Malware is software designed to interfere with a computer's normal functioning. This can include computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, dishonest adware, scareware, crimeware, rootkits, and other malicious and unwanted software or program. Most of the time, these programs are installed without the users consent.

So how does it get on your machine? Usually, it is because you have installed something from an untrustworthy source. Does the phrase “Pop-Up” come to mind? Many toolbars open your computer up to the installation of malware. Once you are “infected”, the installed malware can install other malware. It is vicious cycle.

Recently, I have seen several versions of malware referred to as scareware. The software pops up messages saying your computer is infected and it asks if you want to remove the infection. According to the software, you will need to purchase the software to remove the offending program. In fact, it does not remove the program but continues to install more malware and has cost you money.

How can you prevent this software for loading on your PC?

1. Have a quality anti-virus program. You must keep it updated to keep the malware from downloading and installing.
2. Set your internet browser to alert you anytime something attempts a download.
3. Avoid downloading software from unknown or un-trusted websites. Read the fine print on the download.
4. Avoid pop-ups. You can do this with pop-up blocking software. Most internet browsers include a pop-up blocker.
5. Disable cookies in your browser. Malware can install cookies on your computer.

The best advice is pay attention to what you are doing. If you don’t, you could be in for a lot of headaches, not to mention the time to remove these gremlins!

Here's a great story about one of PCX's clients Creme de la Creme  Early Learning Center in Sterling, VA where they recently got hit with record snowfall creating gridlock on their roads and causing some parents 5 hours delays and not being able to pick up their children until 11:30 PM.

Clearly this is a classic story of going the extra mile for your customers and doing whatever it takes.

I was speaking with a client the other day that had recently experienced a brief amount of downtime on a mission critical server for their entire company due to a hardware problem.

We were able to resolve the problem quickly and place the server back online but the experience led to further discussion between us about the cost of downtime and the value of network uptime to a company.

The Gartner research group estimates the average cost of downtime to be about $42,000 per hour per company. Since this is an average, some companies lose far less, while others report seven-figure losses per hour.

Because there are so many variables, it can be very difficult to calculate what the cost of network downtime is with just a few factors being loss of business, loss of discounts, penalties for late payments, costs of idle equipment and telecommunications, costs of facilities, the cost of repairs, missed deadlines, overtime, data recovery etc. but one component that is fairly easy to calculate and usually the largest cost is the lost productivity or idle labor associated with downtime.

As a hypothetical and, very crude example, for a 40 person company with an average salary of $50K per year per employee, it costs approximately $1,200 per hour of downtime just due to the lost productivity. As I said, this example is unrealistically low and does not take a great many variables into account with the actual costs being much higher.

Obviously this is a deep subject that we could spend a lot of time talking about but the essence of the conversation is that today’s computer networks are an essential component to almost any company’s productivity.

Many companies recognize the importance of their computer networks and how IT enables their business to function but some companies have to experience a significant downtime period before they place the proper value on their network uptime.

In any event, when I speak with people on this topic I always summarize it like this. "Downtime is expensive, very expensive and should be avoided at all costs. It is much less expensive to avoid downtime than it will be to endure or recover from it."

Take good care of your network and it will go a long ways towards avoiding downtime. Your business depends on IT.

In just a few short weeks the 2011 Super Bowl will be held at the brand new Dallas Cowboy stadium in Arlington, Texas and we thought it might be interesting for you to know just what sort of technology goes into  the IT side of this mammoth complex.

Deep inside of Cowboy Stadium lies a state of the art Data Center that many Fortune 500 companies would be envious of. It takes 13 IT staffers to support and operate this 100 percent HP network that consists of  127 HP Blade Servers and a 100 terabyte Storage Area Network that all communicates on a high speed Cisco network connecting IP Phones, IP televisions, 3,100 flat-screen televisions and 300 IP security cameras.

In addition to the stadium and team operation, the data center also supports Jerry Jones' 35-plus other companies in more than 90 locations.

After fixing my large screen tv from the “blinking light of death”, I sat there awhile admiring my handy work. This started me thinking, If it were not for the internet and search tools, A tv repair man would have been called out to repair my TV. Given the age of my set, it would have cost me more than the TV was worth.

I used Google as my search tool. Maybe you’ve heard of it before? It’s been around a little while.

Simple to use, just start typing what you are looking for. “Mitsubishi Blinking light” without the quotes. Click on search and viola, you have results. I was looking for something specific, so it was easy for me to wade my way through all the items that did not pertain to my situation.

That’s searching in a nut shell. Just type in the items you are looking for separate by spaces. Sometimes we don’t really know what we’re looking for specifically. This can be overwhelming when searching. This is where search techniques come in handy.

I’m going to focus on the Google search engine because that is what I use the most. So here are some tips.

Try searching for specific terms. If you just type in Blue Sports Car into the search field, Google will return everything that has a Blue or/and Sports or/and Car. If you use the quotes “” , Google will search for those 3 items together. So type in “Blue Sports Car” with quotes and Google will return everything that actually has Blue Sports Car within the web page.

Still too many results and need to narrow it down some more? Try excluding items. I noticed with the above search of “Blue Sports Car” resulted in a few website advertising gifts. I want to narrow my search and exclude those items. We can do this by using the minus sign - . So I’ll narrow my search and exclude gifts by entering in “Blue Sports Car” –gifts. This will exclude any webpage with the word gift. If you have multiple items, just list them out separated by a space. Ie.. –gifts -twin -wallpaper.

These are just a few of many search techniques you can use to simplify and narrow your results. Hope they help you find what you are looking for.

How could we possibly get along today without much of the technology that we rely on? Isn’t it amazing how much these devices have become a part of our daily lives? Check out this video below for a fun look at some of these devices from a slightly different perspective.

Why is my computer so slow?

Lately I’ve run into a few machines that end users have complained about being slow. They’ve’ taken all the proper steps in scanning for malware/ spyware/virus etc… all have come back negative. So if it’s a clean machine, then it has to be something else?

The first place to check is the memory. First we have to figure out how much we have. You can do this on the properties page of “My Computer” (Windows XP) or “Computer” (Vista, Windows 7). Just right click 1 of the items and choose properties. You can also access this page by holding down the windows key on your keyboard while pressing the “pause/break” key. After you determine the memory size, then its’ onto our next step.

We now need to figure out the baseline memory use. We can use “task manager” in order to determine this. You can bring this up by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL or right clicking your taskbar (the bar between your start button/windows key and clock) and choosing properties. Once this is up, click on the “performance” tab.   Here is where you will determine how much memory you have used. If you have an windows XP machine then the memory will be in Kilobytes. Just remove the last 3 numbers and this will give you an idea of how much you have in terms of Megabytes or Gigabytes . On Windows Vista and 7 computers, It will tell you exactly how much memory you have free.

From what I have seen in the past there are a lot of older machines running XP with only 256-512 megs of ram. Significant gains in performance can be had with only pennies on the dollar for a memory upgrade. One of our customers after a memory upgrade on their XP machine went from a 10 minute boot process to right under 3 minutes. Just by adding 2 gigs of memory to their aging computer there was over a 60% gain in just the time saved from the load process of windows. That is over 2 hours a month of saved time just from your machine booting faster.

For older Windows XP machines that can support it, I recommend at least 1 gig. Add as much as your computer will allow. If you have an older machine whether it’s running XP, Vista or early versions of 7, you can always give it a small boost in performance just by adding memory.

If you’re not familiar with SSD’s don’t worry, these are not something that you’ll need to go get a shot of penicillin for. SSD stands for Solid State Drive and they are a direct replacement for conventional computer hard drives but with many advantages.

SSD’s are basically a big chunk of non-volatile memory that emulates a standard hard drive but because they are only RAM, SSD’s have no moving parts, they are extremely fast in their read/write speeds, they consume very little power and produce very
little heat.

All of these benefits make SSD’s an excellent option for laptops and other types of mobile devices. Although SSD’s have been available for a while now, they have carried a premium price tag. The good news is that SSD prices are dropping rapidly and they are becoming much more affordable.

The biggest downside to SSD’s is that they are relatively small is size when compared to conventional hard drives.  Common sizes for SSD’s today are 64 and 128 Gigabytes which is pretty small compared to an entry level 500 Gigabyte hard drive but depending on how and where you store your data, this may not be a problem for many users.

As their prices comes down, SSD’s will become increasingly popular so when it comes time to purchase your next laptop or notebook computer, it would be worth checking into if an SSD option is available.

I was onsite fixing a server and was staring at the screen as it was going through its boot cycle. I look down at the Dell 2800 and see the floppy drive light up. Brought a smile to my face as I went down memory road to all the times the floppy bailed me out of a jam. I still keep an external floppy drive handy just in case. There is even a version of Linux you can place on a floppy. I could go on and on about floppy drives.

Times change and things usually get better. The USB drive has taken the place of the floppy. Easy to store and use. A lot quicker to load anything, and a single usb drive will hold gigs of information. Not sure how soon, but soon the floppy will stand alongside all the other devices that have changed the world in some capacity. Hopefully after the actual floppy drive has gone away, the floppy save icon will still be around to help us remember how it once was.

By now you may have realized that Hyper-V virtual machines and USB don’t play well together. Why has Microsoft left us in the lurch? It’s not for me to answer. But, what I can say is there are ways around this problem.

Hardware solution – There are devices that will allow you to connect your USB devices to your network. You assign an IP address to the device and then map a drive from your VM. These can be costly but, they do the job.

Software solution – Developers have designed a software solution to the problem. There is a server side and a client side application. Install each on the appropriate server. Once it is installed, you can add the USB device to be shared on the Hyper-V server and then attach it on the VM. This is less expensive then the hardware solution. There is a down side though; with some of these applications, only one USB device can be attached.

My solution – This is the easiest and the cheapest solution. Open your Windows Explorer on your Hyper-V server. Share the USB device and assign permissions. Connect to your VM and connect to the Hyper-V server, right click on the shared device and select Map network drive. Select the Drive letter and set the location. You can also set it to reconnect at logon if you wish. By attaching it this way, you can connect multiple drives. Best of all, it is FREE!