Free Technical Certifications

There are several free technical certifications available that can help build IT skills boost your resume and to start you on a path towards a career in IT. While some certifications are entirely free, others may require a small testing fee. Here are some of the best options:

Fix the "Virus Scan Failed" download error in Google Chrome, and the "Couldn't Download Virus Scan Failed" error in Microsoft Edge

1. Locate the following registry subkeys:
   \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Attachments
2. If you do not see the "Attachments" subkey, create it by right-clicking on "Policies", selecting "New", then clicking "Key", and then typing "Attachments" as the key name.
3. Right-click "Attachments", select "New", and then click "DWORD (32-bit) Value".
4. Type "ScanWithAntiVirus" as the value name, and then press Enter.
5. Right-click the new "ScanWithAntiVirus" DWORD value, and then click "Modify".
6. In the "Value data" box, type 1, and then click OK.
7. Exit the Registry Editor.
8. Restart your computer, and then log back into Windows to have the registry change take effect!

The download error(s) should be now resolved in both Google Chrome and Microsft Edge!

Jon Pienkowski
Pacific Northwest Computers
www.pnwcomputers.com
www.linktr.ee/pnwcomputers
360-624-7379

Guerilla SEO

Step 1:

Have a website made, or build a website for your company.
For its ease of use and simplicity, we use and recommend Weebly for easily building and maintaining a website inexpensively.

Step 2:

Get your business signed-up and set up with “the big guys”:

• Google Maps/Google Business
• Apple Maps
• Bing Places for Business

Step 3:

Create a business page, and/or account, with all of the major Social networks. Be sure to Include ALL of your important business information; including your logo, address, phone number, email, website, etc.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Snapchat
• Pintrest
• LinkedIn
• WhatsApp
• YouTube

Step 4:

Once you have all of your social media accounts set up, go through the “Free Web Business Listings” list below and set up a business listing through EACH service. Include ALL of your important business information; including address, phone number, email, website, social media accounts, etc.

Step 5:

Create a free Linktr.ee webpage for ALL of the different web links you now have! You can list your main web page, blogs, social media accounts, payment services, etc.

*Extra:

If you would like to accept ANY form of payment from your customers (besides check, cash and credit cards) sign up with the following payment services as well:

• PayPal
• Square
• Venmo
• CashApp
• Zelle

Tips, Tricks, and Recommendations:

1. Purchase your website domain for 2 years or more when signing up or renewing. Renewing your website for just 1 year can make your page appear “temporary” to search engine bots.
2. If search engine bots come across your website information in different places across the internet, your website will start to rank higher in search results organically due to your site’s “perceived” importance.
3. I recommend using Instagram as the main “Hub” for the bulk of your social media posts. With Instagram, you can connect your Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts to share whatever you post on Instagram, to those other social networking platforms as well! From there you can share that same post to other social media platforms by just copying and pasting the post.
4. Use hashtags in your social media posts to have your posts listed in those associated hashtag categories.
5. Go through your website page by page, and make sure that certain “keywords”, that you want to be found with, are used at least 4 times on the associated webpage.
6. When posting to social media, use your main website address AS WELL as your Linktr.ee address.

Free Web Business Listings:

• Yelp
• Better Business Bureau
• Angie’s List
• MerchantCircle
• YP.com *
• Local.com
• Foursquare
• EZlocal.com
• Manta
• InfoUSA
• Infignos
• MyHuckleberry.com *
• Just Local Business
• Brownbook
• CitySquares
• HERE Map Creator
• Judy’s Book
• TripAdvisor
• Thumbtack
• ShowMeLocal
• ChamberofCommerce.com
• YellowBot
• Hotfrog
• Insider Pages
• Business Local Pages
• iBegin
• Opendi
• Sitejabber
• Cylex

A website with a * indicates that either the website is having issues, or the website might be a "paid for" service and may not actually be free.

Jon Pienkowski
Pacific Northwest Computers
www.pnwcomputers.com
www.linktr.ee/pnwcomputers

Microsoft Internet Explorer Vulnerability ~ Fact and Opinion

As you have most likely heard, Microsoft is scrambling to fix a major bug which allows hackers to exploit flaws in Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. The company has also confirmed it will not issue a fix for web browsers running on Windows XP after it formally ended support for the 13 year old operating system back on April 8th.

The vulnerability was discovered by cyber security software maker FireEye Inc. which stated the flaw is a ‘zero-day’ threat. This means the first attacks were made on the vulnerability before Microsoft was aware of it. FireEye also revealed a sophisticated hacker group has already been exploiting the flaw in a campaign dubbed ‘Operation Clandestine Fox’, which targets US military and financial institutions.

FireEye spokesman Vitor De Souza declined to name the hackers or potential victims as the investigation is ongoing, only telling Reuters: “It’s unclear what the motives of this attack group are at this point. It appears to be broad-spectrum intel gathering.”

For its part Microsoft has confirmed the existence of the flaw in an official post: https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/2963983

Now, Internet Explorer has always been a vulnerable browser and has exploits created/identified against it everyday. This is why for YEARS I have pushed my customers to use an alternative Web Browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. As previously mentioned, both of those web browsers are safer to use than Internet Explorer and are both immune from the recently identified exploit!

What makes this recent vulnerability stand out from the others, and why this particular vulnerability is making all the headlines, is that the problem is pretty widespread; affecting 1 in 4 Windows based computers and ALL Windows XP systems.

A Temporary Fix
While Microsoft rushes to fix the bug, FireEye gave concerned users two workarounds .

1. Use another web browser other than Internet Explorer
2. Disable Adobe Flash. “The attack will not work without Adobe Flash,” it said. “Disabling the Flash plugin within IE will prevent the exploit from functioning.”

*Adobe has released a new patch/update for their Flash Player! Allow the Flash Player to update or manually download and install the latest version here: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

No Hope For Windows XP
Microsoft has confirmed that no fix will be rolled out for Windows XP because support has officially ended and there are no plans to make an exception. It states:

“An unsupported version of Windows will no longer receive software updates from Windows Update. These include security updates that can help protect your PC from harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software, which can steal your personal information.”

The company’s advice to Windows XP users has remained the same for some time: upgrade to Windows 7 or 8 or buy a new PC. It has also repeatedly sent a pop-up dialog box to reachable Windows XP machines with the following end of support notification.

For users unsure whether their existing XP PCs can support Windows 8, Microsoft offers a software tool called ‘Windows Upgrade Assistant’ which can be downloaded here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=321548

If you have any questions or concerns please don't hesitate to get in touch!

Jon Pienkowski
Pacific NorthWest Computers
www.pnwcomputers.com
360-624-7379

Force Checking for Updates on Android Devices

Normally your phone has a process which checks for pending updates every "X" amount of hours. But what if you want to force the device to check for updates immediately? This is a trick I found a while back and continue to use time and time again.

• Open the standard Android Phone (Dialer) application
• Enter *#*#checkin#*#* on the dialer keypad ( *#*#2432546#*#*)
• On the last entry of the *, your phone will pause while it is checking for updates.
• Once it has completed, you will see a yellow exclamation icon in the notification (or different icon depending on your installed theme) bar letting you know that checkin has been completed and if an update exists you should be notified.
• It also appears that Market updates are also rechecked as part of this process, so any new updated applications will also notify you to upgrade your applications

That's it! Go into your phone's settings through you home menu and check for system updates. If anything the update should already be downloading!

This has been shown to work on 2.1 (Eclair), 2.2 (FroYo), and 2.3 (Gingerbread). However, not all custom phone dialers support the codes, so try to use the stock Android dialer if you have multiple installed. The stock dialer is the one that ships on Google experience devices like the Nexus One, Nexus S, or Droid1.