Nope, it’s still there. Go into your System Preferences and select Trackpad. Go to the More Gestures section and for the first option, “Swipe between pages“, click the down arrow and select “Swipe with two or three fingers“. Now you’ll be able to use three finger swiping within Finder again.
Back/Forward Gestures Gone in Mac OS X Lion?
By Jason | Published July 23rd, 2011Additional Hard Drive for Dell PowerEdge 840
By Jason | Published April 17th, 2011Client called the other day saying his server had run out of room on the hard drive which he stores all of his work files; server is a Dell PowerEdge 840. He wanted a quick solution of mirrored drives so I researched what that system could support then picked up two Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB 64MB SATA-3G. Installed it in a matter of minutes but Windows couldn’t find it.
Went into the BIOS and I noticed the SATA port was turned off, turned it on, saved the changes and booted into Windows. Everything was good from there.
Remove Fake Internet Security Suite
By Jason | Published December 7th, 2010I’ve had a couple of customers in the past week whom were infected with a fake Internet Security Suite. When encountered on the internet it shows an animated image file, within a browser window, which resembles My Computer displaying hard drive(s), CD player(s), etc. and under each one it states viruses found. Upon clicking anywhere on this image it will want you to download and install it’s application.
This so called application is more a nuisance than anything else, that I have seen, as it keeps popping up fake virus or security alerts trying to get you to download or possibly buy (haven’t checked that) software.
My first encounter with it I immediately noticed there was a shortcut on the desktop for this Internet Security Suite so I right clicked and brought up properties then checked the target location which I forget where it was located but obviously not where installed applications are suppose to be. I deleted all the files except for a couple since they were in use then brought up the task manager to kill the fake application… task manager wouldn’t open.
I downloaded a command prompt version of the task manager and killed the fake app process, then removed the rest of the files which were in use and rebooted the system. Everything worked fine except the system could no longer access the internet, so I’m guessing the fake app was acting as a proxy of sorts.
After that I just decided to run Windows Restore to a point before the customer encountered this, rebooted and everything was fine. This, I think, is the fastest way to remove the fake app and you can read here on how to use the Windows Restore. The Internet Security Suite icon remains on the desktop, right click on it and select properties then click Find Target and delete the files displayed.
I found very little information regarding this fake application so thought I would add it to my blog. I did run across this site which provided a utility to download to remove the fake app, and if it wouldn’t let you, how to modify the Windows Registry file so you could download the utility. But I still think using Windows Restore is the simplest route to go.
My Review of MyCleanPC
By Jason | Published June 16th, 2010Awhile back I saw this commercial for MyCleanPC application which claimed the following with their Free Diagnosis (taken directly from their website):
- Quickly clean your system and increase speed
- Get rid of infected emails, pop-ups and spam
- Remove dangerous spyware and viruses
- Prevent annoying screen freezes, crashes and errors
It’s one of many available applications that advertise on TV & radio and always been curious on how well they actually worked but never took the time to check them out. The day I saw the commercial was just after I ran a clean install of Vista on my PC so decided to see what it would find.
It found 198 errors on this fresh installation of Vista, majority of the errors were empty registry entries. Actually I did install Borderlands for my nephew but that was it.
Importance of Defragmenting your Hard Drive
By Jason | Published May 26th, 2010So I had a client the other day whom thought she had a lot of viruses, and when I first glanced at the system I immediately noticed there was no antivirus software installed. Being a PC there’s really no reason not to have virus protection and recommend checking out Avast Home Free Antivirus Software.
So I installed Avast but didn’t run a scan at that time as I wanted to inspect what was going on with the system (a scan would have taken at least an hour). After looking through the running processes I found nothing out of the ordinary. So I ran a disk check, forget what it’s called exactly and I’m on a mac so can’t look it up, it took a little while but finished without errors.
I then scheduled the disk check with another option that could only be processed after reboot and also scheduled a full virus scan after reboot as well. Then I ran disk defragmenter, I figured since there were no viruses or lack of hard drive space that her drive must have been very fragmented. Not to my surprise, it was over 60% fragmented, so I let that run and left only charging the customer for an hour of work as that is all it took. I gave her instructions to let the defrag run, then to reboot the system when it finished to let the disk utility and antivirus run.
She contacted me a few days later stating how much better her system is running and thanked me very much. I provided a better service than the company she previously hired whom charged over 2.5x my fee for the same time worked, and she saw no improvements to her system after they left. Not only that but they obviously didn’t bother installing antivirus, defragmenting the hard drive, etc.
Troubleshooting Windows Print Queue
By Jason | Published November 12th, 2009Yesterday I had a customer come to me with his laptop stating it was very slow, which indeed it was. His HP printer queue was hung and the spoolsv.exe process, which is the Printer Spooler, was consuming 100% of the CPU. Usually this is solved by doing the following:
- Right click on My Computer and select Manage
- Expand the Services and Applications section, then select Services
- Locate Print Spooler, select it and click the Restart Service button on the toolbar
In most cases this should resolve the issue. However, for him, it did not as the queue still had a print job waiting to be printed and after the service started back up the process was immediately back to 100% CPU usage. When this happens, follow the instructions below:
- Right click on My Computer and select Manage
- Expand the Services and Applications section, then select Services
- Locate Print Spooler, select it and click the Stop Service button on the toolbar
- Leaving the Computer Management window open, double click on My Computer
- Then double click on your C Drive, Windows directory, system32 directory, spool directory and finally PRINTERS directory (i.e. C:\Windows\system32\spool\PRINTERS).
- Delete the files located in that directory then go back to the Computer Management window and, with Print Spooler service still selected, click the Start Service button.
That should resolve the issue, and it did for him until I tried printing a test page. The print queue was hung once again so I went through the above once more then looked at the printer properties. Noticed it was setup to use LPT1 but the printer was actually connected via USB. So I changed that and everyone was fine and dandy!
Troubleshooting 100% CPU Utilization
By Jason | Published November 11th, 2009Got a call from a potential client whose laptop was really slow. I went over to his workplace and immediately identified that the Print Spooler was the culprit consuming 100% of the processor. I was able to clear out the print queue but once I tried to print something it’d go back to 100%.
My next step was going to be reinstall the drivers for the printer, incase they had become corrupt. However, while I was looking at the properties for the printer I had noticed it was setup to use LPT1, after a quick look at the cable I knew I found the problem. It was a USB printer, so I changed the port from LPT1 to USB and he was good to go.
For more information on ways to clear out a hung print queue on Windows check out this blog entry.