Travis is having trouble getting the Windows update that will fix the Meltdown/Spectre exploit. Leo says he should make sure to update his antivirus first, because the fix will break the AVS and crash the machine, forcing a reinstall of the OS. He may also need to do a BIOS update. In fact, the entire machine may need to be updated to prevent the Windows OS update from breaking the machine.
Frank is frustrated because his Windows 10 screen is unreadable. It's frustrating because the white background and the blue letters make it difficult to read. Leo says that in the Accessibility settings of Windows 10 there is a high contrast mode which he can turn on and off by holding down the left "Shift," "Alt," and "Print Screen" keys. He can also choose to turn it on permanently in the settings.
Jason has an old HP Pavilion and he's upgraded it to Windows 10. Recently, it hasn't been able to start up. Leo suspects that the hard drive has started to die. Luckily, hard drives are pretty cheap. Then, to get his data back, he can get an external hard drive enclosure and move the data off it right away. The benefit is, the computer will run a lot faster, especially if he gets an SSD.
Scott has a Windows 7 laptop and he's tired of dealing with all its problems. As a result, he got a MacBook Air for Christmas. How does he transfer all his data from the Windows laptop to the MacBook? The Migration wizard didn't really work for him.
Leo says to bypass all of that and just move it over manually. It's the best way to do it. He should just plug in an external drive, formatted for Windows. Then drag and drop his "My Photos" folder over. Then he can connect it to his Mac, open Apple Photos, and import them.
John is having problems with two Windows laptops (one 8.1 and one Windows 10). They will connect to the hotspots, but they won't connect to the internet. Leo says that's called "captive portal" and it requires logging in to gain access. It could also be a security update that is preventing it. It could be closing down a port that he needs to access the internet. He could try reinstalling the network driver.
2018 brought about the news that every processor built in the last ten years have a flaw in them that could give hackers access to sensitive data. Initially believed to affect just Intel processors, the latest is that this affects every single processor made, regardless of platform.
The flaws utilizes a technique called "processor speculation," which enables the processor to speculate what the user will do next in order to accelerate performance. But the feature also gives hackers access to sensitive L2 cache data like passwords. It's especially true for networks.
Bill has an HP Pavilion Power Desktop that he just got a new SSD for. He wants to know how he can transfer over his Windows 10 to it. Leo says he should make a recovery drive with a USB thumb drive. Then he can put the new drive in, and use that recovery drive to reinstall Windows. Leo would also recommend keeping the old hard drive as a data drive.
Jim wants to be able to run his favorite Android apps on Windows. How can he do that? Leo says that the best option is a program called Bluestacks. He should also check out Android on ARM.
Image: Google Inc. [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Ron has noticed that some of his programs autostart when he boots up. How can he stop that? Leo says he doesn't like apps running in the background. There is a way to stop it, though. There's a power tool from Microsoft called Autoruns that will enables him to turn that stuff off. It's a part of their SysInternals Suite.
Philip keeps getting messages that his OneDrive is full on Windows 10. Leo says that OneDrive is built into Windows 10 and it syncs his data to it online. He can't really remove it, but he can disable it. This article at support.microsoft.com explains how to do that.
