Saturday Bonus Questions and Answers – 101522
It’s another autumnal Saturday and that means it’s time for another edition of Saturday Bonus Questions & Answers.
Sometimes, the best tips and tricks are hidden in the published questions and answers. And rarely do we post questions and answers on this website. Today, we’re featuring some of the questions and answers from past issues of our InfoAve Weekly newsletters.
These questions & answers were selected at random from past InfoAve Weekly newsletters.
Saturday Bonus Questions and Answers – 101522
Robert wants to know if you can still upgrade a Windows 8.1 PC to Windows 10 Free of Charge
My daughter has a laptop that still has windows 8.1 on it. Can I still upgrade it to windows 10 for free? If I can, will you please advise how would be the best way and still keep all files and programs?
Our answer
Hi Robert. Yes, she can still upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge. All you need to do to upgrade is go to the following page…
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
And download the Windows 10 Update tool by clicking the blue “Download tool now” button. Once you download it, run it, and choose the “Upgrade this PC now” option.
Beneath the blue download button, you’ll see various options to get more information. Click on the plus sign next to “Using the tool to upgrade this PC to Windows 10…”
Upgrading to Windows 10 this will allows you to keep all your files and compatible programs.
Windows 10 will be supported until October 14, 2025.
We hope this helps you, Robert.
Paul can’t log in without a PIN
I really enjoy your newsletter. My question is: I upgraded to the new edition of Windows 10 and when I go to sign in, it wants a PIN number. It will not let me sign in. How do i sign in without a PIN? I have tried to find out how to get a PIN number without any luck. Is there any way to sign in without a PIN? My wife and granddaughter are both on my computer. They have the same problem. Is there any way to fix this? Thanks for any help you can give me to fix my problem. Thanks for the great info in your newsletter. Paul.
Our answer
Hi Paul. Thanks! I am not sure how many PINs you have since you mention others using your computer. I don’t know if you’re using a Microsoft account or not – but since you’re using an MSN email address, I assume you are using a Microsoft account on your Windows 10 PC.
On the log-in screen, if you’re using a PIN, you’ll see the box where you enter your PIN and beneath it, you’ll see two options. One is “I forgot my PIN” and the other is “Sign-in options”.
Click on “I forgot my PIN” and follow the instructions on the screen. If – for some reason – you’re not able to recover your PIN, click on Sign-in options – and after you go through the options and suggestions, you’ll see an option to sign in with a Password. If you’re using a Microsoft account, your password for Windows 10 will be identical to the password for your MSN email address.
We hope this helps you, Paul.
JP wants to know if it would be wise to use ProtonMail when buying online
Just have a quick question if you have a moment to answer. Would it be wise to dedicate my Proton email address to do all my online ordering, e.g,. from Amazon, etc.? Thanks, JP
Our answer
Hi JP. That’s entirely up to you. People don’t get their credit cards and personal info stolen from buying online. They get their personal info stolen when they are tricked into giving it away or from clicking links in spam emails or phishing emails. ProtonMail is not immune to spam or phishing mail.
It really doesn’t matter what email address you use to order if you use a strong password and/or two-factor authentication.
Just remember, ProtonMail or any other email account is only as safe as your account password is strong,
Note: For those of you reading this who don’t know about ProtonMail, please see this page.
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Uwe wants to know if his external hard drive is kaput
Suddenly my portable SSD is not recognized. I looked in disk management and it says to initialize the disk. Never had to do this. The disk always worked. I tried to initialize and got this message ” Request failed due to a fatal device hardware error.” Is the disk suddenly corrupt? Please advise. Thanks. Uwe
Our answer
Hi Uwe. From what you say, our guess is that the disk is corrupted. Sometimes, you get no warning and external drives are prone to this. We have had external drives that were working just fine suddenly go bad – some were not even a year old. And others we’ve been using for many years.
You should try your external drive on another USB port or another PC to make sure. But if you’re getting the message that the device has failed, it probably has.
John suddenly finds McAfee and Norton on his computer
Somehow in the last week, I have found McAfee and Norton Antivirus on my computer. Mainly when using Edge. A red warning box appears telling me that I have 3 – 5 viruses and I should run their antivirus. There is no way am I doing that. I have tried Emsisoft since I thought it protected me but to no avail. Help! John.
Our answer
Hi John. Don’t worry. You don’t have Norton or McAfee; you have either installed a bad extension in Microsoft Edge or you clicked on something and approved it by mistake. Here’s how to fix your problem.
Clear Edge’s history and reset Edge.
To clear your Edge history, open Edge and type or copy and paste the following in the Edge address bar:
edge://settings/clearBrowserData
and press “Enter”.
In the Clear browsing data dialog, under “Time range” select “All time” ad make sure you check “Browsing History”, “Download history”, “Cookies and other site data” and “Cached images and files”. Then click the “Clear now” button.
Once you’ve done this, close Chrome and reopen it, then follow the instructions on this page to reset Edge. After you reset Edge, close it.
Next, type Notifications in the taskbar search and press Enter when “Notifications & actions” appears. At the top, under “Get notifications from apps and other senders” turn the switch off.
Now you won’t see any more Norton/McAfee ads or prompts with or without Edge open.
—————–
John wrote back: “Thank You for your quick response. It worked truly great, and everything is working fine. Once again you two have come thru for an old man who has forgotten more than I ever knew! You are life savers. John.”
Lucille likes Thunderbird and wants to know if it’s still OK
Hi. I have been a member for many years and I enjoy all of your comments. Both of you are super. My question is: I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird ever since you recommended it. Is it still OK? I like its layout.
Our Answer
Hi Lucille. Thanks for your kind words.
Sure, Thunderbird is a nice email program. If you like a certain browser or email program, it’s always best to stick with it. Email clients and browsers are two very personal choices.
And, I don’t know why, but people think when we recommend a program that we “de-recommend” all others like it, but that’s not true. A year or so ago we stopped supporting Ashampoo Backup and started recommending Windows File History. Many people asked if they should remove Ashampoo. We always tell them there’s nothing wrong with Ashampoo at all – if it’s working well, that’s great, keep on using it.
So yes, Lucille, if Thunderbird is what you like and you like the layout, by all means, continue to use it.
Carol wants to resize photos for email
How can I make my photos smaller to send by email? My photos are always about 2GB or more.
Our answer
Hi Carol. There are dozens of ways to resize photos. There are dozens of apps dedicated to resizing photos. We recommend you open them in a photo editor. Windows 10 comes with a photo editor – it is called the Photos app. You’ll find it in the Windows 10 start menu, and you can also open it by right-clicking on any image and choosing “Open with > Photos”.
Once the image opens, just click the 3-dot icon in the top-right corner of the Photos app and choose “Resize” from the drop-down menu.
We use a freeware program called Irfanview. We’ve been using it for over 20 years. You can download it free from here.
Once you install it, you can set it as your default image viewer (recommended) so that when you click on any image to open it, it opens in Irfanview.
Once you install Irfanview, open the image you want to resize. From the Irfanview toolbar choose “Image” > “Resize/Resample”.
Irfanview lets you resize your images by percentage, width & height, resize it by half, by preset dimensions (presets always keep the aspect ratio of your image), and more.
And finally, you can also resize photos online. But given that your photos are 2GB or more that would not be a great choice for you.
Helen wants to keep her Windows 10 computer clean
Hi guys. What program do you recommend to clean up Windows 10 Version 2004 and what do I select to be cleaned? Thanks for everything you guys do for us.
Our answer
Hi Helen. Thank you! You don’t need to download a thing to keep your PC cleaned up. Windows 10 has a really nice feature that helps keep your computer cleaned up automatically. It’s called Storage Sense and here’s how to set it up.
1. Right-click on the Windows Start button and click Settings.
2. In Settings click on System, then Storage.
3. In Settings > Storage
4. Turn on the switch under “Storage Sense can automatically free up space by getting rid of files you don’t need, like temporary files and content in the recycle bin.”
5. Below the switch, click on “Configure Storage Sense or run it now”.
You can configure it your way. Below are the default settings. I leave mine set to default.
You can configure Storage Sense to automatically run every week, every month, or just when disk space gets low. I would leave it at “Every week”.
You can set Storage Sense to automatically clean up temporary files and clean up files in the recycle bin, every day, every 14 days, every 30 days, or every 60 days. As you can see mine is set to 14 days.
Finally, if you use One Drive, you’ll see an option to make files stored both on your PC and on One Drive, online only after Never, 1 day, 14 days, 30 days, and 60 days. Unless you have a good reason for wanting to make files stored on both your PC and One Drive, online only, leave this set to “Never”.
At the very bottom of the Storage Sense configuration dialog – you’ll see a “Clean Now” button. You can clean up your computer any time you like by clicking that button.
I just ran Storage Sense and it cleaned up 42.9 MB of space, so there wasn’t a lot of junk on my PC at this time.
In addition to Storage Sense, you might want to clean your browser’s history & cache every week or so. See our tutorial on how to clear your browser’s history, cache, and cookies, here. Our tutorial covers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.
We hope this helps you, Helen.
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Helen wrote back: “This is great, thank you so much! Helen.”
Bill says a Windows 10 update failed – what should he do?
Hi people! How goes the battle? Hope you are doing fine. I just had a small question for you. I noticed in my Windows update that an update failed. The update was KB 5003173. I am currently re-trying it as I type this. The update is for my Windows 10 computer. I notice a 2 after the update number. Is that the number of tries to install? As I retried just now, it is at 100%. I assumed that that would be successful but apparently not. I know that you know of somewhere that I can go to do a successful update. Thanks a bunch. Take care and remain healthy. Bill.
Our answer
Hi Bill. The update is not a Windows version update, it is just your average run-of-the-mill patch Tuesday security update It’s not a terribly important update. It includes:
1. Updates to improve security when Windows performs basic operations.
2. Updates to improve Windows OLE (compound documents) security.
3. Updates security for Bluetooth drivers.
The number 2 does not mean it’s the 2nd install, it can be a threshold number for your version of Windows 10.
Even though it’s classified as a “security update” I would not be overly concerned about this update right now. Windows 10 will automatically keep trying to install it.
To find your version of Windows 10 type WINVER in the taskbar search and press Enter when you see “winver” appear in the search results. You’ll see a Windows version dialog appear.
If you see an update at 100% it may still require a reboot to finalize. It may either automatically reboot or be awaiting a reboot from you.
If Windows is waiting for you to restart our computer, you’ll see an icon in the taskbar in the notification area with an orange dot on it. It’s circled in yellow in the screenshot below. If you see that, you need to restart your computer to finish installing the update.
Rather than waiting for Windows Update to reinstall it, you can install this update from the Microsoft Online Catalog on this page. You’ll need to know your system type (32-bit or 64-bit). You can find that by typing “About” in the taskbar search and pressing Enter when you see “About your PC” appear in the results. Look next to “System type”. And you’ll also need to know your Windows 10 version number.
If you continue to have problems installing this update and you don’t want to wait for the new Windows 10 version 21H1 (May 2021 Update) take a look at this page
I think we covered all the bases! We hope this helps you, Bill.
Cheryl asks about the reliability of external hard drives
Just read in Issue #919 about someone whose external hard drive failed. I’m wondering since I store EVERYTHING I do on my external hard drive if there’s a better (or secondary) way of saving everything in case my external hard drive crashes? Thanks for all you two do to keep us safe. Take Care. As always, please feel free to share in a newsletter.
Our answer
Hi Cheryl. Thank you! Most external drives have a long lifespan, but there’s no guarantee. We’ve had external drives that we’ve been using for over seven years. And we’ve had external drives fail after a year or two.
The best way to protect your precious files is to use a local backup (external hard drive). And also use a cloud-based backup system like OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. to backup truly irreplaceable files. The files you can’t replace probably don’t amount to enough to fill an entire external drive. But only you can decide what is irreplaceable.
I consider family pictures irreplaceable because they capture events in time, and some legal documents, tax forms, and other important documents, but you may feel differently.
Keep in mind that cloud-based storage is not completely free. All cloud-based services offer a limited amount of free space. OneDrive offers 5 GB, Dropbox offers 2 GB, and Google Drive offers 15 GB. You can purchase more space as needed.
We think that OneDrive offers the best deal. If you buy a subscription to Microsoft Office 365 for $6.99 a month, you get 1 TB (terabyte) of cloud storage. And with that much space, you’ll be able to store all your precious, irreplaceable files.
Dropbox charges $9.99/month for 1 TB of cloud storage and that does not come with Office. Google charges $9.99/month for 2 TB of cloud storage. Most reputable cloud storage service backup your date multiple times in multiple locations so that the risk of losing your precious, irreplaceable files is almost zero.
We hope this helps you, Cheryl.
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Cheryl wrote back: “Thank you, Mr. TC. As ALWAYS, you’ve helped me out again. Take care.”
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Sharon wants to make Gmail her default email client in Windows 10
Hi. When I try to email from my desktop… I get a message there is no email program set as default. I went to Control Panel but there was no option to set Gmail as default. Is there a way to make Gmail the default mail program? You guys always know the answers. Thanks for your help. Sharon.
Our answer
Hi Sharon. Thanks! First, the fastest way to set default apps in Windows 10 by going to Settings > Apps > Default apps. If you use Control Panel > Set your default programs, you end up at Settings >Apps> Default apps anyway. And an even faster way is typing DEFAULT APPS in the Taskbar search.
Gmail is not an app, it’s a web-based service and you cannot directly set Gmail as your default email program. You can set “Google Chrome” as your default “email program” (it’s really not an email program, it’s a browser) and access Gmail using Chrome. But you have to set up Chrome to open mailto links first. You can set up Chrome to open mailto links in Gmail by default. To learn how to set up Chrome that way, see this Google tutorial.
And an even better way is to set up an email program like OE Classic to access your Gmail account and set OE Classic (or other email programs) as your default email app.
We hope this helps you, Sharon.
Marilyn’s computer shuts down by itself several times a day
Hi TC & Darcy. I have Windows 10 version 2004 and my antivirus is Emsisoft. I’m completely fed up with my computer shutting down and rebooting several times in a 24-hour period. My email program is OE pro & doesn’t automatically save emails in drafts, so if I forget as I did tonight to press “save” I lose whatever I’ve typed. A very important but lengthy email was lost just before I was about to sign off. I now have to start again. It can happen as I hit a key or click a button or when not in use at all… It never happens on the laptop… only on the main desktop.
How can I stop this from happening? There is no warning of any description. It simply shuts down & reboots. I have at times lost other work due to this as the “save” of a document isn’t instantaneous.
This has been happening for several months, but I’ve put up with it. Any information would be greatly appreciated. All the best to you both. Dellen (Marilyn).
Our answer
Hi Marilyn. As for your computer shutting down several times a day without warning – this is a sign that it’s overheating. The two main causes of overheating are dust/lint blocking the vents in your computer and/or a fan or fans inside your computer’s case has failed. Another cause is (if using a desktop), placing the tower under a desk pushed back against the wall so that’s not getting enough air. Make sure your computer’s vents are clean and free of dust and lint. If a fan or fans have stopped working, they’ll need to be replaced. Also, make sure the tower is not pushed back against a wall and make sure it’s not under a desk, or worse, inside a cabinet. Computers run hot and they need a lot of ventilation. A computer will shut down automatically if it overheats to protect the processor.
Anything you’re working on – email included – will be lost if not saved before the computer shuts down. But for email in general, it sounds like you have your mail set up as POP3 instead of IMAP. POP3 protocol downloads and removes mail from the mail server. If you lose it, it’s gone. IMAP protocol email is synchronized with mail on the mail server. If you lose it or get a new computer or check your mail from another device – it’s still on the mail server and you can still retrieve it.
We hope this helps you, Marilyn.
(For those reading this who are using a laptop and who have similar problems, see our article here.)
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What would be a good free program to open zip files with? Win Zip wants to charge $35 for it now, and my gosh so bloated with all kinds of junk with it. I refuse to download it must less pay #35 for it. I need to open a zip file sent my a friend of mine.
WinZip is borderline malware.You can open most Zip files in Windows natively (that is you don’t need a program to open them). If you want a more robust zip file handler, you can get 7-Zip free. Unlike WinZip, 7-zip does not come bundled with malware or dubious programs. Read more about 7-Zip at https://www.7-zip.org
How in the world do I do it natively with Windows 10. I’ve looked through through all my programs and I can’t find any way to do it. Would you please let me know. I’ve tried every way I can think of and it refuses to open. I must not have what your talking about and I sure would like to open this zip file.
Right-click on a zipped file and select “Extract all”. Make surethat “Show extracted files when complete” is checked and click on the Extract button.