If you have ever wondered what a blog is or how it works here is a nice video that explains it in simple english.

Hope that helps. If you need more info please comment on this post and I will be happy to help out.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Plain English, Simple

For this solution you will need a copy of your windows install CD. Place the CD in your computers CD-ROM drive and start your computer. Your computer should boot up off the CD and display the following message “Press any key to boot from CD..”.  If you do not see this message you may need to change the boot order for your CD-ROM in the BIOS. If that last line made no scence at all have a look at this article on about.com that will provide you with a step by step guide. You will also fine more specific instructions for changing boot order in the manual supplied with your computer. If you do see the message press any of the keys on your keyboard to move on to the next step.

Once setup has finished copying files and loading drivers you will come to the “Welcome To Setup” Screen.

You will be given the following options:

• To set up Windows XP now
• To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console
• To quit without installing Windows XP

To allow us to run the set up again and repair damaged or missing files we need to press ENTER and select the “To set up Windows XP now”. This may seam like the wrong thing to do but stay with me and you will see how it works out.

The next screen that needs you attention will be the License Agreement. Press F8 to accept the license. The Windows install will then look for existing Windows installations. As long as the windows directories on your computer have not been deleted you should see a screen asking you to select the windows installation you would like to repair.

There should be only one install found. If Windows setup finds more than one copy of windows you will need to find out why and witch one is the correct one. Press R on your keyboard to tell Windows setup to repair the copy of Windows XP that is installed on your computer.

If you get this far and don’t see the option to repair a Windows installation this would indicate that the copy of Windows on your computer is badly damaged. You either need to install from scratch or you may need help form an IT professional to try and help you recover any data that may be on the computer.

Hope this helps and if you have any questions please leave a comment at the end of this article and I will be happy to help.

Technorati Tags: Windows XP, Repair, Setup

Ever had a problem with windows security settings and just wished you could reset the security settings back to default. Well here is a quick article showing how.

One word of warning this method relies on the setting contained in a file called Secsetup.inf, this file contains the original security settings and will not contain security settings that have been changed during the windows setup or by other applications you may have installed. I would recommend this solution only as a last resort or in cases where you have a backup or setting up the computer form scratch is not a problem.

Now to the fun part

• Click Start, then Run.
• In the run dialog type in “cmd” then click OK

For Windows XP users type in the following command then press ENTER on your keyboard:

• secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

For Windows Vista users, type in the following command then press ENTER

• secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose

When the process has completed you will see a message telling you that the task is complete. In some cases you will also receive a warning message but these warning can be safely ignored. But to make sure it may be worth checking in %windir%\Security\Logs\Scesrv.log. This file will contain the reason for the warning.Secedit parameters

For further information Click Start, then Run. Type in %windir%\help\secedit.chm and Click OK for help on secedit.

Technorati Tags: Windows, Vista, Security, secedit

1. Make sure you have the right drivers. If you install the wrong drivers you may need to re-install windows to get your computer working.
   
2. Start windows click on the start button
   
3. Under Programs then Accessories you will find Windows Explorer.
   
4. Click Windows Explorer. On the left pain of the windows explorer you will find My Computer.
   
5. Right click My Computer and click on manage.
   
6. In the new window that opens, look through the list on the left and find Device Manager.
   
7. Click Device Manager. Then expand the IDE controllers in the right hand panel.
   
8. Under the IDE drivers find the driver for your hard disk.
   
9. Right click on the driver and click update driver.
   
   1. At the first dialog click no when asked to connect to windows update.
      
   2. On the next dialog click install from a list or specific location.
      
   3. On the next dialog click Don’t Search, I will choose the driver to install.
      
   4. The next dialog will show you a list of driver windows has installed. If the driver you need to install for your SATA drive is not listed click Have Disk.
      
      1. If you have clicking have disk you will be asked where the drivers are located. Point to the directory where you have downloaded the drivers. Make sure the drivers are not in a zip file or some other archive. Click OK
         
      2. You will now be shown a list of drivers that are contained in the downloaded folder.
         
   5. Click on the driver that supports your SATA drive in native mode and click Next.
      
   6. You may see a windows warning that Windows cannot verify that the device is compatible with your hardware. When asked if you want to continue installing the driver click Yes.
      
   7. The installation is now complete.
      
10. Reboot your computer and go into the BIOS settings.
    
11. Enable the SATA native mode, save settings and exit. If you have the correct driver windows will now load as normal.
    
12. If you find windows will not start you will need to boot off your Windows install disk and run a Windows repair.
    

Hope this helps and my next article will describe how to use your install CD to repair windows.

Technorati Tags: Sata, Drivers, Native Mode, Install

This kind of virus came out when the computer networks started to become common place. Internet was also readily available and businesses started communicating using e-mail. As with all viruses there is more than one type of worm so let’s have a closer look at some of the variants.

Email Worms

This version of the worm is reliant on a computer having an email client installed. The virus hides inside an email as an attachment or link to a webpage. Some can hide inside the e-mail as a script and infect your computer just by looking at the e-mail. When you double click the attachment or the link the virus is also started and it can do one of two things. It can attaché itself to every e-mail you send out or it can have a look thought your contacts list and send out emails with itself attached. Some worms have even been known to look thought your documents to try and find e-mail addresses. The e-mails that are sent out sometimes have random addresses put into the sent from section making it hard to find out where the virus originated from.

Instant messaging worms

If you have ever used a program like msn or yahoo messenger this type of worm could infect you. The worm sends out a link to random people using the messaging service. When the link is clicked on you are directed to a website that infects your machine. Once infected, the worm can use your messenger program to send the link to your friends. There are also versions of this type of worm that can use IRC chat systems.

File sharing networks

File sharing networks allow users to share files over a global network. This type of sharing is also know as P2P and has had a lot of bad press due to copyright material being shared over these networks a lot. The worm will copy itself into the programs shared directory in a harmlessly named file. When someone downloads it and executes it gets to infect the computer and try to get shared out again.

Internet worm

This is the most dangerous of all. Microsoft windows is a very complicated operating system with billions of lines of code. No matter how hard they try to make windows secure there will always be a way for someone to get windows to do something that it should not. Programmers have learnt how to take advantage of these bugs and have developed worms that can copy themselves onto your computer and install themselves without any help from anyone. These worms then search the network looking for other computers to infect. Once you get a few machines infected these worms can cause delays on the network that can get so bad that you are unable to use the network. These viruses prove to be very hard to detect and even harder to get rid of.

Technorati Tags: virus, computer worm

Anyway have a read and see what you think

Technorati Tags: Grayware

As you can tell not much has been happening round here on the blog. Most of that is due to me working away on a few other projects. So I thought it might be a good idea to explain what I have been up to.

First off I am now the proud owner of a game server. I have been looking into setting one up for a while and I hope to be able to write a few articles about the experience. If you play Counter Strike Source and would like to give me a run for my money please see the info below for the server IP. I am always around during the evenings UK time. So hope to see you online.

I have only had the server now for about 24 hours and so far I am very happy with www.inx-gaming.co.uk/. Only run into two little problems so far and those are to do with installing mods and the download core that is used to make map downloads quicker for clients. More on the issues and more later.

The second item I have been working on is still a work in progress. I am setting up a wiki for Simple IT support. My hope is to use the blog for general information but use the wiki for step by step solutions. It is my hope that other people who like to help others will join the wiki community and contribute fixes that they have come across. As mentioned before this is a work in progress as getting the skin to look and feel like Simple IT supports it very time consuming.

Well that’s all for now. I should have another post out this week to continue our look at viruses so see you there. If I don’t get it done you can always come and shoot me in the head on my server.

Technorati Tags: News, Counter Strike Source, Game Server, Wiki

What is a virus? When I started out in computers this was a real easy answer. A virus was a program that made copies of itself on computers without the owner knowing. Sometimes these viruses had what was called a payload. This payload is a part of the program that is run when either a date or any number of other conditions are reached. In most cases this payload causes damage to the information stored on your pc. Some viruses will delete all the information on your computer while others just scramble the contents of file so that you are unable to open them.

But even during this simple time of computing there where to main types of viruses. The main virus would hide itself in the executable files on a computer. Then when someone started the program they also loaded the virus. The virus would then be able to spend its time copying itself to other executable files in the hope that one day you would make a copy of your favourite program and copy it to another computer. As soon as you started the program on the unaffected pc the virus would be loaded and able to infect the new computer.

Then came the dreaded boot sector virus, every device that you connect to your computer than allows you to copy files to it has a boot sector. This boot sector is a special place on all disks that allows your computer to start windows. So this little virus is able to start itself up every time you run your computer. When you put a floppy disk into the machine it would copy itself onto the disk ready for when the disk was used in another computer.

Time and computers have moved on from these simple days and as computer experts have tried to make the computer less venerable to viruses the people who develop them have made them smarter. Today we don’t just have a virus but we have worms, Trojans, email viruses, malware and many more. But even with all this complexity all these programs do one simple task. They make copies of themselves.

Join me in my next post where we will have a closer look at some of the new virus we have to deal with today. We will also have a look at what software you can use to help avoid these little programs of doom.

Technorati Tags: virus, boot sector virus

You may be wondering what all of this means? Well basically the next version of Firefox could be with us as soon as June. Won’t that be nice? If you haven’t had the opportunity to use Firefox I would recommend downloading version 2 here and giving it a god. Just like me you may find you never need another type of browser.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Beta

What it can do for you
7Zip has many uses; one use could be compressing your work files to make them easier to back up onto a DVD. Also, if you are sending files over the Internet is always useful to make the files as small as possible. 7Zip can also be used to open zip files that you download from the Internet.

What support is available
Support is available from the community forums and there is help built into the software.

What we like
• Better compression on some files.
• Simple interface.
• Support for other compression formats.

Things to be aware of
• The ace compression format is not supported.
• As with all compression software always run a test after compression to ensure that the file is ok.

Technorati Tags: 7zip, Compression, Tools