Table of contents for December 2019 in Windows Help & Advice

Passwords are a big issue for security. They’re the keys to your accounts, yes, but imagine that someone had swiped a copy of your house key without you knowing: they’d be able to get in whenever they liked until you wised up and changed the locks. If one of the services you use online has had some kind of password breach – perhaps their own security was not strong enough, or a hacker stumbled upon a master key – the problem could be even worse than that. Your credentials could be floating around any number of illicit communities, your house keys copied and handed out to every ne’er do well in the dark corners of the pub. But how would you know? First of all, you’ll need to keep a…

Yes, this is Windows Help and Advice magazine, but one of the most beautiful things about Linux, besides its inherent freeness, is that people are able to package it up with all kinds of also-free software, and send the whole thing out in one big bundle. Given that it’s (usually) possible to run a Linux installation in Live form (that is, without installing it and making a mess of your Windows installations), this can be a good way to keep those rarely used utility packages at hand, or get your hands on a whole bunch of software all at once. So, pick up some USB sticks, get these apps installed, and be ready for anything. FOR PRIVACY TAILS http://tails.boum.org When you’re getting all clandestine, turn to Tails. It automatically routes…

That low disk space warning we flagged in the introduction is unlikely to be the first indication you get that you’re running out of disk space. It’s not designed to appear until you have 200MB or less free disk space – a mere drop in the ocean these days. Instead, Windows’ first warning will likely appear when you open File Explorer to the ‘This PC’ view to see your drive’s usage is represented by a red bar rather than the regular blue one. This appears when your drive has less than 10% free space left, although the seriousness of the warning does depend on the size of the drive. For example, a 64GB drive with under 6GB left is more worrying than a 2TB drive with around 180GB free space…

Freeing up space on your PC has never been easier thanks to Windows 10’s new Storage Sense feature, which is designed to render third-party apps like CCleaner redundant. Your first job, therefore, is to employ its services to free up additional space on your drive. Navigate to Settings > System > Storage and click the ‘Configure Storage Sense or run it now’ link. Flick the Storage Sense switch on and choose when to run the disk-cleaning tool: by default, it’ll run when you run low on disk space, but if you want to take a more pre-emptive approach you can run it monthly, weekly or even daily. Scroll down to configure more options – for example, removing temporary files, emptying files from the Recycle Bin after a set period and…

The march of technology inevitably leads to increased demands on your system, particularly if you’ve discovered a new space-hungry hobby such as gaming or 4K video editing. If you’re simply looking to expand available storage for your files, you have two basic options. The first, of course, is to invest in additional storage. Desktop users can investigate whether their PC case has the room for a second internal hard drive – with 4TB drives shipping for under £100, you can solve all but the most demanding needs with a single purchase. Before splashing out, power down your PC, open the case and verify there’s a spare drive bay to fit it in. Also check your power supply has a spare SATA power socket (see photo – if not, Google ‘molex…

Why not turn your problem of storage space – or lack of it – into an opportunity? If you’ve not done so already, now is the perfect time to investigate one of the most effective upgrades money can buy: a fast solid-state hard drive to run Windows and your programs on. Switching from a clunky old hard drive to a SSD is like leaving the Stone Age. Windows loads in under a minute, apps open in a matter of seconds and your computing life is no longer held up by clicking and waiting for files to load. With SSD prices tumbling to put even relatively large amounts of storage space in your hands for a modest sum, there’s never been a better time to make the move. The upside? Your…

It seems like everything has a dark mode these days, especially if you’ve got an Android phone. Facebook, Twitter, even the Chrome browser can be set to use dark colours. Windows 10 has one too, but the May 2019 update introduced the complete opposite – a light mode that introduces a new, brighter version of the default blue WIndows logo wallpaper and some lighter shades of grey throughout.…

1 Windows 10 Head to www.microsoft.com/ software-download/windows10 and click ‘Download tool now’. Once downloaded, open MediaCreationTool. exe. When prompted, select ‘Create installation media’ and follow the prompts to create either a USB flash drive or an ISO file (for burning to DVD). 2 Windows 8.1 Download the Media Creation Tool from www.microsoft.com/ software-download/windows8 – input your language, edition of Windows 8.1 and PC architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) and then click Next. Choose to create either a USB flash drive or an ISO file and then follow the prompts to the end. 3 Windows 7 Go to www.microsoft.com/ software-download/windows7 and enter your product key – choose a 32-bit or 64-bit version as required. Once downloaded, double-click the file to burn to DVD, or use the Windows USB Download…

1 Reboot for media If you re running Windows 7, or have Fast Boot disabled, insert your boot media and start your PC. Look for a ‘Press any key to boot from CD or DVD’ option (even if you’ve booted from a USB flash drive) – press the key and you should find the Windows install process starts. 2 Tweak boot options If you boot back into Windows, restart your PC again, but this time press a key, such as [F11], when prompted to open a boot menu. Do so, select your boot media (choose UEFI if the option appears) to boot; otherwise, enter Setup to change the boot device order. 3 Windows 8.1/10 If Fast Boot is enabled, open Settings in Windows and navigate to ‘Update & recovery’ >…

£5,457 | $6,800 www.asus.com Asus’ ROG lineup regularly features impressive specifications, RGB lights aplenty, and price tags that you’ll have to do a double-take over. The Asus ROG Mothership follows in these footsteps, and might be the company’s most ambitious device ever. Part laptop, part desktop, it features some insane specifications, and an equally eye-watering price tag to go along with it. And while it clearly has its sights set on gamers, it’s actually built like an entry-level workstation, so those looking for sheer power for intense applications like 3D rendering or AutoCAD may actually benefit from owning one of these. This is a machine that pretty much sticks with you once you’ve bought it – upgrading a few internal components is possible (more on that later), but whatever configuration…

The best Ultrabooks are more than just status symbols. They’re the ideal grab and go machines, which means that you can edit your photos, render your videos and power through your work, no matter if you’re on a train in Europe, at a café, or in between classes. Ever so light and compact, they now pack more power than ever before, coming equipped with the best processors and SSDs out there. They truly are powerful little devices that can help you breeze through projects like no one’s business. And, frequently, that power is paired with a pretty extraordinary battery life that may last you an entire work day on one full charge. 1 Matebook 13 £1,200, www.huawei.com Huawei has been biding its time to take on the best Ultrabooks.…

Your first 30 minutes with a NEW PC What to look out for, which apps to install, what not to do: your complete guide to using a brand new PC USE A PASSWORD MANAGER Don’t leave it to chance, and don’t reuse passwords. Secure your online accounts the easy way HOW TO ● Use Windows Timeline ● Log on without a password ● Customise the taskbar ● Reinstall Windows * Contents subject to change Catch up with us on… www.facebook.com/windowsmag www.twitter.com/windowsmag www.windowsmag.co.…

Services like Facebook and Google have tentacles that reach far across the web, and they’re watching what you do. Although they rarely tie your activity to any personal information, that which they do learn is sold to advertisers, who target you with ads that theoretically fit your interests. Ever looked at a sofa online then been bombarded with ads for sofas for the next month? That’s why. If this makes you uncomfortable – it’s mostly benign, but we can certainly understand being against it – there are a few things you can do to stop it. First, consider changing your web browser. Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge don’t (yet) include any significant technology to stop tracking, though it’s apparently coming to Chrome in a future version. Try using Firefox (getfirefox.com),…

Microsoft Hololens 2 $3,500 microsoft.com Hololens is dead. Long live Hololens. A new headset, lighter, more powerful and with a wider field of view than the one that failed to set the world on fire three years ago, is now available to pre-order – as long as you’re a business. The cheery images of families gathered round playing Minecraft, or other friendly mixed-reality pursuits, have fallen away to be replaced with a focus on engineers calmly fixing things with holographic help, or shoppers using headsets in-store to see how a new purchase will fit in with their existing home furnishings. Also new is an Azure developer kit, underlining the link between the headset and the cloud rather than with an individual Windows PC. Developers can license the technology this time…

Fill your PC with software or take advantage of online tools? It’s a tough one. In certain circumstances, this isn’t an option – we don’t know, for example, of an online tool that can help repartition your hard drive – but moving your work online does have a long list of advantages. Your files will theoretically always be where you left them. There’s no need to manually update a piece of online software to keep it in line with the latest developments. And your local machine stays uncluttered and unslowed by the overheads of installed software. We might have presented a list of 50 programs, but we don’t expect you to be mad enough to install them all. There’s an ever-growing string of online tools turning up. For the office,…

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 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 programs with our…

1 Solid background GIMP is the image editor used by Scribus. 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, or green. You’ll need to add an Alpha Channel in the Layers panel first, then… 2 Colour to Alpha With your image open, from the main menu click Colours > Colour to Alpha, and click OK. If all goes well it should detect everything automatically and separate the object from the background. If not, you may need to use the Color Picker tool. 3 Export your image If you don’t have the option to choose Colour to Alpha, change the image to RGB mode by clicking Image>Mode> RGB. Note…

Wi-Fi 6 is probably the most exciting thing to happen to your wireless network in 2019. Now it’s launched, you’ll start to hear the term increasingly bandied about by router makers and ISPs. But what exactly is Wi-Fi 6, and how can it benefit you? Here, we take a close look at what Wi-Fi 6 promises and explain the impact it can have on home networks. We’ll tell you everything you need to know about the standard, including how to upgrade your network to get the most out of the new tech. You may have already come across Wi-Fi 6’s previous name: 802.11ax. Thankfully, the Wi-Fi Alliance, a non-profit organisation that ensures Wi-Fi products meet certain standards, acknowledged that the former naming conventions were far too convoluted. As Edgar Figueroa,…

If you’re looking for a slightly different approach to viewing your drive’s makeup, try SpaceSniffer (www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/)instead. It has a more modern user interface, but more importantly provides a visual view that helps you identify which folders contain the most files. Again, be sure to run it as an administrator. Unlike WinDirStat you must focus a view on one drive at a time, but thanks to its labelling system it’s easier to spot which folders contain the most data as they’re clearly named, and their file size listed. Simply double-click one to zoom in to view its contents or double-click its parent folder (displayed above it) to zoom back out. If you know which files are likely to take up most space on your drive, use the Filter box to input…

Another way to save space is to move folders and files on to a secondary storage drive, such as a USB drive. If you don’t have this luxury, then save space by zipping up these rarely used files and folders instead. Right-click the item(s) in question and choose ‘Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder’, then wait for it to be combined into a single zip file. Right-click this and choose Properties, then compare its size to the original file. If there’s a significant saving, delete the original file or folder, then repeat to keep freeing up more space.…

Another storage location you can make use of is your cloud provider. We’ve already seen how you can use OneDrive to free up space on your computer, and other providers offer similar features within their paid-for plans – Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) calls its equivalent Smart Sync, for example. Here you need to navigate to a folder inside your Dropbox folder, right-click it and choose ‘Smart Sync > Online-only’, or browse to ‘Preferences > Sync’, select your account and choose ‘Online-only’ to make it the universal default. If you’d like to access Google Drive or Dropbox folders in this way without a paid account, then for a one-off fee (€35) you can use a brilliant tool called Mountain Duck 3 (download a free trial from https://mountainduck.io/). This can create a series of…

1 Partition old drive Desktop users planning to migrate Windows and apps to a SSD drive while leaving their data behind should first use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free (www.partitionwizard.com):choose ‘Split Partition’ and drag the slider as far left as it can go. Click OK followed by Apply. Reboot when prompted. 2 Move data to new partition Once complete, follow the guide on page 61 on moving data to your new drive, using your newly created partition as the target. Next, download and install Macrium Reflect Free from www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx if you’ve not already done so. 3 Select partitions to clone Launch Macrium. Select your Windows drive and click ‘Clone this disk…’ Make sure only those partitions you need will be copied across: System Reserved, your actual Windows partition…

Not all reinstalls require a complete wipe of your hard drive. A repair or refresh installation leaves your programs, settings and files in place, and restricts itself to installing a fresh copy of your Windows files over the top of your existing copy. If your problem is linked to a corrupt file or Windows setting, the repair installation can usually fix it. All repair installs share one common characteristic: you must launch them from Windows itself. You can’t boot from your install media and repair Windows through that; you need to boot into Windows, then start the repair process from there. If you’re unable to boot into Windows, therefore, you’ll need to skip to page 72 and perform a full destructive recovery instead. Start the repair Starting a repair install…

Reinstalling Windows from scratch – namely, wiping your system drive to install a fresh version of Windows on to it – is the ultimate choice for anyone looking to revive a slow PC or resolve a major, non-hardware issue. Here we’ll step you through the entire process – if you’re simply looking to repair an existing Windows install, turn to our guide on page 70. Before you begin, make sure your PC is fully backed up by following the ‘Back up Windows 10’ tutorial on page 43 of issue 148. A full reinstall really is destructive – nothing left on your C drive will exist once you’ve finished. If you’d like to transfer selected program settings from old installation to new, download the portable CloneApp tool (www.mirinsoft.com) to your backup…

So far, we’ve covered both traditional reinstall techniques, but there are other reasons – and methods – for reinstalling Windows. First up is the recovery option. Most pre-built PCs come with a built-in manufacturer’s recovery partition that enables you to restore Windows to its factory shipped condition. The main advantage of this method – aside from being cheaper and easier for the manufacturer, of course – is that your PC is restored to a guaranteed working state, with all the drivers it needs to function. The downsides are that a lot of extra unwanted software is usually installed alongside Windows, you need to exercise extreme caution not to lose everything on the drive, and that if the recovery partition corrupts – typically due to hardware failure – you’re left with…

£1,755|$3,498 www.sony.co.uk Sony isn’t a company that tends to do things by halves when it comes to camera releases. Sensor resolution may have taken something of a back seat to improvements to performance in other areas in recent years, but the ‘R’ line has always been about resolution, and it’s unquestionably the main pull of this new model. The 63MP sensor outputs 61MP images as standard and, as with the sensor inside the previous A7R III, boasts a back-illuminated design for better light-gathering. Sony promises up to 15EV of dynamic range from the sensor, which is also what it promised for the A7R III. As is now standard on Sony models of this calibre, SteadyShot Inside image stabilization has also been incorporated into the body. This promises a maximum 5.5EVstop…

Hear us out as we use this box in an article about free apps to tell you not to use them: sometimes it just pays to pay. There are times when a free package can’t do the exact thing you want – for example, if you’re interacting with a business with very precise standards, a document that LibreOffice produces might have subtle differences that make it look terrible on that firm’s Microsoft Office-packing machines. An open-source package comes with no guarantees, no support and no comeback if everything goes wrong. It might have a forum full of enthusiastic amateurs and some official-looking documentation, but it doesn’t have any guarantee of professionalism. If it’s mission critical, don’t rely on free software. Often, free apps either lack critical features (many exist simply…

All the big router manufacturers have Wi-Fi 6 routers available already, or are due to launch them imminently. For example, Asus’s RT-AX88U is the company’s first Wi-Fi 6 router. It’s dual-band and offers up to 6,000Mb/s of Wi-Fi throughput, along with four antennas, and eight LAN ports. It costs £300. Asus also has the gaming-oriented ROG Rapture GT-AX11000, a tri-band router that can keep one 5GHz band dedicated to gaming, and costs £380. There’s also the Asus AiMesh AX6100 Wi-Fi System, which is a mesh Wi-Fi system that can cover the whole home. It should launch around the time you read this issue. As one of the biggest names in networking, it’s no surprise that Netgear is going all-out on Wi-Fi 6, and the company has a number of Wi-Fi…

1 View a summary You can choose to monitor all drives or focus on a specific drive. Make your choice and click OK. Wait for WinDirStat to finish its analysis and you’ll see a three-paned window. The bottom provides a colour-coded ‘map’ of your hard drive according to how it’s being used. 2 Investigate in detail Click an item on the map and its filename and path will be revealed in the top left pane, which shows a traditional folder view. Right-click and choose ‘Zoom in’ to view a map of the next level down: either a specific drive or the folder containing your target file. 3 Remove large files When you’ve identified a file you think is safe to remove, select it and open the Clean…

1 Select hard drive Open AntiTwin. Click ‘Select folder’ next to ‘Basic folder’ to select the root of your drive if you’re looking to clear up space on one drive only. Tick ‘2nd folder’ to select another folder path or drive if you’re looking to clear space across two hard drives by weeding out duplicates. 2 Focus search Leave ‘Include subfolders’ ticked and click the File filter… button. You can exclude smaller files from the search (and speed it up) by setting a minimum file size. Click the dropdown as shown to focus on specific file types, and tick ‘Compare images (pixels)’ if you’re looking for visually similar images. 3 Pick your comparison method By default, files are compared according to their content only, but you can…

1 Set up new folders You can choose to monitor all drives or focus on a specific drive. Make your choice and click OK. Wait for WinDirStat to finish its analysis and you’ll see a three-paned window. The bottom provides a colour-coded ‘map’ of your hard drive according to how it’s being used. 2 Move user folders Browse back to This PC. Right-click Documents and choose Properties > Location tab. Click Move… to browse to and select the Documents folder you just created. Click ‘Select Folder’ followed by Apply. When prompted, click Yes to move your files and folders to your new drive. 3 Rinse, repeat Now repeat the process for all the other folders listed – be prepared for a long wait if you have large…

Windows STOP SHARING A WINDOWS ACCOUNT My wife and I share a Google account, email and so on, but I use Windows 10 on a PC in my study and she uses the same on a laptop in the lounge. She has recently upgraded to a new laptop which I set up for her, but whereas her previous laptop had her name on the welcome screen, it now has mine, as it appears on my own PC welcome screen. Is there any way we can change the welcome screen name on my wife’s laptop? Martin Gulliver Ian’s solution This occurs because you’re sharing the same Microsoft Account to log into both PCs. The logical step is to set your wife up with her own Microsoft Account. If you go down…

Start by stress-testing your desktop to verify that everything works as it should – sometimes the repair can introduce more problems than it solves, in which case if you’re running Windows 8.1 or 10 you can undo the changes. Go to Start > Settings > ‘Update & recovery’ > Recovery and look for an option to go back to your previous version – click ‘Get started’ and then follow the prompts. If the repair doesn’t appear to fix your underlying problem, Windows 8.1 and 10 users can take one more intermediate step – the reset or repair. It will see you waving goodbye to all those desktop programs you’ve installed (including MS Office and your third-party security software), but it will preserve your Microsoft Store apps, files and Windows settings.…

Once Windows is reinstalled, open Windows Update to bring Windows fully up to date – don’t be surprised if there are hundreds of updates still to apply in the case of Windows 7 and 8.1. Once it’s fully up to date, consider reinstalling Macrium Reflect Free and taking your first drive image – a vanilla backup you can restore in future instead of reinstalling Windows itself. Next, it’s a case of reinstalling your core apps. Once in place, open CloneApp from your data drive. If you click the Restore button, every single program setting you backed up will be restored – if there are any backup settings you don’t want to restore, select Options to locate the backup folder, then open it and move any program folders you want to…

1 Partition hard drive You’ll need to partition your drive to free up space on which to store your copy of Windows. The best tool for the job is AOMEI Partition Assistant (www.aomeitech.com/ aomeipartition-assistant.html). Start by clicking Make Bootable Media under Wizards to create rescue media. 2 Shrink main partition Select your Windows drive (typically C:) and click Resize/ Move Partition under Partition Operations. Use the slider to free up at least 30GB space to the right of the Windows partition. If your drive is an SSD, click ‘Advanced>>’ and tick ‘Allow partition alignment…’ Click ‘OK’. 3 Add new Windows partition Now select the newly created Unallocated space to the right of drive C and click ‘Create Partition’ under Partition Operations. Verify NTFS is the file system and click ‘Advanced<<’…

From £1,600 | $2,000 www.hp.com The general consensus is that Microsoft’s early attempts to get Windows running on both desktops and tablets was a bit of a disaster, but several years down the line the endeavour now has a happy ending: a wealth of versatile 2-in-1 laptop/tablet Windows devices. The Surface Pro might be the gold standard, but plenty of other PC makers are trying their luck as well, including HP. Here we’re looking at the latest HP Elite x2 2-in-1 – technically called the HP Elite x2 1013 G3, the latest incarnation of the computer that’s on sale now. As 2-in-1s go, this is a premium-level one: that’s reflected in the specs, and in the design, and, well, in the fact that HP has made it. It’s a laptop/tablet…

From £109/month www.samsung.com The Samsung Galaxy Fold is the most forward-thinking smartphone of 2019, finally delivering on the promise of a foldable phone, and instantly turning heads out on the streets. And yet, it’s still not something we can recommend to most people. Wherever we went with the Fold, people wanted to know what this thing was and how it worked. We demonstrated how it folds down to a 4.6-inch outer screen, and folds out again to become a 7.3-inch mini-tablet – and it always amazed. But there’s a second wow-factor too: it’s twice the price of today’s best smartphones, and has a troubled track record with regard to durability, which could prove a deal-breaker. Samsung has refined the Fold over the course of a five-month delay to its launch,…

1 GIMP www.gimp.org GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the best free photo editor around. It’s packed with the kind of image-enhancing tools you’d find in premium software, and more are being added every day. The photo editing toolkit is breathtaking, and features layers, masks, curves, and levels. You can eliminate flaws easily with the excellent clone stamp and healing tools, create custom brushes, apply perspective changes, and apply changes to isolated areas with smart selection tools. GIMP is an open source, free photo editor, and its community of users and developers have created a huge collection of plugins to extend its utility even further. Many of these come pre-installed, and you can download more from the official glossary. If that’s not enough, you can even install Photoshop…