Ask Leo! #395 - My wife's new Mac, svchost, fake accounts, fake email and more... - Confident Computing

The Ask Leo! Newsletter

*** Featured

Why I bought my wife a Mac

My wife's old Dell D610 laptop has served us well for many years, but its age was beginning to show. Maxed out at 2GB of RAM, running Windows 7 Professional along with Microsoft Security Essentials, Team Viewer, Dropbox, Evernote, and a couple of other things, it was just getting ... pokey.

Slow.

Not absolutely, horrifically slow, but slow enough from time to time that it was clear action would soon be called for.

Now, the normal approach would be to backup, reformat, reinstall ... it'd been a while since I'd done that to this machine, and it was probably overdue for that level of cleanup. And it would probably help.

But I'd also decided that she was overdue for a new computer anyway, so I'll be completely honest and call it what it really was.

An excuse.

Continue reading: Why I bought my wife a Mac
http://ask-leo.com/C5885

* * *

What is svchost, and why is there more than one copy running?

Fire up Process Explorer or Task Manager in Windows to view the running processes and among all the processes running on your machine you'll see something called "svchost.exe."

In fact, you'll see it listed several times.

As I write this, there are no less than 11 copies of svchost.exe running in my Windows 7 64-bit system.

To understand why this is expected, we need to understand a little bit about why svchost exists and what it does.

Continue reading: What is svchost, and why is there more than one copy running?
http://ask-leo.com/C1852

* * *

*** Answercast

Answercast #58 - Preserving old content, power settings, fake accounts and domain emails, full hard drives and more...

Still looking for Outlook Express or having troubles emailing documents? More spam, fake accounts, troubles with Chrome, and more in this Answercast from Ask Leo!

Continue reading: Answercast #58 - Preserving old content, power settings, fake accounts and domain emails, full hard drives and more...
http://ask-leo.com/C5874

Will Windows 8 have Outlook Express?
Outlook Express was a wonderful email program and I understand people's reluctance to move to something else, but Microsoft stopped supporting it a long time ago.
Continue reading: Will Windows 8 have Outlook Express?
http://ask-leo.com/C5875

How do I replace my hard disk while preserving the old contents?
The approach that I'm going to suggest is quite practical and I think it kills two birds with one stone.
Continue reading: How do I replace my hard disk while preserving the old contents?
http://ask-leo.com/C5876

Why can't my recipients open the documents I email them?
It really is a simple fact that a computer out of the box, or an email program out of the box, simply can't read every possible file format.
Continue reading: Why can't my recipients open the documents I email them?
http://ask-leo.com/C5877

My power options include an active or passive CPU setting. Which do I want?
It depends so much on how you use your computer and what your own personal preference is for things like heat versus noise.
Continue reading: My power options include an active or passive CPU setting. Which do I want?
http://ask-leo.com/C5878

Someone's sending email that looks like it's coming from my domain. What can I do?
The problem is that the from address on an email is incredibly easy to spoof. Fortunately, that spam has nothing to do with your servers.
Continue reading: Someone's sending email that looks like it's coming from my domain. What can I do?
http://ask-leo.com/C5879

How can someone create a fake account in my daughter's name?
It's unfortunate, but people can go out and create email accounts using what ever name they might want to.
Continue reading: How can someone create a fake account in my daughter's name?
http://ask-leo.com/C5880

Chrome won't load my home page on the first attempt, but will on the second. Why?
There are several steps to try, including clearing the cache and then restarting the browser.
Continue reading: Chrome won't load my home page on the first attempt, but will on the second. Why?
http://ask-leo.com/C5881

How do I confirm that a file has been copied correctly?
In the long run, I wouldn't really worry. Trying to verify that the file is copied correctly takes more time than simply keeping regular backups.
Continue reading: How do I confirm that a file has been copied correctly?
http://ask-leo.com/C5882

What do you recommend for storing the many addresses we all have?
By and large, there really isn't a strong and specific recommendation that I have for everybody, Google and desktop email clients both have good contact management systems.
Continue reading: What do you recommend for storing the many addresses we all have?
http://ask-leo.com/C5883

How do I find out what's filling up my external drive?
Two things to try are to analyze your backup program and the allocation of your disk space.
Continue reading: How do I find out what's filling up my external drive?
http://ask-leo.com/C5884

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*** Last Issue's Articles

*** Comments

How do I uninstall this search hijack that came along with another install?

carol putman writes:

Recently while installing software, I had to click trough several installation screens labeled "Advanced" to discover that extra, unwanted software would be installed with the software I wanted. This is nothing short of devious tactics and unethical behavior and I can't see how any legitimate software can allow this kind of thing to be associated with their companies. I don't consider myself "Advanced," just curious, so I would imagine the unwanted software gets installed with regularity.

How do I uninstall this search hijack that came along with another install?

johnpro2 writes:

I run my browser sandboxed when downloading/testing new software and then if necessary run the downloaded software sandboxed. If all seems well after a time I might install and run un-sanboxed. Sandboxie is available free and is well worth having..although maybe a little geeky for some home users. Jp

Why does my ISP-given email account fill up if I don't use it?

Peter B writes:

Some ISPs will use the e-mail address they have provided you with to send you e-mails (annual renewals, price increases, etc). so you may want to at least monitor the contents.

That's actually a very good observation I hadn't considered...

-Leo

How do I disable the touchpad if it's not in my Control Panel?

Susan writes:

Had the same problem on my husband's brand new Dell Inspiron N5050. After he and I both searched on-line for fixes, finally found on a Dell forum the advice that you give to download the driver for the mousepad. After installing the driver, I didn't have to disable the mousepad. Here is what I did and it worked: go to Control Panel, select Hardware & Sound, then, Devices and Printers, then Mouse, then Dell Touchpad. On that screen, click on the link that says, "Click to Change Dell Touchpad Settings". One of the icons will be labeled, "Touchpad Settings". Uncheck " Tap to click". This is in Windows 7 OS. Completely fixed the problem.

What does "the path is not of a legal form" mean?

Tom R. writes:

I run both Kubuntu and Win 7 in a dual-boot configuration. Several years ago I created a file called "Earth: Where We Live," which is a perfectly valid file name in a Unix-like file system. I stored it on an NTFS partition that I use for work created in either OS. The problem is that NTFS, while running under Windows, chokes on a colon used in a file name. Unix-like OSes have no problem with the colon. Therefore, Linux could open the file just fine but Windows couldn't even see it. It was completely invisible. After I figured out what the causing the problem and renamed the file to get rid of the colon (using Kubuntu), the file started appearing in Windows.

A real-life example of an illegal path form.

*** Leo Recommends

Dropbox - Share files across machines, with friends and publicly for free

I've been using Dropbox for a quite some time now and recently came across perhaps the most compelling reason to finally recommend it to you.

One of the common questions I get is "how do I share [files, photos, documents, whatever] with my [friends, business associates, contacts] without using email, and without having them show up on the public internet?

Dropbox solves that, and a lot more.

Continue reading: Dropbox - Share files across machines, with friends and publicly for free
http://ask-leo.com/C4540

Each week I recommend a specific product or resource that I've found valuable and that I think you may as well. What does my recommendation mean?

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