The Lucid View

I bet some of you reading this have immediately thought “Why 2009 and not 2010?!”. Well we found that 2009 runs much smoother and quicker, particularly on Windows XP computers than the 2010 version. Why this in mind, unless the computer is running Windows 7, we stick to 2009. There is plenty of value in sticking to what you know works.

This versus article has came about because of a few reasons………

Performance | How quick does it start up and does it slow your computer down?

Having used Kaspersky Internet Security for some time now both internally at Lucid Towers and for many, many of our customers it was always well thought of. Having attended a Kaspersky Road Show though, I was given a free copy of Kaspersky Pure to try out. Having installed this on one of our office computers (nothing flash, just the admin PC running a Pentium D, 2GB RAM, XP Pro) it became apparently it was a little more resource hungry than Internet Security. The boot time was longer and the overall ‘feel’ of the computer was clunky (technical term) and simply not at smooth as it was previously. Now you could point to the fact that the selected computer isn’t the greatest spec, but I’m not interested in providing and supporting solutions where the customer would need to upgrade their hardware just to run Anti Virus software. So on this simple battle, Internet Security wins here for me.

Virus Detection Rates | What can it detect and remove from your computer?

Now this is very important. You always want your Anti Virus software to detect as many viruses, Trojans, Spyware etc as possible. We had a customers laptop come in to us as they had one of the many flavours of fake Anti Virus installed. Having scanned the system with Kaspersky Pure it detected and treated six of these viruses. However the machine was still clearly infected as it was still unusable. Having then scanned it with Kaspersky Internet Security, it removed well over twenty viruses which Kaspersky Pure hadn’t detected. This is worrying. A newer product not detecting as much as the old version simply isn’t good enough. For this reason alone you should stick to Internet Security.

Ease of Use | Do you need qualifications from NASA to use it?

As a techie geek sort of person, you would imagine all pieces of computer software would be easy for us to use. This simply isn’t true though, we see various software applications which only someone with a Masters in Biometrics would be able to figure out. Having used Kaspersky Internet Security for a few years now, configuring this product is second nation to us and easy to do. More importantly though, end users are able to configure it with minimal advice. Kaspersky Pure on the other hand though, is rather difficult. It took us a good few minutes to figure out how to get to the settings for each component. If this took us a few minutes, muggles would have no chance.

Overall Conclusion

As I’m sure you have already gathered, we will be sticking to recommending Kaspersky Internet Security for the time being because it wins all of our basic tests. I’m not sure what or who Kaspersky Pure is aimed at, but maybe Kaspersky need a rethink on this.

About the Author: Some say he invented Oxygen and he once read The Sun by accident. All we know he is called Gavin Moorhouse and from his base in Redditch, Worcestershire he runs Lucid Computer Solutions Ltd who provide IT Support and Computer Services in the surrounding areas of Bromsgrove, Evesham, Worcester and Stratford-upon-Avon to name just a few.

This is only a quick blog entry, relating to something we’ve picked up on over the last few weeks.

We’ve seen a number of cases where computers have completely frozen up, to the point where the only thing you can do is kill the power to the computer. This seems to happen most commonly when the computer has been left idle and the user is away from the computer. When they return to it, it’s frozen.

One thing that always appeared to be the case was that Kaspersky Anti Virus for Windows Workstations was installed and doing an update when the computer froze. We know this because you could see the Kaspersky icon in the bottom right of the screen with the update icon next to it.

Thankfully there is also an easy cure to this problem………….

We noticed that all of the computers suffering this problem we’re running Kaspersky Anti Virus for Windows Workstations Version 6.0. This is aimed at businesses as it plugs into the Kaspersky Admin Console.

Having done some digging, we could see that the build of this version was out of date. A quick visit to the Kaspersky Labs UK website was next in line, and there we found the latest build which is Kaspersky for Windows Workstations 6.0 MP4. All you need to do is download and install this version. It will detect your product key so there is no need to worry about backing this up. Once installed, ensure you update it straight away for good measure.

Once you have this latest build installed, we found the computer freezing problem no longer occurs. Your welcome.

About the Author: Gavin Moorhouse isn’t a fan of television, he prefers listening to the radio and reading. He also runs an IT Support and Computer Services in the West Midlands called Lucid Computer Solutions Ltd.

For sometime now something’s been bothering me. I have an account with the business networking website Linked In and I have done for some time. I’m connected to lots of people and when I meet someone for the first time, they often ask “Are you on Linked In?”. I politely respond with “Yes, of course I am”, but deep down inside I don’t know why.

I hear wonderful stories of people generating all of their new business via this website and stories of outrageous success, all because of Linked In. But I’m missing a trick. I also come across the Linked In' ‘trainers’ who will take me to one side and go through how exactly I’m meant to use the site, but I manage to figure out blogging, Twitter and other networking skills myself, surely I can crack Linked In!

So as I write this and I think about my master plan to get more out of Linked In, let’s assess the basics………

• Linked In is a good way of keeping in contact with your customers and suppliers.
• Sending them a personal message via the Linked In system, might stand more of being responded to than an email.
• It can be a way of making contact with that business owner or key decision maker, rather than being turned down by the ‘gatekeeper’.
• You can show off your customer testimonials to your potential customers.
• You can bounce ideas off each other using Linked In groups.

I still think that email’s, phone call’s and other social media tools work just as well as Linked In, but I’m here to be convinced.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be as proactive as possible with Linked In and see what happens. Now before you jump out of your skin and declare it’s a ‘slow burn’ process, I know this, but I will simply make an effort over the next few weeks and if I like what I see then the rest should just become habit like Twitter and other forums that I use.

I’ll post again with an update to let you know how I’m getting and what I’ve found out.

Once I’ve found the real purpose of Linked In, I will let you know straight away!

Acknowledgement: This article was inspired by a recent conversation with Paul Alekna from E-Response Recruitment, a good personal friend, a good customer, but unfortunately not so good at football.

About the Author: Gavin Moorhouse once jumped into a lake to rescue his fishing rod. He also run’s an IT Support and Computer Services business in Redditch, Worcestershire. You can contact him here (or check him out on Linked In!)

Been getting lots of spam emails with funny looking characters in it? Do a little digging and you might there from Russia with love…..

If your suffering from an abundance of spam emails, why not have a look at exactly where there coming from? Recently we had a vast quantity of spam emails coming through to a particular generic email address. We suffered with it at first, moved on to using a desktop anti spam product which did filter them straight into the Junk email folder, but there was still a stupid amount of spam emails sat there.

So when I had a few minutes to think about this conundrum, there had to be a way of blocking these emails completely.

Having inspected these emails I found that they were all coming from Russian domains in one form or another.

How to ban a top level domain in Microsoft Exchange………

To block the Russian emails I used Microsoft Exchange to reject anything involving .ru

1. Head into the Exchange System Manger

2. Locate your Global Settings

3. Right click on Message Delivery and click on Properties

4. Select Filtering on the tabs that appear

5. Click on Add

6. Add *@*.ru

7. Make sure you have filtering turn on, on your SMTP connector to apply this!

You will then be living in a spam free world!!!

Gavin Moorhouse runs Lucid Computer Solutions Ltd, a West Midlands based IT Support and Computer Solutions business.

With many businesses now looking to their first server, what are the benefits of Microsoft’s Small Business Server?

I know, this should have been discussed a while back. However it’s dawned upon me that we’re doing more and more installations for businesses acquiring their first server or businesses looking to take control of their IT by having their own File Sharing Server, Email Server and the ability to access IT resources remotely. The customers looking for a Small Business Server range from businesses with a couple of employees to fifteen or so.

The benefits of Small Business Server 2008……..

So we’ll keep this brief and simply summarise the key benefits:

Value For Money | File Server, Email Server and Remote Access all in one box

File and Printer Sharing | Share your company documents, share printers and restrict access to certain files

Email Server | Take control of your email, creating your own email addresses and email groups

Company Web | Host an Intranet to share your announcements and document templates

Remote Access | Remotely Access your work computer, your work email and company website

Backup | Backup your company data with ease, enabling you to have an off site backup

Gavin Moorhouse runs Lucid Computer Solutions Ltd, a Worcestershire based IT Support and Computer Maintenance business.

So you have a backup, that’s a great start, but how secure is that backup?

We like simple solutions. We like backup solutions. We therefore like simple backup solutions, such as having all of your company data, databases and email automatically backed up at a given time of day. A nice touch would be to have an email afterwards telling you that the backup worked or failed so you can take appropriate action.

However backups solutions are the point of this blog posting……….

The point of this blog posting is to simply raise the question – how secure is your backup?

You have all of your confidential company data backed up and the backup drive is in your car. Your car is stolen and Mr.Thief plugs in the backup drive to his stolen laptop and can instantly access all of your data. This would be bad for any business, but even worse if you store personal details which are confidential.

You can be exposing your customers to identity theft or risk your own trade secrets……..

Thankfully there is a simple solution to save your bacon……

You can encrypt your backup drive so that you can only access the drive after you have entered a secure password.

If you don’t enter the password, you can’t view the contents of the drive at all, so Mr.Thief wouldn’t even know the data was there in the first place. This would also give you peace of mind in the event of a drive being stolen or lost.

Gavin Moorhouse doesn’t manage the England football team, but if he did, they would probably be the best in the world! He does however provide IT Support and Computer Maintenance in Worcestershire and the surrounding areas.

Last night saw the 30th Brit Awards, here is what I made of it……….

Lady GaGa, Jay-Z and Cheryl Cole were amongst the performers at last nights Brit Awards. For once I honestly enjoyed the whole show. Peter Kay as presenter was a master stroke, he is a legend and his links to the performers and presenters were brilliant! He should do it every year!

Lady GaGa was her usual bonkers self, which is what I love about her. I would like to have seen her perform Poker Face or Just Dance, but you can’t have it all can you? The king of hip hop Jay-Z was superb with Alicia Keys, if some of the other acts are the in the Championship, they are defiantly top of the Premier League.

Cheryl Cole clearly mimed (badly) but the performance was still superb. After recent newspaper revelations about her husband (not the broken ankle) she looked angry to say the least. I loved the remix of her track with Steve Angello (that’s right, I’m still down with the kids).

Robbie is on my middle ground. I don’t love him or hate him, he is just sat in the middle. I’m not sure about him getting an outstanding contribution to music though, I’m sure Sir Paul McCartney picked it up last year and I think Robbie has a very long way to go to be in the same bracket at the former Beatles legend.

I think my only criticism of the awards would be ‘The Spice Girl Show’ at the beginning. We had Geri and Melanie B collecting an award, then individually presenting an award and then both being interviewed afterwards. I was soon sick of the site of them.

Overall it was probably the best Brits I’ve ever watched as I only paused for one cup of tea, which is normally a good sign!

If your using Kaspersky Internet Security or Kaspersky Anti Virus, this might apply to you…..

As a big Kaspersky fan, it’s not often I see problems with this product. However today I received an error on my laptop (which I have seen before) which made me think it would be worth putting out a quick blog article about the error and how to resolve it.

Database Corrroption / Application Errors

When starting up your computer you may have received a notification in the bottom right of the screen that Kaspersky hasn’t started, that there has been an application error or that the Kaspersky database is corrupt (see screen shot).

This is normally caused by a bad update from Kaspersky, a hard shutdown of your computer or by another program interfering with the Kaspersky program.

Thankfully there is an easy way to resolve this problem. All you need to do is force Kaspersky to do an update and it will automatically resolve your problems. You can force the update of Kaspersky by either right clicking on the Kaspersky icon in the bottom right of the screen and clicking on update or by going into the main program and clicking on the update button.

Once you have clicked on this it will go away, grad the updates and a normal service will be resumed.

The Manchester City v Stoke City game has just kicked off in the FA Cup, my money says City will win this one………..

Is your Internet connection slow or dropping out completely? Have you tried replacing your router?

For a few days at Lucid Towers we had been suffering with drops in Internet connections and a general slowness to our usual speedy connection. Looking after our customers is our first priority so we just grinned and took it as we had to crack on with the job in hand. However after the connection appeared to grind to a complete stand still, enough was enough.

Time to try something different

I could have phoned my ISP or the line provider and more than likely would have had the run around. Perhaps I would have been told to reinstall Windows (yes I was told this once by a call centre) so I thought I’d just check out things myself.

Having swapped over the ADSL Filter and Lead there was no difference, the same result was also apparent after disconnecting everything for a while.

It was time to bite the bullet and try a different router. Having connected up the new router, the connection speed was some five times quicker on average compared to previous test results. I tested the speed over a period of a couple of hours and the same consistent speed was still there, which was great news.

Having left the replacement router in for a few days, all is well and we’re once again firing on all cylinders! Result!!!

Following on from the previous posting on Anti Virus Live, we have another similar nasty…….

Internet Security is it’s name, and pain is it’s game!! This hoax program is similar to the Anti Virus Live program I previously blogged about. Internet Security is another scareware product which will tell you have a number of virus problems and the only way to resolve them is to purchase the full product. This is the last thing you should do, at the least it will cost you money, worst case scenario, your card details are ripped off.

System Restore won’t resolve this one……….

A handy tool which is part of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 is the System Restore feature. Unfortunately this nasty little program will hide itself in the System Restore area, so even if you roll back to before your problems, it will appear again and again.

The best option for removal is to scan your hard drive using another computer with up-to-date Anti Virus software installed, removing all the infected files and then to clean up the registry to ensure it doesn’t come back.

In the future you should such as a real Internet Security suite such as Kaspersky or Avira.

I’ve seen this program getting onto many systems using the AVG Free Edition product, which doesn’t appear to detect and remove this little number.