58. The Crypto Locker Virus

Ever since I have been running the U3A Computer Skills Group I have emphasised the need for a solid backup of essential data on our computers. It is very important that data and software can be recovered and re-installed should the worst happen and your hard drive fails, somebody deletes important bits of your operating system, or as is happening more and more frequently your PC becomes infected with one of the latest viruses called Ransom Ware. In this the virus can completely encrypt your entire PC then you will receive a message asking for money to de-encrypt it. THIS IS NOT A JOKE OR A RUMOUR, IT HAPPENS AND THERE IS NO SOLUTION. Even paying the ransom is no guarantee that your data will be released. The virus deletes itself after encrypting your data so there is no use trying to find and destroy it, the damage is done and the de-encryption key is the only thing which will cure the problem. Even the mighty Kaspersky company say that the encryption key is unbreakable.

Not only does your internal hard drive become encrypted but every externally attached drive which is switched on, and even your networked colleagues or Home Group who are attached to you when the virus strikes will be affected.


The way to avoid this happening is quite simple, do not open attachments or links in emails unless you are rock-sure of the validity and source of the email.
 
This is, I admit, a very glib answer. Who amongst us has not clicked on an inviting looking link or attachment and it is mainly good luck that we have not been infected with some sort of virus. The rule however still holds true.

If the worst does happen then obviously you are not going to hand over money to some crook who has just screwed up your PC in the hope that he does not do a runner, leaving you in the mucky stuff. Now is the time to reinstall your entire system from that emergency backup we discussed earlier. What do you mean you haven’t got one?

If you look at the Computer Skills Group, page on the U3A website there is a link at the bottom of the page to detailed instructions on how to create both a complete backup of your system disk, AND an emergency recovery disc from which you can reboot your PC then go on to re-install all of your software and data.

It is not too difficult and needs only basic skills. The instructions are detailed and advice on where to download the necessary applications is included.

DON’T GET CAUGHT OUT - DO IT NOW.

For more information and help Google "Cryptolocker Virus"

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57. Easily Select a Large Quantity of Text

When you’re trying to select text in a long document, the usual way of doing it is by swiping over it with the mouse. You move the mouse to the left of the first word, press and hold the left mouse button and drag downwards until you’ve highlighted what you want.

As long as you can see both the beginning and the end of the text you want to select, this method works a treat. But what if the end of the text is somewhere below the bottom of the window? In this case, as you drag the mouse downwards, the whole document suddenly shoots upwards at an alarming rate and you find you’ve selected reams of extra text!

Here’s the trick to doing this in a more-controlled way. Start by clicking to the left of the text you want to select, so that the cursor is flashing beside it. Then (taking care not to click anywhere else in the text), scroll down to find the end of the text you want to select. When you can see it, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and click to the right of the last word (or punctuation mark). When you do this, all the text between your first and second clicks becomes selected.

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56. How strong are your online passwords?

You may have read that the online systems of the major software company Adobe were hacked recently.

The hackers got away with the account details of 38 million Adobe users, and that’s an awful lot of passwords. Or is it?

Well, no, the actual number of passwords seems to be disappointingly small, because so many people were using the same easily-guessable passwords.

When the stolen data began appearing on hacker websites, a security researcher named Jeremi Gosney analysed it to see what he could learn about users’ password choices. The top choice, picked by almost two million Adobe users, is '123456’. And amazingly, the third most popular choice was the word ‘password’. The list also includes such gems as 'qwerty’, ‘000000’ and ‘iloveyou’. A notable feature of this Top 20 list is that not one of these passwords includes a capital letter or a symbol. In fact, the entire Top 100 passwords contains not a single uppercase letter or symbol.

The research revealed another interesting fact. Adobe allowed its users to set a so-called ‘password hint’ – a clue to the password – with the intention that if you’d forgotten your password, you could have the hint displayed as a reminder. Apparently, the majority of Adobe users had simply typed their password itself as the hint, thus cheerfully allowing their passwords to be displayed to any passer-by who wanted to know them.

The lessons to be learned from this security breach and others like it are straightforward. First, if you use the passwords ‘123456’, ‘qwerty’ or ‘password’ for anything at all, you might as well not have a password! Second, if you use the ‘password hint’ option to re-enter your password itself, rather than just an oblique clue to it, you don’t really have a password at all. And third, however simple a password you choose, throwing in a capital letter or a symbol (+, *, %, $, etc.) immediately takes your password out of the Top 100 and makes it far less guessable. Be aware however that simply substituting symbols for characters in popular words is the next worse case. Any hacker worth his keystrokes will have no trouble with ’Pa$$word’ ‘He110’ or ‘HarryP0tt3r’, so be careful.


The fourth lesson, unfortunately, is that the first three lessons don’t seem to be getting through!   

55. JPEG, Bitmap, GIF, PNG – What’s the Difference?

In most areas of technology, whenever a fight starts there tends to be just one winner. For instance, remember the battle for video-recorder dominance back in the 1980s between Betamax and VHS? They slugged it out for a while, VHS won, and Betamax slunk off to its corner. In computing, though, everything can be a winner as long as it has some modicum of usefulness. Prime examples of this are picture files, which you can save in a confusing variety of ways.

Whenever you save a picture in a picture-editing program, you’ll regularly choose between the ‘Big Four’ file formats mentioned in the title of this item, and perhaps a few others that don’t really matter. But what’s the difference between them, and which should you use?

Bitmap: this is the simplest type of picture file. Every individual dot of colour that makes up your picture is saved into the file in a long stream of numbers. The file isn’t compressed (you’ll see the significance of this in a moment), so a bitmap file can be huge. Let’s say you take a photo with a 5-megapixel camera, load it into a picture editor and save it as a bitmap (a file with a .BMP extension): that file will be about 16 MB. It’s big, but it’s an absolutely faithful copy of what you see on the screen.

JPEG: this is a file with a .JPG extension, and it’s the most common format for photos and any other pictures with true-to-life colour. The difference between a JPEG and a bitmap is that a JPEG is compressed: if you load that same 5-megapixel photo into a picture editor and then save it as a JPEG file, the file you get will be under 1 MB. That’s tiny compared to the high-quality bitmap, but there’s a reason it’s so small: the JPEG format uses ‘lossy’ compression.

The word ‘lossy’ is one that probably looks quite technical, but it’s actually another of those slightly-silly computing words. It really does mean that you lose something – there’s a loss. What you lose with JPEG is some of the fine detail in the photo, so the quality isn’t as good as that of the bitmap. And if you repeatedly edit a picture, save it as a JPEG, edit it again, and save it as a JPEG again, you’ll lose more and more detail each time.

GIF: here’s a spot of welcome relief – if you’re editing photos, you don’t care about GIF! It’s mainly used for hand-drawn artwork, such as cartoons and logos.

PNG: in case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced ‘ping’, and it’s a lovely file format. It’s a little like JPEG, in that it’s compressed, but that compression is ‘lossless’. You can probably guess what that means: none of the detail is removed from your picture. Returning to that 5-megapixel photo which ended up as a 16 MB bitmap (or a 1 MB JPEG with its quality reduced), a PNG version should be a little under 4 MB and will look just as good as the bitmap.

Most digital cameras save their photos as JPEG files, and that’s as a trade-off between quality and size. The quality won’t be quite as good as it could be, but that powerful compression means you can take and store lots of photos. If you copy those photos to your PC and keep them as they are, unedited, it’s fine to leave them as JPEG files.

But if you’re serious about photography and you use a photo-editing program like Adobe Photoshop Elements or Corel PaintShop Pro, then a better choice is to use PNG throughout editing and keep it at the end. The lovely thing about PNG is that it covers all bases: it retains all the quality of the original, so it’s fine for editing, but it’s nicely compressed so it doesn’t take up a huge amount of disk space.


From PC Tips for Seniors www.pcforseniors.co.uk.
(c) PC Tips for Seniors

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54. How Can I Use Someone Else’s Wireless Broadband?

  First things first: I’m not suggesting you try to use your neighbour’s wireless broadband – at least, not without asking first! This article explains how to join another wireless network such as at a friend's house or in a bar or shopping mall.



When you want to connect to someone else’s wireless broadband, there are two things you need: the name of the wireless network (which is technically known as the network’s ‘SSID’) and the network’s password (sometimes referred to as a ‘network key’ or a ‘security key’). 

If you take your computer to a hotel, library, coffee shop or somewhere else that offers Internet access to its customers, these details may be posted on a wall or the reception desk, or you may have to ask a member of staff for them.

Armed with these two pieces of information, the rest should be plain sailing. That’s the case whether you’re using a laptop or tablet PC with some version of Windows on it, or any other portable device that can connect to wireless networks – some other kind of tablet computer, a smartphone, an e-book reader – you name it. Your device will be able to display a list of all the wireless networks it can detect nearby, one of which should be the one you want to connect to. You select that network, enter its password, and Bob’s your mother's brother.

Here’s a quick run through how this is done in the various versions of Windows:

Windows 8: on the taskbar, click the wireless network icon near the clock. In the panel that appears at the right of the screen, click the name of the network you want to connect to. Tick the box beside Connect automatically and then click the Connect button. Enter the password and click Next. Finally, if this is a network in someone’s home, you could click Yes, turn on sharing and connect to devices. For any other kind of network (or if you’re in any doubt about which to choose), click No, don’t turn on sharing or connect to devices.

Windows 7: on the taskbar, click the wireless network icon near the clock. In the panel that appears, click the name of the network you want to connect to, tick the box beside Connect automatically and click Connect. Enter the password when prompted and click OK. Finally, click Home network if this is a network in someone’s home; for all other networks click Public network.

Windows Vista: on the taskbar, click the wireless network icon near the clock and choose Connect to a network from the little pop-up panel. Click the name of the network you want to connect to, then click the Connect button. In the next dialog, type the password and click Connect, then make sure there are ticks beside Save this network and Start this connection automatically and click Close. Finally, click Home if this is a network in someone’s home; for all other networks, click Public location.

Windows XP: on the taskbar, double-click the wireless network icon. Click the name of the network you want to connect to, then click the Connect button. In the next dialog, type the password and click Connect.

When you’ve done this once, Windows remembers the details of this network and connects to it automatically whenever you’re within range. So, every time you go to your favourite coffee shop which offers Free WiFi, your PC or tablet will recognise the wireless network and connect to it automatically, just as it connects to your own network whenever you’re at home.

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53. Where Is ‘All Programs’ in Windows 8?

In Windows 7, Vista and XP, when you open the Start menu, you initially see a collection of the programs you use most. If you want to use a program that doesn’t appear in this short list, you click on (or hover the mouse over) All Programs and you see all the programs installed on your PC, neatly organised into folders. In Windows 8, however, there’s no Start menu, so there’s no ‘All Programs’ item. So how do you find a list of all your programs?

The equivalent of the Start menu in Windows 8 is the ‘Start screen’ which contains lots of rectangular blocks called ?tiles’. There’s one tile per program, but you won’t find all your programs here. In particular, quite a few of the useful Windows accessories are missing – you won’t see Calculator, WordPad, Notepad, Paint, Character Map, and so on. (See Post 51 on our Blog via the link below).

Fortunately, there is an equivalent to the ‘All Programs’ list of old, and this is where you’ll find those Windows accessories along with all your other programs:

When you’re looking at the Start screen, right-click on any blank space. A bar will appear along the bottom of the screen: when it does, click the All apps button in the bottom-right corner. The layout of the Start screen will change, and now you’ll see all your programs organised into groups with headings. Those headings correspond to the folders you used to see on the Start menu, making it much easier to track down the program you want to use.

Extra Tip If you download and install a very nice, simple to install, free application called “Classic Shell” (Google it) you will be able to set up Windows 8 with the familiar Start Button and menu system. Try it to save a lot of frustration. I use it all the time so have the added features of 8 plus the comfort and familiarity of 7. 

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52. How to safely clean a flat screen monotor

Did you know you can permanently damage your expensive flat screen monitor or television if you clean it the wrong way? It's true. Most importantly, you want to avoid products that contain ammonia, ethyl alcohol, acetone, toluene, ethyl acid, or methyl chloride. These can discolor or dissolve important films on the screen.

There are some fantastic screen cleaners out there, but there's also a simple vinegar and water mixture you can make yourself that works equally as well. Simply mix filtered or distilled water with an equal amount of white vinegar.

Flat screen monitors and televisions, most of which are LCD (including LED-backlit LCD) displays, require special attention when cleaning. Older CRT screens, the kind used in large "tube" monitors and TVs, are glass and can be cleaned in pretty much the same way as you would any other glass in your home or office.

Flat screen monitor and television displays, however, are much more sensitive and are easily scratched and damaged. The same applies to your laptop or tablet screen, and often too to the screen on your smartphone or e-book reader.

Note: Plasma TVs are glass, as are many touch screens, but often also have very sensitive anti-glare coatings applied. I recommend taking the same special care with those types of displays.

Follow the easy steps below to safely clean your flat screen monitor, TV, or other device in just a few minutes.

Difficulty: Easy

Time Required: Cleaning a flat screen display, like an LCD TV or monitor, usually takes less than 5 minutes

Here's How:

1. Turn off the device. If the screen is dark, it will be easier to see the areas that are dirty or oily.

2. Use a dry, soft cloth and very gently wipe the screen. A great choice would be the microfiber type of cloth used to clean eyeglass lenses. A dry eraser works good too.

See Tip #1 below for kinds of cloths to avoid.

3. If the dry cloth did not completely remove the dirt or oil, do not press harder in an attempt to scrub it off.



Pushing directly on the screen can often cause pixels to burn out, especially on laptop displays, desktop monitors, and LCD/LED TV screens. This isn't so much an issue on screens designed to be touched, like phones and tablets, but be careful nonetheless.
 
4. If necessary, dampen the cloth with distilled water or with an equal ratio of distilled water to white vinegar.


Many companies also sell small spray bottles of special cleaner for flat screens. Ultra makes a screen cleaning solution called Hydra LCD that people seem to like but honestly, the 50/50 vinegar and water mix is probably just as effective.

See Tip #2 below for types of products to avoid.

5. The plastic edge that surrounds the screen can be cleaned with any multipurpose cleaner but take care to avoid contact with the screen itself.


Tips:
 1. Avoid using paper towels, toilet paper, tissue paper, or something like your shirt to wipe the screen. These non-ultrasoft materials can scratch the display.

2. Avoid cleaning products that contain ammonia (like Windex®), ethyl alcohol (Everclear® or other strong drinking alcohol), toluene (paint solvents), as well as acetone or ethyl acetate (one or the other often used in nail polish remover). These chemicals can react with the materials that the flat screen is made of or coated with, which could permanently discolour the screen or cause other kinds of damage.

3. Never spray liquid directly on to any screen. It could run inside the device and cause damage. Spray onto the cleaning cloth instead.

 

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51. Windows 8: Where are Paint, Calculator and WordPad?

If you’ve switched to Windows 8 after using one of the previous versions of Windows, perhaps you’ve been perplexed by some apparent disappearances: where have all those familiar accessories gone? When you look at the Start screen, you won’t see any sign of the old faithfuls like Calculator, Snipping Tool, Notepad, WordPad or Paint.

 Don’t worry – they’re not gone, they’re just not immediately obvious. There are two ways of finding them, and you can use whichever you prefer:

• From a list of programs: at the Start screen, right-click any blank space and a bar will appear at the bottom of the screen. On this bar, click All Apps and you’ll see a neatly-categorised list of programs. All those I’ve noted above can be found in the ‘Windows Accessories’ section.

• By searching: at the Start screen, simply start typing the name of the program you want to use (without worrying about capital letters). For instance, type ‘notepad’ or ‘snipping’. Windows looks for programs whose names match what you’re typing, and you should see the program you want in the search results at the left of the screen.

50. How to avoid a phishing scam.

Reproduced from PC Tips for Seniors:-

"A couple of days ago I received two slightly suspicious-looking email messages. One was from PayPal, telling me my recent account activity was available to view online and that I could ‘click here’ to log in and view it. The other was from Barclays, telling me that my online banking had been suspended because a third party had tried to log into it several times; it then told me that I should ‘click here’ to log in and confirm my identity.

There were reasons to regard both messages as genuine. I do indeed have a PayPal account, and I do bank with Barclays and use their online banking facility. However, there were reasons to regard them both as scams as well.

To start with, both wanted me to click a link and type my private login details into whatever web page I arrived at. That’s the hallmark of a so-called ‘phishing’ scam – a scam in which criminals set up a clone of a website’s login page to steal the account details of anyone unfortunate enough to be fooled by it.

I don't us my PayPal account very often, so the suggestion that there might be any ‘recent account activity’ certainly seemed suspicious. And in the case of the Barclays message, if they knew it was a third party trying to log into my account (and failing to do so), where’s the sense in blocking my own access to it? Clearly Barclays’ security measures had worked as intended, so no further action should be needed by anyone.

So, were they genuine or were they scams? Well, there was one extra telltale clue.

The PayPal message began ‘Dear Rob Young’. The sender obviously knew my name, and clearly this message couldn’t be sent to thousands of other people as well (unless they were all named Rob Young!).

The Barclays message began ‘Dear Barclays Online Customer’. Obviously the sender doesn’t know my name, whereas Barclays certainly does. The same message could easily have been sent to thousands of other people (and it probably was).

There are several tricks to spotting a phishing email, one of which is: does the story in the message seem at all believable? The Barclays message is full of holes, but the PayPal message seems a bit dodgy too.

The real key is: does the sender actually know who you are? Was this message sent to you personally, including your name and any account numbers or references associated with you?

Companies like PayPal and Barclays are well aware of phishing scams, and they’re careful to ensure that any messages they send are clearly personal. They’ll often do something else, too, as my PayPal message did: they’ll say that if you’re not sure whether or not this message is genuine, you can ignore the link it gives and visit the PayPal website by typing its address into your web browser, thus ensuring you won’t end up at a scammer’s cloned page.

If it had been genuine, the Barclays message would have suggested I type the address of the Barclays website into my browser, or that I pick up the phone and give them a ring, or that I pop into a branch. It didn’t, and of course that’s because it was a phishing scam.”

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49. How to replace a Keyboard or Mouse

In fact, it could hardly be easier: assuming your new mouse and your old mouse both plug into USB sockets, you simply unplug the old one and plug in the new one. There’s no need to have the PC switched off when you do this, but equally, if it’s currently switched off, there’s no need to switch it on first either.

If either the old or new mouse plugs into a different type of socket (such as a circular ‘PS/2’ socket) , you should do the switchover with the PC switched off.

The nice thing about mice is that their basic job is so simple that Windows can automatically install the software required to make them work. As soon as you plug in the new one (and start your PC, if necessary), it should be usable – at worst, there may be a pause of a few seconds while Windows sets it up.

One little wrinkle is that your mouse may have additional features beyond those included on the most basic mice: it may have extra buttons which can be configured to do particular things when clicked, for instance. In that case, you probably received a CD of software with the mouse, and you should install that software before plugging in the new mouse.

So, to recap, the routine is this: install the software accompanying the new mouse if required; shut down your PC if either mouse is a non-USB mouse; unplug the old mouse; plug in the new mouse; switch on your PC if it’s switched off. If your old mouse had its own software to enable its extra features, you might like to uninstall that software now, just for tidiness, but don’t worry too much about it.

Incidentally, everything I’ve said about the mouse applies to the keyboard too. If you want to replace your keyboard, just mentally swap the word ‘mouse’ for ‘keyboard’ above and approach it in exactly the same way.

 

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48. Have you ever deleted an important file?

We have all deleted important file from our PC by accident and wish we could get them back.

An easy way to do this is by downloading and installing a file recovery application. The one recommended here should be installed and resident on your PC before you ever need it. When you delete a file on your PC it actually stays on your hard drive, your PC management software simply renames it and enables the space it occupies to be used by something else should the need arise. For that reason you must never install anything if you are wishing to recover a deleted file as Sod’s law will say that the space you use for the installation is the one containing the file you want to recover.

The application recommended here is Recuva which is, without a doubt, the very best free file recovery software available today. Recuva is very easy to use and is as or more effective as any other freeware or premium file recovery program out there.

To get started with Recuva, visit the program's website linked at the bottom of my review. Once there, click the Download button corresponding to the download type you prefer. You can choose between Installer, Portable, or Slim.

Important: I highly recommend you use the portable version of Recuva if you don’t already have the main application installed on your PC. You should use the portable version of Recuva because it's important to avoid installing anything after discovering that you need to recover a file.

When Recuva starts, you're presented with a wizard where you choose what kind of file you're looking for and where it was last located, neither of which you need to know but will help in the search for deleted files if you do.

After a quick scan, you're presented with a list of recoverable files. Recovering one of the deleted files is as easy as selecting it and clicking Recover....

At any time you can switch to Advanced Mode which reveals a number of options and additional sorting abilities.

If a file has gone missing, either from your mistake or even from a virus infection or system crash, I recommend you use the Recuva free file recovery program. There's no guarantee that Recuva can successfully recovery every deleted file but it's certainly your best bet!

Recuva can recover files from hard drives, USB drives, memory cards, and even MP3 players, including the iPod.

47. When will Windows XP stop working?

This is another question I have been asked recently, and it points to a bit of a misunderstanding.

Microsoft is due to stop supporting Windows XP on April 8th 2014. What this means is that Windows XP users will stop receiving updates from that date: if anyone discovers a security flaw in Windows XP, it won’t be fixed. As far as Microsoft is concerned, next April marks the point at which the company can finally forget about Windows XP and concentrate all their efforts on newer versions of Windows.

However, XP isn’t going to stop working: if you chose to do so, you could continue using it for years. Whether it would be wise to do so is another question (to which my answer is: "No it isn’t". If you are not ready for Windows 8 then install Windows 7.), but there’s certainly no need to worry that your copy of Windows XP is suddenly going to be ‘switched off’ in April 2014.

46. Does Icognito Mode make you Anonymous

No it doesn’t.

Whatever the name, Icognito, Private Browsing, InPrivate etc. etc. all this mode does is hide your tracks online. When this mode was first introduced it became known a “Porn Mode” as people used it to visit unsavoury sites without storing the evidence on their PCs.

The usual histories, cookies, and temporary Internet Pages are all deleted as your session ends but that does not make you anonymous whilst online.

Your ISP, sites you visit, your work network, may all log your visit and the pages you have looked at so be aware!

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45. A telephone scam to be aware of

A friend had a telephone call from a gentleman seeking access to his computer to correct security dangers.

It’s been a long time since this has been mentioned, but I think it deserves another outing to ensure that new readers are aware of it, and to remind long-time readers that it’s still going on.

It’s a scam, plain and simple. You receive an unexpected telephone call from someone who claims to be from Microsoft or ‘Windows technical support’. This person explains that they’ve been monitoring your PC and it’s exhibiting all sorts of errors and is infected by a large number of viruses. They may even threaten that your Internet access will be cut off because your PC is in such a mess that it’s a risk to other computer users.

The caller directs you to various areas of Windows where long lists of technical information are stored, telling you that all these items are the ‘errors’ or ‘viruses’ that your PC has silently reported to this mysterious technical support company.

In fact, these lists are quite normal – every Windows user has them – but the caller knows you’ve probably never seen them before and that he can pretend they’re something important and worrying.

When he feels he’s convinced you, the caller asks you to install some software that allows him to take remote control of your PC under the pretence of correcting all these problems. You have to supply payment details for this ‘service’, and then allow the caller to do whatever he wants with your PC.

The key point to remember is that there is no-one – anywhere in the world – monitoring your PC (and doing so without your knowledge would be illegal anyway). The caller doesn’t know who you are, and doesn’t even know whether you have a PC.

Indeed, the caller doesn’t know whether you are, in fact, a PC expert who knows more about computers than the scammer does! We recommend a free security program named Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

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44. Does "Log off" do the same as "Shut down" from the Windows menu?

The short answer is: no, it doesn’t. When you choose ‘Shut down’, Windows closes all your programs, shuts itself down and switches off your PC, but when you choose ‘Log off’, Windows continues running and the computer stays on. The one similarity is that all your programs are closed.

So what’s it for? Well, let’s step back to the moment you started your PC. Before you could do anything, you had to 'log in’ to Windows by clicking your username and, perhaps, typing your Windows password. In doing that, you’ve told Windows who you are: you may have set up several different usernames on your PC, and Windows now knows which of these users is at the computer.

Windows now sets up everything the way you like it: your desktop wallpaper, your desktop icons, your sound effects, your volume levels, and so on. When you go to the ‘My Documents’ folder, it shows your documents rather than those belonging to another of your PC’s users, and each program you use will load your personal settings and preferences. As an example of how important that last point is, if you start your email program, you’ll see only your own email messages and it will connect to your own email account to collect your own new messages.

Perhaps you have other usernames set up on your PC, and one of those people would like to use the PC when you’ve finished with it. This is where that ‘Log off’ option is useful: you choose ‘Log off’ and Windows closes your programs and returns you to the ‘Log on’ screen. That other user can now click his username, type his password, and use Windows with everything set up the way he likes it.

The result, then, is that if there’s only one username set up on your PC, there’s rarely any point in using the ‘Log off’ option. Similarly, even if Windows is set up for multiple users, if no-one wants to use the PC after you, you might as well head straight for the ‘Shut down’ option.

Finally, a quick clarification for Windows 8 users. Although I’ve referred to ‘Log off’ above, Windows 8 refers to it as ?Sign out’. Also, rather oddly, that ‘Sign out’ option doesn’t appear in the same place as ‘Shut down’, ‘Restart’ and other related options: to log off, go to the Start screen, click your name in the top-right corner and choose Sign out from the menu.

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43. Changes to Windows 8.

Even before Windows 8 was released last October, it was clear that Microsoft hadn’t got it right. The question was, would they fix it? If so, when and how? And what would they actually ‘fix’?

We’ve learned the answers to some of these questions over the last few months: yes, there will be a new version later this year (named Windows 8.1), it will address some of the complaints about Windows 8, it will be a free upgrade, and it will demonstrate that Microsoft is now listening to customers. As regards what would actually be fixed, though, any answers have been based mainly on rumour, supposition and hope.

Some of the major changes:

•There will be an option to land at the desktop after logging in, rather than at the Start screen – a tiny detail, but one that will make Windows 8 feel a lot more like its predecessors.
•The Start button makes a welcome return to the taskbar: clicking the Start button takes you to the Start screen; right-clicking it opens the handy ‘Power User’ menu (currently available by pressing Win+X).
•The Start screen can display the same background wallpaper picture as your desktop, making for a less-jarring experience when you switch back and forth between the two.
•The Start screen can be made to display its ‘All Apps’ view by default – an alphabetical list of every installed program (and the closest thing Windows 8 has to a Start menu).
•That ‘All Apps’ view can also be made to arrange all your programs by usage, so that the programs you use most appear first in the list.
•Apps will update themselves automatically in the same way that Windows itself does, rather than forcing you to visit the Windows Store and update them manually.

That’s not the whole list by any means, but it covers the main points, and for anyone already using Windows 8 it should be apparent that some real improvements are being made. We’ll see most (if not all) of these on 26th June, when Microsoft releases a ‘Public Preview’ of the new version which, like the final release due later in the year, will be free for all Windows 8 users to install.

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42. Add Favourite Options to the Quick Access Toolbar in Microsoft Word

If you use Word 2013, 2010 or 2007, do you find yourself hunting through the Ribbon trying to find a favourite option but not remembering quite where it is?

Perhaps you know exactly where it is, but you find it annoying to have to keep switching between tabs to reach it?

If so, here’s a simple tip you may not have discovered. Almost any button you find on the Ribbon can be added to the ‘Quick Access Toolbar’, the little toolbar in the extreme top-left corner of the Word window. The handy thing about this little toolbar is that it’s always visible, so the buttons it contains are always just one click away.

Adding a new item to it is easy. As an example, let’s say that you frequently need to add comments to Word documents, meaning that you’re forever flipping to the Review tab and clicking the New Comment button. Go to that tab now and right-click on the New Comment button. On the menu that appears, click Add to Quick Access Toolbar. Hey presto – that button now appears in the little toolbar, ready and waiting whenever you need it.

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41. How Do I Take a Screenshot in Windows 8?

A ‘screenshot’, as you may know, is a picture of what you see on your screen. It’s useful to take a screenshot for your own reference in some situations (a confirmation web page shown after you buy something online, for instance) or to send to someone by email when seeking help with a problem on your PC. Another reason for taking a screenshot is if you see a wonderful picture which you want to save for future use for use as a Wallpaper or article illustration.

In Windows 8 there are two ways of taking screenshots. The first is the way that’s common to all versions of Windows:
•To take a screenshot of the whole screen, press the Print Screen key (sometimes abbreviated to Prt Scn; it’s usually just above the block of Home/End/Page keys). To take a screenshot of just the window you’re currently using, press Alt+Print Screen.

The screenshot is now stored on the Windows Clipboard. From here, you can paste it into a Word document or a picture-editing program by pressing Ctrl+V and then save the document or picture.

The alternative method, which is new in Windows 8, is to press Win+Print Screen. (Win refers to the Windows key which appears on all modern keyboards). This takes a screenshot of your whole screen, but it doesn't leave you to muck around with pasting it somewhere: instead it saves it as a picture file on your hard disk. Press Win+E to open File Explorer, go into your Pictures library and you’ll find a folder named Screenshots. Open this folder, and you’ll find the screenshot you’ve just created.

Cool eh?

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40. Does More Software Make My PC Slower?

Have you noticed how a PC that was very speedy when new gradually seems to get slower? And have you ever wondered why?

Well, there are two reasons. The first is a trick of the mind: when a PC is new, you’re frequently amazed by how fast it is, but gradually that speed becomes the ‘new normal’ and instead you increasingly notice the times when it makes you wait.

The second reason is software, but not for the reason you might imagine. You might be expecting me to say that all that those added programs are filling up your hard disk, but that’s not the problem: unless your hard disk is more than about 90% full, your PC won’t mind at all.

The problem is actually the registry, the hidden database where vast amounts of information and settings for your PC and software are stored and which Windows is constantly consulting. The bigger the registry gets, the longer your PC takes to find anything in it, and since it’s in constant use that can lead to a noticeable slow-down of the whole system.

Most of the programs you install add at least a little information to the registry, and some may add quite a lot. And even if you uninstall a program, it may not remove what it stored in the registry. That’s partly because many software makers are a bit slapdash, but a lot of software leaves its registry information behind on purpose.

If you install a 30-day trial of a program, that program uses the registry to keep track of how many days you have left before it starts insisting you pay. What you might think of doing at the end of the trial is to uninstall the program, install it again and have another 30 free days. To prevent this, the program purposely leaves behind that registry data when you uninstall it. This way, if you do install it again, it knows you’ve already finished your free trial.

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t install software, of course – you won’t get far without it! But if you’re the kind of PC user who likes to install and try out every program you come across, on the basis that you can uninstall it if you don’t like it, it would be a good idea to rethink that strategy!

This is a great use for an old PC if you have one lying around. You can install new programs on it to try them out, and only install them on your main PC if you decide they’re really worth having.

If you don’t have a spare PC, think carefully before installing something new. Do you think you’ll really find it useful? Is it worthy of adding a little extra weight to that bulging registry? If you’d only be installing it out of vague curiosity, my advice is to give it a miss!

39. Use Any Photo as Your Desktop Wallpaper

Windows offers a standard way of changing the wallpaper picture shown on your desktop: you right-click a blank space on the desktop and choose Personalize (in Windows 8/7/Vista) or Properties (in XP), select Desktop Background (or Desktop in Windows XP) and choose the picture you want to use.

But perhaps you’re approaching this from a different direction: perhaps you’re looking through your photos and you come across one that would look good as your desktop wallpaper. If so, there’s no need to go mucking around with the steps above, just use this quick method: right-click the photo you’ve found and choose Set as desktop background (or Set as desktop wallpaper) on the context menu that appears.

You can do this as often as you like, and the photo you've chosen will remain in use as your wallpaper until you choose something different. Indeed, if you like this way of changing your wallpaper, you can even use it to choose between Windows’ built-in wallpapers: just navigate to C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper where you’ll find the various background pictures included with Windows, and you can right-click one of those to set it as your wallpaper.

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38. Will This Folder Fit on My Flash Drive?

How do you find out whether a particular folder (or collection of files and/or folders) will fit on a USB flash drive. Here’s how to go about it:

1. Plug in your flash drive and wait a few seconds for Windows to register its arrival. If any dialogues or windows open as a result, just close them.
2. In Windows 8, press Win+E to open File Explorer. In other versions of Windows, open the Start menu and click Computer.
3. In the Computer window, right-click the icon for your flash drive and choose Properties. In the dialog that appears, find the line beginning Free space and at the far right you’ll see the space available on the flash drive. (You might like to keep this dialog open as you follow the next few steps, perhaps moving it to one corner of your screen to get it out of the way for a moment.)
4. Now you need to see whether the folder (or files) you want to copy to the drive are smaller or larger than this. Make your way to the folder containing the items you want to copy and select them. If it’s just a single folder you want to copy, that just takes a single click; if you want to copy multiple folders, click the first to select it, then hold down the Ctrl key as you click the others.
5. Right-click one of the items you've selected and choose Properties. In the dialog that appears, you’ll see the total size of everything you've selected alongside the word Size. (If you selected several folders, or a folder containing a large number of files, you may have to wait a few seconds while Windows tots up all their sizes and the total is displayed.) Now, of course, it’s just a case of doing a quick comparison between this figure and the one you found in step 3.

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37. Microsoft takes a step back in Windows 8

During the development of Windows 8, Microsoft carefully turned a deaf ear to users’ complaints about it, and with some justification: any sort of change to something as familiar as Windows always leads to cries of anguish, and protestors always have the loudest voices.

Unfortunately, after Windows 8 was released and the dust had settled, the complaints continued just as loudly. And this week, news emerged that Microsoft is going to relent over a couple of widely-criticised changes: the next version – Windows 8.1 – will bring back a pair of familiar Windows features.

The first is the option to start at the desktop. Currently, after you log into Windows 8, you arrive at the new Start screen. From there, it’s easy to get to the desktop (where most computer users need to be): you just click the Desktop tile. Alternatively, if you move the Desktop tile to the top-left corner, a quick press of the Enter key as soon as the Start screen appears will do the job.

Easy though it may be, many Windows 8 users don’t like being thrust into this Start screen at all, and in Windows 8.1 there will be an option to go straight to the desktop automatically.

The second change is the one that’s excited the most comment: the Start button is set to return. This has been widely interpreted as meaning that the Start menu is coming back, which would constitute a huge climb-down by Microsoft, but the truth is going to be much simpler.

At the moment, there are two main ways to reach the Start screen: using the keyboard, you tap the Windows key; using the mouse, you move the pointer to the bottom-left corner of the screen and click. What are you clicking? Well, nothing really – there’s nothing to see in that bottom-left corner. It’s just one of those peculiar things about Windows 8 that has to be learned or discovered by accident.

The new Start button will give you something to click, and that’s all – a visible button in the bottom-left corner of the screen which, when clicked, takes you to the Start screen.

If Microsoft really were to bring back the Start menu too, it would be like confessing that the Start screen was a bad idea. More practically, it would mean two different places from which programs could be started. And would the Start button open the Start menu, as in previous versions? If so, how would you get to the Start screen? And which one would appear when you pressed the Windows key?

For those using Windows 8 and who prefer the traditional Desktop and Start Button then you can quickly download and install a completely free application called “Classic Shell” from http://www.classicshell.net/. This is a fabulous little application which I have been using for some months and which rids me of that dreadful Windows 8 Home Screen which has been designed for touch screens but is not what I want to see when I open Windows on my Laptop or Tower Computers. Try Classic Shell, you will love it.

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36. Office 2013

Microsoft has recently released the new version of its best-selling Office suite, Microsoft Office 2013. The release means that we finally know the UK prices of the various Office editions, so we can tie up a few loose ends. Let’s start with the pricing to buy Office 2013 in a box and install it from using the product code:

•Office 2013 Home & Student edition costs £110 and gives you Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. (An important change is that this edition can now be installed on only one PC; in previous versions of Office, this Home & Student edition was licenced for use on three computers.)
•Office 2013 Home & Business edition costs £220 and gives you the same four programs as the Home & Student edition plus Microsoft Outlook.
•Office 2013 Professional costs £390 and gives you the five programs in the Home & Business edition plus Publisher and Access.
(It’s worth mentioning that these are Microsoft’s own prices (rounded up by a penny, as they all end with a pointless 99p), and you should be able to find any of these editions cheaper in the shops and at online software stores.)

There’s another way to buy Office 2013, and that’s via a subscription. Microsoft has long wanted to get its Office customers onto a subscription model, so this offering was always going to be temptingly-priced. For either £80 a year or £8 a month (again ignoring the odd penny), you get your hands on ‘Office 365’ which gives you all seven of the programs included in the Professional edition for as long as you subscribe, and a licence to install them on up to five PCs.

If you want to find out more about Office 2013, visit the Office section of Microsoft’s website at http://office.microsoft.com, or http://office365.microsoft.com for details of the new Office 365 subscription product. There’s just one catch to keep in mind: if you’re using Windows Vista or XP, you’re out of luck – the new Office only works with Windows 8 or Windows 7.

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35. 32 bit or 64 bit, what is the difference?

The smallest piece of digital data is the "bit" (binary digit) and this can represent a 1 or a 0. Everything which is transmitted by computers is in this format. 8 bits make a byte, and so on. We are used to talking in megabytes and now gigabytes and these mean 1000 and 1000000 respectively. So a megabyte (MB) is 1000 bytes (actually 1024 bytes) and a gigabyte (GB) is 1000 megabytes. In these days of cheap storage we think nothing of having a 500GB external hard drive.

The term "32-bit" refers to the number of bits a computer processor uses when processing data and performing calculations. Operating systems and applications are labeled "32-bit" or "64-bit" to indicate the type of processor with which they should be used. 64-bit processors, operating systems and applications are beginning to replace 32-bit technologies because of their superior speed.

Processors
32-bit processors can process 32 bits of information at a time. Most processors sold in computers today are 64-bit, but the additional processing power can't be capitalized on unless the operating system and applications are made for 64-bit processors.

Operating Systems
Even though most processors sold in computers today are 64-bit, the operating system that comes with the computer may not be. Windows Vista and Windows 7 are available in 32-bit and 64-bit variations.

Applications
Even if a computer's processor and operating system are 64-bit, the applications and programs that run on the computer must also be 64-bit to take advantage of the computer's advanced processor. The 32-bit applications can usually be installed on a 64-bit system, but drivers for printers, scanners, digital cameras and other electronics can cause conflicts. As a result, you should research the compatibility of a 32-bit application before installing it on a 64-bit system.

Definition
A 32-bit processor is essentially a chip that processes data with a lane that is 32 bits wide. This means that any instructions that pass through the processor at any one time can be up to 32 bits (4 bytes, or a DWORD) in size.

Benefits
All 32-bit processors have the capability of using larger chunks of data and crunching 4 bytes in one single clock cycle. This is quite handy when doing very complex and large mathematical operations (such as graphics rendering).

Function
The function of a processor, regardless of the bit width, is to perform operations based on instructions given to it and data attached to the instructions. Larger bit width allows for a larger instruction set and larger registers.

Potential
Processors with higher bit width are constantly being developed. The 32-bit processors have a limited potential because of the small bit width they have, but their potential is much higher than 16-bit processors, for example.

Processing Speed
As tempting as it is to get a processor with the highest clock speed, consider also the bit width. Processors with a higher bit width will be able to take larger chunks of data from programs that actually use the full potential of their registers.

Background
64-bit processors can represent larger chunks of data at a time than 32-bit processors, allowing more efficient handling of all types of computer calculations. Although 64-bit processing is inherently faster, it also requires more temporary storage--random access memory (RAM)--to accommodate the larger chunks of data and provide better system performance.

RAM Considerations
32-bit operating systems can only use about 3.5 gigabytes (GB) of RAM, even if you install more; 64-bit operating systems can use much more. For example, the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate support up to 192 GB of RAM. According to Microsoft, you need at least 4 GB of RAM in order to experience an increase in system performance with 64-bit processing. If you have less than 4 GB of RAM, moving to 64-bit could actually decrease system performance.

In summary, most laptops and PCs which we buy now have 64bit processors and are future proof. Having said that the expected speed increases will not occur until all of the software falls into line and is capable of taking advantage of the64bit OS.