2019 in review

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Calendar
I can’t believe that another year is almost over. That means it’s time for another year in review. 😉

As I look back on 2019, I can’t help but to be extremely grateful for everything that it’s brought – the ups and downs, the new skills learned, and the exciting plans for the future.

In this last year alone, we’ve repaired hundreds of computers – both desktops and laptops, running Windows and Mac – for some amazing people.

We’ve removed viruses, stopped malware, and blocked pop-ups from computers of all makes and models, and all shapes and sizes.

We’ve successfully recovered data from dead computers, old computers, flash drives, floppy disks, and SD cards for many panicked and stressed-out customers.

Our Maintenance Plan has protected our client’s computers – saving them hundreds of dollars, and countless hours of downtime and frustration.

We’ve helped clients who were scammed by unscrupulous emails, pop-up ads, and telephones calls – securing their computers, and walking them through the steps of recovering what was stolen from them.

We’ve advised many clients on what equipment was needed to fill their particular IT needs, recommended software, and helped with setting everything up.

We were even awarded for being the top rated Computer Repair/IT Services company in Grand Junction for the second year in a row, and the scored second highest in the whole state of Colorado.

We’ve met thousands of new faces, earned almost a thousand new clients, and made hundreds of new friends this year

2019 has given us a lot to be grateful for, and I know that 2020 will prove to be even more awesome!

What is the Best Way to Backup?

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“That will never happen to me.” We get through our lives telling ourselves the worst won’t happen to us. It’s the same with business: “We won’t need this data backup.” Yet, whatever your industry, secure, reliable backup ensures business as usual. So, what’s the best way to backup? Here’s help.

Backup
Why You Need to Backup

  1. Business disruptions of any kind can be costly. The disaster might take one of several shapes:
  2. Natural (e.g. wildfires, floods, earthquakes, or hurricanes)
  3. On-site (e.g. hardware/software failure, power outage, inability to access building)
  4. Employee driven (e.g. damaging mistakes or intentional sabotage by a disgruntled employee)
  5. Cyber-attack (e.g. data breach, ransomware, or distributed denial of service attack).

Regardless, the best backup solution can help reduce downtime and damage.

Plan B: Approaches to Backup

There are several off-the-shelf backup options your business can use. Let’s consider the pros and cons of the most popular ones.

USB Thumb Drives — Also known as “flash drives,” “pen drives,” or “memory sticks,” these thumb-sized devices are compact and portable. But, they have size limitations compared to hard drives. Also, the mobility makes them easy to lose (which can actually set the disaster scenario in motion).

Additionally, a USB thumb drive is robust when not plugged in, but more vulnerable when attached. If someone inadvertently snaps the drive or employs too much force, they can put the data on that backup at risk.

The cheap ones also tend to be slow, which can make backing up sluggish.

USB Hard Drives — Portable hard drives increase the data storage available, often at a decent price. They are designed to be compact and mobile. You can prioritize durability, processing speed, storage volumes and more.

Hard drives are less likely to get damaged than a thumb drive. If knocked or jostled, the cables are flexible. Still, a hard drive can be prone to physical failure. Selecting an external solid slate drive (SSD) can help since it has no moving parts. Information is stored instead in microchips.

Cloud Storage — Backing up to the cloud stores data on an external, secure server. If thieves take your computers and USB backup, you can still access your data on the cloud. Cloud storage providers build in redundancy to ensure your backup remains safe.

Most cloud storage services back up to secure centers with thousands of servers storing data. Oh, and they’ll have their own server backups too, just in case they’re the ones hit by a disaster. The providers also encrypt data during transit to further ensure compliance and security.

Migrating to a third-party cloud storage service also cuts the clutter at your premises. You can count on expert help to ensure security and compliance. Plus, you can cut operational costs by offloading in-house storage or external hard drive expenses.

OK, What’s the Best Answer? 

Don’t think disaster won’t strike your business. Research has found data loss and downtime are most often caused by:

  • Hardware failures (45% of total unplanned downtime)
  • Loss of power (35%)
  • Software failure (34%)
  • Data corruption (24%)
  • External security breaches (23%)
  • Accidental user error (20%).

We recommend the 3-2-1 backup strategy. This means having 3 copies of your data. Two (2) of these would be located on different devices (e.g. on your computer and on a backup drive). The other remaining backup copy (1) would be secured offsite, in the cloud.

Want to secure your data for the worst? Give No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction a call to set this up. (970) 433-7454 

2018 in Review

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Happy New Year
As 2018 draws to a close, we look back on the past year and can’t help but to be extremely grateful.

This last year we’ve repaired hundreds of computers – desktops and laptops – Windows and Mac – for our clients.

We’ve removed viruses, stopped malware, and blocked pop-ups from computers of all makes and models, all shapes and sizes.

We’ve successfully recovered data from dead computers, old computers, flash drives, and SD cards for many panicked and stresses-out customers.

Our Maintenance Plans have protected our client’s computers, saving them hundreds of dollars, and countless hours of downtime and frustration.

We’ve helped clients who were scammed by unscrupulous emails, pop-up ads, and telephones calls – securing their computers, and walking them through the steps of recovering what was stolen from them.

We’ve advised many clients on what equipment was needed to fill their particular IT needs, recommended software, and helped with setting everything up.

We were even awarded for being the top rated Computer Repair/IT Services company in Grand Junction, and the third highest in the state of Colorado.

We’ve earned almost a thousand new clients, and made hundreds of new friends this year.

As you can see, 2018 has given us a lot to be grateful for, and know that 2019 will be even more awesome!

5 Most Common Computer Problems

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Here at No Ware Computer Repair, we have to solve a lot of computer problems. While some complications are more puzzling than others, here’s a short list of the most common issues that are brought into our shop.

Computer spill

One of the most common problems we come across is the “hardware mishap.” Typically this includes spills or drops, laptop screens being broken, motherboards fried, and others of the like. Hardware mishaps are pretty common and can be expensive at times.

dirty computer

Another problem we see a lot of is the “slow computer.” Older devices have a tendency to fall victim to this particular annoyance because as they age they can build up dust and grime on the hardware, and the software itself can become clogged with useless files that do nothing but take up vital storage and leave a device in a miserably sluggish state. In a fast paced world, the last thing people want is a computer that runs at a snail’s pace.

viruses found

Viruses are the bane of a computer user’s existence. Not only do they knock a computer from NASCAR level speeds down to leisurely strolls in the park, they can also do some serious damage. From the mostly harmless popups that occasionally assault the user, to the dangerously malicious ransomware that could cost you thousands, viruses are unfortunately still a frequent occurrence.

data loss

Data loss is an extremely overlooked issue that people don’t usually think about until it happens to them personally. It could be due to a myriad of causes; theft, hardware mishap, software failure, and so much more. It’s the reason we highly recommend using a cloud to backup all of that highly important data you might have on your devices. It saves you a lot of time and money in the long run. Fortunately, even if you forget to back-up your data, there are experts who specialize in data recovery.

Blue Screen of Death

This final failure has been making a lot of us in the tech industry scratch our heads. It seems to be a little counter-intuitive, but many computer users have recently been having windows update problems. Whether it be the percentage simply stopping, graphics drivers failing, or operating system glitches, if you’re having a problem with any of the above, just know you are most certainly not alone.

Regardless of what problem your computer is having, No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction can have your device up and running in no time!

5 Reasons Why You Should Backup Your Data

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Backup
As often as we hear computer companies boast about the quality and efficiency of their products, it’s almost difficult to imagine anything going wrong. Sure, we see the warning signs and we know we should rationally be taking extra precautionary measures to ensure that nothing does go wrong – but more often than not, we simply push that thought to the side in favor of something more “important”.

The fact of the matter is that any day now you could lose all of the information stored on any of your computers or devices. Be it a liquid mishap, an internal shortage, or something completely unaccounted for, it can and does happen. Unfortunately that’s not always convincing enough in the argument of why you should backup your data though, so why else should you take the extra steps?

1. Accidents Happen

Computer Accident

Believe it or not, as much as we try to prevent them, accidents do happen, and they happen more often than we think they do. Maybe you forgot to save that paper before exiting, or maybe a program simply stopped working in general. Either way, backed up data is guaranteed to keep that data in safe from the occasional accident.

2. Theft

Computer Theft

Say you left your laptop in the library, or perhaps you fell asleep on the bus and your backpack was ransacked, while it’s not always easy to track that lost device, you can at the very least access your backed-up data if you’ve happened to save it on some sort of cloud storage. From there it only takes a few clicks to restore all of that data onto a new device, if you choose to invest in another one.

3. Hardware Failure

Computer Failure

Some malfunctions are completely out of your hands, they happen deep within the hardware itself and within an instant, all precautions you’ve taken aside, everything you had on your computer is lost completely. Unless of course, you had it backed up to begin with. Then it’s just a matter of getting a repair, or a new device.

4. Viruses, Malware, and Hackers

Data Ransom Note

Some problems you might face aren’t even technical errors, but malicious attack from hackers that aim to corrupt your data, steal it, or hold it for ransom. It’s easy to see why having safeguarded data is a good idea in that case.

5. Save Money on Potentially Expensive Data Recovery

Data Recovery

Regardless of what happens, if your data really means that much to you and you’ve somehow lost access to it, you can still take it into a computer repair shop and get the data recovered right off of the hard drive, but be warned that it can be a little expensive. With prices reaching upwards of hundreds of dollars, it’s not difficult to see the appeal in backing up your data.

When it comes to data backups, it’s always better to have it and not need it than it is to need it and not have it.

This is just a short list of why you should be backing your data up regularly. If you need advice on how to backup, or even need some lost data recovered, your friends at No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction are always happy to help.

Client Success Story: Farmer’s Friend

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High tech farming
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Grand Junction isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis, and that the surrounding area is still home to many small farms and ranches.

Will, the owner of one of these small farms in rural Mesa County uses his computer to run his farm. He uses spreadsheets to keep track of his fields – how much of each nutrient and fertilizer that he puts in each plot. He also uses a digital almanac and weather apps to preconfigure his numerous sprinklers and automatic watering systems.

So when Will’s computer froze up after a Windows update a couple months ago, he was in a bit of a panic. Whenever he would turn the computer on, he was met with a black screen and nothing more. It was the middle of planting season, and the worst possible time for Will’s computer to go on the fritz.

Every now and again one of Microsoft’s updates to Windows can occasionally cause a computer to become unbootable. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen.

We were originally hoping that it would be a simple matter of just resetting the computer to a previous restore point, getting Will and his farm back up and running nice and quickly. Unfortunately, System Restore was turned off – as it is by default in Windows 10 – leaving us up the proverbial creek.

We would have to take a different approach.

We booted the computer up using a USB drive with Linux installed on it. From there we were able to transfer all of Will’s data – tons of spreadsheets and other documents – to an external Hard Drive.

Once we were sure that we got all of the data copied, we then reinstalled Windows 10 onto the computer. We made sure that all the drivers were installed, and the system was up-to-date. We then installed Microsoft Office, and Will’s almanac and weather apps.

Next we transferred all the data back onto Will’s computer, putting it in all the appropriate folders. We even changed the default wallpaper to the picture of Wills dog that he previously had as his background.

Finally, we ensured that System Restore was active, so that if something like this were to happen again, the downtime would be minimal.

With that all done, Will, and his farm, was back up and running. Just in time to finish planting.

Will was so happy that he promised to bring us a couple boxes of vegetables when it comes time to harvest.

We’re really looking forward to those veggies.

Computer Crafts Part 2

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It is that time of year again! When we go through old things and throw out the junk – Spring cleaning!

During this time, many of us find our collections of old monitors, hard drives, and broken keyboards. Instead of throwing them away, why not do a little re-purposing?

In fact, there are some beautiful works of art being made with old computer parts.

Disc Art

Here are a couple of projects you might want to undertake with your old electronics. They can make fun family projects.

Container Gardening

Computer Gardening

Old computer monitors can be emptied out the contents recycled. The cases can then be used as containers for plants. This is a great idea if you want a garden and don’t have a lot of space.

The 21st Century Chia Pet

Chia pet!

Chia seeds sprout easily, need very little soil, and can be watered with an easy spritzing from a spray bottle. So instead of spending money on a Chia Pet, why not turn your old broken keyboard into an oxygen giving friend?

Pen Holder

Pen Holder

This pen holder is probably the most popular way to use recycled computer parts, but it’s still pretty cool.

Hard Drive Safe

Drive Safe

Almost every household, or office has a few of these laying around. Broken, unused, and full of data waiting for recovery. Once you get the data recovered, you can have the movable parts removed, recycled, and then use it as a hidey-hole for your treasures.

Crafting with old computer parts is fun and an exciting way to make custom ideas for your home, or office. Take a chance on this “waste not want not” idea and see how far your creativity will take you!

Perhaps your small pet would like one of these?

Cat box

Then again, you might have a weekend to kill and are feeling ambitious.

Vader

No Ware Computer Repair is an environmentally friendly computer shop. We want to remind you to recycle your old computer parts responsibly.

Client Success Story: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

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About a month ago we had the pleasure of meeting Elaine. Elaine was passing through Grand Junction, on her way to one of the area’s many ski resorts.

Elaine liked to travel, in fact, since retiring she has spent a majority of her time traveling and taking pictures. Just like most everyone these days, Elaine takes her pictures using her smart phone. In fact, she takes so many pictures that she occasionally plugs her phone into her laptop to transfer all the pictures, so that she can make some room on her phone for more photos.

When Elaine turned on her laptop so that she could read the news while having her morning coffee in her hotel room, she was greeted with a black screen. She tried waiting, but nothing happened. Elaine then tried restarting the computer, but the screen remained black.

That’s when Elaine got on her phone and used Google to look for someone who could help.

Elaine called us, citing our reviews on Google, and told us about her situation. It sounded like Elaine was in a bit of a pickle, so we had her bring her laptop down to our office so that we could take a look.

While chatting with Elaine, we were told about how she uses her laptop as a way of storing all of the photos that she takes on her travels. Needless to say, she was extremely concerned about all of her pictures.

After assuring Elaine that we would do whatever we could to save all her pictures, we got to work.

It didn’t take long to determine that a botched Windows update was the reason that her computer wasn’t booting up. After doing a little more poking around, we decided that the best thing to do would be to pull all of the data, completely reinstall Windows 10, and migrate the data back on to the laptop.

We quickly learned that Elaine wasn’t kidding when she said that she has a lot of pictures on her computer. Almost 200 Gigabytes of photos alone had to be pulled off the laptop before we could proceed with reinstalling Windows. Once the pictures were backed up, everything else was a breeze.

When Elaine came to pick up her laptop, we had a brief sit-down, and discussed how she was backing up her photos, and brainstormed a better way for her to get the job done.

We ended up setting her up with Dropbox on her phone and computer, and taught her how to upload her files so that they would be saved in the cloud and synced to her laptop. She was absolutely ecstatic when she uploaded her first set of photos on her own.

After the work was done, we sat with Elaine for a while as she showed us some of the pictures from her many travels all around the world over a nice cup of green tea.

Is your computer giving you trouble? Call us now to see how No Ware Computer Repair can help you!

beach laptop

Client Success Story: Pulling a Client Out of the Fire

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Data Recovery

A couple weeks ago we received a call from Kyle, meekly asking us if we happened to do data recovery. Specifically, if we could we recover deleted files from an SD card.  When he was told by the “big box geeks” that they couldn’t help him, he had started down the list of the Grand Valley’s computer repair services. When he got to our friends over at Computer Ambulance Service, they gave him our number.

We told the Kyle that data recovery was one of our specialties, and that we would definitely be able to help. That’s when he dropped the bomb and asked, “Can you have this done by 6 o’clock today? “We looked at the clock, and it was just after 2 in the afternoon, so we told him to bring by the SD card, and we’d see what we could do.

He zipped into our office, and after chatting for a few moments, the urgency of his situation became clear.

Kyle works for a rather large local property management company, and a big part of his job is to document work that was done on properties, as well as the condition of properties before someone moves in, and after they move out.

Apparently, they had someone leave one of the properties that they manage in a rather bad state of repair. So bad that it involved a court case. A case that was going before a judge the very next morning.

Kyle had done his job and took pictures of absolutely everything that the tenants had done to this house, and as he was getting all his stuff together for the hearing the next day he decided to take a look at the SD card, just to make sure that he had all the pictures ready for the next day’s hearing.

His heart absolutely sank when he loaded the card and saw that nothing was there. The files seemed to have vanished. We told Kyle that we would take a look at the SD card, and run some tests to see if the data was recoverable, after which we would give him a call to let him know what could be done.

After Kyle left, we immediately loaded the SD card into our data recovery workbench and ran the usual tests. There was much joy and relief felt in the office when we saw that the card was still accessible, and the missing files were recoverable.

We gave Kyle a quick call to let him know the good news, and his first question was “Can this be done before you close?” The clock now said it was almost 3 in the afternoon, we were going to be cutting it close. We rolled up our sleeves and got to work getting everything set up and configured to retrieve those missing photos.

Shortly before 5 the moment of truth had arrived. Taking a deep breath, we opened the recovery folder and there they were, hundreds of pictures, all with timestamps and everything.

We got everything transferred to a new USB drive, and gave Kyle a call, telling him that everything was done. With a touch of skepticism in his voice he said that he’d be right down.

Once Kyle got back to our office, we sat down and looked through all the pictures that we were able to recover.

As he scrolled through all the photos, a smile began to creep onto his face. “You really pulled my butt out of the fire here” Kyle said as he shook our hands.

“Thanks” we told him “we’re just doing our job”

Are you feeling the heat? Do you need No Ware Computer Repair to pull you out of the fire? Give us a call, or drop by our conveniently located office in Grand Junction, we’re always happy to help!

Client Success Story: The Perfect Gift

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Tech gift
Not all Christmas gifts have to be traditional. Sometimes something “outside the box” can be the most amazing gift of all.

Our client Ben’s wife had been holding on to a couple of old computers that had ceased to function years ago, because she just couldn’t bring herself to get rid of them. Recently, she had been talking about how upsetting it was that so many old papers from college, art projects, and photographs were stashed away in those old machines, perhaps never to be seen again. The only reason she has been holding on to these old computers for all these years was that she was hoping to one day retrieve the data that was locked away in them.

While doing some cleaning Ben stumbled across these dusty old computers. This gave Ben a brilliant idea for his wife’s Christmas gift this year, have the data recovered from the old machines as something of a surprise.

Ben dragged these antiquated boxes into our office early in December, telling us of his brilliant gift idea, and asking us if we can help, and get everything done in time for Christmas. Never being ones for disappointing our clients, we told Ben that we could get our little elves to work right away.

After getting everything in order, a couple of things occurred to us: 1) These computers were definitely old. One was an old Power Mac G4 from 1999, and the other a MacBook from 2006 or 2007. And 2) Since Ben would need everything done before the holiday, preferably with enough time for Santa to get everything gift-wrapped and under the tree, our elves would have to work quickly.

Ben's Power Mac G4 from 1999
Fortunately, we have the tools and know-how to make quick work of a job like this. After pulling the hard drives from these ancient dust traps, we were able to recover all the data from both computers, and copy it all onto a brand new portable hard drive. By using a portable hard drive, Ben’s wife would be able to access the data from any computer that the drive is plugged in to.

We were able to get everything taken care of in just a couple of days, giving Ben plenty of time to find a deceptively large and misshapen box to package this tiny drive into, wrap it up in some pretty paper (complete with bows), and stash it under the Christmas tree.

Mrs. Ben was overjoyed to unwrap her special present on Christmas morning, earning our client some extra brownie points for being so very thoughtful.

Do you have an old computer just sitting around because you can’t bring yourself to part with it just in case something can be done to save the data? No Ware Computer Repair can do just that! Call us now, we can work our “holiday magic” on your old computers all year long!