Remote IT Support in Thetford

Remote IT Support for Thetford Businesses

When your IT stops working, you want someone who can get into the problem immediately - not log a ticket and wait. We connect to Windows PCs and laptops over a secure remote connection.

We work exclusively on Windows PCs, laptops and Microsoft 365. We do not cover Apple Mac hardware or software. If your office runs on Windows, we are a straightforward fit with no ambiguity about what is and is not covered.

What We Can Fix Remotely

A remote support session is effective for a broad range of everyday and urgent business IT faults, including:

• Microsoft 365 sign-in failures, account lockouts and licence errors
• Outlook not connecting, mail not syncing or calendar and contacts issues
• Teams meeting failures, missing audio, dropped calls and sharing faults
• Windows update errors, failed patches and machines stuck in restart loops
• Slow or unresponsive PCs - caused by full disks, excessive startup programmes or background processes
• Shared drives and network printers lost after a Windows update
• Ransomware and malware alerts requiring urgent triage and containment
• New user account setup, password resets and Microsoft 365 admin changes
• OneDrive and SharePoint sync problems
• Browser and application faults affecting day-to-day office work

If a fault requires a physical visit - a hard drive failure, a dead network switch, a hardware fault - we will tell you that clearly rather than extend a remote session that cannot reach a fix.

Support Plans and Pricing

We offer monthly contracts and pay-as-you-go time blocks. All prices exclude VAT. Contracts are priced per computer per month, never per user.

Business Essentials - remote and phone support, with Windows updates, backups and security monitoring included. On-site visits are charged separately at £60 call-out plus labour. Per computer per month: 1 computer £36; 2-3 computers £31.20 each; 4-9 computers £25.20 each; 10-17 computers £22.20 each; 18 or more £21.60 each.

Business Premium - everything in Business Essentials. Per computer per month: 1 computer £54; 2-3 computers £42 each; 4-6 computers £38.60 each; 7-9 computers £33.80 each; 10-12 computers £31.20 each; 13-15 computers £28.40 each; 16-19 computers £25.40 each; 20 or more £24.40 each.

No monthly contract - buy a block of support time. Block prices: 4 hours £312; 8 hours £592; 16 hours £1,123. A managed email service is also available - price on request.

If particular staff members cannot work without their machine, raise the response priority requirement when setting up the contract.

Warning Signs: What to Watch For and Why IT Problems Happen

Most IT failures that bring a business to a halt did not appear from nowhere. There are usually earlier signals that something is heading the wrong way. Knowing what those signals mean - and what causes them - lets you call for help before the situation becomes urgent.

A Machine That Has Started Running Slowly

Gradual slowdown is one of the most common warning signs, and it tends to be ignored because it creeps up. A PC that takes noticeably longer to open applications than it did six months ago is telling you something. The usual causes are a system drive that has filled up, too many applications set to launch at startup, a Windows update that did not complete cleanly, or background processes consuming memory. Left unaddressed, slow machines eventually become machines that crash or freeze entirely, usually at a critical moment.

The threshold to watch for: if File Explorer shows less than 15-20% free space on the C: drive, or if Task Manager shows CPU or memory consistently above 80% when the machine is idle, those are clear signals that something needs attention.

Repeated Crashes or Unexpected Restarts

A PC that restarts itself without warning, or that shows a blue screen briefly before restarting, is logging a stop error. Windows records these in the Event Viewer. The cause is often a failing driver (particularly after a Windows update), overheating hardware or, in older machines, RAM that is beginning to fail. Overheating is a physical cause with a software symptom: a machine that restarts unexpectedly and feels hot to the touch around the vents may simply need its internal fans cleaned, but it may also indicate the beginning of a hardware fault that will worsen.

Microsoft 365 Login Warnings and Unexpected Sign-Out

If staff are being unexpectedly signed out of Microsoft 365 accounts, or if accounts are prompting for re-authentication more frequently than usual, there are several possible causes. A licence that has expired or been reassigned will force sign-out. A token that has expired due to a change in the organisation's security policy will do the same. But repeated sign-out can also be a sign that someone else is attempting to access the account, or that multi-factor authentication is not configured correctly and is conflicting with a conditional access policy. Any unexpected Microsoft 365 authentication behaviour is worth investigating rather than dismissing as a routine glitch.

Antivirus or Security Warnings Appearing Repeatedly

A single security alert can be a false positive, particularly if new software has recently been installed. But repeated or escalating security warnings on the same machine indicate either that a threat is present and not being fully removed, or that a programme installed on the machine is behaving in a way the security software classifies as suspicious. Running a full scan and ignoring the results without addressing what triggered the alert is not a resolution - the underlying file or behaviour is still there.

Outlook Behaving Differently After a Windows Update

A pattern that causes problems in small offices: a Windows update installs overnight, and the next morning Outlook will not connect, shared drives are missing, or the printer is not responding. This is not coincidence. Some Windows patches change authentication behaviour, network settings or driver compatibility. The update itself is rarely the wrong decision, but when it causes secondary failures, those failures need to be addressed correctly - usually by repairing the affected application or resetting the relevant network configuration - rather than by uninstalling the update and leaving the security patch unapplied.

Emails Not Arriving or Disappearing

Missing emails in a business context need to be taken seriously. The most common causes are Outlook rules that have been set up - deliberately or accidentally - to move or delete incoming mail, junk filter settings that are too aggressive, or a mail flow problem in Microsoft 365 itself. A less obvious cause is a compromised account: attackers who gain access to a Microsoft 365 account frequently create forwarding rules to send copies of incoming mail to an external address, and they may also delete evidence of their access from the inbox and sent folder. If email behaviour has changed unexpectedly, check the Outlook rules list and the Microsoft 365 account's forwarding settings before concluding it is a simple technical fault.

Applications That Used to Work Fine and Now Crash on Opening

Applications that crash on launch after working reliably are almost always caused by one of three things: a Windows update that changed a dependency the application relied on, a corrupted user profile (common in Microsoft Office applications - the fix is to rename the profile folder so the application rebuilds it), or a conflict introduced by a new application installed around the same time the crashes started. Reinstalling the application without investigating the cause first will often not resolve the underlying conflict and the crash will return.

Password Reset Requests Nobody Initiated

If a user receives a password reset email for their Microsoft 365 account that they did not request, treat it as an active threat rather than a system error. Someone has entered their email address into the Microsoft account recovery page - either by mistake or deliberately as an attempt to take over the account. If the account does not yet have multi-factor authentication enabled, enable it immediately. MFA means that even if a password reset succeeds, the attacker cannot complete the sign-in without access to the user's phone or authenticator application.

When to Call Immediately

Some warning signs require action now, not later. Call us if you see any of the following during office hours:

• Files on shared drives are being renamed with unfamiliar extensions - a possible ransomware infection. Disconnect the affected machine from the network immediately before calling.
• A ransom note has appeared on screen.
• A Microsoft 365 account is sending emails that the user did not write.
• Forwarding rules or inbox rules have appeared in an account that nobody set up.
• A machine shows repeated blue screens within a short period.

Acting quickly on these faults limits the damage. Waiting to see if the problem goes away is not a safe option in any of these cases.

Get Remote IT Support for Your Thetford Business

Call us during office hours to discuss support for your Thetford business. Whether you want a monthly contract or a block of time to draw on as needed, we can talk through which arrangement suits your setup. We cover Thetford and the surrounding area from our Bury St Edmunds base.