Proactive vendor updates with an e-mail blast!

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I received an e-mail today from Norton. Yes, that was the “from” name in Outlook. At first, I suspected the subject line, “Larry, your free update to Norton™ AntiVirus is Available” was spam. However, a careful review of the contents (thank you SpamBayes) revealed this was legitimately from Symantec.

Norton 2011 Update

After spending a moment reading the contents, I thought this marketing effort was quite impressive. The 2011 AntiVirus and Internet Security products were released to the public on September 9, 2010. Now, one month later, it is all the more impressive that Symantec would alert customers to take advantage of what amounts to a “free” upgrade.

Most consumers usually wait until the product starts to nag them (30 days – every day) before they update their subscription. Others wait until they can manage to obtain the new version of the product for $9.99 at their local office supply store.

In this case, Symantec is taking a preemptive step towards ensuring their customer base is on the latest version of the product. That is something aggressive and new.

Yet this actually fits in with something I have been telling my clients for a long time now:  You should update the product version at least every two years to take advantage of the latest available detection technology. Simply renewing your subscription to the updates is not sufficient to keep your computer secure from all of the nastiness that is out on the Internet.

In keeping with a recent ruling, the e-mail contains the requisite text that informs customers of the following:

If your product is not updated yet and you choose to download Norton AntiVirus 2011, you will have the right to use this product for no additional charge until the expiration of your current Norton AntiVirus subscription, subject to acceptance of the Symantec License Agreement included with this product and available for review at www.symantec.com.

I’d be interested to learn about your reaction to this e-mail.

Windows Vista Laptop Can’t See Printer in Windows XP – Solved!

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Too many people seem to be having a problem connecting their Vista laptops to Windows XP-connected printers. It took me a while to get the steps right, but I believe this should help anyone else who has been similarly vexed.

Here’s a default configuration:

  • Existing Windows XP desktop with USB attached printer
  • New Windows Vista laptop

To network the laptop to the desktop printer, you need to do the following:

  1. Gather computer information
  2. Install printer drivers on Windows Vista
  3. Install LLTD on Windows XP
  4. Set up printer sharing on Windows XP
  5. Establish Vista user on Windows XP
  6. Add the network printer to Windows Vista

Step 1. Gather the required information

In Vista, click Start, right-click Computer, and select Properties. Scroll down until you locate the Computer name and the Workgroup name. Write both down.

In XP, click Start, right-click My Computer, and select Properties. Click the Computer Name tab.  Write down the name of the Workgroup.

You must use the same workgroup name, so change one of the computers.  Afterwards, you must restart the computer.

Step 2. Install printer drivers in Windows Vista

Unplug the USB cable from your Windows XP desktop. Download the appropriate drivers to your Vista laptop and start the installation. Don’t connect the USB cable until directed.  Print a test page to make sure everything works.

Step 3. Install LLTD on Windows XP

Download and install a Microsoft file that allows you to see your XP desktop on your Vista network.  Use the following link:  http://tinyurl.com/2b3lkn.

Step 4. Set up printer sharing

In the XP Control Panel, select Printers and Faxes. Right click the printer you want Vista to use and select Properties. Click the Sharing tabe and select “Share this printer.”  Make a note of what Windows calls the printer; you can change it if you wish.

Step 5. Create a new Windows XP user

To use the printer, Windows Vista needs access to the Windows XP controlled device.  So, you have to create a user with the associated privileges.

In the XP Control Panel, select User Accounts. Click the Create a new account link and enter the user name that you use on your Vista laptop. Click Next. On the next screen, take the default option and make this user an Administrator. Click Create Account and close the open windows.

Step 6. Add the network Printer to Windows Vista

On the Vista laptop, open the Control Panel and select Printers.  Click the “Add a Printer” button at the top of the page.  Select “Add a local printer.”  Select the “Create a new port” radio button and leave the drop-down menu on the default.

A small window will open for you to enter the port name, which is in the form of \\computername\printername (you wrote down the computer name in Step 1).

Select the manufacturer and printer from the list and keep the existing drivers.  You can set the name of the printer and print a test page to ensure that this process works.

I hope this post helps anyone else who might be struggling with the same problem.  Please let me know if this has helped you, or if there is anything I may have overlooked.

Did you really save anything?

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A major office supply store has been promoting technical support services – often at a discount.  All of their offerings are directed to PC or laptop owners, and the discounts only apply to a machine that you bring into the store.

Well, if you think you have a virus on your PC and are willing to get under the desk, unplug everything, schlep the PC to the store, and hand it over to a stranger, you are a very hardy and an incredibly self-sufficient individual.  After all, once the work is done, you have to bring the PC back home, crawl down under the desk, and hook everything back up.  All that effort was worth the money you saved with the discount, right?

But what happens when one of your frequently used programs stops behaving the way you expect it to?  And what happens when you get an error message from your printer?  Those things didn’t happen before you brought your PC to the store – they only happened after you brought it home.

So you call the store and complain, “Hey, this program doesn’t work right any more, and I can’t print anything because of this error message.”  The likely response you will get form the store’s technical support representative is, “Bring the PC in, along with the printer and the cables, so that we can see what’s going on.”  I am not certain how you are going to respond to that – if at all.  But for the store, that’s easy, isn’t it?

Instead of trying to be so self-sufficient (just to save a few bucks), you should have contacted a reliable computer consultant so that you could have avoided the headaches associated with an incident like this.  You should be looking for a company that offers an affordable service plan that makes sure your anti-virus software is always up-to-date, and that a system scan is run on a regular basis.

Most top-notch computer consulting firms can establish a remote session to determine exactly what actions to take to eradicate any malware on your PC.  If you didn’t have access to the Internet, you should make certain the computer consultant is located nearby.

In either case, your problem would have been solved without your having to take everything apart and bring it to some other location.  Now that’s what I consider easy tech support!

An AOL error message yields exasperating search results: Resolved!

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A customer who uses AOL for both personal and business-related e-mail recently called me with a problem.  He had encountered the following error message when starting AOL on one of the accounts:

“An error occurred while loading a file.  AOL will attempt to restore the file.”

All he could do at that point was click OK.  Afterward, he connected to AOL, but when he looked at the list of e-mails, all he could see were the envelopes – everything else was blank!  To make matters worse, he was able to open these e-mails, but that was ridiculously dangerous without knowing who had sent them.

This customer was using the latest version of AOL on Windows Vista.  I searched in the usual places, and read every discussion thread to make sure I understood what the problem was.  However, nothing seemed to indicate what actions would be appropriate, especially when this customer could use a different screen name and have full functionality (meaning he could see who the e-mails were from).  That fact alone ruled out uninstalling and re-installing the AOL software.

It took some time, but I was able to uncover a solution that worked.  First, I backed up the Personal Filing Cabinet (PFC).  Next, I compressed the PFC.
Note that each of these processes requires you to be signed out of AOL.

To backup the contents of your PFC:

  1. Click the Mail menu and select Mail Settings.
  2. Click the Manage Saved Mail drop-down menu and select Backup.
  3. Click the Backup Now button.
  4. When the task is finished, click the Save button.

To compress the PFC:

  1. Click the Mail menu and select Mail Settings.
  2. Click the Manage Saved Mail drop-down menu and this time select Compact.
  3. Click the Compact Now button, and then click the OK button.
  4. When the task is finished, click the Save button.

After both of these tasks were completed, we checked his mail.  Amazingly enough, all of the information was displayed for all of his e-mail!

Despite what the text of the error message indicated, the AOL software did not restore any file, nor did it attempt to do the correct thing.  It is clear the program detected a problem – perhaps the PFC was too big for AOL to handle properly, or had some slight form of corruption – but who ever coded this section of the program simply issued the wrong error message.  (Alternatively, it could be the correct error message, but the AOL software failed to perform the task correctly.)

I do not think that the AOL programming staff is going to correct this situation.  Despite the dozens of threads that I found in various Internet searches, I am not certain if they are aware of this problem.  Nonetheless, my customer is very pleased that I was able to solve his AOL e-mail problem.

I hope this blog post helps anyone else who encounters this error message.  Let me know!