How to Boot Your Computer from a USB Stick

After creating a bootable USB stick, you can use it to run Linux or other software directly on your computer. Follow these steps:

Step 1: Insert the USB Stick

Plug the bootable USB stick into an available USB port on your computer.

Step 2: Access the Boot Menu or BIOS/UEFI

You need to tell your computer to boot from the USB instead of the hard drive.

• Restart your computer.
• Immediately press the key to enter the Boot Menu or BIOS/UEFI. Common keys include: F12, F10, F2, Esc, Del. Check your computer’s manual if unsure.
• Some computers show a short message like “Press F12 for Boot Options” when starting up.

Step 3: Select the USB Drive

• In the Boot Menu, look for your USB stick in the list of devices.
• Select the USB stick and confirm.
• If you’re in BIOS/UEFI, change the boot order so the USB drive is first, then save and exit.

Step 4: Boot from the USB

• Your computer should now start from the USB stick.
• If it’s a Linux Live USB, you can try the OS without installing it.
• Follow the on-screen instructions for installation or testing.

Tips

• On newer systems with UEFI, you may need to disable Secure Boot for some Linux distributions.
• If the computer still boots from the hard drive, recheck the boot order or use the Boot Menu key.
• Always double-check that you’re selecting the correct USB device to avoid accidental data loss.

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How to Create a Bootable USB Stick

• Buy a USB stick — 8GB is usually enough.
• Download your preferred Linux OS (or another program).
• Download and install Balena Etcher
  (available free for Windows, Mac, and Linux).
• Open Balena Etcher and follow the prompts, making sure you write to the correct USB stick.
• When done, you have a bootable USB stick and can boot your computer from it.
  (How is that done?)

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Microsoft Ending Windows 10 Support – What Are Your Options?

It has come to my attention that Microsoft is stopping support for Windows 10 in October 2025.

However, there are ways out of having to buy a new Windows 11 machine.

Option 1: Use Flyby11.com (available at Flyoobe (https://github.com/builtbybel/Flyoobe)

• Possibility: Flyby11.com will let you upgrade your Windows 10 computer to Windows 11 even if Microsoft’s own tool will not. This is not sinister or illegal. Microsoft allows it. Even though it is not encouraged (for obvious reasons).
• Risk: It may not work.

Option 2: Move Away From Microsoft Products

This is only viable if you are not dependent on specific Microsoft software. Most non-corporate and non-business people are not dependent, because for every Microsoft product, an equivalent exists under Linux:

• MS Office → LibreOffice (can create and edit MS Office files)
• OneDrive → Nextcloud, ownCloud, pCloud, MEGA, Dropbox
• Outlook (Mail + Calendar) → Evolution, Thunderbird (+ Lightning Calendar), KMail

🔗 See a longer comparison list here.

Many popular apps — Libre Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, Brave, Chromium browser and others — run on both Windows and Linux. So even if you upgrade to Windows 11 you can get a benefit from the many free, open source programs available today, that do exactly the same as the for fee programs.

Why Consider Linux?

If you’re fed up with being:

• coerced to upgrade to a new computer when yours still runs well (sustainability)
• constantly asked to pay more monthly or upgrade fees
• monitored so big tech can sell your behavioral data for profit

…then you can take charge of your computing by upgrading to a community-supported Linux system.

Generally, the programs are free of charge and open source (the code can be reviewed and is constantly updated and bugs are fixed by a wide community of volunteer programers. Thank you for your generousity).

My Linux Recommendations

I have personally reviewed these systems:

Linux Mint

⭐ Top Recommendation.
A complete and well-supported OS with access to all Linux software.

Q4OS

A sleek, slim OS ideal for older computers.
I tested it on a 10-year-old laptop — it worked great thanks to efficient configuration, providing nice graphics or great functionality. Everything you would expect from a modern computer.

Ubuntu 25.10

Another strong, well-supported OS, on par with Linux Mint.

Winux

A hot contender if you want a look and feel close to Windows 11.
It can run some Windows programs — but don’t expect every game to run smoothly out of the box.

How to Try Linux Without Changing Windows

You can test Linux on your current computer without altering your Windows installation:

1. Download the OS you want to try. Click the OS headings above
2. Create a bootable USB stick with that Linux version. (How is that done?)
3. Restart your computer and boot from the USB stick. (How is that done?)
4. Explore Linux in “Live Mode” — no changes are made to your Windows system.

Once you are happy that Linux Mint (or one of the other OS) is good for you you can install it either side-by-side or in replacement of your Windows install.

ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR IMPORTANT FILES BEFORE DOING THIS.

Installation is described in the respective OS’s documentation. How is that done? or do your own search or I use ChatGPT for a lot of these projects to cut down on the amount of information I need to get through and let ChatGPT just give me the essence.

Posted in Linux, Windows | Comments Off on Microsoft Ending Windows 10 Support – What Are Your Options?

Chocolatey – a software management system for Windows

Chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/) is a software manager for Windows. There are almost 5000 packages. The one you use are certainly in there. All mine are.

Install choco from an administrator command line:

@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%chocolateybin"

Then run installs like:

choco install -y ccleaner

https://chocolatey.org/packages contains a list  of all the packages

I recommend the GUI:

choco install -y chocolateygui chocolatey-core.extension

But I like the command line, too.

And I like, that you can update all your installed packages at once (yes they need to be installed by choc first):

choco upgrade -y

Sysadmin

windirstat winrar treesizefree TeraCopy Recuva nmap lockhunter ccleaner autoruns

User

sublimetext3 vlc WhatsApp XnView WindowsLiveInstaller WindowsLiveWriter PDFXchangeEditor paint.net notepadplusplus.install libreoffice lastpass irfanview GoogleChrome-AllUsers Firefox dropbox ditto

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How to turn off the existing Junk mail filter in Outlook, Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail

Running more than one spam filter at a time can cause both filters to become ineffective, thus it is only necessary to run Cloudmark’s filter. To disable the Junk filter, follow the instructions below.

To turn off Junk filtering in Outlook, Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail:

For Outlook 2010:

1. Click on the Home tab.
2. In the “Delete” section of the task bar, click on the “Junk” icon.
3. From the drop down menu, select “Junk mail options.”?
4. Select “No automatic filtering.”
5. Click “Apply” then “OK.”

For Outlook:

1. Open Outlook.
2. Click on the Tools menu.
3. Choose Options from the drop-down menu.
4. Click the Preferences tab on the window that appears.
5. Under “E-mail”, click the Junk E-mail button.
6. Choose “No Automatic Filtering”, then click Apply, then OK to accept the change.
7. Restart Outlook.

For Windows Mail:

1. Open Windows Mail.
2. Click on the Tools menu
3. Choose Junk E-mail Options from the drop-down menu.
4. Click the Options tab on the window that appears.
5. Choose “No Automatic Filtering” then click Apply, then OK to accept the change.
6. Restart Windows Mail.

For Windows Live Mail:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.
2. Click the Actions menu.
3. Choose Junk e-mail, then safety options from the drop-down menu.
4. Choose “No Automatic Filtering” then click Apply, then OK to accept the change.
5. Restart Windows Live Mail.

Posted in Outlook, Windows | Comments Off on How to turn off the existing Junk mail filter in Outlook, Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail

User profile service failed the logon User profile cannot be loaded NO BAK file

Came across a weird issue.

All of a sudden I couldn’t log into a windows machine, that was properly joined into a DOMAIN with a new user name. Domain administrator worked, but that could have been a coincidence.

The error I got was:

User profile service failed the logon User profile cannot be loaded

I searched the web and came across the one solution, which talks about BAK files in the registry, but I had no BAK files.

Then later I found in one of the posts:

I discovered it was caused by a security problem on a few files/folders in the C:\Users\Default folder. I was able to easily fix it by going into the Advanced Security Settings for the C:\Users\Default folder and checking the box to “Replace all childobject permission with inheritable permissions from this object”.

This solved my problem on the workstation.

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Microsoft server products affected by TIFF vulnerability

Exchange and Lync, plus other Microsoft products. (Click here for a full list: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/advisory/2896666)

Microsoft has identified a “zero-day” vulnerability involving .TIFF files. This means that neither Microsoft nor the antivirus companies have been able to develop tools to address this vulnerability. Because this is a zero-day vulnerability, the only way to protect yourself is to exercise extreme caution when opening .TIFF files, no matter how they reach you—whether via Exchange or Lync or through unknown websites. We advise all users to be very careful with .TIFF files. Anti-virus and firewall protection applications may not stop this threat. Do not open any files with a filename ending in .tiff – either through your personal mail or Exchangemail. There are a number of news articles discussing the specific details of the vulnerability. You can read them here: https://news.google.com/news?ncl=d-A1C6SaxJzq77M7R5cmrPtUUtToM&q=zero+day+microsoft&lr=English&hl=en

Here are some answers to questions you may have:

Q: Won’t Blue Net’s Mail Filter catch any viruses that are trying to get through?
A: No. The very definition of zero-day means that as of today, there are no signatures that let us detect any attachments containing malware. Your best defense is user awareness until Microsoft delivers a patch, and until signatures can be developed.

Q: Can I block .TIFF files from being delivered to my end users mailboxes?
A: Unfortunately, that functionality is not available.

Q: When is Microsoft anticipated to deliver a patch?
A: Microsoft has stated that it will “take the appropriate action to help protect our customers. This may include providing a security update through our monthly release process or providing an out-of-cycle security update”. Rest assured that we’ll apply the updates as soon as they’re made available to us.

From Wikipedia:

“A zero-day (or zero-hour or day zero) attack or threat is an attack that exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in a computer application, meaning that the attack occurs on “day zero” of awareness of the vulnerability. This means that the developers have had zero days to address and patch the vulnerability.” The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in the way affected components handle specially crafted TIFF images. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by convincing a user to preview or open a specially crafted email message, open a specially crafted file, or browse specially crafted web content. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

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Setting up multiple hosted exchange accounts in one Outlook 2010 on Windows 7

Set up the first account with the supplied setup facility. That is the easiest. However these instructions will also work for the first account

In windows go into: Control Panel / mail / email accounts

Click on New…

and you get

Click next

The select “Manually configure…..

Then Next

And select “Microsoft Exchange or compatible service”

then Next

And enter the right server and username:

The click “More Settings”

And in the “Connections” tab down the bottom select “Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP”

Then click “Exchange Proxy Settings…”

And fill the page in as appropriate (server names might be different to these)

Then OK and OK and Next

Then you will have to log in with the right username and password and the setup of the second account is complete.

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How to Take a Screenshot in Microsoft Windows

Posted in Windows | Comments Off on How to Take a Screenshot in Microsoft Windows

How to open/view archived Outlook .PST and Data Files for all versions

I beleive this only works with Outlook 2007 and later.

To attach a data file to existing email/personal folders in Outlook:

Tools>Account Options/Settings>Data Files..
Find the one you want and check where it is located

Go to:
File>Open>Data file…
Navigate to directory that we found in the step above, select the data file (or .pst file) and and click open

This will load it on the left along with your personal folder and inboxes.

__________________________________________________________

If you are trying to do this on an earlier version of Outlook, there is another way to do this.

Go to Control Panel>Mail

Click the Data Files button

When the window pops up click on ‘Add…’

Navigate to directory that we found in window that popped up before, select the data file (or .pst file) and and click open

This should have the same result as above and is a bit quicker.

OG

Posted in Customer applications, Windows | Comments Off on How to open/view archived Outlook .PST and Data Files for all versions