Geek Thoughts

Can a Repair be Too Easy?

2009-09-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I got called by a client who said “they can’t print to this one printer.” Printer problems are usually one of three types: one, there is a problem with the physical connection from the computer to the printer; two there is a problem with the printer driver; and three the printer is goofed up (goofed is a technical term referring to an unknown computer issue).

When you troubleshoot a printer problem you start by using the printer property sheet to try a test print. If the printer prints then the printer issue is most likely with the application the client is trying to print from. If the printer fails to print and the document hangs in the printer queue then the cause can be a number of things including the driver or the print spooler.

However, if the print job fails and the printer queue is clear then usually there is something goofy with the printer. In this case that is exactly what happened when I ran a test print. Here is where the ease of the repair comes in, I know that in some cases when you have a scenario like this one there can be, for lack of a better term, a print job stuck in the printer’s memory and the best way to clear the memory is to unplug the printer then plug it in again. This is what I did, and presto we had a working printer. I had been on the job site for a total of maybe 10 minutes.

My normal policy is to charge a one hour minimum for an onsite call. However, in this case I was planning on driving right by the client’s office on the way to a previously scheduled call when I got their call for help. So I had no drive time invested. Call me a softy, but I since the repair was so easy I only charged them a half an hour despite my minimum rate. That is how a repair can be too easy

The Little Old Lady and Zombies

2009-09-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

This older woman (she was a senior and was little so that does make her a little old lady) brought in her PC and explained that AOL had suspended her account for spamming. She was not sure what she had done wrong or what spamming was. I explained to her that spamming was the sending of lots of emails to strangers that really did not want to receive these emails in order to sell products. She swore she had never done such a thing. I said we would take a look at her PC and let her know what I found.

What we found was a PC with a massive spyware infection and an email zombie. A Zombie is a computer attached to the Internet that has been infected by a virus, or a Trojan horse. These PCs usually form a group of compromised PCs referred to as a botnet that is under remote control. The botnet can be used to perform a number of malicious tasks one of which is the sending of email spam. Almost always the owner of the PC is unaware of the infection or that the computer is being controlled remotely. These owners almost never have current antivirus and antispyware programs installed and never bother to update their machines with the latest security patches.

In the case of the little old lady, she had a number of Trojan horses and at least one active Zombie program. Without her knowledge, she was part of botnet being used to deliver spam. AOL detected that she was sending inordinate amounts of email, concluded she was spamming and suspended her account. However, that is not where the story ends. It is what she was spamming.

Her PC was loaded with porn. It turns out that she was being used as part of a porn spamming botnet. Her PC was cleaned up, the spyware removed along with the porn, antivirus and antispyware software installed and the PC returned to the customer. When we explained what had happened and that porn was being sent from her PC she was mortified. This seemed like a good time to explain the need for antivirus and antispyware software and that she needs to run Windows update to keep her PC secure. You really never know if a user will actually follow through and practice safe computing, but In this case the woman was so disturb by what her PC had been doing I believe she will either use the proper software or perhaps just stay off the internet. Either way, that is one less PC spamming and potentially infecting others.

Unable to Replicate

2009-09-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

Most of us have had problems with our cars or computers where we take them in for repair and the technician cannot replicate the problem. One of my customer’s employees experienced this phenomenon in trying to print. He said he could not print a report from a certain application. So I went into his office and asked him to try to print. Yes, you guessed, it printed. So I told him I had to go work on another PC in the building and let me know if he was still having problems. Five minutes after I left his office he came and got me, saying he could not print again.

So we went back to his office and when he tried to print, it printed just fine. He swore that when I was not in his office the application would not print. So I told him I was going to go back to work on the other PC and come and get me if it failed to print again. Well, as soon as I left his office he tried to print and came running to get me swearing it was not printing again. So we went back to office for a third time and I tried to print the same report and everything worked.

By this time the guy that shared the office with this employee was laughing so hard I thought he might hurt himself. The employee was very frustrated, insisting that he could not get the application to print. Since it had always printed for me I had no problem to diagnose, but to make him feel better I uninstalled and reinstalled the printer driver. I then went back to work on the other PC. I did not hear from him the rest of the time I was on site. I am not sure if he got the report to print or just did not want to face having me come back to his office a fourth time.

Watch Your Gender

2009-09-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

It may make you feel better to know that we computer technicians have to deal with outsourced tech support just like customers. It is also a fairly well known fact that companies providing tech support in India have their employees take accent neutralization courses. I doubt that anyone in the U.S. is fooled into thinking they are talking to someone in the States, but at least the support personal speak English well enough to be understood. Another well known strategy these companies use to appear more western is to have their employees use western first names as aliases. Thus you may have heard a support tech say in with an identifiable Indian accent, “Hello my name is Bob, how may I help you?”

During one support call it became apparent that there was a flaw in this particular support company’s effort to sound more westernized. Yes the support tech was understandable and the accent was not a hindrance and yes he used a westernized first name. The problem was no one had checked the gender of the first name aliases being used. Thus, when I called the support line I got a very male voice say with ringing confidence, “Hello my name is Linda, how may I help you?” After laughing uncontrollably for a couple of minutes (with my hand over the receiver of course) I was able to complete the call successfully and I have to say that “Linda” was very helpful.

Mickey Has Been In Your PC

2009-09-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

About 2-3 times a year we get in a PC that comes to be called a hantavirus PC. When we open it up we find mouse droppings, urine stains and sometimes nesting materials in an empty drive bay. If the PC owner is lucky the mouse has not actually urinated on the motherboard. But in a lot of cases the motherboard has been shorted out by mouse urine. All of this is gross but once it was worse. The PC had the droppings and a shorted motherboard but it was where it came from that gave it the added yuck factor. It was the food services PC for a local high school’s cafeteria. Bon appetit

PC Repair – North Idaho Style

2009-08-31T18:21:00.000-07:00

A customer brought in a PC and said that he kept getting a no bootable disk was found error. Upon opening the case the problem was readily apparent. The hard drive had been opened and then taped shut with duct tape. When I called to ask the customer what had happened he said the hard drive was making a funny noise so he opened it up and sprayed some WD 40 and then couldn’t get the drive case to stay closed so he used duct tape. I decided that explaining the concepts of hermetically sealed and clean rooms would not be constructive.

I explained to him the hard drive was dead and I would have to install a new drive and load the OS and applications but his data was gone. I then explained that I would need the disks for the OS and any applications he had on the PC. His response was “what disks."

Spam and Malware at All Time Highs

2009-07-30T14:01:00.000-07:00

According to McAfee spam and malware threats have reached an all time high. Spam volumes have increased 141% since March and the threat posed by malware is greater than the Conficker worm. The spread of both malware and spam is due in large part to botnet infections from unprotected PCs. McAfee threat announcement shows, “Fourteen million additional computers have been turned into botnets this quarter. That averages to more than 150,000 computers infected every day, or 20 percent of the personal computers bought daily”

Another risk is the Auto-Run malware that can infect a PC just by inserting a USB flash drive unless the computers autorun feature has been disabled. Infection by Auto-Run malware has exceeded the Conficker infection by over 400%.

What can the average PC owner do to help stop this spread? First, please keep your PC updated with the latest security patches. Run current anti-virus and anti-malware software. Finally, disable your PCs autorun feature. You can learn how to disable the autorun feature here.