I have email in Outlook Express that I know has a picture attached to it but I can't see or open it, can I change something to make it work again?

In most cases yes, this is just a setting. Some of this can be attributed to updates to security of your system. If you have a decent anti-virus changing these settings should have no real effect as to the security of your computer. There are two things you want to look for, open Outlook Express > click on the word "tools" at the top of the Outlook screen > then click options and then select the "security" tab. View the image provided below to see a screen shot.

Click here to view example----->

What the heck happened to my internet explorer, everything has changed what do I do?

Yes it is true your internet explorer has changed if you do your Windows® Updates. Even though you didn't ask for Microsoft® gave you Internet Explorer 7.0. YOU DID NOTHING WRONG! The upgrade, if you will, did however take away some things you might be use to, like maybe your Menu, fortunately you can get that back and we are going to show ya how amongst other things. To get your normal text menu bar see image below

Click here to view example----->

Also there are some graphical changes for example you favorites were transferred when the upgrade happened they can be revealed by clicking on the star icon located here.

and you can add a favorite by clicking the star with the plus sign right next to it.

Changing your home page has a new feature allowing you to have multiple "Tabs", first tabbed browsing can be explained as:  A function in a Web browser that hides the current Web page behind a tab and presents a new blank window for continued browsing in a single browser pane. You can open a new "Tab" or page if you will by clicking the space to the left of the page you are looking at. See example below:

basically what that does is allows you to have multiple pages up at once! if you have 3 favorite pages say, weather, MSN and the Times Record all 3 can be opened all at once and you just click on the corresponding tab to see that page without having to go back and forth. Now as I mentioned earlier you can have multiple pages as your "Home Page Tabs". This is accomplished by clicking the little down arrow next to the homepage icon, and choosing Add or Change Home Page see below.

Then you can choose to change that particular page to your home page or add that page to your Home Page Tab

Click here to view example----->

My Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware is telling me it is about to expire, what should I do?

This answer really only applies to our clients, but the steps are the same for everyone just different websites. First in the case of Anti-Virus you have 2 choices. You can either give us a call and we will walk you through the steps to renew & just drop off cash or mail us a check for the cost ($30 for NOD32) or you can use your credit card to renew online through the manufacturer at www.eset.com yourself. If you have SpyDoctor Anti-Spyware and it has been less than a year you can either call us for the renewal or bring your system in and we will update you to SpySweeper (ranked #1 recently by PC World Magazine) at no extra charge. If You are not currently one of our clients or you simply have a different Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware and would like to try NOD32 or SpySweeper Please stop in or give us a call and we will set you up!

Phone: (309)582-5905    113 E Main St. Aledo

Should I upgrade to Vista™ and/or Office® 2007?

Good Question, no real easy answer! but we will try to attack these separately. 1st Vista™. While it is true that this is the newest biggest badest thing it is definitely not for everyone. There are many pro's & con's to this, for a more in depth article on this you can search the Web or go to our Vista Review Page. As for Office® it is really up to you. One of the things to remember when contemplating either upgrade is "What is it going to take as far as upgrades to my system, because in most cases to get the full effect of these new super programs you will indeed have to upgrade your memory or hard drive or both. Honestly it's the price that we PC users have to pay to look like MAC® which is really what it has been about for the last 10yrs. I digress, bottom line if you have a powerhouse system you need not worry, if you are like most of us say running a 2-5yr old system it just won't cut it. Having said all of that I must explain that Vista™ Basic will run on a system with 512MB of memory and a Pentium 4 class processor. The Ultimate version will take more and lets face it if you are going to spend the money for a new OS you might as well get the one with all the features (ergo the version that all of the press has been about). So now that I have totally confused you we'll nutshell it! Vista™ Basic is an upgrade and will work on some systems, Premium is the middle of the road and takes a little more oomph! Ultimate is the cream of the crop and to run right needs about 2GB of memory and a 2.0+GHz CPU with at least an 80GB hard drive (these are slightly higher than the minimum requirements Microsoft® has posted, but trust me you'll need it). Mind you this is just to run windows anything else you want to load will exponentially up the requirements.

***Recent Addition***

We have tested Vista a little more and have found some great features. Great features for us, for most people other than the snazzy new look it will be worth waiting for everything else to catch up. We did discover on one particular system that at that particular time we could not install QuickBooks 2007 (even though it said Vista compatible). I am confident these type of issues will be worked out in the near future, it is going to take some time to get the bugs out and also to get everyone on the same page. When this does happen it will be a pretty good OS.

AT THIS TIME ALL NEW DELL® DIMENSION &  INSPIRON SYSTEMS COME STANDARD WITH VISTA!

(so you don't have much of choice unless you want to pay $107 to have XP installed after the fact)

I am getting a "System Alert" saying I have Malware, what is this and what do I do?

Well I am sorry to say in most cases your system is infected with a little and very aggressive bug known by many names, but most commonly as "AntiVermin". The easiest definition of it is this. It is software that purports to scan and detect malware or other problems on the computer, but which attempts to dupe or badger users into purchasing the program by presenting the user with intrusive, deceptive warnings and/or false, misleading scan results. It typically uses aggressive, deceptive advertising and may be installed without adequate notice and consent, often though exploits. In a nutshell it's a pain in the kiester! We can possibly analyze the issue for you, to do this you will need a program called "HijackThis". This is a simple scanner program that basically gives you the opportunity to see what exactly is happening on your system at the time of the scan. If you are a novice I recommend that you set this program up, then click on the scan button, once done (which is usually really quick) click "Save Log". Once you have completed that email the log to us at support@aledopcworks.com We will analyze your log ASAP and get back with you on what we find.

other names for AntiVermin or AntiVermin like issues: Anti Vermins, Malware Wiper, Virus Blast, Virus Burst, Virus Bursters, Spy Heal, Virus Rescue, Pest Trap, System Doctor, SpywareStrike, SpyAxe, SpyTrooper, Malware Wipe, Adware Punisher, ProtectionBar, Spy iBlock and Zlob Trojan (the usual culprit for promoting all of these)

What are my choices for Internet Service?

Well unfortunately we are in a location that limits our choices greatly when it come to affordable "High Speed" internet. At this point & time we have the following and all the following may not be available at your specific location:

Dial-up Services

QC Online - QC Connect - Frontier - Earthlink* - People PC*

High Speed Services

Air Cast Wireless - Frontiernet DSL - Mediacom - Viola Home Telephone Co. (not available in city limits of Aledo...yet!)

How can I combat Identity Theft?

This is an awesome question and one I personally have researched and had a real close call on also. To put this into perspective here are some stats:

Identity Theft Statistics

• 10 million Americans will be a victim of identity theft this year.
• 26 Times More Likely To Be A Victim Of ID Theft Than A Violent Crime
• 1,826 Times More Likely Than To Be Murdered
• 21 Times More Likely Than To Have Your Home Burglarized
• 2 Times More Likely Than Being In an Auto Accident
• 13 Times More Likely Than Being Divorced
• 19 percent of consumers report that financial information, including a bank or credit card number, has been misused.
• 14 percent say they've had personal information such as a Social Security number or birth certificate taken.
• Identity theft prime targets are college graduates, those with annual household income of $75,000 or more, people residing
• in the West, and Americans between the age of 30 and 49.
• Identity theft hits 1 in 4 U.S. households
• Loss to businesses in the U.S. exceeds $50 billion annually due to identity theft
• On average, identity theft victims spend 175 hours of their personal time and $800 to clear their names
• On average it takes victims 14-16 months to clear their name
• One in six Americans (17 percent) say they’ve had financial information stolen (bank or credit card number)
• Three in four consumers (75 percent) agree that they would take more steps to avoid being a victim of identity theft if they knew what to do.
• Four in ten consumers (43 percent) think it is unlikely they will be victims of identity theft.
• One in three consumer (33 percent) think there is nothing they can really do to prevent identity theft.

Source: Federal Trade Commission, The Gallop Organization poll, Consumer Sentinel and Identity Theft Data Clearinghouse

Startling isn't it? there are a number of steps you can take but let's face it anything worth doing has a price. That price may include changing are habits or taking a few extra steps. There is an excellent program out there from the FTC (Federal Trade Commission, the Joy State Bank had us print some brochures for them that detailed some things you can do, so for those of you that do not bank at this bank here is the brochure:

For those of you that are more interested in a guarantee and ease of use I suggest LifeLock®

svchost.exe error, what the heck does this mean and how do I fix it?

Well many of you may be getting this error now, say "Thank You Microsoft" not all but many peoplestart receiving this error after the recent set of updates that came down. Looks something like this:

First lets explain what svchost.exe is : Svchost.exe checks the services part of the registry to construct a list of services that it must load. Multiple instances of Svchost.exe can run at the same time. Each Svchost.exe session can contain a grouping of services. Therefore, separate services can run, depending on how and where Svchost.exe is started. This grouping of services permits better control and easier debugging. Bottom line you kinda need it, which stinks if you are reading this because it's broke!!! Most all of our customers have temporarily fixed this error by turning off your Automatic Update feature. Here is a series of Visual aids to help with that. These are in order of appearance starting by Right Clicking on the "My Computer Icon and choosing Properties:

          1                        2                        3                        4

*****THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN SUBSEQUENTLY FIXED THROUGH MICROSOFT'S AUTOMATIC UPDATES AND SHOULD NO LONGER BE AN ISSUE****

Well guess what campers? This is about the same thing as the question above. It has to do with the file svchost.exe, rather than go into a long explanation about this just know that this question and the previous question can also be generated because of Spyware (most of our customers though have been just Windows issues). Microsoft does however have a fix for this particular error. I will tell you from experience that this fix will not hurt your system just as much as it may not fix the issue!!! but what the heck if this does not work review the suggestion to the question directly above this one. We will post an alert on our home page when an actual fix for the issue has been found or released!

Microsoft's Solution: KB894391

This can be a common occurrence while surfing on Dial-up internet. The problem can sometimes be linked to images or flash content that is considerably large. Dial-up is just not fast enough in some cases to grab it everything and show it to you all at once. The other issue could be the website itself as demonstrated by the image of IE's status bar below. You will find this on the bottom left corner of Internet Explorer. An error on the page can cause the same results as a slow connection. If you have an error 9 times out of 10 there is nothing you can do about it, it is a problem on the webpage itself. Still possible is Spyware, it may be a culprit for such things also. When in doubt give somebody else a call and have them check out the page, if they see it without errors or quickly (assuming they have the same type of internet as you do) then you know you may have an issue.

 The "Auto Disconnect" is a handy little tool for those who are on Limited Dial-up. It is designed to disconnect after a send or receive. Sometimes though it can disconnect a little too soon which causes your mail server [the place you are downloading your mail from] to believe there was a problem and it will try to re-download all mail again. Here is how you turn "Auto Disconnect" off in Outlook Express: