The Older Geek

As if we didn’t have enough things to be concerned about. Identity theft and data theft is a growing problem. Hackers and other criminals are increasingly interested in our data instead of our money. This has insidious repercussions, as once stolen and abused, it is very difficult to get your good name and good credit [...]

In the previous post, I showed you How to Remove Location in Your Facebook Status. A reader asked me how to do the opposite– how to add a location to your Facebook status. This feat is much easier! Here is how: 1. Log in to your Facebook account. 2. Go to the top of the [...]

Your heart may skip a beat when you turn on your Windows computer and see an error dialog window informing you that your User Profile is corrupted, and, therefore, unavailable. Don’t worry– your files and other data is still intact on your hard drive. A corrupt file is preventing you from accessing them, but you [...]

My computer recently got a virus. Although I’ve been through the practice sessions and have thoroughly planned my emergency response should the event ever occur, I was shocked to find that my emotions were largely ruling my decisions at first. When you get a virus, the effect is usually swift and strong. For me, I [...]

From doing a little searching online, this seems to be a common problem but I saw few solutions. You plug in your old DVD player or Wii or Playstation console only to see that your HDTV (High Definition Television) is displaying the images in black and white. The problem is not with the HDTV settings, [...]

The big news in technology this week is the Carrier IQ fiasco. In case you haven’t heard, Trevor Eckhart posted a YouTube video exposing the secret recording capabilities of Carrier IQ on an Android phone. Here’s the video: Called a rootkit, I think Carrier IQ is heinous. Millions of other cell phone users also seem [...]

You may log on to your computer to see that your Windows sidebar calendar displays an orange block. What is up with that?! I had this problem on both my computers, a Windows 7 and a Vista machine. It’s a weird issue, but I isolated my problem to a bug with the latest Internet Explorer [...]

In a previous post, I reported the prevalence of “social engineering,” which is a new technique that’s been developed by hackers. Now that computers and browsers are becoming more secure with improved bug fixes and firewalls, hackers are looking to deceive computer users– YOU and ME. According to one report, 1 in 14 downloads is [...]

Wow, a news story I read at Computer World sure shocked me! According to a Microsoft report, 1 in 14 downloads is malicious! The next time a website says to download new software to view a movie or fix a problem, think twice. There’s a pretty good chance that the program is malicious. In fact, [...]

Ugh, Java. I recently had problems with javascript on one of my websites. Apparently, two different jquery files were interfering with each other and the plugins were canceling each other out. I still haven’t resolved the issue, even after getting some help from a web developer and searching for answers on the Internet. I had [...]

Here’s the fix for the “Access to the Administration Control Panel is not allowed” error that shows up for new phpBB forum accounts. A little background: You have just built a phpBB forum/message board (see my post How to Make Your Own Forum Website for more on this) and you are trying to sign in [...]

My blogging friend, Karen, recently asked me about a problem she’s had. Her computer was recently reformatted by a computer repair shop. They managed to reinstall her photos and documents and a few basic programs, but her beloved Kodak EasyShare software program was missing. Karen wants to know how to get it back. A reformat [...]