Dave's Tech Blog
A Third Eye on Technology

For the last two years or so I have been using an open-source piece of software that was originally called “Gitso” (which I re-branded as “Virtual Dave” with permission from the authors) to establish remote desktop sessions with customers over the Internet.  I could fix PCs over the Internet using it.  This worked pretty well for most cases, especially when Windows XP was the OS being worked with.  But Gitso (version 0.6) relies on a seperate program called TightVNC (version 1.3), which doesn’t work well at all with Windows Vista or 7.  Video streams wouldn’t refresh, the connections were often dropped any time a UAC message appeared, so it could be rather cumbersome at times.  There hasn’t been any new work done on the software for almost 2 years now and I’ve gotten to the point where I simply can’t wait for a code upgrade, so I decided to go hunting for a more modern and professional alternative and I found one.

Today I’m happy to announce that I’ve replaced the open-source VNC-protocol-based software I was using with something better:  TeamViewer.  TeamViewer is one of the most popular remote desktop connection programs/services out there (with over 200,000,000 users world wide) and they offer a very cool service.  The way remote assistance sessions will work now is simply a matter of visiting the Virtual Dave page, clicking on the logo for your OS (Windows, Ubuntu or Mac OS; other Linux versions are available from TeamViewers’ website) and then running the file that you’ve downloaded.  You’re then presented with a TeamViewer window which will generate a fresh/random User ID number and Password, like this:

To give remote access to someone, you just tell them what those two randomly generated numbers are.  That’s it!  A super simple, super secure solution for remote tech support.  One thing to note is that TeamViewer QuickSupport does not install anything when you run it, so if you intend to use it again you’ll want to Save the file you’ve downloaded for future use.

I love open source software and maybe someday I’ll go back to using Gitso if it ever hits version 0.8 but at the moment it would seem TeamViewer is by far the best choice for my needs and I look forward to making use of it.

Heads up Norton users!  A headline hit the news last night about the confirmed leak of source code for the popular Norton Antivirus software by Symantec.  You can read the articles for yourself here and here.

For those who aren’t tech savvy, the word “source code” refers to the so-to-speak “recipe” for the development/creation of a program.  It is literally the instructions that are more or less written by computer programmers.  This kind of information is proprietary and is often a trade secret, much like the coveted ingredients list for Coca Cola or my moms apple pie.  If one were able to obtain such information, say a competator or the creators of compuer viruses, one might use this information to one-up the software or, more importantly, exploit design flaws to circumvent the software.  In short this means it is quite likely there will be a new breed of viruses on the horizon that will be capable of outsmarting Norton, rendering it useless and crippled.

Symantec has been trying to downplay the severity of this breach by stressing the age of the code, stating that the origin is a version of their software that dates back to 2006, or so we’ve been told thus far.  This is an attempt to defuse the concern by implying that their latest software is far different at its core and that there won’t be very much that is useful to virus writers because they still don’t have their hands on the latest blueprints.  But the reality of the situation is far less peachy than they would like to paint it.  In the world of computer programming software and even entire operating systems will retain a fair chunk of old code from previous versions simply because, well, it’s already been written and if it “works” then there’s little need to rewrite it from scratch.  I’m not saying source code is never rewritten, revised or updated from time to time, but when it comes to large programs such as Norton Antivirus that’s made up of tens of thousands of lines of code it could easily be argued that there is likely a good percentage of old code that has been retained for years without ever being modified.  It would be like having a castle or fortress that is under continuous construction and maintenance.  You can’t afford to tear the whole thing down every year and rebuild it from scratch, so instead what you do is build around and upon the existing structure and make repairs to the parts that need repairing the most.  This means that likely most of the fundamental structure is retained and knowledge of the construction of such a structure could be used by an enemy to find a previously unnoticed vulnerability.

In the interest of full disclosure I will have to admit that Norton hasn’t been on my list of recommended software since the late 90s when it was practically the only anti-virus software available.  It’s early bird status was followed by years of successful marketing and advertising, which lead to its continuous wide spread recognition of the software/brand name, giving the impression to novice computer users that Norton really is the best thing out there.  ”How could it not be good when its so popular?” they might ask themselves.

I am here to tell you that the number one problem I fix for people in this line of work is virus removal and far too often I see systems that are running Norton that have become utterly trashed by multiple viruses while Norton gives inaccurate scan results, claiming the system is clean and virus free.  This is particularly irksome to me because when you consider the wide spread saturation of their software along with the monetary cost to the users for the renewal every year you would have to expect the company to use their position and resources to everyones benefit.  Despite its wide spread usage and price tag it fails to survey new viruses and develop new definitions for capturing and stopping them in an effective manner and so many users never seem to get their moneys worth.  I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and accept the fact that there is no such thing as a “perfect” antivirus software, but you should expect to be given better treatment and results if you’re paying upwards of $70 a year for protection, especially when there are free alternatives out there that have been statistically shown to do a comparatively better job.  And to think these kinds of problems existed before some of their source code leaked.  Now that some source code has leaked and the potential for new viruses to be developed to exploit Norton itself are likely right around the corner I feel obligated to suggest that people avoid using it all together.  No amount of marketing or PR can change the consensus of most IT professionals who can see past all the BS and to me this incident is more than just one more nail in the coffin.

So what do I recommend instead of Norton?  I mentioned that there is “no such thing as a perfect antivirus” but there are alternatives that hold a higher reputation than Norton that cost a fraction of what Norton costs or even nothing at all.  In past blog entries I’ve mentioned Microsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes and Combofix and still recommend them, so here’s a little information about them.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free antivirus solution that Microsoft itself actually produces and it’s quite popular in the IT community right now for a couple of reasons.  I already mentioned that its free but it is also effective and not as resource intensive as other software.  There’s also a new stand-alone bootable version of it that’s going through public beta testing right now which is handy to have for particularly difficult viruses.  You can read more about it here.  Be aware that there has, in the past, been a rogue malware impostor simply called “Security Essentials 2010/2011/2012″ which people have confused with the real deal, falling victim to a trap.  You can download the real deal from here.

Along side MSE I also recommend users purchase the full copy of Malwarebytes for the one time payment of $25.  Some of the handy features it has is an active connection monitor which will automatically block your computer from attempting to connect to known malicious web servers.  It also features an active process monitor like a traditional antivirus and will help prevent a good number of rogue malware type software from infecting your system.  There is a free version of this available but its active monitoring features are disabled. I’ve been using it in the field for over 2 years now and it has worked incredibly well for helping clean systems that had already become infected.  You can read more about it here and download/purchase it from here.

Finally a tool I use quite often to help clean systems that have already become infected is a program called Combofix, which is free.  This isn’t so much a traditional antivirus that runs in the background as it is a stand-alone utility for scanning a system after it has become infected.  It is regularly updated so it’s best to not bother downloading and using it until you actually have to.  You can read more about it here and download it from here.

In conclusion I strongly advise my clients to not use Norton Antivirus because it’s one of the most over-hyped, over-priced products out there right now and with the news of parts of its source code being leaked it only stands to become an even less effective product that will do less to protect you than other cheaper alternatives out there.

Speaking of alternatives, there is always the option of picking an alternative operating system such as Linux.

Linux is a free open-source OS that comes in many flavors.  We are already seeing Android being adopted by smartphone and tablet users like crazy and it is just one example of a Linux based OS that is taking the world by storm.  But for desktop and laptop users there remains a need for a full fledged desktop OS and there are many out there to choose from.  My personal favorite is Ubuntu Linux which you can check out at ubuntu.com.  It’s not for everyone but I can easily say that it is a very ideal choice for the average user.  Keep an eye out for future posts; I intend to record a new introductory video for Ubuntu 12.04 when it is released this coming April.

As I mention in the post below, I haven’t made updates to this page in quite some time and I just noticed that the last song I posted an update about is not the last song I’ve posted most recently.  In fact a lot has happened since then.  To keep things tidy, here is a SoundCloud player with all my currently published tracks in it:

A few notes about the most recent additions:

• Sleepy Daemons:  Added just before the new year, this track started as a non-percussive ambient, creepy thing.  Out of the blue I decided to add a lot of fast drums to it and things just popped to life.  Not sure where it will go next but I’m waiting for auditions for vocals to come in.
• Untitled Doodle/Ringtone:  I did everything in it but wouldn’t consider it finished just yet.  It features my first guitar performance recording and some cool effects processing.
• The Hare:  Again, 100% self-produced.  This one primarily features a new filter effects found in Reason 6 called The Alligator, an effect that’s more formally referred to as a “trance gate”.
• Delirium:  This started as a simple piano melody, which I put through the Alligator.  I then added a somewhat hiphop drum loop which I played with using a roll-echo effect to ramp the echo on and off.  This was eventually replaced with live drums, performed by r00m237.  Vocals came in by complete surprise thanks to a lady in California who goes by the name Deanna (thank you!).
• Document 22:  This features flute by Matt Unger and some guitars by Matt Christensen.

All my music is available for free under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.  You are free to download, share, remix and use this music for non-commercial purposes.

I don’t write blogs much these days but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing blogs the golden rule is to make them useful and valuable to people.  As a sort of philanthropic gesture I am now going to reveal a few tricks I use in the field when repairing systems that have already become infected with viruses or malware.  Perhaps these tips will save you some money during these dark economic times.  I can’t promise that these tips will work for you but for the DIY user who’s not afraid to get their hands dirty, it might prove to be very useful.  So lets get right to it:

Phase 1:  Safe Mode (with networking?)

Almost every version of Windows out there (from Windows 95 all the way up to the most recent Windows 7) have a hidden menu you can access at boot that gives you access to a diagnostic profile called Safe Mode.  Safe Mode is a sort of back door mode into Windows that loads the absolute (or nearly) bare minimum of device drivers and background services.  It’s sort of a bare bones environment that is suitable to start your repair from primarily because most viruses aren’t auto-started by the system in this mode, but it’s not perfect.  More on that in a moment.

To access Safe Mode you need to press the F8 key on your keyboard at a VERY specific time.  Typically when you turn your computer on you’ll see a screen that either has the logo of the manufacture of the PC or perhaps some generic startup relating to your BIOS.  At some point that all goes away, your screen will be black for about 3 seconds, and then Windows will proceed to boot with the little scroll bar loading away.  It’s during (or just before) that 3 second window of blackness that you need to start tapping the F8 key.  If done correctly, you’ll be presented with a menu that looks like this:

You’ll use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the highlighting selector bar.  Typically I will select Safe Mode With Networking, as this allows me to access the Internet and download utilities as well as give these utilities access to definition updates for itself later.

After you select Safe Mode With Networking and press Enter your screen will be bombarded with a slathering of strange and mysterious words…

Don’t worry, this is normal.  (Note: If instead of this screen above you get another menu asking what version of Windows you want to boot, just press Enter again).

Eventually you will get to the familiar blue colored user login screen and you might see an account called Administrator shown there that you’ve never seen before.  If you do, go ahead and select it to log in as “Administrator”.  Otherwise, select your own user name.

Once you’re logged in you have a few options you can take.  The safest way to get started is to actually bring a copy of your utility software with you on a thumb drive or CD to install it from, instead of downloading via a web browser.  The reason it’s not a good idea to try and download via a web browser is because a lot of viruses tend to wrap themselves around a browser’s EXE file so that when the browser starts, so does the virus.  This could potentially happen with a lot of other software so it’s best to try and resist the temptation to run any programs except for the cleaning utilities we’re about to install.

Phase 2:  Cleaning

There are only three pieces of software I typically use with great success in the field for removing viruses and malware.  They are:

• Malwarebytes
• Combofix
• Microsoft Security Essentials

All of the above are free with the exception of Malwarebytes, which functions with all its features on a 30 day trial when you first install it (note that you will see an error message appear when you tell it to start the trial while in Safe Mode; this is normal and you can ignore the error by clicking the OK button when it appears).  To keep the full version running you have to buy it for the low one-time payment of $25 and I strongly recommend it.  Apart from these three the only other tool I use is Google, which I’ll use to lookup exact phrases found within suspicious malware to see if I can find other people talking about that particular virus somewhere online and hopeful discover what unique thing they did to remove it.  Fair warning:  Your mileage may vary.

I typically start by installing Malwarebytes first (however I have had one experience where I wasn’t able to do this until after I ran Combofix so you might need to flip the order of these two tasks), applying the most recent update for it and then running a full scan, removing all infected objects it finds.  A typical scan can take around a half hour to do.  When it’s finished, you just need to click the “Show Results” button and then make sure the results listed all have check marks next to them and then click “Remove Selected” in the bottom left.  If an object doesn’t have a check mark when you first view the results it means Malwarebytes thinks it could be a false-positive result.  Use your best judgment and google to determine if either the file is malicious and/or if the file is a necessary part that can be removed without grief.  A reboot will likely be required when it is finished.  Be ready to hit F8 again when you do this so you can come back into Safe Mode and continue your work.

One thing I’ll often do while I’m waiting for a Malwarebytes scan to complete is take a look at the MS Config utility and see what items are enabled to auto-start when you boot into the system.  To access this, click Start, then click Run (or just click into the search box if you’re using Windows 7) and type in “msconfig” without the quotes into the box and click OK.  Then click the Startup tab at the top.

In this startup list are programs that are told to run right away when you first log into your system.  Almost all of these items are non-essential and to be on the safest side you could probably get away with unchecking all of these items, but that’s usually overkill and might rob you of some convenient feature you’d like to have.  Look carefully down the list for items that have empty path names, or very bizarre characters in their name… I have to admit that at this point experience with this stuff comes in to play.  If you don’t know what something is you could look it up by name with google on a separate computer before deciding to uncheck it  Alternatively, you could use the uncheck-all-the-things strategy and then go back later to add check marks back into the few items you know you need enabled.  You can also check out the Services tab which is to the left of the Startup tab, check the box that says “Hide all Microsoft items” and then use the same judgment to decide if there are third-party services running in the background that don’t need to be.  Google is your friend here for helping to determine if a service is useful or not.

Another thing I’ll do while waiting for a scan to complete is open the Add/Remove Program (Programs & Features) applet from the Control Panel to view all the software that’s been installed on the system.  I target toolbars of any kind first, next by software that is unfamiliar to the user.  Again, google is a useful reference here because you don’t want to remove something that’s known to not be malicious.

The next step is to run Combofix which you can find a tutorial about by clicking here.  It is pretty strait forward:  double-click on the combofix.exe file that you downloaded and follow the on screen instructions.  It’s own scan will also take about 30 minutes or so but it is very sensitive so once you kick it off, don’t touch the computer until its finished.   There is almost no interaction required with the software and it will automatically remove anything malicious it finds, producing a log with a lot of interesting jargon at the end that you can forward on to an expert for further analysis if you’d like.

After all this I’ll typically reboot the system and let it boot normally and then install Microsoft Security Essentials, running a full scan with it right after and checking to make sure the trial mode has been enabled on Malwarebytes.

If all of the above didn’t work, something I’ll try next is to reboot back into safe mode and use the control panel to create a new user account, then log off and log back in under that new account and repeat all the same steps above.  The reason this might help is because viruses tend to damage registry entries for accounts that existed when it found and infected the system.  Because we’re creating a new account in an environment that hopefully didn’t auto-launch the virus, we can then create a fresh account with it’s own default settings and preferences that hopefully won’t be manipulated by the virus.  This kind of problem could also be reversed using the System Restore utility but I’ve found that a lot of times (not always) I try to use this utility none of the restore points are any good.  I wouldn’t be surprised if previous restore points are destroyed by certain viruses making it even more difficult to undo the damage done.  In situations like that I’ve occasionally just created a new user account and migrated all the important user data (documents, etc.) from the old account to the new account, deleting the old one in the end because it’s irreversibly broken.

One last tip I’ve run across in a training video for a competitor of mine who will remain unnamed is to shut the system off by force instead of doing a soft reboot during this cleaning process.  In other words, hold the power button down for 5 seconds and then turn the computer back on after 20 seconds.  The reasoning behind this is that there are a few viruses out there that alter the shutdown script of events that take place during an ordinary shutdown and one of the events it injects into the script is to reinstall the virus during shutdown from a rogue location, as a Plan B so even if the live version of the virus is caught and removed it might be able to recreate the file from an encrypted copy of itself elsewhere.  If you decide to do this my only advice would be to backup the entire hard drive before doing so.  It’s technically dangerous… but probably not THAT dangerous… it’s best to remain on the safe side and not use shortcuts.

Finally a word about a couple of common viruses in particular I’ve run into in the last year:

A few of these viruses going around exhibit the symptom of making all your files and shortcut icons on the desktop vanish.  This is often done with a combination of changing the file attributes to enable the hidden flag, or by moving the files to a hidden location.  It is sometimes also conjoined with malware that tries to frighten you into thinking your hard drive is on the verge of failure, or at the least, claims to be antivirus software itself.  The goal of all such attempts is to get you to give up your credit card number.  Please don’t.

I’ve had great success removing the virus that causes these files to go missing but after it’s been removed it’s not always so easy to reverse the damage and restore the missing icons.  Fortunately there is one program out there that, for the most part, has been able to do this for me very simply and it’s simply called “Unhide”.  Use this program after going through all the above steps to be sure you’ve removed traces of the virus and hopefully it will get all of your stuff back for you.  You can download Unhide from here.

One other common symptom I’ve seen certain viruses exhibit is hijacking certain registry entries to alter file associations, specifically one which makes your computer forget what to run EXE files with, asking instead what program you’d like to open another program with.  I have found that in Windows 7 one trick of working around this is to right-click on a program shortcut and then click Run as Administrator.  This uses a separate registry association which hopefully has not been affected by the virus.  Using this Right-Click>Run as Administrator trick you should be able to run your scanning utilities like Malwarebytes and Combofix from within Safe Mode.

Phase 3: Prevention

Now that we know how much of a pain these kinds of viruses can cause we should talk a little about where they come from and the different ways they can end up on your computer.  I wrote a much longer blog about this topic which you can read here.  Basically it boils down to this:

• Make sure you install all available software updates for Windows itself as well as 3rd party software and plugins like Adobe Flash, Acrobat and Java (among others).  Updates are your friend and help to patch recently discovered security vulnerabilities.
• Pay attention to links people send you in emails.  It’s quite possible their email account has had its password stolen and is being used by a robot to send spam email with links to malicious websites out to everyone in their address book.  Warn your friends if you suspect their account has been compromised and suggest they change their email accounts password before following the steps above to attempt to remove a potential infection.
• Use good anti-virus software.  As recommended above, I prefer MSE and Malwarebytes.  Combofix is only to be used as an emergency utility; it doesn’t have a real-time monitoring feature.
• Consider using a software firewall to block unwanted inbound traffic and unexpected outbound traffic.  Zone Alarm Free is an excellent choice for this.
• Use an ad-blocking plugin to further reduce the chances of a virus sneaking in through a flash-based advertisement.  Ad-Block for Firefox is a great option.  You can also get it for Google Chrome from here.
• Along with these plugins, consider using a better browser.  Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have both become superior to Internet Explorer, especially in terms of security.
• Avoid installing “toolbars” for your browser.  If you install one by accident, disable it in your browser or better yet uninstall it via your control panel.
• Avoid using P2P file-sharing software like Frostwire or MP3Rocket.  These methods of file sharing do not have any form of user moderation and anybody can wrap a virus inside a file then name it something innocent/sensational looking to trick people into downloading it and installing a virus.
• Consider adding a parental filter to your computer; you don’t need kids for this.  Having a web filter like K9 Web Protection can be helpful to block your computer from accidentally trying to connect with a known malicious server.
• Lastly, though this is too extreme for most people:  Consider switching to Linux on your desktop.  Linux is free, open-source and is even more secure than MacOS.  Seriously.

I hope this advice has been helpful.  Please leave comments or suggestions about other tips and tricks you use to help remove malicious software in the comments section below!

Recently I had the rare opportunity to tackle a serious problem with a Macbook Pro. For some reason an update locked up midway through and the owner had no choice but to shut the laptop off abruptly after it had been siting on for several hours not making any progress in the update and with no available option to cancel/revert.  I suspect the hard drive is beginning to wear out and failed to read/write something important, locking the system up completely.  When they attempted to power their system on next time it remained stuck with the startup screen (Apple Logo with the rotating “gears” below).

Apple includes a copy of their OS on discs you can boot from to run the included  Disk Utility. This checks the file system for integrity issues, file permission errors and corrects them for you. Unfortunately doing this did not solve this particular problem and the laptop remained stuck. Even booting into MacOS’s “Safe Mode” (by holding down SHIFT right after the startup chime is heard) didn’t work.

Most guides I’ve found on the Internet will tell you to send the system to an Apple Expert at this point. While there is a slim chance they might be able to revert the changes or correct the problem that’s causing a system to lockup while booting, an alternative approach is to do what is termed a “destructive recovery”, where the hard drive is erased and the OS reinstalled on a clean slate so to speak. Before you do that of course you’ll want to pull your own personal files/data off the drive. You can’t do this with the Disk Utility provided by the MacOS install discs, but there is another “utility” that’s totally free to download that you can do this with: Ubuntu Linux.

What You Need

1.  A blank CD
2.  Another computer to burn that CD with
3.  Ubuntu Linux ISO image file
4.  An external hard drive (preferably one that’s formatted to Windows NTFS; I will explain why in a moment)

Burning Ubuntu to a CD

First, visit the link to Ubuntu’s website.  Click the Get Ubuntu button and follow the steps to download the 32-bit version of Ubuntu.  You’ll be asked to download a large (about 700MB) ISO image file.  Once downloaded, you need to burn this file to a CD.  If you are burning this CD with another Mac you can follow this guide that will show you how to use the built in Disk Utility app to burn the Ubuntu ISO file you have to download from www.ubuntu.com.  And if you are burning with Windows, there is a “Show Me How” button you can click on at Ubuntu’s download page that will show you how to use a program called InfraRecorder to burn the ISO file.

Booting Ubuntu On Your Mac

Once the CD is burnt you will need to boot from it.  I have found the best way to do this on a Mac is to turn the system on and immediately after you hear the classic “chime” sound, hold down the Option key on your keyboard.   (Tip:  If you are using a Mac with a Windows keyboard hold down ALT instead.  Also, if you need to eject a disc from the system, hold down F12).  Eventually you will see this:

Double-click on the CD that says “Windows”.  We know it’s not actually Windows, but Mac doesn’t know any better… or Ubuntu isn’t presenting itself correctly.  Anyhooo…

If all goes well (and I can’t promise that it will but it did for me) you will see the Ubuntu boot screen appear (pictured above) with the purple background.  Please be patient as this is a slow process; loading an entire OS from a CD is not a quick and snappy ordeal.  Eventually Ubuntu will load up the Ubuntu installer screen.  At this point click “Try Ubuntu”.

It will proceed to load the rest of Ubuntu Linux right off the disc.  Eventually you will see something like this:

Accessing Your Data

First, we need to browse the hard drive inside the Mac.  You’ll do this using the Places menu.  When you click Places, you will see a list of several common folders like Home Folder, Pictures, etc.  Look past those in about the middle of the list and you should see an item called Macintosh HD.  We will mount it by clicking on it in the places menu.  (Note: It would also be a good idea to repeat this step to mount the external hard drive or media you intend to copy your data on to at this time, just to get mounting it out of the way).  The next thing you’ll see is the contents of the Macintosh HD volume.  Unfortunately there is a lot of data in this drive that you won’t be able to access/read right away due to file ownership and permissions.  But there’s a way around that.

You need to gain full administrative access to the hard drive so you don’t have to worry about file permissions getting in the way.  It is also recommended that you use an NTFS formated external hard drive for this because it will help avoid further file permission issues later down the road when you move your data back.  (If you use a Linux/Unix/Mac formatted external drive the files you copy are going to change owners from you to the Linux superuser account which means you’d have to change ownership of every file after copying them, so it’s just easier to scrape all those attributes off the files by sending them to an NTFS filesystem which does not store those descriptors).

Gaining Full Administrative Access To Your Files

To gain administrative access to the hard drive and browse the contents, click Applications>Accessories>Terminal in the upper left.  A new window will appear with a black background and white text.  From here type:

gksu nautilus

…and press the Enter key.  This will open the Nautilus file browser as the SuperUser (aka, “root” user).  It is exactly the same window you saw open when you mounted the drives from the Places menu, but keep in mind that this new file browsing window that has appeared is the ONLY window with root access.  Any others that were already open are still running at the standard user level, so you can’t drag files from the super users browser to any others unless you open a second terminal window and start a second instance of Nautilus in the same manner.  But it’s pretty easy to do all the browsing you need with the one window using the Edit>Copy and Edit>Paste menu options.

Note: The rooted instance of Nautilus will only let you browse volumes that have already been mounted.  If you’ve not already accessed your external hard drive or the Macintosh HD hard drive using the Places menu as mentioned earlier, do so now and then close or minimize those windows to get them out of the way, leaving the super-user instance of Nautilus running up front.

Copying Your Data

Once you’ve started the Nautilus file browser as the super-user, you can click on “Macintosh HD” in the left hand side of the Natilus window to begin browsing your hard drive.  For most users the most important data is going to be stored in the Users folder.  Simply scroll through the Macintosh HD hard drive to find a folder called Users.  If you browse through it a little you will quickly be familiar with the files you are looking at inside the Users folder.  You just need to copy everything out to the external hard drive.  To makes things simple and quick it’s easy to just copy and paste the entire Users folder to an external hard drive (as mentioned, NTFS drives are recommended purely to make the copying of data back to the computer easier after the OS has been reinstalled).

Also note: Stopping after the Users folder alone may not be adequate enough for some advanced users who may have data stored in other folders, such as the /var folder if the system was an Apache server.  Details about where your production/business critical data is auto-saved should be researched from the developers/publishers of said software or their respective README.txt/help documentation before proceeding to format your hard drive as all data will be lost after formatting.  In almost all cases everything will be in the Users folder, but fair warning to you if you are not certain.  For more information, refer to this official help article about application data storage locations.  By the way, the ” ~/ ” folder they refer to is shorthand for “your home folder”, which is inside the Users folder; you will find that everything they list is stored somewhere in there so you should be good with not copying anything else.

Reinstalling Mac OS

Now with all the user data backed up on an external hard drive you can restart the system with your original Mac OS install discs and proceed to use the Disk Utility to erase and re-format the hard drive and then proceed with installing the OS on a fresh partition.  Just press that Option key again to bring up the boot menu and boot from the MacOS install disc 1.  I would strongly recommend searching for and installing any and all available updates available for the OS and software before moving data back to the computer.

Moving Your Data Back

I have found that moving data back isn’t going to be as simple as moving the entire Users folder at once because Mac doesn’t like to let you merge folders.  You will be able to copy and paste the files and folders in groups to get everything back to where it was originally.  Alternatively you can use this tool called Folder Merge for Mac to help you copy all your files and folders back into place while skipping the ones that can’t be overwritten in their place.

If all goes well, you should be able to backup the data from your Mac and reinstall the OS in a matter of about 3 hours, most of which is a just a matter of sitting and waiting for things to finish.

Troubleshooting:  What if the drive isn’t shown?

In newer versions of Ubuntu (verions 11.04 and newer) the new Unity desktop interface is used, so there is no Places menu to open up.  However, you can still open your Nautilus file browser by clicking on the Home Folder icon.  Once open, look along the left side of the screen to see if your drive is shown among the other popular locations.

If it is not shown it may be necessary to mount the drive manually via a terminal window.  To open a terminal in Ubuntu 11.04 or later, click the Ubuntu button at the top of your dock bar to open the search panel and type in “Terminal”.  You’ll see the shortcut for Terminal appear which you can just click on to open up a terminal/command prompt.

Once the terminal is open you’ll want to get a list of the drives Linux is able to see.  To do this, type in the command:

sudo fdisk -l

The output will look something like this:

Starting at the top Linux is telling me that it sees an 80 gigabyte sized hard drive and has called the drive /dev/sda.  Within that hard drive are three partitions, called /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda5.  Below that we see there is a second 2000 gigabyte sized external hard drive and it has been called /dev/sdb, with only one partition called /dev/sdb1.  If we were looking at a Mac we’d likely only care about /dev/sda partitions and would only be interested in mounting whichever of these partitions is the largest.  You can quickly determine which is the largest of them all by checking under the Blocks column.

Once you’ve determined which partition is the largest we need to mount it.  For the sake of example, lets pretend that /dev/sda1 needs to be mounted.  Before we can do that we need to create a temporary placeholder folder for this partition to be aliased with after mounting.  To create an empty folder on your desktop called “temp” you would type:

mkdir ~/Desktop/temp

(Note: all linux terminal commands are case-sensitive).  Now we can mount /dev/sda1 into this temp folder with the following command:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 ~/Desktop/temp

You can close or minimize the terminal window at this point and find the folder we created called temp on your desktop and open it.  Within should be the contents of your Mac hard drive, and you can now begin copying data from there into an external hard drive or other external media.  When you are finished it’s easiest to use the shut down menu in the top-right corner to shut the computer down (which will eject the disk for you).  If you were successful at extracting your data the next step would be to boot from your MacOS disc and proceed with using the Disk Utility to remove/format the existing partition(s) on your Mac’s hard drive, create a new partition and install MacOS on top.  I would recommend disconnecting your external hard drive before doing this so you don’t risk deleting your external hard drives partition by accident.

Good luck!

Just wanted to put a quick shout out to the person who recently sent me a request for an estimate on the cost to replace the LCD panel on their Acer Aspire D255 netbook. I am sorry but the email address that you left for me to respond to must have been mistyped. This is partially my fault for not having a more robust “Ask Dave A Question” box that asks the user to confirm their address by having them type it twice. I’ll be working on upgrading this box soon to add this feature. In the mean time, in the off chance you happen to see this post, the cost to replace your screen would be $30 labor plus the cost of the part, which in your case is $65, for a total of $95. There are slightly different models of the D255 out there so I would have to see the laptop to confirm the part number before ordering. Please contact me again if you are interested.

And just so everybody else out there reading this knows, I now charge a flat rate of $30 labor per device to replace LCD panels on all netbooks and laptops!

I recently bumped into someone who is a big fan of Skype and uses it to save money at his businesses, as land-lines cost far more for businesses than they do residential customers. He’s seen real savings by using it and was wanting to migrate his company completely away from the local telephone services and go 100% Skype. One of the hitches here was the necessity to have a fax line that you could send and receive faxes on.

Unfortunately there is no good way to send a fax from your computer using Skype. The audio compression that takes place when sound is transmitted from one side to the other undergoes a great deal of detail loss, and this results in error correction protocols taking over and throttling the speed of the fax modem down to a crawl. So in theory, you could use Skype somehow to send a fax but it would literally take forever.

Enter in online faxing services. These are companies that allow you to send and receive faxes over the Internet. In doing some research to find one that performed well and at a modest price I stumbled across someone recommending a company called PamFax.  It was not long after first trying their service that I was pretty sure I could close the book on this egg hunt.

PamFax is delivered to you as a small program you install on your system and use to create your account.  They offer a free membership program which allows you to send three pages for free to see if you like their product or not.  I decided to sign up for the free account and then used a nearby fax machine where I work to send a fax to my new PamFax number.  The instant the fax was sent my PamFax account page auto-updated itself to tell me I had received a new fax.  Faxes are put into an inbox, just like emails, and each fax is downloadable in PDF format.

Sending a fax is also very easy.  You can either use the PamFax program to upload files you want to send or use the virtual PamFax printer device to send your documents to PamFax when you press Print in any application.  Here’s a video that demonstrates how easy it is to send a Fax:

Of course there will be times when you need to fax a physical document that’s already on paper.  The best way to do that is use a flatbed scanner to scan the documents into a PDF file.  You can do this very quickly with any number of Scanner-to-PDF style programs and any scanner.  A free one I’ve found to work well is aptly called Scan to PDF by Ironfist Software.  It is a free utility that you can use to scan multiple pages and then save all of them as one PDF file, which you’d then upload to PamFax for faxing to one or multiple recipients.

The cost for sending a fax varies based on whether or not you want to pay a monthly fee.  If you don’t pay a monthly fee it will cost you 13 cents per page sent and you will not be able to receive faxes.  If you step it up to the “Basic” package you will be able to receive unlimited faxes at a monthly rate of $5.84 plus 13 cents per page sent.  The professional package costs $8.80 a month, includes 20 free page out per month (9 cents per page after that), allows you to keep your received faxes online forever, and gives you the ability to administrate employee access to the account and regulate their limitations.  So there’s something for everybody.

In the end I was pretty impressed with how easy it was to install and use PamFax.  What’s even more impressive to me is their support for Linux. It’s rare that I have to send a fax but the next time I need to I know exactly what I’m going to use.  Good bye Kinko’s!

Did you know that dust can act as a weak conductor of electricity?  This is something my dad taught me a long time ago while working under the hood of a car, taking care to clean the surface and leads of the battery off so that it was spotless.  He said that if dust were allowed to build up on top of the battery it would eventually discharge the thing and you wouldn’t be able to start your car.  Granted, it might have to sit for a few days for that kind of problem to occur but it does occur, and similar problems can happen with computers.  In fact I’ve encountered a few computers that had dust built up inside of them for a long time which did result in the CMOS battery discharging.  This caused a problem if the power went out because the role of the battery is to keep track of the time, date, and a lot of other hardware settings in the BIOS.  If these are forgotten, you’ll get a couple errors messages when you turn your computer on after the power has gone out and your computer will think it’s the year 1980-something.

In the last month I’ve fixed three different computers just by blowing dust out of them.  These systems would turn on, reach the POST screen (which typically is the logo of the manufacturer or the BIOS) but would just hang there indefinitely.  Blowing the system out with a can of air (or in one case an air compressor) was all it took to bring the systems back to life.  Dust is just as much of a problem for laptops, but not so much for getting the motherboard dirty (because they’re fairly well sealed off from the outside air) but for clogging the heatsink fins so that the cooling fan can’t push air past the fins to keep your CPU cool.  The side effects of this are a noisy laptop that runs hot, or even powers itself off abruptly as a failsafe.

All CPUs these days have internal temperature sensors with a threshold for a certain amount of heat.  If that threshold is exceeded the processor will either throttle itself down in speed to the point where the system runs far slower than usual or the BIOS takes over and just shuts the system off completely.  So if you have a hot, noisy laptop that shuts off every now and then, you probably need to go buy a can of air.

You’ll find cans of air in the electronics section of just about any major retail store.  You need to be careful with these things because they contain a liquid that itself can conduct electricity and short your electronics out.  To prevent the can from shooting this stuff out it’s important to always hold it level and upright, not sideways or upside down.  This liquid also has an extremely low boiling point, which causes it to feel very cold when it’s not under pressure.  You can feel this by touching the can after using it for a little bit, and even hear the liquid boiling away inside to replenish the can with more compressed gas.  Something fun kids like to do with this stuff is spray it at glass while holding it upside down to produce a cold frost on any surface.  So you need to be careful not to do this to your own skin by accident or you might get a little frost bite.

These things can go pretty quick so I like to shoot the air in short bursts to try and save air while maintaining higher pressure.  Be sure to use that little straw that comes with these things to get a more focused shot of air into the areas that need it most.  I would also recommend you do this outdoors as the dust particles could make you sick if you inhale them.  Be sure to shoot everything, especially the inside of the power supply (that grey box your power cord plugs into) from all sides.

On laptops the only thing you can really dust out is the heatsink and your keyboard.  Some laptops have exhaust vents that only come out the back of the laptop, while others come out the side.  What I like to do is position the laptop in such a way so that I can shoot air directly into this exhaust vent against the normal flow of air produced by the fan while the laptop is running.  Having the laptop on while you do this is a good thing because the fan will help blow dust you’ve loosened back out and also help break it apart into smaller particulates that can fit through the fins.  Also shoot air into the intake of the fan.  Go back and forth between the exhaust and intake a few times until you can’t produce any more dust with your air.  Just beware that if you have never done this before you might have so much dust built up on the backside of the heatsink that loosening it up might cause a large chunk to get wedged in the fan, preventing it from spinning.  This isn’t much of a problem if you can remove the bottom panel from the laptop to access the intake of the fan but not all laptops let you do this and you might have to dismantle the entire machine to reach the fan and pull the fat dust bunny out with some tweezers.

I like to keep a can of air in the glove compartment of my car so I’ll always have something on hand to clean a system out when I make house calls.  But you should keep a can nearby and clean your system every 3 to 6 months to help improve air flow in your system so it can stay cool as well as reduce the possibility of something important being shorted out.

From the looks of things, I’ve been writing a lot more music than I ever have before in my life and to help keep it all organized for you I’ve created a new page to host it from.  You’ll find a link to “dave’s music” on my websites main menu, and you can go directly there now by visiting http://www.davestechsupport.com/music

From here you’ll have access to my SoundCloud uploads which are finished projects, learn about my other works in progress and read a little about the making of some of my songs.  It’s not much to look at right now but I’m going to try and make things look a little more fancy in the coming months.

My uncles’ brother-in-law contacted me a couple weeks ago and asked if I might be up for trying to write some background music to go along with a magic show he will be performing at the Rialto Theater in Loveland, Colorado tonight.

You can read more about the show by clicking here.

After hours of drinking stimulants and skipping sleep, this is the result, weighing in at roughly 13 minutes in length.  It is actually a combination of a new song with an old one that I originally wrote while living in Iraq during the later half of 2009.  It is a long song so you might wanna go to the restroom before you hit play.  Feel free to download the WAV of this song for top notch quality.

Magic Show by David Steinlage