Quad Computer Services Ltd

The quick answer is "no" and if you do use directory enquiries, you could be ringing fraudsters. Most people are familiar and wary of scammers cold calling and telling you they are from Microsoft or somewhere similar and offering to aid you in fixing your computer. We know that once they're on your PC, they'll try and take money from you for their "services", and also try to hack any banking or credit card details stored on the computer. This week, we've found that if you call 118118 and ask for Yahoo! (for instance if you're struggling to access your account) the number they give you could put you straight through to the fraudsters. The above image is from 118118.com and is the same number given out by 118118 if you call. Yes, there are other Yahoo! numbers, and you may get one of them. However, we had a client who phoned 118118 to get the number for Yahoo!, then called the freephone number they gave him. Half an hour later, they'd remo...

Recently, we've seen some strange emails from people we know. It turns out that something has got at their contact lists - usually in Yahoo! email accounts (and providers which use Yahoo! to run their email like Sky, BTInternet, etc). Although difficult to pinpoint exactly how this happened (it is unlikely they've been hacked as the emails don't come from their account) the likelihood is recent Adobe Flash Player vulnerabilities which have been exposed and which users have failed to patch. Adobe Flash is a powerful tool and is used by many companies to display adverts on their web pages. You would hope these adverts are properly policed, but evil forces can put booby-trapped adverts on these sites which may in turn infect your PC or harvest data from your contacts. The detail of such attacks is documented very well on TheRegister  . It's not always tiny companies or dodgy sites that show these adverts. Again, TheRegister points at weather.com, a massive site ...

We are happy to announce that TheFirm Networking is coming back to Dronfield! Quad have helped to organize the networking group and would like you to come along to the first meeting of 2013 where you can network and benefit from meeting with businesses from all sectors.  WHEN:          14th February 2013 WHERE:        Hallowes Golf Club, Hallowes Lane, Dronfield, S18 1UR TIME:            7:00 am – 9:00 am It is only £10 per person (cash on the day please) to attend with no joining fee or subscriptions and a hearty breakfast will be served at each event too! It is easy to book on by visiting http://thefirmnetworking.co.uk/events/dronfield-firm   Hope to see you there. 

https://help.quad.co.uk Quad have invested in technology which allows a Quad technician to connect remotely to your desktop, simply, securely and quickly. If you have a support issue, you may be asked to go to the above link and put in a 6 digit PIN provided by the Quad engineer. After this, you'll be prompted to install and run some software which only takes a few seconds and allows you to see what we are doing on your remote PC. The software has proved extremely useful in fixing support queries and guiding users to a solution, if they are stuck.

We are delighted to announce that Pegasus won the Enterprise Payroll Software award for Opera 3/Opera II Payroll & HR in the Software Satisfaction Awards 2011 . End users rated Pegasus software highly on key attributes; functionality, reliability, ease of use, and value for money. Stuart Anderson, of Pegasus commented 'We are very proud that Pegasus has triumphed at another award ceremony. This is a testament to the fact that our customers feel strongly enough about the product and the quality that they are willing to vote for us. Our Payroll is used to pay over one million employees throughout the UK and this success follows our recent achievement in the Payroll World User Satisfaction Survey.' Winners were announced on Tuesday 18 October at an award ceremony at the London Marriott Grosvenor Square. To find out how Quad can help your business in Sheffield and South Yorkshire, visit Quad's site for more information.

We've become aware of an increasingly common scam which has taken in a number of our customers as well as hearing word of it from family and friends. One of our engineers also had the scam call, so we were able to gain first-hand knowledge of what happens. The scam is well-documented here on The Guardian's website but we also know that more stubborn recipients of the call (like our engineer) will be asked to perform other so-called checks (like CheckDisk/CHKDSK) to see how your PC is running in addition to looking at the Event Viewer. These routines always display something designed to alarm you and to make you think something is wrong with your PC. You're then asked to go to a website where the caller can then fix these for you. People are then directed to payment websites in order to pay for the service. However, the caller will often remain connected to your PC, disabling your anti-virus protection and installing trojans and key-loggers. They'll then get access to c...

I had a problem which was niggling for a while in that I couldn't seem to get Visual Studio (2008) to work properly with Visual Source Safe on my new Windows 7 PC. VSS seemed to work fine when I ran it to view files, etc. For existing projects which I had copied to the new PC, source control integration was working fine. I then created a new project and needed to check it into SourceSafe. I couldn't get any databases to appear in the "Open SourceSafe Database" dialogue box. It always wanted to default to the local database, which was empty anyway. Even though I could browse and choose the database I wanted, nothing would appear in the dialogue box. After much tinkering and Googling and reinstalling, I finally discovered what the problem was. The list of available databases is held in registry and even though I had tried manually altering things in there, it seems Visual Studio must have looked in a different location to where I was altering. A post on the internet led...