Windows Tips

Have you been scammed by Informatico Experts, Inc for a fake PC support contract? You're not the only one. Infopackets Reader 'Ulrica' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have been in contact with Informatico Experts Inc ( Live PC Experts ) since last November ... and have paid them a grand total of almost $12,000 (up until recently). They claimed my PC has been hacked and have installed Firewalls and Antivirus service over the last few months. They keep calling me all the time and want to gain access to my computer. They told me my computer was being used to commit crimes and that I needed to get it fixed ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Bob S. writes: " Dear Dennis, Thanks for the article on Browser Cryptomining scams . I have a related problem. I use Firefox browser and Norton keeps telling me that I'm infected with ' JSCoinminer ' for every single web page I ... visit - for example, eBay.com, Amazon.com and even Infopackets.com! I have tried to remove the infection using Norton, Malwarebytes and also Norton's 'Power Eraser' but the infection persists. The error message reads: Norton blocked an attack by: Web Attack: JSCoinminer Website / An intrusion attempt by thrillingos.herokuapp.com was blocked ... Web ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jose B. writes: " Dear Dennis, For the past few months, my PC has tried to upgrade to Windows 10 version 1709, but each time it fails to install. Whenever I use my computer I receive a pop up message on my desktop stating that ' ... Your device needs the latest security updates . Microsoft can't install important security updates on your PC until you install the most current version of Windows 10.' When I look at my Windows Update history, it says the upgrade to version 1709 failed (repeatedly) . When I manually check for updates, it says: ' Your device is at risk because it's ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Paul P. writes: " Dear Dennis, Thanks so much for your informative website. I have read a few of your articles on OpenVPN, and set up a free VPN connection to my home PC. Now I can connect to my personal, free VPN using my Android ... smartphone when I'm away from home without having to pay for a VPN service! It works so great I decided to connect my laptop to the VPN - however I am not able to resolve machine names on my network. For example, when try to access \\home-pc using Remote Desktop, it won't work. The only way I can make it work is if I enter in the IP address of the ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Cindy' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have Windows 8.1 on my laptop which has been very, very slow. I decided to upgrade to Windows 10 hoping this would fix my problems, however I keep getting a message that ' The installation failed ... in the First_Boot phase with an error during Sysprep Operation ' (pic). I have been researching this problem for 2 days using Google, and have yet to find a fix that makes sense! Absolutely nothing I do seems to work! Can you PLEASE help? " Update 20200116 : I'm getting a lot of emails from folks asking for help on this. If you want this problem ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Tom G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am trying to send encrypted email to a friend using MS Outlook . To do so, I purchased a digital certificate from Comodo, then imported the certificate into Outlook. I could send my friend digitally ... signed messages which he could read and reply to. He could send me digitally signed and encrypted messages, which I could read and reply to. However, I could not generate an encrypted message; I could only reply to his. I could not create an encrypted message from scratch. When attempting to initiate an encrypted message, I was told ' Microsoft ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Marjie H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just received an email offer from Norton Security asking if I would like to enroll in the Norton Identity Protection. In order to do so, the form says I need to provide my social insurance ... number. The protection being offered is free, so long as I renew my Norton Antivirus subscription. From what I understand, this service includes protection against personal credit, credit cards, bank, social insurance number (SSI), etc. My question is - with all this information they are asking for, what is the possibility they could be hacked and all my ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Mbi Ent' writes: " Dear Dennis, After upgrading from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 on the C drive, I still have a partition which is viewable under 'This PC' and is labeled as the 'Recovery' partition (also known as 'the D drive'). ... As far as I understand, the D Drive contains the vendor's recovery data for my Windows 8.1 which was originally installed on my system. What I would like to know is if the recovery partition has also been upgraded to Windows 10, or if it still contains Windows 8.1 recovery data? If it is the latter, could I just delete the recovery drive? " My ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I hope you can help! I own a small business and we recently purchased a new, refurbished Server computer running Windows Server 2012 R2 DataCenter. I have set up the server as a domain controller, and ... now I'm trying to connect to the domain using my PC here at work - however, every time I try to connect, it gives me the error ' DNS name does not exist. (error code 0x0000232B RCODE_NAME_ERROR) '. Of course the error message is much longer than that. I am not a network administrator and admittedly not very knowledgeable when it comes to Windows ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Paul P. writes: " Dear Dennis, I've been using OpenVPN, coupled with Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to connect my laptop to my home PC when I'm on the road. It's worked great for a while now, however, suddenly remote ... desktop has stopped working and I can't connect to my PC anymore. The strange thing is that OpenVPN seems to complete the connection, so I am not sure why my RDP won't work any more. Can you help? " My response: I asked Paul if he would like me to connect to his laptop using my remote desktop service in order to investigate the problem further, and ... (view more)