The Computer Tutor

Do you know what your laptop does when you close the lid without powering it down first? Does it shut it off, or put it to Sleep mode, or Hibernate, or maybe it does nothing at all?

It’s interesting to find out what people think about this process. Some people assume that when they close the lid, it shuts off the power to the computer. For others, all they know is that when they open the lid the next time, they can just click to sign in and they can use the computer again (without having to wait for it to do a full bootup process).

The truth is this: shutting the lid on your laptop can make the computer do whatever you want it to do. It’s fully configurable!

If you don’t do anything or change anything, in most laptops the default setting is that the laptop goes into Sleep mode when the lid is closed. For some users, that’s fine.

What if you want it to go into Hibernate mode, or actually fully power down, when you shut the lid? You can change that by making an adjustment in the Power Options area.

To get to Power Options:

In Windows 7 – click the Start button and in the search field type “power options” and you’ll see the Power Options link show up at the top of the Start menu. Click that.

In Windows 8 – hold down the Windows key and tap the letter “x”. In the menu that comes up, click on Power Options.

In Windows 10 – hold down the Windows key and tap the letter “x”. In the menu that comes up, click on Power Options. Then click on “Additional power settings”.

At that point you should see an option on the left side that says “Choose what closing the lid does”. Doesn’t get any clearer than that, right?

When you click that, you’ll be presented with a screen that gives you a drop-down menu for what you want to happen when you close the lid – whether running on battery, or plugged in:

Your options are:

You might want to have it do something different if it’s running on battery, to conserve the power. But there is no right or wrong choice here – it’s whatever you prefer, based on your usage and preference.

And as you can see in that screenshot, you can also choose what you want to have happen when you hit the Power button, or when you hit the Sleep button (if your laptop has one). You are in control!

Recently I got a message from one of my readers, Mike –

Boo. I asked a question some months back which you mentioned, but did not answer. Perhaps I can ask again? I need to limit my search results by date. For example, I want to search for mythtv. This is sort of useless and I find many old out of date results. Some info is outdated, some is flat wrong, some companies or web sites have closed down. I waste lots of time checking the results. Is there a way to search for mythtv, but use a date limiter of ONLY the last 3 years and not all the old useless junk? I mostly use the search engine duckduckgo but sometimes use Bing, Google, or Yahoo. I am on your mail list and have enjoyed your weekly mail for the past 2 years. Thanks.

I don’t know how Mike’s question slipped through the cracks but I told him we would get it answered, so here it is.

(Side note: I asked Mike about MythTV since I had never heard of it. He said:   It looks a great deal like Windows Media Center and allows you to play all your media files like movies and TV shows. But if you add a TV tuner card, it becomes a PVR (Personal Video Recorder). Using PVR functions, it goes online and gets the TV schedule data, uses mysql, and presents the results for you to search. Once you find what you want to record, it sets the timers, records your shows, and chops out the commercials for you. All this is called the backend. The frontend portion can be used for playback on as many of your network machines as you like. You can also install both front and back ends on the same machine.“)

Sounds like interesting software. If you use it, let me know in the comments below what you think of it. But this isn’t a software review post.

Mike wants to know how to do a search, and limit the search results to a particular period of time. He specifically wants to see only the things that are from within the past 3 years. And he mentioned that the search engines he uses are DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo and Google. Here’s how it works for each one of these.

DuckDuckGo

Unfortunately, they aren’t set up to do what Mike is requesting. If you do a search with DuckDuckGo, you’ll see the search results and right up above that there’s a drop-down menu that says “Any Time”. When you click that, you can choose to narrow your search results to the past day, week or month:

Bing

However, Bing can be configured to narrow search results to specific dates. You do your regular search, then look for the drop-down manu that says “Any time”. At the bottom of that menu is the place where you can enter the dates you want to use for your search results:

Yahoo

Unfortunately, Yahoo is also not able to filter search results by specific dates. It offers basically the same options as DuckDuckGo. When you do your search, click on “Anytime” and you’ll see the options for day, week or month – but nothing more specific than that:

Google

To get search results based on a particular set of dates, first do your regular search. Then click on “Tools”, then click on “Any time”. In that menu there’s an option for “custom range” where you can enter the dates you want to use:

As you have probably guessed, out of these 4, I prefer Google just because the search results usually give me what I’m looking for. Want to try a comparison for yourself? Do a search in Bing, then open a new tab and do the same search in Google.

For example – I searched on “did the red sox win their last game?”.

Bing search results gave me generic information:

Google search results specifically answered my question:

I know that’s not a comprehensive evaluation, and in some cases Bing search results might be better. But overall I think Google does a much better job. What do you think? Comment below.

Thanks to a really good ad blocker (Ublock Origin), I see almost no display ads on most websites. It’s wonderful. But if that’s the only ad blocker you use, you’ll still see ads on one popular website – Facebook. Here’s how you can get rid of the ads on Facebook as well.

Facebook is kind of tricky about how ads are displayed. They try to make the ads sort of “blend in” with the other content so you’ll maybe not notice that it’s an ad and you’ll just keep reading it. And they put ads all over the place:

Suggested pages and Sponsored posts:

Right-side column on newsfeed:

Right-side column on profile page:

Under comments in photo view:

What I really hate is when I’m scrolling down the news feed and come across something that seems like it could be interesting. I start to read, then I notice that word: “Sponsored”. Just someone trying to sell me something. I think Ublock Origin might get rid of some of these ads, but those “Sponsored Posts” seem to fly under the radar for most traditional ad blockers. But not any more!

When I use Facebook now, I don’t see any of those ads. That’s because I use a browser extension called QClean. You can get it free at http://qcl.github.io/QClean/. At that page, just scroll down and choose the download based on the web browser you use:

Update: apparently this extension is not compatible with the current version of Firefox.

Just follow the directions to install it. Mine is installed to use with Chrome of course, since it’s my default web browser. Once it is installed, go to Facebook and you’ll see the QClean icon light up right there in the top right corner (might show up somewhere else in browsers other than Chrome, I’m not sure):

What you WON’T see are all the ads that used to show up all over your Facebook pages. I’ll bet you won’t even miss them. I sure don’t!

Do you have a bunch of pictures saved on your Windows 10 computer? It’s really easy to view them in a slide show, full screen.

(yes, those are my pups – Lilly and Fenway – in that picture)

There are lots of ways to view the images stored on your computer. You can see them on your actual monitor, you can connect your computer to your large screen television, or you could even connect a projector to your laptop and put them up on a big screen if you want.

But you still need a way to have the pictures rotate one after the other without your having to manually open one, close it, then open the next one. All of them should display in order, automatically.

In Windows 10 this is pretty easy. Here’s how you play a slide show in Windows 10:

1. Go to your Pictures folder, then open a sub-folder of pictures that’s in there (or you could just view pictures that are in the root level of your Pictures folder). Ideally, your pictures will be sorted into folders such as a particular vacation, or Christmas, or an event you attended, that kind of thing.

2. Click one time on one of the pictures in the folder.

3. At the top of the window, look for the “Manage” tab and click on it. Then click “Slide show”, and just sit back and watch the show!

You know when I find things like this the most useful? At family events, such as birthdays, wedding receptions, or funerals. You can hire a company to create a slide show with an audio soundtrack for you, and spend a few hundred dollars. Or you can use the process outlined above – put all your chosen pictures in a designated folder, and play the slide show while your music plays from iTunes or a few mp3 files that you have picked from what’s stored on your computer. It works wonderfully and costs you nothing.

A little while back I discovered a service that doesn’t cost anything and can sometimes be useful. Now my post office sends me a picture of what the letter carrier will be putting in my mailbox later that day.

I don’t know how long the US Postal Service has offered this service, but I just discovered it and I like it.

My snail-mail delivery is in the afternoon. Sometimes as early as 2:30 pm, sometimes as late as 5:30 pm. I don’t know why there is such a difference in time each day, but that’s how it happens.

There are a few situations where it would be nice to know ahead of time what the mailman is going to deliver that day:

Not to mention, I just like knowing what’s coming in the mail later today! With this service, all of that is taken care of.

Every morning between 7 and 7:30, I get an email from the post office. The email tells me what mail will be showing up in my mailbox later that day. The first part of the email looks like this:

Then below that, there are actual scans of the pieces of mail that are scheduled to be delivered that day. They look like this:

As you can see, this isn’t just an email “telling” me what mail is supposed to be delivered today – it actually shows me pictures of the mail pieces.

I had no idea that the US Postal Service actually created a scanned image of each piece of mail. But since they’re already doing that, might as well take advantage of it and have them notify you what to expect in your mailbox.

NOTE: this is only for letter-size mail pieces. Packages, magazines, etc. are not included in the notification.

To set this up for your address, go here: https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.action. It’s completely free for US residents.

And I’m curious – have you heard of this service before? Or was this the first time you were made aware of it? Leave a comment below.

I love Airbnb and I’ve used the service several times. But unfortunately, like with many things today, the scammers have figured out a way to trick you out of your money using the Airbnb service. Here’s how it works and how you can avoid it.

I love Airbnb (use this link to get $40 off your first trip if you want to try it out) and have used it several times. If you’re not familiar with it, Airbnb is basically an alternative to staying in a hotel. Anyone that has a home with a spare bedroom, or a condo they’re not using, or even a whole house, can list that space on the Airbnb website and rent it out for whatever price they want to put on it.

I tend to be pretty open to trying things like this, and every time I’ve used it has been a positive experience. It saves me money, and I get to meet new people who are sharing part of their home with me. My wife was a little hesitant the first time we used it when traveling together, but she’s a fan of it now too.

The main concern for most people who hear about it for the first time is safety. Not just for the guest, but also for the homeowner who is apparently just inviting random strangers to spend the night (or several nights). But there are security measures built in to the process, mainly based on reviews. Both hosts and guests get rated and reviewed (by each other) after a visit, so you can look at that information before you make a reservation. It’s nice to hear what other people have said about a host before you go there.

But like almost every other area of our lives, the scammers have figured out a way to manipulate it. The way they do this is actually kind of clever, but you can easily avoid getting caught if you know what to look for.

To fully understand this, you need to know that when a host lists their location for booking on Airbnb, one of the things they decide on is how they want to handle cancellations. There are 3 standardized options:

The policies listed above are all in reference to when a guest cancels a reservation. But what if the host cancels the reservation? That means the guest is entitled to a full refund. And that makes sense. If you book and pay for a room, and the host cancels your reservation, of course you should get all your money back.

So here’s what the scammer does:

So for example if the room was $50 per night, and the guest booked and paid for 3 nights, that’s $150. The scammer “host” makes $75 for doing nothing.

And remember, this is just one reservation – the scammer can fill up a calendar with these.

And think about this other possible plot twist: since the scammer will never host anyone, he doesn’t even need to list his own house. Anyone can go on Google and get pictures of a really nice house, full interior and exterior shots, and just list it as their own house. And at a discounted price too – they can list a $200 per night property and only ask for $125 per night, just to get more reservations.

Now you might be thinking, “Great scam, but how long would it go on? If someone gets scammed, they’re going to leave a bad review, so future guests will read that and not book with this host any more.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You can only leave a review for a host if you actually stayed as a guest with that host. Since the visit never took place, you can’t leave a review.

As you might imagine, the most common victims of this scam are people who are new to Airbnb and are not really familiar with the cancellation policies. For a guest that initiates a cancellation of this type, Airbnb does tell them that they will be losing 50% of their payment – but some people just don’t pay attention and don’t think about it. That’s what the scammers are counting on.

How to avoid this Airbnb scam:

First, you can just avoid using any hosts that have chosen the “Strict” cancellation policy. Lots of hosts use the “Flexible” option so that’s what I always look for.

Second, if a host contacts you and asks you to cancel your reservation, don’t do it. If they are unable to provide accommodations, let them cancel it.

Third, and perhaps most important, only book with hosts that have several positive reviews. The vast majority of hosts on Airbnb are good people (in my experience) and their ratings and reviews from previous guests will usually reflect that.

In some cases, you might find it necessary to book a reservation with a host using the “Strict” cancellation policy. What if they ask you to cancel after you’ve paid? You don’t have the option of leaving a negative review, but you can definitely report them to the service. Airbnb is aware of this scam, and if they see a trend of this type of complaint against a host they will cancel that account. Of course, the same scammer can just create a new account under a different name, but at least you did your part to help future guests to avoid being a victim.

Recently a client called me in a panic, because he was in the middle of using his laptop and suddenly it shut off and now it wouldn’t boot up again. By all appearances, his laptop was just dead. Here’s how we handled it.

I have to tell you, I really love using this trick. To someone that watches it happen, it’s like magic. One minute their computer is completely dead – no lights, no fan, nothing on the screen, and pushing the power button has no effect at all. Many times when people contact me with this situation, they are already thinking “Great, now I have to buy a new laptop”. That just makes the effect that much more impressive when their laptop is suddenly working fine again.

What happens is that sometimes the computer can slip into a Hibernate mode and not be able to come out of it on its own. Kind of like a person with a traumatic injury that goes into a coma. Except with a person, usually you have to just wait and hope they come out of it. With your laptop, we can snap it back into reality with this little trick.

Here’s the process:

1. Unplug the power cord

2. Remove the battery (you’ll need to flip the laptop over to get to the battery)

3. Turn the laptop back over as if you’re going to use it, then press and hold the power button for 30 seconds (yes, you won’t see anything happen since the battery and power cord are disconnected)

4. Plug in the power cord (with the battery still removed)

5. Tap the power button as you normally would to turn on the computer, and watch it boot up like normal (magic!)

6. After it is fully booted up, go through the shut down procedure to turn it off

7. Reinsert the battery

8. Boot it up again, and you’re back in business

This works on both PC and Mac laptops, although the problem that sometimes arises is that some are poorly designed and you aren’t able to easily remove the battery without disassembling the laptop. You can blame the manufacturer for that inconvenience.

Everyone seems to be in a panic about privacy these days. All the big companies want to know everything about you, and most people are reluctant to give up any more information than they really need to (with one exception – we willingly tell Facebook everything about ourselves). But when Google asks you for your phone number – you definitely should give it to them.

“What??”

“Google is evil! They want to know too much about me!”

“I don’t want to give them any more personal details!”

That’s fine. I understand that. And in general, I agree with the idea that protecting your personal information is a good thing. But this is an exception.

First of all, this only applies if you have a Google account. How would you answer these questions:

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you have a Google account.

Now the big question: why does Google want your phone number? What are they going to do with it?

Well, they aren’t going to call you at dinner time to sell you a time share or ask for a charity donation.

Google wants your phone number, so they can help you get your account back if for some reason you are unable to log in.

For me, all of my email comes in through Gmail (I actually have several Gmail accounts, for different purposes). What if suddenly you could not access your email account? How big of a problem would that be for you? That means you can’t get new emails coming in now, which is an issue in itself. But you also cannot go to Gmail.com and access any of your PAST emails (although you still could see the old emails if you have them stored on your computer). You also don’t have access to your Gmail contact list. Or your Google calendar. Or any of the photos you have backed up in Google Photos (a great way to backup all of your photos, by the way). Or anything else you use your Google account for.

This would be an issue you would want to get resolved as soon as possible. And the way to get it fixed is for Google to either send you a text message with a special one-time code, or to call you and give you that code. You enter that code on their site, and you then have access to change your password to a new one. And you’re back in business that quick.

But if Google doesn’t have your phone number, it’s not that easy.

They could also send that code to an alternate email address that you provide them (yes, you should give them that information as well). Hopefully you still have access to that old email account – you might not though, if it was from an internet provider you cancelled 10 years ago.

You can also resolve this by answering some security questions that Google has on file. Assuming you remember those answers. I had a client recently that had to answer one of those. The question was “What is your favorite movie?” and she had to think about it for a minute because she originally answered that question a few years earlier. Fortunately she was able to get it right after a few tries, but it was a little risky to depend on that one thing.

Giving Google your phone number and the other information they need is really easy. Just go to Google.com and sign in to your account. Then click on your picture up in the top right, and in the drop-down menu click on “My Account”.

On the next page, look on the left side for the “Security Checkup” area and click on “Get Started”. Google will walk you through the rest from there.

Keep this in mind: you can only do this BEFORE you lose access to your Google or Gmail account. That means you need to do it now!

Online scams are a huge problem, and it seems like they won’t be going away anytime soon. I recently had a client who almost got scammed and wasn’t even aware of it until I explained what happened.

Laura contacted me about buying one of my refurbished laptops. Her laptop had been running really badly recently so she was considering getting a new one. I answered some questions (we were communicating via Facebook chat) and eventually we were talking about her current laptop and the possibility of getting it repaired rather than replacing it.

I explained to her that diagnosis was free, so it really would make sense to at least explore that option rather than just giving up on it and buying a new one. So a couple of days later she brought it to me.

Whenever someone brings me a computer for repair, I try to ask a lot of questions and get as much information as possible. Sometimes just one question, one little bit of info, can make a huge difference in the outcome of a project. That was very true in this case.

So she brought me the laptop, and the first thing I noticed was that it looked fairly new. Of course, outward appearance is not always an indicator of what kind of condition a computer is in, but it’s often a pretty good sign.

Also, I could tell from my communications with Laura that she is someone who is very attentive to detail – the type of person who is careful, organized, and would take good care of her things.

As part of our conversation, it came up that she had purchased the laptop new about a year ago. That naturally lead to my question, “Is it still under warranty?” Typically the manufacturer’s warranty is one year from the date of purchase.

Her response: “No, I called HP and they said the warranty has expired.”

Whenever someone says they have called and talked to some large online company (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, etc.), my next question is: “How did you get their phone number?”

Laura: “I found it online.”

From experience, I know that when someone looks up a “tech support” number online, the number they find is most likely NOT going to be a phone number for the actual computer manufacturer’s tech support department. Of course, when they call that number, the answer will be something like “HP Tech Support” or “Microsoft Tech Support” or something similar, so there would be no reason to suspect anything. But on the other end of that line is a scammer ready to steal your money.

I asked Laura for more details about what the “HP” representative told her. She explained that he was sorry to inform her that the warranty had expired, but that she could purchase an extended warranty. Laura didn’t recall how much the new “warranty” would cost, but typically these things sell for $200 – $300. Fortunately, she did not purchase from the scammer, but contacted me instead to talk about getting a new computer.

I explained to Laura that she was most likely NOT talking to an actual HP representative. She was pretty surprised to find out that she had probably been talking to a scammer. These criminals are really getting pretty good at fooling people into thinking they’re legitimate, and in many cases they are successful. Just not this time.

At this point I couldn’t be 100% certain until I did some more research. So I told her I would check into it, as well as diagnose the laptop’s problems, and get back to her.

My next 3 steps:

Turns out Laura’s laptop was actually still under warranty. And how much time was left on the warranty? TWO DAYS. No time to waste.

I contacted Laura immediately (this was still the same day she dropped it off) and told her what I had found out. She came back right away and picked up the laptop as well as the portable drive that was now safely storing her Documents, Pictures, etc.

I heard from her later that day. She had called the actual HP phone number (which I gave to her) and they confirmed that the laptop was under warranty. They will be sending her a shipping box to pack up her laptop for shipment to HP, for them to repair at no cost to Laura whatsoever. What I expect they will do is replace the hard drive with a new one and send it back to her with a fresh installation of Windows 10 (same as it was when she first got it).

What can we learn from this? Three things:

First: Don’t Google for tech support phone numbers. The scammers know that many thousands of people, every day, are searching on Google for a tech support phone number. So they create websites to match those searches. Those websites can have very convincing content, even including the actual logos of the large computer companies, to make you think you are genuinely talking with someone from that company. Don’t fall for it.

Second: When hiring a tech, make sure it’s someone you can trust. I hate to say it, but there are some techs that run their business without integrity. In a case like this, the client is usually expecting to pay a few hundred dollars for the data backup and hard drive replacement, so the less-than-honest techs will just do the repair and get paid for it. Especially when the client already “knows” the warranty has expired. Find a tech who you know will do the right thing.

Third: Back up your important files. I say this repeatedly and without apology. Laura’s hard drive was failing gradually, which allowed us to grab the data before it completely died. Some hard drives don’t give you that luxury – they just crash without warning. Setting up a mostly automated backup is not expensive, and I can do it for you remotely. If you have stuff on your computer that you would not want to lose, get this done. No excuses!

Had this come up with a client recently. His email inbox was constantly showing the wrong time for incoming emails. He could receive an email at 2 pm, and yet when he looked at that email, it would show that it arrived at 9 pm. In fact, he demonstrated the problem while he was here at my home office. I sent him an email, it showed up in his inbox, but the “arrival time” displayed was several hours into the future.

He had been dealing with this mystery for quite some time before telling me about it. Of course, the first thing he checked was the date and time for the computer itself. Those were correct.

The problem was that his time/date was incorrect inside his email settings.

This applies to any of the Microsoft-related email services: MSN, Hotmail, and Outlook.com (note: Outlook.com is Microsoft’s web-based email service – not the MS Outlook software that comes with Office).

For each of these services, there’s a setting that allows you to designate a particular time zone that you want to use just for email purposes. This is a separate setting from the traditional time zone setting in Windows.

Here’s how you change that time zone setting in a Microsoft web-based email account:

1. Sign in to your MSN, Hotmail, or Outlook.com email account. (These screenshots are from my Outlook.com account. I don’t have an MSN or Hotmail account, but the process should be pretty similar since these are all Microsoft services.) Click on the gear icon in the top right:

2. In the drop down menu, choose “Options”

3. In the window that opens, look over on the left side and click on “General”, then click “Region and time zone”:

4. Now you’ll see a screen where you have a drop-down menu to choose your correct time zone. Once you’ve done that, click Save:

Now you can click on “Options” in the top left and you’ll go back to your email Inbox, ready to work.

Here’s a question for you – why would you want to change the time zone in your email program, but not for your computer in general? Leave a comment below with your opinion.