Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
Wow! Yesterday’s item, “New, free Chrome extension checks for password hacks in real time” generated a ton of replies… and questions! For example, over on the AskWoody lounge, a number of readers expressed concerns about explicitly asking a Google product to examine your passwords. As I explained there, I completely understand the reluctance to invite…
Older Windows Secrets/LangaList columns are in the process of being moved to their new home at AskWoody.com, and may not yet be publicly available. In the interim, I’m reprinting selected columns here to help ensure readers can find and access information I’m referencing in new columns. The column below was originally published in the May…
You have four choices: a safe and ethically positive one; a probably-safe but ethically murky one; a maybe-kinda-sorta-safe one, also with murky ethics; and a totally unsafe one, with murky ethics. The 100% safe choice is not to keep the drive. For one thing, the person who lost the drive might need it or its…
Why on earth would Microsoft give two entirely different functions the same name? It’s a baffling user-interface mistake: When Microsoft spliced some functions from the classic Disk Cleanup app into Win10’s “Storage sense,” they created silliness like this: There are now two separate on-demand disk-cleanup functions, both called Free up space now, both just one…
In Part One, I told you about a weird email problem that caused me to receive a take-down notice from Google, telling me my account was being killed due to Terms of Service violations. The notice was 100% real, but turned out to be meant for someone else at “Langa.Com.” Trouble is, I’m the only…
Part One: At first, the email subject line was only mildly alarming: It said, “Security alert for your linked Google account.” That usually signals some minor event, such as a new login from an unrecognized device. But this was different: The body of the email began, “Your Google Account has been deleted due to Terms…
Reader Oystein Ravner asks (via the CONTACT link): Hi Fred! I am glad you are back! Problem: W7 Disk Defragmenter. System Disk is successfully analyzed, but with result 41% fragmented. Clicking ‘Defragment Disk’ leads to nothing. System Disk has capacity 100MB, free 70%, status Healthy. Why is there no defrag action when Microsoft advises such…
Reader Bill Hagemeyer asks, via the Contact link: Q: I have tried to do your Win7 no-reformat reinstall several times, but the system just doesn’t ever finish. It gets lost in the middle of the process and never completes. Any advice would be welcome. A: I think we can get you going, Bill! I have…
I’m again experimenting with voice-to-text transcription. I keep hoping for that Star Trek experience — you know, where the characters whap their comm badge, speak with normal speed and diction, and have the computer fully understand them. But for me, that’s truly fiction. In real life, with free-form text, voice to-text accuracy is likely to…
Farewell, Disk Cleanup! Microsoft has announced that Windows’ classic Disk Cleanup tool — which can strip gigabytes of junk and obsolete files from your system — is being discontinued. Here’s what’s going away: Here’s what’s replacing it: Win10’s new Free up space now setting. Access it via: Settings/System/Storage/Storage Sense (on); then click Free up space…