Archive for the ‘Computer Tips’ Category

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Why do Macs overheat?

Posted by South City Computer

Macintosh computers are known for their powerful hardware, and good looks, but unfortunately they have had issues with overheating dating all the way back to the original Mac. The cause of this is simple: the more power you run through electronics, the more heat you generate. It is similar to the fact that higher wattage incandescent light bulbs produce more heat. For macs, this is a big issue. Apple uses enclosures that are notorious for being thin and light, which is great for convenience and portability, but not-so-great for heat dispersion.

Computers include systems specifically designed to remove heat, but since they involve moving air through, they eventually suck in dust and other particles. When this happens and the system cannot run at full efficiency, strange things start to happen. Sometimes you will get a temperature warning, but more often the computer will just freeze up and stop working. If your computer has variable speed fans, it will also start to get very loud.

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to Mac computers, but to any PC desktop or laptop as well. It even applies to modern gaming consoles.

If this happens to you, there’s not a whole lot for you to do. What’s important is that you shut down the computer and let it cool. Don’t use it again until you have a professional correct the problem. This will prevent you from permanently frying any components.

Windows 8 Start Menu Guide

Posted by South City Computer

Created by Top Gold, Copywrited, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/With Microsoft’s release of Windows 8 there have been a lot of questions and complaints concerning the most bold new feature, the Start Menu. The Start Menu which replaces the desktop at the start of your computer is considered “innovative” and “incredible” but also is giving users a hard time. We here at South City Computer made a guide for those who are struggling with this new feature, so to help you navigate it better.

 

Start Button:

Microsoft although wanting to switch up the way your computer starts still they did not entirely throw out the desktop which users are accustomed to.  By hitting the Start Button you are transported directly to the Desktop. The Start Button is the picture above but on a key located to the left of the spacebar. The Start Button, if hit while on the Desktop will transport you back to the Start Menu.

The Start Button is the first part of the keyboard shortcut to a lot of the new Windows 8 features, and by holding it down along with hitting another key can access some of the new features. Here are some useful Windows 8 keyboard shortcuts:

  • (Start+D)= Go to desktop
  • (Start+Tab )=Multitasking Menu
  • (Start+Q)= Search Apps
  • (Start+F)= Search Files
  • (Start+I)= Settings
  • (Start+Prnt Scrn)= Screen shot

Start Menu:

The biggest change in the new OS is the addition of the Start Menu which has a sleek design geared toward touch-screen, and mobile devices. While the Start Menu certainly looks good it can be confusing to navigate and understand with the Live Tiles especially.

Live Tiles:

The Live Tiles are essentially applications that are “pinned” to your Start Menu and run even when not in use. They tend not to take up to much room and are apps like: Facebook, Twitter, etc. The Live apps are on the Start Menu and usually have moving pictures or something along those lines going around the box. For example, the Netflix app will have recommended movies or shows fading in and out. Live apps differ from their desktop counterpart which can bring up a lot of confusion; the Live app version of Skype (a program that can be used to video call and instant message) can be opened from the Start Menu and functions differently from the desktop version of Skype.

“Pinning” Programs to the Start Menu:

While Live Tiles can be downloaded from the Windows Store they are not the only thing that can be on the Start Menu. While on the desktop by right-clicking a program you can “pin” it to the start menu, in doing this when you are on the Start Menu you can click the program you pinned and instead of it opening as a live tile Windows opens the program on the desktop.

Multitasking with Windows 8:

Although the all new Live Tiles can be difficult, they offer a very useful way to multi-task. When having multiple apps open, by dragging your mouse to the top left corner of your screen then dragging it down the left side of the screen or hitting Start+Tab, either way a menu showing all open apps should appear. From being able to see all open apps you can “snap” an app to the side of the screen of your choice, you can do this either by right-clicking and selecting “Snap Left” or “Snap Right” or you can click the app and drag it your preferred side. For example say the Desktop and a free photo editing app downloaded from the Windows Store are both open from the left menu I snap the desktop to the left side and the photo editor to the right side now from here you can find a picture from either your Facebook page or in your Pictures folder via the Desktop. When finding the picture you wanted, you can then select the picture from the photo editor and begin editing now being able to see both the new and the old picture. While editing a photo is just one example there are plenty of other ways to multi-task, like researching and writing a paper on one screen or even watching a movie while video calling a friend.

Windows 8 is still pretty new even for being over a year old, although it may be frustrating we here at South City Computer hope this helped with some the new features. If you have any computer problems or questions call our number: 314-400-7918

Data Loss Can Cause Major Issues

Posted by South City Computer

Did you know that data loss has become increasingly more common since 2008? The Open Security Foundation has recorded the increase of data loss incidents since 2008, claiming that it has become a major problem for some businesses.

What is Data Loss?

Data Loss is when data that someone has stored, whether it be a person or a business, when data gets destroyed or fails without the person or business having a backup storage of the data and without being able to restore the data. Data loss can primarily be catastrophic to businesses that store a lot of data especially if that information is critical to their business.

Data Loss Affects Businesses

One of the more publicly known data loss incidents was TJX’s (the retailer owning such stores like Marshalls and T.J Maxx) loss of 94 million people’s information including credit card and customer identity. TJX lost an estimated $256mil+ along with hackers successfully gaining access to 45 million customers’ information.

Another well know data loss was Sony, in late April of 2011 the PlayStation Network (PSN) was hacked. Hackers obtained personal information including Credit Cards. Post-Breach Sony closed down both PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment. The Poneman institute (research center with focus on data protection and data privacy) estimated that Sony may have to pay up to and/or beyond $2 billion.

How to deal with Data Loss:

  • Data Recovery- In a data recovery shops can attempt to recover lost data but without a previously arranged data backup plan, often data recovery will involve reinstalling of applications, files, etc.
  • Data Backup Plan- Here at South City Computer we can set up a data backup plan, that will support your choice data.

If your data is ever lost or you would like to set up a data backup plan please call us or leave us a message on our website .

Sources:

  • http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2011/0504/Data-theft-Top-5-most-expensive-data-breaches/1.-tie-Sony-to-be-determined
  • http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Top-seven-data-loss-issues

What is Defragmenting and Why You Should Do It

Posted by South City Computer

In HDD’s ,or hard disk drives, spinning platters hold your data saved on it. When data ,such as a photo or a word document, is first written on the drive it is in order on the platter making access to it speedy. A hard drive becomes fragmented when the file gets spread apart on the drive losing it’s order and quick access. Fragmentation when your data on your hard drive constantly change, let’s say you save files A,B, and C, you then deleted B and save file D then file D takes as much of the space it can where file B was but that space didn’t have enough room(files D is much bigger then B). Now this file D is cut up with file C in between it. That is fragmentation

Defragmentation puts these files that have been fragmented and puts them back in their place. This makes the file much faster when trying to open, the same as when it was first created. Solid state drives or SSD’s do not need defragmentation due to them not having the spinning platters that HDD’s have. Windows 8 often defragments itself but other operating system such as Windows XP do not. Having your hard drive defragged speeds up your system very much and will improve user experience. At South City Computer our computer techs can defragment your hardrive for you, scheadule a tech desk visit today! 314-400-7918

Windows XP Reaches the Dusk of It’s Existence

Posted by South City Computer

Windows XP LogoIn 2001, Microsoft release what some might argue was their greatest operating system of all time: Windows XP. Windows XP brought in great advances over it’s predecessor, Windows 2000. It brought Windows away from just home desktop computers, and extended it to laptops, and even servers. Then in 2006, Microsoft released what some might argue was their worst operating system of all time: Windows Vista. The tremendous failure that this system was among consumers gave new life to Windows XP, extending the long-term support period all the way into 2014. This makes XP the longest supported OS Microsoft has ever released.

All good things must come to an end, though, and in this case XP has been replaced by other, better things. Windows 7 brought modern sharing and network capabilities to the operating system, along with a file permissions system that rivals that from UNIX systems. This means that the time for XP is over.

Support for Windows XP ends on April 8, 2014

So what does that mean?
Well, the short answer is you need to upgrade. The long answer is Microsoft will no longer be releasing critical security updates for Windows XP. It’s just a matter of time until somebody finds a big vulnerability in XP and starts cracking into any computer running XP. And when support ends, nobody is going to do anything about it.

Protecting yourself is simple, just upgrade to a newer system: Windows 7 or 8. Be careful, though as upgrading comes with risks of data loss. If you are afraid that you might accidentally get rid of something you need to keep, consider leaving the upgrade to an expert. You can come in to our computer store in the Lindenwood Park neighborhood, for example. When we upgrade computers, we always make sure that the data is safe and sound outside of the computer itself.

How to Avoid Yahoo Malware and Other Types of Malware

Posted by South City Computer

Image for google warning about malware.In the beginning of 2014 Yahoo’s ads contained malicious software (malware) which infected an estimated 2 million users computers. It was estimated that almost 27,000 computers using Yahoo were infected an hour. The computers that were infected through Yahoo, were using up a massive chunk of the computers resources as bit coin slaves, where without the users knowledge the computers were mining bit coins thus harboring a lot of the computers capability. Although malware today is very common especially through email and the Internet; there are still ways to defend your computer.

What is malware?

Malware is a term that is short for “malicious software” which is meant to harm your computer. Malware includes: spyware, trojan horses, and computer viruses. malware can be downloaded or installed unintentionally or unknowingly by the user through the Internet or via email.

What does malware do?

Malware infects the computer and can lead to the attacker accessing content on the computer, leaving the user susceptible to Identity Theft and other financial and personal information being seen. With malware undetected the computer can have certain operations disrupted along with being used to store unidentified data. Certain malware like spyware can be used to spy on the user’s action for marketing.

How to defend from malware:

  • Keep your computer up to date.  Make sure your computer is automatically updating itself.  Make sure  check for updates is set to run when you have the computer turned on, not at 3am like the default setting.
  • Make sure you have antivirus/anti-malware installed.  Microsoft provides free of charge antivirus and malware built in if you download and activate it.  The issue with commercial subscriptions is that you forget to pay and they expire, putting you at risk.
  • Be careful of spam emails. Emails that seems sketchy or are otherwise unexpected may contain malware. View header of email, also clicking to check who the sender of the email is can help you decide whether to open it or not.
  • Heed computer warnings. Often if entering a dangerous website your computer may already be letting you know. Computers may also display a message saying that certain files may be harmful to your computer if opened.
  • Bring computer to local computer shop. Bringing your computer to South City Computer or another local computer repair shop to be scanned for malware. You could schedule a Tech Desk visit in order to have your computer scanned while you wait.  Call or Send us a message through our website.

Malware is becoming very common now which now there are many anti-virus and anti-malware softwares available for download. Also bringing your computer into South City Computer or another local computer repair shop to be scanned for malware can see if you already have malware and can be removed.

Call:  314-400-7918

Sources: http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-malware-turned-european-computers-into-bitcoin-slaves-2014-1

 

Companies with Free WiFi, Watching You

Posted by South City Computer

Over the past decade, WiFi has made a major appearance in public places. But as cellular data has become more and more prevalent in the past couple years, one starts to wonder why exactly retailers are so big about having WiFi. The truth is that retailers who provide free WiFi in public places aren’t just providing internet access because they want to be nice to you. They are using it to track you.

When you connect your Android or iPhone, or any device, to a WiFi network, it transmits a unique identifier known as the MAC Address. While this address doesn’t necessarily provide any information about your device or your person, it is completely unique. Retailers can track when and for how long a device is connected to their network, and therefore determine your habits.

The best way to explain how this information might be useful to a retailer is through an example.
Let’s say you’re paying a visit to the Lindenwood Park neighborhood and you connect your phone to a free WiFi network provided by a local computer store. That computer store could gather data about how often you visit, and how long. By combining information about how long you are there with the known radius of the WiFi network, the computer shop could gather data about what you are doing. This information is not used to creep on you, but rather to determine what the best way to market to you is. If it was determined that you regularly connect to the WiFi while visiting a nearby restaurant, the store might consider taking out an ad on a table tent.

This form of tracking has potential to be beneficial to both consumers and retailers alike. However, retailers have not established standards regarding informing consumers about what exactly they track and how they plan to use it. Until this happens, one may want to disable the WiFi on his or her device when away from home. AVG has also developed a “Do Not Track” app that will do this for you automatically.

Xbox One Owners Tricked into Ruining their Xbox’s

Posted by South City Computer

If you think your Xbox One might be backwards compatible with an Xbox360 or if you’ve seen any posts online about how to play Xbox 360 games on your Xbox One then you’d better think again.

Did you know that hundreds of Xbox One owners have turned their Xbox One’s into a brick by trying a hack that advertised making their Xbox One compatible with Xbox360 games? The unfortunate truth is that the Xbox One will never be compatible due to the different architectures of the computer itself. The Xbox One is built to be connected to the network and to stream games. It does not have the horsepower to play the Xbox 360 games natively. But that hasn’t stopped some people from trying this hack. We highly recommend you do NOT do this as it will ruin your gaming console. But I thought I’d share it with you so you don’t try this at home.

Again, this is for demonstration purposes and is NOT SOMETHING YOU SHOULD DO!!! THIS WILL BRICK YOUR XBOX ONE!!!

  1. Go to the system menu
  2. Press LB,RT,LT,RT in order quickly
  3. Select the developer console
  4. Check the “enable devkit” box
  5. Change the sandbox ID to “freezone.reboot”
  6. Select “Reset Home Console”

After a user completes these steps the gaming console goes into an infinite loop rebooting itself. There is no way to fix it.

Xbox team member Larry Hryb took to Twitter in an attempt to stop the prank from spreading further: “To be clear there is no way to make your Xbox One backwards compatible & performing steps to attempt this could make your console inoperable”.

Five Tips to Keep Your Phone from Getting Broken

Posted by South City Computer

We all know accidents can and eventially will happen when it comes to our cell phones. We all know somebody who dropped their iPhone or Android and broke the screen. You may have even heard of people accidently dropping their phones into a pool, or worse the toilet! So in response to these misfortunate mishaps, South City Computer offers you five great ways to keep your iPhone or Android phone from accidently getting broke. If your phone is broken from water damage or a cracked screen South City Computer can help! Please call us 314-400-7918 or Contact us today!

  1. Water is the worst enemy to iPhones and AndroidsIt’s a fact that the most common cause of damage to cell phones is water. People often accidently drop phones into puddles, toilets, and drinking glasses. Keeping your phone away from water is the best way to protect it but for a physical line of defense you can purchase a waterproof case.
  2. Cases really do save lifes..or at least they save phones:
    The second biggest reason iPhones and Androids break is that they do not have a case on them. Cases protect your phone from wear and tear, drop damage, and screen cracks. The iPhone has a sleek and sexy design, that is SO sleek it is slick, and can seemingly slip right through your fingers. They are vital for your cell phone’s protection. Unfortunately these accidents are all too common. However, if you have a broken screen the techs at South City Computer repair shop can fix it for you.
  3. Don’t Jailbreak Your Phone Unless you KNOW WHAT YOUR ARE DOINGEven though jailbreaking your phone might seem like a good idea, the amount of ways you can ruin your device by doing it is innumerable. If you really have the need to jailbreak, be sure you have an understanding of what you are doing, and proceed in doing so with extreme caution.
  4. TOO HOT or TOO COLD :
    Forgetting your phone in your car is a very easy and common mistake. However, very hot temperatures like those on the inside of a car during a nice spring or summer day or the opposite frezzing cold temperatures on a cold winters day can ruin the cell phones battery and logic board to a point that the device is irreparable.
  5. Get phone insurance:

Getting phone insurance may sound funny but if you are in areas where your phone has a high chance of breaking, such as a construction site, phone insurance may be good for you. While Apple does not insure phones,traditional insurance companies such as Esurance offers coverage for your phone.

Of course phones will always find a way to break eventually no matter how much you protect them. If you are a customer living in St. Louis City or Lindenwood Park neighborhood, and your phone is broken, please bring it into our computer repair shop for us to give it a look. The computer technicians at South City Computer are more then happy to fix your phone or computer issues. Just call us or leave us a message on our website.

Call: 314-400-7918

2 Million or More Facebook, Google, and Other Accounts Compromized

Posted by South City Computer

In recent news security experts are saying that more than two million Facebook, Google, and other “cloud” accounts have been hacked, compromised, and circulated online!  This is just another hack attack announcement in a slew of online account compromises that’s been in the news lately.

So you might be wondering, how in the heck did they get into so many different types of accounts?  Well, the answer actually is very simple:  1.) A Dictionary and 2.) User complacency. Users can be terrible at picking good strong passwords and remembering them for each service they sign up for or online account they create.

The attackers that stole the Facebook passwords used a dictionary of common passwords and variations thereof ie: password123, PAssW0rd123, etc… to try to log into a users Facebook, Gmail, or other online service. These attacks are automated and can be carried out successfully in a very short time. So if your password matches an entry in the password dictionary then the attacker gains entrance to your account in relatively short order.  Then in a nutshell, the ill-doer simply takes the guessed password and tries it on all your other accounts, your Gmail, your Facebook, your bank. And then those compromised accounts get sold. Sometimes they are used for spamming and sometimes for worse things.

And you probably know what happens next if you’ve ever had your Facebook or Gmail or Yahoo account hacked– friends emailing you telling you that you’re sending spam, or worse like identify theft.

So how can you protect yourself?

  1. Change your passwords to random passwords at least 8 characters in length that contain a capital, a number and a symbol.
  2. Use a different password for each different account to keep the damage localized to that service and not spread to your other accounts.
  3. Use a password keeper tool like Keypass Keepass password safe to make managing different passwords easier by only having to remember one.

Free Good Password Tool

Here is an easy password generation tool.  If you click the link it will generate a random passwords.  Click refresh in your browser until you find one that suits you.  And don’t worry, this link is refreshed every time and no two passwords are ever the same and we don’t record what passwords are chosen.

Click Below

Click Here for a Secure Password

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/12/05/passwords-guidelines-for-protecting-internet/

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