TTC Shelbyville – Technical Blog

Privacy? Who needs it?   In case you missed the 3 billion warnings, Google is changing their privacy and you need to sign in to your Google account and clear your entire web history.   Everything we do today is used by larger companies so they can market to the masses.   Here’s how to get a fresh start by clearing your entire web history with Google.

• Sign into your email
• Navigate to http://www.google.com/history
• Click on Remove all Web History

If iTunes gives you an error when opening it in Windows 7 or when you attempt to burn a CD/DVD.

• Download Gearsoftware’s drivers for iTunes
• Install the Drivers as an Administrator
• Open Computer
• Hit the Alt key – Tools – Folder Options-View – Select show hidden files, folders and drives – uncheck -Hide Extensions for known file types – Hit OK,
•  C drive – Windows – System32 –  DRVSTORE – Open the first GearAspi {String} you see
• Right Click the GEARAspiWDM.inf and select install
• Close out all of your windows
• Go to the Device Manager
• Select your DVD/CD Rom drive – right click uninstall
• Right click your computer name at top of the Device Manager – right click scan for hardware changes

This should reload the DVD/CD – Although Kurt and I followed all of the directions on the internet including Apple’s  and Gearsoftware’s support, none worked.    Our theory is that once the Gear Software driver is loaded and the DVD/CD is reloaded, it worked by rebinding the Gearsoftware,  the computer’s burning software and iTunes.

Items we tried before doing the above:

• Uninstalled iTunes
• Rewrote/deleted registry entries in regards to the  Upper and Lower filters
• Removed directories
• Registry clean
• Removed Bonjour
• Reloaded Gearsoftware several times
• Looked for asf.sys driver (many forums suggested deleting this because of some types of conflicting burning software)

So which one do you want?  They are by no means a powerful computer to complete architectural drawings on with AutoCAD or FeatureCAM, but the Raspberry Pi is a great hobbyist’s computer that is ultra small (smaller than a deck of cards).   Go over and check out the Raspberrry Pi and see all of the features included with this tiny computer.

Raspberry Pi

NTCore has an excellent little program that will patch .exe files of applications letting them use 4gb of RAM. Typically these applications will use far less than the 4gb of RAM in a 32bit operating system.  This 4GB Patch file is a tiny file that modifies the executable of files and creates a backup of the file.  Once executed, you simply pick the .exe file and it will patch the file to use more memory.

The software will then ask if you have finished or if you need to patch another file.

If this does not work, simply delete the new .exe and rename the backup file back to the original name.

Nessus® is the world’s most widely-deployed vulnerability and configuration assessment product with more than five million downloads to date. Nessus 5.0 is Here | Tenable Network Security.

If you want to keep your computer working great, you need to clean the temporary files, uninstall unused programs, keep it up-to-date, keep it virus and malware free and clean the registry.

Typically cleaning the registry should be left to a computer savvy person.  Why?  Registry programs find programs that have been uninstalled and have in essence left parts of it behind.  There are tons of programs out there that will find missing pieces of programs left behind.   Three excellent programs are CCleaner,  MVRegClean and TweakNow RegCleaner.  Here’s the results of each of these programs after a run on an older computer.   It appears MVRegClean is the winner….but reading through the results shows that CCleaner and TweakNow picked up some items MVRegClean may have missed.   While MVRegCleaner is more thorough than the others, much like anti-malware products, you may have to run more than one registry cleaner.   Remember, running a registry cleaner and not verifying the entries could lead to programs not working.  Double check the entries that are being removed and always backup the registry.

TweakNow

CCleaner

Every Monday we review our blog in class and visit other sites as I remember them or an when an article catches my eye.   There are great posts each week at these other sites but this acts as a reminder for me!   Be sure to visit my favorites and for a thorough list, visit Bookmark4Techs!

Bill Mullins

TweakNow PowerPack 2012  - Read Bill’s review of this excellent software that offers dozens of features to Tweak out Windows.   Also take a look at their registry cleaner!   (Thanks Mickey for pointing Bill’s post out!)

Another excellent review over at his site is Comodo Cleaning Essentials - so add this tool to help clean computers.

Also this link comes from Bill’s Tech Thoughts - Free Game Rentals at Redbox Next Week 

Rick Robinette  - “What’s on my pc”

Add 50gb of storage to your Android Device – see how by visiting Rick’s blog

Convert a PDF to Word or a PDF to Excel or create a PDF by using Microsoft Office.

Dell Inspirion, Latitude and Precision laptops that overheat are common with several models.  You should always try a BIOS update first and always keep the vents and fans clear.

An alternate solution to this overheating issue may be controlled by an older software that controls the CPU and other fans onboard.  I8kfanGUI is a great piece of software that is compatible with many of the Dell laptops that may be having this issue.

Without this software, the CPU’s heat could literally be felt through the keyboard and the bottom of the chassis was hot to the touch.    The average temp was over 120 degrees on the CPU.   After loading the software, the laptop became much cooler.

I8kfanGUI has dozens of options to control your Dell laptop.  Be sure to look at the supported models and remember this software is NOT supported by Dell.

I would never recommend flashing a BIOS on a laptop with a low battery.  However, it seems several of our older laptops may have batteries that are failing and with a BIOS fix for heat issues needed on our Dell Latitudes, we needed to flash the BIOS.  The Dell BIOS update utility will not allow you to flash the BIOS until the battery is replaced or at a certain level.

 Although the battery is installed, it has become unreliable.   Dell’s BIOS upgrade would not update the BIOS.

Here’s the solution.

Download the BIOS to a folder on your C drive.

Open a command prompt as an administrator.  Type the name of the flash utility followed by /forceit /forcetype.

In this case, updating to the A17 BIOS required me to type d630_A17.exe /forceit /forcetype

Close any programs you can on the taskbar.

Click continue and wait patiently as the BIOS is flashed.  Do NOT disturb your power cord or power down your computer.  It will reboot automatically.

Identity fraud incidents increased, amount stolen remained steady - The number of identity fraud incidents increased by 13 percent over the past year, but the dollar amount stolen remained steady. Additionally, consumer out-of-pocket costs have decreased by 44 percent since 2004, likely due to the improved prevention and detection tools that have come available as well as fraud alerts leading to reduced detection time. Read more…Identity fraud hits 11.6 million in the US.

In many hotspots today, malicious people can run their computers or droids in adhoc mode allowing  your computer to connect to them while unknowingly to you;  they have malicious intent.   How is this done?   By running their computer in adhoc mode and with them being connected by a second wireless card or on their 3G network, their computer broadcast an SSID that you trust.  After you connect, the malicious user begins to run ettercap, etherreal, wireshark or other packet capturing software and may even begin to try to break into your computer.  This process runs your network traffic through their computer.

There is no true protection against this other than being aware of who / what you connect to, use https when surfing and to use something like HotSpot Shield.

HotSpot Shield is free to use and allows your computer to connect to the internet securely.  The installation requires HotSpot drivers to be installed so that your computer can reconnect to servers on the web for security.  Without losing internet connectivity, your computer during connection will redirect to the program via your own browser allowing a secure connection on the web.  When you do this, you obtain another external ip address and you are assigned a second internal private ip address by a VPN thus encrypting your traffic.

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Unsecured Wireless – 50% or more? New Wireless Tools