Dennis Faas

Infopackets Reader Peter M. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a very strange issue. I recently put together a new computer build and installed Windows 10. Everything was working fine for the past month or so, then all the sudden, Windows 10 won't boot ... into the login screen - it simply freezes at the swirling dots. Surprisingly, I can remote desktop into the problematic machine from another, but the system stability doesn't last and eventually it freezes up on me. I suspect I have a hardware problem - perhaps the video card. I've managed to run 'msconfig' and specified Safe Mode with Networking, ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam R. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am running Windows 10 and I have installed RDP Wrapper (per your previous article). This allows more than one person to use the same Windows computer via remote desktop - this is very convenient if ... you have a 'server' computer and want to use it for multiple purposes. I have a question: I would like to be able to hide the remote desktop user accounts I want to use on the server from being displayed on the Windows 10 login screen. Do you know how I can do this? " My response: It is possible to hide user accounts from the Windows 7, 8 and 10 ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam T. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently upgraded my motherboard and CPU to the Intel Core i7 7700k processor which is very fast! I loaded Windows 7 onto the machine and everything was working great - that is, until I went to ... check for Windows Updates and I received the error: ' Unsupported Hardware / Your PC uses a processor that is designed for the latest version of Windows. Because the processor is not supported together with the Windows version that you are currently using, your system will miss important security updates.' Is there any way to prevent this 'unsupported ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Steve P. writes: " Dear Dennis, The company I work for is renting a dedicated Linux web server, which runs CentOS 6.5 and PHPList to manage their mailing list. Recently we were faced with a power outage on the server which then ... caused corruption in the PHPList database. When I look at mysqld.log I see a lot of error messages that 'mysqld: Table './phplist/phplist_usermessage' is marked as crashed and should be repaired'. I checked the database drive for errors using 'e2fsck -n /dev/sdb1' and am getting an error message that '/dev/sdb1: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Vema H. writes: " Dear Dennis I just upgraded to Windows 10 and one thing that really bothers me is the taskbar thumbnail previews. For example, if I place my mouse over top of a task on the taskbar, a preview will show up. The ... problem is that most of the time I don't mean to do this, so part of the screen is being taken away by some task preview that I don't care about. Is there any way to disable the taskbar thumbnail previews? It's driving me nuts! " My response: I completely agree with you - I have never had any use for this feature which I believe started some time ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Samir R. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently did a clean install of Windows 10 on my machine and now my numlock on the keyboard keeps shutting off during bootup, even though I have numlock enabled in the computer's BIOS. When I was ... running Windows 8 (which I later upgraded to Windows 10), I did a registry hack to keep the numlock enabled after Windows is loaded. Can you help? " My response: I've had this issue before. I had to do a bit of digging and testing to make sure the registry hack you're referring to is compatible with Windows 10, but I managed to find the answer. I' ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Roger' writes: " Dear Dennis, I am using Windows 10 and my email client is Outlook 2010. Last week my computer updated itself using Windows Updates, and ever since then I can't click links in my emails in Outlook. Every time I ... try to click a link, I get an error message that says 'This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer.' I have searched Google on how to fix this error but I can't seem to figure it out. Can you help? " My response: I don't use Outlook so I asked Roger if he would like me to connect to his system using my remote ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Shelly T. writes: " Dear Dennis, I'm trying to uninstall Winzip, but it failed during the uninstall. Now there doesn't seem to be any way to uninstall this annoying program! When I searched Google, I came across instructions on ... Winzip's website that says in order to uninstall Winzip, go to Control Panel -> Programs and Features and uninstall from there. The problem is that Winzip isn't listed anywhere - and yet, the program remains on my computer. For example, I've installed 7zip (after attempting to uninstall Winzip), and had even had 7zip registered to open my .ZIP ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader George F. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just purchased a new AMD Ryzen 1700 CPU, motherboard, and RAM for my computer - wow what a speed difference! Before I installed the new hardware I backed up all my data using Macrium Reflect. I ... would like to move Firefox to my new computer. I just read your article about moving Thunderbird to a new computer and was wondering if the steps are the same? " My response: Moving a Firefox user profile over to a new computer (or new user) is almost identical to moving over a user profile in Thunderbird, though the folder locations are different. ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Suzanne S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just purchased a new Windows 10 PC and I would like to move my Thunderbird emails over to my new computer and new user account. I've looked in the 'Tools' menu of Thunderbird for an 'export' ... feature of some kind - hoping to export my user data for re-import on the new machine - but, there does not appear to be such an option. Can you help? " My response: Moving Thunderbird to a new computer or user account is fairly easy to do using Thunderbird's built in "Profile Manager". All you need to do is copy the Thunderbird user data ... (view more)