Nethunter 2 metasploit Database [*] postgresql selected, no connection.

Nethunter 2 getting posgresql working with metasploit. If your in metasploit and are checking the status of db_status and are getting error that [*] postgresql selected, no connection.

Getting WepCrackGUI installed on Ubuntu 13.04 & 14.04

WebCrackGUI is an easy scripted way to run attacks on WEP and a simple way of grabbing handshake from a WPA network. Though WepCrack does not install always easily.
*updated 11/.2/14*

Flash Blue People Bug Linux Fix

For those that are using Linux they may have noticed that if your using the flash player from adobe that you have blue people. Well there is a problem with flash that causes the hardware acceleration in flash to mess  up.

Chrome Flash on Ubuntu Problems

If your like me I had problems with my flash playing videos on places like amazon and what not with the default flash player on Ubuntu. I had tried to install the flash player to see if that changed anything and it did not. Well here is a way to see if the amount of flash players you have on ubuntu is conflicting with it running properly.


Lets first make sure you have a proper flash installed on your computer.
Download here

once you download the right flash player for your computer. for me it would be APT for ubuntu and I am running a 64bit.
after you install that you will need to make sure that your browser does not have others conflicting with it.
Restart your browser to load the new plugin that you installed.

after that go to this link

Chrome://plugins

on the right side click details
then go to the bottom of the page to the Shockwave Flash for me I had 3 different flash players installed on my machine which where having conflicts with each other. Not making sites like youtube, amazon, or really any other flash website.

we want to disable all the other flash plugins beside the highest

for me it is. The default for the chrome 19 dev is not the newest.

Version: 11.1 r102
Location: /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so


this should fix any problems your having playing flash on different websites. try now to go to youtube and play a video. it should be playing now.

I hope this helps you enjoy the web more.
Local Tech Repair Admin

Removing xp,vista, win7 antivirus 2012

Right after the new years the place were I work got hit with computers all having different variants of the fake antivirus 2012. This variant renames it self depending on which version of windows you have. But like most fake antivirus software they try to steal your credit card info and personal information. So here is how you remove it.

This is what you may be seeing depending on the version of windows you have.

1. So if you see this don't try to manually remove any of the files it lists. They are fake and you could be removing non infected files.
So what we will need is a few programs. on a sperate computer download these programs to a flash drive.
Malwarebytes
Spybot Search & Destory
SuperAntiSpyware
RKILL
ComboFix
TDSSKiller

Once you have your software downloaded and on a USB.

2. Start the infected computer in safe mode with networking. (hitting F8 during start up)

3. run RKill and wait for it to finish

4. then install malwarebytes, spybot, and superantispyware. then update and run full scans this will take a few hours.

5. Once scans are finished and items found are now fixed we can restart the computer into normal mode.

6. Run comodofix... this will take a while and it will tell you when it is done. if you need help they have a guide to walk you through it (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix)

7. once that is finished you can run TDSSKiller to make sure everything is clean.

8. Run Registry cleaners CCleaner and Registry Mechanic

9. Uninstall malwarebytes, spybot, superantispyware, comdofix, ccleaner, and registry mechanic. Less you want to keep some of them

10. You now are finished.


I hope this helps you get your computer working again.
if you are wanting to help prevent these things in the future. keep windows updated, use firefox or chrome, install WOT plugin, and keep your antivirus updated.
If you need an antivirus software one of the top rated by AV-test.org is Bitdefender for xp,vista, and windows 7 beating away the competition.

if you rather have a free antivirus check out Avast

Thanks for reading,
Local Tech Repair Admin

and leave a comment...

Virus scanner for Ubuntu - BitDefender

I am not on of the people out there that will tell any linux users that they are free from viruses as linux grows the chances of viruses grow with it. It is true that there are worms, viruses, and more out there for linux already though the number is still well below that of windows.

After years of not having an antivirus on my linux machines I have decided to go with one that would support my 64bit needs. That alone cuts out many of the competition by default. Those like AVG, Avast, mcafee, and etc. and i did not want to use clamav for some reason I felt like expanding my horizon. After seeing how well bitdefender has done in the windows arena for all the current versions of windows it seemed right to go with it for linux. They have a free home use only version for linux and it is updated by repository.

BitDefender repositories are located here
http://download.bitdefender.com/repos/

With this in hand you can install the repositories to your ubuntu machine.
download the virus scanner GUI which is what I like and then go at it.

BitDefender has a very simple and nice looking GUI to use on linux which is not always the cause but becoming more so now that linux is becoming more popular.
BitDefender comes with a 30 day free trial and requiring you to request another free key to renew it for another 365 days.

For what it is worth in protection and security it is not bad to have a little extra protection even if the likely hood of getting a virus on linux is very small. it is always better safe than sorry.

I hope you try BitDefender out for linux and share your thoughts.
Local Tech Repair Admin

Avast Free AntiVirus Results

Avast is a low powered power house when it comes to virus protection. First off I don't know if results are fully accurate as some of the virus links went dead sense the first part of the tests but after adding more it still did well.

Avast performance wise is not that bad as it runs at ~50mbs of ram while idle and does not very much while actually scanning. The software did well when I was surfing the net trying to download viruses using IE8 though on known bad sites the software would block the download of the known viruses not even giving it a chance to get in temp directory to do havoc. On top of that avast redirects you to their page telling you that you just dodged a virus and tries to sell you on upgrading your free version to a version with more bells and whistles. Though on the positive note avast did not allow me to bypass the block like some other virus scanners did when they did warn you about a site.

On scan it did not pick up any viruses which surprised me a little though sense it did block downloads it did not allow many to get a foothold. While in herins boot cd avira did not pickup anything though SAS did pick up 2 variants of a fake antivirus. While malwarebytes did not pickup anything spybot did pickup a pup that every other virus scanner also did not pick up.

Overall avast did well enough to go to round two with the other better virus scanners to go in to more testing. AV-Test.org has their results here if you want more information from their tests.

So far avast has done the best out of the virus scanners both detection rate, prevention, and performance in low memory situations.

Hope this helps and will do more testing later,
Local Tech Repair Admin

Avira Antivir Personal 2011 Review – Benchmark Windows XP

Today I am testing out Avira Antivir Personal and seeing how it holds up compared to other anti-virus suites out there. Avira AntiVir Personal has a fairly simple display and for a free anti-virus it I was hopping for a ok performance both detection rate and also hopefully having a low resource requirement.


I just want to start off by saying that I am not really impressed with how well it works. Avira is the software the company I work for uses for their virus removal off of Hiren's Boot CD. So I figured it be good for a dedicated virus scanner on the windows side.

Results:

While testing Avira with their Guard activated I used IE8 to surf the web to known predetermined websites that hosted a wide verity of bad software. Most the sites that I downloaded viruses from did not get stopped by avira in their active scans I only had 1 active block from an active x virus sense active x was enabled across all websites. Avira only stopped one virus from installing and only one virus from running after it installed. Which total 3 viruses in all during avira's active guard.

On the other hand during the scanning Avira did pick up one more virus in a 14min scan. This is not the best seeing that the computer still has many more viruses installed and spyware and spamware. So lets compare this to others to see how much they truly did miss.

Hiren's Boot CD
avira: 0
superantispyware: 3
normal mode:
comodofix: to many to count over 20
malwarebytes: 1
spybot S&D: 1
Sophos: 0


Conclusion:
Avira did protect against some of the more nasty viruses on the list though did miss many adware and rootkits and fake anti-virus software. Though sense it was able to pick up active x viruses and stop a few of them it is on the same level as AVG but with out a any warning on the web for if your going to a bad website or not. Still this is still better than what we have on our low end of clamwin.

Thanks for reading,
Local Tech Repair Admin

AVG Internet Security 2011 Review for Windows XP

AVG is a popular anti-virus software along with others like Norton and McAfee. So I decided to see how well it did compared so some other anti-virus software. I decided to test the AVG Internet Security 2011 instead of the free version because they gave a free 90 day trial to see how well it works and I wanted to see if it worked. I will go back and try again later with the free version to see the difference between the two.

If you have not read the first review check out it here:
http://localtechrepair.blogspot.com/2011/07/clamwin-and-clam-sentinel-review-on.html
this gives detail on what links I used for the malware.

Performance:
I just wanted to start out by saying that AVG Internet Security 2011 did not pick up every virus and malware so even the paid version still needs help by other things like spybot, malwarebytes, or/and superantispyware. But it did do a lot better than clam did to say the least.

AVG has some nice features like integration into the web browser to help warn people of virus infected sites. This should help some of the less techy people out there see a visual sign that something is wrong. Though only one of the sites did it not let me at all go to the site where the others gave me an option to bypass the warning.

AVG was able to block some of the applications from installing in the first place with is good for prevention though it did not prevent all of them. It was only able to block 4 while they where trying to install. This is better than nothing but not perfect either. It was able to detect running processes after some of the viruses where installed (5 of them). This is nice but I would rather of had it block it before it was installed but still did not make me have to scan for them.

While scanning it did a whole system scan and was able to find 1 infected file and 4 warnings which where corrupted exe from viruses that tried to download. The scan for a 10 gb hard drive took ~13mins.
AVG gives you the option of the priority that you want the scan to go I left it at the default for the scan though giving it high priority would probably speed up the time but make it less likely for the user to work on the computer while scanning.

Though AVG did not pick up everything and could not uninstall everything.

While running in Hiren Boot CD I ran different tests to see what it missed.
Superantispyware was able to find 4 adware and 1 rootkit and remove them.
Avira was able to find 5 infections.
Normal mode:
Malwarebytes found 12+2 = 14
Spybot Search & Destory found 1


AVG Internet Security 2011 missed a total of ~24 malware/virus and possible more that the programs above did not find.



Conclusion
AVG did a fairly good job and probably would have don't a lot better if we listened to the warnings that they gave while on the Internet we may have been in a better place. Though this still has room to grow in its protection of viruses sense the internet is not the only one place that can give you viruses. The performance of the scan speed was not bad at all compared to that of clam. Though on the performance of the the software on the ram side while idle the software was using 230MB of ram while scanning on default mode it was using 334MB of ram and while on High Priority scan it used 375MB. For a slow computer this may be acceptable but it depends on the users. Though for a windows xp computer with a half a GB of ram this and other things starting up this may be little to ram heavy for those computers.


Thanks for Reading,
Local Tech Repair Admin

ClamWin and Clam Sentinel Review on Windows XP

Clamwin is a version of ClamAV for windows. Though clam does not have active protection this is where clam sentinel comes in providing active protection for the clam definition database. So trying out clam to see if it really holds up to some of the things that viruses can throw at it we will see if it is worth even trying.

The list of viruses are from the following links.
-----WARNING REAL VIRUSES-----
adeliminator.net
http://www.thevalidatecheck.com/fr_ipd3/MjAxMTA3MTAtNzYuMTE1LjI0OC4xNjk=/index.php?web_id=CD4099&muid=MT-4e1a64ed4d383-3659
http://www.anti-spyware-101.com/download-sph
http://www.top20free.com/wallpaper.html
http://www.keygenguru.com/
http://spywarezapper.com/
http://www.rocketdownload.com/program/serial-keys-recover-215490.html
http://www.topwallpapers.com/
freevirusprotection.org/
www.free-antivirus.info/anti-virus/avg-antivirus-free-edition.html
www.newfreedownloads.com/find/adware-removal.html
www.freechristmasscreensavers.com/animatedsavers.htm
www.ihateadware.com/
www.freechristmassavers.com/
www.fasterpccleanclean.com/remove-rootkit-win32-agent-pp
http://www.reimage.com/lp/nhome/dyn.php?tracking=ga1&banner=6.1_Content_US&adgroup=Malware&ads_name=728x90_spyware_new_lp8&keyword=Spyware&lpx=LP-8
www.handyarchive.com/free/rootkit-web-bug-worm-eliminator/
---------WARNING REAL VIRUSES DON'T GO TO--------------


So while visiting these sites and and allowing the active x to run all these sites. I never received any popups warning me of possible infections or any warnings on a default install. This could possibly been fixed if I turned on warn on suspicious activity though this is not turned on by default. After trying to run in normal mode spybot, malwarebytes, and superantispyware and all of them being killed by the viruses I decided to try safe mode to see if it made any difference. And it did not.

Detection Rate for Default mode for clamwin is 0%


To see if clam will pick up any off them I tried to run it under hirens boot CD to see if the definitions would work. While in Hirens Boot CD Clamwin was able to find 1 virus after a ~31min scan of a 10GB hard drive. Where by comparison avira picked up 5 in 9 mins from hiren boot cd. And superantispyware found 5 more on top of that in 14mins. ClamWin is a non effective virus protection it could not prevent any viruses from being installed and it could barely find any when there was some.

My Rating of this small virus scanner is a complete fail for both boot scanning and active windows scanning.

The Best Free Anti-Virus Comparison - Clamwin VS McAfee VS Norton VS Avira VS AVG and More

I have always wondered if clamav is really that bad of a virus scanner compared to others in the industry. Researching on the web I hear a lot of people bashing their definitions database saying that it is worthless but I could never find any comparison between it and other virus scanners. When virus scanners are compared I normally look at av-test.org to see which one is the best for the year. But they don't test clam in their tests. So I figured I do my own test.

So here is what I am doing. I have a virtual machine with windows xp fully updated to the current updates (7-10-11). I will have one antivirus on the OS with nothing else. So it is only the virus scanner and the OS fully updated. I will be using IE for getting the viruses and then doing a virus scan with the virus scanner and seeing how many it picks up and how many it actively blocks. Then I will delete the Virtual Hard drive and start over with a new .vdi (I am using Virtual machine for the VM).

The First Anti Virus I will be testing is Clamwin with clam sentinel for the active scanner sense clamwin does not have a real time scanner. After that I will test it against some of the most common free anti-virus software out there so the free version of AVG, Avira, McAfee, Norton, and More (Post a link to one if you want it tested). After all the tests I will write a conclusion article summarizing the statistical information. All virus tests will also have the same viruses installed (or tried to be installed.)

If you have any suggestions let me know and I will try to do what I can. Each Anti-virus scanner will get their own post with their results.

Looking forward to your commons,
Local Tech Repair Admin


Test Results:
Avira
AVG
ClamWin and Clam Sentinel

Ubuntu Defragmentation - Defrager for Ubuntu

There are talk about why linux does not need to be defragged like some older windows file-system types did. Though those that do not think that linux is that great and still needs to be defragmented then there is still hope for you.

It was hard for me to think that my system did not need to be defraged sense I use my system a lot and am always running out of space and deleting things and then downloading more till I have no room left and then doing it all over again. So I decided to see if my system truly did not need to be defragmented like a lot of people say linux does not need to be for ext3 and ext4 filesystem types. So I went on a search for a defrager for linux because there was non in the package managers.

What I found was a very simplistic but functioning defrager called defragfs. So I downloaded it and checked it out. If you want to all you need to do for ubuntu is extract the perl script from the zip file to your home directory or your desktop. Now we just open our terminal and then cd to the directory we put it. So for me I extracted it to my desktop at ~/Desktop then I simply started the script with this command.

Sudo perl ./defragfs /

For those that want to know what this does. The sudo gives the command I am going to type administrator privileges then the perl command tells the file I will be loading is a perl script. the ./defragfs starts the script and the / tells what directory to start in.

So to my surprise the only fragmented files I could find is torrents and I did not even need to run the defrager. my fragmentation rate was ~0.7% so less than 1% I personally think that is amazing seeing that i am repairing a windows computer right now that has an 22% fragmentation on a NTFS drive.

If you want to know why linux does not need to be defraged in more explenation I found a good article here.

I hope you all try this out for your self and see for the fun of it if you have a high fragmentation rate or not. I would love to see if anyone has a higher fragmentatino rate than me.

Thanks for reading,
Local Tech Repair Admin

Rootkit Removal Tools By Wonky

When your computer gets a virus, that virus tries to spread, and eventually it will damage the host making it much easier to detect. A rootkit on the other hand is designed to hide certain elements such as files, processes, registry entries, or network connections, from the user and other programs thus making it very difficult to detect. This technology can be used for good as well as malicious purposes so it is important to be familiar with your computer to avoid deleting these legitimate objects. Within Windows rootkits are used to hide malware so that their execution goes unnoticed by your security applications. So imagine that a rootkit has been installed on your computer and that its purpose is to hide a virus, thus giving the malware time to complete its goal, steal your data, and damage your system all the while going undetected. Unfortunately, rootkits are extremely effective at this, which means that even though you may believe your PC to be totally clean, some of you could be infected right now.

Most of the anti-virus vendors have integrated anti-rootkit technology into their more recent products. However, this is not a fool proof solution against rootkits because just as the AV companies improve their products detection abilities, so the malware creators find new ways to avoid detection. So as security conscious users we must rely on third party tools to help us, and there are several free applications which specialize in the detection and removal of rootkits. Keep in mind that none of these products will detect every single problem, so it is always a good idea to keep more than one of them to hand.

here are a lot of anti-rootkit programs available, a lot of this software is very advanced and requires an experienced and technical minded user who is familiar with computers and operating systems. However, there are a couple of options that do not require much technical ability and are also very effective.

At the top of the list is Sophos Anti-Rootkit. The program has a small but easy to use interface with no options other than choosing where you want to scan. As it scans it opens up to a slightly larger interface where it lists the results of the scan and gives you information about each result as well as a recommendation for them. Additionally, a small help file is available that explains the program in a little more detail and gives directions on how to use the command line anti-rootkit tool which is also included. For all Windows users, Sophos offers an easy and very effective choice in rootkit removal, that is suitable even for beginners.

I have two top choices for all the experienced and technical users because I find it impossible to choose one over the other. GMER and RootRepeal are very popular applications, and they are definitely my favorites, but it takes someone pretty knowledgeable about computer systems to be able to interpret the results. You can find a lot of documentation on both programs but if you are the type of person who likes to click the scan button and simply wait for the results, you would be better served with either Sophos or F-Secure Blacklight.

F-Secure Blacklight Rootkit Eliminator is another great tool for rootkit removal. Unfortunately, support for it ended a couple of years ago or it might have been my top pick. However, you can still download it on the F-Secure web site and it is compatible with Windows Vista and XP.

Windows Vista and XP users should download a copy of this great program because even though it is not supported anymore, it is still one of the best rootkit removal applications available.

The next product that I looked at is one that I always keep in my toolkit. Dr. Web Cure It is not a standalone anti-rootkit tool like the other tools I recommended, rather it is a free malware scanner and removal tool that happens to be pretty effective at removing rootkits. It is always a good idea to have more than one tool capable of removal, so Dr. Web's freeware scanner is a great addition to anybody's arsenal because it removes more than just rootkits, and it does this very well.

Sometimes the only symptoms you will get from rootkits is an increase in network traffic, or a decrease in performance, and maybe an unknown process running. So with today's high bandwidth networks, and high performance computers it can be very hard to notice any signs. Prevention is always the best practice, but detection is just as important so make sure your AV has anti-rootkit capabilities, and make sure you have a good Firewall and HIPS combo. This and a combination of the tools I have mentioned are the best approach toward keeping your computer free of rootkits.

The free version of Prevx offers the same class leading real time detection of the full version, unfortunately it doesn't offer much more than this. Prevx Free is only capable of cleaning select infections, such as Adware, the ZEUS banking trojan, and MBR rootkits. When dealing with rootkits detection is definitely very important, so even if you can't clean all infections you might at least be alerted, enabling you to take further action and manually remove the rootkit or seek help in doing so. As hard as it is detect the newer, ever evolving rootkits and viruses, Prevx can be a very powerful and informative addition to your regular anti-virus software.

Additionally, Prevx Free can run customized scans from the context menu and also gives you the ability to schedule scans in the GUI to help assure that nothing has gotten by your normal security software. On my 320 GB hard drive a deep scan takes about three minutes on average. The free version also offers protection of stored cookies as well as protection for all of your saved credentials. There is also a browser protection component in the free version but it only offers custom protection on only one web site of your choice. It does however, give the full Prevx Safe Online protection, which includes anti-phishing, protection against hijacks, keyloggers, and cookie stealers for a number of popular websites such as PayPal, CleverBridge, or Amazon and of course the one website of your choice.

While the free version of Prevx can not clean a lot of rootkits, it can effectively warn you about new infections. Prevx is inherently built on their anti-rootkit technology, and has consistently been one of the first vendors to detect new rootkits. I believe that this application can play a very important role in keeping your computer clean of all infections, after all, you can't remove what you can not find.

Please note: Some of the free version component features in Prevx/SafeOnline are either restricted or disabled altogether. Users should read the vendor's description carefully for the version they are downloading before deciding if the program is suitable for their own needs.

Written by
wonky
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-rootkit-scanner-remover.htm

Keyboard Only Putting Out Numbers on Windows XP

I recently have gotten a computer in that would only type numbers no matter which keyboard you put on it and no mater what key you pressed it would only press from asdfghjkl;' it would type 34567890123 or something very close to that.

Sense I had never seen anything like this before the only thing I could think of is that some malware must have over written the keyboard layout keys so that they where only numbers. But after doing a full virus removal and hardware checks making sure it was not the computer it self having a problem and it not fixing it. Though the computer did have a lot (ish ~500) of adware, virus, rootkits, and the bunch of other things I was wondering if one of these things reset the mapping on the keys in windows. So in doing so I tried to reset the key mapping back to US under the control panel >> Region and language settings

Though that still did not fix it so I was left with only searching the web to figure out if anyone else had this weird problem. And not to my surprise I noticed a lot of people complaining about their Comcast software and Norton software causing the problem. Most people just needed to uninstall and then reinstall the software to get rid of the problem.

The software from Comcast was called Comcast Constant Guard. So after using the Norton removal tool and uninstalling Comcast Constant Guard I noticed the keyboard started working properly again. On the uninstall of the Comcast Constant Guard I noticed one of the reasons why your dissatisfied and uninstalling it is because it would only type 0-9 on the keyboard.

So if your having this problem I don't know if the software started doing the only typing from 0-9 to help protect the user from the malware on the computer collecting the users passwords or not. But it is a good thing that it did mess up for this user because they needed to have those removed before they compromised their bank info or anything else.

Hope this helps resolve the problem,
Local Tech Repair Admin

Remove Viruses

Repairing Broken Packages Ubuntu - Livecd

Sometimes you accidentally have power loss during and update or you accidentally turn the computer off during an install (or in my cause my little girl likes the blue button). well how do you fix a broken update that won't let your ubuntu start. Well I will help you try a method of fixing that.

The first thing you will need is an Ubuntu Live cd. This comes in handy especially if you can't boot ubuntu to try to fix the problem so I suggest always having it on hand if you only have one computer. Once you have that just boot to the live cd. Once your in the live cd you will want to open up terminal and type sudo -i if it is not already in root.

from root you will want to type:
cat /etc/fstab

this will give you the information about the system something that will look like this.
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=0ad11260-eafc-40cb-a20d-4801bfdae453 /               ext4    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=60331c4e-0957-4d3a-b9a8-6da71fed3455 none            swap    sw              0       0
...

What you want is the one that has the ext4 or 3 or 2

the /dev/sda1

then type:
mount /dev/?d?? /mnt/repair

in my example would look like this
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/repair

what this does is mount the drive with the partion on sda1 to /mnt/repair so that we can start repairing the ubuntu partion

type:
sudo chroot /mnt/repair su
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo aptitude upgrade
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get upgrade

what this does is changing root to the broken ubuntu system then we are updating and then upgrading to make sure everything is up to day. we then force install the pending and then we configure the packages and then upgrade again to make sure everything is upto date.

we can now exit and reboot the system.

This will fix the broken packages and then if that was what was holding up the boot then it should boot if not then you will have to try something else.

hope this helps start fixing a bad boot because of a bad install or update.

Local Tech Repair Admin

Data Transfer

Many people will go to a computer repair shop to get their computer's data transferred to their new computer. Though even the average person can easily transfer their old data, pictures, documents, music, and etc. to their new desktop or laptop easily.

You don't need a big hard drive to transfer the information or even lots of dvds or cds but just the hard drive with the old information on it and the new comuter and a cheap little device.
that device is Cables To Go 30504 USB 2.0 to IDE or Serial ATA Drive Adapter (Black)

I personally use this device at work when ever we do a reinstall or need to do a data transfer from one computer to another. The only difference between you doing it your self and having a computer repair company doing it for you is that a computer repair company may charge you +$100 to do it and can do it for only 20 if you buy it your self and just take the hard drive out of the old computer and plug it in.

When using a device like that always remember to unplug everything first. Then take the old hard drive out from the computer. Now turn on the new computer into windows or which ever operating system your using. then plugin the usb transfer device and then plug the old hard drive to the usb transfer device then plugin the power to the hard drive. Depending on if it is a sata or ide drive they will be powered differently so make sure you put the right power adapter on the data transfer usb. It will take a little bit of time for windows to recognize that the hard drive is there but after it does it will look like another drive on windows just like and external drive does.

If your wanting your old drive to be a external drive I would not suggest using that transfer device to do that which you can do. but buy and external enclosure. If the old hard drive is an old laptop drive then you will want to use 2.5" USB 2.0 SATA Hard Drive HDD Case Enclosure
or
USB 2.0 External 2.5" IDE HDD Enclosure Case Blue For Laptop

sata does not have pins but the connector looks more like what a USB connector looks like where IDE (old hard drives) use pin configuration like in the picture for the device.

for desktop hard drives they are probably the larger 3.5 in drives
Vantec NexStar CX NST-300S2-BK 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure (Black)

or
3.5" IDE HDD Enclosure, Black



the transfer device will work on everything where enclosures are specific to the drive type.

Hope this helps get your data transferred
Local Tech Repair Admin

also check out
Data Recovery

Ubuntu 11.04 Crash startup after upgrade or update Nvidia drivers

Recently I upgraded my ubuntu 10.10 laptop with Nvidia drivers to 11.04 ubuntu while upgrading the installer did not really look kindly that I had custom drivers for my GPU. Sense I use nvidia's drivers and not the distributions drivers because I use CUDA on my laptop it just crashes when ever I upgrade or update the kernel for Ubuntu. Though this does make sense because Nvidia does tell us in their documentation that we needed to rebuild the drivers for each kernel that we install. So I will help you walk through how to fix this problem with out having to do a reinstall.

as I stated in my installing cuda on ubuntu 10.10 article we will do some of the same things. To find that article follow this link
http://localtechrepair.blogspot.com/2011/02/installing-cuda-on-ubuntu-1010.html

So the very first thing we can do is just check over some basic things to make sure it is your drivers. Start the computer and go in to the recovery console. Once that is boot up you can go down to drop to shell with networking. Make sure your computer is connected to the internet my wire.

Once your in shell then you will need to connect to the internet.
commands:
sudo dhclient eth0

We then will need to do a few more other things. we are going to make sure that the upgrade did finish properly.
commands:
sudo -i
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get check

What this does is makes apt update is records to make sure it has the newest packages in the system. Then it will do is make sure the upgrade is finished or if there is anything wrong it will install more. The third thing is it will make sure there are no broken packages on the system.

After that we should reboot and test if that fixed the problem if it still has not fixed it which it won't if it is a video driver problem. But it is always good to make sure everything is up to date. We will need install the drivers for nvidia for our kernel. So when you reboot go to the recovery console again and then make sure the system is ready for installing the drivers.

(If you do not have the drivers you will need to download them
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us
I used the beta drivers version 275.09)

step 1
sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
step 2
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf
then add:
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
blacklist nvidia-173
blacklist nvidia-96
blacklist nvidia-current
blacklist nvidiafb

Step 3
telinit 3
step 4
sudo -i

step 5
cd to location of the drivers aka .run file
step 6 (ls will show you files)
./then_the_driver_name.run
step 7
Reboot

Doing all these steps will make sure that that the nvidia drivers are installed and that there are no conflicts with other drivers on the system. When installing the nvidia drivers I would recommend that you say yes for everything that it asks.

This is a basic repair of the nvidia drivers after an update of the kernel or a system upgrade. Sense if you use Nvidia's drivers from their site they do not auto recompile for each new kernel which requires you to build them each time.

I hope this helps,
local tech repair admin

How to Prevent Viruses on Windows

Getting viruses on your computer can be costly in both time and if you get them professionally removed then it may cost you a bunch of money. To keep from having to waste all that time and money and keep your computer healthy and your private data safe it is better to prevent your self from getting viruses in the first place.


The first thing you will need is to make sure that there is not already any viruses or worms on your computer to start with. If your starting with a new computer is always the best.

so step one would be installing firefox, chrome, opera, or another web browser other than windows IE. If you must use IE then make sure it is updated to the newest version which right now is version 9.

the second thing is to get a good anti virus installed on your computer and always download the anti virus software from their venders website not anywhere else.
for a list of anti virus software you will want to visit.
http://www.av-test.org/certifications.php

AV test test different anti virus software against many different known viruses out there and sees how many false positives and false negatives that each vender has and also test usability and how well they repair if the computer does get infected. Going of their rating is a good way to compare anti virus software.

if you like to read reviews and compare different anti viruses to each other you may want to check out the following website.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews

These websites are great starts to finding the best anti virus software that fits your needs.


The third step that you will want to take is to make sure you have a good anti malware program. I would personally suggest getting spybot S&D and malware bytes.


Fourth thing you will need to do is not use P2P programs like limewire, frostwire, or bittorrent. If you must use them then read comments on your bit torrent site to make sure that other users are not noticing that the files do not contain viruses. If a video asks you to install a codec to run the video do not install the codec as it is most likely a virus. For all the codec that you will ever need please download http://www.cccp-project.net/ as it will have all the codec that will ever be on any torrent site. And if the video still asks you to install a codec from a site then try to find a different torrent with the same video as the one you got was not good.

don't download random games online or get "free" ringtons as a lot of the time these things contain viruses. A good site to download random thing from is http://download.com

And always keep your computer up to date. Turn on Windows auto Update.

Thanks for reading,
Local Tech Repair Admin


*update*
also check out the link below for updated certifications on anti virus programs for the best that fits you
http://www.av-test.org/certifications

Windows 7 Won't open exe file open with

Recently i had a computer that came in that was infected with a virus that loved to hide different files and also would not allow the person to execute files at all. so let me know how I fixed that.

Sense I could not open regedit or cmd to help change the file back. I needed to find a different way of fixing the problem. so what i needed to do is very simple on a separate computer I went and downloaded a registry fix for the computer and then started up in safe mode.

from there all I had to do is fallow these simple instructions
To fix the association for a particular file type:

1. Download the corresponding fix from the above table. (Use Right-click – Save as option in your browser to download the fixes.)

2. Unzip the file and extract the .REG file to Desktop.

3. Right-click the REG file and choose Merge. Alternately, you can open the Registry Editor and then using the Import option from the File menu, to merge the REG file contents.

Note that you need to be an administrator to apply these fixes.

for the registry file go to this wonderful site.
http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/file-asso-fixes-for-windows-7/


just make sure that you have removed the virus before you change the registry or you may have the problem of it not working again.

If you don't know how to remove viruses here is a good way.
http://localtechrepair.blogspot.com/2011/05/basic-repairing-of-virus-infected.html


I hope that this will help you fix your windows 7 exe problem. It is really annoying to get viruses that change your executable files.

later,
local tech repair admin

Basic Repairing of a Virus Infected Computer

So I have been working at a computer repair shop recently and fixing computers with lots of different problems. when we get a computer with a virus for service we throw in a free diagnostic in with it to make sure the computer it self is running fine. So let me take you through the process of how we fix most computers in the store.

The first thing that you will need is something called a hiren's bootcd which can be found this link
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Once you have that burned to a cd or USB you then start the computer your fixing up and open the boot menu (normally Esc or F12) from there we go in the the windows xp mini. We mostly use software that is easy to use and that does not take someone extremely knowledgeable about computers to run. This is why we use windows instead of linux and command-line.

so next once the hiren's menu opens up we got to testing and then we use a program called S&M Stress Test to make sure that the computer's hard ware checks out. for instance does not have a bad stick of ram.

then from there after that passes we go and use Avira AntiVir Personal and SuperAntispyware and you need to make sure they are updated. then after that you will find a few problems most of them will be tracking cookies which aren't really viruses.

From there we restart the computer and then start it up in safe mode. And run the avira, superantispyware, and Malwarebytes. After all that checks out we restart the computer in normally and then run the last 3 virus scanners again.(malwarebytes is most effective in normal).

We then run CCleaner and Registry Mechanic to clean up the computer.

we then update windows using the windows update manager. We then check to make sure that the user has some form of anti virus protection if they do not we install avira for them or AVG

That is a simple way of fixing a lot of your virus problems.


hope this helps,
local tech repair admin