Product Updates With an Add-on You Didn’t See Coming

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So you finally acquiesce to the nagging prompt that the Java runtime needs to be updated.  You click OK and the download starts.  You wait a few minutes and the installation begins.  You click the Next button repeatedly, because you just want to be done with this update.

Unfortunately, you just installed the Ask toolbar in your browser and changed your homepage and search provider to Ask.  And you never meant to.

But, if you paid careful enough attention during the installation, there was the tiny – pre-checked – mark that “asked” if you wanted to install the Ask toolbar and all of its attendant changes.

Over the years, I have seen Internet Explorer browser windows with more than five toolbars:  Yahoo, Google, Ask, and others.  Why would you need all of those?  Most people don’t have any explanation.  Still others figure it is all part of what they are supposed to have when they use IE (as if Microsoft had decided to update something for them).  Even fewer know how to remove them.

One major problem with all these toolbars is that they slow down your web browser.  In addition, they add clutter to your screen.  Some increase the risk of virus and spyware infections.  Of course some toolbars are the result of spyware, so it is not always your fault.

With the Java update, Oracle gets paid by Ask for each user that gets this toolbar and uses it.  You, as the “victim,” need to jump through hoops to get your settings back to the way they were before the installation.  Unfortunately, even the Windows Restore feature may not work well enough to make things right.

So, what can you do?

For one, you simply have to pay attention during the installation.  Different vendors insert this “permission” step at different points.  Simply clicking the Next button is a lazy approach.  Take your time.  Make sure you read each window carefully.  Uncheck the box that was filled in for you about any toolbar you don’t need.

By the way, my SPF+ and SHADE subscribers do not encounter this problem – the installation is handled automatically, and no toolbar is installed!

Have a lot of toolbars in your web browser?  Send me a screen shot and I’ll post the best entries.

 

Symantec Offers Overly Aggressive Protection

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The newly updated Symantec Protection Suite Small Business Edition 4.0 contains Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.  As part of that offering, there is a module called “Tamper Protection,” which is designed to prevent any form of malware from adversely affecting the operation of the Symantec Software.

As a managed service provider, I am using a third-party software product to monitor and maintain the health of my clients’ servers and workstations.  The software takes an inventory of a variety of things and reports back to the data center on a regular basis.  I get to view the results on my web-based portal.

Somehow, and quite unfortunately, Symantec Endpoint Protection thinks each of these activities is a threat to its existence, and the default setting for Tamper Protection is to block any offending program.  When it does, it places an entry in the Windows Event log.

Windows EventID 45

Windows EventID 45

Of course, my MSP software is designed to keep trying to get its information back to the data center – so the Event log just fills up with EventID 45 records as it struggles against Symantec Endpoint Protection.

There has to be some way of preventing this.
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Sometimes Remote Technical Support Is Not Enough

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I just came back from a very, very, short client visit – and I feel bad about it.  Not because I couldn’t solve the problem that he called about (I did).  I feel bad because I could not arrange to get to see him for more than a day and a half, and the problem identification and resolution took less than one minute.  To make matters worse, he had spent most of the day waiting for a Time Warner Cable technician to come to fix the problem with his modem, after having spent almost one hour on the phone with their technical support the day before.  The issue he was experiencing:  no Internet connectivity.

My client called me on Tuesday, right after the July 4th holiday weekend, and said that he could not connect to the Internet.  He’s a businessperson who works out of his home office, and I know that getting his email and the attached documents is extremely important to him.  He told me that he thought the problem started sometime on Sunday evening, but that he waited until after the holiday to call me.

He said that the lights on the modem were not all lit, and asked if that could be the problem.  I told him that it sounded like a bad modem.  I also explained that I was booked with appointments for the entire day, but that if he had the patience, he should call Time Warner Cable to see if the problem was on their end.  He was willing to do that.

During a brief follow-up phone call later in the day, he told me that he spent almost an hour on the phone with a support representative, who after exhausting her script, told him that she would dispatch a technician the following day.  Good for him, right?  No, not really – the appointment could not be narrowed down to anything other than between 9 am and 7 pm.  My client was going to be a captive in his office with nothing to do but wait.

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Preventative maintenance is the key to a healthy computer system

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In the March/April 2011 issue of the AAA North Jersey Traveler magazine, author Jim Grey wrote an article entitled, “Preventative maintenance helps the life of your vehicle.”  While I won’t reprint the article in its entirety, I do want to highlight a few of the statements he uses to describe how to take care of your car, and apply them to the care of your computer network.

“Consumers may think it’s the luck of the draw when a car reaches 200,000 miles and another bites the dust at 100,000, [while] it really comes down to preventative maintenance.

Scheduling regular trips to your mechanic can mean the difference in tens of thousands of miles in your car’s life.”

Well, most small business owners know that their computer networks can last anywhere from two years to ten.  But very few of them contact a technician to take care of them until something breaks.  Most people don’t know (and even fewer even care) about the common maintenance techniques necessary to keep their computer networks running properly.
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Can’t print a PDF file? Join the club!

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I received a frantic call from a client just the other day.  He had just returned from a trip and had not used his computer in three weeks.  He told me he was able to print out the contents of an email, but when he tried to print the attached PDF file, nothing happened.

I went to see this for myself, because I could not understand what was wrong.  Sure enough, nothing happened when I tried to print the PDF file; not a flicker, not an hourglass, and nothing in the print queue.

I approached diagnosing the problem in a logical manner.  I restarted the printers (there were two – and neither one worked), rebooted the computer, and tried to print the PDF file.  Still nothing.
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Larry on Laptops

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One of my favorite “guilty pleasures” is to turn on the HGTV network on a Sunday evening, and watch Mike Holmes renovate a house.  For those who don’t know who he is, let me explain.  Mike is a professional contractor, based in Canada, who demands that others in the building trade live up to their word.  He often appears at a lovely house where the homeowners describe some kind of problem that they have experienced with their builder, contractor, or building inspector.  Mike investigates the problem, turns up more horrors than the owners had imagined, and then – with a large, very skilled, crew – proceeds to demolish things and fix them up better than new.

I revel in this kind of reality television because it resonates with me.  In my job, people often call upon me to fix some kind of computer mess.  For me, there are two kinds:  home computer users and small businesses.

When I work with home computer users, it is often a matter of asking a few questions, and then working through a series of decision boxes.  Does the computer have this or that software, problem, or malware?  Does the computer respond when this setting is used or not?  Has this selection been checked in the program properties or not?  It gets to be repetitive sometimes, but there is a basic flow and I can resolve most problems in about an hour.  It takes me longer to clean up malware because I use three different system scans.

On the other hand, small businesses present a greater challenge for me because more of them resemble “Holmes on Homes” situations.  At this point, the reality show becomes “Larry on Laptops.”

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My Business Grew In the Midst of a Recession

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I am pleased that I was able to provide computer support to a larger client base during 2010.  Because Heliotropic Systems specializes in home computer users and small businesses (5 to 10 PCs), it was difficult to gain traction against the overwhelming forces of the economy – but I did.  And so, I would like to take a moment to say, “Thank you!” to my client base, for helping me achieve growth during a difficult time.

Now that the overall economy appears to be settling down, I look forward to 2011 as a year in which I can make a greater improvement in my support of all things computer-related.

The other day, I was reading an article by Harry Brelsford in a recent issue of SMB Partner Community.  Here is an excerpt:

Have you ever worked with a client who insisted on doing too much of their own IT?  Maybe they buy their own computers (from whatever’s on sale at Costco) and try to add them to the network themselves, maybe they pick security applications from magazine ads and do their own installations, maybe they spend hours on the phone with Dell tech support trying to figure out a server issue.  What’s the result?  In my experience they usually wind up paying a lot more for a real IT pro to come in later and clean up their mess.  In fact many of us use the same sales pitch with those types of clients, something like “You have your own work to do.  Why don’t you save money, time, and frustration by letting a professional handle this for you?”

It is quite obvious that Harry knows some of my clients and what I say to them.  And it is true – you don’t need to know about computers.  All you have to do is let me do my job so that you can do yours.

In the coming year, I hope more of you will contact Heliotropic Systems when you need a professional to take care of your computer systems.

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.

Access 2010 Runtime Gotcha With Report to PDF

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One of my small business client’s is still using Microsoft Access 2000 for two of its databases.  There never was any need, nor was there a desire, to upgrade the version of Access when the rest of the Office suite was upgraded.

Now, Windows 7 is being rolled out across their office and they want to continue to contain costs.  At my recommendation, they started using the Access 2010 Runtime.  This will permit their databases to continue to function without change – or without too much change.

One thing that was discovered early during testing was that the Calendar control (MSCAL.OCX) is no longer supported in Access 2010.  However, it is possible to continue to use the Calendar if you copy the file and register it.

More importantly and just recently discovered was the errant output of one of their reports.  The function uses Stephan Lebans’ Report to PDF code to take a report and convert it to PDF format.  While this has worked for a very long time, with only a minor hitch or two as the DLLs changed, it has proven to be a valuable utility.

Imagine the client’s surprise when a recently created document was produced in A4 landscape format (11.69 x 8.27) – resulting in a loss of data on the report!  Well, I was surprised and, at first, figured that some random printer setting was at fault.  That wasn’t it at all.

Another aspect of Access 2010 that Microsoft changed was the elimination of the snapshot format for reports.  Because this is the “driver” for Lebans’ code, the output defaulted to – I don’t know what, but it didn’t generate a valid report.

On the plus side, Access 2010 allows you to create a report and send it directly to PDF.  So, once it was clear that that some kind of coding change was necessary, it was relatively easy to implement.

I simply had to test for the current version of Access, because the shop is still in transition. Those folks who haven’t been upgraded continue to use the Lebans’ code, while those who are using the Runtime, get to take advantage of the new functionality that Access 2010 provides.

Here’s a sample of the code:

{code type=HTML}

Dim blRet As Boolean

‘If greater than Access 2003, use the built-in PDF functionality
If Int(Val(SysCmd(acSysCmdAccessVer))) > 11 Then
Dim acFormatPDF As Variant
acFormatPDF = “PDF Format (*.pdf)”

DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputReport, strRptName, acFormatPDF, strPDFName
blRet = True
Else
‘ Call Stephen Lebans’ convert function
blRet = ConvertReportToPDF(strRptName, vbNullString, strPDFName, False, False)
End If

{/code}

Now, everyone in the office can continue to produce PDF reports without any errors.

Plain talk

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In the January/February 2010 issue of Mainframe Executive, Eric L. Vaughan makes a point about language as it is used by different groups of people, and the shorthand each group adopts to convey different concepts.

I have always taken a direct approach when describing computer-related problems to anyone, either a home computer user or a small business owner. The fact is, most people don’t care about why something is broken or not operating correctly, they just want the darn thing to work.

Vaughan expounds:

Our industry as a whole must learn to posture technology differently. Users don’t want architecture. They want results. They want software to work, easily and simply. They want to use it, not have to be schooled in it. We need to change the way we talk about it, starting by speaking in plain language rather than abbreviated, contrived terms designed to imply creative complexity. Language has played a key role throughout history and it’s no different in our industry.

We need to make a stand. CxOs throughout the world are begging for less complexity. They want to run their businesses with what the technology community can provide, but we’re making it too difficult for them to grasp what we’re doing simply by the terms we choose.

The magazine’s audience primarily consists of mainframe-based technicians, programmers, and senior managers.  However, I believe Vaughan’s premise should be taken – in context – for all IT consultants, like myself, who act as technology advisers for a specific client base.

If a computer’s hard drive has crashed on a small network server, does the business owner care about the read/write heads or how the high RPM of the disk could have contributed to extensive data loss?  I don’t think so.  He or she is concerned with getting their business up and running, and how to handle the appointments and customers that are scheduled for that day.

Some technicians would immediately launch into a description of their efforts to perform data recovery using clean rooms and the painstaking process of accessing data on the disk.  The small business owner stands there, eyes getting glossy, and says, “Whatever,” because that explanation doesn’t help him or her one bit.

Using “plain talk,” I would say something like, “The drive may be repairable, but that’s not our immediate concern. Let’s use the back-up from yesterday and restore that to get you back in business. We can figure out how to handle today’s data afterward.”

No jargon, no obfuscation, just simple, clear, concise statements. The business comes first, the technology takes a back-seat.

Isn’t that what you would want?

Tell me what you think.