Our resident technology guru picks some of his most unusual occurrences of this or maybe next year

The Case Of The “Broken” Keyboard

I receive at least one phone call a week regarding lost passwords that my clients either misplace or forget. Sometimes they even make crazy mistakes like changing their passwords on their voice mailbox and asking me to hack into Verizon’s network to fix it. (Please note: what you see in movies is usually based on fiction.) But my favorite story began with a call from a frantic client who thought that the cleaning lady broke her keyboard. When I asked her what seemed to be the problem she said, “It’s broken, everything I type comes up as a period.” Of course this issue seemed rather alarming over the phone since I never heard of such a problem. My first thought was that it may be a stuck key or possibly a virus, but through some simple questions I figured out it wasn’t. Then it hit me and I thought it couldn’t be possible that someone would call me over this but I had to ask. “Excuse me but where are you typing this?” “I’m doing this in my email” she said. By then I had to ask “Could you be typing in your password box perchance?” Her answer sadly enough was, “Yes, how did you know?” Folks, above all else, please remember that passwords are type hidden, usually with bullets or asterisks. Duh.

When All The Computers Were Dead

The most common computer problem usually comes in the form of lack of power. From kicked out plugs to unplugged computers, I’ve seen it all. Now, of course, this can happen to anyone and normally all it requires is a push of a button or plugging the power cable back in to fix it. However, there is one case that, in my experience, beats all. Early one Monday morning I received a call from one of the many medical offices my company takes care of. The doctor tells me that none of his computers is working and he needs me immediately. When I asked him what the problem was he said it would be impossible to explain but that I needed to be there to fix it. Obviously this was a big concern so I rushed over only to find that the office had no power. Giving the doctor and his 3 other staff members the benefit of the doubt I still asked him what was wrong. He proceeded to show me that the power button doesn’t work on any of the computers. Duh.

When The Email Didn’t Work

One of the companies I manage had just hired an on-site computer tech to help implement new software they were installing. On a routine visit I stopped by the manager’s office and her first words were, “We have to talk.” I asked if something we’ve done is unsatisfactory or are you having any issues. She said, “I have been trying to send an email for over a week now and I can’t because according our new IT guy says you messed up the network.” I asked to see the problem for myself so I had her log into gmail and show me. Of course her email had an attachment which was over 20mb and gmail responded, in a nice font I must say, “Error 008 Attachment size is greater than 20mb limit.” I proceeded to explain what the message meant and asked the new guy over. His response was “Oh I didn’t read that before.”  Duh.

They Want To Back Up What?

So I received a call from a law office I manage and the lawyer says, “Are we backing up regularly?” I said, “We have full backup systems, why?” he responded, “Well, I need to make sure we are backing up the internet.” Hmmmm… I tried to explain to him how the internet works and that it is completely unnecessary and impossible to back it up. His said, “We should invent a way to back it up just in case, call me tomorrow with some ideas.” The next morning the only thing I could say is “How big is your Hard Drive?”   Duh.

Is Your Radio Button Turned On? Did You Know You Had A Radio Button?

Here is a weird problem I tend to encounter quite often. A client or a friend will call me up to tell me their computer can’t get online.  The network is fine and all other devices have no problem connecting. So what could possibly be the problem? Check to see if your Wi-Fi “radio button” is turned on. Most people accidentally turn off their radio button either by pressing a function key or switching it off on the side of the laptop.

Can You Hear It Now?

When purchasing speakers many people feel they only need minimal sound and purchase the cheapest speakers they can get. This is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you are purchasing powered speakers. Many of those $4.99 speakers are only USB powered and have no volume control, making the audio level really really low. On the other hand, if you connect speakers that require AC power and have big sub woofers attached your nice little home office multimedia audio system, it becomes so loud that it could blast you out of your computer chair. So be careful out there.

What?! Your CD-RW Can’t Read?

Another odd problem that I’ve encountered just recently was with a CD-RW that could only read audio CD’s. Believe it or not this problem had a simple fix on a Windows XP PC that was solved by Microsoft. Here is a little site many know about but rarely share: http://support.microsoft.com/fixit/

Smartphone’s Not So Smart Battery Life

If you are anything like me, your phone is your life line to the world. Therefore you should consider optimizing your phone battery life by turning off any unnecessary background items. My advice is to look into some powered cases and external battery chargers. In addition, if your Smartphone doesn’t need Wi-Fi because your cell service is working fine, turn off the Wi-Fi. That, too, will save battery life.

Big Problem, Simple Solution

This is a problem that many of my clients experience after a fresh install of Windows  XP. You go to Windows Update and it fails to update over and over again. Stop by www.softwarepatch.com and download SP3 for Windows XP. Also be aware that Microsoft doesn’t support XP any longer and many new printers, MP3 players and even digital cameras don’t recognize the XP operating system so you won’t be able to attach those devices to your PC.

Back Up Back Up Back Up. Did We Mention, You Should Back Up?

Here is a horror story: late one dark and stormy night a young, unsuspecting woman is working on her 20 page report for her Anatomy and Physiology class. Speeding away to finish the report which is due the next day she is unaware of her surroundings and that, with every new word she only comes closer to a painful demise. Now, on her last paragraph she takes a pause and rocks back in her chair pleasantly looking at her report when suddenly a sound breaks through the sound barrier and rocks all the car alarms on the street and everything goes dark. A nearby lightning strike caused a minor power outage immediately erasing this poor student’s unsaved work. This is a sad story but one that could be easily prevented.  All she needed was a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply).  These units will act as a backup battery in case of a power failure, literally saving your work.

So did the student lose all her hard work? No! When her computer came back on she quickly opened MS word only to receive a blank pale faced document staring back at her. She tries to search for her document, but how?  Since she was using MS word 2003 (which many have yet to move off of) and she did a search for .asd (the extension for word recovery) and found 1 recovered document. It turned out to be her document. Lucky her, she lost only one sentence.

The moral of the story is, above all save save save your work and back it up. Consider using an online backup system like Carbonite or an external One Touch backup. It doesn’t matter what product you are using during a crash, before you panic and give up go to Google and check to see if Autosave is available for your product and if so what the extension is so you can run a search.