Microsoft

A bit of a nightmare . . .

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I opened up my laptop this morning as I had a couple of things I needed to do before R*** came home. To my total surprise and annoyance, there was that little box at the bottom right of my screen, telling me that my computer needs to restart to complete the update process. I thought it sensible to do it straight away. After about 10 minutes, the system began to start-up again. But what was that? A pop-up message telling me that my profile had failed to install and was advising me to sign out. This was duly done and the start-up continued. My laptop is always slow to start so I wasn’t worried.

That is when the trouble started. My desktop screen had changed. All my usual icons had gone, only to be replaced with some random ones. It actually made to screen less cluttered which is not a bad thing. I then had to check that a document had been scanned and I needed to print it. This is when the real nightmare began. All the documents I had saved seemed to be missing. Everything for the funding review had gone! Months and months of work were nowhere to be found!

I headed straight to Google, but that produced nothing helpful. After about an hour of frantically pulling out what little hair I have, I decided to search for one of the documents. To my amazement, they were still on my machine, only in a TEMP folder. It seems that when the profile failed, any saved stuff was moved into this temporary folder. All I now needed to do was to move the files back into the main part of the storage area. This is going to take some time.

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After a lot more hours on Mr Google things are still not right, but better than first thing. I’m not holding my breath that everything will get back to ‘normal’, this is Windows after all.

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I continued with the Googling and profane language when some of the basic apps just wouldn’t work. then hidden on one of the Microsoft ‘help’ pages I spotted something. It appears that I was signed into my machine with a temporary login. The puzzled look on my face got more and more contorted as I scrambled about looking for my normal login. I found it and signed in using this profile, and everything opened up as normal. Everything I had lost was back in the correct place.

I have to admit that the foul language did not lesson very quickly and I was still more than a little angry about the whole experience, but all is good again (until the next time!)

Sometimes . . . Grrrr

/ Tony / 9 Comments

There are occasions when Microsoft Windows will make life so difficult that murder becomes an attractive option. I can usually have a go at fixing a problem when I know what the problem is. But then there are times when even knowing the problem leaves you in the dark when trying to fix them.

Windows 10

Today was one such occasion. It started yesterday evening when my laptop informed me that Windows needs to restart to complete the latest update. I like to get things like that out of the way as soon as possible, so I did the required restart and cracked on with some other stuff I needed to do.

It became apparent after about 40 minutes that something was amiss. The screen showed the usual blue update screen warning me not to turn my computer off as it was ‘working’ on the updates and was at 0%. Twenty minutes later, it was still at 0%!

It was then that I took drastic action and put my laptop into ‘sleep mode’. Upon waking up again everything seemed fine until it got stuck again 10 minutes later. A bit more sleep mode and then the update finished. By this time it was getting late and I decided that I needed to go into ‘sleep mode.’

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SFC.exe

This morning new problems appeared. Everything was running very slowly and some applications were simply refusing to open. I remembered from my previous job that if there was a problem, I should run the “System File Checker” (sfc.exe). This would find the problem and I could then look for a solution. It took about 2½ hours to run, but the system still seemed slow. I was contemplating how I could explain that I needed a new machine when a pop-up occurred telling me that ‘Windows needs to restart …” again. A quick look in the update settings told me that the previous update had not been installed.

Once again I restarted my laptop and after a good 30 minutes, I was back up and running. This time everything was back to normal speed and all the applications were behaving themselves. I’m thinking that yesterdays update file was corrupted somehow and a new version of the update fixed everything. But who knows?

Random tech problem . . .

/ Tony / 6 Comments

© Microsoft

I’ve been having a bit of trouble with my OneDrive. I have two laptops. My main one is downstairs but when I bought it, I decided to keep the previous one upstairs as a kind of back-up machine. It is a bit slow, but it was a good machine. I did want to try and connect both as a home network, but that doesn’t seem to work with Microsoft Home edition. I had ‘misplaced’ a couple of files that I now need to use. They were not big or even complicated files, I just didn’t want to re-write. I thought they were on my OneDrive, but I could not find them. I then had the idea that they may just be in the documents folder on old laptop. And they were.

© Microsoft Office

I copied them into my OneDrive, along with some video files that I had forgotten about. Must have spent a good couple of hours opening, and copying the files, or so it seemed at the time. I shut down the old laptop and trotted off downstairs ready to work with these newly found files. But … they were not in the OneDrive I was accessing from downstairs. I ‘ummed and ‘ahhed for a while before deciding that I must have two OneDrives. Seemed reasonable as the Office package on the upstairs laptop was Office 2013 and downstairs it is Office 365. All I need to do is copy the files I wanted onto a Flash Drive and then onto the downstairs machine. Problem solved … or not.

Try as I might, I could not get the files copied and was receiving an error message:
Error 0x8007016A: The Cloud File provider is not running …
Restart after restart would not cure the problem and in the end I gave up for the evening.

© SanDisk

This morning, after a lot of Googling, it came to light that I must not have signed in to my OneDrive on the upstairs Laptop. In fact, the service was not even running, I must have disabled it in Task Manager. More clicks and reboots ensued and finally I was able to copy the files to the Flash Drive and onto the main machine. Then I found that they had synchronised and so all the copy and pasting was a total waste of time. Thankyou Google and all who sail in you. If the fact that I was not signed in to the OneDrive upstairs reason had been one of the first in the Google search screen, I could have saved a lot of time and unnecessary brain work!

Coincidence or … ?

/ Tony / 2 Comments

I use Microsoft Money 2002 to manage a number of financial accounts locally on my laptop. It is no longer supported by Microsoft, but still works the way I like. I run it in a compatibility mode as if it is running on a Windows XP machine. There has been a number or rumours that the next update to Windows may disable some compatibility modes in order to force customers to purchase newer products. These rumours, whilst not being confirmed or denied by Microsoft tend to flare up now and again and there has been rather more this year than previous years.

In order to ensure that I have some kind of continuity, I have started to look at maybe using Excel to do the job. I had encountered a few problems with formatting and a couple of formulas. Nothing I tried seemed to work, so I posted a question on an Excel forum that I used when I working for the council. After about 30 minutes or so, I got a reply. I followed the instructions, but only partly did what I wanted. I thanked the responder and gave a bit more detail. The next reply came back within 5 minutes. Once applied, everything worked as I wanted.

Now for the coincidence. This morning I received an email from Microsoft. I get regular updates as I have a Microsoft account that came with Office 365. This email was advising me that the new Microsoft Budget Template was now available in Excel. Prior to today, the template was only available in America. First impression is that it is something that I can work with if Money 2002 is blocked.

Was it just a coincidence ?

** Update … it appears that the Money in Excel is still not available in the UK. Microsoft are (supposedly) looking into why I received the email **

More testing

/ Tony / 2 Comments

Derrr

I now see what I have been doing wrong. I had the Save setting to Save Draft, but when I close the editor, I was clicking on the Publish button in an attempt to publish as a draft post. I now realise that I do not need to select Publish from the editor. The post is saved regularly as a draft post and I can preview and amend as I do now.

So I now need to work on updating my skills to learn this new ‘Block’ editor. I don’t think I’m going to drop Open Live Writer as an editor, but I think I need an additional string to my blogging bow. It’s funny, I originally started using the WordPress editor before moving to Microsoft’s Windows Live Editor which was part of the Windows Essentials software. When this deprecated, I tried using the blog template in Microsoft Word before I found the open source software ‘ Open Live Writer ‘. So in a fashion, I have come full circle.

My thank must go to @themagicrobot who’s response in the WordPress Support Forums showed me the error of my ways.

It is getting there …

/ Tony / 3 Comments

I picked up the new laptop on Thursday. K*** ordered it Wednesday afternoon and it was ready for collection Thursday lunchtime. The thing with Argos and her cash-back site Happy bunny was a non-starter as her cashback site no longer deals with Argos. So that was a bit of a Happydisappointment. But we still managed to get a bit of a discount through her staff credit card (I think!!). So actually I’m what you might call a bit of a “happy bunny” so to speak.

I am now in the process of getting the machine up to the status/position that my last lappy was in. I speak of course about the software and applications that I’m used to. I think I have got to about 90% normal, but I’m fully aware that there will be some stuff I use that I have forgotten.

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Without meaning to get too technical, I decided to shy away from the more common names. The last two machines have been Asus and R*** has an AcerThe new beast. Both Asus machine have failed, but the Acer is doing okay. Other alternative in my price range were Dell and HP, both of which I used to use at work and they were a bit on the hefty side. This time, after reading a few reviews I went for a Lenovo. It has the same keyboard layout as the Asus machine, so R*** would be happy using it and it just looked the better machine.

I was quite surprised how easy it was to set up. Microsoft seems to have put in some work in the user set-up procedure. The machine talked me through the whole process, which is something that has never happened before. So all in all, I’m well satisfied … hope this continues.

Should I bite the proverbial …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I’m in a bit of a quandary. I use some old banking software to keep a record of my spending and to give some kind of warning of when bills are due. I’ve been using Microsoft Money for over 20 years now and although it was discontinued some years ago, it still works and does the job I want it to. Now the issue is, that I would like to be able to access the data from one of the two other computers that I have. In order to do this, I need to able to save the data somewhere other than the laptop I am currently using. The two ways I can see this being able to work is:

  1. I save the data file on a portable hard-drive (maybe even a flash drive) or
  2. I store the file in the ‘cloud’ on my Microsoft OneDrive.

I use the OneDrive for a few files, but none of which are really important so it feels a bit scary to use it for something as important as my bank balances. I have to state here that it is only the transactions that are stored. No bank or personal details are kept within the data files, but it does worry me. Does anyone else have the same fears?

Can’t believe it worked …

/ Tony / 1 Comment

This might get a little bit ‘techy’ so look away now, if you’re uninterested.

The youngest son has two laptop computers. He has an old Windows 7 machine that he keeps in his bedroom. He uses it to watch YouTube videos, and that’s about all. His other machine is a Windows 10 laptop thatNontworking lappy he takes when he is on respite and sleeping away. Some months ago, we got a message that the laptop he took away had a problem. When he got home I found that the machine was stuck in a ‘Repairing Windows’ loop. The IT people at his respite could do nothing with it and neither could I. So for the past six months it has sat at the back of the sofa doing nothing.

Fast forward to the beginning of November and an interesting article on a news-feed that I subscribe to. The article related to updating Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10, for free. The so called ‘offer’ from Microsoft(MS) to upgrade to Windows 10 expired some time last year, but the article explained that it was still available, and it gave instructions on how to get it. After reading the article a few times, I began to think that I may be able to do something with the trashed laptop. At worst it would still be trashed and at best it could  be a working laptop.

I downloaded the files and yesterday I bit the bullet and began the process. I was expecting the task to take 4 or 5 hours, but in the end it took just over 3 hours. It actually worked!! Of course, there were a few issues that made the process difficult. working againNot least, the laptop battery expiring when I was trying to login with my current MS account. By 21:50 the machine was up and running with the latest Windows 10 operating system. As you may imagine, I was beside myself with joy. I could not believe that it had worked. I rebooted the machine again and it was still working. I installed a couple of bits of software that I knew was needed and rebooted aging. Still working !

So I go to bed thinking that I’m a genius.

This morning, with bated breath I switched the said laptop on … still working !! I still can’t believe it worked, but work it did, and I’m one happy, ecstatic, cocky bunny and think I can do anything  !!

Problems still ongoing…

/ Tony / Leave a comment

When I started to compose this post at the beginning of the week, the problems I was having with my laptop were indeed ‘still ongoing’. However, and I am touching as much wood as I can find, things seem to be a little better at the moment. Many of the problems seemed to be with my Microsoft Office 365 applications. I was getting a lot of ‘xxx not responding’ messages when using Word, Excel and Outlook which seemed to point to an issue there. Although, other software was often slow to open and close. The internet gave me a few ideas, and one of the more prominent ones was to ‘repair’ my Office application. So I gave it a go, and (here’s when the touching wood comes into play) at the moment it seems to have worked.

Later yesterday, I got what IT people call the “Blue Screen of Death” or BSOD. For those that don’t know, it’s when Windows decides something is amiss, produces and ‘error code’, uploads the code to Microsoft and restarts your computer. I checked out the error code, which told me nothing at all but I was advised to run a system security tool. This tool, called Windows Defender Offline, which is part of the Windows security system, runs a much deeper scan for viruses and malware than the normal scan. It takes about 40 minutes on my laptop and (back to the wood touching again) seems to have done the trick, although I’m not holding my breath.

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I’m going to try a new approach to my posts. For a long time I have been combining the topics I want to say into one post. I usually separate the topics with a divider (as above) and the post can often have 4 or 5 topics. I have now decided to use single topics in each post, and post more often (how many times have I said ‘post more often’). I shall see how it goes.

Problems might just be gone …

/ Tony / 1 Comment

For a few weeks now, I’ve been having performance issues with one of my Windows 10 laptops. I’ve uninstalled software that I rarely use, but the issue seems to have remained. What happens is that I’ll be using for example Microsoft Word and suddenly it hangs with the message “Word is not responding” and this will happen three or four times during the session. I end up having to restart Windows and hope the problem has gone away. Often this fixes the issue, but occasionally it doesn’t.

Today, while I was looking at the Task Manager application, I noticed something called ‘software reporting tool’. I had not seen it before and so I ran an online search and discovered that it is a program that checks to see if any software is going to affect the Google Chrome browser. There were reports that it has a high CPU usage when checking and the check often takes 20 minutes or so to run. The date on the file is 4th October which seems to coincide with the second time I had problems. Things seemed to improve after I removed my other printer, but then problems re-emerged a few days later.

The sites I looked at (and I always check a few to see if they say the same thing) told me that the process is not necessary and can be stopped. They also said that Google may restart the process again whenever the Chrome bowser updates. It gave instructions on how to prevent it running and how to prevent Google from restarting it. The instructions for this can be found at https://www.ghacks.net and searching for ‘how to block the Chrome Software reporter tool’.

It may not fix the problem, but the tool sends scan information back to Google, so there may be privacy issues here.

We shall see if there is any improvement.

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On another point, this was written using the WordPress editor on an iPad Mini. I had not thought of that as an option, but it seems to work quite well. I do need to understand how the HTML style tags work for formatting, but there must be a tutorial out there.

 

Too clever for my own good …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

This is a little techy. I have been having a problem all week with the performance of my main laptop. Applications were slow to open and even slower to close. I scoured the internet for answers and did everything, bar re-installing Windows, that was suggested. But the problem remained, and it was getting worse. Some programs were now not even opening. Then today I had an idea. You see, I have two laptops on my home network, both with an attached printer. At the beginning of the week, I thought it would be good if I could print to both printers in an effort to save ink, as the other printer never gets used. After a couple of hours and a fair bit of stress, I got it working. I then installed the other printer on my main laptop so that it could be seen. Then all I had to do was to ensure the other laptop and printer were switched on and I could print to it. Really quite pleased with myself at that point.

I didn’t really want to have the other laptop and printer to be on all the time, so I shut both down. This was on Monday afternoon. On Tuesday, I started to notice the performance issues. As Tuesday was the day when Microsoft updates Windows, I put the problems down to that. When there was a second update pushed on Wednesday, I was convinced that everything would now be okay. Not so. The performance had improved slightly, but not so as you would notice. It was getting so bad that I began to think I had a virus or something. I searched the internet for the problem and the answers were as I expected: run an anti-virus; run an anti-malware; run a disk clean-up even reformat hard drive and start again. Well I tried all except the last one, but nothing seemed to work. Then another search, came up with something. I may have a corrupt drive recently installed. Hmmm … the only driver recently installed was the printer driver for the other printer. I thought I would have a look at that. I removed the printer from the device list (an I assume that removed the driver) and did a full reboot, rather than a restart.

Now (touch wood) it seems to be back to as normal as it was before. I had a quick online chat with the printer help desk (free thankfully). It would appear, that when the other laptop and printer were switched off any software that you can print from would be looking for the printers when the software opens. As the printer was off, it was not visible and so the delays. I’m not entirely convinced, but it does seem to have been resolved.

(Written with Word 365 – blog template)

Decisions, decisions …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

When I first had the idea of creating a blog, I sought some online advice as to how I could go about getting my thoughts online. It became apparent, quite quickly that the free version of WordPress was the way to go. I toyed with Blogger, but it seemed to lack any kind of quality so I went for WordPress.

Much of the advice centred on the software I could/should WLWuse to get my message into the blog. Quite a few people said that if I wanted an off-line editor, then there was not much to fault the built-in Windows program “Windows Live Writer” or WLW as it became known. This was part of a suite of applications called  “Windows Live Essentials” that came, ready to use with Microsoft Windows. It seemed the most logical way to go, and most of my earliest posts were written using WLW. Then, OLWas is usual with Microsoft, it was announced that Windows Live Essentials was being run down and no further development work would be done. Around about the same time coincidently, a piece of software appeared called “Open Live Writer” (OLW). This was an open-sourced version of Windows Live Writer set to replace the former. I have used this now for a long time, being my prefered editor.

Now to the point. Over the past few months, I have had a couple of occasions when uploading a post from OLW, that the upload fails and the post is lost (the draft post seems to get corrupted). The problem is that there has been no development work on OLW for some time, and it is now beginning to show its age. In fact a post that I was going to upload yesterday failed and was lost. So now, Im beginning to think that it is time to move on again and choose anothe blog editor for my laptop.

I’ve done a little research and have come up with the following options:

  • Continue with OLW
  • Use the WordPress editor (this was written with the WP editor)
  • Blogdesk
  • Microsoft Word
  • Windows Notepad and paste into the WP editor or
  • some other paid for application (not my ideal choice)

So for the next few posts, I will be writing using a different method each time to test which I find is the most suitable method.

(Written using WordPress editor)

 

Just lazy … that’s all … or maybe not …

/ Tony / 1 Comment

I started to write this post on Friday, but put it off. I didn’t have a title then and was trying to think of reasons excuses why I haven’t posted since 5th July. And they were just excuses … ‘didn’t have time’ … ‘nothing to say’ … ‘too late/early/drunk/tired etc ‘ … you get the picture?  The only one that really seems to crop up the most is (not ‘too drunk’ although …) ‘nothing to say.’ I often sit down at one of my laptops, or the iPad with good intentions, and then nothing. So I’m going to try a bit harder over the coming months/weeks, after all now I have a paid blog, I need to get my money’s worth Be right back

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Now it may sound a little extravagant to have two laptops and an iPad, but there is a reason. Since I got my first PC back in 1995, I have had a money management application (or program as it was called back then) called Microsoft Money. It was discontinued some years ago, although Microsoft did bring out some cut-down versions, but I understand even these are now extinct. It has always worked fine with the upgrades up until Windows 8.1 came out and users were advised that ‘some’ software would not work properly in future editions of Windows. I don’t use it as part of my online banking as it never really worked with my bank, it just keeps a record of my future, past and present incomes and expenses. A a pinch I could use a spreadsheet, but I think that over the years, it would get a little unwieldy.

A couple of years ago, I decided that my laptop was running very slow and convinced K*** that I needed a new one which I got. I thought it would be a good idea to keep the older one, just in case R***’s home laptop gave in. So the old one was consigned to a wardrobe shelf to gather dust. Then, along came Windows 10 and everyone was urged to upgrade with the free upgrade. This latest version was said to be the worst for compatibility of older software, so I held off upgrading for a long time. I then had a thought Thinking smile . What I should do is keep the old laptop on Windows 7 (which I knew would run the Money program) and upgrade my new(ish) laptop to the latest version of Windows 10. That way, if Money didn’t work I could always use the old laptop. Thankfully it did work and I now have Windows 10 on both machines. I’m still very wary when updates come out and I will not update the old laptop until I know Money works on the latest Windows version.

Break over …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

Well we all managed to get through the week without any major upsets. Some of the family were going home one way and the others were going a different way. K***, S**** and me decided that we would just go straight home. We called in Aldi and were going to have lunch at Ask Italian, in Wetherby. However S**** had found out that his house having a viewing and he just wanted to get back. So we left it at that.

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R*** was home a bit later than usual, and he didn’t look too happy. He was droning a lot and then started shouting and banging the furniture. He was also getting quite violent. We gave him some of his medication that calms him a little,but it took quite a while to work. Eventually he did calm down. We have no idea what caused the melt-down, but I think it may have been some issue with some YouTube videos that he was looking for. Often when new ones that he likes are added, some of the older ones drop off the suggested list. He slept all night without a problem, and whatever it was was no longer an issue. It has been a long time since he was like that. We have had the occasional angry outburst every few days or so, but have not needed his medication for months.

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I think there has been an update the the web version of Outlook.com and I’m not sure if I like it. formatting the afore mentioned break, there was a button in the Spam folder, that allowed you to block an email address. This button is no longer there. I liked it, because you could select three spam mails, hit the Block button and Outlook.com would display the senders address. That way you could make sure that the emails were really spam before you blocked\deleted them. Now the only viable option is to delete. I feel that Microsoft is taking away more of my control and I’m not sure I like that.

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I’m still learning how to use this BlogPad Pro app. Each time I use it I find new things about the software. For example, I prefer to have my posts full justified and using Open Live Writer, that kind of formatting is easy. This was a tad more difficult to find the formatting button, but I got there in the end. Think it may be a long haul to fully master it.

 

Hmmm … now that’s interesting!

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I have been using the WordPress.Com app for Windows 10 for a few weeks now. It’s okay when it works, but there have been a imagecouple of issues recently. For example, it is often very slow to to open. Sometimes posts do not update straight away and on a few occasions it has been known to simply crash and require a computer restart.

Usually faults like this can be rectified by reinstalling the latest version. However, attempting to download from the Microsoft Store results with a message telling me that the app is not available. Very strange, as version 3.2.0 is available to download direct from the WordPress.com website. I’m not the biggest fan of the Microsoft Store, but I would have thought an app such as this would be available. Is the reason that there are too many issues with the app that Microsoft no longer want to be associated with it? I don’t think that could be reason as there are many other apps in the Store that are simply rubbish. No there is some other reason that I’ve not quite figured out yet.

I still have the original version and will re-install it and see if is any better for a clean install, but I have my doubts.

Doing a bit of computer housekeeping …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I (currently) own two laptops. My main one sits on my computer desk in the living room but the previous one lives in S****s (the spare bedroom) bedroom. Both work fine but the old one was beginning to get a little slow. So on Friday I decided to give a good clear out and try and bring it to a more reasonable speed. I first spent about three hours getting the system up-to date. As I tend not to use it as much as I use the more recent one, it had fallen a little behind with the “up-dates”.

On Saturday morning I ran a small piece of software that checks most of my applications to see if there re any updates for them. The list was quite large, but as I was not going to be using all the applications on the laptop, I only updated a few. Later in the day I began to uninstall some of the bigger software apps. I managed to get three done before I got fed up with it. Started again this morning and after around four hours, I was in a position to write this post. The machine is now much faster, and it is my intention to use this one to work on any creative writing I happen to be engaged in.

The problem I had was the the Microsoft cloud storage on the ‘old’ laptop was called “SkyDrive” whereas on the ‘newer’ laptop it’s called “OneDrive”. It caused me a bit of grief to get the two synchronised, but I eventually got it sorted. You see if I wanted to do any work, such as write this blog on a Sunday, it was a problem. R*** like to use my newer laptop before he has his lunch, and this has now become part of his routine. It meant that any ideas I wanted to write down had to wait until he had finished.

Random Microsoft rant …

/ Tony / 2 Comments

Yes, it’s that time again when I have a bit of a rant at, what is arguably the most successful IT companies ever. I have to say, that I/we have a fair bit of personal IT equipment in the house. I have two laptops, three tablets and two smartphones, K*** has a tablet and a smartphone and R*** has two laptops and a tablet. The laptops are all Windows laptops with mine running Windows 10. R***’s laptops are still running Window 7 and 8 respectively, but that is because of the way he uses his computers. He only uses Internet Explorer and YouTube so he has no need for all the ‘whistles and bells’ that later versions bring.

To get to the point. Windows 10 is now ‘provided as a service’ as Microsoft says. This basically means that for home users, there is no choice but to update their computers when Microsoft say so. It is different for business and educational systems, who can refrain from updating if they like. But for us mere mortals, we do as we are told. There are ways around this, but it is often too much hassle.

So on Friday, I noticed that my main laptop was showing that an update was ready to apply. This is what Microsoft called the ’Windows 10 Fall Creators Update’ and is a major update to the system. The main issue I have with this forced update regime is that sometimes Microsoft will remove files that it deems are no longer useful. Now I have a piece of software that I use for my banking. It is what they call ‘legacy software’ which one way of saying outdated. But I call it ‘critical software’ as it suits my purpose and without paying a lot of money, there is nothing similar out there. The same software is on my other laptop, as a backup, which for the past month had been disconnected from the internet in order that it did not update with the possibility of breaking the software. So I bit the bullet and ran the update. It took two and a quarter hours to run! But, in the end, the software ran without issue, so all was good. I now felt that it was safe enough update the other laptop.

It was now 09:30 on Saturday morning. I started up the other laptop and ran the update checker which advised me that there were a number of updates waiting. Clicked on the update button and sat back waiting for it to finish. After about two hours I had a quick look to see what was happening, only to find that two of the updates had failed to install. I did a reboot and tried again. Still nothing. So later in the evening around about 21:15, I ran a utility that cleared some files and tried again. This time I saw that the updates were going through. I turned the screen off and left it too it. I checked about 23:30 and it was still running. It actually finished at 04:20. Just over seven hours to update! Amazing!

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I sometimes hate Microsoft … beware the Anniversary Update my friends …

/ Tony / 4 Comments

I must explain. I’ve never been a fan of Apple software and whenever I have considered new IT equipment, I have always looked for alternatives to Apple. I have never had an iPod, I had a unknown music player.My smartphones have always been Android phones. I would never consider an iPhone. All my PC’s and laptops have all been Microsoft. The only exception was my first computer which was a Texas computer. So you could say, I’m a fan of Microsoft. A big fan.

However … this week has been a trial, even for me. I have two laptops. One, I have had for about four years and the second one for about eight/nine months. It is a long story, why I got the second one, and I’ll not go into it today but suffice to say, it was a wise choice at the time.

So why the post title?

On Monday, I decided that my ‘old’ laptop should be fired up and have all the updates that it needed. Oh sh*t! Windows tells me that there are ‘updates ready to download’. I checked what they were, and right at the bottom of the list was update that had the number ‘1607’ mentioned. The time had come for the so called ‘Windows 10 Anniversary  Update’. This was the one that I have been dreading. I was so thankful, though that it was first coming through to the old lappy. That way I could make sure that I would not have any major issues. You see, my banking software is an old Microsoft programme called Microsoft Money.

I’ve used it since I had Windows XP. I never use the internet functions, simply use it as a computerised bank account/cheque book. When I upgraded to Windows 7, there was the fear that this software may not work. Fortunately, it did and it saved me a lot of worries. Then along came Windows 10, and with it more rumours that Microsoft Money would not work. After a lot of stress and fruitless web searching, I bit the bullet and bought a new machine with Windows 10 installed. My idea was that I would use the old machine, as a internet free machine, just for the banking app.

So back to updating the old machine. What the hell, I thought. There is no choice, it has to be done, and I could always ‘roll back’ if the banking app did not work. Three hours later and Windows tells me that my laptop is “Preparing to install the update” or words to that effect. It does not actually call itself the Anniversary Update. That’s probably a media thing. After another three hours or so, the ‘installation’ is at around 63% and I really need to sleep. So I leave it to do it’s thing and hope that it will be all done in the morning.

Morning arrives (06:30 to be exact) and I’m looking at the laptop with an air of disgust. All I have is that blue/grey  screen that shows between turning on and the desktop appearing. Something amiss I fear! No time to do anything now, so I press the power button to shut down. Speedily move on to me getting home from work. I fire up the machined and after a few minutes the damn thing tells be that it is rolling back to my original set-up. The update failed! Down hearted, but not deterred, I click on the Windows update again and the whole process repeats.

Now with the echo of that film ‘Groundhog Day’ in my head, the same thing happens again. Exactly the same as before. Fail! I am now thinking that a Mac has serious possibilities. I scour the internet for possible causes of the failure, and one seems to strike a chord. Someone with an unpronounceable name that looks about 11 years old, suggests that any peripherals such as a printer or an external hard drive be unplugged. I unplug the printer and start again for the third (and as I said to the wife) final f**king time. Of course, the process needs to be left overnight to finish. Another sleepless night ensues.

It’s now 06:10 Wednesday morning and I’m tiptoeing around trying to see if the update worked. ‘B**lcks’ I say quietly. It looks like the same has happened. Same old blue/grey screen. I press the power and go off to work in not the best of moods. Fast forward again to home time. I power up the cursed machine, expecting the worst. Not at all! The thing powers up and it all looks good. A few checks, and it seems like third time lucky. The update has taken! First thing I do, is check the banking app. It works! Everything I try seems to work. Of course that stupid ‘Edge’ browser thing is still stupid, but I have updated! I survived! I can now concentrate on the real issues of the day. That being ‘Great British Bake Off’ going to Channel 4 and Angeline and Brad splitting up.

Now all I have to do, is wait for my main laptop to tell me the update is ready and it all starts again!

New lappy … getting there … ish

/ Tony / Leave a comment

So the new laptop arrived on Monday and I have to say I was a bit worried about how I was going to accept the change. But after a few false starts, I am beginning to get the hang of this Windows 10. I think I have mentioned this before, but I am one of those people who find change for change sake difficult. I’ve been using Window 7 for heaven knows how many years now, and it was a bit of a struggle upgrading from Windows XP. I resisted changing then until I was forced to change.

My main worry in upgrading to Win 10 was the issues surrounding my financial software. I have been using Microsoft Money 2002 since I got my first real PC (back in 2002 as you may have guessed) and it has been really useful. I have never used the so called ‘on-line’ banking facilities that Money 2002 featured, so it was mainly a simple cheque book monitor. The decision I took was that I would buy a new laptop with Win 10 and keep my old one as just a non-connected machine, so that Money 2002 would continue to be of use. So imagine my surprise, when finding a post on the Internet that stated Microsoft Money 2005 was available for free download, and that it had been proven to work on Windows 10. After a nervous download and install, my latest fears were proven to be unfounded. The bloody software works! I’ve not done a full test yet, but things are looking good and when I checked, it looked to have a license key, so no need to register.

It is going to take a few more days to get me back up to scratch, but I will get there. I have so much on my old laptop that I probably will never replicate, but maybe that is a good thing. There is no doubt that much of the software (or ‘apps’ as they now seem to be called) I have accumulated over the past few years is not really used, so it may not take as long as I hoped. Wish me luck.

Another bitten bullet and other things

/ Tony / 1 Comment

The laptop I’m currently using is a Windows 7 machine. I’m always quite reluctant to change, espcially if I don’t feel the need to change. So I have never been tempted to upgrade my machine to a later version of Windows. However I may have no choice as Microsoft seems intent un upgrading users to Windows 10, whether they want it or not. As those in the know, it’s a free upgrade and brings ‘all the benefits of an up to date‘ operating system, if you believe the blurb.

It is probably a good thing to upgrade and I have come around to the idea that I need to do this. The problem is, that on this machine, I have a number of software applications that I use regularly (daily or every other day) that will not run under Windows 10. I struggled to get them to run under Windows 7 and people have tested them for me, and they simply fail. These are not applications that need the internet to run so I have decided that I will buy another laptop running Windows 10 and leave the Win 7 machine as an ‘unconnected’ machine that I can use for non-internet specific things.

The issue now is, that I need Microsoft Office on the new machine. I cannot install my current version as it is tied to the machine I’m using now and it can only be used on one machine. All is not lost. Last year I bought my son a subscription to Office 365. It seems that the subscription type I purchased allows the software to be installed on upto 5 different machines. Job sorted! The only thing now is how? A quick on-line chat with Microsoft support and I have all the info my son and me needs. Well done Carmina P. the help desk advisor.

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So, how am I doing with what I called my ‘New Year Intentions‘? Sad to say, not as well as I would have liked. The number 1 on the list, was to blog at least once a week and this is the only one I have kept up to press. Although they are all still on-going, just not quite quickly as I would have liked. I am reading more (No 10 on the list) but it it difficult to read at work as the dining room can be quite noisy and there is nowhere else in the office. I recently chatted to a friend who has a blog about theming my blog (No 2) and their answer was to either pick something that I enjoy (she said obsessed with) or that I’m and expert with and blog about that. Well the only thing I’m either obsessed with or an expert in is … me, and I’m blogging that already. With regard to the rest, who knows where I’m going.

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Talking of blogs, I have been looking back over the years at my stats on WordPress. I have noticed something quite unusual. I have been posting on and off some of my photos, following The Daily Post‘s ‘Weekly Photo Challenge’. I’m by no means an expert photographer, I just take pictures of things or scenes that I like.

It looks like my average views (no going into comments here) for my written stuff is around the 3 – 4 mark per post. However, when it comes the the photo posts, the average has rocketed up to 10 or 11 per photopost. When I started this post, my last photopost under the ‘Weekly Photo Challenge’ banner had hit 31 views!  Looks like that old adage ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is true! One could say ‘ A picture is worth a thousand posts.’

Just a test….or maybe not

/ Tony / 2 Comments

I tend to use a Microsoft Word blog template to post. However I like to try other ways to get my message across. I’ve used the WP editor on my PC and even tried to post using email. The WP editor was quite successful and means I could post during breaks at work. Posting by email was very different. Try as I might, I could not get the tags to show properly.

For this post, I thought I would try and use my tablet. I don’t have an iPad as I’ve never been a big fan of Apple products, so I use a Tesco ‘hudl’ as an alternative to using a PC or laptop. It seems to work. I’m still using the WP editor, but it looks totally different to using a laptop.

Fingers crossed it works okay. However, I usually save my posts on my computer before posting. I don’t believe this is possible using the WP editor

An Experiment

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I’ve seen on a number of occasions, comments on this site and others, that warn people about using Microsoft Word as a blogging tool. This not using Word to write, then ‘cut & paste’ into your blog, but using the built in template named “Blog post.dotx”. This post shows how I use it.

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Centre Aligned

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam nec accumsan ligula. Quisque lorem purus, venenatis eget massa eget, finibus rutrum turpis. Aenean ac mi.

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Left Aligned

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam nec accumsan ligula. Quisque lorem purus, venenatis eget massa eget, finibus rutrum turpis. Aenean ac mi.

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Right Aligned

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam nec accumsan ligula. Quisque lorem purus, venenatis eget massa eget, finibus rutrum turpis. Aenean ac mi.

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Various

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus porta nec lectus ut molestie. Ut ut pretium elit. Duis ultrices mollis tortor ultrices sodales. Vivamus nulla diam, rhoncus vel felis a, tincidunt consectetur metus. Suspendisse congue, tellus et accumsan pellentesque, velit ex hendrerit nunc, at vestibulum mi neque euismod sapien.

Image Alignment

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque eget nulla leo. Curabitur elementum congue ex eget consectetur. Vestibulum eleifend, nibh a dapibus cursus, ipsum dolor consequat nisi, in lobortis nisi purus quis velit. Pellentesque consequat nisl tincidunt dolor gravida, vitae luctus massa viverra. Aenean at vulputate leo, eu ornare mauris. Curabitur eros nisi, fermentum non facilisis non, dictum non turpis. In sit amet sem neque. Quisque ultrices pretium quam, ut faucibus turpis euismod vel. Sed in dapibus lorem. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque eget nulla leo. Curabitur elementum congue ex eget consectetur. Vestibulum eleifend, nibh a dapibus cursus, ipsum dolor consequat nisi, in lobortis nisi purus quis velit. Pellentesque consequat nisl tincidunt dolor gravida, vitae luctus massa viverra. Aenean at vulputate leo, eu ornare mauris. Curabitur eros nisi, fermentum non facilisis non, dictum non turpis. In sit amet sem neque. Quisque ultrices pretium quam, ut faucibus turpis euismod vel. Sed in dapibus lorem.

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Please forgive the faux latin. It was just the easiest way of adding text.

The only real issues I have come across, is that images need to be realigned (left or right from within the WordPress editor) and tags need to be added from the WordPress editor.

 

Blogging from Word 2013

/ Tony / Leave a comment

Now here’s a thing. Way back in October 2012, I was running Microsoft Office 2010. I attempted to post a blog using Word 2010. Whilst it was quite successful Word, did not have the power and facilities, I was used to in Windows Live Writer. There are muttering amongst, the rumour merchants that WLW is going to be discontinued, or as Microsoft put it ‘no longer supported’. This will be a shame, and will affect a large number of bloggers who use WLW. I have tried a number of alternatives to WLW including Zoundry Raven, Blogdesk and even the standard WordPress editor. None come a close 2nd to WLW. However, even this has its limitations and one of its big issues (as far as I’m concerned) is the problems with ‘Tags’. Okay, you can get an add-on that will create tags from your text, and this works very well for quite a number of blogging platforms, but it adds the tags at the end of your text. These do not seem to be correctly formatted WordPress tags and do not link to any tags in other blogs, which is a bit of a bind.

So, I am trying out this post, using the blog post template in Microsoft Word 2013. It does not feel much different from the 2010 version, so I’m not too sure if it is going to be better. There is still no facility to add tags, which is a major downside, but it just means that posting has to go as a draft. Now that, may not be such a bad thing in the scheme of things. I will just have to add the tags at ‘draft stage’.

I’ve just sent for a small keyboard for my ‘hudl’. I am wanting to be able to use it to write with. I know I can use my laptop, but there may be a time, when I want to write something, for say a quick blog post, or just a note to be used in some writing later. If you have ever tried to use an onscreen keyboard on a 7″ tablet (I know ‘should have got an iPad’) then you’ll know how difficult it can be. Especially when trying to format the text. It only cost just over £7.00, so it’s no great loss if it does not work.

Right. Time to upload this post. Wish me luck or something !!

Getting back to normal (or as normal as it gets)

/ Tony / Leave a comment

     After surviving Christmas, the next task was to get through New Years Eve. We did!! R*** was on respite, as he struggles with the NYE fireworks. It’s not the fireworks themselves that are the problem, it’s the randomness of the explosions coupled with the unexpectedness, if that’s the word I’m looking for. So he was away for two nights and came back on Thursday evening. Sounds like he had a successful time, there were no reported issues. S**** and his girlfriend A**** and another friend from his university days, went to a party. They were all staying over, so that left me and K*** ‘home alone’ as they say. So what did we do… go to the pub? go to a party? go into town??? Nope, we watched the television. Well that sounds a bit simplistic, but it was a nice evening. We had a nice meal, some nice wine and spent the evening relaxing.

     Then it was back to work on the 2nd. That was a more stressful day than the whole of Christmas and New Year together. It appears now, that the work review that we are going through is changing somewhat. We were originally told, that our service would be “picked up and dropped into the new service” and that “new opportunities would present themselves.” We are now told that we will be “slotted in” but will have to push ourselves forward and sort of make a case for our existence. So that sounds interesting! We have also been told, that we need to make a brief ‘pitch’ to promote each one of us. My direct manager, S**** was pushing the idea, that this was going to be some sort of ‘presentation’ and that I should use Microsoft PowerPoint to do it. Ten minutes each was the suggested time frame for each one of us. The fact that this meeting was only booked for an hour with eight people to speak did not seem to matter. It is now down to a two minute talk about who we are, what we do, where we come from and where do we want to go. I am not looking forward to it at all. I’m not one of those people that enjoys self promotion. I’m a background person that just want to get on with the job in hand. I’ve been told that I should always be looking for better opportunities. Sorry, that’s not for me. So we will see what happens at this meeting on Friday.

     I now have a Tesco ‘hudl’. th I mentioned it to K*** just after Christmas, that I was going to see if they were reduced in the sales. I’m not a fan of Apple products, so the Ipad or Ipad Mini were not something I could ever see me using, but thought it might be useful to have some form of tablet computer.She got a bit annoyed with me as she did not know that I wanted one. We looked on the Tesco website, and she bought me a red one. We shall see how useful it proves to be. With it being an Android device, I am quite used to the operating system, which is the same as my smartphone. I just need to be careful that it does not turn into a smartphone without the telephone part.

     My attempt at writing a story based on letters from the main character is coming along, albeit slowly. I have a good idea where I am taking it, but I’m just not sure whether it is moving along to fast or even too slow. I decided to write this back in October 2013 and had the idea that each of the letters is a chapter of the story. I’m now up to chapter six, and this is where my doubts seem to be creeping in. I will finish it though, but not sure when.