GREAT NEWS FOR THE ELDEST GEEK! TOP TECH is OPEN! Come visit!
Our new address is 8332 Richmond Highway, Suite 205!
Check out our nice SIGN on Richmond Highway:
“Home of the Eldest Geek” 🙂
We have had the store running for a while now – drop by for a visit!
We are open 10-7 Mon-Sat and sundays by appointment. INCLUDING TUESDAYS!! 🙂
MT VERNON FIRE UPDATE FROM THE ELDEST GEEK
I went to a presentation from the Fairfax Fire Marshall a few weeks ago – and there will never be an official cause of the fire. They have however ruled out arson.
Sam will have to demolish it soon, but I’m still trying to get in there and do some excavation – hopefully to retrieve SOMETHING
RECENT WINDOWS 10 UPDATES
There have been quite a few folks who have had their computers hobbled or hosed by recent security updates. I am at a loss to explain WHY Windows 10 (and 8) get themselves tied into knots as has been happening, but it is clearly an issue. Something seems to get stuck in Windows’ throat – and it cant clear it. It just keeps recycling, updating, saying ‘Restoring previous version’ and the link. Often it is in an infinite loop doing this!
But – to anyone this has happened to – we can correct the situation. There are various things we can do to ‘clear’ the obstruction from its throat. And we have had good success on a number of recent customers! Now, we can ALWAYS do a ‘clean’ install of Windows 10 (or 8 if you must have it) – and then copy DATA from the old install. I mean, files, pictures, music, documents. The problem is that you lose all the installed SOFTWARE. You have to spend hours and hours reloading Office, quickbooks, turbotax, games 1-999, etc etc!
When you do a clean install windows ‘moves’ all from the original install into a folder called windows.old. In it you will find the Users folder with all your user accounts (and all the before mentioned files). But you also see the original Windows folder (with its all important Registry files), and the Program File folder where all your software was installed. Until very recently there was no way to ‘use’ this information, but I’ve discovered a utility that for a price can effectively scan registry and program files folders – and reinstall your software and duplicate all your settings from the old computer! It sounds to good to be true (and if you google right now you will probably NOT find it!) – and so far I’ve done this a half-dozen times. It usually works reasonably well. One time it did not move the users account over properly and I had to reinstall outlook and the like. Other times it has gotten real close – losing a printer only! But it clearly is worth doing in any ‘complicated’ installation!
The only flaw, and we have run into this once so far, is that things like Office may SEEM to work but parts of it dont. and then you simply have to reinstall. But thats only reinstall OFFICE – not everything!
So if you are having these sort of problems and your friend says you need to start over and reload everything – we can AVOID you having to do that! Or – at least – mostly avoid it!
MAC OSX HIGH SIERRA
Apple in their infinite wisdom rolled out a new file system for High Sierra – APFS. And you need to be aware of it! It will be imposed on you by default if you are installing onto a Solid State Drive! If you have a platter hard drive, it wont even give you the choice (though you can override and pick that). I’m of rather mixed minds about this because I’ve had customers panic when they have a High Sierra system fail and they take out the hard drive attached it to another mac they have – and cant see ANYTHING on their drive! If this happens and the data is important you may actually need to upgrade the other mac to High Sierra – before you can make sense of the hard drive from the dying mac!
Just something to be aware of!
ADOPTION CORNER: ALL WITH 6 MONTH WARRANTY
I will have available shortly some RATHER nice macs – a 12in 2015 macbook, a 2015 13in pre-touchbar retina, several 2012 13in macbook pros (including a rare i7).
And on the PC Side we have several VERY nice gaming laptops – 17in Asus units with 7th generation i7 cpus and 4gb Video!
Also various others – all kinds from 12-17in, – and I have some convertibles as well (double as tablets).
Looking for anything? Let me know!
Enough for now – I dont want to have folks get tired of reading me!