We've seen many of our customers struggling with the decision whether or not to leave their computer for a required repair when they had deadlines and commitments that they needed to continue working on, despite the fact that their computer was falling apart.
The Computer Cellar now has loaner computers available for these customers. Starting at just $35/week, the laptops include Microsoft Office 2010 for maximum file compatibility. Who else do you know that offers a benefit like that? We will transfer up to 10 files at no cost from your old computer to the loaner or a memory stick that the customer provides.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
No way to easily clean up archived emails in Gmail
I was setting up Outlook 2010 on my home computer and imported my Gmail account. I initially just entered the email address and password into the Outlook Account Setup Wizard and, after a minute or so of crunching on it, Outlook configured the account as an IMAP account and brought everything in, including all of my labels as folders. Very nice, I thought.
Then, I started deleting emails from the Inbox. In between every email delete was a lengthy delay as Outlook contacted Gmail and did the deed. After a few emails, it was obvious that that wasn't going to work out too well.
So, I researched the issue and found suggestions to set it up as a POP3 account instead. Here's a good link with instructions. After setting it up as POP3, Gmail proceeded to download emails from 2006. Lots of emails from 2006, and 2007, etc. It did it in batches, importing 300 to 500 emails at a time, maybe dependent on the size of included attachments. I quit somewhere in 2008 when it started importing FreeCycle posts and started researching the problem.
It looks like the issue correlated with my use of my Moto Q. During the time that it was synched with my Gmail account, it was not actually deleting email but was only marking them as read and moving them into archived status on Gmail. It turns out that there is no way to view only archived emails in Gmail. All emails show up in your "All Mail" view, and any emails that are still in your inbox or have been assigned a label will show that in front of the email subject.. The only way to narrow the results down is to eliminate any results that include a label, as you'll notice that the messages that have simply been archived have no label at all. The discussion within this Gmail Forum link help to describe the process.
So, the net result is that, if you have very few labels set up already, you can fairly easily weed out the archived emails and then delete them. Within your general account settings in Gmail, you can dictate whether you have 25, 50 or 100 messages show up at a time. This is the maximum number that can be deleted at one time. Since I currently have 6800+ messages archived, it will take many, many screen refreshes to get through the task!
Daryn
The Computer Cellar
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Then, I started deleting emails from the Inbox. In between every email delete was a lengthy delay as Outlook contacted Gmail and did the deed. After a few emails, it was obvious that that wasn't going to work out too well.
So, I researched the issue and found suggestions to set it up as a POP3 account instead. Here's a good link with instructions. After setting it up as POP3, Gmail proceeded to download emails from 2006. Lots of emails from 2006, and 2007, etc. It did it in batches, importing 300 to 500 emails at a time, maybe dependent on the size of included attachments. I quit somewhere in 2008 when it started importing FreeCycle posts and started researching the problem.
It looks like the issue correlated with my use of my Moto Q. During the time that it was synched with my Gmail account, it was not actually deleting email but was only marking them as read and moving them into archived status on Gmail. It turns out that there is no way to view only archived emails in Gmail. All emails show up in your "All Mail" view, and any emails that are still in your inbox or have been assigned a label will show that in front of the email subject.. The only way to narrow the results down is to eliminate any results that include a label, as you'll notice that the messages that have simply been archived have no label at all. The discussion within this Gmail Forum link help to describe the process.
So, the net result is that, if you have very few labels set up already, you can fairly easily weed out the archived emails and then delete them. Within your general account settings in Gmail, you can dictate whether you have 25, 50 or 100 messages show up at a time. This is the maximum number that can be deleted at one time. Since I currently have 6800+ messages archived, it will take many, many screen refreshes to get through the task!
Daryn
The Computer Cellar
post signature
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Why we love the Geek Squad and Best Buy
This was just too good not to share. Our friend made the mistake of taking his computer to Best Buy to have them remove and repair virus problems. $199.99 later, they returned the laptop to him with the viruses supposedly removed, but mentioned that there were problems now with the operating system as a side effect of removing the virus.
It seems that they think "an operating system problem" is acceptable. In this case, the computer immediately went to a screen indicating that there was a problem with the startup device. Telling it to continue simply cycled back to the BIOS splash screen and back to the message. In this case, though, the freakin' message told them what to do - insert your operating system installation disk, restart the computer, choose the appropriate language and then select the repair option. It was all right there. We fortunately had a Win 7 Home Premium install DVD, followed the instructions, and quickly repaired that issue. The repair process told us to restart, and the computer started just fine. All of 10 minutes work, maybe.
After getting in, we updated MalwareBytes and ran that, which found 3 problems including a Trojan FakeAlert, then tried to get on the Internet using Mozilla just to find that there was a problem accessing the proxy server. We went to Internet Options and cleared the "use a proxy server" option (which is frequently something that is set by Trojans and malware). That got us on the Internet just fine. We then installed and ran SpyBot - it only found 1 entry for AdBrite.
At The Computer Cellar, we typically charge anywhere between $90 to $120 for virus removal. I personally feel that this is a lot of money to have to spend just to get rid of something that you were simply an innocent victim of (well, most of us are). It does take time though and requires a thorough look at the computer. Simply scanning the hard drive externally and removing viruses that way is never sufficient; I find that the best success is to do it from the problem computer directly and ensure that everything is addressed. Returning the computer to the customer in an unusable state would qualify as one of the jobs that we couldn't charge for, not unless the customer then wanted us to do data recovery then possibly reinstall the operating system. They do get torn up sometimes so badly that this is the only answer, but that is just part of the job.
Daryn
It seems that they think "an operating system problem" is acceptable. In this case, the computer immediately went to a screen indicating that there was a problem with the startup device. Telling it to continue simply cycled back to the BIOS splash screen and back to the message. In this case, though, the freakin' message told them what to do - insert your operating system installation disk, restart the computer, choose the appropriate language and then select the repair option. It was all right there. We fortunately had a Win 7 Home Premium install DVD, followed the instructions, and quickly repaired that issue. The repair process told us to restart, and the computer started just fine. All of 10 minutes work, maybe.
After getting in, we updated MalwareBytes and ran that, which found 3 problems including a Trojan FakeAlert, then tried to get on the Internet using Mozilla just to find that there was a problem accessing the proxy server. We went to Internet Options and cleared the "use a proxy server" option (which is frequently something that is set by Trojans and malware). That got us on the Internet just fine. We then installed and ran SpyBot - it only found 1 entry for AdBrite.
At The Computer Cellar, we typically charge anywhere between $90 to $120 for virus removal. I personally feel that this is a lot of money to have to spend just to get rid of something that you were simply an innocent victim of (well, most of us are). It does take time though and requires a thorough look at the computer. Simply scanning the hard drive externally and removing viruses that way is never sufficient; I find that the best success is to do it from the problem computer directly and ensure that everything is addressed. Returning the computer to the customer in an unusable state would qualify as one of the jobs that we couldn't charge for, not unless the customer then wanted us to do data recovery then possibly reinstall the operating system. They do get torn up sometimes so badly that this is the only answer, but that is just part of the job.
Daryn
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