Reaching out to our customers through social media

It’s a bright new future, what with all the ways we have to connect with people we know, care for, and love. It seems to have gotten to be as vital as breathing to stay in contact at all times.

We here at The Neighborhood Nerd would like to extend an invitation to all the people who are becoming our business family to connect with us through our newly founded social network.

You can find us on:

Myspace
Facebook
LinkdIn
Twitter (@nbrhoodnerd)
Yelp
Merchant Circle
Yahoo
MyCity

And a great many more!

We would greatly appreciate connecting with you, and would very much welcome any comments or reviews!

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BFG Technologies Liquidating – No More RMA’s

As of last week, when Best Buy decided to no longer carry BFG’s products, BFG has started sending out rejection letters for all ongoing and newly created RMA’s. What that means for our customers: Any of our customers who had a BFG card installed or built into their system is going to have to wait until BFG gets bought and re-established to get warranty repair on their product. There is also a distinct possibility that this may never happen at all.

Here is the letter we’ve received from them:

BFG Technologies, Inc. is winding down and liquidating its business. Unfortunately our
major supplier would not support our business. As a result we are cancelling your RMA
without being able to repair your product. We apologize for the inconvenience.

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Virus Removal Services

We here at The Neighborhood Nerd are always looking out for new viruses and malware that can cause harm to your computers. We’d like t take a moment here and give out some free advice on how to avoid needing to call us for a virus removal at all.

Several things can be major factors in your computer’s security:

  • Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware software
    • Use of both Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware
    • Update regularly
    • Scan regularly
  • Computer Usage
    • Visiting adult or pirate websites
    • Using music download software (Limewire)
    • Play online gambling games (Party Poker)
    • Play “free” online games (Gamevance)
  • Computer’s specifications
    • Memory and Processor
    • Operating System
    • Number of installed programs

There are a number of broad categories to avoid when surfing websites. Avoiding these things will help greatly reduce you chances of getting infected.

  • Myspace: The main website is mostly clean, but any of the ads on the top or sides will have many different infections. Zwinky and the cursors and smileys specifically have some really nasty ones.
  • Party Poker: And other gambling sites like it are stuffed full of spyware
  • Pirate websites: places that support the downloading of illegal software generally don’t care about the law or what damage they do. Not many of these sites have viruses built into them, but it’s a large enough percentage to give note

Switching your browser from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome can also avoid many security vulnerabilities

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Tags: Anti-Malware Programs, Antivirus, Computer Services, Malware, Malware Attacks, spyware, virus removal

Remote Support is Up!

After extensive testing we’ve implemented a remote support application into our security suite. All customer’s who purchase a TuneUp, Virus Removal, Windows Reload, or Software Configuration will get our Remote Support package installed alongside our free Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Security Suite.

Remote Support Technical Help is free for the first 30 days after purchase of one of the above listed services, after which customer’s may pay monthly for on-demand Remote Support or Pay-Per-Use. See here for pricing!

Thanks for helping make The Neighborhood Nerd a better company!

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Tags: Computer Services, GeekStuff, News, Printer Install, Software Install Sacramento, CA, Software News, UPGRADES - Software

Remote Support Coming Soon!

We here at The Neighborhood Nerd are always on the lookout for new tools and software to do our job faster and better, and we think we found a major winner.

Using a service called TeamViewer we will be able to give direct support to any previous customer over the internet. All you as a customer need to do is click on our new Remote Support icon in your Nerd’s Security Suite folder and watch as we take care of your issues right then and there! Only requirement is to have an active broadband connection (No administrative privileges required). This means that if you nee a follow up to a call we can help you out within minutes instead of waiting for us to reschedule a call for you!

Starting next month we will be offering remote support to our customers who have had our security suite installed. Customers who have purchased a TuneUp service package will receive 30 days free of online support as a promo. After 30 days you may purchase a monthly remote assistance service package, or pay-per-instance. Please call us for details!

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Tags: Computer Services, remote computer assistance, remote computer repair, Remote computer support, remote support, remote virus removal, Software News

Virus Targets Spybot S&D

Recently We’ve come across a virus that replaces a critical file in Spybot S&D causing the program to malfunction. If you notice your Spybot installation acting up or behaving strangely (wont start, wont update, does not allow you to scan), please re-download Spybot and re-install it.

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Tags: Anti-Malware Programs, Malware Attacks, Malware News, Software News

csrss.exe Virus Solved!

We’ve now developed a reliable method for removing the USB csrss.exe virus that cropped up recently. While this virus proliferates very quickly and is annoying to deal with, the fix for it is quite simple.

  1. Attach any USB drives you know to be infected to the system you plan to disinfect.
  2. Enable viewing of hidden files and folders
  3. Delete ONLY the autorun.inf from each infected drive
  4. If running WindowsXP or a 32bit version of Vista or Win7, run Combofix
    1. If running a 64bit operating system, navigate to C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\
    2. Under this directory you will find a copy of csrss.exe. You will need to use ProcXP64 to kill the process before deleting the file.
  5. After the csrss.exe has been cleaned from the computer, you can now safely delete the copies on the USB drives without them returning
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Tags: Anti-Malware Programs, Malware Attacks, Malware News

csrss.exe Virus Infects USB Drives

A new strain of infection has sprung up that imitates the real windows process Microsoft Client Server Runtime, but modifies itself to allow for a hacker to have a free backdoor into your system. The virus runs silently in the background and collects information like your network configuration, IP address, and system passwords and stores them. When the hacker wishes to intrude on your system through this virus he has all this information readily available to make the process of hijacking your computer easier.

There is a very simple and easy way to tell if this virus is on your system. The newest versions copy themselves to thumbdrives in the form of two hidden files: autorun.inf & csrss.exe which you will find on the root of any attached device including iPods. The other place the virus will hide is in %systemroot%\Users\%username%\Application Data\Temp\

As far as we can etll so far it only installs a single fraudulent csrss.exe file to that one location and to any attached removable media. Its very hard to tell if it is active on your system without looking for those files specifically as t does not directly attack the computer.

***Also note that to find these files you will need to have “hide hidden files” in your folder options turned off.

A round of Combofix and cleaning off the files from your USB drives will fix the issue in most cases.

csrss virus

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Tags: Malware Attacks, Malware News

Windows 7 Is Finally Here!

Today is the day! Windows 7 has finally been released to the public and we can start offering it to our customers on our custom PC builds! We’ll be offering all three versions (home, pro, and ultimate) on any new systems built. We will continue to offer Windows XP installations for those of you who would like to stick to that for the time being. Happy release day!

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Tags: News

Total Security 2009 update

We’ve now developed a reliable method for removing this latest version of System Security 2009. As with the last version, this particular virus requires the use of an external OS like a “bootable antivirus & recovery tool” or BART, and therefor this method is not reliable with systems that have Norton GoBack or disk encryption installed. Please fill out a service request form or call to schedule an appointment if you would like a Nerd to take care of your infection!

If you don’t already have an antispyware program to augment your security software, feel free to choose from this list of free and effective antispyware utilities.

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Tags: Antivirus, Antivirus 2008, Antivirus 2009, Antivirus 360, Antivirus XP, Computer Repair, Computer Services, fake security, fake security software, Frostwire, infection, Kazaa, Limewire, Malware, Malware Attacks, pdf virus, rootkit, rootkit removal, Sacramento Computer Repair, scam security, security software, Software News, spyware, System Security 2009, total security 2009, Virus, virus removal, Vista Antivirus

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