Windows feature edition 21H1 for Windows 10 is going to have its last security patch on June 13th, 2023. At this point, all Windows 10 users should switch to Windows 10 22H2 (2022 second half), or move to Windows 11. Need help? I’ve placed instructions in the May 2023 PC Updater News, available free for download or delivery at https://startupware.com/newsletter.

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Mark that date. Tuesday, October 14, 2025. It’s the second Tuesday of the month, so it’s a Windows patch Tuesday, and it will be the last Patch Tuesday for a whole set of Microsoft products. This list is probably going to grow:

• Windows 10 Home and Pro. The last feature update was 22H2.
• Windows 10 Enterprise and Education
• Office 2016
• OneNote 2016
• Office 2019
• Windows Defender for Windows 10
• Skype for Business 2019
• Exchange Server 2019

Also check the Windows end of Support Calendar for a list by year, of when the patches end.

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There’s some nasty malware showing up in inboxes right now, disguised as fake receipts and documents, or delivered on web sites from a very fake ‘You must update your… ‘ message. While these have always been a major source of computer attacks, the current batch deserves special prevention and backups. CryptoWall 2.0, CryptoLocker, and other ransomware arrive quietly, encrypt all your documents in the background, and then place a ransom notice on your screen, asking for payment in Bitcoins or an untraceable money order. The encryption is not breakable on most variations of this ransomware; the best defenses are to never work with an administrator account (use ‘standard’ or ‘limited’), and to backup your entire computer on a schedule, and unplug the backup device between backups–these programs encrypt every document they can see, even on backup drives and networks.

We have more information on prevention, either do-it-yourself or as a service, here. And we can help with the cleanup, in central Maryland.

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The phone rings, I answer, and manage to start recording right after. The standard LIES are that they’re from Microsoft, and are in the US, and can see viruses in your computer, and can clean them up, and can be trusted, and, on and on–all wrong. The skill level of whoever wrote the script is high enough that they do point to screens that do show information that is sufficiently technical that it looks scary. They take you to the ‘event log’–that’s a list of routine stuff. Not scary unless the computer is already spitting sparks out the front.

Don’t try this at home. The result of letting these guys actually play in your PC are not pretty for your computer or your credit card. When you get this phone call, just hang up.

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With all the work that webmasters put into responsive designs, for web sites that stay readable at every size, there are just so many that aren’t readable–they’re scrolling off the sides, or the bottom, or the text is too small. The fix for that is the ZOOM feature in all the major browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. Here’s a reminder guide of how to zoom in (make everything bigger), zoom out (smaller), or just put browser magnification back the way the webmaster intended it to be (reset).

Here are the zoom settings again:

• Control Plus (hold down Control, tap +) to zoom IN.
• Control Minus to zoom OUT.
• Control Zero to reset zoom.

And while using Control with the top row of keys is easy to remember, these keyboard shortcuts also work on the numeric keypad, as long as you include the ‘Control’.

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Today’s mail includes a new variation of an existing scam. A simple message, apparently coming from your own email server, reporting the arrival of a fax message. Note that it’s all super-generic; the from address is fax@ (your email domain here), and the return address is (probably random) blopez27@ (your email domain here). The download link is through Google’s goo.gl link shortening service, but other domain shorteners are likely also in use–note the reference to Dropbox in the email–OOPS!

Don’t Do What I Did–I Am A Professional

OK, I followed the link. it led to a ZIP file, and I downloaded it. Again, don’t try this at home.
Then I opened the file. It contains one file, ‘Document-2816409172.scr’. I did NOT open that file.

A fax would typically be an image file, probably PNG or TIF or JPG format. It will not be inside a ZIP, because ZIP files compress or bundle other files, and image files are already compressed as much as they can be, so zipping them makes them slightly larger–there’s no logical reason to zip a fax image.

An SCR file is a Windows screen saver, and it can contain scripting and program code. It’s potentially very dangerous.

So, for those of you who still use 20th-Century image transmission technology, er, faxes, be advised of these facts:

• Email services won’t receive faxes for you.
• Fax services are branded with the name of the service provider that you pay a monthly fee to, or on corporate networks, much more information than just the domain name from your email address.
• If you haven’t paid for a fax phone number through a paid service, any fax that arrives is anything but a fax.

OK, all of this should be obvious, but if no one is falling for the scam, then why haven’t the senders moved on to the next evil idea?
 

The post Infectious Fax? No, It’s a Dangerous Download appeared first on Science Translations.

Computers draw power when turned off, to keep the clock running. Notebooks pull power for battery charging, all the time. Monitors have fancy ‘soft switches’, which electronically sense a finger press. Pure mechanical switches will actually cut power, but most electronics don’t have them. The front switch on a tower is what we call a ‘momentary contact, single-pole’ switch–it just sends a signal to the mainboard to turn on or off, and doesn’t isolate anything. So turning off a computer isn’t enough. You have to disconnect it from power completely.

How? Quickest way is to flip the small rocker switch on the surge suppressor strip; that should take care of everything that connects to the computer at once. For notebooks, unplug the charger, it’s time to go cord-free.

Same thing applies to all electronics, not just computers. Anything that uses a remote control is connected to AC power, and turned on, at least at a low-power level–unplug it before the lightning reaches your area.

And finally: Remember to also unplug the network cable–half the lightning strike repairs I fix here in Maryland are from a lightning strike at the power pole carrying the Internet into the router, which continues into the network and burns out computers.

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Computers are slow for many reasons:

1. Malware, Adware, and PUPs taking up background cycles on work for their owners, not for you.
2. Hard drive hasn’t been defragmented in, well, ever.
3. Autostarts are cluttered with advertising crapware from the computer manufacturer, some as ads, some as phone-home junk.
4. Not enough memory. Windows 7, 64-bit, requires 2 Gb of memory, and speeds up with 4 Gb. 32-bit installs can manage with 1 Gb, but still benefit from more memory. Windows 8.1 has similar needs.
5. The antivirus is a suite product, with far too many autoplay entries, and it has taken over your notebook like the Borg on a mission. Switch to a non-suite AV.
6. The installed hard drive is running at 5400 RPM. By comparison, most desktop drives run at 7200 RPM.

So, first, deal with any cleanups and updates needed. Then consider why a notebook should be running a storage device with spinning disks and motors, based on a cross between a photograph record and something akin to 8-track tapes and wire recorders. These spinning disks are technology from the early 1970s, known as Winchester Drives back then. Yes, they’re reliable if you don’t move them. But motors and moving parts don’t really work all that well in a travel notebook.

Why an SSD?

A solid state drive has no moving parts, just memory chips, and can survive a drop better than the notebook it’s installed in. A solid-state drive is many times faster than a spinning drive. An SSD uses less power than a hard drive, so battery runtime is significantly improved. All that is the good side.

And the bad side? Well, until recently, cost and reliability. As of now, solid-state drives are very reasonably-priced in the smaller sizes, up to 250 Gb, and that size works well for nearly all notebook owners. Reliability is approaching that of spinning hard drives, and many SSD’s have 5-year warranties, compared with 1 or 3-year warranties for mechanical hard drives, or drive warranties that match the notebook warranty on every drive installed by a notebook manufacturer. As always, use an external drive for backups, both as full-drive images and as uncompressed document files.

Yes, we’re installing SSD’s as upgrades to notebooks here at Science Translations, if you’re anywhere near Carroll County, Maryland, including Howard and Baltimore Counties. Call us at 410-871-2877, and we can tell you if it’s worthwhile for your notebook. We’ll ask for the computer model number, and how much space is used on the current drive, and can help find that information.

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Looking for a printer for a home office? The low end of printers has changed, and how we use our computers has changed. How we connect to our computers should change, too.

There was a time when if you needed a printer, you bought it and hooked it up to the printer port. AKA the LPT1 port, the Centronics connector, or the DB25 cable end. All that is gone. The choices now are: USB, wireless, and network. Because all the printer companies are marketing geniuses, they manage to sell network printers for more than wireless printers. Keep in mind that a wireless printer is a network printer with a network radio added; they have more components than a network printer, and if not for economies of scale, would be expected to cost more than a network printer. They don’t, when compared to other printers of similar printing speed and options. And most wireless printers also have a wired network connection for an ethernet cable that will connect back to your router or network.

Can I share my printer?

Back a decade or so, if you wanted to share a printer among multiple computers, I would set up printer sharing from inside Windows. That lets you use a printer connected to some other computer. I don’t do that now, because 1) that host computer must be turned on, and 2) cross-platform printer sharing in Windows doesn’t work. Sharing between Windows 7 and XP is more broken than not, and sharing isn’t a good option when printing from non-Windows gadgets.

The easy solution is a network or wireless printer. It allows printing from every device on the network without having to leave some other computer turned on, avoids a lot of messy sharing setups, and it just works more reliably than sharing through Windows. The setup is done by running the manufacturer’s setup program from each computer, so it’s usually something that a home user can manage without having to call for tech support.

So Should You Buy a Network Printer?

Yes. But both ‘network’ and ‘wireless’ printers are network printers. If you buy a printer and connect it to your router, and it’s not wireless, you can still print to it wirelessly from any device on your network that doesn’t need a network cable. And vice versa–a wireless printer is available to your wired computers.

So either wireless or network printers are a good choice now; avoid ‘USB-only’ printers. For wireless, check to see if the printer has a network jack, sometimes called a ‘RJ45’ connection; that gives you the extra option of connecting to the router with a cable; wired connections are easier to setup, and less likely to break later on as the printer and router age.

The best brand names, as I write this, for good low-end printers that are wireless, are Brother and Epson.

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