Table of contents for May 2020 in Windows Help & Advice

The world of malware is constantly changing and evolving – who’d heard of nasties like ransomware, cryptomining or social engineering until relatively recently? In its State of Malware 2020 report, Malwarebytes noted some interesting trends. One was that malware is increasingly focusing its attentions on business rather than consumers – presumably because cyber criminals spy bigger gains to be made. That said, don’t ditch all your anti-virus software just yet – consumer infections were only down a paltry two percent on the previous year. Of more significance is the changing landscape. The biggest source of infections by far are adware – these are programs that don’t carry malware themselves, but try to trick people into either downloading malware or giving up personal details. The biggest jump in the list is…

As reported on the previous page, the biggest individual threat to consumers these days comes from adware. In the past, adware tended to simply mean ad-supported software, and later it evolved to include so-called PUPs (potentially unwanted programs), which are offered alongside the original program during installation. Sometimes these unsolicited extras are flagged and easy to avoid, but some use deliberately misleading language and confusing options to trick you into installing them. These days, PUPs are better known as bundleware, and are usually more annoying than outright malicious – most are ignored by your security software, so you’ll need additional help: Unchecky (www.unchecky.com) offers limited free protection, but Malwarebytes Premium is by far the best at blocking these. Most PUPs should be removable via ‘Settings > Apps > Apps &…

Another growing threat to your computer – and wider network – comes from so-called hack tools. These are part of a wider range of tools known as ‘riskware’, which are tools that aren’t in themselves malicious, but capable of being used for nefarious ends by hackers. This is a grey area usually ignored by security software because the targets are perfectly legitimate programs that perform useful functionality – for example, Nirsoft’s ProduKey is designed to help you recover Windows and Office product keys from your computer, but because it can also be deployed to pull product keys from other computers on your network is designated a hack tool by Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. Other types of tool that fall into this category are network scanners, SSH and even tools designed to perform…

Any network drive easily accessible from Windows is vulnerable to ransomware. Tightening security means changing your network shared credentials. First, if you’ve set up a user on your NAS that shares the same username and password as your Windows account for ease of access, log into your NAS’s user account settings and change the password to something unique. Also, make sure you’re not saving network credentials: when you’re next prompted to log on to a network share, make sure the box ‘Remember my credentials’ is left unticked. If – as is likely – you’ve previously saved credentials, type ‘credentials’ into the Search box and click ‘Credential Manager’. You should see entries for each saved network password under ‘Windows Credentials’ – click the downward arrow button followed by ‘Remove > Yes’…

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 new…

1. MODULES Use these buttons to select a collection; contacts, books, images, movies, music, and software are included, while any custom collections appear here, too. 2. ITEM MANAGEMENT These buttons enable you to manage your catalog by adding, deleting, and even visualizing your items. Both pie and bar charts are available, based on a selected field. 3. NAVIGATION STRUCTURE Items are organised into a hierarchical structure – we’re organising our book collection by category, then tags. Books may appear under every tag you assign. 4. EDIT ITEMS Need to make changes or add info? Navigate to the item on the left, then double-click it, or right-click for more options, such as Edit as new to create a new entry based on the current one. 5. ITEM DETAILS The selected item…

Lifeograph enables you to change the look and feel of diary entries using themes to define the colour scheme used. These are applied at the tag level: when you select a tag to view its properties you’ll see a section devoted to themes. Here you should be able to change the colour of selected items, whether it’s text in the case of headings and normal text, or the colour used for highlighted text, or the background of the entry itself. You can also change the font size and style too – again by clicking the appropriate option and making your choice from the menu. Once you’ve assigned a custom theme to a tag, you can quickly paste it to another one – simply select that tag, click the drop-down menu…

1 Add extra headings We’ve seen how the first line on any diary entry is formatted as a heading by default – other lines revert to body text. Lifeograph also supports two further sub-header styles. The first level can be invoked for the current line by starting it with a single space – ‘ Sub-header 1’, for example – while the second starts with a double space, so ‘ Subheader 2’. 2 Formatting Insert formatting via the formatting toolbar, or use these shortcuts: underscore (italics); asterisk (bold); hash (highlighted); and equals (strike-through). Remember to use these before and after your chosen text – so _italicised text_ for example. Disable formatting in a paragraph by starting it with a full stop followed by a tab. Right-click for emojis. 3 Add links…

EE With 50 UK cities and towns at least partly covered by 5G so far, EE is doing a commendable job in getting this super-fast connectivity out to the people. By March 2020, the city number is expected to reach 70, with 5G stretching from Market Street on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, to Manchester’s Albert Square, to Piccadilly Circus in London. EE has a strong selection of 5G phones, with eight handsets currently on offer at varying prices, plus one SIM-only 5G plan that will set you back £44 a month for 12 months. SKY MOBILE Sky Mobile 5G has reached 20 different UK towns and cities so far, including London, Manchester, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Sky says more places will get 5G “soon”, though it hasn’t gone into too much…

APPLE Apple has so far been quiet about its 5G iPhone plans, but it always plays its cards close to its chest. If the rumour mill is to be believed, at least some of the September 2020 iPhones will have 5G on board, and it would be a surprise if Apple waited until 2021 to introduce the next-gen technology. OPPO The Oppo Reno was one of the bestspecced 5G phones we saw through the course of last year, and that bodes well for what’s to come in 2020. Part of the same family of phone makers as OnePlus, it’s likely that Oppo’s 5G phones for this year will be a little more experimental and unusual than the rest. LG LG has already put its flag(ship) in the ground in terms…

The Asus ZenBook Flip 15 is a great laptop for work, entertainment, productivity and even some light gaming; it really can do it all. And it should, given its north-of-four-figures list price. It features genuine versatility in interaction and use, and one of the best screens on a Windows 10 laptop we’ve experienced. Housed within the brushed-metal body are a satisfying keyboard and excellent touchpad. The touchpad is also a second screen that can be used to launch tasks and shortcuts – Asus calls it a ScreenPad. It’s a bit of a gimmick but still useful, and fits with the premium nature of this machine. Meanwhile, the main screen is a total joy: its 4K resolution provides a roomy and crisp display for the 15-inch panel, and the touchscreen functionality…

1 EaseUS Todo Backup Free  www.easeus.com EaseUS Todo Backup Free has lots of bases covered: backing up individual files and folders, whole drives or partitions, or creating a full system backup. There’s also a ‘smart’ option that automatically backs up files in commonly used locations, and you have the option of using cloud storage. Backups can then be scheduled, running as incremental, differential or full backups as required. The free version of EaseUS Todo Backup free has almost all the features of the premium edition. You can still run backups on a schedule, but lose the ability to have these backups triggered by various events – not something most people will miss. The same goes for command line-driven backups, PC-to-PC data transfer, and Outlook backup; they’re all nice to…

It cannot have escaped your attention that most of the world has been sat at home for a while. But life goes on, and for those with jobs that can be done remotely, that work is being done as closely to normal as possible – and that includes network connectivity. Cloud computing is one of the unsung heroes of the crisis, allowing companies to scale up their systems quickly to support an entire workforce working from home. While Amazon, Microsoft and other cloud providers aren’t altogether happy sharing their stats, we spoke to the head of IT at a major firm with 80,000 employees, who told us the company’s network was holding up nicely thanks to Amazon Web Services – but that he had “bought Jeff Bezos a new helipad”…

£Unimaginable intel.co.uk Intel loves a baffling code-name. See Sandy Bridge for the first generation of Core CPUs, or Black Rapids for a rather unexciting motherboard. Pohoiki Springs is a bit more interesting, however, as it provides a potential glimpse of the future of PCs: chips that mimic the structures of the human brain. Intel calls it neuromorphic computing. Utilising a ‘spiking neural network’, in which each synthetic neuron fires independently, sending signals to other neurons in the network that change their electrical state, Intel’s machine – which consists of 100 million of these neurons spread across 768 Loihi chips – can recognise gestures and even smells, detecting dangerous chemicals through 72 sensors. “My next step is to approach a wider range of problems – from understanding the relationships between objects…

In most cases your security software should stop infections in their tracks, but if some creep through you may find them difficult to remove. Start by attempting to boot into Safe mode with networking – doing so usually cripples the malware enough to allow your security software to download the latest updates, perform a successful scan and remove the malware. The quickest way to do this is to type ‘msconfig’ into the Search box and click System Configuration. Assuming you’ve not been locked out by the malware, switch to the Boot tab to tick ‘Safe boot’ and select ‘Network’ before clicking OK and rebooting. If this doesn’t work, visit your security vendor’s home page on a clean machine to create a rescue disc – failing that, use Kaspersky’s tool (https://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/…

Many websites that sell products or services rely on third-party payment providers to process payments. When you make a purchase, you’re redirected to that provider’s website to complete the transaction before being redirected back. Sadly, scammers have found ways of intercepting traffic to these sites to pop up their own fake version of the payment site to trick users into giving up their credit card details. This form of a ‘man-in-the-middle’ attack doesn’t target the payment provider, but instead alters the code on the merchant website to redirect your traffic to the phishing site. Malwarebytes Premium’s web protection component offers users realtime protection against known phishing sites based on their behaviour, but you can take further steps to protect yourself: verify the payment provider’s website using the information in the…

1 Lock down router Open your browser and log into your router’s configuration utility via its IP address. If you’ve not yet done so, look for an administration section where you can change the password (choose a strong one using your password manager) and disable remote administration. 2 Force secure access If the option exists, tick the box to access your router over a secure (HTTPS) connection. If you run into problems – our TP-Link doesn’t support the newer TLS connections required in Firefox, for example – then at least change the port for non-secure remote management from the default (80). 3 Disable unsafe services You’ll need to hunt around for these specific options but disable UPnP (use manual port-forwarding instead), followed by the following services if…

1 Protected folders Open the main Bitdefender program and select Protection from the left-hand pane. Verify Safe Files is switched on, then click ‘Protected Folders’. Click ‘Protect More Folders’ then tick the folder(s) you want to protect from unauthorised access. Click OK. 2 Whitelist apps Bitdefender allows certain known trusted programs like Microsoft Office access to your folders but will automatically block unknown apps. You may first see an error message attempting to launch or use the program, then a Safe Files dialogue pops up. 3 Trusted apps Click ‘View details’ to investigate the app in question – its name and file path will be listed, helping you identify if it’s safe or not. Assuming it is, flick the switch to ‘on’. While you’re here, you can…

1.ENTRY TITLE Click the title to rename it, or click its associated icon to turn it into a to-do item or make it a Favorite. 2.SORT DIARY ENTRIES Click the burger (three lines) button to change the sort type (date, size or last changed) and order (ascending or descending). 3.TAGS Assign these to diary entries to help organise them – click one to edit its properties (including theme). 4.DIARY ENTRY WINDOW This works like a regular text editor with some clever extras, including support for markdown formatting and hyperlinks. 5.NAVIGATION PANE All diary entries and chapters are listed here – use the Search tool or Filter to control what’s shown by date, keyword or other. 6.CALENDAR Use this to navigate by date – days with entries linked to them appear…

Windows UK CORTANA Q I’ve just switched to a Surface Pro. I think Windows 10 is a big improvement on earlier versions, but I’m unable to get Cortana to work – an error message tells me it’s not available in the UK. Microsoft told me to set the language and region to US, which worked, but it stopped when I switched back to the UK. Any ideas? Chris Hudson Nick’s solution When Microsoft decoupled Cortana from Windows Search, it started developing a new, separate app from scratch. This is still currently under development, and one of the consequences has been to remove localisations like UK English while it’s being put together. UK English should return in the next few months assuming the final version is released on schedule. Keep an…

Brother’s X-Series is a trio of A3 inkjet printers with high paper capacity and print speeds fast enough to make you think twice about buying a laser printer. Positioned at the top of this range, the MFC-J6947DW, appears to have it all. Unlike many A3 printers, it can also scan, fax and duplex print with this size paper, and with three trays to fill you can load up to 750 sheets of varying media. It claims a print speed of 22 ipm (mono) and the fastest FPOT (first page out time) in its class at under six seconds. The MFC-J6947DW is aimed at the small to medium business looking for a compact four-in-one that can handle lots of paper and deal with tasks ranging from sending a fax to copying…

The Nikon D780 is perhaps the best example yet of a DSLR reinventing itself for the mirrorless age. It’s a very traditional-looking full-frame camera with an optical viewfinder, but underneath that old-school skin lies some of the same tech that you’ll find in its cutting-edge Nikon Z6 cousin. When Nikon and Canon finally relented and committed to their Z Series and EOS R mirrorless systems, fans of optical viewfinders and generous battery lives were naturally worried that the days of new DSLRs were behind them. But the D780 proves that Nikon isn’t abandoning the DSLR – in fact, if you have a stash of F-mount lenses or just prefer the way a DSLR handles, it might just be one of the best full-frame cameras the company has made so far.…

The Polaroid Now certainly looks like a Polaroid camera, with a look directly inspired by the 1977 OneStep Land, and just like its ancestor it prints directly onto instant film. There are no frills, no screens to fight with, and thanks to the technological improvements made by this newest revived edition the output is even less hit-and-miss than ever before. That said, you still get what you get, but over-exposed shots are all part of the fun.…

Malware isn’t the only threat to your PC’s health – physical dirt, grime and dust can have a cumulative effect in shortening its life too, while harbouring germs that can be detrimental to your own physical wellbeing. Start with your keyboard. Unplug it, turn it over and shake any loose debris from it. Use compressed air to clean out dirt from between the keys and a non-bleach disinfectant wipe (not too wet) to clean the tops of the keys afterwards. The same type of wipes can be used to clean your mouse – focus on the optical sensor beneath it. Also take the time to check inside your PC case – you’ll be surprised how quickly dust builds up inside, leading to increased heat and stress on your components. Again,…

1 Browser security Open your browser’s Settings page and look for the Security and Privacy section. For example, Firefox users should make sure that Enhanced Tracking Protection is switched on along with Deceptive Content & Dangerous Software Protection. In Chrome, look for Safe Browsing in Privacy and Security. 2 Install uBlock Origin Visit your browser’s add-ins page (Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Store for Edge, or about:addins in Firefox) to search for – and install – uBlock Origin. Once in place, it’ll start blocking all intrusive ads, including many malicious ones. Click its browser toolbar icon to view stats. 3 Avoid unsafe tech Many dangerous ads are employed using the likes of outdated and insecure technologies like Flash and Java. Up-to-date browsers now block these, but if you’ve…

Ransomware may not be the threat it once was – these days, businesses are more frequently targeted than consumers – but that’s not to say you’re immune. If you needed reminding, ransomware is a form of malware that encrypts all or part of your drive before hackers demand a ransom to provide you with the decryption key required to get it back again. Most forms of ransomware target your data rather than locking you out of your entire PC. For those that do, check your security software’s website for a rescue disc. Ransomware that targets your files is trickier to remove – typically you’ll need to use a rescue disc or boot into Safe mode with networking to remove the underlying infection before you can look at recovering your files.…

YOU’LL NEED THIS DATA CROW Download it from www.datacrow.net. JAVA Download it from www.java.com Ever needed to keep a catalogue of important items you own? Perhaps your DVD collection needs organising before you start lending it out to friends or family, or you want to keep tabs on your books. Maybe you’d like to make a definitive list of your music to avoid going out and accidentally buying another copy of an album you already own. Or perhaps you’re looking to record a more personal treasure, from cigarette cards to stamps. Whatever your cataloguing needs are, Data Crow is the tool for you. This underrated freebie makes it easy to start building and managing collections of all sizes, and thanks to some nifty time-saving tools, you don’t necessary have to…

One of the biggest weaknesses of blogging – the online equivalent of keeping a diary – is that it’s so public. Sure, you can lock down your blog, but unless you’re hosting it on your own local server, it can leak online despite your best efforts. Lifeograph (http://lifeograph.sourceforge.net) is designed to provide you with a journal that’s offline and – through password-protected encryption – private. It’s clean and simple to use, but dig a little deeper into it and you can get even more from it than simple text-based scribbles. –NICK PEERS First steps Look for the Windows installer download under Downloads on the Lifeograph web page. There are Linux and Android versions there too. At the time of writing, the latest version was 1.6.1. Download and install just like…

Lifeograph enables you to perform a selective merge or sync between two different diary files, choosing exactly what to transfer between them – entries, tags and/or chapters. Click your diary file’s name in the navigation pane to bring up its properties screen. With Edit mode on, click the diary’s icon and choose Synchronize/Merge… Click the None button at the top to select your diary – we found leaving Diary Files selected as the file type produced no matches, so change this to All Files to locate and select the file containing the data you wish to bring across. By default, all items are set to be added as new entries in the new diary – click Scheme to change the default behaviour (you may wish to set Changed to Overwrite…

5 G isn’t just on the way – as of 2020, it’s here. Today you can go out and buy yourself a 5G-ready handset, and enjoy blazing fast 5G speeds on your mobile network, assuming you’re stood in one of the spots in the country that are covered – a list that’s grown strongly, and will get bigger in 2020, but still has a lot of limitations. While you might think 4G is fast enough for your sports streaming and your Twitter browsing, 5G is on a whole new level: expect average download speeds of 150-200Mbps (almost 10 times faster than 4G) and peak speeds of 1Gbps (more than six times the maximum rate of 4G). As the technology improves, 5G should get faster still. And it’s not just about…

At initial release late last year, the HTC Vive Cosmos was in a sorry state. Setting up the VR headset on your PC sometimes outright failed the basic setup process. But even worse, its state-of-the-art controller tracking that used six cameras on the front plate was… ineffective at best. In short, the Cosmos wasn’t a headset we could wear for very long, let alone recommend. After six months of software and firmware updates – plus the new Cosmos Elite faceplate that allows for more precise room-scale tracking – the Cosmos is a far better headset. It still can’t quite compete with the likes of the Valve Index, but it can competently stand up to the Oculus Rift S. That’s because, unlike the Oculus Rift S, the Cosmos is the only…

For serious podcasters, there’s nothing worse than not being heard during your broadcast. Your microphone tends to be the unsung hero in your entire audio arsenal. When choosing the best microphone for podcasting, there’s one thing we look for above all else: can you be heard loudly and clearly? XLR mics offer the best studio-quality sound, but are very pricey. USB mics, on the other hand, are easier to set-up, a lot cheaper, and play well with most audio software. Also, note the microphone’s polar patterns, as this is the easiest way to figure out what the best use is. For podcasting, look for cardioid, which is sensitive only in front of the mic. 1 Yeti X £150, www.bluedesigns.com The Blue Yeti X is a hybrid model of the…