Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2019 i Windows Help & Advice

America’s Federal Trade Commission has fined Google $170 million after the company’s subsidiary, YouTube, allegedly violated a children’s privacy law. YouTube is accused of both marketing childrens’ use of its platform to advertisers and of tracking the viewing habits of children to pass on to those advertisers. FTC Chairman Joe Simons said the company “refused to acknowledge that portions of its platform were clearly directed to kids,” adding, “there’s no excuse for YouTube’s violations of the law.” The FTC’s action now requires YouTube to change its practices – and it seems the response may have to be extreme. Comments and notifications on content targeted at children will be disabled, targeted adverts on kids’ videos will be abolished and, according to a YouTube statement following the ruling, the company, “will treat…

Reinstalling Windows 10 is a fairly trivial task. Put in the right media, boot from it, grind away the old OS, and replace it with the pristine bits of a shiny new install. This can be a painless, if time-consuming, procedure that leaves you with a like-new PC, or perhaps an even better one if you were unlucky enough to buy a PC burdened with preinstalled trashware. Before you do this, make sure you’ve checked off a few prerequisites, all of which are good practice even if you’re not planning to wipe everything and start again. “Dig out the product keys for all your crucial software and keep them safe, as you’ll need to reinstall that too” First, keep a record of your product key (if you have one –…

If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating new installation media for any version of Windows 10 past the Creators Update, you’ll probably feel a bit silly when you discover that Microsoft tucked a ‘fresh start’ option into its later Win 10 editions. Using it takes any Windows 10 installation back to the basics of a Windows install, even removing any preinstalled software your manufacturer might have included, and stripping away all your drivers – and it doesn’t require any special media. It’s basically a clean install without you having to directly perform the actions of reinstallation. You’ll find it in a corner of Windows Defender Security Centre, aka Windows Security – select Device performance and & health, then Additional info, before clicking Get started to begin. Again, make sure…

We’re at the point in the PC’s evolution where the overheads of virtualisation are proportionately so small, and the technology enabling it so plentiful, that running an everyday OS in a virtual machine is entirely reasonable. You obviously won’t get 100 percent of bare metal performance from a virtualised instance of Windows 10, but it has a host of advantages. When you’ve got a system running just as you like it, you can take a snapshot, then quickly return to it at any point in the future. You can whip up a fresh copy of Windows in minutes, without any risk to your existing install. You can fire up other operating systems, and run them simultaneously on the same machine. If you’re the kind of person who loves to settle…

• 32bit rescue media isn’t recognised: 32bit media requires an older BIOS-based PC or a newer UEFI PC with Compatibility Mode enabled and Fast Boot disabled. Choose the USB option in the boot menu. • Insufficient memory error: PE loads everything it has into memory – if you’ve not got enough RAM, rebuild your rescue media with fewer tools. • Computer doesn’t boot from USB: Try burning a CD or DVD instead if your PC isn’t capable of booting from USB devices (only the very oldest PCs shouldn’t able to do this). • Certain hardware doesn’t work: There’s no guarantee you’ll get your hardware to work, even if you track down drivers. We failed to get two Wi-Fi adapters working (one code 37 error, another driver unrecognised), and our third…

What is the blockchain? It is tempting to say it’s a mass of complicated maths you don’t need to understand. Essentially, it’s an electronic ledger that tracks the movements of digital tokens between wallets – apps that store the tokens. The tokens can represent anything: ownership of a share or proof of identity, for example. Each transaction is verified and added to the list, or chain. The wallets have two cryptographic keys, one private and one public. A transaction is encrypted using your private key and the recipient’s public key. At the other end, the process is reversed, so it can only be unscrambled by the intended recipient, and they know it’s from you. The scrambling involves that complicated maths we mentioned. Each transaction becomes part of the whole, because…

Security IS THIS RANSOMWARE? Q A few days ago, I spotted a couple of strange-looking folders on my data drive: Tprogram136 and Oapplication5. An internet search revealed nothing, so I tried deleting one of the files only for Cybereason RansomFree to pop up and claim it had blocked an attempt to lock my computer. I selected the option to remove the ransomware, but then another file popped up in its place: Tfiles37. Inside these are seemingly random files with various formats. Where are they coming from? John Buchanan Nick P’s solution After some extensive research and further scans using John’s other tools – Avast FREE, EEK and Malwarebytes – we suddenly had our eureka moment! The folders in question – hidden by default – are created by Cybereason RansomFree as bait.…

The April 2018 Update introduced lots of new features, including the Timeline. This is embedded into Task View and enables you to jump back to files, apps and sites that you’ve recently used. The Action Centre also gained a few extra tweaks – look for Focus Assist under Settings where you’ll be able to further prioritise what notifications you receive and when. One feature that was originally promised for the April 2018 Update, but never arrived, was Sets. It would have enabled you to group related apps, documents and sites together under a single tabbed window, though Microsoft has since killed the idea. Luckily, TidyTabs (www.nurgo-software.com) does much the same thing.…

1 Disable ads To remove unwanted ads, go to Start > Settings > Personalisation > Start and toggle the ‘Occasionally show suggestions in Start’ switch to Off. Now open the Start menu and look for a Get Office entry under All Apps. Right-click this and choose Uninstall to stop the Office ads from appearing. 2 Customise the left-hand panel The buttons on the left give you one-click access to power, Settings, user options (including the ‘Switch user’ function) and much more besides. You can customise which user folders and tools appears here via Personalisation > Start – click ‘Choose which folders appear on Start’. 3 Tweak the app list You can disable the A-Z list of apps in the Start menu via Personalisation > Start (switch off ‘Show app list…

1 Basic configuration Click Start > Settings > Cortana to configure your mic, set permissions (and delete history), configure web search settings and manage notifications between all your devices running Cortana. To clear everything, select ‘Change what Cortana knows about me in the cloud’, scroll down and click Clear. 2 Manage services Open Cortana and click the Notebook icon on the left to configure Cortana’s functionality as a personal assistant. Most options involve choosing the kind of information that you want to know about; click Connected Services to link supported providers such as Gmail, Office 365 and Wunderlist. 3 Disable Cortana completely Press [Win] + [R], type regedit and press [Enter]. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\ Windows\Windows Search. Choose Edit > New DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name it AllowCortana and double-click it…

From £849 | $999 www.hp.com HP’s Envy line of laptops is effectively the more affordable alternative to its premium Spectre line of Ultrabooks. But, over the years, more and more of the premium features have trickled down into Envy laptops, and the latest Envy 13t keeps that up with plenty to offer at a more affordable price. The unit we’re reviewing is around £1,000 as configured, and includes an 8th-gen Intel Core i7 quad-core CPU, 16GB of RAM and Nvidia GeForce MX250 graphics. That puts it well below the £1,250 Spectre 13 with a slower Intel Core i7 and half the memory. Meanwhile, the £800 Dell XPS 13 may fit into the same price ballpark, but the base configuration is an Intel Core i3 processor paired with just 4GB of…

£2,000 | $2,400 www.lg.com No longer is a home cinema strictly the preserve of the rich. For those who covet that big-screen experience from the comfort of their own sofa, the market is strewn with portable projectors available for around the cost of a takeaway dinner. At the other end of the spectrum, you could build a pretty decent entry-level system for a couple of grand, your very own mini picture house. But what happens when you covet a true 4K HDR picture, with all the functionality of your smart TV and built-in speakers that won’t give you tinnitus, all without sacrificing the convenience of being able to pack it away in the broom cupboard after every film? Well, that’s where the LG CineBeam comes in. The HU80KSW will put…

Every shopping website you look at will try to tell you you’re getting a bargain. It’s slightly deceptive, but that’s basic marketing, and it’s something we’ve all learned to look through. But it also means that finding out what’s really good value can be tough. Shopping around is a good first step. You could hop between sites, checking the usual high street outlets as well as known online stores, but try searching for the item you’re looking for on Google, then selecting the ‘Shopping’ tab at the top of the page; this will bring up Google’s own price checker, which scours those sites for you. Be very careful where you’re shopping, as this will also bring to light some retailers who aren’t necessarily solid; you’re not guaranteed to be ripped…

AI-blended whiskey From £60 https://mackmyra.co.uk Sweden may not be the first country that springs to mind when you think of whiskey, but one distillery’s blend of traditional techniques and cutting-edge Microsoft cloud AI may be about to put it on the map. Now available to buy following its announcement earlier this year, Recipe 36 is an algorithmically generated blend of spirits that was selected by a human master blender to go into production following, we assume, a long period of tasting and contemplation. Possibly followed quite swiftly by another one, it being cold in Sweden at this time of year. The machine learning models, powered by Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and Azure cognitive services, are fed with Mackmyra’s existing recipes, sales data, and customer preferences. With this dataset the AI…

One of the factors that contributes to our pessimism surrounding reinstalling Windows is that we desperately don’t want you to lose anything. We’re kind like that. But there is another, slightly frivolous way to do a reinstallation if you’ve got working hardware to play with: you can turn one Windows installation into two. If you have a second drive that is able to support a Windows 10 installation, or enough access to your current Windows 10 installation (and enough free space) to be able to trim down its drive using Disk Management then create a new clean partition, you can install a second copy of the operating system alongside the first. Simply select a custom install, and then point Windows 10 at that spare disk space – it should do…

Reinstalling is, or should be, a last resort – and if you ever come to the point where you absolutely have to reinstall Windows and don’t have copies of your files, it might be too late. A hardware failure, a cryptographic malware attack, whatever the case may be, you don’t want to be left stranded. We’ve talked about using Windows’ File History tools elsewhere, which is a good way to keep regular copies of your personal files, but Windows also includes a more thorough backup procedure in the form of Backup and Restore (Windows 7). Now, we can’t be entirely sure how long this is going to last, given its archaic name, but for now, it works, and we’d wager that Microsoft will supply a tool to restore its backups…

If Windows fails to boot, or you’re otherwise locked out of your system, what can you do? Built-in recovery tools are certainly helpful, but they’re not the most user-friendly. Microsoft developed a special ‘pre-installation environment,’ called Windows PE, which gives you access to a cut-down version of Windows that can be started from a bootable DVD or USB flash drive. It’s basic, but it contains a familiar, user-friendly graphical interface that gives you access to your system even when it won’t boot. Creating this recovery media by hand can be tricky, but AOMEI PE Builder 2.0 makes it possible for you to build your own customised recovery disc, complete with the tools you know and trust for recovering data, restoring a previous backup, researching the problem online, and even performing…

Off-the-shelf is good as far as it goes, but there comes a time when you want to put your personal stamp on something, and with Windows, you’ll be surprised by just how much control you can wield over its look and feel. We’ve dug out no fewer than 60 tips to help you customise Windows 10 to your personal tastes. There’s a reminder of some familiar tips, but we’ve dug deeper to reveal buried settings and little-known techniques that can do more than simply change the background picture or apply a colour scheme. Indeed, we open this feature by introducing two free tools that, between them, open up a wide array of customisable options that normally require you to be a maestro at Registry editing. You’ll tackle the desktop and…

Facebook will not run Libra directly, but through its subsidiary Calibra, it will be a partner in the body that does: the Libra Association. This is a non-profit, independent organization dedicated to running, controlling, and promoting Libra, as well as managing the reserve fund. Facebook hasn’t gone alone for a number of reasons, trust being one of them. As the project leader David Marcus admitted, “If we were controlling it, very few people would want to jump on and make it theirs.” The association has 28 founding members, and among them are such big names as PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, eBay, Uber, and Spotify. There are also some names you won’t know, unless you are familiar with blockchain development and venture capital. This is just the initial lineup – it is…

The Game Bar was introduced as a way for capturing gameplay videos, allowing you to boast of your multi-headshot prowess on social media. In reality, it can be run on any application as long as you tell the Bar that it’s a game, so Chrome, Word, even Photoshop become games when you want to capture video of them. The Bar was upgraded in the May 2019 update to an overlay that gives you CPU and GPU usage stats too.…

1 Edge supports extensions One of the biggest turn-offs for Windows 10’s new web browser was a complete lack of support for add-ons and extensions. This was rectified from the Anniversary Edition on, and because extensions are only available through the Microsoft Store, you can be sure they’ve been properly vetted. 2 Tablet-friendly features The Anniversary Update also took steps to make Windows friendlier on touch devices, such as 2-in-1 tablets. This saw the introduction of a dedicated Windows Ink workspace with sketchpad, sticky notes, annotated screenshot tool and digital ruler, all designed to play nicely with touchscreens and styluses. 3 3D updates The Creators Update introduced widespread support for 3D, from a brand new app (Paint 3D) to support for 3D content in other Microsoft tools, including both Edge…

We’ve seen how the desktop can provide you with a means of pinning favourite programs and files within easy reach, but it’s only the start of your journey into navigating Windows 10. Let’s start with File Explorer – the tool you use to browse and manage your computer’s contents. You’ll see its folder icon on the Taskbar, so click this and it’ll open to one of two views: ‘Quick access’ or This PC – you can change the default view by switching to the View tab on File Explorer’s ribbons, clicking the Options button and making your choice from the ‘Open File Explorer to’ drop-down menu. ‘Quick access’ is a special folder that contains shortcuts to both recently opened files and folders you frequently open. It’s also possible to ‘pin’…

From £1,399 | $1,599 www.razer.com The Razer Blade 2019 is eerily similar to the 2018 model, but has ample updates to the hardware inside to make the price increase worth it.. The biggest upgrade is the novel Nvidia Turing graphics now inside, and these are undeniably much more powerful than the Pascal predecessors. This gaming laptop also has radically increased battery life as well as an added infrared camera, finally permitting for Windows Hello login. For a 15-inch Razer Blade with Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics inside, Razer wants a monstrous £2,199 to start. That gets you a model rocking RTX 2060 graphics, a 144Hz 1080p display and a 512GB SSD. You can compromise with a GTX 1060 Max-Q, which will slash a few hundred quid off the price tag to…

Action cams are small and rugged and, because of the firstperson footage they capture, have become the go-to gadget for those looking to film their high-octane adventures or capture cool timelapse videos. Buy one with a waterproof housing and you can take your action camera in the ocean. There are also models with waterproofing as standard. The most important things to consider are what you want features-wise and what your budget is. If you want to shoot super-smooth footage in 4K and control the camera hands-free (with an app or voice control), be prepared to spend upwards of £250, depending on what deals are being offered. 1 GoPro Hero7 Black £380, www.gopro.com Whether this GoPro is the best action camera for you comes down to what type of pursuits…

So, you use Windows. You’re in a slowly shrinking but still three-quarters majority, so it’s not a surprise: Windows users are ubiquitous. Almost as ubiquitous as people complaining about Windows, because macOS and Linux users do that, too. Whatever your gripes, the thought of reinstalling Windows has likely crossed your mind at some point. Perhaps you’ve even gone ahead without thinking of the consequences. You might even have been left with a half-functioning machine that’s missing many of your critical files and programs. Let’s be clear at the start of this feature (one that’s ostensibly about reinstalling Windows): Reinstalling Windows is generally a really bad idea. Hear us out. Windows 10 is a much cleaner and more stable OS than its predecessors. There’s no good reason to reinstall it unless…

The act of reinstalling Windows 10 can feel daunting. Never fear: we’re going to step you through the entire process from booting from your Windows installation media to running carefully through the post-install setup options. If you’ve not yet done so, visit www.microsoft.com/en-gb/ software-download/windows10 and click Download tool now to download and run the Media Creation Tool. Insert a blank DVD, or plug in an unused USB flash drive (8GB or larger). After launching the tool, accept the licence terms, then choose Create installation media… and follow the prompts (use recommended options when asked) to create your flash drive or generate an ISO file. If you choose the ISO file option, click Open DVD burner at the end to write it to your blank DVD. Once your installation media has…

“Keeping an eye on your PC’s actions isn’t particularly difficult, Windows 10 includes all the tools you might need” Many people look at a Windows reinstallation as a way to fix any and all ills. However, we consider it as being more of a last resort. It’s a little like dealing with unruly children. Before taking drastic action and shipping your PC off to military school, you should really do everything you possibly can to fix the problems you’ve got, and find out the cause of its misbehaviour, because you might just find that a simple solution works better. Heavy-handed metaphor aside, keeping a keen eye on your PC’s actions isn’t particularly difficult, because Windows 10 includes all the tools you might need at your disposal: There’s the Task Manager…

Packed with informative tutorials Every issue, we guarantee to pack the magazine with great tutorials teaching you all the best things you can do with your PC. Each article features step-by-step instructions to make learning new skills fast and enjoyable. Customise Windows to work your way We all know how to do the basics but getting the most from Windows isn’t always easy. Our dedication to the operating system means you get the very best tips and tricks for all versions of Windows. Get more from your favourite websites We all have our list of favourite sites but often we miss out on great features because they re difficult to use or hidden from sight. We’ll show you how to do more online, for a more satisfying web life. Discover…

You can incorporate additional portable tools in your AOMEI rescue disc, giving you access to a wide range of additional apps and utilities. Just one golden rule: Your portable app must match the system type (32bit or 64bit) of your rescue disc. To determine this, first launch the app, then open Task Manager. Switch to the Details tab, right-click the column headers, and choose Select columns. Select Platform, and click OK. Locate your program, and you’ll see it’s listed as either 32bit or 64bit. Start your search for portable tools at http://portableapps.com, where you’ll find most bases are covered, particularly for 32bit apps. Tools to grab from here include Autoruns (manage startup items), SSD-Z (check hard drive health), Teracopy (faster file transfers), FileZilla (FTP transfers), and PuTTY (SSH into other…

Facebook’s currency, Libra, is nearing launch, and if the plans bear fruit, it’s going to be the most disruptive thing to come out of Silicon Valley for years. Let’s start with what Libra isn’t. It’s not a cryptocurrency, you won’t be able to mine coins, and it’s not an opportunity for speculation or investment. It does use similar blockchain tech to drive it (see box, p60), but it’s a closed system designed for stability. It’s also designed to be fast, something Bitcoin struggles with (it can barely manage seven transactions a second; Libra will start at 1,000). It isn’t a bank account either, something Facebook is keen to stress for legal reasons, so you won’t be earning interest on your account, or get credit. Libra is a stable private blockchain…

A stated early target for users of Libra is the migrant worker who sends money home to support their family. While the individual amounts may not be large, the scale of the whole business is huge. The World Bank estimates that $715 billion is moved around the world annually, supporting over 800 million people, and making major contributions to the economies of many nations. The established wire transfer services, such as Western Union, take a cut of this. The global average for transfer fees is 7 percent, which is quite a hit: seven pounds for every hundred of hard-earned wages disappear when you simply send money home. There are currently few ways to avoid these fees, and they have a disproportional effect on wealth. UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific,…

When it first appeared, Windows 10 introduced lots of new features, from a revamped desktop to Cortana, the virtual personal assistant who’s always on hand to help, provided you’re prepared to give up some of your privacy. Internet Explorer got dumped in favour of the all-singing (if not, initially at least, all-dancing) Edge web browser. It also blended the best bits of Windows 8.1 – the vastly superior File Explorer for accessing your files, for example – with the best bits of Windows 7, such as bringing back the Start menu. Other changes have followed with each new successive feature release. The step-by-step guide on the facing page highlights six major new features, but numerous smaller changes have been applied with each release too. For example, the Anniversary Edition also…

The Windows desktop has undergone some radical changes over the past few years, but after experimenting with Windows 8’s Metro user interface – which was rapidly scaled back in Windows 8.1 – Windows 10 has returned the desktop to something closer to Windows 7. This means the desktop has returned to its original function – as a virtual desk. You can use it as a simple backdrop when switching between application windows, or keep shortcuts, files and folders on it for easy access (right-click on it and choose Personalise to change its look and feel). Adding items to the desktop is simple enough – just drag them from a File Explorer window. You can also create desktop shortcuts by right-clicking the file or folder in question and choosing ‘Send to‘…

When it comes to changing system settings – from the apps you’ve installed, to the picture to use for your desktop background – you’ll need the Settings tool, accessible from the Start menu by clicking its button. Settings is currently divided into 13 discrete sections – click one and you’ll see a series of sub-menus on the left, each of which contain subsets of options. Settings is Windows 10’s replacement for the Control Panel. When Windows 10 was first released, it was still very much a hybrid of both Settings and Control Panel, but with each successive feature update more settings have made their way from the Control Panel into Settings. For example, from the Spring Creators Update, you’ll manage your fonts from within Settings rather than being redirected to…