Computer Repair Tips for everyday users

Before you attempt to do anything mentioned here or elsewhere, please remember to always back up your data.

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Thursday, April 29, 2010

Monitoring and controlling Web access

The World Wide Web is a wonderful source of information that can be useful to employees in doing their jobs. But it also has the potential to be a big source of trouble when employees visit the wrong sites from company computers. Some of the possibilities are obvious:

• If pornographic sites are displayed on company computers or the images are downloaded and subsequently viewed by other employees, the company could be subjected to a sexual harassment lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for creating a "hostile work environment."

• If child pornography is viewed or downloaded to company computers, this could result in a criminal investigation and seizure of the computers in question, as well as arrest of one or more persons and negative news media attention for the company.

• Many questionable sites, including porn sites, music download sites, hacker sites and "warez" (illegal software) sites, contain active content that can download viruses or other malicious software to the user’s computer with his/her knowledge. Viruses that are downloaded this way can be spread throughout the company network or even beyond the local network, or the system can become an entry point for attacks on the network or be taken over to act as a "zombie" to be used in attacks on other networks.
These are only a few of the dangers presented by uncontrolled access to the Web. But how can you address the problem without taking away Web access completely? Here are some solutions:

• Many firewalls have the capability of monitoring users’ Web access, so that you can see who visited what sites, and when.

• Web content filtering software, such as Websense (www.websense.com) and SurfControl (www.surfcontrol.com) can block Web sites based on lists of reported offensive sites in many categories, by IP address/domain name, or by keywords.

• Browsers can be configured not to allow download of executables, to block Active X, Java and other active technologies, to help prevent "drive-by downloads" from sites that may not be blocked by filtering software. Administrators can use Group Policy on Windows machines to apply browser security settings and prevent users from changing those settings.

Computer Repair Lakeland, FL
863-521-1079
      

Fix Your Internet Connection by Cloning Your MAC Address

This problem is all too common, and I’ve actually had to use this for some of my clients a few times myself. But only with Verizon.

They may tell you it is incompatible with your Internet Service. Your router is not incompatible with your Internet service. Your router’s MAC is simply unknown to your ISP.

Force Your Internet Connection to Submit; Clone Your MAC
If your Internet service is down because you are using your own router, you can bring it back up within seconds by cloning your computer’s MAC address to your router. The process of “cloning” your MAC address to your router is quite simple:

Log into your router and clone your computer’s MAC address.
Restart your broadband modem.
When the system reboots, your ISP asks for a MAC address, and your router responds with the MAC of your computer instead of it’s own.
Your ISP thinks it’s talking directly to your computer, and restores Internet access.

Broadband Reports has instructions and illustrations for the cloning process on a number of popular router brands, such as Linksys, D-Link, SMC, and Netgear.

To access your router’s administration panel, you must start up your web browser and type an IP into the address bar.

Here are the addresses for a few popular brands:

Linksys: 192.168.1.1
Netgear: 192.168.0.1
D-Link: 192.168.0.1
US Robotics: 192.168.123.254
SMC: 192.168.2.1
Siemens Speedstream: 192.168.254.254

These are the default IPs for these devices so it may not hold true in all cases if you or someone has changed this.

Computer Repair Lakeland, FL
863-521-1079
      

Can't print from IE8 in Vista

Can't print in Internet Explorer using Java on Windows Vista machine.
Symptoms:
New Tab/Window not working error, tabs on Favorite pane missing, empty dialogs or can't interface with the printer.
http://www.iefaq.info/
Once there set the language to English or hit translate and then search for the Repair IE* (IE7) ID#1128
On that page you will see 4 command files, choose the one that matches the OS to the IE and run in administrator mode.
Make sure all instances of IE are closed before running.

Computer Repair Lakeland, FL
863-521-1079