Short Answer: usually. Most of the time an extended warranty on IT gear (and many household appliances) is a waste of money. Here’s why: Bathtub Failure Curve IT equipment has a “bathtub” failure curve. High initial failure rate, followed by years of no issues, and then a growing failure rate as the gear wears out. … Read more
I wrote this to help an older friend who was scammed. Those cretins are very, very good at what they do, and extremely convincing. They hone their scripts over thousands of calls until they know just what to say to convince you to let them access your computer. So, here is my attempt at a … Read more
Erasing files, formatting a drive, even deleting a partition does not wipe the actual data from your hard drive. If you want to sell your computer (or completely clean it after malware) you need to make sure the data is actually destroyed and completely nuke the drive. Here’s how. When you erase a file on … Read more
So – Windows 10 PC, using OneDrive, and the next day after a Windows Update, One Drive is gone. There is a very simple fix: Hold the Windows Key and tap R Copy and Paste this into the Run dialog box, exactly as is appears below: %localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\Update\OneDriveSetup.exe Include the % signs and everything. Then click … Read more
The Problem: If your webhost uses litespeed to speed up your websites, an unintended side effect is it caches MySQL SELECT queries. In my experience it only cached them for 45-60 seconds, but a one minute delay after you add data (like a shopping cart) is not good! The Test: First of all run … Read more
The Problem WordPress seems to limit the file upload size to 2Mb. You see a message like this: Maximum upload file size: 2 MB You may also receive an error like this: filename.jpg exceeds the maximum upload size for this site The Solution Assuming you are using a web host (and not your own dedicated … Read more
Fix with Step by Step Instructions By default Skype (and other voip call programs) reduce the volume of systems sounds when you are in a voice chat. This is rather annoying when you are playing a game and chatting to friends. Fortunately it is easy to turn off. The trick is, it isn’t a Skype … Read more
If I had followed my own advice, I would not have been scammed. Here’s what I advise businesses and home users to do to stay safe from scams: Interrogate Inbound. Emails Evil. Activate Antivirus. Powerful Passwords. Suitable Security. Preventative Procedures. Careful Companies. Begin Backups. Interrogate Inbound Treat everything inbound as a scam until proven … Read more
When your computer is switched on, the first thing the motherboard does is run a Power On Self Test, or POST. This is run by the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) on the motherboard, not by Windows – Windows hasn’t even started to load yet. If there is a problem with say faulty RAM or … Read more
Use MyGovID Instead After 27 March 2020, you can’t use AUSkey to access ATO services. You need to use MyGovID instead. See the ATO website for further information: https://www.ato.gov.au/Tax-professionals/Services-and-support/Working-online/AUSkey/ Previous Information I will leave this here in case there is any reason it may be helpful in the future, or in case the ATO allows … Read more
The Problem: Windows 10 using One Drive for your files. You just did a format re-install of Windows or you have a new PC. You want to copy your One Drive files to your new PC / new install of Windows. The Solution: You could just install One Drive and let it sync from … Read more
The Problem: Windows 10 user folder is the first 5 letters of your email address (e.g. danie instead of Daniel) You want to change it (because I hate being called danie) The Solution: This is going to take a while and a fair bit of messing about. The sooner you do this after installing Windows … Read more
The Problem: You add an additional hard drive to your Windows 10 PC. You can see the hard drive in the BIOS (when you press DEL as the computer first boots up). You go into “Disk Management” (Right click Windows Start Icon – Disk Management) and drive does not appear in Disk Management. You go … Read more
This Question Has a One Word Answer… I am often asked what is the best virus protection? Malwarebytes. As a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and programmer who has fixed hundreds of infected PCs over the last 20 years of running my own IT company, it is the only product I can recommend. Every other product … Read more
The Problem: Windows 10 PC (probably upgraded from Windows 7 or 8) Network is connected (Wifi or Cat5) Yellow exclamation mark on network icon saying internet is not connected Attempting to do a network repair fails Wifi or Ethernet adapter has an autoconfig IP address (169.x.x.x) ipconfig/release then ipconfig/renew results in “File Not Found” The … Read more