The Computer Tutor

Recently, Western Digital had a problem with a couple of their external drives. This caused a huge disaster for some users, who ended up losing all of their data. Here’s what happened, and why those who follow my backup process had no problems.

First, let’s clear up some terminology.

A portable drive usually is slightly smaller than a smartphone. It will only have one cable – a USB cable that you connect to the computer when you want to have the computer do a backup.

An external hard drive is usually larger, like the size of a paperback book. The image pictured above is an external hard drive. These drives usually have a USB cable and also a regular power cord to plug into the wall for electricity.

Either of these types of drives can be used for a backup, but the one I use and recommend is the portable drive. For most people, it’s all they need. It can sit on top of your computer tower, or on  your desk next to your laptop.

Western Digital is one of the well-known companies that manufactures hard drives. They make external hard drives, and portable drives. They have a couple of particular external drive models known as My Book Live, and My Book Live Duo. These drives have been around for a while, and they are used by literally millions of people all over the world for file storage.

What makes these drives a bit unusual is that they are connected directly to the internet. This means that the files that are stored on the drive can be shared, or you can access the drive from any computer. This is a convenience feature.

Western Digital My Book Live Duo

Last week, many people who use these two drives discovered a huge problem. All of their data on the drive had been wiped out. Completely erased.

When this happened, I saw some people posting things like “This is my nightmare” and “I’m totally screwed” because they were counting on those drives to store their most important things, like documents and irreplaceable pictures and videos.

The question now is, what happened, and how could it have been avoided?

As far as what happened, at this point it appears to have been a malicious attack. Some malware was able to run on the Western Digital servers, and that malicious software gave the command to reset those internet-connected external drives. So not only were the drives reset back to factory state (meaning none of the customer’s data was kept), the password that was used to get into the drive was also reset.

How could this have been avoided? I would explain this in two concepts:

So many of the people who used these drives made a fatal mistake. And it’s one that I see my clients make sometimes if they don’t check with me first. They say, “My computer’s hard drive is pretty full – so I’m going to free up some space, and move those files to an external drive.” But think about that – if you move them off of your computer, to your external drive, how many places are they stored? ONE. This means you do NOT have a backup. When that external drive fails, you lose.

The process I recommend for backup means that your files are stored in 3 places:

One thing I want to stress: I still have faith in the physical integrity of Western Digital drives. I use both Western Digital and Seagate drives, and I think they are both equally reliable. What happened recently was not a hardware failure – it was a breach of the Western Digital cloud servers. The process that I use and described above does not include having any files stored on Western Digital computers. Yes, one of the backups we use is in the cloud (Carbonite), but again – that’s just one place. If that one fails, you still have the other two.

Don’t take any chances with your important files. If you need help setting up a backup process, contact me. No backup system is 100% foolproof, but we can at least make it as reliable as possible.

A recent Windows update probably added a new icon to the lower right corner of your screen. If you don’t want it there, here’s the easy way to get rid of it.

Microsoft really loves to put things on your computer screen even though you didn’t request it.

Last week (June 8, 2021, to be exact) was the monthly time that Microsoft sends out their regular updates to Windows. It’s always the second Tuesday of the month, and is called Patch Tuesday (because many of the updates “patch” security holes that have been discovered). This most recent update included the addition of a Windows toolbar called “News and Interests”, and it shows up in the row of all the other icons in the bottom right corner of your screen:

By default, it just shows the local temperature and weather conditions (84 F and sunny, that’s Florida!). But wait til you put your cursor over it (don’t click, just move the cursor over that icon). Suddenly you have lots more stuff –

So there’s a more thorough weather report, stock prices, a traffic report for an upcoming trip, and several current news stories. And the image you see above isn’t the whole thing – that window is fully scrollable. There are LOTS more news stories when you scroll through the list.

You might actually find this little thing to be a handy quick source of information. But you would also probably want to customize it with the specific news and interests that pertain to YOU.

For the stock prices, you can specific which stocks you want to see. Or you can just eliminate that info entirely.

You can change the weather location (in my example, I would change it to Safety Harbor, which is where I live, rather than Clearwater). Or you can have it not display the weather at all.

There’s also a sports option, so you can see the latest scores and info for your favorite players or teams if you want.

And of course there is always the news – this is reflective of the mind-numbing 24/7 news reporting cycle we are in now.

Some of this stuff might be handy. If I want to know the current temperature, I can just glance at my screen. Of course, I could already do that by glancing at my phone. I don’t follow most sports so I don’t really care about that. In my case, I might customize the news filtering so that I only see the most unusual news stories (those stories are sometimes the source for guests for my “What Was That Like” podcast).

The bad news about this little addition – when you click a link to read an article or get more info, it doesn’t care that your preferred browser is Chrome. All links will open in Microsoft Edge. Remember, this “News and Interests” thing is a Microsoft creation, so they will force you to view any details in their Microsoft browser. Even though most of the world uses Chrome.

But if you find nothing of value in this new addition to your Windows Taskbar, you can just get rid of it. Just do a right click on it, then go up to “News and interests” and in the side menu, click on “Turn off”. And you can always turn it back on using the same process.

Are you thinking about buying a laptop? Here are some things to consider before handing over your money.

Manufacturer

That being said, the brands that I prefer are Lenovo, Dell and HP (in that order). That’s just my opinion, based on my experience in buying, selling and repairing computers for 22 years. And some people have very strong opinions about this as well. There are people who may have had a bad experience with Dell and vow to never buy a Dell computer. Then again, I have other clients who love Dell computers and ONLY buy that brand. There are wide-ranging opinions about every manufacturer. Just keep in mind that it’s not the only factor to consider.

Screen size

Internal drive

And that’s the next question – what size drive do you need? Here’s how you figure that out. Look at your current computer, and see how much drive storage space you are currently using. Let’s say for example you’re using 110 gb of space. For the new computer, you want to be able to transfer your important files and folders, and still have at least half of the drive as unused space. So if you found a laptop with a 250 gb solid state drive, and you transferred over 110 gb of files (documents, pictures, etc.) then you would still have over half of the drive free. For most people, a 250gb or 500gb drive is sufficient. But make sure you know what you need before you start shopping around.

I had a client once who got a great deal on a new laptop (and bought it without consulting anyone). It had a 120gb solid state drive. She brought it to me so I could move all of her stuff from the old computer to the new one, and that’s when we discovered all of her pictures, music and other files came to over 200gb – so it wouldn’t even fit on the new computer at all. That’s the situation we want to avoid.

Processor

Memory (RAM)

Internet connection

Keyboard

Price

If you need a laptop with decent specs but you don’t have the $600 – $1200 budget, you might consider getting a refurbished laptop. I have these available quite often. The ones I offer will always have a solid state drive and a good processor, and it will be already set up for you with Chrome and Firefox, ad blockers, and much of the Windows 10 privacy invasion “features” will be disabled. I go over them and make sure all is working great, and I price them at about half of what a similar-spec new one would cost.

Have you ever created a Word document and included a link to a YouTube video? Today I’ll show you how to put that video right into the document!

Most people don’t even know this is possible so it’s a great trick to show your friends.

First, you need to determine what video you want to use for this. Let’s say we’re writing an article about the TV show The Office. I’ve been a big fan of that show for a long time and highly recommend it. Anyway, there’s a YouTube video that has a few minutes of bloopers from the Office, so that’s the video we want to use.

When you see that video on YouTube, up at the top in the address bar you’ll see the website address for that video:

Highlight that website address, and Copy it (right click, Copy).

Now, go to your Word document and put your cursor at the spot where you want to insert that video.

Then, click on “Insert”, and in the Insert section, click on “Online video”:

Now you’ll see a new window open, and it will ask you for the URL (the website address) for the video. So, in the field provided, do a right-click and choose Paste. That puts the address in that field, and you can click Insert.

Now, the video will show inside the document like this:

As you can see, there are control points all around the video image, so you can drag and make it as small or as large as you like. You can even rotate it using the rotate arrow at the top. You can also format it the same way you would format a regular picture – so the text in the document can flow around it, or beside it, or right over the top of it if you want.

So, what happens when you click to play that video? Well, a small window opens right in front of the Word document, and there’s a Play button which you can click to watch the video.

And it plays, right there in the document. If you click anywhere outside the video window, that window disappears and you’re back to the regular document. It’s pretty smooth.

You might be thinking, “Why would I do this?”  Well, if you want reference a video in your article, you could just include the website address for that video. The reader could then click  the link, and open a separate window such as Chrome, where they could also watch that video. By including the video inside the Word document, it makes it more convenient for the reader because they don’t have to open a separate program in order to go to the YouTube website and view the video. They can do everything from right within your document.

Bonus: people will probably ask, “How did you do that?!”

You should not save your passwords in Chrome. But before you delete them from Chrome, you need to save them so that you can refer to them.

I’ve said it many times – don’t store your passwords in your web browser. Yes, it makes things easy. You go to a website, and Chrome just automatically inserts your login information (email address and password) for that account, and you’re in. That’s fine, until your laptop gets lost or stolen, or someone hacks into your computer. If anyone ever gets control of your computer, all of your passwords are stored in Chrome in plain text. Now they don’t just have your computer, they have ALL of your online accounts. Think it will never happen? So did the people who have actually experienced it.

So – the way I recommend you store all your passwords is by using LastPass (I’ve written about it here before). But that’s not what today’s tip is about.

What we want to do today is create a nice spreadsheet that contains all of the passwords you currently have saved in Chrome – BEFORE you delete them from Chrome. This makes a nice reference sheet to have, in case you ever need it. And there’s another handy use for it, which we’ll cover in a minute.

Here’s how you do it –

First, open Chrome and click the 3 dots up in the top right corner. In the drop down menu, click on Settings.

In the Settings window, look in the “Autofill” section and click on “Passwords” –

At the top are two options: “Offer to save passwords” and “Auto sign in”. I recommend turning both of these off.

Now, under that, you’ll see your list of saved passwords. Directly to the right of the words “Saved Passwords” you’ll see 3 dots. Click on those 3 dots, and choose “Export Passwords”.

You’ll get a warning that anyone who sees this file will see your passwords. You probably already know this. Click on the button labeled “Export passwords”.

You will be asked for your Windows password. This just means the password you type in each time you boot up the computer. Type your Windows password and click OK. If you don’t have a Windows password, just leave it blank and click OK.

Now you will get a window that will let you choose where you want to save the list of passwords. It will probably default to your Documents folder, but you can choose to save it anywhere you want. Just pay attention to where it gets saved, so you know where to go find it.

The file name will be: Chrome Passwords.csv

Click Save, and you’re done. You’ll just be back at the list of Chrome passwords in Chrome settings (this isn’t the file you just saved). Close Chrome and any other windows.

Now just go to where that file was just saved (probably Documents unless you designated a different location). Find that file called “Chrome Passwords” and double click it.

If you have Excel, the file will open up in an Excel spreadsheet. If you use LibreOffice, it will open up in the spreadsheet program called Calc. If you don’t have a way to open the file, you can get LibreOffice for free at LibreOffice.org.

So there you have it – all of your passwords that were saved in Chrome are now listed there on that spreadsheet. From here, you can go back and delete all of them from Chrome (using the same list where you exported them). Or even better, you can use that list to import all of them into LastPass – which is a much better and safer way to store your passwords.

As always, if you need help with any of this, just contact me by phone or email.

Is there something you want to learn? The internet has what you need.

If you have the time and the incentive, there are resources online that will help  you learn just about anything you can imagine.

Online courses:

Coursera – Coursera.org – build skills with courses, certificates, and degrees online from world-class universities and companies.

Udacity – udacity.com – discover the fastest, most effective way to gain job-ready expertise for the careers of the future. Great place to learn tech skills.

edX – edx.org – free online courses by Harvard, MIT and 160 other member universities.

Learn a language:

Duolingo – duolingo.com – probably the most popular way to learn a language currently.

Memrise – memrise.com – learn a new language fast by watching thousands of clips of real locals.

Rosetta Stone – rosettastone.com – the original language learning site, and still very popular

Verbling – verbling.com – learn a new language with an online tutor – over 10,000 online teachers give private lessons based on your interests and objectives.

Learn how to code:

Code Academy – codeacademy.com – join millions of others who are learning to code, and you can get started for free.

Learn Code the Hard Way – learncodethehardway.org – advertised as the most effective system for learning the basics of computer programming, designed for complete beginners.

HTML Dog – htmldog.com – learn the code that’s used in making websites.

Learn music:

Justin Guitar – justinguitar.com – over 1800 effective and fun lessons and song tutorials.

Music theory – musictheory.net – free online content as well as premium apps.

How to Play Piano – howtoplaypiano.ca – Andrew Furmanczyk takes stuff that’s complicated, and makes it easy and clear to understand.

Learn to cook:

Cooking for Engineers – cookingforengineers.com – if you have an analytical mind, and you like to cook, this is your site.

How 2 Heroes – how2heroes.com – how-to videos for people who have a passion for food.

Reluctant Gourmet – reluctantgourmet.com – a work-at-home dad started this cooking website 20 years ago to teach himself how to cook, and now he uses the site to share everything he has learned.

Learn math:

Wolfram|Alpha – wolframalpha.com – compute expert-level answers using breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase and AI technology

Project Euler – projecteuler.net – a series of challenging math and computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve.

A few more – 

If there’s a particular skill you want to learn, I recommend SkillShare (skillshare.com). Just go to the site and browser, or type in the search what you want to learn.

For general life hack ideas, LifeHacker (lifehacker.com) has been around forever and is full of great stuff.

If you love to learn by watching documentaries, check out Top Documentary Films (topdocumentaryfilms.com) or Documentary Heaven (documentaryheaven.com).

That should keep you busy for a while! Do you have other online learning resources that we should know about? Put them in the comments below!

You know I love writing about illegal scams, how they work, and how to avoid them. Recently I was approached by something that seems to have all the characteristics of a scam, but it’s most likely legal.

Just this past week, I received this message, which was submitted via the Contact form on my website:

The subject is 2021 City’s Best Award Nomination.

The text of the message is:

Hello! I wasn’t sure which email to send this to. I’m happy to let you know that you won the 2021 City’s Best Award! We work with one business in each major city throughout the US. Here is the link to claim the award (all of the details are here too)… email me after you claim it so that I can get all of the award collateral over to you. Congrats again! The link is: http://www.citysbestaward.com/2021

Wow, isn’t that amazing? Not really.

Let’s examine this “notification” piece by piece.

“Will” (whoever that is) sent me this message that I have won the 2021 City’s Best Award. Isn’t it interesting that they don’t actually say the name of my city? That’s because this same email goes out to hundreds or thousands of business owners, and it doesn’t matter what city I’m in. When you’re sending out an email to many thousands of recipients, it’s much more time-consuming to customize each one with the name of the city. So they opted to just leave it generic. It’s a show of their laziness really.

It also says that they only choose ONE business in each major city throughout the US. Now, this is confusing to me in a couple of ways.

First, this is not saying one business in each category. That would actually make a bit more sense – like the City’s Best Computer Repair service, the City’s Best Restaurant, the City’s Best Hair Salon, and so on. But no – they’re claiming they only choose ONE single business to give this award to. Again, this is just laziness. It would be a lot more work to categorize each business and customize the award for each category. Without the categories, they can just send out the same cookie-cutter email to every business owner in their list of thousands.

Second, it’s pretty clear that they don’t really deal with one business “in each major city throughout the US”. My city is Safety Harbor, Florida. With a population of around 17,000, it is by no means “major”. Again, this is just nonsense text. They don’t care what city I’m in or how big it is. They just want to get their message out to as many business owners as possible.

And why would they do this? What’s the objective of this scheme? To find out, we would need to visit the website – citysbestaward.com/2021 (I’m intentionally not linking to the site because I don’t want to give them any search engine optimization).

Here’s what comes with this amazing “award” that I’m being offered:

1. Business listing ranked #1 on our website!

Which means nothing, since no one visits their website except other business owners who have fallen for this fake “award”.

2. Website badge for your website!

This means I can put the “award” on my website, so that people can click on it and go directly to my business listing on the awards website. If someone is already on my site, why would I want to put a link on there that takes them to some other website? Really stupid.

3. Social graphics to spread the word!

So I get 100% generic digital images to post on Facebook, to advertise to people that I fell for this nonsense.

4. Award certificate for your office!

And I can also show all of my in-person clients that I got suckered into this too! And note this – they are not going to send me a certificate by mail. They are going to give me a link to some digital image which I have to print myself. More laziness on their part.

5. Professionally-written press release!

No doubt this is a template that reads exactly the same for every one of the “winners” of this award. And do they send out the press release to the news media? Nope – they just give it to me, and then I have to distribute it myself.

And for all of that, I just have to “Claim my Award” – and pay the $299 annual fee. Ah, now we see where this was all going, right? They want to give me all the meaningless junk listed above, and for that I have to pay not just $299 now, but $299 every year. Wait a minute, how do they know I’ll still be the best business in my city a year from now? Well, their website says that they’ll check in with me in a year, and if nothing about my business has changed, I’ll get the same award again. And every year after that – if I keep paying the $299.

So you can see why they have the incentive to send this out to as many business owners as possible – regardless of the type of business, or what city it is, or how big the city is. What if they just get a 3% conversion rate? That means if they send out a thousand emails, 30 people will claim their so-called “award” and this place just made $8970. And I can guarantee you they’re sending out a LOT more than a thousand emails.

And why is something like this profitable? It comes down to one word: ego. Who doesn’t want to feel like they own the best business in their city? So some people see that “award” and kind of willfully ignore all the parts of this that feel fake.

And, unfortunately, what’s happening here is most likely not breaking any laws. I mean, they tell you what you’re getting, and they tell you the price, and you agree to the price, and they give you that stuff. Yes, the initial message is pretty misleading, but who’s going to complain? The people who fall for it and pay the $299 don’t even know it’s all worthless, and those who know it’s all junk just delete the message and move on.

When someone sends them $299, I would estimate probably $260 of that is pure profit. You almost have to respect them for coming up with something like this, right? Something that feels very much like a scam, but doesn’t really break any laws.

Just make sure you’re not one of the few who fall for it.

There are different versions of Windows 10, and you might not be running the most current one. Here’s how to check.

Windows 10 is the most current Windows operating system. If you’re still running Windows 7, you NEED to upgrade to Windows 10 now (you actually needed to do this over a year ago). If you’re still running Windows 8.1, you SHOULD upgrade, but it’s not critical that you do so immediately. The primary reason for upgrading from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 is because Windows 8.1 is really awful.

But at this point, almost all of the computers I see are running Windows 10. That’s a good thing. The bad news is, it’s not always the most current version of Windows 10.

Probably the oldest version of Windows 10 I see sometimes these days is version 1909. That version is almost to its end of service. So if you’re running that one, we need to take action before it reaches its end of service on May 11, 2021.

The next versions after 1909 are 2004, and then the current one, which is 20H2. Either of those is fine for right now.

Here’s how to check on which version of Windows 10 you are running:

On the keyboard, find the Windows key (lower left area). Hold that down and type the letter “r”.

In the box that comes up, type: winver and click OK.

You’ll get a window that looks like the one below, which will tell you if you’re running version 1909, 2004, or 20H2.

If you are still running 1909, it most likely means that the automated Windows Updates are “stuck” and needs to be forced to update. I can do this through my Remote Support service if you need help with that. You would need the 2-hour package (it sometimes takes longer than two hours, but we don’t need to be on the phone for that whole time).

If you are running 2004 or 20H2, you’re fine for at least the rest of this year (2021).

Have you ever started typing up a Word document, and gotten quite a bit of text entered, then accidentally closed it without saving? Today’s lifesaving tip will show you how it’s possible to get that document back.

Is there a particular program that you want to run automatically, every time you turn on your computer? Here’s how to make that happen.

What we’re talking about today is usually the OPPOSITE of how we discuss this topic. So many programs want to insert themselves into the “startup” process when they have no business being there. I’m constantly removing programs from automatically starting up every time the computer boots up, on client computers and even my own primary PC.

But what about if you actually WANT a program to run every time you turn on or restart your computer? In some situations, that might make sense.

Here’s an example.

A while back (actually it’s been 4 years ago now), I wrote about a program that checks the health of your hard drive. It’s called Crystal Disk Info. Once it’s installed, you can run it whenever you want just to check your hard drive.

For me, I like to check my hard drive regularly – ideally, that would be every time I boot up the computer or restart it. And that is exactly what happens, using the following process.

When you install Crystal Disk Info, it creates a shortcut icon on the desktop.

Then, you hold down the Windows key and tap the letter “r”. That will open a little window with a space to type an instruction. You will type:

shell:startup 

and click OK.

That will open a new window. Now, you can just drag (or copy/paste) the Crystal Disk Info shortcut icon into that window. Done!

And you can check it by just restarting your computer. When you get back to Windows, you’ll see Crystal Disk Info pop up and give you your hard drive health report, which should look something like this:

Now you can close that window and get on with your work or whatever you need to do. It will show up every time you boot up or restart your computer.

If you want to remove anything from that shell:startup list, just open it up, right click on the item to be removed, and choose Delete.

So whatever program you want to run at each bootup, that’s the process you use.