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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:

CTRL key in MS Word — The magical CTRL key in Microsoft Word Jan 18, 2016
Show notes

Microsoft Word does so much more than any of us can imagine. I could probably create a whole blog just on MS Word tips and tricks. Today, I’ll show you some of the cool things you can do in Word by using the CTRL key in combination with some other keys.

The Control key (usually abbreviated on the keyboard as “Ctrl”) does a lot of things that most people aren’t aware of. If you use these shortcuts, it can definitely save you some time. If you’re using a Mac keyboard, I believe the key you would use for these functions is the Apple key (also known as the Command key or cmd key).

Note: for this list, I did not include the commonly-known Ctrl key functions such as Ctrl+C for copying or Ctrl+P for printing.

Action: [Ctrl] + [k]
Effect: make selected text a clickable link
If you’re writing in word and you have the phrase “my website” in there, you might want to just make that phrase clickable – without having to type out the entire URL. So you can highlight the phrase, then Ctrl + K and in the new window enter your website address in the “Address” field.

Action: [Ctrl] + [m]
Effect: indent the entire paragraph
Put your cursor anywhere in a paragraph and Ctrl + M, and that paragraph alone is indented. In the example below, I did this with the second paragraph:

Action: [Ctrl] + [click]
Effect: select (highlight) a whole sentence
When you need to highlight an entire sentence, this is so much easier than dragging the cursor across every letter. Just hold down Ctrl and click anywhere in a sentence, and the whole sentence is highlighted.

Action: [Ctrl] + [backspace]
Effect: delete the preceding word
Just put the cursor at the end of the word you don’t want (if you just typed that word, you’re already in the right spot). Hold down Ctrl and hit the Backspace key. That word is gone. (Technically, the computer is just deleting from wherever the cursor is back to the first “space” entry. So if your cursor is in the middle of a word at the start, the letters to the right side of the cursor will remain afterward.)

Action: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [>]
Effect: increase font size of selected text
This is another time saver in a specific situation. You have a single sentence and you want to change the font size. First you have to highlight that sentence (Ctrl + click, remember?). The old way would be to go up to the toolbar, click the font size drop-down list, and choose a number. If that doesn’t look right, go through the same thing again. This Ctrl shortcut is much easier – just hold down Ctrl and Shift, and tap the “>” key until it looks big enough.

Action: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [<]
Effect: decrease font size of selected text
Same as above, but if the text gets too big and you need to reduce it you just use the “<” key.

Action: [Ctrl] + [=]
Effect: makes selected text subscript
Useful in certain situations, such as some mathematical equations. In the example below, the second sentence is subscript.

Action: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [=]
Effect: makes selected text superscript
Same as above, but the selected text is superscript. Second sentence below is superscript.

Action: [Ctrl] + [a]
Effect: select the entire contents of a document
This is one I use all the time. If you need to take some action on the entire contents of a document – such as copying to paste it, or changing the font size, or the font itself, etc. this is the best way to do it. Don’t drag your cursor over multiple pages. Just hit Ctrl + A, and the whole document is highlighted.

Action: [Ctrl] + [z]
Effect: undo last action
Everyone makes mistakes. The key is recognizing a mistake quickly enough. Ctrl + Z fixes whatever you just did – it only affects your most recent action. So if you accidentally highlight and delete an entire paragraph, you can immediately Ctrl + Z and get it back. But if you delete the entire paragraph and then do just one other thing (like typing a single letter), this “undo” shortcut won’t help.

The post The magical CTRL key in Microsoft Word first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Control key shortcuts — The magical CTRL key in Microsoft Word Jan 18, 2016
Show notes

Microsoft Word does so much more than any of us can imagine. I could probably create a whole blog just on MS Word tips and tricks. Today, I’ll show you some of the cool things you can do in Word by using the CTRL key in combination with some other keys.

The Control key (usually abbreviated on the keyboard as “Ctrl”) does a lot of things that most people aren’t aware of. If you use these shortcuts, it can definitely save you some time. If you’re using a Mac keyboard, I believe the key you would use for these functions is the Apple key (also known as the Command key or cmd key).

Note: for this list, I did not include the commonly-known Ctrl key functions such as Ctrl+C for copying or Ctrl+P for printing.

Action: [Ctrl] + [k]
Effect: make selected text a clickable link
If you’re writing in word and you have the phrase “my website” in there, you might want to just make that phrase clickable – without having to type out the entire URL. So you can highlight the phrase, then Ctrl + K and in the new window enter your website address in the “Address” field.

Action: [Ctrl] + [m]
Effect: indent the entire paragraph
Put your cursor anywhere in a paragraph and Ctrl + M, and that paragraph alone is indented. In the example below, I did this with the second paragraph:

Action: [Ctrl] + [click]
Effect: select (highlight) a whole sentence
When you need to highlight an entire sentence, this is so much easier than dragging the cursor across every letter. Just hold down Ctrl and click anywhere in a sentence, and the whole sentence is highlighted.

Action: [Ctrl] + [backspace]
Effect: delete the preceding word
Just put the cursor at the end of the word you don’t want (if you just typed that word, you’re already in the right spot). Hold down Ctrl and hit the Backspace key. That word is gone. (Technically, the computer is just deleting from wherever the cursor is back to the first “space” entry. So if your cursor is in the middle of a word at the start, the letters to the right side of the cursor will remain afterward.)

Action: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [>]
Effect: increase font size of selected text
This is another time saver in a specific situation. You have a single sentence and you want to change the font size. First you have to highlight that sentence (Ctrl + click, remember?). The old way would be to go up to the toolbar, click the font size drop-down list, and choose a number. If that doesn’t look right, go through the same thing again. This Ctrl shortcut is much easier – just hold down Ctrl and Shift, and tap the “>” key until it looks big enough.

Action: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [<]
Effect: decrease font size of selected text
Same as above, but if the text gets too big and you need to reduce it you just use the “<” key.

Action: [Ctrl] + [=]
Effect: makes selected text subscript
Useful in certain situations, such as some mathematical equations. In the example below, the second sentence is subscript.

Action: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [=]
Effect: makes selected text superscript
Same as above, but the selected text is superscript. Second sentence below is superscript.

Action: [Ctrl] + [a]
Effect: select the entire contents of a document
This is one I use all the time. If you need to take some action on the entire contents of a document – such as copying to paste it, or changing the font size, or the font itself, etc. this is the best way to do it. Don’t drag your cursor over multiple pages. Just hit Ctrl + A, and the whole document is highlighted.

Action: [Ctrl] + [z]
Effect: undo last action
Everyone makes mistakes. The key is recognizing a mistake quickly enough. Ctrl + Z fixes whatever you just did – it only affects your most recent action. So if you accidentally highlight and delete an entire paragraph, you can immediately Ctrl + Z and get it back. But if you delete the entire paragraph and then do just one other thing (like typing a single letter), this “undo” shortcut won’t help.

The post The magical CTRL key in Microsoft Word first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

microsoft — Microsoft simultaneously issues some good news and some deceit Jan 11, 2016
Show notes

I’m not sure what to think about Microsoft lately. They’re sending good and bad messages. Recently, they issued some really good news about Internet Explorer, but they also made some statements about Windows 7 that seem to be designed to deceive.

The good news:

Internet Explorer, the web browser that we love to hate, will only be supported if you have the most recent version (which is Internet Explorer 11). Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 will no longer be supported – so if your computer still has an old version, you need to update it. You need to do this even if you don’t usually use Internet Explorer.

Why is this good news? Because the older versions are full of security problems and are a constant source of headaches for people that make a living creating websites. Not to mention the risk to the people who actually still use those outdated versions of IE.

To check what version you have, open Internet Explorer and click on the gear-shaped icon in the top right, then click on “About Internet Explorer”. If you see this, you’re good to go:

Note: this change of support goes into effect Tuesday, January 12, 2015 – that’s Patch Tuesday, the day Microsoft sends out all Windows Updates for the month. So you should check this and make any necessary changes right away. Unfortunately, there are lots of people – millions probably – that still use outdated versions of IE and won’t bother to get the update. That’s what keeps computer repair shops in business.

The deceit:

Microsoft is so laser-focused on getting every computer worldwide on Windows 10, they are now starting to look really desperate. And usually desperation means you start to do stupid things, like making statements that are pretty misleading.

In a recent episode of Windows Weekly (podcast), there were some comments made by Chris Capossela, the Marketing Chief of Microsoft. He said that Windows users that continue to use Windows 7, do so “at your own risk, at your own peril“.

He went on to say, “We do worry when people are running an operating system that’s 10 years old that the next printer they buy isn’t going to work very well, or they buy a new game, they buy Fallout 4, a very popular game, and it doesn’t work on a bunch of older machines.”

That is just irresponsible, fearmongering nonsense.

The printer issue: If you were a printer manufacturer, would you build printers that are incompatible with over half of the computers currently in use? Currently, 55% of computers worldwide are running Windows 7. Virtually any printer you buy today (or next year, or the year after) will be compatible with Windows 7. Nothing to worry about.

Here’s the irony in this statement – many people have “upgraded” to Windows 10, only to find out that they can no longer use their printer. That’s because the printer was designed to be compatible with Windows 7. When their printer was built, Windows 10 didn’t exist so there are no Windows 10 drivers for that printer. So if you like your printer and you want to keep using it, better think twice before moving to Windows 10.

The game issue: This statement is just as ridiculous. First, just do a Google search for “Fallout 4 minimum requirements” and you’ll see that the game is compatible with Windows 7, 8 or 10. If a game doesn’t work on a particular computer, it’s not usually because of the version of Windows (and obviously that wouldn’t be an issue with Windows 7 and Fallout 4). The problem is most often hardware-related – meaning there’s not enough video memory, or the processor isn’t fast enough, that kind of thing. Clearly, this guy – a software company executive – knows this already. This really amounts to nothing more than deliberate misinformation.

Oh, and the line about “an operating system that’s 10 years old“? Windows 7 was released to the public in July of 2009. So it’s not yet even 7 years old. Sounds like Mr. Capossela might be better suited for a career in used car sales or politics.

Windows 7 is stable, secure, and will be fully supported through January 14, 2020. I’m not upgrading yet, and I don’t think you should either.

The post Microsoft simultaneously issues some good news and some deceit first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Internet Explorer 11 — Microsoft simultaneously issues some good news and some deceit Jan 11, 2016
Show notes

I’m not sure what to think about Microsoft lately. They’re sending good and bad messages. Recently, they issued some really good news about Internet Explorer, but they also made some statements about Windows 7 that seem to be designed to deceive.

The good news:

Internet Explorer, the web browser that we love to hate, will only be supported if you have the most recent version (which is Internet Explorer 11). Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 will no longer be supported – so if your computer still has an old version, you need to update it. You need to do this even if you don’t usually use Internet Explorer.

Why is this good news? Because the older versions are full of security problems and are a constant source of headaches for people that make a living creating websites. Not to mention the risk to the people who actually still use those outdated versions of IE.

To check what version you have, open Internet Explorer and click on the gear-shaped icon in the top right, then click on “About Internet Explorer”. If you see this, you’re good to go:

Note: this change of support goes into effect Tuesday, January 12, 2015 – that’s Patch Tuesday, the day Microsoft sends out all Windows Updates for the month. So you should check this and make any necessary changes right away. Unfortunately, there are lots of people – millions probably – that still use outdated versions of IE and won’t bother to get the update. That’s what keeps computer repair shops in business.

The deceit:

Microsoft is so laser-focused on getting every computer worldwide on Windows 10, they are now starting to look really desperate. And usually desperation means you start to do stupid things, like making statements that are pretty misleading.

In a recent episode of Windows Weekly (podcast), there were some comments made by Chris Capossela, the Marketing Chief of Microsoft. He said that Windows users that continue to use Windows 7, do so “at your own risk, at your own peril“.

He went on to say, “We do worry when people are running an operating system that’s 10 years old that the next printer they buy isn’t going to work very well, or they buy a new game, they buy Fallout 4, a very popular game, and it doesn’t work on a bunch of older machines.”

That is just irresponsible, fearmongering nonsense.

The printer issue: If you were a printer manufacturer, would you build printers that are incompatible with over half of the computers currently in use? Currently, 55% of computers worldwide are running Windows 7. Virtually any printer you buy today (or next year, or the year after) will be compatible with Windows 7. Nothing to worry about.

Here’s the irony in this statement – many people have “upgraded” to Windows 10, only to find out that they can no longer use their printer. That’s because the printer was designed to be compatible with Windows 7. When their printer was built, Windows 10 didn’t exist so there are no Windows 10 drivers for that printer. So if you like your printer and you want to keep using it, better think twice before moving to Windows 10.

The game issue: This statement is just as ridiculous. First, just do a Google search for “Fallout 4 minimum requirements” and you’ll see that the game is compatible with Windows 7, 8 or 10. If a game doesn’t work on a particular computer, it’s not usually because of the version of Windows (and obviously that wouldn’t be an issue with Windows 7 and Fallout 4). The problem is most often hardware-related – meaning there’s not enough video memory, or the processor isn’t fast enough, that kind of thing. Clearly, this guy – a software company executive – knows this already. This really amounts to nothing more than deliberate misinformation.

Oh, and the line about “an operating system that’s 10 years old“? Windows 7 was released to the public in July of 2009. So it’s not yet even 7 years old. Sounds like Mr. Capossela might be better suited for a career in used car sales or politics.

Windows 7 is stable, secure, and will be fully supported through January 14, 2020. I’m not upgrading yet, and I don’t think you should either.

The post Microsoft simultaneously issues some good news and some deceit first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

change facebook font — How to change your font in a Facebook post Jan 04, 2016
Show notes

Part of the fun of Facebook is seeing something new, or learning to do something you never knew was possible. Unfortunately, most of what is posted on Facebook is just fake junk that gets repeatedly posted because people don’t research or verify; they just click the “Share” button. But what I’m telling you about today is definitely real, and I’ll bet you didn’t know you could do this. Plus, you can verify it works by trying it yourself.

If you use Facebook, you obviously know what a status update looks like. It’s very plain. You can’t make any changes to what the letters look like – all of the billions of posts on Facebook look exactly the same.

Until now.

If you want to make YOUR Facebook update stand out from the crowd, now you can – through a free website called FB Font Changer. You can check it at FBFontChanger.com.

At that website, you just enter your Facebook status content in the field at the top of the page, then hit the “Convert” button. Let’s say for example you want to post on Facebook “Taking my dogs to play at the park”. When you enter that and convert it, you now have these options to choose from, depending on how you want it to display:

As you can see, you get lots of choices. When you see one that you like, you just click the “Copy” button out to the right of that particular line. Then go to Facebook and in the status update box, do a right click and choose “Paste”. There it is!

Obviously this is not something earth-shattering, but not every computer trick has the ability to change the world. Do a few posts with some of these fonts though, and I’ll bet you have some friends that will ask, “Hey, how did you do that?”.

The post How to change your font in a Facebook post first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Facebook font changer — How to change your font in a Facebook post Jan 04, 2016
Show notes

Part of the fun of Facebook is seeing something new, or learning to do something you never knew was possible. Unfortunately, most of what is posted on Facebook is just fake junk that gets repeatedly posted because people don’t research or verify; they just click the “Share” button. But what I’m telling you about today is definitely real, and I’ll bet you didn’t know you could do this. Plus, you can verify it works by trying it yourself.

If you use Facebook, you obviously know what a status update looks like. It’s very plain. You can’t make any changes to what the letters look like – all of the billions of posts on Facebook look exactly the same.

Until now.

If you want to make YOUR Facebook update stand out from the crowd, now you can – through a free website called FB Font Changer. You can check it at FBFontChanger.com.

At that website, you just enter your Facebook status content in the field at the top of the page, then hit the “Convert” button. Let’s say for example you want to post on Facebook “Taking my dogs to play at the park”. When you enter that and convert it, you now have these options to choose from, depending on how you want it to display:

As you can see, you get lots of choices. When you see one that you like, you just click the “Copy” button out to the right of that particular line. Then go to Facebook and in the status update box, do a right click and choose “Paste”. There it is!

Obviously this is not something earth-shattering, but not every computer trick has the ability to change the world. Do a few posts with some of these fonts though, and I’ll bet you have some friends that will ask, “Hey, how did you do that?”.

The post How to change your font in a Facebook post first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Windows Explorer — How to show folder sizes in Windows Dec 28, 2015
Show notes

Some things seem so obvious. But, just about every week (if not every day) some new “research study” comes out with an end result that any reasonable person with half a brain could have come up with. And we the taxpayers are often paying for these ridiculous things! Some important “findings” include “students who do their homework get higher grades” (study), “pigs do love mud” (study), “weight gain is caused by overeating” (study), and “reading is good for your brain” (study). Well, here’s something that I think is obvious: Windows Explorer should display folder size by default. But it doesn’t.

Here’s what I’m talking about. On your Windows computer, click the Start button (the MS orb in the lower left) and choose the Documents folder. For this example, I’m assuming you have some sub-folders inside the Documents folder. Mine looks like the image below (yours may display slightly different if you choose to display Large Icons, Small Icons, etc. I choose to display in the “Details” format).

How am I supposed to know how much data is in each of those folders? Microsoft goes to all the trouble to have that column there titled “Size” and then for any of the folders, it is just left blank – no information! This just does not make any sense. But that’s how it has always been, and Microsoft probably doesn’t have any plans to display that info, regardless of how OBVIOUS it is that it should be shown there.

As is often the case, someone recognized this need and created a solution. The fix is a little program called Folder Size Explorer. It’s free, and you can get it at folder-size-explorer.com.

Folder Size Explorer runs on any recent version of Windows (although I only have it installed on my Windows 7 machine). Just go to the website and click the “Download” tab and you’ll see the link to download the file in .zip format. You can extract the files from the zipped folder and run Setup, and you’ll see that the installation is pretty routine.

Once it’s installed, you should see an icon for it on your desktop, and it’s also in your “All Programs” list in the Start menu. Just click to run it, and see what the difference is when you’re looking at your Documents folder (or any folder). Here’s what information is displayed:

As you can see, for each folder, it shows the total size of the data in that folder. In addition to that, it tells you how many individual files are in that folder, as well as how many subfolders are there. It’s beautifully simple. I really don’t know why Microsoft can’t figure out how to do this in Windows by default.

And that’s it! No fancy bells or whistles, it just does what it’s supposed to do. You probably also noticed on the Download page there’s a link to Donate. The software is free, but I always like to give some money to the developer when I find a program like this that does a great job and doesn’t try to sneak a bunch of other junk into your computer.

The post How to show folder sizes in Windows first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Windows Explorer — How to show folder sizes in Windows Dec 28, 2015
Show notes

Some things seem so obvious. But, just about every week (if not every day) some new “research study” comes out with an end result that any reasonable person with half a brain could have come up with. And we the taxpayers are often paying for these ridiculous things! Some important “findings” include “students who do their homework get higher grades” (study), “pigs do love mud” (study), “weight gain is caused by overeating” (study), and “reading is good for your brain” (study). Well, here’s something that I think is obvious: Windows Explorer should display folder size by default. But it doesn’t.

Here’s what I’m talking about. On your Windows computer, click the Start button (the MS orb in the lower left) and choose the Documents folder. For this example, I’m assuming you have some sub-folders inside the Documents folder. Mine looks like the image below (yours may display slightly different if you choose to display Large Icons, Small Icons, etc. I choose to display in the “Details” format).

How am I supposed to know how much data is in each of those folders? Microsoft goes to all the trouble to have that column there titled “Size” and then for any of the folders, it is just left blank – no information! This just does not make any sense. But that’s how it has always been, and Microsoft probably doesn’t have any plans to display that info, regardless of how OBVIOUS it is that it should be shown there.

As is often the case, someone recognized this need and created a solution. The fix is a little program called Folder Size Explorer. It’s free, and you can get it at folder-size-explorer.com.

Folder Size Explorer runs on any recent version of Windows (although I only have it installed on my Windows 7 machine). Just go to the website and click the “Download” tab and you’ll see the link to download the file in .zip format. You can extract the files from the zipped folder and run Setup, and you’ll see that the installation is pretty routine.

Once it’s installed, you should see an icon for it on your desktop, and it’s also in your “All Programs” list in the Start menu. Just click to run it, and see what the difference is when you’re looking at your Documents folder (or any folder). Here’s what information is displayed:

As you can see, for each folder, it shows the total size of the data in that folder. In addition to that, it tells you how many individual files are in that folder, as well as how many subfolders are there. It’s beautifully simple. I really don’t know why Microsoft can’t figure out how to do this in Windows by default.

And that’s it! No fancy bells or whistles, it just does what it’s supposed to do. You probably also noticed on the Download page there’s a link to Donate. The software is free, but I always like to give some money to the developer when I find a program like this that does a great job and doesn’t try to sneak a bunch of other junk into your computer.

The post How to show folder sizes in Windows first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Facebook filter — Filter out the garbage in Facebook’s news feed Dec 21, 2015
Show notes

I like Facebook. It has a lot of good and useful features. But it also has a lot of stuff I don’t want or need. There are a couple of tools I use to filter out all the garbage in Facebook so I don’t waste time on stuff I’m not interested in.

Anyone that’s on Facebook knows what I’m talking about. These days, you can’t hardly look at the news feed without having to wade through the latest thing that Donald Trump said. Or one of your friends post the results of a quiz that tells them which Disney “Frozen” character they are. Or there’s a “news” story about the Kardashians. All of this is of zero importance to me, but my Facebook news feed is cluttered with it all the time.

Here are the two ways I clean that up (both are free). The first one you might know about.

Tool #1 for Facebook news feed cleanup: Unfollow

I use this liberally. Every time you see someone post something in Facebook, there’s a link in the top right corner of their post. When you click it, you have a few options. It looks like this:

When you click “Unfollow” it just means that whatever that person posts in the future, you won’t see it. Two important factors here:

You will still be Facebook friends with that person.

That person will not know that you unfollowed them.

So it really is the perfect solution, if you have someone you’re friends with but they are constantly posting their high score in Mafia Wars, or their status is always about how great their new Amway business is, you can finally declare yourself free of all of that.

Personally, I am very liberal with the Unfollow option. I might give someone a second chance (based on how annoying they are, and how close our relationship is in real life). But it really doesn’t take a whole lot for me to just Unfollow and filter someone right out of my news feed. Facebook is enough of a time waster already – there’s no point in having to see stuff I don’t want to see.

And I know the question that some people are already thinking – if a person is that annoying on Facebook, why not just unfriend them? Fair enough. For some people, unfriending is an option. In my case, I use Facebook as a marketing tool for my computer services and laptop sales. So even though I might not want to see what someone is posting, I do want them to see what I’m posting. So I keep them as a Facebook friend but unfollow.

Tool #2 for Facebook news feed cleanup: FilterFeed

This one is a browser extension. I just discovered it recently and I like how it works. Unfortunately, it is only available for the Chrome browser so if you use Firefox you’re out of luck (although there are other options for those browsers).

To get this, open Chrome and go here. You can install the extension into Chrome right from that page and it just takes a few seconds.

Once it is installed, go to Facebook. You’ll see up at the top there will be a an icon that looks like a funnel:

Now that you know it’s running, you have to decide – what do you NOT want to see in your Facebook news feed?

A good example at the moment might be Star Wars. Obviously the new movie is about to be released, and of course there are LOTS of conversations about it on Facebook. But you know you won’t be able to see it on opening night, so you definitely don’t want to accidentally read a Facebook post that reveals anything.

So you do a single left click on the Facebook FilterFeed funnel icon, and you type Star Wars and hit Enter.

You can enter lots of words (I don’t know if there is a limit). Just type the word and hit Enter, and you won’t see any posts that contain that word.

Maybe you get tired of all the political arguments. It’s so bad now especially, with the presidential election and all the campaigning and the televised debates. I get really sick of it. For something like that, you could enter all of the relevant names:

One thing you want to be careful about is to not enter a keyword that is too generic. In this case, it was probably a mistake to have just “Hillary” by itself. In politics, it’s obvious who that means but I also have some friends named Hillary and their posts would be blocked also.

And of course, the little “X” you see next to each name means you can remove that word from the filter whenever you want. But that list does look like a nice selection of things to not see any more.

The possible uses for this filter are endless. So whenever you find yourself scrolling past a bunch of junk in Facebook, don’t just stay frustrated – get rid of it for good!

The post Filter out the garbage in Facebook’s news feed first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Facebook filter — Filter out the garbage in Facebook’s news feed Dec 21, 2015
Show notes

I like Facebook. It has a lot of good and useful features. But it also has a lot of stuff I don’t want or need. There are a couple of tools I use to filter out all the garbage in Facebook so I don’t waste time on stuff I’m not interested in.

Anyone that’s on Facebook knows what I’m talking about. These days, you can’t hardly look at the news feed without having to wade through the latest thing that Donald Trump said. Or one of your friends post the results of a quiz that tells them which Disney “Frozen” character they are. Or there’s a “news” story about the Kardashians. All of this is of zero importance to me, but my Facebook news feed is cluttered with it all the time.

Here are the two ways I clean that up (both are free). The first one you might know about.

Tool #1 for Facebook news feed cleanup: Unfollow

I use this liberally. Every time you see someone post something in Facebook, there’s a link in the top right corner of their post. When you click it, you have a few options. It looks like this:

When you click “Unfollow” it just means that whatever that person posts in the future, you won’t see it. Two important factors here:

You will still be Facebook friends with that person.

That person will not know that you unfollowed them.

So it really is the perfect solution, if you have someone you’re friends with but they are constantly posting their high score in Mafia Wars, or their status is always about how great their new Amway business is, you can finally declare yourself free of all of that.

Personally, I am very liberal with the Unfollow option. I might give someone a second chance (based on how annoying they are, and how close our relationship is in real life). But it really doesn’t take a whole lot for me to just Unfollow and filter someone right out of my news feed. Facebook is enough of a time waster already – there’s no point in having to see stuff I don’t want to see.

And I know the question that some people are already thinking – if a person is that annoying on Facebook, why not just unfriend them? Fair enough. For some people, unfriending is an option. In my case, I use Facebook as a marketing tool for my computer services and laptop sales. So even though I might not want to see what someone is posting, I do want them to see what I’m posting. So I keep them as a Facebook friend but unfollow.

Tool #2 for Facebook news feed cleanup: FilterFeed

This one is a browser extension. I just discovered it recently and I like how it works. Unfortunately, it is only available for the Chrome browser so if you use Firefox you’re out of luck (although there are other options for those browsers).

To get this, open Chrome and go here. You can install the extension into Chrome right from that page and it just takes a few seconds.

Once it is installed, go to Facebook. You’ll see up at the top there will be a an icon that looks like a funnel:

Now that you know it’s running, you have to decide – what do you NOT want to see in your Facebook news feed?

A good example at the moment might be Star Wars. Obviously the new movie is about to be released, and of course there are LOTS of conversations about it on Facebook. But you know you won’t be able to see it on opening night, so you definitely don’t want to accidentally read a Facebook post that reveals anything.

So you do a single left click on the Facebook FilterFeed funnel icon, and you type Star Wars and hit Enter.

You can enter lots of words (I don’t know if there is a limit). Just type the word and hit Enter, and you won’t see any posts that contain that word.

Maybe you get tired of all the political arguments. It’s so bad now especially, with the presidential election and all the campaigning and the televised debates. I get really sick of it. For something like that, you could enter all of the relevant names:

One thing you want to be careful about is to not enter a keyword that is too generic. In this case, it was probably a mistake to have just “Hillary” by itself. In politics, it’s obvious who that means but I also have some friends named Hillary and their posts would be blocked also.

And of course, the little “X” you see next to each name means you can remove that word from the filter whenever you want. But that list does look like a nice selection of things to not see any more.

The possible uses for this filter are endless. So whenever you find yourself scrolling past a bunch of junk in Facebook, don’t just stay frustrated – get rid of it for good!

The post Filter out the garbage in Facebook’s news feed first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

charge phone with coffee — Charge your phone with a cup of coffee (someday) Dec 14, 2015
Show notes

I love new technology and I just heard about this recently. It’s not available to the general public yet, but it’s a good possibility that you’ll see this (or something similar) in the future.

This is a project called Heat Harvest. The Copenhagen Institute of Interactive Design gave 12 people a couple of weeks to come up with some ideas on how to save energy and promote a healthier lifestyle. Two of the participants, Sergey Komardenkov and Vihanga Gore (both of whom are much smarter than I am) came up with this idea.

You know when you have a cup of coffee sitting on the table, and you’re chatting or watching the news or checking Facebook or something – what happens to the coffee? Over time, it loses its warmth and will eventually get to room temperature. Hopefully you will have finished drinking it before it gets cold.

The point is this: in terms of physics, heat = energy. So the heat that is lost from your coffee into the air in the room is really just energy that is lost and wasted. So these two people thought, “How can we put this energy into use, instead of wasting it?”.

So they came up with a process that converts the heat from an object (whether it’s your cup of coffee or any other hot dish sitting on the table) into electricity. That electricity is released at a certain point on the same table using a concept called thermal electricity. It’s been around for hundreds of years, but some recent developments have made it possible to be more efficient to actually harvest wasted heat and use it to power up or charge the objects that we use every day.

One of the sponsors for this project is Ikea – you’ve probably heard of them. We have an Ikea store here in the Tampa Bay area, and they do have some pretty cool furniture and household items. There have been times when I wish it came preassembled, but I guess that’s part of the fun. So I guess the most likely place to first see the Heat Harvest in action could be in an Ikea dining room table. Pretty smart!

Here’s a video that explains more about it:

https://youtu.be/JZ3B68rxkf4
The post Charge your phone with a cup of coffee (someday) first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Get Windows 10 icon — How to disable the “Get Windows 10” icon Dec 07, 2015
Show notes

There are some things in life that are really obnoxious and annoying.

Car dealer commercials.

A dog that’s left outside and barks for hours on end early in the morning or late at night.

Politicians who will promise anything to get elected.

Computerized telemarketing calls on your cell phone.

People who make an appointment then don’t show up and don’t call.

People who feel entitled.

And last but not least – the Get Windows 10 nag icon in the bottom right corner of Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers.

When Windows 10 was first made publicly available at the end of July, I made it very clear more than a month ahead of time that my recommendation was to NOT upgrade yet. I know some people who went ahead and got Windows 10. Some are okay with it, and I’ve talked to many people who have regretted the decision to “upgrade”. Some of my clients even purchased brand new computers with Windows 10 already installed, and ended up sending them back to the manufacturer (in this case, Dell) for a refund.

And now, each week I get the question – “Is it safe to upgrade to Windows 10 yet?” And my recommendation is still the same: not yet. When will I recommend you upgrade to Windows 10? I don’t know.

One thing I do know is this. Microsoft has been extremely and obnoxiously aggressive in pushing Windows 10 down the throats of Windows computer users. In some cases, they included it in a Windows Update and computers were upgraded to Windows 10 even without the permission of the user. Lots of Windows computers have already downloaded (silently, in the background) the Win10 installation files and folders so that all it takes is a click from an unknowing user, and the installation begins. Even if it doesn’t get installed, that download takes up several gigabytes of space on the computer’s hard drive.

When this first started happening, I found a way to fix it on my client’s computers. I would just go into the Windows folder on their computer, and rename the GWX (for Get Windows 10) folder to something else. With the folder showing a different name, the upgrade app and icon was not able to run automatically when you turned on the computer, so the icon would not be displayed.

Unfortunately, Microsoft caught on to that pretty quickly. Soon Windows got another update and the folder was renamed to the original name, and that icon started popping up again.

Well now we have a more permanent solution, and you can do this on your own.

A software developer in Portland, Oregon has created a small program that solves this problem, and he has made it available for free. It’s called GWX Control Panel.

There are a couple of ways you can get this program:

You can go to the website ultimateoutsider.com and click on “Software”, and you’ll see GWX control panel listed as one of the programs available for download. If you want to read about the program itself, what it does, and all of those details, you can do that at the website.

The other option is to just use a shortcut I created – ComputerTutorFlorida.com/gwx – as a direct link to download the program. That link takes you to a Dropbox file, so you can just click “Download”, and then run it to install.

You can run the installation file and just leave everything as default – it won’t try to sneak anything in with it. When it’s done and you run the program, you’ll first see the Agreement window:

After that you’ll see the main program window. This is what mine looks like now, since I have already installed and run it. For most people, the first time you run it, the answers to the questions will be “Yes”.

While it may look like a lot of items to contend with here, it’s really this simple: the first 2 wide buttons near the bottom of the screen directly correlate with the first 3 questions at the top of the screen.

So you just click the first 2 wide buttons:

Click “Disable Windows 10 App” and the first 2 questions questions at the top change from Yes to No.

Click “Disable Operating System Upgrades in Windows Update” and the third question changes from Yes to No.

Optionally, if there are Windows 10 download folders found, you can click “Delete Windows 10 Download Folders” to free up that space on your hard drive.

Two other options:

If you want the program to run in the background and monitor if any Windows 10 related settings or features somehow gets on your computer, you can click “Enable Monitor Mode”. If something does show up, the little icon in the lower right will flash to alert you of this.

If you are interested in more details of how this program works, you can click on “Display the User Guide” to see the full set of instructions and a more detailed explanation.

I’ve been using this on client computers for a while now, and I’ve been very pleased with the results. No spyware, no bugs (that I have found) and it just works for the purpose it was intended – keeping Windows 10 off the computer, no matter how hard Microsoft tries to get it on there.

As a disclaimer, I did not create this program and have no control over it, so if you decide to use it, you do so at your own risk. But I use it on my own computers and I think it’s great.

And by running this program, it does not eliminate your opportunity to EVER upgrade to Windows 10 in the future. You can click the same buttons and enable that upgrade option whenever you want to. I just wouldn’t recommend doing it right now.

The post How to disable the “Get Windows 10” icon first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

GWX Control Panel — How to disable the “Get Windows 10” icon Dec 07, 2015
Show notes

There are some things in life that are really obnoxious and annoying.

Car dealer commercials.

A dog that’s left outside and barks for hours on end early in the morning or late at night.

Politicians who will promise anything to get elected.

Computerized telemarketing calls on your cell phone.

People who make an appointment then don’t show up and don’t call.

People who feel entitled.

And last but not least – the Get Windows 10 nag icon in the bottom right corner of Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers.

When Windows 10 was first made publicly available at the end of July, I made it very clear more than a month ahead of time that my recommendation was to NOT upgrade yet. I know some people who went ahead and got Windows 10. Some are okay with it, and I’ve talked to many people who have regretted the decision to “upgrade”. Some of my clients even purchased brand new computers with Windows 10 already installed, and ended up sending them back to the manufacturer (in this case, Dell) for a refund.

And now, each week I get the question – “Is it safe to upgrade to Windows 10 yet?” And my recommendation is still the same: not yet. When will I recommend you upgrade to Windows 10? I don’t know.

One thing I do know is this. Microsoft has been extremely and obnoxiously aggressive in pushing Windows 10 down the throats of Windows computer users. In some cases, they included it in a Windows Update and computers were upgraded to Windows 10 even without the permission of the user. Lots of Windows computers have already downloaded (silently, in the background) the Win10 installation files and folders so that all it takes is a click from an unknowing user, and the installation begins. Even if it doesn’t get installed, that download takes up several gigabytes of space on the computer’s hard drive.

When this first started happening, I found a way to fix it on my client’s computers. I would just go into the Windows folder on their computer, and rename the GWX (for Get Windows 10) folder to something else. With the folder showing a different name, the upgrade app and icon was not able to run automatically when you turned on the computer, so the icon would not be displayed.

Unfortunately, Microsoft caught on to that pretty quickly. Soon Windows got another update and the folder was renamed to the original name, and that icon started popping up again.

Well now we have a more permanent solution, and you can do this on your own.

A software developer in Portland, Oregon has created a small program that solves this problem, and he has made it available for free. It’s called GWX Control Panel.

There are a couple of ways you can get this program:

You can go to the website ultimateoutsider.com and click on “Software”, and you’ll see GWX control panel listed as one of the programs available for download. If you want to read about the program itself, what it does, and all of those details, you can do that at the website.

The other option is to just use a shortcut I created – ComputerTutorFlorida.com/gwx – as a direct link to download the program. That link takes you to a Dropbox file, so you can just click “Download”, and then run it to install.

You can run the installation file and just leave everything as default – it won’t try to sneak anything in with it. When it’s done and you run the program, you’ll first see the Agreement window:

After that you’ll see the main program window. This is what mine looks like now, since I have already installed and run it. For most people, the first time you run it, the answers to the questions will be “Yes”.

While it may look like a lot of items to contend with here, it’s really this simple: the first 2 wide buttons near the bottom of the screen directly correlate with the first 3 questions at the top of the screen.

So you just click the first 2 wide buttons:

Click “Disable Windows 10 App” and the first 2 questions questions at the top change from Yes to No.

Click “Disable Operating System Upgrades in Windows Update” and the third question changes from Yes to No.

Optionally, if there are Windows 10 download folders found, you can click “Delete Windows 10 Download Folders” to free up that space on your hard drive.

Two other options:

If you want the program to run in the background and monitor if any Windows 10 related settings or features somehow gets on your computer, you can click “Enable Monitor Mode”. If something does show up, the little icon in the lower right will flash to alert you of this.

If you are interested in more details of how this program works, you can click on “Display the User Guide” to see the full set of instructions and a more detailed explanation.

I’ve been using this on client computers for a while now, and I’ve been very pleased with the results. No spyware, no bugs (that I have found) and it just works for the purpose it was intended – keeping Windows 10 off the computer, no matter how hard Microsoft tries to get it on there.

As a disclaimer, I did not create this program and have no control over it, so if you decide to use it, you do so at your own risk. But I use it on my own computers and I think it’s great.

And by running this program, it does not eliminate your opportunity to EVER upgrade to Windows 10 in the future. You can click the same buttons and enable that upgrade option whenever you want to. I just wouldn’t recommend doing it right now.

The post How to disable the “Get Windows 10” icon first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

hard drive space — How to save disk space, and reduce the size of your backup Nov 30, 2015
Show notes

Last week I told you about how my backup process saved all of my critical data twice in the last couple of months. One of those backups is called a system image backup and it saves EVERYTHING on your hard drive. As a result, that backup can be pretty big. Today we’ll talk about an easy way for you to reduce the size of that backup, and also save some space on your hard drive.

I have a TON of files and folders on my computer, including a lot of pictures and videos. Those types of files take up a chunk of space, not to mention all of the audio podcast files as well as the typical documents, spreadsheets, etc. That means whenever I do a system image backup (which is overnight, every night) it takes several hours to complete. This works out fine for me since it happens during the night when I’m not using the computer. But what if you want to just do the system image backup during the day? The longer it takes, the longer you are without the use of your computer.

Not to mention, the more files and folders that are stored on your computer, the less free space there is on your hard drive. Of course, with hard drives today being quite large, space might not be an issue for everyone. But there are some people that would benefit from freeing up some hard drive space.

Here’s how you free up some space, and make your system image backup smaller:

In Windows, click the Start button (the Microsoft logo in the bottom left corner), then click on “Computer” (or click on “This PC” if you are using a newer version of Windows).

When you see the drive icons with letters, do a RIGHT click on the C drive and choose “Properties”. That brings up this window:

Now click on the little button labeled “Disk Cleanup”. You’ll see a small window that calculates how much space you are using and how much you can save. This might be here for a few seconds or a few minutes:

When it’s done with the calculation, you’ll see a window that shows you how much space you can potentially save on your hard drive, by removing some files and folders that are not needed:

As you can see, in my case it came up with a lot of files that I could get rid of and free up some space – 106 gb in fact. That’s a lot of space! For some perspective, the first Windows computer I bought had a hard drive that could hold 40 gb of data – that means I had to store the Windows operating system, all of my other programs, and all of my own files and folders inside that 40 gb of space. And today, I have “throwaway” files that are more than 100 gb! How things change!

You might want to go down the list and see what types of files and folders are included in this total. If you’re not sure about something, or if you definitely DON’T want to delete a particular item, just uncheck the box and it won’t be included in the total and it won’t be deleted.

But Scott, how do I know if I can delete something or if I should keep it?

You can click on the name of each item in the list, and in the area at the bottom of the window you’ll see an explanation of what that particular item is. That should give you some idea of whether it’s important or not (it’s probably not).

Best rule is this: if you’re not sure, keep it. But practically speaking, the reason the items in this list are in this list are because they aren’t really critical for the continued operation of the computer. So you probably won’t be hurting anything if you delete these things.

Once you have the preferred boxes checked or unchecked, click OK and the Disk Cleanup process will begin. It might take a while if you have a lot of non-essential things to remove. The progress bar will tell you how it’s getting along:

When it’s done, just close the open windows and you’re all set.

You may save a lot of hard drive space doing this, or you may not save much. It’s worth checking out though, especially if you have never checked it (or have not checked it in a while). I don’t check mine very often, which is why there were over 100 gb that could be eliminated. By doing this, the size of my system image backup went way down. Prior to this, my backup process overnight would take almost 7 hours. Now, with the smaller backup, it only takes 5 1/2 hours. That’s a significant difference!

The post How to save disk space, and reduce the size of your backup first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

hard drive space — How to save disk space, and reduce the size of your backup Nov 30, 2015
Show notes

Last week I told you about how my backup process saved all of my critical data twice in the last couple of months. One of those backups is called a system image backup and it saves EVERYTHING on your hard drive. As a result, that backup can be pretty big. Today we’ll talk about an easy way for you to reduce the size of that backup, and also save some space on your hard drive.

I have a TON of files and folders on my computer, including a lot of pictures and videos. Those types of files take up a chunk of space, not to mention all of the audio podcast files as well as the typical documents, spreadsheets, etc. That means whenever I do a system image backup (which is overnight, every night) it takes several hours to complete. This works out fine for me since it happens during the night when I’m not using the computer. But what if you want to just do the system image backup during the day? The longer it takes, the longer you are without the use of your computer.

Not to mention, the more files and folders that are stored on your computer, the less free space there is on your hard drive. Of course, with hard drives today being quite large, space might not be an issue for everyone. But there are some people that would benefit from freeing up some hard drive space.

Here’s how you free up some space, and make your system image backup smaller:

In Windows, click the Start button (the Microsoft logo in the bottom left corner), then click on “Computer” (or click on “This PC” if you are using a newer version of Windows).

When you see the drive icons with letters, do a RIGHT click on the C drive and choose “Properties”. That brings up this window:

Now click on the little button labeled “Disk Cleanup”. You’ll see a small window that calculates how much space you are using and how much you can save. This might be here for a few seconds or a few minutes:

When it’s done with the calculation, you’ll see a window that shows you how much space you can potentially save on your hard drive, by removing some files and folders that are not needed:

As you can see, in my case it came up with a lot of files that I could get rid of and free up some space – 106 gb in fact. That’s a lot of space! For some perspective, the first Windows computer I bought had a hard drive that could hold 40 gb of data – that means I had to store the Windows operating system, all of my other programs, and all of my own files and folders inside that 40 gb of space. And today, I have “throwaway” files that are more than 100 gb! How things change!

You might want to go down the list and see what types of files and folders are included in this total. If you’re not sure about something, or if you definitely DON’T want to delete a particular item, just uncheck the box and it won’t be included in the total and it won’t be deleted.

But Scott, how do I know if I can delete something or if I should keep it?

You can click on the name of each item in the list, and in the area at the bottom of the window you’ll see an explanation of what that particular item is. That should give you some idea of whether it’s important or not (it’s probably not).

Best rule is this: if you’re not sure, keep it. But practically speaking, the reason the items in this list are in this list are because they aren’t really critical for the continued operation of the computer. So you probably won’t be hurting anything if you delete these things.

Once you have the preferred boxes checked or unchecked, click OK and the Disk Cleanup process will begin. It might take a while if you have a lot of non-essential things to remove. The progress bar will tell you how it’s getting along:

When it’s done, just close the open windows and you’re all set.

You may save a lot of hard drive space doing this, or you may not save much. It’s worth checking out though, especially if you have never checked it (or have not checked it in a while). I don’t check mine very often, which is why there were over 100 gb that could be eliminated. By doing this, the size of my system image backup went way down. Prior to this, my backup process overnight would take almost 7 hours. Now, with the smaller backup, it only takes 5 1/2 hours. That’s a significant difference!

The post How to save disk space, and reduce the size of your backup first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

computer crash — How my backup saved me TWICE in the last two months Nov 23, 2015
Show notes

Yes, here I am again preaching to you about backing up your computer. But this time, it’s from a personal point of view and it has to do with my own primary desktop computer. I’ve had two different, major problems in the last two months so I wanted to tell you about what happened and how each of them turned out.

Problem #1 was about 2 months ago. Everything seemed to be going along fine, then I started to get the Blue Screen of Death on my computer every so often. Maybe once every 7 to 10 days. I could be right in the middle of something, and all of a sudden my cursor would freeze, then both monitors would go black, then the blue screen would flash up there and the computer would immediately restart. I wasn’t too happy about this obviously. Otherwise, it seemed to be working okay.

When I checked the error codes, it looked like the problem might be related to an outdated video card driver. So I updated all the drivers, and yet it still kept happening.

I knew I would have to do something about it at some point, but I just hadn’t decided exactly what. Then, that decision was made for me one day when I got the blue screen, and this time it didn’t reboot. I would make sure it’s completely turned off, then when I would go to power it up, it would not boot to Windows at all. It just got stuck in that “Repair Windows” cycle but the Self-Repair was not able to accomplish anything.

Now just for a minute, I want you to put yourself in that situation. Your computer won’t boot up. You cannot access any of the data on your computer – no documents, emails, pictures, nothing. How bad would that be if it happened to you? Would losing all of your files and folders be a really bad thing?

Solution to Problem #1 : replace the hard drive

As I said, this is a desktop computer. In this computer, I have a second physical hard drive. Every night, my main hard drive is completely cloned to that second hard drive. So, when my main hard drive crashed, all I had to do was switch over to that second drive and everything was there. Then I just replaced the first hard drive. Hard drives crash all the time – sometimes gradually, and sometimes with no warning at all.

This might sound complicated, but it’s really not. The process of cloning that drive every night is completely automated by software, so I don’t have to do a thing. This might be more of an effort than some people are willing to exert, but for me I like having it this way. And this cloning process is just one of the 4 ways my computer is backed up every single day. As I said, for some that would be overkill. Just personal preference.

Problem #2 was just a couple of weeks ago. The second Tuesday of each month is called Patch Tuesday. This is the day Microsoft sends out their monthly Windows Updates, to patch up problems and security issues that have been discovered in Windows. For my computer, those updates were installed on Wednesday November 11.

That day, I noticed I was having a lot of trouble with MS Outlook. Every time I would get an email that had any images embedded, Outlook would crash. Then I noticed that Skype would not run – it just would not open at all. I also use Sony Vegas, a video editing program, and that would also not open. There were a few other screwy things going on that I don’t recall specifically right now.

I checked the hard drive, and it was not showing any signs of crashing or failure. With a little research, I found out that one or more of the updates that Microsoft had sent out that week had a problem. It was crashing Outlook and other programs. For some of my clients, it was just a matter of removing the bad update. For me, it was worse – my computer went downhill pretty rapidly and before I could repair it, it would not boot up to Windows at all. I couldn’t even use System Restore to take it back to an earlier date.

So there I was with a perfectly good hard drive, but a completely screwed up Windows installation and unable to boot up, even in Safe Mode.

What would you do in that situation?

Solution to Problem #2: restore Windows from a system image backup

One of the other mostly automated backups I do each night is what’s called a System Image backup, using a program called Macrium Reflect (free). All I have to do is plug in my external drive at night, and unplug it in the morning. Overnight, Macrium Reflect takes everything on my main hard drive – programs, files, folders, settings, EVERYTHING – and puts it in a single file on my external hard drive.

So all I had to do was restore that System Image backup from a couple days earlier, and everything was back like it was on that day (Tuesday, before the Windows Updates came in).

This type of backup is one of two backups that I recommend for everyone. It allows you to get back in business within an hour or two after replacing a crashed hard drive. In my case, the hard drive didn’t even need to be replaced – I just need to restore a system image backup to get everything back the way it was.

So that’s what has happened to me recently. Yes, it was a slight inconvenience to deal with it – BUT I was back up and running very quickly in both cases, and I lost no data. I have gone through this same procedure with many of my clients who had a regular automated backup, and experienced a major problem. Let me tell you, they were very happy that I had encouraged them to have a backup process in place.

If you want help with setting up a backup for your computer, just email me at pctutor@gmail.com or call me at 727-254-9078.

The post How my backup saved me TWICE in the last two months first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

listen to my podcast in iTunes — How my backup saved me TWICE in the last two months Nov 23, 2015
Show notes

Yes, here I am again preaching to you about backing up your computer. But this time, it’s from a personal point of view and it has to do with my own primary desktop computer. I’ve had two different, major problems in the last two months so I wanted to tell you about what happened and how each of them turned out.

Problem #1 was about 2 months ago. Everything seemed to be going along fine, then I started to get the Blue Screen of Death on my computer every so often. Maybe once every 7 to 10 days. I could be right in the middle of something, and all of a sudden my cursor would freeze, then both monitors would go black, then the blue screen would flash up there and the computer would immediately restart. I wasn’t too happy about this obviously. Otherwise, it seemed to be working okay.

When I checked the error codes, it looked like the problem might be related to an outdated video card driver. So I updated all the drivers, and yet it still kept happening.

I knew I would have to do something about it at some point, but I just hadn’t decided exactly what. Then, that decision was made for me one day when I got the blue screen, and this time it didn’t reboot. I would make sure it’s completely turned off, then when I would go to power it up, it would not boot to Windows at all. It just got stuck in that “Repair Windows” cycle but the Self-Repair was not able to accomplish anything.

Now just for a minute, I want you to put yourself in that situation. Your computer won’t boot up. You cannot access any of the data on your computer – no documents, emails, pictures, nothing. How bad would that be if it happened to you? Would losing all of your files and folders be a really bad thing?

Solution to Problem #1 : replace the hard drive

As I said, this is a desktop computer. In this computer, I have a second physical hard drive. Every night, my main hard drive is completely cloned to that second hard drive. So, when my main hard drive crashed, all I had to do was switch over to that second drive and everything was there. Then I just replaced the first hard drive. Hard drives crash all the time – sometimes gradually, and sometimes with no warning at all.

This might sound complicated, but it’s really not. The process of cloning that drive every night is completely automated by software, so I don’t have to do a thing. This might be more of an effort than some people are willing to exert, but for me I like having it this way. And this cloning process is just one of the 4 ways my computer is backed up every single day. As I said, for some that would be overkill. Just personal preference.

Problem #2 was just a couple of weeks ago. The second Tuesday of each month is called Patch Tuesday. This is the day Microsoft sends out their monthly Windows Updates, to patch up problems and security issues that have been discovered in Windows. For my computer, those updates were installed on Wednesday November 11.

That day, I noticed I was having a lot of trouble with MS Outlook. Every time I would get an email that had any images embedded, Outlook would crash. Then I noticed that Skype would not run – it just would not open at all. I also use Sony Vegas, a video editing program, and that would also not open. There were a few other screwy things going on that I don’t recall specifically right now.

I checked the hard drive, and it was not showing any signs of crashing or failure. With a little research, I found out that one or more of the updates that Microsoft had sent out that week had a problem. It was crashing Outlook and other programs. For some of my clients, it was just a matter of removing the bad update. For me, it was worse – my computer went downhill pretty rapidly and before I could repair it, it would not boot up to Windows at all. I couldn’t even use System Restore to take it back to an earlier date.

So there I was with a perfectly good hard drive, but a completely screwed up Windows installation and unable to boot up, even in Safe Mode.

What would you do in that situation?

Solution to Problem #2: restore Windows from a system image backup

One of the other mostly automated backups I do each night is what’s called a System Image backup, using a program called Macrium Reflect (free). All I have to do is plug in my external drive at night, and unplug it in the morning. Overnight, Macrium Reflect takes everything on my main hard drive – programs, files, folders, settings, EVERYTHING – and puts it in a single file on my external hard drive.

So all I had to do was restore that System Image backup from a couple days earlier, and everything was back like it was on that day (Tuesday, before the Windows Updates came in).

This type of backup is one of two backups that I recommend for everyone. It allows you to get back in business within an hour or two after replacing a crashed hard drive. In my case, the hard drive didn’t even need to be replaced – I just need to restore a system image backup to get everything back the way it was.

So that’s what has happened to me recently. Yes, it was a slight inconvenience to deal with it – BUT I was back up and running very quickly in both cases, and I lost no data. I have gone through this same procedure with many of my clients who had a regular automated backup, and experienced a major problem. Let me tell you, they were very happy that I had encouraged them to have a backup process in place.

If you want help with setting up a backup for your computer, just email me at pctutor@gmail.com or call me at 727-254-9078.

The post How my backup saved me TWICE in the last two months first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

email scam — Analysis of a scam email Nov 16, 2015
Show notes

If no one ever opened a scam/spam email, the spammers would stop sending them. If you have checked your spam folder lately, you know that the flow of spam doesn’t seem to have slowed down much. One reason I like Gmail is that their excellent spam filters keep that garbage out of my inbox. But what if one slips through? How do you identify an email as a scam?

Let’s take a look at one of these that showed up in my email recently.

Gmail correctly sent it directly to the Spam folder, but I pulled it out of there just for the purpose of this blog post. Four things on this email jump out to me right away.

First, it does not state clearly who is sending the email. It just says that it’s being sent from “mailminion.net” on behalf “Payments Dept”. This is just an email sending service, not a person. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a scam, since many legitimate online businesses use an email service. I use one of the most popular ones, Aweber, to send out my Monday morning emails. But they fact that they have chosen the display name “Payments Dept” is suspicious.

Second factor is the blind link within the email message. This is exactly the type of link you should never click on, and for that reason alone this email is one that should just get deleted. But in the interest of investigation, I followed that link to see where it would go. Don’t try this at home!

The actual link behind that text is this:

http://mm-s399.com/campaigns/yc483c9l3taac/track-url/a621ea4bb5e6c/b63d0cc529d45c8aba3dba1cdcef66e03f0a5703

but once it was clicked, it forwarded from that address to this actual website address:

http://sarahsconfession.com/c/?clickID=2786033600&aff=StrongLead&c=US&tid=1023b209664a379305b8caeec13444&aff_id=5662#

So now we can actually see where we’re going with this junk.

On that page is a video sales pitch for some stock trading software that the video claims is currently making its other users $10,000, $20,000 or even up to $60,000 each month. And it’s all automated! You just click one button in the morning, and go out and do whatever you want to do during the day, and by the end of that day you will have thousands of dollars in your bank account. To any resaonable thinking person, this is obviously all garbage and a complete scam. Unfortunately, there are many people that buy it simply because they want so badly for it to be true.

But what about the Paypal payment that was already “processed”, that the original email talked about? Just a lie to get me to click on the link and hopefully get sucked into the scam.

Just what we’ve already talked about is enough to prove that this is not a legitimate email. But there’s more.

The third item – you can’t see it very well in the image, but at the bottom of the email there is what is supposed to look like a US mailing address. That’s designed to add some credibility and make it more believable. After all, a scammer wouldn’t actually give out his address, right?

Well, what it says is this:

Finance Rewards Society, 2205 Rose Avenue,, LA, 70171

They’re hoping people see that and just assume that it’s in Los Angeles, California. Except there is no 70171 in California. In fact, that zip code does not exist anywhere in the United States.

The fourth tipoff is that you can “unsubscribe” and you can even “report abuse”. But the place you’re reporting the abuse is the very place that’s sending you the email. They’re giving you the opportunity to THINK you have reported them, so you don’t actually report the spam/scam to any authority or group that can take action against them. They allow this type of scam email to be sent through their service, so your “report” doesn’t do any good. It’s like reporting a burglary to the burglar’s accomplice.

The other factor that is common in a lot of scam emails is bad grammar and misspelled words. It’s usually very clear that whoever wrote it is not a native speaker of English. In the email example above, there are only a few sentences so they didn’t really have any glaring grammatical errors. But I’ve often said this: if a convincing scammer ever teams up with someone that knows proper written English, that’s a team that will be able to scam a lot of people. The bad guys already snag a lot of people even with their broken English; who knows what they would be capable of if it sounded legitimate.

The post Analysis of a scam email first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

email scam — Analysis of a scam email Nov 16, 2015
Show notes

If no one ever opened a scam/spam email, the spammers would stop sending them. If you have checked your spam folder lately, you know that the flow of spam doesn’t seem to have slowed down much. One reason I like Gmail is that their excellent spam filters keep that garbage out of my inbox. But what if one slips through? How do you identify an email as a scam?

Let’s take a look at one of these that showed up in my email recently.

Gmail correctly sent it directly to the Spam folder, but I pulled it out of there just for the purpose of this blog post. Four things on this email jump out to me right away.

First, it does not state clearly who is sending the email. It just says that it’s being sent from “mailminion.net” on behalf “Payments Dept”. This is just an email sending service, not a person. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a scam, since many legitimate online businesses use an email service. I use one of the most popular ones, Aweber, to send out my Monday morning emails. But they fact that they have chosen the display name “Payments Dept” is suspicious.

Second factor is the blind link within the email message. This is exactly the type of link you should never click on, and for that reason alone this email is one that should just get deleted. But in the interest of investigation, I followed that link to see where it would go. Don’t try this at home!

The actual link behind that text is this:

http://mm-s399.com/campaigns/yc483c9l3taac/track-url/a621ea4bb5e6c/b63d0cc529d45c8aba3dba1cdcef66e03f0a5703

but once it was clicked, it forwarded from that address to this actual website address:

http://sarahsconfession.com/c/?clickID=2786033600&aff=StrongLead&c=US&tid=1023b209664a379305b8caeec13444&aff_id=5662#

So now we can actually see where we’re going with this junk.

On that page is a video sales pitch for some stock trading software that the video claims is currently making its other users $10,000, $20,000 or even up to $60,000 each month. And it’s all automated! You just click one button in the morning, and go out and do whatever you want to do during the day, and by the end of that day you will have thousands of dollars in your bank account. To any resaonable thinking person, this is obviously all garbage and a complete scam. Unfortunately, there are many people that buy it simply because they want so badly for it to be true.

But what about the Paypal payment that was already “processed”, that the original email talked about? Just a lie to get me to click on the link and hopefully get sucked into the scam.

Just what we’ve already talked about is enough to prove that this is not a legitimate email. But there’s more.

The third item – you can’t see it very well in the image, but at the bottom of the email there is what is supposed to look like a US mailing address. That’s designed to add some credibility and make it more believable. After all, a scammer wouldn’t actually give out his address, right?

Well, what it says is this:

Finance Rewards Society, 2205 Rose Avenue,, LA, 70171

They’re hoping people see that and just assume that it’s in Los Angeles, California. Except there is no 70171 in California. In fact, that zip code does not exist anywhere in the United States.

The fourth tipoff is that you can “unsubscribe” and you can even “report abuse”. But the place you’re reporting the abuse is the very place that’s sending you the email. They’re giving you the opportunity to THINK you have reported them, so you don’t actually report the spam/scam to any authority or group that can take action against them. They allow this type of scam email to be sent through their service, so your “report” doesn’t do any good. It’s like reporting a burglary to the burglar’s accomplice.

The other factor that is common in a lot of scam emails is bad grammar and misspelled words. It’s usually very clear that whoever wrote it is not a native speaker of English. In the email example above, there are only a few sentences so they didn’t really have any glaring grammatical errors. But I’ve often said this: if a convincing scammer ever teams up with someone that knows proper written English, that’s a team that will be able to scam a lot of people. The bad guys already snag a lot of people even with their broken English; who knows what they would be capable of if it sounded legitimate.

The post Analysis of a scam email first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

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