Having had a few stupid little problems on my own PCs recently, I thought I’d introduce a new section to the blog – PC First Aid.
This is mainly to provide a resource for those little niggles which annoy us all…

Don’t forget – the usual disclaimers apply – do this at your own risk!

The posts will be tagged ‘First Aid’ and will be available through the search OR by selecting the tag.

So, on to the first little problem:

Windows 7 fonts in bold and/or italics
This seems to be due to some form of corruption of the font files themselves or of problems within the registry which refers to the files.

You are going to need a good grasp of Google (to download a zip file of the fonts), or a PC with Windows 7 on or a Windows 7 installation CD.

If you can – get onto a PC with Windows 7 on, open the c:\windows\fonts folder, and copy the contents to a separate folder. If you can’t find (or don’t have) another PC, then try extracting the files from your Windows 7 installation media (the CD).
Alternatively, there are a few zipped files available containing the original fonts – these I’m sure breach the copyright rules though, so I’ll not post a direct link. BE WARNED – The zipped file will be a couple of hundred MEGs to download.

However you get the files, simply copy the fonts onto the PC with the errors’ desktop, open this folder – select all (CTRL + A) and right click a font and choose install. tell Windows to overwrite the existing fonts and it should fix this.

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I received a phone call today, from the garage where I recently purchased my shiny new car…
This caused another minor flutter in the old ticker – was there something wrong with my little baby?

“There is a discrepancy with your paperwork”  - Garage
“I’ll pop in and we’ll get it sorted” – me

Zooooooom… Off to the garage.

The ‘discrepancy’ was the minor issue of me not having signed the agreement to pay for the car AND not having signed the direct debit.
Effectively I had a free car!
Jokingly I suggested that I didn’t want to sign – there was NO intention of this – but the guy did say that I would be surprised at the number of people who would have tried just that.
I signed the  paperwork and left several relieved car salesmen.

What kind of society are we living in?
Someone makes a mistake and someone would try to get out of paying!
It saddens me to know that I exist in the honest minority…

One solution –

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I very nearly fumbled the ball today – though I do feel somewhat justified that it was not ALL my doing!

A client calls on Friday afternoon (about 16:50) to report that he’d just gone on to his website to get some information. He noticed that the products didn’t show.
Uh oh…

This particular website was left open for attack after a, erm.. let’s just say “ill advised”  password change to their admin section, allowed some hacker in to do nefarious stuff. (I cannot advise strongly enough about the security of passwords. Using combinations like admin and admin as user name and password are NOT a good idea!)

This website was refreshed from a slightly older backup – the site was then re-backed up.

A few days ago, the client then took advantage of our new hosting offerings and we moved the site.
Unbeknown to me at the time, I had inadvertently uploaded this older backup, not the current site, and this was why the issues were noted.
This was where I also noticed I couldn’t put my hands on a backup of the current site!
A minor heart tremor spoiled the otherwise sub zero level of cool I normally exhibit.

Now as it turned out, our internal systems DO work – Chris had a backup of the site on his machine NOT where it should have been in the client’s folder – hence my panic that we didn’t have a backup.
I uploaded the correct version and all was fine.

This was a classic case why the previous post is important – in this case luckily Chris has returned from his brain bug and we solved the problem, but it could all have been so much worse..!

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There is, in business, a rather macabre term known as ‘Hit by a bus syndrome’.
In more prosaic terms it refers to the aftermath of a key member of staff being hit by the proverbial bus and not being able to fulfil their role in the company.

It’s something all small business owners should take into consideration – losing a key member of your team, could critically damage your business.

Our man Chris had a brief sojourn into the arms of our countries medical professionals this weekend, hence the sombre tone of this post…
He’s on the mend now, that’s why I feel it’s not to bad to post something like this.
The lengths some people will go to get some time off…

Once we’d got the news of his ailment, (and having exchanged our concerns and worries for the patient) we had to go into full on, contact rescheduling mode, come the following Monday morning.
Thus exercising our ‘Just in case’ plan.

Having gone to great pains to get things down into a more accessible format – when it’s just a small team, everything gets held in ones ‘Little Grey Cells’ (one for the Poirot fans out there) :thumbsup: - we simply consulted the files and things were sorted.
This is the fundamental problem in the aforementioned scenario, most businesses of a smaller size just don’t bother to go through this exercise.

One or two minor issues did crop up though; these will be addressed and rolled into the plan for the next, large automotive meets considerably more squishy human scenario.

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It’s been a long time since I posted here, time has positively rushed by..!

I have however, got a reasonable excuse for the time delay in the postings – we’ve been in the process of changing our hosting.
In terms of both our own service requirements and the offerings we present to our clients things have changed in a big way.

We are now our hosting our own websites
If you are looking for a new host that actually listens and provides a cost effect service – call us (08456 340 599)

This means we can offer our clients enhanced packages at competitive prices.
We can even offer a tailor made package if required – no more thinking “which box do I fit into” when it comes to your website needs.
We have, of course, got some ready made packages if you “just need hosting” (which, to be honest, most of our clients do…), just tell us what you want/need and we’ll do the rest.

As an example, our simplest package costs about £4.00 per month! (+VAT)

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Things swapped over for the websites at the weekend, so it’s been a little frenetic getting the websites/blog back to working, though I was pleasantly surprised at the ease at which I managed to accomplish these tasks…
Things just seemed to work

I can’t think what else has happened recently, though I’m hoping soon I’ll be able to reveal some big news regarding us – I’ll keep that under wraps for now

Any way…
It’s getting late and I’m needed for stuff in the real world – do the chores NEVER end?

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