The Todd Today

Here’s your chance to make a difference … tool up and kill a zombie. 

What … what are you doing? Put down that baseball bat and chainsaw!

I’m not talking the living dead kind of zombie here, I’m talking about the silicon kind that are used by cybercriminals to send spam, distribute malware, and commit identity theft.

A zombie computer. What’s a zombie computer?

It’s a computer that is infected with malware to bring it under the control of the cybercriminals as part of a botnet.

Billions of spam emails are sent daily, and 99% of these are sent using zombie computers.

How can you stop the zombies?

• Scan your computer and those of your friends (ask permission first!) with an up-to-date anti-virus program. If you don’t already have an anti-virus you can always buy one form any computer store.  TC-TEKS recommends AVG or Kaspersky Internet Security.
• Keep your operating system and programs up-to-date with the latest security patches, and run a firewall.
• Spread the word on Twitter and Facebook by liking and spreading this email using the share buttons at the top, make sure that your friends know they also need to help kill a zombie.
• If you are still not sure if your computer is a zombie get it in to your local computer repair shop ASAP to stop the spread of the infection!

What do Gucci bags, Rolex’s, and Anti-Virus Software all have in common?

They all have fakes and when you buy the fakes you get what you pay for.

Actually with fake anti-virus software you get even less than what you pay for.  At least with fake Gucci and Rolex’s you get a usable bag or watch after you buy them.

With fake anti-virus you only get more of a headache.

Fake Anti-Virus is one of the biggest threats that we are seeing come into our stores right now.

What is fake anti-virus?

Basically fake anti-virus is a virus that pretends to be an anti-virus.

Virus writers have become increasingly money hungry and increasingly deceitful in trying to separate you from your money.

Contrary to what some believe, viruses are not written just to annoy you or ruin your computer.  They are actually written because they make money for the author or for the authors group.  Usually that group is some type of criminal organization such as the Russian Mafia.

The viruses popup a fake anti-virus software that can look very real.  This fake anti-virus will tell you that you have a bunch of viruses and that you need to purchase their software to remove them.

If you purchase their software the fake anti-virus might do one of a few things.

1. It might do nothing, it will continue to popup and cause you headaches.
2. It might disappear for a couple weeks and then come back and tell you you need to purchase something different.
3. They might simply steal your credit card information and use it to make fraudulent purchases.
4. All of the above.

So what do you need to look out for?

• Look out for a fake anti-virus popup that you did not think that you had.  If it does not look right it probably is not.
• Look out for a fake anti-virus popup that looks just like the one you have installed but will not go away.  Its probably a fake.
• Look out for a fake anti-virus popup that will not go away and your Internet no longer works.  Its probably fake.
• Look out for bad grammar or spelling mistakes on the fake anti-virus popups.

If any of the above is true then the anti-virus is probably fake.

The biggest tip off is the fake anti-virus is usually very annoying.  Real anti-virus will allow you to choose what to do about a virus you might have picked up and then leave you to handle your business.

So how do you prevent fake anti-virus infections?

• Always have a full featured Internet Security software on your computer (I recommend Kaspersky Internet Security which we recommend and sell at our stores).  Many of the free anti-virus work ok but they do not protect you from everything.  You really do get what you pay for.
• If you get a strange email from someone you know, do not open it.  Create a new email and ask the person if they sent it.  Most viruses will come from people you know because their computer is infected and is sending viruses out to people that they know.
• Do not click on strange links on Facebook.  Again these links will come from people that you know.
• Do not buy or renew your anti-virus software from a popup, only buy from reputable sites or at a retail store.

So what should you do if you get infected?

1. Shutdown your computer immediately.
2. Get your computer in to us as soon as possible.  Once these viruses infect your computer they download and infect your computer with other viruses.  They also use your computer to send out spam and Facebook posts to infect other people’s computers.

Real Anti-virus companies are detecting and releasing protection as fast as possible but nothing is one hundred percent because they are always playing catchup just like police trying to stop crime.

While I hope that you never get a virus infection the fact is that most people will.

You probably found this post because a program you are trying to install is giving you the error “The Windows Installer service could not be accessed”.

The issue here is that the registry has been damaged and or the msiexec service is not started properly, most likely a combination of both.

How this happened is hard to say but below is how you can fix it.

1. Click on the Start button
2. Windows XP click the run button, Vista and Windows 7 click in the search box and type in “regedit” and hit enter.
3. On the left side Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – SYSTEM – CurrentControlSet – Services – MSIServer
4. To the right you’ll see WOW64.  Right click on it and click on modify.
5. Change the setting from 1 to 0.
6. Close regedit
7. Next, click on start and control panel
8. Double click Administrator Tools
9. Double Click Services
10. Look for and find the Windows Installer service.
11. Double click on it and click stop then click start again.
12. Ensure Startup type is Manual
13. Click OK and then close the Services window
14. You should now be able to install your programs.

Let me know in the comments if this worked for you.

Did your Windows XP computer  get a bad virus infection, remove the virus and now you can not get an IP address from your router via DHCP?

In your system tray (usually bottom right of your screen) do you have two little computers with a ball floating back and forth over them?

The issue is that the virus removal software that you used has corrupted a service that DHCP depends on to get an IP address from your router.  The service that is corrupted is AFDSERV.

Below is one fix for this issue and hopefully the fix for yours.

1. We need to replace the damaged sys file first which is afd.sys.  You can get this file off of any Windows XP system, just do a search for afd.sys and copy the one in the C:/Windows/System32/Drivers folder.
2. Copy the good afd.sys to the C:/Windows/System32/Drivers folder on the non working machine and overwrite what is there.
3. Now we need to fix some damaged registry entries:
4. Copy the below text and paste it in a notepad document.  Only use notepad not word or wordpad because they add extra formatting that can mess things up.
   Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFD]
   “DisplayName”=”AFD”
   “Description”=”AFD Networking Support Environment”
   “Group”=”TDI”
   “ImagePath”=”\\SystemRoot\\System32\\drivers\\afd.sys”
   “Start”=dword:00000001
   “Type”=dword:00000001
   “ErrorControl”=dword:00000001

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFD\Parameters]

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFD\Security]
   “Security”=hex:01,00,14,80,90,00,00,00,9c,00,00,00,14,00,00,00,30,00,00,00,02,\
    00,1c,00,01,00,00,00,02,80,14,00,ff,01,0f,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,\
    00,00,02,00,60,00,04,00,00,00,00,00,14,00,fd,01,02,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,\
    05,12,00,00,00,00,00,18,00,ff,01,0f,00,01,02,00,00,00,00,00,05,20,00,00,00,\
    20,02,00,00,00,00,14,00,8d,01,02,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,0b,00,00,00,00,\
    00,18,00,fd,01,02,00,01,02,00,00,00,00,00,05,20,00,00,00,23,02,00,00,01,01,\
    00,00,00,00,00,05,12,00,00,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,12,00,00,00

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFD\Enum]
   “0″=”Root\\LEGACY_AFD\\0000″
   “Count”=dword:00000001
   “NextInstance”=dword:00000001

5. Next save the notepad file as afd.reg
6. Navigate to the afd.reg file, right click it, then click merge, then click yes on the popup.
7. Now reboot your computer and hopefully your internet will work again.

Let me know in the comments if this does or does not work for your computer.

No matter what you do Internet Explorer will not open maximized? It always opens in a small window?

If that your problem the below will fix the issue.  Most likely the issue is with a misbehaving add-on or “stuck” setting.

Now I should mention that resetting Internet Explorer, which is what this does, will reset your preferences such as your homepage, installed add-ons, etc.

1. Click “Start”, type “inetcpl.cpl” (without quotation marks) into “Search” bar and press “Enter” to open the “Internet Options” window.

2. Switch to the “Advanced” tab.

3. Click “Reset…” to reset Internet Explorer settings.

4. Check “Delete personal settings” box and click “Reset” to confirm the operation.

5. Click “Close” when the reset process is complete.

6. Click “Restore advanced settings” button and click “OK”.

7. Close the Internet Explorer window and restart IE to check the issue.

Let me know in the comments how this worked for you.

So your small preview thumbnail pictures that normally show up have disappeared huh?

Well its hard to say why they did so but some how the option to display them was disabled so we simply need to re-enable it to get the thumbnails back.

Simply follow the below instructions and you should be sitting pretty:

1. Open the Start Menu.

2. Click on the Control Panel button on the right. (see screenshot below)

3. Open Visual Effects settings. (See screensho below)

4. To Turn On Thumbnails A) Check Show thumbnails instead of icons, then click on OK.

A customer recently brought in an IBM Thinkpad Model T43 in which the sound was not working.

On this model the volume and mute buttons on the unit work independently from Windows. If the volume is all the way up and the mute button is not checked in the sound manager, there still could be no sound if the volume is turned all the way down or has been muted using the buttons.

There is no way to tell in Windows if the buttons were used to turn the volume all the way down or mute the sound, which makes this easy to overlook.

If you open the sound manager in Windows and it looks like there should be sound but is none, try the buttons on the unit to make sure that someone did not use them to control volume level.

If this was your issue let me know in the comments, if this was not your issue let me know what your solution was in the comments

If your print spooler keeps stopping every time you start it hopefully this fix will work for you.

I ran into this problem today and after much searching on google I was able to come together with a few solutions as well as the one that ended up working for me.

The problem seems to be a faulty printer driver that may have been corrupted or messed up by a windows update.  So if your printer had been working and now is not try the solution below.

The solution is to delete the print drivers on your system and re-download the latest drivers from the manufacture website but that’s not as easy as it sounds.

Most posts wanted me to open a “Print Management” which can be found in the control panel under administrative tools to delete the printer drivers.

The only problem is that I did not have “Print Management” under control panel because my print spooler is stopped so this was not much help.

Another way to bring up “Print Management” is to run the command “printui /s/ t2″ without the quotes.  This did bring up the “Print Management” for me but I could not delete printers because my print spooler was still not running.

My final solution that worked:

1. Unplug all of your printers
2. Navigate to where your printer drivers are stored C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS\
3. Make a new folder called OLD
4. Copy all files into the new folder called OLD
5. Go to the control panel – click Hardware and Sound – click Devices and Printers (Make note of printers deleted for step
6. Right click on all of your printers and click Remove Device
7. run “printui /s/ t2″ from the start menu / run dialog box
8. Select the printers that you deleted in step 5 and delete them.
9. Restart your computer (Your print spooler should now stay running)
10. Download the latest drivers from your printers manufacture website
11. Install the drivers and hook up the printers again when prompted to do so by the software.

Did this work for you?  Let me know if the comments.

With the following steps you will be able to backup your Windows 7 or Vista Windows Mail even if you can not boot into Windows.

What you will need

• External Drive Case or USB Drive Connection – This allows you to connect your hard drive from your computer to any other computer.  You can usually get one of these from your local computer store.
• Flash Drive

1. To start if you do not have access to login to Windows we will need to pull the hard drive out of your desktop and or laptop.  To find out how to do this refer to your manual or manufacture website.
2. Once you have the hard drive out install it in your external case or hookup to your USB Drive Connection.
3. Then plug it into another working computer.
4. Show hidden files  (Open Computer, Click Tools – Folder Options, Click View Tab, Click “Show hidden files and folders”)
5. Navigate to ( (Drive-Letter):\users\(user-name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\) where Drive Letter is the drive letter of your drive and user-name is the username of the account you want to get the email from.
6. Copy the Windows Mail folder to your usb flash drive.  You now have all of your emails, contacts, and account information.
7. Once you have your non-working computer working again you can simply copy the Windows Mail folder to (C:\users\(user-name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\) and all of your email, contacts, and account information should be restored.

Let me know if that works for you, Good luck!

So suddenly you can no longer add or remove new programs because everything is gone in your Add/Remove applications list?  Same thing happened to me and luckily the fix is quite easy.  It seems that the culprit is an installation of Adobe Air, but don’t worry no need to remove Adobe Air and lose all of those cool programs., just follow the simple instructions below:

1. Close all open applications, you can keep this browser window open
2. Open a terminal session (Applications -  Accessories – Terminal)
3. In the terminal type:

   sudo apt-get install gnome-app-install --reinstall

4. Hit enter and watch the gnome-app-install reinstall
5. All done, your Add/Remove Applications list should be working like new!

Let us know in the comments if this worked for you or if you had any issues.