Back to Normal.

With restrictions easing, and life getting “back to normal” slowly, I thought it about time to put finger to keyboard!

It’s been busy over the last 10 months, as everyone has been using their computers more than usual. I’ve been helping them keep going and run smoothly. I’ve helped and advised people get new computers or upgrade their existing machines.

During this time, I have been taking precautions to keep my customers, and myself, safe. Despite the easing  I have continued to wear a face mask and keep sanitising before each visit. I think it is the right thing to do.

I have had both my vaccinations and have not yet contracted Covid. Hopefully I won’t and maintaining careful practices when working will hopefully see this continue.

Here to help.

As ever I am here to assist and advise on any aspect of your computer needs and use. I can upgrade existing machines where economic to do so. Or I can source and supply new or refurbished machines if not. I can also help you get the most out of your computer by helping you work smarter. This is especially helpful if you have an older or less powerful system.

Be careful.

During the last 18 months scams have been on the increase again. The scammers never go away, and Covid gave them new opportunities to try and hoodwink the general public. The common ones where they pretend to be from Microsoft, Amazon etc have not disappeared. They have just been joined by fake NHS emails, calls and text messages. As ever, if anyone, apart from a trusted friend or IT professional, calls and asks for access to your computer to ‘fix’ an issue DO NOT let them. No one apart from yourself can know what is going on with your computer. If you do get strange messages on your computer, or calls then please contact myself or another professional first to check.

Get in touch.

Please get in touch if you require any of my services in the usual way.

www.srcomputers.co.uk/contact

Keep staying safe, let’s get back to normal in the right way.

Damian

Windows 7 is broken…….

……or is it?

The question most people are asking about Windows 7 is “Will my computer stop working now it is out of support?”

The simple answer is NO.

But should you still continue to use Windows 7?

The correct answer is also NO.

Even though it will still work and do everything it always did, it no longer receives security updates. As time goes on it will become more vulnerable. Therefore, your online activities become less secure.

Banking, shopping and any other financial activity will become riskier over time. These sites may also stop you logging in to them at some point. This happened to Windows XP and Vista users when their support ended.

When security loopholes and vulnerabilities in Windows are found, they will NOT be fixed in Windows 7 any longer. Windows 8 & 10 will get fixed. Therefore the sensible option is to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Do this before you encounter any problems or get infected with malware or ransomware.

My advice is to upgrade or replace your Windows 7 computer as soon as possible.

Contact me for further information or advice about doing this.

Further information from Microsoft is available here.

Windows 7 end of life page

Windows 7 will roll over and die in January 2020!

I talked about this last time and earlier in the year.

We are getting closer to the time that Windows 7 will no longer be supported.  So, I thought it worthwhile to go over what’s going to happen, what the likely issues will be and how to make sure you are prepared and know what to do.

What is happening to Windows 7 in January 2020?

As I said previously, January 2020 is the month when Windows 7 will reach its end of support from Microsoft.

This means that Microsoft will no longer release security updates for it. When a bug or vulnerability is found it will no longer be patched or fixed. This will mean those machines will become less secure than they were.

Newer versions of Windows will get patched, Windows 7 will not. Therefore, cyber criminals and hackers will likely try to take advantage of this fact and target the more vulnerable Windows 7 machines.

How will this affect me?

It is likely, as it happened when Windows XP and Vista reached their end of support, the most noticeable effect is that websites you regularly use will no longer allow access from computers running Windows 7.

Sites such as banking, shopping, travel and all those using secure logins and connections will prevent users from logging in from unsecure browsers.

Internet Explorer is one such browser and is integral to Windows 7.  Support for it is also ending in January 2020. Even users of Internet Explorer on Windows 8 & 10 will find they are affected.

There is an easy solution for those users. They can easily switch to using another newer, more secure browser such as Edge, Firefox or Chrome.

Windows 7 users will not have such a quick and easy option as the newer version of those browsers will not be available on to them.

What do I do?

The answer for Windows 7 users is simple. Upgrade your computer to Windows 10 or replace the computer with one running Windows 10.

I’m sure most will opt for a new machine as many computers running Windows 7 are now at least seven or more years old and are nearing the end of their life anyway.

As ever, I can help with the transition, whether you choose to upgrade or replace. If you are unsure, I can provide the necessary information and advice to help make your decision.

My main advice would be to do it sooner rather than later. Prices of new machines are likely to increase as the time draws nearer.

More information can be found here.

Windows 7 end of support.

If you have any questions on any of these topics please get in touch.

Contact

I’m going to touch briefly on a few things this time. Just topics that have cropped up during day to day work that prompted me to get writing. So here are some thoughts on anti-virus, backing up and Windows 7.

Anti-Virus software

You should only have one anti-virus package installed at any time on your computer.  I recently went to a customer who was getting odd messages on his screen.

It turned out to be a second AV program conflicting with his main one, which caused the PC to run slow and the error messages to appear. Removal of the offending software solved the problems immediately.

Neither program was able to do its job properly due to the conflicts.

Backups

This topic is a common theme for me. I often meet customers who have no backup or only one inadequate manual backup on a memory stick or such like.

I cannot emphasise enough how important backups are, especially if you are in business. Most people do not recognise the importance until it is too late. By then they have had an incident and lost precious data.

As a minimum you should make a local backup and also an online backup using one of the commercially available solutions. I will write further on this in the future.

Windows 7

I talked about Windows 7 earlier in the year, this is just a reminder.

In January 2020 Windows 7 will reach its end of support from Microsoft.

This means that Microsoft will no longer push out security updates for Windows 7. So, when a bug or vulnerability is found it will no longer be patched or fixed. This will mean Windows 7 machines will become less secure. Users with such machines should upgrade to Windows 10 by either buying a new machine or upgrading their old one.

More information can be found here.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4057281

As ever, if you have any questions on any of these topics please get in touch.

https://srcomputers.co.uk/contact

How many of you have experienced that irritating wait when booting your computer or waiting for an application to launch?

You’re not alone, many of us have, at some point, suffered this. Unfortunately, Windows in all its various incarnations, tends to slow down over time.

No one really knows why this happens, and a full re install of Windows can usually alleviate the problem, for a while anyway.

It tends to happen after a few years, and even after a couple of years on a well specified machine running Windows 10, (my own family PC!).

It should not have happened, the machine has a high-end CPU, plenty of RAM and no games or other 3^rd party software slowing it down. The main software installed is Office 365 only. This got me wondering what could be behind the slow down. A little bit of investigation later and I had identified the culprit. The 3TB hard drive, which was hardly full at all, a paltry 220GB used out of the 3TB.

There was nothing wrong with the drive per se, but it was getting a lot of use from Windows 10, even in an idle state. I had checked to make sure there were no sneaky non-Windows processes running in the background. I could only conclude that Windows 10 itself accesses the drive regularly in its operation.

So why don’t all Windows 10 machines run slowly then I hear you ask.

Quite simply it is down to the type of storage drive used where Windows is installed. Most average machines with a reasonable amount of storage use traditional hard drives with a magnetised spinning platter and arm, like the one pictured above. In speed terms of modern CPUs and RAM, this is actually a bottleneck. The necessary mechanical action of the hard drive internals is slow compared to the rest of the system. This causes data transfer to be slowed down comparatively.

The solution is simple, replace the old mechanical technology drives (HDD) with newer solid-state drives or SSDs as they are known. These solid-state drives have no moving parts and run at the same speeds as the rest of the system. Thus not causing any slowdown of data transfer.

Once upgraded to SSD you will see much reduced boot up times and speedier opening of applications on your system. Older systems really do benefit. Previously where start up could take several minutes it could now be ready to go in under 30 seconds.

What’s the catch I hear you say.

Well there is always something, and the cost per GB of storage space is higher for SSDs than HDD. However, over the last 8-12 months prices of SSDs have dropped dramatically. Typically, a 1TB HDD will cost around £40 on average, whereas, a 1TB SSD will be over £100.

However, most people I encounter only use a fraction of the capacity of their drives, myself included. Therefore, it is not necessary to replace a 1TB HDD with a 1TB SSD, a lower capacity will suffice, thus reducing the cost dramatically.

Typically, a 128GB SSD will come in around £30 and a 256GB around £60. Much more affordable when revitalising an older computer.

I’ve done lots of these upgrades over the last twelve months. The reaction when people see how quickly their computer now responds is brilliant.

If you want to know more then please get in touch.

Thanks,

Damian.

https://www.srcomputers.co.uk/contact