PC Repair on Wheels Blog

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Print spooler keeps crashing

 

Problem:

No printers show up in the printer section of control panel. This is a result of the print spooler crashing. if you go in and manually restart the print spooler it runs until you try to do anything related to the printer then crashes again.

Solution:

Usually this is the result of corrupt print drivers (possible virus infection causing the corruption. Make sure to run a quick malware scan). You may need to uninstall print drivers completely – including the registry entries.

If it is a local printer (My Computer), go to the following registry keys and delete the respective entries:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPrintEnvironments Windows NT x86 DriversVersion-2

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPrintPrinters
If it is a network printer (network printer server or ), go to the following registry keys and delete the respective and entries:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERPrintersConnections

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPrintProviders LanMan Print ServicesServersPrinters

After the registry edit, you need to stop and restart the spooler service. At this point, you’ll be able to reinstall the printer driver correctly.

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Outlook won’t open, profile error

When Outlook won’t open, nine times out of ten, it’s a profile issue. You’re PST gets corrupt and Outlook just can’t open. Forunately, Outlook has a built in utility to fix just this…if you can find it.

The Utility is “Scanpst.exe” and it’s located in the C:programfilesOffice(version number) folder. Bring up the RUN command and access it there, then point it to your outlook PST file. These are usually located either in the hidden folder “C:Users (username)AppDataLocalMicrosoftOutlook” or in an Outlook folder in your Documents folder. The initial error check is quick. Ten minuets or so, but further repairs may take hours. Be prepared.

Once done, Outlook should open normally.

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Text scam

Here’s the newest one floating around. It’s a pretty easy one to spot, however it’s always possible to catch us off-guard ESPECIALLY since you’re getting a text instead of an email. Keep a watch out for this 5/3rd bank customers! And for the rest of you, It wouldn’t surprise me if we start seeing ones for other banks soon as well.

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Idle Buddy

Man do I hate this one.

See, here’s the thing; there are applications out there that allow you to share your computers processing power (when you’re not using you PC) with other machines to help solve important problems. The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, known as BOINC, is probably the best-known volunteer-computing platform, tackling issues like LHC@Home from CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), Rosetta@Home for the University of Washington’s protein-structure project, and Berkeley’s own long-running SETI@Home initiative for analyzing radio telescope data from space. 

Idle Buddy is none of this. IdleBuddy is deceptive crypto-mining software often distributed with various potentially unwanted adware-type programs. Research shows that adware commonly infiltrates systems without consent. Immediately after infiltration, adware-type applications deliver intrusive advertisements and collect information relating to users’ Internet browsing activity.

That means it’s not only watching what you do, it’s also using your computer to hack. And how much of your computer? Idle Buddy dosn’t care. It’ll max out your processor, and overheat your CPU, all while completing it’s nefarious work.

And don’t count on just being able to uninstall this sucker. Add and Remove Programs will give you an entry, but Idle Buddy will find a reason to make every uninstall attempt fail. At the very least you’re going to have to blast this thing with a Malwarebytes scan to get it out. You may want to just bring it in to us instead. Call today 440-777-7881 to schedule an appointment!

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