Lisa Hendrickson is the owner of Call That Girl. She is an Outlook Expert and Microsoft 365 Consultant.
By request, one of my clients asked me to blog about this and help spread the word. I said of course!
I would like to invite you to join us in a ‘Celebration of Life and Courage’ during Breast Cancer Awareness month in Oktoberfest fashion.
What: FUNdraiser called BEER FOR BOOBS
In support of the 2012 Susan G. Komen 3-Day 60 Mile Walk for the Cure
Where: Mancini’s Char House
When: Thursday, October 6th 6:00pm to 9:00pm
Why: Because ALL profits will go toward helping people affected by Breast Cancer and toward preventing people we know from being affected in the future.
Cost: $30 in Advance
Enjoy Oktoberfest Beer Tastings paired with Appetizers prepared by Chef Nick (chili, wings, pot roast sliders and more!!)
Join our hosts Jason and Alexis from myTalk 107.1
There will also be a silent auction!
So, please go to www.PinkAngelWarriors.com and click on the ‘Buy Now’ button at the bottom of our website.
Everyone’s busy, but join us for fun, for a cause! Your night out will help make a difference to so many. Please share this email and / or the attached poster with as many people as you can.
Most importantly, ALL profits will go to the Susan G. Komen 3-Day 60 Mile Walk for the Cure Foundation in support of the research they support, the free services they provide to women who otherwise couldn’t afford it and the on-going support in the fight to end breast cancer.
Guest Post by:
Liam Tidwell of LiamTek in Longview, Texas
We have all been there. You knock your iPod of the counter into the dogs water, your cell phone ends up in the pool thanks to a friendly toddler, or coffee is spilled in your laptop.
Now what? That depends on the device. Follow the steps below to minimize your chances of damage to your device.
Immediately pull the battery. Can’t get to the battery? Turn it off and get it to someone who can take it apart. DO NOT turn it back on, charge it, or try to use it!! Pull the device apart as much as you can and set the individual parts in rice or some other dry grain to help pull the moisture out of it. DO NOT try and dry it with a compressor or hair dryer this will only force the liquid deeper into the device. DO NOT put it in an oven or under a heat lamp. The heat will only speed up the corrosion or your electronics. Do flip it upside down so it can drain out the same way it got in.
The main thing is to have a plan and to know how and what to do if your device(s) get wet/immersed. Learn how to get the batteries out. Take off your phone case and put it back on a couple of times. It can be harder than you think, and those things trap water really well…
Liam Tidwell – LiamTek
Longview, Texas
903 686 0200
Liam Tidwell is a Laptop & Cell Phone repair technician in Longview, Texas with over 11 years experience in IT and owns two Computer Repair Businesses. Liam can be found on Nutz@Night almost every Thursday night working hard to bring you the LULZ.
Do it yourself. A common phrase for a lot of people who either prefer to be self reliant or are looking to save on costs.
But what happens when a “do it yourself” attempt ends up causing more problems than you started with? This is a very common issue faced by people seeking to repair their own electronic devices, and more often than not will lead to costlier repairs than if the repair had been done professionally in the first place. I am not saying that only professionals should fix handheld devices and other electronics. What I want readers to understand is that they need to consider if the risks being taken outweigh any benefits gained from attempting to perform repairs yourself.
For instance, let us say that a person has a high end smart phone and the camera stops working. They want to save some money and decide to order a part online and use a guide they found elsewhere (perhaps a step by step video) of how to perform the repair they want. This person gets home, picks up the part from his or her mail, goes out some tools and goes to work. This is, from my experience, how most customers start off their attempts at fixing their own products. The person may or may not be successful in their endeavor, but immediately there are four big issues with the process they have undertaken.
1. The new part they ordered. There are hundreds of places online where people can order parts from for more devices than I can conceive. The issue is that not every part is manufactured the same and most people do not have have any idea if the place they are ordering from is reputable and dealing in manufacturer grade parts or cheap knock offs. It may sound silly, but there are a lot of vendors out there that deal in parts that either will not last or will not fit/work at all for the repair being attempted. A company that specializes in repair services knows their vendors and the quality of parts they are ordering (and will typically also offer a limited warranty the repair for said part should any issues arise).
2. The next problem is the guide the customer is using. This is always a very hit or miss issue. Some guides may be very accurate and amazingly well presented, others could skip important information that lead to huge mistakes. Even more important to remember is that the people who often make these guides (specifically quality ones) are very practiced at what they do. They know which connections are easy to break accidentally, when to avoid putting too much tension on a part and exactly where that little clip is hiding that is preventing that one piece from separating for the next step. The average person, lacking this learned knowledge, is prone to making simple little mistakes that cause more harm than realized until after they close the electronic device up and try to use it again.
3. Something as mundane as tools may not come to mind when doing repairs, but more and more electronic devices are using specialized tools and drivers. If a person tries to use a substitute, they will likely cause unintended damages to the device being worked on. Should someone decide to go out and buy what they need for this specific repair that margin of money saved by doing it oneself begins to dwindle very quickly.
4. ESD, or electrostatic discharge, is the bane of every electronic repair. The tiniest, unnoticed discharge of static electricity can permanently ruin a circuit board. Sometimes the problem is not even apparently right away, but instead causes failures down the line. A good repair center will have anti-static equipment on hand to safely repair electronic devices without risk of such issues.
So next time that smart phone, tablet, mp3 player or other similar device breaks make sure to ask yourself if the small benefit of trying to fix it on your own is worth the effort and risks involved.
We offer free email quotes and questions, so before you jump on in that tiny device and possibly ruin ribbons, little teeth and whatnot, email us! info@callthatgirl.biz
This blog is a cross blog by Eric Salce of Gem State Computers
I much like everyone else like a good deal, and what deal is better than free? Sure we have been there, hanging out online, and you stumble across, or you see an ad for software that speeds up your computer, or it could copy your DVDs and CD’s. The best part, it’s all free. Or is it? I think most people will find that this software comes with a very steep price. While many people think the only way you get infected with virus or malware is downloading pirated music, and movies, or to be surfing material of a more adult/questionable nature. While some infections are very obvious, for instance if you download a video or music file and it contains a program, then most likely you will find some form of malware waiting to jump on to your system.
One of the most common ways computers are infected is by downloading free software. While not all free software is bad many free software comes bundled with tagalong programs or other malware. How do you know if you are infected? On sign of infection is the toolbars that have been added without your knowledge. Another Sign of infection is that your computer will slow down, as more and more spyware use up your systems resources, you will find your computer to slow to a crawl. What should you do if you find yourself infected? You should find yourself a friendly computer Technician to get your system cleaned up. If the infection is caught early then the damage should be minimal, and should be a very straight forward, inexpensive, and easy to repair. So just stop and think about what you are installing. If you are not sure give us a call and let us tell you what paid/free software might meet your need.
After all it’s like mamma used to say, if it’s too good to be true, then it most likely is.
Eric Salce of Gem State Computers
Welcome to my Outlook FYI series of blogs. We will be covering these topics in a series as there is just way too much information to handle in one blog. I felt that these FYI’s were important to discuss because so many people use Outlook every day, for so many things. And Outlook is just not for email anymore. I also apologize, there are no “How to” in my blogs, just FYI’s. This blog will just explain things hopefully better for you to understand.
Many of us use Outlook in our everyday computing needs. It’s a wonderful tool, but very misunderstood by the common user. And maybe by some not so common people. Many of us are really married to it and I am all for it because it’s been my favorite software program since 2000, but it can be tricky and problematic.
Last weekend one of my clients took a computer to a “big box” place to buy a new computer and in a panic, had them do a data back up from his old computer to get the files quickly. When he got his computer back, he asked many times about the Outlook files and they told him, “We couldn’t get those files, they were corrupted”. He panics and comes back to us, where we find his files in no time flat. Why is that? Because we know where Microsoft hides the PST files, their technician must not have known. Years of data, calendar appointments, tasks, contacts, emails, archives…all could have been gone in one fast “Nope” type answer. Let me explain…
By default, when you set up Outlook for the first time, it creates what is called a PST (personal storage). You usually complete a set up wizard, fill in all of your email account information and happy days, email is back and running again! Email is working fine, but…Houston, we have a problem.
Again by default, the Outlook PST file on older computers that have XP and Windows Vista are set up in a hidden folder (not in Windows 7, it’s in the Documents folder now), way deep in some folders that are not shown by default. Windows says “click here to show hidden files” the average person would never think of going to find. Nor do they really make it easy to find unless you know how to navigate around the Outlook properties and settings. To be honest, very few of my clients know where this file is or know it exists.
So you may ask, why should you need to know where that PST is? Because it stores everything you do in Outlook. If you are using Pop3 for email, that’s where your email probably is being downloaded. Using the calendar? That’s where your calendar is. Contacts, Tasks, Auto-fill name, archive files….Yep, all there and hidden. And please never assume your emails are being kept on your server because that is not the truth in many cases either. (That will be our topic next Wednesday though, email).
I think of Outlook like this, it’s like buying a house but you don’t know where the furnace is. You know you have heat and can manage the thermostat…but don’t know where the furnace really is. Could you imagine that? Buying a house with no furnace, then one day you notice something is wrong and you can’t find the furnace at all. But you Google it and find the house builders buried your furnace underneath your basement. That is what Microsoft does with your default PST, hides it under the basement pretty much. And when you find the furnace, let’s say you can’t get it out of the basement because the house builders never told you how to get in and find it nor do they allow you to just open that basement door and see your furnace. You can see the outside of it, but you can’t see the pilot light to know its running. Your PST is in those deep hidden folders and you can’t just double click them to open them. You must open them through two or three special ways and the common person, again…doesn’t know how to do this. (I hope I didn’t lose you on the furnance comparison, but it’s the only thing that I could think of this am!)
Whenever I am remoted into a client’s machine and they are missing an archive folder, I go and find it open it. Most times I get this, “How did you do that”. Such a mystery that Microsoft really didn’t need to do to people.
To close, today’s topic of the infamous Outlook PST file was a just a start of my series of Outlook blogs. I will try to keep up with these every Wed and will continue to post in this blog, so favorite it and come back next week! Please share with your friends on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Newsletters, etc. If you or a loved one are in a need of an Outlook intervention (haha), or just need assistance, I am the Outlook gal here at Call That Girl and I know it well. Let me help you and quickly!
When your Outlook is not playing well… Googling repairs is fine and I recommend you do that to learn, but when it comes to actually repairing it, call us first. I can help you get back to work fast. To book an appointment to see if you are backing up your PST, click on the monitor below.
Upcoming topics
Just got an email from Facebook Administration. Looked real, but I got this awhile back. As a daring person who troubleshoots malware and virus attacks everyday, I clicked on it out of curiosity and of course got sent to a weird banking site. I closed it immediately and ran a full scan of our malware detetion program.
Yep fake-no malware though on my computer for just clicking on it. Not sure how bad it could have got though if I had gone to the banking site and did stuff, I just closed the window quick.
What can you do when you get these emails? How can you tell when they are fake or not? You really can’t by just seeing it. It looks just like every other Facebook email notification I get about events, messages, etc. It’s pretty sad though that Facebook is getting hacked, has my email address, is sending me fake emails and Facebook doesn’t give a shit. Pretty sad, and I’m tired of it. Soon here I will be leaving Facebook for G+ due to issues just like this.
Here is a picture of it for you all to see…
If this blog post helped you or you enjoyed it, please share with your friends by clicking on the links below to share with your Facebook or LinkedIn networks! If you need help, we we are here to help!
