Hi all. I've dug out an old laptop that I want to give to a friend, but I can't remember my password. Burnt Windows Password Recovery to a USB Drive. When I put it in the old laptop, and got it to boot from USB drive, I just get a blank screen with a Smiley Face in the top left hand corner, by the cursor. Any keys I press just adds another Smiley Face. I can't find the same problem happening to anyone else on Google, so I'm quite confused. It is a Samsung R519 running on Windows 7. Thanks in advance. SOD'EM

Good day to all I seem to have a problem with the Windows 1803 update that for some reasons after many hours searching the so called experts cannot put right. I can download the New Version Update (1803) no problems at all but when it tries to install it tells me that I have Avira Security blocking the install. I have uninstalled this many months ago before I even contemplated updating. After reading the Avira website ref: Registry and safe boot options I eventually managed to locate 4 Avira folders and files in safe mode (unable to find them in standard mode even with hidden files showing). BUT ... they are locked and no matter what I have used or the options offered I am unable to unlock these files/folders. I have tried all the unlockers, deletion apps etc and non move/unlock it. I have tried to change the files security/owners options, group policy options but nothing seems to work. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on how I can get rid of this pain so I can update my computer. I cannot use restore as this is so far back that the point of Avire deletion has long gone. Any help that may keep my hair appreciated Many thanks

Hi I am using windows 8/8.1 and happy with it but last few days had a message saying it is outdated and to upgrade to Windows 10! Has anyone else had this message? I have also had problems with Windows updates and messages saying error not able to update and the writing has gone small so had to increase it, I have 360 total security and do a scan daily Any help/advice be appreciated thanks Sandy

Hi. I want to add some side windows to my Landrover Defender but cannot get any guidance on if I need to let the DVLA know re taxation class. Everywhere on the internet talks about adding windows AND adding seats which creates all sorts of trouble with the tax. I just want windows. Can anyone sign post me to what I need to do legally. My vehicle is currently registered as Light Goods Vehicle. Many thanks Kilo

Hi Guys, I picked up a Sony Vaio for next to nothing and it's in pretty good nick. I am however having internet connection problems. I have connected it to my router via ethernet and wirelessly, but Internet Explorer still can't display the web page. The internet icon says connected with 100mbs speed, but still can't work out what's wrong. Thanks in advance.

I know I shouldnt laugh but you have to check out this guys users name.......... One computer user has become so disillusioned with Windows 10's spying features that he has been driven to using Linux Mint as his primary operating system. But Voat user CheesusCrust was curious to find out just how pervasive Microsoft's privacy invasion is. The results of his investigation are quite staggering. Using a router kitted out with DD-WRT, and a copy of Windows 10 Enterprise installed in a virtual machine on his Linux laptop, he started by disabling every single one of the tracking and telemetry features found in the operating system. Eight hours later, 4,000 connection attempts to 93 different IP addresses were logged, with most of these IPs addresses being linked to Microsoft. Explaining his setup on Voat, CheesusCrust said that he used a completely virgin installation of Windows 10 which had been used only to verify that the internet connection was working properly. Perl was then used to pull 8 hours of data from log files and push them into a MySQL database. Perl was also used to obtain route data for any connections. Presenting the results, CheesuCrust says: Here is the roughly 8-hour network traffic analysis of 5508 connection attempts of an unused, base install of Windows 10 Enterprise (NOTE: I did not remove any 192.168.1.x home network IP addresses from the analysis). Broken down, this works out to 3967 connection attempts to 51 different Microsoft IP addresses. You can see full tabulated results on Voat. With Microsoft facing unprecedented levels of criticism for its lack of transparency over spying components, these findings will serve only to add fuel to the fire. The fact that it was the Enterprise edition of Windows 10 that was used for testing is likely to raise further questions. Serious subject but that user name is a real cracker.

Please help, (I suggest a comfy chair and a cuppa, this is a big mess) Last year we had three new windows installed in our bungalow. In addition to this we also signed a contract (27th June 16) for a new composite front door to be fitted in our recessed porch which required raising of the internal step, removal of the old door and frame and replacing this with a door and top light on the front of the porch, not the recess. The fitter had to leave and collect another piece of glass for one window as it was incorrect (a small triangular window) and this delayed the job which I had been assured wouldn't take long. When completed the fitter said one window was too small so he would have to use additional trim. It was one fitter, on his own, fitting three windows. I was literally hovering around him as he was finishing off as I had to go to work and he had overrun. On my return from work I properly looked at the windows. Inside they looked fine but outside was shocking. He had hacked off all the render on the return edge and stuck large plastic lengths of trim in it's place. The trim protruded and there were massive chunks of sealant visible which was uneven and unsightly. As the trim was protruding you could see the yellow backing. It looked like my 4 year old had finished it off. I called the company and asked them to come and make it look better, I was told they never re render and always replace render with plastic trim. I advised them I had not been informed of this and would not have gone ahead with the new windows if this was the case. They asked for payment and I refused until they sent someone to look at it. They sent some fitters round immediately to have a look. In the meantime I looked at their website to see some lovely examples of new windows with the render still intact. The guys that arrived looked at the trim and agreed it was a real mess, that the trim was far too wide and was protruding. I asked them why the company removes the render and they informed me that they didn't as a matter of course and that customers should be consulted. They advised that sometimes render has to be removed and they advise that they will replace it as best they can and that the customer would then be responsible for painting it. I asked them to remove the plastic trim that was protruding and to re render it all which they did. This looked much better at this point then the lumpy sealant and yellowy trim. They told me the office was on the phone requesting payment and handed me a mobile phone so I could make payment over the phone. I said it looked better and paid in full. On comparing my new render with my neighbours I noticed that instead of it having a square edge it was rounded of, was uneven and when it dried it looked horrible. Painting it was not going to make it look any better. I also noticed there were layers of trim around the windows which seemed unnecessary and I wondered if this was because the windows were too small. I complained again and over the phone and was assured the windows were the correct fit. In the meantime the surveyor came round regarding the relocation of the front door in the porch. He advised me that what was proposed would not fit and the door would have to open outwards. I was not happy with this at all. He also said the proposed top light would not fit either. He ummed and ahhed a lot then said the door could open inwards and it would be packed out with trim, and gave me some paper to sign with a drawing showing a front door and built up step. I signed then called the company to ask if the price would alter now we were not having a top light to be told there was no change in price. I then contacted the manufacture of the company through live chat to ask their opinion to be told a top light would cost around £150. I informed the company that I was not happy with what was now being proposed, I wanted a top light and if this was not practical I wanted the price reviewed and they emailed me to say as a gesture of good will they were happy to reduce the price by £50. i was not in agreement with this and made this quite clear. They agreed to come back and look at things to reassure me, we arranged two appointments and they failed to show for both. He then turned up really late (October), obviously not very happy and said again that we couldn't have a top light, that the door would not be packed out with trim it would be the full size of the opening. I said this would be too big and wouldn't it catch on the internal wall edge, he said he didn't think so. I was really unimpressed. I felt that they really didn't give a toss now and that I may end up with a front door that wont even open as it would hit the internal wall edge. At this point I asked for the £250 deposit to be refunded as I didn't want to go ahead with what was proposed. They then said the door was waiting to be fitted so I would not be refunded. I asked why a door had been manufactured when we were not in agreement and they said that I had signed a contract with them. I informed them I had signed a contract for a door with a top light and they said that as I had signed the surveyors paperwork this was a contract. Back to the windows, the company have recently said they would send an independent surveyor for his opinion of the windows (the fit and the appearance), I agreed to this but they sent the surveyor who had originally surveyed the windows, is this independent? Furthermore, they will not provide a copy of the report, I have asked for it in writing several times to be told it is not their policy. Am I entitled to see it? They have said they are happy to come and remove more plastic trim and re render but they will not detail what trim will be removed. I have said they may remove too much or too little, what they do could be irreparable. I have absolutely no faith in this company and do not want them to now mess about with my front door and porch as firstly I do not want what is proposed and secondly I am still unhappy about the windows. I really do not know where I stand legally. my questions are: Is my signature on the surveyors paperwork a new contract? (I have queried it every step of the way and I have evidence) Can I get my £250 deposit back for the door, am I obliged to go ahead with having something I don't want fitted? Can I insist on an independent surveyors report for the windows and am I entitled to see the report? Thank you for taking the time to read this epic mess, I would really appreciate some guidance x

You only have untill the 29th of this month to get the upgrade for Free!

If you've not upgraded to Windows 10, and are thinking of doing so, then you'll have to get your rear in gear as Microsoft have announced that they're ending the free upgrade on 29th July. Previously there had been speculation that Microsoft might extend the 12 month free upgrade offer for Windows 7 and 8 users. If you upgrade after that, it'll cost you upwards of £80 (there's no official UK pricing as yet) to get Windows 10. If you're buying a new device, it'll come installed on the machine as standard. The good news is that Microsoft will finally turn off that annoying 'Get Windows 10' app that pesters Windows 7 and 8 users into upgrading to Windows 10. http://www.bitterwallet.com/freebies/no-more-free-windows-10-upgrade-after-july-91964

Summary: If you have had a similar experience with Anglian Home Improvements please contact me directly. I am taking them to court and want to get as many witness statements as possible. Detail: Anglain canvassed our area offering free no obligation quotes 50% off. We got a quote for doing our house. We were conned into signing a purchase order which they now want us to pay. We were specifically told the following lies by their representative: We handed over £50 to “guarantee the price of the quote”. This was actually a deposit. We foolishly signed a purchase order. However, we did not know it was a purchase order, in fact were told it “was just a template for measuring the windows”. We were told “we could choose to go through with the purchase at any time for the next 12 months or not if we chose otherwise”. When the representative left our home we had no idea we had committed ourselves to any expenditure. This is of course in the small print of the purchase order (which we were told was not a purchase order). We are now way past the cooling off period and Anglian are demanding we pay the full value to get the windows installed, or 80% and get nothing. This way of getting business is clearly negligent misrepresentation, and I would argue fraudulent misrepresention. If you have been told similar lies by Anglian (even if you never went through with the purchase) I would love to hear from you to help build my case (or indeed strengthen yours if you are going through something similar). I would also be very interested in hearing any success stories from challenging similar contracts. Thanks in advance

If you are running QuickTime for Windows on your personal computer, you should uninstall it as soon as possible. The two vulnerabilities were disclosed publicly on Thursday without a patch because the Windows version of QuickTime is deprecated, i.e. it will no longer receive security updates. An alert issued by the US Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) agrees that the threat is serious: https://www.grahamcluley.com/2016/04/quicktime-windows/

I am currently running windows 8.1 on my laptop, however a pop up window keeps appearing saying that my pc is scheduled to upgrade to windows 10 on Saturday 12th March. Despite the fact that I clicked cancel to cancel the upgrade, another window opened advising me to "upgrade now" or "upgrade later", and does not appear to have cancelled the upgrade. What do I do ??

For the full story see ..... HERE http://www.ibnlive.com/news/tech/microsoft-forcing-in-windows-10-to-pcs-what-you-can-do-about-it-1199507.html http://www.dispatchtribunal.com/microsoft-to-shove-windows-10-down-your-throat/13922/

This is superb, absolute brilliance.

Has anyone else had this error? Had this error for a few days and it would not load or update. As always I looked around as many forums on this as I could. I eventually found this >> http://www.windows10forums.com/threads/update-for-windows-10-version-1511-for-x64-based-systems-kb3122947-error-0x80070643.5909/ I followed the guide it worked so now all sorted for the time being. So if anyone else has had this error and wants to sort it then this may help you out.. But you MUST use the elevated command prompt... For the elevated command prompt right click start hit Command Prompt (ADMIN) then paste the code that is in the link above Hit enter wait then it should be done.... Run the windows update to see if the issue is fixed (windows is up to date) last checked xxxxx Copy/paste the command from the PDF

For those who don’t know, Microsoft is currently working on it’s first non-patch update for Windows 10, currently codenamed Threshold 2 and was originally supposed to launch sometime in October. But as of recently, it appears that release window may have slipped ever so slightly, as according to my sources, Threshold 2 will now launch in early November instead. This is likely for the best, as it gives Microsoft a little more time to continue developing Threshold 2 and should hopefully result in a better built all round update for consumers when it is finally released. Now another interesting thing to think about is what the update could possibly be called when it does eventually launch. Full Article

Hi Peeps. I've set up a basic account on my pc for my son. When I start Firefox, the homepage shows just fine. If I click a link, that works just fine. However, when I try and search something, or put a URL in the Address Bar, it just says 'Problem loading page'. I've looked in Firefgox settings, but can't see a problem. Hope someone can help.

Installed Win 10 over 8.1 on a laptop. Seemed to install well - but soon got error messages about missing MVSCR100.dll file. Outlook could not send emails - although, strangely it could send test message correctly - but nothing else. Email links would not open in my default FF browser. In the end, the broken email problem persuaded me to revert to 8.1. Now everything is working perfectly again. A shame, because it looked very nice and seemed to be quick

In February this year, I called several Double Glazing companies, one of them being Safestyle Windows, to give me a quote for, you guessed it, new windows on the front of my house. Safestyle confirmed an appointment with me for the following weekend, saying that they would call 30 minutes before the appointment to make sure I hadn't changed my mind - a little strange I thought, seeing as when I make an appointment I always keep it. Anyway, the following weekend came and I received a phonecall from Safestyle in Coventry to check that I still wanted to keep my appointment to which I said yes. Ten minutes later, another phonecall, this time from Safestyle Birmingham, so I said yes I still want to keep my appointment and hadn't changed my mind in the last ten minutes and told them that I had already spoken to their Coventry office, to which they replied that I must be mistaken and they needed to check it out. About an hour later, I received another phone call saying sorry about the mix up, but unfortunately I had missed my slot and would I like to reschedule the following weekend, to which I said yes. The following weekend exactly the same happened again, but they did try and arrange an appointment for the following day this time. However, the next day I received a phone call saying that it wasn't possible to make it and can we now arrange an appointment the following weekend. Finally, fourth time lucky and someone eventually made it to my door. So after an initial quote of £5818 (remember I've now had time for all the other companies that I invited to quote to provide me with a quote) a phone call back to base and the quote is reduced immediately to £3800. Now I don't like these sort of tactics - why not quote me the £3800 in the first instance? Secondly the 'salesman' certainly took liberties with the truth during his presentation which I'm not sure he fully understood anyway. Part of my job (as a test engineer) involves material selection, so I know a little about grades of steel and one of the Safestyle salesmans lines was "our windows have galvanised steel reinforcement and galvanised steel is the best kind of steel that money can buy". At this point I offered that I would be more than happy with 17-4PH Stainless Steel reinforcement if it would do anything to help bring the price down to which he agreed to look into for me (17-4PH Stainless Steel would most likely cost around six times as much as galvanised steel which is essentially monkey metal dipped in zinc). He also claimed that I would see a 31 decibel noise reduction from Safestyle windows, to which I asked on which scale and at what distance are they measuring this on (unless a scale and distance is quoted then decibels on their own are meaningless). Anyway I thanked the salesman for his time and offered him out f my house, to which he then asked me for £60 to secure my quote. I told him that I would not be parting with any money today and I would contact Safestyle should I require their services to which he explained that he could not guarantee that I could get the quote down as low as £3800 again. Bearing in mind that I had already received 4 other quotes of which the most expensive was £3400, Safestyle weren't going to get a look in. So I spoke to Safestyle when they called later in the week and I told them 'thanks but no thanks' and here the real problem starts. They started to call me during the day whilst I was at work on a daily basis, I asked them if it possible that should they need to contact me please do it outside of office hours. Two weeks and seven mid afternoon phone calls later they finally got the hang of it and called me at around six in the evening. I tell them each time they ring that I did not want to take their quote any further and have now replaced my windows and am very happy with the company I have dealt with and the job that they did. It is now July, the windows were replaced in March yet Safestyle still insist on calling me at least two or three times a week and each time I ask them to take me off their dialling list, they agree but within the next couple of days I receive another phonecall from a telesales person who just doesn't hear the words 'No I'm not interested'. They seem to be very pushy, almost aggressive when I ask them not to call, speak over the top of me and not let me finish my sentences and never hang up. Quite often I hang up on them in the middle of them talking as they simply do not give the impression that they are listening to me. Does anyone know how I can get this awful company to stop bothering me. Safestyle Windows have provided me with the worst consumer experience I have ever had and do not seem to be willing to it. Please Safestyle Windows, just go away - I will never deal with you again.

Reddit user FalloutBoS has posted a salutary warning to others thinking of upgrading to Windows 10: be careful it doesn't result in your wife finding out about your porn collection. FalloutBoS says that he installed at the end of last week. When his wife got up the following morning, the computer was merrily rotating through his carefully curated collection of x-rated images, using the hardcore pics as a screensaver: Loaded up WIN 10 last night and left it on to do its thing. Woke up to wife asking why I set it to rotate all my porn images right on the desk top view. I have no idea how to shut that feature off and that computer is staying shut down until I do. Free windows and a free trip to the doghouse. Thanks Microsoft!!! Edit: Don't make my mistake, keep your private pictures out of My Pictures, no matter how deep you hide them in sub folders. My wife is very happy I admitted my mistake on this sub. She said I took my medicine and she now finds it quite funny. 'Ain't love grand? I guess it's a good thing Aunty Hilda wasn't staying with them over the weekend... If you have content on your computer which you don't want other users to see, it might be worth creating an encrypted archive and ensuring that you haven't placed any (ahem) compromising content in the My Pictures folder. You have been warned. Source: Reddit.

Then here is the answer. Works for Adobe programs, MWord, Outlook, - probably works with any program http://neoshamon.blogspot.fr/2015/06/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays.html?view=sidebar magic.

I purchased one of those three Mi-Fi devices. The HUAWEI E586 that you can run up to 5 Wi-Fi devices at once. After about 5 minutes i get the dreaded yellow triangle on my desktop limited connectivity. The signal is 100% on the router and on computer. Looking at all the forums this is an issue with the network adapter and windows 8.1 whenever windows updates. If i put the sim from the Mi-Fi device into a normal dongle i have no problems Even though these forums are littered with the problem, very little info on rectifying the problem as this has nothing to do with three, but windows 8.1 and Microsoft updates to the network adapter

Can someone point to what the problem is please. Windows 7 updated to current releases Asus laptop about 4 years old, works really well apart from this problem below. When the laptop needs to restart or be started, it will switch on ok, but there is a blank screen with no cursor. I can hear the hard drive working and the windows sound shows that it has started, but still a blank screen. I then allow all the start up programs to load up in the background (which I presume is happening as I cannot see it), before forcing the laptop to turn off, so I can try to restart again. On switching back on pressing F8 for safe mode doe not work and I then have to keep trying to get the laptop to show graphics. Sometimes using cont/alt/del after switching on forces the laptop to come on properly. Is this a graphics driver issue and it needs to be reinstalled ? To do this unfortunately requires the laptop to be switched off and to go into safe mode, which I might have a problem with. When I have done checks available in Windows, it says that everything is working normally, with no errors. Thanks for any suggestions you might have. I don't want to reinstall windows or anything major, just in case it does not work and I have to reinstall all the other programs etc.

Will it be worth it? http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-10-faq?ocid=win10_auxapp_LearnMore_win10faq

When Microsoft MVP Patrick Barker tried to help a user with a computer problem, he stumbled across something curious. Windows Update kept randomly being disabled. Was malware at work, turning off Windows Update to prevent Microsoft patches and security updates from being installed? No, malware wasn't to blame. It was Samsung. Barker discovered that Samsung's SW Update software was downloading and running a file with the unambiguous name of Disable_Windowsupdate.exe. Read More especially the chat with the Samsung Rep at the bottom It is recommended this is reported to Microsoft as malware.