Files Gone? Could be a Hidden Files Virus

Hidden Files Virus Hits Victims Hard

Imagine starting up your system one fine morning only to discover that everything appears to be missing – your files, installed programs, even your Start menu shortcuts.  If you’re one of the many people who’ve recently become victims of the “Hidden Files Virus,” this scenario may be a painful reality.

The good news: your files aren’t actually gone for good.  The bad news: your system has a virus and getting your files back will require some work.

First, a few things NOT to do:

DON’T install any “anti-virus” or “removal utility” program that presents itself in the form of a pop-up, dialog box or un-closeable message on your screen.  In many cases, the virus has come onto your PC via a trial installation of a program claiming to be an anti-virus or utility program (for example, an application promising to optimize your hard drive or speed up your PC).  Once infected, the program seems to be the only way to get your files back, but it is in fact the source of the problem.

DON’T pay for any program claiming it can clean the infection off your PC.  The program itself is the virus and holding you hostage by hiding your files is how it extorts money from victims.  Giving your credit card number to the same nefarious individuals that have created a virus to con you is quite possibly the worst thing you can do.  If you’ve already done so, I recommend that you contact your credit card company to close your account and consider keeping an eye on your credit report in the months to come to ensure the crooks don’t use your personal information for more fraudulent activities.

DON’T run a registry or temporary file cleaning tool (like CCleaner).  In most cases, your settings and recovery data are in this folder.  If you “clean” (i.e. permanently delete) the contents of your temporary folders you may lose your data for good.


What SHOULD you do?

If you are a beginning user, you should strongly consider contacting a reliable computer repair professional.  If you’re pretty savvy and familiar with navigating through your system settings, here are some steps to try:

Make a backup of your start menu and settings:

Windows 7 & Windows Vista users: navigate to C:\programdata\microsoft\windows. From the list of folders right click “Start Menu” and select “Restore previous versions.”  Follow the prompts to restore back to a date prior to when your system became infected.

Windows XP users: go to C:\documents and settings\[your username]\local settings\temp\smtmp\ and navigate through the process of restoring to a date prior to when your system became infected.

Unhide your Files:

Download and install the executable file located here: Unhide.exe

Once you’ve downloaded the program, double-click the icon on your desktop and allow the program to run.  The program will remove the hidden attribute (+H) attached to all your files.  If you’ve intentionally hidden files you’ll need to re-hide them after you’ve fixed your system and removed the virus, but I’m guessing you’ll find that’s a small price to pay for getting the rest of your stuff back.

Update and run your anti-malware software:

Once your files have re-appeared, it’s time to get rid of the nasty bug that tried to hold them hostage in the first place.  Download and install Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/mse.aspx )and the free version of Malware Bytes (found here: http://www.malwarebytes.org/lp/malware_lp_form/).  If you’ve already got one or both of these programs installed, download any updates and run a full system scan.

Prevention = Protection:

Now that you can breathe a sigh of relief that you dodged that bullet, help ensure that it doesn’t happen again.  Be wary of installing software from untested sources.  Never click through pop-ups warning you that your system is infected and prompting you to install an anti-virus program or removal tool.  Avoid downloading files from sharing and torrent sites – when you’re tempted to try to get the latest episode of True Blood from BitTorrent, remember the pain and suffering you just went through to get your files back.

Speed up Windows - Software Alternatives

Looking to Speed Up Windows? Try these programs

“My computer is so blazingly fast I can hardly keep up with it!” – said no one, ever. The complaint I hear voiced most often by people calling to have their computer serviced is that their system is sluggish, slow to boot up and unresponsive. While the usual culprits (viruses and spyware) often factor in, sometimes even clean computers run slower than they should. If you have a decent, malware-free system that’s underperforming, you may be able to get noticeable improvement by replacing some of its resource-sucking software with less bloated alternatives.

Norton and McAfee are the most well-known anti-virus programs around – just about everyone with a computer has at least heard of them. They have relationships with most computer distributors, resulting in the vast majority of pre-built systems arriving at the user’s door with one of these software packages pre-installed. Unfortunately, Norton and McAfee are massive programs that hog system resources. Heavy-handed online monitoring can lead to slow-as-molasses Internet surfing and in some cases can even restrict access to certain sites, or break a user’s web-access entirely.


Adobe Reader is the most widely used PDF reader around, yet it’s large file size (it takes up over 100MB of drive space) and drain on your system’s resources makes it one of the slowest PDF reader programs on the market. Many websites instruct users to install Adobe Reader and include links to download it, though in most cases it came pre-installed on the machine. While some advanced PDF functions may work best with Adobe (like watermarks, for example), you do have alternatives that can quickly and easily handle basic PDF viewing.

Sumatra PDF (http://download.cnet.com/Sumatra-PDF/3000-18497_4-10698785.html) is a simple reader program with a small file size (4 MB drive space used) and streamlined configuration. Another popular option is Foxit Reader (www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/). It's less than 1 MB to download and allows you to open, view, and print all types of PDFs. It integrates with DocuSign®, a program that allows users to securely send documents with eSignatures.

iTunes an easy way to get your tunes and videos on your iPod, but you may be regretting making it your default media player. It’s slow to launch, slow to run and is constantly popping up notices to download updates to itself and its partner program, QuickTime. Save iTunes for your Apple gadgets and use any number of other media players to listen to your music – even the default Windows Media Player is faster to load and less of a drain on your system’s resources.

To get all of the organizational tools you’re used to from iTunes, check out MediaMonkey (www.mediamonkey.com/), a free media management program. Play MP3s, audiobooks, podcasts and videos, sync with your mobile devices and even burn CDs and DVDs, all the while keeping your media collection in order, be it small or massive (its site claims it can “manage 100,000+ music and video files without bogging down”). It supports most file types and can even convert file types to enable syncing across devices.

With a few software swaps, you could be singing a different tune about your system’s speed and responsiveness.

 

Image of Windows 7 by Microsoft

Great New Year's Resolution Websites

Resolution Websites for the New Year

Whether you've dreamed of making delicious meals like a professional chef or would like to become fluent in French, this is the year you've resolved to make it happen.  In the past, you would have had to enroll in a class at your local college, requiring that you accommodate your work or personal commitments around the class time parameters.  Today you need only a computer and access to the Internet to dive into the abundance of knowledge available online – in many cases for free if you know where to look.

Start Cooking Like a Pro.  We love Epicurious (www.epicurious.com) for their inventive recipes and delicious food ideas, and now they offer online classes in conjunction with The Culinary Institute of America.  Learn everything about Italian cooking or how to concoct the perfect dessert.  The first class is free, and then you pay about $50 for several hours of video instruction on the topic of your choosing.


Become More Crafty. Always wanted to learn how to knit a sweater?  Maybe you've thought about baking a unique cake for your son's 5th birthday party, but don't know where to begin.  Craftsy (www.craftsy.com) offers courses on knitting, baking, jewelry crafting and much more.  Costs for full individual classes vary, but there are many free mini-classes you can try, and they offer a money-back guarantee.  Watch classes from any device with an internet connection – they even offer an app for iPhones and iPads.

Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) is also a great resource for inspiration and links to craft how-to’s, most are free with photos or videos. Many are geared toward the novice so you can learn from your fellow hobbyists how to tie-dye, create your own candles, decorate adorable cupcakes, and much more.

Become your Own Handyman (or Handywoman).  If you feel like your home is falling apart, one leaky faucet at a time, look no further than www.diynetwork.com for everything home-improvement.  VideoJug (www.videojug.com) is another great resource for short videos showing you how to complete a bevy of common repairs - they promise to help you "get good at life."  The “DIY & Home” tab gives you a wide selection of tutorial videos on topics like Electrical, Plumbing, Interior Design and much more.

Learn to Play the Guitar.  Learn a little about music theory before you get started.  Get yourself a music lesson from Ricci Adams' Music Theory (www.musictheory.net). Choose from two apps for iOS devices, designed to teach you the fundamentals of music and to practice what you've learned.  Once you've mastered the basics, check out Justin Guitar (www.justinguitar.com) for your free guitar lessons.  Improve your Internet karma and donate if you can to support the cause.

Wrap your Tongue Around a New Language.  Rosetta Stone may be effective, but it’s pretty pricey.  The BBC has a nice program for complete learning of upwards of 40 languages (www.bbc.co.uk/languages) with step-by-step courses including pronunciation, grammar and exams.  Once you're beginning to master the language, you can test your knowledge further by listening to BBC World Service broadcasts in the language of your choice.

Anki (http://ankisrs.net/) can help you learn more quickly.  It's a flashcard program that runs on computers and smartphones and is designed to put a large number of words into your long-term memory rapidly while allowing you to "study" anywhere you have a few minutes to spare.

Feed Your Intellect. We all have that class that "got away" while we were attending university, but never fear: there are resources for free online education aplenty.  Apple device users should start at iTunesU (www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/).  With courses from hundreds of universities, including Stanford, Yale and MIT, you can watch lectures and take entire courses on all subjects from biology to economics.  It seamlessly integrates with iBooks in case you want to purchase the textbook for future reference.

Finally, the Open Courseware Consortium (www.ocwconsortium.org) is a worldwide community of institutions that provides free continuing education, complete with notes, memos and examinations.  They also have a list of member schools so you can take courses online directly with the university.

What is Siri, Really?

What is Siri? An Explanation

Apple made headlines in December when it introduced Siri with the latest iteration of their iPhone, the 4S. Siri has been billed as an “intelligent personal assistant that helps you get things done by just asking.” It’s a new feature to the phone and coming to the iPad that allows you to control pretty much every life-related feature on the device. It has been touted to be able to do just about everything that your phone is capable of by entering simple, natural-language voice commands. So, what is Siri, really? How does it work in the real world we interact with daily, and not just in a controlled marketing test environment?

The Nuances of Siri

Siri was developed at Stanford Research Institute and takes its name from the organization’s initialism. Apple purchased the project and adapted it to their device. Siri utilizes a few third-party technologies as well. Nuance, the most well-known voice recognition technology, powers Siri’s ability to recognize what you’re saying, even if it’s “Hey Siri, think you could remind me to meet my brother tomorrow for lunch?” Nuance filters out exactly what you mean and schedules an appointment for tomorrow at lunchtime that notes your brother. Siri also utilizes Yelp and Wolfram Alpha for some of its other features. This allows you to search for local businesses and do computations like “What’s 15% of 34.86?”, useful for calculating tips, or finding out the number of calories in a cubic foot of guacamole.
Holding the home button or moving the phone to your ear whenever you’re not in a call activates Siri. It’s simple and natural to use – which is what Apple tries to do with most of its interfaces.

The reality of Siri

Siri has been marketed as being able to do just about anything. The commercials, which star famous personalities like Samuel L. Jackson and Martin Scorsese, claim that you can locate friends, ask the meaning of life, or schedule appointments – all talking to the device like you would your personal assistant. We all know technology ads tend to exaggerate the actual usability of devices, so how accurate are these ads?

As long as you understand what the “sequences shortened” title card at the end of all the ads means, Siri is actually remarkably good at doing exactly what it claims. While the device won’t respond at conversational speeds like purported, the actual features are mostly there. Siri responds amazingly to contextual awareness, both location-wise and in your conversation. If you ask it the weather, it will tell you what the forecast is for your current location, but if you say “What about in New York?” it will remember that you’re talking about the weather and tell you the forecast for New York. It “just works,” instead of trying to plow through technical jargon with you.
One of the very few limitations, though, is that if you try to do anything outside the features that have been integrated, Siri loses you. You can’t launch other apps or search your notes for that thing you wanted to look up. Apple has noticed this missing integration too and with the release of iOS 6, this fall, Siri is supposed to gain new abilities.

Siri is very human like and you will quickly find yourself saying “please” or “sorry” to your phone before you realize what you’re doing. It, essentially, replicates all the functionality of a personal secretary– albeit one constantly connected to the Internet. Therein lays a major drawback. If you don’t have a network connection, Siri can do almost nothing. So if you’re on a limited data plan, you might want to be more conservative with your queries.

Overall, Siri is moving in an excellent direction. I’m sure we’ll see more voice-powered interfaces in the future, and for now Siri does pretty much what it claims it can. I look forward to seeing what it turns into and for now – I think I’ll hold off on hiring a secretary.

Antivirus Problems: Overzealous Scanning

How to Deal with Antivirus Problems

Whether you’re a Nerd who’s adept at surfing the web, or an amateur who has yet to learn the ins and outs of it, a virus scanner is one of the most critical parts of your computer. If you don’t have a virus scanner, you should probably stop reading this article and go download Microsoft Security Essentials right now.

Back? Alright...Now, virus scanners are wonderful, but often a little paranoid. Back in 2010, McAfee’s virus protection had a glitch which caused it to register critical system files as viruses. So even though you have virus protection, you should probably double-check files that it marks as positive if you have any suspicion about them.

If your virus scanner happens to alert you to a file that you’re pretty sure is clean, you don’t have to take its word as the truth. It might just be a false positive. Now, there’s no 100% sure way to tell if something is a virus or not, but there are a few tips you can take to narrow it down. It’s probably even more accurate than diagnosing real viruses, so you can be pretty sure here.


So if something like this pops up on your computer, and you’re not sure whether to delete the file that your virus scanner is telling you to delete, you can upload it to a website called VirusTotal to check. The process is pretty simple. You can do a one-time check via their website, or install their up loader in order to check any file simply via right-clicking the suspect file and running it through their database.

The final option for checking if a program has a virus is simply to contact the developers. You can tell them that your virus scanner identified the program as suspect and that you were wondering if this is a problem. If they’re legitimate, you will probably receive a personalized email back explaining the problem. If they’re not legitimate, you will probably receive either nothing or an email that further confirms your suspicions. If you get nothing, you can always just Google the program name and the word “virus” and see if others are having the same problem.

Fortunately, you shouldn't have to go through these steps too often. They’re just precautions, but it never hurts to be informed!

 

Image copyright Malwarebytes

Use Amazon at Your best

Get the Best when you Use Amazon.com

Whether you’re in the market for the latest hit movie, coffee, electronics, or even a drum set, Amazon.com has just about anything you can imagine buying online. In addition to massive selection, Amazon is known for its competitive pricing. Save even more time and money by taking advantage of some of its shopper incentive programs.

While the $79 price tag may seem steep at first glance, Amazon Prime entitles users to more than just free 2-day shipping on eligible items – though that’s a big selling point. One-click shopping stores your billing and shipping information so you don't have to type it in every time or navigate multiple confirmation screens. Stream a large selection of on-demand movies and TV shows for free over the Internet to any device that supports Amazon Prime Instant Video (including your computer, most gaming consoles, and many TVs and set-top boxes). Kindle owners can take advantage of the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library to borrow one e-book a month to read on your Kindle device with no late fees or due date. There are currently over 145,000 titles available.


Even if shipping is the only Prime benefit you’re likely to use, one holiday’s worth of shipping to family members throughout the U.S. can make it break even: you need only make about 13 purchases a year for it to pay for itself.

If you're already a Prime member, share your account with up to four other people for added value. In the upper right-hand corner after logging in, click on "Your Account." Under the Settings section, select "Manage Prime Membership." Just below your membership information is a section labeled "Invite a Household Member." Enter their name, relation, email address and birth date. Each person you invite will need to know your birth date to confirm their identity. Once they're set up, they'll benefit from unlimited two-day shipping, but not Amazon Prime Instant Video or Kindle Owner’s Lending Library benefits.

The Amazon Mom program (www.amazon.com/gp/mom/signup/info) is free to join and benefits caregivers of small children with three free months of Prime membership, 20% off diapers and wipes subscriptions, and exclusive deals and discounts.

Students currently enrolled in a college or university with a valid .edu e-mail address can sign up for Amazon Student (www.amazon.com/student). Membership includes six months of free Prime membership and the option to continue Prime for up to four years at $39/year. One caveat: you can't share an Amazon Prime Student account.

You probably wouldn’t consider Amazon a good place to pick up a jar of peanut butter - shipping costs as much as the item, unless you buy in bulk and have more than you need. Amazon's new Add-on Program now offers thousands of small, low-priced items, available to be "added on" to orders of $25 or more. These items can be combined with free super saver shipping or Amazon Prime accounts for additional savings.
While e-books are great for tomes that would be bulky and unmanageable in hardback, there are some books you want to hang on to. Harry Potter series, anyone? With Amazon Upgrade, you can have the best of both worlds. Purchase a physical book from Amazon that's part of the program and Upgrade lets you obtain a digital copy for a discounted price. You can even upgrade past purchases, so long as you've made them through Amazon and the titles are included in the program.

Lastly, if you find yourself purchasing certain products regularly, consider Amazon's Subscribe and Save program. Eligible items include everything from toothpaste and deodorant to diapers and cereal, and garner up to a 15% discount in addition to free shipping. Simply choose an eligible product and the quantity you'd like to receive. Customize your delivery schedule, from once-a-month to once-every-six months. Amazon sends an email notification a week prior to shipment, so you can delay or cancel at any time. You're only charged when the order ships and subscriptions are managed through the Your Account page so you can manage or update them any time you like.

Hidden Mac Features: Getting the most from your computer

How to Find the Best Hidden Mac Features

Last week I explored some of the cool, less-well-known things your Windows PC can do and this week it’s Mac’s turn. If you’re ready to unleash your Mountain Lion, here are some under-utilized tools built into Mac OS X.

Dictation and Text to Speech:

Imagine how quickly you could reply to Aunt Edna’s email if you could talk instead of type. Click the Apple menu in the top left corner and select System Preferences. Choose the Dictation & Speech icon. Use the Dictation tab to turn it on and set a shortcut to launch (such as “Press Left Command Key Twice”). You can speak continuously for up to 30 seconds – that’s a lot of text!
Those who multi-task should explore the Text to Speech tab. Activate “Speak selected text when the key is pressed” and choose a key to launch (default is Option + Esc). Now you can have that accounting report or lengthy email from your college roommate read to you while you prune your bonsai tree. You can choose the system voice you prefer, have alerts or application notifications announced, and even have the clock broadcast the time to break you from your Facebook stupor and remind you to get back to work.

Add secret services to your default services list:

Launch an application such as Safari or Pages and click on the application name in the upper left Finder bar. Choose Services, then Services Preferences to see a list of options you can activate to appear in your default Services menu.

Capture Full Screen lets you easily obtain an image of whatever’s on your screen, or activate Capture Screen using Timer to get images of what’s on your screen at certain times or intervals.

Check the box next to Summarize and the next time you want to speed read a lengthy document select the text, click on the name of the application you’re using to view the material (such as Safari), choose services and then summarize. You’ll be presented with an abbreviated version that you can pare down further using the Summary Size scroll to increase or decrease the length of summarized text.

Customize text “hotkeys”:

If you find yourself typing the same things repetitively (such as your email address or a closing salutation in correspondence), create a hot key to cause the text to automatically appear when you type associated text or symbols. From the System Preferences menu choose the Language & Text icon and select the Text tab. The list of default symbol and text substitutions is shown so you can choose which you’d like to activate, or click the + in the lower left corner of the pane to add your own.

Note: this works in Apple default apps like Pages and can be activated in Safari by clicking Edit – Substitutions and enabling Text Replacement. Third party applications like Microsoft Word may not support your custom hotkeys.

Encrypt a flash or external hard drive:

Encrypting data you’ve transferred to a flash drive or external hard drive is a good way to keep it from falling into the wrong hands should your portable device be lost or stolen. Connect the device you wish to encrypt, find the icon created for it on your desktop and right-click on the icon. A dialog box appears with an option for Encrypt “.” Once selected, a dialog box will appear prompting you to select a password and password hint.

Encryption is time consuming - expect 5 GB to take 30 minutes or more, depending on your system’s capabilities. This feature also requires the device have a GUID Partition Table, so you may have to format the drive before you transfer data and encrypt.