Tag: Computer support St. Paul Minnesota
Auto-fill….Friend or Foe?
Now that some time has passed, I think I can tell this story without feeling that the person I am speaking about will read this and figure out it’s them I am speaking of. This story could be anyone, in any town, in any state. But because it happened in my town, where I network, and where I work, I had to let time go before telling this great story of how auto-fill let me in on a little secret. (What is auto-fill you may ask? It’s the little tool in your email that remembers all the people you have emailed, it “fills in” in their email address once you start typing it in).
Once upon a time an account executive from a Minneapolis business tried to get CTG to become a referring partner. They found me on LinkedIn, told me they LOVED my business and asked me out for coffee, I refused of course because I don’t do coffee dates anymore. They persisted and offered to come to my office if I would have a few minutes. Ok, I can do that for a fan (and I sometimes accept if someone will come to my office for a few minutes to pitch something that I may need). During our meeting, we discussed an upcoming instrustry change and maybe becoming friends outside of work “we get a long so great, we should hang out!” type of conversations began. Hey I’m a social person and I love making new friends, so I said yes to happy hour and yes to making a new friend. Then the day of our get together they cancelled. Not a big deal. Then they cancelled again. I was starting to get irritated and wondered what happened. Then started the fun emails, more chat about the industry changes coming up, calls to keep me on the line, etc. Never met again in person. But what I did notice was this person had slowly received information out of me that I had good insight on in the industry and like a friend…I trusted them with it.
Moving ahead, they slowly lost contact with me after I shared most of the good industry tips I had. Then one day, I got an interesting email that was sent to their entire sales team and I was listed as a sales team member. Wrong Lisa I guess (thus my reference to Auto-fill). I read the whole sales pitch/proposal and found a lot of my “good tip’s” from this executive in the email giving out to their team all of the things I told them. Now, none of these were secrets by any means, all public knowledge, but for us in the industry, it was information that not a lot of folks knew about back then.
Was I ticked off? Yes. I wrote that person back and said, “You didn’t get it ALL accurate” LOL! I am quite sure that they about shit their pants when they noticed I was cc’d because I can tell you this much, I should not have been copied on that email. I still crack up thinking about it. Never heard back from that person ever again. There are a lot of lessons to this story and the one I want to remind you of is remembering the auto fill feature when sending out emails (double check names! Auto-fill is so easy to just grab the first “Lisa” on the list), there are some other lessons here but I’ll let you figure those out for yourself.
Happy Monday!
Lisa
Press
Oops, sorry to my subscribers. I meant for this to be a page at the top!
Enjoy your Sunday, it’s raining here in Minnesota AGAIN. Catching up on website stuff:)
How to troubleshoot your cable/internet
Boy have I had computer dramas this past month. First my computer died well over a month ago, then I watched my computer get infected by a spyware virus, then this past weekend I had cable company drama.
It started with my “on demand” channels not showing up. So I called them up and we did some troubleshooting. They told me that they were going to “send a hit” to my box. That didn’t fix it and they sent me to the Video group. They wanted me to do a bunch of troubleshooting and I didn’t have time, so I offered to call back. Next thing I know, about an hour later my internet was starting to flake. I troubleshoot problems like this with my clients over the phone, so I know what to do right? Yes I do! I did all the in house troubleshooting and still couldn’t get a signal. Is it possible that their “hit” they sent to my DVR box might have done something to my internet modem? Hmmm….
I called the cable company and found it did need to be reset. After it reset, I got it working fine and was really irritated that the company didn’t tell me that my internet might be problematic after that “hit” to the DVR box. I was actually really irritated! Well, it turns out that I have a splitter on my outgoing cable connection so the “hit” hit everything, phone, cable internet modem and my wireless router.
Ok, so that is all figured out. The cable company came out and gave me a new DVR box that is very confusing. I have to spend some time to figure out how to record my favorite shows. (more drama!).
Now on to troubleshooting your modem. If your computer is giving you signs that the internet is not stable, then try these easy steps before calling your cable/DSL company.
- Restart your computer. Many times, the connection is weak and just needs a reset. If you are still having problems…
- Restart your wirless router (if you have one). Unplugging your wireless router for 10 seconds usually gives it a “good kick” and will connect you again. If this fails…
- Unplug your cable/DSL modem power for a minute. This sends a signal for a “refresh” to your cable/DSL company.
For the most part, you will not need to reconfigure your wireless router. Unplugging it is enough to fix that.
If it still doesn’t work, then calling your cable/DSL provider to have the modem reset is usually not painful. My company has it set in the phone in options to reset it without talking to a person. If you do these things prior to the call, the call goes faster. They will ask you if you did these things already.
If that fails, you may want to Call That Girl. We have the experience to talk you through getting your internet repaired from other issues that are not caused by cable/DSL. Viruses may be not allowing your internet to work or just internal network configurations may be upset.
To close, keep in mind that some new Antivirus programs install their own Firewalls. Sometimes these cause folks problems with getting on certain websites or attempting to download certain programs. Make sure you check out all the options with all new Antivirus installations.
Important phone number to keep handy
It’s our number at Call That Girl!
If your internet goes down, how can you “Google” computer repair? We all seem to rely on our internet providers way too much. Just last weekend I had another problem, this time with my internet. (Remember in the past 2 months, I have had a laptop die on me and I watched a virus infect my computer). When the cable company did a “hit” to my tv to check status, it also reset my internet modem. I wasn’t on the internet when they were working on the tv, so I had no idea until later my internet was down. A few hours later, I found my internet was on, then off, then on….I had enough and hard wired my laptop to the router and it still didn’t work right. Then I reset everything, including my Linksys router and it still was off. I gave up for the day and the next morning called the cable company and yes…the modem needed to be reset.
Of course. I should have known or figured it out, but when we have problems like this, we think it’s our fault. Not always the case, but in this case I should have done the math early on and called the cable company right away, saving me frustration.
With all of that being said, if your internet is down and you don’t have Yellow Books anymore, calling us will maybe help you out down the line.
Office: 612-865-4475
Night/Weekend: 612-865-4475
Comcast and Norton Crashes Another Computer
We have found that “one size doesn’t fit all” here at Call That Girl!
Unfortunately, I have to blog about this yet again. On Saturday I had a networking colleague call in with the “black screen of death”. Her computer would not get past the black screen after it crashed the day before. Luckily, I know how to troubleshoot remotely with folks to get their computer back up and running, but she did not.
After we got her computer going again, I asked her what had happened that morning and she didn’t really know. So I did my “usual suspects” list of what can cause it (Antivirus programs or Windows Updates are the big two) and what do you know, after checking her computer, it appears Norton had done an update 19 hours earlier. I asked her when did this black screen happen. She stated that the day before at 5:00 she started having problems. She called at 11:30 on Saturday, so after doing the math…I have no one else to blame but Norton for causing this problem. I guess we could also blame Comcast as well. We can’t blame my client as they were offered it for free by Comcast. I don’t understand how Comcast can offer a product or service to their customers that is a well known product to crash computers.
My last blog about Comcast and Norton crashing computers, posted on Feb 12th has almost 30 comments on this same issue. It is the #1 blog if you search “Comcast Norton slow.” If you would like to see the blog, here is a link to it.
https://callthatgirl.biz/comcast-users-should-avoid-installing-nortonsymantec/
As much as I enjoy working with these folks, I always want to call Comcast and just complain that “one computer program doesn’t fit all”, meaning that they should check the computer’s age and memory to see if the Norton Security Suite can even hold the program and do it’s unscheduled sporatic updates.
If you are going to download the Comcast/Norton Security Suite or have already downloaded it, then please be aware of a few things.
- Your computer may be too old to run it
- You may not have enough hard memory
- You may not have enough hard drive space
Here is the link to Comcast’s site for the Norton installation requirements. I have read through this list and still think that 256 MG of RAM is not enough to run this robust program.
http://security.comcast.net/norton/resi/?cid=33_230
If you have any questions, feel free to comment.
If you want help with this slow down, please let us know!
If you want to get RID of NORTON and replace it with an awesome program, then click on the logo below. Install Malwarebytes instead. $25 for a lifetime license!
While having coffee this morning, I watched a virus infect my computer
I know for some of my readers they would be scared, but for a computer repair tech, it was pretty neat to see it happen. I’ve been waiting for this day, where my computer gets infected without me doing anything or clicking on anything. (Yes, I do have protection, but I keep it limited so I can get what you folks get so I can witness it).
Here’s what happened….
I left my computer on all night doing a back up, then I went to check my hotmail email and once I clicked on an email that should have been safe to open, I saw a window pop up at the top of the hotmail window, asking for permission to download. But right after, I saw the “download installer” start moving. I didn’t give it permission or press the install button. I watched for a bit to see if it would show me what I was installing, it never came, so I cancelled the installation.
Too late. Next thing I saw pop up on my screen was “Your computer may be infected, please check your antivirus software” and I knew I got infected right then and there.
- I didn’t click on anything
- I didn’t install anything
- It self-installed
- It started running without me doing anything!
Next thing that happened was a big green shield showed up in my system tray and then POOF, a huge window popped up and starting running an antivirus check. The virus I got was “Anti spyware Soft” (I believe). I have seen this before on client’s machines, so I was familiar with it. I could not believe what had just happened though, it was crazy to see it all happen. It was crazy to actually witness what happens to my clients!
I then fixed my own virus (just like how I fix your viruses) and went on with my morning. As a repair tech, we fix our own problems. We rarely if ever have to call a “helpdesk” or “repair company” but for you folks, you probably do need help to remove these.
We fix these problems and quickly. Your best bet is to write down our phone number in case your virus takes away your internet access. Mine didn’t work after the infection.
612-865-4475
Happy Saturday, it’s really just too cold here in Minnesota today!
