Computers Byte
1345 2nd Ave East N4K 2J5 Owen Sound, ON, Canada

We will be close for vacation the Week of July 17th, returning on July 24th.

Crap...USB ports are acting up... Crap...this board looks like it's finally failing... Crap...now I have to deal with my own office computer...good thing it only costs me parts heh.... On the plus side, new Motherboard, new RAM, new CPU for the ol' office machine.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium, 1 year / 3 Machine License, now available for $39.99 + Tax.

We are closed today due to a death in the family.

Another day, another fight with Malware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY1k1GcZRww

That moment when you realize that you're having heat problems in a brand new build because AMD's stock cooler is so bad it can't even hold up to minimal load. Honestly they should stop shipping with heatsinks at all, or start shipping with copper core heatsinks. This all aluminum thing is entirely worthless.

Seems that someone decided that the fern I was given by a customer was needing to be stolen, will have to go through my HD Camera (+ night vision of course) history tomorrow. Wonder if the $10-15 fern will be worth the theft charge.

Looks like Microsoft is going to get even more heavy handed with the Windows 10 Upgrade pages. The biggest plus side is on the bottom left hand corner there is now an option to deny the upgrade. https://www.theguardian.com//microsoft-windows-10-full-scr

Stumbled across this on Reddit, Microsoft is getting a little more heavy handed with the Windows 10 Upgrades. Edit: This is a joke, and does not actually show up in Skyrim except as potentially a third party modification, but chances are no one would waste their time with such a modification. https://i.imgur.com/CEF7Kxx.png... https://www.reddit.com//4mqybe/this_is_getting_out_of_hand/

Know anyone that has been hit by one of the many Ransomware viruses? One of the groups writing one of those viruses just released their master key. As such we can now un-encrypt those machines and recover that data. If you or someone you know has been holding on to a machine with one of the many different ransomware viruses let me know and depending on which virus it was, it may be recoverable now! http://www.bleepingcomputer.com//teslacrypt-shuts-down-an/

Enough Said. http://i.imgur.com/rKUCKNK.jpg

This is a long one, but it's worth the watch if you're interested in what your Bank is trying to force you to download for "security" purposes. This talk was given in 2011, in January 2016 I contacted the speaker to see if anything has changed, he stated that Trusteer's Rapport is still as worthless now as it was in 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EimZQgt7WPg

Microsoft Flight Simulator custom build.

One day advertising companies will get their stuff together...one day. https://blog.malwarebytes.org//large-angler-malvertising/

Little Nostalgia for the Windows 95 Gamers that are still around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVeFEBCwXy0

EDIT: This is no longer available. Are you a gamer? If so there are free old school Sega games on Steam currently! Just click the the Install Game button under the Make War not Love 3 Prize Bundle. http://store.steampowered.com/sale/makewarnotlove3

Looks like Long Term storage of data will be cooler in the future, if / once this tech makes it to consumers anyway. Chances are the majority of it will be in data centers and such for the next decade or so though. http://gizmodo.com/optical-data-storage-squeezes-360tb-on-t

It seems that Microsoft has decided to push the Windows 10 Upgrade as a Recommended update, which is going to likely cause some people to inadvertently upgrade when they don't want to. I very much understand why some folks may not want to upgrade to 10, but apparently Microsoft either doesn't understand, or doesn't care. Either way the upgrade can be disabled! There are a few options to do this, if you're an advanced enough user you can disable it manually, which may or may ...not last depending on how Microsoft decides to deal with it. For the not so advanced of users it can be checked on here at Computers Byte. http://www.zdnet.com//microsoft-starts-pushing-windows-10/

Are you an Apple user? Do you have MacKeeper on your computer? If so it's officially time to change all of your passwords. Also, MacKeeper is not what is considered to be legit software, do yourself a favour and uninstall it as soon as possible. https://blog.malwarebytes.org//massive-mackeeper-data-br/

This may or may not be how iPad repairs are done. http://i.imgur.com/6DpoHoQ.gifv

Looking for a good quality 250GB Solid State drive? Today is the day. Not often that I'll post links, but this is a pretty good deal for anyone wanting a substantially faster drive for their computer (or PS3/4 etc). http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx

No, Facebook is not going to start charging you to keep your posts "private" (even though they already aren't private anyway). There is no need to be concerned that this is going to happen. The copy + paste thread going around right now is just a joke. If Facebook themselves decided to take steps like this, there would be articles written about it by security professionals. There are no such articles, and there is no threat to your postings going public (outside of them already being sold to everyone that wants them anyway). http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-privacy-policy-changes-dont

This is why you should buy yourself a Brother Laser printer. http://www.collegehumor.com//3915385/your-printer-is-a-brat

Having some frustration today! All this rain has caused some water to accumulate on the roof. Sorry for the additional delays in getting down to work.

Will be in a little late today, first day of school for the munchkin and I have to see her off :)

I've been fighting with a Dell laptop for a week now, trying to figure out why it's locking up. It's not the normal Malware/Virus problems, because this unit locks up before it even finishes POSTing (Power On Self Test). So This mornings job was a full dis-assembly...I can't even honestly figure out what they were thinking putting not only no fan in the unit, but not even a heatsink at all. All it has is an Aluminum filler with no heatsink attached to it even. This is so far beyond bad design I can only shake my head. It's a disgrace that someone thought it was okay to build a laptop computer like this. I am extremely disappointed in you Dell.

If anyone has any older computers or computers they no longer need that they'd like to donate to the victims of this mornings fire, please let me know and I can clean them up and get them ready for use (obviously at no cost). I've got one laptop almost ready to go already, it's nothing special but I'm sure the people who have lost a lot of their possessions will appreciate still being able to be in contact with their friends and family.

Once supply comes back into normal ranges we will start stocking 5/5c/5s screens again, until then once current stock is depleted we will be waiting on prices to come down. http://blog.revampwholesale.com//iphone-55c5s-raw-materia/

Windows 10 is here. If you're not willing to deal with a bunch of bugs and things needing tweaking, I highly suggest you don't upgrade to it yet. Give it some time to work things out.

Apple people be vigilant! https://blog.malwarebytes.org//fake-safari-update-instal/

Had a customer ordered something and they had it sent to the shop, giftwrapped! Wooo it's like Christmas time!

A fellow IT Professional in the UK has made a great video about Laptop Abuse. To have your machine properly cleaned out, give us a call, and for $45 (+Tax) we'll get your temperatures down to like new again! #StopLaptopAbuse... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aIGLJk6eoI

Have a stuck pixel on your screen? Give this a try, sometimes they can be convinced to start working again, sometimes they cannot. Worth a shot though! http://www.jscreenfix.com/

Looking to get a Solid State Drive but haven't been able to find something reasonably priced for a decent size? Amazon.ca has a deal on right now on a quality budget 500GB SSD. http://www.amazon.ca/Crucial-BX100-500GB-Inte//ref=sr_1_1

Apparently Google's Image recognition system is dreaming like we do. http://www.theguardian.com//google-image-recognition-neura

Some of you, like myself, use LastPass to keep your passwords in order. Unfortunately on Friday that had a breach and you need to update your Master Password. They are confident that none of your data has been compromised, but it's a precaution worth taking. https://blog.lastpass.com///lastpass-security-notice.html/

For all of you Apple users out there, make sure you're vigilant with what you put your Apple passwords into, including mail on your iPhone. Demo Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wiMG-oqKf0 Proof of Concept Resources here: https://github.com/jansouc/iOS-Mail.app-inject-kit//master