Ask Leo! #387 - TeamViewer for remote access, display names that don't match email addresses and more... - Confident Computing

The Ask Leo! Newsletter

*** Featured

TeamViewer - Powerful Remote Access Software, Free for Personal Use

This recommendation comes with a bit of a caveat.

TeamViewer makes remote access to your computers easy. If you have TeamViewer set up on your machine at home, you can connect to it from just about anywhere you have an internet connection and via just about any device that you might have with you.

It's very cool and relatively simple to set up.

It's also fairly expensive if you're looking at a solution for your business.

However, TeamViewer is free for private use, which makes it an ideal solution for individuals just wanting to remote-access their computer back home or any other non-commercial uses.

Continue reading: TeamViewer - Powerful Remote Access Software, Free for Personal Use
http://ask-leo.com/C5772

* * *

*** Answercast

Answercast #50 - SP3 and Chkdsk failures, spam from friends, old floppies, annoying improvements and more...

Ever wonder if Hotmail listens to your complaints or how good anti-virus software can go bad? Ever get spam from old friends or need to load something from an ancient floppy? Wonder about choppy audio or how to stop an annoying auto-play? All that and more in this Answercast from Ask Leo!

Continue reading: Answercast #50 - SP3 and Chkdsk failures, spam from friends, old floppies, annoying improvements and more...
http://ask-leo.com/C5773

I get a blue screen when setting up Windows XP. What do I do?
Problems installing XP's service pack 3 could be coming from either hardware or software. Getting that machine cleaned up is the first step.
Continue reading: I get a blue screen when setting up Windows XP. What do I do?
http://ask-leo.com/C5774

Why am I getting replies to emails I sent months ago?
When you suddenly start receiving suspicious emails from an old friend, the first thing to think of is spam. Don't click on anything!
Continue reading: Why am I getting replies to emails I sent months ago?
http://ask-leo.com/C5775

Why does legitimate anti-malware software interfere with my browsing?
Anti-malware software tries to insert itself between you and "possibly malicious" links and webpages on the internet... it often does that less than perfectly.
Continue reading: Why does legitimate anti-malware software interfere with my browsing?
http://ask-leo.com/C5776

Why does the name not match the email address on this email I just got?
More than likely your friend's email has been hacked. Spammers use this type of email cloaking to fool people into clicking on their links.
Continue reading: Why does the name not match the email address on this email I just got?
http://ask-leo.com/C5777

Why is my audio choppy?
This could be anything from out-of-date drivers to an overloaded computer. We'll look at both.
Continue reading: Why is my audio choppy?
http://ask-leo.com/C5778

CHKDSK is stuck after 48 hours. Is this a problem?
A CRC error and CHKDSK failure is a sign of a hard drive that is on its way out. Recovery and replacement is the way to go.
Continue reading: CHKDSK is stuck after 48 hours. Is this a problem?
http://ask-leo.com/C5779

Can I just give people remote access to my machine to view my vacation videos?
Opening your machine to the public is a path fraught with peril and something to be avoided at almost any cost!
Continue reading: Can I just give people remote access to my machine to view my vacation videos?
http://ask-leo.com/C5780

How do I load my floppy-based backups if I have no floppy drive?
A USB floppy drive is a simple answer to getting your data off old disks.
Continue reading: How do I load my floppy-based backups if I have no floppy drive?
http://ask-leo.com/C5781

How do I stop this auto-play audio from playing after I delete the email message that had it?
A media player, such as Windows Media Player, is probably playing in the background. The trick is switching over to that program and shutting it down.
Continue reading: How do I stop this auto play-audio from playing after I delete the email message that had it?
http://ask-leo.com/C5782

Is there any chance that Hotmail will revert these broken "improvements" they've made?
Hotmail only moves forward! If you don't like their service, there ARE alternatives!
Continue reading: Is there any chance that Hotmail will revert these broken "improvements" they've made?
http://ask-leo.com/C5783

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*** Last Issue's Articles

*** Comments

I get the New Hardware Wizard frequently for no reason. How do I fix that?

doc_benway writes:

Sometimes Windows (even Win7-64 Ultimate) just gets confused with/by USB hardware and ports, and seems to lose the proper settings and needs to "clear its head," so to speak.

I have found that problems like that described by the OP often resolve if the port or hub to which the device is connected is uninstalled in device manager, followed by a reboot, which will rerecognize the port and everything attached to it.

If the problem persists, I would suspect hardware (which includes cables, so try swapping the cable out before giving up).

How did someone in another town login to my Facebook account?

prince writes:

there may be another problem like when you use another 3rd party application to access facebook i experienced this when using ebuddy on my mobile and saying that it is accessed from california

That's an excellent observation I hadn't thought of. Quite plausible. Thanks!

-Leo

LastPass - Securely keep track of multiple passwords on multiple devices

Bradley writes:

Hi Leo,

I signed up for LastPass a few days ago based on recommendations I read from you and on Lifehacker, and I really think it's great.

I have a question that I can't resolve on my own: If I'm on somebody else's (or a public) computer, how do you advise accessing my passwords for things like email, since I don't have them memorized anymore? Is it risky to log in to LastPass (using their onscreen keyboard to avoid keyloggers) and use the online vault to access my passwords? I assume I'd have to do a copy/paste of my email password and then overwrite the clipboard afterward. Any thoughts?

Thanks for a really excellent website!

Brad

If you're at a computer you can't trust then you shouldn't be logging in to your email at all regardless of whether you're using LastPass or not. Your email password could be captured by several different means. Copy/paste does nothing to thwart keyloggers since in reality there are "activity" loggers which can easily capture what comes and goes in the clipboard.

-Leo

How do I get YouTube videos embedded in email messages to work?

Fred Wortham writes:

I would be very, very careful about clicking on videos in emails unless you know the sender. I've gotten videos in emails that have nothing to do with YouTube, but may prompt for a codec installation which may very well be, in reality, malware of some sort.

So, again, I would BE VERY CAREFUL about videos in emails.

*** Leo Recommends

Recuva - A free, easy to use undelete and file recover tool

As you might expect, I have a small collection of useful tools that I keep available for assorted system maintenance and troubleshooting tasks. However, for the longest time I haven't really carried a file un-delete utility with me. Not because there aren't some good ones out there, but more because I never really got comfortable with any of the ones I had tried. I certainly was not comfortable enough to recommend any.

I recently discovered Recuva, which I just added to my toolkit. It's free, it's easy to use, and it's from the same people that bring you CCleaner, which gives added credibility.

When you delete a file, the contents of that file are not necessarily immediately overwritten or removed. Instead, the space used by that file is marked as "available" so that it can be used the next time data is written to the disk. As long as that doesn't happen and the old data is not overwritten by something new, there's a chance you can recover the file.

This is where utilities like Recuva come in. They scan the available space and the control information on the hard disk to identify files that might be recoverable.

Recuva starts with a Wizard that allows you to specify what drives to scan, and what classes of files to look for. Let's say you just deleted a picture on your flash drive by mistake, you can tell Recuva to scan all the removable media for pictures, and it'll do exactly that. Or, you can dive right into the program's advanced interface and have it scan a specific drive you specify, and then filter the results based on type or name.

Continue reading: Recuva - A free, easy to use undelete and file recover tool
http://ask-leo.com/C3605

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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