September 2009 Newsletter

Hello All,

August has been a very exciting month at Abacus. This month I have been able to implement several more services that Abacus customers can take advantage of. I have recently partnered a couple internet and telephone firms. I am now able to offer my clients internet and telephone services. Abacus still handles web design and now web and email hosting with email SPAM filtering and backups.

In September, I will be going live with 7 x 24 help desk support for Abacus clients along with a toll-free phone number that can access help desk, my office and/or cell phone.

As you can see, I have been busy and working hard to help you get the most "bang for the buck" out of your technology.

Can T1 Internet Save You Money?

Saving Money with a better connection. What is the difference between our inexpensive DSL connection and a more expensive T1 connection? Why should we pay hundreds of dollars a month for the same internet? Look at it like this. How much time and frustration to you get when your DSL connection goes down? You're working away at your desk. Emails are flying in and out, you're send files and figures to clients, customers and vendors. Suddenly you get an error that "server is not responding." You try a couple of things and now you have no internet. You ask a coworker if their internet is working and they discover that it isn't. If you don't have an IT provider of some kind you are the lucky one who gets to call tech support at your internet provider. You dig up an invoice and find the toll free number to call for help. You are then greeted with a very friendly sounding automated voice that asks you if you "para continuar en española prensa una." You wait for the next prompt and are asked "if you know your party's extension please dial it now. If you want to talk to someone in our sales department press or say 1, if you wish to speak with someone in technical support press or say 2." You get the idea.

Ok, now you have a level 1 technician on the phone. He claims his name is Kevin but you have your doubts. He asks you to tell him the status of the lights on your DSL modem. You think "modem, what's that...where's that?" Ok, you found the modem, congratulations. Now you get to spend the next 30 minutes or so playing question and answer with Kevin the whole time wondering if Kevin really knows what is wrong but doesn't want to admit that they owe you a new modem. They now transfer you to another department who will help expedite a new modem. A tech will probably be dispatched to your business sometime tomorrow. Whew. I'm tired just typing this.

Let's take a similar scenario but this time with a managed T1 connection. Internet goes down, they know it, they fix it. Done...and I still have energy. Think I'll go get a sandwich.

In case you haven't guessed I am promoting the idea of a dedicated, managed internet connection. With this type of connection, there is a staff of people monitoring your internet connection 24 x 7. The best part is, the equipment they are managing is heavy-duty stuff. Not some chinsy little Netopia or 2Wire modem/router...the real thing. What it comes down to is this...it just has to work all the time.

If you are interested in improving your internet uptime, give me a call at 708-366-0091.

10 Ways to recovery corrupted Word file

If your document is stored on a properly configured Windows server 2003 or Small Business
Server this is a non-issue. Documents have backup copies on the server by default.

If you've ever had an important document get corrupted, you know the despair that sets in.
You've lost critical information and/or countless hours of work - or so it appears. But hang on: You may not have to accept data loss. Here are some things you can try when you're dealing with a corrupted Word document.

Don't assume that the document is corrupt. Automatically assuming that a document is corrupt can be a big mistake. It could be Word or even Windows that is having the problem. Before you start trying to restore a backup or repair a file, try opening other documents. Try opening your "corrupt" document from another computer. You may be surprised by what happens.
Make a copy of the document. This isn't really a recovery trick, but it is a crucial preliminary step. If you don't have a backup copy of the corrupt document readily available, make a copy of the corrupted file right away and store it on removable media. There's a chance that the corruption within the file could become worse over time or that you could destroy the file while trying to recover it. Making a backup copy of the file now may save you even more heartache later on.
Check your email. In many cases, you may have emailed a copy of the document to someone at some point. If so, a copy of the document may still be in Outlook's Sent Items folder, attached to the email message you sent. Try selecting the Sent Items folder and using Outlook's Search feature to look for the document's name.
Run CHKDSK. Try running CHKDSK against the volume containing the corrupted file. Your problem could be caused by corruption at the file system level, and CHKDSK may be able to fix the problem. If nothing else, running CHKDSK allows you to test the integrity of the file system, which allows you to determine whether the problem exists at the file system level or within the document itself.
Try exporting the file. If you can open the file in Word, try saving the file in an alternate format. Sometimes, using a format such as RTF or TXT will cause some of Word's codes to be stripped from the document, which often fixes the problem.
Extract the raw text. Although saving the Word document as an RTF or TXT file usually works pretty well, that technique does you no good if Word won't open the file. One approach is to use another word processor that supports Word documents. Alternatively, you can use a file editor (a hex editor) to manually extract anything salvageable from the file.
Use Word's text converter. You may also be able to recover the text portion of a document using Word's text converter. Click File | Open. When the Open dialog box appears, select the troublesome Word document. Then, choose Recover Text From Any File from the Files Of Type drop-down list and open the document. This filter will import straight ASCII text from any file. You will lose Word formatting and nontext items such as graphics, but you should at least be able to extract most of the text information from the file. Note that this method is limited to documents in the Word 97-2003 format (not docx or dotx files).
Use Open And Repair. Word XP and later offer an Open And Repair option, which you can use to force Word to attempt a recovery. Just select the file in the Open dialog box and choose Open And Repair from the Open drop-down list in the bottom-right corner. This isn't necessarily foolproof, but it does work on a lot of problematic documents.
Use a Vista shadow copy of the document. Windows Vista automatically saves shadow copies of some files to the hard drive. If a shadow copy of your document exists, it may be possible to recover a recent version of the document. To do so, right-click on the document and select the Properties command from the shortcut menu. When the document's properties sheet appears, select the Previous Versions tab. (This tab exists only for files stored on NTFS volumes.) The Previous Versions tab will show you any previous versions of the file that are available. For more on the shadow copy feature, see How do I... Configure and use shadow copy in Microsoft Windows Vista?
Rebuild the file header. Although every Word document is different, Word documents that are created by a common version of Word have a common file header. I can't tell you exactly what this header contains, because it varies from one version of Word to the next. What I can tell you is that if you use a file editor to examine multiple known good Word documents, it will quickly become apparent which bits each of the documents has in common. Once you have determined which part of the file is the header, you can copy the header bits from a known good document and use the editor to paste those bits into your corrupt document, overwriting the existing header in the process. If the header was the portion of the document that was damaged, this technique will fix the problem.
Use a recovery program. Several third-party applications on the market are designed to recover corrupt documents. One of the best known products is OfficeRecovery. Another popular product is Ontrack Easy Recovery. Data recovery products like these can have a hefty price tag, and depending on the extent of the damage, they may or may not actually be able to repair your file.

Article taken from Brien Posey at techrepublic.com