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The Computer Tutor — Software How-To
The Computer Tutor

Computer repair, personal computer instruction in Safety Harbor, Clearwater, Tampa, St Pete

Latest Episodes:

Google — Google wants your phone number – so give it to them Aug 07, 2017
Show notes

Everyone seems to be in a panic about privacy these days. All the big companies want to know everything about you, and most people are reluctant to give up any more information than they really need to (with one exception – we willingly tell Facebook everything about ourselves). But when Google asks you for your phone number – you definitely should give it to them.

“What??”

“Google is evil! They want to know too much about me!”

“I don’t want to give them any more personal details!”

That’s fine. I understand that. And in general, I agree with the idea that protecting your personal information is a good thing. But this is an exception.

First of all, this only applies if you have a Google account. How would you answer these questions:

Do you use Gmail?

Do you use a Google Calendar?

Do you use Google Photos?

Do you have a YouTube account?

Do you use Google Drive?

Do you get apps from the Play Store for your Android phone?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you have a Google account.

Now the big question: why does Google want your phone number? What are they going to do with it?

Well, they aren’t going to call you at dinner time to sell you a time share or ask for a charity donation.

Google wants your phone number, so they can help you get your account back if for some reason you are unable to log in.

For me, all of my email comes in through Gmail (I actually have several Gmail accounts, for different purposes). What if suddenly you could not access your email account? How big of a problem would that be for you? That means you can’t get new emails coming in now, which is an issue in itself. But you also cannot go to Gmail.com and access any of your PAST emails (although you still could see the old emails if you have them stored on your computer). You also don’t have access to your Gmail contact list. Or your Google calendar. Or any of the photos you have backed up in Google Photos (a great way to backup all of your photos, by the way). Or anything else you use your Google account for.

This would be an issue you would want to get resolved as soon as possible. And the way to get it fixed is for Google to either send you a text message with a special one-time code, or to call you and give you that code. You enter that code on their site, and you then have access to change your password to a new one. And you’re back in business that quick.

But if Google doesn’t have your phone number, it’s not that easy.

They could also send that code to an alternate email address that you provide them (yes, you should give them that information as well). Hopefully you still have access to that old email account – you might not though, if it was from an internet provider you cancelled 10 years ago.

You can also resolve this by answering some security questions that Google has on file. Assuming you remember those answers. I had a client recently that had to answer one of those. The question was “What is your favorite movie?” and she had to think about it for a minute because she originally answered that question a few years earlier. Fortunately she was able to get it right after a few tries, but it was a little risky to depend on that one thing.

Giving Google your phone number and the other information they need is really easy. Just go to Google.com and sign in to your account. Then click on your picture up in the top right, and in the drop-down menu click on “My Account”.

On the next page, look on the left side for the “Security Checkup” area and click on “Get Started”. Google will walk you through the rest from there.

Keep this in mind: you can only do this BEFORE you lose access to your Google or Gmail account. That means you need to do it now!

The post Google wants your phone number – so give it to them first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Google security checkup — Google wants your phone number – so give it to them Aug 07, 2017
Show notes

Everyone seems to be in a panic about privacy these days. All the big companies want to know everything about you, and most people are reluctant to give up any more information than they really need to (with one exception – we willingly tell Facebook everything about ourselves). But when Google asks you for your phone number – you definitely should give it to them.

“What??”

“Google is evil! They want to know too much about me!”

“I don’t want to give them any more personal details!”

That’s fine. I understand that. And in general, I agree with the idea that protecting your personal information is a good thing. But this is an exception.

First of all, this only applies if you have a Google account. How would you answer these questions:

Do you use Gmail?

Do you use a Google Calendar?

Do you use Google Photos?

Do you have a YouTube account?

Do you use Google Drive?

Do you get apps from the Play Store for your Android phone?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you have a Google account.

Now the big question: why does Google want your phone number? What are they going to do with it?

Well, they aren’t going to call you at dinner time to sell you a time share or ask for a charity donation.

Google wants your phone number, so they can help you get your account back if for some reason you are unable to log in.

For me, all of my email comes in through Gmail (I actually have several Gmail accounts, for different purposes). What if suddenly you could not access your email account? How big of a problem would that be for you? That means you can’t get new emails coming in now, which is an issue in itself. But you also cannot go to Gmail.com and access any of your PAST emails (although you still could see the old emails if you have them stored on your computer). You also don’t have access to your Gmail contact list. Or your Google calendar. Or any of the photos you have backed up in Google Photos (a great way to backup all of your photos, by the way). Or anything else you use your Google account for.

This would be an issue you would want to get resolved as soon as possible. And the way to get it fixed is for Google to either send you a text message with a special one-time code, or to call you and give you that code. You enter that code on their site, and you then have access to change your password to a new one. And you’re back in business that quick.

But if Google doesn’t have your phone number, it’s not that easy.

They could also send that code to an alternate email address that you provide them (yes, you should give them that information as well). Hopefully you still have access to that old email account – you might not though, if it was from an internet provider you cancelled 10 years ago.

You can also resolve this by answering some security questions that Google has on file. Assuming you remember those answers. I had a client recently that had to answer one of those. The question was “What is your favorite movie?” and she had to think about it for a minute because she originally answered that question a few years earlier. Fortunately she was able to get it right after a few tries, but it was a little risky to depend on that one thing.

Giving Google your phone number and the other information they need is really easy. Just go to Google.com and sign in to your account. Then click on your picture up in the top right, and in the drop-down menu click on “My Account”.

On the next page, look on the left side for the “Security Checkup” area and click on “Get Started”. Google will walk you through the rest from there.

Keep this in mind: you can only do this BEFORE you lose access to your Google or Gmail account. That means you need to do it now!

The post Google wants your phone number – so give it to them first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

fake tech support — Case study of a client who was (almost) scammed Jul 31, 2017
Show notes

Online scams are a huge problem, and it seems like they won’t be going away anytime soon. I recently had a client who almost got scammed and wasn’t even aware of it until I explained what happened.

Laura contacted me about buying one of my refurbished laptops. Her laptop had been running really badly recently so she was considering getting a new one. I answered some questions (we were communicating via Facebook chat) and eventually we were talking about her current laptop and the possibility of getting it repaired rather than replacing it.

I explained to her that diagnosis was free, so it really would make sense to at least explore that option rather than just giving up on it and buying a new one. So a couple of days later she brought it to me.

Whenever someone brings me a computer for repair, I try to ask a lot of questions and get as much information as possible. Sometimes just one question, one little bit of info, can make a huge difference in the outcome of a project. That was very true in this case.

So she brought me the laptop, and the first thing I noticed was that it looked fairly new. Of course, outward appearance is not always an indicator of what kind of condition a computer is in, but it’s often a pretty good sign.

Also, I could tell from my communications with Laura that she is someone who is very attentive to detail – the type of person who is careful, organized, and would take good care of her things.

As part of our conversation, it came up that she had purchased the laptop new about a year ago. That naturally lead to my question, “Is it still under warranty?” Typically the manufacturer’s warranty is one year from the date of purchase.

Her response: “No, I called HP and they said the warranty has expired.”

Whenever someone says they have called and talked to some large online company (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, etc.), my next question is: “How did you get their phone number?”

Laura: “I found it online.”

<alarm bells – warning – alert – Danger, Will Robinson!>

From experience, I know that when someone looks up a “tech support” number online, the number they find is most likely NOT going to be a phone number for the actual computer manufacturer’s tech support department. Of course, when they call that number, the answer will be something like “HP Tech Support” or “Microsoft Tech Support” or something similar, so there would be no reason to suspect anything. But on the other end of that line is a scammer ready to steal your money.

I asked Laura for more details about what the “HP” representative told her. She explained that he was sorry to inform her that the warranty had expired, but that she could purchase an extended warranty. Laura didn’t recall how much the new “warranty” would cost, but typically these things sell for $200 – $300. Fortunately, she did not purchase from the scammer, but contacted me instead to talk about getting a new computer.

I explained to Laura that she was most likely NOT talking to an actual HP representative. She was pretty surprised to find out that she had probably been talking to a scammer. These criminals are really getting pretty good at fooling people into thinking they’re legitimate, and in many cases they are successful. Just not this time.

At this point I couldn’t be 100% certain until I did some more research. So I told her I would check into it, as well as diagnose the laptop’s problems, and get back to her.

My next 3 steps:

Back up her important data. The computer was not working properly, and there was critical data on it, and she had no backup. So the first priority in any case like this is to make sure whatever data is still accessible gets saved to a separate drive. I was able to save all of her important stuff.

Check the hard drive health. My diagnostic testing came back with the result that the hard drive was failing. This is also known as a hard drive crash. This would explain all of the problems the computer was having when Laura was trying to use it.

Check on the warranty situation with HP (the REAL company this time).

Turns out Laura’s laptop was actually still under warranty. And how much time was left on the warranty? TWO DAYS. No time to waste.

I contacted Laura immediately (this was still the same day she dropped it off) and told her what I had found out. She came back right away and picked up the laptop as well as the portable drive that was now safely storing her Documents, Pictures, etc.

I heard from her later that day. She had called the actual HP phone number (which I gave to her) and they confirmed that the laptop was under warranty. They will be sending her a shipping box to pack up her laptop for shipment to HP, for them to repair at no cost to Laura whatsoever. What I expect they will do is replace the hard drive with a new one and send it back to her with a fresh installation of Windows 10 (same as it was when she first got it).

What can we learn from this? Three things:

First: Don’t Google for tech support phone numbers. The scammers know that many thousands of people, every day, are searching on Google for a tech support phone number. So they create websites to match those searches. Those websites can have very convincing content, even including the actual logos of the large computer companies, to make you think you are genuinely talking with someone from that company. Don’t fall for it.

Second: When hiring a tech, make sure it’s someone you can trust. I hate to say it, but there are some techs that run their business without integrity. In a case like this, the client is usually expecting to pay a few hundred dollars for the data backup and hard drive replacement, so the less-than-honest techs will just do the repair and get paid for it. Especially when the client already “knows” the warranty has expired. Find a tech who you know will do the right thing.

Third: Back up your important files. I say this repeatedly and without apology. Laura’s hard drive was failing gradually, which allowed us to grab the data before it completely died. Some hard drives don’t give you that luxury – they just crash without warning. Setting up a mostly automated backup is not expensive, and I can do it for you remotely. If you have stuff on your computer that you would not want to lose, get this done. No excuses!

The post Case study of a client who was (almost) scammed first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

alarm bells — Case study of a client who was (almost) scammed Jul 31, 2017
Show notes

Online scams are a huge problem, and it seems like they won’t be going away anytime soon. I recently had a client who almost got scammed and wasn’t even aware of it until I explained what happened.

Laura contacted me about buying one of my refurbished laptops. Her laptop had been running really badly recently so she was considering getting a new one. I answered some questions (we were communicating via Facebook chat) and eventually we were talking about her current laptop and the possibility of getting it repaired rather than replacing it.

I explained to her that diagnosis was free, so it really would make sense to at least explore that option rather than just giving up on it and buying a new one. So a couple of days later she brought it to me.

Whenever someone brings me a computer for repair, I try to ask a lot of questions and get as much information as possible. Sometimes just one question, one little bit of info, can make a huge difference in the outcome of a project. That was very true in this case.

So she brought me the laptop, and the first thing I noticed was that it looked fairly new. Of course, outward appearance is not always an indicator of what kind of condition a computer is in, but it’s often a pretty good sign.

Also, I could tell from my communications with Laura that she is someone who is very attentive to detail – the type of person who is careful, organized, and would take good care of her things.

As part of our conversation, it came up that she had purchased the laptop new about a year ago. That naturally lead to my question, “Is it still under warranty?” Typically the manufacturer’s warranty is one year from the date of purchase.

Her response: “No, I called HP and they said the warranty has expired.”

Whenever someone says they have called and talked to some large online company (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, etc.), my next question is: “How did you get their phone number?”

Laura: “I found it online.”

<alarm bells – warning – alert – Danger, Will Robinson!>

From experience, I know that when someone looks up a “tech support” number online, the number they find is most likely NOT going to be a phone number for the actual computer manufacturer’s tech support department. Of course, when they call that number, the answer will be something like “HP Tech Support” or “Microsoft Tech Support” or something similar, so there would be no reason to suspect anything. But on the other end of that line is a scammer ready to steal your money.

I asked Laura for more details about what the “HP” representative told her. She explained that he was sorry to inform her that the warranty had expired, but that she could purchase an extended warranty. Laura didn’t recall how much the new “warranty” would cost, but typically these things sell for $200 – $300. Fortunately, she did not purchase from the scammer, but contacted me instead to talk about getting a new computer.

I explained to Laura that she was most likely NOT talking to an actual HP representative. She was pretty surprised to find out that she had probably been talking to a scammer. These criminals are really getting pretty good at fooling people into thinking they’re legitimate, and in many cases they are successful. Just not this time.

At this point I couldn’t be 100% certain until I did some more research. So I told her I would check into it, as well as diagnose the laptop’s problems, and get back to her.

My next 3 steps:

Back up her important data. The computer was not working properly, and there was critical data on it, and she had no backup. So the first priority in any case like this is to make sure whatever data is still accessible gets saved to a separate drive. I was able to save all of her important stuff.

Check the hard drive health. My diagnostic testing came back with the result that the hard drive was failing. This is also known as a hard drive crash. This would explain all of the problems the computer was having when Laura was trying to use it.

Check on the warranty situation with HP (the REAL company this time).

Turns out Laura’s laptop was actually still under warranty. And how much time was left on the warranty? TWO DAYS. No time to waste.

I contacted Laura immediately (this was still the same day she dropped it off) and told her what I had found out. She came back right away and picked up the laptop as well as the portable drive that was now safely storing her Documents, Pictures, etc.

I heard from her later that day. She had called the actual HP phone number (which I gave to her) and they confirmed that the laptop was under warranty. They will be sending her a shipping box to pack up her laptop for shipment to HP, for them to repair at no cost to Laura whatsoever. What I expect they will do is replace the hard drive with a new one and send it back to her with a fresh installation of Windows 10 (same as it was when she first got it).

What can we learn from this? Three things:

First: Don’t Google for tech support phone numbers. The scammers know that many thousands of people, every day, are searching on Google for a tech support phone number. So they create websites to match those searches. Those websites can have very convincing content, even including the actual logos of the large computer companies, to make you think you are genuinely talking with someone from that company. Don’t fall for it.

Second: When hiring a tech, make sure it’s someone you can trust. I hate to say it, but there are some techs that run their business without integrity. In a case like this, the client is usually expecting to pay a few hundred dollars for the data backup and hard drive replacement, so the less-than-honest techs will just do the repair and get paid for it. Especially when the client already “knows” the warranty has expired. Find a tech who you know will do the right thing.

Third: Back up your important files. I say this repeatedly and without apology. Laura’s hard drive was failing gradually, which allowed us to grab the data before it completely died. Some hard drives don’t give you that luxury – they just crash without warning. Setting up a mostly automated backup is not expensive, and I can do it for you remotely. If you have stuff on your computer that you would not want to lose, get this done. No excuses!

The post Case study of a client who was (almost) scammed first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

email time zones — Why do my incoming emails show the wrong time? Jul 24, 2017
Show notes

Had this come up with a client recently. His email inbox was constantly showing the wrong time for incoming emails. He could receive an email at 2 pm, and yet when he looked at that email, it would show that it arrived at 9 pm. In fact, he demonstrated the problem while he was here at my home office. I sent him an email, it showed up in his inbox, but the “arrival time” displayed was several hours into the future.

He had been dealing with this mystery for quite some time before telling me about it. Of course, the first thing he checked was the date and time for the computer itself. Those were correct.

The problem was that his time/date was incorrect inside his email settings.

This applies to any of the Microsoft-related email services: MSN, Hotmail, and Outlook.com (note: Outlook.com is Microsoft’s web-based email service – not the MS Outlook software that comes with Office).

For each of these services, there’s a setting that allows you to designate a particular time zone that you want to use just for email purposes. This is a separate setting from the traditional time zone setting in Windows.

Here’s how you change that time zone setting in a Microsoft web-based email account:

1. Sign in to your MSN, Hotmail, or Outlook.com email account. (These screenshots are from my Outlook.com account. I don’t have an MSN or Hotmail account, but the process should be pretty similar since these are all Microsoft services.) Click on the gear icon in the top right:

2. In the drop down menu, choose “Options”

3. In the window that opens, look over on the left side and click on “General”, then click “Region and time zone”:

4. Now you’ll see a screen where you have a drop-down menu to choose your correct time zone. Once you’ve done that, click Save:

Now you can click on “Options” in the top left and you’ll go back to your email Inbox, ready to work.

Here’s a question for you – why would you want to change the time zone in your email program, but not for your computer in general? Leave a comment below with your opinion.

The post Why do my incoming emails show the wrong time? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Microsoft email services — Why do my incoming emails show the wrong time? Jul 24, 2017
Show notes

Had this come up with a client recently. His email inbox was constantly showing the wrong time for incoming emails. He could receive an email at 2 pm, and yet when he looked at that email, it would show that it arrived at 9 pm. In fact, he demonstrated the problem while he was here at my home office. I sent him an email, it showed up in his inbox, but the “arrival time” displayed was several hours into the future.

He had been dealing with this mystery for quite some time before telling me about it. Of course, the first thing he checked was the date and time for the computer itself. Those were correct.

The problem was that his time/date was incorrect inside his email settings.

This applies to any of the Microsoft-related email services: MSN, Hotmail, and Outlook.com (note: Outlook.com is Microsoft’s web-based email service – not the MS Outlook software that comes with Office).

For each of these services, there’s a setting that allows you to designate a particular time zone that you want to use just for email purposes. This is a separate setting from the traditional time zone setting in Windows.

Here’s how you change that time zone setting in a Microsoft web-based email account:

1. Sign in to your MSN, Hotmail, or Outlook.com email account. (These screenshots are from my Outlook.com account. I don’t have an MSN or Hotmail account, but the process should be pretty similar since these are all Microsoft services.) Click on the gear icon in the top right:

2. In the drop down menu, choose “Options”

3. In the window that opens, look over on the left side and click on “General”, then click “Region and time zone”:

4. Now you’ll see a screen where you have a drop-down menu to choose your correct time zone. Once you’ve done that, click Save:

Now you can click on “Options” in the top left and you’ll go back to your email Inbox, ready to work.

Here’s a question for you – why would you want to change the time zone in your email program, but not for your computer in general? Leave a comment below with your opinion.

The post Why do my incoming emails show the wrong time? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Facebook fakes — Finding and destroying Facebook hoaxes Jul 17, 2017
Show notes

Recently, Facebook has been overrun with all kinds of warnings about hackers and viruses. I’ve gotten numerous direct Facebook messages from friends, alerting me of these problems and encouraging me to forward the same message to all of my contacts. I won’t be doing that.

Here are a couple that I’ve received recently –

This reminds me of the old days when people would get these “alerts” by email, with the instructions to forward them to everyone in their email contact list. And believe it or not, this stuff still actually remains in email circulation, even though it seems to have died down some. But I might have a skewed perception of this, since whenever I get one I immediately reply with the request to never send me those things.

In addition to Anwar Jitou and Jayden K. Smith, other names that you might see in these warning messages are Tanner Dwyer, Christopher Butterfield, Stefania Colac, Alejando Spiljner and Bobby Roberts.

What you might notice is that all of these messages contain 3 common elements:

A big warning

Potential disastrous consequences

Instructions to share/forward to everyone you know

Oh, and they have one other thing in common: THEY ARE ALL HOAXES.

None of these things have any shred of truth or reality. You can’t get “hacked” by accepting a friend request. You can’t get “hacked” by one of your friends accepting a friend request from a hacker.

Here’s another one that’s still making the rounds:

You’ve probably seen some Facebook users copy and paste this as a post to “protect” their online pictures. Complete hogwash.

Maybe you’ve seen this one, where Facebook is now charging fees to users in order to retain privacy:

I repeat: THESE ARE ALL FALSE.

So what should you do if you get a message like this?

Do not forward it, like it, love it or share it. Do not copy and paste it as a post. Do not send it as a message to any of your friends. Just delete it.

If you want, you can send a message to the person that posted it and link to this blog post. Then at least they will know that what they are sending out is 100% false. People do this with good intentions, so most would probably not post this stuff if they already knew it was completely made up. They just don’t know.

“But Scott, what if I get one that is actually true?”

You won’t. But if it makes you feel better, just do a Google search on one of those “hacker” names and the word “hoax” and see what comes up.

What you will see are dozens – maybe hundreds – of blog posts and articles and news reports, all telling you that it’s just a stupid hoax. Then you can go back to Facebook and delete it. But you can save some time, because this requires no research. Just delete it.

The post Finding and destroying Facebook hoaxes first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

facebook hoax — Finding and destroying Facebook hoaxes Jul 17, 2017
Show notes

Recently, Facebook has been overrun with all kinds of warnings about hackers and viruses. I’ve gotten numerous direct Facebook messages from friends, alerting me of these problems and encouraging me to forward the same message to all of my contacts. I won’t be doing that.

Here are a couple that I’ve received recently –

This reminds me of the old days when people would get these “alerts” by email, with the instructions to forward them to everyone in their email contact list. And believe it or not, this stuff still actually remains in email circulation, even though it seems to have died down some. But I might have a skewed perception of this, since whenever I get one I immediately reply with the request to never send me those things.

In addition to Anwar Jitou and Jayden K. Smith, other names that you might see in these warning messages are Tanner Dwyer, Christopher Butterfield, Stefania Colac, Alejando Spiljner and Bobby Roberts.

What you might notice is that all of these messages contain 3 common elements:

A big warning

Potential disastrous consequences

Instructions to share/forward to everyone you know

Oh, and they have one other thing in common: THEY ARE ALL HOAXES.

None of these things have any shred of truth or reality. You can’t get “hacked” by accepting a friend request. You can’t get “hacked” by one of your friends accepting a friend request from a hacker.

Here’s another one that’s still making the rounds:

You’ve probably seen some Facebook users copy and paste this as a post to “protect” their online pictures. Complete hogwash.

Maybe you’ve seen this one, where Facebook is now charging fees to users in order to retain privacy:

I repeat: THESE ARE ALL FALSE.

So what should you do if you get a message like this?

Do not forward it, like it, love it or share it. Do not copy and paste it as a post. Do not send it as a message to any of your friends. Just delete it.

If you want, you can send a message to the person that posted it and link to this blog post. Then at least they will know that what they are sending out is 100% false. People do this with good intentions, so most would probably not post this stuff if they already knew it was completely made up. They just don’t know.

“But Scott, what if I get one that is actually true?”

You won’t. But if it makes you feel better, just do a Google search on one of those “hacker” names and the word “hoax” and see what comes up.

What you will see are dozens – maybe hundreds – of blog posts and articles and news reports, all telling you that it’s just a stupid hoax. Then you can go back to Facebook and delete it. But you can save some time, because this requires no research. Just delete it.

The post Finding and destroying Facebook hoaxes first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

customize chrome — How I customize Chrome Jul 10, 2017
Show notes

Chrome is great even if you just leave it alone and use it with the default settings. But I like to customize and “tweak” it a few different ways to make it even better.

Basically what I’m describing here today is the process I go through when I’m setting up Chrome on a client’s computer they’ve just purchased, or on a laptop that I’ll have available for sale.

The following steps involve going in to the Chrome Settings. To get to that area, you need to click the 3 little dots in the top right area of the Chrome window (see below). That will give you a menu, and in that menu you can click on “Settings”.

1. Set Chrome as the default browser. In a new computer, Windows 10 REALLY wants you to use their Edge browser to view websites. So if you don’t change anything, Edge will be the default browser. In Windows 7 or 8, the default is Internet Explorer. We don’t want that; we want Chrome. So go into Settings , scroll down to the “Default browser” section and click on “Make Default”:

For Windows 7 or 8, that’s just about all you have to do. For Windows 10, it will take you to a “Default Programs” page in the Windows settings, and you have to choose Chrome from a list. They’ll pop up a message about how great Edge is to talk you out of it, but you just click on “Switch anyway” and it’s done.

2. Set your home page tabs. When Chrome opens, you can have it open just one tab to whatever website you want (such as just the plain Google search page, or Facebook, or something else). Or, you can have it open a bunch of tabs with a different website in each one. For me, I have about a half-dozen tabs open each time I open Chrome (these are websites I visit regularly).

So the first thing you do is open up whatever websites you want, one in each tab. You just need to get Chrome set with those websites. Then click to the Settings area, and scroll down to the “On Startup” section, and click on “Open a specific page or set of pages”, then click on “Use Current Pages”.

Now close Chrome and open it again, and you’ll see all of your tabs are right there, and they’ll be there like that every time you open Chrome.

3. Set your default search engine to Google, and get rid of the others. Of course, since Chrome is a Google product, the default search should be Google already. So just go to Settings and scroll down to the “Search Engine” section. Make sure Google is the one displayed like this:

Then click on the “Manage Search Engines” arrow and you’ll see a list of the “other” search engines that are available (like below). Click on the 3 dots out at the right side of each one, and choose to remove them one by one (except for Google, of course).

Why Google even includes those other search engines, I don’t know (especially junk like Ask).

4. Set up your ad blocker. I wrote a whole blog post about this recently. The ad blocker I use and recommend is uBlock Origin. If you open Chrome and do a Google search for “ublock origin” it will be the first thing that comes up. Just click it and follow the instructions for installing it as an extension in Chrome. It’s the best thing in the world for blocking ads on almost any website you visit.

For my own computer, the other extension that I definitely install is LastPass. This is the program that stores all of my passwords for me. This means that I can use really long, random passwords – and LastPass actually creates them for me as well. I don’t set up LastPass on the laptops that I sell because you have to have a LastPass account (which is free). But I definitely recommend it.

5. Display the bookmarks toolbar. For websites I check on regularly, I like the convenience of having them right at the top of my Chrome window, ready for me to click at any time. To do that, you have to tell Chrome to display that toolbar all the time. To do that, just hold down Ctrl and Shift, and tap the letter “b” (for bookmarks). You’ll see the toolbar show up right under the address bar in Chrome. And you can drag any website address there you want, and it will always show up there for quick, easy access.

These are the things I do as part of my routine when setting up Chrome. But of course, there are LOTS more ways you can customize it. There are thousands of Chrome extensions that do all kinds of cool things (in fact, I’ll probably do a blog post about the best Chrome extensions at some point – if you have a great one, let me know about it).

The post How I customize Chrome first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Chrome settings — How I customize Chrome Jul 10, 2017
Show notes

Chrome is great even if you just leave it alone and use it with the default settings. But I like to customize and “tweak” it a few different ways to make it even better.

Basically what I’m describing here today is the process I go through when I’m setting up Chrome on a client’s computer they’ve just purchased, or on a laptop that I’ll have available for sale.

The following steps involve going in to the Chrome Settings. To get to that area, you need to click the 3 little dots in the top right area of the Chrome window (see below). That will give you a menu, and in that menu you can click on “Settings”.

1. Set Chrome as the default browser. In a new computer, Windows 10 REALLY wants you to use their Edge browser to view websites. So if you don’t change anything, Edge will be the default browser. In Windows 7 or 8, the default is Internet Explorer. We don’t want that; we want Chrome. So go into Settings , scroll down to the “Default browser” section and click on “Make Default”:

For Windows 7 or 8, that’s just about all you have to do. For Windows 10, it will take you to a “Default Programs” page in the Windows settings, and you have to choose Chrome from a list. They’ll pop up a message about how great Edge is to talk you out of it, but you just click on “Switch anyway” and it’s done.

2. Set your home page tabs. When Chrome opens, you can have it open just one tab to whatever website you want (such as just the plain Google search page, or Facebook, or something else). Or, you can have it open a bunch of tabs with a different website in each one. For me, I have about a half-dozen tabs open each time I open Chrome (these are websites I visit regularly).

So the first thing you do is open up whatever websites you want, one in each tab. You just need to get Chrome set with those websites. Then click to the Settings area, and scroll down to the “On Startup” section, and click on “Open a specific page or set of pages”, then click on “Use Current Pages”.

Now close Chrome and open it again, and you’ll see all of your tabs are right there, and they’ll be there like that every time you open Chrome.

3. Set your default search engine to Google, and get rid of the others. Of course, since Chrome is a Google product, the default search should be Google already. So just go to Settings and scroll down to the “Search Engine” section. Make sure Google is the one displayed like this:

Then click on the “Manage Search Engines” arrow and you’ll see a list of the “other” search engines that are available (like below). Click on the 3 dots out at the right side of each one, and choose to remove them one by one (except for Google, of course).

Why Google even includes those other search engines, I don’t know (especially junk like Ask).

4. Set up your ad blocker. I wrote a whole blog post about this recently. The ad blocker I use and recommend is uBlock Origin. If you open Chrome and do a Google search for “ublock origin” it will be the first thing that comes up. Just click it and follow the instructions for installing it as an extension in Chrome. It’s the best thing in the world for blocking ads on almost any website you visit.

For my own computer, the other extension that I definitely install is LastPass. This is the program that stores all of my passwords for me. This means that I can use really long, random passwords – and LastPass actually creates them for me as well. I don’t set up LastPass on the laptops that I sell because you have to have a LastPass account (which is free). But I definitely recommend it.

5. Display the bookmarks toolbar. For websites I check on regularly, I like the convenience of having them right at the top of my Chrome window, ready for me to click at any time. To do that, you have to tell Chrome to display that toolbar all the time. To do that, just hold down Ctrl and Shift, and tap the letter “b” (for bookmarks). You’ll see the toolbar show up right under the address bar in Chrome. And you can drag any website address there you want, and it will always show up there for quick, easy access.

These are the things I do as part of my routine when setting up Chrome. But of course, there are LOTS more ways you can customize it. There are thousands of Chrome extensions that do all kinds of cool things (in fact, I’ll probably do a blog post about the best Chrome extensions at some point – if you have a great one, let me know about it).

The post How I customize Chrome first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

MS office — MS Office not working properly? Here’s a quick fix Jul 03, 2017
Show notes

Microsoft Office is a group of programs, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and others. Most of the time these programs work fine, but occasionally they can misbehave. What a lot of people don’t know is that there’s a quick fix you should try before you call your computer tech for a repair.

The programs in Microsoft Office are large and complex. Most people, including myself, use just a very few features out of all that are available. I might use MS Word to write a letter to the Safety Harbor city commission, or document a recipe, or print the customer intake sheet that I fill out when someone brings me a computer to repair. Nothing fancy.

But there’s a lot going on behind the scenes with any of the Office programs – and that means there’s also a lot that can go wrong.

Maybe Outlook decides it won’t send a new email you just created. Or your new PowerPoint presentation won’t run when you tell it to. Or a formula isn’t working right in an Excel spreadsheet.

What do you do when that happens? For a lot of people, that’s when I get a phone call. Usually I can remote in and figure out what’s going on and get it fixed.

But before you spend money on a software repair, there’s something you can try on your own. It’s very simple, and in a surprising number of cases, it takes care of the problem very quickly (and no, I’m not talking about restarting the computer – although it can’t hurt to try that too).

Microsoft Office has a built-in “self repair” function that most people have never tried. So when an Office program starts acting up, do this:

1. Go to Control Panel, to the “Programs and Features” section. In Windows 10 you can just click Search and type “uninstall” and click on that item in the menu that comes up.

2. In the list of programs, find Microsoft Office:

3. Do a right-click on Office, and in the little menu, choose “Change”:

4. Now a new window opens, giving you the option for a Quick Repair or an Online Repair. I usually try the Quick Repair first and see if it does the trick. If the problem persists, go back through this same process and choose Online Repair. Click the Repair button.

5. You’ll get another window reminding you that you can’t use the program while it’s being repaired. So click “Repair” again:

6. If you have any Office programs open at the time, you’ll get the notice that they need to be closed:

7. You’ll get a little progress window that you can watch for the brief time that it takes to run. When I ran this it took less than 30 seconds to finish. Your mileage may vary.

8. And before you have time to get bored, it’s done:

That’s how easy this is. These screenshot images are from my own computer which is running Office365, but the process is very similar even for earlier versions of Office.

The post MS Office not working properly? Here’s a quick fix first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

MS Office — MS Office not working properly? Here’s a quick fix Jul 03, 2017
Show notes

Microsoft Office is a group of programs, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and others. Most of the time these programs work fine, but occasionally they can misbehave. What a lot of people don’t know is that there’s a quick fix you should try before you call your computer tech for a repair.

The programs in Microsoft Office are large and complex. Most people, including myself, use just a very few features out of all that are available. I might use MS Word to write a letter to the Safety Harbor city commission, or document a recipe, or print the customer intake sheet that I fill out when someone brings me a computer to repair. Nothing fancy.

But there’s a lot going on behind the scenes with any of the Office programs – and that means there’s also a lot that can go wrong.

Maybe Outlook decides it won’t send a new email you just created. Or your new PowerPoint presentation won’t run when you tell it to. Or a formula isn’t working right in an Excel spreadsheet.

What do you do when that happens? For a lot of people, that’s when I get a phone call. Usually I can remote in and figure out what’s going on and get it fixed.

But before you spend money on a software repair, there’s something you can try on your own. It’s very simple, and in a surprising number of cases, it takes care of the problem very quickly (and no, I’m not talking about restarting the computer – although it can’t hurt to try that too).

Microsoft Office has a built-in “self repair” function that most people have never tried. So when an Office program starts acting up, do this:

1. Go to Control Panel, to the “Programs and Features” section. In Windows 10 you can just click Search and type “uninstall” and click on that item in the menu that comes up.

2. In the list of programs, find Microsoft Office:

3. Do a right-click on Office, and in the little menu, choose “Change”:

4. Now a new window opens, giving you the option for a Quick Repair or an Online Repair. I usually try the Quick Repair first and see if it does the trick. If the problem persists, go back through this same process and choose Online Repair. Click the Repair button.

5. You’ll get another window reminding you that you can’t use the program while it’s being repaired. So click “Repair” again:

6. If you have any Office programs open at the time, you’ll get the notice that they need to be closed:

7. You’ll get a little progress window that you can watch for the brief time that it takes to run. When I ran this it took less than 30 seconds to finish. Your mileage may vary.

8. And before you have time to get bored, it’s done:

That’s how easy this is. These screenshot images are from my own computer which is running Office365, but the process is very similar even for earlier versions of Office.

The post MS Office not working properly? Here’s a quick fix first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

listen to my podcast in iTunes — Is it time for you to upgrade to Windows 10? Jun 26, 2017
Show notes

Windows 10 has been out for almost 2 years now. If you’re still running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, is it time for you to upgrade? Maybe.

A little background first. If you’ve been reading this blog or listening to my podcast for the past couple of years or longer, you know that I did not take kindly to Microsoft’s rollout of Windows 10 back in the summer of 2015. They were forcing the “free upgrade” on Windows 7 or 8 users, even if people specifically opted to NOT take it. And many of those that ended up with Windows 10 had all kinds of problems with it. It was a nightmare, and Microsoft lost a lot of credibility with their users because of it. During that first year, I voiced my disgust with Microsoft and Windows 10 loudly and often to my readers and listeners.

As a result, many of those that follow me online are still using Windows 7. And I still get the question sometimes, “Should I upgrade to Windows 10 now? Is it safe?”. This is especially compounded by the fact that my OWN computer now is running Windows 10. But that came about rather unexpectedly. My previous computer died and its replacement happened to be running Windows 10. I didn’t intentionally just do the upgrade.

Should you upgrade now?

If you’re using Windows 7 – you probably don’t need to yet – but there are some disclaimers. Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with Windows 7. It works great. So if your computer is working okay (and the hard drive has been tested and is not showing signs of failure), you can stick with Windows 7 for now. But keep in mind, sometime in the next couple of years, you’ll need to start thinking about either upgrading your computer to Windows 10, or replacing that computer (and the new computer would have Windows 10).

Windows 7 will be supported until January 2020, but you DON’T want to wait until December 2019 to start thinking about this. There’s no big hurry at the moment, but get it done before the rush.

If you’re using Windows 8.1 – you probably should upgrade – but there are some disclaimers here too. This is not because Windows 10 is so great, but rather because Windows 8 or 8.1 is just so awful. It was a goof-up by Microsoft. They screwed up the whole Start button and Start menu, making Windows confusing and difficult to navigate. Of course, if you’re used to using it and it’s no big deal, then don’t worry about upgrading right away. But in my opinion, Windows 10 is working well enough that you would probably like it better than the crummy design of Windows 8.1.

Windows 8.1 will be supported until January 2023 so you’ve got lots of time to make that decision. But for me, I’d much rather be using Windows 10.

And, it’s not like the upgrade is perfect either. Windows 10 still has issues, and not all of them are just bugs in the software – some are built right in to the operating system intentionally by Microsoft. Some of the things I don’t like:

Telemetry – this is the big set of “features” that most people consider an invasion of privacy. It’s actually listening for you to do a voice search, it tracks all kinds of stuff about what you do, and it sends all that information back to Microsoft. Not cool. When I’m setting up a new Windows 10 computer, I disable all of those “features”.

The junk in the Start Menu – When you click the Windows 10 Start button, the menu is filled with junk like Candy Crush, XBox games, ads to buy MS Office, movies, TV, Minecraft, and lots of other stuff. Just lots of visual noise. I delete most of that junk.

System Restore off – this makes no sense, but in many computers I’ve found that System Restore is turned OFF by default. System Restore is a great tool to use in solving problems, but it has to be turned on before the problem occurs in order to be useful.

Cortana and the talking installation – Cortana is the “artificial intelligence” component that allows you to “speak” with your computer. When Windows 10 is first installed on a computer, the Cortana icon (a circle) is bouncing up and down on the screen, offering to help you search and whatever else you need to do on the computer. Personally, I find it really annoying. It reminds me of the old Microsoft Office mascot “Clippy” (the annoying paper clip that was always bouncing up and down and offering to help you write a letter).

Changing default programs – this is just Microsoft being Microsoft again. 99% of computer users, when clicking a PDF file, expect it to open in Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is the worldwide standard for opening and viewing PDF files. But in Microsoft’s twisted logic, the user would rather have a PDF file open by default in their crappy web browser, Edge. Why? It makes no sense other than to annoy people. And if you do change the default PDF program to Adobe Reader, at some point in the future, Microsoft will change it back to opening in Edge. It’s infuriating. But there’s third-party software that will fix this as well. I’ll probably do a blog post about that at some point.

No more photo Preview option – you used to be able to right-click on an image file and get the option to “Preview”. This was great if you just wanted to take a quick look to see what the photo was, rather than actually opening it in a program like Photoshop or something. Well, apparently that was just too useful and practical, because Microsoft eliminated that in Windows 10. But I have a way to get that back also (it’s a registry edit so you probably don’t want to experiment with this yourself).

That might seem like a lot of bad features, but in reality most can be reconfigured and avoided, either with a third-party program or by a setting in Windows 10 itself. And these things are nothing compared to the problems I saw when Windows 10 was first introduced – printers stopped working, peripheral items like keyboards, mice and optical drives weren’t compatible, etc. Those things are pretty much taken care of now, unless your printer is really old. You can check your printer’s manufacturer website to make sure it will work with Windows 10.

So the bottom line is this: If you’re using Windows 7 and everything is working fine, you don’t need to upgrade to Windows 10 – yet. If you’re using Windows 8.1, you can upgrade to get a version of Windows that’s easier to use. And if you buy a new PC now, it’s going to come with Windows 10 anyway (including some of those bad “features” I listed), but it can be customized and it’s a lot better than it used to be.

The post Is it time for you to upgrade to Windows 10? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

traffickam — Smartphone app that could literally save someone’s life Jun 19, 2017
Show notes

Now that most people have smart phones, and we all have a high-resolution camera with us at all times, there are new ways to use them popping up all the time. What we’re talking about today is a great example of that. Who would have thought that your cell phone could actually save someone’s life – but it’s true.

What we’re talking about here is human trafficking. This is something that’s easy to not really think about much because most of us don’t see it happening. But it is definitely happening, and most likely it’s going on right there wherever you live.

Some numbers:

Up to 300,000 Americans under 18 are lured into the commercial sex trade every year.

Human trafficking is a $32 BILLION-a-year industry. The only bigger industry in the world is drug trafficking.

Sex trafficking is in all 50 states.

75% of underage sex trafficking victims said they had been advertised or sold online.

The most common venue where traffickers exploit their victims: hotels.

It’s easy for law enforcement to go undercover and find the online and underground forums and websites where these kids are being advertised. They can see pictures of the child. And they can also see the hotel room where the pictures were taken. But that’s not enough – what’s needed is a database of pictures of hotel rooms all around the country (or world).

That’s where you come in. This is a good example of crowdsourcing.

Millions of people are traveling and staying in hotel rooms every day. What if everyone just snapped a few pictures of their hotel room, then uploaded those pictures to a common location? Then, when cops see a child being advertised, they can use their computers to compare that picture with the database of pictures already stored, and possibly find out exactly where that child is.

This is now happening! It’s been made possible through a smartphone app called Traffickcam. The website is https://traffickcam.com/ but you can get the app directly from the Google Play Store or the Apple Store. It’s free of course.

Once you have the app on your phone, you use it to take a few pictures of your room every time you stay in a hotel. Those pictures are automatically uploaded to the database, so that authorities can use it to find these young people being trafficked.

When I first heard about this, I was questioning in my mind whether it could actually be useful. I mean, my work doesn’t usually require me to do overnight travel so I’m usually in my own bed here in Safety Harbor each night. But I have been in a bunch of hotels, and in my mind the rooms all kind of look the same. You know – you walk in, bathroom is immediately to your right or left, then the closet, then the room with the bed, and the window on the far wall with the AC/heater unit under it. How would you differentiate among tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of rooms?

But they are different. Especially when you take 4 pictures of each room, including different angles of the main room, and the bathroom. There are lots of points of comparison that a computer program can run through very quickly, and hopefully come up with a match that can lead cops to where the trafficking picture was taken.

Currently, the Traffickcam database has 157,616 hotels in its database, and there are over 1.6 million photos. And it’s still relatively new – it was only introduced a year ago. There are about 85,000 iPhone users, and 35,000 Android users. That’s such a small percentage of smartphone users – which means there’s a whole lot more potential for this to be really effective! So get the app on your phone, and then tell your friends and family to use it as well, whenever they travel.

And don’t waste your pictures – if your hotel room pictures include any people, they’ll be rejected for use in the database.

The post Smartphone app that could literally save someone’s life first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Traffickcam — Smartphone app that could literally save someone’s life Jun 19, 2017
Show notes

Now that most people have smart phones, and we all have a high-resolution camera with us at all times, there are new ways to use them popping up all the time. What we’re talking about today is a great example of that. Who would have thought that your cell phone could actually save someone’s life – but it’s true.

What we’re talking about here is human trafficking. This is something that’s easy to not really think about much because most of us don’t see it happening. But it is definitely happening, and most likely it’s going on right there wherever you live.

Some numbers:

Up to 300,000 Americans under 18 are lured into the commercial sex trade every year.

Human trafficking is a $32 BILLION-a-year industry. The only bigger industry in the world is drug trafficking.

Sex trafficking is in all 50 states.

75% of underage sex trafficking victims said they had been advertised or sold online.

The most common venue where traffickers exploit their victims: hotels.

It’s easy for law enforcement to go undercover and find the online and underground forums and websites where these kids are being advertised. They can see pictures of the child. And they can also see the hotel room where the pictures were taken. But that’s not enough – what’s needed is a database of pictures of hotel rooms all around the country (or world).

That’s where you come in. This is a good example of crowdsourcing.

Millions of people are traveling and staying in hotel rooms every day. What if everyone just snapped a few pictures of their hotel room, then uploaded those pictures to a common location? Then, when cops see a child being advertised, they can use their computers to compare that picture with the database of pictures already stored, and possibly find out exactly where that child is.

This is now happening! It’s been made possible through a smartphone app called Traffickcam. The website is https://traffickcam.com/ but you can get the app directly from the Google Play Store or the Apple Store. It’s free of course.

Once you have the app on your phone, you use it to take a few pictures of your room every time you stay in a hotel. Those pictures are automatically uploaded to the database, so that authorities can use it to find these young people being trafficked.

When I first heard about this, I was questioning in my mind whether it could actually be useful. I mean, my work doesn’t usually require me to do overnight travel so I’m usually in my own bed here in Safety Harbor each night. But I have been in a bunch of hotels, and in my mind the rooms all kind of look the same. You know – you walk in, bathroom is immediately to your right or left, then the closet, then the room with the bed, and the window on the far wall with the AC/heater unit under it. How would you differentiate among tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of rooms?

But they are different. Especially when you take 4 pictures of each room, including different angles of the main room, and the bathroom. There are lots of points of comparison that a computer program can run through very quickly, and hopefully come up with a match that can lead cops to where the trafficking picture was taken.

Currently, the Traffickcam database has 157,616 hotels in its database, and there are over 1.6 million photos. And it’s still relatively new – it was only introduced a year ago. There are about 85,000 iPhone users, and 35,000 Android users. That’s such a small percentage of smartphone users – which means there’s a whole lot more potential for this to be really effective! So get the app on your phone, and then tell your friends and family to use it as well, whenever they travel.

And don’t waste your pictures – if your hotel room pictures include any people, they’ll be rejected for use in the database.

The post Smartphone app that could literally save someone’s life first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Netreset — New device to speed up your internet consistently Jun 12, 2017
Show notes

Think about when your internet connection isn’t working properly. Maybe you’re getting a “Page cannot be found” error, or your computer can’t find the wifi signal, or perhaps websites are just loading reeeaaallly slowly. If you call your internet provider, what’s the first thing they’ll tell you to do? Restart your modem and router. But even better than that – have your modem and router restarted automatically for you, every single day.

Sometimes my clients will call me when their internet is not doing what it’s supposed to do. Here in Safety Harbor, we have a few good options for high-speed internet, so we can get kind of spoiled with that super fast connection so when it slows down or something goes wrong, I get a phone call.

My advice for this is the same thing the actual internet service would say – restart the modem and/or router. In many cases, that solves the problem and the connection is nice and fast again.

So it makes sense to restart your modem and router every day – proactively – to just avoid having to do it when the speed or the connection drops. But who wants to do that manually? Modems and routers aren’t always located in the most convenient places. In some cases, you have to get on the floor or behind a desk just to access it. Then you’ll have to unplug it, wait a while, and plug it back in. Pain in the butt! And even if you do have easy access, you won’t do it every day. And that’s the whole point – the daily reset is the key to getting the benefit from this.

No worries! Now you can have it happen automatically for you. You don’t have to unplug and re-plug. You don’t even have to remember it!

All of this is done through a little device that just plugs into your wall outlet. It’s called a NetReset and you can get it at Amazon here: http://amzn.to/2rWqAjn

It’s pretty simple. This is what the front looks like:

And this is the back:

This is the NetReset plugged into the wall, and of course Lilly (one of my two Yorkies) has to inspect it:

Using this thing is really simple. You plug it into the wall, and then you plug your modem in one side, and your router in the other side. I use this here in my office in Safety Harbor every day. In my case, my modem and router are all in one unit, so I only need to use one of the outlets.

Then there’s the little display at the top with the small white buttons. You use the “Clock” button and then Hours/Minutes to set the current time. You use the “Prog” button and then Hours/Minutes to set the time of day you want your modem/router to be shut down and then restarted. I set mine for 4 am since no one in our house would be using the internet at that time. Since the internet will be cut off briefly while the reset is happening, you want to make sure it happens at a time that’s convenient. For most people, that’s sometime in the middle of the night.

A daily 4 am reset does cut the internet off but only for a few minutes, so it should have no effect at all on any antivirus updates or Windows Updates. The GOOD effect is that your modem and router will start each day fresh, and ready to deliver all the goodness of the internet to you all day!

When you order yours from Amazon here (http://amzn.to/2rWqAjn) Amazon pays me a small commission, which helps support this blog and my podcast. Of course, I only recommend things I use and approve of personally. If you get one, I’d love to hear what you think of it.

The post New device to speed up your internet consistently first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

NetReset — New device to speed up your internet consistently Jun 12, 2017
Show notes

Think about when your internet connection isn’t working properly. Maybe you’re getting a “Page cannot be found” error, or your computer can’t find the wifi signal, or perhaps websites are just loading reeeaaallly slowly. If you call your internet provider, what’s the first thing they’ll tell you to do? Restart your modem and router. But even better than that – have your modem and router restarted automatically for you, every single day.

Sometimes my clients will call me when their internet is not doing what it’s supposed to do. Here in Safety Harbor, we have a few good options for high-speed internet, so we can get kind of spoiled with that super fast connection so when it slows down or something goes wrong, I get a phone call.

My advice for this is the same thing the actual internet service would say – restart the modem and/or router. In many cases, that solves the problem and the connection is nice and fast again.

So it makes sense to restart your modem and router every day – proactively – to just avoid having to do it when the speed or the connection drops. But who wants to do that manually? Modems and routers aren’t always located in the most convenient places. In some cases, you have to get on the floor or behind a desk just to access it. Then you’ll have to unplug it, wait a while, and plug it back in. Pain in the butt! And even if you do have easy access, you won’t do it every day. And that’s the whole point – the daily reset is the key to getting the benefit from this.

No worries! Now you can have it happen automatically for you. You don’t have to unplug and re-plug. You don’t even have to remember it!

All of this is done through a little device that just plugs into your wall outlet. It’s called a NetReset and you can get it at Amazon here: http://amzn.to/2rWqAjn

It’s pretty simple. This is what the front looks like:

And this is the back:

This is the NetReset plugged into the wall, and of course Lilly (one of my two Yorkies) has to inspect it:

Using this thing is really simple. You plug it into the wall, and then you plug your modem in one side, and your router in the other side. I use this here in my office in Safety Harbor every day. In my case, my modem and router are all in one unit, so I only need to use one of the outlets.

Then there’s the little display at the top with the small white buttons. You use the “Clock” button and then Hours/Minutes to set the current time. You use the “Prog” button and then Hours/Minutes to set the time of day you want your modem/router to be shut down and then restarted. I set mine for 4 am since no one in our house would be using the internet at that time. Since the internet will be cut off briefly while the reset is happening, you want to make sure it happens at a time that’s convenient. For most people, that’s sometime in the middle of the night.

A daily 4 am reset does cut the internet off but only for a few minutes, so it should have no effect at all on any antivirus updates or Windows Updates. The GOOD effect is that your modem and router will start each day fresh, and ready to deliver all the goodness of the internet to you all day!

When you order yours from Amazon here (http://amzn.to/2rWqAjn) Amazon pays me a small commission, which helps support this blog and my podcast. Of course, I only recommend things I use and approve of personally. If you get one, I’d love to hear what you think of it.

The post New device to speed up your internet consistently first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

computer mystery — That window that keeps flashing on the screen every hour – here’s the fix Jun 05, 2017
Show notes

Recently I got some reports from people that something weird was happening on their Windows computer. Every so often a window would appear on the screen and then immediately disappear. It would happen so quickly there was no chance of seeing any words or error message – it would just flash on then disappear. Then I noticed it also happening on my screen. What is this weird thing that’s happening to our computers?

Honestly, when I first heard about it, I kind of assumed it was virus or at least some type of malware. But it was too coincidental that all of these people were having this same issue. And even though I would never say anyone is 100% “immune” to a computer infection, I would be very surprised if I got one because I am so aware of them and my computer is so well-protected.

Turns out, we can thank Microsoft for this one.

This is happening as a function of Microsoft Office. There is a computer task related to Office, called “OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration”. None of us really need to know what this thing does from a technical standpoint, but it’s basic job is to update “relevant Office data”. And it does this every hour pretty consistently, as long as an Office program (such as Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.) is running.

The fact that the window flashes on the screen every time it runs, then disappears immediately, is just a bug in the software. Eventually it will be fixed with a regular Office update.

In the meantime, here’s how to prevent it from happening:

1. Open Task Scheduler. In most cases, to do this you can just click the Microsoft logo in the bottom left corner of the screen, and in the search field type Task Scheduler, then click on it when it shows up in the menu above.

2. In the next window, click the little “greater than” sign next to “Task Scheduler Library”:

3. When you do that, it will expand. Now click the same thing next to “Microsoft”, then click to highlight “Office”. You should now see a window that looks like this:

4. You will see that list in the middle has an entry called “OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration”. Do a right-click on that and choose “Properties”. Now you should see this window:

5. Right in the middle of that window, you see that there’s a button called “Change User or Group”. Click that. In the next window, in the white area, type the word “SYSTEM” and click OK:

6. Then click OK again to close the remaining window, and click the X in the top right corner to close the Task Scheduler window.

That’s it! No more mystery flashing window.

The post That window that keeps flashing on the screen every hour – here’s the fix first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Task Scheduler — That window that keeps flashing on the screen every hour – here’s the fix Jun 05, 2017
Show notes

Recently I got some reports from people that something weird was happening on their Windows computer. Every so often a window would appear on the screen and then immediately disappear. It would happen so quickly there was no chance of seeing any words or error message – it would just flash on then disappear. Then I noticed it also happening on my screen. What is this weird thing that’s happening to our computers?

Honestly, when I first heard about it, I kind of assumed it was virus or at least some type of malware. But it was too coincidental that all of these people were having this same issue. And even though I would never say anyone is 100% “immune” to a computer infection, I would be very surprised if I got one because I am so aware of them and my computer is so well-protected.

Turns out, we can thank Microsoft for this one.

This is happening as a function of Microsoft Office. There is a computer task related to Office, called “OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration”. None of us really need to know what this thing does from a technical standpoint, but it’s basic job is to update “relevant Office data”. And it does this every hour pretty consistently, as long as an Office program (such as Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.) is running.

The fact that the window flashes on the screen every time it runs, then disappears immediately, is just a bug in the software. Eventually it will be fixed with a regular Office update.

In the meantime, here’s how to prevent it from happening:

1. Open Task Scheduler. In most cases, to do this you can just click the Microsoft logo in the bottom left corner of the screen, and in the search field type Task Scheduler, then click on it when it shows up in the menu above.

2. In the next window, click the little “greater than” sign next to “Task Scheduler Library”:

3. When you do that, it will expand. Now click the same thing next to “Microsoft”, then click to highlight “Office”. You should now see a window that looks like this:

4. You will see that list in the middle has an entry called “OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration”. Do a right-click on that and choose “Properties”. Now you should see this window:

5. Right in the middle of that window, you see that there’s a button called “Change User or Group”. Click that. In the next window, in the white area, type the word “SYSTEM” and click OK:

6. Then click OK again to close the remaining window, and click the X in the top right corner to close the Task Scheduler window.

That’s it! No more mystery flashing window.

The post That window that keeps flashing on the screen every hour – here’s the fix first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

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