Daiwa's Articles In Personal Computing
January 20, 2023 by Daiwa
The January 13th update to LastPass appears to be bug-ridden & has broken several things it was previously doing flawlessly on both my rigs.  Anyone else using LastPass having issues since the new version was rolled out?  There is no meaningful/useful support at LastPass - just FAQ's.
January 13, 2022 by Daiwa
There are 3 or 4 Twitter accounts that I follow via browser just for entertainment purposes.  One in particular I find particularly entertaining because his sick sense of humor is so much like mine. For a few months now, there has appeared a popup dialog on opening of the web page of each offering the opportunity to Log In or Sign Up.  A little annoying but it always had a convenient X to dismiss the dialog & go on about surfing. That was until today.  Now the dialog can...
December 28, 2021 by Daiwa
This was the subject of a reply of mine to Tatiora's October post on Windows 11 Updates that I think merits a separate thread. I've been advised by my tech support company to not install Windows 11 under any circumstances.  A major reason for that is that I (and my office network) deal with protected health information and Windows 11 is not only not HIPAA compliant but opens your computer to all kinds of background third party access.  MS has decided to go the way of Facebook and m...
December 18, 2021 by Daiwa
I have owned Acrobat 9 for 5-6 years and have used it for .pdf document manipulation at least several times a month.  Of course, Acrobat Reader DC has been around for a while now, too, and has a function that I use almost daily - Fill & Sign.  These two applications, with different features & uses, co-existed on my rigs quite happily until about 3 weeks ago. Upon launching Reader DC one day, I was greeted with a message that my version had been automatically 'upgraded' to th...
November 15, 2017 by Daiwa
Perhaps it's just me.  Within the past week, msn.com has started refusing to load the home page graphic interface when it detects an ad-blocker.  Same browser, but 2 different rigs.  Access to the graphic interface is immediately restored by disabling ad-blocking, even though the site doesn't say that's the problem, just gives a generic comment about some plugin or extension 'interfering' with msn.com. Not big whup.  MSN exists only so I can study how the other h...
February 14, 2017 by Daiwa
This is a follow-up to Brad's linked post which is locked, recommending setting the processor power on battery setting to 99%. The one thing his post didn't indicate is what the default processor power setting on battery was before he set it to 99%.  My rig has it defaulted to 50%.  My simple brain thinks setting it to 99% would increase power consumption and reduce battery life.  If the default on his Surface Pro 4 was 100%, setting it at 99% would make sense to increa...
February 9, 2017 by Daiwa
I finally transitioned to Windows10 Pro about 3 weeks ago when it came time to retire my Win7 laptop that had developed terminal constipation and display issues.  Among the many annoyances of the background/automatic update drill in Win10 is its handling of MS Office updates.  I use Word & Excel every day and I keep a bunch of documents pinned to the recent documents list in each application.  After getting them set up as I needed following the initial install, Update has remo...
July 4, 2015 by Daiwa
For reasons unknown, clicking on the "Apply" button in WB Config now opens My Cart in the Stardock Store and won't actually apply the skin.  Not only that, My Cart shows 2 items in the cart that I never put there.  This behavior has survived several reboots. Only happening on one of 3 rigs, so a re-install of WB would appear to be in order.  Only posting because it was so odd.  I'll post a follow-up after the re-install.  
February 27, 2015 by Daiwa
For other-than-AirPrint-printers requires a desktop app to print 'via', but works great.  Still can't print from within VPN sessions, but finally a solution for general printing to non-HP and network printers and it's free if you grab it now.  Not a new app, but newly free (temporarily) courtesy of Apple.
June 19, 2014 by Daiwa
Logged on to my laptop this afternoon and a popup appeared in the lower right corner of the desktop labeled "Magic Barrage". Text below it was "Get Gift" "Enjoy Game" "Win Confidence" And a button labeled "Play Now". Which of course I'm not clicking.   Anyone know what this is and what process it might be associated with?  Nothing in Task Manager seems to match it.  MalwareBytes didn't identify a problem. Thanks
March 3, 2014 by Daiwa
I've used Smart Defrag since version 1 and been extremely pleased with it.  And IObit seemed like a solid outfit, on a par in my mind with Piriform.  The app has been trouble-free and efficient, doing exactly as advertised.  One of the better free apps out there in my experience.  The installer would offer to install the IObit Toolbar, but it was easy to decline - no muss, no fuss. Things have change drastically with Smart Defrag 3.  After multiple installs, ...
June 23, 2012 by Daiwa
I've been having a problem with one of my Win7 64b rigs (Vostro 360 All-in-One) periodically (every couple of weeks or so) running out of resources (I get a message to that effect) &/or simply crashing with the screen going black, at which point the system will be very unstable/unresponsive to mouse/keyboard input if it will respond or not come back up at all.  Usually I have no choice but to power the machine off & restart.  Sometimes I can get to TaskManager and initiate ...
February 4, 2012 by Daiwa
I have a ~5 year old Fujitsu laptop which, if memory serves, came with XP SP1 OEM, since updated to SP3 & kept up to date with all the security updates. I've been trying to figuring out a problem with it being very slow, taking a long time to open some apps and running slow within apps. The HD is less than 50% full.  I've done the usual stuff (CCleaner, etc.) to remove temp files and spiff the reg, multiple times, without any real change.  Ran MalwareBytes on it from ...
August 21, 2011 by Daiwa
Had a problem with installation of the first of the .net updates last month and after repeated failed attempts to get it to install, and after several other updates also failed subsequently, I decided to try MS's free tech support for security issues.  We got all the failed updates to install manually except for the two .net updates.  The first, the one that originally first failed, would hang at about 50% on the progress bar and just sit there. When I attempted to do the update...
July 20, 2011 by Daiwa
Palemoon's website has been offline for several days now ('The connection has timed out' error message).  Anyone know what's up with them?