What is that little Windows icon on my taskbar?

Win10-U-07A little Windows icon has appeared in the notification area of the taskbar on PCs operating on Windows 7 (SP1) and Windows 8.1. What is it for?

It is a little “gateway” to the future!

Win10-U-08Put your pointer on it and it will bring up a little message saying “Get Windows 10”.

Click on it and you will see a window with this message:

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The “How this free upgrade works” message from Microsoft tells you the three steps to get your free upgrade to Windows 10. Step 1 is to “Reserve” your copy of Windows 10. You really have a year to perform this upgrade operation, but why not get in line to be one of the first to enjoy the latest and most efficient operating system from Microsoft?

Click on “Reserve your free upgrade” and you will see a simple form that just asks for your email address and whether you want to be informed of the latest on Windows 10.

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Once you have sent in your reservation, you will get downloads of the upgrade components. The actual Windows 10 upgrade package will not be installed on your computer until after July 29, 2015, the official release date of the new operating system. There will still be opt-in steps for you, so don’t worry that your computer will be “taken over”.

.:.

© 2015 Ludwig Keck

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When it says “Do not turn off your computer” what happens if I do?

You see this message usually when your PC is installing updates and it is in the process of shutting down or restarting. If the computer is powered off during this process the installation process will be interrupted.

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The interruption can have several outcomes. The best is that when you restart your computer the process either continues or picks up from the start and you hardly notice that anything bad has occurred. It may be that the computer goes through several cycles trying to get the job done. That may take extra time but gets everything updated.

It can also happen that the process was stopped when it was already marked done but has not completed. The PC will show the update installed when in fact it reverted back to the prior version of whatever was being updated. This can be bad especially if some vulnerability was being corrected and that did not really happen. It is usually best after a power interruption to manually check for updates again.

The worst outcome can be that the process gets caught in such a way that it loops back to the same incomplete state. The machine might even be unusable as it tries over and over to complete the update. Intervention might be needed, restarting into safe mode, and starting the update process again.

One thing you normally do not need to worry about is loosing any of your data.

.:.

© 2015 Ludwig Keck

How do I make a OneDrive album public?

Back a year and a half ago when OneDrive was called SkyDrive this same question was answered here. Of course, Microsoft has made a lot of changes since then and the details have changed. In fact, the current procedure is not at all intuitive and might frustrate a lot of users.

Microsoft intends your OneDrive to be your “file cabinet in the cloud”. It is meant for your private use, but you can share any folder, album, or individual item with a specific person, with anyone you provide a link to, or with everybody on the Internet anywhere in the world. This last “share” setting is usually referred to as “public”. If you wish to provide access to an item in your OneDrive to any and all readers of your blog for example, you need to make that item “public”. It’s sharing setting has to be “Everyone”.

Anything in a folder, or album, including sub-folders and items in the sub-folders will inherit the share setting of the folder. It is possible to have an unshared folder and somewhere inside you may have an item, album, folder, photo, or document, that you may wish to share publicly. That is possible. There are some disadvantages to such mixed up sharing that are beyond the scope of this article. It is best to maintain a clean,easily understood sharing structure.  Things available to the public should be in one main folder that is public. That makes adding public material straightforward.

Here is the procedure for making a OneDrive album public

Create your folder or album that you wish to share with the world. By default a newly created folder is not shared, it is marked “Only me” as you can see in the illustration below. Note the white arrow, it shows that the folder has been selected. In the information pane the “Sharing” shows “Only me”.

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To share this folder publicly click the “Share” link in the information pane or the Share link in the menu bar. The next page defaults to the sharing with individual people option. Click the “Get a link” option on the left.

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The next page may be confusing, as the “public” option is not apparent.

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You may think that you want to get a link with the “View only” option and that is what is shown on this page. But note the options chevron (see red arrow). Click that! Now you see the “Public” option.

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Click Public, then click Create link.

You will get a longish link in the window that you can copy (Ctrl-C) to provide to your readers. There is also an option to shorten the link.

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Also note that the folder is shown as being shared with “Everyone” and that the setting is “Can only view”.

You can use the long link or the much shorter one which is much easier to type by others, if that is needed.

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On you main OneDrive page you will see the sharing setting right under the folder name. If the information pane is showing you will see the sharing setting there also. The globe symbol indicates that the folder is now public.

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Anything you put in this folder, including new folders, will also be public by “inheritance”.

Although your folder is public it is not easily found by others. Search engines do not show OneDrive folders. So you need to provide the link to you readers in your blog or on your site. If you don’t, it is like unlocking the backdoor to your store. You customers can’t find it unless they know the address of your place.

.:.

© 2014 Ludwig Keck

How do I get AutoPlay to import photos from a flash drive?

Normally when you plug in your camera or the memory card the AutoPlay program on your PC will automatically start the photo import routine. If you use an USB drive or adapter this might not happen.

This article provides detailed instructions for checking your PC and setting it up so that the import routine will start when you plug in a USB device or memory card that has photos on it.

This will work on PCs running Windows 7 and earlier versions. This will not work on Windows 8.1 – just forget about AutoPlay on Windows 8.1, it isn’t ready for prime time yet.

First make sure that the external media is recognized.

  • Plug in your USB device or memory card. Listen for the sound that tells you that the PC has recognized something being plugged in.
  • Check Windows Explorer to make sure that the device is listed under Computer.

If this part does not work you have a problem beyond the scope of this article.

Second make sure that AutoPlay is properly set.

  • Click the Start button and type autoplay
  • The AutoPlay program will show up in the start menu already selected (highlighted). Press Enter to start it.
  • Take a look in the AutoPlay window near the top. There is a checkbox with this text: “Use AutoPlay for all media and devices”. If this box is not checked, click it so that it is checked.

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  • Click the Save button.
  • Now try and see if your external device is recognized and causes AutoPlay to start.

Chanced are that the PC will behave just as it did before and the media does not start AutoPlay.

To get your PC to start AutoPlay for an USB device or memory card you will need to do a bit of “brain surgery”. What we will do next is to modify a setting in the “registry”. Read this article through first. If you are reluctant to dig this deep into the inner workings of your computer don’t feel bad. Things can go wrong and it is possible to do harm. This is brain surgery on your PC. Just get an expert friend to help you, or take your machine to your friendly computer shop.

If you feel that you can handle the process go ahead and “scrub in”.

Setting your PC to start AutoPlay for USB or other devises

imageHere are step by step instructions with illustrations along the way to guide you.

  • Click the Start button and type regedit
  • In the Registry Editor window click the Edit link.

  • In the dropdown menu click Find…

There will be an additional Find dialog window.

  • In the text entry box type NoDriveTypeAutoRun

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  • Click Find Next

You will see a message “Searching the registry” – it will take a while to complete this search. When the search is finished you will see something like the illustration below.

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There will be an entry that we searched for and it will be selected (highlighted).

  • Double-click on the highlighted entry.

A new little dialog window will come up.

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The “Value data:” will likely be “ff” as shown in the illustration. The value will be selected so you can cjange it by just typing the new value.image

  • Type 91 as the new value.
  • Click OK

The change dialog will close and the new value, 0x00000091 (145) will show in the registry data area.

  • Close the Registry Editor

That’s it. You have completed the brain surgery. You can take of your mask now, smile at the nurse and go on to the next details.

Final details

  • Restart your computer
  • When the computer has come up, plug in your device

imageNow momentarily after the beep you should see the AutoPlay dialog.

  • Cheer, clap your hands
  • In the AutoPlay dialog click the checkbox “Always do this for pictures:”
  • Then click Import pictures and videos using Photo Gallery

There may be a number of other option as illustrated here. Yours will be different from mine. The important thing to remember is that the Photo Gallery importer is the very best one available. None of the others do as good a job, give you the variety of options, or make it as easy.

After you click Import pictures and videos using Photo Gallery the normal import process will start. It will start that way in the future whenever you plug in your device.

If this solves your problem, do me a favor and let me know with a comment below.

.:.

© 2013 Ludwig Keck