Home > Technobuddy > Archives > 2006 > September > 22
Friday, September 22, 2006
Warning: Don’t open that greeting card
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s a fine way to celebrate your birthday or an anniversary: The electronic greeting card with best wishes arrives and all of a sudden you are broke.
A cyber criminal ring in Australia has been sending Yahoo Greetings e-mail notifications to hundreds of thousands of consumers. When you click on the link to get your greeting card you are first connected to a rogue server that attempts to infect your computer with a rootkit and a keylogger. Then, so that you don’t really suspect any problem, you are transfered to Yahoo to pick a real card.
The keylogger captures everything you type - user names, passwords, credit card numbers - enough stuff to clean out your wallet.
Read about it here and - for now at least - think twice about opening any electronic greeting card. Remember, once a scheme like this starts, it can be changed to use different companies, different cards.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Crime
DIY computer fix-its
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Most technicians agree that do-it-yourself computer fixes cause more problems than viruses, spam or Mountain Dew spilled onto a keyboard.
But there are some jobs that can be safely done at home. The trick is knowing which ones.
Today’s column is not aimed at techies. Stuff that would be insane for you to try is fun for them. These folks keep a volt/ohm meter in their desk drawer and often talk among themselves about motherboards and surface-mount technology.
But even if you’ve never had much use for a screwdriver besides prying the lid off a pickle jar, there are things you can tackle at home. Here are a few techniques:
Find a substitute
One way to tackle a problem is through substitution — a tactic that can be just as valuable in the computer world as it is on the football field. It involves substituting a device that you know is working for one that’s suspect.
Here’s how that works: Let’s say your monitor is flickering. Maybe the problem is in the monitor, but it could also be the video card. You can’t decide what to replace until you know where the problem lies.
Many of us have more than one computer these days. So taking a working monitor from another computer and replacing the flickering one will narrow down the diagnosis. If the problem stops, you know you need a new monitor. If the flickering continues, it’s clear the problem may be the video card.
The same technique will help you diagnose a balky mouse, a suspect keyboard or a cable that may be going bad.
Keep it simple
Another principle of self-repair is simplicity.
Years ago I had a friend who was a terrific shade tree mechanic. He could replace a clutch, tune an engine and perform all kinds of mechanical tasks. So when his wife called one night to say the car wouldn’t start, he was pretty sure he could take care of the problem himself.
He worked for hours — checking spark plugs, tracing electrical connections and doping other stuff too technical for me to understand. Nothing helped.
Finally, while trying to start the car one last time, he glanced at the gas gauge. The car was out of gas.
The lesson is, try the simple and obvious things first. Check to see that cables are plugged in. Heck, check to see that the AC plug is securely in the socket. If the keyboard or the mouse won’t work, check the connections.
I know it sounds dirt simple — and it is — but I’ll make you a bet that checking the simple things will often save you a huge amount of trouble. Interestingly enough, some of the worst offenders when it comes to ignoring the obvious are experienced technicians.
Pay attention
A good physician listens to the patient and observes. Often, a little quiet observation offers clues that the most exotic tests might miss.
It’s the same with computers. Pay attention to error messages, and watch and listen for anything out of the ordinary.
If you get an error message, type the exact text of the message — inside quote marks — into a good search engine such as Google. You’ll almost certainly be taken to pages that explain the problem. It may or may not be one you can fix, but at least you’ll have a clue about it.
Sounds are big deals, too. For instance, a hard disk going bad has a distinctive clatter. That sound should be enough to warn you to save your information to CDs, DVDs or an external hard disk.
Your computer may also literally attempt to tell you the nature of the problem. Honest. If your computer is acting up and also making beeping noises, those beeps may be coded messages that tell you what’s wrong.
While not every manufacturer uses the same code, most use one devised in the early days by IBM. In that code, for instance, repeated long beeps signal a memory error and one long beep and two short ones are a sign of a video problem. Here’s a Web page that will help you decode the beeps:
Undo the change
Despite the way it seems at times, computers are very logical machines. When something goes wrong, it’s often the result of a change you made — anything from installing a new program, to adding a printer, to a little do-it-yourself fixing.
When something goes wrong, think back to the last change you made. Often you can get things back to normal by undoing that change. Windows itself offers a virtual time machine - called System Restore - that can take your PC back to a time when it worked correctly. You can read more about System Restore here.
I’d be the first to admit we’ve just scratched the surface today. There’s plenty more you can do to find and fix problems at home.
Since we’ll revisit this topic, this is a good time to jump in and offer tips of your own. If you happen to be a computer, just beep.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns
