Table of contents for Christmas 2019 in Windows Help & Advice

Microsoft Edge is changing. As reported in these pages previously, Microsoft’s oft-maligned web browser is getting a fresh lick of paint on the outside and a complete mechanical rewrite underneath. This means the technology borrowed from Internet Explorer, which until now has dealt with the difficult task of displaying web pages, is being removed in favour of the Chromium engine with powers Google’s Chrome. That’s a very significant update – the browser itself won’t look or feel particularly different in use, but the move to Chromium will help Edge’s updates more frequently, by more people, and means Microsoft’s own engineers can focus on building a better browser. It also means that those building the web have an easier time, given that they have one less browser technology to build for.…

Your first steps with your new PC will vary slightly according to the route you’ve gone down. If you’ve purchased a laptop or off-the-shelf desktop PC then you’ll find Windows 10 will be installed, but paused at the initial setup process. If you’ve built your own PC and purchased your own copy of Windows, then obviously you’ll need to install that from scratch – should you need any help, follow our reinstall guide from the November 2019 issue. Ready, get set… After switching on your new computer, you should be taken through the Windows 10 post-setup process where you’ll probably be asked to confirm your country and region, connect to your Wi-Fi network and sign into Windows using your Microsoft Account. If you’re coming from Windows 7 this may require…

If you simply want to transfer everything (possible) across from old PC to new, and aren’t worried about paying for the privilege, then take a look at EaseUS Todo PCTrans (www.easeus.com/free-pc-transfer-software/). This program makes it easy to transfer across programs, settings and files from old PC to new – you can transfer directly via your network or create an image file on your old PC that is subsequently transferred across and restored to your new computer. To transfer this dats over your local network, download and install the program on both machines, then choose PC to PC on either machine, select your other PC and enter your user password. Choose which direction the transfer should take, then wait for the files, setting and data to be analysed. Finally, choose what…

Your new PC is ready and raring to go: your programs, settings and files have been safely transferred across and your old PC’s fate has been decided (the step-by-step guide reveals what to do if you plan to pass it on or dispose of it). But before you take full advantage of that extra speed and power, it’s time to make sure your new PC is at least as secure as your old one was. Start by setting up your backups if you haven’t yet done so – both File History and the old Windows 7 backup tools are accessible in Windows 10 via Start > Settings > Update & Security > Backup. File History is more flexible – it stores more versions of your files for example – and…

Scribus outsources its imaging editing to GIMP, so we may as well use it for transparency. First, make sure your image has a solid background colour that can be easily differentiated by the computer from the rest of the image. White is good, but green is a common choice for its use in digital effects. Open your image in GIMP, and from the main menu choose Colours>Colour to Alpha, then click OK. A new window will appear with an image preview showing whatever GIMP has autodetected. If you don’t have the option to choose Colour to Alpha, change the image to RGB mode using Image>Mode>RGB and repeat. It will attempt to detect everything automatically and separate the object from the background. If it can’t, you’ll need to use the colour…

The PC. The personal computer. The IBM-compatible. Whatever you want to call it, somehow this machine has maintained a dominant presence for nearly four decades. If you try to launch a program from the ’80s today, you have a good chance of getting it to launch – your PC has backward compatibility going right back to the ’70s, enabling you to run pieces of history as though they were from yesterday. In fact, your computer is brimming with heritage, from the way your motherboard is laid out to the size of your drive bays to the layout of your keyboard. Despite the weight of all of this lineage, we have an extraordinary range of devices that somehow get lumped under the category ‘PC.’ Go back to the early ’80s, and…

Hardware LAPTOP FAN TOO LOUD Q Yesterday, I left my laptop running while on charge while I went for dinner. When I came back around 90 minutes later its fan was running extremely fast and loud, while the bottom of the laptop was very hot. I shut down my PC, and today it’s working fine. Is it due to overcharging? Fros Vonex Nick O’s solution The fan will run hard and the laptop feel hot whenever it’s running under load – in other words, some intensive process in running in the background. Should the problem reappear, open Task Manager and use the Processes tab to review the CPU and Memory scores – if either is over 50% then click the column header to see which app or process is responsible for…

The act of reinstalling Windows 10 can feel daunting. Never fear: we’re going to step you through the entire process from booting from your Windows installation media to running carefully through the post-install setup options. If you’ve not yet done so, visit www.microsoft.com/en-gb/ software-download/windows10 and click Download tool now to download and run the Media Creation Tool. Insert a blank DVD, or plug in an unused USB flash drive (8GB or larger). After launching the tool, accept the licence terms, then choose Create installation media… and follow the prompts (use recommended options when asked) to create your flash drive or generate an ISO file. If you choose the ISO file option, click Open DVD burner at the end to write it to your blank DVD. Once your installation media has…

If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating new installation media for any version of Windows 10 past the Creators Update, you’ll probably feel a bit silly when you discover that Microsoft tucked a ‘fresh start’ option into its later Win 10 editions. Using it takes any Windows 10 installation back to the basics of a Windows install, even removing any preinstalled software your manufacturer might have included, and stripping away all your drivers – and it doesn’t require any special media. It’s basically a clean install without you having to directly perform the actions of reinstallation. You’ll find it in a corner of Windows Defender Security Centre, aka Windows Security – select Device performance and & health, then Additional info, before clicking Get started to begin. Again, make sure…

We’re at the point in the PC’s evolution where the overheads of virtualisation are proportionately so small, and the technology enabling it so plentiful, that running an everyday OS in a virtual machine is entirely reasonable. You obviously won’t get 100 percent of bare metal performance from a virtualised instance of Windows 10, but it has a host of advantages. When you’ve got a system running just as you like it, you can take a snapshot, then quickly return to it at any point in the future. You can whip up a fresh copy of Windows in minutes, without any risk to your existing install. You can fire up other operating systems, and run them simultaneously on the same machine. If you’re the kind of person who loves to settle…

From £999 | $1,285 www.microsoft.com The 15-inch Surface Laptop 3 marks the unprecedented debut of AMD silicon within a flagship laptop, as well as a surprisingly deep collaboration between the chip maker and Microsoft resulting in the AMD Ryzen Surface Edition. That alone should be exciting. Unfortunately, there isn’t much more to be excited about with the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3. This makes it a difficult laptop to recommend beyond a very specific group of people: those that want a large screen with largely unmatched battery life. The all-aluminium laptop feels very light for its size, weighing just 1.54kg and measuring 339.5 x 224 x 14.69mm. That makes it both lighter and thinner than the 15-inch MacBook Pro. That’s no small feat. However, it’s rather obvious how and why this…

£200 | $250 www.xerox.com By Xerox’s standards, this entry-level mono laser printer is a modest affair, offering print, scan, copy and fax in a compact and cost-effective design. However, it manages to stand out by adding a tilting colour touchscreen for easier operation and claiming a print speed that leaves the competition behind. At around £203, it is priced to appeal to the small business looking for a device that can handle a wide variety of tasks and serve a small work group of one to five people. Xerox recommends an average output of 3,000 pages per month, with a maximum of 30,000 pages. It comes with enough toner for 1,500 monochrome pages and has a fairly low per page print cost of around 2.2 pence per page. The B215…

Alexa can control your smart home and help you access information When Windows 10 launched, Cortana – Microsoft’s digital assistant – was an integral part of its search function. Not so much any more. Cortana’s adoption has been light at best, and many people switch it off entirely, to the point that Microsoft has now unbundled the two functions making Cortana an entirely optional component. But Cortana is, as you may already know, not the only smart assistant out there: Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant are both great, and they can give you control of your smart home accessories as well as helping you access information more quickly. Getting started with Alexa is an easy one – you’ll find the Alexa app on Microsoft’s store. You don’t need to own…

Motorola Razr 2019 €1,599 (approx £1,360) SIM-free motorola.com Anyone who’s been watching smartphones get gradually bigger and bigger over the last five years or so, and wished for a return to the early 2000s when phones folded over and fitted in your pocket, should take note of Motorola’s newest, or oldest, announcement. Rather than taking the Samsung approach to foldable phones, and creating something that still manages to be large even when folded down small, Moto has raided its own vaults and created a new version of 2004’s iconic – yes, really – Motorola Razr. The diminutive phone, which will be available on EE in the UK but currently doesn’t have a confirmed release date (pre-orders begin in December), features a small screen on the outside of the shell for…

If you’ve built your own PC, you may need to install drivers yourself from various sources – start with your motherboard’s manufacturer. Look out too for related utilities – for example, MSI Live Update for MSI motherboards – that can simplify the sourcing of drivers (and subsequent updates) for you. Repeat for other core components – including your graphics card – before moving on to your peripherals like your printer or game controller. Struggling to find them all? Consider installing Driver Booster 6 (www.iobit.com/en/driver-booster.php) to seek out drivers across your entire system, including updates not normally detected by Windows Update.…

When transferring programs and settings using CloneApp you may have already transferred some of your data too – specifically files stored in supported cloud-based folders like OneDrive and Dropbox. Transferring them this way before setting up your cloud sync accounts is actually a good idea – it’s quicker (and uses less internet bandwidth) for your new PC’s installation to compare all the files you’ve copied across with the copies in the cloud rather than download a fresh copy of them all to your PC, which could literally take days if you’ve hundreds of gigabytes to transfer. Even if your cloud provider isn’t supported, don’t rush to install and sync just yet. You can transfer those – and other files – using several alternative methods, but first stop for a moment…

Contrary to popular belief, the IBM PC was not the first personal computer, nor was it the first desktop computer by IBM. Microcomputers existed long before “the PC,” and as for IBM itself, desktop computers had already been developed, though in very different forms to the PC we know now. In 1973, IBM developed a prototype computer called SCAMP, which emulated an IBM 1130 minicomputer in a ‘portable’ (we use the term loosely) boxed form factor, with a small monitor and keyboard built in. Perhaps of most interest in relation to the 5150 Personal Computer is 1975’s IBM PC 5100. Before you start jumping up and down, here the ‘PC’ actually stands for Portable Computer. This was similar to the SCAMP, but designed for mass manufacture, using an IBM PALM…

In February 2012, the original Raspberry Pi was released, taking the industry by storm with a new form factor, often referred to as a single board computer (SBC). Made in Britain from a combination of mobile phone and desktop parts, the Pi is barely larger than a credit card, for £35. The Pi was intended to get kids programming after the Raspberry Pi Foundation recognised a national decrease in programming skills, but it became more popular with hobby builders and the embedded computing industry. Unfortunately for PC giants, the Pi ran Linux on an ARM CPU instead of Windows on x86. Due to its popularity, Microsoft ported Windows to the system a few years later, and manufacturers started producing rival machines. For the ARM crowd, there are products like the…

Reinstalling Windows 10 is a fairly trivial task. Put in the right media, boot from it, grind away the old OS, and replace it with the pristine bits of a shiny new install. This can be a painless, if time-consuming, procedure that leaves you with a like-new PC, or perhaps an even better one if you were unlucky enough to buy a PC burdened with preinstalled trashware. Before you do this, make sure you’ve checked off a few prerequisites, all of which are good practice even if you’re not planning to wipe everything and start again. “Dig out the product keys for all your crucial software and keep them safe, as you’ll need to reinstall that too” First, keep a record of your product key (if you have one –…

Reinstalling is, or should be, a last resort – and if you ever come to the point where you absolutely have to reinstall Windows and don’t have copies of your files, it might be too late. A hardware failure, a cryptographic malware attack, whatever the case may be, you don’t want to be left stranded. We’ve talked about using Windows’ File History tools elsewhere, which is a good way to keep regular copies of your personal files, but Windows also includes a more thorough backup procedure in the form of Backup and Restore (Windows 7). Now, we can’t be entirely sure how long this is going to last, given its archaic name, but for now, it works, and we’d wager that Microsoft will supply a tool to restore its backups…

£1,999 | $1,550 www.lenovo.com The Yoga A940 is a powerful all-in-one PC that’s geared towards creative professionals – essentially taking on Apple’s iMac and Microsoft’s Surface Studio 2. Both of those combine powerful performance and stylish designs. While the iMac has been the go-to all-in-one for creatives for years, Microsoft did a fine job competing against it with the Surface Studio. Now Lenovo wants to compete with both. The Yoga A940 comes in a variety of base configurations, depending on where in the world you are. In the UK there is one model available, for £1,999. It comes with an Intel Core i5-8400 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive and 256GB SSD, and an AMD RX 560 GPU with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. Meanwhile, in Australia, you can…

Touchscreen laptops forever changed the laptop landscape at their conception, primarily because the emergence of two-in-one PCs changed the way we see and use laptops. For one, touchscreen laptop users can get into the habit of using their PC the way they would a tablet to squeeze in some entertainment or a bit of gaming after work. The fact that Windows 10 is now a more touch-friendly operating system only strengthens these touchscreen laptops’ case. This list should make your hunt for one of the best touchscreen laptops easier. Keep an eye out for money-saving deals as well, as Christmas rolls around. 1 XPS 13 £1,200, www.dell.com The touch model in Dell’s XPS 13 line has every single thing we love about this highly-rated laptop, from its 8th-gen processor…

WI-FI PROBLEMS SOLVED Dropped connections? Slow data transfer? Dead spots? We guide you through fixing common complaints ICE LAKE EXPLAINED A deep dive into Intel s latest line of CPUs. 10nm process, Thunderbolt 3, Gen11 graphics and more explained HOW TO ● Use Windows search ● Enhance web browsing ● Beat Bluetooth ● Master audiobooks * Contents subject to change Catch up with us on… www.facebook.com/windowsmag www.twitter.com/windowsmag www.windowsmag.co.…

The next step with your new PC is to set up all your favourite applications, plus transfer across your carefully crafted settings from your old PC. Before going any further, we recommend taking a drive image of your old PC’s system drive using Macrium Reflect Free (www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx). Save this image to your backup drive, then install Macrium on your new PC and take a drive image of its hard drive as your baseline backup: Windows 10, all updates and key system utilities only. Should you need to roll back for any reason, you’ll save yourself time by skipping the previous section’s instructions. Plus, with Macrium installed, you can mount your old PC’s drive image as a virtual drive to access any missing files – more on that over the page.…

What happens if, having transferred your files and disposed of your old PC (see over the page), you discover that you forgot to copy across a key file or setting? This is where that fail-safe Macrium Reflect backup we recommended you take earlier comes into its own. You can mount this as a virtual drive on your new PC in File Explorer, then copy any missing data from it to your new PC. To do this, install Macrium on your new PC if you haven’t already, then navigate to the drive image file and double-click it. Allow Macrium to launch, then place a tick next to the drive or drives and make a note of the drive letter each is going to be assigned (you can change these by clicking…

Packed with informative tutorials Every issue, we guarantee to pack the magazine with great tutorials teaching you all the best things you can do with your PC. Each article features step-by-step instructions to make learning new skills fast and enjoyable. Customise Windows to work your way We all know how to do the basics but getting the most from Windows isn’t always easy. Our dedication to the operating system means you get the very best tips and tricks for all versions of Windows. Get more from your favourite websites We all have our list of favourite sites but often we miss out on great features because they re difficult to use or hidden from sight. We’ll show you how to do more online, for a more satisfying web life. Discover…

1 Insert Text Frame Create freehand text boxes on the page in any dimensions you like, which you can then fill with text. 2 Insert Image Frame Much the same procedure as with text frames, but with images instead. Fancy layering options are available. 3 Rotate Item Enables you to freely rotate any text or image frame. The content rotates with it 4 Image Tab The Image tab under Properties is where you should instantly head when an image is loaded, especially if you need to fix its proportions. 5 Text Frame Required for inserting any text, which can be styled at will with the Story Editor. 6 Image Frame A filled image frame, these can be resized at will and be re-formed into elaborate shapes.…

Everyone needs a password manager. You simply can’t get by online these days relying on a handful of easily guessable passwords – just take a trip to https://haveibeenpwned.com to confirm your trusted passwords of yesteryear have almost certainly been exposed. The value of a password manager can’t be overstated, whether it’s generating unique, random, lengthy passwords that are almost uncrackable, or storing them securely in a vault protected by strong encryption and – if you’re diligent – extra layers of security. But it’s not necessarily all good news. Where is your password vault stored, and who can access it? Services like LastPass and 1Password that make it easy to sync and access passwords between mobile, desktop, and browser store your encrypted vault on their own online servers. They argue their…

When Microsoft released its proprietary Windows Store, Valve’s Gabe Newell described it as a “catastrophe for everyone in the PC space”. Valve felt that the Windows Store threatened Steam’s existence, and decided to branch out with its own platform, using Linux as a base. First, Valve released the full Steam gaming client for Linux in February 2013, followed by its own platform, SteamOS, based on Debian Linux in December 2013 (Linux and SteamOS applications are generally cross-compatible). However, SteamOS failed to gain much traction, and most of the user base would come from the regular Linux client. Perhaps following the advice of id Software’s John Carmack, Valve re-focused its attention from encouraging native SteamOS/Linux ports to perfecting Wine, the Windows compatibility layer for Linux. In August 2018, Valve released Proton,…

Windows 10’s Calendar app received a time-saving upgrade in the November 2019 update: the ability to create new events and reminders by clicking the clock at the right-hand end of the taskbar. Below the calendar in the popup menu there’s now a box to add events, with time and location options. Hit More Details and the Calendar app itself opens, so you can add more detail and invite other people to the event.…

One of the factors that contributes to our pessimism surrounding reinstalling Windows is that we desperately don’t want you to lose anything. We’re kind like that. But there is another, slightly frivolous way to do a reinstallation if you’ve got working hardware to play with: you can turn one Windows installation into two. If you have a second drive that is able to support a Windows 10 installation, or enough access to your current Windows 10 installation (and enough free space) to be able to trim down its drive using Disk Management then create a new clean partition, you can install a second copy of the operating system alongside the first. Simply select a custom install, and then point Windows 10 at that spare disk space – it should do…

“Keeping an eye on your PC’s actions isn’t particularly difficult, Windows 10 includes all the tools you might need” Many people look at a Windows reinstallation as a way to fix any and all ills. However, we consider it as being more of a last resort. It’s a little like dealing with unruly children. Before taking drastic action and shipping your PC off to military school, you should really do everything you possibly can to fix the problems you’ve got, and find out the cause of its misbehaviour, because you might just find that a simple solution works better. Heavy-handed metaphor aside, keeping a keen eye on your PC’s actions isn’t particularly difficult, because Windows 10 includes all the tools you might need at your disposal: There’s the Task Manager…

£889|$1,200 www.asus.co.uk They say that ‘less is more’, and the trend with laptops in recent years has certainly been moving towards ultra-portables that are ever smaller and lighter. Sometimes, though, you need a nice big screen to play with, whether it’s for number-crunching spreadsheets, a spot of close-up photo-editing, or just watching Stranger Things on Netflix. The VivoBook S15 from Asus fits the bill nicely, combining a large, bright 15.6” display with strong processor performance and a slimline design that still allows Asus to describe it as an ‘ultra-portable’. There’s a rather confusing range of models, and Asus complicates things further as most of these models aren’t actually available from its own online store. You’ll need to track the VivoBook down at Amazon and other online retailers – the model…

1 Balabolka www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm There are a couple of ways to use Balabolka’s free text to speech software: you can either copy and paste text into the program, or you can open a number of supported file formats (including DOC, PDF, and HTML) in the program directly. In terms of output, you can use SAPI 4 complete with eight voices to choose from, SAPI 5 with two, or the Microsoft Speech Platform. This free text to speech software can also save narrations as audio files in a range of formats including MP3 and WAV. For lengthy documents, you can create bookmarks to make it easy to jump back to a specific location and there are excellent tools on hand to help you to customise the pronunciation of words. With…