Bravo, Maryland! + Troubleshooting USB + More

Today’s reading includes a download for help in fixing troublesome USB ports.

Big, big news: Maryland Lawmakers Ban Employers from Requesting Facebook Credentials from Employees or Interviewees

“Last week, Maryland’s House and Senate passed legislation prohibiting employers from asking for a current or prospective employee’s logins to Facebook and other social media sites. Once Governor Martin O’Malley signs the bill into law, Maryland will become the first state in the nation to pass legislation protecting employees from having employers access their social media accounts.” Read more..

(I think this absolutely should be Federal Law, and I wonder why they (Congress) voted down similar legislation. Oh. Wait. I don’t wonder at all actually. But if we have to gain this “protection” state-by-state, let’s do so. If your state doesn’t have at least one politician looking out for their constituents and smart enough to propose this — start a Proposition.)(Unbelievable there’s been no public outrage on this..)

* Map and troubleshoot your USB ports with Microsoft USB View

“After some deep investigation, Greg Shultz came across a Windows 7 compatible version of the old Windows utility USB View.” Read more..

These next two might be a little too corporate for most readers, but..

* Five ways companies use social media and look like jerks

“Let’s take a look at five ways companies use social media and end up making themselves look like complete and utter fools.” Read more..

(I enjoyed this one.. even though I don’t use “social media”, or work for the man.)

* Connect your iPhone to Microsoft Office 365

“Office 365, the cloud-based collaboration platform from Microsoft, can actually be iPhone-friendly. Will Kelly shows you how to connect your iPhone to Office 365.” Read more..

And.. this can’t be good..

* Seventeen years worth of Emory patient data missing

“Emory Healthcare in Atlanta lost the personal information of surgery patients treated at its three hospitals when 10 backup discs went missing.

How many victims? 315,000 patients treated from September 1990 to April 2007.

What type of personal information? Names, Social Security numbers (on 228,000 patients), surgery dates, diagnoses, and other information about the procedures, such as whom performed them and what types of devices were used” Read more..

More news on the Apple botnet..

* Russian security firm says Flashback infection rates still high

“Last week’s reports of a sharp decline in infections by the Flashback malware may have been premature. A new report by Dr. Web says 566,000 Macs are still infected, with new infections appearing.” Read more..

* New Flashback variant silently infects Macs

“A new Flashback Trojan has been discovered that infects Macs without prompting the user for a password. If you haven’t updated Java on your Mac, or disabled it entirely, you could be a victim.” Read more..

And in the News From Around The World Department..

* In China, plagiarization is an established business model

“Copying business ideas from both foreign and domestic firms has been standard operating procedure for Chinese Internet companies. But these borrowing practices could be losing their momentum.” Read more..

Well, I’m out of time for today. See you next time.

Today’s quote: “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.” ~ Booker T. Washington

Copyright 2007-2012 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

---

>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Free Tool Immunizes PC’s, USB Devices

Disable Autorun With A Click

Folks, an increasingly common method the cybercriminals are using to get their spyware and viruses onto your machines is by infecting thumb drives. In fact, if you remember Conficker…

Fortunately, the good folks at Panda have a free tool for us to help protect ourselves. The below is from their website…

Panda USB Vaccine – free antimalware to block malware spreading through USB drives.

There is an increasing amount of malware which, like the dangerous Conficker worm, spreads via removable devices and drives such as memory sticks, MP3 players, digital cameras, etc. To do this, these malicious codes modify the AutoRun file on these devices.

Panda USB Vaccine is a free solution designed to protect against this threat. It offers a double layer of preventive protection, allowing users to disable the AutoRun feature on computers as well as on USB drives and other devices:

Vaccine for computers: This is a ‘vaccine’ for computers to prevent any AutoRun file from running, regardless of whether the device (memory stick, CD, etc.) is infected or not.

Vaccine for USB devices: This is a ‘vaccine’ for removable USB devices, preventing the AutoRun file from becoming a source of infection. The tool disables this file so it cannot be read, modified or replaced by malicious code.

This is a very useful tool as there is no simple way of disabling the AutoRun feature in Windows. This provides users with a simple way of disabling this feature, offering a high degree of protection against infections from removable drives and devices.
You can Download Antimalware Panda USB Vaccine free here.

* The good folks at Panda get another tip of my Geek hat for this. And my thanks also to Bryce at Technibble for mentioning this in his newsletter. I had meant to mention this, but it had slipped my mind..

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

---

>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

Share this post :

Mac Printer Problem

The other day I received a phone call (at Aplus Computer Aid) from a man whose printer had suddenly stopped working. All the lights were on. The cable was plugged in. He hadn’t moved the printer or computer, changed any settings, or installed/uninstalled any software.
So he was puzzled.

So I had him try the usual Printer Troubleshooting Steps
* Was the printer getting power (plugged in)? Yes.
* Turn the printer off, and then turn it again. Resolved? No.
* Is the USB cable plugged in securely? Yes.
* Delete old print jobs. Resolved? No.
* Is the printer showing in System Profiler? No.
* Restart the computer. Resolved? No.

Hmmm… Now I was puzzled.
The fact that the printer wasn’t showing up at all in the Profiler meant that it was almost certainly not a software (driver) issue.. And all the lights on meant it (probably) wasn’t a power issue. So I kept coming back to the USB cable, and he kept telling me it was plugged in just fine, and that he hadn’t touched it.
So I told him to “humor me” and plug it in to a different USB port.

This resolved his problem.
It turns out that he had made a change recently. He had replaced his keyboard with a new wireless mouse and keyboard set.
Keyboard? What’s that got to do with a printer???

His printer’s USB cable had been firmly and securely plugged in — to the old keyboard. The one that he had unplugged to make room for the new wireless one. Apple likes to put convenient USB ports on their keyboards, and..
Normally, I run into this “it IS plugged in” with powerstrips. Is the powerstrip plugged in?

Today’s free link: Apple’s Support page for troubleshooting printer issues provides the step-by-step methods for resolving most printing errors. Those with driver issues (software) should look here.

Today’s free download: In sticking with my Mac theme today.. http://www.opensourcemac.org/ is a website dedicated to listing the best in free (Open Source) programs for your Mac. All kinds of categories, so whether you’re looking for an anonymizer or image editor, you’ll find something here.

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

Share this post :

Thumb drives: did you get less than you paid for?

I received in my e-mail a question from a very upset reader yesterday. The reader wanted to let me know about a company that makes thumb drives (and other products, too) and told me I should warn you folks about how that company had ripped them off.

Now, I want you to rest assured, Dear Reader, and take joy and comfort in, that if and when I run across “bad things” in the world of tech– I let you know about them. (I think we can all agree that a rip-off qualifies as a “bad thing”.)

The writer named names and pointed fingers unabashedly.. and I suspect, had to go back and clean up their language before hitting Send. They were.. um.. passionate in their outrage.
What had caught my eye, however, was the perpertrating  company’s name — it was a (brand) name I think highly of; and frankly, so does rest of the industry.

What had our e-mail writer so irked? The company had ripped them off over a Gigabyte. They had paid for 16 GB’s, and actually gotten just under 15. (14.9, to be exact.)
They felt short-changed, flim-flammed, and lied to… and as I may have mentioned, they did not like the feeling.
My letter writer’s angst was natural, but misplaced.

When is a Gigabyte not a Gigabyte?
* Ever since the neolithic era of personal computers, way, way, way, back in the Early Days (circa 1984), when dinosaurs still roamed, and “kilo” was king (I’m talking before “mega”, and well before “giga”) the men who produced hard drives (aka “storage devices”) described the size of their products using numbers other humans could understand. That is: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. of the good-old “Base 10” system [ten fingers and ten toes=20].
So to those guys, a “Giga” is 1,000,000,000… just like it is to you and me.
* Computers, in their relentless and perverse desire to frustrate, confuse, and generally annoy humans, decided not to speak in Base 10. Computers invented their own numbering system and named it “binary”.
In this sick, twisted, and baffling numbering system, a one is still “1” (to sucker us, no doubt), but two is “10”. And “3” (to us) is “11” (to them). Want a real kick in the head? Four is “100”. And if you expect 5 to be “1,000”, you’re wrong– it’s 101.
A “Gigabyte” to a computer is 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Let’s see if I have done a good job and you’ve followed along: to the guy who is making the storage device, if he makes it big enough to hold 1,000,000,000 bytes of information, he calls it a “Gigabyte storage device” (always has and always will).
When you plug it into your computer, your machine will see 73,741,824 bytes less than what it thinks of as a Gigabyte, and it tells you that you you have “.93 GB’s of available space”.
In the case of my writer, we multiply the difference by 16… which equals 14.9 GB’s of available space.

Let me be clear, the manufacturer did indeed provide a storage device that can hold 16,000,000,000 bytes of data– 16 GB’s. And machines “see” that as 14.9 GB’s. So they’re both right.. and my writer wasn’t a victim of a scam, flim-flam, nor fraud.
It’s just Base 10 vs. Base 2.

Yes. I understand.
And despite that, I actually like computers!

[For those of you who would like more of a description of “Gigabyte” than my attempt, click here; and for more on binary, here.]

Today’s free link: FreeRip 3, a C/Net Editor’s 5-star CD application. Description: FreeRip is an easy to use application that can record digital audio tracks directly from compact discs to PC files. You can save CD audio tracks to CD-quality WAV files or encode them to OGG Vorbis, WMA, MP3 or Flac compressed audio formats. It can also convert/encode audio files from WMA/WAV/MP3/Vorbis/FLAC. FreeRip also lets you adjust track volume and it supports ID3 tagging and CD-Text. Includes MP3 ID3 Tagger.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

Share this post :

Get a boost from your thumb drive

Thumb drives are amazing. They’re fast, they’re small, they make great keychain fobs, and they’re affordable. I have seen 8GB thumb drives for as little as $30, and 16GB’s for $50*.
That’s right– sixteen billion bytes. (The hard drive on my P-II [still running] is 4.3GB’s.)

Yes, thumb drives are all those things, and they’re practical too. By purchasing a U3 drive, or downloading the Portable Apps suite, you can easily convert your thumb drive to a “computer on a stick” and run your applications from it (as opposed to the host computer). This can be particularly useful when traveling, as you can carry your bookmarks, contacts, and documents with you.. and you won’t leave histories and ‘tracks’ that someone can read later.

In this article, https://techpaul.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/how-to-install-a-program-on-your-thumb-drive/, I tell you the steps for installing (pretty much) any program onto your thumb drive. By doing so, you can load your favorite, and most useful programs onto your computer-on-a-stick.. allowing you to carry a computer on your keychain (sort of).
I recommend loading a antivirus, and a couple of anti-spyware onto your thumb drives, and — since thumb drives are small and “losable”– using encryption to render the drive unreadable without knowing the password.

In another article, https://techpaul.wordpress.com/2007/06/28/put-your-thumb-drive-to-work/, I describe how to make a thumb drive “bootable”, and how you can load it up with diagnostic and repair programs; thus turning it into a recovery tool, and portable repair kit-on-a-stick. (This is for the more geek-inclined, but there is some good information there even if you aren’t skilled in computer repair.)

But even if you aren’t interested in using a “computer on a stick”, Vista users can still get some extra mileage out of your drive that you might not be aware of…
Tip of the day: Improve Vista’s performance with ReadyBoost. Loyal readers of this series will already know that 1) Vista is a resource hog, and 2) the best way to improve Vista’s performance is to give it lots of RAM. Well, the flash memory in your thumb drive may be fast enough for Vista to use as additional RAM (this is determined by the make/model of your thumb drive. Typically, the discount, or generic drives are not fast enough).

When you plug in a thumb drive, a small window opens which provides a list of options of what you want to do with this device– one of the options is “speed up my system”. Select this, and another window opens; click “Use this device”. If your thumb drive is capable of ReadyBoost, you’ll see a slider which allows you to allocate how much of your drive’s room you want to give over to the Vista OS– accepting the default is fine.
That’s it. You’re done. Pretty painless way to add RAM, eh? (cheap, too.)

Today’s free link: today’s free link is a repeat, but it is simply the best way to encrypt your volumes (drives), files and/or folders — such as your thumb drive. Download the free TrueCrypt, and make sure a lost thumb drive won’t be a minor disaster.

* As a testiment to Moore’s Law, just two weeks after posting this, I have seen the prices go down $20!

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

Share this post :

 

 

Can’t use their thumb drive at work–Reader Question

A reader e-mailed me a question I believe will be of interest to other readers of this series. He wants to use a thumb drive to transfer files between his computer at his work and his home computer, but the work computer will not recognize the thumb drive. He wanted advice on how to fix this.

Q: My thumb drive works great at home, but when I took it into work to try and copy some files so I could work at home, I plug it in and the little window never opens so I cannot use it. What am I doing wrong?
A: There are several possible reasons for this, and here’s a few things to try:
* One may be that Windows is “recognizing” the device, but isn’t displaying the little “Found new hardware” balloon for some reason (such as a Service isn’t running). Open My Computer, Start >My Computer, (just “Computer” in Vista) and look for the drive there. If it’s there, great, just double-click it, but if it’s not…

* Try plugging the drive into a different USB port. It is possible that the one you tried has “gone bad”. (It helps if you use an open port on the machine, and not use a hub.) If that isn’t it…

* Ask your company’s IT department if USB volumes have been disabled. Many companies are turning off USB access to iPods/Media Players and thumb drives (storage devices) in an effort to prevent “data leakage”.. which is a fancy way of saying, preventing the employees from walking out the door with the Company Secrets. If this is indeed the case, you can ask that an exception be made in your case. If your request is granted, they will re-“enable” USB storage devices on your machine.
But if that isn’t it…

* It is possible that the drive letter your thumb drive is pre-disposed to being assigned (say, “E:” or “F:”), is being used by another device or “share” on the company network, and so it isn’t being seen as a volume (aka “drive”).. you’ll have a volume, but without a drive letter, Windows won’t “see” it and you can’t use it.
a) Right-click on My Computer and select “Manage” from the context menu.
b) click the “+” sign next to “Storage” to expand the tree, and then click on “Disk Management”.
You will now see all the volumes on your computer..

This screenshot  shows that I have two volumes/drives, and that they both have been assigned drive letters [(C:) and (D:)] — this means they’re “recognized” and fully functional. What we’re looking for in our thumb drive issue is a volume that does not have a letter.

c) If you see one (that will be the troublesome thumb drive), right-click on it and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…” from the context menu. A small window will open.
d) click on the “Add” button, and another small window will open. Use the drop-down arrow next to “Assign the following drive letter” and choose one of the letters (those shown will be “available” letters on the company network). It really doesn’t matter which letter you choose. Then click “OK”, and “OK” again.

You should now be back in business, and you can use the thumb drive as you’re used to. Open My Computer again and you’ll see the thumb drive and double-clicking it will open it up.

* If these steps fail to allow Windows to see the USB thumb drive, submit a trouble ticket to your company’s IT department.

Today’s free link: Once upon a time, the visionaries of IT thought that the answer to creating a “paperless society”, and getting all the disparate machine types talking to each other, was the PDF (portable document format). The PDF was to be create-able by anyone and readable by anyone, but Adobe didn’t see much profit in that… If you find that you need to create a PDF, but don’t have Acrobat or Word 2007, you can do so by downloading PrimoPDF, which can convert over 300 formats into .pdf’s.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

Share this post :

 

Put your thumb drive to work (updated)

I often use a specially configured USB “thumb drive” as my portable PC repair kit, and use it as an alternative to a “boot CD”. I have made it “bootable” and loaded it with useful tools and repair applications (like an antivirus scanner). It has come in handy, from time to time. With the price of these drives being as affordable as they are, there’s really no reason you cannot have a portable PC repair kit (on a stick) too.

Tip of the day: Making yourself a toolkit-on-a-stick requires a couple of steps; first you must format it to make it bootable, and then you must load it with the tools and applications you think you will need — if the thumb drive you’re planning to use is small (say, 512MB), you will want to get the “portable”, or “Lite”, versions of these programs if they’re available.

1) Make the drive bootable. The geekier (remember, I use “geek” as a compliment!) of you out there may be already familiar with the DOS utilty FDISK, and if you are and you still have a Windows 98 Install CD (or a Win 95 boot floppy) laying around, you can format the drive using the format /s command as outlined here.
If that doesn’t fit your description, or you are going to use a larger thumb drive, I suggest you download and run (it is a Wizard, so you just follow the prompts) a tool offered by HP (the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool), which should do the work for you: get it here.

2) Now that your thumb drive can be used to boot a machine, it’s time to load it up with some useful programs and utilities. I started with the DOS tools FDISK, scandisk, and format. There is some debate amongst my fellow Tech Support-types as to which utilities are “must have’s” (but we all agree on some version of antivirus and anti-spyware) and I’m not going to trouble you with that. Instead, I’m going to point you towards today’s free link (below) and a wonderful pre-made suite of very handy portable applications, and suggest the addition of (my previously mentioned) HiJack This!

If you used the copy-the-system-files method (the “format /s”) you will already have chkdsk and fdisk and a few others.. or if not, these can be added. If you are not going to install Portable Apps, I suggest you do install Portable Firefox (or similar Web browser) so that you can access the Internet, for downloading device drivers.

To make it more of a “repair kit” you can add: a Registry cleaner/fixer, such as CCleaner and or AMUST Registry Cleaner, Process Explorer, and another anti-spyware like Spybot Search&Destroy.

Click here to read my article on the steps for installing programs on thumb drives.

Today’s free link: Portable Apps.com. This collection of portable application runs completely from the USB thumb drive. It has a Webbrowser, word processor, antivirus and more. Get started on the road to thumb drive power here.
[Update: Bill Mullins has brought to my attention a program for running apps on your thumbdrive that seems superior to others I have mentioned. To read his review, click here.]

Copyright © 2007 Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

Share this post :