Last month?  Last year?

Never?

If you are like most people, you fall into the last category.  If it aint’ broke, don’t fix it… right?

In case you don’t know what a “driver” is, a hardware driver a small program that sits between your operating system (e.g. Windows XP or Windows Vista) and a specific piece of hardware (e.g. printer, monitor, sound card, hard drive).

A driver interprets hardware signals and converts them into bits of information that your operating system can use, and vice versa.  That is why each piece of hardware you purchase usually has a “driver” disc that you need to install to make the hardware work properly (like that printer you purchased a while back).

Since the driver interprets between the hardware and the operating system, you are likely to have some drivers that will work for Vista, but not XP… or XP, but not Vista.  Which is why that printer probably came with several discs – one for XP, one for Mac… and maybe even one for Vista (if you purchased it within the last couple of years).

Now that we have that out of the way, you can see that drivers play a vital role in whatever computer you are using right now.  If it’s weren’t for these drivers, you wouldn’t be able to see the screen you are currently looking at, or even use the mouse or keyboard to scroll down this page.

Some of the most basic drivers are built into the operating system, so they are installed automatically… but, they are still there.

What does this have to do with you?

Drivers are often taken for granted and forgotten.  Once you install the driver and the hardware works properly, people usually don’t think much about drivers.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret, however.  It’s something that only computer enthusists and gamers know about:

Updating your drivers will often give you a dramatic boost in your computer’s performance.  Often it’s very noticable.

If that weren’t enough, updating your hardware drivers will often remedy a lot of problems too.  Newer, better drivers can help stabilize a flakey computer system when nothing else will.

You see, programs and drivers are written by people.  People, of course, are not perfect.  Therefore, the programs and drivers people write are NOT perfect.  They can slow down a computer if not written well… and cause absolute havoc when written horribly.

But, just like your golf swing and your sudoku skills, these programs can be improved upon.  So, a driver that was installed last year may have had 5 ot 6 complete rewrites since you installed it.  The newer drivers are not installed automatically… not even during a Windows update.

They are not doing you any good sitting out there on the hardware manufacturer’s website.  But, how do you get them installed without having advanced technical skills?

In the past, there weren’t too many choices.  But, here in our Fort Collins computer repair shop, we’ve discovered a program that we have really grown to love.  It’s called RadarSync, available at www.radarsync.com.

Downloading the program is completely painless, installing it is easy… and running the application is a piece of cake.

The program gives you the option to backup your drivers (useful if you are formatting your hard drive and reloading the operating system), or updating the drivers which is the subject of this posting.

Although there are other driver update utilities available on the web (Driver Genius Pro, Carambis Driver Updater), one of the coolest things about RadarSync is that it also checks for outdated programs, too!

For example, my first run of RadarSync on my machine revealed the I had an outdated version of my Mobile Intel 965 Chipset Driver.  But, in addition to that, RadarSync informed me that there was a newer version of 7-Zip available, and a newer version of VLC ready to be downloaded and installed.

It also let me know which of my computer’s applications were okay and needed no updating.

My only gripe about RadarSync 2009 is that you can’t maximize (or even increase the size of) the main window.  Hopefully, they will resolve this small annoyance in the next release of the software, making this application near perfect.

All in all, RadarSync is a great addition to update your outdated drivers and update  your software.  This alone will do a lot to speed up your system, make your system more stable and less prone to crashes.

Download RadarSync from www.radarsync.com.

But, with that being said, many computers are being sold right now with a Windows 7 upgrade option, which will allow you to upgrade the operating system up to Windows 7 once it becomes available.  That’s all fine and dandy, but it also means that you will potentially have to deal with Vista problems for a couple of months.  Even then, the upgrade probably won’t be a fresh install, and you may be transferring Vista instability over to your new Windows 7 upgrade.

According to our testing with the pre-release versions of Windows 7, performing a clean installation of Windows 7 on a PC was much better than upgrading from Vista to Windows 7.  The “upgraded” Vista to Windows 7 computer has slower overall system performance, slower boot times (by about 20 seconds), and there was instability with some of the hardware (especially fingerprint readers and touch screen LCD monitors).

A word of warning:  I’ve been advising my clients (especially my business clients) to exercise some patience with Windows 7.  Just like any operating system, the early adopters will be guinea pigs.  If system stability is important to you or vital to your earning potential, let the early birds sort out the bugs.  Wait a few months before making the leap.  If you want to be extra cautious, wait for the first Windows 7 service pack to be released before upgrading.

Happy shopping.

Bradley Chapple, IT Consultant & Owner of Aspen Computer Services, Loveland Colorado

If you’re keen to the process of updating drivers, you may have wondered… is there some way I can just easily update my drivers without scavenging the web for all of the latest updates?

Personally, I have 5 different websites to visit about every other month.  I know some of my friends have even more hardware vendors to visit when they are updating their systems.

Maybe you already know where to download the drivers or updates, but hate having to spend the better part of 2 hours every month to keep them up to date.

So do I.

Unfortunately, you can only count on Windows Update for the basics.  It is very limited in scope.

For most drivers, you have to go to the manufacturer’s website and navigate a strange and unfamiliar page.  Sometimes you can only find the drivers by going the site map (if you can find that page).

Finding driver updates on a regular basis is a pain.  So much so that most people just not doing it, and it ends up leading to security issues, slowness, and general system instability.

Then there is the dreaded “Unknown Device” in the device manager… you know the one with the yellow exclamation mark.  How can you find a driver when you don’t even know what to look for?  If that wasn’t enough, throw in a few helpings of a very generic “Base System Device” and a “High Definition Audio Bus” and you have a big ole bubbling pot of unknown driver soup.

WHEN GOOD COMPANIES GET GREEDY

We used to have a paid (monthly) subscription to driveragent.com, but since they started limiting the updates to 10 computers, we no longer use them.

If you ask me, charging a monthly fee and limiting it to 10 computers was a BAD move for driveragent.com.  I’m only one of the MANY clients that’s ditching driveragent.com for friendlier alternatives.  Personally, I fought with paying that $15 every month, feeling that it was bit too steep for the frequency that I used it, but it was a nice thing to keep in my bag of tricks.

But, driveragent.com, like many companies got greedy and now it’s costing them clients.

So began our mighty and noble quest for an alternative to driveragent.com.

We have gone through a few products so far.  A few of them are free.  Some of them have a free version that is very limited in what it can do.  Some of the products we looked at are completely paid.

While looking for a alternative to driveragent.com, we stumbled upon DriverMax from http://www.innovative-sol.com.

When I found DriverMax, I thought, “Now here is a product that looks promising.”  Supposedly, the premise is that you can download drivers and driver updates for your system… and in return, it will make a list of the drivers in your computer and upload them to the web.

A SITE ONLY OSCAR WOULD LOVE

The feeling that I got from the DriverMax Website is that everyone there is overworked and very grumpy.

Their “Help” page was much more defensive than helpful… with lots of “this is not our fault!” and “there is nothing we can do!”… and my favorite, “The problem is on your computer, please don’t contact us about it.”

One of the topics on the help page was about getting a refund from DriverMax.  It states that “DriverMax is a FREE program and was always a FREE program.”  It goes on and on about people who buy a product and then mistake it for DriverMax.  But, what about the PRO version they are selling on http://www.drivermax.com/upgrade.htm?  That product doesn’t seem to be free.  It has the same name, but it’s not free.  Hmmm…

When I downloaded the program I was pleasantly surprised.  For a free program, it looked very polished and nice.  I kept reminding myself of the dangers of judging a book by it’s cover.

AND WE’RE OFF!!!  (TO A ROCKY START)

When I ran DriverMax for the first time, it wanted me to register.

So, I input my desired username, password, e-mail address, etc.

Then, it said that I needed to validate the e-mail address by clicking on the link that I was sent.

I waited… and waited… and waited.  I gave them a good 5 or 6 hours to send me the validation link.  With today’s technology, this process should be instantaneous.  There is a topic on the help page that discusses this problem, and once again they say, “This is not our fault! Please don’t complain to us – instead, complain to your e-mail service provider…”

Well… what if I AM my own e-mail service provider and my Exchange Server is sitting right next to me, and I’ve never had a problem sending or receiving e-mail?  Just for giggles, I checked my spam filter… and then checked it again.  Still nothing.  What now?  Personally, I think that something in their own auto-responder system is messed up, and they either don’t see it, don’t want to fix it, don’t have time to fix it, or all of the above.

Filling out another request was not very intuitive and I had to find the option under DriverMax settings… but, I did that, and then used a different e-mail address (my hotmail account) and that one actually went through.  Weird.

It unfortunately doesn’t get much better.

Although the interface is nice-looking, it’s not very intuitive.  There are options such as “Start the DriverMax Agent”, without much clarification about what that is.

Once we did that, we scanned for updated drivers and tried to download one of them.  We were brought to a DriverMax page and asked if we wanted to continue as a Free DriverMax user, or continue as a DriverMax PRO user.

We obviously chose the Free option, since we hadn’t paid for anything.

Then we were prompted to wait… 30 seconds, actually.

After our 30 seconds were up, we got the beige box at the top of our browser that stated, “To help protect your security, Internet Explorer blocked this site from downloading files to your computer.  Click here for options…”  Typical.  So, we clicked the bar and selected “Download File…” only to be hit with another 30 second countdown!

Remember back in grade school when someone else would get you into trouble, and then YOU were the one that had to stand in the corner, even though you didn’t do anything wrong?  Yep, it sort of feels like that.  This is a typical ploy to sell the PRO version of their software.  It feels more like you are being punished than anything else.  Even if the software is free, this is crossing the line a bit.

If that isn’t enough to get your blood pumping, then this will:  They only allow you to download 2 drivers per day with the free version… something that isn’t very obvious before you actually download and use the product.

THE DRIVER INSTALLATIONS

I went on to download the updates and even tried it out on a couple of  “unknown devices”.  But, it was A LOT OF WORK!  It would have been easier to just go the DELL web site and look for the drivers one by one.   I am looking for a product that will make my life and the life of my clients easier… not more complicated.

The drivers worked very well… but, then again, Innovative Solutions didn’t write the drivers, so they should work.

THE CONCLUSION

The time-wasting 30 second delay was a pathetic attempt to frustrate a user enough to buy the PRO version, and it was the straw the broke MY back with this product.

A better option would have been a 15 day trial, or the ability to download 1 or 2 drivers, but VERY EASILY… thereby selling the ease of use of the product.

Example:  The client download the program, clicks one button and it tells you the drivers that need updates, identifies the “unknown drivers” and then asks you to select just 1 driver to update.  The client selects one driver, and clicks the Download, Install and Reboot button (all just one button).  It does all this, and brings you back to the window.  Then, the window says, “See how easy that was?  You could do this with ALL your drivers if you just register this product for $29.95.”

Wouldn’t THAT sell more product?

So, combined with the non-intuitive nature of this produce, the 30 second to 1 minute delay, and the horribly unfriendly copy on the website, I could never recommend this product.  The only exception is that you are desperate, smart, have a lot of extra time on your hands… oh, and flat broke.

I have heard some okay things about the DriverMax PRO product… so I may try that at some point.  But, unfortunately, I need to get the bad taste out my mouth first.

In the future, we’ll be posting reviews of some other products, such as Driver Genius, RadarSync and a few others.  So far, these are working better than DriverMax, but unfortunately they are aren’t free.  So, it seems that you really do get what you pay for, after all.

Bradley Chapple, IT Consultant & Owner of Aspen Computer Services, Loveland Colorado

So, here I go… attacking another well-known player in the Antivirus market, and this time it’s a favorite among IT golden-boys everywhere.

Today, I’m going to talk about AVG Free.

AVG is one of those companies you just love to like.

First of all, they offer a decent free product.

Second, they are one of the “underdogs” of the antivirus market (not Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro).

Third, they aren’t Symantec, which immediately gives them a couple of points in my book… I mean, who else but Symantec can make a program so messy that they had to create an uninstaller to aid in the removal of their own product [ aka Norton Removal Tool ]???  I won’t even get into the mess that SEP (Symantic Endpoint Protection) creates, even after you have removed it!

Despite the reasons to like AVG Free, I have a number of complaints with it.  Unfortunately, they are major gripes.

The cons of AVG Free:

• AVG Free isn’t that great at detection and removal
• AVG Free, since it carries the name “Antivirus” gives you a false sense of security
• AVG Free doesn’t update automatically
• AVG Free slows down your system… I’m talking about the new version 8.0 and above

The trouble is… I really want to like AVG Free… I really do!

Many of my own home systems had AVG Free installed until very recently.  Of course, I have other forms of protection in place too, that most people do not have – such as a hardware firewall, OpenDNS Filtering, and a few others… but that’s another story for another time.

The fact is, surfing the web these days is dangerous… not just for your computer, but also for your privacy and possibly your very identity.

Web sites have viruses.

Let me repeat that… WEB SITES HAVE VIRUSES.

ANY web site can harbor a virus… not just pornographic web sites.  Not just the sites you go to get cheat codes, game cracks, key generators, and cutesy little widgets to put on your myspace profile.

Viruses can be hiding in banner ads, or infect a website unbeknown to the web site owner.

A story I tell my clients sometimes is the how thousands of innocent web site visitors were affected by a virus that infected many very high profile web sites, such as the Kelly Blue Book web site.  You can read more about that here, at the Washington Post online:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6746-2004Jun25.html

AVG Free is just NOT good enough for today’s Internet threats.  Period.

In addition to not giving you adequate protection, many users don’t know enough about antivirus and antispyware programs to make well-informed decisions on the matter.  They just see the word antivirus, and they think, “Oh yeah, that’s what I need.”  They download it, install it, and then think they are safe from all harm.

If they think they can save some money and get the same protection, but for FREE… what do you think they are going to do?  Of course… they are going to download the free product.

Before you make the decision on whether or not to go with a FREE product to protect your computer, or a $50 or so per year product, consider your choice wisely.  It helps to look at this another way…

If you HAD to go into a dangerous foreign country, who would you choose to be your body guard?

Would you want the paunchy, out of shape, middle-aged guy, who used to work mall security and has a license to carry a concealed weapon?  He’s a friend of a friend, and he’ll work for free.

Or, would you want the six foot two, ex-navy-seal-turned-mercenary who is an expert in hand to hand combat?

In case you are still deciding, you want the second guy.

Trust me.

You want the guy who’s not going to be playing around.  He’s not going to be your buddy or send you flowers.  He’s going to keep his eyes pealed, his ears to the ground, and his knife sharp.  He will to keep you safe… but, he’s NOT going to do it for free.  It took a lot of blood, sweat, tears  and time to acquire and hone these specialized and valuable skills and he expects to be compensated accordingly.

The same can be said for antivirus applications.

Are you really going to get the top-notch product for free?  Not even close.

No… for free, you are going to get the mall cop, and he won’t be armed with anything but pepper spray and a whistle.

Let’s switch gears here, and talk about performance…

When it comes to your computer’s speed, why sacrifice it when you don’t have to?

AVG Free (and even it’s paid version) will slow down a computer a bit.  There are website that talk about how to disable certain web/surf filters in AVG in order to reclaim some of their computing power… but, why would you want to put yourself at even MORE risk by turning off these filters?

So, please, please, please stay away from AVG Free.

The AVG Professional Version may slow down your computer, but at least you get some great protection!

There are a lot of products out there that won’t cost you an arm and a leg.  If you spread the cost out over the course of a year, you are talking about $0.07 to $0.10 per day.

Kaspersky Antivirus, for example costs $59 for a year, but if you purchase two years in advance, the price drops to $36 per year.  Although I think that Kaspersky Internet Security is a bit bloated and expensive, the Antivirus product is sleek, fast, and is very affordable (it’s what I use on the computer I’m on right now).

Same thing goes with Avast Professional Edition.  Avast charges $57 for a two year license.  That is an investment of less than $29 per year.  Very nice, considering how highly rated this product is.  Not only does it blow the doors off of anything by AVG Free, but it’s cheap too!  Quality protection for about $0.07 per day.

Bradley Chapple, IT Consultant & Owner of Aspen Computer Services, Loveland Colorado

Recently, I have been looking for some ways to help make things more efficient, here in my computer repair business.

Most of our clients know that we have a 3 hour cap on a residential single-computer repair or service jobs.

If this is the first you’ve heard of this “3 Hour Cap”… let me explain: It means, if the computer repair or service is being done on just one PC or laptop in a residential environment, we will only charge for 3 hours of labor… no matter how long it takes to repair the computer, remove the virus, repair XP, or solve whatever other glitch or problem the computer has.

The advantage here is that, in the clients’s eyes, labor will never get out of hand. Some of my clients have told me stories about how other computer repair shops would hand them a bill for $700 when the only thing wrong with the computer was a virus infection. Ouch.

There is just one problem with capping jobs to a 3 hour maximum….

MAKING $2.50 PER HOUR IS AWESOME

What a lot our clients do not know is that some of these jobs can take a LONG time.

A few of the more stubborn jobs have taken an entire 24-hour day of concentrated troubleshooting and numerous failed attempts at a resolution.  My techs can tell you some painful computer repair stories that involve DAYS of beating their heads against a stubborn/elusive problem.

On those longer (but capped) computer repair jobs, we aren’t even making enough money to put food on the table, much less stay in business!

Luckily for us, those jobs are few and far between. Our average job only takes about 1 to 2 hours, actually. A tough virus or spyware infection plus a computer clean-up/tune-up might take 2 to 4 hours, but that’s okay. If it goes over 3 hours, we cap it off at 3 hours labor, the client gets back a computer that runs like new, and everyone’s happy.

But, it’s those really tough (and unprofitable) jobs, combined with the 3 hour cap on labor, that has inspired us to seek out new ways of doing things around here…

GETTING BACK TO BASICS

Instead of running a virus scan from the infected machine, we usually yank the drive out and scan it from one of our shop machines.  This typically renders the virus inactive and allows our virus removal software to actually work.  It also allows us to remove locked files from the drive without the virus attempting to defend itself.

Another thing that we are doing more often is checking for a lot of other lower-level problems, such as visually inspecting the systemboard for bulging or burst capacitors, running Memtest, and running a complete health check on the hard drive with HDD Regenerator. These lower-level checks have saved us a lot of time in the long run… even if the computer problem LOOKS like an operating system issue, or a software glitch.

But, our attempt to make our business more efficient also led us to try Reimage, from http://www.reimage.com. Reimage claims to have the ability to check the operating system files, compare those files with an enormous database of Windows XP system files, and then correct what’s missing or corrupted.

Fair enough. That is sort of like using a “sfc /scannow” at the command prompt. But, it also has the ability to check for registry errors and damaged drivers, and fix those too. Hmmm… NOW we’re talking.

How has Reimage been working out for us so far?

NOT AS GOOD AS A HUMAN… BUT I’M STILL IMPRESSED

For the most part, we have found that the majority of problems that Reimage finds and repairs, we can do a little bit better ourselves. Nothing beats the excellent intuition of an experienced technician. After working on computers almost 20 years, those “gut feelings” have gotten pretty accurate when it comes to troubleshooting computer problems.

Example: I had a client’s computer here at our Loveland shop that was causing all sorts of havoc. It would turn on, boot to XP, start loading the system-tray icons and then crash. It would do the same thing in safe mode. I checked memory, hard drive, etc. Not even a full repair installation wouldn’t fix it. Long story short, the answer was a bad power supply. It seems that when the graphics card kicked into hi-res mode, it was pulling a little too much power for that power supply.

I’m not trying to brag. I’m merely noting that this problem looked like an XP problem, or perhaps a driver issue. Reimage would obviously not have been able to fix this particular issue. Tricky troubleshooting jobs like that one will always require that “fuzzy logic” which humans are better-known for.

With that said, Reimage has shown some amazing promise. We used it on a virus-infected machine what was so badly infected that it would not boot. It was throwing up a nasty BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) on every restart – even safe mode. By creating the XP Boot CD, I was able to boot to a workable interface on the infected machine. From there, I was able to connect to the Internet and run the Reimage utility. The program ran, scanned the system, even ran some basic benchmarking, and then rebooted to a working system. Eureka!

IT SPEEDS UP SLOW COMPUTERS, TOO!

Although I haven’t used Reimage to speed up a slow computer (I can do pretty well on that one), Reimage can supposedly do that too… and without having to make an XP Boot CD.

So, if you are curious as to how Reimage works, go to http://www.reimage.com and check it out.

Doing a free scan will tell you a lot about your system:  How much RAM you have, how much you NEED… your hard drive space, the health of your system overall.  It’s actually very informative.

If you read the Reimage website, you’ll start to think that this software can work miracles, but it won’t. Believe me.

But, with that being said, it’s worth a try… and it has a money-back guarantee (like us!), so there is no risk in trying it. It may just save you from having to receive a visit from one of our techs.