Comments by "Wol747" (@Wol747) on "Ask Leo!" channel.

  1. The worst thing is the wretched Captcha: I’ve gone down its rabbithole many times especially when trying to recover an account. Tiny blurred panels, numbers you can’t make out, audio clips that can’t be deciphered etc etc etc. There has to be more to life than this.
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  2. This is probably the WORST thing about Windows and it’s incredibly frustrating that it is still an issue after decades of “improvements”. It happens to me all the time and when I’m backing up to an external drive which has months of data on it I can’t bring myself to just pull it. “Ejecting” several times has occasionally worked but 99% of the time it doesn’t. The various remedies from the internet don’t work or - like Leo’s programs - give a welter of information that I, as a reasonably computer savvy but no more guy - can’t make sense of. I usually end up having to close a whole bunch of programs that run and reboot to ensure a safe shutdown. It’s a major, major frustration and drives me bonkers.
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  3. Keepass is dead easy to set up and if you keep the master p/w on a dedicated USB stick when you start it you just point to that to open it. Great video as usual, Leo.
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  4. All very well to say “change your password “ but if you have been compromised your password may well have BEEN changed and you won’t be able to do it. Then you go down the Micro$oft rabbit hole. Then there’s this “reject” - or similar button - does it actually do what it implies? Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get me.
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  5. What I find so puzzling is how Microsoft can write so many buggy, impossible to figure out and user-unfriendly programs which carry on being supported for years yet have deprecated really good legacy programs such as Money and the TV recording prog whose name escapes me.
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  6. Sorry Leo: I was about to gripe about cars when you mentioned them and my blood pressure went up. Apps are one thing - we have to “Get Used” to changes. If like me we use something like openshell to make a new version of Windows more useable that’s OK. But when my car updates twice a week and I find things are not doing what they did yesterday - that’s a safety issue not just an inconvenience.
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  7. I’m a bit slow but Leo seems to say that once you’ve set up this on a device it just lets whoever is using it will get in without a password?
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  8. I agree - I have no idea what he meant! Unusual for Leo.
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  9. Thunderbird has been my email app for years - I wouldn’t consider any other.
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  10. Not often I disagree with you, Leon, but……
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  11. All so very true, Leo. The best software for me, as a reasonably tech savvy 80 year old, are legacy programs which JUST DO THE JOB (my caps). Microsoft Money - excellent. No bells and whistles that even a large company may not need: no bloatware. Similarly I use Colton software Fireworkz for Windows - a word processor/spreadsheet program that - just works with every facility I use and little else.
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  12. I just don't get it then. What's the point? @askleonotenboom 
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  13.  @Mario-lv7wk  But it doesn’t! It just gives the same message as the other method.
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  14. If it’s unrecoverable I drill a few holes through the disc. The NSA could possibly get some of the data given a few hundred man-hours but no-one who just comes across it in the garbage is going to bother.
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  15.  @rswow  Quite. You would think that if it was that simple for Joe User to eject a USB drive it would be easy for professional coders to make "eject" actually "Eject".
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  16. Unless you use some form of journalling software most home users can DIY their backups IMHO. I do a regular manual backup on a 4-disc rotation: I have a pro-forma type of folder which contains empty folders labelled “Firefox profile”, “ Financial”, “My files” etc: just copy these on to the new disc and populate each folder by dragging the appropriate file/folders. I did use the paid version of Acronis but it did weird things and I found it was impossible to retrieve files I needed when I accidentally deleted them from the main drive - it appeared you could replace a whole drive but not pick individual items, which was useless in this case.
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  17. I take it then, Leo, that the sledgehammer isn’t your recommended first option? Second? Last?
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  18. Is this why Thunderbird has recently become impossible to understand? A vast line of headings now appears across the top of the page and it’s impossible to get rid of it to go back to the folders down the left side on which you click to show inbox, various email boxes, drafts etc contents. I’m getting close to abandoning Thunderbird after decades of use - I’m fed up with programs changing fundamentally all the time for no good reason.
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  19. Good take, Leo. I have five spinners plugged into usb slots for backups in rotation. Their power supplies are all plugged into a switched multi plug adapter and I just switch the power on to the next disc as required. I figure that the possible extra wear due to the occasional start/stopcycle is probably less than keeping a disc powered up continuously.
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  20. My comfuser has for a long time been unable to run the latest update - I think because the recovery partition is too small. I keep being told that a patch will fix this but it’s never there. I don’t know enough to play around making it bigger. Another thing: if I run the defender offline scan it finishes but never tells me anything regarding the result! It might have not run - or might have found something: who knows?
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  21. “Use a password manager” Well, yes. But most banks, for example, say that if you write your password down or keep your password on a computer you are violating their policy so……….
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  22. Thank you, Leo: my VIPRE security firewall is blocking every website and I can’t see where the problem is. The firewall has all sorts of settings and the labels are ambiguous.
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  23. Paranoia is an essential part of security in any field. That’s just common sense.
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  24. Several years ago my bank - Barclays, as it happens - offered its customers free Kaspersky AV and for years I used it despite faint doubts. Some time ago I deleted it. Now that Russia under the boot of Putin has proved beyond any doubt just what a savage, immoral and dangerous animal it is I am glad I did. If innocent I am sorry for Kaspersky but that’s part of living in a kleptocractic dictatorship.
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  25. I might have posted this video myself!
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  26. I guess that’s “boot from the floppy disk”?
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  27. I always check the “s” part of the URL and look at the security certificate, but it’s so complex a subject I don’t know if the certificate is actually valid for the site. Firefox for example flags bitdefender certificates whereas Chrome doesn’t. Which is correct - an IT specialist would know but I’m 80-odd and haven’t the skill.
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  28. The latitude financial service credit card has the following - obvious and sensible - message on its website: >> If you received an unexpected message from Latitude, you can ignore it and delete it from your device. Remember – don't click on any links or respond with personal information if you receive an unexpected message. If you responded to a suspicious email or text message, please contact Latitude immediately.<< When I received an email from an address that didn’t look anything like Latitude which said that they had a letter for me and to “please click on this link” I obviously did not such thing. Later I called them and after the usual 40 minute wait got an agent who said the email was genuine. This sort of security naivety from institutions would be horrifying except that it happens all the time: it’s the “do as I say, not as I do” syndrome and banks suffer most of all!
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  29. No, you have another set of frustrations! I’ve done that many times.
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  30.  @askleonotenboom How - I use Thunderbird which seems to have been corrupted by this nonsense?
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  31. When you start the os this way will the local account be an admin account?
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  32.  @askleonotenboom  Thanks Leo, from Australia. Watch all your helpful videos. Regards.
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  33. You keep saying THE recycle bin - does this mean that if you delete files from a USB stick plugged in, for example, it goes into the C drive recycle bin or is there a hidden one on the USB stick?
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  34. How does 2 FA work then with an app like Thunderbird? I never use webmail, Thunderbird gets all my mail and presumably Google won’t send it if I’ve enabled 2 FA……
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  35.  @askleonotenboom  Thanks!
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  36. Remember that if you use a backup program, if your comfuser goes belly-up you will probably lose that program: getting everything back on a new machine can be complicated. After using several bought and free backup programs I just sit down on a regular schedule and copy my data, Firefox and Thunderbird profiles and the like to a hard disk. Using a pro forma set of empty folders it only takes a couple of minutes to start going and the data is immediately available - which wasn’t the case in several of the programs I bought.
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  37. As soon as you said “secret word” I knew what it would be! For years I’ve shifted the profiles from one comfuser to another and also after doing the odd Windows reinstall.(don’t ask….) I frankly think my way is easier - just open the profile folder in the new version, delete the contents and copy from the old. Keeping the random profile folder title makes the program just accept the new contents as valid regardless of its contents. Done this dozens of times and as soon as the new Thunderbird runs it just updates all the recent emails as if it was on the old system. The only question I have is can I do this from W10/11 to linux - are there corresponding folders in Linux?
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  38. Just one note about my method - make sure both the new and old TBs are the same version first - update the old if necessary because sometimes the newer versions seem to work differently. As a last resort just re-do your email accounts in the new version and it will download the emails anyway and copy the local folder over (because that’s held on the computer.)
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  39. Another goodie, Leo! Certainly, an emailed code is quite iffy. I received a message from NORD VPN saying that their scanning had shown my gmail account had been hacked from ** website. If true -and who knows? - potentially a large number of sites’ 2f have been compromised. Additionally, and as you said, time i of the essence: my retirement community’s internet email takes anything up to 10 mins to show emails which often means you are disconnected before you can reply with a code. Most of my sensitive accounts use gizmos or the G authenticator which all work well.
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  40. I’ve used Recuva several times over the years - even on formatted drives - and it’s amazing what it finds. Sometimes it takes quite a bit of selecting individual files from the list of ones it brings up but it’s well worth trying.
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  41.  @askleonotenboom  Leo - test yes - but how? Testing it would presumably wipe the OS on C and reinstall Windows - so if the test demonstrated the recovery drive was corrupt you’d have neither the OS nor the recovery drive useable!
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  42. Reply to wrong person!  @askleonotenboom 
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  43. All those little changes that irritate me such as having ti go through several menus instead of having an operation available with one right-click, the tiny little thin scroll bar, not being able to change the title bar colour of the focus window, having to use a program to make it look like W7 etc etc. all unnecessary “upgrades” that aren’t.
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  44. I do this all the time with both Firefox and Thunderbird, when transferring from my desktop to my laptop. Just drill down to the profiles folder and delete the contents (actually, make a copy of the profile first and leave it in there as xxxxxxxx.copy - it will be ignored but just in case you make a boo-boo. Just copy the contents from the “master” machine into the profile folder, keeping the folder name untouched on the “slave” computer otherwise the program can’t find it. Next time you fire up the “slave” computer all your settings and emails will be the same as on the “master. The only proviso is to make sure both computers’ Thunderbirds are the same version - sometimes if they’re not the slave Thunderbird won’t work!
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  45. I’ve been using CrapCleaner for years and never had any of the issues with it that some people warn you of. One or two runs of the registry cleaner every week or two - but I do back up the registry first!
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  46. I’ve been using TB for years. The “Local account(s) is/are very useful because they are kept on the comfuser: you can have all sorts of folders in it/them which contain kept emails, medical, car emails - you name it. One thing that’s happened recently is that a new bar has appeared across the top with innumerable email headers all of which appear to be various replies in a forum I use - very irritating.
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  47. But do I find the QR or text code if I already have my authenticator app set on my phone to do what you suggest, ie keep a copy as a-backup?
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  48. I @dfs-comedy  I've got the Google authenticator and if it"s got a way of doing that it's well hidden!
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  49.  @askleonotenboom  I don't get it: isn't the suggestion that one has a copy of the actual app settings? I see no way of copying these in the Google app so if I lose my phone (actually unlikely since I rarely carry it, but however!) I'v got no way of retrieving the use of it on another phone.
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  50.  @dfs-comedy  My Google app doesn't allow that - only to transfer via a QR pic to another phone. Since if the phone is lost........
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