Dennis Faas

Infopackets Reader Tom G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am trying to send encrypted email to a friend using MS Outlook . To do so, I purchased a digital certificate from Comodo, then imported the certificate into Outlook. I could send my friend digitally ... signed messages which he could read and reply to. He could send me digitally signed and encrypted messages, which I could read and reply to. However, I could not generate an encrypted message; I could only reply to his. I could not create an encrypted message from scratch. When attempting to initiate an encrypted message, I was told ' Microsoft ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Marjie H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just received an email offer from Norton Security asking if I would like to enroll in the Norton Identity Protection. In order to do so, the form says I need to provide my social insurance ... number. The protection being offered is free, so long as I renew my Norton Antivirus subscription. From what I understand, this service includes protection against personal credit, credit cards, bank, social insurance number (SSI), etc. My question is - with all this information they are asking for, what is the possibility they could be hacked and all my ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Mbi Ent' writes: " Dear Dennis, After upgrading from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 on the C drive, I still have a partition which is viewable under 'This PC' and is labeled as the 'Recovery' partition (also known as 'the D drive'). ... As far as I understand, the D Drive contains the vendor's recovery data for my Windows 8.1 which was originally installed on my system. What I would like to know is if the recovery partition has also been upgraded to Windows 10, or if it still contains Windows 8.1 recovery data? If it is the latter, could I just delete the recovery drive? " My ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I hope you can help! I own a small business and we recently purchased a new, refurbished Server computer running Windows Server 2012 R2 DataCenter. I have set up the server as a domain controller, and ... now I'm trying to connect to the domain using my PC here at work - however, every time I try to connect, it gives me the error ' DNS name does not exist. (error code 0x0000232B RCODE_NAME_ERROR) '. Of course the error message is much longer than that. I am not a network administrator and admittedly not very knowledgeable when it comes to Windows ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Paul P. writes: " Dear Dennis, I've been using OpenVPN, coupled with Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to connect my laptop to my home PC when I'm on the road. It's worked great for a while now, however, suddenly remote ... desktop has stopped working and I can't connect to my PC anymore. The strange thing is that OpenVPN seems to complete the connection, so I am not sure why my RDP won't work any more. Can you help? " My response: I asked Paul if he would like me to connect to his laptop using my remote desktop service in order to investigate the problem further, and ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jeff W. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am having a problem with Windows 10 not updating - it keeps telling me that KB4058258 and KB4074595 won't install. It will attempt to install the updates, then when I check Windows Update again ... those two updates are there again. KB4058258 is a cumulative update for Windows 10 whereas KB4074595 is a security update for Adobe Flash update. Can you help? " My response: I asked Jeff if he would like me to connect to his system using my remote desktop support service , and he agreed. I have been receiving a lot of inquiries about this lately and ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Stuart G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and everything was fine for a few days - then all the sudden Windows 10 got stuck in a reboot loop. The error message is VIDEO DXGKRNL FATAL ERROR . ... The error is displayed on a blue screen for a few seconds, then the computer reboots and does the same thing ad infinitum. I have researched VIDEO DXGKRNL FATAL ERROR on Google and came across websites that suggest doing a malware scan or 'sfc /scannow' to fix corrupt operating system files, or downloading a utility to repair drivers but I can't ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jennifer G. writes: " Dear Dennis, When I first started using Windows 10, I set up an email account using the 'Windows Mail' app. Unfortunately the Windows Mail app doesn't always work. I often get error messages stating it can't ... sync my account; when this happens I can't access my emails. I have installed Mozilla Thunderbird to replace the Mail app (and it works great!), however, the Windows 10 Mail App is keeps alerting me every so often that I have new email. I have no idea how to shut off these alerts. Can you help? " My response: There are a few ways you can disable ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Ted G. writes: " Dear Dennis, Thank you for your pearls of wisdom! I have a question regarding VMWare Workstation . I recently virtualized a friend's PC which was facing numerous blue screens - I suspect his PC has a hardware ... error. After virtualizing the machine I mapped his drive in Windows Explorer; when I try to access c:\users\jim (his user folder), Windows keeps giving me an ' Access denied ' error. There does not seem to be any way to access his files using this method. For the record I have tried copying the files by networking his virtual machine to mine but it is ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Emmy-Lou' writes: " Dear Dennis, I am having trouble accessing eBay. The error message I get is: 'This site can't be reached. The connection was reset.' Other times, it is 'This site can't be reached. eBay unexpectedly closed the ... connection'. On the page with the error message, it says to: 'Try: Checking the connection, checking the proxy and the firewall, and Running Windows Network Diagnostics'. The official error message is ERR_CONNECTION_RESET (but sometimes it is ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED ). Can you help? " My response: Troubleshooting this error message can be rather ... (view more)