Archive for April, 2009

Forget your password?

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

How many of you have ever forgotten your Windows 2000/XP/Vista administrator password? Usually you set this password up when you first get your computer. It’s easy to forget especially if your user account isn’t an administrator account. For myself, I come across this frequently when customers drop their computers off to me and have their user accounts password protected. I used to call them and ask for their passwords which sometimes created an awkward situation because I know they didn’t want to tell me because it may be their password to many other things, like their bank account. Now I don’t have to do that anymore. I came across this repair tool called Offline NT Password and Registry Editor. To keep this as less technical as possible, basically you take this tool and put it onto a bootable CD. You then load the CD into the computer in question and boot from it. Finally, you just follow the instructions and just like that it blanks out the password.

This tool as you can see can be very useful. It can also be used for the wrong purposes very easily. I had a customer come in from somewhere in Cape May County the other day that brought me a computer. He said he forgot his password and needed to get into his computer without losing any information. Sounds simple enough right? Well something wasn’t sitting right with me with this customer. I started asking him some information about the computer like the operating system that was installed, the specs of the machine, when and where he purchased it. He stumbled over most of these questions which told me one thing, the computer was most likely stolen. So to make a long story short I ended up denying service on that machine by telling him I wasn’t capable of bypassing the password. He wasn’t happy. Who knows, maybe it was his computer. Guess I’ll never know. Use this tool wisely…

Offline NT Password and Registy Editor

Nicholas Catanoso
Catanoso Computing
http://www.catanosocomputing.com

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When to Reinstall the OS?

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

For this post I will be basing my opinion on the computers overall performance being affected by viruses and spyware. This question is going to be answered differently by many technicians. Some technicians reinstall Windows at the first sight of a virus instead of trying to remove it. Other technicians may receive a computer that is completely infested and may spend hours upon hours trying to remove the virus only to realize they probably didn’t achieve much of a performance increase in the end.

I usually fall right in between. Computer viruses today are becoming more and more sophisticated which in turn makes them harder to detect and remove. This is why your computer’s security is vital. If a customer brings in their computer to me at the first sign that something is going wrong then it’s usually fixable without having to reinstall Windows. On the other hand, when a customer brings me a computer that has gradually gotten worse over a fair amount of time, then it is usually not worth it to try and manually remove all the viruses and spyware because in doing so you are most likely not going to see an increase in the computer’s performance. This is when a clean install of Windows is necessary.

If the customer has their operating system cd and their program cd’s then it’s almost a no brainer to go ahead with a reinstall if the machine is pretty bad off. They are going to see the biggest increase in performance this way. Basically it is like starting fresh which in most cases is never a bad thing. It also gives you the peace of mind that their machine is clean of viruses and spyware.

I recently received a customer’s computer in which I wish I did a clean install of Windows. They had multiple viruses and spyware on their system that were really rooted in. They were actually almost victims of identity theft because the viruses stole their banking passwords. In this specific case the customer did not have their operating system cd on them which left me no choice to try and manually clean the system. After spending several hours and a half of dozen scans later the machine “appeared” to be clean after every scan turned up nothing. I gave the computer back and several hours later they contacted me saying they still believed there was a problem with their browser although hijackthis showed nothing. Take note that some deleted viruses can actually rebuild themselves making them extremely difficult to remove. Anyway, since they had their OS cd I decided to play it safe and format their hard drive and reinstall the OS so I knew for sure I was giving them back a clean system.

**I just wanted to update this post to say that formatting the hard drive and reinstalling the OS is no longer 100% proof. According to an article on technibble, some rootkit viruses can now survive a format. Great…

Nicholas Catanoso
Catanoso Computing
http://www.catanosocomputing.com

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Uninstalling Software

Saturday, April 4th, 2009

Many people like to try different software titles here and there and depending on whether or not they like them they either keep the software on their computer or remove it. The best option if you decide not to use the software is to remove it completely from your system. This way it frees up space on your hard drive so you have room for other important things. The only problem with installing and uninstalling software is that most of the built in uninstallers usually leave bits and pieces in the registry which over time can slow down your system. Some programs don’t come with an uninstaller which in turn forces you to leave it on your machine.

For my computer repair business I use Revo Uninstaller which removes any software in your system and then does a thorough check afterwards to make sure there are no traces left throughout your system. The best part about this software is that it is free. It can be downloaded here. All you have to do is install it and then run it. It will show you a complete list of software that is installed in your system. Pick one that you would like to uninstall and select uninstall. Revo Uninstaller will first use the programs built in uninstaller and then when that is finished I recommend selecting the “moderate” option. This will search the registry for any remaining parts of the software you just removed. After that is finished, delete the remaining traces, and then reboot your computer and you’re all set. This keeps the registry in order so your computer doesn’t begin to bog down. If your computer is already running slow and you’re in need of a tune-up, don’t hesitate to contact Catanoso Computing. We’ll take care of your problem and have it ready usually within the same day.

Nicholas Catanoso
Catanoso Computing
http://www.catanosocomputing.com

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