Saving Your Laptop after a Spill

Water, coffee, and soda are among your laptop's worst enemies. Just a little bit of such a liquid on your laptop keyboard can damage or destroy your machine or cause you to lose data.

Some laptops are more vulnerable to damage from a spill on the keyboard than others, and it doesn't always have anything to do with the price tag. Some keyboards have a thin rubber membrane beneath the keys with electrical contacts molded right into little domes under each letter; that design may feel squishy and cheap to some users, but it stands up better to a splash or a flood than a more traditional design with springs and exposed contacts. How do you know which type of design you have? Take a look for yourself by prying off a keytop; if you're shopping, you may be able to get the information from the manufacturer or a dealer.

The best way to prevent damage from a mix of liquid and electronics is to keep them as far apart as possible. Keep your laptop far away from cups of coffee, glasses of water, and cans of soda.

I have forgotten my Windows XP admin Password. How do I get in?

Question

I have forgotten my Windows XP admin Password. How do I get in?

Answer

Assuming you have physical access to the machine (ie: you can boot a floppy or cd-rom ) then you can 'root' your machine and get full access to it. There are six different methods that can be used to achieve this.

Go to: [ http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd] This method is a bootdisk to crack the password. I've used this successfully a few times, on a NON-domain account. If you plan on using this at home, then odds are likely you will be OK. If you plan on using this at work, you should know if you have a domain or not. If you do, there are some more instructions (in the url above) to get past the domain controller. If you fail to follow those instructions you can alter login information badly enough such that you will need to reinstall Windows to get back in.
Re-install Windows, but don't format the hard drive and choose to use 'c:\Win2' for the windows directory (or some unique directory). This process will allow you to keep your files in tact but will NOT keep your programs in tact. After doing this, it is highly suggested to do a formatted reinstall.
Use Windows XP recovery console to manually go in to c:\windows\system32\config and delete the SAM file. Someone at Experts-Exchange posted this question: [ http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Q_20881463.html]
Use winternals ERD commander to blank or change the admin password. [ http://www.winternals.com]
You may also try this - [ http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;308402]
Windows Expert Password at: http://www.atlantisminds.com/

If you have the user password to login to windows xp or nt, you could use a more easy way to get in. As long as you know the administrator username and password, or the administrator him/her self (if it is someone else), you can press Ctrl+alt+del and del again on the windows login screen. Then, follow these steps:

Type Administrator in the username field.
Type the administrator's password (or the password you set up during the installation of Windows) in the password field. It might be a blank field as well.
Go to control panel > user accounts and change the user's password.

It should be noted that, if your workstation is on a network using Active Directory (aka Roaming Profiles) then your user information is not local, and the methods above will not work. The modifications have to take place on the AD Server .

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Is Spyware Slowing Down Your Computer

Everyday more and more computers are becoming infected with Spyware and Adware (advertising tracking). No matter where you go on the web, someone is trying to sneak something on your computer. From honest web sites placing simple logon cookies, to paid advertising tracking your movements on the web, to malicious software that is designed to record your keystrokes and discover your passwords, Spyware and Adware have together become the web's number one problem.

Many of these programs are down right dangerous and seriously threaten your online privacy and identity. But even the simple and supposedly benign Adware programs can cause you serious problems.

Online Backup-The Best Solution

How to Keep Your Files Safe

As more and more people get into using their computers for more than just internet browsing and Solitaire there is an obvious gap in service as far as file backups go. People are accumulating thousands of photographs, MP3’s and other important files like resumes. Most large businesses have a good backup policy, but it can be pretty expensive. For the longest time small businesses and home users have had no real option to back up their files. Some people went and bought external hard drives to back up their files but they can have a high failure rate as well. Some people burn data to CD’s but they are easily lost or damaged. Even if you choose one of the above backup methods everything is still on site at your home, what if something happened to your home or office, a fire, a flood, a disgruntled family member or former employee? Off site back up is the only really truly safe way to backup your files in a safe and secure way.

What are all of your pictures worth to you? What are all of your movies and MP3’s worth? Anyone who has gone through a hard drive crash would tell you they wished they had a backup. The team here at Be Your Own IT has gone through our share as well, as recently as 1 month ago we had a hard drive with 35,000 songs on it crash…. At $1.00 a song well, you can do the math, of course we have a Mozy account and everything was safe and sound. There are a few alternatives to using an online backup system:

• Burn a new CD or DVD every Sunday night and store it at your brother-in-law's office. • Pay $200/year for an online backup service that uses old, mediocre software. • Buy a$ 200 external hard drive and hope your office doesn't burn down. • Do nothing and don't worry about backup. (“Ignorance is Bliss isn’t it?.")

Either way none of these solutions really fix the issue. Lets face it even if you choose one of these methods who can remember to do it all the time, who has the time to get around to backing up their files? The real solution is finding a secure, affordable, online backup system to protect your photos, music, outlook email files, address book, movies, and other important documents, we have found that solution and it is Mozy. The best part is they even let you try it for free, and not one of those weak 100MB trials, you get a full 2GB, enough to backup thousands of music and photo files! If you are looking for an safe secure backup system for all of your computers files we suggest trying out Mozy, we have and we LOVE it, below is a link to get your two free GB today, no setup fee, no credit cards, and no expiration.

Set Up Web Hosting

Lesson 1 Setting Up Web Hosting

The first step to setting up any website is to set up web hosting.Basically put websites are a collection of files people can view, these are the web pages.Those files have to be stored somewhere on a computer that is not only setup to display them on the web but is online 100% of the time. (This is your webserver)There are many types of web servers to choose from we will break down the two main categories below.

2 Different Kinds Of Operating Systems

Linux Servers-In an extrememly simple way are great for affordability, they are very diverse and most web companys will choose this server as the default type.All of our websites are hosted on Linux servers unless for example you need an application that required a Windows Server; this typically only happens if you are hosting business applications.

Windows Servers-Are great for small businesses for example that need to host outlook or other server level applications for the company.It often times is just as affordable as Linux servers in the beginning but as you start adding email addresses and things like that costs can add up.For example you would pay a couple of dollars each for email addresses on a windows server and a linux server has unlimited ones for free.That said we are not bashing windows servers, they are great, very reliable, and very scalable, its just 9 times out of 10 it makes more sense for people just starting out to use a Linux server.

3 Different Kinds of Hosting

Dedicated Server-This type of server is for business level type websites, if you are running complex applications on your website, if your website gets large amounts of traffic, or you need to guarantee up time.All this flexability comes at a cost of a couple of hundred dollars a month for most people so this again is usually limited to the types of websites listed above.(Even this website isn’t hosted on a dedicated server)

Virtual Private Server-This is often the second step for people hosting a website; it offers more scalability, more bandwidth and often time’s better support.For us the support was really why we switched we are currently hosted at a virtual private server, but we have pretty complex things running on our site and also receive loads of traffic.A logical second step as your website grows.

Shared Hosting-This is where most websites start, hosting companies like Godaddy gained their huge market share by offering amazingly affordable shared hosting.This just means basically you share a single server with hundreds of other websites, they are generally less scalable, have medeocore support, and cannot handle large amounts of traffic.That said for most people starting out they are the perfect option.Every one of our customers started our on a shared hosting account, all of our sites started there, and it’s the perfect spot to start yours.

Basically put after you have chosen your domain name you will need to setup hosting, most people combine this purchase but you cannot have a website without a hosting account.The ideal setup for people just starting out is laid out below.

Go over to a place like 1and1.com, pick up your domain name and 1 years worth of hosting it will cost your under $50.00 for the whole thing.From there you will use the rest of our lessons to build out your website.If you are a business and anticipate having considerable amounts of traffic from the get go, or you have big plans for applications on your website you may want to start with a year of Virtual Private Server service instead.Below we have ranked the web hosting companies, the top ones anyway.We have always used 1and1, some people have complaints about them but we have hosted over 50 sites there for the last 5-10 years and they have always been great.

You Can Check Out Their Website Here

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Saving Your Laptop after a Spill

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