I bought a brand new HP laptop running Windows 11 23H2. My laptop is a brand new Lenovo i7 with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD.I have an eight year old HP 6960 printer. To start the process, I downloaded the drivers for Windows 11 from the official HP website. Trying to install the software gave an error that the Wi-Fi can’t detect SSID despite laptop and printer being on same Wi-Fi network. I saw that the pesky Wi-Fi direct was…
Even we get scammers trying to steal from us. Today we received an email from a company that looked just like it was from our Domain registry and web hosting company called 1-Grid.The email said that our Domain had been “Cancelled”. I quickly logged into our account at 1-Grid to see that our account was up to date and therefore prooved this was a scam. The scammer had spoofed 1-Grids email so it looks like it came from them.The email…
If you want to learn how to type start by putting your left fingers on the A S D F keys and your right on the J K L : keys.These keys are called the “home keys”.You’ll notice that the F and J keys have a ridge on them. This is to help you park your left and right forefingers (the one that you point with) on their respective home keys. Now comes the fun part:Simply start by typing the…
Have you started receiving pesky sales notifications from websites that you have previously visited and accidentally allowed Notifications? Microsoft Edge stores all of the websites that you visit and if you allow the Notifications, it is added in the Notifications permission list. To stop the Notifications for good you can do the following. 1) Click the three little horizontal dots on the top right of the Edge Browser to open the Browser’s Menu 2) Click the Settings cog at the…
We had a customer complain that her Microsoft application on her computer had started giving her an error that her Outlook email account’s username or password was incorrect. I immediately suspected a 2FA problem since the old Outlook needs an app password when 2FA has been enabled. I was able to log into her Microsoft account which proved that her credentials were correct. I noticed that 2FA had not been turned on.Fearing that the Credentials cache on her computer had…
My wife reported that her 2016 Samsung Tablet S2 with version 7 Android, had done a facebook app update and when she went to reopen the app she saw that she had been logged out of her account and needed to log back in. When she tried to log in, she was told that the app needed to perform a “security check”. This required her to enter the contorted looking text that was presented on the screen. After successfully doing…
We visited a customer that was having trouble converting several images to a pdf. What was happening was that the pages were not in a numbered sequence. She was using the File Explorer’s printing tool to convert the images to a pdf.She had numbered the images as she wanted them printed, but the numbers were not correct when the pdf was opened. She had tried using the “Microsoft convert to pdf” and the “Adobe Acrobat” print output formats.The trick is…
We attended a customer’s home where they were using the amazing Google Home to control their in different rooms. In each room they had a Google Home speaker.In one room if the customer asked Google Home to turn off the lights say in the living room, Google would respond with “Turning off Living Room lights”. In another room with another speaker, Google would simply emit a ding dong tone when it turned the light on or off. The customer wanted…
We were called to a customer’s home that had problems printing from her laptop to her Printer.On closer inspection, I saw that the Wi-Fi network that the laptop was connected to, was set as Public even though she was on her home network.I changed the network to Private and the printer started printing again.However on restarting the laptop I saw that the network had been changed back to Public again. I decided to uninstall the Avast anti-virus software on her…
We attended a customer that was having a problem cloning his old HDD (Hard Disk Drive) to a new SSD (Solid State Drive). The programme that he was using to do the Cloning was the excellent Acronis application. The Acronis tools were installed on a USB stick, which the customer used to boot the computer. The Cloning should be done outside of Windows, to minimise the risk of corrupting the data on the HDD. Needless to say before you attempt…
We attended a trouble call where a customer could not uninstall the McAfee Security Scan Plus software from their laptop.Unfortunately this software is bundled with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader programme. Unless you untick the box to not install this McAfee Security Scan Plus programme, then it gets a free ride into your computer. What happens is when you click the “Uninstall” button, you are given the normal permission window to uninstall the programme, to wish you click Yes, but…
Beware of scams trying to scare you into clicking on a link in a SMS. This is called “phishing” and is sadly quite common. The aim of the scammer is to steal your private credentials such as your username and password. This action is to solely steal your hard earned money. Sadly Banks and Governments seem powerless to stop this or help you try to recover your stolen assets.
We attended a customer’s home to trouble shoot the Send/Receive button missing from one of her Outlook email addresses. Also she noticed that no new emails were appearing in her inbox for a few weeks, despite seeing them in her cell phone email application. Also there were no emails appearing in the inbox of the affected email address. Suspecting that a Folder rule had accidentally been set up to direct the incoming email to the wrong Folder produced no result….
We recently attended a printing problem of a customer using a Windows 10 laptop at home. The laptop was connected by Wi-Fi but had repeated trouble printing to their Wi-Fi connected Printer.Sometimes this can happen if the Printer is far away from the Wi-Fi router and the signal at the Printer’s location was very low or being blocked by interference from other equipment in the home.However this was not the case as the printer was only one metre away. Her…
Do not install this optional driver as it clashes with Windows update and causes the Windows update process to freeze at 61%.It also causes a yellow pause icon to appear and there is no “resume update” button.
We took possession of a customer’s Lenovo laptop, that was stuck doing the latest Windows update. Also there was a yellow “Pause” symbol showing as in the image below. This symbol normally shows if you have delayed the update, however this was not the case in this particular situation.However you should also see a button called “Resume Updates” however this button was missing.The Windows update Troubleshooter couldn’t fix the problem and Windows media creation tool update software said that the…
Scammers and fraudsters will try every trick in the book to obtain your private credentials.By “credentials” I mean your account’s USERNAME and PASSWORD.Microsoft will never call you out of the blue or send you warning emails like in the photo below.Cryptocurrency exchanges will never email you out of the blue asking you to verify your credentials.Google or other email providers, will never email you out of the blue warning you that your account will be suspended, unless you click a…
We recently attended a customer that had changed their Internet Service Provider. They received a new Wi-Fi router and after setting it up, they found out that their Google Home speakers could not connect to the Internet.This was because the new router had a new name and the Google Home devices listed on her cell/mobile phone were still connected to her old Wi-Fi network which didn’t exist anymore.Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy way to change the Wi-Fi network that the…
Yesterday, my wife received a SMS on her cell phone from our bank. The SMS is designed to alarm the reader into taking immediate action and you can see how it looks legitimate. When I clicked the link, you can see that the next page which shows where to enter your private credentials (username and password). This page also looks authentic.Please understand that your bank or Microsoft or other service provider, will NEVER contact you either telephonically or via SMS…
We have had a few customers that needed a new Google app password created for their Microsoft Outlook programme, because they had changed their Google account password.I have found the option to create a new app password, is not visible in the list of sign in options. However, if you search for “app passwords” in the search bar at the top of the Google account, you will see the option for “App passwords” showing in the results. You can therefore…
I recently allowed OneDrive to back up my documents to the Cloud.After the uploading had finished to the Cloud, I got an error when I tried to open and download my emails using the Outlook mail client.The error was “Outlook .PST cannot be opened”For some strange reason, MS chooses to create the “Outlook Files” folder in the Documents folder, instead of the root of the drive. OneDrive does not back up the root of the drive it only backs up…
We recently helped a customer fix a problem with their USB stick.When they plugged the stick into the computer’s USB socket, they were presented with a question box on the screen whether to format the stick or not.This happens if the File Allocation Table on the stick is corrupt and cannot be read by Windows.Do not under any circumstances answer “YES” to the formatting as the contents of the stick will be deleted and you will make things worse.Instead, note…
We had a customer that wanted to tag a company on Facebook, that she had used, but when she started typing the name, the company name would not appear.Another friend was able to tag the company with no problem.We suggested to try adding the @ sign in front of the name. The customer tried this and low and behold the company name appeared in the list of results.When you add the @ sign, it Facebook treats the name as a…
We got a new computer to connect to our TV monitor.Our computer serves our home as a HTPC (Home Theater PC) Media Server. We leave it on 24/7.The new computer only had a DP (Display Port) socket to connect to the HDMI socket on the TV.Consequently, I ordered a cable with a DP plug on one end and a HDMI plug on the other.There is a built-in adapter on the cable to change the protocols required to convert a DP…
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We recently attended to a customer that could not print anything using the Microsoft Edge browser. The “print” button can be used to print webpages that you are looking at as well as .pdf ((Portable Document Format)) documents that you are reading. Microsoft Edge has no problem handling .pdf documents.This situation alarmed him, because he urgently needed to print up some documents that he had received and didn’t want to install a third-party application to print the documents. The symptom…
If you ever get this message or a similar type, immediately press and hold in the power button on your computer for up to ten seconds. Do not under any circumstances call the telephone number shown
Your Bank will NEVER contact you like this. If you suspect any nefarious activity on your account, call your Bank. Do NOT click on any link in a SMS or email purporting to be from your Bank.
You receive a SMS purportedly from sky.The scammer tries to get you to download a virus to your cell/mobile phone. This virus will then steal your passwords. Beware!
If you want to add the day of the week, to the date/time on the bottom right of your display in the notification area, add ddd to the short date field as shown in the below screen shots. You can add dddd but if you find the day of the weeks is not showing because of insufficient room in the notification area, then change the dddd to ddd Start by typing Control Panel in the search field in the bottom…
We look forward to helping you with our Computer Skills Development Package.Looking forward to a New Year with exciting opportunities.
If you have an inkjet printer, make sure that you use it at least once a week. This stops the print head ink from drying out. I suggest that you print something which uses all the colours of your printer. Below you will find a photo that you can use to exercise your printer.
Many times I see facebook comments containing long lines of text which are very difficult to read because they contain no paragraphs.In order to add a page break to your facebook comments, press shift and enter on your keyboard at the same time to create a new paragraph or line break
We attended a customer’s home who told us that she had to keep reinstalling her Office 365 because it would disappear from her computer when she booted up in the morning.Upon arrival she showed me that she downloads the Office 365 installation file using her Husband’s computer and put it on a USB stick and then installs from there.The problem is that the 365 installation file is custom created for the computer that is downloading it. You can’t transfer the…
You may have noticed that when you visit websites using Microsoft Edge, there is an option to add that website to your favourites. This option is via an icon at the right hand side of the Internet address bar or URL bar.You may also have noticed that some stars for websites are a solid colour.The reason for the two types is that if the star is filled in then it means you have already added that webpage to your favourites.Clicking…
We had a customer that was given access to a shared folder of another friend’s Google Drive in which to deposit files.Her friend had a Google Drive storage size of many Gigabytes available while our customer only had a free Google account, that only had a couple of Gigabytes left. The free Google account gives you 15GB of storage space which is shared between all of your Google services. She had tried to upload some large files from her computer…
Do you have a file of folder on your computer that you need to keep sending people, but don’t want to waste time scrolling through File Explorer to find it?Just add an exclamation mark ! at the beginning of the name and the file or folder will always appear at the top of your list. So if the folder name is Comp-U-Train then change it to !Comp-U-Train.
Quickly go to your desktop, by clicking this thin vertical bar in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.
I have used the Acronis USB “rescue media tool”, many times to clone a customer’s old Hard Disk Drive to a new Solid State Drive (SSD).Even if the old drive size was larger than the size on the new SSD, Acronis would take care of this mismatch automatically. So long as the used space on the old hard drive was less than the size of the SSD, it would happen seamlessly.I have had no problems doing this up to now.This…
This scam aims to make you click on the link which will then install malware on your Android phone which can be used to gather your secret information!
There are many ways that scammers try to steal your hard earned money. A modern method, is to tell you either by scam email or phone call, that you have a refund coming to you; or that they have received a large sum of money from you and to contact them, if it is in error. Online scams are bane of the 21st century. No longer do crooks need to physically enter your home to steal from you. Sadly now…
We came across a customer that uses the recycle bin on their computer to store items.The “recycle bin” is a misnomer. It should be called “Rubbish Bin”.If you ever need to get your computer refreshed or upgraded, then the items in the recycle bin will be DELETED!Do NOT put anything in the recycle bin that you cannot afford to lose permanently.
When you set up an account to receive your cryptocurrency, you are given a “wallet” to receive your Bitcoin. This wallet has its own unique ID code which you give out to anyone that wants to send you cryptocurrency.Before you can receive or send cryptocurrency to or from your wallet, you will be asked to set up “two factor authentication”(2FA) which helps you protect access to your valuable cryptocurrency. Before you can conduct a cryptocurrency transaction you will need to…
One of our Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphones started giving us an error whenever we tried to open the built in camera application. Other than this, the phone has worked flawlessly for many years!We tried all of the online suggestions such as making sure that the phone’s firmware was up to date; clearing the camera app cache; doing a soft reboot of the phone; doing a hard reboot of the phone (which meant installing the phone from scratch) but still nothing…
Today we are going to be talking about Tabs in more detail, as well as creating Tables with Tabs in them.
I get asked a lot by our customers about what type of CPU (Central Processing Unit) that I recommend for their new computers.The CPU is the “brain” of the computer and conducts all of the processing activities. An i3 CPU is for the entry level CPU for the basic user. It is an economic choice and is the lowest of the i3 processor family that I recommend. Below the i3 is the “Celeron” processor but I advise my customers to…
We attended a trouble call where the customer had two computers running Windows10.One had an old printer connected to it using a USB cable. She could print with no problem to this older printer.However, she wanted to share this printer to a new computer over her Wi-Fi network and was not able to accomplish it.When we arrived at her SOHO, we checked to make sure that she had shared the printer correctly on the old computer and that “file and…
We received a Notebook from a customer, that was stuck on Windows 10 version 1909. The customer wanted to update it to the latest version of Windows 10 which is 20H2.Unfortunately this Notebook only came with 32GB of hard disk capacity. Just putting Windows 10 and Microsoft Office on the Notebook will quickly use this up.Consequently, the Notebook only had about 3GB of empty space available.The customer didn’t understand the messages from Microsoft about having to free up hard disk…
We had a customer that was trying to install Windows 10 on their HP laptop.After the installation had copied the files to the hard disk drive from the USB key, the laptop restarted; only to return to the same point of the installation where you choose the language and keyboard choices.The installation would not advance past this point.Normally the Windows 10 installation will restart and carry on with the installation even if installation USB key is plugged in.The laptop was…
If you are trying to tag a friend in a facebook comment and when you start typing their name, a pop-up link doesn’t show with their name, then make sure that you are typing their name starting with a Capital letter.
You may have noticed the four volume sliders in your Samsung/Android phone settings.The first volume control is the “Ringing” volume control. This controls the sound of the phone when someone calls you.The second volume control is the “Media” volume control. This controls the volume when you play media on your phone such as music or watching an online video.The third volume control is the “System” volume control. This controls the volume of any sounds made by the system itself. This…
We recently received a trouble call that a customer’s Samsung Galaxy note was not working properly. She couldn’t download emails and the Tablet was making unusual sounds when the customer wasn’t doing anything. It was also exhibiting abnormal behaviour.I brought the device back to our office and looked to see if the Tablet needed any Android software updates to be performed. Sure enough the Tablet needed to do a 286MB update. After finishing that I checked for updates again. There…
Here is another Scam purportedly from the IRS. Companies will never contact you like this. Scammers want to get a hold of your banking information. Never ever respond to these people. Unless you have initiated the contact personally, then must not trust this type of Phishing scam.
If something is amiss on your computer, make sure that you RESTART it and not do a SHUTDOWN and start up. The reason is when you restart, it shuts down your computer first. If you shutdown it puts your recent opened programmes in memory so that it boots up faster. You will notice that if you Restart you computer, you clock log in Task Manager shows that it has been reset to 0.This is due to a Windows 10 feature…
Don’t fall for scams like these!Either do the three finger salute (ctrl+alt+del) to get to the shut down icon, or hold in power button for up to 10 seconds to shut down your computer.The scammers disable the back and close buttons in your browser and will you tell that they have locked your computer.
If you want to copy something to a USB flash drive and then delete said file/folder from your computer, first safely eject the USB drive from your computer BEFORE deleting the file on your computer.Otherwise, Windows Explorer will show a “still in use” error when you try to eject the USB drive. You will then have to wait for hell to freeze over; refresh Windows Explorer; or shut down or restart the computer in order to safely unplug the USB…
We recently attended a customer call whose Dell W10 laptop can’t see their Huawei Wi-Fi router listed under the Wi-Fi networks Other devices can see and join the router. Tried disabling and re-enabling the Wi-Fi adapter but there was no change Looked at the Wi-Fi network app on my Smartphone and I could see the router but noticed it’s transmitting on Ch 13 on the 2.4GHz bandCh13 is used in Europe but not in the US or SA normall. Logged…
If you find that you have to press the ” quotation key on your keyboard twice for the ” to appear, it means that you have accidentally set your keyboard for US International rather than US. You need to go into your language settings and firstly add the US keyboard and then you can delete the US International keyboard.
This morning we lost the Internet connection on our Windows 10 v1909 computers using a LAN cable connection. So I bust out my handy dandy USB Wi-Fi dongles in order to connect to my phone’s tethering. Previously once I had joined the tethering’s Wi-Fi signal, I got Internet service straight away. However despite it showing that I was connected to the Wi-Fi, I couldn’t get any Internet connection. I tried rebooting my confuser and also the dongle but still no…
I recently added some contacts on my Android phone and was surprised to see that they didn’t automatically appear in the contacts on my Android Tablet. I went into the “Accounts” settings on my phone under the “User and backup” option and sure enough under the Google option, the box to sync the contacts was unticked.After ticking the box, my phone starting syncing my contacts with my Google account in the Cloud and the new contacts quickly appeared in my…
I recently downloaded a music compilation CD containing 100 lovely songs.When imported into my Windows 10 Groove Music application, instead of a single album with all of the songs contained, I was presented with one hundred songs separately!A quick look at one of the song’s Metadata information, showed that each song had the singer listed as the Album Artist, instead of Various Artists.By going into the CD’s folder and selecting all of 100 songs at once, I could change the…
We recently attended a trouble call where a customer could not send or receive her Google Gmail on her Tablet.She stated that this situation had existed for over a year!Her laptop needed to go in for repair and desperately needed to be able to use her Tablet to work with her email. First step was to confirm the Google email configuration settings on her Tablet. It had been set for IMAP email service and all of the settings looked correct….
