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

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Ludwig

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.

.:.

How do I pin Outlook to the taskbar in Windows 8?

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Ludwig

How to pin Outlook to the taskbar in Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10

Outlook can mean a couple of different things these days. There is Microsoft Outlook, the desktop mail client that is part of Microsoft Office, there is also Outlook.com the Microsoft email service. Let’s take them up one at a time.

Outlook – mail client

To pin the Outlook mail client to the taskbar do this:

Click Start, or press the Windows key on the keyboard.
Find the Outlook listing – you may need to scroll around a bit.
Right-click on Outlook
Click on Pin to taskbar

That’s it.

Outlook.com – the online email service

To pin a link to the Outlook.com site to the taskbar proceed as shown below.

NOTE: This only works if you are using Internet Explorer.

Open Internet Explorer and go to outlook.com. Sign in.
Find the little icon in front of the web address. See the illustration here.
Place the pointer on the little icon. Note the tooltip “Drag to taskbar to pin site”.
Drag the little icon down to the taskbar and release it on the taskbar.

That’s it.

You can have both the mail client and the online outlook.com site pinned to the taskbar. The icons are very similar. The “white envelope” one is the Outlook client.

Taskbar icons

Outlook icons

.:.

How do I upgrade to Windows 8.1 ?

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Ludwig

Now that Windows 8.1 is available everyone with a Windows 8 PC can get the new system at no cost. Well, it takes a bit of time, but that is all.

Before you start, be sure that you have backed up your computer. Installing a new system, and that is what upgrading to Windows 8.1 really is, is very much like major surgery, things can go wrong. So be safe, be prepared.

Do allow plenty of time. For me it took well over an hour; but then I was eager to update, right along with all the others who wanted to upgrade right after Windows 8.1 became available.

The procedure is quite easy. Go to the Start screen and click on the Store tile. You will see the invitation to update right away.

Click on that invitation, the Download link on the next screen, and you are on your way. The download will proceed. There is nothing you need to to for a while. You will see the “Downloading” message, then “Getting your PC ready”, finally “Preparing to restart”.

Then you see a message asking for permission to restart.

After a number of messages on a black screen with the new Windows logo advising the progress of “Setting up …”, “Getting devices ready …”, “Applying PC settings …”, “Setting up a few more things ..”, you will be presented with the License terms. You can read them, they are very, very long. You really have no choice but to accept if you wish to upgrade.

Now you will need to make some more decisions. Next you will see the Settings screen.

You can make some choices here, but clicking “Use express settings” is probably the easiest. You will be asked to sign in to your Microsoft account. Then a bit of extra security measures. You will be asked to how you want to receive a numeric code.

If you have set up your Microsoft account with a phone number, you can receive either a text or voice message. You can also receive the code by email. Texting to your phone is the easiest. For me the phone rang immediately after clicking Next.

Enter the numeric code on the next screen. You will see an option for using SkyDrive.

Once you proceed from here there will be a number of colorful screens as the final installation tasks. Shortly you will see your Start screen just as it was before on Windows 8. You can now start customizing and using the new features in Windows 8.1

.:.

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How do I include items in my Windows 8 Photos library?

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Ludwig

You might have photos in a folder other than “My Pictures” or on a drive other that “C:”. Those photos will not be displayed in the Photos tile on the start screen and will not shown in Photo Gallery. Rather than moving the photos or their folder around on your PC, the proper way is to include the folder containing those pictures in you Pictures library. Here is the procedure for doing that:

Open File Explorer.
In the navigation bar on the left, locate the folder you wish to include in the Pictures library.
Right-click the folder name.
In the next menu click Include in library
This provides a list of your libraries, click the one to use – in this case Pictures

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That’s it. You have now included the folder in the Pictures library. Yes, you can include a whole drive. You will get the same menu when you right-click a drive name.

Your photos from the included folders will show up in all programs and apps that use the library, like Windows Photo Gallery, Picasa, of course, File Explorer. They will also be displayed in the Start page Photos app.

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