I have been curious about where my online friends go for social networking and for business networking. There just seem to be so many websites out there now.

My online friend, Karlyn, tagged me to find out, so I will post the few I have used, but note that I mostly use MySpace…

My Myspace
My Stumbled Upon
My Del.icio.us
My Tumblr

So, where is it that you hang out? I hope to hear from Arin, Mike, and anyone else who is also into social networking. Then, tag/post this topic to your own blog so we can see the echo effect of where your friends hang out too.

This is an IMPORTANT COMPUTER TIP …

I have an important message to share with you. I felt strongly about it before, but now that it has happened to me, I feel even more strongly about it.

First, let me ask you the following questions:

1) When you go to http://www.google.com, do you see a popup ad while still in the search results at any time? You shouldn’t, because Google doesn’t support pops at all.

2) Do you get popups on a website with a competing company advertisement? If so, Why would that company advertise their competitors? Think about it.

3) Do you have a web search toolbar in your browser that you didn’t insall?

4) Do you have a web search toolbar in the top of your emails that you didn’t install?

5) Do you see icons on your taskbar or desktop that shows software you didn’t install?

I did. I also knew what was causing it due to working on the internet as much as I do. If you have ever heard of Spyware, Adware, or Scumware, you will know what I am talking about. These programs can record your every move – secretly gathering information about you including which websites you visit, which ads you click on, your name, age, social security number, credit card number, passwords, email addresses, buying habits and more.

These bad program are not picked up by anti-virus programs at all. So, since I found that I had it, and I was getting quite annoyed by the extra popups, and couldn’t guess what other information of mine was being stolen. So, I had to ask a friend of mine what the programs there were to help get rid of it.

I downloaded spyware software, try AdAware, and did a scan. This scan resulted in a few small things to have removed. But, it didn’t find the cause of my problem. I was still getting popups at websites I knew didn’t carry the popups. Turns out that I had 2 new spyware bugs. I decided to research the search engine to see what spyware programs others trusted.

If you really want to protect yourself, I highly recommend doing something about keeping your computer free of spyware/adware. The price is affordable, especially for this type of protection.

I even asked how I had picked this Spyware up. I was told ” It’s a Driveby. Which basically means you went to a site or a pop-up was displayed, an ActiveX component was installed; which in turned installed the Spyware. This is the 2nd most common way of getting it. The other way is by installing free games, etc. You may want to adjust your IE Security settings to a higher level. You will get message boxes when you go to sites but it should help prevent these from installing.”

I hope you found this information useful. If you feel that you have found it useful, please send this message to family and friends to help protect them. I am amazed at what comes out sometimes that tries to sabatoge our computers on the internet. Always read and be aware of what is out there. Search google for the latest computer threats. Educate yourself.

-Article Copyright © Wendy Shepherd - http://www.wendyshepherd.com
**May be reprinted with permission, credit, and link (more…)

Let me ask you…

1) Have you backed up your data from your computer lately? (including your email box?)

2) Do you know what to do if your computer keeps restarting itself?

3) Do you have all of your necessary CDs in one place for servicing your computer?

If not, I would highly recommend doing so. I just went through computer problems myself (again) and decided to use this time to remind you to backup your computer. I try to run a backup on an Ion Drive that I own, however, the last time I ran it was in July. Don’t worry, I didn’t lose anything this time.

It all started around Thursday/Friday. My computer would restart for no reason. I thought perhaps I was overworking it like I tend to do. I can work faster than my computer can handle sometimes, and have too many programs open which makes it crash. It is rare with my new Alienware computer system.

But, when it started happening every 15 minutes to 1 1/2 hours, I knew something was wrong. I decided to make sure to back up my stuff on the Ion drive. It took a long time (the whole day) because of my unreasonable use of my Microsoft Outlook email box. I have folders within folders created on there to deal with clients, my websites and my Arbonne customers. I will change this system to have folders created in my computer folders from now on. Did you know you can save email messages as a .msg file and reply to emails much easier that way?

Mike wanted me to leave everything the way it was on the computer and have him just do a system restore. I didn’t want to take any chances! So, when I was finished and he went to do a system restore, imagine our shock when the computer restarted right in the middle of the restore?! That was it. That was all she wrote. The system wouldn’t get back into the Windows XP area to let us do anything. I was fine though, I was just happy that I had backed everything up.

Mike, bless his heart, had to deal with a few days of customer tech support with Alienware and Direcway. I won’t go into the long details of what he had to do to find out what happened and how to fix it. We found that the whole thing was due to one of my two memory sticks going bad. This error caused the computer to restart itself. So, why is it that some individual out there decided it was a bright idea to have the computer restart over and over instead of letting the computer user know what the error IS so it can easily be fixed ?!?!?

After I got back online, I checked my email to find that my friend, Barb, (thank you my friend) had sent me just what I needed, albeit too late. *sigh -I will share with you so that you will know…

What causes a computer to reboot itself?

1) It could be caused by a lot of things, but it is usually a hardware problem, especially if it occurs randomly. A noisy power supply, loose screw under the motherboard, bad CPU fan, and memory, expansion boards, socketed chips, and cables that are not fully seated are among the common causes. The motherboard could be cracked—these are usually hard to find. Our motherboard FAQs (http://duxcw.com/faq/mb/mb.htm) may help.

Here are some software causes:

- Computer May Reboot Continuously with More Than 1.5 GB of RAM (Q304943)

- Computer Caught in Reboot Loop After Using DriveSpace (Q130018)

- Windows XP and Windows 2000 Keeps Restarting Itself

- http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=129341

2) Here is another thing you can try:

You can stop your computer from re-booting itself when there’s an error.

Right click my computer, and select properties, and then the advanced tab. Under startup and recovery, click settings, and uncheck the box that says automatically restart. Click apply/ok the required number of times, and reboot your system.

Now, instead of your computer re-booting when there’s an error. You should receive an error message(BSOD) telling you what caused the problem.

Pay particular attention to any drivers identified in the stop message.

A list of Windows stop messages can be found HERE (http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.htm)
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I will be using number 2 above.

Now I am going back to work to get all programs reinstalled and try to catch up on my tasks/work. Onward and upward!

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Comments:    1.

Wendy!

I am so sorry I was so dense and sent you that vital information so LATE! Next issue, feel free to call me.
I feel like I’ve had every issue known to man.

My PC’s rebooting itself was due to a driver, by the way.
I was new to XP, and the printer I had was rather old,
and the printer driver wasn’t compatible with my new
XP PC, go figure.

The very moment I updated the driver, all was solved. In my defense it took a week of horros, and a dozen knowledgeable techs to finally zero in on the issue.

Comment by Xerraire — 11/2/2005 @ 2:02 am
2.

I keep my email .pst file in my My Documents along with every other file I use. My data files for particular software programs (e.g. Quicken) are also saved to My Documents. I then back up the entire My Documents to a USB drive once a month based on a calendar reminder I have set up. I have too much important data (family photos, emails, financial data, business data, wish lists, etc.) to risk losing it. I get very frustrated when I don’t have easy access to that information, so this not only allows me a backup copy but it is also transportable to any other computer for quick retrievel.

Comment by Misty — 11/2/2005 @ 8:07 pm