Windows 10 end of life. Your options

The Windows 10 end of life is 14/10/2025 In an earlier blog on Windows 10 end of life, I concentrated on the pros and cons of updating to Windows 11 if you can. But what if you can’t? Windows 10, once hailed as “the last version of Windows,” is approaching its end-of-life on October 14, 2025. …
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Microsoft Bitlocker

Bitlocker improves security but can complicate things A password or PIN normally protects the contents of your Windows computer from prying eyes. But what happens if someone removes the hard drive (or SSD) from your computer and attaches it via USB to another computer? In the past, it has been trivially easy to access the …
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Close a frozen program from the taskbar in Windows 11

What do you do when a program stops working in Windows? It happens to everyone from time to time: a program just stops responding. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any great problem, but you can’t do any more with it until you dismiss it and start again. If you don’t know a better way, you …
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“Let’s finish setting up your device”

If you have a Windows 10 or 11 computer then this unwanted interruption has probably hassled you several times in recent months Microsoft’s screen that sometimes pops up with the exhortation “let’s finish setting up your device” is un-necessary and somewhat misleading. Maybe I am naive for thinking that no company with whom we deal …
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Upgrade to Windows 11?

Windows 10 is nearing “end of life” What if your computer will not run Windows 11? The main reason probably lies in a piece of hardware that your computer lacks. It is called Trusted Platform Module: level 2.0. If your computer lacks this then it is likely to be at least five years old and …
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Predictive typing in Word and Windows (10 & 11)

The spirit of Clippy is back Do you remember the good old days of the Microsoft “Clippy” character in Microsoft Word? If you started to create a document that looked anything like a letter then it popped up a totally useless box with a totally fatuous and infantile piece of clipart, and a caption saying …
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Sort on two or more columns in Outlook and Explorer

Sorting on one column in Outlook and Explorer In Outlook, you can sort the display of emails on any column simply by clicking on the column name – eg clicking on “Subject” above the column of the email subject headings will sort on that column. Clicking on it again will sort in the opposite direction …
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Pinning Documents to Start Menus

Although it’s not obvious how to do it, pinning documents to Windows Start Menus is possible This blog post was written for Windows 10 (as reflected in the illustrations below). However, pinning documents to Start Menus also works in Windows 11 (post updated 09/11/2023 and 15/12/2024). If you have documents that you need to access …
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Adding Folder Shortcuts to the Windows Taskbar

Windows doesn’t readily allow you to add folder shortcuts to the taskbar – but it can be done It is useful to be able to drag desktop shortcuts onto the taskbar so that they are easily found whether or not the desktop is being displayed. If, however, you have desktop shortcuts that are shortcuts to …
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