Windows Tips

Infopackets Reader Barbara J. writes: " Dear Dennis, In early March, 2021, my elderly father was browsing the Internet when suddenly a red screen appeared and told him that his computer was infected. Conveniently, the warning message also supplied a ... 1-800 number to speak to Microsoft to 'fix' the issue. My father confirmed that the person he spoke to had a very thick Indian accent . The company that 'fixed' his computer was named Live IP Support and they charged on two separate occasions, totaling $2,700. The checks were withdrawn from his account under a company named Wowser E Services (aka ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'ltb223' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a Windows 7 Pro computer which I haven't used for a long time. Now I want to use it, but I cannot remember my password. It has only one user account, so I believe I need to reset the admin ... password. Is there anyway to recover the lost password or am I stuck with reinstalling Windows and losing all previous data and programs? " My response: It's possible to reset the admin password, or any user password using a special password reset 'trick', known as the 'utilman' and 'sticky keys' exploit. This exploit ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Steve J. writes: " Dear Dennis, I'm a certified PC tech and I have a lot of jobs where customers want to upgrade their PC to a new system. As part of the migration process, I convert the client's old physical machine to a virtual ... machine using VMWare Converter. Once that is completed, I copy the virtual machine to the new PC and run it. The virtual machine serves two functions: 1) it's essentially a 'live' backup of the old machine, and 2) users can export their data from the virtual machine (example: bookmarks from a web browser) to the new machine in ways that a regular ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Paulette J. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently switched from Firefox to Chrome based on your advice in a previous article. I am used to Chrome's interface, however, one thing that really irks me is the constant Chrome notification ... asking me to ' Sign into somesite.com with Google ' near the top right of the screen. It goes on to read 'To create your account, Google will share your name, email address and profile picture with somesite.com'. I can reproduce this notification appearing by visiting Reddit.com. Frankly speaking, I don't want to share my information with every ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Michael O. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a strange problem. Every few reboots, my laptop screen refresh rate will automatically change to 59Hz, even though I've repeatedly set it to 60Hz. On my particular laptop model (Lenovo ... T460), whenever the screen refresh rate is at 59Hz and the screen brightness is relatively low, the screen starts to flicker. The screen flickering is hard to see unless it's on a white background, but it is definitely noticeable and enough to make me want to pull my hair out. When I change it back to 60Hz, the screen flickering stops. The problem is ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Gilles J. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and started using the new Edge browser. As you mentioned in a previous article, the new Edge is essentially Google's Chrome browser, but the interface is a little ... different. All is good, however one thing I don't like about Edge is that the new tab page won't let me redirect to Google. Instead, it displays a bunch of pages I've visited. I'm not interested in seeing that. Any idea how to change Edge new tab page to Google ? I also want to change Edge default search engine to Google . Much thanks!" My response ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Leona L. writes: " Dear Dennis, We really appreciate you mentioning our software to your readers! We would like to extend another holiday offer - this time it is lifetime licenses of our most popular software, including: WinX DVD ... Ripper, WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe, WinX DVD Copy Pro, and WinX MediaTrans. Would you please pass on the word to your audience. Thank you and Happy Holidays! " My response: Thanks again, Leona. I'll discuss the details below. Limited Time Offer for Infopackets Readers - Up to 62% Off Digiarty software has created a special page for readers - ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jill P. writes: " Dear Dennis, I use Microsoft Remote Desktop (RDP) to connect to virtual machines over my network. Most machines use Chrome as the browser. The problem I'm having is that certain actions in Chrome are unreadable ... when using remote desktop. For example: if I try to install a Chrome addon, a dialogue window is supposed to appear confirming that I want to enable the extension. Over RDP, this dialogue box and the text it contains is white and unreadable. There is no way to click on 'OK' to enable the extension. Another time I've seen this happen is if I'm trying ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Steve G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I run a small business and we use Virtualbox to control our virtual server (Windows Server 2016). We had a hardware problem with the hypervisor machine, forcing us to copy the virtual server onto ... another machine temporarily for a week. Now that we're done fixing the hypervisor machine, it's time to move the virtual server back over. The problem is that I get an error message from Virtualbox stating that " Cannot start virtual machine because the following physical network interfaces were not found ... (etc)" It then gives the option to " ... (view more)

If you lost all of the data on your PC, would you be devastated? According to a recent report, cyber crimes are booming thanks to the covid-19 pandemic . That's because cyber criminals are counting on the fact that most users are working remotely at ... home and/or retired, increasing their chances in converting a "sale". The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that in 2019, cyber criminals raked in $3.5 billion targeting individuals and businesses in the USA. Of that, $8.9 million was attributed to ransomware attacks, while scammers posing as fake technical support stole $54 ... (view more)