In the past few months, you may have been prompted to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11. BE CAREFUL, and do your due diligence before you upgrade.   Windows 11 has hardware requirements that older computers may not meet, and some of your software programs may not yet be compatible with this new operating system.  If you are NOT on v24 of Act! Premium/Premium Cloud/Pro, please DO NOT upgrade.  The only versions of Act! that are certified as compatible are v24 Premium or

This week we helped a client recover from a data loss.  However, it was not without some pain.  The data was not being backed up correctly so we had to restore from a really old backup copy. Responding to another question regarding data restoration, someone asked if deleted records could be recovered. The answer was yes but with a caveat.  There had to be a good working backup that contained the data that was deleted.  If the data had not been backed up then it could not be

Every week I try to have a social media "theme" and this week it's Tips and Tricks. Last week we helped a client who couldn’t get Act to open after Windows did an update without him asking. Nothing appeared to be wrong. I asked him if he had rebooted and he said yes, multiple times. Then, I did my normal “call in the guru” (that being my husband) and he said have him do a RESTART and not a reboot. I’ve been working with PC’s forever and I “thought” reboot and restart were the

Recently we've been hearing about several customers getting hit with ransomware software. This has prompted me to put together a quick blog post warning about this growing trend. First off, here's a definition. Ransomware is software that infects a computer and then locks files making them unreadable. The software then asks for money to unlock the files - hense the name Ransomware. An encryption key is sent back which makes the files available again. The big problem is most antivirus software

Got Windows 10?  Act! Not Starting?  Try this! We have been getting quite a few calls lately from clients who are finding out the hard way that their operating system just got upgraded to Windows 10. Well isn’t that nice? Microsoft is now making it happen automatically and many are getting caught of guard.   What to do?  Turn off automatic updates in Windows for one.  If Windows 10 is here, then time to upgrade Act!.  The latest version of Act! is designed to

Microsoft has been aggressive in upgrading computers to Windows 10 - often without you realizing you did give them permission - you just didn't realize you did.  So, if you, like many others, has just recently found you are now on Windows 10 and want to go back here's what you do.   NOTE - this only works for one month after the initial upgrade - so hurry if you want this to be relatively painless. Here's the STEP BY STEP process - it should take you back to where you were

There are several Windows tools I use often in my work and there are several functions I need to get to in a hurry.  I used yet another one today and thought it would make a handy blog post. In Windows, clicking Start Run will allow you to type in commands or words that will either invoke the application or show up searches in the left panel.  Recently this has become very handy because I have an aging cat who seeks the heat from my laptop, will lay on the keyboard, and magically

Microsoft has released an emergency patch for a critical flaw, affecting all supported versions of Windows. They said the vulnerability, if exploited, could "allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted document or visits an untrusted webpage that contains embedded OpenType fonts.

"http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-releases-emergency-patch-for-critical-windows-flaw/?tag=nl.e589&s_cid=e589&ttag=e589&ftag=TREc64629f