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Hello, Kent.
Good morning, Mr. Guru.
We've got Kent here.
We've got Tara.
Hello.
We've got a guest who we'll get to in a minute.
But let's start by saying there are a lot of things happening in the world, in technology anyway,
that you may not, you should probably be aware of.
Right?
So we're going to get started.
We're going to spend probably the first hour of the show talking mostly about scams and
ways that people are just trying to steal your money.
Always.
Because that's what they want to do.
It's much easier to steal it than to earn it.
That's what I hear anyway.
It's not like I have that much of it to give anyway.
This is true.
We're all poor, poor individuals.
But so we basically, this is going to be an interesting show.
All right?
Because Mark was talking about it.
He was talking in the last hour a little bit.
There's a bit of a buzz.
I've been keeping things under wraps.
Mainly just because I haven't really known anything up until like yesterday.
But stick around for the second hour for news on what's coming up with the Computer Guru
Show and how it's going to move forward.
But just stick around for that part.
First, we're going to talk to Jay here.
Jay is a, he called me last week.
After one of the, after last week's show, was it?
Yeah.
And basically wanted to talk about the Microsoft scammers that are out there or tech support
scammers that exist out there.
Now, Jay is a tech journalist.
He lives in Green Valley.
He's chilling out in the Green Valley.
And he's principal of Collar Radio Communications Group.
And he's got some old school cred.
Yeah.
Like I used to as far as running the old BBSs.
You started Colorado Snowbank in 85.
Man, that's, I remember seeing the name of your BBS on the national lists back in the
day.
Just because I used to keep track of those and I have a crazy memory.
But did you say you went multi-line with that?
We went multi-line.
Yeah.
It was under TBBS, the breadboard system, which was the only one that had multi-line.
At least in the beginning, yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Now you produce news segments.
I couldn't be more secure.
OK.
And there's a certain demographic, which I tend to talk to, which seem to be most at risk as far as either the age range or the technology proficiency that we really have to watch out for and say, hey, listen, you can't just fall for stuff like this.
And like the Nigerian print scams that have been going on for 20 years and people still fall for them.
Longer than that.
Yeah.
Well, about 20 AOL days, really.
Well, okay.
Okay.
Online.
But they originally started out with a letter.
They were sending out letters to attorneys and dentists and stuff like that.
Then they migrated to the online world and it's called a 419 scam.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
See, now, I'm one of these weird people that I actually don't get mail, like at all.
It's like there's...
There's still...
At my house, there's still the, this address is vacant slip in the mailbox.
So I just...
No mail.
So I'm just one...
I'm kind of weird like that.
I actually know somebody who got the letter way, way back in the day.
Really?
Regarding their business.
Huh.
And they gave them money and did not get it back, even though it eventually got reported and whatnot.
So, Jay, tell me about yourself and what your motivation is for...
What's going on here with scam and...
Well, motivation and my motivation here was talk about a whole...
Just a little segment called scam baiting.
And to go back, there are actually three types of people who are at risk.
One, you're talking about the older college kids and also people who are foreign, who don't speak the language quite as well.
Right.
They are easily intimidated.
And...
So there's a whole segment that's called scam baiters.
But to just give you a little bit of background, we're talking about big money.
And in April 26, 2017, there was a new survey that indicates Americans...
This is just Americans lost $9.5 billion to phone scams.
And that was just last year.
So who knows?
Who knows what happened all of 17 and what's happening now?
So it's big bucks that they are making.
And it's not only Americans.
These scammers are all over the world.
Okay.
So you mentioned scam baiting, at least the phrase scam baiters.
Now, there's plenty of scammers out there.
But typically, the scam baiters are things like the ones that are trying to hook...
the scammers into making a mistake or reverse engineering the scammers.
As an example, there was an article on Reddit yesterday that talked about one of the, quote unquote, scam baiters
that basically hacked his way into the scammers and refunded a bunch of money to people that had had their money taken by the scammers.
And so these guys are out there kind of...
They're more like the 4chan and 8chan crowd that are reverse engineering the scammers and saying,
well, you know what?
We're not going to let you get away with this.
And a lot of them are just wasting time, which is great.
Because if they're on there trying to waste the time of the scammer,
that person isn't out scamming somebody else at that moment, someone who's very much at risk.
And at least in my line of work during my day job, Mary, we deal with this every day,
right?
Right.
And so I call up and say, well, you know, or they come into the shop and say, well, you know,
I let this person onto my machine and they did horrible things and they gave me my credit card number.
And now I need you to fix my computer to make sure that it's secure.
So there's definitely a lot of money, not just directly like the, you know,
the billions of dollars that were lost directly to scammers,
but there's an entire secondary market where now these people have to go and have their computer looked at
and they end up spending money with places like me or, you know, Best Buy or somebody.
Right.
Or somebody else to try to get their machine back in a working state afterwards.
So there's an indirect market or loss involved with that also,
which I assume is going to be probably on par with that original number, right?
Because they're going to take a couple hundred dollars from,
or up to $400 on average from every person that they deal with.
And then you're, that person then has to go and spend another, you know,
$150 to $200 to get their machine fixed up afterwards.
So that's, that's a huge amount of money that's out there in the world.
Just because, because people are, well, on two sides of it,
you've got the gullibility of the user side,
but you also have the, the,
the aspect of it where you've got people that are just preying upon others.
And you're going to see a lot of this with people who have like regular phone lines.
Like if you have a landline in your house,
you're much more likely to be contacted by these types of people.
Like,
I never get the call.
I don't get the calls anymore, right?
Just because I'm cell phone only.
I don't have any landlines,
but people who have landlines get these calls all the time.
Cell phones are being attacked all the time.
Now, member card services.
Yeah, that's a big one.
And before you go back on that and you,
you hit the nail on the head,
what do scam baiters do?
Their whole goal is to waste their time hours on end.
And even right now,
as we speak,
and you can go to YouTube and look up scam baiting or IRS scam.
There is a live stream now and there's a series of five or six,
seven scam baiters.
And they're not all guys.
They're women,
they're men,
they're old,
young,
some speak Spanish.
They're online right now.
Real time scam baiting.
You can go to YouTube,
find it and listen to them.
And if you,
uh,
if you're out there and you've never heard,
what,
uh,
some of these scams are the Medicare fried fraud,
the,
uh,
oh,
uh,
the grant scam.
Uh,
you can go to YouTube,
you're safe and look up scam baiting or IRS scam.
And you can,
uh,
see literally hundreds of thousands of videos.
And a lot of these people are creative even with cartoons and names.
But the,
these people are doing,
and then you can familiarize yourself with what's going on.
It is a lot of it is funny.
A lot of it is NSFW.
That's for sure.
You learned how to swear in Hindi.
You can learn a second language.
It's very educational.
Uh,
but you can see what's going on and the situations.
He's scam baiters will call in as an old lady,
an old man who's on a low income.
These scammers do,
not care.
Nope.
All right.
Well,
we're going to talk more about that after we do the first break here.
First,
let's take a moment to mention our sponsor.
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yeah.
Look up.
Hmm.
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This is a computer guru show.
Welcome back to the computer guru show.
My name is make Mike here to deal with your technology needs.
Andrew,
would you like a person in the process?
We have Jay Melnick in.
He is a basically a journalist working on stories about scammers and,
and all of the sort of nuance that's happening in that particular area,
trying to keep people safe and doing a bunch of interviews.
He said,
so,
so tell me about you.
Let's,
let's get a little background on you,
Jay.
I mean,
other than the,
other than your intro here,
what is your,
what started you on this path?
Do you think
on the path of computers?
Yeah.
I'm always curious.
So how people got into technology,
uh,
in,
in high school,
uh,
an Emily Griffith opportunity school.
There was a,
uh,
beginning computing,
and this was punch card days,
right?
So we learned machine language.
And then the university of Denver,
uh,
we did programming and that was Algal.
And,
and that was the huge with the raised floors and air conditionings.
And that was like one Thursday every month or something.
Right.
Uh,
college,
uh,
went into,
uh,
it or whatever.
And I was still punch cards.
And I got to be thinking,
well,
she is a computer's the way they're going to go.
And it's just programming.
We're,
you know,
what's,
what's the downfall of that?
Well,
the punch cards,
well,
it's a little bit more complex than that.
uh,
let's take away the human element.
So computers will be programming computers.
What is that going to look like in the future?
Let's before PCs.
So I went back to business and went to my,
uh,
radio days,
I guess,
and Denver and doing all kinds of stuff and TV.
And then,
uh,
went back and saw the new thing of BBSs and I liked what was going on.
So that's where I started going to the,
uh,
the Colorado snow bank.
This is 85,
84,
uh,
got laughed at a lot.
Cara snow bank cause skiing in Colorado and,
uh,
tried to sell that idea.
Oh yeah.
People,
people's computers calling other computers and I get snow reports and road reports and all this other stuff.
And they just sort of looked at me and laughed,
you know,
and had to take it on the road and stuff.
And then over a time period,
some of these people who are laughing,
they'll unveil and laugh anymore.
They became gurus and then I was laughing at them.
So yeah.
So those of you don't know,
the BBSs are,
were bulletin board systems and they were,
they were effectively the precursor to the internet.
Um,
especially,
I mean,
you really started seeing the,
where things were going when things like echo mail came up,
became a thing.
If I don't know.
Yeah.
So where you had,
uh,
and different bulletin boards all came out.
And then you started communicating with one another to share information so that you could do like,
uh,
you know,
it's kind of weird is that you used to have like a,
uh,
think of like your work email.
Yeah.
So you'd be able to,
to log into the BBS and check your individual mail.
And there was generally a,
uh,
a series of posts which were somewhat similar to what Reddit is today to a certain extent where people could comment on and have a conversation.
And then once things like Fido net became a thing,
then those same conversations were then echoed to other bulletin board systems where other people could log into them and also communicate with that particular thread or send mail from one server to another.
And it was,
it,
it definitely was what the internet is now.
Yeah.
As far as you could see the,
the echoes of that,
uh,
sort of a Darwinian,
uh,
precursor to that.
It's,
it was pretty interesting.
And I,
I've,
I found myself hugely fascinated with the bulletin board systems of the back in the day.
And I spent a lot of time doing that,
uh,
even though my,
my father was not terribly happy with it.
Um,
because at the time,
you know,
I was,
I don't know,
12 years old or something like that.
And,
uh,
I kept tearing apart computers to,
to,
you know,
make a bigger system and,
and build my own home network and stuff like that.
And,
uh,
yeah,
he wasn't,
wasn't pleased,
especially because computers back then were really expensive.
Uh,
so I mean that,
that,
that time I broke his computer,
uh,
which I've told the story before where I,
I took apart his computer and broke it.
Um,
and he gave me the carcass of the machine and then put a lock on his door and said,
yeah,
if you want to use a computer again,
you're going to fix this one.
And,
uh,
that's sort of where the,
the computer guru was born.
But,
you know,
you didn't want to drop another three or $4,000,
uh,
on a replacement machine because that was quite a bit of money back then.
And even,
I mean,
by today's standards,
your smartphone is infinitely more powerful than the machines that we were running the
Bolton boards on,
uh,
it more storage and everything,
right?
It was just so much,
it's such a quaint technology,
but I look back upon those days fondly.
Oh,
my first,
uh,
10 megabyte hard drive was a thousand dollars.
And also when you were,
they were all,
they were all modem.
There was no wifi.
So you're tying,
tying up a phone line.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I had a separate phone line just for that because nobody could get me off of that lucky off of the Bolton boards.
Um,
I mean,
at first it was,
you know,
somebody picking up the phone and then you see the garbage appear on the screen because somebody started talking or,
you know,
interrupting your communication.
But yeah,
I mean,
that's some old school cool for,
uh,
when it was not,
you know,
basically we were just nerds back then.
uh,
yeah.
Yeah.
Let me throw something out.
Sure.
Go for it.
Get ready to write.
Here's a great site for everybody.
It's called scam aside.com.
S C A M I C I D E.com.
It's a newsletter.
It's a daily newsletter.
The guy is an attorney and he puts out the latest scams and warnings out there and it's free.
You can get it and,
uh,
you can see what's going on.
So one of the things that we were talking about when we spoke on the phone last week is that I,
you know,
I often don't think about these scams because,
um,
I have insulated myself in such a way.
They don't really see them.
I'm not exposed to them very often other than when a customer comes in and says,
well,
I,
you know,
the scam happened to me.
Um,
so opportunity,
you know,
scams like the yes scam,
which it's not necessarily an online scam.
That's a phone scam.
That a lot of people will inadvertently fall for where someone will call you up on the phone and say,
um,
they,
they can say often little things like,
can you hear me?
But they'll often open with something,
you know,
useful like,
hi,
I'm from blue cross blue shield or something along those lines.
Are you this person?
And they're wanting you to say yes so that they can then take snippets of your conversation.
Uh,
and over the course of the car of the,
uh,
conversation that you have with them,
they can then reorder that in their audio editing platform and have you verbally sign a contract.
And so there's a lot of people that fall for this.
Yeah.
And basically,
you know,
you have to be kind of ruthless.
So if somebody calls you up and says,
I'm so and so are you,
can you hear me?
Or are you this person?
Um,
don't say yes.
That's all that part of social engineering that you see.
Yeah.
That's a manipulation for sure.
And,
uh,
I just,
I don't talk to anybody on the phone in that way.
Like when people call up and say,
is this so and so I can say,
I'll often just say,
how can I help you?
All right.
I won't say yes or no,
or anything that can be used against me in that way.
And mainly because I,
I need them to authenticate with me.
Right.
I don't know who you are.
You're calling me.
You better prove to me who you are before I say anything that's important or that can potentially get in the way of my conversation.
You would,
you would also mention in that same conversation,
how could anyone fall for this,
this stuff?
I mean,
you and I and the people listening out there,
how can,
I mean,
it sounds so ridiculous.
Uh,
they want you to go to a federally authorized store,
which is Walmart or target to keep,
pick up a federally authorized voucher to pay for,
which pre-paid credit card or gift card,
gift card,
which is a gift card.
And how can anybody,
and,
but if you listen to these calls on YouTube,
you can see how it can be.
People can be intimidated or the don't have the use of language or they're greedy.
They rely a lot upon greed.
How that can happen.
Well,
I think there's a sort of like a snow blindness that happens,
but it's tech blind,
right?
Where you've got these people that they have no,
no,
it's magic how their computer works.
And so,
So when they are faced with one of these scammers, they just are like, well, I don't know how any of this works.
So it's much easier for them to just take whatever that other person says, no matter how ridiculous it is.
Like, go down to the store and get a gift card and then come back and give me the number.
They're more willing to do that than to go like, well, I don't know how this works, but that just doesn't seem right to me.
And because it's so foreign to them, they might not even understand that it is wrong.
Or that it's not something that should normally happen.
And that's why over the years, you know, I've encouraged people.
If you have, you know, somebody calling you, trying to scam you, send them my way.
I'll deal with them.
And there's even a new one that happened just last week.
It's a Roku call.
A person calls, says they're from Roku.
And you have to now buy their premium service to get Roku for $200.
Plus $5 a month.
But Roku, it's actually called the Premier Service, not Premium.
But that's a new one out there.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Well, it's definitely not a new thing.
You know, as far as like even what we had Tucson Electric Power that's been issuing warnings like every week through the news saying, you know, if somebody calls you and says they're from TEP, they're not.
Or if they show up at your house, they're probably not.
You know, unless they can probably.
They probably authenticate and have ID and all of that stuff.
You know, scamming is it.
I really wish we could just say that nobody was gullible enough to or naive enough or ignorant enough on the subject to fall for these things.
But they do.
And we'll talk about ways that you can protect yourself after this next break here.
So stick around for more of the Computer Guru Show right here on KVOI.
Give us a call if you'd like to be part of the show.
790-2040.
We'll be right back.
There are some ways that we talk about where people can protect themselves from these types of things.
One of which is, you know, just be skeptical.
Really be skeptical.
Like, don't provide credit card information for somebody who calls you.
Now, I mean, if you know who you're dealing with, right, and they can properly authenticate with you, right,
and you've called them at a number that you know is definitely them and you want to initiate some type of payment that way, sure.
But if somebody calls you and says, you know what, I think you need to give us money, you should probably just say no.
And you can also join the fight, you know, as far as that type of stuff is concerned.
And we've talked about this before, which is waste their time as much as possible.
If you've got the time, you know, most of the people that are going to fall for this are probably retired anyway.
So there's a great chance that if you need a new hobby, your hobby can be just wasting the time of somebody trying to.
Scam you and take as long as possible and make them repeat themselves as many times as you can.
What are your tips as far as, you know, what should people be on the lookout for and ways that you think that they can either contribute towards the cause or ways that they can just know that they're trying.
Somebody's trying to scam them in some way or another.
They just it just doesn't make sense.
I mean, what they're trying to offer.
Oh, yeah.
You want a free cruise, but you have to pay these charges or whatever.
You're listening to the show.
You've got the Internet.
You've got the power of the Internet.
You've got the power of Google.
Just Google it up.
You know what they're trying to say.
Oh, what company are you with?
Repeat that again.
Oftentimes you can just type in the phone number they're calling.
You can type in the phone number.
There's a service online that's called bad numbers dot.
I.N.F.O.
You can verify.
You can verify through that.
And if they say they're with the company, take a name and number down.
Find a known good number for that company and call that company.
And even as you well know, they can really spoof and social engineer just from your bank.
It looks like your bank is asking you to like a phishing experiment, phishing experiment or spear phishing.
Even spear phishing is where they have your contact information, especially with all these numbers.
And sites that have been compromised so they can directly say Mr.
Mrs.
Jones.
Thanks, Equifax.
Yeah.
And hey, Target also.
Right.
Home Depot.
I mean, the list goes on for.
So just hang up.
Call the known good.
Turn your credit card over.
Call them.
And then to go to help the cause, which is time up.
Don't hang up.
Is just talk to them.
Yeah.
I don't hear you.
What did you say?
If you want ideas on how to time up, go to YouTube.
Go look at scam baiting.
Go look at IRS scams.
You'll find them all there.
Hundreds of thousands.
Some are enjoyable and pleasurable.
There's cartoons and funny names.
We have Wonder Woman calling with a voice changer and just all kinds of other people.
Yeah.
There's a lot.
There's a lot of sound boards that are out there.
Sound boards.
Yeah.
There's one of them that is just, it's a riot to listen to.
It's using the Arnold Schwarzenegger sound board to respond to people trying to scam them.
Or it's asking things like, who is your daddy and what does he do?
You know, it's pretty, it's great if you are, if you're cognizant of these things, if you can recognize the scams.
And it's just a lot of fun to watch them waste the time of the scammers.
Yeah.
There's the other side of that too, where there's people that are taking it to the scammers and basically being destructive to the other side.
As far as they'll get somebody to remote into their computer.
And one of the ones that stood out to me was that they left a file that looked like a Bitcoin wallet in a folder on their desktop.
And, but that file actually was a, basically a Trojan.
It was a way for, you know, he knew that the scammer would snatch that file.
Oh yeah.
And take it off his computer.
So, you know, he left the guy into his computer and he saw the guy drag that file off onto his own desktop.
And when he ran it, he had remote control of that guy's computer.
Sure.
And then really started scaring them because he was like, yeah, well, I see your background is this.
And, you know, I see what software you're using to do all of this.
And basically started refunding people's money from the other side, you know, locked that user out of his own computer and said, refund, refund, refund.
And, and, and before they managed to turn the computer off, refunded about $20,000 worth of money.
And that's good on him.
Now he's legitimately saying, well, you know, I don't know if I should be open on this YouTube because technically what I did is illegal.
Right.
As far as, as remote controlling somebody else's computer without their permission.
But that's the same thing they're doing to you, right?
Because the permission that you give them is under false pretense.
But it's not like you're going to be able to call and say, well, some random company, most likely in India, took control of my computer and stole information or, you know, took money from my bank account or, you know, the biggest red flag of all, asked me to pay in a non-traditional currency.
Sure.
As far as the gift cards or, or, or.
Through some type of a cryptocurrency exchange or some type of not regular refundable cash money.
Sure.
So it's just be on the lookout.
And if you're, you're right, if it doesn't make sense, if it seems like, well, you know what?
I don't feel comfortable, you know, listen to your spidey senses.
All right.
If it, if it feels wrong, like you don't know what's going on here, then you should probably just back out of that situation.
The other thing that want people could do is if you're a church or where you have relatives,
older relatives or people who are having problems, challenges, I'll put it that way.
Check on them, make sure that what they're doing and inform them of this stuff because they don't know.
And there's, there's a couple of other ways that you can sort of passively protect yourself.
We'll talk about those in a moment.
Let's talk to Mike.
We got a caller.
Hello, Mike.
How are you?
Good.
A while back, my dad got a so-called phone call from his grandson.
I've never had a child or my sister.
And this supposed grandchild asked my dad to wire him some money because he was in a car accident.
Yeah.
And my dad obviously didn't fall for it, but I just thought it was interesting.
My folks called and said, we got a call from your son saying he needed money.
Yeah.
The grandchild in trouble of some type or another is, is definitely a larger scam that's out there.
And a lot of people fall for it.
Man, so many people fall for those types of things.
And I've heard situations where this one woman.
I heard on the radio lost her life savings over some of these scams.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, there's, there's a lot of money involved in it.
You know, you were saying that, um, that Jay, that there was, uh, even local people have lost thousands and thousands of dollars.
Down in, in the past few months down in Green Valley, one gentleman lost $50,000.
Yikes.
And one woman lost $54,000.
And that's recent.
And there's very little recourse depending on how that's.
It's gone.
Yeah.
How you deal with that.
Um, and that's why when you use things like non-traditional currencies and, and, uh, when you're dealing with, um, you know, you're being overly trusting, I think when it comes to a lot of people, uh, you don't just take somebody's word for it.
It's definitely not a good idea.
Yeah.
And, and especially with the older generation, they will, they are more likely to fall for the heartstrings type things.
Right.
Like, like the Nigerian Prince scam.
Like the, the friend or a relative.
That's in jail or in another country and stranded.
Or you'll get the email.
Yeah.
Uh, and it's just, it's, you, you have to be more cynical than that when it comes to the technology.
Right.
Because.
Exactly.
There's a lot of people that fall for very, very sort of obvious things when you look back on it.
And another major fraud, especially with the older community is a Medicare fraud.
You will get a call or something that says, oh, free back, back break.
Free this, free that for medical stuff.
Right.
And it's just outright Medicare fraud.
They want all your numbers and it's ID theft as well.
They want all your numbers, your insurances and stuff like that.
Don't know if you even get your back brace or your arm stuff, but they've got all your numbers and they've got your Medicare number, which is your social security number.
Right.
And, and believe me, any of these places that if, if Wilford Brimley is saying that you should probably check into it.
That may be okay.
Is he still alive?
Did we determine whether or not Wilford Brimley is still alive?
I don't know.
But they're not going to call you at home and offer you free stuff.
Right.
Even the thing that you see on TV about the get your Medicare approved rascal scooter.
And yes, he is.
Okay, cool.
I'm glad that he is.
It's probably because of those diabetes testing supplies.
Yeah, that's it.
But if, you know, even if you're going to get your free rascal, right, that they talk about on the, on the, on television.
At three in the morning.
That's still you calling them, not them calling you.
And that whole, it's just, it's really sad to me that people fall for these types of things.
And like I said, I don't even see them anymore.
Well, I even have received calls from, oh yeah, we're returning your call on your medical alarm or your alarm, which I've never called on.
But it starts out, hey, we're returning your call.
So if somebody is confused a little bit.
That maybe I made a call.
I don't know.
Wow.
Praying on the dimension.
That's, that's no good.
It's no good at all.
All right.
Let's take another break because we've got to fit another one in before the end of the hour here.
And we'll be back right after these messages.
Bye.
On AM 1030, KVOY The Voice.
Mike Swanson, your computer guru, is just a click away.
Listen and watch at gurushow.com.
This is the Computer Guru Show.
Welcome to the Computer Guru Show.
Give us a call if you'd like to be part of the show.
Radio 79024, we talked about being scammed, or if you have any experience with that.
But if there's ways that you can sort of passively protect yourself,
one of which is please stop using Internet Explorer or Edge immediately.
And if you're going to use another browser, such as any of the WebKit browsers,
that would be Chrome, Firefox, Opera, any of those, please install an ad blocker.
We like uBlock Origin.
That's the letter U, B-L-O-C-K.
Second word, Origin.
It is a beautiful plug-in for the WebKit-style browsers, the Mozilla-style browsers,
so that that way you're just way less likely to see any of those pop-ups on your screen to begin with,
especially ones that lock your computer and talk to you and tell you,
hey, your machine is at risk or it's been compromised.
And by the way, if you do see one of those compromised web pages that come up that starts talking at you,
just close it.
All right?
And a lot of times...
Sometimes they'll say, well, if you're in Internet Explorer, you can't close it, which is true.
You just cannot, can't stop it if you're in Internet Explorer.
But if you're in the other browsers, when you close it, it'll pop back up again,
and then there'll be a checkbox that says, don't show me this message again.
And if you put the little checkbox in there and close it, it's gone.
Just close the browser or reboot the computer, and you won't have to deal with that anymore.
And also, pay attention to what you're going to as far as the site.
Most of the time that you see...
Most of the time that you see those type of lock screens are because of a malformed address.
Like you inadvertently typed Googled or you mistyped a domain
because they will go and buy all of these common mistyping of domains.
Yahoo is one of the bigger ones.
Like if you mistype one of the O's or you're like Y-A-H-O instead of the two O's,
you'll likely end up at a scam site.
Yep.
So just be careful and put an ad blocker on your machine.
Make sure you have...
We like the paid version of Malwarebytes and any free antivirus that is reputable,
usually something like Avast or something along those lines,
then you're much more likely to keep yourself safe.
Also, just stay on top of this stuff.
You can, like Jay was talking about before,
you can view a lot of these types of scams to see how they operate,
and you might actually get some entertainment value out of it,
because they are kind of funny.
By searching for scam baiting on YouTube,
it's not a bad way to at least educate yourself in some way or another.
And you wanted to mention the sites,
the scamicide.com, badnumbers.info, and scammer.info,
where you can go and get more information about other current scams that are out there.
And the one thing I wanted to add that you add,
you said about rebooting,
make sure you're not...
putting your computer to sleep,
because that won't kill it.
You have to actually...
What we have found is you put the finger down on the power for 15 seconds
to make sure it's all the way down.
Yeah, because sleep definitely is not going to solve the problem.
No, no.
And if you're in a situation where you're an Internet explorer
and you want a quick way out of it,
if you hold down the Alt key on your keyboard and press F4,
that will close the browser and make it go away.
And then you can properly reboot your computer, if you like,
by doing...
you know, start the power icon and reboot.
If you're in Windows 10, if you're in Windows 7,
start, shut down, restart.
Or, you know, just hold the power button down until it shuts off.
Or if you're on a desktop, just unplug it.
Now, that's not a good idea to do to your machine very often,
so please don't do that unless it's important.
You know, like you're stuck in some way.
But then, if you need a second opinion on whether or not
something harmful has happened to your computer
or you suspect that there is other bad things,
bad stuff going on,
give us a call down at the shop at 304-8300.
We will happily talk you through it and get some more information.
And if nothing's wrong, we'll just tell you,
hey, nothing's wrong, no big deal.
But if you need to bring it in, we're always here to help.
Did you have any other information you wanted to hand out
before we end the show here?
No, you covered it up and down.
All right, well, thank you very much for coming in, Jay.
I very much appreciate you taking the time to do that.
And I hope that people out there have found
some type of informative information in this
and that they have an opportunity to protect themselves.
Or if you know somebody who's at risk,
like if you do have, let's say something
that's a little bit older in your life,
you know, you got a parent or grandparent that's out there
and needs a little watchful eye on them
when it comes to these types of things,
you know, help educate them.
You can either tell them to, you know,
the things to watch out for.
You can refer them to gurushow.com
for podcasts on this type of information.
You can give us a call down at the shop, 304-8300.
We'll help you and them learn how not to
get themselves in trouble.
And we do several,
several talks out in the Green Valley area each year,
like at the Green Valley Computer Club.
We do some at the Up and Dove Mountain.
We do some other ones where this demographic
is likely to live.
And we'll sit and just answer questions,
usually for two to three hours.
I will sit out there and answer questions
about how to keep yourself safe online,
how to make sure that you are not putting yourself
at additional risk,
and answering just various technology questions
in the process,
making sure that we keep you educated.
Because a little bit of education can go a long way
towards saving you, what, $54,000 like that later?
Oh, 54, 50, yeah.
So if you, I mean, if you've got 50 grand,
you just want to throw away on scammers, that's fine.
But I would say there's probably better uses for that money.
And you don't want to get yourself into trouble
with that type of stuff.
So just keep yourself safe online, people.
And be very, very skeptical.
Right?
Right.
Stay informed.
Oh, you're still here, Tara?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Just making sure.
Just chilling.
I'm listening to the conversation.
And once again, thanks to Jay for coming in.
Is there a place that people can see your work
or anything like that?
Are you interested?
SoundCloud.
SoundCloud?
SoundCloud.
Go to your call radio, C-O-L-O-R-A-D-I-O, SoundCloud.
Also on anchor.fm.
Right on.
All right.
So if you want any more information,
I'll get your links from your card
and put them on the podcast.
I'll get your podcast notes.
So if people want to check you out,
they definitely can.
Thanks again for listening to the first hour
of the Computer Guru Show.
Let's go ahead and talk about
the ultimate sponsor for the show,
which is Arizona Computer Guru.
You can come see us down at 510 East Fort Wool
or 64 North Harrison,
or give us a call at 520-304-8300,
or visit the website azcomputerguru.com
if you have any problems with your technology
in any form,
whether or not it be your residential
or for your business.
You need a new website?
That's what we're here for.
We do everything under the sun,
effectively,
when it comes to computers,
except for development,
because nobody has time for that.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
Nobody's got time for development.
To me, I see development
much like interior decorating.
No, I will not move the curtains
three inches to the left.
No, I will not.
So I'm just not going to do development.
But everything else that you can think of,
it's very likely that I have someone
that specializes in just that
working for me over at Computer Guru.
Thanks again for listening
to the first hour.
Stick around for the second hour
of the Computer Guru
coming up next right here on KVOI.
And if you'd like to be part of the show,
give us a call, 790-2040.
We'll be right back.
I say a warning
Live without warning
I say a warning
Live without warning
From my heart and from my hand
Why don't people understand
My intentions?
Computer running slow?
Avoiding.
Caught a virus?
What?
No!
When?
Does your computer seem to have
a life of its own?
Malfunction.
Need input.
The Computer Guru is here.
Thank God you're here!
Call in now.
Now, it's Mike Swanson,
your Computer Guru.
Hello and welcome to the Computer Guru Show.
My name's Mike.
Here to deal with your technology needs
and treat you like a person in the process.
790-2040 if you'd like to be part of the show.
That's 520-790-2040.
Thank you.
And so we're going to make an announcement here,
which is today is the last Computer Guru Show
that's going to be on for probably a while.
I'm going to take a bit of a hiatus,
mainly because I've got a bunch of reasons for it.
But if you want your opportunity to have your
sort of last tech support weekend
that's available to you, at least on this show,
you will give us a call, 790-2040.
And there will be plenty of information,
plenty of updates about,
what's happening.
There's actually going to be a,
another version of the show next week.
That's podcast only.
Just, it'll give it more of a detailed update
as far as what's happening,
what projects are happening.
But you'll have to either pick that up on iTunes,
YouTube, or one of the other podcasting platforms,
or you can go to gurushow.com to get that information.
It's, there's a bunch of things going on that,
as an example, my, I mean,
I have my daughter living with me full time.
And I would like to free up some weekend time for,
yeah, I've never really done the whole like family
weekend stuff.
So, and I'd like to do that.
You need room for activities.
Yes.
And there's just a lot of things going on and I
haven't really had more than a couple of Saturdays off
in almost 11 years.
So I would like an opportunity to,
you know, work on some of the projects,
have some family time and,
you know,
just, you know,
just to refocus.
Also, I've, the show's sort of been suffering due to me
not having time to properly prepare for it,
to stay on top of the subject,
like, like I would like.
And I feel like the quality of,
of the show has,
has slipped just because,
and it's my fault,
right? It's, I haven't had the time to put into it.
And so I would be,
I don't want to be disappointed with my own product.
And so that's,
that's a,
that's a big consideration.
As far as what's going on with that type of stuff.
But, you know,
we're here today and so we should probably help people.
And we'll go ahead and talk to Annette.
Hello, Annette.
How are you?
How are you doing today,
Mike? I'm glad I caught you before you went on vacation.
Yeah.
Or hiatus, excuse me.
Yeah. It's,
we're probably going to take like five or six months off before
we put out more shows.
But we don't know how or where that's going to be,
but if you go to goodreshow.com,
you'll get the information.
Just make sure you get the information.
We'll probably come back at some point.
I'll give it a shot.
Cause I'm, I'm running out of gurus here.
Okay.
I have a interesting problem and you've probably heard a
variation of this before.
Give you a little background.
My, my primary computer is a windows 10 machine.
And about a year ago,
I had a strange issue surface where one of my hard drives,
not the system drive,
but the drive,
I keep most of my data on because I'm using a solid,
an SSD for a boot drive.
Okay.
So my E drive,
I started to have it a hundred percent disc usage all the
time.
Okay.
Even when nothing was accessing it.
After a fair amount of hair pulling and head scratching,
I replaced the SATA cable and it worked perfectly fine.
Okay.
Which I thought was a bit of a little,
but now I'm having a similar problem with the same drive,
the exact same drive.
Okay.
I now get a hundred percent drive usage only when I access
the drive,
which of course is frequently because that's where my
documents and everything else,
which as you can imagine,
that brings the computer to its knees.
Right.
And I'm wondering if there may be something wrong with the
drive that's not showing up in the smart report,
every drive test,
that I've run on it,
doesn't find any problems,
but I find it hard to believe that I have another bad SATA
cable too.
The drive's fairly old.
It's got about over 600 days of usage on it,
according to the smart report.
So any thoughts on that?
Well, 600 days,
especially if the machine is on all the time,
then that's,
that's not a terrible,
you know,
it's not terribly high usage.
It's on during the daytime.
Most of the time,
it gets turned off at night.
Okay.
So yeah,
you're probably at the,
about the end of the lifespan of that machine,
if that's the case,
cause you'd be at about four years there as far as age of
the drive.
The a hundred percent usage is likely not,
wasn't the SATA cable in the first place.
It just is probably more coincidental that it started behaving
afterwards.
You could have though a problem with the drive controller,
which would be a motherboard issue or,
you know,
if you're plugged into some type of a SATA card,
that could be the problem there.
But if you look at,
you said this one does 10 on this machine.
Yeah.
If you look at the performance monitor and you look under disk usage,
does it tell you what is using your,
your disc?
Have you been into the performance monitor?
Yeah.
I've looked at the resource monitor and the performance monitor,
and there's a lot of things that use the disc.
But basically anything at the moment that's using the disc,
it seems to be hogging a hundred percent of the disc.
Some of the things that are using the disc periodically is the page
file.
And I expanded the size of the page file.
How much memory do you have on the computer?
I got six,
six gigs of RAM on it.
Okay.
And that's a windows 10 64 bit.
Okay.
So what are you using to test the drive as far as whether or
not it's good or not?
Well,
I use,
I've used crystal disc info.
I use,
I use the Western digital data life card,
both of which reads the smart and smart data.
And then I've looked at,
I've looked at the resource monitor and noticed that the access times tend
to be very high.
And I also looked at the error logs and the error logs had a
lot of caution,
caution symbols.
And they're saying address was,
we tried something along those lines.
Okay.
I remember the exact,
the exact wording,
but it was,
it was a desk issue in the,
in the,
in the error logs and it had the word we tried in it.
Right.
So when you're looking at something like crystal desk,
because that's the one that I would recommend that you use,
it's one that's easiest,
easiest to work with.
But,
um,
when you're using crystal disc,
are you using that while the system is under load or while
it's doing the a hundred percent thing,
or are you just doing that like every so often?
I'm just,
you're doing it every so often.
I would say,
do that,
run that test because it is that the way that crystal disc works is
it gives you a periodic result as opposed to a longterm result or
a historical result.
So it's looking at what time,
how the drive is behaving at that very moment that you are looking
at it.
So if the machine is under load and doing the a hundred percent
thing,
I would check it then just to see what it does.
Um,
because oftentimes a,
a drive will test is good as opposed to smart data because it's
a rolling window.
When it comes to smart data,
or at least a majority of the smart data.
Um,
that way you can look at that very instance of what's happening
and find out what's going on there.
I would probably guess that you're most likely having some type of
a controller issue though,
even though your drive is probably too old to,
uh,
really identify that problem.
Okay.
Um,
well,
unfortunately I've got a lot of state of course on that motherboard.
So my,
my,
my theory at the moment,
um,
you know,
my low budget theory is probably going to be,
uh,
try a different state of Porter replaced the theta cable as well.
Well,
you can try that.
However,
all of those ports are going to be run.
Uh,
I mean,
depending on how many you have,
uh,
all of those ports are not eight.
All right.
So if you've got eight,
you likely have two controllers on that board.
Okay.
And,
uh,
one of those controllers is probably bad.
And in which case you have a 50% chance of being on the same
controller.
Even if you're on a different port.
Right.
So the other interesting thing is of course,
is my boot drive is theta.
My,
I have another data drive drive F,
which is theta.
And I've never had a problem with either one of those.
Only the E drive.
Well,
you can try a different port.
That's your low budget.
I mean,
but replacements,
you know,
conventional drives are cheap.
Yeah.
So,
yeah,
I may wind up just buying another drive.
Cause,
uh,
like you said,
600,
650 days is quite a lot of time on the drive.
Yes,
it is.
Well,
good luck with that.
And that I appreciate you.
Well,
thanks very much for your input and I hope you enjoy your family.
Thank you very much.
So we're going to take a break.
If you'd like to be part of the computer guru show for the last
episode,
you can give us a call 790-2040.
That's 5 T 0 7 9 0 20 40.
We'll be right back.
Cause I'm dynamite.
And I'll win that.
I'm a power load.
Your computer guru,
Mike Swanson is here to help you tame that beast of a machine.
Join the chat right now at guru show.com or call in.
This is a computer guru show on KVO.
Why the voice.
I'm dirty.
I'm a machine.
I was in a V club and Glee club and even the chess team.
Only question.
I never thought was hard.
What do I like her?
Or do I like my card?
Spend every weekend at the Renaissance fair.
Got my name on my underwear.
Welcome back to the computer guru show 790-2040.
If you'd like to be part of the show,
we'd love to hear from you.
We have a caller called Paul.
Hello,
Paul.
How are you?
Yes.
Hello.
Um,
I had called before and asked about some error codes and you asked me to email you
so you can explain to me what they meant.
And I did that.
I emailed him twice.
Actually,
I never got a response.
Oh,
really?
What was it?
Well,
they're kind of long.
Um,
if they start with zero X,
just give me that part.
Yes.
He started with zero X and then there's a six zeros and then eight and E Edward.
And then there's in parentheses,
a whole set of more of these zero X codes and they all end in different numbers.
Um,
and then there's like the first set is in zero five,
right?
The same,
you know,
64.
Those parts are more of the,
the specifics.
It's that first part that's really important.
It kind of gives you the what's happening part.
Oh,
okay.
Zero eight.
Um,
so zero eight E is Colonel mode exception not handled.
And it usually means that either a driver has called to a spot within windows that is
failing in some way.
I mean,
most often it's going to be a driver failure of some type.
Like if you have some,
some old hardware that's on there and the driver's no good anymore,
or it's going to be a Ram problem.
So,
uh,
almost always with eights of any type.
So zero X eight is somehow their memory is faulted in one way or another,
either because of a driver or some bad hardware.
So you're,
is there any way if,
if it is,
is there any way to narrow it down to which hardware or what part of the Ram or whatever?
So how often do you see in this message?
How often do you get it?
Every time that I start my laptop,
um,
after it loads,
uh,
well,
for lots of after it loads windows,
it's okay for about,
I don't know,
four minutes.
Okay.
And then it does,
it does this,
um,
blue screen thing where it shows these codes and then it shuts off.
Okay.
And then it just,
or it will actually restart.
And just regular,
it just reboots,
right?
It comes back up again.
Yes.
Every single time that I turn the laptop on.
And so I have to reboot into,
um,
safe mode in order for it to work.
And then it works fine.
Okay.
And what type of antivirus do you have on the machine?
Uh,
I'm sorry.
And it seems pretty good.
I couldn't hear you broke up there.
What'd you say?
Uh,
Panda.
He's in Panda.
Okay.
Yes.
Okay.
So I'm guessing that,
and what kind of machine is this by the way?
It's a Sony Vail.
I own.
Huh?
Okay.
All right.
So 80 on a bio is,
is,
is its own animal.
And I am going to take a wild stab in the dark here that your video cards overheating.
Cause first of all,
bios always have overheating problems.
It's like that is part and parcel of the owning of iOS.
So it's like a VIO is that it's overheating because Sony didn't make a VIO that didn't
overheat.
Um,
and given that the time delay that you're talking about,
like four minutes or so,
I'm guessing your video cards overheating and that's causing the machine to shut down.
Now if your CPU were overheating,
that would be a different thing.
It would give you a different message,
but I'm betting that the video cards overheating and it's causing the machine to throw an error
and reboot.
Now,
after it comes back,
if can you get back into regular mode after that four minutes?
No,
I can.
Well,
I can,
but it just shuts down again.
It restarts.
So I have to choose the,
cause it gives you the options on screen.
Once it restarts,
what mode you want to start back into.
And I can do regular mode.
It'll just load like it normally does.
It'll start up and then it'll load up and go into screen where you log in.
But then eventually it'll just,
few minutes later,
it'll just do the same thing.
So I go ahead and I choose start,
I mean,
safe mode and then it works just fine.
As far as safe mode.
Right.
There's no problems as far as it shutting down or anything else.
Yep.
I think it's your video card.
So I,
the driver for your video card could probably used to be updated,
but I bet it's overheating.
And have you like,
you know,
taken an air compressor to the second blown out the fan?
No,
I've,
I've taken a fan to it.
It was total fan.
I'm blowing in,
you know,
put it on it.
It does.
It does run hot actually.
Yeah.
Well,
you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be more secure than you couldn't be
and causes the kernel panic.
The other weird thing about this is it has a sticker on it,
on the external shell of the laptop.
It says NVIDIA.
Yeah.
But when I checked in through the programs and so forth,
I couldn't find NVIDIA anywhere inside the machine.
You couldn't find it, like, in the device manager under graphics adapters?
No.
It wasn't in there either.
So under display adapter, I mean, are you in front of the machine now?
Yes, I am.
So do you know how to get to the device manager?
Yes, I can get to it in the control panel.
All right.
So go to the device manager and then look under display adapters
and let's see what you've got in there.
Because I'm curious.
All right, device manager.
Are you in safe mode right now or normal mode?
I'm in safe mode.
Okay.
It's the only way I can, and it won't let me do it,
because I'm logged in as, oh, wait.
Standard user.
Okay.
I just got logged in as administrator.
Oh, I see.
Okay, so I'm in here now, device manager.
All right.
Under display adapters, what do you have?
Display adapters.
It says mobile Intel 945 Express chipset.
Okay.
Is that it?
Nothing else in there?
By Windows.
There's two of those, and that's it.
Okay.
So you're doing it.
Your machine uses something like some of the Alienwares do,
which is that they use a video hybrid pass-through.
So it has an onboard graphics adapter,
and it will have like an NVIDIA sort of co-graphics processor.
And what will happen there is when everything's working the way that it's supposed to,
your onboard graphics will handle like the 2D stuff,
and then it will use the additional NVIDIA adapter as a 3D adapter,
and it just basically injects.
That video into the stream.
So Alienwares do that.
Sony Vios are the first ones to do that.
I don't know how long you've been using computers,
but way back in the day, you used to have a video card,
and then you'd have this other sort of loop adapter
where you'd add a secondary graphics card for 3D graphics.
And that's sort of how these laptops work.
So I'm sticking with my original hypothesis here,
is that you've got a video card overheat problem,
and it can't initialize the second card.
Okay.
And it's hot, and it throws a fit.
So I would say get the machine cleaned out.
After about five years or so,
you should probably replace the thermal compound that's under all the chips on the machine.
So under each of the heat sinks,
there's a thermal compound that helps transfer heat from the chip to the copper cooling tubes.
And that stuff breaks down over time and becomes less effective,
meaning that the cards,
the cards run way hotter than they should.
And so I would say, you know,
either take the machine apart and fix that up,
or it may be time to look into a different machine.
Okay.
I could probably go online and find how to...
There's plenty of breakdown videos for those, right?
Too hot, right.
So if you're going to do a YouTube search,
which is probably the way that I recommend most people do it,
you'll be looking for a, like, your Sony VAIO,
and then hopefully a...
similar model number breakdown.
And it'll tell you how to take the machine apart.
Okay.
The VAIOs are nice and easy, though.
So.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thanks for the call, Paul.
I appreciate it.
And sorry I didn't get back to you.
A lot of times I don't see those things,
so they end up in spam or something,
and I apologize.
Okay.
Well, I set the error codes as attachments.
Maybe you thought it was a, you know, scam or something.
I don't know.
My spam filter is set to absurd.
So I apologize if I didn't see your email.
Okay.
Well, thank you for telling me now.
No problem.
Let's move on to Claudia.
Hello, Claudia.
How are you?
I'm good, Mike.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Great.
I had a question.
I know you were covering security for us and our machines
in the previous hour,
but I didn't hear anything about clickbait.
Could you tell us a little bit about what we should
and shouldn't click on when we're on, say, for instance,
reading news online and we scroll down and, oh,
drivers in Tucson, Arizona need to know about this
or whatever it may be.
Well, if you have an appropriate ad blocker,
you won't even see those.
I do.
I've got, let's see, AdBlock Plus on there
from the Mozilla website.
All right.
Well, get rid of that one.
Put Ublock Origin on, and that'll help.
Oh, okay.
AdBlock Plus is fine, but they have a rather extensive
whitelist where they allow plenty of ads through.
And basically, if you have a decent ad blocker
on your machine, right, and AdBlock Plus isn't that bad.
I still think that people should be using Ublock Origin,
which is a good thing.
Right.
Yeah.
In my opinion, it's a better ad block.
Okay.
You're not going to see much, if at all,
anything that's going to hurt you in that particular instance.
All right.
I'll change my ad blocker.
Now, as far as the other things that you shouldn't click on,
well, basically, you know, if it's blinking
or it's one small trick to make you learn something
that is obvious, painfully obvious,
you don't need to click on any of that stuff.
Like I said, when I was talking to Jay,
I was just like, I don't even see that stuff anymore.
Even if it's on the screen, I've been looking at this stuff
for so long that the stuff that's fake is so blatantly obvious
that I feel like I'm almost underqualified to tell people
to stop clicking on stuff, right?
Because it's one of those things where, like,
if you do anything long enough, you get so good
at spotting the stuff that's wrong that you just ignore it.
Right.
You just don't see it.
Well, I'm aware, and I never click on those.
But I know there's, for instance,
older folks around that have no idea about that.
And I thought maybe we'd pass that tip along.
Yeah.
I don't click on those because I'm aware that they're just clickbait.
Anything that says that, any utility that says that it can fix your computer for you,
you should probably not click on.
Right.
Exactly.
Anything that has a big green download button, don't click on that.
Okay.
You know, it's, stay away from anything that is a converter
of any type of software.
Right.
Like, if you want to convert one type of thing to another.
A big one that we've seen recently with people is the YouTube Downloader,
where it allows you to download videos off of YouTube.
I only recommend one program for that,
and it's definitely not called the Free YouTube Downloader.
All right.
The program, if you want to do that, by the way,
there's a program called Jacksta, J-A-K-S-T-A.
Okay.
They would love for you to pay for it,
but it will work indefinitely.
It will work indefinitely without paying for it for free
if you download that software.
Okay.
And that's the only piece of software that I recommend for that.
J-A-K-S-T-A?
Yep.
Okay.
And that allows you to download YouTube videos
and save them to your computer if you want.
Nice.
All right.
So, basically, any type of converter is going to hurt you.
Like, if you want to be able to,
because a lot of people will be like,
well, I need to convert this so I can email,
I need to email it.
No.
No, that's not how this works.
And people need to use their computers differently
when it comes to sending large files
because they're like,
I want to email 5,000 pictures to someone
all in a single email.
And so they search for some type of converter
to make it so that they can magically make it
so that 5,000 emails can be sent in a single email.
Right, compress it.
They're going to come back with an infection.
And the only way to send,
like, a massive amount of data like that
is to use another platform,
something like Dropbox or something
where you can put all of the files
that you want to send into a single folder
and then you can just send a link to that folder
that is shared specifically with someone.
So, it really comes down to just sort of
don't be afraid to ask for help.
Like, if you need help,
we do five-minute free phone support at Computer Guru.
If you call up and you have just a basic,
basic question on how to do something
and it's five minutes or less,
it's free.
So, all you've got to do is call and ask for help.
I know.
You've worked on my machines before
and you guys are awesome.
So, I appreciate all the help that I get from your store.
You guys are great.
Well, I appreciate that.
Okay, well, I appreciate that.
And I'll let you get back to taking some other calls
and enjoy your family time.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
You're welcome.
We're going to go ahead and take a break.
And if you'd like to be part of the show
for the last Computer Guru Show,
that is going to be on air 790-2040.
We'll be back.
What can I do for you, Jeff?
Jeff, what?
I was reading an article the other day
just on one of the PC mag or sites
or something like that.
And they were mentioning something called
Google's Name Bench.
And what it is,
is a DNS optimization service or tool or something
that recommends the best DNS servers to use
for your home network.
Okay.
What do you think about that?
Is that worthwhile?
To look into and safe and all that
to find the best DNS server for optimizing speed?
I mean, in a home instance,
I don't know how important that would really be.
I mean, because DNS is pretty fast.
I'd usually set people to Google DNS to begin with,
you know, using 8.8.8.8.
But I don't know how important that would be
on sort of a home network.
I could see it in,
if you have like a high traffic outbound,
outbound type of data center,
that that would be super useful.
But I mean, we're talking about shaving milliseconds
off of things that take nanoseconds.
I don't know that, I don't know.
I don't know how useful that would actually be.
They were, the gist of it was,
they were saying that, and you're probably right,
it's probably just minuscule,
but it analyzes the distance
and finds the best localized and fastest server
as kind of a tool to see,
you know, which one you should use in your network.
So it sounds like it's probably not worth
the time for the speed gains that you would get, if any.
Yeah, I'm thinking that on a residential scale,
that probably is, it would be undecipherable
as far as, you know,
you wouldn't be able to discern from one to another
as far as if you were to change the DNS servers out
and pick one that is, let's say, faster.
Because most of that stuff is so, I mean,
so close to instant that I don't think that most people
are going to be able to tell the difference.
Now, as an example, if you are, like in my office, right,
we have a couple of fairly large mail servers
that are always sending out to mail
to a number of different servers
that are out there in the world.
And you start to see the delay stack up
when you have, you know,
huge amounts of mail.
Let's say that there's 30,000 pieces of mail
waiting to go out.
And it has to do a DNS lookup for each of those.
And there is maybe an extra 10 millisecond delay
on each of those.
And yeah, you start seeing something
where that would be useful.
But I think in the home arena,
that's not going to be a thing.
Okay, real quick, what's your view of OpenDNS
as far as changing that?
Just for kind of to decipher content,
and make it, you're surfing a little bit safer
in the home network?
I'm always down for people using OpenDNS
or using some type of like a high-end firewall
where they can then manipulate their own DNS
to protect themselves.
Are you able to get around restrictions
if it like falsely blocks you?
Sort of, depending,
it depends on where that block is occurring.
So if it's happening at the ISP level, yes.
If it's happening at the browser level,
like Google is checking on you, then no.
That won't help you a whole lot.
The only way to get out of that type of stuff,
if you want to get around those types of blocks
at the browser level is to use a different browser.
So instead of using like Google Chrome,
you could use Chromium,
which wouldn't have that same block list involved.
Gotcha.
Well, thanks for all the good info as usual.
Well, right on.
And stick around for the podcast, Jeff.
I know you're listening from, what, Seattle?
Is that where you're at?
Yeah, you got it.
Yeah, right outside of Seattle.
And I love the podcast.
The sooner they get up, the better, though.
Yeah, well, we're working on that.
But stick around, Jeff.
Have a great one.
Bye-bye.
Be around for you.
All right, let's go ahead and move on to Jeff, too.
Hello, Jeff, too.
Hi, how you doing?
I'm doing all right.
What can I do for you?
Well, I'm having some problems.
It's a couple years old.
It's 87.
Windows 10 on it.
All right, Jeff, I have to interrupt you here.
You're going to have to, like, stand somewhere else
so I can hear you because you're breaking up badly.
Can you hear me, Jeff?
All right.
How about now?
All right, that's better.
All right.
Okay, so I put in a solid straight drive a couple years ago and never moved Windows over.
So anyway, to make a long story short, I ended up having to reimage the whole computer, so
I'm back to square one.
And I wanted to go ahead and put the operating system on the solid state drive.
I've been able to successfully clone the operating system off my C drive over the solid state
drive.
I'm unable to figure out how to tell it how to boot out of that solid state drive.
You said it was Windows 10 on this machine?
Correct.
Okay.
So you're going to be in a weird position here because if Windows was originally installed
on a conventional drive and you added the solid state drive to it afterwards, the boot
sector is on the wrong drive at that point.
And it's increasingly difficult to move the boot sector from one machine to another.
Unless you just unplug that other drive and then boot off of some type of recovery media and fix the boot sector from there.
Basically recreate the boot sector on the solid state drive.
Now, the other thing is that there has to be enough partition space available for Windows to create its own little special partition for that.
And so if you're already starting from square one, you're going to have to do a lot of work.
And the way that I would recommend you do it, you said you had a backup or you cloned from one drive to the other.
Is that what you said?
Yeah.
I cloned from the C drive, which has all the operating system on to the solid state drive using the application that came with the solid state drive.
Okay.
So here's what I would do if you wanted the simple do it yourself method of doing this at home, which would be to, unfortunately, you're going to have to reclone everything.
But.
Okay.
So what I would do is I would first just do a clean install of Windows on the solid state drive with no other drive plugged in.
So that way that it puts the boot sector on the right drive.
So you know it's all on the same drive.
Okay.
And then once you've done that, then you can use your utility to move Windows from one drive to the other and then unplug the drive again.
Okay.
And that'll likely get you up into where the machine will start.
Okay.
Now, after you do your clone, you'll probably have to run a utility off of the boot media off of the Windows installer.
If you can get into the command prompt from the Windows installer and there's a utility called FixBoot.
And there's three different switches you can use for that.
It's FixBoot slash FixMBR, FixBoot slash, I'm sorry, BootRec is what they call it now.
B-O-O-T-R-E-C.
So BootRec, FixMBR, FixBoot, and then RebuildBCD, which is the boot sector.
And that should make it so the machine behaves the way it's supposed to.
Okay. I'll give that a try.
Give it a shot.
And if that doesn't work, you know, give us a call down at the shop.
We can help you out.
Okay. Great. I appreciate it.
All right. Thanks for the call, Jeff.
Let's go ahead and move on to Mark.
Hello, Mark. How are you?
Hello, Mike.
Hello, Mark.
Yeah. My week and Saturdays are going to be a whole lot less fulfilling.
Sorry to hear that.
I'm going to miss you. I'm a whole lot smarter because of you over these years.
And so I just want to thank you for all of your years on the radio, giving me all educated up.
Well, that's been the goal the whole time is to try to educate everyone, everyone that listens in some way or another,
at least entertain them.
And find a way to make it so that I can help people be less afraid of technology and hopefully keep themselves safe and enjoy it for what it is.
Because even though we do a lot of doom and gloom on this show, as far as technology is concerned, the truth is that technology isn't going anywhere.
And you might as well use it to the best of your ability and knowledge.
And so hopefully people have learned something by listening to the show.
And hopefully I've given back to the community enough that I can.
And I can feel good about myself.
So are you going to come back to the radio in your five months after five months?
I'm not sure if we're going to do on air stuff.
We will. We may.
But there is a plan for doing a podcast version of the show where we can do some video and have a little bit less FCC looming over us.
And and just really I want to have fun with the show.
I want to enjoy it again.
All right.
I mean, I do enjoy helping, but there's a certain amount of I've been disappointed with the output or the results of the show.
And like I said, it's mostly my fault as far as I haven't had the time to put into the show to to make it the product that I want it to be.
And so I don't want to be disappointed or frustrated with the way that the show turns out.
And so we're going to take some time off to re plan how the podcast stuff is going to work and figure out a way to make it so that I have a high quality show.
That I'm proud of.
That is also helpful and informative.
And just go to GuruShow.com for more details, because that's where we're going to announce everything.
OK, well, I certainly have not seen any degradation in your show quality.
It's gotten better and better every year.
Well, thank you.
It's an imaginary thing you have.
Well, I mean, the other part is it is very good.
The other part is I am tired.
I've been doing this a long time and I'd like to take a little bit of a break.
And then I'll be back.
And like I said, I I have a vision for where I want this to go.
And right now, the the return on the radio show doesn't really allow that to happen.
So I want to take an opportunity to to stand back, take a look at it, regroup and and do it right and make it so that it is as informative and as high quality as I would like it to be.
And and hopefully, you know, everything will work out just great.
But for right now, I need a little bit of time.
I want to spend more time with my daughter.
You know, the family is important.
And that's that's where I'm at at the moment.
And the Patreon support was not nearly enough.
I'm sure.
No, no.
I mean, you know, I have to really give a lot of thanks to Mike over at Perfection Auto Works because he he went a long way towards helping me pay for the show.
And I'm very appreciative for the for everything that he did.
And of course, all of the Patreon sponsors.
Now, as far as the total cost of the show and, you know, the expenses involved and not to mention that, you know, this is four or five hours every Saturday that is effectively free for everyone involved with the show is I mean, I appreciate the sacrifice of everyone made, whether it be monetarily, whether it be through their time, whether it be with just content creation.
I mean, like Tara every week does, you know, scouring.
OK.
spent a lot of money putting this show on and it's all out of love.
And so I enjoy the, the interaction with, with people.
And it's, I really try not to make this a, Hey,
why don't you go down to computer guru commercial? Right.
I really try to just help as well as I can.
And if it's beyond doing something over the radio, yeah, then sure. Yeah.
Bring it down to me or somebody you trust. And I've always said that.
So it's a fantastic show.
And highly professional.
And there's thousands of us out here who don't call in.
I'm sure that greatly appreciate what you've done.
Well, I appreciate the kind words part. Now, unfortunately,
I hate to interrupt somebody saying nice things about me,
but I have to do a break here. So when we come back from the break,
if you,
if anybody wants to call in and say nice things about me for the last 10
minutes of the show, you're welcome to do so. But in the meantime,
we have to go to break because,
because read decisions as I must. So we'll be right back after these messages.
Thanks, Mark. I appreciate it.
Yeah.
Whether you're dealing with hardware installation or heaven forbid a virus,
Mike Swanson is answering all your questions one by one.
So call in or chat in with yours, the website guru show.com.
Tune in, click in and kick back.
This is the computer guru show on AM 10 30 KVO. Why the voice?
Mike Swanson.
Your computer guru is just a click away.
Listen and watch a guru show.com.
This is the computer guru show.
Welcome back to the computer guru show.
7 9 0 20 40.
If you'd like to get into the last segment here,
we only have a couple of minutes left.
Let's go ahead and talk to Tom.
Hello, Tom.
How are you?
I'm good.
Thank you.
I just want to thank you for the three or four years I've been listening to you.
You have been my early warning system on sort of staying on top of computer stuff.
And I've,
you've helped me in your shop.
So I'm going to miss you a lot.
And thank you for all you've done.
Well, thank you very much, Tom.
I very much appreciate it.
And I,
I'm glad that I was here to help and don't,
don't worry.
We'll,
we'll still exist.
Just,
we're going to figure things out.
Different format.
Yeah.
Guru show.com for,
to stay on top of stuff.
We'll still be here to help.
I know where to find you.
So thank you very much.
Thanks,
Tom.
I appreciate it.
Let's go ahead and talk to Charles.
Hello,
Charles.
I just want to tell you in Hebrew,
there's an expression,
may call Malamdi.
He's quality by all my teachers.
Am I made more wise?
And you have been a good teacher.
Thanks,
Charles.
I really appreciate that.
And we'll miss you.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
I just wanted to say that I,
I appreciate the,
all of the discussions that we've had,
whether,
you know,
cause I found them all to be entertaining and I learned something from you
every time that we talk.
So thanks.
I appreciate that.
And if there's anything that,
that I or the family of KU,
KVOI can do to,
to,
to bring you back on in terms of support,
or if you're going to go podcast,
if we can help you get your files and stuff,
we're glad to do it.
Well,
I'm not done with KVOI just yet.
So we've got plans still,
but I'm taking some time off and we'll figure it out and get things going.
Good.
We'd love to have you back and you're welcome on Liberty Watch.
Excellent.
Thanks,
Charles.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
So I want to take a moment to take,
say thank you to a lot of people.
Most,
you know,
most importantly,
the KVOI family that has been,
you know,
Doug and everyone here has been wonderful to me.
They've,
they've all been great.
I want to take a moment to say thank you to Tara and Rob,
who,
who have donated their time to me every other week to come in here and,
and help me with the show and to try to make it a little more entertaining,
a little more wonderful,
a very special thanks to Kent on the other side of the glass here,
who has really made it so that I enjoy being an,
I think people really don't appreciate,
the,
how important it is to have sort of good chemistry with your board op,
with your producer,
you know,
to kind of,
you know,
make the show run smoothly.
And thank you very much,
Kent and to Bob and Tom and Harry and everyone else that's,
that's done this over the,
over the years of helping me keep this show on the air.
And,
and most of all the listeners,
right?
My patron supporters,
my sponsors,
such as Perfection Auto Works.
I just want to say thank you.
Now let's go ahead and squeeze Kevin in.
Let's see what's going on here.
Kevin.
Hey,
Mike,
good afternoon.
I'm going to miss you.
Thanks a million.
Thanks to you.
Thanks to Rob.
Tara is going to miss me.
I am.
I'll have to call the shop someday.
Website's great.
We're working on it still.
God bless you guys.
I wish you the very best,
man.
Okay.
Thanks for everything,
man.
I'll miss you.
All right.
Well,
thank you,
Kevin.
I appreciate it.
Thanks to everyone who listens to the show and supports us and brings their computer
down to the shop.
We really appreciate you.
Give us a call down the shop,
304-8300,
or visit gurushow.com.
For more information.
We'll see you guys.