Microsoft Is Calling You In 2017

Microsoft Called And Said I Was Infected

 It's 2017 and we get customers all the time that call and say Microsoft called me and said I have a virus. Most unsuspecting customers do not realize that this is a fake call. It especially is not Microsoft calling you. It is a person who is trying to gain access to your computer. Generally once you give them the okay to remote into your computer the damage is already done. One of the first things they do is turn off the restore in windows. This way once you find out what they were doing you have no way to restore your computer to a previous good date before they were in there. They also remove any image backup you may have in a system.
 So what else do these scumbags do to your computer. Generally they have installed a password so you can not enter your system. They may demand some money to have the password. They have also generally infected your computer with some kind of virus, malware, spyware and adware. There are some individuals that believe they can get back into the system. I have seen some websites out there having a person change and copy various statements into the registry. This may seem to work for awhile, but I have heard of the password problem coming back after a period of time. This is because it is sitting dormant in the system.
 Okay so what do you do now ? Well the only course of action is to clean the hard drive of any infection you find. The next step is to save the data to another hard drive. Next re-install windows on your hard drive, activate, re-install all software, set up printers and copy all your data back to the system. Yes this is a tedious mess and will take some time. The worst part is if you had a windows 8 system originally. You will have to re-install windows 8, activate and install all drivers and updates. Next you will have to update the system to windows 8.1 as well as all windows updates. Then finally you will have to re-install windows 10, drivers and updates plus activate it depending on your windows 10 installation. All I can say is oh boy what fun. This takes alot of time and labor and on a older system may not be cost effective.
 Okay so what should we do in the first place. First you should always have a back up of your system and data. That can change depending on your operating system. Windows 7 has it's back up in the control panel. You would have to have it set up and run previous to this infection. Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 have the file history for data and a manual image back up of the system. Always run the back up to an external hard drive and only connect it when the back up is due to run. This way if disaster or Murphy's Law appears you have a way of getting back to where you were.
 The Moral Of The Story Is NEVER LET ANYONE HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR SYSTEM UNLESS YOU KNOW THEM !!!
 MICROSOFT DOES NOT CALL ANYONE ABOUT INFECTIONS !!!

How To Back Up Your Computer

Back Up That Data Or You Could Lose It

 I get customers asking all the time what do I do so I don't lose my data. Well there are two main ways to save or back up your data. The first is using the back up program in the control panel. You should have a external hard drive to run the back up to. I would recommend a 1tb or 2tb external hard drive. They are fairly small and are pretty reliable. Windows 7 and windows 10 have the same back up program in the control panel. It works very well for the computer it's on. It is not meant to be recovered to a different computer.
 The second way of backing up your data is to the cloud. The most common way is using carbonite. Just be aware of your particular package. The cheapest package only backs up data, so get second package that make a system image as well as backing upon data. It's very difficult to use and it takes the pressure off you on running your own back up. Plus your data will not become infected and is safe.
 There is a third way and is just doing the copy and paste routine to a external hard drive or to a usb flash drive. Just make sure your usb flash drive is big enough for all your data.
 So remember to back up your data and stay safe.

                 

Best Two Ways To Keep Your Computer Data Safe

 Every day I see multiple computers from customers that have had their computers infected with viruses, malware, spyware and adware. When I call the customer to let them know what is wrong with their computer and how much it will cost, they always ask me the same thing. Why didn't my antivirus software catch the infection and get rid of it it. The next question is did I lose my data.

Click Me Now

 Well the first thing I explain to them is that no virus program is going to be 100%. In other words there is no magic antivirus program that will stop everything from getting into your computer. I will tell you most customers are not very happy at this point. So the first thing is to let them know if their data is intact and second is what to do in the future to protect yourself from viruses, malware and all the other nasty pests out there on the internet.
 So for your own protection make sure you have good antivirus software and make sure it is up to date. I can't count any more of the people that have virus software that expired a year or two ago. So what is the best antivirus software in 2017. Well I do like Kaspersky, Webroot and Mcafee Antivirus. The only drawbacks with them are one that Kaspersky is very picky and may block certain programs and functions. Webroot Antivirus has been around a long time and still does very well. No as for Mcafee Antivirus I had some concerns in the last year or two. Mcafee was very good back in the 90s and early 2000s, but dwindled for  awhile. The newest versions seem to be doing much better.

Like Gaming Click Me

 There are other programs that you can also use that do very well at helping remove infections from your pc. One of my all time favorites is the Malwarebytes program. There is a free version that works very well for a free version, but if you want better protection I would suggest the paid version of Malwarebytes. There are others such as spybot and super antispyware that do a good job. Just make sure to only have one antivirus program running or the two will fight each other and slow the system down or crash it.
 There are some programs that you can run to cleanup infections that may have wormed their way in. The first would be roguekiller, second would be junkware removal tool  and finally adwcleaner. All of these can be downloaded from their website or from bleeping.com and are free. If you find any other programs check on google.com or yahoo.com to see if there are any problems with certain programs. Some are just not as good as they seem. If you do run these programs use them in the safemode with networking. There are other virus removal tools available that do a good job as well.