Software sends warnings of false positives, telling you your computer has a virus when it does not.
Slow running computer
Computer freezing up
Computer crashes
Printer won’t work or its software cannot be installed
Other devices won’t install
You can’t get onto the internet

What?! Why?
All above symptoms can be caused by a real virus. Yet, from my years of experience, most of the time it is free software such as antivirus or antispyware installed on a PC which causes all the problems. AVG is one of the most common free antivirus software .

Nothing in this world is free. Free software manufacturers MUST make money somehow. They do not have many business models to choose from. Therefore, they usually make money by:

1. Charging for a premium product
2. Advertisements
3. Selling information

But forget about 2 and 3 for now. Let’s focus on the first one. If you are a regular computer user, you do not pick up many viruses. Once a month you may receive one via spam which you don’t open anyway. And if you don’t tend to browse certain “adult” sites or download “free” software or movies via torrents then you will not run much risk of getting infected with a virus. So how would an antivirus make customers pay? This is where false positives come in handy. Fear is the strongest motivator. If you see a warning that your computer is infected and you could lose all you valuable data, then of course your hand will reach for your wallet almost automatically.

The reasons why antivirus software can slow, freeze or even crash your computer may be unknown even to software manufacturer who may simply not have bothered to properly trouble shoot the product, whether because of a lack of time or money. It is not easy to make perfect software. It has to consume little system resources such as memory and CPU, which is especially difficult to accomplish with (antivirus) software that tracks every file access on your computer and verifies all your actions with virus signatures. No software manufacturer will tell you how much their software slows down your computer. Free software especially is not guaranteed. Also, it’s not easy to measure how well the antivirus will work on your specific computer with all your custom programs and Microsoft updates that come out every week. And after all, if everything works fine – you won’t pay. You only need antivirus software when something goes wrong. They would be crazy to make perfect software! And they do not.

That is why AVG and other semi-free antiviruses also are gold mines for some “professional” computer repair specialists. They just charge professional fees every time an antivirus causes issues with your computer.

The exception in this sea of false friends that are free antivirus software providers is Microsoft Internet Security. Microsoft makes profit by detecting counterfeit versions of Windows. Microsoft Internet Security will verify the legitimacy of your software first. If it is illegal, then it won’t install. Of course this software is not perfect ether. You still need an honest IT guy to repair other computer problems sometimes. Microsoft Internet security is built in by default in the new Windows 8. Is the age of “antivirus racketeering” coming to an end? I hope so.

Also manufacturers use different units of measurement. LaCie uses Mbits/s or MB/s (Mbits = 8 x MB/s). Apple uses Gbs. Gbs is the same as GBit/s = 8 x Gbyte/s, Gbs = 1000 Mbits/s.

USB 3.0 is a PC standard. Mac desktop (Mac Pro) or notebook (MacBook Pro) will work with USB 3.0 drives in slower USB 2.0 mode. Additional USB 3.0 adapter and software are required to use USB 3.0 advantage on Mac.

To check your computer for this specific DNS Changer malware visit  http://www.dns-ok.gov.au/ which was set up by the government.

If this bug is not fixed you may lose access to the internet from July 9^th.

For help, please contact me . I can fix it remotely.

Related links:

Smh:

ZdNet

An antenna booster power pack looks like a mobile phone or laptop power pack. Also, it is easy to get the power pack confused with the antenna booster. Antenna boosters are located on the antenna mast or inside the roof.

Very often, tenants take the antenna power pack with them when they move out – sometimes mistakenly and other times on purpose. When this happens, the people who move into the apartment after them are stuck with an antenna that does not work.

A TV antenna installermay try to persuade you to buy a new antenna mounting, which often costs more than $500 when all you need is a new antenna booster power pack which you can buy from us for $30. That’s far less than some antenna installers will try and get you to pay for the antenna mounting.

Even if you like to fix things yourself, installing an antenna booster power pack is best left to the professionals. This is because different antenna amplifiers require different types of powers packs. If the wrong power pack is chosen, the antenna booster could blow and the antenna could fail to work properly. If you do not know how to install antenna power packs, you should call someone who does. A qualified and experienced antenna man  will be much better suited for this type of job than you probably are.

Antenna mast amplifier power pack

You can purchase antenna power packs here. We also provide fast and accurate antenna repairs or installation services if you are located in the Sydney Northern Beaches area.

• Save Energy

An average PC consumes 200 W of power while on – just like a light bulb. Let’s say electricity costs an average of 20 cents per KWh in Australia. By turning your computer off for 12 hours a night you would save 12 hours x 20 cents x 0.2 KWh = 48 cents per day. That’s a grand total of $14.40 per month, which is ¼ of the cost of an average internet connection.

• Safer from Hacker Attacks?

If you worry at all about internet security, then you already know that if your computer is off it cannot be hacked or infected with malware. Nevertheless, malware is frequently seeded when you are actively using your computer and is activated when you restart your computer. The benefit of shutting down your computer for security is actually quite questionable.

Why leave your computer ON?

• Download Torrents or Large Files Faster

If you are in Australia and downloading torrents or large files, you may want to leave your computer on. Here are a few reasons why:

• Torrents are downloaded from other torrent users’ computers, known as peers. Both your computer and your peer’s computer must be on. The more peers you have, the better download speed you get. Let’s say someone seeded (uploaded) a movie in the US – it will likely be better available during the late afternoon across US time zones, when Americans are sitting at home with their computers on. That means you will want your computer in Australia to be on during the early hours of Australian daytime.
• Some Australian internet providers offer free, unlimited night traffic on certain accounts.
• Networks are less congested at nighttime.

Steps to reproduce bug and see the bug for yourself:
Open All bookmarks manager – Ctrl-Shift-B
Right click on a bookmark and Cut
Move to other bookmarks folder.
Right click Paste.
Result: Bookmark’s Tag cleared.
Expected: Bookmark’s Tag should stay

It is the same bug that existed in Firefox 3.6 Mozilla.

According to the policy of Firefox’s developers, the bug will not be fixed until the release of the of Firefox 7 . That means that Firefox bugs are considered “fixed” when they are not.
This allows plenty of time for people “enjoy” Firefox bugs and for hackers to exploit published Firefox bugs.

Before you download Mozilla Firefox, ask yourself: “can I trust Open Source software”?

PCWorld

Go to Control Panel – Network and Sharing Center. Choose homegroup and sharing options and click “Leave the homegroup”.

Why did this happen?

You probably attempted to disable Microsoft Home Group by changing “Home network” to “public network” in the “Network and Sharing Center”.
It is easy to assume that if you press on “Home network” under “Connect or disconnect” that Home Network will be disconnected. It will not.
Changing “Home network” to “Public network” in Network and Sharing Center does not disconnect or connect anything. It is just switching off/on windows firewall rules for MS Home Network.

Other related errors

Microsoft-Windows-HomeGroup Control Panel/Operational
Get Sharing Flags failed. Details: ???

2. Big Pond Wi-Fi could not be connected from the first go, rejected password, and lost connection intermittently.  Replacing BigPond ADSL WiFi router with a standard one fixed this issue.

3. Big Pond app and others Samsung apps froze, showing the message: “connectivity problem”. The Wi-Fi connection tested good at that time.

Solution:

Firmware update. Apparently, the firmware on the brand new Samsung UA55D8000 LED 3D Smart TV is outdated by 4 revisions.

Some apps still freeze after update occasionally, but not as badly.

4. Still the same problem as before the update: cannot sign-in to Big Pond movies via the BigPond Samsung app in Smart Hub. Shows “incorrect password”. Same password worked via PC or T-Box, of course.  Free Big Pond movies via the same app streamed fine.

5. T-Box gives better resolution then the Samsung Big Pond app.

So, it’s better just use the T-Box via HDMI for Big Pond movies and downloads.

6. YouTube Samsung app starts with most popular (stupid) clip every time you use it. Typing something in search is extremely difficult on the Samsung UA55D8000 remote control. It’s better to use a PC.

7. DLNA streaming from Windows Media Player works intermittently. It’s appearing and disappearing for no apparent reason. Movies do not play via Samsung UA55D8000, at least the mp4 format ones from a camera. I could view pictures via DNLA only. Client was not going to use this feature yet so I did not bother to troubleshoot.

8. Connection speed of 3Mbs is not enough to watch Big Pond TV. Too far from the exchange I guess (Bayview). Big Pond app suggests 3.5 mb/s at leaset. Fair enough. So why does Big Pond sell these packages at all? With an average ADSL speed of 6 mb/s you cannot watch movies online on two T-Boxes simultaneously. Especially if you have other computers in the house downloading something (like torrents or automatic Microsoft updates).

Artificial 3D worked well. Unfortunately no 3D free to air TV programs are available at this time to test it…

Despite these issues, the HD picture on the UA55D8000 model is fantastic; vivid, very bright contrast.

Summary:

You pay a lot for the latest technology and it does not always work. It’d better to wait until new features have been out for a while and all bugs are fixed.

The only feature I liked was a Samsung news aggregation app displaying news as a running line under the picture.

After all, a TV is a TV. The computer is the computer. Why join them? Do you need to download and watch movies on the big screen? Put your computer near the TV, connect the PC to the TV via HDMI and run Windows Media Player on the PC. Or get a wireless (WiFi) network media player for $100 or so.