Suddenly! A big Pop Up!

It happens a lot, almost everyday.

I’m reading an article on someone’s website, when all at once, the page blacks out and a huge box pops up wanting me to subscribe.

No way!

How annoying!

There is a way to close this annoyance, but I shouldn’t have to close anything just to read an article.

Get this webmasters, if I find your stuff worth reading and you have a newsletter, I will sign up for it as I have mentioned once or twice previously, I am a newsletter junky.

If you are a clever writer, you have a sign up link somewhere on your site and I will find it.

Otherwise forget it, I am not going to signup for something if I haven’t even read what you have to say and certainly not because I have been annoyed by a giant popup!

And furthermore, I may just leave and never come back!

Evernote's Work Chat

This page is not quite right due to an error by MyNotSoPerfectPc creator

Work Chat may be and probably is really handy for folks in a business environment. However, I am a home user and don't want to use Evernote's Work Chat (or any other chat for that matter) so I wanted to clear it off my Evernote as there is enough stuff on the interface without it.

It is really easy to hide Work Chat and you can add it back if you decide you need it

 

I removed Work Chat shortcut from the sidebar by right clicking on Work Chat and selected the option remove it.

 

In Tools/Customize Toolbar, I just removed the new chat icon by dragging it off.

 

All Work Chat gone.

No problem.

Outlook Annoyance..Again!

I have used just about every version of Outlook since Outlook 98. I have tried many different email programs trying to find one that will let me do just what I want.

I need reminders to keep me from forgetting really necessary things, like giving my dog her monthly heartworm medicine. This is really important as I tend to forget stuff a lot.

I need the ability to sort my email into folders. I get a lot of email and I want to be able to read just what is pertinent for each folder.

I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds. I prefer RSS over newsletters. Since Google disabled their feed service, I need one to replace it.

Outlook manages all of those things for me very well. While other email programs do most of them as well, they are not as easy for me to set up and some of them just don’t do the job as well.

I want to set up a Contact Group for close friends and one for family members. But for one of my email accounts, Outlook won’t set me set up a Contact Group.

Apparently Contact Groups are not supported by Outlook 2013 if you are using outlook.com. I am not the only one that finds this strange, odd or downright inconvenient, as there are a lot of folks asking why and how to fix. The fix seems to be a number of workarounds that are totally unacceptable to me, one of which is to use Outlook’s Quick Step feature.

I fixed it by just adding another email account to Outlook, imported all of my contacts  and now I have the new Contact Group available.

So if I want to forward something to one of my Contact Groups that comes into my Outlook.com account, I just change the sender email address to my non-outlook.com account then that contact list appears when I click To. Then I add the Group in the To field.

I know this is  not the most technical way but it works for me.  I just wish Microsoft had not decided to go this route, but guess they had their reason.

For me it was a big annoyance!

Installing Windows 10 Technical Preview

The first day it was available, I downloaded the 64 bit version intending to dual boot it on my Windows 7 notebook, but then I decided to try it on my old Dell. So I had to download the 32 bit version and burn that to a DVD.

This Dell has 1.5 Gig memory, but Windows 7 will run on it so thought it might work. Since it needed the 32 bit iso, downloaded and burned to DVD.

This old Dell has had a lot of different OS installed on it.  It originally came with Windows XP Pro. Then Windows 7, then a number of different distros, the last and current being Mint. A number of times I restored it back to Windows 7 using Macrium Reflect. But not this time.

I put the DVD in the drive and then the fun began. Windows seemed to be installing, but then I got this:

'Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS'

'Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. The partition is of an unrecognized type'

For some reason, (why I have no idea) I had removed a partition. Stupid! I can really goof up a lot.

Mint would boot just fine. (I like Mint! Haven't used it a lot but still I like it.)

Everything I tried didn't work. So I downloaded GParted, burned to disk the iso, booted it up, fixed the partition and formatted as NTFS and now I have Windows 10 Technical Preview up and running, tweaking and testing away.

I did have to update the drivers for the sound card, but otherwise everything seemed to run just fine out of the box. And Mouse Without Borders is working great! It seems to be working better with this preview that it did with Windows 7.

I certainly like it better than I liked Windows 8 the first time I saw it!

Restoring My Frozen iPad - Final

The trouble began on Sept 18.. See previous post.

After waiting and waiting for Apple to rest my iPad, it finally happened. On Sept 23 I got an email from Apple support thanking me for providing the proof of ownership. Nothing else except a line about “iCloud: Find My iPhone Activation Lock in iOS 7” and a link  to explain it.

I didn't quite know what to expect, but turned on my iPad and it accepted my Apple ID and password. It asked me if I wanted to set it back to new, restore from a backup in iCloud or restore from a backup on my PC.

I opened iTunes, plugged in my iPad, waited for iTunes to find it and selected restore from my PC.

Wonderful! And it was restored to OS 8!

I don’t know how they did it, but obviously Apple does ‘know’ how to access all of their devices. I guess they can somehow do that by using the Serial Number.

Sometimes it pays to be a packrat. The only way I could get the Serial Number was from the iPad box, because I couldn’t get to it on the iPad.

I have four things to say.

First, Apple Support is wonderful!

Second, don’t update your Apple devices using iTunes! Apple Support did tell me that when their servers are very busy, iTunes could cause a problem updating.

Third, do make a backup before updating. I now have a backup on my computer AND in iCloud.

Fourth, keep a copy of your serial number in a safe place, you never know when you might need it!

How to find the serial number of your Apple hardware product

I love my iPad!

Restoring My Frozen iPad

Today, Sept 18, I updated my iPhone to iOS8. it was really easy. Then I decided to upgrade my iPad, but first I decided to back it up in iTunes.

While I was in iTunes I elected to update it to OS8.

Big mistake! It froze. It didn't update, just sat there. Eventually I figured out there was a problem, so I decided to restore the backup.

Bigger problem, iTunes no longer recognized that my iPad was there.

Apple Support had me try a lot of things, but nothing worked. Just couldn't figure out what happened or how to fix.

Decided to try it on my Compaq with Windows 8. I didn't have iTunes on this laptop, so went through the long process of getting it installed. Apple Support said their servers were very busy! Finally it installed and yea! It recognized I had an iPad and also that it was in need of a repair.



I waited for the process to complete and finally it asked me for my Apple ID and password.



No such luck here. Somehow the Apple ID for this iPad must be crossed with someone else's ID. I don't know what is going on. I have only one Apple ID and it doesn't begin with a z!



Apple Support was really good through all of this hassle, but unfortunately the only way to get the iPad set back to new (if it even can) is to provide Apple with proof I really did buy this iPad new.

Since I bought it at BestBuy, I trekked on over to BB and they gave me a copy of the original receipt. I dully scanned it and sent it to Apple Support, which can (probably) take two business days to complete the process of resetting.

In the meantime I am without my iPad and I sure do miss it.

If I don't hear back by Tuesday, I will take it the Apple Store along with the box it came in and the copy of the receipt.

The Geek at BestBuy told me sometimes iTunes can cause a problem with updates, so lesson learned.

Back it up on iTunes, but don't update there!

As a side note, my iPhone updated with no problem, but of course it wasn’t through iTunes.

I will say, I am very impressed with Apple Support, more than any other support I have ever had reason to use.

Email To Email Part Three

I really like outlook.com aka Hotmail. It has a clean interface and and very easy to navigate. Reading email on the web is very convenient and a lot of folks prefer reading email this way.

Outlook.com also provides email forwarding. To set up the forwarding, log in in to your outlook.com account and go to Settings by clicking on the gear icon by your name. Select Options.

In Options, look under the Managing your account section and select Email forwarding.

On the next screen add your email address where you want the mail forwarded and don’t forget to click Save!

Important, read this: Please sign in at least once every 365 days—otherwise your account looks inactive and could be deleted.

If you want to read your email in a program like Outlook or Thunderbird, don’t forward your email, just download it.

To see how, read ‘Set Up an email app with Outlook.com’.

You can also Import email from another email account to outlook.com.

Select the provider.

Depending on which provider you select you will need to follow the instructions to import your mail.

 

 

 

 

 

Next: Using Mail Store to import your messages to an email program.

Email To Email Part Two

I previously explained how I set up email forwarding with Gmail and the process is really working great.

However, I also have a Yahoo email account that I want to read in my email program, so I set up the forwarding with Yahoo Mail.

First I logged into my Yahoo email and clicked on Settings.



Then I selected ‘Add’ by Accounts.



On the next page I added all of my account information for the forwarded account, then clicked ‘Save’.



So easy!

 



If Yahoo saves a lot of legitimate email to your SPAM folder, you may want to use the POP option to download your mail into your email program instead of forwarding your mail.



Using the Download option you can choose how you want to deal with SPAM.

If you are not sure how to download your mail to your email program, look here at Yahoo’s instructions. Access your Yahoo Mail account with another mail program.

Next time: Email To Email Part Three with outlook.com

Email To Email

I admit it, I am an email junky. Way back when I used Windows XP I took advantage of the Identity feature in Outlook Express and setup each email account in a separate Identity. It was so handy! I had separate accounts for friends and family, a number of Yahoo Groups (different Groups, separate email addresses) and business emails.

Fast forward to Vista, Windows 7 and now Windows 8. No more Outlook Express! I could have multiple accounts in Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird and Outlook. But it seemed to be a bit unwieldy and finally I decided to consolidate emails accounts into just one or two accounts.

I could have just notified everyone of the new email address, but since there are so many folks I would have to notify that didn't seem to be a really good option for me.

So I decided to try email forwarding from one account to another. I have two Gmail accounts, so I set up forwarding in Gmail and sent both of my Gmail accounts to an outlook.com account.

Gmail’s forwarding

To setup forwarding in Gmail, go to Settings.



Next click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP link.



Now setup the forward by entering the email address  and selecting how you want Gmail to handle it.



Don’t forget to save the changes! (Scroll down!to find the Save Changes button.)

I like Gmail's SPAM filters, the best available anywhere. (I wonder, if Gmail can do it, why can't the rest?) But I don't particularly like Gmail's web interface and I hate the way they use 'Labels' instead of separate folders.

If you really like Gmail and want to read all your email there,  you can also setup importing an email address/addresses into Gmail.



You can also import all the mail and your contacts as well, Click add a POP3 mail account you own to start receiving mail from the imported account.



You will have to enter your credentials for the import.



Email forwarding has made my email life less complicated. Now I can read all my email in just one place.

Trimming a Post in a Yahoo Group

I used to have a page on Martha’s Web for trimming posts. This was an old page for folks using an email program to get Yahoo Groups messages on their computers. Eventually I will try to re-create it for this blog.

However, many folks would rather read the messages online as they may not even use a computer email program, or maybe they just don’t want to get the ‘oh so many Yahoo messages’ cluttering up their inboxes.

Either way is great, choice is always good.

One advantage to reading and posting online, if a user is replying to a post, Yahoo does all the trimming and the messages are not two or more web pages long.  However there is a disadvantage as well to let Yahoo trim, when replying. If the poster is trying to get help and is replying to someone, the ‘helper’ may not know what has been tried before, because Yahoo has trimmed it all away.  This can be really frustrating!

However, there is a way to keep the ‘history’ of what’s going on.

When the poster first presses 'Reply', a blank template appears, with no history for the conversation.

The poster can include the history by just clicking ‘ Show Message History’, and all the previous history appears and the poster can add his/her response at the top of the post.

No more frustration!

For help tips about Yahoo’s neo; see here,  Neo for Mods. While us ‘old timers’ for Yahoo Groups continue to be frustrated with neo, sometimes we can find help, but sometimes it just seems to be broken.

Another Outlook 2010 Annoyance

I do not dial phone numbers from my computer, so why does Outlook keep asking me for my phone number every time I add a new contact’s phone number?

 

The only way to stop this annoyance is to go to the Control Panel/Phone and modem and put your phone number and location in the asked for fields.

Now I just hate putting un-needed information anywhere. There surely must be a way around this, but finding out how was almost an exercise in futility.

Finally I found where someone suggested turning off Telephony. So I turned it off by going to Services and disabling Telephony. To get to Services, just type Services in  the search box and the click Services at the top.

Services

Telephony Service

Telephony Service Properties

 

Now when I add a phone number in my Outlook Contacts, that annoying dialog does not pop up. In the event I should ever need Telephony enabled, it will be a simple matter to enable it again in Services.

It's Gone

The hard drive finally failed for good. Chkdsk couldn’t fix all of the bad clusters fast enough.

I knew it was failing, so I made very frequent backups.  When MacriumReflect couldn’t complete because of errors, I decided it was time to remove the failing drive and put in the new one.

It didn’t take very long, once it was determined how to open the drive compartment on this laptop.

Replaced the drive, popped in the Restore disk and Macrium did the trick.  The last complete backup was only a few days old, so it didn’t take long to update the files from my data backup.

There are still a few things I need to check on, but for now, I am a happy camper.

I still haven’t decided whether or not to install Windows 8 and dual boot, but now everything is in place so I will probably do it one of these days.

Connect Two or More Windows Computers Using Homegroup

Setting up a home network has never been easier than now, using the Homegroup feature first introduced in Windows 7 and also in Windows 8.

Start by first making sure each computer to be added to a homegroup has the same Workgroup name. To find out the Workgroup name, right click on ‘Computer’ and select Properties.

(On Windows 8 , right click on ‘This PC’ and select Properties.)

If the name has never been changed, it defaults to 'Workgroup'.

Windows 7

Windows 8

Each computer has a default password for Homegroup. On one computer open the Homegroup by going to the Control Panel and clicking’ ‘Homegroup’.

Copy or print the password on this computer and then Cancel out.

On the other computer/computers, open the Control Panel and click on Homegroup. On this computer select ‘Change the password’  and type the password from the first computer and save the changes.

After each computer now has the same password for Homegroup, you can access each computer by clicking the name in Computer on Windows 7.

Or ‘This PC’ in Windows 8.

How easy is that!

Hard Drive Failing!

Monday my Hp notebook took a very long time to load.  In fact it took so long I thought it wasn't going to load.
However, once it did load everything seemed to be OK. I decided to make a full backup using Macrium and the backup failed.

I ran chkdsk and Windows ‘replaced bad clusters’ in a lot of files.

Now Windows won’t load. It seems like it will load, but then I get a funny looking screen with a lot of text telling me basically, Windows is toast. But the mouse is working, so perhaps all is not lost.

After trying numerous times to get Windows to load, with no success I closed it up and turned on my old Compaq and started looking online for a replacement drive.

This Compaq has always had some issues and frustration begins when I can’t make my external backlit keyboard work.

Several hours later I decide to try the system repair disk for my Hp and finally it loads Windows.

I know the disk is failing. Macrium still can’t make a good backup and tells me to run chkdsk.

I just hope it will last until I get the new drive, which should arrive Wednesday. I am trying to decide whether or not to put Windows 7 on the drive or use my unused Windows 8 Pro on the drive. Maybe I’ll just use both, a dual boot.

Stay tuned!

Outlook 2010 Annoyances

Sometimes I wonder, WHY does Microsoft make things so difficult?

I have some vision problems and I am trying to make it easier to read mail in Outlook, but it is not easy because MS has sprinkled the settings all over the place.

So I go to File/Options and click the Mail tab.

Now I get this screen and have to change the fonts in three places’

Things started to look bigger, but not through, not yet!

I can change the font size in almost everything in Outlook 2010, but it's a real pain to find out how. I finally managed to find it all, but the way to make messages open with larger text. There is a way, but I don't like it.

If I open a message in Outlook, to make the text larger I have to use 'Zoom', but if I use the Preview Pane I can move the slider to make the text bigger. Sliding to make the text bigger may not be a problem for some, but I get a 'LOT' of email.



To change the font size in the Navigation Pane, right click on the Mail icon and select ‘Navigation Pane Options.  At least I only had to change this once.

Now I get this:

OK The navigation Pane is much easier to read.

But now I need to make the Header list bigger. So I right click on the Arrange by column and get this!

Clicking the ‘View Settings brought up this box:

Then I clicked Other Settings and got this Box,

I had to change each setting,  Column Font, Row Font and Auto Preview Font.

Another annoyance, I have to change the settings on every folder! Why isn't there a setting to change all folders? I also have a LOT of folders! This is really making me mad. There should be a way to make changes universal in Outlook, but I can’t find a way to do it.

Outlook is now no longer my default email program. I still use it for RSS, but this all just annoyed me so much I left it and no longer love it.

Backing Up Data Simplified

There are a lot of ways to backup your stuff. You can backup everything or just what you consider essential.

If you want to backup everything including Windows, there are a number of programs that can do this for you. Acronis is very popular, but I prefer Macrium Reflect, free for home users.

However, a recent system crash convinced me that perhaps that’s not the best option for me. I had a really bad crash, nothing could fix my Windows. I tried everything, but Windows would not load. ‘last known good configuration’ would not work, system recovery gave the message something like ‘Windows couldn’t do it’, it was apparently totally broken. Windows kept trying, but to no avail.

I couldn’t even load the Recovery CD to restore my complete backup. Fortunately I still have the Recovery partition on this computer and Windows gave me the option to do the ‘back to original status’.  This was apparently the only option I had so I got a brand new install of Windows 7.

I guess I could have kept trying, but I was tired of going in circles, so now I had a new install of Windows. I could have done a restore after the new install, but, what if the problem that caused the horrible crash was in the restore?

So since I have all of my data backed up I decided I would just go with the new install. I will admit it took me about two days to get back to where I wanted to be, but I did get rid of all that ‘crud creep’ that happens with Windows.

I use Karen’s Replicator to back up my data. It may not be for everyone, but it works for me. I have it scheduled to run all the jobs every day just before I normally turn my computer off. It generally takes between five and ten minutes to run every job. It backs up my documents, my pictures, my Firefox profile and my Snagit captures all to an external drive. Every two weeks I exchange the external drive and the last used one is taken to my bank box.

To see how to use Karen’s Replicator, see my article on Dave’s Computer Tips.

Firefox Broken?

Today I wanted to login to my Yahoo account. But I kept getting an error and couldn’t get to the login screen.



I tried with Chrome and got there just fine.

So what’s going on with Firefox? Maybe a bad cookie? Who knows.

After running the latest version of CCleaner,  Firefox let me login with no problem, so perhaps it was a corrupted cookie. But then again, it could have been a corrupt temp file.

But it works now so that’s good.  Of course now I have to get security codes sent to my phone on a bunch of sites!

The fun stuff just never quits.

When Things Go Wrong Part 2

After the bill pay episode, as if that wasn’t enough, my email starts going haywire.

On Monday, the same day of the bill pay screw up, my email starts getting 'funny' (weird).

I noticed I got the same email from several folks, but not everyone. Just a few, but still it was irritating. My first inclination, it was another Yahoo Gotcha.

But then duplicate emails were coming from other sources.  So I figured maybe there was a corrupted email on the server so I logged in and deleted all of the email there.

Tuesday, there was a deluge of duplicate emails, mostly from the day before! Again I logged in and deleted all of the mail on the server.

Wednesday.  Still receiving all the duplicates.  Can't get the mail screen on Charter server to come up so I can delete the mail.

 

 

Charter mail is starting to really piss me off.

Thursday. Still a trickle of duplicate mail from Charter.  Still can't get to the mail account for Charter on the web.

Friday.   More duplicate emails, the same emails that keep coming and coming, originally posted on Monday. I finally got logged in to Charter mail. Again I deleted all the mail online. (I wonder why just those few and not all email?)

The following week there are still some of the same emails trickling in to my Charter email. Finally the duplicate emails stopped coming. It took almost two weeks for the duplicates to stop.

With this email episode, I made the decision to move all my mail to outlook.com. While it may seem like I didn't just want to wait until Charter fixed the problem, there is an underlying reason for changing. If the merger between Comcast and Time Warner goes through,( and I will be very surprised if it doesn't,)  my Charter email will probably go away because Charter will become Comcast in my area.

Since I have no idea what may or may not happen with Charter email, at least I am now ready for any change.

When Things Go Wrong

Starting on June 9, stuff started to go wrong.

That Sunday I logged into my credit union. I could see my account balance, but when I tried to get into bill pay to see if I had a bill to pay,  all I got was a blank screen.  OK, try later.

Monday the same problem.

I contacted the credit union to see what was going on, they stated no problem on their end, try a different browser. Besides Firefox, I tried Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari. No go.

According to the customer service rep, my browser is not supported. (Oh dear, my credit union is NOT up to snuff!) I am using the latest version of all browsers. They are not certified for the updated browsers!

Since I have been using the latest browser for quite some time with no problem, something must be going on. Maybe there’s a problem with my computer? So I tried another computer. Nope that didn’t help.

Back to the Credit union customer service. After explaining I have tried four browsers and two computers, and still can’t get into the bill pay option, they decided perhaps it was on their end.

Eventually they did something that allowed me to finally get into the bill pay screen and all seemed to be OK.

Tuesday I checked my account online and now it wants me to signup for bill pay? WHAT! Are my scheduled payments going to be made? Will I have to redo everything?  Another frantic connection with customer service that won’t be available for another hour. After I explained again what’s going on, and what seemed like a very long wait, my bill pay is back and all is well.

What a relief, but I am a bit concerned the site isn’t certified for the latest browsers.

I think I am too reliant on technology and this also concerns me.

Blinders

I have been listening to a lot of folks that think the security warning about continuing Windows XP is just BS.

I do understand there are many folks that cannot afford a new computer or even the cost of upgrading Windows XP to a newer version of Windows. They are forced to keep using Windows XP for financial reasons or a lack of technical skills to go to Linux. (It isn’t really hard.) I fear for their safety in the future, especially if they use those XP machines for anything financial. Even if they aren’t using them for any monetary reasons, they may still provide enough information for identity thieves to make out like the bandits they are.

There are also a great many Windows XP users that just don’t get it. They fear change or perhaps just think it is all a ploy by Microsoft to get them to spend more money ‘to make Bill Gates richer’.

These folks are wearing blinders to the dangers that come from using an old unpatched system that is just loaded with security holes. The some of the biggest of these holes could be  the old Internet Explorer and the much beloved Outlook Express that came with Windows XP.

The venerable OS does not have the latest security tools introduced with Windows Vista, like User Access Control (UAC), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR).

Windows XP was a great Operating System (OS) and is still being used by millions of users world wide. But now it is a dangerous OS unless it is used offline.

When old computers fail (and they will fail, only a matter of time),  a fresh install of Windows XP will not be able to get any of the thousands of updates as the update service for Windows XP is now turned off.  This would make Windows XP even more vulnerable.

If you just can’t afford a new computer or an upgrade to a new computer, you can learn a new OS, Linux.  Why XP Users Should Consider Zorin OS!

See the tour for Zorin and what to expect.

You could go from this:

To this!



I think I will do it as well and dual boot it with Window 7. Think about it seriously, best of all, it's free!

Windows 8.1 Update

Just when I decide Microsoft is finally ‘getting it’, along comes the requirement that folks using Windows 8.1 MUST update to Windows 8.1 Update!

If Windows 8.1 users don’t install the update by May 13, they will no longer be able to get future updates, including security updates!

So what if users have problems installing the update? What then? Will hackers be waiting to attack Windows 8.1 users?

There are a LOT of reports of this update failing. Don’t believe me? Just type ‘Windows 8.1 Update fails to install’ into Google’s search and see what comes up!

I had no problems installing the update and it did make some things better. Supposedly it enhanced security as well.

I like being able to close apps the same way using the ‘x’ instead of dragging it down from the top. That has always seemed awkward to me and one reason I have avoided the apps on the Start screen. I like the search button and power options  buttons on the Start screen as well.

Basically Microsoft is giving folks 30 days from the date it was first offered to get it installed. Seems like not much time for something this important.

Really Microsoft? What’s the big rush? Did something really important get left out of Windows 8.1? If so, what’s the deal for only 30 days to fix it?  I am really thinking maybe I should consider a new OS. Ubuntu may be just what I need. I haven’t heard of any threats for Linux users that if you don’t update you won’t get any fixes. Haven’t heard of any threats from Apple either. (Come to think of it, those OSs don't seem to NEED so many updates!)

Because it IS a threat as far as I am concerned.

More Information Regarding the Latest Update for Windows 8.1

Authorized Access to your Google Account

 

If you use Gmail on your smartphone or download your Gmail to an email program on your computer, set up application specific password to receive your mail for increased security

First, logon to your Gmail account. Then click your account name and in the drop down box, click Account.



Click Security and then click Settings.



Clicking Settings brings up the ‘Configuring Applications’ screen’



Now click the 'Manage application specific passwords'



You can set up any number of these application specific passwords. But I couldn’t make it work on my iPad!