I recently received a webarchive file from a client and my PC had no clue how to open it.

After doing a bit of googling I stumbled across something that made a bit of sense but was much more complicated than it needed to be. If you receive a .webarchive file and have no idea how to open it, simply change the file extension. Add .html on to the end of the file name and you can open it in any web browser. That really is all you have to do.

Are you getting an error that says rundll32.exe can’t open? Are you completely unable to run any programs, even after rebooting your Windows XP PC?

You can download a registry edit file from http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm that will fix this problem. I have used this registry fix a few times and it has never failed me. Though I don’t want you to have this problem, I hope this fixes it for you if you do.

Tim

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Biden PC is a Computer Networking Company and we now offer Online Computer Support.

I don’t know about you but as a computer network tech, I spend a lot of time changing the IP Addresses on people’s PCs. So I decided to create a tool to help me do it and I’d like to share it with you.

• No installation required. It can run from a flash drive!
• View settings for any or all of your network cards.
• Change your IP Address from DHCP to Static and back to DHCP.
• Edit your Default gateway.
• Change your Subnet Mask.
• View your MAC Addresses.
• Set your DNS servers to static addresses.
• Change it all from being Static to DHCP.

Are you a computer tech and constantly changing IP Addresses? Are you a computer user who wonders “How do I change my IP or DNS Address?” EZ-IP can change those for you. Has anybody ever asked you “What is your MAC Address?” EZ-IP will show you.

Click on the image or the following link to download your free copy of Biden PC’s EZ-IP. It is absolutely free to use and free to redistribute.

How much personal information do you have online? Have you ever thought about that question? Have you ever googled your own name? How about the different variations of your name, have you googled them? Take this story that just happened to me as an example of how personal information and data can end up online without your knowledge or permission.

Today I received an email from, Google Alerts telling me that my name had popped up in a new web page. This happens occasionally since I am on Twitter, Facebook and I have my own blog (this one) so I didn’t think it was anything strange. However once I read the email (pictured below), I had to check it out.

A day or 2 earlier I had written a letter of recommendation for a friend and thought nothing more about it. Then I get the email that you see above and I had to see what it was talking about. Apparently the friend needed to convert the Microsoft Word file to an Adobe Acrobat file and used the website http://www.scribd.com/ to do so. No big deal, right? Well, the website made the letter public and Google had searched it and found my name. This is why I was alerted. So I called my friend to ask her about it and apparently her resume as well as 2 more letters of recommendation were posted online as well. Thanks to Google Alerts, we were spared the embarrassment of having somebody else find it.

So, how much personal data do you have online? Have you ever Googled your own name? You should. And if I were you, I would set up alerts for the different variations of your name. That way, any time something new is added, you’ll know about it.

Setting up your alerts is easy. You don’t even have to log in or create a new account.

1. Go to Google Alerts.
2. Enter the text that you want alerts for.
3. Choose comprehensive.
4. Enter your email address.
5. Click on “Create Alert”.
6. Google will send an email to the address that you enter. Open that email and click on the link under “Verify this Google Alert request”.
7. You’re done.

Keeping up to date with your information online is a great way to reduce embarrassment and credit fraud.

Thank you for reading,
Tim

If you found this post to be informative, consider following Biden PC on Twitter.

Biden PC is a Computer Networking Company and we now offer Online Computer Support.

I was recently with a client who wanted to give their old software to other people or organizations. In general, giving to those less fortunate is a kind thing to do. However, there are circumstances when this generosity is not kind or legal.

The most obvious problem is that most software allows for people to install it only on 1 computer. This is where we run into the legal issue. You can’t give your old software to another person or organization to use on a different computer. You may be allowed to do this if you give them the entire PC, but on the whole, regiving software is frowned upon.

The second and less obvious issue is security. Some of the software that my client wanted to pass on was antivirus software. These are a security nightmare. The recipients of the software will believe that their computers are safe and secure but they aren’t. When people believe they are safe online, they take risks that they wouldn’t if they knew that they were unprotected. Therefore, this false sense of security is more dangerous than going without security software.

I don’t believe that people should go without security software so I would like to point out some excellent and FREE (to home users, not businesses) security software.

1. Avira Antivir:              Download it HERE.
2. MalwareBytes:             Download it HERE.
3. SuperAntiSpyware:       Download it HERE.

Tim

If you found this post to be informative, consider following Biden PC on Twitter.

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company and we now offer Online Computer Support.

Just a friendly reminder for everybody out there who has WordPress and uses Google Analytics on their blog… Don’t be in a rush when updating your plugins.

I was in a rush and just realized that, when I last updated my Google Analytics, I neglected to update (re-enter) all of my information so I haven’t been tracking a darn thing. Apparently in the past when I updated it I remembered to update all of my settings but the previous time, I didn’t so I lost all of my stats for the last month.

Lesson learned.

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company and we now offer Online Computer Support.

If you found this post to be informative, consider following Biden PC on Twitter.

If you have earthlink.net for your email provider and suddenly you can receive email but not send, I think I have the solution for you.

I am assuming that you have already checked your username and password as well as your server settings to be certain that they are correct.

If after checking these settings, you still can’t send your email, check your SMTP port settings.

From the Email Account settings page,

1. Click the More Settings button.
2. Click on the Advanced tab.
3. Check the contents of the Outgoing mail (SMTP) field. If it is not 587, delete the contents and type 587.
4. Click the OK button.
5. Click the Next button.
6. Click the Finish button.

This should solve your problem.

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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If you have Outlook 2007 connecting to Exchange 2007 or SBS 2008 and have been seeing the extremely persistent “Disconnected” button in the bottom right hand corner of your exchange, I think have the fix for you.

You can download the registry fix HERE or go to the PC that has the problem and edit the registry yourself.

** Warning: Editing the registry can be dangerous and Biden PC does not warrant any changes that you make.**

Navigate to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\RPC” and if the “RPC” key doesn’t exist, create it.
Add or edit DWORD value: “DefConnectOpts” and make it “0″

Thanks lesgetdown! I appreciate the help!

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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Lately I’ve been quite involved with Twitter. If you haven’t been to twitter.com, I would definitely recommend taking a look.

Here is how Twitter works. Let’s say that you’re interested in preventing and removing computer viruses, like I am. You could do a search for “virus”, “viruses” or even “computer virus”. Then you would find people who are tweeting about viruses. Once you find them, you can follow them and every time they post a message, you’ll see it. In turn, when they see you following them, they might follow you and get your tweets.

On Twitter, you have the ability to send short messages (the technical term is “MicroBlogging”) to everyone who follows you. You gain followers by tweeting (posting your comments) and following other people who interest you. If you want to send a message to someone, put a @ symbol in front of their name like @BidenPC. If you want to send a direct message (other people can’t see it) Put a D and a space then their name. That looks like D BidenPC. The catch is that to send a Direct Message you have to be following them and they have to be following you. Got it?

If you want to see how it works, go to twitter.com and create your own account. Then go to tweetdeck.com and download their Twitter interface. It’s great! And finally, go to Biden PC and follow me on Twitter.

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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Are you running Quickbooks on Windows PCs while a Linux domain and file server holds the data files? Do you get an error code -6190 -82? Let me tell you how I fixed this problem on a client’s server. I fully admit that I am no Linux expert but I am learning.

The users that were logged in to the server had admin access but only the user that owned the file was able to access it. All others were given the -6190 -82 error code. I tried everything my non-Linux mind could think of. I had them run QuickBooks from a batch file that removed the “Read Only” attribute. I did this, I did that.

What I finally did to fix the issue was going into the server and see what user group the necessary users belonged to. I then changed the owner setting of the QB Data files to that group.

**ADDITION** I had to go back and I saw that the .TLG file permissions had changed on the server. This sent me searching for why they would change and how to stop it… After testing, changing, testing, changing and retesting, I believe I have the complete solution to the problem.

1. Put all users who need QuickBooks access in 1 user group.
2. Make that group the owner of your .QBW and .TLG file with “Read & Write” permissions.
3. On each users desktop (at least the ones who backup the QuickBooks file), set the program NOT to verify the backup data.
4. Viola. The problem has been solved.

So what is the reason for this??? You can set the permissions on the .TLG file but if you verify the backup data in QuickBooks it creates a new .TLG file with the same name. That causes the permissions to be reset. So backing up without verifying saves the permissions and allows everyone to use the files. **END ADDITION**

Intuit says they don’t support Linux unless you pay for their $3000.00 Enterprise Solutions package. Well, this trick might just save you $3000.00. Feel free to send me a check if you find this useful… Just kidding.

Tim Biden

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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