The Computer Tutor

I’m still seeing a LOT of these showing up, and clients still contact me to see if they are legitimate. Here’s how to identify this scam.

There’s a good chance you’ve gotten one of these emails at some point over the past several months. The scammers have been sending out a LOT of them – sometimes over 200,000 in a single day.

They tend to follow a predictable format. They are supposedly being sent from Norton or McAfee, and the basic message is that your credit card will be charged $199, $299, or even $399 (the dollar amount varies) to renew the service that you have supposedly subscribed to.

Of course, the recipients of these emails are not going to be charged anything. That’s just to get your attention.

The REAL goal of these scam emails is to get you to call the phone number. They know that people will read this and think, “Wait a minute, I don’t subscribe to those crappy antivirus programs – what’s going on?” And the person will see that big notice that says “For information about your order, please call…”. Or it might even say, “To cancel this renewal charge, call this number”. And of course the person doesn’t want to pay that charge, so they call the number.

That’s the big mistake here – calling the phone number. That’s exactly what they want you to do. Never call the number.

When you make that phone call, you will be talking to a professional scammer who is very good and very clever at this game. He will sound very convincing. A lot of people are tricked by this.

When the scammer has you on the phone, he will tell you that he needs to remote in to your computer in order to uninstall the software and process your refund. But in the background, he’ll be installing other malicious software and more unattended remote access tools – so that he can get into your computer anytime, even when you’re not on the phone with him.

If the scammer senses that you are especially gullible, he might ask you for your credit card information in order to “process the refund”. You obviously don’t want to give a scammer your credit card information.

The key to success is this: if you get an email stating that you owe some money, or that your credit card will be charged, or has been charged, don’t call the number on the email. In fact, if you want to, you can forward the email to me at [email protected] and ask if it’s legitimate.

I have one client who gets a lot of these emails. Every time she would call me or email me asking if it’s legit. Finally I told her to just put a note near her computer to remind her that these are all just scams. Then I was in her home recently, and saw this on her desk. Smart!

Do you have all your photos automatically saved to your Google Photos account? What if you want to download all those photos and save them to your computer? Here’s how.

Storing all of your photos on Google Photos is a good thing. It’s kind of like an automatic backup for the photos you take on your phone, and it’s free.

But over time, you can accumulate a LOT of photos on there. And if that’s the only place where those photos are saved, it would make me a little nervous. What if your Google account gets hacked into, and you no longer have access to it? Or something else happens, and you can’t log in? I’m a lot more comfortable if all those photos – which might represent years or even decades of events – are stored in a second location. Specifically, my computer.

When you have all those photos also stored on your computer, you have control of that. In addition, if you follow my recommendations, you’re backing up your computer regularly. So that means those photos would also be backed up. When you store your important things in more than one place, one of them can go haywire and you still have the others.

And how do you get these photos from Google Photos to your computer? Well, you could right click and download them one at a time. If you only have a few, that might be okay. But most people have hundreds or even thousands of photos there. So we need a more efficient process.

For this we’ll use a service that Google provides, called Google Takeout. It’s at takeout.google.com.

When you go there and log in to your Google account (if you’re not already logged in), you’ll see LOTS of data that Google is storing for you. Your Chrome history, your calendar, your contacts, and many more things.

But for this exercise we’re just concerned about the photos. So at the top of the list of data, click where it says “Deselect all”, then scroll down to the Google Photos section and check that one box out to the right:

And if you did not already know this, you’ll also be downloading all of your videos that are stored there as well.

Now, scroll all the way to the bottom and click on Next Step.

Now you can choose the option that says “Export once” (unless you want to set this up on a recurring schedule). I recommend keeping the “.zip” file format:

Now click on Create Export in the lower right.

If your computer is currently running Windows 10, like most Windows computers currently are, there’s a new major update that’s just been released – it’s Windows 11. It’s not something you want yet.

For quite some time, Microsoft said that the last version of Windows would be Windows 10. They said they would just continue to update it, as they’ve always done.

But as they have done in the past, what Microsoft said they would do turned out to be different from what they actually did. Windows 11 was officially released on October 5, 2021 – just 3 weeks ago.

The general rule for any software is that you don’t want to use it when it first comes out. The old saying “Pioneers get arrows, settlers take the land” sort of applies with computer software. The early versions will likely have bugs. So you definitely don’t want to put new software on any computer that you have to rely on.

Right now, Microsoft is saying that Windows 11 will be rolled out gradually. Most people probably won’t see it come in automatically until after the first of the year (2022). But, once again, Microsoft’s actions are subject to change. Remember when Windows 10 came out, and they said you don’t have to get it if you don’t want to? But LOTS of people ended up seeing it on their computers even after opting very clearly to NOT get it.

I can’t really say for sure if Microsoft will force it in. What I can say is that Windows 10 is working fine, and it will be supported until October 14 of 2025. That’s 4 more years to use your current computer and your current operating system. I might jump into Windows 11 before Windows 10 ends, but definitely not right now.

So how do you keep Windows 11 from coming into your computer?

At the moment, it’s not a very simple process. I’ve done this for several clients remotely already. These are the basic steps:

Here is my official position on the process I just described above: I do not recommend you do this, unless you are a computer tech and understand what you are doing.

The Windows Registry is like the “brain” of the Windows operating system. So going in and editing it is kind of like doing brain surgery on your computer. If you know what has to be done (in step 6 above) and you know how to do it, it’s fine. If you’re not sure, or you make one mistake in the Registry, your computer may not boot up again.

I’ve been doing this now for a couple of weeks for my current clients. I can do it through my Remote Support service (pricing and details here). Call or email me if you have any questions about it. Whoever you hire to do this, make sure they know what they are doing.

Once Windows 11 is blocked from coming in, you have 4 years to decide what to do. By that time, you might even decide it’s time to get a new computer. And of course, the new computer will have Windows 11 already installed.

If your hard drive starts to show signs of failure, you want to know that as soon as possible. Here’s how to get that alert nice and early.

When someone says to you, “I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?” what do you say? For me, I am a “bad news first” kind of person. Get it out of the way and on to the good stuff. And if it pertains to my computer, even more so.

If my computer’s hard drive is having a problem, I want to know about it as soon as possible. The earlier it can be detected, the earlier it can be fixed. It also means there’s less of a chance of losing any important data (even though I do two different backups every day).

So I have a system that is completely automated, and it checks the health of my computer’s internal drive daily. And here’s some good news:

Here’s how you do it.

First, you install a little program called Crystal Disk Info. I’ve written about it before. You can get it here. There are different programs listed on the website but what you want is CrystalDiskInfo Standard Edition. Just click on the Installer option, and it will download. Then you can install it. It won’t try to sneak anything else on to your computer.

So now you have it installed, but it doesn’t do anything unless you double click the desktop icon to run it. When you run it, it will show you a window with a button that says Good, Caution, or Bad. That’s really the only indicator you need to look at. If it says Good, just close the window and go on with using your computer. If it says Caution or Bad, your hard drive is most likely in the process of failing so we need to deal with that.

But I said this whole thing is automated, right? That means we need to set it up so that you don’t have to try to remember to run Crystal Disk Info regularly. Here’s how:

Open the program, then at the top click on Function. In the drop down menu, look for the word Startup, and click it.

This means that every time your computer starts up, Crystal Disk Info will run automatically. And you’ll see the report about your hard drive’s health.

For me, that means every single day. My nightly routine, when I’m done using my computer for the day, is to restart it and then plug in the overnight backup drive. So when I restart it, I see the drive health report first thing.

If you don’t do this, your computer’s drive could be in the process of failing for several days or weeks and you wouldn’t even know about it. Better to find out early and take action!

Did you know that Google Chrome can run a quick Safety Check on your computer? Here’s how to do it.

Open Chrome, and click the 3 dots in the top right, and choose Settings.

Then, scroll down to the Safety Check session and click on “Check now”.

Chrome will take a few seconds and check for:

This is what the results on my computer looked like:

If you’re practicing safe computing, and your computer is properly protected, the Chrome Safety Check shouldn’t find any problems. If the Safety Check does alert you to something that needs to be fixed, and you’re not sure what to do, contact me.

Keep in mind, this is a very basic checkup. Your computer may have problems or security issues that would not be detected by this Chrome process. Be sure to have good security on your computer, and make sure all your software is kept up to date (this can be automated).

There are some people who use computers, but don’t do text messages.  That sometimes presents a problem for them, but there’s a way to get around it.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.

When you go to set up a new Microsoft account, one of the things they will want you to provide is a phone number – and they assume this will be a cell phone that receives text messages. Microsoft is not asking for your phone number so that they can text you all the time with spam messages. They want to have that in place in case you ever need to verify your identity.

This usually comes into play when you forget your Microsoft password. When you click on the “Forgot password” link, they’ll offer to send you a text message to the phone number you have on file, in order for you to prove that you are the person who owns that Microsoft account. Then you can reset the password. It’s a pretty quick recovery process, but you have to have that phone number already on file with them in order to do that.

But sometimes I’ll have a client who has just never bothered with text messaging. So they don’t really know how to get a text message. Or, maybe they’re using an older style phone, or a no-contract phone that doesn’t do text messaging. We come to the place where you have to get a confirmation text message in order to configure the new Microsoft account, but how do you do that when you can’t get a text message on your phone?

Google, of course!

If you have a Gmail email account, you already have the ability to do this. Just go to this website: voice.google.com and  sign in with your Gmail email address and password.

Then, just go through their process of setting up a Google Voice phone number. You can even choose one that starts with your own area code if you’re in the US (not sure how it works outside the US). Once you have your phone number assigned to your account, you can use the Google Voice service to make outbound calls, or for people to call you at that number. And guess what – you can also send and receive text messages from that number! All the instructions and configurations are at the website, voice.google.com.

So when Microsoft (or any other website) needs a phone number that receives text messages, just give them your Google Voice phone number. In fact, you might want to use that number even if you are able to get text messages on your actual phone – might help reduce the number of spam message you get on your phone.

When you’re online, do you find yourself constantly having to manually type in your name and address when creating a new account? Here’s how to do that with one click.

You know what I’m talking about. You see something on the internet you want to purchase, and it’s for sale on some website where you haven’t bought anything in the past. So you need to create an account.

That means you have to type in your full name, your street address, your city and state, your zip or postal code, your phone number, etc. These are all things you’ve typed out a hundred times before. Why can’t your computer just remember these things and enter them FOR you.

Good news – it can!

This is a great feature that’s available in Chrome. I’m sure it’s in the other browsers as well, but I use Chrome mostly so that’s what I’ll be referring to here.

Chrome will store all of that personal identity information inside a special section in Chrome settings. Then, when you go to a website form that asks you to fill all of that out, Chrome recognizes that it’s a form and what it’s asking for, and offers you the option to have it all automatically completed.

Here’s how you set this up:

In Chrome, click the 3 dots up in the top right, then click on Settings

Now look for the section called “Autofill” and click on “Addresses and more”

Now, where it says “Save and fill addresses”, make sure that switch is turned on (to the right). And click the Add button to enter your address information –

In the next window that opens, you enter your information. There are places for your country, name, organization, street address, city, state, zip, phone and email –

Click Save and you’re done.

Now, if you want to test this, go and create a new account somewhere online. You’ll see that when you place your cursor in the “Name” field (or any of the other fields on that form), Chrome will offer you the option to auto-fill the form with whatever information you have stored.

A couple of things to also keep in mind:

First, you can store more than one set of info. For example, you might have a physical address, and a different address (such as PO Box) that you use for mail purposes. These can be stored separately and you can just use the appropriate one when needed.

Second, you can also store payment methods (such as your credit card information) in Chrome, but I don’t recommend doing that. I also don’t recommend storing your account passwords in Chrome. If anyone gets access to your computer (such as if it were to get lost or stolen), or someone hacks into your computer, they can get access to that information that is stored in Chrome and it could mean a huge headache for you.

Your Windows computer has a clipboard feature that you are probably not even aware of!

Before I tell you today’s tip, a little background or “setup” information so that everyone is on the same page.

One of the most useful features of a computer is the ability to Cut and Paste or Copy and Paste. If you don’t use this, you should learn how to do it. It’s really easy and comes in very handy all the time.

Here’s how it works in a basic example – let’s say you have a Word document that has five paragraphs. You want to move the second paragraph down to the end of the document. Well, you could just retype the whole paragraph at the end, and then delete it from its original spot. That would achieve your end result. But there’s a much easier way!

You can highlight the entire paragraph, then tap CTRL + X (this is the “cut” part of Cut and Paste. When you do this, two things happen:

Now, you go to the end of the document and put the cursor where you want that paragraph to appear. Now you tap CTRL + V (this is the “paste” part). And there’s your paragraph, where you want it.

That’s how Cut and Paste works.

If instead of CTRL + X, you did CTRL + C, that means you are “copying” instead of “cutting”. So when you paste, the paragraph will be at the end of the document, but it will also still be in its original position.

So what’s the clipboard?

When you Cut or Copy, whatever you have highlighted gets stored on the Clipboard. You won’t see this on the screen though. Think of the Clipboard as being an “invisible” thing that temporarily stores whatever you are cutting or copying. You can’t see it, but it’s there and it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing.

So that’s the background of how Copy/Paste and Cut/Paste works. Now here’s today’s cool tip:

You can actually view the past items you have put on your clipboard, and paste them over and over. Here’s how: hold down the Windows key, and tap the letter “v”. Windows + v.

You’ll see a little window pop up on your screen, and there are the last several items you’ve cut or copied. I’m not sure how many it’s able to display, but I just checked mine and it shows the last 16 items.

So if you need to paste something over and over, you don’t have to go back to the original, highlight it, and copy it again. Just click to display the Windows Clipboard, and grab it from there.

And by the way, it doesn’t matter if you copied text or an image – they will all show up in the Windows Clipboard.

One of the most common things I hear from people is still this: “My computer is too slow!” The problem is, they could be talking about two different things.

This leads me to ask a clarifying question, so we know exactly what we are dealing with.

I ask, “When you say it’s slow, are you talking about when you go to a website, it takes a long time for the website to load? Or, do you mean for example you click on Microsoft Word and it takes a long time for Word to come up on the screen?”

Do you see the difference in those questions?

If it’s a website that is slow to load, that’s not necessarily a problem with the computer itself – it’s just a slow internet connection. If that’s an issue, it’s time to make a call to whoever you pay for the internet each month. They can do some diagnostic checking from their end while you’re on the phone. In some cases, the modem or router (or both) might be failing and need to be replaced. You can also speed up your internet connection by connecting the router to the computer with an ethernet cable, instead of by wifi. I know that’s not always physically possible. But if your computer sits next to the router anyway, you would be better off just connecting a cable rather than connecting to the wifi signal. A wired connection is always faster.

If it’s a program that is slow to load, then that could be an issue with the computer itself. There are a variety of things to check here. The computer may need to be restarted, there might be too many programs running in the background, or it could even be an indication that the hard drive is having a problem (got a recent backup?).

So keep in mind, “slow” can have more than one meaning. But either way, we have methods of speeding it up!

You probably heard the announcement recently from Microsoft – Windows 11 is coming. Here’s what you need to do.

For quite some time, Microsoft held to their position that Windows 10 would be the last one. They would just keep doing updates to Windows 10, and there wouldn’t be any “new” named versions of Windows.

So much for that idea.

They announced recently that Windows 11 would be released as the next big version, starting later this year and extending the rollout into 2022.

And with that announcement, they included a link that took you to a little program that checked your computer to see if it will be able to run Windows 11. That’s because the hardware and security requirements are going to be higher with this new version of Windows. So people started checking their computers, and they were finding out that their current computer would NOT be able to run Windows 11.

So of course that’s when the phone calls and emails started coming in. I had several clients calling and asking what to do, should they plan on going out and getting a new computer, all kinds of questions.

So, I’m here today to give you detailed instructions on how to handle the Windows 11 situation. Here’s my recommendation:

That’s right. Just wait.

Right now, your computer is most likely running Windows 10. If you went out and bought a brand new computer today, guess what operating system it will have. Yep, Windows 10. That’s because Windows 11 has not even been released to the public yet.

And even if Windows 11 were available starting today, do you really want to be one of the first ones to use it? New software inevitably has problems which get fixed in subsequent updates. Let the early adopters find those errors.

And at this point, as I write this, we really don’t know what the system requirements are going to be for a new computer to be able to run Windows 11. Remember that little checker program that people could run to test their current computer for compatibility? Well, Microsoft took that down because they changed some of the requirements. And those guidelines continue to change.

And here’s another important fact to keep in mind: Windows 10 is working just fine, and it’s going to be supported by Microsoft until October 2025. So you’re fine to keep using it for more than four more years!

So there’s no rush. No need to make any changes yet. You can relax and just see what happens.

Having said all that, I was able to get my hands on an early “preview” version of Windows 11. Microsoft has something they call an “Insiders Program” where techs can try out new versions of Windows to play with it and report problems. So I have a beta version running on one of my computers at the moment, and I have to say I actually kind of like it so far. The Start button and Start menu are in the middle of the task bar instead of in the lower left corner. Taskbar icons are centered (similar to the way a Mac computer displays program icons at the bottom of the screen).

Of course, when it does come out officially, I’ll do a blog and podcast about what’s new (both good and bad). Until then – just keep doing what you’re doing.