Simon's PC Services

28/01/2019

We seem to be plagued with hoax recorded telephone calls from various numbers claiming to be from BT and that either your Internet connection has been compromised or that it's about to be disconnected.

These calls are clearly scams and you shouldn't call the number in the message or do anything to interact with these scammers.

If your phone service has the option to block or divert 'scam' calls then that's an option you can try to reduce the number of calls.

If you are with BT for your telephone calls then you can also report scam calls via:

Report a Scam Call to BT Help

07/01/2019

As this topic was raised with me today, if you find your Laptop, PC or mobile phone suffering from water or other liquid damage (Tea, Coffee, Soft Drinks etc) the do the following immediately!

1. Remove any external power from the device, via the main plug or power switch if necessary;

2, Remove any batteries from the device, if it has removable batteries. Disconnect any removable peripherals such as USB devices and similar at this stage.

3. Quickly place the device upside down (for laptops keyboard down) onto a soft absorbent surface (a towel is good) to let the liquid drain from it.

* Under no circumstances attempt to use the device while fluid may still be inside and until it's been properly inspected *

Allow plenty of time for the fluid to drain from the device before you take for inspection.

If it's possible that you may need to claim on your insurance do check with the insurer first as they may have their own process or procedures for dealing with such accidental damage claims and arranging an inspection.

I charge from £20 for an Insurance inspection or inspection repair estimate. The costs of an inspection report can usually be recovered from your insurer as part of any claim you make.

To repeat:

* Under no circumstances attempt to use the device while fluid may still be inside and until it's been properly inspected *

Doing so raises obvious risks of causing more or permanent damage including loss of data which could expensive or uneconomical to repair.

However I am sure you have multiple backups of your documents, pictures, files and other data so we are mostly dealing with the continuing risk of physical damage to the device.

If you continue to use device while fluid is inside then please don't be too surprised if it doesn't work properly afterwards! 🤔

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29/11/2018

Fixing a few faulty laptops and servicing them so they can work to their best.

If your PC or Laptop isn't working well or needs a service or upgrades then give me a call 🙂

03/10/2018

The Autumn update for Windows 10 (called build 1809) has been released today and will be coming your way soon via Windows Update, in the usual way.

If you experience any issues or problems with this please contact me for help!

The main issues so far are the usual ones for devices with low free storage space in that the update will fail unless you have enough free up space to download and install this update.

This is especially important on the lower cost devices with limited storage including as laptops with only 32 GBytes of total storage. It's not really enough for many users and they often run into issues with these bi-annual updates.

If you want to get ahead of the update or you experience issues, drop your laptop or desktop PC in for full services and we'll take care of this and all those other issues for you🙂

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29/09/2018

I'm sure you have all heard about the latest Facebook security issue where somewhere between 50M and 90M users have been affected by a issue where a third-party might have gained access to your account.

If you haven't come across this issue which broke yesterday (Friday 29th September) then the details are below.

What isn't being as widely reported, so far, is that any other service you use Facebook to access could also have been compromised.

If you access multiple accounts and services using your Facebook login details then you either need to change this soon to use separate accounts for each service or ensure your online security is as good as it can be.

This means:

1. Using separate accounts for each service, with unique long random passwords;

2. Use 2 factor (or 2 step) authentication on your most important accounts such as email and Facebook;

3. Use a Password Manager to organise all of this for you, so you are no longer using short, easily guessable and reused passwords across services.

If you need help with your online security, including how to secure Facebook, your email accounts and all of those other services you depend and rely on daily then contact me for support.

It won't cost you a fortune to secure yourself effectively but it might just save one in the long run!🙂

Attack gave hackers ability to take over accounts in what is believed to be largest breach in Facebook’s history