News

You want to use the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection on your computer, but you don’t want to use the default port number.  Here is what you can do to change the listening port on your computer. Please keep in mind, if you make an incorrect change in the registry, your computer may not start back up. 

1. Click Windows Key + R
2. Type “regedit” to star the registry editor
3. Navigation to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\”
4. Right Click “PortNumber” from the right column
5. Click “Modify”
6. Click “Decimal”
7. Type in the port number you would like to use
8. Click “OK”
9. Close the Registry Editor
10. Restart your computer.

Of course, after you make these changes, you also have to do port forwarding in the router & make sure your computer firewall allows the connnection through as well before this will work.

If you would like to change your email password and you are on our web server, the following steps will help you do this.  These steps may work on other cPanel webmail servers as well (or at least be similar), but not guaranteed to work for you.

Changing your password

1. Go to webmail.DOMAINNAME.com (of course replacing your domain name with your website address)
2. Log into your email account by filling in your current email addresss & password
3. Make sure you are at the “Webmail Home” page:
   1. If your in Roundcube, click “Webmail Home” in the upper right corner
   2. If your in Horde, click “cPanel Webmail Home” in about the top center of the screen
4. Click “Password & Security”
5. Type in your new password or “Password Generator”
   1. We strongly suggest making your password at least a “Strong” password
6. Click “Save”

Your password has now been saved.

If you do not know your current password, you will not be able to reset your password, you will have to contact us to reset it.

Other email settings

• Username: Your full email address
• Password: Your current password
• Incoming Server: mail.DOMAINNAME.com
  • Port  Numbers:
    • IMAP: 993
    • POP3: 995
• Outgoing Server: mail.DOMAINNAME.com
  • Port Numbers:
    • SMTP: 465
• IMAP, POP3 & SMTP all require authentication

TRUNK OR TREAT
Trunk or Treat will be held on Thursday, October 31, 2019 from 5:00-7:00 in the church parking lot. Again this year, we will be asking area churches to join us in the popular event where we decorate our cars and trick or treaters walk through the church parking lot collecting goodies.
There is a sign up sheet in the library for those who will be decorating a car or if you are willing to donate candy.
Sandy and the kitchen crew will be serving hot dogs, chips, hot chocolate, and coffee in the fellowship hall.
Last year we had approximately 400 kids plus parents attend and we received many compliments for providing this service.

TRUNK OR TREAT
Trunk or Treat will be held on Thursday, October 31, 2019 from 5:00-7:00 in the church parking lot. Again this year, we will be asking area churches to join us in the popular event where we decorate our cars and trick or treaters walk through the church parking lot collecting goodies.
There is a sign up sheet in the library for those who will be decorating a car or if you are willing to donate candy.
Sandy and the kitchen crew will be serving hot dogs, chips, hot chocolate, and coffee in the fellowship hall.
Last year we had approximately 400 kids plus parents attend and we received many compliments for providing this service.

All Microsoft products are released and then they are only supported for so long. We will try to keep a list of some of the software that they release and give the end of life dates below.

Windows 10 Versions (Home, Pro & Pro for Workstations)

Windows 8.1 & Older

Microsoft Office 

• Please note that the release dates are approximate and the end of support is primarily for the extended support. Most of Microsofts products have a 5-year mainstream support & another 5 year extended support. During the extended support, security fixes will still be released, but there will not be any new features or design changes during this phase.
• This information is for informational purposes only and the data may not be 100% accurate. We try to make sure all the info we provide is accurate, but changes sometime do happen, primarily with End of Support dates.

It seems that Windows 7 is one of the most favorite operating systems of most people who we talk with, the only other one that is close was Windows XP. Well, users who are still using Windows 7 are starting to get notices from Microsoft that their support for this operating system will end January 14, 2019. We knew the support was ending, but it is ending a little earlier than we had originally thought. Support will officially end January 14, 2020. So, this leads to the question, can you still use your Windows 7 computers or can they still be upgraded? I will answer some of these questions below.

Can I upgrade my computer to Windows 10?

The answer is probably yes, most machines that can handle Windows 7 can also handle Windows 10, but here are the system requirements for running Windows 10:

• Processor: 1GHz or faster
• RAM: 1GB+ for 32-bit or 2GB+ for 64-bit (we suggest at least 4 though)
• Hard Drive: 16GB+ for 32-bit Operating system or 32GB+ for 64-bit Operating system
  • (We strongly suggest a minimum of at least 120GB+ hard drive, since even 32GB hard drives have a very hard time doing the feature updates that are released about every 6 months lately. If you don’t store any documents/pictures and don’t install any programs, then the minimum hard drive sizes may work)

You can also find out more about the system requirements at Microsoft page.

There are more variables than just the minimum system requirements though. A couple of things you should ask yourself is how old is my computer, does it still act good or have their been problems lately. If your computer is older, it might be a better idea to purchase a new computer instead of upgrading your current one. This is a case-by-case scenario in our opinion since every user uses their computer differently.

Can I continue to use my Windows 7 Computer?

Yes, you can continue to use your Windows 7 computer. If you do continue to use your computer you will no longer receive any critical, important or optional updates (no updates at all) after that date. These updates are very important though, since they fix holes in the Operating systems that put your computer at a security risk and allows hackers to more easily get into your computer and get your information. With these security holes, even an antivirus can’t completely protect you from these hackers.

Is Windows 10 similar to Windows 7?

Windows 10 is a little different than Windows 7, but they have some similarities. Windows 10 has the better features of Windows 7 & Windows 8. One of the really nice features of Windows 10 is you can click start and just start typing to search for the program or item you are looking for. You can also pin items to the start menu which shows as icons on the right side of the start menu. For most people, the learning curve isn’t too bad.

How do I upgrade?

There are a couple of ways you can upgrade your computer. You can purchase a Windows 10 license directly from Microsoft and upgrade your operating system. If you do this yourself, we strongly suggest that you backup all of your data first, in case something goes wrong, you may not be able to recover your data. Another option, is if you bring your computer to us, we can do the upgrade for you and we will backup your data before we do the upgrades. This way you know your data will be safe and your computer will be updated to Windows 10.

If you are interested in a Windows 10 upgrade, please stop by our office at 410 Jones St, Eveleth, MN 55734 or give us a call at 218-288-5002.

So you have one of those annoying scam popups that say you must call this number or your computer will be deleted, or you will be fined or many other possible things. First thing, do NOT call that number, it is a scam. As long as you don’t let them on your computer, you should be just fine – this is just a scare tactic.

Here are 2 options of what you can do to close this scam out.

Option 1

1. Right click on the taskbar (the bar at the bottom of the screen)
   1. You can also press “CTRL + SHIFT + ESC” to bring up task manager
2. Click “Task Manager”
3. Right Click on the browser you are using (such as “Chrome”, “Internet Explorer”, “Firefox”, “Microsoft Edge”, etc)
4. Click “End Task”.
   1. This will end and close all the windows/tabs you have open. The popup should go away.
5. When you open up your browser again, do not restore the session, if you do, you will get the popup back right away.

Option 2

1. Hold the power button in for 30 seconds (even if your computer turns off, keeping holding the power button for 30 seconds)
2. Wait at least 10  seconds
3. Turn computer back on
4. When you open up your browser again, do not restore the session, if you do, you will get the popup back right away.

We hope this helps you out. If you do let someone on your computer, we then strongly suggest that someone looks at your computer and makes sure there is no malware/viruses installed. Many times, if you let them on your computer and tell them your not going to pay, they are going to change your password – that is something we can also usually get past. If you would like us to take a look or have a question, you are welcome to call us at 218-288-5002 or email us at info@techbytesmn.com.

Problem

When trying to open Microsoft Outlook, are you getting the error “Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. Invalid XML, the view cannot be loaded.”

We had this occur on a customers machine recently, and the following steps were able to resolve this issue for them.

Solution

1. Open the Run Menu (see next line if not sure how to open the Run menu)
   1. Click Start -> Run or Press Windows Key + R
2. Type the following in the run command “Outlook.exe /ResetNavPane”
3. Click “OK”

Microsoft released a Windows 7 update KB4480970 which caused issues. The primary issue that we came across was that windows 10 machines were no longer able to access the Windows 7 shared files or computer anymore. It would say something like “Invalid Handle”.  Microsoft has released a fix for this, but you have to go and manually download the update at this point in time. The fix is KB4487345, which can be retrieved from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

Microsoft is currently releasing to the computers Windows 10 Feature Update 1809. We have had a couple of computers come into the office in which have now received this update. The update, for us so far anyway, has seemed to gone through fairly smooth. A couple signs that you might be getting this update (at least we have seen) are the computer getting very slow – usually during the update download and install in the background. The computer is busy working behind the scenes and seems to have slowed some of the computers up, at least until the update is complete and installed all the way. Then the computer seems to start working fine again. During the restarting process in installing Feature Update 1809, we have noticed a couple of computers also come up with a black screen and only a cursor, for periods of time of 15-45 minutes. Please be sure to give this at least an hour before you do anything as it is usually working in the background. If after an hour the computer is still sitting there, then you could think of maybe doing something like trying to restart the computer. (Note * It is never a good idea to interrupt software during installation).

Some of the features new in Windows 10 Feature Update 1809 are (according to Microsoft):

• Your Phone app
  • Helps share your pictures, text messages & conversations between your PC & Phone.
• Wireless Projection Experience
  • Improves the experience of wireless connection to a screen making it easier to know when your sending your screen to a wireless device
• Windows Autopilot self-deploying mode
  • Windows Autopilot self-deploying mode enables a zero-touch device provisioning experience. Power on a device, plug it into the Ethernet and the device is fully configured automatically by Windows Autopilot.
• Kiosk Setup Experience
  • You can setup the PC as a kiosk or digital sign using this wizard.
• Registry Editor Improvements
  • Unless you know what you are doing, we do not suggest messing with the registry as making an incorrect change here can stop your computer from starting up or working properly.
• Security Improvements
  • The Virus & Threat Protection area will help you keep an eye on what you need to take action on right away. (We have not used this yet, so unsure how accurate/complete it is)
• Windows Defender Updates
  • Updates made on Windows Defender
• And more

Those are some of the updates that were included in the Windows 10 Feature 1809 update. Biggest thing to remember out of this is the update can take 30minutes to 2-3 hours, averages about 40-60 minutes. Don’t get inpatient too quickly as that can cause issues if you interrupt an update. These updates will probably be rolling out over the next few months. When it is ready to install, it will have to be installed as there is no way to turn off windows 10 updates – one of the worst “features” they have in Windows 10.

If there is something in-particular you would like us to write about, please send an email to info@techbytesmn.com and let us know what you would like us to write about.