TechTidBit - Tips and advice for small business computing - Tech Experts™ - Monroe Michigan

Brought to you by Tech Experts™

Data Redundancy And Why You Should Have It

Ron Cochran is a senior help desk technician for Tech Experts.

Data redundancy is the making of an exact copy of the data that you are currently working with, in the event of a hardware failure, theft, or those pesky mistakes where you delete something that you really wanted.

What happens is you will have 1 or more hard-drives used for backups, housing those files that are kept nearly current. You will go through the steps to rebuild or restore the files or programs that were removed, then you will be back at the point you were at before the files were lost.

The above is extremely important when you are working with money or medical records. Let’s say you were working with a customer on their tax returns and your office experienced a power outage, which turns your computer off in the middle of saving data. A short while later, the power is restored and you turn your computer on and open the data to resume where you left off — and you find out that there is no record on your computer of your client and you start to panic.

If you had a redundant data solution, then you could restore the data, but if you didn’t, then you will need to call that customer and explain that they will need to bring all of that data back in so you can enter it into your system again. Now, consider how this customer could begin to think of you and your business.

If you have a safety net, you would follow the steps from your program and, in a short while, all of that data that you lost will be restored and you’ll be back at the point when the power went out, with all of your data intact. There are several different ways you can set up a system backup. One of the ways is to have more than one storage solutions to send data to.

With this solution, you will have more than one drive that is saving that information, which will do a couple of things. It will speed up the read/write times and you take less of a chance of losing more data. It’s always wise to have more than one solution for data recovery. You don’t want to wait until it’s too late and find out that in order to recover the data on your drive it’s going to be thousands of dollars.

You can have an image copy of your hard-drive made one time a day (or once a week or maybe twice a month) with a scheduled back up. You could have an application running in the background of your computer that would take up very few resources as it copies your data to a drive or an offsite storage facility.

We offer quite a few different data redundancy solutions to our clients. Those options range from on-site RAID drives to a cloud-based solution that is off-site. With either option, you can have a data backup or an image of your operating system — or even a direct mirror copy of your hard-drive in real time.

If you are worried that you might lose valuable information, then some sort of data redundancy is probably something you should be actively seeking. If you’re overwhelmed by the options and aren’t exactly sure which method would suit your business best, contact us and we can help you narrow it down, as well as provide a solution.

My Laptop Battery Doesn’t Charge Fully. What Could Be The Issue?

If your laptop has not fully charged after being connected to a power source for a prolonged period of time, you will need to conduct some basic troubleshooting activities to identify what is causing the problem. Try one of the options provided below to identify what is preventing your laptop battery from charging properly.

Verify that the AC/DC cable is in full working order
Remove the battery and plug the power adapter into the laptop to verify that the device can power without a battery source. If not, the AC/DC cable may be faulty. Purchase a new cable and try again.

Service the battery
Once you have verified that the AC/DC adapter is not the culprit, you will need to check that the battery is working properly. An old battery may be inefficient and may need replacing or servicing. If you’re using Windows, an application like BatteryCare can help you to identify the total capacity of the battery. Connect the device to power for two hours and monitor how this affects the battery power levels. If the total capacity doesn’t shift much, now would be a good time to get the laptop serviced. In some cases, you may need a new battery.

Check the charger board
If you replace the battery and have checked that the AC/DC cable is in full working order but continue to experience problems charging your laptop, it may be that the charger board is broken. If that is the case, you will need to arrange for your laptop to be professionally repaired by a qualified IT service company.

Working From Home: Can You Still Be Productive?

“There’s no place like home” rings very true for a lot of people. There is just a level of comfort at home that you can’t find anywhere else.

For me, some comfort is needed to really be efficient and most people probably work better when they are at least moderately comfortable, but is there such a thing as too much? I don’t mean only physical conveniences.

Don’t get me wrong, working from home sounds really great some days. You can multi-task and throw in a load of laundry, do some dishes, or work on something else to break up the day. Sounds good, doesn’t it? You are being really productive!

How much work are you getting done, though? These little side tasks add up. It’s just one of many distractions that can really impede your productivity.

Noise, household tasks, or maybe even other people being home while you are trying to work can make your ability to get things done a real challenge. When considering working at home myself, I have come to the conclusion that it just isn’t for me in most circumstances.

If you are putting in a traditional eight hour work day or 40 hour week at home, how much of that time is actually spent focused on your work? Personally, with a set task (or tasks) that need to be completed, success working at home would come much easier. While you are almost certain to run in to some distractions, having a set task to work on, even if it takes longer than it should, means you’re still being productive.

Let’s say you lose about five minutes an hour being distracted. Even those five minutes can easily add up to a ton of wasted time.

Over the course of a week, losing five minutes an hour adds up to two hours and 20 minutes a week.

Factor in that load of laundry, the 30 minute nap you took, or even just spending a little more time making lunch — we now have HOURS over the course of the week that are just lost time. If you struggle with working at home, there are a few methods of staying focused that help you change your brain from home mode to work mode.

For instance, fight the urge to work in your PJ’s and get dressed like you normally would for work. Also, designate a work space while at home, but change your surroundings every so often if possible to get out of the house, such as working from a café or the library.

Building a to-do list and developing strict work hours (if possible) and sticking to them helps as well. If you have children or a partner at home, you may also want to think about creating a “Do Not Disturb” sign for yourself to let them know that you should be left alone.

Not everyone falls into this category of losing time to distractions and, sure, some people can be very successful while working from home.

Others would be shocked to see how fast the five minutes here and there really add up. Just like every other aspect of life, there are all types of people, and you are all free to make your own decision about working from home.

Some of us (myself included) will stick to keeping our work at work and home at home.

Chrome: The New Standard Browser For Business

jared-stemeye
Jared Stemeye is a Help Desk Technician at Tech Experts.

Numerous enterprises still consider Microsoft’s web browsers as the standard browsers. On paper, Internet Explorer is venerability defined. However, the reality of such claims are a bit different, industry analysts argue.

“Microsoft retains a very strong relationship with [enterprise] IT,” says Gartner Technology Research analyst, David Michael Smith, in an interview. “Most enterprises still have a ‘standard’ browser, and most of the time, that’s something from Microsoft. These days it’s IE11. But we’ve found that people actually use Chrome more than IE.”

Smith, who was updating a 2015 research report on browsers in enterprise, was adamant that, at the time of forecast, Chrome was and still is the king.

“It’s the most-used browser in enterprise,” Smith discloses, referring to Google Chrome.

Internet Explorer still retains a sizable share – Smith calls it “a significant presence” – generally because it’s still essential in most companies. “There are a lot of [proprietary web software, portals, and] applications that only work in IE, because those apps use IE browser specific plug-ins,” Smith stated, indicating examples like legacy versions of Adobe Flash, Java, and Microsoft Silverlight.

“Anything that requires an ActiveX control still needs IE,” Smith concludes.

Many businesses have adopted the modern/legacy implementation strategy: keep the IE browser to handle older sites, services, and web apps, but offer a modern browser for everything else.

That approach lets employees access the old, but does not punish them with a rigid, sub-standard browser for general-purpose use. With this strategy Internet Explorer has played (and continues to play), the legacy role. All while, Chrome remains the most used browser in the world.

There are a few reasons why Chrome is widely used. Doing business on the go is becoming more and more common, even necessary. For that, Chrome boasts some of the best mobile integration available. With Google mobile apps offered on every major platform, it’s easy to keep your data in sync, so seamlessly browsing between multiple devices is easy.

Sign-in to your Google account on one device and all your Chrome bookmarks, saved data, and preferences come right along. It’s a standard feature you can find on other platforms, but Chrome’s integration is the best in the industry.

Secondly, Chrome is fast and light – and with a thriving extension library, it’s as fully featured or as trimmed down as you want it to be. Everything is right where it should be. Privacy and security controls are laid out and accessible while the browser gets out of your way when you need it to.

With all of this included, the most important of these reasons is Google’s announcement of a new Chrome Enterprise Bundle that is suggested to make integration and company standards compliance a breeze. It will help admins deploy and manage the Chrome browser across an entire company. It also provides admins a single installer for the Chrome browser and the Chrome Legacy Browser Support extension (for running an ActiveX widget and administrative policy templates).

Bottom line, Google is vying for the top spot in both consumer and enterprise browser usage, and they are doing a heck of a job achieving this goal. They have already managed to sideline Microsoft’s browser on its own OS, especially in cases where users are not on Windows 10, and don’t have access to “Edge”- Microsoft’s modern browser platform. The true king of business web browsers has become, and will remain, Chrome for the foreseeable future.

Rules Of Thumb To Avoid An Infection

Anthony Glover is Tech Expert’s senior network engineer and service manager.

A virus can be an upsetting, expensive endeavor to deal with. A virus can wreak havoc on your personal files (like important spreadsheets or family photos) or the system files that keep your computer functioning.

These files can become corrupted, encrypted, or deleted, which makes recovery difficult or sometimes impossible.

Some less obvious viruses — the ones that might slow down your system instead of destroying it — can still affect you by stealing data and what you type on your keyboard, gaining access to your stored credit card information or important sites you use, like your bank. [Read more…] about Rules Of Thumb To Avoid An Infection

Anti-Virus: It’s Worth Protecting Yourself

Ron Cochran is a senior help desk technician for Tech Experts.

You can have any machine — from the latest and greatest, to the old dinosaur in the corner — but if you don’t have virus protection, your latest and greatest machine might soon run like that dinosaur in the corner.

All of your sensitive images, documents, billing information, and passwords are subject to infection. No matter how careful you are, there is always something that slips through the cracks.

Often, users say, “I have such and such subscription,” or “I don’t click on anything I don’t know,” but the people spending countless hours causing havoc on computer users will always find new and sneaky ways to infect computers.

Viruses can be attached to images or links on websites. They can also be renamed to look like something that you should install. Once inside your computer, they are hard to track down even by a seasoned computer technician.

Viruses very rarely remove anything from your computer. Instead, they have a tendency to add things that can record your activities on your computer. A person could install a silent program that will start recording your keystrokes triggered by keywords; it can also take a screenshot or record email addresses and passwords. Most of the time, they don’t need to even gain access back to your computer to report the data.

They can have an email sent from your computer and Internet connection without you knowing it. That email, secretly sent from you to them, would contain your information (keystrokes, clicks, etc.).

By now, you have heard of the “crypto virus” and all of its variants. There are many solutions out there, but select few offer “zero-hour” infection reversal, however it’s something that businesses can especially benefit from. Let’s say you accidentally encrypt your machine; it would then be inaccessible until you pay the ransom to unlock your files.

Protection that offers infection reversal can revert your system back to its state right before you were infected and it would be like you never infected by the virus at all. This feature is part of Webroot Secure Anywhere, which is something we can provide.

Viruses not only help people steal your data, but they can also delete or corrupt files, degrade system performance, and make your computer run slower.

Viruses can also prevent programs from working and they can use your email to send out copies of itself to your contacts and other users. Sometimes, they can disable your computer from starting up by corrupting your BIOS firmware.

A couple of the main things that you’ll notice once you’re infected is that your system could run slower and you’ll receive all kinds of fake pop-ups, ads, warnings from “Microsoft,” etc. These type of files are referred to as “scareware” and the makers feed on the fear that you might lose your data, so you’ll pay them to “unlock” your system or “remove” the virus.

Again, we go back to protection. If you had virus protection, then it’s likely that would stop it before it even established itself inside your computer.

There are a few things you should do, if you haven’t already: get some sort of whole computer protection (such as Webroot), have restore points saved on your operating system, have a backup of your operating system install saved on some sort of external media, and save your documents, pictures, and videos to an external source.

When you find yourself in a predicament where you have to wipe an entire computer to remove an infection, you’ll be glad you took the time to prepare for the worst.

Easy And Common Steps To Resolve Internet Issues

Luke Gruden is a help desk technician for Tech Experts.

The Internet is key in almost all that we do on computers. A computer without Internet would have limited use — not only because of the browser, but because many programs require the connection to function.

That’s why when we are right in middle of working and we lose Internet, we can get very frustrated very quickly. Luckily, there are a few things you can try to potentially restore your Internet with minimal time and effort.

Calling your Internet service provider or your IT techs can result in an issue taking longer to resolve as someone may have to drive out to your business or you have to wait for the next available phone representative. Why wait when, most likely, you can fix your own Internet in about 15 minutes or less with minimal experience?

However, before we talk about how to bring back the Internet, we must talk about terminology and devices.

The first device that handles your Internet from the outside of your building is the Internet modem. Your modem usually has your Internet provider’s logo on it and is plugged in by a cord going outside (usually through a wall). You also need to know what a router is. A router plugs into all the computers with either wired or wireless connections. Sometimes, the modem is also a router when it’s a two-in-one device.

Finally, you should know what a firewall device is. Firewalls are usually a box that is plugged in between the router and modem, protecting your network. That said, not every business has a firewall.

Now that you have the basic terminology, we can potentially fix the Internet. First of all, if you lose your connection to the Internet, try a reboot of your workstation.

If the reboot does not work, see if anyone else has Internet. If it is just you that’s lost connection, try to see if you can push your Internet wire (Ethernet cable) into your computer. Sometimes, the connection can become loose and that’s all there is to the problem.

If you are using a wireless connection, turn off your Wi-Fi with a button on your computer and turn it back on. If your Internet is not back, you might have to contact your IT. If no one has Internet, take a look at the modem. The modem usually has lights showing the status of the Internet connection. If it shows that there is no Internet, try to unplug the power from it and wait 15 seconds and plug it back in.

The modem will take time, potentially 10 or 15 minutes, but you will see if the Internet connection comes back. If the modem does have Internet, try to unplug the firewall (if you have one), then plug it back in after 15 seconds. If the Internet still is out after 15 minutes, try to do the same thing with the router by unplugging and plugging the power back in. If the Internet is still out for everyone, you probably have to call your Internet service provider as there could be an outage in the area. Most of the time when the Internet goes out, following these steps can likely bring back the Internet connection. This is especially true if you are at home.

Hopefully, following these steps can resolve your lost Internet connection. Sometimes, your equipment essentially needs a restart to get things back into working order. Should you need further help, we at Tech Experts have you covered!

Built-In Windows 10 Tools You May Not Know About

jared-stemeye
Jared Stemeye is a Help Desk Technician at Tech Experts.
As we approach the second anniversary of Windows 10 this July, users have continued to steadily adopt Microsoft’s flagship OS and move away from the limited support of Windows 7 and clunky interface of Windows 8.

With this, many new users are currently unaware of the simple, yet powerful features that are now built right into Windows 10.

Some were present in previous iterations of Windows, but have been improved upon within 10.

Built-in Screenshot Utility
Those of us without fancy third-party screenshot software had to resort to the old tried-and-true Control + Print Screen function to copy and paste the screenshot into Paint to save. However, there’s now an easier way.

The Snipping Tool application built into Windows since Vista has a ton of intuitive features for taking screenshots.

You can easily find this handy tool by typing “snip” into your start menu search. Windows 10 has added time delayed screenshots as an additional feature to take screenshots that were not previously possible.

Sticky Notes
Built-in since Windows 7, Sticky Notes allows small text boxes to be attached to your desktop. They are great for reminders or quick notetaking. You can create multiple notes and change the background and text colors for better visual organization.

These notes are also smart, using “insights” to provide contextual information to your notes automatically. If you add an email, address, or phone number, your note will recognize it as such to make the note easier to interact with.

Action Center
Brand new to Windows 10, the Action Center can be accessed next to your clock at the bottom right of the screen. By clicking the text box icon, you can access alters from your operating system and applications.

This menu also allows quick access to tablet mode, Connect (Bluetooth device pairing), VPN settings, and other tools. My favorite Action Center tool is night light mode, which dims your screen and provides a warmer tone that’s easier on the eyes in low light.

Display Calibration
In my opinion, the Display Calibration tool is by far the best and most underused tool built into Windows 10. Out of the box, your PC monitor is usually too bright and the colors are typically oversaturated. That may not be an issue if all you do is spreadsheet work, but if you’re editing photos or video, you’ll want to fine-tune the colors for accuracy.

Sure, you could spend $60 or more for color-calibration software and hardware and that might be money well spent if you’re a graphics professional or a movie buff who’s finicky about faithful color reproduction. However, the color-calibration tool built into Windows can give you most of what you without additional software.

Type “calibrate” into the start menu search, and select Settings. You want to pick Calibrate Display Color, which is usually the top option.

The color calibrator’s welcome screen includes a link to a help-center tutorial. All you really need to do, however, is walk through the steps and read the explanatory text.

The first time you do this, don’t skip any of the steps. The steps are, in order: gamma settings, brightness adjustment, contrast adjustment, and color balance. Your monitor’s color will look better than ever once you complete the tuning.

For even more information on the new tools that are in the works for Windows 10, visit microsoft.com/windows/upcoming-features

What Are The Signs Of A Failing Hard Drive?

Anthony Glover is Tech Expert’s network engineer.

As a network engineer by day, I can say that have seen a lot of hard drive problems and, if they’re not taken care of properly, they can cause a severe technical headache. It is important to notice the signs that are present to you and, fortunately, there’s several to note.

Sluggish performance of your workstation is one of the main issues. This can occur without warning and it can even seem like a virus or cause a blue screen of death (BSOD).

Another sign is your PC or workstation making clicking or grinding noises. This can cause a read failure to occur and cause the drive to be inaccessible, which in turn causes data loss. [Read more…] about What Are The Signs Of A Failing Hard Drive?

Double Your Screens, Double Your Productivity

Ron Cochran is a help desk technician for Tech Experts.

When you think of a computer with more than one screen, you tend to think of a gaming computer or command center, but adding a second monitor can save money and improve productivity throughout the day. Having more than one monitor can save each employee several minutes to a couple hours each day, depending on the type of work.

Let’s break it down. It takes a few seconds to move the mouse and click a window or document; if you have to open that document, there is delay while waiting for it to load. Multiply that by how many times documents, programs, and windows are utilized throughout the day — then multiply that figure by the day, month, and then year. You could be saving thousands of dollars with just one employee.

You can add a second monitor to a laptop or desktop computer for a relatively cheap price. There are even monitors and stands on the market that will let you rotate into portrait mode (but don’t forget to change your display settings in your operating system as well).

There are a number of recreational and business reasons to consider getting a second monitor. One example is utilizing two or more screens for editing different types of publications, video, or still images. With dual monitors, you can edit and make changes to an image while comparing it against the original one on a separate monitor. That way, you can see in real time what you’re changing and with more workspace.

With many operating systems, you can have the monitors in a wide range of configurations. You could have: both in landscape mode (the way the typical user has a monitor — wider than it is tall), both in portrait mode (taller than it is wide), or one of each orientation (one landscape, one portrait).  You could also have one screen on top of another.

There are a couple drawbacks to adding a second monitor, but they can be lessened or resolved by getting one of several different mounting solutions. You can just set the monitors on your desk with the supplied stands or you can purchase a larger stand for both monitors. They also make a clamp style mount that would clamp or mount to the backside of your desk or desktop, which would frees up more desk space.

Some may think that having two screens may force the user to focus on too many things at once or clutter up their workspace, but the effect is typically the opposite. It has a staggering effect on productivity by making more resources readily available — to the point that some find it hard to go back to one monitor after using two or more. Utilizing more than one monitor has many benefits and a very few negative points and is something that should be seriously considered, especially for a business.

Don’t let the initial investment scare you off; you’ll immediately find yourself (or your employees) less frustrated and more productive… and dreading ever going back to one monitor again.