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Author: Jackie & Andy

Jackie Thomas is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and has been in the computer industry since 2003.
Acronis Clone problems

Acronis Clone problems

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…

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Beware of the “Refund Scam”!

Beware of the “Refund Scam”!

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…

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Windows “Recycle Bin” is not for storage!

Windows “Recycle Bin” is not for storage!

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.

Protect your cryptocurrency wallet

Protect your cryptocurrency wallet

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…

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Camera Failed Error in Samsung S5

Camera Failed Error in Samsung S5

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…

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Simultaneously share your screen and your webcam during a facebook live video webinar

Simultaneously share your screen and your webcam during a facebook live video webinar

An irritation with facebook live video broadcasting, is that you cannot share your screen and use your webcamera simultaneously, without using a third party plugin or application. As soon as you press the “Stop Sharing” button, your webinar transmission ends and you will have to start things all over again from scratch!This is a huge inconvenience to your viewers during a webinar, when keeping them engaged is so important. This is because you want to greet your viewers first off…

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Intel i3 vs i5 vs i7 CPU

Intel i3 vs i5 vs i7 CPU

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…

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USB shared printer not visible on another networked Windows 10 computer

USB shared printer not visible on another networked Windows 10 computer

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…

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How to upgrade Windows 10 with only small available hard disk drive space available

How to upgrade Windows 10 with only small available hard disk drive space available

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…

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Windows 10 installation keeps restarting to language & keyboard choice

Windows 10 installation keeps restarting to language & keyboard choice

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…

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Samsung Phone System Sounds

Samsung Phone System Sounds

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…

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Keep your devices software updated!

Keep your devices software updated!

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…

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IRS Scam

IRS Scam

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.

RESTART not REBOOT your computer

RESTART not REBOOT your computer

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…

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Scam Alert!

Scam Alert!

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.

USB storage drive currently in use error

USB storage drive currently in use error

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…

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Dell laptop not seeing Huawei LTE router

Dell laptop not seeing Huawei LTE router

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…

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Have to press ” key twice to appear

Have to press ” key twice to appear

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.

No Internet using tethering and Wi-Fi dongle

No Internet using tethering and Wi-Fi dongle

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…

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Contacts not syncing to my Android Tablet

Contacts not syncing to my Android Tablet

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…

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Groove Music shows each song of compilation as separate song

Groove Music shows each song of compilation as separate song

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…

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SSL (Accept all certificates)

SSL (Accept all certificates)

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….

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Acronis USB RMB apps crashing

Acronis USB RMB apps crashing

I recently attempted to clone a customer’s HDD to a new SSD. For many years, I have used the excellent Acronis set of apps to do the cloning. I also use the Back up and Recovery tools. These tools are on the RMB “Rescue Media Builder” that you must manually create using your Acronis True Image programme which I highly recommend purchasing.I have created a USB key with the apps installed as it is much easier to clone a drive…

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Microsoft Office 365 SMTP incompatibilty

Microsoft Office 365 SMTP incompatibilty

I recently installed Office 365 and could not get the email account setup properly in the Outlook app. I kept getting a SMTP error. I verified that the email password was correct by successfully logging into the webmail portal. I discovered that I could get the account set up successfully by typing “Control Panel” in the search box at the bottom left of your screen and then click on the Mail icon. Select User accounts in Control panel and you’ll…

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Easy way to replace Wi-Fi router

Easy way to replace Wi-Fi router

We recently attended a tech call to replace the customer’s Wi-Fi router as the existing one had gotten damaged by a power surge. The customer was not happy about the prospect that lay ahead with rejoining her dozen or so devices to the new router. This new router had a new password and Wi-Fi network name also known as the SSID. I was able to gather some information about her existing router which would help me install the new router…

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Transferring SMS messages between Android smartphones

Transferring SMS messages between Android smartphones

We recently attended a service call, where a customer had bought a new Android phone and after inserting the old SIM card, discovered that the SMS messages had not transferred over from her old phone. SMS messages are not retained on the SIM card for security reasons. If you use the excellent Samsung “Smart Switch” app (application or programme) to transfer your information from your old to your new phone, then the SMS messages are transferred across. However what happens…

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Wi-Fi Printing Problem

Wi-Fi Printing Problem

We recently attended a trouble call where a customer was having intermittent problems printing to her Canon Wifi network printer.She had been using it successfully to print from her Windows 10 laptop; her Apple iPhone and Apple iPad.Suddenly one day, the printer stopped printing from any device.Upon arrival at the customer, I rebooted the printer and rejoined the printer to her Wi-fi network, which was delivered by a Nokia ONT (Optical Network Terminal) provided by her fibre company.Suddenly the printer…

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Always use different passwords

Always use different passwords

If you use the same password for more than one website, please change it immediately. Add an additional symbol such as !@#$ etc. In this day and age where websites get hacked and people’s usernames and passwords getting stolen, you are giving the hackers the key to your city, if you share a username and password across multiple platforms. I notice that new websites ask you if your want to create a new account using your Google or Facebook details…

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Your email mailbox is full scam

Your email mailbox is full scam

We recently attended a customer whose domain is hosted by company X. They had received an email purporting to be from company X saying that their email box was full and that they needed to pay some money to increase the size of their mailbox. I logged onto her webhosting company dashboard to see that her mailbox was hardly used, so immediately contacted company X to find out that in did the email was a scam! If she hadn’t have…

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Cloning vs. imaging a hard drive

Cloning vs. imaging a hard drive

I often get asked what is the difference between cloning a hard drive versus imaging a hard drive. Cloning is the process of creating another drive which is an exact identical copy of your original drive. You would clone a drive if you wanted to convert your old mechanical hard drive to a modern solid state drive. It is a one for one copy. Think of cloning as making an identical twin. You would want to make an exact copy…

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ADATA SSD migration woes

ADATA SSD migration woes

I recently bought three ADATA 2.5″ SSD drives to install into customers laptops. The reason for this, is that these modern SSD (Solid State Drive) drives are much faster than the older HDD (Hard Disk Drive) mechanical drives. The three laptops were different brands. Each SSD was placed in turn, in a “USB caddy” which allows me to easily transfer the data from the HDD to the SSD. The process is called “cloning” and involves making an exact copy of…

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UBTV not working

UBTV not working

We had a call from a customer to say that the UBTV app (application) on their Android media box wasn’t working. They told us that when they clicked the app’s menu icon, the screen went black for a second or two and then returned to the menu. I was able to fix the problem by going into the “Settings” menu on the Android box and selecting the UBTV app itself. On the menu that appeared, I clicked the button marked…

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360 panorama photo not showing properly on facebook

360 panorama photo not showing properly on facebook

On our recent trip abroad, I took several 360 panorama photos with my smartphone camera. When I uploaded them to my facebook timeline, the photos were just a thin horizontal strip; rather than an interactive immersive 360 experience. I discovered that my smartphone camera was not embedding the Exif information correctly in the photo; so that facebook didn’t recognise it as a 360 photo. Exif is hidden Metadata information placed in the photo that contains information about the photo such…

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Cannot connect to Hotel Wifi landing page

Cannot connect to Hotel Wifi landing page

We recently stayed in a Hotel and needed to access the Internet using the complimentary Wi-Fi access. Unfortunately, whenever we opened the web browser on our phone, it would not automatically be directed to the Hotel’s “landing page” which is where you enter your guest credentials, in order to be granted access to the Hotel’s Wi-Fi Internet service.This landing page, also known as a “Captive Portal” helps the owner of the Wi-Fi network control who accesses their Wi-Fi. This is…

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Computer not booting up with Western Digital “My Book” USB HDD plugged in

Computer not booting up with Western Digital “My Book” USB HDD plugged in

Today we received a call from a customer complaining that when they had their new Western Digital “My Book” USB back-up drive plugged into their Windows 10 computer, it failed to boot up. Straight away, I thought that the boot-up setting in the computer’s BIOS had been set to boot from a USB HDD (Hard Disk Drive) rather than the internal HDD. Normally though, you would receive an error message on the screen that an Operating System could not be…

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Wireless mouse erratic behaviour

Wireless mouse erratic behaviour

We recently received a call from a customer that the brand new wireless mouse that they had received for Christmas, was acting erratically. It seemed to have a mind of its own. The cursor would either lag behind or jump in front of their hand movements and was driving the customer batty. Upon arrival at the customer’s home, I saw that the wireless mouse transmitting device, was plugged into the USB port on the front of her desktop computer. I…

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Transferring Contacts between Android phones

Transferring Contacts between Android phones

We recently attended a trouble call, where the customer had bought a new Android phone and had correctly joined it to her Google account. She complained that many of her old phone contacts had not populated the contact list on her new phone. Understandably, she was very worried that she had lost many of her valuable phone contacts that she had accumulated over the years and which numbered in the hundreds! To start with, she had transferred the SIM card…

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Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016 and Office 365 clashing

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016 and Office 365 clashing

We recently attended a trouble call, where the customer could not run a new installation of Microsoft Office 365 successfully. She had recently uninstalled an older business version of Office, called “Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016”, that had been retired as the company had gone out of business. However, when she tried to run Microsoft Outlook 365, it would only open to the Microsoft Activation Wizard for the retired verson of Office, asking for the new valid registration key. She…

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Synchronising S Planner calendars between Android phones

Synchronising S Planner calendars between Android phones

We were recently called to a customer’s home who operates an events organising business, to solve the problem about why a calendar event that she had created in the “S Planner” calendar on one of her Android phones, was not synchronising to her other phone; or showing up on her computer Google calendar, which is stored in the Cloud. This lack of a backup per se, exposes the customer to a potential catastrophe, because if something happens to this one…

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Gmail creation date

Gmail creation date

When you create a new Gmail account, you will be sent a congratulatory email from Google confirming that your account has been successfully set up. It is vital that you do not delete this email. Please record the exact date and time that this email was sent to you and if possible, forward this welcome email to a secondary email account as a backup. If you ever get locked out of your Gmail account, this one bit of seemingly unimportant…

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Ctrl z safety net

Ctrl z safety net

We have a customer that tells us that when she is writing a long email using the Windows 10 mail app, all of a sudden the text disappears. This has happened on a few occasions and upsets her unnecessarily since she is elderly and all of her hard work that has taken a great deal of her precious time has been wasted. To try to retrieve her email, she closes the message using the “x” at the top right hand…

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Laptop bag causes laptop to overheat

Laptop bag causes laptop to overheat

We received a trouble call in late 2017, from a customer complaining that their laptop had suffered premature failure on numerous occasions over the year. They had replaced the laptop HDD (Hard Disk Drive) and Motherboard a couple of times during 2017 and wanted to know if we had any advice or idea about why this was happening. This situation was very alarming as a laptop shouldn’t suffer multiple failures in such a short space of time. After some investigation…

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Updating Windows 10 on a notebook with small storage drive

Updating Windows 10 on a notebook with small storage drive

In a previous blog post, I detailed how to upgrade to Windows 10 from a previous OS (Operating System) on a notebook with a small storage drive. This procedure required the use of an external USB drive of at least 16GB. In a new development, I was given another notebook that needed a Windows 10 update; rather than being upgraded to Windows 10. I discovered that following my previous blog did not work, because the update still needed to utilise…

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“Task Host id stopping background tasks (Microsoft \ Windows \ Plug and Play \ Device Install Reboot required)”

“Task Host id stopping background tasks (Microsoft \ Windows \ Plug and Play \ Device Install Reboot required)”

We received a call from a customer complaining that their laptop wouldn’t reboot/shut down properly. He got the message. “Task Host id stopping background tasks (Microsoft \ Windows \ Plug and Play \ Device Install Reboot required)” He also experienced the trackpad/mouse behaving intermittently. He would left click something and it wouldn’t open. Rather than use a blanket repair such as running the System Restore repair, for this particular problem,  I did a quick google and found a link to…

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How to delete a single auto-complete entry in Microsoft Edge

How to delete a single auto-complete entry in Microsoft Edge

I recently attended a trouble call where the customer was complaining that there were multiple auto-complete username entries in the various web forms using Microsoft Edge. She explained that she wanted to delete these obsolete entries. Previously, she had managed to delete ALL of the auto-complete entries but that was overkill. If you need to delete a single entry, try left clicking the 3 dots on the top right hand corner of the Edge browser. Next, select the “settings” option…

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How to create a URL desktop shortcut using Microsoft Edge

How to create a URL desktop shortcut using Microsoft Edge

An Internet address is known as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and you will be familiar with the ubiquitous “http:\\www.computrain.co.za” format of a URL. The URL is what you type into the address bar at top of your Internet website browser. If you are dealing with a secure website such as your bank, you will notice that there will be the letter “s” at the end of the http. Incidentally, the “co.za or .com” of a URL is called the…

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Windows 10 update failure

Windows 10 update failure

This morning, I received a panic call from a customer that had overnight, attempted to upgrade their laptop to the latest version of Windows 10. They told me that after they awoke, they discovered that their laptop was only showing a spinning circle at the bottom of the screen. First thing in this situation is not to panic! Windows 10 is incredibly self-healing and many times can fix things when given half a chance. By this I mean not to…

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Scareware

Scareware

A couple of days ago I visited an innocuous website that had been hacked, albeit unbeknownst to me, by Internet cyber criminals. As soon as the website opened, I was greeted by both a webpage and Windows messenger message. The crooks had also activated my computer voice to read an ominous computer voice telling me that my computer had been blocked to protect the Internet. I would have to call a telephone “support” number to have my computer unlocked. I could…

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Upgrading a Windows 10 notebook with low storage space

Upgrading a Windows 10 notebook with low storage space

I recently attended an interesting trouble call, about an upgrade problem of Windows 10. The customer had a Lenovo notebook with only a 32GB hard drive installed. This in itself, is not problem. However, after having the Windows 10 OS and a few other programmes installed, the hard drive has only 5GB of space left! The Windows 10 upgrade needed at least 16GB of hard drive space for the 32bit installation and 20GB for the 64bit installation. This space is…

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Printer Wi-Fi Direct causing interference

Printer Wi-Fi Direct causing interference

Today we attended a customer that was having trouble connecting her new laptop wirelessly to her printer. The wireless setup was continuously failing because the software installation gave an error that it could not find the printer on the network. The client also complained that the Wi-Fi speed was varying wildly and was unreliable. Suspecting a neighbour’s co-channel Wi-Fi network, I activated an App on my smartphone that allowed me to look at the Wi-Fi spectrum. I was horrified to…

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HP laptop restarting loop after Windows 10 upgrade

HP laptop restarting loop after Windows 10 upgrade

This morning I got a call from a customer who had tried to do an overnight online in-place upgrade from Windows 64bit OEM 7 Pro to Windows 10. They have a HP laptop i7/8GB RAM and when they checked their “confuser” this morning they discovered that it was stuck in a worrying restart loop! First thing that I tried, was to force a shutdown and then take out the battery. Then I pressed the power button for a few seconds…

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Laptop fan running at full speed and noisy in Windows 10

Laptop fan running at full speed and noisy in Windows 10

We recently attended a call from a customer with a brand new laptop whose fan was running at full speed and quite noisy. This fan noise can sometimes be attributed to a laptop that is overheating because of excessive dust or “fur balls” inside the unit. However, because this laptop was out of-the-box, we disputed this reason. Other customers have reported to us, that this fan running problem only happened after upgrading to Windows 10. Therefore we have concluded that…

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How to share a post on facebook when there is no share button

How to share a post on facebook when there is no share button

Sometimes on facebook, you will see posts on your timeline which you would like to share. Unfortunately you see that there is no “share” button available that you can click on. This is caused by the writer of the post choosing to only share their post with “friends except” or that you are reading a post that is in a closed group. The way around this, is to click the pull-down menu on the top right hand corner of the…

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Multi-task during a PowerPoint presentation

Multi-task during a PowerPoint presentation

Whilst giving a PowerPoint presentation, have you ever needed to do some research on your computer or the Internet at the same time because you were asked a question but not wanted the delegates to view what you are doing? If projecting your presentation, the following method will allow your audience delegates to carry on watching the slideshow whilst your multi-tasking is hidden from view. During the presentation, simply right click the desktop and choose screen, then “Show Taskbar”. You…

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How to view the available hard disk storage space on a networked computer

How to view the available hard disk storage space on a networked computer

We had a customer who wanted to know if they could see the amount of available hard disk drive space that was being used on a shared network computer. This networked computer was a media server which stored her movies. Even though she could see the networked computer listed in the “File Explorer”, the amount of hard disk drive space does not show when viewed in this manner. Only the folder and file names are visible. To be able to…

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Audio stuttering and popping when playing music

Audio stuttering and popping when playing music

We had a call from a customer who’s computer sound was stuttering/skipping/popping when they played their music. As you can imagine this was quite uncomfortable on the ear. Rebooting the computer didn’t fix the problem on this occasion. I verified that the computer had the latest drivers for the sound card and video card installed. Sometimes HD audio drivers are provided as part of the computer’s graphic card drivers. Upon arriving at the customer’s home and hearing the problem for…

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Shared folders not visible over network

Shared folders not visible over network

We recently attended a customer who was having problems with their SOHO network. She was not able to see any shared folders on another laptop computer. Looking in the “File manager” of the laptop, I could not see any shared folders being displayed from the other laptop. I then went to the laptop that was sharing its folders but everything looked in order. I tried restarting both laptops but that didn’t fix the problem. I then tried rebooting her router….

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External hard disk drive reduced to 32GB

External hard disk drive reduced to 32GB

We recently had a customer call us to complain that their new 320GB USB external drive was only showing a capacity of 32GB. They had tried to use it to create a “system recovery drive” which is to be commended. This drive can be used to start up a computer that has suffered a failure of the Operating System. After creating the recovery drive, they realised that they had a smaller USB drive in a drawer which they wanted to…

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Adding Beneficiarys as Online banking payees

Adding Beneficiarys as Online banking payees

We had a customer that reported that they were not able to make online payments to a certain payee using their Internet Online banking service. The payee also used the same bank as our customer. Upon visiting the customer’s home, we discovered that the payee had mistakenly given our customer their ATM card number and not their bank account number. What was confusing was that our customer had been able to make payments to this payee for a few years successfully with…

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How to clone a HDD to SSD using EaseUS Todo Backup

How to clone a HDD to SSD using EaseUS Todo Backup

As your computer’s HDD (Hard Disk Drive) ages, it is prudent to avail yourself of new storage technologies such as the SSD (Solid State Drive). You will notice a huge speed and permformance improvement when you swap to a SSD. As an example, our media server now boots up in half the time! To start with, you will need a programme to help you clone your HDD and I recommend the excellent EaseUS Todo Backup programme. The cloning process literally makes…

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Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts

Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS FOR WORD :):) Select the letter to the left of your cursor . Shift + Left Arrow Select the letter to the right of your cursor. … Shift + Right Arrow Select text from your cursor to the beginning of a word. Ctrl + Shift + Right Arrow Select text from your cursor to the end of a word. Ctrl + Shift + Left Arrow Select from your cursor to one line above. Shift + Up Arrow Select…

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Optical Mouse Problems

Optical Mouse Problems

We received a call from a couple of customers saying that they were having problems with their Optical Mouse. One mouse was a wireless mouse that had stopped working and the other was a USB (Universal Serial Bus) cabled Optical mouse that was “acting weird”. Optical mice have replaced the old roller ball mice and rely on emitted light and an optical pickup device to enable the mouse to rely where their position is on the monitor screen. Like any device, things can…

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Upgrading to Windows 10 stuck at 90%

Upgrading to Windows 10 stuck at 90%

We recently had a customer who brought her laptop to us out of frustration because she couldn’t upgrade from Windows 8.1 to the new Windows 10 OS (Operating System). Every time that she tried to perform the upgrade, the upgrade installation reached 90% and would go no further. She left it overnight but awoke to the same Microsoft spinning progress wheel. We immediately checked her laptop to see if there were any outstanding Windows 8.1 updates. This revealed that there were…

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