Unlike the antivirus software makers, the makers of antispyware and antimalware software do not have a governing body behind them ensuring that they protect your PC from all the latest threats.

The various antivirus software developers have a governing body behind them that shares any newly discovered threats among all the antivirus companies so that threats can be eradicated as quickly as possible. This means that when one of the antivirus software companies find a new virus or virus variant they share that knowledge with all the other antivirus software companies.

Having Antivirus software on your PC is a necessity but typically one antivirus software package is not much better than another at protecting you from the latest threats, they should all protect you equally. What you need to look for in antivirus software package is ease of use and the overhead that it places on your machine.

The makers of anti-spyware and anti-malware software do not have any sort of governing body behind them and there for usually do not share and information on the latest threats out there. In fact, most of these companies protect that knowledge and keep it as their edge or advantage over the other companies.

Because there is no sharing of this knowledge, none of the spyware and malware protection software available can protect you from 100% of the threats out there. We typically do not recommend purchasing any of the available antispyware or antimalware packages, instead we recommend using several of the free versions available together for the best chance at catching the majority of the threats out there.

You also need to be aware that what works this week may not work next week and because of that the programs we recommend change on a regular basis. Some of the free software available can also be very intrusive and may need to be removed or have settings chugged to keep your system free of performance robbing add-ons. If an anti-spyware program has portions of it that stay in memory we typically uninstall it after we have used it to scan. Most of the popular packages do not have components that stay resident in memory or have the option to disable them.

An important item to be aware of is that not all of the spyware and malware removal tools out there are legitimate. Remember, this stuff is malicious and we have found many cases of people buying what they thought was good, legitimate, software only to find out that the very software they purchased was the problem.

Another common deceptive practice used is some spyware will tell you that you are infected when you are not and try to trick or persuade you into buying it or infect your PC and tell you the only way to remove it is to pay for a specific removal product.

A good rule of thumb is if something pops up on your screen telling you that your PC is infected or that for a small fee you can be scanned and cleaned it is most likely a scam and you should close it by the “X” in the upper right hand corner immediately. Buying these products only makes the problem worse by encouraging and funding the makers of these malicious exploits.

Windows 7 Peer to Peer Setup Fix

If you are using Microsoft Windows 7 Peer to Peer as a file server to share files to other XP or Windows 7 Computers on the network you may find that the network slows down or fails to connect after a short amount of time. You may also fin the following error in the Event Viewer of the Windows 7 Peer to Peer File Server:

Source: srv 
Event ID: 2017 
Level: Error 
The server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool because the server reached the configured limit for nonpaged pool allocations.

If you need to share files off a Microsoft Windows 7 Computer to other PCs on the network you need to tell it to allocate resources correctly or you may experience problems after the share has been active for a while or when transferring files.

To fix the problem you need to set the following registry key to ‘1′ on the Windows 7 Peer to Peer File Server:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache

and set the following registry key to ‘3′:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\Size

Reboot after making these changes and you will find the problem no longer occurs.

In Windows 7 when opening Windows Explorer it defaults to a libraries folder instead of opening up to a pane that has a list of current drives and there sub folders. There isn’t a way to change it in any setting in control panel but you can manually change the folder that opens when opening the explorer shortcut or using the shortcut Windows Key + E.

In Windows 7 hold the SHIFT key down, right-click on the shortcut and choose Properties:

To change the startup folder to (My) Computer, use this target path:

Where the GUID {20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} represents the My Computer folder.

To change the startup folder to (My) Documents, use this target path:

When monitoring a Small Business Server if there are reports of numerous slow downs which can be caused when the database is full or nearly full. When the database logs are full there will be

1. Run services.msc.
2. Stop the Datacollectorsvc service(Windows SBS Manger Service), SQL Server(SBSMONITORING) service (To be able to unlock monitoring database files)
3. Change the name of those 2 files in case you will use them in the future:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring.mdf
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring_log.ldf
to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring-bak.mdf
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring_log-bak.ldf
4. Download http://cid-6ca40dd0d4c9caa6.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/sbsmonitoring.zip file.
5. Unzip the zip file and copy those two files to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\ folder
Note: you don’t need to do detach or attach database in SQL Management Studio. And that database has already been tuned by the SQL command above.
6. Start the SQL Server(SBSMONITORING) service
7. Start the Datacollectorsvc service(Windows SBS Manger Service)

“My server is slow”

A lot of the general server slowness I’ve been seeing recently has been with clients who use SQL daily. Some common solutions are below.

Do you Need Technical Support?

If the steps below do not work or you do not want to risk your data by trying to troubleshoot the problem your self, we can help. Simply call us or fill out the Free Onsite Evaluation form to setup a time for us to look at your issue and come up with a solution. We are not like other computer repair companies, we are computer network support specialists.

How can you tell it’s SQL slowing the server down?

Go into the processes in task manager and look for sqlservr.exe. If it’s taking up a lot of RAM, then it usually is part of the problem. For example, theirs is running at 2gb total between 2 processes. Normally it should be under 500mb but it depends on the system. There are cases when this is not true and they are fully functional with huge databases, but it is something to consider as part of diagnosing a slow server.

Open SQL Databases

Run MSSMSE (Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express) and connect to a database. Sometimes they are listed automatically. Server type should be Database Engine. Server name should be server_name\database_name such as APPSERVER\SBSMONITORING. Authentication should be Windows Authentication. Sometimes you can’t find the right names in the GUI and you can literally type them in and see if they open. You can also go into Services and check for database names in the SQL and MSSQL areas (for example, SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) would be one). Sometimes you can click the dropbar for Server name and go to Browse and find them that way as well.

Once you connect, expand Databases to see the names. You can ignore anything that says System, master, tempdb, model, or msdb.

Shrinking SQL Databases

Shrinking databases is sometimes a good thing. It acts like defragmenting a hard drive and can help the server get to data quicker and easier. This should be done on large log files or databases if there are complaints about a program being slow.

First, view the log files by clicking on the database name and then clicking the New Query button. Type dbcc sqlperf(logspace) and then press the Execute button. Below the log file sizes are listed in the results tab. Anything over 20mb can be considered large. Take note of the names of the large databases.

If any log files are large, then run the following on it, replacing database_name with each database name:

• backup log database_name
• with truncate_only
• dbcc shrinkdatabase(database_name, truncateonly)
• Run dbcc sqlperf(logspace) again to see the new size, it should be under 1mb.

You can also use the GUI in MSSMSE to shrink the databases themselves. They can take minutes to hours to complete, depending on size, so give yourself adequate time to do this after hours, or just stick to weekends.

Right-click on the database name and go to Tasks, Shrink, Database. Click OK and let it execute. It should disappear when it completes. If you get any errors, it might be too large to shrink or busy at the moment. Like defragmenting, sometimes it requires space to shrink so you may have to increase the Initial Size and try again, which will be covered below in Optimizing. You can try again after shrinking the files. Right-click on the database name and go to Tasks, Shrink, Files. Under File Type, choose Data or Log and then click OK to shrink them. Make sure to go back and do BOTH Data AND Log. Do these same steps for each database that is necessary.

Optimizing Databases For Speed

There are a couple settings that will make databases slower or are bad in combination. Normally these settings can be ignored for small databases (under 50mb) since they don’t make a huge difference in speed for those, but large databases can be very slow because of them.

First, open MSSMSE and open the appropriate connections. Right-click on the database name and go to Properties. Under Options, we want to set Auto Close to False and Auto Shrink to False. Auto Close keeps the database closed between access and can make it very slow when it is constantly opening and closing. Auto Shrink is good for saving space on the hard drive but it can slow down a server if every time it expands the database to make room, this process shrinks it back down and they battle for size.

Next, go to Files. Here you can change the Initial Size (MB) to larger if you are unable to shrink a database down (see above) because the database is 500mb but it says 25mb as initial size. Increase it to over 500mb in that case so it have some room to shrink down. Normally this setting can be ignored. Autogrowth is the focus of this section. I suggest setting the Data File Type to By 100mb, unrestricted growth and the Log File Type to By 10mb, 25mb, 50mb, or 100mb in either restricted or unrestricted. If the log file is very small (< 5mb), then it doesn’t need to increase by 100mb each time, 10mb would be fine.

Corrupt SBS Monitoring Database

In MSSMSE, open SBSMonitoring, expand databases, right click it and go to Properties. If the size is over 2gb then it might be corrupt. Once it reaches 4.5gb it will be impossible to shrink down, and you know for sure it is corrupt.

Every SBS 2008 server has the database SBSMonitoring running, which can get corrupted and grow up to 4gb big. As your database is completely filled up, then you can replace it with a clean empty one, to install your new clean database, please follow these steps:

1. Run services.msc.

2. Stop the Datacollectorsvc service(Windows SBS Manger Service), SQL Server(SBSMONITORING) service (To be able to unlock monitoring database files)

3. Change the name of those 2 files in case you will use them in the future:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring.mdf

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring_log.ldf

to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring-bak.mdf

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\SBSMonitoring_log-bak.ldf

4. Download http://cid-6ca40dd0d4c9caa6.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/sbsmonitoring.zip file. (I have these files now if we need them in the future)

5. Unzip the zip file and copy those two files to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\ folder

Note: you don’t need to do detach or attach database in SQL Management Studio. And that database has already been tuned by the SQL command above.

6. Start the SQL Server(SBSMONITORING) service

7. Start the Datacollectorsvc service(Windows SBS Manger Service)