Congratulations, you got a new PC for Christmas. Or maybe you bought a new one for your business before the end of the year tax season runs out. Either way, do you know what the first thing you should do is? I mean after taking it out of the box, admiring its awesome shine and plugging it in. That’s right, you should make sure the anti-virus software is in place and up-to-date.
If your machine didn’t come with any protective software, or if you don’t like what it came with, there are some great alternatives available for free download. Note that most of these have both free and paid versions. Even if you would like the extra features available from the paid version, I would recommend trying out the free editions first. You may find out that the software doesn’t suit your exact needs or that the free version would do everything you want.
AVG Antivirus – “No-frills protection to meet your basic security needs.” This is the AV software I recommend most often and the one I use on my own machines.
ClamWin – ClamWin is a Free Antivirus program for Microsoft Windows 7 / Vista / XP / Me / 2000 / 98 and Windows Server 2008 and 2003. ClamWin is open source, so you can even get the code behind the product. An excellent product that is constantly updated and monitored by the open source community. There is even a similar product available for the Mac.
Microsoft Security Essentials – “Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.” Microsoft finally started producing security software for Windows, and it is actually quite good. Also, of course, coming from Microsoft it integrates quite well into the Windows environment.
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Tags: anti-virus, Security, spyware, virus
Question: What should I do with a keyboard when some keys seem to need an extra push? Is this it wear and tear or a cleaning issue?
Answer: It could easily be either simple wear and tear, or it may be that there is something stuck underneath the keys. If you turn the keyboard upside down over a trashcan, shake it, and beat on it gently, you may be surprised at the amount of hair, food particles, and other gunk that comes out. If that doesn’t solve the problem, you can often carefully pry the keys up and clean underneath them with something like hydrogen peroxide. The main requirement of the cleanser is that it is non-corrosive and doesn’t leave a residue.
For wear and tear situations or if all your cleaning fails to return your keyboard to normal performance, a regular replacement keyboard should only cost you about $20. This is not a bad investment at all for the major interface point between you and your computer.
Note: This is part of a column that originally appeared in The Daniel Island News in the weekly issue for November 18, 2009.
Tags: Daniel Island, keyboard, keys
I received a message recently from a client that one of their friends was sending the same email message over and over again. After a bit of investigation it turned out exactly as I thought – the friend is using Microsoft Outlook. Over the years I have seen many instances of Microsoft Outlook repeatedly sending out multiple copies of the same email. There are a number of different things that can cause this, but luckily they are all fairly easy to fix.
1) The most common cause of this problem is that there are too many items in the “Sent” folder. It sounds odd, but Microsoft Outlook can only handle a limited number of items in the Sent folder. If the program reaches its limit it cannot move files from the Outbox to Sent. When that happens it will continually resend any email that remains in the Outbox folder. The fix is simple: every once in a while you need to go in and clean out those old sent emails. If you really need to have a record of the emails you sent two years ago, archive them off to an external file so you still have them, but get them out of Sent. While you are at it, also remember to empty the trash.
2) If somehow there are multiple copies of Outlook running. Do you see more than one copy of Outlook in your task manager? If so, try closing all of them and then only opening one. Or, just restart your machine. If you are consistently having the multiple send problem though, this is unlikely to be the cause.
3) If the send/receive interval is very short, like one minute, and you are sending a very large file that takes over that interval to send then Outlook may start sending the email a second time. In this case the fix is to increase the send / receive interval. Note that this is usually only encountered when sending extremely large attachments like photos.
4) Rarely, but it can happen, the installed anti-virus software will scan outgoing messages and corrupt the queue thereby causing multiple copies to be sent. The solution here is to tell the anti-virus software not to scan outgoing messages. This can happen to all email programs, such as Outlook Express, so watch for it.
I hope this helps if you are having the Outlook multiple sending receiving email problem. If it does, or even if it doesn’t, I would love to hear from you with your experience.
Tags: email, maintenance, outlook
