Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

Windows Vista is scheduled to be released in just a few days. Many of my customers have been asking if they should upgrade when it is released and if so, what they should expect.

I have installed Vista a few times in the past couple months, and I have been doing some significant reading on Vista’s ups and downs. As a rule, I recommend that my customers wait until March to look at installing Vista on an existing PC. This allows Microsoft, as well as the manufacturers of various hardware components, to discover unexpected issues and release patches to resolve them before you are in the thick of the problem.

If you feel you MUST install Vista as soon as it is available, read these tips and hints to ensure you have as smooth of an experience as possible.
Read More

Two of my customers in the past few days have heard a rumor that AOL is discontinuing its dial up and high-speed Internet services. As many of you know, I strongly dislike AOL, but for the sake of truth, I decided to call them and find out the real story behind the rumors.

I called AOL and spoke with Moiz Khan in Bangalore, India. He told me that while there WILL be changes to AOL’s services, these changes will not include an elimination of their dial-up services.
Read More

I have been running our new version of the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition for the past few days on my main PC and aside from taking care of a few false detections, it has been performing pretty nicely – especially for a beta version.

Version 2 of the Home Edition has been in development for almost 2 years. It has been quite a challenge to create an application that has the same ease of use that our 2005 Home Edition did, while at the same time introducing a number of new features including:

• Real-Time Spyware Protection
• The Ability to Exclude Files From Being Detected Locally
• The Introduction of SHA5 Hashes for Spyware Files
• Automatic Program and Definition Updating
• More Advance Hard Drive Cleanup Algorithm
• A Faster Scanning Engine
• A Month-to-Month Subscription Plan
• A Streamlined No-Hassle Renewal Process
• Support for the Visually Impaired

Read More

A new virus started showing up in people’s inboxes three days ago that attempts to trick people into opening an attachment that appears to be a video clip related to a news story.

The virus is called Trojan.Peacomm and it arrives in your inbox with a subject line that resembles a news story. The subject lines are changing constantly, but some of the ones I have seen in the past few days include:

• The Supreme Court has been attacked by terrorists. Sen. Mark Dayton dead!
• A killer at 11, he’s free at 21 and kill again!
• U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has kicked German Chancellor Angela Merkel
• British Muslims Genocide
• Naked teens attack home director
• 230 dead as storm batters Europe
• Re: Your text

While the subject lines of the email message change constantly, the names used for the attachments seem to be fairly consistent. The names used include:

• FullVideo.exe
• Full Story.exe
• Video.exe
• Read More.exe
• FullClip.exe

As of the 19th, Symantec’s Norton Antivirus has been detecting this virus, but if you accidentally double clicked on one of these attachments to view what you thought was a video, you may be unintentionally spreading this virus to the people on your email contact list.
Read More

A new Compute This radio program has been posted on the Schrock Innovations website at www.schrockinnovations.com/radio.php. This week’s show was very busy, with wall-to-wall calls throughout the program.

During the show, callers had questions about dial-up Internet, Music Match problems, and problems caused in Internet Explorer 7 by the Yahoo Toolbar.

The Lovely Kimberly had a great PC Pizazz website that will help you choose the right cruise for you based on other travelers’ reviews.
Read More

My first article is scheduled to be published in March of 2007 in Smart Computing Magazine. In my article, I researched the different types of open-source software that is available and compared it to the commercial software that it most closely competed with.

You can read the first few paragraphs of the article on Smart Computing’s website at www.smartcomputing.com. You can read the whole article online if you are a subscriber to Smart Computing, PC Today, or Computer Power User magazine.

I will also be authoring a second article for Smart Computing this month.

Read More

Last Tuesday Microsoft released some new security patches (as they do on the second Tuesday of each month) to deal with security vulnerabilities that had surfaced. Microsoft warned that one of the vulnerabilities (addressed by Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-004) was already being exploited, and that patching is critical.

Today it was announced that attack code using the security vulnerability addressed by Bulletin MS07-004 had been published on the Internet and that attacks using that code should increase significantly in the coming days.

So what does all of this mean in English?

Read More

About three years ago, Schrock Innovations designed a website for the Deer Park Neighborhood Association at www.deerparkna.org. Since then, there have been numerous changes among the elected officers and board members and updating the website easily has become a concern.

To answer these concerns, Schrock Innovations will be redeveloping the website again and this time will implement basic text editors on a password protected administration page that will allow interested parties at the DPNA to edit the website as easily as they would edit a Microsoft Word document.

Read More

Josh, our new HTML developer has been busy this week adding four new spyware removal tutorials to the DIY (Do It Yourself) section of the Schrock Innovations website.

The DIY section contains all sorts of useful help articles and tutorials covering subjects ranging from how to maintain your computer to removing nasty spyware infections.

Read More

The Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry requested that a new sub-domain be added to their website to accommodate their Nebraska Leadership Program.

The new sub-domain can be found at http://www.nebraskaleadership.nechamber.com. This site was previously hosted on the Nebraska Online web servers, but was successfully migrated to our servers last Friday.

Read More