Telephone? Bah! Why I am making myself scarce on the phone.

“Well, if we’re all done, I’ll just make myself scarce.”  I don’t know where I picked up the expression, but it’s really cute and gets a chuckle now and then.  In a more serious light, though, “making one’s self scarce” is exactly what I’m doing with phone calls, starting today.  Now, me being a small business owner may incite much questioning about this new policy.  Doesn’t a good business owner answer the phone and talk to customers?  What could possibly be the reason behind this?

There is an article that covers this topic well which deserves an honorable mention: Should You Turn Off Your Telephone? Now I’ll answer the question about why and how I am getting away from the telephone.

I have access to three professional telephone numbers: two at the shop which are daisy-chained together by call forwarding, and my own cell phone.  Both sets of phones have voicemail at the end.  Well, had voicemail.  About 15 minutes ago, I cut my T-mobile voicemail service off completely.  Every time I made a voicemail greeting, it would politely recite the shop phone number, insist on calling that number, texting, or calling back in 10 minutes, and explaining what to press to unblock a call, followed by a request, then a demand, to not leave voicemail because I won’t get it.  That request was not respected at all, and my phone would constantly blip up voicemail notification reminders despite my explicit demands to simply wait on a call back! Where did people lose their ability to understand basic English, and to respect my explicitly spelled out request and warning that I don’t check voicemail?

I felt disrespected beyond belief every time someone left a message.  It’s like they said “okay, I’ll leave one anyway because I don’t give a damn about what YOU want, Mister Smarty-Pants Business Owner!”  It’s like someone else spitting in my face.  There’s no excuse for it.  Nowhere in the realm of human decency is ignoring an explicit request even remotely close to existing, yet people do it daily.  I’ve come to realize that many people simply do not consider the human factor of people in business.  The reasons are obvious, but the most significant one is that each ten-minute conversation to them is one ten-minute conversation, while to me it’s just one ten-minute interval in a huge flood of calls that eventually ruins almost half of my potential work time per day.  I need that time to grow my business, write some software, redesign the website, print business cards, and things like that, but instead it is completely drained away having conversations that my technicians could easily handle if callers would stop demanding to talk exclusively to me for anything and everything under the sun.

I want to be available to help everyone, but I am being forced to come to terms with the fact that I am one person with only 16 hours a day to do everything that must be done.  I understand now why corporate types rarely talk to customers: it’s simply not possible to do that and still get their own jobs within the company finished too.

I have decided that I must take charge of my time.  I must manage my time and treat it as the most precious resource in this company, as well as in my life.  It is limited and non-renewable, and I need to make all of it count for as much as possible.  If that means making a customer upset because they can’t speak directly to me, then so be it.  If a customer would refuse to do business with my business simply because they can’t talk directly to me whenever they feel like it, then I wonder whether they are the kind of customer we are in business to serve.  I hired and mentored a team of professionals so that I could extend my capabilities to more people, and it is extremely important that customers take advantage of their knowledge and willingness to help.

Not to mention the fact that some work might actually get finished around here now…

Sylvania G’s VIA C7-M versus Windows XP

I changed my Sylvania G (original, non-Meso) netbook to Windows XP/Linux dual-boot to test some software I’m working on, and discovered that while Windows XP certainly does boot and run in general on the G, some kind of system timer or timing loop is severely out of whack!  I wanted to use my little G as a portable gaming machine from the Windows XP install, and to my horror, ZSNES couldn’t decide what speed it wanted to run!  Now, I’ve never had a single issue with ZSNES on any computer I’ve ever tried it on, even preferring the Windows port of it over the Linux native one, and not once has a problem existed with ZSNES that I couldn’t find an easy fix for, until now.

I’ve been researching the matter and gathering evidence, and I may have a potential answer to the problem.  Linux requires activation of the VIA C7 Enhanced PowerSaver module e_powersaver to clock the VIA C7 CPU properly between 400 and 1200 MHz; apparently the default speed of the CPU is only 600 MHz instead of 1200 MHz, because Linux installs without e_powersaver and Windows XP report a ~600 MHz processor where a 1.2 GHz one exists.  Here’s the extremely weird part, though: if I check the System control panel shortly after bootup and read the clock speed, sometimes it registers a clock speed of 198 MHz (about 200 MHz) which isn’t even one of the ACPI P-states for the VIA C7-M 1.2 processor.

I’ve unlocked the Windows HAL options (I’ll post how to do that at another time) and switched between ACPI Multiprocessor PC (the default for the image I used) and ACPI Uniprocessor PC and MPS Uniprocessor PC, all of which use the local APIC for IRQ routing but the MPS variant of which doesn’t theoretically touch ACPI.  Nothing seems to have helped.  I have two working theories as to what’s going on here, and how it might be fixed:

1. A calibration loop in Windows a la BogoMIPS in Linux is being screwed up by the VIA C7, or
2. The VIA C7’s PowerSaver feature is ignored or incorrectly used by Windows (via generic ACPI P-states) and it’s throwing off some kind of timer that ZSNES relies on for proper emulation of the 65816 CPU and SPC audio processor.

So far, I haven’t found a solution to this problem, and Sylvania’s site is extremely unhelpful, with only Windows drivers and a new version of gOS, but no BIOS updates or further information.  I’m looking into the technical stuff on the VIA c7 now, and it looks like the solution (assuming Windows isn’t doing something sinister) lies in clever manipulation of the C7 model-specific registers (MSRs) that control the processor’s power state.  If ZSNES is mis-calibrating some kind of tight internal timing loop because of some kind of CPU clocking issue, then tweaking the MSRs may be the solution to the problem.  Unfortunately, I’m no Windows developer, so I’m not certain how I should approach the problem.  I don’t think it’s isolated to ZSNES either, but I don’t recall what I saw that justifies that belief.  In any case, I’m working on it.  It’s just one of many pesky projects I’m hitting my head against at the moment.  We’re still working on that remote access software package; in fact, someone found our site and called us, and I had to sort of turn her away.  It’s all a bit behind schedule, and there’s not really much I can do to make things proceed any more quickly.  Stay tuned…

Antivirus 2010 on the horizon…and how we’ll help destroy it!

I just put up a new site in anticipation of the latest nuisance that I only recently came into contact with: “Antivirus 2010.”  You can view the new site at removeantivirus2010.com, but be aware that it’s pre-release at the moment, which is why I haven’t done any SEO or cross-linking for it yet beyond this post.

Antivirus 2010 is the successor to the infamous beasts “Antivirus 2009″ and “XP Antivirus 2008.”  The scammers behind these fake security programs have literally raked in hundreds of millions of dollars, and I’m quite sick of seeing them on our customers’ computers.  The major problem with removing these kinds of beasties lies in their inner workings: they use rootkit tactics inside kernel-mode drivers loaded very early in the boot process to hide themselves from any and all anti-virus and anti-spyware solutions on the market.  The loaded driver’s name always starts with the capitalized string “TDSS” and the older versions use “TDSSserv.sys” as the name.  The ultimate problem is that there is no simple way to delete this driver because of the security manipulation done by this virus: the service registry key permissions are typically null, automatically meaning everything in Windows is denied access to it and successfully hiding it from programs like AutoRuns, StartupList, MSConfig, and HijackThis; furthermore, the virus hooks numerous key NT kernel system calls and “edits itself out of the list” whenever a directory listing or process list is requested by any program on the system, such as Task Manager, Windows Explorer, and even whatever antivirus solution you use.

Worst of all, it locks your system down like this even in safe mode, and its early boot loading means boot-time scanning solutions such as Avast’s can’t get rid of it either.  It’s a truly clever little booger, immune from all your favorite security software.

Spybot can’t get it, nor Ad-Aware or Malwarebytes.  We can get it all gone, but traditionally you had to call a very highly skilled and expensive local technician to get this stuff removed, because a clean boot environment is required as well as somewhat complicated knowledge about the inner workings of Windows and how viruses tend to slip up in the process of securing their presence on your system.  Antivirus 2010 makes almost no mistakes, so you’re currently stuck either getting that expensive local tech or reinstalling.

Until now.

I’m currently writing software that will give Tritech access to a 100% clean environment remotely–free from viruses and spyware, which enables us to perform these horribly difficult virus removals remotely.  The details will remain a secret, but suffice it to say that there are precisely zero computer service providers in the industry today that can perform this kind of service right now: the kind of custom software needed poses a significant barrier to entry, and the alternatives are so much easier and safer to rely on.

It’s revolutionary.  Plain and simple.  No one else we’ve found does anything like it.  We’ve checked.  Regardless of whether you need to remove Antivirus 2010, remove Antivirus 360, remove Antivirus 2009, remove SecurityCenter 2009, or remove any other disgusting infection, we’re rolling out a campaign that can get it done, regardless of your location.  You don’t have to find a local tech and you don’t have to pay out the yin-yang.

Imagine getting this done wherever you are in the world, even if you’re in a hotel in Germany, and paying as little as $30 to have it done.  Geek Squad charges a minimum of $199 (I really hate that whole “$999.99 can be advertised as under $1,000″ pricing scheme! GRR!!!) to do this in-store, and they don’t even offer over-the-internet virus and spyware removal.  PlumChoice charges nearly $90 just to hop on their “SmartPlan,” and they can’t do what we do without an on-site appointment either. iYogi…well, if you think you’ll get this kind of quality and experience at their pricing level, you deserve what you get…they’re like a version of Dell’s Indian tech support that you actually pay money for, and you shouldn’t be supporting the iYogi Craigslist spammers anyway.

Bottom line: only Tritech Computer Solutions in Siler City, North Carolina, USA can remove difficult infections of viruses and spyware over the Internet.  No one else does this, period.

(Edit: a commenter objected to this statement, indicating that it implies other remote computer service providers are ill-equipped to handle difficult virus infections.  The distinction lies in the fact that no one that we have looked at currently does anything like what we’re rolling out; they certainly COULD do it, but they don’t; that’s why it says “no one else does this” instead of “no one else is capable of doing this.”  What we’re rolling out is unique, and fills a niche currently worked around by hiring a local technician…which sort of negates the purpose of “remote computer support” in the first place.  See comments on this post for more information.)

The only bad news is that this is still a work in progress.  I’ll update this post when that changes, as well as post a new one.  We’re looking to have this support platform completely up and running within about two weeks; more testing is necessary before release to ensure maximum reliability, but when this service of ours officially opens for business, it’s going to completely pull the rug out from under all of our competitors, and we can literally say that NO ONE ELSE does it.  We’re truly one of a kind in this industry.

STOP 0×0000007E after upgrading to an AMD platform?

[EDIT: We've got a more easily understood and elegant solution to this problem that only requires an XP CD.  See our update post on the subject.]

If you get a STOP 0×0000007E error after upgrading to an AMD platform from an Intel platform, i.e. replacing an Intel-chipset motherboard with something like a VIA or AMD or nForce or ATI chipset for an Athlon64, here’s a little hint that’ll help you avoid a complete reinstall from scratch:

It’s the “intelppm.sys” driver.

Pop in an XP CD or a KNOPPIX (or other live Linux distro with read-write NTFS capability) CD, find your %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder, and rename intelppm.sys to something else, such as intelppm.old, and that’s the end of that problem. (%systemroot% is your Windows installation folder.)

We’ve been running into this a lot lately and just recently took the time to figure it out instead of reinstalling completely clean.  Don’t let it bog you down the same way.

XP Antivirus 2008 and XP SecurityCenter

I swear, if I ever find the person who created these two fake antivirus programs, I will personally beat the tar out of him.  I went to two totally different small business clients today, both of whom had picked up XP Antivirus 2008 and one of which also managed to get XP SecurityCenter and SmitFraud, all at once.  What an annoyance this thing is becoming!

Let me be very explicitly clear: unless you know for a fact that a security product is a legitimate product from a company that operates on the up-and-up, such as avast! antivirus, you MUST NOT DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL IT.  There are literally hundreds of fake security solutions out there today, and they have been growing almost exponentially.  Before XP Antivirus 2008, it was WinAntiVirus 2006 and 2007, and other crummy little beasts like SpySheriff.  Where previously we would see fake or low-quality “registry cleaners” and “cookie washers” finding their way onto peoples’ computers under the guise of “boosting performance” and “fixing errors in the system configuration,” now we see these stupid fake security programs cropping up practically everywhere a Windows PC exists, and it’s maddening to have as many clients as Tritech does and still see a significant percentage of them end up with what I call “nagware” on their machines, despite not using Internet Explorer and generally staying infection-free for months or even years.  Despite my own best efforts to educate my clientele (because user education is the only true way to improve computer security, no software can its place), I am still receiving reports of these horrid little nuisances to this day.

The psychology of how these things work is very interesting.  Basically, computers have taken an ever-increasing prevalence in our lives since the Internet became accessible to home users en masse in the mid-90’s.  Computer security threats have become mainstream news items, and you can’t open one single PC magazine without seeing a plethora of ads for poor-quality (but nevertheless legitimate and somewhat effective) security software plastered all over the place.  With the amazing growth in identity theft awareness, the public’s perception of “what’s out there” must be no less than a step away from complete paranoia!

That’s where the fake security software comes in.  Playing on the conditioning of the common user to seek solutions in SOFTWARE to all of these immense and overwhelming threats, these products end up on computers after such trivial searches on major search engines as “free anti virus” or “free spyware cleaner” or “free trojan remover.”  Combining our fear of identity theft, hackers, scammers, spammers, fraudsters, and lotteries in Zimbabwe with the post-2000 “I want it all and I want it now” instant-gratification mentality, these products are a perfect storm to extort our hard-earned dollars through promises of “threat removal.”

You see, when you install one of these scummy programs on your PC (often by accident or by trickery), you’re greeted with warnings about the status of your computer.  I’ve seen pop-up balloons by the clock with messages that “Windows has detected spyware infection!  You should download the latest antispyware updates to fix them.  Click here to install antispyware!” (that’s not precise but it gets the point across), when in fact there is no such infection other than the software itself.  The “XP Antivirus” series likes to pop up a “scanning window” that shows “viruses” it “found” along with an explanation of why they’re dangerous, along with a fake “threat level” as well.  I called B.S. on the whole thing 100% for certain today, when it listed a virus about which it stated “this virus corrupts your system BIOS.”  If the machine had a virus that actually damaged the BIOS code, the machine wouldn’t boot!  If they meant the “CMOS RAM” instead (a misnomer but still the generally accepted term for where the BIOS stores its settings), the computer might complain a lot on boot, but otherwise would automatically reconfigure itself to sane defaults and boot right on up anyway.  But I digress.

The fake security programs ultimately will attempt to convince you that you have some kind of threat to your security on your computer that is quite serious, and then attempt to get you to pay up for the software or the repairs.  It’s such a simple modus operandi, but insanely clever.  Please don’t be fooled by promises of increased security.  If you’ve already been infected with this garbage and you’re in our service areas in North Carolina, you can check out our spyware and virus advice page or contact us to get it wiped out.  Otherwise, find a reputable independent technician or local computer service shop in your area to take care of it.  (Avoid major chains such as Geek Squad like the plague, because it’s hard to know what the skill level of the technician will be and their prices are usually quite ludicrous.)

As always, you can contact me directly if you have questions or feedback about this article.