Call the Senior Geek for Smooth Sailing Information Technology and Guaranteed Response

I've been in this game practically from the beginning. So much has changed. But the basics stay the same.

What 'secrets'?

Your NEW computer!

You did it. You bought a new computer. Here's what you do.

1. As soon as it is up and running on the Internet, run Windows Update and get all the critical updates (don't be surprised to find 15 or more of them).
2. Install and update a good commercial Anti-Virus product.
3. Now install your applications (you have the CDs and license keys, right?).
4. What about your files? See below.

Before you decommission the old system, you need to consider 

Often the Import and Export functions, typically on the File menu, can help you get things into the new system properly.

What? you don't have backups for everything? and your old system is basically dead? 

Often the old system disk ('C:' drive) is still readable even if it doesn't provide a running system. So, if you can't network the files over on your Local Area Network or restore from CD or zip, there is an alternative. Open up the old system box and remove its disk drive. Open the new system and install the old drive in the spare disk cavity. There are cable connections for it and when you boot up, it will magically appear (we hope) as another disk that you can browse and use to copy over everything you need. Your new computer is a notebook, you say. No problem...

Finally, go to my page on Security and review the suggestions on how to avoid Spyware/Adware.

See now why so many people use a geek to help them with this?

Second Level Support

Here is a fact that you may find useful. Virtually every technical support organization has one or more individuals they call 'second level support'. These are the really knowledgeable people. They have graduated from the front lines and are kept in reserve for the tough questions. 

An example may help. I was fighting with my e-mail. A professional IT person like myself hates to be stumped by his own system problems. But it happens. We came back from a weekend away, and we couldn't get any e-mail to go out. Received it fine, but couldn't send it. Tried all the usual tricks but was forced to call my DSL provider (ILEC). After two rounds of doing all the stuff they could think of we hadn't made any progress. I was getting pushed off on Microsoft, and wouldn't buy that brush-off. So, I very nicely asked if they had any 2nd level support. He agreed to bring them in and what do you know, the problem was immediately identified. The fix wasn't easy, I had to download and install new firmware on my old cable router to get at the configuration setting that needed to be set. They never did tell me what they changed that broke my service. Maybe they don't even know.

Hackers, Viruses and other Malware

It is getting ugly, isn't it? Any computer that is connected to the Internet needs at least two levels of protection. Don't confuse them. A firewall tries to keep intruders from gaining access to your computer and its files. Firewalls are useful and particularly important if your access is provided by a cable TV operator. A simple hardware firewall in the form of a cable router (Linksys is a popular brand), is sufficient for most people. An alternative is to use a software firewall on your computer. You can get a free one from Zone Alarm, for example. Software firewalls take a little effort to get working properly. Commercially available ones, typically sold with Anti-Virus programs) may be a little more friendly to get running.

Keeping out nasty software is harder. The firewall doesn't protect you from this. The two most common ways for a virus, worm or other piece of 'malware' to invade your system is by e-mail or software download. There simply is no alternative but to use a good anti-virus program to scan e-mail and regularly scan your system. But it is essential you update the 'virus definition/signature' files at least once a week--more often is better. Pay me now or pay me later--it is time consuming, at the least, to disinfect a machine. And that's when you are lucky. If it is too much for you to  try to deal with get someone to set it up for you. Really. This is important.

While I'm on a soap-box. (You probably know all this, right?) Don't trust any e-mail that appears to come from Microsoft telling you to download some fixes. Microsoft doesn't send out such e-mails, and the files you download are almost certainly not anything you want installed on your system.

Final tip--check regularly for spyware. You will probably find many, perhaps hundreds of programs routinely taking up residence on your computer to track what you do and report it to someone, usually for marketing purposes. Ad-aware or Spybot will provide tools to remove this junk.

And one other useful tip. Some of the more persistent malware attaches itself to the browser. You have to go to the advanced settings tab and remove the check box that  enables 3rd party browser extensions. Spybot and Ad-aware don't do this for you.

RTFM (Read The Flaming Manual)

It comes down to this. Be patient, be logical, keep emotions out of it, pay attention to what you are doing. Above all, read. Yes, read. Read the 'help' files and 'readme' file, for starters. Always be certain you are running the latest drivers.

A friend called last week. He is really skilled with managing his Windows system. He told me the mess he had managed to create. How much would I charge to unravel it? I told him and he wasn't ready. Being the helpful sort I am, I told him just what I would do.

This week he called back. He had tried to follow my guidance but was still stuck. How long would it take me?  Okay, it sounded ugly, I have to admit. But I decided I'd carry the risk and offered to fix him up but not charge him for more than an hour, however long it took. Hey, sometimes in business you take a calculated risk.

I spent an hour working through it with him, cleared the jam and he is a happy client. I did just what I had told him to do. The step that he passed over was fundamental. Get on the vendors web site, go to the support area and search for anything that looks rather like the problem you have.  

We techies aren't geniuses. At least most of us aren't. Now, go back and reread my first paragraph in this note. Get it?

But why would any emotionally healthy individual that has a life, want to do this? Beats me. Okay, some of us get a kick out of solving this kind of puzzle. Others work crosswords. Whatever floats your boat. 

It's like anything else, with experience you get faster and more skilled. When you finally decide you really have better things to do, call me or someone like me. My mechanic is infinitely better at keeping my car running than I ever was. He isn't smarter, but he does it all the time. I know him and trust him. He has earned my trust and never, ever abuses it. I like that. I'm trying to deliver that kind of service to my clients. 

Documentation

It seems to be a natural law, like the second law of thermodynamics. You remember that one, everything moves inexorably towards chaos and randomness. We don't have a name for it, that I know of, but computer programmers hate to do documentation. They just do. In the modern world, a ton of documentation gets produced anyway. If you are very lucky, you might find some that is relevant, reasonably accurate and up to date. 

The authoritative source is always the source code, precise instructions to tell a computer (in excruciating detail) exactly what to do under all conditions. Hard core geeks like to get their hands on the source code. This gets us into a question of ownership. Unless one is using Open Source software, usually only the persons (company) owning the code can see it, much less change it. So we live with documentation, for all its warts.

It always amazes me that people that someone will read the strangest things (like this page), but not open the Help system on their computer. The developer wants you to take full advantage of what you bought and thereby love and depend on it. They also want to avoid paying customer support reps to hold your hand. So, they invest heavily in providing you with everything you need to know. Quicken has gone to the extreme of providing you videos. Who reads anymore, right?

When things aren't right

We call them 'bugs'. Bugs are never documented in the Help system. Every product has thousands of 'bugs'. I'm sorry, forgive my tendency to understatement. It is orders of magnitude more than that. If it weren't for the demands of customers and pressure of competition, we would eventually see all the important bugs stamped out, by the steady stream of patches and updates. But, this world moves too fast.

There are two kinds of bugs, those that are known and documented, and those that aren't. Thousands of smart people make their livings by chasing after new and old bugs. One response is to decide to live with the critter. Then it is described as an 'undocumented feature', and will probably find its way into the formal documentation. Otherwise, they try to come up with a workaround and add it to their 'to do' list with a code indicating its level of criticality. Most never get fixed, and it really doesn't matter as the conditions that cause the bug to appear are very unlikely to occur and/or the pain caused is minimal. The worst case is that the combination is declared 'unsupported'. I had to retire my scanner because it isn't supported on XP. That is why you want to check carefully on the 'system requirements' before putting down your money.

I haven't seen an actual bug list in decades. It was a simpler time and you could actually print out descriptions of all the bugs in an operating system in a two inch thick stack of paper. You are no more likely to get access to the known error database than you are to get your very own copy of the source code. But the people who have access and maintain these files, see to it that the most important distilled information is available in searchable files under their Support web pages. Typically, these are available publicly, in order to reduce the cost of Customer Support.

Send mail to gordon@corzine.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: March 08, 2005