Networking Horror Story

There comes a networking job in every technician’s career that truly tests everything that they learned, and makes them feel as if they know nothing. These tests will cause you much stress, head scratching, and undoubtedly be the direct cause of many Google searches on the internet today. This one job in particular was full of surprises, with the customer reporting it to be nothing more than a network problem. Once I arrived however it was much more than that, and a lot of it boiled down to the root cause.

Ok, let’s first go over the basics, this business is roughly the size of half a football field, and many of the customers that came in had problems going online. These customers not being able to stay online complained to management, which forced them to give us a ring and have us come out. Upon first arrival I and my technician were escorted to the server room which consisted of no more than a computer, 2 racks, and a whole lot of cables. I thought to myself, no problem, we will just log into the wireless router set up a password and clean up things a bit. I connected to the open wireless network and proceeded to check my IP, and then I attempted to access the wireless router from Comcast, but It wasn’t letting me in. I turned to my technician and he said he was able to access it when he connected, and that the IP to connect was 10.1.10.1 

After connecting multiple times I finally picked up the Comcast router and successfully logged in and accessed the router. But before I played with the settings I kept thinking as to how weird it was that it took me multiple connections to the wireless access point in order to finally access the router. I asked management if there had been any changes made since the initial setup of the network many months ago, and it was then that I had been told that Comcast had come out and installed their router into their network. “Aha”! I thought to myself, th is tech that came out from Comcast obviously didn’t install the router properly. 

With this new lead I went back to the computer room and I looked at the wiring, and I realized that nothing is labeled. With nothing labeled I don’t know which cable unplugged would knock down the whole POS system which they could not have go down for any length of time. We sat there kind of in shock as to how this was developing. Hours went by, and much troubleshooting was had when we decided to contact the previous techs that had set up the entire network in the first place. When they came in we went straight over to the server room and started troubleshooting. We decided that it was important to know which cables were coming from where, so we had to head up. We went into the ceiling, took down the MAC Addresses of all the equipment installed, and went straight labeling everything.

Now with everything properly labeled, we made the proper cable adjustments, and we set up the networks. All while ensuring that the POS terminals never went down and that the customer knew full well what the situation was. With everything properly networked and setup, we had to go through the process of rerouting and setting up the security cameras which were installed. And with everything properly installed we were able to view the cameras internally on location, and at our office at USA computer store. Although a difficult job, we were able to finish it up completely and within all our projections. Disaster avoided.

Purchasing a new computer for your business

When it comes to selecting a brand new computer for your business, you’re probably going to take an eye towards the market leaders which is HP, DELL, IBM, Toshiba, and Gateway. Asus and Acer are up and comers in the computer market, but their PC’s are more geared towards home and gaming. Upon closer inspection the Toshiba website looks to not be in the business of selling business desktop PC’s, and Gateway appears to have the lack of selection that we’ve come to expect when purchasing computers. That leaves us with HP, DELL , and IBM as possible business desktop solutions for your company.

The first of the competitors with true world brand recognition for creating some of the best computers is IBM. They gained great attention in the past year for its creation of Watson. Truly some of the most groundbreaking technology is being developed by this company. However if you were to go on IBM’s website with the intent of purchasing computers for your business, you’re probably going to have a hard time. Their website at the moment is a mess of computer jargon with a layout that doesn’t make sense to someone just looking to purchase a computer.

And it is because of this I urge you too instead consider Lenovo, which is the parent company of IBM, when looking for a computer that is as top notch in quality as an IBM. Their Think Server Systems are a fantastic solution for a business on a budget looking to upgrade their computer systems. At the time of this writing however, their advertised cheapest offering was $478.00, however upon closer inspection the most affordable solution that I could find was $580.00. Misleading? Maybe. I could be wrong, but what I look for is the advertised deal so that I may select and go from there.

The next of these computer giants is HP, and HP is a computer company that in my opinion has a strong focus on aesthetics while compromising on actual build quality and longevity of the unit. If you were to take a look at HP and their history of blunder after blunder I would stay away. They’ve had a huge problem with laptops overheating and stop working due to poor build design, and on top of that they’ve had several class action lawsuits filed against them due to their oversights. The biggest problem I have however, is giving a company $1000 of my hard earned dollars, only to find that their product is not going to last me no longer than 2-3 years. However if you are adventurous, you are more than welcome to visit their website and consider their offerings, but buyer beware. If you want to buy the many computers in USA you can choose the USA computer store.

Last but not least we have DELL computers at computer traders; known for making solid computers they too have had their fair share of faulty products. Most notable was the problem that they had with their Optiplex GX280 machines, built with lesser quality components; they were failing at a high rate. Enough of these machines failed that they were the defendant in a class action lawsuit filed against them by those unfortunate enough to purchase these defective units. However, overlooking this one serious mishap, their subsequent offerings haven’t had the same issues that the GX280 was so notable for. The greatest thing about the DELL computer lineup is the selection, you’re able to select a computer for every price point that you may present.

The cheapest offering were a hair over $400, with the most expensive systems having so many options that it will be considering the Rolls Royce of computing.

Computers and Your Money

When it comes to money over time computers were never a factor. Money wasn’t computer digits on a computer screen, but it was linked to material goods. Gold, Silver, and government issued currency has always battled for each other for the top spot on the economic food chain, but lately we’ve seen a new victor emerged. A currency not created or controlled by the government, money that is created and controlled by the world’s central banks which are sovereign to no nation
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This means that when they print money, they do it outside of thee control of the government and with no regard to the inflation that was to follow the excess printing. With the advent of computers, we see that our massive debt can be directly attributed to the efficiency at which new money can be created and issued. Money can now be created in moments with no need to physically carry the supply anywhere since they are just digits on the computer screen. This not only allowed for a global economy, but it also made the holders of the currency at risk to inflation which precedes hyperinflation.

“Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value — zero.” – Voltaire

The problem isn’t necessarily the computers, but it’s the bankers and politicians in collusion over the control of exchange and flow of money. This is however, another story for another day.
Aside from this, computers have facilitated personal banking and its prior complexities. People can now withdraw money with ease at an ATM, and people can now move money between accounts from the comfort of their own home. Computers have also helped spread and curb identity theft, making it easier to become a victim of it and to identify if there is someone else posing as you racking up thousands in bills. Many years ago it wasn’t uncommon to he ar of someone that had their stolen from them and only learned of it many years later when an institution verified their credit history.

USA Computer Stores have also played a tremendous role in the financial markets over the past several decades. No longer do traders and investors have to wait a day for their trades to execute. They can now go online, and through their brokerage, buy and sell within moments. This of course, has also opened the door to electronic traders. No longer is the physical person buying and selling to other people, but they are also competing against machines which run on software that anticipates where the price of the stock is going to go. Commonly known as High-Frequency trading, these computer traders don’t trade on emotion or lag. And many times, they can move the market in instants.

Money is even created in banks in ways much simpler than you can even imagine. Our banks for example run on the fractional reserve banking system. This mean s that for every 1 dollar that the bank receives in its depositories, there will be 10 dollars created due to this 1 dollar received. And considering that money no longer needs to be printed, huge quantities of monies can and will be created in moments in the digital bank reservoir. And as you can imagine, with 10 dollars I can go into a bank and deposit it into their system and all of the sudden there’s 100 more dollars afloat. And chances are they will find their way into another bank where the cycle repeats itself. And one must wonder what this does to the currency, well it devalues it. And if left unchecked, it will eventually become impossible to pay off the debt due to the interest alone on the lent money.

Thanks for reading this week’s edition! And if you have any questions/comments feel free to let me know!

How to safely back up and Restore your Outlook emails and contacts info

Outlook is the Microsoft’s email software. It allows users to have a better organized email system. Most of the Outlook users are people who received lots emails a day and have a lot of contacts. About 90% percent of US companies use Outlook as their email platform because it is reliable, customizable and compatible with other platforms. It is in fact a very powerful piece of software, being complex software includes problems and difficulties as well.
Users that have been using outlook for several years have accumulated hundreds or maybe thousands of important emails, important calendars, important contacts, etc. Their main fear is one day to loose every piece of their information, thus, it is extremely important to create backups on a regular basis. Does not matter how good you think your computer is, all the electronic devices are prone to fail. One of the most common computer parts to break is the Hard Drive. Unfortunately, all the Data of your computer including the Outlook is stored in the Hard Drive. If the Hard Drive dies, corrupts you will loose all you information. The question is, how to safely create an Outlook backup file.

There are 2 ways to safely backup Outlook Files.

1. Using Outlook Built-in Feature
In Outlook 2007 version, Go to the “File” Tab at the right top of the screen. Click on it that will bring down a submenu. Go to the option “Export and Import” and click. You will now see a new small window. There is different type of formats to export and import from and to. I recommend using the “.pst” format. Click on the second option “Export to a file”. Click next to go the following screen. On this screen we will choose the type of format. Go ahead and select “Personal Folder File(pst)” as the format. Then, click next and select the folders that you want to include in the backup. If you would like to backup everything, go ahead and check “Include Subfolders” Click next and go to the last step. Specify the location where you would like to save your backup. By the default Outlook will try to save it here “C:\Users\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\backup.pst “but you can change the location. Click finish and now Outlook will create a Backup File, which can be saved, copied, e-mailed anywhere.

2. Manually finding the .pst File
If you are comfortable going through folders this option might the right one for you. Open my computer and follow this path C:\Users\ AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Name.pst. In this location you will find all the Outlook files. Go ahead and select the PST file. Right click, copy and paste the copy where you would like to save it. What you just did is created a duplicate of the Outlook file.

How to restore/put back the Backup files

1. Using Outlook Built-in Feature

You will proceed and follow the same steps you followed to export previously; but now, you will import the specific .pst File you want to recover. Just point outlook to the file and click next. Outlook will start populating all your emails, contacts, notes, calendars, etc.

2. Manually finding the .pst File

Go this location in your PC. C:\Users\ AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\ . Here you will paste the .pst file you want outlook to restore. By the default, Outlook looks for the files in this location. So, as long as the file is sitting in this folder, you are all set.

Simple as that, I highly recommend doing backups on a regular basis. You can make copies of the .pst files and save them in different locations to be safe. In this way, you will protect yourself from losing all your precious and priceless data.

James is free lancer writer and content builder of USA Computer Store, Florida and spends entire day in local internet browsing for computer repair Fort Lauderdale and laptop computer repair Broward.

A computer tech’s story

Today, I did a computer outcall, and I thought this was going to be a walk in the park. The customer over the phone mentioned to me that the Operating System keeps crashing after about 5-10 minutes of turning the computer on. She even presented me with the blue screen error message that she received after the computer had blue screened on her. 

Upon booting up the computer, I figured it was best to run my handy little blue screen tool called “Blue Screen View”. This tool shows me the number of blue screens a person has experienced, the time of day, and even which file is causing the issue. Upon reviewing the information, I realized that the driver called “Ataport.sys” was the cause to the user’s blue screens. Realizing that this problem was going to be a bit more involved, I proceeded to test the hardware.

The first thing that I tested was the hard drive, using the HD Tune Tool which I have preloaded on my utility disk. I chose the error scan test and proceeded to run both the quick & slow aqnd steady portions of the test. The results of both were positive with no indication of hard drive error. My second test was focused on the memory. I ran MemTest86+, which in my opinion is the best memory checking test on the market. It performs a series of stress, write, & recalls on the memory to check for any errors or miscommunications. Upon trying to run the test, i was met with running issues for the first time ever when trying to use the program.

It just wouldn’t want to start up, so I went ahead and proceeded to pull out my laptop which I always bring with me to the job and I tested the memory on my personal machine. The tests ran fine, and showed me that the memory indeed was not the culprit. 

One thing did stick in the back of my head, “Why did my memory test fail, and why is Ataport.sys still giving me this problem”? So I went ahead and tried my hardest to find a mode where the computer wouldn’t crash almost immediately, I tried to boot up normally to no avail, I tried safe mode with networking yet when I tried to run my computer check software I ran into another blue screen. Then I decided to just go with the bare minimum, and I tried to go on using just Safe Mode with no fancy bells or whistles. I managed to run my computer check software, and it corrected issues related to internet explorer, and possibly a worm.

When I restarted the computer however, I attempted to boot up normally and the computer blue screened on me again! Troubled by this failure I went full speed to the Toshiba website and I downloaded every single driver & update that was available to me. I updated the IDE ATA drivers, video drivers, sound drivers, touchpad driver, the often unnecessary miscellaneous updates which programmers dish out, and then I rounded things out by running a computer registry repair. I restarted the computer again, and it blue screened even quicker than before. In discontent, I slumped in my chair and knew what I had to do. I proceeded to back up and save every file on the computer and performed an operating system reinstallation. Making this decision is never easy, but I wouldn’t want to run around in circles trying to fix that which couldn’t be. My system restore even failed! 

Sometimes, even us computer techs have to know when to call it quits and just take the short road home.

Daniel is a senior editor for USA computer store he always tries to find out the best and latest new things in technology and which is very beneficial to his team and passion. Currently he is busy at laptop repair Fort Lauderdale and laptop repair Broward.

PCs for Sale! Cheap?

Nowadays you should never be spending more than $300 on a personal desktop computer unless you have some very strong arguments! Nevertheless should you? Here are some tips for obtaining a very good deal--without getting shorted and squeezed!

When you are in the market for buying a computer, being incredibly strict on your budget is tricky. Budget PCs are a wonderful solution for people that just don’t want to spend too much on upgrading their in home tech. Industry veterans like Dell, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard all provide affordable and not so affordable options for you. However if you want best bang for the buck, pick up a used computer which is preferably under 2 years old.

At the very minimum, you should expect you’re used computer investment to last two years. And when it comes to picking one out, make sure you check 3 critical things. The processor being the first! Make sure that it is at least Intel Core 2 Duo or better. Th e Second and Third thing to make sure the computer has is DDR2 Memory & SATA HDD Connectors. Because if any of those parts break down a fix is super easy and cost effective. Make sure you also get at least a 90 day warranty when it comes to picking out a computer for yourself, because if there is something critically wrong with the computer chances are it’s going to happen within 30 days.

If your dead set on buying new, you have to be very careful when picking out the cheapest computers. The cheap computers are often built with cheap components which have a tendency to break or snap after extended periods of use. When it comes to buying a computer you have to “Think boring and boxy.” The easier it looks to open, the easier it will be in the future to do some kind of repair without breaking the thing to get it open! Stay away from the ultra small computers which are no bigger than a laptop, because if there is something in there that fails, opening it will be a pain! By sticking to boring and boxy, you know that opening it is a cinch and all the components are easily replaceable. Also stay away from computers which have power connectors that are very similar to the kind laptops use… cause if it breaks...!

The only time you as a computer user would even notice the difference between a $500 PC and a $1500 PC is if you were some kind of designer or engineer. But if you’re the everyday kind of person who doesn’t do anything “fancy”, then getting a supercomputer would not be much of a difference to you than a $300 computer. 

I hope this guide has been somewhat informative to you, and if there’s one thing you could take away from all this is that you have an open mind to the used computer market. A quick EBay search for “Core 2 Duo Desktop” should yield a multitude of affordable results… one of which could be your next computer! Give it a shot, don’t be scared, and try it out. You’d be surprised at t he prices you’ll find on Ebay, and this is much through the cutthroat nature of the business of sales itself. People will always chase towards the lowest price, no matter where it comes from, at the expense of quality. But this is computers were talking about here, and they all use the same critical components, just arranged a little differently. 

Daniel is a senior editor for USA computer store he always tries to find out the best and latest new things in technology and which is very beneficial to his team and passion. Currently he is busy at laptop repair Fort Lauderdale and laptop repair Broward.

Which Computer Gaming Desktop is Best for You

These days the barrier of entry for gaming PC’s has been lowered considerably when compared to 2-4 years ago. Computers that can play all of today’s computers are very easy to come by, and as long as the core of the system is solid you should be able to play any of the top games with relative ease. The biggest thing that you should have to look for in a gaming computer is the processor; you should make sure that you have an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.3 GHz or Higher Processor. And as long as that part of your computer is in check, than the other important components will come by easily! 

Other than the processor, the next most important thing is the RAM. You need to have at minimum two gigs of ram to ensure consistent speeds when navigated between menus and applications. RAM however is also easily upgradeable, and if you have the ability to increase the amount of system ram, then you should! The ideal amount of RAM to have in a computer with a Core 2 Duo Processor is 6 Gigs of Ram all clocked at a Bus Speed of at least 500MHZ minimum. By having all your memory sticks identical, you will find that your computer will run as smooth as butter!

One thing that is often overlooked however is the Hard Drive! And if you skimp out on a good, fast, and reliable Hard Drive you’re going to have a bad time. Aside from the obvious commentary of storage capacity, you also need to look at the technical. Most importantly is the RPM! A Hard Drive with 5400 RPM is good, but its not great. And if you were to ever upgrade your computer after using 5400 RPM hard drive, you’ll notice the difference right away. 

For example, in my personal computer I use a Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0 GB/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive… that was a mouthful! The greatest benefit to this hard drive is the SSD capabilities that this Hard Drive presents. It will remember which is your most commonly opened programs on the computer and it will store it in the SSD memory of the HDD automatically. And this is great because you’re never going to have to do any sort of setup, and once the operating system is installed, you’re going to find your computer booting faster and faster every day! It’s not going to get to the speed of a pure SSD HDD, but it’s going to get pretty darn close!

And finally, the one thing that all gamers DO know about is the almighty graphics card! Here’s the tricky thing though, down the aisle at your local electronics computer store you’ll see a whole variety off cards on display. But how do you know which is right for your system? First thing is first, before you even step foot inside the store you need to open up your computer case and look for two things, the Power Supply Unit & an open PCI-Express slot on your computer’s motherboard. What’s important about the power supply is the wattage output. If you’re going to be gaming with a high end card, your going to need a power supply of at least 550 to make sure you have enough to go all around! And as for your PCI-Express slot, you just need to make sure that your going to need enough space for the card your about to put in on all sides. In the end, it’s probably best to take it with you in your car so that you can ask one of the techs if the card would fit inside the case.

Picking out the card nowadays is easy, as of this article writing (June 2, 2012) you should find yourself picking out a card between the $130 and $200 price range. Anything below won’t have the power you’d want, and anything above will be overkill.

I hope this guide was informative, email me at sales [at] usacomputerstore [dot] com if you need any tips! Or you want any information related to technology meet me and my team at laptop repair Fort Lauderdale and laptop repair Broward.