Wednesday 10^th January 2018

W10 Start Menu - Update
I mentioned last time that you can choose to display Most Used and Recently Added apps in the Windows 10 Start Menu by going to Start, Settings, Personalisation, Start. Arthur found these settings were greyed out. Subsequently he has discovered that this is due to another setting found at Start, Settings, Privacy. Here, you need to ensure that Let Windows track app launches to improve Start and search results is turned on.

Roger's Documents

Over the years, I have produced a range of technical documents which I have shared in PDF format. Earlier ones were categorised as Quick Guides and How To, with more recent ones grouped as Computer Essentials. Older ones are stored on my Google Drive, while newer ones are on Dropbox. I thought it might be useful to create a web site that lists all these documents and the links to them, and this is it:-

bit.ly/rogersdocs

Any new documents I create will be added to this list. The links on the site will always take you to the latest version of a document. I have added a permanent link to this site in the column on the right of this blog.

Short URLs
I use "Bitly" to create shortened URLs (i.e.web addresses). This service enables you to map a URL to a shorter one. Not only are the URLs shorter, but I choose them to be more memorable. The basic Bitly service, which I use, is free - they make their money from their Enterprise service which provides additional features. If you want to use their service, go to bitly.com and create an account. 

Cloud Storage
As mentioned above, my documents are stored on Dropbox and Google Drive, so this led to some discussion of those services and other cloud storage providers. All these services provide online storage which you can use - usually free up to a limit, with further capacity available for an annual fee. Here are some of the cloud storage services:-

• Google Drive (drive.google.com) - 5GB free.
• Dropbox (dropbox.com) - 2GB free.
• Microsoft's OneDrive (onedrive.com) - 5GB free.
• Apple's iCloud (icloud.com) - 5GB free.

The documents I have shared on Google Drive and Dropbox are PDF files, but you can upload any type of files to these services, although there some limits on individual file size. Remember, if you use Google Photos to store your photographs then, provided you have selected "High Quality" in the settings, you have unlimited photo storage and this does NOT count towards the 5GB limit on your Google Drive. As many of you will already have Apple, Microsoft or Google accounts, you already have some of this free storage space available, although you may not realise it.

Meltdown and Spectre

Meltdown and Spectre are recently reported vulnerabilities found in some Intel, AMD and ARM processor chips. They can allow apps to access areas of the Operating System (i.e. Windows, iOS, Android, Linux, etc) which should be out of bounds. This could lead to sensitive data (e.g. passwords) being accessed by a hacker, although no actual attack of this nature has yet been discovered. As the problem is with the micro-processor chips, it cannot be ‘fixed’, but software changes can mitigate the risk.

Microsoft has released an emergency patch for the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (1709) to address the Meltdown issue – it is update KB4056892 and this will bring the “Build” to 16299.192. You can check this by going to Start, Settings, System, About and looking at the “OS Build” under the “Windows specification” heading. Meltdown mainly affects Intel-based PCs (although it also affects ARM’s high-performance Cortex A-75 chips and Apple’s Chips), so if your PC has an AMD processor, it will not be vulnerable. It seems that protecting from Meltdown may also slow down the system.

Some third-party anti-virus programs have not been updated to allow the above Meltdown patch and could prevent all future Microsoft Updates from being applied. If you think this may be the case with your system, I would recommend uninstalling the third-party anti-virus and rebooting so the machine reverts to using Microsoft’s built-in Windows Defender anti-virus program.  Then check for updates again.

Spectre affects all processors – Intel, AMD and ARM – so that’s pretty much all systems including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux.  It looks more difficult to deal with Spectre, but all manufacturers are working on solutions, although these could further reduce the performance of your systems.  Web browsers are a particular risk for some variants of the Spectre vulnerability, so updates to browsers are being issued to mitigate this.

Here is an article with more information on the Meltdown and Spectre bugs:-

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3245810/security/how-to-protect-your-pc-meltdown-spectre-cpu-flaws.html

Some AMD-based PCs have become unbootable after recent Microsoft updates to address these bugs – see this Microsoft support notice on this issue:-

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4073707/windows-operating-system-security-update-block-for-some-amd-based-devi

Here is Microsoft’s summary of how to protect your devices from these threats, published Tuesday 9^th Jan 2018:-

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4073757/protect-your-devices-against-spectre-meltdown

Apple have released iOS 11.2.2 for iPhones and iPads which mitigates the effects of Spectre (Meltdown does not affect iOS devices).

I may be able to say more on this next month as the situations develops. The best thing you can do for now, is to ensure all your software is kept up to date.

How To Find Favourites Stored By Browsers
Brian asked about finding/restoring browser Favourites/Bookmarks. Most browsers can export their Bookmarks/Favourites. Also, if you sign-in, your browser can synchronise Favourites so they are available on other devices where you sign in with the same credentials. After the meeting, I found this web site which explains how to export/backup Bookmarks/Favourites on a range of browsers including Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Netscape:-https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000524.htm

ISPs
We had some discussion about Internet Service Providers (ISPs) following a comment made by Tony about Plusnet which had been mentioned recently on the Martin Lewis Money Show on ITV. Plusnet is a subsidiary of BT, but tends to offer better pricing for phone and broadband, and they have UK-only call centres based in Sheffield. If high reliability and excellent customer service are more important to you than price, you could consider Zen or Andrews & Arnold. Plusnet offer a balance of reasonable customer service and value for money. For information and reviews of ISPs, have a look at:-https://www.ispreview.co.uk/

Next Session
Wed 14^th February 2018 1:30 to 3:30pm.