New Year’s Resolutions For Problem Free Computing
Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company. |
Even though we’re a few weeks into the new year, it’s not too late to take a look at your company’s network and make a few resolutions for better computing in 2012. Here are a few suggestions.
Better backups - now!
Implement a better, more reliable backup system to ensure your critical business data is properly protected. If you’re still using tape drives or not employing the latest professional-grade backup software, there’s no bigger New Year’s resolution that you should have.
You should have both an onsite and offsite backup of your data that allows you to restore files fast. Your backup should also be image-based, not just file-based.
Data loss can happen from human error, hardware/software failure, fire, flood, theft or other disaster. Every hour that you’re without your critical business information could cost you thousands of dollars.
Check out the cloud
Is cloud computing is right for you? In many cases, parts of your IT infrastructure can easily be put in the cloud to save you money and give you better service. It is important to talk to someone who can honestly assess your situation and tell you the pros and cons of making the switch to the Cloud. It’s not for every business but it’s worth exploring closely.
Dump the old PCs
I know that no one really likes spending money on new computers but think about how much unproductive time your staff spends waiting for their slow machines.
You can get an entry-level business desktop now for as little as $600, and speed upgrades to newer machines are very reasonably priced. What’s the cost of staff sitting
around waiting for their computer or dealing with computer problems?
Upgrade your server
New servers are light years ahead of the ones made three, four and five years ago. Your company is less productive and less profitable with a server that slows everyone down.
Change your passwords
Most businesses regularly have employees leave, including those who were involved with supporting the computer network. Changing passwords regularly will improve security and protect your valuable customer and business data.
Perform a security review
We’re seeing all sorts of increased threats from hackers these days and you need to make sure your security approach is up to date. There are many parts to your security that you should examine including password strength; anti-virus software; and getting a strong firewall that will prevent intrusions, attacks and other malicious activity.
Keep up with your preventive maintenance
Downtime and annoying IT problems can be prevented with regular maintenance on your computers and network. If you’re not doing this now, it’s time to start!
Start the year right with a full audit of your network to develop your IT plan for the year.
Our top of the line network audit is a 27-point review of the security, performance and reliability of your network, and includes a full hardware and software inventory, plus checks on the health of your server, firewall, and network backup.
Backing Up And Restoring Files With Windows 7
In the business world it’s critical for end users to have a backup solution available in case of data loss or system failure.
System Restore is one of the easiest ways to restore files and settings. If you can’t find a file on your computer or you accidentally modified or deleted a file, you can restore it from a backup if you’re using Windows backup in Windows 7, or you can try to restore it from a previous version.
Previous versions
Previous versions are copies of files and folders that Windows automatically saves as part of a restore point. Previous versions are sometimes referred to as shadow copies.
System Restore is a component of Microsoft’s Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems that allows for the rolling back of system files, registry keys, installed programs, etc., to a previous state in the event of system malfunction or failure. Using System Restore to restore previous versions is simple.
Simply open up any Explorer window, right-click on a file or folder you wish to restore, and select “Restore Previous Versions.”
For instance, if you accidentally deleted a file from a folder in My Documents, browse to a file you would like to restore from an earlier point (all of the contents may have been over written mistakenly.)
Likewise if you have accidently deleted a few documents from a folder within your My Documents folder titled “Easter Pictures,” simply right-click on the folder and select properties, then select the previews versions tab, then open previous versions from it.
Please note that this will only appear on files and folders, not drives or Libraries in Windows 7.
The dialog will show all of the previous copies of this folder that are available. Click on the time you wish to restore from.
You can choose to either Open, Copy, or Restore the folder. If you click Restore, you can restore the full contents of the folder as it appeared at some time in the past.
Choose “copy” to copy the entire contents of the folder as it appeared at that time to another location. For instance, you could copy it to a flash drive for safe keeping, which also previews overwriting the current file.
Lastly you can choose “open” to browse the contents of the folder as it appeared at that time.
You can open, copy, or do anything you choose with the file from here. For instance, if you deleted a folder named emails accidentally today, you could click copy, and then paste it into the location of your choice.
When in this mode, you are directly browsing the shadow copy of your hard drive. The path to the folder shows the date and time of the copy.
And, the great thing is, this feature is available in all editions of Windows 7, including the low-cost Starter edition often preinstalled in netbooks.
System Restore is a great way to back up your files in case of accidental deletion, or unwanted changes, but should not be used for your disaster-recovery plan.
In cases of disaster-recovery, you will want to make sure you have a proper backup set to automatically backup your systems, System Restore should only be used as an addition to the backups you currently have setup with your IT professional.
It’s Severe Weather Season... Do You Have A Disaster Plan?
Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company. |
Perhaps it’s just me, but this spring has been one of the worst I can remember in terms of severe weather. The flooding and tornadoes we’re seeing around the country should serve as a wake-up call for small business owners to review their business continuity plan.
A disaster recovery plan prepares a business to deal with disaster scenarios such as fi res or tornadoes that disrupt the business’s operations.
Although larger companies create such plans as a standard operating procedure, small businesses tend not to do this type of planning.
In fact, according to Symantec’s 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey, only 50% of small businesses have a plan in place for a disaster or data loss.
Your disaster plan serves two purposes. First, the plan should limit the financial impact a manmade or natural disaster has on your company.
Second, the plan should establish the steps you will take to begin operating again quickly following a disaster. Developing the plan and making employees aware of it helps protect your business and mitigate risk.
Plans should name specific employees that will play key roles in the event of a disaster, and identify critical assignments that each employee must complete in a disaster scenario.
Finally, the plan should focus on keeping your company’s irreplaceable data safe. That data includes customer information, email correspondence, sales information and accounting and financial records.
Most businesses our size don’t have the resources to implement redundant office locations, but the plan should include a strategy operating at an alternate location.
The resources needed to resume operations within 24 hours of a disaster may differ from those needed to resume operations within three to four days. The plan should call for the minimum set of resources possible to meet the established targets.
We’ve put together in a free report that will help guide you through the planning process - from assessing the risks to setting up in a new location. The report is free - simply call the office at (734) 457-5000, or email info@MyTechExperts.com for your copy.
Data Loss Prevention And Recovery Tips
With every business relying heavily on their computers and network, it is a huge risk to not properly care for your important data.
The fact is a computer’s hard drive becoming damaged, corrupt, or even completely unusable is not an issue of whether or not it will happen to you, but rather an issue of when.
If you do not properly care for your data you may wind up in the unfortunate situation of having to recover your lost data.
Backup Your Data
First of all, the most important step in preventing lost or corrupt data due to a faulty hard drive is to back up your data. This may sound silly, but there are many people that simply do not have a good backup strategy in place to protect them from the inevitable hard drive failure.
You see hard drives are much like your car; they have moving parts that function nonstop as your computer works and processes data.
These moving parts eventually will wear out and when they do if you did not back up your data you will have to recover it. Backing up your data is the best solution; it will save you a huge headache when your hard drive fails.
If you have a backup, the recovery process is as simple as buying a new hard drive, reinstalling Windows and your applications, and then transferring backed up data over.
Backups can be in many different forms from CD’s, DVD’s, Flash Drives, External Hard Drives, Online backup, etc. Whatever your choice, it is good practice to not only back up your data, but make sure you can recover it from the backup as well.
Unfortunately, many times we see business owners backing up their data, but never taking the time to do a test restore. It’s only when disaster strikes that they find out the backups had errors.
In the event that you did not have a good backup solution or it was not working/tested properly there is the option to try and recover the “lost” data.
If Your Hard Drive Crashes
In order to have the highest success rate recovering your old data make sure to follow the following procedures:
Upon realizing you have lost data make sure that you immediately stop using your computer.
The reason you want to make sure that you stop using your computerimmediately is that when data is lost as long as it is still on the hard drive and has not been over written on the actual hard drive disks it can be recovered.
When you use your computer data is randomly placed on your hard drive disks so using your computer after data loss greatly increases the chances of losing the data you wanted to recover because it was overwritten from the computer being used.
Avoid System Utilities
Do not run any system tasks such as a Disk Cleanup or Disk Defragmenter.
Running Disk Cleanup or Disk Defragmenter both can cause you to permanently lose data that you need to be recovered.
These system process move data around and in doing so could overwrite your lost data.
As long as you follow the steps listed above you can bring your computer to Tech Experts, and we can run various programs that allow us to recover lost files that have not been overwritten by other files.
This is the reason it is so important to stop using your computer as soon as you realize the data loss.
Data Recovery Firms
If in the case your hard drive is damaged mechanically there are companies you can send your hard drive away to and have them manually open the hard drive and recover that data in a “Clean Room.” Just a side note, never ever open a hard drive.
When these other data recovery companies open your hard drive they use a clean room that exceeds the cleanliness of a surgical room.
They do this because even the smallest amount of dust or dirt in the hard drive will ruin it in a very short period of time.
This is the reason it is so expensive to have data recovered in this fashion, usually in the $1700+ range depending on the company you use.
Long story short, always make sure to have a good backup.
Having a good backup can save you a lot of headaches in the future.
Feature article by Frank Wright, Service Manager for Tech Experts
The Three Scariest Threats To Small Business Networks
Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company. |
While spam, pop-ups, and hackers are a real threat to any small business network, there are three security measures that you should be focusing on first before you do anything else.
Worry About E-mail Attachments, Not Spam
Sure, spam is annoying and wastes your time, but the real danger with spam is in the attachments.
Viruses and worms spread primarily through cleverly disguised attachments to messages that trick you or your employees into opening them.
Another threat is phishing e-mails that trick you by appearing to be legitimate e-mails from your bank, eBay, or other financial accounts.
Here are three things you must have in place to avoid this nightmare. First, keep your anti-virus up to date and enabled. This sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s not uncommon for an employee to disable their antivirus software “because it bothers them.”
Second, educate your employees on what is and isn’t allowed on company computers, e-mail, Internet access, etc. One thing that should be on the list is that they should never open suspicious attachments or respond to phishing e-mails. We highly recommend creating an acceptable use policy (AUP) to teach your staff what NOT to do.
Third, put monitoring software in place to maintain the health of employees’ desktops and automatically “police” employees from accidentally visiting a phishing website, downloading a virus, or visiting questionable web sites.
Fear Downloads Before Pop-Ups
Did you know that most computers and networks get infected with viruses because the user actually invited the threat in by downloading a file (screen saver, music file, PDF document, pictures, etc.)?
Again, this comes down to training your staff on what they can and cannot do with your company’s network. Again, the best way to avoid trouble is to remove temptation by installing monitoring software that will prevent employees from downloading or opening dangerous items.
We also recommend installing and maintaining a good firewall, which will block Internet traffic to and from dangerous sites.
Lose Sleep Over Backups, Not Hackers
You are more likely to lose data from hardware failure, accidental deletion, human error, flood, fire, natural disaster or software corruption than a hacker.
Sure, you should do everything to keep hackers out of your network, but not backing up your data to a remote location is incredibly dangerous. At a minimum, you should have an onsite and offsite copy of your data, and you should be testing your data backups regularly to make sure your data can be restored in the event of an emergency.
So, here’s the scary Halloween question for you: If you came into your office tomorrow morning, and your computers and server were destroyed or missing, could you recover your data, and how long would it take?
What To Do When You Drop Your Cell Phone In Water
If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to drop your cell phone into water, take some solace in knowing you’re not alone.
Dropping a cell phone into the swimming pool, bathtub or toilet is such a common occurrence that some cell phone manufacturers include a sensor that will detect if it’s been submerged in water, so users can’t return them saying they are defective.
If it happens to you, it’s important to act quickly. First, don’t turn the phone on until it has been completely dried out or you’ll probably end up shorting out some circuits. Cell phone repair services recommend taking out the battery right away and wiping it off.
Shake out any excess moisture from the phone. Unfasten the screws and open up the device. Then use an electrical-contact cleaning spray or rubbing alcohol to remove corrosive moisture. When you think it’s completely dry, wait another day before turning it on.
There are a number of recommended drying techniques, but the key to all of them is to dry the phone as soon as possible.
One proven phone-drying method is to use a hair dryer set on cool. You don’t want to use high heat - that could cause even more damage to the phone.
Another method is to seal the phone in a jar with uncooked rice. The rice absorbs the moisture, but it does take a few days.
Most important: Make sure you always back up your smart phone! Most cell phone providers offer this service, and many phones come with software you can load on your computer to perform a backup using a USB cable.
Fall Is The Perfect Time For An IT And Network Checkup
Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company. |
To make the most of your IT investment, you don’t need to be a technology whiz. However, you should have a plan in place for making the most of your company’s data. As fall approaches, now is an excellent time to examine your company’s technology to determine what’s working well and what could be improved.
Is It Time To Update?
Technology changes rapidly. While your systems may appear to be working well, you may be missing out on new ways to protect your business information, help your business run more efficiently, and better serve your customers.
For example, to run some of today’s most powerful programs, you need a fast and large hard drive with significant memory capacity.
You might consider adding newer technology - such as wireless capabilities - to older equipment; but the cost of upgrading a computer is often more than the cost of a new model.
Check Your Power Protection
Loss of electrical power and power surges are the most common causes of data loss and weaken computer components. If your business depends on computers, protecting the power source is critical.
This is especially important if your area is prone to power fluctuations or electrical storms.
An Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) unit offers both superior surge protection and, depending on the model, anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes of backup power-enough time to save and copy critical files.
The idea of a UPS isn’t to continue your business dealings while the lights are out. Rather, it is to ensure that your data is available when the lights come back on.
Have You Patched Windows?
Have you installed the latest version of Windows on your computer, and do you keep it updated? Do you do this automatically?
It is incredibly important that you keep Windows and your software applications current. Updates improve performance, fix bugs, and many add new features. You should also regularly update and run anti-virus software.
How’s Your Backup?
Consider storage needs in terms of both capacity and physical location. Depending on the amount of data, you can back up to USB flash drives, CDs, DVDs, tapes, or an external drive.
You might also want to look into off-site backup. Our Experts Total Backup System is an excellent backup, disaster recovery, and offsite storage service.
Integrate Your Data
Over the years, businesses tend to produce multiple silos of data. Your inventory, sales data, and marketing information need to be linked together to better serve your customers and increase your company’s productivity and profitability.
Without this integration, you may not know who your best customers are or you could end up agreeing to provide a top customer with an item you don’t have in your inventory.
Gone In Sixty Seconds: Protecting Your Laptop & Data
 Ryan Seymour is Tech Experts' Service Manager and a PC hardware specialist. |
September was a whirlwind travel month for me, having been in both Charlotte, North Carolina and Chicago in the last three weeks of the month.The training is great, but as anyone who has traveled lately knows, the airports can become a real challenge.
I was waiting in the Charlotte airport for my return flight to Detroit, and watched an awful story unfold.
A passenger, who was obviously a business owner or executive was searching frantically for his laptop case. After about 20 minutes, airport police showed up and it turns out his laptop had been stolen.
Business owners as well as your average everyday computer users are turning to laptops more and more each and every day, due to
their mobility and the ability to keep them in touch with the office no matter where they are.
A huge importance that many seem to forget is keeping their data safe, and doing regular backups. I would guess that every three in five users are not performing any type of backups. They run the huge risk of losing all their valuable data, programs, and even their entire computer as the gentleman in the airport did.
It is crucial to have a backup solution in place, especially for business owners who keep most of their work information on their laptop computer.
With today’s technology options, you can find a backup solution that will work for you, and there seems to be a price range for everybody.
Backups can be performed in several ways, from a manual backup to a CD or DVD, some form of removable media like a flash drive,
or SD card, and there are even the higher end solutions like BDR and off site backups.
Typically a backup solution would come with a piece of software to control your backups. Things such as what you’re backing up, how often your backing up, and where you want the backups to go.
The beauty of using software is it almost completely automates the process, and becomes something you don’t have to worry about
any longer, knowing that if your computer is stolen, or your hard drive suddenly crashes out, you have a good copy of your data, and you can be back up and running in no time at all.
My favorite solution is the offsite backup, which can be offered thanks to the Internet. With an offsite backup system, data that
is on your laptop, workstation, or server(s) can be sent out across the Internet (typically encrypted) to an offsite location.
So for example, you could be working at your company, and having all your daily additions to a highly secure data center out in
the cloud. This would protect your information from a disaster such as a building burning down, or a fatal hardware crash.
If that sounds like overkill for your situation, an easier solution can be used, such as backing up once a week to a flash drive.
All Windows based systems have a utility built in called Backup and Restore. This utility will allow users to backup just their personal data, such as pictures, documents, emails, etc. or even take it a step further and back up the entire computer’s configuration, including the data.
Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore is most useful for disaster recovery when your PC malfunctions.
This feature helps you create complete PC backups, and then in the event of a serious system issue or data loss, Windows Complete
PC Backup and Restore can restore your entire PC environment, including the operating system, installed programs, user settings, and data files.
If you do not have currently have a backup solution implemented, please contact our technical support team. We can work with you to set up backups to a flash drive or CD.
We also have a great offsite solution for $39.99 per month that will keep all of your data safe in the event of a failure. It works transparently in the background, encrypting and forwarding your data to our data center, where’s it is stored and updated as needed.
The best thing about this type of solution is that it doesn’t require you to do anything - the backups occur automatically, and we’re notified if there is ever a problem where your backup didn’t complete properly.
Is There A New Computer In Your Future? Here’s A Tip To Help You Transfer Your Important Information!
Robert Saylors is a senior network technician and hardware specialist with Tech Experts. |
It eventually has to happen, we need a new computer. You can buy one from the “BIG BOX” stores, or order online or worse yet buy one from “Freddie” on the corner, but the time will come that you need a new computer.
The technology advances so fast it is hard to grasp what you need, what the kids need, and what should you buy that will give you the most bang for your buck.
A bigger concern is: “What will you lose?” When you upgrade your computer, it’s important to preserve the “my documents” and “my photos” folders.
How can you transfer them to your new computer and not lose them?
If you are running Microsoft Windows XP, you are in luck. Not only does Windows provide you with a file transfer wizard, they have a feature called profiles.
Each person who has logged in to a Windows computer had created a profile that has all of their favorites, documents, music, and photos stored in an easy to transfer directory structure.
The secret is in knowing how to move them to the new computer. It is very easy. I mentioned thumb drives and external storage in my last article. Using your external storage, it’s relatively simple to transfer things over. Since each person who uses the computer has their own profile, all of their information is stored separately - all you need to do is find your profile, which is under your user name and then copy the folder which is named after your login name.
For example, if I created a user called “BigBob” then a profile folder called BigBob would also be created. This folder will contain all of my documents, Internet favorites and music if I have saved them to the default location.
Once you find the user’s profile folder, you’d just copy the folder to your external storage or thumb drive. Then, on your new computer, you’d copy the folder back to the same place. I know this gets confusing, but it isn’t that difficult.
Microsoft has developed a way to keep all of your information stored in one central location, and keep each user’s information separate from each other.
This makes it so easy to do the transfer to a new computer. But to play it safe! If you have very important information, or you haven’t made a recent backup, you may want to use Tech Experts to transfer your data, photos and music to you new system.
We do it every day, and we realize the importance of your data. Give us a call at (734) 457-5000, or e-mail support@mytechexperts.com.
USB Flash Drives Great For Backups At A Low Cost
Robert Saylors is a senior network technician and hardware specialist with Tech Experts. |
A few issues back I discussed what random access memory (RAM) was, and how important it was to have as much memory as your computer can hold. This month I’d like to talk about memories. Or more to the point the storage and retrieval of memories.
I’ve experienced countless numbers of hard drive failures in computers that belong to our home user clients and as a result of this failure they lose all of their precious photo memories.
Once I tell them that I cannot rescue these photos, a lot of times they get that deer in the headlights look, and it is so sad. I got to thinking about this as just this past holiday season, my wife and I purchased a digital camera. Never having owned one before, I have been taking pictures like crazy and downloading them to my home PC.
In years past, it wasn’t an issue to back up your photographs. You used to take your pictures into the store and have them developed. It didn’t matter which type it was, slides or photos: Once you got them back developed, you could put them in an album and anything short of a major disaster those images will live on for generations. Your “backup” was the negatives that came back with your pictures.
Hard drive failure can lead to a loss of so many memories that many feel this would be a major disaster. We’ve touched on various backup systems for business users, but home users should be just as vigilant in the protection of what they consider to be their important data, their photo memories.
 My wife and I took this picture of a deer at the Metropark near our home. |
As technology has changed over the years, storage technology has evolved just as quickly. We used to backup onto floppy disks. Then came the writable CD player. And just a few years back came the development of an affordable DVD writer that can store much more data then a CD.
But the latest technology is the USB thumb or flash drive. This tiny portable electronic drive has no moving parts and is small enough to fit on your key chain.
And as companies refine their technology; these drives have become more and more affordable.
The ease of use is one of it’s best features, a truly plug and play device that works instantly on any computer with a current operating system such as Windows XP or Windows Vista. You can move the drive with true ease from computer to computer to copy those memories and have them stored away for future generations.
I’ve seen USB flash drives with 4GB of storage sell for as low as $25. This type of capacity will allow you to store numerous photos and can serve as an electronic photo album. The other nice thing about a USB drive for backup is that you can use them for more than just pictures - any important data you have on your computer can be backed up or copied.
If you’d like more information about how to use a USB drive to backup your memories (and important documents), just give us a call at (734) 457-5000.