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Recently we have had a slew of MacBooks come into the shop all having the same issue with hard drive failure. After taking their macs to the apple store, where they are told the drive has failed and there is nothing they can do.  The customers then approached Charm City Networks for their data recovery needs. After inspecting the hard drives and not hearing any physical issues with the drives, we were able to mount the drives on a local windows file system and access them. After copying a few files over during the recovery process, a few errors would pop up showing read/write errors not allowing all the files on the drive to be recovered. Luckily we were able to copy over most of the users documents and media, but any remnants of the old OS were irrecoverable.

After the two more macs came in with the same symptoms, and several phone calls with similar concerns,  we started to notice a pattern. Researching the commonality of the issue  we turned up a few things.

According to Apple found on

http://www.apple.com/support/macbook/hd/repairextension/

“Apple has determined that a very small percentage of hard drives that were used in MacBook systems, sold between approximately May 2006 and December 2007, may fail under certain conditions. ”

After scouring through the forums a bit more, we found that many other models (other than the model listed by Apple)  had  the same issue, many of which have the identical hard drive installed.

Apple in the case of the 13-inch black and white MacBook models listed in the recall, will replace the hard drive free of charge. However will not recover or back up your data in any form. This in turn will leave the user stranded, since Apple is keeping the old hard drives after replacement,  killing the chances of recovery.

In  any case, the Lesson learned here is always back up your data! If  your mac or pc is acting slow or files start showing up as corrupt, we recommend backing up your data immediately. Whether it be an external hard drive,  thumb drive, or online backup service such as Carbonite  or Nordic Backup.

Can you afford to lose all your financial records, music, email, contacts, or your even those wedding photos? A small investment can save you from a huge nightmare and make the transition to a replacement or new PC or Mac a piece of cake.

-Jon

Over a period of about two weeks now. We have been experiencing a pattern of computers coming in with similar symptoms regarding “inability to browse the internet.” At first we assumed it was probably an improperly configured browser or even firewall/networking configuration issue.

Quickly we realized that all installed, even newly installed, browsers were showing the same problems. Background network activity such as email, software and even anti-malware are blocked, and were not able to download needed updates. However basic networking such as ping commands and trace-routes are unaffected.  At this point we would assume this to be a sign of a virus or trojan program,  choking communications to service its own malicious activity.

After running several scans with numerous programs;  including combofix; and having no malicious software  found. We had to go back to the drawing board.

When troubleshooting networking issues the first step is to disable the firewall. This will show if any security protocols are blocking any networking activity.

After we diagnosed the problem further, our results were shocking. The systems all had Norton Security Suite  installed, the trend being that the subscriptions had all expired.  Digging around a bit further we realized that we couldn’t close or even manually shutdown the Norton services. To top it off we couldn’t even update the subscription  because Norton couldn’t connect to its update server!

Leaning more toward Norton causing the problem, the software was removed. (After having to download the “removal tool” because the uninstall process would fail) Completing the removal process, restored connectivity and we were able to browse, receive email, and download updates.

How did this happen? Well apparently the latest Live update caused Norton to block traffic due to the subscription expiration. Whether this being a programming flaw or a security apparatus to protect an unsubscribed system, this brought the host system to its knees.  Norton had basically held up your system until you handed over your wallet, and in a business environment this can be disastrous.

Similar to the epic McAfee failure we recently posted, consumers are pressured by fear tactics to purchase big name software to protect them. Nine times out of ten failing, assuming no liability, and allowing malicious software on the host computer anyway.

As we’ve recommended in the past, there are various FREE anti-virus and anti mal-ware programs out there, such as Avira antivirus (www.free-av.com), and malwarebytes (www.malwarebytes.org), that from tried and true experience, perform much better, run automatically in the background, and don’t slow down your system.

Using only a handful of free programs and coupling that with a dash of good judgment while browsing are the only preventative steps you need to have a clean, well tuned PC.

-Jon

A client came to us with a dead thumb drive that had a whole semester’s worth of notes and school work on it. Windows gave the old “you need to format this disk” message when you inserted it. Also, for some reason, it would mount an 8MB partition (it was a 2GB thumb drive). Our onslaught of Data Recovery programs failed, and something just didn’t add up.

There was a physical short somewhere on the teeny little circuit board, and little physical manipulation did the trick. After carefully flexing the board and giving ti another try, the original volume mounted without issue.

We immediately pulled the data off and retired the thumb drive!

-Chris

We recently had a computer come into the shop with what appeared to be some pesky malware.  It wouldn’t let you drag icons, the taskbar was minimized and unresponsive, and it kept auto-initiating shutdowns due to DCOM errors and the RPC Service stopping unexpectedly.

These services required svchost.exe (along with a hundred other things in Windows) to be usable and located in the system32 directory.  It was missing, and after replacing just that file with a copy of the good one, it would still disappear after a minute or so!

After searching in vain for some rogue process that might be causing this, it became clear that this machine was hit by a pretty disastrous false positive due to a McAfee Antivirus update!

Basically, the latest update (April 21st, 2010) was downloaded by the machine, and after scanning it thought it had found an instance of the w32/wecorl.a virus (which apparently hasn’t been around since 2003), and proceeded to remove and quarantine svchost.exe, bringing Windows XP to its knees. This little bug has effected  millions of machines worldwide in the last 48 hours! (and, this isn’t the first time a McAfee update has done something like this.

This is yet another testament to antivirus programs doing more harm that good for most users.

-Chris

We recently transitioned to a full VoIP phone system, meaning there are no longer any dedicated phone lines running around our office.  All voice traffic is sent via the network, both internally and externally.  While many of the larger, proprietary systems are out of reach for small businesses, we’ve been experimenting with open source technologies that bring the power of a VoIP PBX to those on a tight budget.

The Status Quo

Most small businesses will use regular household analog phones, or even “business phones” (analog phones with multiple lines, the ability to transfer calls, etc).  These require a normal phone jack to operate, and generally don’t come with many bells and whistles.  You place multiple phones on a single line, customers call the line, someone answers, and yells across the office “Bob, it’s for you!” Maybe you get one with a built-in answering machine, and that’s about the extent of functionality of your “phone system”  Couple unpredictable fees, long distance charges, and other legacy billing nonsense with this low-tech phone system, and you end up with a hassle.

Enter business phone systems, that include a clunky and expensive PBX located in your wiring closet, interface cards to tie them into PSTN lines (That’s Public Switched Telephone Network, or normal phone lines), cards for each user, proprietary programming languages for hunt groups, voicemail cards with built-in hard drives, and a ton of other complicated junk that still requires dedicated phone wiring to each station and still requires regular phone lines from Verizon or Comcast!  Sure, after a lofty bill you may have an autoattendant, personal voicemail, and a bunch of phones that are useless if detached from the PBX, but now you’re a legit business with a legit phone system!

Enter VoIP

VoIP, particularly open-source VoIP has come a long way in recent years, with the main benefit of most of the components being modular, interchangeable, and scalable.  VoIP Phones use a protocol called SIP to package voice communication and send it over the same computer network (and internet) that we all know an love.  Since SIP is a non-proprietary standard, many different manufacturers make SIP compatible phones that are all usable with SIP PBXs (in theory, anyway).

For phones, we chose a simple SIP staple, the Linksys SPA942.  The phones have a simple web interface for configuration, and can show up to four extensions (or 4 instances of the same extension, as is the case normally).

For a PBX, we went with Switchvox Free Edition, a branded graphical interface running on the open-source VoIP platform called Asterisk.  Asterisk runs on Linux, so we installed our Switchvox PBX on a linux virtual machine running on our Windows 2008 Server.

With a few VoIP phones and virtualized Switchvox PBX, we could make all the internal extension to extension calls our hearts desire, but how do we call outside the office without the low-tech, pricey hard wired phones lines we’re used to?  The answer is a VoIP provider.  A VoIP provider gives you 100% internet-based voice connectivity, routing calls from your PBX to outside phone numbers, and routing outside calls to your phone number to your PBX!  We get unlimited calling in the continental U.S. for $30 a month per line, with no hidden costs.  It’s a much better deal than getting phones from Comcast.

Bells and Whistles

Once you get the basic VoIP system up and running, it’s those neat little bells and whistles that make the system very powerful.

Email Voicemails – You can configure the PBX to send an email to a user when they have a voicemail, which they can play directly from their email client or web browser.

Browser Dialing – Switchvox includes a firefox plugin that allows you to quickly dial ANY phone number on any website.  Right click the number, click dial, and your phone will ring!  When you pick it up, it will already be dialing whatever number you clicked.  This is especially useful if you already use a web-based Contact Management System (like us!).

Remote Extensions – Even though the PBX is at our office, we can use software phones (softphones), or hard-wired phones at other locations to connect to it.  This means it’s easy and FREE for a branch office to call the main office extensions over the internet, without tying up any outside lines.

If you’re interested in moving your business to a VoIP phone system, just give us a call!

-Chris