Wireless Network Issues – What you can try.

This comes up several times a week for me. A user complains that their laptop used to connect to a network fine and now it will not. This opens a can of worms for what the root cause may be, but I wanted to list a few considerations and examples of what I find often.

• Is the laptop powered on? (Just kidding, this is an old joke)
• Some laptops have a key sequence or a physical button that can turn off the wireless radio emitter, this may be turned off. 
• Is the wireless card disabled? Right-click on “My Network Places” and choose properties
• Many laptops have two versions of wireless configuration software. Only one of them should be controlling your wireless connections. I find a lot of users trying to configure the wrong one, but no one told them there was two! Windows has it’s own wireless configuration utility, but it is possible you may have another version now controlling things, it’s worth checking out.
• The network you are trying to connect to may be password protected to allow access.
• The driver software that controls your wireless network card may be corrupted.
• Your wireless router or similar device may in fact be faulty, have incorrect settings, or the wireless radio on this device may be turned off
• Your ISP (internet service provider) service may be down

These are the main causes, although there can be others that are not so common. If you are getting frustrated, you can always give us a call or contact us here. Typically, a repair like this takes an average of 1-2 hours, but it all depends on what the true cause is. We can work with your remotely, and if necessary send a technician out to your location if things are that bad. We have technicians all over the country, so it’s just a matter of scheduling . I hope this helps.

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Programs – Why you should avoid them

This is an issue I run into often with a lot of clients. I’m going to explain my reasoning on why I feel free file sharing programs are a bad idea for any computer… I’ll try not to ramble

These programs are peer-to-peer file sharing programs, so installing them gives you access to download music, software, and other programs, usually for “free”. They are “free” because someone else has bought them already and are giving you access to download them, usually illegally. This is called a peer-to-peer type network connection. A “peer-to-peer” network creates a sharing connection between all users that have this software installed on their system. It’s like you are sharing files within an office, except sharing over the entire Internet. This can be bad for many reasons:

• Most of the content you are downloading is technically stealing
• You are usually, unwillingly, sharing your music collection with strangers.
• As these strangers are downloading your music, it is robbing much bandwidth away from your Internet connection, and using hardware resources on your computer. These will will both slow your system down significantly.
• Some of these strangers embed or hide viruses and spy-ware into the music or files you are downloading. Once you’ve downloaded them and tried to open them, you run the risk of installing these viruses.

Ultimately, this is why these programs are not “free”

• They slow your system down, so they rob you of productivity
• They can install viruses and spy-ware, which could cost you a hundred or two to upgrade your anti-virus software and have a technician remove them for you.
• The music you download is usually labeled incorrectly, so it’s not what you wanted, or you have to spend the time re-labeling it to be correct
• You could get hit with a lawsuit for downloading unlicensed material
• The wrong kind of virus could open up a connection to your system that exposes your personal or client’s data to the public

In general, it’s just a bad idea, but it’s at your own risk. If you have any questions about a program you are using, or you think you may have an issue like this you can contact us.

Here is a good reference on peer-to-peer networks and examples.

Tip – Quick XP Performance Boost (Video)

I just wanted to share another quick performance booster in Windows XP. XP uses a lot of animations in the background to make it look nicer, but it can slow down your system quite a bit, especially if your system has a slower processor or is low on memory. This tip may help boost the performance a bit, and you won’t miss any of the features we change, it will still look the same. I have a VIDEO posted here for you to check out, it explains how to quickly make the changes. Most cases, you can see a difference in speed without losing the look.

A Quick Arguement on Backup

I run into this ALL the time. I just wanted to share my thoughts on why backup is SO important to a business, regardless of cost. I’m sure you all have heard horror stories out there. I just wanted to create a quick argument regarding the cost to implement a common backup solution. Let’s just say for money sake, you have a small business, 12 users. The cost to deploy your basic tape backup solution to a company this size can vary, but let’s call it $5000. This would include hardware, software, and installation. So the common arguement from the business owner is “That’s too much, we don’t think we’ll need that solution for that kind of money.” I agree, five thousand is not the easiest investment to swallow for something that isn’t a Disney World trip or yielding a return. The fact is, it’s not the cheapest investment, but it’s one of the most important. I’ll just use one example of how it would pay for itself. Let’s suppose this business owner has a secretary. This secretary makes $15.00 an hour. Let’s choose one document from this business owners arsenal, an excel sheet with 5000 contacts with all of their relevant information, account numbers, etc. Let’s say this document were to go missing and was not recoverable. How much time @ 15.00 an hour would it take his secretary to re-create this document? Let’s be fair and say 4 weeks. To call all of these clients and get their information back to re-enter (if they are available). So that’s 160 hours x $15.00 = a $2400 document. This is just one document, imagine the cost to re-create your Quickbooks file? Anyhow, I just wanted to point this out to those who argue about a backup solution. It really is your loss…

Fortunately, we can help you prevent this type of damage with many solutions available. Please contact us to learn more.

Quickly Clean Up Your Outlook 2007 PST Data Profile

This is a quick tutorial on how to clean up your Outlook 2007 Profile when it has grown too large. Outlook will typically give you errors once your pst file has reached a large limit, typically more than 1.5GB. View the tutorial here

For further help, you can visit my profile here: http://www.crossloop.com/FreeSource-IT

Use Gmail for Mail, Database, Chat, Blog, News and many more…

The Exchange Alternative for Small Business….

Gmail is a great open source Exchange alternative that we can offer our clients. It usually only takes a few hours of setup, and you have yourself a free, stable, spam free solution for your email. As a side note, a lot of people hear the word “gmail” and think they have to have an email address like example@gmail.com, this is not the case. You can host your OWN domain mail with gmail so it looks like it is coming from your business, like example@1800widgets.com. A lot of clients I come across are still using their ISP’ domain mail, examples being Verizon, or Comcast. This creates a real problem if you ever wanted to change your service provider. Let’s say your a business owner named Joe, and your emaill address is joe@comcast.net. Joe gives this email address to every one of his client’s, prints it on his business cards, letterhead, etc. Then something happens; Joe decides to change his ISP or his ISP closes their doors. Then Joe is stuck with an email address he can not use. He now has to try to contact all of his existing clients, re-print his professional stock, etc. This really creates a problem for Joe.

What we suggest, is buying a domain name of your choice and switching your email now, before you are forced to do it at an inconvenient time. It’s safe to keep your old address for about 6 months before completely turning it off, if you have this luxury.  I’ll explain the steps below to display the order of how this would all work… again, we can do all of this for you… it’s really inexpensive, and can save you money and headaches.

• Create a domain name with free hosting, usually costs about $10 a year, say 1800widgets.com. You may already have your own website, so if this is the case, no need for this step, we can use your existing domain.
• Create a gmail business account (free). We can handle this for you.
• Create users for this gmail business account, sue@1800widgets.com, Joe@1800widgets.com, etc
• Then we need to change your mx records at your hosting account to show where your mail is going to go from now on, your new gmail business account. New mail from your domain is now hosted with gmail.
• Create your new mail account in Outlook or whichever mail client you use, using your new gmail hosting servers.
• You are now receiving your new mail at your business domain!

Now you can now email everyone from Joe@verizon.net and tell them you are now using joe@1800widgets.com. To make this easier, we can forward your “Verizon” mail to your new address, so when you reply, it will be coming from your new email. We can also setup your email signature with a message telling everyone to start using your new email. Once you’ve noticed email has stop coming to your old address, you can just stop using it completely.

In a nutshell, it’s just a bad practice to use your ISP email for business, and it does not give off a professional feel to your clients. When I get an email from a business owner, and they are still using an @aol.com address, it does not feel like a business, it feels more like a home office.

If you are interested in learning more, contact us at www.freesource-it.net

Slow Computer – Great free cleanup tool

This is a tool I personally have used quite a bit, especially the last 4 years without an issue. This has 2 basic modes, registry cleaning and a cleaning mode for junk files, cookies, etc. on your system. There are many tools out there, but this one has not given me issues, as some programs out there can damage your registry. I do not offer any guarantee with this tutorial, so please use at your own risk and always back up first
Here is a link to download ccleaner You can read more about it’s history here

Quick Tutorial Video after downloading and installing.

How to Defragment your Disk Drive in Windows

People ask me all the time how to do basic maintenance on their Windows system, and Defragmenting is a basic tool to begin with on a regular basis. I would run it at least once a month. If you are not sure what defragging is, you can read about it here. It can take some time to run, so be patient. I created a quick tutorial on how to get it up and running here

Quick and Dirty – Creating a Diskless Client Jumpstart Server for Sun Microsystems Test Environment

This is a quick example to get you up and running with a Sun Jumpstart server. The hostname, IP scheme and hardware is just a typical example, but you can be creative and use whatever you have. I personally set up the jumpstart modules on a separate disk array, but it is up to you. Please contact me and I can email you the document. Hope this helps. You can download it here

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Sun NetraT 105 – What to do when the second ethernet port fails?

This was actually a goof in the firmware. When it was updated, it changed values in prom that should have been left alone. Here is how to fix it

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If for some reason the 2nd Ethernet is disabled through show-nets,
This is the procedure to fix:

Ok>printenv
This will show the listing of current and default values for obp
If the current value of pcib-probe-list is 1,2 it needs to be changed
Ok>setenv pcib-probe-list 1,2,3
Ok>reset-all
Ok>show-nets
Ok>watch-net-all (To test ports)

That should do it.