This evening I took the Windows 10 upgrade plunge… I “sat back and relaxed” as ordered, and all was going swimmingly – the kids oooo’d and ahhhh’d as we tried things out, and we all said it looked like how Windows 7 and 8 should have really been, etc etc, until I tried to send an email from Outlook 2013. Nope. Stuck in the outbox. Rebooted. Nope,... read more

This is a note to self really, as I find that when I come to transfer an LP to computer once every few months I have forgotten how I did it before so it takes me twice as long as it should. There are a lot of possible variations in this process, but this basic workflow does the job for me. I hope it might be useful to someone else too. Setting... read more

Lots of things open and close – doors, shops, windows, mouths, apps, free schools, etc. The “open” state is good for use, travel, ventilation, communication, education, aspiration and operation. The “closed” state is good for silence, darkness, stasis and rest. “Closed” is good only when the recovery it permits is necessary for “open” to be... read more

I’m sharing this because I’m sure others will have the same issue, and the same miserable time trying to find helpful information. Such is life when you have any computing kit that is older than about 6 months, it seems. I wanted to scan a couple of Helen’s drawings, before they went off to school and got mangleworzled. Our scanner is one of those ... read more

My Windows Backup has been failing to complete for a while, after churning away for ages. I use it to backup a data drive and make a system image onto a NAS (a 1GB RAID5 Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, which is Linux based). I wasn’t that fussed for a while as I have other backups that are working, but finally this morning I chased the beggar down. It was... read more

My favourite web authoring tool, however… … since an automatic update to Windows Live Essentials the other day, Windows Live Writer has failed to start, giving “Windows Live Writer has stopped working” immediately. Actually I’m not 100% it was working just before that, but I think so. I am of course writing this in Windows Live Writer, so what... read more

Our books are all over the place – bookshelves all over the house with mixed up contents, and loads in cardboard boxes too (we moved house only 11 years ago). not surprisingly, it’s rather hard to find that book I’m sure I’ve got somewhere about Greek mythology, or whatever. So as a masterclass in displacement activity (from DIY and real work) I... read more

A quick note for anyone encountering similar misery with Windows 7 updates, failed installations, and TrustedInstaller.exe gobbling CPU. Here's a solution that does not involve reinstalling Windows. My Windows 7 64-bit PC failed to install an update to Paint.Net a few weeks ago – mildly irritating at the time, but in fact just the first in a... read more