We find that most users don’t appreciate the magnitude of the problem if they lose their data.

The two scenarios are real life examples of data loss our customers have hit with

 Example 1: Home User

5500 Personal Family photos.  (6 years worth of digital photos, with no printed copies all lost)

Hundreds of Microsoft word files (Children’s School Work / College Essays , CV’S, legal correspondence all lost)

Hundreds of emails ( personal family correspondence all lost)

Hundred of email addresses (all lost)

Family accounts (6 years worth of personal accounts  all lost)

Summary

In the case a large part of the family photos were lost, these included several years worth of photos of the families new born baby.   The older children were forced to write college work in a short time scale to the the data loss happening under a week before assignments were due.  All of this could have been prevented with a simple and cheap backup system.

31% of PC users have lost all of their files due to events beyond their control.

Every week 140,000 hard drives crash in the United States. (Mozy Online Backup)

Simple drive recovery can cost upwards of £1,000 and success is not guaranteed.

Viruses – 10% of PCs are infected with viruses each month. Of these, 37% of computer virus infections result in data loss. (Source – ICSA Labs/TruSecure, 2002)

Example 2: Business User

Thousands of client records (customer billing information, current status of projects all lost)

Thousands of design drawings (current and past customer project information all lost)

Hundreds of Microsoft word files (all lost)

Thousands of emails ( Past and current project correspondence  all lost)

Thousands of email addresses (all lost)

Years worth of business accounts ( all lost)

Summary

This company spent months trying to rebuild their business having lost all of their customers information, accounts, project work and  most of all emails and addresses.  This could have been prevented with a backup system!

93% of businesses that suffer data loss for more than 10 days file for bankruptcy within 1 year, 50% immediately Source – British Chamber of Commerce ICT Report

Up to 20% of PCs suffer hardware failure in the first three years of use. Source – Garter Analyst M. Margevicius, Aug 2001

Laptop Loss – Of the 2.3 million insurance claims for computer loss in 2001, 25% were theft related; notebook theft has increased by 53% since 2000. Source – Safeware, The Insurance Agency Inc. 2001

How can you backup ?

There are several ways to back up below we will have a look at some of the options to suit any situation.

Email to Self.

One of the most basic ways to backup information is to use email.  By using a free email system with a large amount of space (googlemail.com) you can email documents to yourself, and have the document stored on the Google server.

This method is particularly good for students who usually transfer coursework from college / uni to home and back using memory sticks.  Memory sticks can be very unpredictable and can often lose information.  By emailing a copy of your work to your own email makes sure you never have to redo a piece of coursework due to data loss again.

Drop Box

Drop box is online storage.  Signup for an account,  Get 2GB of free space select which files you want to back up, and forget about it .   Drop box automatically syncs your files as you change them or add new ones.

Idea for backing up School work, College essays or Uni Coursework.  Drop box is also perfect for backing up family documents and emails.

Signup for Drop Box

Backup Drive

For large backup systems, drop us an email and we can advise on the best solution for you, we can make sure your not paying over the odds and can periodically make sure your backup is still working.

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Here is our advice on the software to install to keep your system safe and secure,

Antivirus :- Free AVG http://free.avg.com/gb-en/226187 The best Free antivirus we have come across.  We use it on all our ‘Test Bed’ machines (Machines we use to solve / repair / recover client machines)  and it hasnt yet let us get infected.

Anti Malware :-  Malwarebytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/ (the free version)  Run once a week to protect against malware infections

One additional piece of software we would recommend is K9 http://www1.k9webprotection.com If you have under 16′s using a computer K9 will help protect your youngsters from visiting sites which they shouldn’t be. Various different levels of sites can be blocked out, with lots of parental controls and logging are available.

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Currys / PC World
LG 32″ Full HD TV £279 (£549.00) Save £270

LG 42″ Full HD TV £379 (£799.00) Save £420

LG 42″ Full HD LED TV £499 (£649) Save £150

Samsung  50″ Full HD LED TV £899 (£1299) Save £400

ACER TimelineX 4820T £499 (£599.99) Save £150.99

HP g56 Laptop £379 (£599) Save £220

Some of the prices that these offers are ‘reduced’ against are the prices they were at back at the beginning of the year, so i’m guessing that  the huge saving wouldn’t be such a huge saving if you compared it with last weeks price !!

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I personally have never received one of these calls, that was until last week To help people out in understanding how these con-men try and work their way in to your system I took some notes while stringing the friendly Indian ‘Support’ guy along.

In the below transcript my comments are in green marked as [phx] and [C2F] will be the comments of my scam caller.  The caller does spout a lot of incorrect information about the system to frighten you in to thinking he needs your help.  I will explain with comments in red as we go through what the windows functions he talks about are for and how to really ensure you have no viruses.

[C2F] Good morning Mr Phillips I am calling because we have discovered a lot of virus infections on Computers in the Hereford area.

[phx] Oh really, how can I tell if I’m one of them ?

[C2F]What computer are you using ?

[phx] Windows Xp

[C2F] Ok well there is a chance you are infected.  Can click the start button and then right click on ‘My Computer’ and press ‘Manage’.  Please Click the Event Viewer link .  Do you know what the Windows logs are?

[phx]No i have never seen them before… I lied I use the Windows event logs pretty much every time I repair a computer.

[C2F]OK well the Windows logs record information about all the viruses you have on your computer.  Actually the Windows Log store information about the computer when it boots up and when it shuts down. It also stores information about crashes and programs which report errors.

[C2F] Do You see any red exclamation marks ?

[phx] Yes a few

[C2F]More than 10 or Less than 10

[phx]More than 10 I lied again, there were no red exclamation marks.

[C2F]These are errors on your system, do you know what they mean

[phx]No

[C2F]These Red errors mean you have many online infections on your system that have affected your computer.  I had to stop myself from laughing here,  it is not uncommon to see some errors listed in the Windows Log,  Programs when they crash will log the even in the Event log etc So seeing Errors here does not mean you have an infection or Virus.

[phx] Oh No !!!

[C2F]Does it take a long time for your computer to boot up ?

[phx]Yeah I guess it does take a little longer than it should do.

[C2F]That’s all down to these online infections and your computer could crash down in a mater of days.  Some Viruses can cause the computer to boot slower but most computers  are so full of ‘junk’ and unused programs and start up items this is the reason for the slow boot and can be fixed by a clean out.

[phx]Oh so how do we get rid of them ?

[C2F]Well your pretty badly infected, lets have a look at how badly they have taken over your computer.

Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete Key.  Do you know what this does He’s constantly testing my knowledge to see how far he can push his lies.

[phx]No i’ve never seen this before I seem to be telling a lot of lies here, but its all in the name of research!!

[C2F] The is will tell us how much of your computer the virus is using.  Click on the performance tab, what percentage of CPU usage is being used?

[phx]70%

[C2F]{sharp intake of breath} Oh thats bad  70% of your computer is infected This figure actually represents how hard your computer is working.  When playing a game this figure maybe close to 100%, when you have just booted your computer this figure would be closer to 0%.

[phx]OH NO !!!

[C2F] Dont worry, we can  help you, please open your web browser and go to www.click2fixs.com.  At this point this guy wanted me to download some remote tool from his website.  I can only assume he was then going to infect my system and try stealing my passwords.

[phx]At this point i have to inform you i am an IT consultant, I know exactly what the Windows Logs do and the Task manager.  I think what you are doing here is highly illegal…

[C2F]{silence}

[phx]Do you have anything to say ?

[C2F]{Phone Goes Dead}

So a few tips to remember:

• Microsoft aren’t going to call you, unless you called them first.
• If you haven’t called anyone to help you with your computer,  don’t let any one try and convince you you have a problem
• If you think you have a problem call a company you trust to help you out.

Please pass this on to anyone who may find it useful.  Older people may find this scam convincing and be so worried they allow these con men to hack into their computers  .

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Messages are sent to entire contact lists pretending to be from a genuine user trying to get you to click on a link. Messages like “OMG is this you in the photo” or “cant believe its u in the vid Alistair! u should be ashamed of urself! http://apps.facebook.com/superxmas/” are used to then try and infect more user accounts.

If you receive any messages like these then do not click on any of the links they contain.

So what can you do to protect your self ?

1. Change your Facebook password regularly. (Any passwords should be changed on a monthly basis, to protect your security)
2. Make sure you have an up to date Anti Virus software. (set to run a scan EVERY day) I can recommend the free AVG version.
3. Run a spyware tool like malware bytes at least once a week.
4. Be very careful when clicking links on Facebook, especially those on pages which want you to verify you are human by filling out surveys.
5. Use Google Chrome browser as it has built in Phishing and Malware protection.
6. If using Public machine, Make sure you LOG OUT after you finish!!!

If you have any suspicion your machine is infected with a virus DO NOT sing into any Web based email, banking, social network, your details maybe sent to the virus maker.

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The bugs which cause server timeouts, making the Online multiplayer function of the game unplayable, were due to be fixed with a patch last week.

PS3 and PC Users are still reporting problems

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Both Nokia and Apple have spent the last few years Suing and counter suing each other in ‘tit for tat’ exchanges. Both sides claim infringements of 3G and wi-fi technology.

Whether anything ever comes of the claims is yet to be seen.

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In a statement on its blog, Facebook apologised for the brief downtime.

“For a brief period of time, some internal prototypes were made public to a number of people externally.” read the message. “As a result, we took the site down for a few minutes. It’s back up, and we apologise for the inconvenience.”

A new feature called memories which will show you your history on Facebook in a timeline was shown for the first time. New brand pages and revamped photo sections were also leaked.

On Twitter, one widely circulated tweet doing the rounds read “Facebook is down. Half the world population had suddenly become productive. The other half of the population is using Twitter.”

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More info is available on their website http://forums.avg.com/ww-en/avg-free-forum?sec=thread&act=show&id=132999#post_132999

Please see update towards the bottom of this post

we regret to inform you that latest virus database 271.1.1/3292 (432/3292) released 12:53 AM CET requested computer restart with inability to start the system again with error:

STOP: c0000135 The program can’t start because %hs is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

We have immediately downgraded published failing version to fully functional 271.1.1/3291 (432/3291).

If you have unfortunately met mentioned error, please follow these steps:

If is possible to boot into Safe Mode, then run System Restore before the night AVG update and re-install AVG.

——————————————————————————–

If is not possible to boot computer at all, please follow this How-To.

Or use AVG Rescue CD -> menu Utilities -> Midnight Commander -> navigate to /mnt/sda1/program files/ (or program files (x86)) and rename by F6 AVG folder to other name (for example AVG_old).

Windows 7 Startup Repair
Described at this Microsoft website – follow section “To open the System Recovery Options menu on your computer”

Then start your system again and re-install AVG.

Please accept our apologies for any inconveniences caused by this situation.

Thank you

Update from Kodl:
This issue is limited to 64-bit systems only, currently it looks like not all 64-bit systems though, we are investigating. The updated has been pulled from our servers and if you have not been affected by this issue, it is OK to update normally.

We will release some tool to help in fixing the systems affected by this bug. Also, a few users here in the forum have posted excellent descriptions of fixes that do not require full use of the Rescue CD.
In short, during boot, boot into the command mode (pressing F8) and rename/remove the AVG program folder, then boot normally. After this, you can run the repair installation of AVG.
See for example an excellent description here http://forums.avg.com/ww-en/avg-free-forum?sec=thread&act=show&id=133009#post_133009 by Pulse21

Again, please, accept our apologies and stay tuned for a more detailed description and a fix

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Windows vista machine ran an update yesterday and now runs start up recovery every time the machine tries to boot. The above message is shown when you try to boot with automatic restart disabled.

Selecting the view problem details option shows:

Problem Event Name: StartupRepairV2
Problem Signature 01: AutoFailover
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6000.16386.6.0.6001.18000
Problem Signature 03: 6
Problem Signature 04: 72097
Problem Signature 05: BadDriver
Problem Signature 06: BadDriver
Problem Signature 07: 0
Problem Signature 08: 3
Problem Signature 09: WrpRepair
Problem Signature 10: 16389

We also have the error (0×800700002) when trying to run the system restore function.

Solution:

The most likely cause of our two error was a corrupt registry.

So here goes in C:/windows/system32/config Create a new folder called temp move the files DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM and all the associated .Log files to the Temp folder you just created.

Within C:/windows/system32/config there is a folder called RegBack copy every file in this folder back to C:/windows/system32/config. Rebooted the machine and Bingo the machine booted back up

Let me know if this solves your problem!!

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