. This was different and had me scratching my head for a couple of minutes. Then I saw it! The bookmarked website was not www.myhome.ie but www.myhomes.ie - note the extra "s" at the end. I suspect that this site is designed to lure people in who are looking for www.myhome.ie and then barrage them with pop-up advertising for dubious products. A pop-up blocker, as found in Windows XP, or some home security products would keep the pop-ups at bay, but not for an unprotected Windows Me machine. Just be careful when typing those web addresses.

Jammed Discs

2006-03-16T08:46:00.000Z

It can happen all too easily. You're in a hurry and you don't seat the disc flush in the tray of your computer's CD/DVD drive. You press the close button, the tray slides in and ... the disc jams. I've done it myself ... on more than one occasion. On other occasions a disc is put correctly into the drive but, possibly because of finger marks or scratches, won't eject when the eject button is pressed. If you find that you can't reopen the tray by pressing the eject button on the drive, don't panic. This is a situation that manufacturers of CD/DVD drives have anticipated. If you look closely at the front of your drive, generally to the left and below the tray you should see a tiny hole (highlighted in the accompanying picture). What you need to do is to get yourself a paper clip and straighten it out so that you have at least 2-3 cm of straight clip. Turn the power off on your PC and insert the clip into the hole. When it's in about 1 cm you shoul feel some resistance - keep pushing gently and the drawer should pop open enough for it to be gently pulled open and the disc recovered.