Ms. Ducktoes likes to crank up the music and dance around the room. I know, embarrassing to teenaged sons and yes, even to the techs who work for me, poor guys who have to put up with all my shenanigans. Embarrassing or not, life is too short not to kick up your heels. But only [...]

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Here’s a youtube video from Sophos that shows how you can get infected from a Google Ad advertising Norton.  Note how on the fake Norton website the colors are yellow like Norton Antivirus or Symantec, but there’s no real name, only the word “Anti-virus,” a clue you’re not getting the real deal, but a rogue [...]

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Many new Ducktoes clients have been victims of a phone scam where a caller from outside of Canada claims to be from Microsoft. The friendly and helpful caller convinces the client their computer is infected with viruses.  He sympathizes  and earns their trust.  And then persuades them to give him access to their computer and [...]

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Here’s an article from ghacks.net on how to back up your Windows 7 machine by making an image of your operating system, your programs and your files.  You put the image on a disk and then can restore your system by booting from that disk.  It is great protection for your programs and files and [...]

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Wondering what specs you’ll need in a new computer?  I found an excellent blog post by a computer repair shop owner in San Diego on just that. Here is the link. It is more like an article than a post.

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An excellent way to prevent viruses is use Ad Block with Google Chrome as your browser. Since many viruses and malware are hidden in ads on websites, using Ad Block will really protect you. My son Peter uses Google Chrome with Ad block and has now stopped using an anti-virus. And he doesn’t get viruses. [...]

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Here’s a great interview with the anti-virus pioneer Kaspersky. He says that the cyber-criminal created viruses are coming from China, South America, and Russia. His anti-virus software is rated the highest on many comparative tests.

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As I said in my last post, I am worried about all kinds and brands of hard drives. I no longer think they are made well. I buy Seagate usually. I like Intel boards and processors. I like Cooler Master and Antec cases. I like Asus motherboards too. I hardly see any ASUS computers in [...]

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I can’t say this often enough. Hard drives are vulnerable and flimsy. They are the most common piece of hardware to go bad, so you, a computer owner, are under constant threat of losing your data. So never, ever, go without backing up your data. You can not rely on your hard drive! Just because [...]

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In December, Apple announced that Mac users should install anti-virus protection, but since then, they’ve withdrawn the story. However, it makes sense, as more people buy Macs, the more virus creators will create malware for Apples. So if you own an Apple computer, a little precaution is advised. Here is a link to avast! for [...]

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I’m often asked what free anti-virus I recommend. Unfortunately no one anti-virus can remove all viruses. In our Calgary computer repair shop we use many different ones and each finds different infections. Some that we use are AVG, Avira, Avast, Kaspersky, Dr. Web Cure-it, E-set online and off, among others. If we relied on only [...]

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Last post I promised to recommend some good defragmentation tools to help speed up your computer. So here goes. Defragmentation can make a big difference in hard drive performance and helping a computer stay faster longer. It’s an essential computer repair and hard drive process. I’ve previously explained in an old post what defragmentation is [...]

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