Dennis Faas

Infopackets Reader Neil S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am trying to access a mapped network drive via an administrative command prompt in Windows 10, but I keep receiving the error that 'The system cannot find the drive specified.' The strange thing is ... that if I run a regular command prompt, I can access the mapped network drive. I am trying to write a batch script to perform maintenance on the network drive, and I need administrative access to be able to do it. Can you help? " My response: I have run into this problem a number of times. There are two ways to get around this issue: one is to try ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Marion L. writes: " Dear Dennis, I've been using my Yahoo email with Windows Mail for quite a while, but now it keeps telling me 'Your Yahoo account settings are out of date' near the top of the screen. The options 'Fix Account' ... or 'Dismiss' don't work. If I click 'Fix Account' it says 'Something went wrong. We're sorry but we weren't able to do that. Error code: 80070422'. I cannot send or receive emails using my Yahoo account. Can you please help? " My response: As I mentioned in last week's post, the ' Your account settings are out of date ' is a very generic error ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Marion L. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am using Windows Mail with Windows 10, and all the sudden I have been getting an error that says 'Your Outlook account settings are out of date' near the top of the screen. I have the option to ... 'Fix Account' or 'Dismiss'. If I click the 'Dismiss' option, I can't receive any emails, then within a few minutes I'll receive the same error that 'Your Outlook account settings are out of date'. If I click 'Fix Account' it tells me 'Something went wrong. We're sorry, but we weren't able to do that', and it gives me an error code 0x80070003. I have ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Judy G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I'm running Windows 7. Throughout the day, I often receive a message from Windows that says: 'Windows has detected your computer's performance is slow ... To improve performance, try changing the ... color scheme to Windows 7 Basic.' I click the option to 'Keep the current color scheme, and don't show this message again', but the error message 'Windows has detected your computer's performance is slow...' returns about 5 minutes later. I don't understand why this message appears, and I can't stop it from reappearing! It's incredibly annoying! Can ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Steve F. writes: " Dear Dennis, I will be upgrading my computer to the new AMD Ryzen 1700 CPU (which has 8 cores and 16 threads!) at a fraction of the price of Intel CPUs. I have searched online but I can't seem to find the answer ... - can you please tell me: after I install the new motherboard and CPU, can I continue to use my existing Windows installation or do I need to install Windows again? Also is my Windows 10 license still valid or do I need to purchase Windows 10 for my new motherboard and CPU? " My response: Short answer: It depends on the type of Windows you own and ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Steve P. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am trying to convert my Macrium Reflect disk image backup into a virtual machine by using the 'Macrium ImgtoVHD' utility. The problem is that ImgtoVHD aborts every time, telling me ' The vhd file ... could not be created or written to '. The backup I'm trying to convert is from an old machine which died and I really need to get this working so I can export data from a program. Can you please help? " My response: I have had this problem before and the solution (in a nutshell) is to create a blank virtual machine, then restore the backup onto the ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Rachel P. writes: " Dear Dennis, As per your recommendation, I have installed Malwarebytes Antimalware Free on my system and I do a full system scan every 30 days or so. Today I tried to launch Malwarebytes Antimalware Free ... ("MBAM") and it gives me an error, stating that it is 'Unable to start' and 'Unable to connect to service' , with an option to click 'OK' and nothing else. I don't know how to fix this. Can you please help? " My response: I have run across this issue a few times with my clients, but resolving it is not always the same. I asked Rachel if she would like me ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Paolo' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a very strange problem. Whenever I drag my browser window on my Dell laptop, I see 2 blue rectangles popping up near the top of the screen (pic). At first I thought this was a Windows 10 ... feature but I have searched Google for the 'dell 2 blue rectangles popup' problem but I cannot seem to find a solution. I have no idea how to shut this feature off but it is very, very annoying. Can you please help? " My response: I have never had this problem before, so I asked Paolo if he would like me to connect to his system to have a closer look ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Rebecca' writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently purchased a tablet with Windows 10 and I have Windows Defender running. My question is whether I need to install any other protection to stop people (hackers) from being able to steal my ... bank details, etc. My dad was recently a victim of this but I don't know how to protect myself. How can I keep my PC secure in 2017? Thank you in advance! " My response: I have been asked this question no less than 100 times in the last 16 years I've been writing articles online - but the truth of the matter is that the answer changes slightly as ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Phoebe A. writes: " Dear Dennis, Today I tried to free up some space on my C drive by moving files over to my external hard drive, but Windows gave me an error message, stating that 'Error during copy: the request could not be ... performed because of an I/O device error'. I've also tried using 'TeraCopy' to copy files over, but it keeps freezing on the same files. Can you help? " My response: If you receive an error that says "the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error" when trying to copy or move a file, that usually (but not always) indicates bad ... (view more)