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Most boot sector viruses detected by some of the best commercial antivirus software such as Symantec's Norton Antivirus, Microsoft's Security Essentials, or Kapersky's Antivirus can not be removed by these applications. And in many cases a boot sector virus is capable of alluding these applications unless the drive is connected to a clean system that has the AV software actively running.

What is a boot sector virus? This is a computer virus that infects a diskette or hard drive in the area which contains information about the configuration of the disk. The boot sector is used by many computer operating systems to determine how to access the diskette or drive. These viruses replace the critical boot sector program used to start the computer with their own malicious program often causing frequent computer crashes, allowing other malware infections, and performance issues.

Client's HP Pavilion M9400t was reported as having a noisy fan and then would not boot any longer. The power supply was the primary reason for the system not powering but after replacing the power supply the system would continually reboot. Using the F8 key while booting we were able to force the system to stop on the error and not reboot. This allowed the error message STOP 0x0000007B to be displayed. This error most often is reported when there is a hardware issue.

After backing up the hard drive using Norton Ghost, we went through a series of tests by removing hardware. In this case the video card was an add-in so it was removed but the problem still persisted. Next we checked the BIOS settings and noted the default for the SATA drive was set to RAID. We changed this to IDE and rebooted the system. The system booted normally.

There are times that you may have a web site that you frequent often that gets updated which causes the site to function in unusual ways or may not work at all. Most likely the reason is that some of the files that are related to the site didn't update on your local computer. To resolve this issue you need to flush or clear the cache files from your browser. The steps below are for Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 but are similar for older versions.

1. Open Internet Explorer or IE as it is often referred to.
2. Select Tools from the menu or the gear icon.
3. Select Internet options which will open a dialog box defaulting to the General tab.
4.  Click the Delete... button under the Browsing History section.
5.  Click the OK button at the bottom and the close Internet Explorer
6.  Reopen Internet Explorer and go to the web site that was having issues.

If the cache of older incompatible files was the issue, then the site should be working now. If this was not the issue, it might be a compatibility issue with Internet Explorer and may need the Compatibility View option enabled for the site. 

The Search Protect malware is often inadvertently installed with other freeware applications. We won't go into the details of this application, there is plenty of information published already. These days you don't get anything for free, it seems many of these free applications come with malware bundled with them, Search Protect being one of them.

We see this application often on client computers and removing it can be difficult. The application is constantly changing so these steps might work or they might not. But it won't hurt to give it a try.

After spending years supporting the Microsoft platform you find those special tools that help you overcome specific situations that seem monumental at first because you have to manually work your way through it. If you are lucky you will find some administration tool that eases that pain because someone before you had it to and had the skill to develop a tool to make it easier.

The purpose of this page is to help point others to some great web sites that offer free tools for administrating a Microsoft environment. Since we are unaffiliated with any of these sites, use these tools with caution. We don't advocate piracy so if there is a licensing fee, please pay up. The only things free are viruses and malware - and eventually you will pay the cost for that too.

When using the recovery CD for various eMachines (T2080, T2792, T3065) with Windows XP, the computer hangs or freezes at the Name My Computer stage of the process. After spending some time researching the issue, other technicians have noted that the system is stuck trying to configure the video.

The easiest way around this is to shutdown and reboot in VGA mode as follows. If your not sure how to shutdown the computer at this point, just press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds until the computer powers off.

Repair Process

The process for upgrading QuickBooks Enterprise 2012 to QuickBooks Enterprise 2013 is fairly easy, but it may take some time depending on the number of workstations and the size of the database file.

In our client's environment, we run QuickBooks Enterprise on a Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011, which runs as a Virtual Machine (VM) within VMware vSphere 4.1. The first step in any upgrade is to make sure you have a good back up before proceeding.

A client attempted to install an upgrade to Kaspersky Anti-virus, but the install was interrupted and so the system was left in an unstable state. Continued use of the computer frequently resulted in the following Blue Screen of Death.

One of the side effects from this issue was that the hard drive was constantly getting corrupted and several drivers would fail to load. In order to get the system to boot we had to go into safe mode, run a check disk on reboot, and then the system would finally boot and run for a short period of time, which was all we needed.

The End of Life for the Windows Server 2003 was on July 14, 2015.  It was reported that as many as 8 million licenses were still active at the time of the expiration for support. All support for Windows Server 2003 including R2 have ceased unless special paid support has been arranged with Microsoft.  Now is a good time to begin making plans to upgrade your old servers that may be running Windows Server 2003 and the applications you have running on them.

Not sure how this will impact your business? Then let us help you review your current install base and provide you with the man options available. This might be a great opportunity migrate applications to one of our Cloud Services like Microsoft Exchange, Nebula Data Online Backup, or VMware Cloud Air.

When attempting to connect a vCenter server to Active Directory I got an error that I had to enter a fully qualified domain name in the Domain field, which I had done. So why the error. I started checking the following areas.

Domain Resolution - does the domain resolve back to one of the domain controllers. In my case I could ping and perform an nslookup on the domain and it resolved fine.

We seem to have a great need for training our clients on removing garbageware or other unwanted applications. So in order to provide that training and have it as a future reference for when they forget how they performed the task at a previous time, we are making this How To training public for reference.

This process, although written with Windows 7 in mind, will basically work as well with the other versions of Windows with some minor changes.

With many computers needing to be upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10, the need for clear consistent instructions are needed. The instructions listed are for Dell computers but could be easily adapted for other makes. Install Windows 10 from Dell Recovery DVD  Download the Dell Windows 10 Recovery ISO image for your system at this Dell ...

On occasions a client's network is missing the server or one or more workstations when browsing the network. Typically this is noticed when our tech company takes over support from another MSP. This is frustrating to both an IT tech that is not familiar enough with the environment and the end users that may need to access the server directly. The l...

Occasionally we get a computer that needs a reinstallation, but they don't have the original media because they didn't create it before the computer crashed. If you have a computer with pre-installed Windows 7 or Vista, most likely you’ll notice the manufacturer’s support information when you look in the system properties window. However once the computer has been restored to working condition with OEM media, there is no logo. We often want to change the OEM logo in the computer properties dialog box so that it reflects the original installation and makes the customer feel like they got there computer back just like they bought it.

How to Customize the OEM Logo

After installing Microsoft Windows 10 upgrade on a Dell Inspiron One 2320 All-in-one, which formerly had Windows 7 Home installed, the system booted for the first time with several colors that would cycle through on the screen (red, green, blue, white, black). There continued to be disk activity but there was no way to break out of the color c...