Tag Archives: Repair

Superfish malware installed on new machines exposes HTTPS browsing

If you have a new Lenovo laptop, do this today: Check for Superfish and eliminate it Software called Superfish, a “Visual Search enhancer” product pre-installed on new consumer laptops from Lenovo among other brands, has been revealed to have severe … Continue reading

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CryptoWall and Cryptolocker – what you need to know

Where did my data go? You might remember a series of viruses (or trojan horses) which “deleted” your data files and charged a ransom to get them back. These were frightening, but not fatal because they only hid files and with … Continue reading

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Q. How do I add memory to an Apple Mac Pro tower?

There are three main generations of Mac Pro machines, each generation has particular RAM types and installation procedures The models from 2006 to early 2008 use FB-DIMMs with large heatsinks in 667 MHz and 800 MHz. These models have two … Continue reading

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Q. On July 9th, my machine stopped finding websites. What’s wrong?

There was a nasty piece of malware a couple of years ago called DNSChanger, which redirected your web browser to advertising sites instead of where you wanted to go. It did this by changing the DNS Server defaults of your … Continue reading

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Q. How do I upgrade the hard drive in a Windows laptop?

Most modern notebook machines have hard drives that can be replaced with a larger, faster 2.5″ SATA hard drive or upgraded to a 2.5″ SATA Solid State (SSD) flash drive. Older notebooks may have 2.5″ IDE (Parallel ATA) hard drives, they can still … Continue reading

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Q. My Win XP PC comes up with “Couldn’t find NTLDR” and won’t boot?

Your Windows XP or XP Pro machine cannot find a bootable drive to start from, or the NTLoader (NTLDR) software on your bootable drive is damaged. (for Windows Vista/7 go here) The first step is to make sure you are booting … Continue reading

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Q. My Win7/Vista PC comes up with “Couldn’t find BOOTMGR” and won’t boot?

If your machine is stopping very early in the boot up sequence and telling you that BOOTMGR is missing, that means your Windows 7 or Windows Vista machine cannot find a bootable drive to start from, or the software on … Continue reading

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Q. My Macintosh is slow in all programs – what’s the problem?

There can be a variety of problems that can slow a machine down. If the performance is poor in only one program, the first approach would be to delete and reinstall that program.  For slowness across all programs and OSX, … Continue reading

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Q. How to set up a new external hard drive on a Mac?

A. When you plug in a new external hard drive to a Mac, it will either be formatted for Windows (in which case you may have trouble writing to it from the Mac) or it will be unformatted. An internal … Continue reading

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Q. What is happening with OEM hard drive warranties?

Hard drive warranty coverage has been reduced by the major manufacturers, and competition in drives is consolidating around just three companies. All Seagate bare (internal) consumer level drives have 1 year warranty in North America (down from three years). Some … Continue reading

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Q. What memory and hard drives fit Macintosh computers?

Different models of Apple Macintosh machines take different types and capacities of RAM memory and hard drives.  We’ve put together charts of all of the models of Macs since 1998 that list the RAM requirements and the hard drive types … Continue reading

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Q. iTunes is not working in Windows?

If your iTunes software is refusing to open, even after you have reinstalled, you need to completely uninstall iTunes and then re-download it and reinstall.  Just installing the new version over the old isn’t going to work because it doesn’t … Continue reading

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Q. Windows XP doesn’t start. What can I do?

If your machine powers on but Windows does not load properly, the first step is to try restarting in Safe mode – Start the machine, and hit F8 while it is starting, you should get to a text screen which … Continue reading

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Q. Someone called me from my internet provider and told me my machine needed to be fixed?

Hang up the phone immediately.  This is a scam. (Never believe a phone caller. If your service provider really needed to contact you, you could hang up and call them back on their support phone number, which you can easily … Continue reading

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Q. My hard drive is running out of space – why?

The space used on your hard drive is data that you have put on it, plus the operating system, plus any programs you have installed and the data files they generate. Have you Emptied your Trash?  When you throw files … Continue reading

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