Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC » Daniel

Windows 7 – Switch between monitors with ease

Daniel — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:37:48 +0000

Have you ever had a laptop and one of those head-scratching moments while you tried to figure out which combination of buttons to press so you could use a projector or monitor that you plugged in? On one laptop it might be fn+F8, while on another fn+F5 while on another it might be a button that you press that is somewhere on the laptop.

With Windows 7 Microsoft made it easy. Press the Windows key and p. That’s it. Windows Key + P will bring up a window that will allow you to switch between your laptop display and a projector or monitor that you hooked up. If you are running a desktop system with multiple monitors you can also use Windows Key + P to configure your displays.

We welcome any feedback, and as always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give us a shout!

Web www.scurlocksystems.com

Daniel Scurlock

Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC

972.633.1111

Firefox and Windows 7 – How to Enable Taskbar Preview

Daniel — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:18:47 +0000

If you are using Windows 7 and Firefox did you know you can enable the nifty little feature to display your open tabs in the Taskbar? Previously this was a feature only available in Internet Explorer.

What this will allow you to do is hover your mouse over the Firefox icon at the bottom of your screen and see images of all of your open websites in Firefox. You can simply click on the site you wish to jump to.

To enable this feature in Firefox, simply type “about:config” (without the quotes) where you would normally type in a website URL.

You will get a warning, press the ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’ button

In the Filter box, type browser.taskbar.previews.enable – this will display the entry, and by default it is set to false.

Now double-click under Preference Name on browser.taskbar.previews.enable. This will change the value from false to true.

That’s it! Now close Firefox and open it back up. If you have multiple tabs open you can hover your mouse over the Firefox icon at the bottom of your screen and you will see images of all of your open tabs.

Keep in mind that this feature is available only in Windows 7. Thinking about upgrading to Windows 7? Give us a shout and we will be happy to discuss the best upgrade path for you, be it replacing your system or reworking your existing system.

We welcome any feedback, and as always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give us a shout!

Web www.scurlocksystems.com

Daniel Scurlock

Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111

Using Winzip to encrypt a file

Daniel — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 17:36:22 +0000

Winzip is a handy little utility that not only compresses files but can also encrypt (password protect) your zip files to keep the data safe when emailing to others or placing on media such as flash drives or CD’s that could potentially wind up in the hands of someone other than the intended recipient.

There are many options in the latest version of Winzip – this post will go over the basics of creating a zip archive, adding a file and encrypting the file.

You can find the latest version of winzip at http://www.winzip.com.

After you download and install the product, open it up. You will see a screen similar to the one below. Click on the Settings option on the menu bar at the top

Now click on the Options icon at the top

At the bottom of the screen choose ‘Legacy menus/toolbar’ and press okay. There are several different ways to create zip archives with the program – for this demonstration we’ll be focusing on the Legacy interface, but don’t shy away from trying the wizard or ribbon interface as well!

Click on the ‘New’ icon at the top left

You will be prompted for a file name. This is the name of the actual zip file itself. You can name it anything you like. I named mine ‘test zip’

Browse out to the file you wish to include. You can add multiple files or entire folders. For this example we are adding a single file. Notice the ‘Encrypt Added Files’ option near the bottom. Place a check mark in the box to encrypt (password protect) your file. Now press the Add button

Type in the password for the file and press OK.

Notice the lock icon next to the file indicating that it is encrypted. That’s it – you have now created a zip file and password protected it. Don’t forget the password! When anyone attempts to open it up they will be prompted to enter the password.

There are a multitude of options in Winzip – this is just one of the many ways in which the program can be utilized.

We welcome any feedback, and as always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give us a shout!

Web www.scurlocksystems.com

Daniel Scurlock

Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111

Firefox Browser – Add AdBlock Plus

Daniel — Thu, 27 May 2010 23:56:43 +0000

Mozilla Firefox is an absolutely fantastic browser, and one of the many features that makes it that way is the ability to use add-ons. Add-ons allow you to customize your browser in myriad ways.

One of the ‘I can’t live without this!’ add-on is Ad-Block Plus. Ad-Block Plus strips out all of those annoying adds that seem to take over web pages.

The add-on is easy to install, and will serve double duty in that your surfing will be faster without having to load the extra baggage that the adds bring, and will protect you against those annoying fake virus warnings “Click here now! You are infected by eighty-bazillion viruses!”

1 – To install, open up your Firefox browser and click Tools, Add-ons

2 -Click the ‘Get Add-ons’ icon, then type ‘adblock plus’ in the search field and press

3 -There will be several add-ons listed. What you want is Adblock Plus. Click the Add to Firefox button

4 – Click Install Now

5 -Next press the Restart Firefox button

6 -Adblock Plus works off of a (free!) subscription. Choose the EasyList (English) if it isn’t already listed and press Add Subscription button.

That’s it – you have installed Adblock Plus. Let’s take a look and compare the same website viewed on two browsers. One *with* Adblock Plus and one *without*.

1st the browser without Adblock Plus…

Take a look at the right side of the screen. Quite a few adds over there. Now, take a look at the same website loaded on a browser *with* Adblock Plus installed…

Just a wee bit more space there, eh?

Thanks for stopping by!

Please visit our website at www.scurlocksystems.com and our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/scurlocksystems for more information, and check out our new youtube channel at www.youtube.com/scurlocksystems!

Daniel Scurlock

Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111

Windows 7 Trick – Alt + Tab vs. Windows Key + Tab

Daniel — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:48:15 +0000

In various versions of Windows you can press the Alt + Tab keys to cycle through your open programs. By keeping the Alt key pressed town you can jump from program to program by pressing the Tab key until the program you want is displayed.

Starting with Vista, Microsoft added a very slick new way to display your open programs called Aero Flip 3D. It also displays your open programs, but displays them in a 3D (well, as close as you can get to 3D without wearing those silly glasses) view. You can see your open programs and use your mouse wheel or Tab key to cycle through the windows.

To use the Aero Flip 3D view press the Windows Key (near the bottom left of your keyboard) and Tab key.

It’s that easy! Next time you are flipping between open programs try using the Windows Key + Tab and enjoy the view.

The Aero Flip 3D does require a bit more hardware oomph from your system in order to display the 3D view. Here are the minimum requirements to use Aero:

Minimum Hardware Requirements for running Windows 7 Aero:

1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 GB of RAM

128 MB graphics card

Thanks for checking out the post.

Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111

Windows 7 Trick – ‘Send To’ Options

Daniel — Tue, 25 May 2010 00:22:13 +0000

As you know, when browsing the contents of your computer you can right-click on a folder or file and one of the options you have is ‘Send to’. Send to is handy, but somewhat limited in where you can actually send the file or folder to.

Now take a look at the additional places you can send the file or folder by simply holding down the key while right-clicking and pressing the Send to option:

As you can see there are quite a few more places you can send your data to, including the Documents, My Music, My Pictures and My Videos folders. Quite handy!

Thanks for checking out the post.

Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111

MozyPro 2.0 Online Backup – Oooh la la

Daniel — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:27:44 +0000

We use MozyPro for our backups at the office, and have quite a few clients who also utilize it to backup their data.

Overall it’s a great system – backs up around your schedule, everything is automated, easy to use, and so on.

I had a hard drive crash a year or so back and if it hadn’t been for Mozy I would have had to recreate 6 years worth of data (dream the impossible dream, why don’t ya).

We just got word that Mozy has upgraded to version 2.0 and started getting calls and emails from clients wondering if they should upgrade to the new version.

After upgrading our own systems and playing with it, the answer is oh yeah! yes yes yes yes yes.

The biggest new feature that 2.0 has is the ability to also backup your data to an external drive (while still keeping your offsite files). What does this mean to you? What this means is that if you need to restore a large amount of data, instead of initiating the restore online, waiting for the restoration process to complete then getting an email with a link to a big honkin’ zip file you can now restore your data *locally*. This means saving time, big time.

If you currently have Mozy installed please see below for screenshots of the upgrade process. It’s easy peasy, and definitely worth taking a few minutes to do.

The 1st thing to do to upgrade your MozyPro account is to login. Head over to www.mozypro.com and press the Log In link at the top.

Key in your email address and password for your MozyPro account and log in.

On the left side of the screen near the bottom click on ‘Download MozyPro Client’

Click on the link to MozyPro Windows 2.0…. Save the file to your hard drive and run it once the download is complete.

When the installation screen comes up click Next

Then Install

That’s it! You have upgraded your MozyPro client to 2.0. It imports your previous settings so there is no need to redefine your backup sets or schedule. There is now a new option for backing up to a local drive. You can find it under Options, then the Local Backup tab.

I’ll be playing more in the coming days on timing the speed to perform a restore of 2GB or so in size via the local backup vs. the online.

Please visit us at www.scurlocksystems.com for more information, and check out our new youtube channel at www.youtube.com/scurlocksystems!

Thanks for checking out the post.

Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111

The Joys (and pains) of Multiuser Mode in Quickbooks

Daniel — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:00:13 +0000

Sherry and I both have Quickbooks 2009 on our systems and we share one data file.

It’s a great system – Sherry takes care of the day to day invoicing, I can run reports, enter stock, and all those other Quickbooksey things that one does in the daily running of a business.

Sherry had been using an old Dell desktop since she started here over a year ago (I know, the cobbler’s kids have the worst shoes) and we finally built her a very nice replacement system. All the bells and whistles, including an upgrade to Windows 7 Professional – woohoo!

So we get the new system installed, all of her data transferred over, her Outlook up and running, MS Office up and running, Mozy backup setup, etc. and we get Quickbooks installed.

When running in multiuser mode Quickbooks requires one to run a little program called Quickbooks Database Server Manager – you simply run the program and it scans your drive for Quickbooks files that you wish to share. Easy peasy. We ran the program, it found the data file and we shared it.

Sherry opened up our company file in Quickbooks with no problem and set Quickbooks for multi-user mode.

I head back to my office to fire up Quickbooks – I have stock to receive, invoices to print and mail, it’s time to get to work!

Alas, Quickbooks has other plans. I can see the Quickbooks file on Sherry’s system but Quickbooks is not having any of it. Nuh-uh. No way. Not gonna happen. Quickbooks gleefully points out that it can’t open the file on Sherry’s system. I hear sounds Nelson on The Simpsons “Ha-ha“.

Quickbooks can’t open the file – it tells me that the file is not properly setup for sharing on Sherry’s system; it can’t connect.

Hrrrmmm.

Much troubleshooting ensued. Data file moved from Sherry’s machine to mine, new data shares setup on both systems, and so on.

What we ended up discovering was a nifty little utility from Intuit’s site for troubleshooting network connection issues from within Quickbooks. We downloaded and ran the tool and it generated two errors for us to research.

After a bit of research we the found the cause of the issue to be……

Undocumented ports that needed to be opened at the firewall! No really. That was the issue.

In all of the troubleshooting and knowledge base searching at Intuit’s site nowhere did we find any mention that certain ports needed to be opened on the firewall software in order for Quickbooks to function in a multi-user environment.

It seems that the Windows 7 firewall blocks these ports by default. The fix took all of 30 seconds to implement. Opened up the firewall on Sherry’s system and allowed access to ports 8019 and 55333.

We are quickbooking away now – woohoo!

-Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC

Windows 7 – It’s All That (and more)

Daniel — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:00:16 +0000

So we’ve been playing with the Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) for a few months now and have been quite impressed with what we’ve seen, but a couple of weeks ago we received the *full, complete version* of Windows 7 from Microsoft as an Action Pack subscriber.

All I can say so far is ‘Wow’, and I mean that as a good wow, a great wow, a jumping up and down with glee wow.

Windows 7 is what Vista should have been, and then some. The interface is cleaner, the bells and whistles numerous, and the stability rock solid.

Jimmy has been running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 on his main desktop for a week now and swears he will never go back to XP or Vista – that’s saying a whole lot right there.

What has me so jazzed at the moment is that earlier this morning I decided to install Windows 7 on my little Acer One Netbook which is not a powerhouse of a system by any stretch. It has only 1GB of RAM and an Atom 1.6GHz processor. I wasn’t sure if Windows 7 would even do an initial load or not due to the system hardware specs.

The netbook doesn’t have a CD or DVD drive built in, so I hooked up an external DVD drive and booted to the Windows 7 installation DVD.

Flash forward 30 minutes and we’re done. Windows 7 is installed, NO drivers were needed. System has full video, audio, wired and wireless networking. I’ve also installed MS Office 2007 Enterprise and Malwarebytes Antimalware.

The system is faster now than it ever was running XP, which just blows me away. MS Word loads in under 4 seconds, Excel in about 3 seconds.

Call me a convert.

-Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
scurlocksystems.com

The Saga of Bob, Skippy, and the Vaio

Daniel — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:00:47 +0000

We all like to save a buck when we can, but I wanted to tell you a little story about what happened to one of our clients recently who purchased a Sony Vaio system from an Amazon seller…

And the saga begins…

For the sake of not typing ‘our client’ over and over we’ll call him, oh, Bob, and let’s call the Amazon seller Skippy.

So Bob find a great deal on a Sony Vaio desktop system on Amazon and orders it and receives it with no issues. He installs MS Office and his printer and off he goes, happy as can be.

All of this goes down with no issues – the system is up and running; everyone is happy.

Flash forward one week…

The system starts hanging up, blue-screening, locking up, powering itself down, spewing green vomit, well, you get the idea. Something is *definitely* not right here.

Bob contacts Sony, who determine that there has been a major hardware failure in the system.

Bob then contacts the Skippy the Wonder Amazon seller, and makes arrangements to send the system back for replacement. Bob packs up and ships the system back, eagerly awaiting the replacement system.

A week or so goes by and Bob receives his replacement system. He plugs it in and wham, same problem as before. blue-screens, lockup, green vomit, it’s ugly.

At this point Bob is not a happy camper. Skippy the Wonder Amazon Seller has simply shipped him back the same broken system without making any repairs or replacements.

Bob checks into Skippy’s feedback on Amazon and begins to find a series of unhappy recipients of Skippy’s computers with similar stories.

Bob contacts Sony again, in the hopes that perhaps he can deal directly with them and have the system repaired under Sony’s warranty.

Now here is the meat of the story, and what prompted me to share this with you all…

Sony has Bob run some hardware diagnostics, and Bob is reading off the make/model of the individual internal components of the system. Sony informs Bob that someone (Skippy!) had replaced the internal components of the computer with sub-standard, weak and broken parts.

So what Bob basically had was a nice shiny Sony Vaio case on the outside, but inside it was garbage.

Bob had been scammed.

Have I mentioned that Bob is a lawyer?

Bob contacts Skippy the Wonder Amazon Seller and explains to him that he will be refunding 100% of Bob’s money, shipping, etc. and what will happen to him if he doesn’t. Bob also contacts Amazon and alerts them to the fraud that took place.

Bob now has his money back. Skippy’s account has been banned at Amazon, and Bob has since ordered a NEW computer directly from Sony.

If you must order a computer from an individual online, but SURE that you check out the feedback for that user. If they have negative feedback read them closely and if there is *any* doubt don’t send them your money.

Once you receive your computer have it checked out by a pro and verify that what you paid for is what you received. Bob was extremely fortunate that he got his money back. Not all of us would be that lucky if that were to happen to us.

Cheers,
Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111
scurlocksystems.com