Archive for the ‘Computer Tips’ Category

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When the cloud goes down it turns into fog

Posted by South City Computer

Are you confident that your data is safe and available at all times on the “cloud”? Many companies and individual entrust their valuable data, and proprietary business information to third party data storage and hosting companies without ever giving it a second thought. Mainly “who controls the cloud”? Is your data really any “safer” and more available on the cloud?

Cloud services from Amazon, Google, etc are prone to failure just like any other computing storage network. The truth is, the cloud is just a pretty way to say “A computer in a datacenter somewhere”. As we know computers and data networks are prone to failure. The cloud is by no means a high availability cluster like most people invision. They falsly invision the “Borg” if you will (that ones is for the Trekies). Unfortunately most cloud services are not at all like that, and are no different than shared hosting services. Many companies are suprised when their data is unavailable do to outages at major cloud hosting companies like Amazon and Google. They are also suprised when their data is hacked and stolen on the cloud, since they falsly invisioned security happening behind the scenes. While most cloud hosts offer some basic security, you should probably not rely on the cloud for sensitve and proprietary data storage. The cloud get hacked, and the cloud goes down. There I said it.

When the cloud goes down it turns into fog.

A fog of questions like, “What happened to may data?”, “Where is my data?”, “When can I expect to see my data again?”, “Will I ever see my data again?”, “Wait a minute, what the heck is the cloud anyway?”. Leaving many business owners and IT managers scratching their heads and throwing their hands up as they are at the whims of the big cloud hosts to restore their data, “hopefully”. This downtime costs companies millions of dollars in lost time, productivity and revenue. There is nothing worse for a business than the entire company of employees sitting at work waiting for the computer systems to be restored while on the clock.

If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself! This includes data security and data hosting. We recently lost a contract to a company touting cloud data services for use in a medical practice. They convinced the customer to move their email service to Google Mail (Gmail). They sold them on the data uptime and security of Gmail at such a minimal cost. However no where does Gmail admit to being HIPAA compliant, and nowhere would they agree to enter into a Business Associate agreement with a physicians office to be so. Google also shares information with third party advertisors, because Google is first and foremost an advertising giant who survives on selling data to advertisers! So next time you are wondering how the heck Google knows you are on ED meds, or something more private, you should probably ask, where is my physician storing my electronic private health information?

How to fix renamed files after virus

Posted by South City Computer

One of our friends brought in a computer where a virus had renamed all of his files so that they appeared as a .html file. He had thousands of files so doing this manually was out of the question so he came to us to write a program to do it. Below is the program we used to strip the .html extension recursively from all of his files.

find -name "*.html" -print0 | xargs -0 rename 's/\.html//'

If we knew all of his files had the extension .html appended, then we may have done something like this. But upon closer inspection only some files had been renamed.

find -maxdepth 1 -type f | sed ‘s/.\///g’| grep -E [.] | while read file; do mv $file ${file%%.*}; done

Alert: Fake Anti Virus Software

Posted by South City Computer

Avasoft Professional Fake Anti-VirusOver the past couple years there have been a number of computer viruses that appear to be anti-virus software. The programs will appear to be scanning your computer and finding many computer viruses, trojans, and worms. Some of these fake anit-virus programs will even turn off the network connection until a payment is made into a phishing website.

Computer Virus

Computer virus mimicing anti-virus software

Fake Anti-Virus programs can appear to be “very similiar” to real anti-virus software programs to most computer users. However they are NOT really anti-virus software at all, and do not find viruses and worms on your computer, but instead are fake/phoney interfaces meant to scam you into divulging your personal identity and credit card information. It is very important you do not fall for this type of Internet scam, as it could cost you big and cause you future problems.

This past week a computer came into South City Computer with a fake anti-virus program called Avasoft Professional Antivirus. The customer understood this was a fake anti-virus program and immediately brought her computer in to have her data backed up and the computer fully restored to factory defaults to insure the program would longer infect her computer.

If you think your computer may have fake antivirus software on it, bring it to South City Computer today!

Schnucks Falls Victim of Cyberattack

Posted by South City Computer

Last week the news stories broke all over the St. Louis metro area about people’s credit card number being stolen and fraudulent charges being made. The common thread of all of these fraudulent charges was these cards were also used at Schnucks Markets in St. Louis, Missouri. According to a press release on Schnucks.com from March 30, 2013, Schnucks CEO Scott Schnucks says “After extensive review, we confirmed that Schnucks was the victim of a cyberattack”.

Why would Schnucks supermarket store your credit card information in a centralized database system that could fall victim to cybercrimes and hacking? Most stores take in credit card information encoded on the magnetic stripe at the point of sale and store this information temporarily until all transactions are batched out. They do this to keep banking fees at a minimum for charging credit cards, unfortunately this means that your credit card information is being stored for a period of time, which in turn means it can be hacked and stolen, which is exactly what happened to Schnucks.

If you have fallen victim to this cyberattack, you will need to cancel your credit card and get a new one, as the cybercriminal will still be able to use your credit card number to make fraudulent purchases until the card has been canceled.

This is the official Press Release from Schnucks:

“ST. LOUIS – Schnucks announced today that it has “found and contained” the issue behind the reports of unauthorized access to payment card information at Schnucks, and it has taken comprehensive measures designed to block any further access. The computer forensic firm that Schnucks engaged found evidence of computer code that would capture the magnetic stripe data on the back of payment cards. Now that the issue has been identified and contained, the investigation will turn to determining for how long the issue existed and which stores were affected. Customers can continue to use credit and debit cards at Schnucks.

“After an extensive review, we confirmed that Schnucks was the victim of a cyberattack,” said Chairman and CEO Scott Schnuck. “We have identified the issue and taken comprehensive measures to contain the incident. We are cooperating with law enforcement, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, and the credit card companies to determine the scope and magnitude of this crime and apprehend those individuals making fraudulent purchases. We have been told by the computer forensics expert that the security enhancements we have implemented in the last 48 hours are designed to block this attack from continuing. Our customers can continue using credit and debit cards at our stores. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers, and we thank each of them for their patience while we worked hard to investigate their concerns.”

Schnucks advises that if customers suspect their cards may have been compromised, they should immediately contact their credit or debit card company, typically a bank or credit union.

Founded in St. Louis in 1939, Schnuck Markets, Inc. operates 100 stores (including five Logli and six Hilander stores) and 96 in-store pharmacies in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa. Follow Schnucks on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Schnucks.”

The official press release webpage.

Over 2 Million Cards stolen from Schnucks – StLouisPublicRadio.org

How to recover a deleted file

Posted by South City Computer

Accidents happen, it is a fact of life. Don’t worry, it may NOT be too late to get your erased file(s) back after you accidentally deleted it. Here is what you can do to try to recover your lost or deleted file.

First you need to STOP using the computer right now. That means turn it off completely by shutting it down the way computer manufacturer recommended.

The techs at Ivanhoe Computers can recover most files after they were deleted as long as the deletion of the file(s) happened recently. Bring the computer to our store located at 3235 Ivanhoe Ave. in St. Louis MO 63139. Or give us a call 314-400-7918. Get your deleted file back now!

We understand how frustrating it can be to make a simple mistake that costs you BIG time. Or does it? Your deleted file may seem to be erased completely from your hardrive, but actually it has probably just been hidden from the Windows operating system. The Operating System keeps a directory of files and their locations on the hardrive, you can think of it like a phone book. When the computer deletes a file, it actually just removed the record in the “phone book”. Our expert computer technicians can usually find your recently deleted file, and probably lots of other files you have deleted recently.

Customer Stories

We had a customer, Tim, who had a disgruntle girlfriend, Rachel, who deleted images of Tim’s vacation to Costa Rica with an ex-lover. While Rachel probably thought she had won this battle; she was wrong. Our computer support experts and repair technicians were able to retrieve the images from Tim’s hardrive after they had been deleted by Rachel. Tim ended up recovering his memories stored in digital format, even though Rachel had deleted his prized files. While we don’t usually give relationship advice, we advised Tim that it may be time for Rachel to have her own account on Tim’s computer.

Stanly was working on his final term paper at the end of the semester. He had procrastinated until the very last minute to do the assignment, and was in a total crunch for time to get it done. Unfortunately when we are most pressed for time, we can and usually make silly mistakes that cost us BIG time. Stanly worked on the paper for 18 hours straight, and then somehow forgot to save it, or forgot where he saved it. Stanly knew his professor was never going to believe this story. Stanly was extremely irritated at himself, and decided to see if a local computer repair place could help him. Luckily he was right! Our computer support technicians were able to recover the “lost” term paper, along with many other files that had been deleted from the computer recently. While we couldn’t guarantee Stanly an A on the term paper, we could save him some time, and heartache.

Give us a chance, we can probably support your computer data recovery needs too!

*The names used in the Customer Stories have been changed to protect the innocent computer user.

What to expect when getting your computer repaired

Posted by South City Computer

All computer repairs are unique experiences. Here are just a few typical things to expect when getting your computer repaired at a computer repair store.

Expect to be without your computer for at least a couple days. While some computer repairs are finished in a day or two, others can take more time depending on the complexity of the issue and the age of the computer. We understand having your computer out of commission can be a very frustrating.

Expect to pay up front for service before work begins. Most computer repair stores take a retainer or initial payment for service up front. This charge is for the time it takes a technician to diagnose your computer problem and provide a repair estimate.

Expect to be called and/or emailed notification updates and questions about your computer issue. Playing phone or email tag can take up valuable time and slow down your computer repair. Be on-call for us so we can get your computer repaired and back to you as quickly as possible.

Expect your computer to come back to you in working form. Most computer problems can be fixed the first time you bring your computer in for service. If you continue to experience the same issue, then bring your computer back at no additional charge.

Expect your computer to be clean and sanitary. The first step in a computer repair is to sanitize and clean out the computer. We blow out the cooling fans, and a wipe down the computer before it is serviced. You never knew your computer could look so new again…right?

Expect to learn something new about computers. Our computer repair techs are experts and are very knowledgeable about computers and computer problems. You will most likely learn a thing or two about your computer along the way.

If you are looking for professional computer repair services, bring your computer to South City Computer.

Simple Steps To An Easier Computer Repair

Posted by South City Computer

Simple steps to take before computer repairThis is a quick check list of simple steps you can do before you bring your computer to us for diagnostic and repair services:

  1. Do you have the Recovery CD(s) that came with the computer. With newer computers there may be a recovery partition on the hardrive. We can order recovery CDs for most makes/models of computers, however its quicker if you have the recovery CDs when you bring the computer in for service.
  2. Bring the power cord for your laptop computer. That is usually the only chord we will need to perform the computer repair. If your desktop computer uses a non-standard power cable, be sure to bring it with the computer.
  3. Have you been backing up your data? We will need to know if you need the data on the hardrive recovered (if possible). It’s a good idea to have a backup plan in place. Talk to a our computer technicians about a backup and recovery strategy that will work for you.
  4. What are the problems you are experiencing. While we do not expect you to be up on your “geek speak”, be specific and descriptive about the issue(s) you are experiencing when using your PC. Let the tech know the types of software that you are running when the issue occurs.
  5. How old is your computer? Knowing the approximate age of your computer can help our technician identify the version of Windows or Mac OS is installed on your computer, and also which Windows service pack your computer is on. It also will help our technician to discuss with you the benefit of fixing your computer problem, or assisting you to select a replacement computer that is right for you, and then help you to migrate your personal data to your new computer.
  6. Be prepared to pay a fee for our service up front. Most professional computer repair stores ask for money before they begin work. Usually we request you pay for the time it takes a technician to diognose your computer issue and prepare a repair estimate.
  7. Reset your password before you bring your computer to South City Computer if you still are able to. We recommend setting it to something like “temp1234”. We respect your privacy and do not need to know your private passwords.

    8. Getting your computer repaired can seem like a daunting task, but taking these few simple steps before bringing your computer in for repair service could make your repair go much faster.

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